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Welcome

 

This week’s CommenTerry addresses a massive cheating scandal in Atlanta. Some educators, policymakers, and pundits believe that high-stakes testing invariably leads to cheating. I argue that there is a better way to think about the issue.

 

Bulletin Board

  • The John W. Pope Civitas Institute will hold its monthly poll luncheon on Thursday, July 21st at 11:45 am at the Clarion Hotel in downtown Raleigh. Speakers include John Rustin and Jonathan Kappler from the North Carolina FreeEnterprise Foundation. To register, call 919-834-2099 or go to http://www.nccivitas.org/events/.
  • The John Locke Foundation is looking for a Director of Fiscal Policy Studies. JLF’s Director of Fiscal Policy Studies researches, writes about, and comments on spending and tax issues in North Carolina. These include the state budget, tax reform, government employment and compensation, and local spending trends. For further information on duties and requirements, please visit the announcement posted at Talent Market. (Note: One of the implicit duties of the Director of Fiscal Policy Studies is working with me. I am sure that this aspect of the job will dissuade some of you from applying. Sorry.)
  • The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project website for further information.


CommenTerry

 

Last year, then-governor Sonny Perdue ordered an investigation into allegations that Atlanta Public Schools teachers helped students obtain higher scores on Georgia’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, an assessment of student proficiency in reading, language arts, math, social studies, and science. In a three-volume report published last week, investigators detailed evidence of cheating in over three quarters (44 of 56) of the Atlanta public schools they examined.

 

The governor’s investigative team identified 140 teachers and 38 principals directly involved in cheating. (They suspected that many other educators participated, but they were unable to identify them by name in the report.) According to the report, teachers regularly corrected student mistakes on answer sheets, while administrators, including former superintendent Beverly Hall and her staff, looked the other way.

 

It is easy, but misguided, to blame their reprehensible behavior on "high-stakes testing." Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Jim Wooten observed,

 

Those who say "testing pressure" drove good people to cheat make excuses for the unethical and aid and abet their crime against children. That crime is failing to educate children while passing them through the system with self-esteem rallies and unearned grades. Meanwhile, they hold weekend "changing parties" to erase wrong answers on accountability tests.

 

Wooten asks us to change to the way we think about the issue of testing and cheating. Rather than asking how testing triggers cheating behavior, he reorients the discussion to focus on the perpetrators and their relationship to the public schools and taxpayers that fund them. Doing so makes for a much more productive discussion.

 

Indeed, this is a story about people and power. According to the report, Superintendent Beverly Hall was a narcissistic and autocratic sociopath who empowered school district bureaucracy to conduct psychological warfare on teachers and principals. Investigators wrote that Hall and her bureaucratic allies created a "culture of fear, intimidation, and retaliation" that placed unreasonable demands on teachers and principals (Vol. 3, p. 350). Understandably, some school employees compared the school district to the Mob. Hall, who conveniently retired just before Governor Nathan Deal’s office released the report, insisted that she was not aware of cheating.

 

This nauseating environment explains, but does not necessarily excuse, the behavior of teachers and principals who knowingly participated in the cheating scandal. (Applied ethics alert!) As Wooten suggests in the quote above, many of these school employees cheated out of concern for their self-interest with little regard for the "common good" or, at least, the good of those under their charge.

 

Yet, those who are most likely to sympathize with the cheating teachers are also the ones most likely to defend the communitarian purposes of education and vilify acts of egoism (ethics based on self-interest). Simply put, cheating is not consistent with the positive social and educational goods that many expect from our public schools.

 

Random Thought

 

PEZ is the worst tasting candy ever.

 

Facts and Stats

 

Parks Middle School teachers and principals orchestrated Atlanta’s most egregious cheating efforts. In one year, the faculty and staff at Parks miraculously increased eighth-grade reading proficiency by 31 percent. Language arts proficiency rose by 27 percent and math proficiency jumped by 42 percent during the same year.

 

Mailbag

 

I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].

 

Education Acronym of the Week

 

WTR — Wrong To Right

 

Quote of the Week

 

"The monetary bonus for meeting targets provided little incentive to cheat. But fear of termination and public ridicule in faculty and principals meetings drove numerous educators to cross ethical lines."

 

– Office of the Governor, Atlanta Public School System report, vol. 3, June 20, 2011, p. 355

 

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