Guest Post : Atlanta 12

This is a response to all the people—from judges to journalists and everyone in between-- jabbering about the Atlanta 12 being responsible for hundreds or thousands of Atlanta's students failing school due to their CRCT answers being changed by adults who should have known better.

Hogwash.

If guilty, the Atlanta 12 committed two “crimes”: cowardice and greed. The cowardice was nutured by fears of job loss, poor performance reviews, or loss of reputation; greed was enhanced by a monetary reward system tied to student performance on the CRCTs.  But good people do not succumb to the easy lures of promotion and money. So they are guilty as charged. But to credit these dozen educators with the dismal failures and poor performances of the public school system is neither justified nor sensical.

One test, administered over one to three school days per year, does not determine a child's success. As an indicator of what the child needs academically, it is second-rate at best. That's why you have teachers in a classroom. Otherwise, save us all time and money and put kids at computers. Some of the convicted educators never spent a single day in the classroom of some of the students whose poor education has been labeled their fault—all because they changed CRCT answer sheets.

School years approximate 180 days. Who allowed these children to spend a year or more making little/no forward progress? Who promoted these students to the next grade? What have classroom teachers been told to do with students incapable of doing grade-level work?

The fact that someone changed answers on a 5th grader's CRCT exam does NOT explain why the 5th grader was promoted 4 times (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade) and still can't read. A CRCT scores does not explain why an 8th grader can't multiply or solve a simple math problem. And if a parent or teacher needs a CRCT score to know this about the child, no one is doing the job.

Assume that classroom teachers have college degrees and educational training. The CRCT is given during the last quarter of the school year. Is it really the first time teachers (or parents) realize their children are not performing? If so, why? A good teacher can identify an illiterate student in a time frame between 5 minutes and 5 days. Why are CRCT results then such a big deal?

The argument that a poor showing would signal the need for remediation and help is silly. A teacher and a parent should know those signs because they see them every single day. These kids are not suffering because they were denied help because they did poorly on the CRCT but the cheating covered this up. These kids suffer due to poverty, poor parenting, horrible living conditions, undiagnosed conditions that hamper learning, and a generations-long community attitude that gives education a very low priority.

In the famous story “The Emperor's New Clothes,” an entire village jumps on a bandwagon led by two schemers who make “invisible clothes of such refinement and quality” that their work is never questioned. Commissioned by the emperor, they become rich, sewing things that were not really there. When the emperor parades through town to show off his new wardrobe, villagers “ooh” and “aaah” until one small boy summons the courage to shout, “He's naked. The Emperor is naked.”

Georgia public schools need a hero like that little boy—someone with the courage to shout out loud the real reasons students are failing to reach their potential. The Emperor needs some real clothes.

Lessons Learned

There has been a lot of handwringing and lipflapping over the APS cheaters, the trial, their conviction and their soon-to-be-announced sentences. Some want to "put this behind us and move forward", educrat code words for "sweep it under the rug." Pre-trial APS and Bev cheerleaders from the political and business communities would like to see tarnished reputations mellow into a soft patina. Some parents are actually happy ignoring the systemic issues and comfort themselves with the notion that "we've caught ALL the cheaters, everything is fine now."

But there is much to be learned from this experience.

Let's start with race and get that out of the way. It appears that well educated, respected black defendants can no longer reliably expect acquittal with an octoroon jury. In this case the jury was otherwise adequately black yet all but one of the defendants was convicted, with those found guilty being convicted on at least the RICO charges, if not additional charges. Nonetheless these defendants, who had turned their noses up to a plea agreement were sincerely stunned when they were found guilty by a "jury of their peers." It was these defendants' judgment that no matter how damning the facts of the case that a "black enough" jury would never convict a black educator. Wrong.

Then there is the "of course they cheated" defense mostly offered by APS and public education apologists attempting to deflect blame towards "high stakes" testing. The implicit "as anyone would" should be noted, because there is perhaps a bit of truth in that.

When one defines "cheating" as "not providing children with the education that taxpayers have purchased" one realizes the system they  built is structured to support such cheating and will likely drive out anyone not aligned with those goals. It is a system that advances students without regard for accomplishment and the educators leverage the transient nature of failing students and mask their activity with grade inflation. This makes the argument that these few convicted APS bad actors stole "opportunity" for access to tutoring or early intervention/remediation by changing test answers ring hollow. From the educators' point of view remediation belongs exclusively in the early years of college and apparently the University System agrees.

That leads us to the another part of these educators' ecosystem that makes cheaters of them all: colleges of education. While universities generally offer remediation to teach "everything you should have learned thru high school" in a few short semesters, colleges of education combine grade inflation (everyone gets an 'A') with watered down content, particularly subject matter content. They aren't pumping out legions of 4.0 wielding graduates because education attracts the best and brightest. Instead it is because that is what sells, and in fact is required, in the education marketplace. Should any college break ranks and award meaningful grades students would flee to colleges that know and play the game. From pre-K to retirement these folks are somehow involved in the little lies we know as grade inflation.

It should come as no surprise that newly minted educators do not join a work place instituted as a meritocracy. They've never encountered one before. In fewer years than it took to get the college degree they will enjoy quasi-tenure and no matter how obvious their incompetence they are immune to dismissal. And teaching is a bit like pornography--you can't define good (or bad) teaching but you sure as hell know it when you see it. And so does everyone in education, including the bad teachers. So it turns out that everything they know they did learn in kindergarten: everybody gets a gold star--which only amplified their shock when the jury did NOT award them the easy A, a gold star or just give them a pass.

So will they, those that remain, cheat? Of course. That's what they've always done, what they are doing and what they will be doing for the foreseeable future. No matter how distant your sight horizon. But would they falsify documents? THEY ALREADY ARE! Every time a grade report is submitted with an inflated grade someone has falsified a state document. Every time they cash a paycheck knowing full well they have not, cannot and will not provide the service for which they are being paid, they commit theft. If a true professional, say a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, did only once what our educators do on a daily basis they would lose their license and very likely go to prison.

Which brings us to the sentencing phase...

Now that they are tried and convicted they await sentencing. Some say jail time is too harsh. That these career educators should not be housed with hardened criminals. That we must temper justice with mercy. There must be a second chance. But are their soon-to-be-colleagues "hardened criminals" or are they simply former students--product of the pre-K to prison pipeline these "educators" have operated for years? Perhaps that is the second chance. The opportunity to educate those students they failed during their careers as unindicted felons.