Home is the key factor
Does a basketball star have to make 100 percent of his shots to be a “great player?” Does a doctor have to save 100 percent of her patients to be called “successful?” Of course not, but does a school system have to make 100 percent of its students “proficient” by 2014 or be dubbed “a failure?”
Yes. Does this impossible goal impose unreasonable pressure and panic on educators? Of course.
The truth: Good teaching can make some difference in test scores, but the biggest factors are the students themselves and the homes they come from. Dismissing this fact as “the teachers’ excuse” merely keeps our nation from addressing the real problem and will lead to more academic failure. We will become more efficient in proctoring tests, but we will become no more effective in educating our students.
Donna Douglass, Marietta
School chief falls short
So Beverly Hall has acknowledged responsibility for the mess? Well, yes, she did — with so many qualifications that her apology is as worthless as her name. If she had any integrity at all — but then we know she does not — she would not only return the awards she received, which are certainly no longer valid, but she should also return all the money she was paid out in bonuses.
Elizabeth Wilson, Stone Mountain
Blame shift won’t work
Beverly Hall’s statement is precisely what most people expected from her — more lies and self-serving baloney. Who benefited from all the publicity and accolades surrounding the amazing rise in the CRCT scores? It sure wasn’t the teachers, or even the other powers-that-be within APS; those employees Hall is trying to shift the blame to when she said, “Where people consciously chose to cheat, however, the moral responsibility must lie with them.”
The parents of the unfortunate kids who bore, and will continue to bear, the disgusting fallout from Hall’s corruption aren’t stupid, as Hall must believe they are; they’re seeing now that the cheating was always Hall’s game plan ... from inception to discovery.
Bill Montfort, Atlanta
Tragic loss of learning
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is congratulated for its persistence in making sure the test cheating by the Atlanta Public School system did not fall between the cracks. We may never know the full extent of cheating and corruption during Dr. Hall’s tenure. Remember, APS spent early $14,000 per student per year during these times when surrounding systems spent around $10,000.
A far greater tragedy occurred in that students’ time was wasted in preparing for and taking tests. Sacrificed was learning how to reason and master skills in reading, writing, mathematics, science and social studies. These losses will never be made up.
James Rust, Atlanta
Clearing citizen panel
I note in all the “extended” coverage of the APS mess, the AJC deems it unnecessary to report that the Blue Ribbon Committee formed to investigate the cheating scandal was effectively exonerated by the GBI for “not doing its job.”
Presumably 50 GBI agents were not available for hire. Certainly, the committee of volunteers (with no subpoena power) were not given nine months to conduct an investigation.
As the GBI’s report states “But the BRC investigation was never likely to uncover the truth because the scale of the problem in APS was too deep, given the limited resources available and the time restrictions on the BRC’s work,” from page 398 of the report.
This is not newsworthy? Maybe the people on that committee who were raked over the coals feel differently.
Ruth Alexander, Atlanta
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