Wow, what a busy month it's been

And thank goodness the AJC has been paying more attention than I have. I was pretty well convinced nothing of any consequence would happen over the summer. I could not have been more wrong.

One of the big stories, as you'll recall, was the ongoing investigation into widespread cheating (by administrators, not by students) on the CRCT. That's the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test: In addition to students being required to pass it in order to advance to the next level at key grades, it is also used to allocate resources for additional help for students and schools in need. It's no secret to anyone within Atlanta Public Schools that someone's reputation rides on being able to show consistent and impressive improvement from year to year -- whether the students actually are improving or not.

The other big story, which is actually unrelated to the CRCT scandal, is the fact that we have a contentious school board. They get along so poorly that AdvancED has placed Atlanta Public Schools' on probation, at risk of losing its accreditation. (This eventuality would cost APS grant money and make it harder for students to be accepted in colleges.)

So what's been going on?

Let's see, the chairman of the school board resigned. Initially he was to remain on the board, but he has since resigned completely. A new chair has been named.

The superintendent has retired, and the search for a successor continues.
We have an interim superintendent, God help him. Although this is actually a golden opportunity: An appointee with no ambition to keep the job permanently can afford to step on some political toes, which he'll almost certainly have to do to get APS in order.

A former APS official said she was ordered to destroy reports that would confirm "systematic" cheating. Her boss just resigned.

June 30: Investigators delivered a 800-page report to the Governor, which (after taking the weekend to read it and let certain key parties know what it would say) he released to the media on July 5. The report names names, and it's not pretty. "Interim Atlanta schools superintendent Erroll Davis said in a news conference later Tuesday that those responsible for the cheating will 'not be put in front of children again.' " (Good to hear, but most of them haven't been in front of children for years, discounting the occasional honors program. They're ensconced in administrative positions, safely separated from the little darlings. But see below.)

Investigation into APS cheating finds unethical behavior across every level: "Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible." If you really want to know how many people cheated school-by-school, it's here and here.

Retiring superintendent Beverly Hall still says she didn't know this was going on, but she nonetheless accepts ultimate responsibility. The report doesn't specifically say she did know, but it does say she should have known. It may cost Hall her 2009 Superintendent of the Year award. (Well, duh.) And parents in Dallas, TX are demanding that her ex-deputy superintendent lose her new job as superintendent of DeSoto Independent School District.

The search for a new permanent superintendent is on hold while the interim superintendent "began Thursday to dismantle former school chief Beverly Hall's administration". He has removed four deputy superintendents designated as "School Reform Team Executive Directors". (APS divides its elementary and middle schools geographically into School Reform Teams, referred to as SRTs. There is a fifth SRT director who oversees all of the city's high schools. So far, no high schools have been implicated in the CRCT investigations.)

Other than that, not much, what's new with you?

This weekend at APS

What, more problems?

Beverly Hall closely tracked CRCT results

...E-mails, memos and other documents recently obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution provide the most detailed look to date at the intensity with which [Atlanta Public Schools' Superintendent Beverly] Hall followed the yearly CRCT results. She parsed scores in detailed exchanges with district researchers. She praised subordinates whose numbers improved. She kept business leaders and other supporters apprised of successes.
Nothing in the e-mails and other material suggests that Hall, Atlanta’s superintendent since 1999, ordered anyone to tamper with test papers or to behave illegally or unethically to achieve certain outcomes. How the district achieved its impressive 2009 scores is at the center of two criminal investigations.

I'm assuming everyone has noticed that reports keep leaning heavily on the item, paraphrased differently from story to story, that nobody is saying Hall knew. Neither am I -- but if she was qualified to sit in that chair, she must have suspected. The best possible spin that can be put on it is that she was too eager to believe unbelievable numbers. Villain or victim, though, she shouldn't become the CRCT scapegoat. There's plenty of clear deceptive intent to go around.

And now what?

APS underfunded its pension plan

The district has underfunded its pension for custodians, bus drivers and cooks by more than a half-billion dollars.
APS has the worst underfunding of any large public pension plan in the state, according to a recent state audit. While it is generally agreed that, at any given time, a pension plan should contain 80 percent to 90 percent of the money it is obligated to pay out, APS has assets to cover just 17.4 percent of its pension promises.
“It’s something that dates from long ago,” ...said Chuck Burbridge, the district’s chief financial officer.

How long? When did it begin? Nobody wants to say.

Most teachers are in a separate state-run plan that is much better-funded. 

Oh, well, then.

What were they supposed to say?

Atlanta school district denies trying to obstruct

Lawyers for Atlanta Public Schools have sent state investigators a defiant letter, ratcheting up the tension in an already-strained relationship.

In a three-page letter, sent Friday and obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, district officials denied obstructing the state’s criminal investigation into test-tampering, as investigators alleged last week. The letter objected to accusations that school officials have for years systematically retaliated against employees who reported cheating on state tests.

The school system also refused to cease its internal inquiry into allegations that a high-ranking district official allegedly advised a dozen principals to tell GBI agents to “go to hell.”

Judge orders APS to halt investigation

A Fulton County judge has ordered Atlanta Public Schools to halt an inquiry involving a high-ranking school official after state investigators accused the district of misleading them, hiding evidence and retaliating against a witness, according to documents filed Monday.

The temporary restraining order — signed by Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall just before 10 p.m. Sunday — provided a sharp answer to the district’s defiant pledge Friday to continue its investigation of Tamara Cotman, a regional superintendent who is accused of commanding principals to tell GBI agents to “go to hell.”

The state investigators, appointed in August to examine evidence of widespread tampering with state tests in Atlanta schools, asked the district last week to stop internal investigations related to cheating. The district refused and the investigators took the matter to court over the weekend.

It is hard to interpret "go to hell" as an expression of wholehearted willing cooperation.

Catching up

Here are a couple of news stories about the ongoing investigation of Atlanta Public Schools that I missed the first time around.

Whistle-blowing teachers targeted

Former teacher Sidnye Fells: “It’s just this thing that everyone knows is going on but nobody says anything.... It’s the elephant in the room. If you say anything, you lose your job.”

Education secretary to Atlanta board: Get your act together

Mayor Kasim Reed: “There are times when a mayor needs to be outraged. If I am not outraged, show me the person who should be. If I am not pushing for change and reform, show me the person who should be pushing for it.”
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan: "What you have now, frankly, is you have adults who I think have lost sight of why they’re doing this work. It is what I call adult dysfunction."

Atlanta school board to meet on cheating response

Atlanta school board members will meet Monday with Superintendent Beverly Hall about how she and her staff handled both the system's response to an ongoing state cheating probe and actions by top aides that drew a piercing rebuke last week by investigators.
The meeting follows reports that two high-ranking Atlanta Public Schools officials have over the past several months disparaged the investigation, which involves possible widespread test-tampering in schools during the state's 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.
It also follows a sharply worded letter sent by the investigators that alleged a pattern of "intimidating, threatening and retaliating" against employees who report cheating or other improprieties.

As you were.

I'm shocked. Shocked.

AJC | State: Atlanta schools protect those who would intimidate whistleblowers
State investigators have uncovered what they call a pattern of “intimidating, threatening and retaliating” against Atlanta Public Schools employees who report cheating or other improprieties.

Imagine that.

See also Atlanta schools official reassigned pending "go to hell" investigation.
And Another APS official disparages cheating probe.

Wait, I can't let this go.

The “... calling in of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is what, nothing short of horrific,” [Deputy Supt. Kathy] Augustine said in [the conference call with principals]. “It is extremely denigrating, it is extremely disrespectful, it is... it is just... it is just bizarre.”

...In her e-mailed statement Wednesday, Augustine elaborated: “My reference to “horrific” related specifically to the reaction of many educators to state [GBI] agents who normally investigate felony criminal activity going to schools in the middle of the day to question principals, teachers and staff.”

This says to me that, even now, they don't think they've done anything wrong. No, wait, that's not enough: That they don't think the charges against them are that serious. That even if they had done it, so what? It's not worth calling in the GBI. Anyone would think they were common criminals.

Make it so

Reflections [HDR] 
Originally uploaded by sibastiNo

APS suppressed scandal | ajc.com
Atlanta Public Schools officials, including Superintendent Beverly Hall, carried out a broad campaign over two years to suppress mounting allegations of widespread cheating on standardized tests, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found.

Hall, who built a national reputation on raising urban students’ test scores, worked with top aides and prominent supporters to minimize or conceal evidence that some of the district’s much-vaunted gains were not legitimate.

Read the whole article.

AJC report confirms Perdue decision to probe Atlanta Public Schools | ajc.com
State investigators took over a probe of Atlanta Public Schools in August after Gov. Sonny Perdue said he was concerned the search had been deliberately narrowed.

Monday, his spokesman said that decision appears to have been confirmed after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported local officials carried out a broad campaign over two years to suppress mounting allegations of widespread test cheating.

"That's why the state did what it did," Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said.

The AJC compiled the report using hundreds of documents obtained through the Georgia Open Records Act. It said Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall and other system officials exerted far greater influence than previously acknowledged on a local investigation of 58 schools with suspicious test scores.

Looks like they're trying to hang Dr Hall for it. That answer is too easy, and won't address the greater problem.

You can talk, you can talk, you can bicker, you can talk

WABE: State Investigators Warn Atlanta Public Schools to Stay Out of the CRCT Cheating Probe: A Conversation with State Investigator Bob Wilson (2010-09-16)

The investigators appointed by Governor Perdue to look into allegations of cheating on the Criterion Referenced Competency Test in the Atlanta Public Schools have rejected a request from Atlanta school officials who wanted to participate in the probe.

Former state Attorney General Mike Bowers and former DeKalb County District Attorney Bob Wilson have also warned the Atlanta schools against mounting their own investigation. APS already has the results of a probe by a blue ribbon commission appointed by the school board. But Governor Perdue called it "inadequate."

Well, that's what he calls it. You don't want to know what the teachers call it.

A-a-and here comes another layer of investigators

Feds probe Atlanta schools | ajc.com

Federal authorities are investigating whether Atlanta Public Schools committed fraud by illicitly boosting scores on standardized tests, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.

...The CRCT provides a key measure of whether schools are meeting standards mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Meeting the standards can earn those schools additional federal money, which principals can spend for almost anything they wish.

But if the schools are found to have earned extra grants through inflated scores, officials could face criminal charges. The U.S. attorney’s office also could ask a judge to order the school district to reimburse the federal government. The bonus grants for Atlanta schools total nearly $360,000 a year.

This strikes at the core of the fiction that public schools are locally-run. "We can't just tell you what to do," says the Fed, "but we'll make it worth your while to do it our way, if you take my meaning." And the local school boards, for their part, will jump through any hoop the Fed puts in place to get that money. The idea of NOT doing so simply doesn't occur to them. "That's OUR money," the school board will say. It was written into the budget years ago.

"Bonus" grants? Hah!

State investigators launch tip line in Atlanta test cheating probe | ajc.com

State investigators launch tip line in Atlanta test cheating probe | ajc.com

Special state investigators looking into alleged test cheating in Atlanta Public Schools have set up a confidential tip line number for anyone who wants to report possible violations.

The number, 404-962-3849, went active at noon Wednesday, according to a memo obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The memo said the line may be answered by a live person or voice mail. If callers want a return call, they are to leave a telephone contact number.

The CRCT cheating scandal fights its way back to the newspapers after several days' free publicity for the Fox Theater.

But it's in a memo, you can't ignore a memo

Memo directs Atlanta school employees to cooperate with state cheating investigation | ajc.com

Superintendent Beverly Hall has issued a memo directing all Atlanta Public Schools employees to cooperate with a special state investigation into alleged test cheating "or risk being found insubordinate."

"Any employee who fails or refuses to fully cooperate with the special investigators may be subject to formal disciplinary action, including termination," the memo said.

Well, since you put it like that, I'm sure everyone will be 110% cooperative now.

“I wonder if they were given instructions and directions of how to constrain this investigation rather than to explore it”

'Lite' investigation of Atlanta test cheating | ajc.com

This report is a textbook-quality example of how you write a new story when you don't have any new facts to present. On the face of it, it may appear that there's no need for such a thing, but the Sunday paper should contain a roundup of news that broke over the previous week. Plus, I have to admit, I smile to see this story refreshed. We must not be allowed to forget about this.

Atlanta questioned just 230 of 3,100 employees assigned to the 58 schools suspected in the cheating scandal; investigators spoke to three or fewer people at 34 of the schools. High-ranking school district officials — among them, the top aide to Superintendent Beverly Hall — conducted or observed 140 of the interviews. And a data analysis commissioned for Atlanta’s investigation appears to have limited the inquiry’s scope.

...When they ordered Atlanta to investigate the 58 schools, state officials gave directions as clearly as they could, said Kathleen Mathers, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.

Officials wanted the district to establish a chain of custody, Mathers said, by interviewing anyone who could have touched test papers at each of the 58 schools. Principals, assistant principals, testing coordinators, teachers, test proctors: All, she said, should have been questioned.

...The company’s president, John Fremer, recently defended Caveon’s work in an interview with WABE, the public radio station operated by the Atlanta school board.

“It was a very thorough investigation,” Fremer said. “Did we end up with people like in Perry Mason saying, ‘Oh, that’s it, I confess’? No. We didn’t end up with that. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

He offered no reasons, however, for the irregularities found in so many Atlanta schools — in the 12 Caveon cited, and beyond.

“It’s kind of puzzling to me why the overall level of wrong-to-right erasures is so great,” Fremer told the radio station. “I don’t have an explanation for that.”

Funny, that's exactly the question you were hired to answer. Way to admit incompetence, there.

Who watches the watchmen?

Bowers, Wilson to investigate CRCT | ajc.com

The cheating scandal at Atlanta Public Schools raised questions about what happened during tests in hundreds of classrooms. Now, two seasoned litigators will begin digging for answers.

The two men have conducted numerous high-profile investigations. Each once served as top prosecutors, only to step down to seek higher office and then suffer defeat. They have since become successful private attorneys with reputations as hard-nosed litigators.

Taking extraordinary action last week, Gov. Sonny Perdue picked former state Attorney General Mike Bowers and former DeKalb County District Attorney Bob Wilson to head a special investigation into testing irregularities at the Atlanta and Dougherty County public school systems.

J. Tom Morgan, who worked in the DeKalb DA's office under Wilson and worked with Bowers in private practice, said both men are detail-oriented lawyers who are compatible with one another.

"They will call it as they see it," Morgan said. "They will leave no stone unturned. Neither one of them is scared of anything."

ATL superintendent loses shine | ajc.com

Hall insisted during an interview Thursday that Atlanta’s gains during her tenure are real. “We have stayed the course for a very long time in a very difficult environment,” she said, referring to the district’s mostly poor, highly transient student body. In the interview with AJC editors and reporters, Hall also asserted that no cheating has been proved, any cheating was perpetrated by unscrupulous individuals,* and that the aggressive teacher accountability system that she initiated had nothing to do with any wrongdoing.

“It’s always possible,” she said, “for some human being to cheat.”

But the district’s skewed data call into question the two feats most responsible for Hall’s national stature: the dramatic increase in the graduation rate and the skyrocketing scores on state and national achievement tests.

...For a month before schools administer the test each spring, records show, transfers spike at Forrest Hill Academy, an alternative school for students with academic or behavioral problems. Concentrated at Forrest Hill, contained by wrought-iron and chain-link fences,** these poor-performing students no longer are liabilities to their home schools. Instead, their CRCT scores count against Forrest Hill, where failure rates on portions of the exam run as high as 97 percent.

Looks like the grown-ups have finally taken an interest in the people who've been playing school over at Atlanta Public Schools. It's about time.

* Gosh, thanks, Dr Hall. I was sure it was all the honest folks who were cheating. Thanks for setting us straight.

** Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses, are they still in operation? I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course.

From the school board to the Mayor to the Governor

How does a (let's face it) local school board issue find its way all the way up to the Governor's office? Well, partly because the Governor's office is right across the street. But we can't discount the presence of unmitigated ineptitude. Let's have a round-up of the week's news:

Not so easy listening: WABE interview with Beverly Hall on CRCT cheating probe and whether warning signs ignored

Well, what do you expect her to say?

Atlanta superintendent calls alleged cheating ‘a painful chapter'; vows to regain public trust

"Let me be clear: As superintendent, the buck stops here ... Our children deserve better," Hall said. "They have a right to teachers and administrators who believe in them and who are willing to teach them determination instead of deception."

Nice words, Dr Hall. We needed them months ago when the investigation started, though. And this was the same meeting where the Mayor intervened to attempt to cool hot tempers.

Memo outlined APS cheating response, strategy for Hall
State senator, taxpayers group demand Atlanta school superintendent's resignation

“It bears out a lot of what we’ve been saying — that the investigation was a set-up with Beverly Hall’s cronies circling the wagons and not really having an independent and transparent investigation,” [state Sen. Vincent] Fort [D-Atlanta] said.

Perdue calls Atlanta's cheating investigation "woefully inadequate"
Perdue to appoint investigator to look at Atlanta schools

Gov. Sonny Perdue made a rare appearance before the state Board of Education over alleged cheating in Atlanta public schools, calling it "a sad day."

"I know you share my deep disappointment with the results. To this day, we still have not gotten to the bottom of what was revealed in the 2009 CRCT results," Perdue told the board Wednesday afternoon.

“This is about individual students being robbed and cheated of their one fair shot at a good education.”

"I know you share my deep disappointment..." = "Start acting like you want to get to the bottom of it."

Perdue still has questions; Hall supports state investigation into Atlanta Public Schools

Again, what would you expect her to say?

Perdue: Atlanta cheating probe was stonewalled

Wait, hold on. That isn't what the governor said.

"When people said, we don’t have to talk to you, the investigator says OK, we’ll just go on somewhere else. If I’m in charge, then I say, look, you have a choice. We’re going to get to the bottom of this one way or another. You better be telling your side of the story. This is not yet a criminal investigation. There are no Fifth Amendment rights at this point. But the actual facilitation of lawyering-up and stonewalling does not seem to have been, to me, discouraged at all."

The story is big enough without exaggerating.

Multiple choice: Are you [a] incompetent [b] dishonest [c] blindly arrogant [d] all of the above?

High CRCT test scores trumped honesty | ajc.com

The schools cited in the cheating investigation serve mostly poor neighborhoods and have long histories of substandard academic performance. Many of their students come from single-parent homes and lack support from family members in pursuing their studies. But their higher scores of recent years gave credence to a view promoted by Atlanta’s superintendent, Beverly Hall, that all children, even those from the poorest homes, are “educable.”

Now, emerging evidence of widespread cheating suggests some Atlanta educators either were determined to prove Hall right or were convinced that, without cheating, they couldn’t.

These are the people into whose hands you put your children's future. "All children are educable." The tyranny of low expectations. Perhaps we ought to put that phrase somewhere in the Pledge of Allegiance.

12 Atlanta principals reassigned, among 108 employees to face state review in test scandal | ajc.com

The schools include Gideons, Usher, Peyton Forest, Perkerson, Venetian Hills, Scott, Connally, Dunbar, F.L. Stanton and Capitol View elementary schools as well as Parks Middle. Bromery could not identify the 12th school, which is affected because its principal previously led a now-defunct school, Blalock Elementary, listed in the report as having had a serious problem.

Well, so long as you don't actually say his name.

All the principals reassigned Friday led the 12 schools which appeared to have widespread problems. They will be moved temporarily to jobs in the system's central office, Bromery said.

Where they can't possibly do any harm -- which is to say, speak to any reporters or parents. APS really needs to avoid the temptation to conclude that dealing with the principal = dealing with the problem. Some principals, like administrators and middle-managers in any industry, have less influence over their subordinates than they think.

It's worth noting that the interim principals were actually put in place a week or two ago, before the specifics of The Investigation were made public, so this isn't quite as last-minute as it appears.

See also Throwing them under the bus or cleaning house? | ajc.com

For this, I actually bought a copy of the Sunday AJC. It did my heart good to see the story on the front page, and the two-page spread to which it continued, the newspaper equivalent of "twenty-seven eight by ten colored glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence." Local news will save newspapers, of that I am sure.

Well, that and comic strips printed large enough to read.

"Guiding our efforts is a single premise: We have nothing to hide."

If I'm going to yammer on when I think they're wrong, fairness compels me to say so when they're right.

I have to praise APS Superintendent Dr. Beverly Hall for making so much of the report and its supporting documentation freely available on the APS website.

Atlanta Public Schools | State Erasure Report

I'm delighted to observe that everyone concerned seems to agree that there is a "there" there, and we're a long way from having heard the last word.

“How long and how far do you look for every last person who potentially may have done something wrong?”

Atlanta test-cheating probe fails to satisfy | ajc.com

Investigators chosen by Atlanta’s school system gave only cursory attention to evidence suggesting extensive cheating on standardized tests in more than half the 58 schools they examined.

Seventeen schools suspected of some of the most widespread cheating were barely investigated and, consequently, avoided recommendations for sanctions. Another 14 schools where state officials voiced a moderate concern about cheating received similar treatment. The investigators disregarded testing irregularities in hundreds of Atlanta classrooms.

...Commission members defend their work. They say they focused mostly on schools highlighted in a statistical analysis performed by a consulting firm they hired.

But a review of the commission’s report and interviews with education officials and testing experts suggest that the investigation fell far short of unearthing the scope of a cheating scandal that calls into doubt a decade of higher test scores and other academic progress by Atlanta students.

This article is by AJC reporters Alan Judd and Heather Vogell
 instead of Kristina Torres, whose byline I've seen on most of this thread. Good article; keep it alive!

At Deerwood Academy, for instance, the state flagged almost half of 90 classrooms. The Atlanta commission’s investigators noted unusual numbers of erasures and 100 percent pass rates on two tests given by one teacher. But the investigators interviewed just four people at Deerwood, cleared the entire staff and submitted a report that omitted the fact that an earlier investigation found strong evidence of cheating on a CRCT retest there in the summer of 2008.

At other schools, investigators spoke to as few as two staff members. In the case of one recently closed school, they spoke to none.

Just because the school is closed doesn't mean the teachers and administrators vanished. Smart money says they're still employed by APS.