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.

Old and Busted: Spontaneous Playground Recreation. New Hotness: "Recess Coaches"

Back in my day, we walked to school. It was uphill, both ways.

Even worse, we didn't have "recess coaches."

It's not always easy to get kids to play nice. It's also not cheap.

Playworks, a national non-profit that dispatches recess coaches to mostly inner-city schools, says its job is to "put the play back on playgrounds." It comes at a cost of $60,000 per school.

The organization currently is employed by four St. Paul schools and plans to add eight metro-area schools next year, including two in Minneapolis and two in an inner-ring suburb.

Although Playworks charges $60,000, the company has helped the schools get grants and donations to offset more than half the cost. Schools paid $23,500 this year and will pay $25,500 next year.

Some say it's a good investment at a time when bullying is an omnipresent issue and teachers need to be more focused than ever on matters such as improving test scores and overall student achievement.

Others wonder whether it's money well spent, especially with St. Paul Public Schools facing close to a $25 million budget deficit, among other challenges.

"Clearly, we have staff that already supervises playgrounds during recess," said Mary Cathryn Ricker, St. Paul's teachers' union president. "My question is, couldn't you save money by training the staff to do what Playworks does?"

The district has traditionally employed teacher assistants to monitor recess.

Well, if teachers' unions think recess coaches are stepping on their turf then I count that as a point in Playworks' favor. Still, one has to assume that any public school with taxpayer money to burn on recess coaches is not exactly hurting for funding in areas actually having to do with, you know, education.

h/t: Chad the Elder.

Cross-posted.

A Tale of Two Schools or Why School Choice Is Important

A recent incident in the beleaguered Dekalb county school system, yet another metro Atlanta school district facing an accreditation battle, points up just why having a school choice is important.

The first participant is Lithonia High School. Last year the school did not meet the goals in the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) as outlined under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program, and as a result parents were allowed to transfer their kids to a better school.

Well many of the parents did just that and transferred their kids to a Arabia Mountain High School.

There are some distinct differences between the two schools. Arabia requires the wearing of uniforms and boasts of it's numerous academic achievements, although in fairness I am not sold on their whole environmental theme.

Near 100% pass rate on the Georgia High School Writing Test
Highest participation rate of any Georgia high school in the Garden Club of Georgia’s annual essay contest
Technology Student Association (TSA) – 2nd place in System Control Technology at the 2010 State Conference
TSA – 1st place in Agriculture and Biotechnology Design at the 2010 State Conference
TSA – 1st place in Electronic Game Design at the 2010 State Conference
TSA – Arabia’s Andrew W. elected as the 2010-2011 TSA State Reporter
TSA Vex Robotics team winners at the DeKalb County Vex Tournament
3rd place win in the Iron Chef High School Competition held at the Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School
Nine Arabia Mountain students were selected to perform in the 2009 Spivey Hall Honor Chorus

Lithonia applauds their athletes and on their main page post several warnings to the students and parents.

Punctuality plays an important role in the development of our students, and being on time to class further ensures optimal class time for instructional purposes.

As we monitor our hallways, we have noticed the number of students intentionally not arriving to class on time has increased. As you are aware, tardies are disruptive and interrupt the entire class during instructional time. Students having four classes in close proximity to each other and five minutes to transition to class on time, it is a reasonable expectation that all students are in class before the tardy bell sounds.

We have instituted a tardy lock-out process where occasional, random, unannounced tardy lock-outs will take place. Those students “swept” up in the lock-out will be escorted to the commons area where a discussion regarding punctuality will take place. The students will sign in, receive their tardy, and report to class. The awarded tardies will be cumulative, though if caught in a tardy lock-out, the following progressive discipline consequences will take place:

1st tardy lock-out : Warning/Parent Phone Call
2nd : Detention/Parent Phone Call
3rd : One Day In School Suspension/Parent Phone Call
4th : One Day Out of School Suspension with a
principal-parent conference and behavior contract
5th : Referral to School Social Worker

and

If a student misses 10 days of school, the Department of Motor Vehicles will rescind their driver's license or permit.

So what happened? Due to overcrowding at the high performing school the school was forced to bring in trailers. Citing a lack of space at the good school they located the trailers on the failing school grounds with the predictable results.

A fight, a near riot and vandalized trailers are why DeKalb County school officials moved 155 students from one campus to another Monday.

The county is going to separate the two schools but this points to one of the main arguments parents make for having a choice in which schools to send their kids too. Parents who are involved and concerned about their kids want to be able to send them to a school where they can have a chance to succeed. They want to get them out of an environment where low expectations are the norm. Remember the students at the high achieving school used to attend the low performing one, but once they were removed from that situation they suddenly became hated. When you punish success, or even the attempt at success you breed a mentality that becomes a deep seated hatred of those trying to climb above the station in life that has been assigned to them.

That applies to academics, business or any other endeavor in life. This lesson is lost on the fairness arguing folks. Life ain't fair. Never has been, never will. In the end we are left the choice to accept what happens to us and use it as an excuse to justify our failures or we treat it as a challenge and rise above it in spite of the obstacles.

Government Schools Still Holding Slave Auctions

Last month I posted about a school in Ohio where a teacher thought it was a great idea to hold a slave auction. Well proving that our wonderful taxpayer funded teachers are on top of the game it has happened again, this time in Virginia, just in time to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

Georgia Supreme Court To Decide If Your Kids Can Leave the Plantation

Sometimes it's hard deciding on what to post and this is one of those times. While it's true all politics is local and some events don't have much appeal beyond geographic boundaries, in some cases they also act as a canary in the coal mine type case, and I believe this is one of those cases.

The despicable behavior of the union-led teacher's revolt and, to a larger degree, the extent to which government teachers go to to indoctrinate the children entrusted to their tutelage, came to full light in the wake of the actions in Wisconsin by the teachers reversing their roles and acting like the juvenile delinquents.

In Georgia, there's a case that has been simmering--at times boiling over--and gaining attention only to recede from view while the judicial system continues to stew over the questions. The case revolves around charter schools and taxpayers dollars.

In Georgia. there are provisions in the law which allow tax dollars to follow the student and not the school. There has been a big growth in charter schools in the state fueled mostly by the realization from parents that the government-run schools just were not doing their job. The government schools have several lawsuits trying to stop this expansion for one simple reason: money.

The amounts are considerable. When a child goes to a charter school, that school is entitled to receive the tax dollars that would have normally gone into the coffers of the government school system. This is the money that the school systems count on to fund the exorbitant salaries of the administrators more then the teachers or for anything to fund any sort of teaching activity in the classroom.

The latest case is headed for the state Supreme Court and it's outcome could determine life or death for charter schools in the state.

If the court sides with the argument put forth by the government schools coalition then the charter schools will lose this money.

This is not about education. In fact, nowhere in the plaintiffs case do you see a mention of educational achievement being affected other then obtuse, nebulous terms. It is about being able to continue to live in the lifestyle to which these government bureaucrats have become accustomed to.

Since I began following this story, which I became acutely aware of after my child was out of school and the state mandated that on our property tax bills that the amount going to education be clearly identified, I realized what a huge ripoff the school system was running. I also became aware that it was not the teachers who were the drain on the system as much as it was the administrators. That is a distinction I want to make clear.

Within the government school system now you have two tiers. Administrators and teachers. Administrators encompass everything from guidance counselors to principals to those on the school board. I found it very hard to find any administrator who did not rake in a six figure income.

While teacher complaints of having to do more with less does have a certain amount of validity to it, it is quickly squelched by the revelation that academic achievement has not improved much since the days I was in school and we didn't have those marvelous high-tech gadgets which have become a must have in every classroom.

Introducing competition into the education market is the best way, in my opinion, to improve the quality of the end product and to ensure more parental involvement. I compare it to the way income taxes are taken out. Since it comes out of your paycheck each pay period you really don't notice it and have become conditioned to it; however, if no taxes were taken out and once a year or each quarter you were to write a check to the federal government for your income taxes, you would very quickly become interested in how that money was being spent. That is what happened in Georgia when they started itemizing the property tax bills.

Parents now want to get the best return on the money they are sending to the state and the education coalition simply cannot stand by and watch the little fiefdom they have built up through the years be torn apart by the barbarians.

I hope the charter schools prevail in this legal case, but most reports by analysts I have read do not give them very good odds, mostly based on the arguments being made by the government school lawyers that the institution is the only answer and why do you want to upset the apple cart. For a group that was firmly on board with the community organizer in charge's mantra of change, they sure are fighting it tooth and nail in their little corner of the world.

Slave Auctions Latest Fad In Goverment Schools

I would love to know who in the heck thought this was a good idea. A elementary school in Ohio thought it would be great to subject at least one of their fifth grade black students to the realities of what it feels like to be the center of attention at a slave auction.

No this isn't the deep south, which of course is where all the racist folks live. This is in the middle of America in the middle of a very blue state where unions rule and common sense left town long ago.

I can not even imagine the harm done to this kid and I can't believe anybody with a functioning brain cell would have thought this to be a good idea. The entire school district ought to be feeling a deep sense of embarrassment over this incidence. Of course no doubt the teacher is a union member with paid up dues and therefore in good standing, probably votes Democrat religiously and so is in no danger of losing his/her job or even having to make a symbolic act of hari kari to atone for their actions.

I just can not believe something like this even happened and listening to the description by the boy of what he was subjected to makes me wonder what impressions the other children were left with. Apologies ring hollow at this point.

Why Do Dems Hate School Choice So Much?

“Our experiment with the tax credit has gone as far as it needs to go,” said State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur. Oliver said the tax credit does not help the long-term stability of public schools. “I don’t believe that this continued push for taxpayer money to go to private institutions helps public education.”

No where in that little quote do you see any concern for the quality of the education being given to the kids, rather it is all about propping up what is yet being exposed as another failed government program, in this case public schools.

There is a little bit of a firestorm going on in Georgia right now because for about 5 years companies and individuals have been able to claim a tax deduction for contributing voluntarily to scholarship funds that are given to private schools. These funds are then used by the private schools to attract students and more importantly help parents finance the cost of the education. Parents who would otherwise be denied this opportunity.

Of course Dems hate it and want it stopped. Who are these barbarians that keep insisting on having choices? The real fight though is about taxpayer dollars. See if you can find the flaw in this former government worker's logic?

Fred Dissen of Flowery Branch, a retired government clerk, said he has serious concerns, as a taxpayer, about the program’s fairness.

“If I take that as a tax deduction then my fellow citizen has to make up the amount of tax that I didn’t pay,” Dissen said.

“I think that is unfair. That is just subsidizing a private school.”

When you see the buzz word "fairness" your BS detector should start ringing. Let me explain it to you Mr Dissen. Less students in public schools doesn't mean less students overall and it should allow for further cut backs in the number of facilities required to be maintained by taxpayer dollars since public schools should be able to consolidate schools and also reduce staffing. If you are worried about teachers jobs I would think a good teacher could work just as well at a private school as they can at a government school and like I already said there is no fewer students so the demand for teachers should not be affected. Unless of course you don't think public school teachers couldn't measure up to the standards expected of them from parents who have kids in private schools. So fewer facilities, and fewer teachers would actually mean a decreased burden on the taxpayer so there is no shortfall to make up.

You will never hear the Democrats argue the merits of the education children will receive whenever the topic of school choice comes up. Instead they will tug at the heart strings with cataclysmic stories of homeless teachers standing in bread lines, which once again only leads one to the conclusion that that only happens if the probably union member teacher, who apparently has no other marketable skills, was not able to get a job teaching at a private institution.

As far as that state representative comments about taxpayer money going to private institutions doesn't help public education, I would just say taxpayer dollars going to public schools certainly doesn't help public education either. It has already been proven over and over again that the amount of money thrown at schools does not guarantee a better education. For the state of Georgia, the city of Atlanta spends more, almost double as a matter of fact, per pupil, and yet continually ranks down at the bottom even while their neighbors in the adjoining metro areas spend less and constantly receive national recognition for their schools and students. If you could take the Atlanta school district test scores and graduation rates out of the reporting statistics the state would probably move up about 10 positions on those list of best education lists. I am sure she will remind you it is all about the kids though. It always is

Democrats can not stand the idea of choices. Whether it is in the food you eat, activities you engage in, the type of car you drive or the health insurance you choose to have or not have, to them there is only one choice and that is to have the government dictate it to you. Sort of frees you up from all that personal responsibility thing and makes life so much easier and stress free when you can at once blame government for your failings in life and at the same time allow them to make all of your decisions for you. Well actually, you don't have to make decisions anymore.

And that folks is called liberal utopia.

Charter School Versus Teachers Union

Weigh these two statements and decide which one sounds more sincere to you.

School board chairman Dan Seckinger said the lawsuit was in the “best interest” of the students and taxpayers of Gwinnett.

Or this one.

Student Deja Holbert said Ivy Prep has proved that it has high academic standards and it outperforms other schools in the state. Holbert said stereotypes would have her “pregnant and a dropout between the ages of 15 and 17” but at Ivy Prep she is Ivy League-bound.

“At the school I was zoned to go to, the test scores were 79 percent for math, 88 percent for language arts, and 80 percent for writing. At Ivy Prep it was 91 percent for writing, 96 percent for language arts and 98 percent for writing,” she said.

Ivy Prep also stands as a good example of why it isn't all about the money either. For a couple of years they have been getting by on a shoestring budget with their teachers being paid on the 2006 pay scale, using computers they bought for $20 at surplus auctions, and limited funds from the state. Back in August the state changed their designation which then made it mandatory for the county to share its education budget with the school, which meant an infusion of about a million dollars.

It is this sharing of the budget which prompted the lawsuit. In a nutshell this is the issue. The state approved the schools but the counties, there is another charter school in the same situation, Statesboro’s Charter Conservatory for Liberal Arts & Technology in which these schools are located did not.

There is a very important constitutional issue at the heart of this, that being at what level is control of the school boards actually held.

For me the results speak for themselves, and while the constitutional question is important, the bigger lesson here is that our government school system is woefully inadequate and this example lays that bare, so win or lose, hopefully it will open some eyes and cause parents to put more pressure on local school boards to approve these charter schools.

While the Gwinnett school board is putting their face on this lawsuit, don't be fooled. It was at the instigation of the teachers union, but the union doesn't have the standing to allow it to bring the case.

Parental Unit Shows Offspring How to be Mature

You wonder why our kids are so screwed up? It is because of the fine examples of maturity that they are exposed to.

Police say the mother and daughter walked into Williams' classroom and began arguing with the teacher. Williams asked them to leave but the mother pushed past the teacher and grabbed a book off her desk, police say.

When Williams, 40, tried to get the book back, the mother pulled the teacher's hair and threw her to the ground, the report said. Then the mother and daughter stomped on the teacher, according to the report.

Williams, a first-year teacher at Southside High, teaches video broadcasting, Manguno said. She has not returned to the school since the attack, he said.

Thankfully, both mother and daughter have been arrested and charged and who knew teaching kids how to make YouTube videos could be so dangerous.
The attack occurred on February 28, so I wonder what took the police so long to make an arrest in this case? I have no doubt that the school board and members of the administration were doing all they could to make this go away so they wouldn't have to report the incident and risk being put on the list of schools labeled as being in trouble as required by the No Child Left Behind legislation. More and more, school administrators are abandoning their teachers in the classroom in the sake of making the metrics in the NCLB legislation. Soon the teachers union is going to have to decide who they represent. Is it the teachers or the administration?