Opinion
Busted for ‘Cheating to the Test’
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a Better Future Now”
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E
leven Atlanta teachers have
been convicted of altering
student test scores on stan-
dardized tests. They are charged
with racketeering and conspiracy.
The much-celebrated Superinten-
dent of Atlanta Public Schools
Beverly L. Hall was among the
indicted but was too ill to stand
trial. She died March 2.
Another group of teachers, prin-
cipals and administrators took plea
bargains. A total of 178 people
were accused of taking part in the
cheating “scam” and in 2011 Hall
reminded observers that “we have
over 3,000 teachers in Atlanta,”
and just a few were part of the
cheating scandal. She also denied
having any knowledge of the
cheating. Until her illness, she
insisted that she wanted to stand
trial and clear her name.
In what was described as the
largest cheating scandal in the
nation’s history, District Attorney
Paul L. Howard Jr. prosecuted the
educators under a law originally
designed to snare organized crime
figures. Of the 12 defendants, 11
were convicted of racketeering, a
felony punishable up to 20 years.
One defendant, Dessa Curb, a for-
mer elementary school teacher,
was acquitted.
Those 11 convicted were taken
straight from the courtroom to jail.
Sentencing should take place this
week. On top of the 20 years max-
imum sentence for racketeering,
they could be convicted on other
charges including making false
statements. It is interesting to note
that most of these teachers are
African American.
You can serve as few as 15 years
for second-degree murder in Geor-
gia, and as little as a year for
involuntary manslaughter. Further,
B ENNETT
C OLLEGE
Julianne
Malveaux
most convicted offenders get a day
or even months to go home and
straighten out their affairs before
reporting to prison. But not this
group of educators.
These Atlanta teachers aren’t the
only teachers involved in similar
cheating scams. A year ago, 130
Philadelphia educators were
pressure that many face when fed-
eral laws mandate the use of
standardized tests to “prove” that
teachers and schools are doing
their jobs.
In some districts, including
Atlanta, teachers are given bonus-
es when their students do well on
tests, and may be terminated when
students do not. Even now, after
revisions in teacher evaluation,
half of teacher performance is
based on standardized tests.
Teachers can be reassigned, or
schools can be closed if there are
too many poor-performing stu-
dents enrolled.
It makes sense to look at the
many ways that the system
District Attorney Paul L. Howard Jr.
prosecuted the educators under a
law originally designed to snare
organized crime figures
accused of cheating. In September,
several were ordered to stand trial.
Why have those who chose a
low-paid and little-regarded pro-
fession stoop to cheating on
standardized tests? Are they
judged by the number of students
who pass these flawed tests, and
the number who fail? Is there a
culture of cheating in too many of
our nation’s schools? Is there a
culture of “teaching to the test”?
There is no excuse for the cheat-
ing in Atlanta, or Philadelphia, or
in El Paso, where the school
superintendent was imprisoned for
reporting faulty test scores.
While there is no excuse, it
would be foolhardy to ignore the
encourages teachers to manipu-
late, if not outright cheat, when
they administer standardized tests.
Some schools spend days prepar-
ing students to take the tests.
They aren’t spending days
teaching the material students
must learn, just the rote material
needed to pass standardized tests.
Passing a test in English and
grammar may prove some profi-
ciency, but does it prove that a
student can write a paragraph or
an essay, or engage in critical
thinking?
When teachers spend too much
time focused on standardized test-
ing and not enough on course
content, are they cheating stu-
dents? In teaching to the test, are
they cheating to the test? I’m not
referring to the multiple erasures
that investigators found on some
of the Atlanta tests, or schemes
that excluded poor-performing
students from testing so average
grades could be higher.
I’m referring to teachers who
choose to teach content that they
know will show up on the test, or
those who spend tens of hours in
“practice sessions” with old copies
of tests used as drills. From my
perspective students are being
cheated when there is too much
emphasis placed on standardized
testing.
One might ask how teachers and
students can be evaluated without
standardized tests, but there is an
extensive body of research that
suggests other methods of evaluat-
ing teachers, including classroom
observation and curriculum
review. Interestingly, an increas-
ing number of colleges do not use
standardized tests to evaluate stu-
dents for admissions because they
recognize such tests are flawed.
Obviously, there must be some
way to measure progress among
students, and proficiency among
teachers. Still, standardized test
results should not be tied to
teacher compensation, or to
threats of school closings. If stan-
dardized tests are one way to
measure results, they must be
combined with other measures to
ensure fairness.
It makes sense, though, to ask if
there is a racial dynamic to leading
nearly a dozen teachers, mostly
African American, out of a court-
room in handcuffs. And it makes
sense to wonder if the charge of
racketeering is being applied too
harshly for what is clearly illegal
misconduct.
Watch Out for ‘Religious Freedom’ Scams
P
ity the poor, put-upon anti-gay
bigots.
Worried by recent steady march
of federal court decisions advanc-
ing the right of gays and lesbians
to marry, they tried to copy the
Supreme Court majority’s flim-
flam maneuver of last year in the
Hobby Lobby case: By asserting a
business is a “person,” they
intended to enable business own-
ers to discriminate against gay and
lesbian prospective customers,
and anyone else under the cover of
“religious belief.”
The blowback from corporate
giants, religious denominations,
cities and states, associations and
organizations, and prominent
entertainment and literary figures
produced a thunderous roar suc-
cinctly expressed by the headline
of the March 31 front-page edito-
rial
of
the
Indianapolis
Star newspaper. In huge letters, it
blared: “Fix This Now”
Suddenly, faced with the likeli-
hood of devastating economic
boycotts, the two states’ governors
and state legislatures quickly com-
plied. By week’s end last week
they had amended those particular
so-called religious freedom
restoration laws to declare they
couldn’t be used to discriminate
against someone because of their
sexual orientation and gender
identity. (However, neither did
either legislature enact specific
Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner April 8, 2015
L AST
C HANCE
Lee A.
Daniels
statutes barring discrimination
against, gays, lesbians and trans-
gendered people.)
But no one on the right side of
history should think this ends the
anti-gay rights campaign. Nor
should they forget this episode’s
lessons.
affirmation of same-sex marriage
by the federal judiciary.
Secondly, these wolf-in-sheep’s-
clothing laws offer further proof
that the GOP down to its very
roots in state and local communi-
ties has devolved from a political
party ruled by the old traditions of
give-and-take politics crucial to
the functioning of a democratic
society. It’s become one driven by
an unceasing winner-take-all atti-
tude that’s only barely concealed
beneath a thin veneer of ultra-con-
servative religious dogma.
Further, we should remember
that the justifications for these
laws are classic examples of the
Those who want to discriminate against
a particular group claim it’s that group,
backed by ‘the government’ who are
‘victimizing’ them
For one thing, it’s underscored
the true purpose of these “reli-
gious freedom” laws, which now
exist in 19 other states and are
being considered in an additional
14. That purpose, with the U.S.
Supreme Court set to rule on
same-sex marriage by this June, is
to provide the anti-gay forces a
means of escaping compliance
with the seemingly inevitable
“hustle” used to pretend bigotry is
not bigotry: those who want to dis-
criminate against a particular
group claim it’s that group, backed
by “the government” who are
“victimizing” them.
So, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence
could assert, shortly after he
signed the original state law, that
“many feel their religious liberty
is under attack by government
action” in forcing them to accept
gays and lesbians as customers of
their businesses.
One doesn’t have to be that well-
versed
in
the
Southern
massive-resistance
campaign
against the Civil Rights Move-
ment of the 1950s and 1960s to
note the tawdry similarity: That
region’s politicians also vocifer-
ously claimed that they were
defending white citizens’ against
attack by the federal government.
And, as numerous other commen-
tators have noted, many Southern
Christians cited Biblical passages
to justify their racism.
The rationales for today’s anti-
gay laws are just as despicable.
Their advocates claim they’re
needed because, as Eric Miller,
executive director of the conserva-
tive group Advance America, said
they could help Christian bakers,
florists and photographers avoid
punishment for “refusing to partic-
ipate in a homosexual marriage.”
Got that? Miller contends that
any business owner who sells an
item to or performs a service for a
customer thereby becomes a “par-
ticipant,” and “involved” in
whatever it is the customer pro-
ceeds to do with the item. If you
think that’s silly, look up some of
the segregationists’ rationales for
all the grand and petty laws of Jim
Crow for further proof that bigotry
is impervious to logic.