The Sodom and Gomorrah of Public Schooling?

The Sodom and Gomorrah of Public Schooling?
[Cato @ Liberty] Though Duncan made an off-hand comment that high-stakes NCLB-required tests may have contributed to the pressure that lead to the cheating, he repeatedly blamed the cheating on a uniquely “morally bankrupt culture” in Atlanta’s public schools.

Unique to Atlanta. I see. Can't possibly happen anywhere else. Except that it is: Philadelphia. Washington. Albany, GA. Which is to say, pretty much everywhere it's actually being looked for, it's being found. Yeah, New York has its head firmly embedded in its... er, that is, is dogmatically insisting "it can't happen here," which is what Beverly Hall was saying a couple of years ago, while it was happening here.

Did Rhee and Hall consult the same playbook on how to respond to news of cheating?
[ajc "Get Schooled"] I have to wonder if all school chiefs follow the same playbook when confronted with catastrophic evidence of cheating in their districts: Dodge, deny and dismiss.
It did not work for former APS Superintendent Beverly Hall, and it isn’t working for Michelle Rhee, the ex DC chancellor who is now confronting her own Erasure-gate as the result of a well done USA Today investigation.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, it's the source of the bottled water they serve in teacher schools.

"The results [from] 2010 and 2011 ...have not been questioned"

Former Atlanta schools chief Hall says recent scores "have not been questioned" [ajc | PolitiFact]
Hall submitted her commentary to Education Week on Aug. 9, according to its opinion editor. This is days after the AJC released its findings on the 2011 scores and more than a month after special investigators released their report.
She had more than enough time to figure out that GOSA, special investigators and the AJC have questioned her results.

Should I point out that there are three possible explanations for Dr Hall's statements and actions?

• Dishonest
• Incompetent
• Delusional

Which do you like? At this point, a combination of all three seems most likely (bubble-in D, "all of the above"), but I'm going to go with "delusional." Even now, she really doesn't think she's done anything wrong.

(I'm really amused that Education Week gave her the option to rephrase her comments after publication. Most public figures don't get that kind of... I'll call it "courtesy". Who do they think they are, the Congressional Record?)

(For those who don't know: The Congressional Record is "the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress", but it is not, in any sense, a transcript of what was actually said in session. Legislators can and do "correct" what they said "for the Record" to reflect what they "intended to say" and provide supporting data and additional exposition they didn't have time to say. They say.)

"The Atlanta Public Schools system under [Hall's] guidance was a disaster"

I adore that image to the right, there. It came from The American (see below), and it's just perfect. It reminds me of one of the less obvious problems of standardized testing, one that, er, a particular educator I know told me about. Sometimes, when students have absolutely no clue what to do with the test (they may not even fully grasp the concept of "bubbling-in" the right answers), they'll make designs with the bubble patterns on the answer sheet. The teachers call this "christmas-treeing".

Well, anyway.

Investigators call APS under Hall a 'disaster' [WXIA]
APS investigators call the state of Atlanta schools under Dr. Beverly Hall a "disaster." In their first sit down interview, Mike Bowers and Bob Wilson talk about a "heartbreaking" culture of corruption.
...Wilson says he lost track of days, sitting in a conference room from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., conducting and pouring over the 2,100 interviews they conducted and 800,000 documents they examined.

*sigh* That's poring, not pouring. But they're television reporters, they can't be expected to know how to spell.

Bowers and Wilson have pretty much concluded the Atlanta investigations, so there's nothing new to add here. However, you do get a sense of the scope of the investigations, and the reality of trudging through this tragic, shameful situation. It's important to remember that not everyone named in the report is a villain -- nor are the investigators.

But it was inevitable that, sooner or later, this crap was going to hit the fan.

More Cheating To Come...& Lessons Reformers Can Take from Atlanta [Education Week]
One key lesson from Atlanta is that civic leaders and the business community threw their influence behind Superintendent Hall because, as one local paper reported, she was "fluent in the language of corporate America." In doing so, they compromised their effectiveness and sacrificed their ability to constructively challenge the school system.
A second lesson that Atlanta highlights is the problem with presuming that school systems are being scrupulous with their data or open about their processes and problems.

The culture of secrecy manifested in plenty of ways. For all that APS struggled to hide its inner workings, they were hopelessly incompetent at hiding the fact that they had something to hide. But look how many lives were damaged before someone said "this cannot continue." As I've said, the wonder is not that the AJC caught them, but that it took so long.

The Atlanta Cheating Scandal's Tough Lessons for Business Leaders [The American]
As a seasoned legislative staffer who champions business involvement in education told us, “It makes a difference when a business person …[tells us], ‘I don’t care what your [standardized test] scores or your [reports] say, the kids who come to work for us can’t read.’” This valuable reality check was compromised in Atlanta when the business community threw its influence behind Superintendent Hall regardless of results, just because, as one local paper reported, she was “fluent in the language of corporate America.”

Mn. That phrase "fluent in the language of corporate America" keeps coming up. Because "The American" is a publication of the American Enterprise Institute, they may be looking to blame everything on Beverly Hall using her corporate wiles to delude the innocent businessmen of Atlanta. I'm not so sure. I can't say they're wrong, but I fear that willing co-conspirators may go unexamined.

Teachable moments

Hall invoices district for $127K in legal fees [ajc]
Rhoda Spence, a mother of two APS students, has been watching the continuing fallout from the cheating scandal and the mounting financial commitments the district is having to make as a result.
“I’m sorry this happened," Spence said. "I just want the focus to be back on the children.”

I think we're all sorry it happened, Ms Spence. Some are sorry they lied; others are sorry they got caught.

I believe the interim superintendent is doing everything he can do to return the focus to the children. But if dishonest teachers are not investigated and (when appropriate) prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows, what will the children learn from that? The response to this situation really isn't optional: Actions must have consequences, or else nothing teachers say matters at all.

"The names of all employees paid bonuses..."

Despite cheating scandals, testing and teaching are not at odds [Washington Post]
The Atlanta cheating scandal has been described as the worst known incident of systemic cheating, so it is worth noting that even there investigators found cheating in 44 out of 2,232 schools in Georgia.

They were only looking for cheating in 56 schools. They found it in 44. What if 4:5 is representative of the rest of the state? (The same investigators are now looking in Dougherty County.) Who's responsible for this misleading piece of... Oh, no. Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education! We're in deep trouble if SecEd is trying to cover for us.

Well, maybe I should be optimistic. Maybe he isn't trying to cover for us. Maybe he's just... stupid? Oh, I feel so much better now.

Fulton grand jury subpoenas APS records [ajc]
A Fulton County grand jury has subpoenaed Atlanta Public Schools, seeking among other things the names of all employees paid bonuses for improved student test scores, as well as a list of those disciplined since 1999.
...Another point seeks a list of all teachers, principals and administrators “fired transferred or demoted since 1999, along with reasons for their status change.” It previously has been reported that employees who reported test cheating risked retaliation by school administrators.

Bring it on! Let the sun shine in! Hey, Grand Jury? Better also look into who they chose to replace "disciplined" employees. Ah, it's a grand new day!

When Teachers Cheat, What About The Kids? [npr]
What [previous Governor] Sonny Perdue did after just another one of these blue ribbon commissions that produced nothing is he said he wanted to get to the bottom of it. And he appointed three people. And I think this was the key.
Michael Bowers was a former attorney general in the state or about 15 years, so - Robert Wilson, who was the DA for DeKalb County for about 12 or 14 years, and Richard Hyde, you know, really a great investigator. And he basically said - left them alone. He said I'm not going to read the report ahead of time. I promise you I'll give you the manpower you want, you go do and what you need.
And they spent 10 months, and by the time they were done, they had about 60 or 70 investigators working with them and over 100 people altogether.

Mark the calendar, I'm going to compliment NPR. This is a very, very, good interview. It summarizes the story for anyone new to it (there might be some), it explains how the cheating was done (fairly ineptly, as it turned out, but it was in everyone's interest to cover it up), and it explains why the story is a big deal (the sheer scope and effrontery of it).

And an "A" in self-esteem

Maureen Downey: Teaching punctuality 101
[ajc] Many people lament the spotty interpersonal skills and work ethic of the millennial generation, the media-savvy teenagers who can command MacBooks and PhotoShop but apparently can’t figure out an alarm clock.
...Millennials grew up in a society that rewarded them for just showing up, said Deborah Covin Wilson, senior adviser for career support Georgia Tech, at a town hall meeting Thursday at DeKalb Technical College in Clarkston.
“On a soccer team, everybody gets a trophy whether you win or lose. Because you came, you get a trophy,” she said. “If you grow up like that, you think that if you just barely got to work and didn’t do anything, then you have the right to stay there.”

But I have to think that if schools were actually teaching the knowledge they're supposed to be teaching, the rest would take care of itself. If you never fail, you never really learn what success feels like. And Kia can't find employees who will actually show up on time.

"It was all about greed"

Atlanta school cheating scandal presents valuable ethical lessons
[Spartanburg Herald-Journal] Several students said the following: "They're selling us short. I think they're really taking education away from us. It was all about greed — ‘to make sure the money is there.' " In other words, I would apply the egoism principle here to say that Atlanta Public Schools was only looking out for itself to ensure its funding and status as a successful school district instead of building its success upon bright, well-rounded and aspirant students, especially as they matriculate in order to become active public servants for our world.

When Atlanta students speculate about the scandal being "all about greed", they're not talking about school funding, prestige or what I might call "abstract" rewards. Teachers and principals got bonuses, direct financial incentives, for high test scores -- and public humiliation among their peers for poor ones.

I do not blame solely the Atlanta Public School District for its role in the cheating, for I believe that "it takes two to tango," which is where our households come into play. I am from the household that education begins at home.

"I am from the household that education begins at home"? I believe I know what Mr Wilder is trying to say, but his inability to say it clearly is troubling. He seems rather less comfortable expressing his thoughts in print than I would like my college-level political science instructors to be.

Schools happy program being left behind
[Pekin IL Daily Times] School districts are pleased that President Barack Obama signed an executive order this week granting states the option of requesting a waiver of No Child Left Behind requirements if they pursue other education reform efforts.

Which districts are pleased? Are some ambivalent? Perhaps my district is fraught with ennui. "Districts" are not entities capable of being pleased: People can be pleased, but when they are, they should be quoted, or at least attributed anonymously. What do they teach kids in journalism school these days?

It's also too soon to claim that "No Child Left Behind" is being "left behind", and yes, *sigh*, I saw what you did there.

No cheating on tests should be tolerated
[Charlotte Observer] School officials had revealed last month, as the Atlanta scandal swept headlines, that [Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools] conducted 11 investigations into test cheating or security violations last school year and found seven incidents involving misdeeds.
...The most troubling incident - the kind that has the Atlanta Public Schools reeling - involved a teacher assistant at Lake Wylie Elementary who was showing students the correct answers. She was supposed to be acting as a monitor to make sure the teacher was following test rules.
...The 11 CMS breaches may be the only ones that occurred. But all we actually know is that those were the only breaches uncovered and reported.

Surely seven positives out of eleven investigations is enough to widen the scope of the inquiry. I have a sinking feeling that the problem is far larger than any single school system.

How many billable hours is that?

The hottest story in the ongoing APS scandal is how much taxpayer money Beverly Hall spent on her own legal defense. The Freedom of Information Act makes those records public, an event that one must assume Dr Hall did not anticipate.

Once you hear "$125,000 for March, April and May" (that's her last three months in office, after the scandal hit -- I would say "while she was still insisting nothing was wrong", but she still says that), there really isn't anything for me to add.

Reporter's Notebook: Dr. Hall & how much she spent on legal defense [WXIA]

Well, I guess there is one more thing: Perhaps she didn't consult the right lawyers.

Beverly Hall: "I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona..." [Eric Wearne]
Former state official says Dr. Hall’s defense rings hollow [ajc | "Get Schooled"]

And now I've found one reason why my RSS feed seems to fill up with stories I think I've seen before: I have seen them before. A Kansas City Star commentary I saw Tuesday and commented upon on Wednesday has just shown up again, word-for-word reposted on Saturday with no hint that it's a rerun. That's far from scandalous, of course, but in this age of search engines and archived internet stories surely it's unnecessary?

On the other hand, I guess it generates fresh page-views for no cost. I mean, I looked again...

"It Is Tiring To Make This Point Over And Over Again"

Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So [The Nation] The research consensus has been clear and unchanging for more than a decade: at most, teaching accounts for about 15 percent of student achievement outcomes, while socioeconomic factors account for about 60 percent. It is tiring to make this point over and over again.

I'm sure it's no more tiring for Dana Goldstein to say than it is for me to hear. But there's so much more that needs to be said.

For instance (assuming the data are reliable), is this across all 13 classes of primary school (K-12), is she trying to convince idealistic young teacher graduates out to Change The World that their efforts are better spent almost anywhere else than in the classroom?

Is she saying that because it's been true for ten years, it will always be true? And if it is true, why is it true?

Now, APS had a reported graduation rate of 69% in 2009 (since questioned, but let's leave that for now), which is depressing enough. Is Goldstein saying that IF every one of those teachers was doing the best she could, and IF they had instead just been counting days until retirement, the rate would only have dropped to 66%? Then what accounts for the 43% graduation rate -- yes, less than half -- in 2003? Did 25% of APS families suddenly get rich?

I really need to see the source.

Yes, it is certainly true that a child's home situation is more important than his schoolteacher. But it's also true that children can overcome pretty much anything they want to overcome.

You have to catch them very young. If you wait until high school to start moaning about low graduation rates, there's nothing to do but count the bodies. Even middle school is far too late. You have to surround them from pre-k to grade 2 (and beyond) with people who demonstrate that those little ink marks on paper mean something, and that it's important to learn how to figure out what they mean.

The academic damage done in a lower-income household has almost nothing to do with money per se. It happens because the parent (statistically, there's only one) doesn't read and doesn't see any reason why anybody should. She (again, statistically, it's a woman) may have reasons that look pretty good to her, biggest being she doesn't have time. But if this environment is allowed to stand until the child reaches, say, third grade, there's no recovery.

But because teachers with seniority get to choose where they teach, the schools who need experienced quality teachers the most are almost guaranteed not to get them. Low-prestige elementary schools in lower-income neighborhoods are nobody's first choice. The cycle continues.

"The doors got closed to the grassroots"

APS to meet Monday on accreditation, contracts
[ajc] The Atlanta school board Monday will meet to work on issues related to restoring full accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. In January, SACS placed the district on probation for poor governance and infighting among members. The board is also scheduled to finalize new Superintendent Erroll Davis' contract. The meeting will be held from 5:30-9 p.m. in the Center for Learning and Leadership auditorium, 130 Trinity Avenue, Atlanta, 30303.

Mr Davis' contract isn't finalized yet? Aren't you supposed to do that before he starts working?

Am I the only person who doesn't understand why Atlanta Public Schools calls their downtown fortress office building the "Center for Learning and Leadership"? Even leaving aside that precious little of either is in evidence there. "The CLL building", employees call it, as if that makes sense. Shouldn't it at least be "the APS building"? "District Office" is what most other school systems call theirs.

I'm going with the simplest explanation: Deliberate obfuscation. The same reason, I suspect, they call their deputy superintendents "school reform team directors". We learned these words in teacher school, dammit, and we're going to use them.

Want Atlanta Public Schools To get Better? Get Involved
[East Atlanta Patch] A product of an APS education himself as were his children, [Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza] Hall said pioneers who moved in and revitalized many of Atlanta's in-town neighborhoods, shouldn't turn around and abandon the district now.

Even as a councilman, he said felt the same culture of aloofness from APS that other parents said they experienced.

But he said the district has no choice to open up now, giving parents and all who are interested in school improvement to give their input and help shape the district.

"The doors got closed to the grassroots and to change actually happening at a grassroots level," Hall said. "Now, in light of all the things that have happened, the door is back open; it's wide open."

Aloofness? Aloofness? It was undisguised hostility that I encountered when I wanted to know what was going on in what was supposed to be an open meeting at my child's school. I was told that my presence was not wanted.

"That’s actually lying to parents"

Are smaller elementary-school class sizes better?
[the Straight Dope] Education experts had long conjectured that young kids learn better in small classes but lacked the research to prove it. In the 1980s Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, who would later become education secretary under George H.W. Bush, decided he'd fix that. The one government type in this whole sorry story who seems to have had a clue, Alexander persuaded the legislature to pony up several million dollars for Project STAR (Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio), a multiyear experiment involving roughly 6,500 kids and 330 classrooms in 80 schools throughout the state. The idea: reduce class size for some kids in grades K through 3 from 20-25 pupils to 13-17, and see if they do better on standardized tests.

Read this. Read this, read this, read this.

Atlanta votes to increase class sizes
[ajc] The Atlanta school board Monday approved a resolution to allow class sizes to be increased this school year. Citing a need to reduce the budget deficit, the district will add up to five more students per class at every grade level.

Well, remember they're still short some seventy-odd teachers from last year, and that's after transferring every librarian who still has teaching credentials. And, what the heck, para-professionals are a lot cheaper than fully-certified teachers.

Study Finds Low Test Standards
[gpb] A new report released Wednesday by the National Center for Educational Statistics says Georgia’s state eighth grade reading exam is one of the least rigorous in the country when compared to a well-regarded federal exam.

The report compared 2009 state test standards to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, exam. It found that standards for reading and math vary widely among states. And Georgia’s eighth grade reading standards were the second lowest in the country.

That means that many Georgia eighth graders who pass the reading CRCT would fail the NAEP exam. And a Georgia eighth grader found proficient in reading here could move to almost any other state and fail state reading tests there as well.

...Joanne Weiss, chief of staff to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, said that the federal No Child Left Behind law has inadvertently driven states to lower their standards. ..."That’s actually lying to parents, it’s lying to children, it’s lying to teachers and principals about the work they’re doing," she said.

So, if our students' average scores on the Georgia tests have risen (as previous superintendent Beverly Hall continues to claim) but the state tests are becoming less and less demanding, is our kidz gettin' any smarter?

It's hard to put a positive spin on "but a bunch'a other states are doin' it too."

• Bloomberg: U.S. Children Face Low Bar to Pass State Tests
• Wall Street Journal: States Fail to Raise Bar in Reading, Math Tests
• Education Week: What Do Rising Title I Achievement Scores Really Mean?

Broken clock is right twice a day: Huffington Post just ran a good article

Howard denies conflict of interest in APS cheating case
[ajc] [Fulton County Taxpayer Foundation] is demanding Fulton County's top prosecutor step aside from the criminal investigation of the Atlanta Public Schools test cheating scandal. District Attorney Paul Howard's wife, who was not named in the investigation, works at a school where staffers are accused of altering answers to improve test scores.
...Attorney General Sam Olens said Howard had no obligation to step aside unless his wife became an investigative target or a witness.

I'll go along with this. No, he has no legal obligation to recuse himself, and nobody's accusing him or his wife of anything. But his presence in the investigation will impair the perceived trustworthiness of the DA's office. Err on the side of caution: There must be other qualified prosecutors who can take the lead on this.

Does APS have any other choice but to pay suspected cheaters?
[ajc "Get Schooled"] There is indignation tonight over news that APS must dig into its savings to pay $6 million in salaries and benefits to educators accused of cheating. But does the district have any other real choice in view of the unresolved legal issues? At this point, the educators have not had their day in court.

I'll accept that. I'm not happy with the thought of all these accused employees sitting around collecting wages for doing nothing, but I'll accept it in the name of due process. But here's a question: If they're found guilty, should they have to give the money back?

Schools Caught Cheating In Atlanta, Around The Country
[Huffington Post] In an Ikea-sized warehouse turned de facto crime lab last fall, professor Gregory Cizek got his first look at the Atlanta test papers that would beget an education scandal of historic proportions.
...In the Indianapolis warehouse, far from both his office and the schools where the suspect tests were taken, he saw clear evidence of what has become the most widespread episode of cheating ever documented in U.S. public schools, one which has diminished one of the nation's few education success stories of the past decade.
"Here you have a kid, this fourth-grader who sat down to take a test, who wrote his name on top of an answer booklet," Cizek recalls. "You see it was obviously changed through an awful lot of erasing. That's when you say, 'Something is going wrong here.'"

I can't believe I'm citing the Huffington Post. I also can't believe I am pleading with you to read the whole thing, but I am.

It's not our fault

Beverly Hall: Real progress made by APS is being ignored
[ajc "Get Schooled"] Beverly Hall tells the “rest” of the APS story in Education Week today, insisting that the real and dramatic progress in Atlanta schools is being ignored in the media frenzy over the cheating scandal.

One, Beverly Hall has no credibility left. Two, I'll concede that some progress could have been made, but yes, it's being overshadowed by the cheating scandal, and it should be. When one set of statistics is proven to be questionable, the source is tainted.

"The progress made by Atlanta’s public schools over the past decade is real and dramatic." Says you. Gonna have to have more than your say-so, Dr Hall. You don't think cheating is real and dramatic?

The cheater's fallacy: Undermining the state aptitude tests is no preparation for life
[Philadelphia Inquirer] The unidentified [Philadelphia] teacher justified her role and that of others in helping students cheat on the PSSA tests, which monitor school goals under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The exposé came on the heels of cheating scandals in Atlanta, dozens of other cities and allegations of significant cheating in Philadelphia.

The teacher said her motivation wasn't to protect her job or bolster her school, but to protect the self-esteem of students battling poverty and the pressure of difficult home lives. She said her cheating was also meant to undermine the whole testing enterprise.

The...HELL?!?

Change the game
[Chicago Tribune] The way to stop that sort of behavior is not to waste more of our precious education dollars investigating whether teachers and administrators in Chicago and elsewhere might have changed test answers or found even more creative ways to cheat on high stakes standardized test. The way to stop the cheating is to change the rules of the assessment game. Rather than using one test to decide which schools are making grade, which teachers will keep their jobs and which administrators are effective leaders, we should be using a variety of measures over time.

Look, I want to agree. No single test is reliable enough to be worth the importance we give the CRCT. But are you seriously telling me that people who are guilty of criminal fraud should be let off the hook because President Bush and No Child Left Behind made them do it?

Bush to blame for cheating scandals
[Examiner.com] This national cheating embarrassment should bring an ugly but very necessary end to the Bush-era misevaluation of schools based on artificial targets as opposed to a holistic approach allowing teachers and administrators to assess individual students based on each child’s academic strengths and weaknesses.

I guess that's exactly what they mean.

Thanks, @apsupdate on Twitter

@apsupdate live-tweeted last night's Southwest & Northwest Atlanta Parents & Partners for Schools (SNAPPS) meeting at Agnes Jones Elementary. Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis was present, and took some really good questions -- and provided some really good answers, as well. I was waiting to link to a report from the AJC or a local television station or something, but I don't seem to be able to find one. Hmm.

Anyway, if there's a way to provide a convenient link to the whole session, I can't find it. The link above goes to the first tweet, but Davis' Q&A starts later. Here are some select exchanges: Do remember that this is a live tweet and not a transcript.

Q: Did the administration think about the downside of dismissing teachers and principals before due process hearings?

A: No one has been dismissed; people have been put on administrative leave. I had to balance a risk management question. I am hopeful that many are exonerated. And if they are I hope they are welcomed back with open arms. But I also want to make it clear that cheating did take place. We will solve these problems. I don’t believe in pre-judgement but I do believe in accountability. Some will find themselves in the criminal justice system, the professional standards and our own administrative hearings. Right now things are not moving quickly because the criminal justice system wants to operate first.

Q: Follow up comments from a parent/teacher who wants teachers put into places where they can work while waiting on their due process.

A: As soon as possible those teachers implicated than can be put into other capacities while they wait, will be.

Q: Why are we taking this type of drastic measure against our educators? Other counties have not done that. 

A: We need to make one thing perfectly clear. People did cheat. A number admitted and resigned from our district because of that. Is this system handling it differently? Yes. We did not call in the GBI or special investigators. I believe this could have been avoided and handled it like other districts but if you analyze our initial responses it was not effective. It is what it is. As I said before my decision is a risk management decision for what is best for the children and I am comfortable with the decisions I have made.

Q: Will APS reconsider it’s high stakes testing methods?

A: Absolutely yes. I am not a fan of high stakes testing. Evaluation should be on a body of work. We want to give teachers everything they need to be successful.

As soon as there's a better, easier link, I'll edit this post to include it. In the meantime, I like what Davis is saying.

LATER: Well, there's another link, but I wouldn't call it a better report:
Atlanta Schools superintendent talks about cheating scandal [WGCL]
I'm not sure the reporter attended the same meeting @apsupdate tweeted. The reporter and anchor worked the phrase "tough questions" into the report a truly comical number of times, but on this issue I'll give 'em a pass.

LATER LATER: I expected Talk Up APS to be mindless public relations, but I must apologize for my mistaken first impression. They are posting excerpts from the same SNAPPS meeting, with cleaned-up (but not substantively changed) quotes of the interim superintendent's comments. Bravo and thanks.

"Lackluster crop of candidates"

A message for APS students back in school
[CL] ...Judging from the lackluster crop of candidates running for an empty seat on the school board, [interim superintendent Erroll] Davis might not get much in the way of help from the next generation of elected officials.

Read the whole thing. I don't care for the "message for the students" conceit, which comes across as too cutesy when the article is not written for elementary-age readers. But it's not wrong.

As school year starts, here's what to expect
[AJC] Districts are under pressure to improve student achievement with high test scores and graduation rates and to deal with policy changes on graduation and math.

Budget cuts and unpaid furloughs. New teacher evaluation system. "No Child Left Behind" left behind. Changing graduation requirements. Option to teach traditional 'algebra, geometry and statistics' vs integrated 'math'. It makes it sound like they're jacking up the buildings and sliding new schools under them.

Culture of testing went too far in Atlanta schools
[Kansas City Star] No public schools are immune to the pressures of state test scores. And the next district to reveal cracks could be yours.
“Whenever you have an accountability system with severe sanctions attached to it,” said Betsy Regan, who coordinates testing in the Shawnee Mission School District, “... it drives a tendency to work around the system.”

I can't decide to be annoyed or amused at the KC reader who comments "Inner cities schools have challenges suburban schools just don’t have to face." Kinda funny, now that the Georgia investigation has moved to Dougherty County. That's Albany, nobody's definition of "inner city". (I'm not sure why the reporter feels the need to mention that Dougherty is a "majority-black" system. So is Atlanta.)

Aside: Content-management software makes you name a document when you save it. This original name isn't always reflected in its eventual headline. However, it often surfaces in the article's URL. This Kansas City article, for instance, says "theyre-watching-for-cheaters.html".

Journalism 101 fail

Atlanta charter school gets $1 million grant; four others also receive innovation grants

[AJC] Gov. Nathan Deal surprised an Atlanta charter school Monday with a big boost to its bank account – $1 million in Race to the Top money.

Students and staff at Charles R. Drew Charter School greeted news of the award with applause and cheers on the first morning of classes.

...Also picked to receive a $1 million grant was the KIPP Teacher Fellows Program, a teacher induction program that will train Georgia State University and Mercer University education graduates and deploy them to the most needy metro Atlanta school systems, the governor's office said.

When did it become journalistic habit to put the lede in the second paragraph? I'm seeing that far too many times to be a coincidence. Some editor is telling the reporter to put it there. Why? To keep the reader's eyeballs on that story for five seconds longer?

LATER: I get it now. It's a response to the popularity of RSS feeds. Site visits and click-throughs are the common currency of the web. It doesn't matter to the content provider how many readers follow the RSS feed if they don't click through to the site itself. And they won't do that if all the information they need is actually in the first sentence, where it belongs.

Schools accused of cheating collected thousands in bonuses

Schools accused of cheating collected thousands in bonuses
[AJC] Educators from at least 13 Atlanta schools named in the state cheating investigation were paid thousands in bonuses tied to student test scores, according to a review of documents by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News.
Since January 2009, about $500,000 in bonuses were paid to educators at those 13 schools implicated in the state investigation, according to records obtained from Atlanta Public Schools.
...District spokesman Keith Bromery said the bonus program, introduced by former Superintendent Beverly Hall in the early years of her tenure, was now "under review."

Financial incentives for job performance is one of those obvious business ideas that just doesn't directly translate to education. It requires us to rethink exactly what we mean by "job performance." Should a child be able to sabotage a teacher's bonus by "taking a dive" on a test? How do we know that isn't happening?

Day one summary

The overall tenor of the "first day of school" coverage is that parents, with no obvious justification, trust the teachers in their school. The schools with some of the highest ratios of altered scores inspire some of the most fervent faith. I don't get it.

"Oh, I guess they are just a great guesser"

CNN | Cheating report confirms teacher's suspicions
"I started believing that I wasn't a good teacher," [Julie] Rogers-Martin says. "Other teachers were coming in with these perfect scores and mine are not so perfect. I mean they weren't bad, they were just normal."

I'm tempted to respond to this with a sarcastic "welcome to the party" to CNN, who cannot possibly think this is a new story. They are, after all, headquartered here. But reporter Paul Frysh does something that few other reporters do, and he does it well: He puts a face to the honest teachers who found themselves bewildered by impossible student performance happening all around them -- but not in their own classes.

As I've said, the wonder is not that the news media are all over this: They should be. The wonder is that it took so long. It wasn't subtle, and it wasn't clever. When a student is below average one year, brilliant when CRCT is administered and back to below average the year after, how stupid does a cheating educator have to be to believe no one will notice?

They were confident in the ability of their administrators to terrorize everyone into, if not participation, at least cowed silence. This is to everyone's benefit! Don't you want those bonuses?

But... (I swore I'd never say this, because too many people invoke it as an "abracabra" phrase to halt debate) but... What about the children?

Mixed signals

AJC "Get Schooled" | Feds promise relief from No Child Left Behind goals to states moving in right direction. Georgia seems a shoo-in.
Responding to predictions that waves of U.S. schools would be proclaimed failing, the Obama White House delivered on its promise to offer states relief from the controversial provision of No Child Left Behind that all children demonstrate proficiency in math and reading by 2014.

They're going to blame this on President Bush yet. See if they don't.
(Later: Surprise! GPB | State Will Apply For No Child Law Waiver)

AJC "Political Insider" | A divide over prosecution in the APS cheating scandal
[Attorney General Sam Olens] said that the granting of immunity to teachers, principals and some school administrators by state investigators would make it harder to chase down malefactors at the top.

That's not the way immunity usually works, or else no one would ever grant it, let alone two such experienced prosecutors as (previously Georgia A.G.) Mike Bowers and (previously Dekalb D.A.) Bob Wilson. More likely, Olens is looking at this situation and seeing a very narrow margin of success amidst a strong possibility of disaster. A canny politician who doesn't have to get involved clearly wouldn't.

WCGL | APS appoints new deputy superintendent/chief of staff
[Steve] Smith has held executive positions with Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. and Georgia Public Broadcasting. He is also a former principal and teacher in Fulton County Schools.

Ah, here he is. I find myself encouraged by the fact that although he has experience in education, he isn't a career educator -- not unlike interim superintendent Erroll Davis. I dare to hope that Davis is laying the groundwork for what will follow him. But he may be tainted by his association with the Chamber of Commerce, and through it the Blue Ribbon Commission.

WABE | First Day of School & New Era For Atlanta Public Schools
Monday, August 8th, was the first day of school for thousands of students in the metro area.
Today, Atlanta, Clayton, DeKalb and Gwinnett all began the 2011-2012 school year.
In Atlanta, a new era begins as the district tries to move forward from the cheating scandal.

This is pretty much the traditional evergreen "first day of school" story: Nothing new here. So why mention it? Well, everyone remembers that the ABE in WABE stands for "Atlanta Board of Education", right?

AJC | Atlanta school board picks new, temporary member
Longtime Atlanta resident Nisha Simama was selected Monday night to fill the interim District 2 seat on the Atlanta school board. Simama, whose children graduated from the district, will occupy the position until a special election set Nov. 8.

That makes it sound like she's a random parent they picked out of line at the West End Kroger CitiCenter. Here she is. She's been employed for 18 years at Paideia School, where she is "multicultural coordinator." Looks like business as usual at the school board.

A tale of two cities

Yes, I know, it's a cliché headline. They get to be clichés because they work.

AJC | APS could pay those named in cheating probe $6 million
Atlanta Public Schools will use $6 million from savings to pay the salaries and benefits of educators named in the state cheating investigation, if the board gives approval tonight.
Almost 200 teachers, principals and staff were implicated in a state cheating investigation last month. Of those named, 126 people are on administrative leave awaiting a due process hearing. The rest have resigned or retired.

The phrase I used to describe what those 126 employees are doing is "running out the clock". If they get to split six million dollars, you could say they won. On the other hand, the measure is to ensure that the culprits' inevitable payoff won't come at the expense of school operations.

And that's only about $48k each. Not really enough of a payoff to trade one's career for.

Meanwhile, in DeSoto, Texas...

AJC | Former APS administrator's fate up for Dallas-area vote
A suburban Dallas school board is expected to vote Monday night on whether to cut its ties with Kathy Augustine, its newly hired superintendent who has been named in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal.
...Augustine was accused of illegally withholding public documents, making false statements and "aiding and abetting" [Superintendent Beverly] Hall in "falsifying, misrepresenting or erroneously reporting the evaluation of students" on the 2009 CRCT, according to the investigation.

The phrase the report used, and used repeatedly with so many of the named employees, is that she "knew or should have known". Translated, that means "guilty or incompetent". I can't avoid the phrase "didn't run far enough, fast enough."

Breaking news:
AJC | Dallas school district votes for Augustine removal
AJC | The APS cheating scandal casts a long shadow, all the way to Texas
AJC | Atlanta school board picks new, temporary member
AJC | APS takes $6 million from savings to pay accused teachers

A commencement speech

Ladies and gentlemen of Atlanta Public Schools, thank you so much for allowing me to address you today. I know you're probably confused that I'm calling this event a "commencement", since you all know that such a thing traditionally happens at the end of the school year.

But to commence doing something means to begin it. So it's actually quite appropriate, if unusual, to refer to the commencement of a school year.

But this is not just another school year. This is a new day. This is a golden opportunity for you to make history. You have it within your power, right now, to take control of Atlanta Public Schools and change it, dramatically and permanently. You only have to do one thing. It's easy. It's simple. And it's what you went into education to do in the first place: Change the world.

Tell the truth.

more...

Everybody thinks they know how to fix APS

• AJC | A business approach to fixing the APS system
• AJC | Creating a new culture at APS
• SunSentinel | Cheating scandal should be lesson for Florida
• Washington Post | A teachable moment from Atlanta’s cheating scandal
• WSB | Teachers, Parents Pray As School Starts Amid Scandal
• NY Times | Atlanta School Year Begins Amid a Testing Scandal
• AJC | APS hopes for fresh start but doubts linger

Look, the fix is simple. So simple it'll never happen.

1. Dot every "i", cross every "t".
2. Say exactly what you plan to do, then do it.
3. Hide nothing. Let the sun shine in.
4. Don't lie. Tell the truth.

There, see? Was that hard?

Meanwhile, here's one quote from someone who should know:

USA Today (WXIA) | Investigators in Atlanta cheating scandal discuss corruption "'There's probably two-to-three times (the number of teachers) from what we named. But we didn't have enough to name everyone,' said Bowers."

That's what I keep telling people.

Open communications

The Wejr Board | Your School Needs a Facebook Page
Things have gone extremely well with our Facebook Page – parents love it. We have grandparents and other relatives, former students, and community members (businesses, reporters, etc) that “Like” the page and therefore get constant updates on their Facebook Page. It is THE best way to showcase the great things that are happening at our school.

I suppose that depends on the school community's comfort level with new media. Still, it's a step worth considering, if the school has someone who will post to it regularly and monitor it for comments that need replies.

Refresher course

Courthouse News Service | Report Eviscerates Atlanta Schools for Decade of Systematic Cheating
A stunning and exhaustive report for the governor concludes that "thousands of school children were harmed by widespread cheating in the Atlanta Public School System," in institutionalized corruption of standardized tests, directed from the central office, for a decade. Teachers and administrators gave children answers, erased incorrect answers, hid and altered documents, offered monetary incentives to encourage the cheating, and punished employees who refused to cheat, according to the report.

More than 178 administrators and teachers from 56 elementary and middle schools in the Atlanta Public School System participated in the cheating on the standardized Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, according to the 3-volume report of more than 800 pages. (Volume 2, Volume 3, interview with retired superintendent.)

"Eviscerated" is not too strong a word. This is not a new story, of course (CNS posted it on Wednesday, July 27), and it is rather long -- but comprehensive. CNS is a news service targeted specifically at lawyers.

It's also worth remembering that there are more cheaters to find.

• Some schools weren't investigated as heavily as others. 
• Many weren't investigated at all. 
• The investigations specifically targeted the 2009 CRCT cycle, two years ago. Previous years' testing was considered only to get a baseline against which to compare 2009. Subsequent years were outside the scope of the investigation.
• Some of the people named were replaced for other reasons before the investigation had even begun -- and some of their replacements may be guilty of the same actions of which their predecessors stand accused.
• The initial "investigation" was conducted -- tainted -- by the infamous Blue Ribbon Commission, a body with no concern for the chain of evidence. Statistical studies are evidence, of a sort, but evidence that proves only that a crime DID occur, and doesn't necessarily definitively identify a perpetrator.

I confess I want to see heads roll. A little metaphorical blood in the streets would be nice too. As big a story as the CRCT scandal is, it is still merely a symptom of the larger problem, the "culture of lies and intimidation" throughout APS.

I do have sympathy for the teachers who took part in "cleanup" parties only because they felt their jobs were threatened -- but I'm not prepared to let them completely off the hook. And I certainly want to see the willing co-conspirators run out of town.

Other APS problems

Anyway, if you're not sick to death of APS news, take a look at:

• AJC | APS faces $10 million in cuts: "Davis said Friday that it will cost APS almost $1 million a month to keep nearly 130 implicated employees home on paid leave while also hiring their replacements. The figure does not include legal expenses for the district, which will soon begin efforts to fire them."
• AJC | APS board sanctioned by attorney general: Embarrassingly, when Governor Deal called the Mayor and School Board to the Capitol to read them the riot act, they violated the Open Records act.
• AJC | Feds say APS cheating unlikely on NAEP, but Perdue seems to think otherwise
• AJC | Qualifying ends for APS board seat
• AJC | APS faces final accreditation push
• And there's still that search for a permanent superintendent: Interim Superintendent Davis has a one-year contract, but doesn't want the job long-term.

Also: Take Part | Top 5 Most Shocking Public School Cheating Scandals: You mean, there are others? Oh, you bet there are.

But it couldn't happen here, could it?

Chicago Tribune | Cheaters: A disturbing pattern in education. Is it happening here?
We know some educators here have cheated.
In 2002, then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan asked University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt (later of "Freakonomics" fame) to study possible cheating on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, then given to CPS elementary students.
Levitt and coauthor Brian Jacob targeted 117 Chicago elementary classrooms, some of which were suspected of cheating because they had reported huge and unexpected student gains. Those classrooms were retested under tighter controls. Result: The huge scoring gains disappeared in 29 classrooms. CPS investigated. Several teachers and principals were fired or reprimanded.

That's how they get away with it. It's so damned brazen that a sensible observer can't believe they would try.

If there's anything schools are good at, it's pep rallies

This just in...

Interim Superintendent Errol Davis, with Brenda Muhammad
and others I should know. Tweeted by @apsupdate

AJC | 300 rally to support Atlanta Public Schools
District-wide teacher of the year Belita Hamilton called on parents and others to help the district rebuild trust. "The relationship of trust has been damaged,” she said. “We need your help in rebuilding trust with all our parents, students and community members."

And each other. Don't forget each other. Remember it was a test coordinator who said "If any bitch mentions my name...[I'll] get them at their car." It was a principal who said "you do not need to be [here] if your students do not perform better." It was an SRT Director who told teachers if the GBI questioned them, to tell the GBI to "go to hell."

WGCL-TV 46 | Dozens rally to support Atlanta Public Schools
The school year starts Monday and leaders want to put the CRCT cheating scandal and the nearly 180 educators accused behind them. The troubled school system wants to start the school year off right.

Good luck with that. You can't just lose 180 employees and have nobody notice.

Countdown to Chaos

Students return to class on Monday, August 8.

WSB-TV | APS Library Workers Forced Into The Classroom
Dozens of employees who head up media centers and libraries in Atlanta Public Schools are being transferred into teacher positions to replace educators removed following the test cheating scandal.
Some of the media specialists being placed in teacher positions contacted Channel 2's Tom Regan to complain that they are not prepared to lead a classroom even though they are certified to teach.
...Some of the media specialists also complained they were being uprooted from schools where they have worked for years and transferred to teach in another school.

No, this didn't happen to, er, a certain person I know. It might have happened, but (fortunately, I guess) she doesn't have the right certification. Many librarians are semi-retired and sorta-retired teachers, which makes them vulnerable to reassignment.

AJC | Parents defend Atlanta school caught up in scandal
Parents of students at [West Manor Elementary School] on Tuesday night defended their school and teachers at a town hall meeting. ...The town hall meeting, held at Jean Childs Young Middle School in southwest Atlanta, was called by the school board representative for the area, LaChandra Butler Burks.
Also Tuesday, about 15 clergy, parents and community members attended the early portion of a planned six-hour vigil outside Atlanta Public Schools. ...The event was organized by Rev. Timothy McDonald of First Iconium Baptist Church in East Atlanta as a way to highlight the work of the thousands of teachers and employees not associated with the cheating scandal.

Rev. McDonald never saw a camera he didn't want to jump in front of. He's our local Jesse Jackson, a man in danger of becoming a parody of himself.

AJC "Get Schooled" Blog | A rally downtown this evening to affirm the good in APS
The Atlanta Council of PTAs plans a rally this evening [at Centennial Olympic Park] on behalf of the Atlanta Public Schools to highlight all the good things about the battered system.

At this time, the "GOOD" statistics the event celebrates are questionable. The rally isn't a bad idea, but it may be premature or insufficiently researched.

WABE | Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens Addresses Atlanta Press Club
According to Olens, APS officials blatantly delayed or denied numerous open records request from Atlanta Journal Constitution reporters. This was prior to the investigation that eventually revealed systemic cheating: "It was abundantly clear that their responses to the request were not compliant to Georgia law."

There is more, but then the man is a lawyer, he phrases his remarks very carefully.

Lawrenceville Patch | Parents Talk: APS Cheating Scandal
With Atlanta only about 40 minutes away from Lawrenceville, a parent must ask, where will the teachers who participated in the APS Cheating Scandal end up? More than likely their teaching certificates will not be taken from them. They probably will not be able to teach in Atlanta again... so where will they go?

Retirement, mostly, but even that doesn't mean they won't show up in some unlucky district's schools.

Alternative journalism

I haven't been comprehensive: I've been concentrating on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) coverage. Let's see what Creative Loafing (CL) has had to say.

The 9 most depressing details in the APS cheating report [CL]

These are awfully long details, but they constitute the core of APS' problem. If you don't want to read the whole 800 pages, read this.

APS cheating report only the first step to recovery [CL]

There's hundreds of millions of dollars unaccounted for. And everyone knows (always watch out for that phrase) how cash-strapped public schools are. When I hear about APS administration getting bonuses for Adequate Yearly Progress numbers, I remember that every teacher I know has to pay for her own photocopy paper, yes, out of her own pocket, in order to give her students a test.*

Anyone want to dive head-first into the APS crapstorm? Anyone? [CL]

Or, as a normal news outlet would headline it: "Qualifying dates set for special election to fill vacancy on APS board." You can tell Creative Loafing is an edgy alternative paper because its reporters write like bloggers. No, wait, that doesn't work, a lot of reporters write like bloggers. Were I the editor, I might have had the writer point out that the position is open only to residents of the West Side. Which he sorta did, by referring to the post being to represent APS district 2, which is equivalent to City of Atlanta districts 3 and 4, and leaving it up to the reader to figure out how to find a city council district map.

While we're all laughing at what one CL commenter called the "Sopranos wanna-be" attitude of the secretive educators, let me say (as has been observed elsewhere) that the pressure teachers felt to elevate these test numbers by any means necessary did not come from each other.

I'll also say that despite the temptation to think of this incident as Keystone Kops Korruption, those who created this atmosphere were clever enough not to put anything in writing where it might become evidence.
_______________
*   The vast, vast, vast majority of APS employees are women. So sue me.

"Somewhere in this process, the truth got lost, and so did the children."

This is my favorite sentence from the Bowers/Wilson/Hyde report, hand-delivered to Governor Nathan Deal on June 30, regarding the now-infamous "culture of fear" surrounding the CRCT scandal.

Following are links to the 400-plus pages of the report that have been released publicly, divided into three PDF documents. Part 1; Part 2; Part 3. Seeing what has been included, I shudder to think what has been withheld.

Reporters are still on the beat

Dallas district keeps ex-APS deputy on paid leave

If they're reading the Governor's report, they're going to see her name come up. A lot.

APS plans to replace implicated employees

Named educators have begun to receive their termination notices.

New jumps in test scores put some Atlanta schools on the radar

That is to say, they are, again, reporting unlikely upward fluctuation in CRCT scores.

Atlanta principals say test monitors prevented cheating

"But those tests were proctored!" Yeah, well, so were the others.

Davis optimistic in spite of APS' ‘Perfect Storm'

What would we expect him to say? "It's hopeless, better send the students to the closest Fulton or Dekalb County schools"?

By 'perfect storm,' he means that the CRCT scandal, bad as it is, isn't the only thing on his plate. He's also dealing with a gigantic budget shortfall, possible loss of accreditation, sanctions from the state attorney general for violations of open meeting/public records laws, and a threat from the state Board of Education to just fire the whole APS board and start over.

I'm sure they're all longing for the days when the biggest problem they had was mystery meat in the school cafeteria.

Some learning lessons, others skipping class

And the pot just keeps on boilin'.

One aspect of the APS CRCT scandal that isn't getting the attention it deserves is the suspension of four deputy superintendents, or "SRT Directors" as the actual job title is.

I put that in quotation marks because I firmly believe that no one who isn't an APS employee has any idea what a "school reform team" is. I also firmly believe they meant for the job title to obscure what they do. That, and "director" sounds so much more prestigious than "deputy superintendent."

I have two reasons I'm mentioning this. One is simply that there has been little follow-up. The second, closely related, is that there had damn well better be. It's widely reported that teachers felt pressure to produce good numbers on the CRCT by any means necessary, in fact feared for their jobs if they didn't. If the source of this pressure isn't identified and removed, the problem isn't solved. This is proven by the fact that no one at APS is being congratulated for having blown the whistle on this. If this were going on in the private sector, the whistle-blowers would be household names by now.

Even if Superintendent Hall did know (she's sticking with the Bart Simpson defense, "I didn't do it nobody saw me you can't prove anything"), she couldn't possibly have created this situation alone. And anybody "downstream" from the SRT Directors (like the teachers and principals who are being fired as we speak) would have gone to them if they'd had any expectation that they would have found help there. And in the private sector it would have worked. I can think of only one reason why they didn't do that.

Anyway. Is there more news? Ah, the fourth estate is a ravening beast once awakened. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution now has a blog-like list of their stories (that is, newest first, moving further back in time as you read) available for your reading pleasure.

Here's a recap (in oldest-to-newest order).

APS Timeline: The Story So Far

A Study of What Went Wrong

Cheating may force APS to pay back nearly $1 million

This is federal money that was obtained on the basis of test scores now known to be falsified.

APS to teachers in scandal: Resign or be fired

C'mon, man, it isn't just about the teachers! They weren't being pressured to cheat by each other.

Few step down in APS cheating scandal

Ah, there are those SRT Directors. "The trickle came as the district acknowledged for the first time it continued to pay more than $550,000 in combined annual salaries for four area superintendents relieved of their duties because of the scandal." They're still on the payroll at a six-figure income each? They're laughing.

APS leaders, teachers will fight for their jobs

"Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts, Robin Hall and Tamara Cotman, all area superintendents named in the cheating report, told Channel 2 Action News they did not cheat or condone cheating in the local schools they oversaw. An attorney representing the four said there are no documents proving his clients cheated." Ah, the Bart Simpson defense again. Not the point, ladies and gentlemen. It was your job to put a stop to it. 

I'll take this comment out of the bullet point so you can't miss it.

If you knew about it, you're guilty as home-made sin. If you didn't know, you're irredeemably incompetent. If you sincerely think, even now, that it wasn't happening, you're in denial to the point of being delusional. Which one do you want to admit?

If I were a betting man, I'd put money on option "D": Your plan is to duck and cover and wait for the storm to blow over (which you're convinced it will because, even now, you don't believe you've done anything wrong), then use every scrap of your remaining political pull to make life hell for anyone who might have blown any whistles.

I want to think that the reason the SRT Directors aren't more in the limelight now is that the Interim Superintendent knows that there are still some innocent people vulnerable to their machinations.

Seven APS employees step down in scandal

That's how many acted before the deadline.

More resign or retire in face of APS cheating scandal

The first seven were named: This late batch (who did miss the Supt's deadline) weren't. Look, I don't want to dump on the teachers unnecessarily, they were under a great deal of pressure. And as soon as anyone makes noise about going after the source of that pressure, I'll shut up.

13 principals named in cheating scandal leave APS

This is a bit misleading. Ten of these principals named in the GBI report departed before the report was released, never mind before the Interim Superintendent's deadline. At least one has been out for years. I just lost a lot of confidence that anyone yet knows what's actually going on.

Out-of-work teachers see APS cheating scandal as an opportunity to work

Just to show it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. 

kodachrome

All blogs are works in progress, so in saying so I'm doing no more than stating the obvious. I expect that for so long as I maintain this page, that's pretty much all I'll be doing.

Obviously (heh), I intended for you to think of the first lines of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome":

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all

Living in the Atlanta area as I do, I'm acutely aware of the ongoing foofraw (well, "kerfluffle" is taken) with Atlanta Public Schools and its "culture of cheating, fear, and intimidation." I find myself in need of an avenue in which to say what I think without fear. An avenue I don't need to look both ways before crossing, you might say. So here we are.

See you soon.