You should first note that the articles were not exculpatory for either Atlanta or Georgia. As the AJC noted, "[a]mong the nation’s largest school districts, [Georgia's] level of sustained questionable scores was unmatched."
Before reading the articles, you should perhaps first read the AJC's explanation of its methodology: Cheating our children: The AJC’s methodology behind suspicious school test score. Remember that the using a minimum probability that a positive change in testing scores could have happened by chance only 1 out of 20 times is a minimum. In the case of the Atlanta schools, some schools had a large percentage of classrooms experiencing wrong-to-right erasures at up to 50 standard deviations from the norm, when seven standard deviations were likely to occur randomly fewer than one out of 350 billion times. Flagging an event at likely to occur randomly no more likely than one out of 20 times tells us where the line was drawn; it doesn't tell us how far over the probability line the event actually went.
Other stories from the investigation:
Cheating our children: List of cities that show high probability of cheating in schools
Map of suspicious test scores nationwide
Cheating our children: Find your school district's test-score shifts
Cheating our children: The story behind the story
That's not all of the articles, but it's enough to get you started and the rest are linked from most of those articles. I'm just beginning to digest it myself, but wanted to share it now.
It appears that a substantial number of public school teachers and administrators nationwide were willing to change test scores under the pressure of threatened funding cuts.
The “public school” is BY FAR, the largest, most expensive, most subversive, and most destructive entitlement program in the country.
The “public school” is better understood as the “government school collective”.
It is silly to imagine that you can fix the public schools, because the very concept itself is communist.
Any child that comes out of the government school collective with their moral compass and common sense intact does so in spite of the government school indoctrination, not because of it.
If you want to win the culture war, have lots of children (see my tagline) and homeschool them or form your own school cooperative with your church or synagogue and like-minded friends and relatives.
Nobody loves your children more than you do.
Nobody can teach your children like you can.
Your children would love nothing better than to be taught by you, if you start doing so before they are corrupted by the government school collective.
It is hypocritical for you to submit your children to an authority with whom you fundamentally disagree. And your children will know it.
If you have children, make whatever sacrifices you must to get them out of the public schools.
DO NOT FEED THE BEAST!
Especially not with your own children.
What else would anyone expect when contempt for truth becomes a cultural foundation? The fundamental evil that is the Left—the embodiment of decadence—is mendacity. It has pervaded our nation, our world, our civilization. Its corrupting effects are devastating.
I haven't draw any conclusion about them. You'll find them across the U.S.
Obama claims he wants hope and change. My hope is that someday minorities will come to understand what hypocritical liberals are doing to them. For three generations they herd them into dysfunctional urban public schools keeping them ignorant, docile and easily manipulated. They are denied vouchers and choice which would of course empower them. Meanwhile the hypocritical liberals like Obama and Rahm Emmanuel “choose” to send their kids to good private schools. The liberals fund planned parenthood clinics in minority neighborhoods and actually kill them to keep their numbers down. They hire frontmen like Sharpton and Jackson to keep them in line. If 20 to 30% finally realize what the hypocritical liberals are doing , then there will be real change.
Great article. I notice many districts and states have their heads in the sand and try and explain away impossible results or ignore them.
There needs to be mass firings,removal of benefits. Everything on the table. This is after all theft. They are not doing their job but being paid for it. Stealing from the tax payers.
Iffen you don’t like the temperature, you just change the thermometer.
It started on a national level with clinton—remember the redifinition of the word “spin”?
We’ve gone downhhill as a nation from there.
WAAAAY DOWN. Faster, too.
The writers of the article aren’t upset at the cheating, they’re mad that students are tested.
The “Lake Wobegon” phenomenon: all the children are above average.
It will not be surprising if standardized-test cheating is extremely widespread. The Federal regime requires the schools to show improving results, and yet they are unable to actually produce improved student performance. “What choice do they have” but to cheat?
A substantial proportion of the students simply can’t read and do arithmetic, and once they get past about 4th grade, it’s never fixed. Why can’t they read and do arithmetic? One can offer a lot of sociological theses, but a major reason is that they are simply not taught. But don’t “bash” the teachers: they’re heroes for spending all day with the children the parents would rather die than be around.
It’s like Lake Wobegon Greater School District, where all the children are above average.
The amount of **afterschooling** done by the parents is **never** measured in any government school in this nation! Therefore...ALL testing to determine the effectiveness of the school is BOGUS!!
Conclusion: ALL testing to determine the effectiveness of any government school is completely INVALID without measuring how much learning is due to the school and how much is entirely acquired **IN THE HOME** due to the hard work of the parents and child, and private tutoring!
I've been hammered here on Free Republic for using the word, “all”, so if any poster can prove me wrong, I would welcome the correction. Please provide links.
I conclude, after working with the youth of our church for 30 years, that if an institutionally schooled child can read and do basic arithmetic it is because the parents are doing **tons** of **afterschooling***!!! The parents and child are working just as hard IN THE HOME as my kids did homeschooling. I have never met an exception.
That, in and of itself, is a scandal.
I am a high school teacher in an urban school district. Da Fuhrer Mayor Bloomberg, along with his libtard buddy Gov. Cuomo, have brought about a teacher evaluation “deform” which is very heavily based on student test scores. What if, as I am, you are working with a bunch of kids with a reading level score of 1-2 (out of a scale of 4) with a strong anti-academic culture? Smart kids are in fear of being beat up, so they feel they have to act tough and not show their brains in class.
The students come to me with these abysmal reading levels as upperclassmen in high school. They cannot read much of the material assigned or only haltingly. I don’t have a textbook, none was supplied. Many kids come to class daily without a notebook or pencil to their name and have to ask for a handout from one of their classmates. It takes them a good 10-15 minutes AFTER the late bell to finally settle down in their seats and take out their notebooks (if they have one). There is never 5 minutes that goes by that I don’t have to stop and tell someone to stop talking, put away their cell phone or a newspaper, get off the person next to them (they embrace in class, I’m surprised a baby hasn’t been conceived by these so-much-more-than-hugs right in the middle of the classroom).
Get the picture?
Despite trying to call parents (75% of the time, you get a disconnected number) and working with the overworked guidance counselor, it’s hard to effect a positive change in behavior to try and improve their grades.
But I am evaluated as though these were white blue-eyed kids from upper middle class homes, as Bloomberg and Cuomo came from. Where such behaviors were not even in their imaginations, let alone carried out. My evaluation will be up to 40% based on the TEST SCORES of these students.
If you want to continue having your job, it’s very obvious what you are FORCED to do. Swallow your integrity and give falsely inflated grades.
So I can understand why these teachers across the nation are being forced to falsify grades. Test scores are NOT the sum total of what a child learns. They are merely a snapshot view of what the kid knows at THAT moment, on THAT day. What if they had a fight with their mom the night before? What if they found out their boyfriend was stepping out on them the day before the test? What if they are hungry because their parents use their money for drugs? What if their sibling is in the hospital? Do you think they will test optimally with these situations?
And what about the little progresses you see, but which will never be recorded as a test score? Laquita heard you when you told her about self-respect and now she dresses more modestly. Dequint will now read aloud in class because he knows no one will laugh at his halting reading. Jose is now doing his homework, which he never did before. Thomas is asking good questions in class now. These are results of a caring teacher, but that will never be recorded, you will never get credit for a titanic effort which results in these little steps.
It appears that Utah is the only state that does not have schools with suspicious scores. Hm? Could it be to the overall values of the teachers, principals, and families of the overwhelmingly Mormon state?
They're liberals - of course they cheat. Why not? They're soooooooo superior to the rest of us.. they deserve the right to be liars and cheats. Just ask them.