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The articles/movement you want are out there. Start with the links I posted in post #157. And it is major (especially considering the people, money, power, and proganda that teachers/educators are up against).
Good Luck--and let me know what you think. Then I will introduce you to even more articles/blogs, etc. (I have a "library" of links about the movement).
There are indeed reasons to talk about the failure of urban school systems.
However, it's baloney to claim this somehow justifies or explains the Atlanta cheating scandal. Beverly Hall and her cadre of highly paid administrators were not running a poor urban school system trying to scrape by on inadequate resources. To the contrary, Atlanta has long had the highest per pupil expenditures in the state. Atlanta spends more per pupil than big city systems like L.A and Chicago. APS teachers make excellent salaries and enjoy extremely generous benefits and pensions. Hall herself was paid nearly half a million dollars a year and zipped around in a chauffeured limousine driven by another employee who was paid over $100,000 a year. There are more administrators at APS making over $100,000 than any other system. The APS physical plant is phenomenal and taxpayers have spent over $1 billion dollars on it in the last ten years alone.
What happened at certain APS schools was not the result of being "hoodwinked" or "forced to teach to the test." And it was not carried out by students.
Instead, it was a conscious decision by certain teachers and administrators to forge test answers in order to make them look good. It was solely the act of some individuals, all of whom knew it was wrong and harmful to their students. Yet none of them spoke out about it, until they were caught They made the decision that it was preferable to hang on to their well paid jobs, even though that meant outright cheating. This was active alteration of test answers, not merely turning a blind eye to someone else's transgressions.
That these were individual shenanigans by a relative handful of people is underlined by the fact that in many other APS schools there was no cheating. (In these other schools students and teachers excelled year after year without cheating).
So while Diane Ravitch's arguments about the problems in urban school systems may be important, they don't address the systematic cheating by certain teachers and administrators in the Beverly Hall administration. In Atlanta, city schools have enjoyed immense resources. Some individuals just decided to take a shortcut to make themselves look good.
...
The APS teachers need to put themselves out there & stop hiding behind Maureen Dowd and start getting their hands dirty with reforming Atlanta's education system. There are ways of bypassing the mainstream media & the corporate power structure to bring the message to the masses if folks simply believe in themselves. It has worked in the past with the various civil rights movements, so I don't see any other reason other than apathy & laziness why it can't happen now. There is no other way but that way at this point in time.
Hopefully then, this movement as you point out can move beyond the defensive into the offensive. Even moreso this teacher's movement can hopefully reaffirm to the public the reasons why public education was necessary in the first place.
(I posted it publicly so that others could also benefit.)
You have to wonder whether Vito Perrone and Deborah Meier would have dealt with the problem by simply erasing student's test answers and writing in new ones, while keeping their activities a secret and continuing to draw cushy paychecks and benefits.
This should be required reading for all the players and pimps who are coming to Atlanta. Atlanta welcomes you!
Whats wrong with being a player or a pimp??
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