When the Educators Cheat

The results of a massive investigation in the government school system in Georgia, one which involved outside agencies such as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), has revealed what everybody in the state knew. With the release of the report we now have the hard evidence of just how poorly served your children are by those tasked with educating them.

In a report that Gov. Nathan Deal planned to release today, the investigators name nearly 180 educators, including more than three dozen principals, as participants in cheating on state curriculum tests, officials said over the weekend. The investigators obtained scores of confessions.

The findings suggest the national accolades that Hall and the school system have collected — and the much-vaunted academic progress for which she claimed credit — were based on falsehoods. Raising test scores apparently became a higher priority than conducting the district’s business in an ethical manner.

Those in academia of course are spraying excuses in all directions blaming everything from the color of paint on the classroom walls to the No Child Left Behind standards. Let me say this about the NCLB: while laudable in its goal, no reasonable person could have expected it to succeed in the real world. Some people are going to fail. Life sucks, but that is the truth. While it is noble to want help the failures at some point, you have hand them an apron and teach them to ask the customer if they want fries with their order.

Teachers are blaming the lack of parent involvement, which is really hypocritical when they constantly tell parents that they are not adequate when it comes to educating their kids, and over the years have sought to seize more and more control over your child. Administrators are blaming poverty, which will come as news for some of our past presidents, whom I seem to recall rose to the highest office in the land after spending a childhood in a log cabin with no running water or electricity and studied by candlelight.

No, what happened in Georgia, and mainly in Atlanta, is administrators wishing to keep drawing their six-figure salaries started fudging the data and in turn exerted pressure on the teachers. Teachers being predisposed to moral weakness and imbued with a philosophy that there is no right or wrong, only varying degrees of gray which can always be explained away to justify one's actions joined in. Soon these educators no longer knew right from wrong and cheating on tests and fudging data on other reports just became the accepted standard. It isn't just the competency tests that were changed, most other areas related to reporting of information related to the NCLB rules were also.

The investigators’ report, officials said, depicts a culture that rewarded cheaters, punished whistle-blowers and covered up improprieties.

Administrators no longer accurately reported bullying or assaults at their schools. Absenteeism was modified to show no problems and when it absolutely, positively became imperative to suspend a student it was more then likely an honor student for some sort of violation of the Zero Tolerance policy then it was the gang-banger selling crack in the hallway.

The report’s release comes less than a week after Hall departed from the district. It is likely to provide the harshest critique to date of her 12-year tenure, which reached an apex in 2009 when she was named Superintendent of the Year for the nation. [ed-Beverly Hall was the Superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools]

This report, while conducted in Georgia, and concentrated mainly on the Atlanta school system, could have been done anywhere; it is just that the governor could no longer ignore the smell and is indeed an indictment of the government-run school system. A system that is corrupt and dysfunctional at all levels, and like drug addicts, they seek to affix blame everywhere but where it belongs.

UPDATE: This thing is bigger then anybody imagined. Basically if you have a kid in the Atlanta School system they are screwed thanks to those wonderful professional "teachers" and "administrators". The full report is here. I don't know where the kids go to repair the damage. The next time you see your local teachers union out on strike or protesting, drop a copy of this report at their feet. If it happened in Atlanta you have to wonder how many other places it has/is occurring. A powerful indictment of academia in this country which so easily leaves their morals at the door.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link. Make sure to read today's update to this story. Yes, it gets worse.