More cheating exposed

No sooner had we pegged cheating scandals as our number 4 story of the year, than a new scandal emerges, this time in Georgia.

A new investigative report details a second major standardized test cheating scandal in a Georgia school system, implicating 49 educators, including 11 principals. A key reason for the “disgraceful” cheating, investigators said, was pressure to meet No Child Left Behind requirements.

The probe (see here and here) by the Georgia governor’s Special Investigators team into cheating in the Dougherty County School System concluded that “hundreds of school children were harmed by extensive cheating.”

“While we did not find that Superintendent Sally Whatley or her senior staff knew that crimes or other misconduct were occurring, they should have known and were ultimately responsible for accurately testing and assessing students in this system. In that duty, they failed,” the 293-page report says.

Wherever we have corporate education reforms we find unsavory corporate behaviors.

Could collective bargaining prevent cheating?

Yesterday we brough news of the massive cheating scandal unfolding in Atlanta. The full report to the Governor is now out and it's an absolute doozy.

Teachers, in many cases, were bullied and subjected to intimidation and fear in order alter tests to boost school performances. Indeed the report's findings even has a section titled "Culture of fear". The report cites

Many principals humiliated teachers in front of their peers for failing to meet goals. For example, at Fain Elementary School, the principal forced a teacher to crawl under a table in a faculty meeting because that teacher’s students’ test scores were low.

Pressure from the district's administration was intense

Virtually every teacher who confessed to cheating spoke of the inordinate stress the district placed on meeting targets and the dire consequences for failure. Dr. Hall articulated it as: "No exceptions. No excuses." If principals did not meet targets within three years, she declared, they will be replaced and "I will find someone who will meet targets." Dr. Hall replaced 90% of the principals during her tenure.

You can read the report here:
Report Vol. 1
Report Vol. 2
Report Vol. 3

The report also finds that Atlanta Could Have Averted Its Cheating Scandal If It Had Listened To Its Local Teachers Union. But in Georgia there is no power of collective bargaining so teachers were helpless and unable to apply pressure on the administrators to stop the abuse and cheating. When they tried, they were subjected to retribution and retaliation. Instead of this problem being dealt with early and decisively, the high stakes environment with no employee protections led to widespread cheating, and now serious repercussions for the Atlanta Public Schools system and the children who have been hurt by it.