Dear Commons Community,

During the past year, I have posted on how the over-emphasis on standardized testing has created a culture of gaming and/or outright cheating by school leaders . In New York and Washington D.C., children and parents were systematically duped into thinking that the schools were doing a good job of education by pointing to the gains in standardized test scores only to find out that tests were dumbed down or that there was widespread cheating on the part of school administrators to inflate passing rates. The NY Times has an article exposing another great American City school system, Atlanta, for its wide spread cheating on student standardized tests. The article states that:

“The results of the [state] investigation, made public by Governor Nathan Deal, showed that the cheating occurred at 44 schools and involved at least 178 teachers and principals, almost half of whom have confessed, the governor said.

A culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation existed in the district…”

The Governor’s Report further concluded that:

“Cheating was caused by a number of factors but primarily by the pressure to meet targets in the data-driven environment and that
There was a major failure of leadership throughout Atlanta Public Schools with regard to the ethical administration of the 2009 CRCT.”

The outgoing Atlanta schools superintendent, Beverly L. Hall, joins the likes of Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, as “the shinning knights” of urban school reform who have been exposed as betrayers of the trusts of school children and their parents.

Tony