Jul 08 2011
Fraud & Theft In Public Schools – Part II
Just wanted to note that Hot Air posted a very similar view on the fraud and theft discovered in public education testing to the one I posted yesterday. A key snippet:
Evidently state level investigations into Georgia public schools are nothing new, but the new revelations of the attempt to defraud test score results merely for enhanced funding status from the Federal Government–in my mind–should be a RICO complaint, with secondary charges of theft.
The majority of the nation doesn’t know that investigators have turned up a hatched-scheme in which Union bosses coordinated efforts with public education officials. Further that 44 of 56 school districts in the Atlanta Public Schools system strategically convinced Superintendents, Principals and teachers to cheat–primarily by going back and erasing answers on tests and replacing them with correct ones–in order to have a higher means score for the No Child Left Behind funding qualifications.
The evidence is overwhelming.
I agree that these schemes (and others I noted in other school districts) should result in jail time for those guilty of fraud (cheating) and theft (stealing children’s education). I still cannot fathom how anyone could do this, and on such a huge scale. It clearly required union pressure to pull off.
I agree with opinions I have seen posted in other places that Atlanta ,and maybe others now surfacing, could be subject to a RICO indictment because of the organized fraud to gain federal funding.
“I still cannot fathom how anyone could do this, and on such a huge scale.”
Start with the assumption that the entire Public School Administration in Georgia is hopelessly, mind-numbingly corrupt, and I mean Mafia-level corruption in *every* hiring, purchasing, and policy decision, and a scandal like this follows quite naturally.
What I suspect is true of most public school systems is now demonstrably true in Georgia – the system no longer exists to teach or serve children. The system exists to allow a large number of politically connected apparatchiks to scam the system for life. Here is the most perverse part – the worse the children do, the more money and people they claim that they need, and so they think they can just get richer and fatter forever.
It may be time to end public schooling in this country. It has failed the students, and it has failed the country.
We have transitioned to where the students are just something the system collects bounty for as long as they have a warm body filling the seat.
Broken corrupt unions and work rules and such ensure bad outcomes.
Just look at any union engaged government entity say the Post Office for example.
The list just goes on from there.
I for one don’t want to be forced to pay my tax dollars to something that primarily exists to funnel money to the unions who send it to a political party I oppose and use those same funds against things I do support.
Very similar to double taxation my own money is being used against me.
AJ: I attempted to contact you via Facebook to explain how your conclusions regarding the Atlanta cheating scandal are incorrect. Full Disclosure: I’m a teacher and union member from Florida. I will provide some facts and provide some commentary for purpose of clarity.
1. Georgia is a non-union state and subsequently does not enjoy many of the benefits and protections that conservative usually associate with public school teachers. These include protections as a whistleblower. Nevertheless, Governor Deal’s report revealed that it was the Atlanta chapter of the AFT in 2005 which first attempted to bring the scandal to the attention of superintendent Beverly Hall. She passed it onto one of her underings.
At interestng aside is that Georgia public school teachers are among the best paid in the southeast.
2. Deal’s report provides countless instances of intimidation that came from the administrative level. It was here where the scheme was but both hatched mand driven. It is administrators – non union members – whom have most at stake. Poor test scores often result in firings for principals. And significant bonuses, too.
3. And yes, its about money now in education. Let me explain. As part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (EASA) was passed in 1965. For the first time federal dollars would be earmarked for imoverished kids. In the beginning, no strings were attached. This all changed in 2002 with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Now TITLE 1 bfunds (for the impoverished districts) would be tied to success on students test scores. The largest blocks of impoverished kids are in the nations big cities. It should come as no surprise that in it is in three large urban areas – Atlanta, Washington DC and Baltimore where we have cheating scandals. These districts have the most to lose.
4. The biggest problems that teachers universaly have is the manner in which high stakes tests have been untilized under NCLB. They were never intended nor designed to have such far reaching consequences. Such tests are limited to measuring individual student acheivement and to serve as tools with which to assess individual strengths, weaknesses and needs. Test were intended to be means with which to look at indivual students but as become an ends to be the final arbitor of students, teachers, principals, schools, district level administrators and states.
5. Interestingly, there’s hope for the nation’s teachers that they are not aware of yet. First of all, there are two Republcan candidates for President who do not like NCLB in Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. With NCLB’s reauthorization a political football right now, education will enter presidential politics during this cycle. Second, late this week the GOP proposal for NCLB reauthorization focused on giving individual states autonomy again and at least in part removing some of the strings to TITLE 1 money. When these factors are coupled in with President Obama’s March speech where he declared that he believed that far too much testing is currently being administered right now some real change could be had for the nation’s schools. And maybe then we can not worrying about more Atlanta’s.
And, yes. There are numeous spelling errors from a teacher. Like most, I don’t do well without spellcheck. While I’m here, I’ll take the liberty to direct you to my, um, “manifesto” for colleagues:
http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/teachers-need-to-take-the-lead-and-not-yield-the-future-of-education-to-either-political-party/
[…] How Teachers Can Comunicate with Conservatives About the Atlanta Cheating Scandal Posted on July 9, 2011 by Bob Sikes Teachers understand that the visceral reaction by far too many conservatives is to associate any education issue with union influence. They have a point, but one that only goes so far. The recent early endorsement of President Obama bewilders many teachers and it gives justification to the those whom oppose us on these grounds. Yet to save education from the current test-based, market solutions reform tsunami, teachers will have to win over conservatives. Here is the following comment I left in the site of influential conservative blogger, AJ Strata: […]
Interesting perspective, Bob. Consider me one who thought from the start that NCLB was a disaster, but no one wanted to hear it at the time. From my view, the best possible thing we could do for education would be to abolish the Education Department at the Federal level, end ALL Federal regulations, guidelines, and dollars, and let full responsibility go back to the states and the localities, as it should be.
The Federal Govm’t should never have been involved in education in any way. This scandal is just one of the many bad ramifications that flowed from that original mistake.
On a completely different topic, and something I hope I’m wrong about – in my reading the last two days, I am getting a very bad feeling about the markets and the economy, a feeling like I have not had since August of 2008, just before the last great crisis hit. I now think these budget talks are likely to be a train wreck, and that’s not bad in itself – but the entire world is waiting for a trigger, any trigger, to set all the domino’s that are in place falling. Now if it wasn’t the budget crisis, it would be something else, but that will probably get the blame.
I can’t shake the feeling that all Hell is about to break loose. Not some unspecified time in the future – right here, right now.
Our public education system has been in serious decline since the schools were intergrated in the 1960s. It has reached the point where all our children are getting the same type education that black children once got in the all black segregated schools. In 1895 the Supreme Court ruled that blacks were entitled to separate schools because they couldn’t keep up with the white children. Fifty years later, they went back to the Superme Court claiming they were discriminated against because their children were not getting the same education as white children got. The end result has been a that now nobody’s children graduate with a decent education any more. My children reported that the majority of blacks cut up and disrupted the classes so that the teacher could not teach anyone. One second grade teacher told me that most of the black children in her classes thought they were comedians and the only reason they came to school was to cut up and have a good time. Teachers are limited in what they can do to maintain discipline in the class rooms. They can’t paddle them. Can’t keep them in after school or they will miss their busses. If you lock them in a closet or tie them up or tape their mouths you will be accused of child abuse. Can’t expel them or the NAACP will have the Justice Department on your case. Instead of addressing the real problem, the federal government set standards that teachers are required to meet. Just what do you expect the teachers to do when they have a room full of disruptive commedians who are so full of self esteem that they think they already know everything? The Fed. govt. threatens to withhold funding from schools that don’t measure up. What other alternative is there but to rig the scores? The present state of our education system reinforces my belief that few blacks want what the same things white people have. They just don’t want anyone else to have any more than they have. You can label me a racist if you like but you will never be able to solve the problem if you don’t face up to the facts. My suggestion is that disruptive students be expelled, then picked up as truants and sentenced by the juvenile courts to alternative schools where they can cut up and have a good time with others of their ilk without interfering with those who do want to learn. That’s the only way to keep the justice Dept from filing discrimination suits against school systems with a large percentage of disruptive students. Until people face up to what is causing our system to fail, and then find a solution, it ain’t going to get any better.
Momdear, I sympathize with your sentiments – but I can’t help but note one line that made me literally LOL!
“If you lock them in a closet or tie them up or tape their mouths you will be accused of child abuse. ”
uummmm – I think there’s a pretty good reason for calling it that! I’ll guess that using a taser on kids is frowned on, too. Imagine that.
But Seriously…. the problems that you’re talking about all stem from the change in the goal in the schools implemented by the bureaucracy – and I am serious about this, think about it and you’ll see how this one change leads to all the bad behaviors you have described above. The goal of most public schools today is NOT education of the students – the goal is social warehousing of a large number of young people that no one knows what to do with, combined with a money machine for a large number of politically connected administrators. The more warm bodies they have in the seats, the more money they can get, so no one can be expelled, ever.
And as soon as students begin to realize that the entire system is really a joke which is using them, not helping them, then they treat it as such. I submit that this has already happened.
RICO requires a predicate act across a state line, such as interstate email, surface mail, etc.
This is classic fraud on the federal government, which carries similarly draconian penalties and is easier for federal prosecutors to prove.
I doubt that the Obama administration will try to recover any of the unlawfully obtained federal funds from the Georgia public school system, let alone any additional monetary penalties. The only way I see them trying to recover any money would be to forestall whistleblower civil suits from the Civil War era statutes (fraud on the taxpayer) which remain on the books.
DOJ will probably seek significant prison time from the most senior perpetrators, lesser convictions from a few others, and let the rest walk. I do expect major league racial discrimination by the federal prosecutors, i.e., they’ll single out white perps to show diligence while giving “I can’t believe I’m so lucky” plea bargains to more culpable and senior black perps. It’s the Democratic way.