Long before the teachers unions ruined their whole profession, liberals made the decision that the goal of racial integration would trump the merits of the individual. Long before busing policies caused white flight and turned truly integrated schools into ghetto ganglands, the outright rejection of objective standards in our public schools was set in policy stone. Cheating administrators and teachers led to cheating students and ‘round and ‘round it went.
Long before God was completely removed from public classrooms, liberals decided that lying and cheating for the sake of appearances would be just fine. Long before metal detectors had to be installed, the culture of crime was set by the elites.
Long before the special-education kids were brought into the mix, liberals decided that the appearance of rights granted would trump genuine education. Long before the drugging of kids to avoid the difficulties of real discipline, liberals decided that appearances of a calm classroom would trump real learning taking place.
America’s public education system has been a sham since those very first look-the-other-way decisions were made by social-engineering elites. The biggest lie of all is that liberals will say to their dying day they did it for the children.
Never has such a shameful pile of self-serving poppycock passed for “love.”
I still remember from the ’70s a very prominent ad for charitable giving. The United Negro College Fund solicited donations to support the system of historically black colleges with this haunting statement: A mind is a terrible thing to waste. It was so true then. It is still just as true.
And sadly, the vast majority of those Atlanta school children cheated out of their educations were black. Self-serving, self-advancing, self-deceiving teachers and administrators have succeeded in wasting more genuine human potential than one mind can possibly even conceive — all of it sacrificed on the phony altar of liberals’ vainglorious pretense. If this isn’t a crime against humanity I truly cannot imagine what would be.
If those administrators and most of the teachers had been white, this cheating scandal would be now denounced by liberals as nothing short of “racist terrorism.” But since the highly acclaimed superintendent is black and originally from Jamaica to boot, this whole scandal will be whitewashed in liberal double-speak and individualized in the extreme. Atlanta’s black mayor can get away with calling the release of the scandalous GBI report “a dark day for the city.” A white mayor would have been rhetorically tarred and feathered for such a blatantly “racist” statement.
That’s just the way it is in Orwell’s America. In a few months, the furor will be barely remembered. The shock will have given way to more wasteful study groups and education seminars and requests for more taxpayer funds for more sham schools. And more human minds will be wasted by phony teachers holding phony degrees, but getting real paychecks.
Shame? No, not here. We’re way too far gone to feel shame.
We’ll just pretend we’re shocked.
The issue is simple:
The public wants to believe that kids performing significantly below grade level in reading and math can suddenly, MAGICALLY be fixed in a single school year!
It may happen with 1 kid out of 10,000. Maybe. This is not about education, it’s about the suspension of disbelief. If it SOUNDS too good to be true…..
Exactly. No one in/near Memphis truly believes that Booker T Washington HS turned around in one year, but Dear Reader sure made a campaign stop on that BIG LIE.
And with this attitude, the “Dumbing Down of America” began. And the process of changing the rules to fit the children is now the replacement of teaching the children.
Repeat after me:
We have education / energy / transportation etc policies
*because*
we have a department of education / energy / transportation, etc.
This applies to states as well as the feds. If only the government would cease meddling, most of these troubles would soon go away.
I wish it could be more widely understood that education is not manufacturing, schools are not factories, and children are not piece rate goods. When we reduce education to just one or two variables–the CRCT, the SAT, etc.–people will leave off everything else involved with education and focus on those. Will in fact try to game those few variables. It’s too much temptation for fallen humanity.
Bull. I vastly prefer an objective measure, like the SAT, to no objective standard at all, like the idiocy called self esteem. The best solution is complete parental choice, with school vouchers, that allow either public or private schools. Then you wont need gov standards at all, because parents and students will decide what they want in a school, and let market competition work. Some may prefer a good sports school, some academics, some religion, some loose disclipline, some tight. Vouchers allow each of these approaches, and let the market decide what works best.
You forget those that do not want the voucher system also oppose the free market.
Yeah, they’re called Democrats.
…..which includes public unions.
Competition is clearly the answer, or part of it. There is a major battle going on in NYC over charter schools, and Diane Ravitch has joined the NAACP and the UFT (teachers union) in opposing them. I wrote about her role in formulating educational policy here: http://clarespark.com/2011/05/28/who-is-a-racist-now-2/. But also see http://clarespark.com/2011/06/23/the-u-s-history-establishment-divided-and-failing/. On the philosophy of the Department of Education, see these blogs: http://clarespark.com/2010/09/22/links-to-arne-duncan-blogs/. It is all a big mess, and like some others here, I blame it on Democrats and their shameful neglect of urban schools, for political advantage. But there has ever been elite resistance to educating hoi polloi.
The SAT is a test that doesn’t have any correlation to reality. Students who do well on the SAT are not better students in college, they’re not better at business, they’re no more honest, they’re not technically adept at anything other than perhaps taking standardized tests.
That’s the problem with any standardized test. People will do everything they can to study for the test, not the subject it is testing for. What we need is a true performance test. We need to test for something better than multiple choice nonsense. We need to test for real essay writing. We need to test for actual problem solving in mathematics. We need to test for real reading comprehension. We aren’t doing that.
Once upon a time, we used to use live teachers who graded real papers with written problems. There was none of this multiple guess testing which is designed for machines. Yes, the tests were somewhat subjective. But overall, a competent teacher could tell when a student clearly understood the question and the answer.
But today, thanks to whiny parents, and political needs to test exactly the same thing across the board, we have standardized testing with multiple guess answers.
And we sit and wonder why these students don’t understand a damned thing…
I agree with your assessment on the SAT and I remember reading in the book “The Bell Curve” that the SAT was designed to predict how well a student is going to perform in their freshman year of college. And that a high school graduate’s class ranking was just as good a metric in predicting college freshman year performance.
“a high school graduate’s class ranking was just as good a metric”
Well, if the article is to be believed, at least in the Atlanta area, you cant; go by high school scores, either. Just sayin’…
If only there was a black leader of national stature who would take these people to task for the fraud they committed against the students of Atlanta.
Is it any wonder why low income people tend to stay in the low income bracket throughout their lives?
Yes, they have a personal responsibility to excel, but events like this help to stack the odds against their success.
Good point. Where is Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton decrying in loud, dramatic terms the wrongs which have been done to all the black children at these many schools?
Yeah, I’m not holding my breath either…
Why? Because those who listen to these race pimps themselves are forever doomed to stupidity.
Stupid is as stupid does.
“The death-of-public-education die had been cast”
Just as soon as AA was cast…the cheat was in. AA…nothing more than cheating sanctified by the liberal elite to assuage their white guilt.
Bill Cosby (who has an earned Doctorate of Education, not an honorary one) has tried, and has gotten soundly castigated for saying what other black people did not want to hear.
For example, his famed “Pound Cake” speech.
Black leader? Atlanta?? Where the hell is Herman Cain???? Is he a leader, or not???
I just recently moved out of Atlanta. The black leadership in Atlanta routinely ignore Herman Cain. To them he is an “Uncle Tom” who’s rejected the victim mantle they so proudly wear. Herman Cain, unlike John Lewis, won’t manufacture phony stories of being spit on.
Why on earth do oyu think Cain is a leader? Cause he’s been given an Affirmative Action gig, albeit a very high end one?
The problem is YOU, curtmilr – YOU. You are so investend in you completely fallacious, and DISASTROUS lunatic belief, that “Race doesn’t matter/we are al lthe same underneath” that you cannot comprehend WHY Blacks don’t react or perform the same way as Whites – or as any other Race.
Race is REAL. Racial differences are PROFOUND.
Start with Race and IQ – and go from there.
Then study th 100% consistent history of WHAT HAPPENS – facts on the ground – when Blacks are introduced to White social orders. They do not improve, as a group. They take over, kill Whitey off -as in SLAUGHTER – and then DESTROY what Whites create.
Whites and Blacks shold not even be on the same planet, let alone the same country.
Cain is just one more God-DAM NED N!G GER in a White Man’s World. Wait – it’s now a Black Planet.
Why the EFF you you even CARE about Cain? WHY ? WHY? Why don’t YOU care about WHITE people?
Until people like you get OVER your insane VANITY about Race – then the USA will follwo the same course as Haiti, South Africa, and Rhodesia. So damn you to H3ll.
Wipe your mouth there, Ms. Barber. The foam will ruin your upholstery.
Well…despite being a bit over the top and obviously angry. Facts are hard to dispute / digest when after 50 years of AA, integration, level playing field, dumbing down, black failures to achieve even of basic reading and math skills….high schools all over the country where blacks barely graduate 40% of their students and in some cities only 25% graduate…hiring quotas, civil service cheating and stacking the deck against the more qualified to achieve racial quotas…
Yet crime is up….illegitimacy is at close to 80%….everywhere one looks…one sees the failures.
We still have the sharptons, jacksons, waters, rangels, hastings that prove those failures of decency and morality.
Thank you, Denise, that needed to be said. I write from South Africa, where what you said has already come to pass, exactly as you said, and I see the same thing happening to America. All because of this insane refusal to see what’s under your noses. Black students don’t have the innate intelligence to perform on the same standard as Whites.
These kids have been robbed of nothing; they were never able to pass those tests. The people who have been robbed are the employers who hired them, and the capable students who lost jobs to them because of affirmative action. Yes, the White and Asian kids who actually passed the tests.
I’m shocked! The grownups cheat! Oh my, no wonder climate science is in such a tizzy. No significant global warming for the last ten years, but the carbon levels are still rising! What to do? New theory to account for the anomaly: all those Chinese coal burning power plants coming on line every week for twenty years has cooled the the climate! Mean while, EPA is passing regulations that force American coal powered plants to go bankrupt when all that dirty coal burning could be cooling the climate! Idiots!
And now Maryland MUST teach “environmental education” which is, of course, code for global warming. But teach them how to write? That’s soooo last century. Don’t be ridiculous.
Teachers unions? Affirmative action? Teachers who can’t pass a simple competency test? Teachers unions that fought teacher testing? Administrators that rose in positions and power with the help of incompetent school boards? School board members that put politics above the interests of the students? Voters that voted for school board members based on the color of their skin? Voters in the school district that paid no school taxes but voted for bloated school budgets? Unfortunately the students will pay the price. Political Correctness, you reap what you sow.
And sadly…not one of them is embarrassed or humiliated by the fact that way too many of them are where they are …solely because of their skin color.
IMHO reparations have been made. Many times over.
Shocked! Shocked, I tell you!! Truly, I’m shocked that anyone is shocked that another Progressive wet dream is destructive to the very people they profess to care the most about. Keep ‘em ignorant and poor, and pretend to give a damn. This is the progressive game plan. And the Black community keeps coming back for more. The Democrats haven’t changed their stripes, just their “narrative”.
It it will worsen more and become scarier yet.
We see it now with illegals flooding the schools. And with 20,000,000 more illiterates being added to the school system as well as voters….it’s time to completely abandon public education.
To paraphrase the old Soviet joke:
The teachers pretend to teach and the students pretend to learn.
This is a story that Old Media seems in no hurry to cover. My prediction is that the Atlanta teachers and their union will try to go on the offensive and blame these actions on the standardized test requirements of “No Child Left Behind.” The party line will be that cheating is inevitable (and even understandable) when federal funding is attached to the scores students achieve on these tests. It’s a lousy rationale but look for it to be rolled out pretty soon.
It’s hard not to think of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as old media. You know, what with their long publishing history and what not.
So Old Media opened this one up for you.
These statements are not meant in any way to endorse the Urinal-Constipation…
If there were stereotypes about black kids being obsessed with hanging out in libraries and seeing who could read the greatest 100 novels in the English language, this wouldn’t be happening.
If there were stereotypes about black flash mobs descending on bookstores and carrying away text books and literature, this wouldn’t be happening. In fact, in such situations a book store owner wouldn’t really need to lock their doors at night while the electronics and sports clothing store on either side were denuded. Values.
Black American culture is based on not what they do, but what whites do to them. You can’t cure a value system you have nothing to do with. That is for people who hold wretched values to do themselves.
True story: when I was 13, I used to go to a used bookstore and steal books wholesale. No money or books in my house, single mom. I read a book a day that summer and no one told me to do it or encouraged me; I just wanted to.
Yes I was a thief. At least I had the right idea instead of filching knuckle-rings.
Library?
lol
I did the same thing…
Library books..carried away more then I checked out, and never brought them back….History books no one else read….in the ’70′s before Cable TV and the History Channel…My Dad was a WW2 vet, our neighbors were Holocost Survivors.
I read constantly as a kid because I wanted to,
I wanted to understand the world my dad grew up in, and I was inheriting….
And in the course of reading so much history, I branched off into kinds of hobbies, like visiting/hiking in historic places like Gettysburg, and building Model Airplanes, which was the genesis of my Engineering Degree (funded by the Marine Corps)
No one told me to do it, no one made me do it.
I just read (and still do) because I wanted to…
Teachers or no teachers, I was interested in finding out things on my own.
They taught me to READ…everything else was on me.
You are responsible for your OWN education.
I’m puzzled why kids would steal books from bookstores when they could go get a library card and read them with no risk and even more puzzled why you would take out books from the library and never return them, so someone else could enjoy them.
That kind of “entitlement” thinking and behavior is also part of the education problem in America. As my mother always said and I’ve told my own daughter the same thing, ” It’s not what you do when someone is watching; it’s what you do what no one is watching that counts and defines for yourself and the world who you really are.”
Kids dont always do the smartest things…
My dad whipped my but when he found “stolen” library books…
But considering what other kids my age were into at the time (smoking pot, bullying, shoplifting, school vandalism) I’d say “liberating” some forgotten ignored and unread books in the back of the library, and developing a lifelong love of reading, are minor sins to be forgiven of a 9-13 year old….
BTW, my parents WERE paying the HIGHEST property taxes in the nation, in order to support an evil Democratic machine (the NJEA teachers unions) that couldnt care LESS about our education.
When I was in college there were 2 books I couldn’t get enough of at the library there: The 60s Cambridge Medieval History of the Byzantine Empire and the U of Wisc. Press History of the Crusades. My name was the only one on either library card. I never stole them though no one would’ve noticed they were so otherwise neglected.
Years later the U of W book was finally re-issued in soft cover and I bought it online with glee. The updated version of the other is a completely different book and I’ve never been able to find it for sale.
The bottom line is that, with that type of self-motivated innate curiosity for curiosity’s sake without regard to larger peer groups, a person is unlikely to have many problems in regard to that aspect of life. I took it for granted at the time that America was simply like that.
Young black folks are being sold a bill of goods in many different ways by their elders and a tradition of neglect has taken hold based on finger pointing and excuses. If you’re going to do a thing just do it – apply yourself.
Black writers on these subjects just don’t get it cuz life in this regard is really quite simple and not the agonizing struggle they depict it as. When I went to grade school the idea of a metal detector was laughable. They are routine now and that tells an awful lot. You want to rebel, fine. You then pay the price and don’t start bitching about racism but look within yourself. Do you dream of books or a cool jacket?
Dream of crap and that’s what you’ll end up with. These people, even when teenagers are not animals but quite capable of making good and bad decisions – that’s on them, not on some person based on their skin color they’ve never met 6 states away.
Gee, Dial C, your personal story is inspiring…sort of…I suppose…
So … filching books lifted you all the way up to the heights of being a cocktail waitress? What were you reading a book a day of? Barbara Cartland?
Edgar Rice Burroughs. What did you expect from a common thief: Madame Olenska?
By the way those cocktail waitress were Hizbollah and when they call things can get quite dangerous and thrilling. Enough so that morons write about it in their thrilling memoirs.
Ha, ha, ha.
I’m spending the rest of the summer in Europe and the winter in Portugal and Viet Nam.
I stole money from nuns. But it’s toward a good cause and nuns don’t travel. Where are they going to go? It’s wasted. My value system will ensure the money is properly spent.
Obvious troll is obvious.
Nothing is obvious to an idiot.
Obviously.
Is it fair that the jobs and careers of public school teachers and administrators, like those involved in this scandal in Atlanta, depend on the performance of students whose low intelligence makes high performance in academics impossible?
You beat me to it. Well said sir.
Yes, it is fair….
They get exorbitant salaries compared to the Private Sector…
The school boards justify the burden on the taxpayers by claiming them to be so “highly qualified and highly rated”….we simply MUST hire them at their hyper salaries…as if there is such stiff competition from other areas of the country for these rare, precious gems….as if each one a Heisman Trophy winner or First Round Draft pick, we dare not let slip away….
When in the end, they are nothing but Government Waste Products…nursed on the Pubic Dole their entire careers…phoney experts with phoney credentials making phony predictions, and delivering phony achievements.
Is it fair their JOBS and LIVELIHOODS should depend on their ability to DELIVER ACTUAL RESULTS without CHEATING?
Are you f*cking kidding me?
Have you ever had a JOB?
Is it fair?
There are too many Administrators already, but with all those government programs you just gotta have someone to administrate…
Don’t you?
Now, for Teachers: whoever claims a legitimate classroom teacher is paid beyond the “private sector” corollary is naive.
Don’t believe me? Qualify, and then perform, Substitute duty. Take a day off, see what the classroom is like – a classroom mandated by government, the edicts being enforced by “administrators” – and THEN, ONLY THEN, imply that teachers are “overpaid.”
It’s warfare out there, folks, and the teachers have only their wits as weapons.
Seriously, if you are not a “teacher” by degree (I’m not either) go the “sub” route (I do, and love the student contact but hate the Admin contact and have ulcers to prove it. After 40 years of self-employment as an engineer and small business owner).
Paul Revere – and those of his generation (our Founders’ generation) apprenticed at 10 years of age, following 4-years of “Reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.” Ponder that.
Those with the courage to ply the day-to-day heartbreak IN the modern “No Child Left Behind” classroom deserve your help, not your scorn.
Those with the chutzpah to be “administrators” deserve your skepticism at best, but that is your choice – they already have my scorn. Politicians and bureaucrats are of the same ilk.
Try it. Sub. You’ll either get hooked, get burned-out within one school year, or walk away – after only once or twice on the line – marveling that ANYONE could want to make a living that way.
Why do you assume low intelligence? In a society where the term “racist” is tossed around far too carelessly, that seems pretty damn close to actual racism. Isn’t it far more likely these kids have spent their lives trapped in an educational system run by incompetent, leftist, politically-driven ideologues?
Poor kids who are trapped in a family of single parents, being raised by Grandparents etc have no chance.
I was the enrollment manager for a private college for years and I learned early on from the SAT people that the #1 criteria for high SAT score was a two parent family. Not being white, or rich or having broadband,or a computer. Just a two parent family.
We go round and round about teachers, charter schools (the next sham in education), No Child Left Behind etc…this is simple. When do we put the onus for these kids on the back of the parents, the family, and the Churches. all of this bull about free meals, computers etc is just window dressing for the fact that these families and this country have gone against God’s way. and when you do, this is what you get. 80% of poor white and black kids are born to single Mothers. those kids go on to difficulties in every part of their life.
I had no faith in Obama but I thought the guy might just use his position as President to lead Black people to the goal of stronger families, less single parents, reliance on the church etc.
I guess that was asking too much. You never see him taking his girls golfing, or kicking the soccer ball with them on the White House lawn, or picking the supposed vegetables with them in the garden that mysteriously propagates huge vegetables whenever Michelle goes there for a photo op! And the only time he ever coached their soccer team was when they were out of town. Not much of a Father if you ask me.
“Various studies have shown that children raised by a single mother comprise about 70 percent of juvenile murderers, delinquents, teenaged mothers, drug abusers, dropouts, suicides and runaways. Imagine an America with 70 percent fewer of these social disorders and you will see what liberals’ destruction of marriage has wrought.”
Anne Coulter explains it all: http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-07-06.html
She’s right but the stubborn pushback continues as people who don’t measure up want us to measure down. In this article at, surprise, that poster child for racial self-absorption, The Root, they write about the LGBT and black communities fighting against “laws that aim to narrow the definition of family.”
Swell. Now it “multi-generational” and “non-traditional” and a family is whatever failure feels good to explain away at the time.
It says “fighting for the recognition of all families is the only way to protect families in the black community.” Reality means nothing to these people as they do whatever they want and then shrink the English dictionary to feel “normal”.
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/can-marriage-equality-save-black-family
Yes, of course it’s “actual” racism, or more properly race realism. And your point is..?
When you have affirmative action hires as teachers and those teachers are NOT teaching and butchering the English language…well, I have a problem with that.
Is it fair their JOBS and LIVELIHOODS should depend on their ability to DELIVER ACTUAL RESULTS without CHEATING?
Are you f*cking kidding me?
Have you ever had a JOB!?
You all must be living on another educational planet. Of course the teachers cheated. They cheated their way through grammar school, high school and college and probably cheated to get their teaching credentials. Those poor children you are crying over are another generation carrying on an American tradition: cheating their way through school, cheating their way through life, and cheating themselves out of an education.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6539855.html
http://education-portal.com/articles/75_to_98_Percent_of_College_Students_Have_Cheated.html
While I appreciate the author’s sentiments and generally agree w/ her perspective, her piece not mentioning the black/white achievement gap and both liberals and conservatives pursuit of policies to “close the uncloseable” make it simply a C+ paper rather than the home run it could’ve been. Teacher unions, political correctness – yes, these are all symptoms. But the root of the problem is the belief that we are all equal. The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Watson, shows, in the aggregate, we are not. But we continue to ignore its findings at grave peril to our pocketbooks and sanity.
Both W and Teddy Kennedy thought this abortion known as NCLB would force schools to “fix” the IQ/achievement gap. We all know it can’t be fixed, at least not until it is accepted as the “hatefact” it is. Yet we continue with the political theater anyways. Someday both sides will learn. Someday.
I think the Bell Curve is tolling for thee.
Wait, I’ll get it.
It might be Hizbollah calling to yell at me.
Or a miffed nun.
There is a real IQ difference between groups, but I think it is due more to culture then it is to race or ethnicity. During the civil war, northern black soldiers for the Union had higher IQ scores than southern white confederate soldiers. I bet if you tested poor whites against poor blacks, and middle class, two-parent family whites against comparable blacks, the results would even up quite a bit, because you are now testing groups with similar values and cultural mores.
Brianna wrote:
‘During the civil war, northern black soldiers for the Union had higher IQ scores than southern white confederate soldiers.”
It would be very interesting to learn where you found that little factoid.
The IQ test was invented in France on or about 1904. By Simon and Binet. So that is BS.
Well, maybe it was some other kind of intelligence test and I am just remembering it as IQ because everyone thinks of basic intelligence in terms of IQ. Or maybe the author wrote IQ for the same reason. Or maybe it was some other kind of test, and the results were translated into what the takers would have gotten on an IQ test. But I’m not making it up.
BlacK Rednecks and White Liberals, by Thomas Sowell. Anyone who is interested in race relations in America should read it, the stuff he writes about the 19th century south is absolutely fascinating.
Brianna, I tried to leave a comment in reply, but it looks like it was “eaten”. You are correct in your memory of IQ test scores, with black northern soldiers scoring higher than white southern ones. However, the tests were administered in 1917 (WW I) not during the civil war. You might have read about the tests in Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man, if the Sowell book you mentioned below doesn’t contain an account of the testing .
Ironically, Gould’s book has been debunked by a recent study, as reported here. Seems he was guilty of exactly the bias he accused others of.
And I won’t even ask you to link to those 1917 tests. In 1917, intelligence testing was in its infancy. We have plenty of much more modern testing that indicates the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans is about 70. “African-Americans” score better, at 85, probably because most of them aren’t pure-bred Africans. Check the link I supplied below.
Well said. For those doubters who rely on 19th-century intelligence tests, UnamusementPark has put together a handy little flyer that summarises the modern evidence here.
I had a similar experience in SC in 1970.
I had an incompetent chemistry teacher in HS, brought in by integration. I was going to study pre-med in college later, but the teacher was so bad I dropped out of the course. He was borderline literate.
He motivated me to drop out of HS and go on to college early.
I never regretted then decision. I made up for the lost knowledge later, went to med school and got my MD at 22yo.
I went to high school in the mid 1970′s in Charlotte, NC. The court fights, protest marches, and school disruptions over integration were over by then. My middle class suburban high school was integrated by forced busing from poor black neighborhoods in the city. I had one or two suburban black kids in each of my AP classes, and my Physical Education class was half white and half black. So much for integration.
My Biology teacher was black, and excellently qualified, and an excellent teacher. He had been at my high school for more than a decade, and was hired when the school was essentially lily white. He was one reason the school was excellent.
We also had two three more or less closeted homosexual teachers, each excellent in their subjects. They were reasons the school was excellent.
My Chemistry teacher was an irascible old man with the nickname “Toad.” He threw chalk at sleepy students to keep them awake. He “partnered” with several universities to supply his labs with equipment, taking their surplus and obsolete materials and making them work for us. He was a reason the school was excellent.
Our principal was a tall, thin black man who insisted everyone call him “Pop.” I saw him backhand an insubordinate student across his office once. I also learned, when he commented on a student’s picture of Hamlet’s drowned Ophelia, that he removed bodies off Normandy beaches after the D-Day invasion in an all-black military unit. He was one reason the school was excellent.
Excellence appears when you demand it. Our school teachers, principal, and parents did.
“…was hired when the school was essentially lily white.”
May we assume that, if the school had been all black, you would have referred to it as tar black?
No. Jet is the word.
starless and bible black.
“Skillet Blonde.”
Coal black was once common…
What a bunch of PC drivel.
You’re giving ALL of the credit to a few blacks and homosexuals for the ‘excellence’ of a ‘lily white’ school? Hilarity ensues…
you racists. yes there are excellent black teachers, principals. there are excellent gay teachers and principals. excellent, strong tale, mikee.
the point is that this country stands on the shoulders of quite a few strong black men and women.
those people have not yet been paid.
they will be paid back. but we have given you obama. we can continue to try to help you. our youth will extract payment. watch out.
Guess you couldn’t find the Shift / Cap key? Atlanta public school “education”?
Oh krikey! Where did I say there CAN’T be good black or any other color teachers? And, YES, Mikee was making it out like only blacks and homosexuals were the ones making the school excellent unless I missed his mention of some ‘excellent’ white teachers in his ‘lily white’ school.
Or are ‘white’ people never supposed to be mentioned in a positive way now?
*eyeroll*
Perhaps you should go back to school yourself? Reading comprehension is a good skill to have. mmm’K? There are some excellent community colleges around. I’d suggest you shop around a little.
Anyway, he in no way said that the excellence of the school was due solely to black and/or homosexual teachers. He was providing a telling couterpoint to all those other comments about the crappy teachers that got positions through forced integration by noting that he had excellent black teachers and that there were black students in the advanced level classes.
He POINT in describing the minority teachers was clearly stated at the end- excellence appears when demanded and expected. After you take a couple of literature and comprehension courses, you might actually percieve that.
Excuse me? Mikee didn’t name one teacher who was identified as ‘white’ who helped the school become ‘excellent’ in a ‘lily white’ school?
ERM?????? HELLO?
The students were given the best education money and unions and education schools thought possible. What other result could there be? Affirmative action should apply to students as well as employees; Tilte IX should apply to the scientists and engineers as much as it applies to the liberal,arts and education schools. What’s fair and just is fair and just.
When i was a kid i went to the liberry. and read books. These kids kan to.
Randy
supertennant of sch0ols
for Detrot Mish.
LMAO@
I’m reasonably certain that the root cause of this situation is underfunding of the public school system. If only the millionaires and billionaires were forced to pay their fair share then the schools would be miraculously transformed into golden palaces of higher learning.
Or not.
It’s also interesting that the richest person in most towns today is the retired school teacher. A teacher neighbor of mine once boasted, “the day I retired, my salary doubled!”
I wonder if in the state of GA it is a felony to willfully put false information on a state document. That is what we are talking about here? Falsifying state documents? How many of these party-goers are gonna do time? Lose their jobs, or face any discipline for that matter?
Having integrity is racist, you see.
Just imagine a young person, who was recently hired or accepted to college on the strength of one of those faked diplomas, receiving the rude awakening of a firing or college flunk-out all because he couldn’t actually read or write.
But hey, I’ve no doubt that they all had really high self-esteem, eh? This only bolsters the case for separation of school and state.
Isn’t one of those kids currently pretending to be presient?
Maybe off topic, maybe not. A few years ago my son, an English major, applied to a “Teach America”-type program in an urban school system. He had to take the Praxis test that is required of most teachers who graduated with an education degree. He passed it easily, never having taken an education course. Said it was cazy easy.
This is nothing new.
I remember the adults talking about the all black schools in the 1950s, saying that the teachers ‘passed’ their children every year with no regard to anything learned. I still believe it had to be true since those children never learned Standard English and in many cases did not learn basic things like how to read.
I remember riding by the black schools in the summer and marveling how the kids broke out EVERY pane of glass in their own school. After graduating from high school, one of my classmates went to an all black college because it was easy to get a college diploma there.
Teachers, students and teacher unions (I despise the unions) are NOT responsible for the temptations to cheat. The federal government and the States perpetuated ‘systems’ mandates are responsibile.
1. States are forced by federal programs to develop curriculum standards and it is always around a developed standard test.
2. The States standards are developed around prescribed parts and sections of the textbook content and within a limnited time frame where ‘mastery’ is irrelevant.
3. Teachers in many systems have to submit weekly audits to curriculum coordinators to indicate staying within content and time frames.
4. In many States there is no differential of the above between the conventional classrooms, EIP, special ed or profoundly handicapped classrooms. Their test results equally effect the teachers performance and other rather severe consequences.
Putting aside all the variables that a classroom teacher has zero control over, the perpetual experimental systems the government comes up with consistantly jepordize even the best of teachers. For example, the NCLB perpetuated a competency system of test for teacher and students. Each State in turn had to write exhaustive plans for curriculum standards and testing implementing the standards of NCLB, to be approved by the federal government. In nearly every instance the federally approved plan was unofficially around the test thus, teaching to the test became the systems standard. Next came Obama & Arnies new RTtT federal system still in implementation phase among the States plans sofar approved granted federal funding. The RTtT system of testing far exceeds the NCLB testing. It creates essentially, the complete standard for teacher proficiency, their pay and their career in education with NO allowances for the vast variables that a classroom teacher has no control over school by school, district by district and State by State. Its virtually a nationalized one-size-fits-all system as is the NCLB system.
Now lets address States BOE’s, Local Districts and schools administrators. The States BOE’s are pressured from the federal government by both performance and funding variables and down the hill it all slides to the locals and the schools administrators…on down to the teachers. A snowball of corruption by design!
As for the students. While all federal and States programs are masked in rhetoric of… its all about the children, that is completely disingenuous. Today with States in an economic crunch, classroom sizes have increased to 30+ in the conventional classrooms hardly improving teaching efficiency much less, student mastery or the time to advance student mastery. Next comes the endless teacher modality experimentations which sometimes will change within the teaching year. Also, the States have been become mandated under federal laws for inclusion into the mainstream classrooms, students formerly assigned exclusively to special education classrooms. This in addition, created a new concept of co-teaching that in most places around the nation, is a disater. It requires teachers with compatible personalities, education and ego’s to succeed in this modality.
The ‘systems’ are simply designed for ‘official-unofficial’ cheating. Cheating the classroom teachers of teaching as they are professionally capable and cheating the children of the systems. These education experimentations have been going on non stop since the mid to late 60′s. Is it any wonder that 70% of teachers nationally…very accomplished teachers, leave the profession within the first seven years of experience?
Sorry TT but this is absolutely NO EXCUSE! All you have done is explain the nature of temptation generally. These individuals are completely, absolutely culpable–by their own admission too. They deserve to be fired, and perhaps even serve jail time. A stunning percentage of the educators admitted guilt. Several even wore gloves to the Cheating Parties to avoid fingerprinting the tests.
Newsflash: every single occupation has some form of this temptation. It’s called GREED. Carpenters cheat on construction quality behind the walls, bankers fudge on mortgage bonds, doctors split their patient visits into 5 separate procedures, etc. It boils down to STEALING. In this case the victims were taxpayers, and more pitifully, children.
You’re obviously not an educator in K12…in Georgia, much less any State. The ‘temptations’ to cheat is not born from the teachers! The temptation is born with administrators from the federal level down and especially from the States BOE’s down through the local boards, superintendents and schools administrators upon the teachers. Its all about conforming to policies set by the governments for funding. Teachers and students are at the bottom rung of the education heirarchy ladder…not the top! Teachers are put in jeopardy from nearly every angle of their profession….administrators, policies, parents, students lacking motivations for education and discipline, family environments of students and testing outcomes in which they have very little control over. Teachers in most States are told what to teach, what deliver modialities to use and what time frames to teach each component. Tese things only scratch the surface of what teachers do and what kinds of problems classroom teachers are confronted with daily.
And…I’m not an educator! However, over the past three decadees I have been involved in consulting and advocating a return to local controls in education policies in several States.
So this explains the reason why Obama doesn’t want to release his academic transcripts. He’s dumber than we thought. Figures.
I hope that TBI takes some notes from GBI; Memphis is OBVIOUSLY full of the same sort of cheating.
No Child Left Behind: Federal funding linked to higher grade averages and graduations. Cheating ensues. What a shocker.
So really, is there _any_ district in the country that accepts federal funding that doesn’t actively engage in some sort of cheating in order to maintain or increase federal funding? This “scandal” should lead every community to take a closer look at their school systems–but I’ll bet that doesn’t happen. Too many open palms.
The real “closer look” which needs to be made is why do we have a Federal Dept. of Education in the first place.
What is the surprise here? Teachers and educators with no real education but promoted anyway into well paying jobs based solely on their social and racial background, and who then proceed to act both incompetently and immorally, all the while collecting awards and honors that they neither deserve nor have earned.
Does this not sound familiar? Like someone we all know who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for no clear reason other than his race? Like someone who is woefully incompetent at a supremely important job he was elected to on hot air and the need some voters felt to get rid of feelings of guilt? Like someone who was promoted through the educational system without any identifiable achievement, and who even now hides his school transcripts?
Sound like anyone you know? Different person, perhaps, but the exact same result as in Atlanta, and for the exact same reasons.
When some years ago California mandated publishing High School dropout rates our local district squeaked into tne bottom 10% statewide. The solution was simple. Recalculate the rate eliminating all those kids who left in the 9th grade. Put us somewhere in the middle. Some years later one of those hustlers who travels around from district to district as a reformer came aboard. Got a nice contract with a really big severance agreement. The state mandated accurate dropout reporting and when they did we showed up at 54% from 9-12, seriously 54%. Citing errors in the state mathmatical model and problems with the database Captain Contract produced a new report. Somehow, magically, the dropout rate went from 54% to 12%. One of the things you have to remember when you deal with the education system is that the wors they perform the more consultants and assistants and administrators they have to hire. It’s for the children after all.
so all the “math and science” they espouse involves fudging data, accounting gimmicks, and pagan idol worshipping
I will be SHOCKED if they fix the system
What you have to remember is that 50-60% of the people you interact with every day are fundamentally dishonest. They will lie and cheat at every opportunity, even when it makes no difference. It’s the most frustrating thing about being a manager. You can’t trust the numbers people give you, you can’t believe the comittments they make and most important you can’t make comitments of your own based on what they tell you. Managing become an exercise in guessing how wrong the info they give you is. And how late they are going to be completing their tasks. It’s sad and disappointing.
You need to learn to hire better people. They are out there. With the unemployment numbers we have today, there are a lot of them out there.
On topic: This is fraud. It is done to procure funds for the schools. I’m sure the Attorney General will be on it, and the miscreants prosecuted and imprisoned.
Sarcasm aside, they’ll probably charter Acorn to fix things. The barbarians are not only inside the gates, they are running the government.
Hey, these teachers shouldn’t be cheating for the students. . . if they’re to be worth their salt, the students are going to have to learn to cheat on their own!
If you see corruption, fraud & waste in your school, thank a union member.
How sad.
Not a race issue, but worth telling.
In 1963, our public high school had a test for all chemistry students, probably to compare the four teachers’ results. One teacher used the actual test as a study guide. When they realized it, his own students ratted him out. They didn’t want false credit.
that is the problem today …it is unlikely anyone would rat him out.
socialism means cheating is ok.
In the black community in Atlanta ratting someone out to the authorities will get you beat up or killed.
Socialism sanctions living as a parasite, whether off the money of the successful or directly off of their intelligence and drive.
Of course, eventually the successful will get fed up and quit. Who is John Galt?
One of the saddest aspects of this mess is that, in fact, quite a few people DID rat this practice out. More than Madoff for instance. And the whistleblowers were punished horribly. If you have the time, read the Christian Science Monitor story. It says that the District was run like the Mob with intimidation and threats. Several whistle blowers were fired too. Others were fired in “softer” ways.
When you have a teaching force that is largely comprised of folks who are only in it for 30 years of guaranteed paychecks and a guaranteed pension, why would you expect any different behavior?
I’d love to try an experiment. Take 100 public schoolteachers at random. Tell them that they will no longer be teaching and in fact do not have to leave their house every day. They will continue to get all their pay, COLA’s, and at retirement time, pension and health benefits, but instead of teaching, they will have to move 1000 dry beans from one jar to another, and then back when the second is full, from 8:30 until 3:00 each week day. They would get the same holidays and summers off that they have now.
My guess is that only about 10% would say, “Screw that, I want to work”, and would go and get another job. I estimate that 90%+ of public school teachers would just do the bean trick. Of that 90% some would grumble, maybe 10%, and wish the job were more interesting, but they would still move the beans. Another 20% would be psyched, probably those real active in the union. The rest wouldn’t give a damn one way or another.
Just as long as the checks keep coming.
I think you’d find a goodly number would not even bother to move beans, figuring nobody could tell the difference anyway.
So true. During a visit with My Strictest Old School Teacher Ever, she commented that education went to the dogs when counselors were injected into the mix, requiring teachers to consider factors other than student performance when literally GIVING student grades.
No Child Left Behind means No Child Gets Ahead.
Yes, yes, the Atlanta Public School system is riddled with cheats and liars; what else is new? Humorous aside; National Public Radio in Atlanta is ‘a service of the Atlanta Public School system’. How droll. But seriously, folks, even a casual examination of the end products of the American public school experience will demonstrate how unprepared these youngsters are to get a job, much less go on to institutions of ‘higher learning’. And graduates issuing from those institutions are even worse off, having spent four years studying race/sex/gender victimology, crusade de jour, and a palette of social ‘science’ effuvia. Nothing will change, of course, until the teachers unions are dimantled. Good luck with that. Getting back to Atlanta, I always thought it peculiar that members of the Atlanta city council have a special reserved parking area at Hartsfield-Jackson airport. I thought that their business was local. Hoo hah, what do I know??
I guess I’ll be the baby in here. I graduated high school in 2004 and am now working on a PhD. While college has not been too pleasant an experience, primary education was considerably worse. I’m from a small Southern town where my graduating class was somewhere around 50 people. This sort of cheating amongst teachers was not too uncommon though never on the level as Atlanta; it was usually an individual teacher’s actions. But there was more to it though than, say, racial divides. There was an overabundance of under-qualified teachers but a few decent teachers made up for it. Racism was always on the mind as the curriculum seemed to make every month black history month, and the younger teachers often vocally complained that the blacks and whites never sat together at lunch. But that was a racial decision by students, not the school; there was nothing racist about it, you just sit with people of similar upbringing and ethics. That is the problem.
While I am disgusted by these Atlanta teachers, it is of no surprise. But while I don’t condone what they did, and would not be surprised if they were poor quality teachers, I wouldn’t blame them too much on poor quality student performance. Why is it to “act white” when one speaks clearly, dresses modestly, and makes good grades? (I might ad that this feeling was not just felt by kids but teachers too, defending this culture of ignorance.) How often do parents take an active interest in their kids’ studies? The most I saw was the forcing of kids into football or the school band; the idea was that these activities were a free ride to college. To continue, college was seen as a free ride to money. Now while I have no problem with people going to college only for work reasons, this logic requires effort. These kids never worked, rather they just expected to be handed a grade for absolutely nothing. Those who made it to college on lenient scholarships did the same. They’d take tech classes on x-ray repair (since it was once rumored that it paid well, everybody signed for it)and then learn nothing: they paid for it, so they better get a good grade. The idea was the same in public education. Parents think, “I paid for band equipment, he’s going to pass.” (or “He better pass!”) Students think, “I have to be here, so I’ll just wait it out.” You could fail these punks, but what good will it do? Substituting I saw students who should have been expelled long ago only receive a verbal reprimand because the loss of a student cuts funding. As for the student, their ethics remain the same as if you kept them in. What good is stricter standards at school if the parents don’t police their kids?
As much as I love the idea of opening up private schools, I doubt that it will help with overall literacy. If anything, it will open up these racial wounds as the distance between scores increases, and even though race is only an aspect of it, prepare to be labeled racists. Still, let those kids who work have the option to choose.
I graduated from an Atlanta Public School in 1972. Made A’s in chemistry and thought I might major in it. Went to college and realized I did not know anything about chemistry. Liked the teacher though and did learn: So Sad, Too Bad, Your Dad -whenever my kids want money from me. Can’t put a price tag on that.
Your writing is excellent. It is not just what you say, but, also, the way you say it. It is a pleasure to read your articles. Congratulations on your work well done.
Warren Buffett could not be hired to teach economics in a public Georgia elementary, middle or high school. Bill Gates and Michael Dell could not get a job in a Georgia public school teaching a computer class. Neither is certified by the Georgia Department of Education.
Education majors who are certified to teach physics or chemistry in Georgia public schools almost always have lower achievement test scores than students who go on to major in physics or chemistry in college. In fact, college departments of education majors consistently score lower on achievement tests than most other departments. Physical Education excluded.
Eliminate Education departments in schools accepting tax dollars and require that math teachers have majors in math; chemistry teachers have majors in chemistry and so on.
Unions should be illegal in the public sector. The teachers’ unions are nothing but PACs for democrat politicians.
hammer nail head!
+1
There are two very significant, unreported stories here:
1. This problem is enormously widespread! I live outside DC and Michele Ree (the then School Superintendant) uncovered this same sort of cheating about a year ago. She went after it, the teacher unions went feral. She was of course fired by the newly elected [and already under indictment] mayor. And guess what? Scores are magically up in DC now. It has also happened in Detroit, Chicago, and numerous other school districts. There is simply no telling how widespread the problem is.
2. Why the silence in the media? Chirp, chirp. I don’t even have kids and I’m going nuts! The MSM seems to be too busy going after Murdoch. The worst part is that the poor students in Atlanta at least would have gotten remedial education, but did not, because of the bogus scores!
I was over at Huffpost and they are of course saying it is “sad but predictable” given the incentives under No Child, and blah blah blah GWB’s fault. I ask you: how is this ONE IOTA DIFFERENT than a Wall Street banker fudging mortgage bonds to get a bonus? These educators had exactly the same motive: money. The only difference: unions.
Back around the middle of the last century when Douglas DC-3s chugged around the country at 170 knots one could mail a letter in Chicago at 3:00PM on Wednesday and know that, the 12-14 hours of flight-time notwithstanding, it would be delivered by mid-morning, Thursday.
Since then the new biology teacher’s brother has taken over at the post office and despite that the jet aeroplane has reduced the travel time to around three and a half hours, the same letter might be delivered in a week.
Or so.
“Air Mail” via Gooney Bird
Y’all member dis: “a preposition is a bad word to end a sentence wit.”
Government schools, i.e., compulsory education, have NOTHING to do with education. You cannot cause a person to pursue a value by force. Whatever he does because he is forced is not a value. In fact, he must react against the force in order to regain his autonomy in order to pursue values.
This principle is why socialism fails, why planned economies fail, why anything ultimately fails that is forced.
During the 60’s and 70’s, radical critics of schools such as Jonathan Kozol, brought accusations of sadistic and racist teachers, said to be hostile to children and who lacked innovation in pedagogy. “Traditional” schooling was seen as an instrument of oppression and schools were recast in a new, “hipper” interpretation of what progressivism was supposed to be about. In moving away from the way things were, the education establishment’s goal was to restore equity to students rather than maintaining the tracking that created dividing lines between social class and race. The end product however was a merging of general track with college prep with the result that college prep was becoming student-centered and needs-based with lower standards, and less homework assigned. Classes such as Film Making and Cooking for Singles were offered, and requirements for English and History courses were reduced if not dropped. Social class and race was no longer a barrier for such classes as evidenced by the increasing numbers of white students began taking them.
The elimination of the achievement gap has been realized by eliminating achievement. See http://www.educationnews.org/commentaries/156298.html.
I’ve been a licensed teacher for 40 years and thus have spent my career in the public schools. When I started teaching in 1971, there were still standards of achievement but, over the decades, these standards were eroded. It became much more important for students to feel good about themselves than to gain any academic knowledge. The result is that, every spring, the colleges turn out new teachers who are incompetent because they attended the same rotten schools that are now hiring them. How can we expect these teachers to teach what they never learned themselves?
I attended a workshop given by a reading expert and he made this remarkable statement (with quite a few new teachers sitting in the audience): The teachers we’re turning out now can’t find their ass with three hands in a phone booth. Regrettably, he is correct.
We need to restore the rigors of scholarship to our schools. Where do we start? It’s a tough question. If we rewrite the curricula at all levels to make them more rigorous, we have teachers who will be unable to teach the new material. If we demand that teacher training programs become more scholarly, we have wannabe teachers unable to learn the material because they have no academic foundation to build on and lack the study skills to bridge the gap.
I don’t know what the answer is, but we simply must improve our schools. The election of Obama is a good example of how uneducated and uninformed our population is. Many people voted for him based on skin color alone, with no attention paid to his political ideology and what his election would mean for the country. Our founders believed that an educated and informed electorate is essential for preserving our Republic. God help us if we don’t do something about our schools. We may end up losing the great gift that the Founders gave us.
Teacher….you stated ["I don’t know what the answer is."]
Thats an appauling comment from a career teacher as you stated your creedentials! You can’t possible contribute to solving a problem when you can’t even recognize what the problem(s) are.
Forty years as an educator and you weren’t observant and analytical enough to witness the effects of centralized government intervention and its systemic affects on local education? How have you missed the perpetual educational experiementations that continue today from the mid 60′s? How have you missed the one-size-fits-all approach to education over the past few decades? How have you missed all the many other social, political and government variables that have led to the decline of education?
Teachers of your era are the products of government intervention systemically taking education controls away from the local communities and centralizing it with primarily one-size-fits-all policies.
Its not like America doesn’t know what works in education. America afterall raised up and educated a generation that went on after WWII to make this nation the greatest industrial and economic nation in the world. In fact, the educated generations from the turn of the 20th century made much of the great strides ushering in the last great generations successes….and America reaching its highes pinnacles.
The continuing decline in education came from your generations starting in the late 60′s and systemically gaining downhill speed with each following decade.
Its NOT professional classroom teachers who have failed America’s education! Classroom teachers and students are at the very bottom rung of the education hierarchy!
It’s long since past time for the government to get *out* of the education business *entirely*, for the same reason as freedom of speech, and for the same reason as separation of church and state: the government has no business promoting any point of view since it’s only proper purpose is to defend individual rights. In taking our money to promote someone else’s point of view (pick your issue) there can be no more pernicious violation of our rights. In taking our money and failing to educate our children they add insult to injury and undermine the entire fabric of the country — a citizenry capable of reasoning independently.
How to get it done and overcome the unions? Turn each and every school into corporations and *give* them to the teachers, free of all taxes *and* regulations, but subject to all competition. Parents will vote with their pocketbooks. Bad teachers and unnecessary staff will eventually be forced from the system, costs will drop, education will improve and no one’s rights will be violated.
I went to college in GA, and I took the tests one needed to take at that time to become a teacher.
To get into a graduate program in education you had to take the Miller Analogies Test (MAT). It was scheduled for 90 minutes. I completed it in 45, and I scored in the 99th percentile. And I’m not especially bright.
The tests one took to become a certified teacher, which one could only become after getting an ed degree no matter how well one did on the tests, were the Praxis I and II. You were exempt from the Praxis I if you scored over 1000 on the (old) SAT. Having exempted this high hurdle, I took the Praxis II, which was a test that measured competence in specific subject areas. I took History and Geography. I finished the tests in about half the allotted time, scoring in the 98th percentile for History and the 78th percentile for Geography. I have never taken a Geography class.
If i had to guess, i would estimate that the tests called for a 9th grade level of literacy. If I had actually planned to teach in a public school I would have been humiliated that this was what the system thought of my intelligence.
There were study guides for sale for these tests. There were people who took them multiple times in order to make whatever bare minimum score their specialty required.
I’m not surprised that there was rampant cheating in the system. What shocks me is that they managed to pull it off.
Surprised they pulled it off? They were the untouchable victim class -PC has hurt the very people it was designed to protect from being told the truth.
Why else do you think Hillary was bumped by Obama?
Sadly, because of their actions, it will be decades before employers can feel comfortable hiring “these people.”
This merely will add fuel to the belief that affirmative action is the greatest Peter Principle in history.
C Man….Heres the problem with your comments! College…especially undergraduate, is a place of ‘prepatory’ learning for career disciplines. Once having graduated its up to the individual to seek the approriate continuing education and or, on the job training to succeed. Heres where the real problems begin for those who choosing teaching careers. Some seek on the job training while others chose formal post graduate training…both being of value theorhetically. But what are they to learn in advancing their career skills? I suggest they begin to learn the myriad of conflicting educational ‘experiementation philosophies’ perpetuated by predominately socialist backed special interest consortiums….all advancing student learning equality mandates.
For example! How many teacher deliver modalities come to mind from your own years of teaching experiences? First, every classroom teacher must analyze every student and determine an appropriate delivery modality to benefit the individual students needs to learn…right? Assuming you’re a dedicated professional teacher, the answer would be…yes! Lets assume you have a class of 5th grades, 26 in number with five inclusion students from special ed and a minimum of 12 students who represent a total lack of discipline and study motivation. Now, lets throw in another 12 stiudents from active duty military families subject to constant relocation/deployments to or from the classroom and school district. Lets also include a couple students who are tested and its declared they’re borderline special ed. Lastly, lets not forget the more than a handfull of students who have designated IEP’s from testing and guided by legislative mandates. Maybe now we can get around to the teachers local and states policies mandated by law and of which most all are subject to legal action and or teachers losing their certification license in the advent of an infraction. Tell us how much time you spent in college dealing with all these issues…which equate to only a few of the daily problems for the classroom teacher. Would now be an appropriate time to ask how many MINUTES are dedicated to each subject in a 5th grade class each day?
Folks casting darts at teachers don’t have a clue whats involved in the life of a classroom teacher especially in K 5 grades! Classroom teachers and academic results gets all the media and what actually controlls and drives declining education and academic results gets ZERO media attention. Probably because they simply don’t have a clue! Teachers of today simply are products of their times and have NO reference to any time when education was uniquely different and in the control of local communities and little to no government interventions. That said the motivation and love for teaching is no different today than in the past….just the hierarchy and mechanisms they have to work within is the difference. As a classroom teacher today, it is a self defeating career…even for the very best of teachers. Thats why nationally, the percentage of teachers leaving the profession within the first seven years of experience is so high.
These so called Teachers, these, better described as baxxds, have stolen the children’s lives. There is no way that these lives can be returned to them.
The teachers, the School Administrators, the Union leadership and anyone else that was a party to this should be prosecuted to the limits of the law.
The results of these deplorable acts can not be overstated. Lives have been ruined. The very lives the schools have a sworn duty to enhance through
education.
Instead they have removed this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from the most Innocent of those amoung us.
Here is a clear case where an example must be made. These people should pay and pay dearly in treasure and life. Make people think twice before embarking on any similar venture.
It’s racist to call mere conspiracy felony a party!
You folks are running out of whites to blame and carry what load there is left to carry. You’re on your own now The set-aside jobs are producing nothing and actually dragging down the black race. It’s all about race and you refuse to call a spade a spade. Stop waring your wealth and start investing it because you are never going to get a job from a poor man. Better learn how a business is run and stop asking for a job when you can’t even read above the 8th grade level.
The next 4 years of your lives are going to provide only what you put in to them. You got some blood sweat and tears coming and the man you voted into office is going to laugh all the way to the bank. He doesn’t give a sh*t about you or he would not have paid off his Chicago and New York Buddies first and thrown you “12 shovel ready jobs when there is no such thing as a shovel ready job. You need something to build and be hired first and he sure hasn’t provided that to you now, has he?
Where are the job applications to be handed out when he comes into your town to throw a campaign speech at you? Ask him, he likes to shoot the sh*t while in your adoring presence. Ask hin if he brought some government job applications for you to fill out. I didn’t think so.
tHIS IS JUST SICKENING….THERE IS A LOT OF YOUNG BLACK KIDS THAT REALLY WANT TO MOVE UP IN THIS WORLD….AND THIS UNIONIZED CADRE OF COMMUNISTS HERE IN aTLANTA, HAS DESTROYED THEIR HOPES….not all blacks want to move ahead by hard work, but there is some….and that is where the real pain comes…..i would love to see the public take these Ni66ers that has done this to their own children, taken out abd beaten with straps, and then ordered to spend a summer on a farm in South Ga. picking cotton, and tobacco, and whipped every time they are lazy….that is what they are doing to these young blacks that want an education…..we are finished in usa….thank a union
“Long before the special-education kids were brought into the mix, liberals decided that the appearance of rights granted would trump genuine education. Long before the drugging of kids to avoid the difficulties of real discipline, liberals decided that appearances of a calm classroom would trump real learning taking place”. PLEASE CLARIFY This Statement ?????
So with this statement what is the blogger trying to say , would schools be better off w/o children of disabilites and children of color?? Do you suggest that would that rid the system of cheating?? So eliminating black teachers,children of color, disabled and Unions is going to fix everything is that the crux of this blog ?
So Please Clarify this statement and other statements in this article????
“Long before the special-education kids were brought into the mix, liberals decided that the appearance of rights granted would trump genuine education. Long before the drugging of kids to avoid the difficulties of real discipline, liberals decided that appearances of a calm classroom would trump real learning taking place”.
If we get rid of Black teachers, children of color,children with disabilities, and unions that will eliminate cheating ??? And shouldn’t there be republican written every place you wrote liberal??
Nadine, you either have an understanding problem, or you are very paranoid when it comes to any criticism of black teachers or black people. Nowhere in the 2 sentences is there any mention of “Black teachers, children of color,….., and unions”. The statements essentially say that, in general, students were given individual rights in place of real education, and that special education students were given drugs (whether true or not) in place of real discipline, all for the sake of appearance. Liberals do run our education system, as evidenced by the high degree of unionism in our school districts, who normally support the Democratic Party with contributions to their reelection campaigns. And, for your information, “republican” is not the opposite of “liberal, but “conservative” is.
In 1974 in the Peoples Democratic Republic of Maryland I had a Minority teacher for Social Studies. We did questions out of the many text books she had acquired over the years every day but Friday. On Friday we got to read from Time, Newsweek or US New and Word Report magazines and write a 5 sentence essay. We never even saw a test. A group of us (Honor Students all) went to the administration and begged to be transferred to another class. Our parents called and wrote asking for us to be moved and guess what? Nothing happened. We spent 10 month in the classroom with a teacher that was either drunk, drugged or mentally deficient. At least she slept most of the time she was actually in the classroom, the other part of the time she was absent from the room for about 40 minute of our 50 minute class period.
While my 6 children have had some excellent teachers (we live in the Mid West) even here there are tenured morons, mostly those who were hired to coach something and then they teach History or Computers. Well they teach mostly those two subjects, because there is no mandated test for proficiency there. And we don’t care about producing intelligent citizens anyway, right?
So I’m not sure what’s really changed. Except that now we’re paying a lot more for pretty much the same standard. Of course these days you can’t get a start at any kind of technical education because everybody has to go to college. I wonder what will happen when there are no plumbers or electricians or car mechanics to fix what breaks down.
Kind of make one say hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
As a life-long teacher I can only say that this scandal is disgraceful (and yes, to me, shocking). The best spin I can put on it as that this sort of thing will lead to some reform. Supposedly, teaching is a job that now pays well and and in this economy, especially, should lead to more competition to get the positions.
For what it’s worth, in my school, there was great security with the tests both before and after their admission, but obviously security is only as good as the integrity of the individuals involved. I will admit that there was probably less pressure to cheat since we did very well on such tests, and teachers were NOT held individually accountable for their students test performance in any systematic way.
Dwight….so many folks haven’t the insight into education to argue any points with validity. For example most Asian teachers are payed more than lawyers and engineers. Ironocially, so many of those Asian teachers are educated, at least during their college years, in Americas colleges and universities. Take a look at Asian education outcomes in comparison to America’s! The problem is NOT Americas classroom teachers! The problems in America’s 50 year declining education is government (federal & States) intervention into all educations policies and funding. America’s education that provided for America rising to its highest industrial and economic pinnacles was community based…. before the governments began to intervene.
Testing standards were developed by the consortiums that wrote the textbooks and further provided to teachers alternative testing latitudes. Textbooks were taught from cover-to-cover and tested accordingly. Likewise, they were smart enough to know that not all students were capable or would chose to achieve equally and there were alternative tracks of education provided in lots of areas in the U.S. Its not like America doesn’t have a model for education that works! Its just that the socialists (‘social justice’) folks have for 50 years, in conjunction with the governments, been conducting perpetual education experiementation on the backs of classroom teachers and students…with not a single instance of academic success.
T.T. seems to understand what is going on in many schools today. Into the mix in the classroom, factor in students leaving for band, strings, chorus, LD classes, speech, and various doctor and dentist appointments. The teacher has absolutely no control over this. For years, the excellent public school system in which I taught studied ways to enable teachers to have a solid bloc of time in which to teach reading. When I retired they still had not solved the problem.
I am not surprised by the number of irate adults who are replying to this article. But the situation has been partially caused by you: parental demands for the various services. Cheating is nothing new and is not limited to classes taught by a minority teacher. A neighbor who was an English Teacher at New Trier high school in suburban Michigan in the 1960s told of the scope of cheating in that prestigious school. Places in elite colleges are determined in various ways; students fight to get in them. How? Parents and various companies seek to reduce the income taxes they must pay. How?
Think of a modern classroom as an Indy 500 race with cars ranging from rent-a wrecks and model Ts to super performing cars. Teachers are supposed to direct the race keeping in mind race, gender, the curriculum, learning modalities, and, above all, fairness to all. That teacher may be called to task at any time by the parents, school administration, politicians, advocates for various handicaps or diseases, and various social justice groups. Add to that advocates for new groups which may not have been considered by the teacher…religious, non-religeous, patriotic, anti-patriotic, allegationsw of sexual abuse, etc. Some teachers are sued. These same demands are made from kindergarten through high school.
Those who are complaining should visit schools, not just for field trips or parties but for weeks and months on end. Try some long term substituting. See what it’s really like. Ask a teacher if they want their own children or grandchildren to teach.
I would certainly like to meet those rich retired teachers. I don’t kinow any.
And sadly, the vast majority of those Atlanta school children cheated out of their educations were black. Self-serving, self-advancing, self-deceiving teachers and administrators have succeeded in wasting more genuine human potential than one mind can possibly even conceive — all of it sacrificed on the phony altar of liberals’ vainglorious pretense. If this isn’t a crime against humanity I truly cannot imagine what would be.
This is an excellent summing up on the situation in Atlanta, thank you.
In Australian black education:- Doctors, nurses, police and ambulance personnel are ALL able to conceive of the gross waste in human life. It is they that picked up the broken bodies including the bodies of children, went to the houses to inform families of losses, were viciously attacked themselves including for speaking out. Public data collections were adjusted using extraneous variables to maintain a narrative (and excuse). Parents who understood and spoke out for improvement in education delivery and quality were also silenced.
The neighbourhood planning units and local services decisions and delivery, lacking (or eschewing) facts and scrutiny serve to support thugs intent on creating fiefdoms. Since the 60s this model, exported globally, has been called ‘community development’.
I live in metro Atlanta (Dr. Tom Price’s district), not the city or even almost-as-dysfunctional Fulton County–and my kids go to private Christian school. I would not lead my kids within a league of a public school in this state (even out here in conservative Cherokee County). The Atlanta debacle is no surprise at all, as Ms. Shiver points out, for anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see. The city is run by and for black liberals, and woe unto anyone who dares to point this out–much less criticize it.
As a fellow Georgian, I can understand to a degree why and what you said, however, I have neighbors here in N. Fulton County who have done the same as you and sent their children to a “christian” school and after a few years they decided to send their children to the local public schools because the private “christian” school did not offer the advanced curriculum they desired for their children as they got older. I never quite understood their decision to send their children to the private school when we had some of the best public schools in the state all around us. You might be able to shelter your children for awhile by sending them to a private christian school, but eventually they will have to live in the real world.
John.inGeorgia,
Why do you place “Christian” in quotes (and fail to capitalize it)? Is there some implied criticism therein?
What happened to your neighbors is not necessarily normative, much less determinative, for others.
“Best public schools in the state”–that’s like saying “best hitter in the minor leagues.” Georgia by most rankings of public education is at the bottom rung in the US–some rankings have it 49th out of 50 states. So your confidence in Georgia public schools–even in North Fulton, where Chattahoochee and several others are not bad–is perhaps misplaced.
Do you not think I and my wife have enough sense to examine curricula before we allow our kids to matriculate? Gee, you must think I went to public school or something….
I take issue with your contention that sending children to a Christian (note the lack of sarcastic quotation marks, and the correct capitalization) is somehow “sheltering” them. On the contrary: in Christian school my kids are doing far more, and harder, homework, than the public school kids; and they’re learning the realities of not just history, but of the world’s, and this country’s, largest religion: Christianity. One could well argue that public school kids are the ones being sheltered from realities such as competition, difficult intellectual challenges, and politically incorrect–but true–aspects of history.
great post.
This was simply a case of Affirmative Action in operation.
Yes. As “I’m shocked shocked to find that gambling…”. Frank Sinatra, who we understand had some personal appreciation of gang “ethics”, knew a thing or two. Casablanca to begin and Manchurian Candidate to finish his representation of gangster milieu/code in late 20th century West/America. Dressed in fancy words and smooth manners.
The code of omerta. And from that the kiss of the brotherhood in the educational system throughout the USA from nursery school through graduate schools in even – or especially ? – the “elite” educational institutions as in “Gang of Four”: Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford.
This Gang of Four, as example, is supported to large extent directly and indirectly via student,teaching and research grants, and student loans by- you guessed it- taxpayers. Money expropriated with the fist of law via IRS, otherwise spent for their and their criminally cheated children’s “Hopes” and “Dreams”. “Commoners” – bourgeois don’t you know – fair game for “elite” hyenas and vultures. The main object of intellectuloid “elite” to “epater le bourgeoisie”
I understood America’s exceptionalism as refusal of citizens to bend the knee before royalty, self-seleceted or via Dieu et mon droit. When did and how did that CHANGE?