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Prosecutors Get an 'A' On Convictions of Atlanta Ed-Reform-Gone-Bad Test Cheats
theodp writes Just weeks after an L.A. Times op-ed called on public schools to emulate high-tech companies by paying high salaries to driven, talented employees whose productivity more than compensates for their high pay, the New York Times reported on the dramatic conclusion to perhaps the largest cheating scandal in the nation's history, which saw a Judge order handcuffed Atlanta educators led off to jail immediately for their roles in a standardized test cheating scandal that raised broader questions about the role of high-stakes testing in American schools. Jurors convicted 11 of the 12 defendants — a mix of Atlanta public school teachers, testing coordinators and administrators — of racketeering, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution sowed suspicion about the veracity of the test scores in 2009, and while investigators found that cheating was particularly ingrained in individual schools, they also said that the district's top officials, including Superintendent Beverly L. Hall, bore some responsibility for creating "a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation" that had permitted "cheating — at all levels — to go unchecked for years." (More below.)
Officials said the cheating allowed employees to collect bonuses and helped improve the reputations of both Dr. Hall and the perpetually troubled school district. Dr. Hall, who died on March 2, insisted that she had done nothing wrong and that her approach to education, which emphasized data, was not to blame. But a Fulton County grand jury later accused her and 34 other district employees of being complicit in the cheating. Twenty-one reached plea agreements, and two defendants died before they could stand trial. Interestingly, in early 2010, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported on how Hall and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were bringing a "fair and transparent evaluation and support mechanism" to the Atlanta Public Schools. "We are excited to continue our [$23.6 million] partnership with APS and Dr. Hall," said Gates Foundation director of education Vicki L. Phillips. Five years earlier, in a 2005 Gates Foundation press release, Hall said, "We look forward to partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to take our reform efforts to the next level."
IANAL but I don't see how this could be considered racketeering.
Well, they obviously chose the wrong profession. Had they been Wall Street hedge fund bankers, they would have got an invite to the next country estate deer hunt.
46137
I'm used to theodp putting things into selective context so they sound better or more usually worse than they are, but WTF is up with this one? Would higher teacher salaries somehow have something to do with a culture of fear and retaliation? Do well paid people not feel this kind of pressure?
They got em.
Private sector too whenever the sole and only focus is on metrics. Like how Pepsi loaded all their inventory on a truck moved it 1 foot then did an inventory count each quarter is a classic example.
People will find a way a number is met
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Felony racketeering for a cheating scandal?
How on earth does cheating on some tests in any way compare to racketeering?
Sounds like the only racket going on is centered on the judge and prosecutor, not some bad teachers.
I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Moral of the trial appears to be "Don't mess with the feds unless you've been granted too big to fail status".
Moral of the story seems to be that, surprise surprise, if you attempt to rule by the metric, you'd better be damned good at using it or all you'll get is peons who are good at gaming the metric. You'll get there even faster if you make demands that can only be satisfied by gaming the metric; with extra credit for exquisitely defeating the purpose of data-driven-improvement by creating a class of people whose organizational survival depends on gaming the metric, and who can then be reliably expected to intimidate and retaliate against anyone who makes gaming the metric harder (like any honorable and/or competent enough to succeed without cheating employees you might have...)
Obviously, you can't get much of anything done if you just pretend that the world, is, like, fundamentally inaccessible to your reductionist empirical 'measurements', man... and sometimes there's simply no pretending that it isn't time to cut some dead weight; but the sheer naivete of these test score based funding allocation proposals(and implementations) seriously makes me wonder if the people proposing them are just dumb, actually believed that most schools that suck suck because of slacking and can be fixed just by whipping the slackers a bit, or whether the intent was always just to find a nice, 'objective' way to declare the schools a write-off and purge them.
Based on the results, it's impossible to argue that these schools are just A-OK and peachy keen; but it's not exactly news that "just intimidate and fire workers until Wall Street smiles" has not worked all that well as a corporate management strategy, and many of these testing initiatives seem to be largely the same plan, adapted for the public sector.
So yes, when presented with the opportunity, some educators will cheat for personal and professional gain. This has undoubtedly going on for years but is easier to catch with more standardized testing regimen with better checks in place. The solution is not to get rid of standardized testing, but to have an orientation every year to remind teachers of their contracts, ethical obligations, and professional and legal consequences if they choose to cheat, just as works in the private sector. It is impossible to eliminate cheating, but it can be minimized with the right combination of education and enforcement.
Now people will not want to be teachers and the current ones will change job.
Don't forget that edumacation iz importenant and u r34lly sh0u1d b3 c4r3fu1.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Stupidity cannot be learned. Now they teach it in school.
I hear Isis is recruiting. They most certainly do not believe in unions and are prepared to do something about it.
Her demanding teachers do better is what created this problem. Making teachers fear for their jobs if their students don't learn is morally wrong. The teachers can't control the parents.
I suspect that this is irrelevant to your little rant; but it's commonly the case for teachers(and some; but not all, flavors of support staff) to be unionized; but administrators, principals, and the superintendent almost certainly weren't.
That is the fault of the No Child Left Behind Act.
This is such a small part of the problem that it is really not worthy of discussion. Centralized testing has been mandated since the mid to late 80s. The government mandated testing, and the bureaucracy that has to follow it around is the problem. The Feds have school districts handcuffed with this, since funding is all tied to test results. Kids are stuck not learning, because constantly cramming for test problems means you rarely if ever get to learn.
Just like everything else in the Federal sector, the corruption is simply massive in the DoE. It has been for as long as the agency has been active, but today we are seeing the full force of the corruption. They are not even bothering to hide it any more.
Yeah, the "fix" is to get rid of the agency and start jailing all the people abusing offices for personal gain. Nothing likely will happen though, it's easier still to bitch about the problem than band together and take action.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
High tech companies are ultimately able and driven to pay productive employees more because they make them more money. In the long run, companies can't fake how much money they have made: the money is either there or it isn't.
But in the educational system, outcomes can be faked, because they aren't self-enforcing. Whatever test results, performance measures, or statistics you use for determining performance, they are subject to lobbying and manipulation and they can be gamed. Putting public teachers on a performance standard is probably even worse than simply letting them do whatever they want.
If you want teachers who are actually evaluated and paid based on performance, the only option you have is to send your kids to private schools. It would be nice if more parents can do that (via vouchers or similar mechanisms), but that's not going to happen as long as public teachers unions remain as powerful as they are.
Corruption is "massive in the DoE"? Really? I don't think your premise is common knowledge, so please cite a few sources.
The DoE doesn't pass any laws; it enforces the ones passed by Congress. And as it's a cabinet-level department, Congress approves all cabinet appointees, so blame them on both fronts. And while the DoE does a lot of things, its central mission, and its reason for its establishment, is to assure access to equal educational opportunity for every individual. Take the DoE away, and we've lost the primary means of enforcement against educational discrimination of children in our nation. Even if you do happen to somehow prove that the DoE is full of corruption, I don't think you want to throw that baby out with the bathwater.
Speaking with 10 years of experience in public K-12 schools, blame lies with the superintendent. Superintendents are the leaders of a district, and they can and often do set a strong tone of expectations that are carried out by administrators, including principals, which then trickle down to teachers and support staff. There's no doubt in my mind that the superintendent, tacitly if not directly, created this cheating culture in Atlanta. We can blame the law all we want for encouraging the genesis of such an environment, but that's like blaming cheese for mold growth. Yes, an optimal environment was created for this cheating scandal to take root and grow, but it was disgusting school leaders like Dr. Hall that caused it to happen.
if you're gonna change a student's test answers so you can get a bigger paycheck..... use a better eraser, and keep your trap shut.
... all you get is numbers. This testing-mania is hurting education badly. In cases where the numbers are not outright made up, they are subject to over-fitting (pupils learn jut for test-scores, not for knowledge and skills anymore), where they become just as meaningless. The underlying problem is that politicians are so abysmally dumb these days that they cannot comprehend anything about any real question but whether a number is higher or lower.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Who let the mentally disturbed cave-man in?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Greed is good.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution sowed suspicion about the veracity of the test scores in 2009
Actually, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) newspaper was one of Beverly Hall's biggest cheerleaders. Bloggers were pointing out problems with the Atlanta test scores for years before the AJC looked into it. The cheating wasn't really a secret -- someone was even using the screen name "Beverly FRAUD" to post comments on the AJC's own website.
The AJC ignored all those allegations of cheating until Beverly Hall was named 2009 National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA).... and then the newspaper reluctantly started investigating her.
I do not condone the actions of the teachers, but I also disagree with the outcomes of high stakes testing in general. High stakes testing has been in place long enough to know that it has failed to improve outcomes. The problem is that these tests take the focus away from the student and put it on the subject. Every course is one size fits all and it does not matter if a student has mastered or will never master a subject.
No Child Left Behind is a rallying cry for the ignorant and idealistic. It does not take into account the capacity of the student. The solution really is to abandon standardized tests. The nation often cited to have the best education system in the world, Finland, has no standardized testing.
In their place, I would like to see locally or regionally developed pretests and posttests. Student progress would be determined by the difference in the two scores. This puts the focus back on the individual student where it belongs.
I have taught students to pass high stakes tests, I have also written questions for high stakes tests. The bottom line is that teachers can not win given the rules.
-If students do well on a test, the test was too easy or the teachers were cheating. The test must be re-normed. An investigation ensues. The teachers may be fired.
-If students do poorly on a test, the teacher did not do their job. A State take over is imminent. The teachers must be fired.
-If students learn about science, teachers are violating their religious beliefs. A church rally gathers at the school board meeting to fire the teacher.
-If students learn that the United States committed genocide against native Americans, teachers are unpatriotic. Teachers must be fired.
-If students come to school hungry, tired, or beaten by their parents, teachers must resolve all of those issues and teach the student (with no support). Failure to do so may result in loss of license.
For anybody reading this who is considering becoming a teacher - DO NOT BECOME A TEACHER IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! I have to get back to my lesson plans now - during spring break.
The teachers played along with your idea of having schools emulate corporations: They ignored your laws and did what they could to "optimize" the results. Now what you have to do is to release them acquitted, hand them big bailouts to recover their losses and let them retire with golden parachutes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This story is about Atlanta teachers who lied and cheated to get more money. Not sure how that is 1. Defensible. 2. Related in any way to Wall St.
... every school that provides AP credit with classes graded on a AP scale (A=5.0, B=4.0, etc.) instead of the normal scale.
Now THAT'S a racket!
... that the school district in question is largely black and relatively poorer than most. The convicted school administrators and teachers were also black.
I doubt the same verdict and punishments would have occurred had the defendants been whiter and more affluent. Our society's conscience has a much easier time jailing black Americans than any other, and race factors into even white collar crimes.
In the U.S. of today, prosecutors can get dishonest advances to their careers by lying and cheating.
From an earlier submitted Slashdot story: New Jersey cops killed a man by mauling him with a dog. The U.S. is rapidly getting worse.
When I spoke with the school Principal, she was aware of the incident and backed up the teacher. As far as I know, this teacher and principal are still working at the same school.
there should be a college GED or at least some way for people to take a test to get a piece of paper and with out having to spend 30-50K + 2-4 years for it.
With a mentality like this, they would be welcome in third world countries.
As I'm sitting here grading AP calculus .. bullshit. At least now we're teaching the test instead of fucking nothing at all. My union has done an amazing job of ensuring that teacher feel underpaid while more and more administrators get hired and the education industry siphons more and more money. Many of my peers are truly worth as little as they're paid; they've either given up or were business school flunk-outs to begin with. Forcing the incompetent and unwilling to teach the test is better than teaching nothing.
There are a few schools that offer essentially that. I'm doing it at WGU.edu, which is a state school in many states (WGU Texas, for example, is a state school in Texas). You finish each class whenever you can pass the test, which in many cases is an industry-recognized certification test from CompTIA, CIW, Microsoft, etc. I just finished my database course, which took me a week to get four college credits since I know the material very well. If you knew ALL the material well enough to pass all of the tests, you could get a bachelor's degree in six months or so. They ALSO provide curriculum to teach you the material, but you study it only as much as you need to.
You mentioned the cost. With WGU, you don't pay per-credit or per-class, but per-semester, and you can take as many courses in that semester as you want. (Minimum 12 credits for financial aid.) IF you knew everything you need to know for your degree, you could do the whole thing in one six-month semester at a cost of only $3000. The tax credit is about $1,200, so the net cost to you is only $1,800.
Personally, I have a full time job, a part-time business, and a family, so I'm doing it in just a few hours per week and it will take a while.
Other schools offer similar programs. WGU offers low cost and reasonable credibility - it's a state school just like Texas A&M, University of Texas, etc. Not AS flagship prestigious, but also not a joke like some online programs. Exclesior is somewhat similar in that you get credit for knowing the material, not for attendance or homework.
At first I thought it was the Chinese who cheats
Then the news from India of parents scaling walls of an exam building to help their children cheat
And now it's USA
I thought USA never cheat
I though USA is honest, plays fair, hates cheaters (that's why they hate the Chinese so much)
Now it seems that USA is in the same boat as China
I dunno what you are smokin' man ...
The US public education system has already been in the motherfucking gutter for decades !!
Prosecutors Get an 'A' On Convictions of Atlanta Ed-Reform-Gone-Bad Test Cheats
Try again, I don't think your headline was quite convoluted enough.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If only we had such good and motivated prosecutors to go after the massive banking fraud that caused the 2008 crash.
He somehow managed to find slashdot. Happens sometimes. Always a crank.
There is something to be said for black students. I was waiting for my Son who was in elementary school. That'd be about 15 years ago. On the lobby table was a book of performance on standardized tests. At the top were the white girls, then boys, then asian girls, asian boys.... bottom of the list black girls - 1 passed, no black boys. I thought WTH? I knew there were probably a dozen black boys in that grade for that school, about the same number of girls. Same school, same books, same teachers, same lesson plan, etc.. The one thing I did find is that the parents of the black kids couldn't seem to care less about them. I couldn't even help them. White guy trying to help black kids - must be up to something.
How terrible.
I did have a lot more success at the 4-H. Some black parents brought their kids by. I'd teach them anything. Anything at all. Sadly, it was just a fraction of a percent of black kids.