Cheating Scandal in Atlanta Public Schools

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Only looking at a couple of districts, it looks like there's more cheating in districts with more poor kids....

And as I previously stated cheating and other issues are more common in predominantly poor districts across the country.

Districts can pretend it's an issue with the specific people involved and focus on criminal and professional sanctions. But, since these districts have histories of being horrible multitaskers, I hope they do some sanction but put the most emphasis on reducing the perceived need for cheating and other negative outcomes.

[UGAalum94]

I don't think I denied that there was likely to be more cheating in districts with more poor kids, especially as in regard to basic proficiency tests.. When it comes to cheating across the board, I think it's as likely to happen anywhere. It might be more likely to happen with affluent kids because they have more resources to spend on it, like paying someone to take their SAT.

You can talk all you want about other outcomes, but you probably can't deliver much or people would be doing it. If there were better ways of doing things that ensured success in the districts we are talking about, why don't you think people have used them?

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

You can talk all you want about other outcomes, but you probably can't deliver much or people would be doing it. If there were better ways of doing things that ensured success in the districts we are talking about, why don't you think people have used them?

People across the country have done it and are doing it. It is relatively rare but not because those who can enact change are clueless about what can be done. It is a rarity for other reasons...but people want to concentrate on some cheaters. Either way, the biggest lesson for APS to learn from this is not that there are criminal and professional sanctions to hand out.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

People across the country have done it and are doing it. It is relatively rare but not because those who can enact change are clueless about what can be done. It is a rarity for other reasons...but people want to concentrate on some cheaters. Either way, the biggest lesson for APS to learn from this is not that there are criminal and professional sanctions to hand out.

Show me. Link a few.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

And as I previously stated cheating and other issues are more common in predominantly poor districts across the country.

Districts can pretend it's an issue with the specific people involved and focus on criminal and professional sanctions. But, since these districts have histories of being horrible multitaskers, I hope they do some sanction but put the most emphasis on reducing the perceived need for cheating and other negative outcomes.

At this point, it's out of the district's hands. We're talking a state investigation and perhaps a federal fraud investigation with federal charges.

I think that's going to do wonders to cut down on cheating, both because corrupt district personnel have to worry about the ethical standards of the outside world but also because it will give teachers who never wanted to cheat a safe haven when they are being pressured to do so.

The Georgia cheating scandal has already caused testing procedures to be reviewed and in some cases changed, which I think will eliminate the opportunity for the relatively small percentage of teachers who might have tried to cheat just to make themselves look good or because they couldn't deal with good faith concern about what their relatively low test scores meant about their students' learning.

The big thing that I think you are ignoring is that the negative stakes in Atlanta were actually really low, except for the internal craziness in the district. Surrounding counties had a lot of Needs Improvement schools and the sky didn't fall. There didn't seem a big push for expensive transfers in district or without. There's was no big loss of funds. Sure, it was probably embarrassing, but as countless other schools and districts showed, ultimately other than the label, not much changed. As far as I know, we've yet to have a single school in Georgia even get "restructured."

All it should take to do away with the perceived need for cheating is for the district personnel quit scaring the hell out of people about scores that didn't really matter that much, except as they indicated student learning and secondarily resulted in a label that got you a gold star or black mark.