April 09, 2015
By Julianne Malveaux
NNPA Columnist
Eleven Atlanta teachers have been convicted of altering student test scores on standardized tests. They are charged with racketeering and conspiracy. The much-celebrated Superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools Beverly L. Hall was among the indicted but was too ill to stand trial. She died March 2.
Another group of teachers, principals and administrators took plea bargains. A total of 178 people were accused of taking part in the cheating “scam” and in 2011 Hall reminded observers that “we have over 3,000 teachers in Atlanta,” and just a few were part of the cheating scandal. She also denied having any knowledge of the cheating. Until her illness, she insisted that she wanted to stand trial and clear her name.
In what was described as the largest cheating scandal in the nation’s history, District Attorney Paul L. Howard Jr. prosecuted the educators under a law originally designed to snare organized crime figures. Of the 12 defendants, 11 were convicted of racketeering, a felony punishable up to 20 years. One defendant, Dessa Curb, a former elementary school teacher, was acquitted.
Those 11 convicted were taken straight from the courtroom to jail. Sentencing should take place this week. On top of the 20 years maximum sentence for racketeering, they could be convicted on other charges including making false statements. It is interesting to note that most of these teachers are African American.
You can serve as few as 15 years for second-degree murder in Georgia, and as little as a year for involuntary manslaughter. Further, most convicted offenders get a day or even months to go home and straighten out their affairs before reporting to prison. But not this group of educators.
These Atlanta teachers aren’t the only teachers involved in similar cheating scams. A year ago, 130 Philadelphia educators were accused of cheating. In September, several were ordered to stand trial.
Why have those who chose a low-paid and little-regarded profession stoop to cheating on standardized tests? Are they judged by the number of students who pass these flawed tests, and the number who fail? Is there a culture of cheating in too many of our nation’s schools? Is there a culture of “teaching to the test”?
There is no excuse for the cheating in Atlanta, or Philadelphia, or in El Paso, where the school superintendent was imprisoned for reporting faulty test scores. While there is no excuse, it would be foolhardy to ignore the pressure that many face when federal laws mandate the use of standardized tests to “prove” that teachers and schools are doing their jobs.
In some districts, including Atlanta, teachers are given bonuses when their students do well on tests, and may be terminated when students do not. Even now, after revisions in teacher evaluation, half of teacher performance is based on standardized tests. Teachers can be reassigned, or schools can be closed if there are too many poor-performing students enrolled.
It makes sense to look at the many ways that the system encourages teachers to manipulate, if not outright cheat, when they administer standardized tests. Some schools spend days preparing students to take the tests. They aren’t spending days teaching the material students must learn, just the rote material needed to pass standardized tests. Passing a test in English and grammar may prove some proficiency, but does it prove that a student can write a paragraph or an essay, or engage in critical thinking?
When teachers spend too much time focused on standardized testing and not enough on course content, are they cheating students? In teaching to the test, are they cheating to the test? I’m not referring to the multiple erasures that investigators found on some of the Atlanta tests, or schemes that excluded poor-performing students from testing so average grades could be higher. I’m referring to teachers who choose to teach content that they know will show up on the test, or those who spend tens of hours in “practice sessions” with old copies of tests used as drills. From my perspective students are being cheated when there is too much emphasis placed on standardized testing.
One might ask how teachers and students can be evaluated without standardized tests, but there is an extensive body of research that suggests other methods of evaluating teachers, including classroom observation and curriculum review. Interestingly, an increasing number of colleges do not use standardized tests to evaluate students for admissions because they recognize such tests are flawed.
Obviously, there must be some way to measure progress among students, and proficiency among teachers. Still, standardized test results should not be tied to teacher compensation, or to threats of school closings. If standardized tests are one way to measure results, they must be combined with other measures to ensure fairness.
It makes sense, though, to ask if there is a racial dynamic to leading nearly a dozen teachers, mostly African American, out of a courtroom in handcuffs. And it makes sense to wonder if the charge of racketeering is being applied to harshly for what is clearly illegal misconduct.
While teaching to the test is not against the law, isn’t it cheating our students nearly as much as the scams?
Julianne Malveaux is an economist, writer, and President Emerita of Bennett College. She can be reached at juliannemalveaux.com.
March 26, 2015
By Maria Adebola
Special to the NNPA from the Afro-American Newspaper
Black Women’s Health Imperative, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit has launched the first chapter of the “My Sister’s Keeper” initiative at Howard University and Spelman College.
The program is intended to provide information on a variety of topics including sexual violence, reproductive health, and sexually transmitted diseases, geared towards African American women.
“It’s important that we give young women the tools needed to protect themselves and their sisters, and that they understand that they must be invested in good decision-making—their own, that of their partners, and that of policy makers—around their sexual health and rights,” Linda Goler Blount, president and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, said in a statement. “We also want young women to know that their sexual health and rights intersect with the reproductive justice movement, started by Black women in 1994, that melds health justice to justice in education, housing and transportation, among many other factors.”
According to the organization, sexual violence, unintended pregnancy and risky sexual activities are among the leading causes of college dropout among women.
Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, the Anna Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College, said she believes that the partnership will highlight the importance of addressing the particular needs of African-American women.
“The Women’s Research & Resource Center at Spelman College has had a long connection with the Black Women’s Health Imperative, which began in 1983 at their first national Black women’s health conference, which 2,000 women traveled to the Spelman campus for a historic gathering,” she said. “We are thrilled to host on campus the launching of their equally historic My Sister’s Keeper initiative which promises to be as transformative in the lives of Black women.”
“It is fitting for the launch to occur at Spelman, the oldest college for women of African descent in the world,” she added. “For over a century and a half, Spelman has played a significant role as our sister’s keeper locally, nationally, and globally.”
Black Women’s Health Imperative is a nationally-recognized organization dedicated to improving the health and wellness of African American women and girls physically, emotionally and financially.
March 19, 2015
By LISA LEFF
Associated Press
Leaders of California’s vast community college system recently approved a program aimed at making it easier for students to transfer to historically black colleges and universities in other parts of the country. It comes at a time when seats at the state’s own public universities have gotten harder to come by and many of the schools that once were the only higher education option for African-Americans are facing declining enrollment.
Under a deal brokered by Chancellor Brice Harris’ staff and approved by the system’s governing board, nine historically black schools in the South and Midwest have promised to admit all students who have completed certain prescribed courses at California’s 112 two-year colleges with a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.5.
The agreements, set to take effect in the fall, are designed to reduce the time it takes students to accumulate enough course credits to move to a four-year school and earn their baccalaureates by making sure the work they do in California is recognized by the historically black institutions. Mismatches between the content of lower-division courses at community colleges and the same classes at four-year schools often make it hard for students to meet transfer entrance requirements or cause them to lose credits.
“This is very important for our students,” Joseph Bielanski Jr., a member of the system’s Board of Governors, said of the agreements. “It’s a way of building pathways that are clear to the students so they can have a variety of opportunities now to get their education.”
Individual community colleges throughout the U.S. have created their own compacts with historically black colleges, most of which also have transfer pacts with the two-year schools in their home states. But California’s arrangement is believed to be the first between a community college system and multiple historically black institutions, Paige Marlatt Dorr, a spokeswoman for the chancellor, said.
“This may be a model that can be used by other states in the nation to look at HBCUs to provide meaningful opportunities for access and educational attainment,” George Cooper, executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, said at Tuesday’s meeting in Sacramento.
African-Americans make up about 7 percent of the 2.3 million students enrolled in California’s community colleges. In 2011, the last year for which statistics were available, less than half of one percent of those who transferred to four-year schools opted to complete their studies at one of the nation’s 105 historically black colleges and universities.
The transfer program is open to students of all races and ethnicities.
University of Pennsylvania Professor Marybeth Gasman, an expert on historically black colleges and universities, praised the program as an opportunity for both California students, who may be unfamiliar with historically black colleges since their state has none, and for the colleges that will be able to recruit from a more geographically, racially and educationally diverse pool.
“This is a really, really great initiative,” Gasman said. “It’s a whole new market for HBCUs and might bring in more Latinos, which will help with enrollment.”
The nine schools are Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas; Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri; Dillard University in New Orleans; Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina; Wiley College in Marshall, Texas; Fisk University in Nashville; and Stillman College, Talladega College and Tuskegee University, all located in Alabama. With the exception of Lincoln, all the institutions are private schools with annual tuitions ranging from about $9,300 to over $19,000.
The low transfer rate for California’s community college system long has been a sore point in the state. Just 12 percent of the students who started their studies in 2008 had moved on to a four-year school after three years.
March 12, 2015
City News Service
In the face of a nearly $160 million budget deficit, the Los Angeles Unified School District board authorized layoff warning notices on Wednesday for 609 employees, including teachers, counselors and social workers. Included on the proposed list of those who will receive notices were more than 260 adult education teachers, 59 counselors, dozens of foreign-language teachers and 63 psychiatric social workers. The board also authorized notices to “certificated administrators, confidential employees and supervisory employees,” along with “all certificated and classified contract management employees with expiring contracts.”
State law requires the district to send warning notices to employees by March 15 that they may be laid off or reassigned. Receiving such a notice does not necessarily mean the employee will actually be laid off. The final number will be determined as budget discussions continue.
“Failure to appropriately notify certificated administrators, confidential employees, supervisory employees, certificated and classified contract management employees in accordance with Education Code provisions and laws, may require the district to continue paying these employees’ salaries and benefits at their current rate and classifications,” according to a district staff report. “Additionally, the district would be limited in its ability to implement layoff proceedings as required due to budgetary uncertainties.”
As they cast their votes on the issue, some board members said they were reluctantly voting in support, but hoped the district would be able to rescind most or all of the notices. The district is facing a roughly $158.3 million deficit heading into the 2015-16 school year, according to a staff report. Superintendent Ramon Cortines has been warning that layoffs are possible in the district, which is in the midst of contract talks with the teachers' union, United Teachers Los Angeles.
UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl blasted the layoff notices, saying he believes there is funding available to prevent them. He said union officials have been reviewing district documents, and, “We’ve found the line more than once in district memos that money is unaccounted for and can’t be accounted for. That’s unacceptable.
“Out of nowhere we seem to find money, tens of millions of dollars, to take care of the MISIS crisis and the MISIS fix-up, and now the superintendent’s report ... says that more money needs to be put away and not spent on classrooms in case MISIS is in fact going to cost us more,” he said, referencing the district’s troubled My Integrated Student Information System computerized scheduling system.
UTLA has been pushing for a roughly 8.5 percent salary increase for teachers, but the district has offered 5 percent. The union declared an impasse in negotiations last month. Caputo-Pearl has said the district is using a layoff threat as a “scare tactic.” Cortines warned the board that the district cannot continue to rely on one-time funding to resolve ongoing financial issues.
“If you continue this, you will be another Detroit,” Cortines said.
“And that’s not that many years away if we do not stop the one-time funding. Unless we have ongoing funds, even though they are for wonderful programs, we can’t do it.”