Former supe indicted in Atlanta school cheating scandal

[Mosiah]

Former superintendent indicted in Atlanta school cheating scandal

More than three years after a state investigation began into unexplained rises in student test scores, former Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Beverly Hall was indicted along with 34 others on racketeering charges. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

By Kate Brumback, The Associated Press

A grand jury indicted a former superintendent and more than 30 other educators Friday in one of the nation's largest cheating scandals that rocked Atlanta's public schools.


The indictment named the former Superintendent Beverly Hall as well as several high-level administrators, principals and teachers. Hall faces charges including racketeering, false statements and theft. She retired just days before the 2011 probe was released, and has previously denied the allegations.

A state investigation in 2011 found cheating by nearly 180 educators in 44 Atlanta schools. Educators gave answers to students or changed answers on tests after they were turned in, investigators said. Teachers who tried to report it faced retaliation, creating a culture of "fear and intimidation" in the district.

Read more here: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...g-scandal?lite

[Mosiah]

And she had to go and be Jamaican!

[Assasin]

We will see how it works out. I don't think she actually tell them to cheat, she may put some pressure on them but we will see how it work out. She was once a rising star.

It may sound a lot but some of these school districts are like 10,000 staff. 180 teachers maybe 4 or 5 schools.

[Gamma]

For it to have been that widespread, it would beggar belief to think that she was totally oblivious of the practice as the coordi action seems to have been centralized

Poor S'Nandrews High School for Girls

[Assasin]

She could have known but not necessarily. I have worked in one of this school district and while they are driving results from top, people take shortcut and if not caught their numbers seems good and even get promotion because it is thought that they are driving results.

She could have known and turned a blind eye but is that deserving of 40 years which she is about to face. The charges are lying to investigator, and that she was actually the ring leader in this. I hear at least one teacher on the news say they were pressured to get result, she never said anybody told her to cheat but maybe others can say otherwise so we will see.

[MdmeX]

40 years - you've got to be kidding?

How much compensation did she earn?

[MdmeX]

She could have known but not necessarily. I have worked in one of this school district and while they are driving results from top, people take shortcut and if not caught their numbers seems good and even get promotion because it is thought that they are driving results.

She could have known and turned a blind eye but is that deserving of 40 years which she is about to face. The charges are lying to investigator, and that she was actually the ring leader in this. I hear at least one teacher on the news say they were pressured to get result, she never said anybody told her to cheat but maybe others can say otherwise so we will see.

I think she was aware of it, but turned a blind eye!

[Assasin]

<LI id=menu-item-3115 class="menu-item menu-item-type-taxonomy menu-item-object-category menu-item-3115">MusicBeverly Hall and ‘The Art of War’ at Atlanta Public Schools

March 31, 2013 | Posted by ABS Staff
Tagged With: APS, Atlanta Public Schools, Beverly Hall, Sun-Tzu, The Art of War

The book that lay on Beverly Hall’s desk through years of acclaim and reproach at the Atlanta Public Schools contained neither business-school bromides nor educational platitudes.
It was “The Art of War.”
The millennia-old, pre-Machiavellian classic, by the Chinese general Sun-Tzu, lays out strategies for prevailing in any conflict through ruthless efficiency. Its eternal presence on her desk underscores Hall’s approach to her dozen years as Atlanta’s school superintendent: Schools were a battlefield. Test scores were weapons. Defeat was not an option.
An indictment issued Friday charging Hall and 34 other Atlanta educators with racketeering and other crimes sends the former superintendent into a new battle — this one in a courtroom. The case asks the court to render judgment not just on Hall and the other defendants, but also on the aggressive, sometimes-intimidating management style that she, her top advisers and their subordinates propagated for years.
A Fulton County grand jury accused Hall, other administrators, teachers and even a school secretary of participating in a criminal conspiracy to juice the district’s standardized-test scores for financial gain and professional recognition. By pushing subordinates to meet unrealistic performance targets, the grand jury alleged, Hall and a few of her most trusted advisers transformed a public school district, albeit one with a history of poor performance, into a criminal enterprise in which the primary victims were children.
Hall, 66, the national superintendent of the year in 2009, could face 45 years in prison.
Even setting aside criminal culpability, the indictment portrays a workplace with a toxic culture in which leaders routinely sacrificed their integrity to preserve the district’s image, not to mention Hall’s. Desired results, no matter how unlikely, drew little skepticism, grand jurors found. Truth-telling, on the other hand, could result in severe punishment. Employees who reported cheating put their jobs in jeopardy, and the indictment recounts an episode in which Hall lightly punished a cheating teacher but fired the whistleblower.
Through her lawyers, Hall denied the charges, as did other defendants, and the indictment provides no direct evidence that Hall ordered district employees to cheat on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, or CRCT. But it states that Hall did little or nothing to ferret out cheaters, and it alleges the superintendent and others took extreme actions to cover up wrongdoing.
“All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu wrote.
If the indictment is accurate, Beverly Hall took his words to heart.

[Assasin]

Right now I know another school district in the same region where I use to work and a certain principal put a lot of pressure on the teachers and some good ones just walk away. I was suprise, everytime I hear some of the calibre teachers who walk away, he put the pressure on and get results so he is seen as one who is driving results, but put it this way, him make big woman ball all the time and he has almost all control over his school.

[MdmeX]

Employees who reported cheating put their jobs in jeopardy, and the indictment recounts an episode in which Hall lightly punished a cheating teacher but fired the whistleblower.

Part and parcel of the problem If I was the whistleblower who was fired, I would be rejoicing

[Assasin]

yep but is it as stated??? Hall might have a different recollection.

There is so much politics in these school districts. Some people grandfather in and nuh want nuh changes and some people and they will gang up on you if they see it fit. Been there, have to save every email and paper work you can and nuh take nothing up to chances inna those environment.

[MdmeX]

Sass - everyone of them had an inclination of what was going on!!

[Me]

US school districts are as political as cities and states. Can never be sure what the exact story is and who is simply taking the fall.

[Islandman]

That is the most likely scenario, yes.

[Assasin]

The problem is the people who do it, is seen as turning their class around, get promoted, turn the school around, get promoted, only that the school never turn around but the staff get promoted and more money. Until they are caught. Too much emphasis is placed on test in these school district and the Bush no Child left behind make it worst, maybe they should have charged him too. LOL.