The Atlanta
Journal Constitution reports that authorities are considering using the
Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to prosecute
teachers and administrators implicated in the Atlanta Public Schools test
cheating scandal. Conviction under RICO
carries penalties of up to twenty years in prison. This is absurd and an outrage and should be
opposed by all fair minded people. According
to published accounts, 178 educators including 38 principals have been accused
of altering student scores on tests mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
policies. Superintendent Erroll Davis has announced his intention to fire all
of the accused and placed them on administrative leave with pay while perfunctory
due process procedures ran their course.
However, the cost of keeping the accused teachers and administrators on
the payroll while they await their pre-firing administrative hearings is said
to be in excess of a million dollars monthly.
Using RICO would allow authorities to expedite the trial and firing
processes.
This is an
outrage. Indeed the whole inquisition is
an outrage. The Atlanta Public School (APS)
system is only one of scores in Georgia and hundreds of systems across the
country suspected of doctoring student test scores. In 2009, for example, the
Governor’s Office of Student Achievement reported that answer sheets from 10
percent of classrooms state-wide showed erasures that justified moderate to
severe concern. And the problem is not limited to Georgia. Questionable test scores in states as
disparate as Ohio, California, Texas, and New York have been reported. Even schools that have been lauded with high
commendations in the Race to the Top sweepstakes have come under
suspicion. Clearly Atlanta is not an
aberration. The problem is nation-wide. But as far as I have been able to ascertain,
Atlanta is the only jurisdiction committed to firing all of those implicated
and conducting public hearings to humiliate the accused. As Diane Ravitch, a former Assistant of
Education under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton has said about
the cheating scandals, “All of this was to be expected”.
Why would
she say that? And why have the other jurisdictions
refrained from having show trials of those implicated. Ravitch argues, and I
concur, that the best predictor of academic achievement is poverty, and I would
add poverty compounded by institutional racism. Taking these two critical factors into
account, we know beforehand which are likely to be the high and low achieving schools.
The tests only confirm what was already widely known or at least widely
believed. Nevertheless the tests could be a useful diagnostic tool if they are
used to render greater specificity in identifying problematic areas. However
under the evolving NCLB regime, the test results have became more than
diagnostic tools. They have become
punitive yardsticks to rank teachers and schools, and as a result, determine
the career fortunes of school personnel.
For school
personnel, especially mid to senior level employees, this means that the rules
regarding career advancement and indeed job retention have been changed in
mid-stream. Student test scores above all else are critical factors in
determining career advancement. Obviously
this puts school personnel in what they quite rationally believe to be a no-win
situation. Given their experiences, they
have no reason to assume that student test scores would show significant
improvement in such a short period of time. And apparently, the rest of the attentive
public shared their misgivings because no one expected the low achieving
schools to show dramatic improvement. Indeed, the whole test-cheating scandal
evolved because informed observers found the reported improved test scores to
be incredible.
Manipulating
student test scores is inexcusable, but it is also understandable. The teachers were asked to collect and report
data which would undermine any chance they have of career success—despite all their
hard work. It’s no wonder that many of
them gave in to temptation to submit doctored reports and answer sheets when
they felt that there was neither time nor resources to improve student
performance in a legitimate way.
Moreover, the test cheating scandal
is not an individual problem; neither individual teachers nor individual
schools should be the foci of the investigation. It is a systemic issue brought about as a
result of flawed and misguided policy.
The discussion should be about rethinking education policy and not about
prosecuting teachers for racketeering.
At a minimum that discussion should begin with the assumption that
testing is to be used only as a diagnostic tool and not as a punitive
instrument. Schools must have more
holistic measures for determining career advancement but that is outside the
scope of this column.
Getting
back to the APS administrative hearings cum star trials, personnel ranging from
high level administrators to young elementary school teachers have been paraded
before the tribunal and accused of a variety of transgressions. One teacher has been slated for firing for
using facial expressions to steer students away from wrong answers. The local
newspaper headlined that she would be fired because she gave “a look” to
students who chose the wrong answer.
Another was slated to be fired because he paraphrased test questions in
a manner that made it more understandable to the students. Others, of course, are accused of more flagrant
violations including actually erasing incorrect answers. So this is column is written not to justify
the cheating but to concur once again with Ravitch that all of this was to be
expected. It is time to move on.
The show
trials should be stopped. We have seen teachers
who were caught up in a situation not of their own making being humiliated and
paraded before the public as common criminals.
Many of them have given years of satisfactory and in some cases exemplary
service to APS. No public purpose will
be served by these hearings. I challenge
anyone to show how any public interests or purpose is being served by the
public hearings and aggressive prosecution of those implicated. Those who are
guilty of the allegations were wrong but like others involved in widespread
system induced indiscretions, amnesty for them would be in the public interest.
In the American political culture it is not unusual to offer amnesty to
individuals guilty of illegal behavior when that behavior grows out of the
exigencies of extant public policy. For
example, those who stretched the truth to justify going to war in the Middle
East were excused. So too were the bankers, mortgage companies and other
financial players whose behaviors led to the recent financial crisis. The same
compassion should be shown toward those accused in the APS cheating scandal
No more show trials.
No indictment. AMNESTY FOR ALL.
Mack H. Jones
May 14, 2012
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