"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.