| By Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. The great city of Atlanta and many other Georgia towns are, at this very moment, in the throws of the latest installment of their ongoing school cheating scandal. It's a scandal that could take place in most any school district, but which is worst in Atlanta, a city that has well and truly lost its moral compass . Here no one, whatever their high titles and educational degrees and licenses, is responsible for anything. And so I have selected for the music to accompany this article, Chaka Khan's tune "Ain't Nobody" (released 1983)... because in Atlanta ain't nobody educatin', ain't nobody learnin', ain't nobody leadin', ain't nobody truth tellin'... and ain't nobody cleanin' up the mess and galvanizing the folks so that Atlanta can hold up its head again... proud of its achievements, not abashed by its lies, deceptions and deceits. You can find Chaka Khan's tune in any search engine. Get it now... and let its pulse get you in the mood not just for disgust, outrage and indignation but for the hard work of school and municipal reform which must start at once, this very day... And don't read this article with any smugness at all... for you cannot be sure the "educators" in your town aren't doing the same things but just haven't been caught yet. Who's bright idea was this anyway? Investigators and the public may never know the name of the first educator who erased the wrong test answer and entered the correct one, and if there were only one such infraction, or even just a few more, we could simply say, "There are always some bad apples in any barrel." But this is not what happened in Atlanta... where, at least 178 Public School employees in 44 schools, including 38 principals, all decided, some independently, some working together, to alter standardized test results. Now think about this for a moment. Each of these educators has gone through years of (we hope) rigorous training, with degrees and licenses to prove their hard work and diligence. Each will swear on a stack of Bibles that they believe in education and that they are well and truly dedicated to helping students achieve success through the application of high standards of learning and instruction. Each would take the most sacred oath that cheating, altering test results, passing off another's work as your own, and all the other egregious forms of educational mendacity are wrong... and can never be tolerated at any time.... and that educators who perform these deeds should and must be punished and driven out of the Academy forthwith fueled by the indignation of the worthy. Every teacher, every administrator would, I know, signify in any way requested their adamant belief in these propositions... and yet an astounding, astonishing number of these same teachers and administrators altered test results with their own hands... risking their careers and sacrificing their self-respect and honor to do deeds which all knew were wrong and which each abominates and deplores. How had so many gone so wrong? While there is finger-pointing all around, the most digits are pointed at former Superintendent Beverly Hall (1999-2011). Her mantra was "performance, performance, performance" which was what the people wanted.... but which morphed over time to "performance at any cost" with the emphasis on the "any". In the Hall Administration you got the Superintendent's eye (and extra bennies and emoluments) by demonstrating improved, increasing, dazzling performance. She, once so voluble, now has "no comment". The problem is, education doesn't work like a machine process, a conveyor belt delivering better product for less. Oh, no, education is not remotely like that. Education is a slow, incremental process, where results today, with today's students, are determined by what each previous teacher in each grade was able to achieve with each student. There is no activity slower than education... nor one in which so many each have a part to play. Each and every teacher and administrator knows this... but each one decided that pleasing the powers that be was more important than doing the hard work of focusing on each student, with painstaking dedication, effort, and patience. And thus with a simple pencil eraser did each erase everything each knew to be true, good and necessary about their vocation... thereby shaming themselves, their city, their honorable colleagues, and, of course, the students who were, with each erasure and substitution, bereft of what they needed so desperately, a real education, an education of merit, of high standards set and high standards achieved, and above all of honest endeavor and honest testing and review. As I said, finger pointing is rampant as everyone scurries to save themselves in an environment where there is now intense scrutiny and a desire to see heads roll and so demonstrate that there is a new broom sweeping clean. Interim Superintendent Erroll B. Davis, Jr. says that the prevailing "culture of fear and intimidation" in his predecessor Hall's regime must be changed. "People," he says, "felt that it was easier to cheat than to miss their goals and objectives." Not just one incident, but a series of incidents. Americans, of course, want fast answers to endemic problems. And here is no exception. The people don't want to believe they were thoroughly betrayed by the very people they must rely upon the most: the teachers, educators, and administrators charged with the sacred objective of lifting their children, one step at a time,to a higher, better place. But the current scandal is just that -- "current", for the good citizens of Atlanta have been cheated by the cheaters since 2001 at least, and quite possibly longer. Over the course of the last decade, one cheating scandal after another has punctuated the Atlanta school calendar. All bear a dreary resemblance to each other. High standards are set which cannot be met, though those setting them reap a torrent of praise for such daring and boldness. In due course, though, the high standards are shown to be too high, unrealistic, overly ambitious. Cheaters enter to bridge the difference between what is... and what could never be. And, in due course, these cheaters, or at least some of them, are caught... to the outrage of citizens and short-changed students. And so new leaders are brought in, who set unrealistic goals and tell you they have the necessary skills, you betcha, to achieve the objective and make Atlanta proud... yet in due course they, too, fail -- but only after reaping educational awards and honors for proclaiming goals too steep to achieve. Thus they, too, are discarded and villified. And all the while the students of Atlanta are bereft of the education they must have and have every right to expect. They do not get it because their parents, their teachers, their elected officials and bureaucrats at every level will pontificate about education... but will not engage in the slow painstaking business of educating one student at a time... for they want an education to be what no education has ever been: a machine process, an assembly-line activity... and until the citizens of Atlanta know this and demand this these humiliating, demeaning, abashing scandals must and will continue. |
