@poetsheart excellent post!
Slap on wrist = cheating will be the norm
Serious penalty = others will be scared to cheat
Drop high stakes testing = sanity
Ah yes because lengthy prison sentences, etc have been shown to reduce “crime”.
/sarcasm.
In my mind, Sorghum and Xiggi have it right. Why don’t we ask the subordinates and co-workers who the perpetrators threatened and see how they feel about jail sentences? And why should the parents of the kids in poorly performing schools be told that second best, as well as cheating, is fine for them? That’s what minimal punishment for these folks would represent; ‘Well it’s alright, because these are Black school children. We can’t expect much from them. Really, what’s else can be done?’ Reprehensible.
An interesting article with some of the human details:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/wrong-answer?currentPage=all
It’s easy to be quick to judge from the outside.
What some of the people did in Atlanta was wrong. The idea behind No Child Left Behind was very well-intentioned, but I think it ignored reality, and set up standards that could not be met. In the early years of NCLB, schools needed to show only a modicum of improvement over their past results. However, the goal, which was to be met sometime around this year, was to have 100% pass rate in all student demographic categories. (Exceptions have been granted to some schools.) But having 100% pass rate + having “pass” mean something does not seem attainable to me.
I’m not in favor of high stakes testing, but I never excuse cheating. What I hate about this is it isn’t just adults cheating - it’s adults showing kids that cheating is the way to go.
It would have been much better if the teachers had not changed student answers, and had been able to get the message out that the standards could not be met. The very low level of improvement required in the early years covered this up. Most states had very steep rises in the required pass rates in the last 2-3 years of the original program. Some states kept changing the tests, to eliminate direct comparisons with previous years.
One of the real difficulties is student mobility–if a student only spends three months in a school, it’s hard for the teachers there to help the student reach levels that should be reached.
The life problems described in the New Yorker article are really, really challenging.
I understand the existence of “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” and I oppose that. I do think all students can learn well. But I think we need to figure out something smarter than annual testing to help students achieve academically, when they face really difficult circumstances in their neighborhoods.
So what does this rationale say about a possible repeat of the 2008 Banking/Mortage meltdown, given that none of the actors involved received so much as even a slap on the wrist? Think they’re scared?
Failure to punish corrupt bankers doesn’t mean everybody else can commit smaller scale frauds without serious punishment.
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testing is what is ruining the education of millions by robbing them of instructional time and warping the instruction that they do receive.
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And the idea of wasting tax dollars putting these people in prison is beyond foolish. In what way, exactly, are they a threat to society? Racketeering? Give me a break. Give them probation combined with community service.<<<
Racketeering were the charges. Not my interpretation.
Testing is as much the source of problems than a thermometer the source of fever.
This is a deeply rooted problem of consistent and organized cheating that is misrepresenting our state of education for the sole benefit of the service providers. They rob kids of an education and pass them on to the next class. Rinse and repeat enough and you end up with the quasi illiterates who dropout or are graduated without skills. The under education of many is akin to a life sentence of poverty and perhaps delinquency.
All of them had a chance to make deals before. They gambled.
To be clear, I do not think that multiple years in prison fits the crime. But neither does house confinement or straight probation.
They gambled and lost.
One of the educators, Donald Bullock, took the state’s plea deal of five years probation, six months of weekends served in jail, a $5,000 fine, and 1500 hours of community service. The plea included first offender status. It also required Bullock accept responsibility and waive any future appeals. Bullock read a statement apologizing to APS students and the court.
Judge Jerry Baxter sentenced Tamara Cotman, Sharon Davis Williams, and Michael Pitts to to 20 years (7 to serve), $25,000 fine, 2000 hours of community service, and no first offender status.
Angela Williamson was sentenced to five years (one to serve), 1500 hours of community service, and a $5,000 fine.
Dana Evans received a sentence of five years (one to serve) and 1000 hours of community service.
Tabeeka Jordan received a sentenced of five years (two to serve), 1500 hours of community service, and a $5,000 fine.
Diane Buckner-Webb was sentenced to five years (one to serve), 1000 hours of community service, and a $1,000 fine.
xiggi, have you visited kindergarten classes in districts across socio-economic classes?
I understand the extreme challenges that people living in poverty face, when they are trying to help their children academically–so I don’t blame anyone for the observable differences.
I also think that rhetoric such as “they rob kids of an education” is not accurate, in describing what is happening. The New Yorker article has no unambiguous bad guys–and a number of the people who did reprehensible things were actually trying to help the students, as far as they could.
I don’t think anyone here put forth even the first argument to suggest that what these teachers did was “fine”. I could well imagine I’d want anyone who threatened me under such circumstances to see at least some jail time, but I contend that the sudden inability to earn a living practicing one’s profession is hardly “a slap on the wrist”. I argued against “lengthy prison sentences” as being disproportionate to the crime committed, especially in comparison to such deeds as brought about the 2008 economic meltdown.
Please, if you would, identify anyone who even coughed the intimation that the failures against these children were “alright, because these are Black school children” and therefore, “we can’t expect much from them.” Having had black children myself whom I had no choice but to entrust to public schools, I would never ever think such a thing, much less suggest it. I happen to believe the Atlanta children have been failed on many levels, and by a number societal institutions. Effectively addressing such failures is going to require much more than the setting of academic benchmarks, because the roots of the problem are deep and perniciously spread out. Of course that doesn’t mean we can throw up our hands and lament that “nothing else can be done.” It’s going to take a renewed and innovative approach that aggressively tackles the many variables that have allowed the problem to persist. It will require changes in families, in communities, in attitudes about the value of education, in beliefs about what black children can attain, and in a willingness to adequately fund solutions shown to work.
I firmly believe these teachers and administrators will be scapegoated, and schools such as the ones in Atlanta will continue to fall short of state and federal benchmarks, even when educators roundly fear the consequences of fraudulent testing. Only the willingness to implement and fund a comprehensive approach to correcting the problem will actually result in the desired successes. And it grieves me to believe such a collective willingness shall be long forthcoming.
Quantmech, I would not write so often about similar subjects, I was not very familiar with them. I have done more than “visiting” districts across socio-economic classes, and this with the widest range of wealth you might imagine. Fwiw, I am used to similar question: “Xiggi, have you ever taught a class?” and know the reason why it is asked.
I also come from a region that is been riddled by criminal activities among administrators and educators. The joke has been that they cannot keep a superintendent as they often leave for a trip to prison. Musical chairs of bad apples are the norm vs the exception. To protect bond ratings and costs, districts are known to bury egregious behavior like embezzlement or theft.
Poetsheart, the reality is that we have simply relied on excuses for the past 5 decades and obvious attempts to hide the depth of our problems. Before we can work on real solutions, we have to be able to measure the problems correctly. Those people who should now never be tasked with educating children or being part of the system had NO place in the education. There lies our foremost problem: the profession attracts both incredibly talented and generous people AND the ones that look at a system that ripe for abuses, cheating, and self-serving.
I could go on and on towards a more comprehensive discussion of what is wrong and what could or should be done, but that is usually utterly wasteful here. In a matter of seconds, there will be a cry that it represents again a bashing the teachers thread. So, I will save ourselves a dozen pages, and simply go to the conclusion.
Those people are exactly what is WRONG with our system. They were willing participants in the endless schemes to defraud, hide the truth, protect their own turf and benefits. And if they were indeed coerced or threatened by that demon who passed away before meeting her fate, the next generations of teachers might point to the real danger of ending in a cell as a deterrent to become a pawn in that organized corruption game.
If solutions is what you want, it is important to get rid of the people who are making a living being determined to stop every concrete attempt to redress a failed and corrupt to the core system.
The Atlanta case is a small step in the right direction. And decades too late.
This is true for reasonable testing. My state, for example, used to have a system of testing in several grade levels: 3rd, 7th, and 11th, IIRC. The tests were rigorous and aspirational in terms of educational quality. They were designed so that the vast majority of kids even in the best schools would score no higher than “partially meets expectations.” These tests were far more expensive to score than the poor-quality stuff being pumped out by the educational industrial complex now. They had a lot of value as a diagnostic tool that schools could use to improve their curricula and teaching methods. They were not used to punish, but to educate.
The yearly high-stakes testing initiated with NCLB gradually and definitively distorted elementary education, robbing teachers of creativity, pushing towards drill-and-kill, forcing schools to concentrate on desperately trying to drag up the bottom third rather than meeting every child where they were and enriching each child’s education. In my area, the very best schools in the state were constantly one child away from being put on the “failing schools” list because the way NCLB sliced and diced the school population was designed for large urban districts, not for ones with perhaps 200 children or fewer in an entire grade. A bad performance or absence on the part of ONE special ed kid and you were on the “failing” list.
Even now, the amount of instructional time lost to meaningless testing is huge. A superb HS language teacher I know told me that her students lost 10 hours of instructional time in her class this year due to testing. Note that this is on the order of 2 weeks of class.
At the elementary level we see schools reducing or eliminating recess, art, social science, music, even science. We see little kids endlessly drilling with too many worksheets and too little creativity. It is a disaster.
@romanigypsyeyes, you say you don’t believe in prison sentences for non-violent offenders. What punishment, if any, would you recommend? Keep in mind that “deterrent” has 2 purposes. One, deter this offender from repeating this crime. In this case, no punishment is needed to serve that purpose. These people will never repeat this crime. Two, deter others from committing this crime. That is the issue in this case. What punishment, administered to these offenders, will deter OTHERS in the future from committing this crime? Community service? Monetary fine? Prison time? I would suggest that only prison time will truly deter others from committing this fraud in the future. (And, of course, no punishment will deter all knuckleheads. There are always those that think they can get away with anything.) But what do you think should happen to these and other non-violent offenders?
I do think I already expressed the opinion that such people should no longer be allowed to earn a living as teachers, so upon that, we can certainly agree. I also agree that the profession attracts no small number of individuals looking for a job they can get away with performing just minimum requirements, and which come with three months summer vacation. Part of the problem, I believe, is the fact that teaching has long been a profession that garners little in the way of social prestige. We don’t want to pay teachers salaries that match the importance of the job, nor require that those jobs be filled only with the most top notch, and committed college graduates (I think teaching should require at least a masters degree, for instance). I don’t like seeing all teachers painted with the same broad brush used to justifiably mark some. That’s often where charges of teacher bashing come into education threads. But, if we are to honestly address all areas of educational shortcoming, it would be irresponsible to pretend there’s isn’t a rotten element in the teaching profession that seriously thwarts efforts to correct the problem.
@Barfly poetsheart has articulated my views on this better than I ever could. I defer to her recommendations.