It's the ones full of administrators you really have to watch out for

Parents fear impact of empty Atlanta school buildings | ajc.com
Parents and community leaders fear a future of more derelict buildings dragging down struggling neighborhoods as 13 Atlanta schools face closure in a bid to balance enrollment and make better use of funding.
Atlanta Public Schools already has 14 empty school buildings, some of which closed in the 1970s.

Okay, you're right to worry about that. APS doesn't have a great track record for re-purposing vacant buildings. All those crack-heads have to live somewhere.

Let's say we have a school like Cook Elementary School. It's running at about half capacity. Where is everybody? The census says there should be plenty of kids. But Cook is a "lower-performing" school, and APS is obligated to allow any parents who want to transfer their child to a better school to do so. Schools like Neighborhood Charter, Parkside (which only has openings because so many of "their" kids are going to Neighborhood Charter) and Drew Charter (where all the principals' kids go). APS can't make them go to Cook. Every parent who can "vote with his feet" is doing that. Every child who can meet the demands of a higher-performance school is getting and staying away from Cook.

Who's left?

The overwhelming majority of the remaining Cook kids are from single-parent households. Mom would like to move her child to a different school, but in order to do that, she'd need a car. (APS will allow you to transfer, but they won't bus you to an out-of-zone school. If you have to ride the school bus, you have to go where they take you.) So, in effect, the kids who remain at Cook are there because they can't leave. Guess what morale is like.

The school board is faced with an unpleasant decision. They can (1) leave the situation as is, spend money they don't have to maintain a half-full school that nobody wants to go to, a school where enrollment is now so low that it doesn't qualify for most forms of state and federal funding; or they can (2) close the school and re-zone the kids into another school...where the parents, teachers, and students don't want them. Since the school they'll be merged into is almost certainly performing better, they won't want their numbers to be dragged down with this massive influx of low-performing students.

And the Cook neighborhood, going nowhere fast, has another big, empty target for vandals and scavengers. Even if the kids get along in their new school just fine, they still have to come home to the Cook area.

In which option are the children better off?

Multiply this times thirteen schools on the superintendent's current "to be closed" list.

UPDATE: Turns out the Cook kids are being split between Centennial Place, Hope-Hill, Parkside and Whitefoord, so maybe there won't be a large enough concentration of them at any one place to destroy their performance scores.

My calculator is broken

96 accused of cheating still on payroll  | ajc.com
Ninety-six out of almost 180 educators named in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating investigation are still on the payroll, officials said Friday. The district took the first steps to fire three more educators Friday by issuing "charge letters" stating the claims against them. So far, 22 charge letters have been issued.

It's almost like they read this blog, they know I'm putting together a scorecard, and they want to throw me more numbers while not quite making it possible for them to add up. I'm missing something, or I've been rounding the "about"s, "more than"s and "some-odd"s in the wrong directions. I've massaged the scorecard accordingly.

Is there a scorecard?

5 more APS teachers targeted for firing | ajc.com
Atlanta Public Schools is taking steps to fire five teachers implicated in a widespread test-cheating scandal, joining 11 others targeted for termination earlier this month.
After months of delay and millions spent in payroll and legal expenses, the district is trying to get educators accused of cheating off the payroll. APS has sent out a total of 16 "charge letters," notifying teachers of the intent to fire them and explaining the reasons why.
...Of the 11 educators sent charge letters earlier, nine have resigned or retired. One attended a hearing, but lost. One is scheduled for a hearing Friday.

Well, I guess we have to call them educators, since many of them -- the ones who have the most to account for -- aren't teachers.

So let me think. Of "about 180" originally named in July 2011, as of February more than 80 had confessed. I'm not sure how that compares to the numbers in this article, though:

• "About 70 have left the district." Does this mean physically relocated, or just no longer being paid? They didn't wait for a charge letter. It sounds like they've escaped formal censure / consequences from APS, PSC or the courts. That makes me sad. It means that for those who left APS since 2009 who apply for another job, the circumstances of their leaving APS will be suspect. That's unfair to the innocent (if any) and not enough for the unrepentant guilty. On the other hand, we've seen a couple of high-profile "escapees" whose new employers didn't actually make the connection until after they had actually started their new jobs. School system personnel offices must not look very hard at applicants' job histories.
• 9 waited until after they'd actually received a charge letter to resign rather than face a hearing. I guess they dodged the bullet, too. (Or is that a tasteless metaphor to use for schoolteachers these days?)
• 1 "attended a hearing, but lost."
• 1 "is scheduled for a hearing Friday."
• 5 more have just been sent charge letters and face a fight-or-flight decision deadline.
• "About 94" to go.

I'm not feeling very optimistic.

C'mon, "educators." If you don't start naming names, the administrators who are really responsible for this mess are going to walk.

LATER: Three more charge letters have been sent.

That brings to 19 the number of educators the district has taken steps to terminate after months of delay and millions spent in payroll and legal expenses. APS is paying about $1 million a month to some 110 educators accused of cheating who remain on leave, but the system is trying to resolve the cases by the end of the school year.

I'm updating this scorecard. I'm thinking that these 19 are some of the "more than 80" confessors, who in turn comprised part of the "about 110" remaining when we subtract the 70 who ran the fastest from the 180 who were originally accused. This would be so much easier if they'd use hard numbers instead of "more than 80" and "about 180." Is "some 110" an exact number, I wonder, or another weasel guess?

I tell you, I can't wait until they get around to those SRT directors, who have neither confessed nor resigned.

You can't say "Halloween" in school

City avoids placing taboo topics (that kids may actually know about) on public school exams - NYPOST.com
In a bizarre case of political correctness run wild, educrats have banned references to "dinosaurs," "birthdays," "Halloween" and dozens of other topics on city-issued tests.
That’s because they fear such topics "could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students."
Dinosaurs, for example, call to mind evolution, which might upset fundamentalists; birthdays aren’t celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses; and Halloween suggests paganism.
Even "dancing" is taboo, because some sects object. But the city did make an exception for ballet.
The forbidden topics were recently spelled out in a request for proposals provided to companies competing to revamp city English, math, science and social-studies tests given several times a year to measure student progress.
...Homes with swimming pools and computers are also unmentionables here — because of economic sensitivities — while computers in the school or in libraries are acceptable.

This is a bit off my self-defined mission, but some things are just too stupid to ignore. Yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to use the word "stupid."

I can't think of any reason that a child should never have heard of dinosaurs because his parents think the earth is only 4,000 years old. Now, I can hear you saying, "It's absurd to think that any child will never hear of dinosaurs merely because they aren't mentioned on a test at school." Why, yes, it is. Then why bother hiding them? Schools, and tests, routinely mention things that the student hasn't personally encountered, or at least hasn't encountered yet. Isn't that sort-of the point of school? To teach 'em something new?

What kind of science are you teaching that you never have occasion to mention dinosaurs?

At what point in a child's development is it acceptable for them to encounter things and ideas that are not put there (or are withheld from them) specifically for their convenience?

If they aren't prepared to cope with things as benign as birthdays and home computers, what the hell will happen to them when (as they inevitably must) they hear about slavery, the holocaust and sex?

If you're determined to avoid things that "evoke unpleasant emotions in the students," then you'd better stop giving tests.

Which cheating teachers?

Senate approves bill to take bonuses away from cheating teachers | ajc.com
Georgia educators who cheat would have to return any bonuses or incentive pay they earned through falsified standardized test scores under a bill passed unanimously Monday by the state Senate.
...Educators from some of the APS schools implicated in the state investigation received about $500,000 in bonuses through the district's payout program, according to records obtained from APS.
The sponsor of HB 692, Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, had at the time investigators released their report promised to fight for a law to make cheating educators give the money back. He said the law does not affect employees' due process rights.

I looked it up. Here's what the law does say:

A teacher or other certificated professional personnel's salary increase or bonus that is based in whole or in part on an evaluation which included student assessment results, standardized test scores, or standardized test answers that were falsified by such teacher or professional or known or caused by such teacher or professional to have been falsified shall be automatically forfeited.

What an awful, tortured sentence.

My concern is this: Who has to say that a given teacher cheated in order to trigger the provisions of this bill? The Bowers/Wilson report names 180 teachers. Is the fact that they were named enough? Are they all liable? Is it enough to prove that the results were changed, even if you don't bother to prove which teachers actually changed them? The phrase we see repeatedly throughout the Bowers/Wilson report is that they "knew or should have known". Is that good enough?

If not, where exactly do you draw the line? What about the teachers who resigned rather than face termination? Does that count as an admission of guilt, or is it a get-out-of-jail-free card?

Okay, what about the teachers who didn't resign? How about the ones whom the APS tribunal recommended to be fired? (That's three so far, I believe.) Is that justification enough? They haven't faced the PSC, the Professional Standards Commission, to defend their teacher certifications. What if the PSC doesn't act to censure them? And then they're looking at criminal charges, and there's no guarantee they'll be found guilty in a court of law. Will they still have to give back the money?

And then there are the other 80-100 educators-on-leave who have been collecting their salaries all this time. Since the bill specifically says bonuses, not salaries, I guess they get to keep that no matter what.

Those are the kind of big whopping loopholes that the bill has to address, and it doesn't.

Besides, isn't there already a law that deals with people who profit from fraud? Well, I guess they have to actually be convicted of fraud for that to be relevant. I suppose it could make a certain amount of sense for the code to actually say that it's not OK for teachers to lie, but surely that's already there, somewhere. Isn't it?

HB 692 looks more like a publicity stunt than meaningful legislation. That's not the side of this issue I want to be on. I want the guilty parties -- the real guilty parties, the ones who forced dozens of teachers to choose between committing fraud or losing their jobs -- to pay for what they've done. I don't want the General Assembly to waste time passing loosely-defined, unenforceable laws.

And I especially don't want them closing the barn door after the horses are gone. A good defense attorney, or even a mediocre one, will argue that crooked teachers can't be subjected to the provisions of a law that wasn't in place at the time their actions occurred. Alleged actions, I mean. I'd hate for this bill to be used to justify crooked teachers keeping the money because the law wasn't in place when they stole it.

“Do you think you could get into something undetected?”

Atlanta fires first teacher in cheating scandal | ajc.com
“We were told failure was not an option,” [Damany] Lewis said. “Teaching and learning was the primary focus of the teachers. Results were the primary focus of this district and our administration.”

In the accompanying video, Lewis points out that he and his fellow teachers "had nothing to do with the aura of fear and intimidation." That's probably true. If all of the teachers like him who yielded to pressure from above to cheat had stood their ground and said no -- all of them, publicly -- then the true sources of that pressure might have been dealt with years before.

But of course...

Some time back, I expressed curiosity as to why principals and senior administrators could credibly threaten to fire unwilling teachers if it's so damn much trouble to fire teachers. The answer is simpler than I thought it would be. Administrators can create fabricated personnel records and negative  performance reviews just as easily -- probably easier -- than they could create false CRCT test forms. APS is presently handicapped by having to act openly and honestly. If the current administration were as crooked as the previous, the firing process would go a lot more smoothly.

But then, if the current administration were as crooked as the previous, they wouldn't be trying to fire 180 people in the first place.

Occupy Middle School

APS rezoning: Coan plan no longer part of the plan | Creative Loafing Atlanta
Last weekend, I attended a rally to save Coan Middle School in Edgewood. At least I'm pretty sure that's what it was. The messaging, as PR people like to say, was a little scattershot.

This morning, I saw a news article. At least I'm pretty sure that's what it was intended to be. The research, as we journalism school graduates like to say, was a little sucky.

The little blue box next to the headline said "News", though, so I suppose I have to take their word for it. Didn't interview anybody, didn't identify any organizers, didn't get any names. There was a photo of parents (one presumes) and a kid, all holding placards which appear to have been written by the same hand. The photo is credited, with no apparent irony, to "Eric Celeste's iPhone". Perhaps Eric didn't actually go, himself. That would explain why he wasn't sure what was going on.

You know, if you had walked up to a group of people obviously trying to attract press attention and said "I'm from Creative Loafing [which some people consider to be a news organization], who's in charge here?" you would probably have gotten a nice quotable statement or two. Or at least a name.

Every time a speaker [sigh] addressed the 200-or-so parents and kids in front of the school, he or she would begin a chant as soon as a decent phrase escaped the lips. These included, but were not limited to, the following: "Invest in Coan," "Davis listen," "keep Coan open," "strong schools, strong community," "it's not fair," "Say no to Davis," "our neighborhood, our school," "this is our school," and "invest in the future."

So, adults claiming to be concerned with education have decided that the Occupation is the civic activism model they want to adopt, seeing as how it has worked so well everywhere it has been tried. Any argument longer than four words is Too Hard. I weep for public intercourse in the 21st century.

So, I get that you, clever reporter, understand that APS no longer plans to use the Coan Middle School building as a "6th grade academy" extension of Inman Middle School. And I get, because you linked back to your own previous "reporting", that APS still intends to close Coan Middle School. That's a given: It's running at less than half capacity. Do somebody a favor and figure out why it's running at half capacity.

Or can't your iPhone take that picture without you?

What about the ringleaders?

APS teacher opts to quit rather than be fired | ajc.com

You know, I don't have the heart to haunt every teacher who found herself helpless in the grip of APS "culture of fear and intimidation". I'm honestly not interested in watching their humiliation. Yes, they are guilty of fraud, but they were under duress. Yes, they should pay a price, but they should not see their careers and lives wrecked.

I have no sympathy for the architects of this sad situation, and I have even less now that I know that as we watch individual teachers undergo their Public Walks of Shame, nothing much is happening to many of those who were the source of brutal pressure to cheat or be fired.

Robin Hall, a former principal and area superintendent, works for the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools as its director of language arts and literacy. Hall joined the organization on Oct. 6 and soon after retired from the school district. 

Former area superintendents Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts and Tamara ["tell the GBI to go to hell"] Cotman are still on the payroll. They earn six-figure salaries, and according to their attorney, George Lawson, each was issued an intent-to-fire letter months ago, but no hearing has been scheduled. They deny any wrongdoing. 

Former Deputy Superintendent Kathy Augustine left APS and was fired in August as superintendent of a suburban Dallas district because of her alleged involvement in the case. 

Millicent Few, former chief of human resources, was ousted in February from a consulting job in Connecticut after district leaders there learned that she's accused of trying to cover up cheating. Few resigned from APS in July.

You missed one, AJC. Where is ex-superintendent Beverly Hall today? She retired before the lid blew off the CRCT fraud, with "more than $580,000 in bonuses above her annual pay in the 12 years she worked for the district" [ajc]. She's been keeping a low profile since.