Atlanta cheating scandal perpetrators sentenced
I wrote about the Atlanta school cheating scandal several times (see the first three entries after this one on this list). It’s a shocking tale of widescale corruption within the public education system of the city, plus an attempted coverup:
A state investigation in 2011 found that educators gave answers to students or changed answers on tests after they were turned in. Evidence of cheating was found in 44 schools with nearly 180 educators involved, and investigators found teachers who tried to report it faced retaliation.
A grand jury indicted 35 educators in March 2013 on charges including racketeering, false statements and theft. Many reached plea agreements, and some testified at the trial.
Most of the convicted teachers were immediately taken into custody:
“I don’t like to send anybody to jail,” [Judge] Baxter said. “It’s not one of the things I get a kick out of, but they have made their bed, and they’re going to have to lie in it, and it starts today.”
Here’s some further background.
Big deal… if bella dodd being the head of the communist party and the teachers union isnt worth discussing, then why bother discussing a few teachers cheating…
if a teacher sticks a knife in her vagina, throws tomatos at the blade and shows that to her students isnt news, how is giving a few answers to kids something worth bothering with?
look who else is cheating and moving… and unlike atlanta they got nuclear weapons…
Russian ships in old Arctic NATO base set alarms bells ringing
http://news.yahoo.com/russian-ships-old-arctic-nato-set-alarms-bells-050008186.html
if nuclear war and all that isnt a topic, who cares about a few teachers cheating to fluff up scores?
that they went to jail? heck, even a stopped clock is right twice a day…
russia threatening nuclear war to obama is not news
teachers cheating to look better is…
can i have a list of what priorities matter???
mine must be out of wack… i used to think that the death of millions and starvation, economic collapse and so on mattered… my bad..
Putin threatens nuclear war: Russian leader will take any necessary step to drive Nato out of Baltics and defend Crimea
Russian intelligence chiefs took part in secret meeting with U.S. officials
Outlined three potential flashpoints that could lead to all-out nuclear war
A secret meeting between intelligence figures in Moscow and Washington reportedly revealed Putin will consider any attempt to return the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine as declaration of war and will take any necessary step – including using nuclear weapons – to retain control of the region.
Notes from the meeting are also said to have revealed that Putin is planning imminent ‘destabilising actions’ in pro-Western Baltic states in a direct challenge to Nato’s promise to defend the countries from Soviet-style Russian expansionism.
These disturbances are thought to likely involve cyber attacks or ramping up local ethnic tensions in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania intended to unsettle the region.
if i wait to discuss it, you wont discuss it…
New York Teacher Charged with Rape of Mentally Ill Student
http://jezebel.com/new-york-teacher-charged-with-rape-of-mentally-ill-stud-1684512534
nope… test scores count more…
NJ gym teacher arrested on child porn, drug charges
http://pix11.com/2015/02/19/nj-gym-teacher-accused-of-possessing-child-porn-operating-marijuana-grow-room/
this has been an endless stream of things for over 30 years… test cheating is nothing compared to the other stuff… and nuclear war…
my priorities need adjusting…
I read it was only the ones who insisted on going to trial that lost big time and got big time and big fines as a result.
A very sad story. Makes me ashamed for my hometown.
Only time will tell whether there will be any silver lining. Note that what broke the case was the State Government saying “Enough!” and taking over the investigation (via the GBI). Until then, it was being home-cooked by the School Board é la the US State Dept’s in-house “investigation” of Benghazi. Just think about what these people were willing to do on an almost system-wide basis (44 schools)!
Greedy child-neglecting, child exploiting, system-gaming FELONS. [I apologize for yelling]
my opinions dont count, so dont worry about the wasted space where the noise is… 🙂
This isn’t as black and white as it sounds. If they were cheating to cover up their own incompetence and laziness, they belong in prison. But if they were just trying to lessen the damage these tests cause then I’m sorry they were caught. Every single teacher I know had this same opinion.
Having a child in public school and seeing what these tests do to the district administration, teachers, students, and parents, I can understand the impulse to teach the kids what they need to know and just cheat to get past the test.
My son is gifted in math. Last year he tested out of Pre-Algebra and went straight into Algebra I, where he had a 100% final average. He barely passed the Keystone exam, and if he hadn’t he would have been required to attend math tutoring every day for this entire school year. These exams turn math into a language art where it’s more important that they explain why they got the answer than than that they actually got the correct answer. If he had failed, I would have loved a teacher who had changed his grade.
Hoisted on their own petard. The ‘education’ union thugs donate to the dems who poke their noses into every aspect of local education. Then, when dems impose standards they can not meet, they cheat to keep the funds flowing to pay their salaries, benefits, and cushy pensions. Jail time is the least they deserve.
A Sarasota High School student has been charged with organizing a prostitution ring of students from Venice and Riverview high schools.
and
Feminist Teacher Presents Class With Her Genitals
Ms. Barri-Holstein, a PhD student and lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, was introducing a new module for her class called “Theater and its Others.”
In its introduction, she showed a video from her play “Splat!” The clip, which was shown to first-year students, “shows her inserting a knife handle into her vagina and throwing red tomatoes at the blade, giving birth to a small, plastic Bambi figurine, and inflating a condom.”
Ms. Barri-Holstein told the stunned class that it was “feminist performance art concerned with the female body.”
http://moonbattery.com/graphics/Lauren-Barri-Holstein.jpg
and
Teacher Accused Of Sex With 3 Students To Face Separate Trials For Each Victim
Teacher accused of sex with 6 students, making sex tape
Teacher Faces 22 Years In Prison, Admits Having Sex With Four Students. Virgina
NYC Teacher Made Sex Tape With Student
Witnesses: Prince George’s County Teacher Punched by Student Over Racially Insensitive Comment
Student arrested after classroom attack on NJ high school teacher caught on video
Paterson freshman charged with assault after classroom attack
Elementary student accused of attacking teacher
HS student accused of beating substitute teacher
Kids poisoned teacher’s drink to see her reaction
2 Brooklyn Pupils Accused of Putting Rat Poison
Teen accused in teacher’s murder charged in new attack
2 males arrested in ‘grisly’ murder of sixth-grade teacher
A teen charged with raping and killing his high school math teacher had … waiving his rights and making detailed statements about the murder.
you can literally go on and on with the most henious things you can think of ranging from raping teachers to teachers raping.. murder, poisonings, prostitution rings etc..
Gay Adoption Horror: Duke University Official Molested Adopted African American Son, Pimped Son to Cop in Web Sting
http://www.rpvnetwork.org/profiles/blogs/gay-adoption-horror-duke
Associate director of Duke University’s Center for Health Policy, Frank Lombard, was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old African American son for sex to an undercover cop. Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son to the undercover officer in an online chat room under the user name “Perv Dad for Fun”. He invited the under cover officer to travel to North Carolina to rape his already-molested adopted son. Lombard faces 20 years in prison if convicted but is not eligible for the death penalty.
Lombard bragged to the detective that “the abuse of the child was easier when the child was too young to talk or know what was happening, but that he had drugged the child with Benadryl during the molestation,” according to the detective’s affidavit.
[edited for length by n-n]
The ratio of males to females graduating from a four-year college stood at 1.60 in 1960, fell to parity by 1980, and continued its decline until by 2003, there were 135 females for every 100 males who graduated from a four-year college. Another study found that half of the current gender gap in college attendance can be linked to lower rates of high-school graduation among males, particularly for young black men.
The work of one American researcher may offer clues to the question of why and how. Professor Christopher Cornwell at the University of Georgia has found that a heavily feminist-driven education paradigm systematically favours girls and disadvantages boys from their first days in school.
Examining student test scores and grades of children in kindergarten through fifth grade, Cornwell found that boys in all racial categories are not being “commensurately graded by their teachers” in any subject “as their test scores would predict.”
The answer lies in the way teachers, who are statistically mostly women, evaluate students without reference to objective test scores. Boys are regularly graded well below their actual academic performance.
Boys are falling significantly behind in grades, “despite performing as least as well as girls on math tests, and significantly better on science tests.”
After fifth grade, he found, student assessment becomes a matter of “a teacher’s subjective assessment of the student’s performance,” and is further removed from the guidance of objective test results. Teachers, he says, tend to assess students on non-cognitive, “socio-emotional skills.” This has had a significant impact on boys’ later achievement because, while objective test scores are important, it is teacher-assigned grades that determine a child’s future with class placement, high school graduation and college admissibility.
The War Against Boys
This we think we know: American schools favor boys and grind down girls. The truth is the very opposite. By virtually every measure, girls are thriving in school; it is boys who are the second sex
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/05/the-war-against-boys/304659/4/?single_page=true
The Shameful Truth About Our Treatment of Boys
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2013/01/10/politics-and-feminism/the-shameful-truth-about-our-treatment-of-boys/
Feminism and the disposable male
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/feminism-and-the-disposable-male/
the truth is that women have been down grading and hurting boys for 30 years… no one cared much… which is why i cant give a damn about 11 atlanta teachers modifying grades in a poor way that allowed the system to not be able to deny that they did it.
what about the literally thousands of boys whose grades were modified downwards, drugged, had grades for their competition modified upwards, abused by teachers (And no one to complain to or help them!!!)…
We extend the analysis of early-emerging gender differences in academic achievement to include both (objective) test scores and (subjective) teacher assessments…we show that the grades awarded by teachers are not aligned with test scores, with the disparities in grading exceeding those in testing outcomes and uniformly favoring girls, and that the misalignment of grades and test scores can be linked to gender differences in non-cognitive development.
…Boys in all racial categories across all subject areas are not represented in grade distributions where their test scores would predict. Even those boys who perform equally as well as girls on reading, math and science tests are nevertheless graded less favorably by their teachers.
so who gives a crap if they change scores
no one gave a crap for 30 years about these boys scores and their college being taken away from them… their lives ruined for false accusations… their ability to have families and such taken
i was one of them..
i had no one to turn to, and unlike the girls, was attacked if i tried to find help… my SAT Scores were downgraded by adding boost scores for women and minoroities…
on top of all that all the help, scholarhsips and such go to others… exterminating my family
so you might understand that caring about 11 tgeachers cheating out of literally thousands, and some doing heinous acs who are not even examined or believed to exist is a waste.
much like wandering a garbage dump and saying look, i found a piece of trash while ignoring that your in a dump
Art,
The problem is that this cheating shows exactly why so many in the country are unable to think, read, and establish priorities. Do you think these kids will know anything about Lenin, Stalin, WWII, and how communism ruined the lives of so many? They may learn how to put a condom on a banana, but will they learn that teachers are responsible for their students and can’t use thex as sex toys?
Lisa M,
While I certainly believe there are dedicated teachers, I think there are many who see teaching as a lifetime salary with union benefits who don’t really care whether the kids are learning. I’m really sorry if decent people got caught up in this, but the skandal had to be exposed to start some serious discussions about the quality of our teachers’education, the whole teaching-to-the test phenomenon, and the flaky educational theories that have ruined our schools.
LisaM:
So I guess you believe that ends justify means.
They were also cheating to get bonuses.
LisaM, yikes! I find your post shocking !
Don’t be shocked, Molly.
Within the fraternity of public education, the finality and importance of these standardized tests are seen as the source of most of the problems of the classroom teacher, particularly those in urban districts. That’s why it was so easy (on a relative basis) for them to justify doing the crime in the first place.
You might find that if you are in their shoes trying to compete in the world with the measure being these scores, you feel you are fighting a battle that cannot be won, and in many cases they are correct. Hence, either you blame the students who can’t triumph in this arena, or you blame the test. This is where the Lake Wobegon syndrome does the most damage. The problem can’t be the kids and their families and the culture they come from, can it? Fighting against the offspring of the Tiger Moms, who would you bet in to win the competition? The fact that they even have to compete gripes them the most. They feel it is unfair.
These prison sentences are an unmistakable message that school’s truly out for those who would cheat the measure of competence. In the profession, I believe this would best be referred to as “chilling” in its effect.
Will this eventually benefit the students and our nation?
Only time will tell.
LisaM Says:
April 3rd, 2015 at 4:27 pm
RE: “Every single teacher I know had this same opinion.”
THANKS for your daily drought of of intellectual integrity, hopefully your cancer diagnosis comes back with a McDonalds Happy Meal gift coupon – and is worth about the same amount too! Have a cigarette while you struggle to understand with what I just said….
Just so that I’m well understood, I feel that these 11 instructors received an abysmally light sentence. A public whipping or branding would be more appropriate. The damage that they did to these children’s minds and society in general will take decades to correct – if it can be corrected over the children’s lifetime. There is NOT a lot of difference between these ‘teachers’ and the local drug pusher – they’re both stealing the lives of their victims. I hope every one of these ‘teachers’ learns a new skill in prison…how to submit during a gang rape.
Lisa M….”This isn’t as black and white as it sounds. If they were cheating to cover up their own incompetence and laziness, they belong in prison. But if they were just trying to lessen the damage these tests cause then I’m sorry they were caught.”
What if a company CEO or Division Manager honestly believes that Generally Accepted Accounting Principles don’t realistically measure the performance of his business…and there are certainly situations in which that is the case…and commits accounting fraud because he is genuinely concerned about the impact of reporting bad results on his employees? (layoffs, plant closings, etc) Would you also hope he didn’t get caught?
I see that my post was completely misunderstood to the point where someone named Mr. Happy is hoping I get cancer. Nice. And no, Neo, I do not believe that the ends justify the means. I’m a very moral person who plays by the rules. I’m also a systems analyst for a Fortune 400 company and I’m very familiar and 100% on board with the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting rules. But thanks to all who insulted my integrity.
My point was that if they cheated to further their own careers, they deserved prison. But if they fudged a point here or a point there to save their students from the shame of failure, retaking the agonizing tests, or unnecessary tutoring then I think it was somewhat understandable. My teacher friends tell stories of kids crying, shaking, vomiting during these tests. Even kids who know the subject matter find that the way the questions are worded make it difficult or impossible to answer correctly. I’ve read that these tests are rigged so that a large percentage of students do fail and have to take it again, which costs the school money that goes to the testing companies. And teaching to the test is robbing our kids of a real education. My son just told me that the younger grades only have Science and Social Studies once a week now, and most of every day is taken up teaching the Common Core version of Math and English so they pass the tests.
LisaM:
I understood you the first time. The tests are a joke and unfair. You understand the pervasive inequity amd evil of the system and realize that going along may be worse than “illegally” bucking the system.
Tests that do not test what they purport to test bring on this type of response.
This is where we are in this country now. What these teachers did is something that will be required of many of us if we are to defeat the left.
The fraud is despicable, but LisaM is right when she says that there are serious problems built into the tests. That alone would not be much of an issue if no real importance were attached to them – but the importance attached to them is such as to discourage studying the actual subject matter but that promotes, instead, “teaching to the test”. This has created a very awkward and burocratized school culture.
On a side note, I often truly do not understand the standardized ELA and reading comprehension tests. They tend to be worded in bizzare ways without clear answers. In order to score well on such tests I would first have to be taught the particular distorted logic behind them.
* bizarre, I always misspell that.
LisaM Says:
April 3rd, 2015 at 9:08 pm
I stand with LisaM.
My kid went to private and public schools.
I found the teachers in public schools to be very dedicated.
I heard those tests are a horror and wouldn’t surprised if the teachers tried to put some oil on the cogs so to speak.
If the system and the laws for that matter are stooopid people overtly or covertly won’t play along.
Nothing bizzare about it ….
Y’all: They did this to make their schools and more importantly, themselves, look good so that they could win praise and with that praise, more Money. There were no lofty purposes being served.
Everyone agrees that standardized tests suck. That’s not the point.
Of course there are problems with the tests, tests mandated by the very same politicians and their regulatory bureaucracies the education unions help elect. You can’t have it both ways. Cry me a river.
I couldn’t possibly be a surgeon, never mind the intelligence, I don’t even have the nerves that profession requires. I also could never teach a student common core math. I can not begin to comprehend math without numbers.
So I didn’t got to medical school or get a teaching certificate. I could not do those jobs so I didn’t. If public school teachers find their job so impossible, that cheating seems the only way to do it, they should find other jobs. If you can’t fulfill the requirements of your job, go get a different one. If you are incapable of teaching your students to pass these required tests, you have no business taking your paycheck.
I hear this all the time from teachers. It is impossible for them to do their job because the students, the parents, the testing, the money. Whatever the reason, they constantly complain their job is impossible for them. Then go home! You are as useless as a surgeon whose hands shake.
mf – You explained my thinking much better than I did. The tests and teaching methods are tools that the left is using to:
1) Insure that students do not learn about history or government.
2) Promote sex and homosexuality, illegal immigration, and the idea of white privilege via the literature selected and paragraphs presented for discussion.
3) Punish independent thinking and reward mindless obedience and group think.
4) Level the playing field – rigging things so that the highly intelligent are brought down to size by not allowing them to use what they already know and forcing them to use methodology that is geared toward those who don’t “get it.”
5) Gather data on our kids, and track how they perform and think. For example, based on my son’s answers to some of the questions they know he’s an intelligent, conservative, independent thinker. They know that we have a gun in the house and go to church.
I can provide personal examples of all of the above and have read about many, many more.
If these teachers cheated to get bonuses for themselves, then they’re despicable. But if they cheated to help their students avoid the real damage done by the curriculum and tests then that’s a different thing.
Feels like I’m browsing MSNBC.
To bring up and discuss this story without mentioning the overwhelming race of the teachers and students involved is like Obama condemning the massacre at the Kenyan college without mentioning Islam or Christianity.
LisaM: “If these teachers cheated to get bonuses for themselves, then they’re despicable. But if they cheated to help their students avoid the real damage done by the curriculum and tests then that’s a different thing.”
Sorry Lisa, if you think any of these teachers were concerned about their charges, you’ve been drinking too much of the kool-aid.
I grow weary of hearing the establishment and the teachers tell us just give us another generation and more $$ to improve the system.
Not that we can go back up the slippery slope but take a look at this link- An 1885 entrance test to get into high school for a 14 yr old. And mind you that was when education was strictly a local issue and had no cooks from the State or Federal bureaucracy involved. Hell, as an engineer and MBA I would have to work at being able to pass the full test. 🙂
Here is a math example for a 14 yr old with the answer !
II. Write a homogeneous quadrinomial of the third degree. Express the cube root of 10ax in two ways.
“2×3 — 2×2 + 3x + 5 cube root of 10ax
ax to the 1/3 power”
III. Find the sum and difference of 3x — 4ay + 7cd — 4xy + 16, and 10ay — 3x — 8xy + 7cd — 13.
Sum: 6ay + 14cd — 12xy + 3
https://schotlinepress.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/%E2%80%9Ccould-you-pass-the-1885-admission-test-for-high-school%E2%80%9D/
All of my teacher friends fault the lack of money or the quality of the product they start with as the reason for the abysmal results of their teaching. None of them can see that they may have been part of the problem and not part of the solution. I doubt the 1885 school board would have accepted this type of excuse from an 1885 teacher.
Just like when this Iran thing blows up literally, we will be told it was not Obummer’s fault.
catinflas: “To bring up and discuss this story without mentioning the overwhelming race of the teachers and students involved is like Obama condemning the massacre at the Kenyan college without mentioning Islam or Christianity.”
Excellent point!
My reading on this story is that the “educators” (all black) figured out a way to game the system, which provided them with financial rewards. In other words, it was fraud, plain and simple. Jail time is warranted.
Our education system is broken. The standardized tests and all the unintended consequences of them are just a symptom of the overall disease. Watch Jay Leno’s Jay Walking vids or Watter’s World on the O’Reilly show to get an idea of how little knowledge of our world the average young person has. It is to weep.
catinflas and J.J.:
I didn’t mention race in this post because the posts of mine I linked to at the beginning, where I had previously written about it at length and in some depth, make the racial angle very clear. This post is just an update.