Cheating Scandal in Atlanta Public Schools

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Who is insisting this?

General comment. The point is there are overarching issues that led to the cheating.

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I think it was caused by a county office and superintendent who wanted the appearance of achievement and the accolades that went with it, even though they had no faith in their staff or in their students. And they created the pressure for everyone else.

This is an example of an overarching issue.

In this case, I change my post to:
"...if people insist that's what the issue is, why do these school districts have county offices and superintendents who only want the appearance of appearance and accolades; have no faith in teachers, staff, and students; and who overtly or covertly encourage cheating, misappropriation of funds, or whatever else? That type of thing wouldn't fly in certain school districts."

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

There are very similar districts in the Atlanta area (and in other urban areas of the state) that have the demographics and history that I think your are describing, and they didn't have similar wide spread problems with cheating.

Cheating is not the end-all-and-be-all, whether districts are caught or not. This thread just happens to be about cheating but, as my post said, I am not too concerned with that. The issues that are pervasive in these school districts manifest themselves in different ways.

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I think the difference is that the leadership in APS, maybe aided by previous dysfunction, was able to go educationally Enron.

Right so there is something going on that is impacting APS just as it does districts with similar dynamics across the country. Whether it is cheating or some other observable outcome, there is an outcome.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

In this case, I change my post to:
"...if people insist that's what the issue is, why do these school districts have county offices and superintendents who only want the appearance of appearance and accolades; have no faith in teachers, staff, and students; and who overtly or covertly encourage cheating, misappropriation of funds, or whatever else? ."

Because the voters in those districts aren't minding the store? Because the same voters graduated from these schools or schools like them? Because the culture of mismanagement has run that way so long and people who have resources* elect not to live in the districts most impacted by the mismanagement and corruption? Because we decided that people even in poor and minority districts have the right to self government in elected officials and are reluctant to intervene in a paternalistic fashion, short of the elected officials or their appointees actually having broken the law?

I don't think there's any magic bullet to fix any of that.

But we can insist that public employees not cheat and commit fraud, and we can take action when they actually do break the law or violate clear professional standards.

And that improves things a little for the kids. They and their teachers the following year get a more accurate picture of their skill level and they can know where to being with real instruction.

*Actually, I think it's only people with middle class level resources who choose certain districts. People with even more resources opt out completely and go to private schools.

[UGAalum94]

http://www.albanyherald.com/home/hea...t_on_CRCT.html

The state is going to complete its investigation of Dougherty County school, too.

This is the main Albany, Georgia system down in the southwest corner of the state.

It's interesting to read the full comments because they mention equal protection and concerns about seeming to single out Atlanta.

ETA:http://www.ajc.com/news/suspicious-t...ad-296490.html
This supports the idea that there's cheating all over.

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-crct...al-295376.html
This lets one see how different different school systems are in terms of the numbers of classrooms flagged.

http://public.doe.k12.ga.us/ayp2010/search.asp
And this, if you are super nerdy, would allow you to look at the demographics of the test takers in all the districts.

Only looking at a couple of districts, it looks like there's more cheating in districts with more poor kids, which I think most people might expect because there'd be a perception that the kids started out behind so teachers would be panicky*. But I don't think you see too many whole systems, even with a lot of poor schools, with high rates of flagged classroom. *I think people would expect to see the same about cheating all over if having really high scores mattered to the test takers but all that matters with the CRCT is passing.

[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.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

And that improves things a little for the kids. They and their teachers the following year get a more accurate picture of their skill level and they can know where to being with real instruction.

If it was that simple there wouldn't have been a perceived need to cheat in the first place.