Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal Points Finger to Superintendent

 

At first glance, this woman looks harmless. Something like a really cool grandmother, or perhaps a teacher. However, Dr. Beverly Hall, former Superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools is in waist deep shit with the release of the Governor's Office for Student Achievement investigation regarding cheating on Criterion Reform Competency standardized tests in 2009.

The office used a simple assessment. They scanned all the competency tests to view the number of erasures on answers that went from wrong to right. They found out that several public school systems, including the state's largest, Atlanta Public Schools, as having a high number of erasures. These erasures imply that answers were removed and the correct answer replaced. By whom is the million dollar question, but also suggest that adults rather than students having an epiphany of testing intelligence to go back and fix numerous wrong answers.

Two years ago, when the governor's office requested information regarding these large numbers of wrong-to-right erasures from Hall Administration, Dr. Hall, the 2009 awardee of "Superintendent of the Year" rebuffed requests, sending even more alarms during the inquisition.

But get this, there are whistle blowers in this investigation, principals and teachers who say that the Hall Administration created a climate of fear and retribution if one did not comply with the erasures. According to the investigation, 58 principals and 444 teachers who instruct in 1 - 8 schools are under fire for cheating. Add to that over 80 people have come forward with information detailing the cheating climate at APS.

Dr. Hall who announced her retirement months before this investigation was released has now come out to say that she did not know about the cheating. According to the Jamaican born educator who got her fame working in New York and New Jersey public schools, the whistle blowers were blowing hot air. In a written statement she says, “Apparently, not one of the 82 persons who allegedly ‘confessed’ to  cheating told the investigators that Dr. Hall at any time instructed,  encouraged or condoned cheating.”

Okay, I am simple, but if 82 people have said that they were coerced and over 500 people have been fingered for this scandal, Dr. Hall is either a dumb ass, or a horrible liar. A woman who had the reputation for running a school district with "an iron fist" now pleads that she was ignorant to these egregious acts of which were spread throughout her district.

Interestingly, it was the large jump in achievement on standardized tests that was a major accomplishment that got Dr. Hall her fame, accolades, and $400,298 yearly salary.

Furthermore, she has literally vanished from Atlanta and has left others to take the heat.

This scandal has created a round of discussions, one of which is around the "No Child Left Behind" bill during the Bush regime that totally disrupted public schools and dis-empowered teachers and parents in providing wholesome education. The implementation of schools being given funding based on standardized achievements placed pressure on schools to concentrate on passing tests instead of getting real education. As well, parents have meet a plethora of roadblocks in finding the right schools for their child if they did not perform well on tests.

This draws another fact in standardized tests. As a former teacher, it is well known that in the history of teaching there has cheating going on for a very long time. From elementary tests to SATs, cases upon cases have discovered that many have fallen under the pressure of tests that really don't prove much at the end of the day. George W. Bush can agree to that!

Nevertheless, Dr. Hall, you get an F for major fuck up! You have failed communities and the public education system grossly.

Dismantling Public Schools by Privatizing Education: Jailing Black Mothers Who Seek Better Future for Their Children

Kelley Williams-Bolar is shown in a "perp" walk as she is escorted to a hearing for allegedly falsifying paperwork to have her child go to school in a better part of Akron, Ohio.

Black women can't win for shit in the United States. Not if they are being progressive, educated, or good mothers who are concerned about the quality of their children's education.

In the past months we have seen three cases in which black women have been jailed for fighting for a better education for their children.

In Detroit, twelve expecting teen mothers were arrested for peacefully protesting to keep their school, Catherine Ferguson, open and running so they could continue to maintain an inner city farm. This is very important since Detroit doesn't have a major grocery store in the city and residents have taken to using community farming.

Then you have Kelly Williams-Bolar from Akron, OH and Tonya McDowell of Norwalk, CT, facing jail time for enrolling their children in districts they don't live. Williams-Bolar thought she went through the proper channels by using her father's address and McDowell used her babysitter's address, but are being charged with felonies of falsifying information.

Okay, so here I am confused again. First, black women are berated for being bad mothers and welfare mothers. Now they are being criminalized for being good mothers?

The attack on black mothers who seek better education is the attempt to remove a continuum women who educate their communities by any means necessary. There are documents of slave women who would teach other slaves at midnight schools in the swamps and woods during slavery, and impart all that they knew to others in the community to uplift.

Even the women of the Black Club's Women's Movement in the late 19th Century, early 20th Century who took on the duty of educating and providing basic social services to severely neglected black communities under the banner, "Lifting As We Climb".

Much of the schools throughout the south and urban black communities of the North were kept alive through the tireless efforts of black women. Feeding children, cleaning the schools, making sure everyone had clothes or some type of school supplies. It was the women who fought for access, a far cry from black men, who often used education as a source to gain status and entry into socially and politically exclusive areanas.

Osceola McCarthy

My father is from Mississippi, and he vividly remembers how the mothers of the students would cook hot meals for children in the morning and after school to make sure they had dinner that night. That was the original breakfast program, waaaaaaayyyyyy before the Black Panther Party.

The history of black women involved in education as been one of selflessness. Even when a black woman could not eat or go to school, she made sure the children of the community were well-fed.

People such as Mary McCleod Bethune who sold pies to open a vocation school for girls that turned into Bethune Cookman College. Or Oseola McCarty, who had to drop out of school in the sixth grade in order to be a laundress, donating her life savings of $150,000 to University of Southern Mississippi to set up a fund for poor students.


And it is known fact in general American history that once women were taught how to read, the society as a whole moved forward. This is why the jailing of black mothers who seek better education is imperative for dismantling public education. Black women have been tireless advocates for access to education, and to criminalize their efforts is sending a message to dissuade others.

When one has the ability to fight for not only free education, but the quality of education, then they become an involved citizen in shaping a society. And if a black woman is putting in her 2 cents, she is flipping that bitch to be $20, best believe.

This is the second in a indefinite series exploring education in America by Eco.Soul.Intellectual

Dismantling Public Schools to Privatize Education

After the United States was founded, there were three institutions that were forged into the country's development in order to progress the new nation and disseminate the democratization process in quickening speed.

The institutions were the Post Office, the Free Press, and Education.

Soon free education was a national debate. Should it be the responsiblity of the US to fund education? The overwhelming answer was yes, and women were included. As a result, it was discovered that a more literate and educated society would be exponentially creative, productive, and engaging citizens.

Now of course, this discourse occurred within the realms of whites who at the time were the only ones who could be US citizens. Nevertheless, once enslaved black people were Emancipated, the resurrection of schools throughout the South for former slaves paralleled an economic growth in the country.

Just like after the Revolutionary War, those who were educated began to invent technologies that afforded easier functionings of society. Great thinkers were developed and re-constructed the flaws of social order. Women, yes women, and people of color, provided an essential perspective in the meaning of citizenship.

The United States grew, and flourished.

Literacy, hence, education provides you the option of garnering more options. And education has the potential of building intellectually saavy populations.

But since the mass Americanization of European immigrants and the mass exodus of whites out of inner cities to the suburbs across the US, public education has slowly disolved into a vaguely operational entity.

It is a blah more than an institution.

Suburban education provided these spaces of development, but they also cloned a sheltered an socially-ignorant middle and upper middle class that could not think farther than their local parks.

However, dads and mommies (but mostly daddies) would leave the suburbs every morning and drive to the cities to make money off a community in which their taxes were not privy of receiving.

Mary McCleod Bethune sold pies to create what is now Bethune Cookman College. Most of y'all would not sell a bean pie if your life depended on it.

And those who aspired to be a teacher from backgrounds that were not historically included in teaching at institutions discovered very early in their careers that Plymouth landed right on inner city school districts, squashing much of the growth; especially women and men of color and of low-wealth communities who grew up in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s who had people in their family who could not read or go to school were duped.

At one time, to be a teacher was a calling like a prophet in the black and brown communities.

But somehow, the educational resources of the cities and those that were never developed in poor rural communities fled to the suburbs, and those aspiring teachers were left with two broken pencils, old books, overcrowded classrooms and under-reported pedophiles.

Teachers became exhausted, then fake teachers entered the arena. Fake teachers were those who could not find a job in their industry and just said "fuck it" I'll teach.

A working class parent could no longer trust the instruction and guidance of a teacher; and teachers became hostile enemies of parents.

In the midst of the division and chaos, degradation of public schools eroded like acid dripping from a toxic waste barrel.

Today, the teachers union is filled with fake teachers, and largely led by fake ass teachers who should've just been crooked politicians.

Now public education has become the target of a failed America. Teachers, with their $30K pay unlivable wages and shitty retirement packages are the face of losers.

How in the fuck did this happen?

How did we turn against our teachers? Especially in the black community where black teachers were akin to Jesus; and in particular, when blacks were killed during enslavement when it was discovered they were literate, and uppity Negroes who flexed some sort of intellectual swagger were hung.

I gasp at this hatred and apathy for the lifeline of cognitive development.

But as I look at groups like Choice Point I understand clearly the agenga. Choice Point and Green Dot are organizations that front as advocates for great education, but are really investors in privatizing education. They go to school districts in trouble and mobolize the parents to make their schools chartered.

The catch words for the last 10 years have been "Charter Schools" however, studies are showing that these schools do not enhance the performance of low-performing schools. They merely kick out the bad apples and keep the creme de la creme to show off enhanced testing results.

Locke High School in Watts, California was taken over as a charter school by Green Dot and the school is still underperforming and full of issues that are carried over from community issues like poverty, gangs, police profiling.

On the other hand, results have shown poor performing students generally do not get better grades in Charter Schools. They are simply flunkees with nice uniforms.

And where do the bad seeds go, or should I say stay? Public school.

With a 50% drop out rate amongst black men in the New York schools system, it is narrow-minded to deduce the issue to a problem with schools and parents. It is a social disease.

Nevertheless, a charter school near you is creeping in your town.