Atlanta Schools Cheating for A Decade (career, reservations, work)
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Snake, you are completely right about that and I am wrong. I should not let my frustration over this situation override the need for due process and the right of folks to defend themselves. That's basic Constitutional law here in the U.S.
If any of these teachers and administrators actually did not do what the report says they did then they should be exonerated. While that seems unlikely in view of specificity of the report, that doesn't mean there can't be errors.
Well...the APS teachers have do have to actually face their accusers in some sort of court of law, don't they? What you and others on here seem to forget is that the results of the statewide audit as preformed by the G.B.I. are still up this point, allegations.
Remember that word? "Allegations"? Here is another phrase that people also seem to conveniently forget as well: "Due process".
This is what I dislike about our America media nowadays. All this entity does is pump up the latent fears and biases of normal everyday people, work them up into a lather for a lynch party and make them forget that there was ever such an idea as due process. You know...that inconvenient little rule in the 5th amendment of the U.S. Constitution and buttressed by the 14th amendment that gives all legal citizens in all of the states & territories of the U.S.A. the right to face their accusers in a court of law.
How would you like it if you was accused of some major impropriety and had your good name dragged out in the press before you ever had the opportunity to face your accusers in a court of law? You wouldn't like it one bit, would you arjay?
And yet this what you are allowing yourself to get goaded into with the other lesser-minded bigoted types on city-data... the types who care less about the fate of Atlanta Public School's kids one way or another. A lot of the city-data personalities hate Atlanta one way or another, and that's never gonna change. Trying to convince those aforementioned types of anything different would be akin to casting pearls before swine.
But you are different, my friend. You are more conscious, more enlightened...a vastly different & rare breed of American, I'd say.
[quote=arjay57;20050462]I originally wrote: "Great. So now we're going to litigation with cheating teachers who want to stay in their jobs? Just what APS needs."
But see my post below -- it's entirely appropriate for those who truly did not cheat to defend themselves.
If they did cheat or were complicit, they should be dismissed. Obviously those who have confessed should be fired now. For the others named in the report who contest its accuracy, I'd recommend suspension. They have every right to show that the charges are false. If they later prove they didn't cheat they can be reinstated.
One way or another, the children of the Atlanta Public School system will get the justice that they sorely need. Hopefully at the end of this scandal and the following period of reform, APS will come out better than any public or private school system in the entire United States of America.
Aries is hardly apologising for the bullcrap that came out of Dr. Hall's administration. He is simply reinforcing a point of view that I also hold that America's approach to public education for ALL of its children is broken.
Our system isn't broken for all children. Many of our children are doing extremely well.
Obviously the public education system is not working in some areas.
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Interesting enough, out of the 28 pages of material I've read on this topic by far, I have yet to hear any contructive solutions from the anti-Hall/anti-APS camp on this particular thread...and lord knows I've asked for some.
I'm not part of the anti-APS camp. I've vigorously supported APS for decades, and poured several hundred thousand dollars into it. I attended APS schools myself, as did my children, and as do my grandchildren now. We've had APS teachers in the family and have supported the schools through PTA and other activities.
I don't have any formal training in education but I can offer my ideas for solutions. And I'm certainly open to criticism of them and to other ideas as well. But here's where I'd start.
(1) Eliminate all personnel who engage in cheating. I understand that some feel they are under pressure ot do so, but sometimes you have to let integrity rise above keeping your job or collecting a bonus. That's especially so when you are entrusted with the education of our next generation of citizens. The incentive to not cheat [firing] should outweigh the incentive to cheat [job retention and bonuses].
(2) Eliminate pay incentives based on standardized tests like CRCT.
(3) Find new measures for evaluating learning in schools that are significantly under-performing.
(4) Eliminate "teaching to the test" if that simply means jacking up scores on CRCT. If that means bucking the Georgia or federal departments of education, so be it. You can't be a slave to money forever. It's obviously time to change the status quo.
(5) Go to the schools in APS and elsewhere in metro Atlanta that are highly successful and find out what they are doing. Then work on getting parents, teachers, students and administrators to help develop similar systems for low performing schools. I believe there would be a lot of sharing and that there's a lot of energy and resources that could be brought to bear. For instance, almost everybody agrees that the children in low performing schools aren't getting the support they need at home. Let other people in the community work with those families and show them how to provide more support, and offer encouragement.
(6) Reduce crappy role models for children. They in no way benefit from romanticizing shootings, going to jail, demeaning women, using the N word, etc. It's one thing for adult poets to explore those themes in the artistic context, but these are negative values for elementary school children.
(7) Bring in the seniors. We've got a crapload of old people in this town, many of who have lots of experience working, going to school and/or raising children. Put them to work on a volunteer basis. Or maybe cut the salaries of $500,000 administrators and pay the seniors a little for hands on work with students and families.
(8) Get ultra focused with private money, like the funds we get from the Gates, Ford and Blank foundations. Maybe that could be used to incentivize parents, or help defray the costs of community volunteers.
Again, I'm sure there are more and better ideas and that there are plenty of problems with what I'm throwing out.
One way or another, the children of the Atlanta Public School system will get the justice that they sorely need. Hopefully at the end of this scandal and the following period of reform, APS will come out better than any public or private school system in the entire United States of America.
That's my dream, anyways.
Thanks, Snake. We have a dream, if I may coopt that famous quote.
One way or another, the children of the Atlanta Public School system will get the justice that they sorely need.
In a broad sense, the children have been hurt in that they've been shown that breaking rules can be very financially rewarding. Perhaps some minor incremental improvements in education (the only kind possible) have been delayed by this cheating. But there has been no direct negative impact on the education of the children in APS during Hall's regime. They still had a wonderful unabridged opportunity to learn, fully funded by the taxpayer.
Our system isn't broken for any children. What reason do you have to think that the system has hurt students? I haven't seen a shred of evidence.
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