It is summer. You can see it in children’s smiling faces. You can see it in the numbers registering on thermometers. And in Atlanta, Georgia, it just got a lot hotter for Atlanta Public Schools’ outgoing superintendents, staff, many of the district’s principals and teachers, and even the state’s governor. Burned the worst are the district’s students.
What happened? According to a synopsis of an 800 page report, state investigators found evidence of cheating on the state’s 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) at nearly 80 percent of the schools they examined. One hundred, seventy-eight teachers and principals were involved in the cheating, with 82 already having confessed to misconduct. Such misconduct included changing answers on completed test sheets and helping students with answers. This may have gone on since 2001. Furthermore, the district’s superintendent, once hailed as a model of urban school chiefs because of the dramatic turnaround in student test scores, has resigned under a cloud of controversy.
And the students? Because the district appeared to be doing so well based on test scores, students in need of remedial education were denied that opportunity.
As teachers, most of us have had to deal with a student cheating on a test or quiz. It’s part of the job and part of the process of growth in our students. Teacher and administrator misconduct, on the other hand, is not something we ever anticipate or welcome in our lives.
Have you ever had to deal with misconduct by your colleagues? How did you manage to continue your work during such a distraction? Or was the matter handled quietly and decisively?