N.A.S
L.A.B
by Sean Begin
For 11 Atlanta teachers, the choice between jail and a plea deal resulting in house arrest is now in the hands of a judge.
The Fulton County district attorney, Paul Howard, offered the 11 teachers the deal but Judge Jerry Baxter, who has said that jail time for every teacher convicted is fair, must first approve it.
The teachers were among the 35 educators indicted in March 2013 under racketeering charges. Prosecutors used the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to convict each educator of obtaining bonuses by forging test results or giving out answers to tests beforehand.
The issue with the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal resulting in jail time is it’s punishing teachers who felt they had no other choice, thanks to the horribly written No Child Left Behind act, passed in 2002.
Under that law, schools have to pass a certain percentage of students in math reading and language arts in order to remain a functioning school. In addition, teachers are allowed to advance in pay and rank based on the scores of their students.
In theory, No Child Left Behind was a noble concept. It used data to drive education, but over time that data became the central focus of educators, and is ultimately what led to the APS’ cheating scandal.
The focus on data, derived from standardized test results, failed to take into account the many and complex social variables that affect a teacher’s ability to educate young people. In Atlanta, for example, in many of the schools that were found to have cheated, the students come from broken homes, often with one or both parents missing or under the influence of hard drugs.
This is what makes the “scandal” in the APS so sad. Many of these teachers felt they had no choice but to forge answers in order to continue providing some sort of education for students who would be forgotten and left behind by the rest of society.
In July 2014, the New Yorker profiled an Atlanta school, Parks Middle School, and the rampant cheating that was involved. Based around former teacher Damany Lewis, considered by many the top educator at the school, the profile describes how Lewis and his fellow teachers felt they had no choice but to forge results, to avoid being shut down and to avoid losing their jobs, simply because they knew they were all many of these children had.
Yes, perhaps some of those involved stood to profit from higher test scores among the schools, but many used whatever small amount they did receive to give back to their community, “to buy groceries, H.I.V. medications, furniture, and clothes for students and their mothers,” as detailed in the New Yorker profile.
The scandal in Atlanta is merely the by-product of badly written legislation (No Child Left Behind) combined with the district’s nearly unreachable targets that resulted in an environment where all that mattered were test scores.
When several of Parks’ teachers decided to come clean, they said they did what they did because forging the test results allowed them “to focus on issues that seemed more relevant to their students’ lives.”
What Baxter and other judges, what other lawyers and legislators should be pointing the finger at, is the badly written legislation of No Child Left Behind, and the pervasive virus of standardized testing that has become the norm in our education system.
If there’s one thing that’s fact, it’s that no two students learn in the same manner or at the same speed. So why do we continue to develop and push an education system that rewards outside factors like income and living situation and punishes those who are born with less?