America is criminalizing Black teachers: Atlanta’s cheating scandal and the racist underbelly of education reform

Apparently Atlanta is a lot like San Diego. When illegal activity happens in a school, local officials handle the issue in two very different ways. When the wrongdoer is an adult with political connections, taxpayer money is poured into that person's defense, and the schools go into cover-up mode. On the other hand, if the wrongdoer has no political connections, the school goes after him or her with a vengeance. The justice system stands ready to support schools and other public entities. You're fighting an uphill battle when you want justice from a pubic entity. See Depraved in Poway and series of posts about shenanigans in Poway.  Adults in San Diego County schools usually misbehave with impunity, but kids who do the same thing are called "depraved." There was an amazing case at Guajome Park Academy where teachers improperly changed grades, but instead of censuring the teacherd, the school sued a whistle-blower kid who hacked the school computer to prove the wrongdoing.
 
See also my comparison of the Atlanta cheating scandal and the bizarre color-coordinated indictments of school officials in San Diego.


America is criminalizing Black teachers: Atlanta’s cheating scandal and the racist underbelly of education reform
Our educational system stacks the deck against Black children -- now we're throwing their teachers in jail Brittney Cooper
Wednesday, Apr 8, 2015
Salon 

Former Atlanta Public Schools school research team director Tamara Cotman, center, is led to a holding cell after a jury found her guilty in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial, Wednesday, April 1, 2015, in Atlanta. (Credit: AP/Kent D. Johnson)

Last week, an Atlanta jury convicted 11 teachers and school administrators of racketeering in a system-wide cheating scandal. Yes, you read that correctly. Teachers and administrators inflating student scores on standardized tests is now considered “organized crime” in this country, and is punishable by more 20 years in prison, in these cases.

I am an educator. I am a Black woman who may someday mother a Black child. I have taught other Black mothers’ children. Much of my educational success in elementary school is directly attributable to high performance on standardized tests that caused my white teachers to notice me and intervene on my behalf to get me “tracked” into higher-achieving classrooms. I believe all children deserve access to a good, high-quality, public education.

Therefore, I don’t have to condone cheating in any form (and I don’t) to assert that what has happened in Atlanta to these teachers is a travesty. The pictures that emerged last week of handcuffed Black schoolteachers being led out of Southern courtrooms in one of the country’s largest urban Black school systems were absolutely heartbreaking.

Scapegoating Black teachers for failing in a system that is designed for Black children, in particular, not to succeed is the real corruption here. Since the early 1990s, we have watched the deprofessionalization of teaching, achieved through the proliferation of “teacher fellow” programs and the massive conservative-led effort to defund public education in major urban areas throughout the country. There is no longer a consensus that a good public education — a hallmark of American democracy — should be considered a public good.

Black children have for generations been the primary victims of this continuing social mendacity about the national value of education. More than 51 percent of children who attend public schools live in poverty. In Georgia, the percentage of Black children living in poverty hovers right around 39 percent. For Latino children, the number is consistently over 40 percent. Nationally, the number for Black children is 39 percent, according to most recent data, and 33 percent for Latino youth...

Read more at http://www.salon.com/2015/04/08/america_is_criminalizing_black_teachers_atlantas_cheating_scandal_and_the_racist_underbelly_of_education_reform/?source=newsletter

The Atlanta Public Schools cheating verdicts: How to deal with illegal behavior by teachers and school administrators? Indict some black or brown people.

See also Brittney Cooper's Salon article.

The Atlanta Public Schools test cheating case proves a couple of things:

1) Teachers and administrators lie under oath.  I knew that before the Atlanta case.  I've claimed this for several years, based on personal experience at my school district, but a lot of people simply didn't want to believe me.

2) If you're a corrupt teacher or school administrator, your chances of being charged with a crime are miniscule--unless you're black or brown.

In my case in Chula Vista Elementary School District, the teachers and school officials who committed illegal acts were overwhelmingly white.  The school board consisted of four white members and one Mexican.

I reported the wrongdoing to District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, and was ignored.

Imagine my surprise a few years later when 15 officials in neighboring school districts were indicted and eventually pleaded guilty to corruption charges.  These 15 individuals were overwhelmingly Mexican.

Ironically, one of these indicted officials was Bertha Lopez, the only Mexican among the five board members who violated the law in my case, including violations of Labor Code 1102.5 and 432.7 (a section with criminal penalties).  Bertha made the mistake of leaving CVESD and running for office in Sweetwater Union High School District.  She ended up pleading guilty to a ridiculous charge: accepting a gift over the state limit.

In Chula Vista, Lopez and her four white colleagues committed illegal acts that harmed children at Castle Park Elementary in order to protect law-breaking adults who were in political favor at the time.    I think that this sort of direct undermining of the education of children is a far more serious form of corruption than accepting a gift.

Students were harmed by the rogue group of teachers at my school. This self-styled "Castle Park Family"was protected by the district when its illegal actions were exposed, while at the same time, many good teachers were forced out.  The power-hungry teachers chewed up and spit out 11 principals in 11 years, enabled a $20,000 embezzlement by a PTA-president crony, and cost the district $100,000s in legal fees and increased liability insurance premiums. Finally the district decided that the teachers in charge of Castle Park Elementary were out of control, it tried to transfer some of them out of the school.

Here are a couple of recent cases that illustrates contempt for the law among white school boards:
Elaine Allyn case in Fallbrook--violations of Labor Code 1102.5
Sharon McClain case in Del Mar

Interestingly, Patrick Judd, one of the board members in my case, was found liable in civil court for sexual harassment of an employee.

Standardized test cheating may be widespread in school systems throughout the U.S.

See all posts on cheating on tests.

Report: Test cheating may be widespread
by Donna Krache
CNN
March 25th, 2012

(CNN) An investigative report published in Sunday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution found indications of standardized test cheating in school systems throughout the U.S.

The seven-month long investigation of testing data examined 1.6 million records from almost 70,000 public schools nationwide. Suspicious score increases, high numbers of erasures and other irregularities were uncovered in about 200 school districts. The indicators found were similar to those discovered in Atlanta Public Schools, says the AJC.

Atlanta as cheating ground zero

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has broken news before about test cheating. In 2009, the paper reported “statistically unlikely” test score gains at some Atlanta schools. A state review determined that some cheating had occurred in more than half of the district’s elementary and middle schools. About 180 teachers have been implicated in the scandal.

So far, one teacher, Damany Lewis, has admitted to cheating and been fired. Other educators suspected of cheating who have not accepted a “resign or be fired” deal are being brought before a tribunal to hear their cases and determine what actions will be taken.

Former University of Georgia Chancellor Dr. Erroll Davis was named interim superintendent of APS last year. He replaced Dr. Beverly Hall. Hall resigned in June 2011 after 11 years as the head of APS. She was the recipient of praise and awards for her role in the district’s increased graduation rates and higher test scores.

Officials from APS and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are still investigating what has become known as the “biggest cheating scandal in American history," but according to the AJC, Atlanta is not alone in its testing irregularities.

A nationwide problem

According to the AJC, the paper’s investigation does not prove that any widespread cheating occurred, but “it reveals that scores in hundreds of cities followed a pattern, like, in Atlanta, indicated cheating in multiple schools.”

The report says that in nine districts, test scores fluctuated so much that “the odds of such dramatic shifts occurring without intervention such as tampering were worse than one in one billion.” Houstonschools, the report says, experienced test score jumps two, three or more times than typically seen in one year. When these students went on to the next grade, their test scores plummeted, so the likelihood that the score increases were due to learning is slim. A spokesman for the Houston school district, however, questioned whether cheating was the cause of all the irregularities that the AJC found.

The AJC says that 196 of the country’s 3,125 school districts had enough irregularities that the odds of these irregularities happening by chance alone are worse than one in 1,000.

The paper’s statistical analysis of test scores red-flagged more than one in six tests inSt. Louis and one in seven in Detroit. Officials in the St. Louis district have acknowledged the unusual score changes, but say that cheating is not the cause. Detroit officials have said that score increases were due to “better teaching,” according to the report.

According to the investigation, “dozens” of mid-sized school systems, including those in Gary, Indiana, East St. Louis, Illinois, and Mobile, Alabama exhibited “suspicious” tests in high concentrations.

No Child Left Behind and student outcomes

Standardized testing is a key point of No Child Left Behind, the bipartisan federal legislation signed into law ten years ago.

At the heart of the law is is a mandate for accountability and measured student outcomes, derived primarily from state-administered standardized tests that are given annually in grades 3 through 8 in math and reading.

Critics say that the law promotes “teaching to the test” and that it cultivates a climate for cheating, especially when teachers’ and administrators’ jobs and pay are tied students’ performance on tests.

But supporters say that there needs to be accountability for student learning among teachers and administrators, and that reliable, valid testing is one way to establish that. They call for stricter test-taking measures.

Regardless of the possible reasons behind them, inaccurate test results also erode public confidence in school systems and the credibility of public information.

And experts agree that when cheating happens, it’s the students who suffer. Schools with inflated test scores may look good on paper and earn praise for their staffs, but low-performing students who are entitled to tutoring and other educational options lose out when their scores don’t reflect their deficiencies.

Read the AJC report: “Cheating our children: Suspicious scores across the nation” here.

It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat

It's ridiculous to say that teachers and administrators in Georgia and elsewhere committed crimes only because they had to give high-stakes tests to students.

The Georgia indictments are, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg of White Chalk Crime in schools.

The indicted educators tried to get rewards that they had no right to, and to take them away from those who deserved them. This happens all the time in schools. It's the reason the education system is failing. The wrong people are in charge of most districts, and too many of the wrong people are teaching kids.

If we had a system for correctly evaluating teachers, like this one, we wouldn't need to test kids so much, and we would save billion dollars a year. We could trust the teachers to do their job, and part of that job is to know exactly what each child knows and how each child learns best. Standardized testing could go back to its original purpose: to make an official determination of which kids are most advanced academically.

It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat
By Michael J. Feuer
Edweek.org.
April 9, 2013

News came down, or up, earlier this month about the indictment of the former Atlanta schools chief Beverly Hall and 35 other current and former officials for their alleged roles in a massive cheating scandal that has rocked the city for the past three years.

The best coverage of this story is by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Heather Vogell and her colleagues, whose fine journalism uncovered the muck.

There is nothing good to say about cheating on tests, which, in this extraordinary case, involves allegations of tampering with student answers, racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy, and making false statements. It’s wrong, period, and if Ms. Hall et al. are found guilty, they will hopefully use their time in jail to think about the damage they have caused to the kids, to the system, and to the public’s trust in schools and in the measures we use to gauge their quality.

Still, some of the reactions to the scandal have been surprising, if not scandalous in their own right. The most troubling response comes from people opposed to standardized testing generally and to current federal policy specifically. They somewhat gleefully use this sorry episode as the ultimate smoking gun, the perfect we-told-you-so case that clinches their claims about the evils of testing, and, by extension, the entire reform movement. It’s a big nail, they hope, in the coffin of test-based accountability.

"Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct?"

Among the more remarkable statements is one posted by William C. Ayers on Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post blog. For Bill Ayers, an education professor emeritus from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Atlanta story proves that “teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the ‘outcomes’ both incentivizes cheating and is a worthless proxy for learning.”

Mr. Ayers goes further. Not only does he attribute the alleged cheating to the testing policy, thereby essentially absolving Ms. Hall and her colleagues of their own ethical and professional lapses, but he uses the example to issue a sprawling condemnation of the U.S. Department of Education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and even the president. As he puts it, “the road to the massive cheating scandal in Atlanta runs right through the White House.”

I have four problems with this logic (echoed in other commentaries, such as Jason Stanford’s bold assertion in the Huffington Post that “high-stakes testing makes cheating inevitable”; and FairTest’s pronouncement in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed last year that “[t]hese scandals are the predictable result of overreliance on test scores”).

First, shifting the blame for egregious mischief away from the perpetrators and onto the system strikes me as morally and politically bankrupt. Here’s an analogy to consider: Do we react to the worst instances of tax evasion by condemning the concept of taxation rather than by prosecuting the evaders? I assume that Mr. Ayers would not call for abolition of the graduated income tax as a way to finance public goods and redistribute wealth just because the system has its imperfections and because some people lie on their tax returns. Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct? Banking executives accused of fraud will be delighted.

Second, even if one could make an evidence-informed case that testing “inevitably” leads to illegal behavior—as if high-stakes testing overwhelms the human capacity for moral choice—there is the added problem of guilt by association. Pinning the responsibility for the Atlanta disaster on the White House is an extravagant example of misdirected blame. Maybe current federal policies lead to unwanted outcomes, such as narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test, but that’s a far cry from the outright fraud of the sort listed in the Atlanta indictment. Nothing in the No Child Left Behind law requires states or districts to use test scores to fire teachers and principals or to protect and reward those who achieve targets by tampering with answer sheets. In any case, there’s no evidence that federal policy causes cheating, or that “cheating is inevitable.”

Third, indicting testing, rather than cheating, undermines the possibility for reform in the design and uses of tests. The compelling logic in Campbell’s Law—“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decisionmaking, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures ...” —is supported by abundant empirical evidence on the effects of overreliance on tests for accountability.

But what’s often ignored in the popular frenzy against testing, especially in the wake of cheating scandals, is the benefits side of the argument: Tests can help gauge individual learning, give teachers additional information about their students’ progress, provide objective indicators of student achievement, and expose inequalities in the allocation of educational resources.

We may never be able to completely “overturn” Campbell’s Law, but what’s needed is a sensible approach to assessing the ratio of benefits to costs and to the design of mechanisms meant to keep the ratio strongly positive.

Fourth, it turns out that in Atlanta there were schools, and kids, that actually did improve during Ms. Hall’s tenure, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics Sean P. “Jack” Buckley noted, “There were obviously rampant violations of testing integrity going on there, but there were also schools there that were legitimately improving.”

We shouldn’t allow score gains inflated from cheating to be misconstrued as evidence that any measured improvement in student learning—especially among poor and minority children—must always be the result of cheating or other mischief. This kind of smoking-gun logic saps the morale of educators, parents, and policymakers working in behalf of our most disadvantaged students and provides free ammunition to those who believe investments in public education are essentially futile. Just when we education researchers and social scientists are facing increasingly mean-spirited political challenges to our profession, Bill Ayers’ and others’ evidence-free diatribes further erode public confidence in the credibility of our work. One can only hope that the temptations of guilt by association won’t prevail, and that the research community as a whole won’t be blamed for the shoddy logic of some of its members.

Michael J. Feuer is a professor of education policy, the dean of the graduate school of education and human development at the George Washington University, and president-elect of the National Academy of Education.

Cheating scandal: Feds say teachers hired stand-in to take their certification tests

I've been saying for years that we need more highly-capable teachers.

Cheating scandal: Feds say teachers hired stand-in to take their certification tests
By Adrian Sainz
The Associated Press
Nov. 25, 2012

It was a brazen and surprisingly long-lived scheme, authorities said, to help aspiring public school teachers cheat on the tests they must pass to prove they are qualified to lead their classrooms.

For 15 years, teachers in three Southern states paid Clarence Mumford Sr. — himself a longtime educator — to send someone else to take the tests in their place, authorities said. Each time, Mumford received a fee of between $1,500 and $3,000 to send one of his test ringers with fake identification to the Praxis exam. In return, his customers got a passing grade and began their careers as cheaters, according to federal prosecutors in Memphis.

Authorities say the scheme affected hundreds — if not thousands — of public school students who ended up being taught by unqualified instructors.

Mumford faces more than 60 fraud and conspiracy charges that claim he created fake driver's licenses with the information of a teacher or an aspiring teacher and attached the photograph of a test-taker. Prospective teachers are accused of giving Mumford their Social Security numbers for him to make the fake identities.

The hired-test takers went to testing centers, showed the proctor the fake license, and passed the certification exam, prosecutors say. Then, the aspiring teacher used the test score to secure a job with a public school district, the indictment alleges. Fourteen people have been charged with mail and Social Security fraud, and four people have pleaded guilty to charges associated with the scheme.

Mumford "obtained tens of thousands of dollars" during the alleged conspiracy, which prosecutors say lasted from 1995 to 2010 in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Among those charged is former University of Tennessee and NFL wide receiver Cedrick Wilson, who is accused of employing a test-taker for a Praxis physical education exam. He was charged in late October with four counts of Social Security and mail fraud. He has pleaded not guilty and is out of jail on a $10,000 bond. He has been suspended by the Memphis City Schools system.

If convicted, Mumford could face between two and 20 years in prison on each count. The teachers face between two and 20 years in prison on each count if convicted.

Lawyers for Mumford and Wilson did not return calls for comment.

Prosecutors and standardized test experts say students were hurt the most by the scheme because they were being taught by unqualified teachers. It also sheds some light on the nature of cheating and the lengths people go to in order to get ahead.

"As technology keeps advancing, there are more and more ways to cheat on tests of this kind," said Neal Kingston, director of the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation at the University of Kansas. "There's a never-ending war between those who try to maintain standards and those who are looking out for their own interests."

Cheating on standardized tests is not new, and it can be as simple as looking at the other person's test sheet. The Internet and cell phones have made it easier for students to cheat in a variety of ways. In the past few years, investigations into cheating on standardized tests for K-12 students have surfaced in Atlanta, New York and El Paso, Texas.

Still, most of the recent test-taking scandals involved students taking tests, not people taking teacher certification exams. Cheating scams involving teacher certification tests are more unusual, said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

Schaeffer notes that a large-scale scandal involving teacher certification tests was discovered in 2000, also in the South. In that case, 52 teachers were charged with paying up to $1,000 apiece to a former Educational Testing Services proctor to ensure a passing grade on teacher certification tests.

Teachers from Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi took tests through Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark., in 1998. The college was not accused of wrongdoing.

Educational Testing Services also writes and administers the Praxis examinations involved in the Memphis case. ETS spokesman Tom Ewing said the company discovered the cheating in June 2009, conducted an investigation and canceled scores. The company began meeting with authorities to turn over the information in late 2009, Ewing said.

"These cases are rare, but we consider them to be very serious and something we have to guard against happening for all the honest test-takers, students and teachers," Ewing said.

Ewing said ETS observes test-takers and reviews test scores to try to root out cheaters. ETS also has received anonymous tips that have led them to cheaters, Ewing said.

Prosecutors in the Mumford case say he, the teachers and test-takers used the Internet and the U.S. Postal Service to register and pay for the tests, and to receive payment. The indictment does not say how much he allegedly paid the test-takers.

An experienced educator, Mumford was working for Memphis City Schools when the alleged scam took place. Authorities say Mumford defrauded the three states by making the fake driver's licenses.

"What happens at many testing centers is that a whole bunch of test-takers show up simultaneously, early on a Saturday morning, and the proctors give only a cursory look to the identification," Schaeffer said. "It's not like going through airport security where a guy holds up a magnifying glass and puts our license under ultraviolet light to make sure it has not been tampered with."

Mumford was fired after news of the investigation came out, and others, like Wilson, have been suspended. But at least three teachers implicated in the scandal remain employed with their school district.

Kingston, the university professor, said prospective teachers may not be confident in their knowledge base to pass the test. Or, the cheaters may believe they are smart enough to pass on their own but also know they are poor test takers.

Kingston said his research has shown that cheating on exams is getting more prevalent.

"The propensity to cheat on exams both through college and for licensure and certification exams seems to be increasing over time," said Kingston. "People often don't see it as something wrong."

The pressure of passing the test could make people do things they normally would not do. And it could take a while for authorities and test-taking services to catch up with the cheaters.

"When people come up with a new method for cheating, it takes some time for folks to figure it out, partly because this has been an understudied area in the field of assessment," Kingston said.

Nina Monfredo, a 23-year-old history teacher at Power Center Academy in Memphis, has taken Praxis exams for history, geography, middle school content, and secondary teaching and learning.

Monfredo, who passed all her tests and is not involved in the fraud case, said the exams she took were relatively easy for someone who has a high school education. She said some people use study aids to prepare, but she didn't. And she didn't feel much pressure because it was her understanding that she could take the test again if she did not pass.

"If you feel like you can't pass and you hire someone it means you really didn't know what you were doing," she said. "I think it would be easier to just learn what's on the test."

Could the Atlanta Cheating Scandal Happen Here?

Could the Atlanta Cheating Scandal Happen Here?
Jul 7, 2011
by Emily Alpert
Voice of San Diego

A bombshell broke in Atlanta this week: A state investigation in Georgia found that Atlanta teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on standardized tests for students, a widespread practice that was covered up by area superintendents and ignored by the superintendent.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first raised questions about test scores at some schools more than two years ago, pointing out schools that had seemingly unbelievable gains on state tests in a single year. The school district did its own investigation, which the state rejected as flawed.

Could this happen here in California?

Maybe, but if it does we wouldn't be able to detect some of the same things that Georgia investigators did. Besides looking at massive gains at specific schools, one of the ways that investigators sniffed out cheating was by analyzing erasures: how often wrong answers were erased and changed to right answers. If a school or a classroom has extraordinarily high rates of wrong-to-right erasures, it's a red flag.

But California doesn't collect that data anymore. USA Today mentioned that absent data in a sweeping investigation of cheating across the country earlier this year:

John Boivin, administrator of California's standardized testing program, says his state once conducted random test audits at 150 to 200 schools a year. California dropped the audits two years ago because of record budget deficits. And the state no longer collects data on which schools show unusually high rates of erasures on answer sheets — sometimes a clue, experts say, that either students or school officials might be cheating. Total savings: $105,000.

Instead of auditing or tracking erasures, California relies on school districts to report and investigate any alleged cheating, Boivin told me in an interview earlier this year. But as the scandal in Atlanta shows, school districts may not be the best at policing themselves.