Last week’s CRCT investigatory report upset and angered all of us at the Atlanta Public Schools. We have accepted the report’s findings, and the Atlanta Board of Education and I are committed to addressing the issues it uncovered, as well as initiating appropriate action against all of our employees involved in any way with testing irregularities and tampering.
Education is a special calling for those who truly care about children and the importance of providing them with a solid, well-rounded education.
Cheating hurts children, because it obscures a student’s real academic standing, depriving some students of the additional learning support they may need to succeed in school, college and life.
I do not accept the contention that setting challenging academic goals that some may have believed were too difficult to reach caused educators to cheat. We expect our employees to perform at the highest levels within defined ethical, financial, legal, operational and environmental boundaries.
Clearly, the behavior of some employees as described in the state report crossed some of those boundaries.
We are initiating appropriate action against the employees identified as committing, hiding or ignoring testing improprieties. We are also implementing mandatory annual ethics training for all APS employees. The APS Office of Internal Resolution (OIR) is being moved from Human Resources to Internal Audits, which reports directly to the Atlanta Board of Education. The Office of Research, Planning and Assessment (RPA) is setting trigger points that will result in automatic investigations of schools whose test scores increase by a larger than normal percentage.
The district is also initiating a climate survey to periodically assess the culture at schools and district facilities. And the district’s Department of Strategy and Development will make customer service and student support key measures on the “Balanced Scorecard,” which is used annually to evaluate the performance of departments and employees.
We have enhanced the testing environment in all of our schools with tighter security for testing materials and state-of-the-art safeguards designed to prevent improprieties and tampering. These enhancements were implemented starting with the 2010 CRCT administration, with more added for the 2011 test.
We have also enhanced our annual training for all employees involved in the CRCT administration. And we established a 24-hour hotline where people are encouraged to report testing improprieties.
I plan to issue a detailed action plan in response to the state CRCT investigation report that will be based on a thorough review of the findings. I plan to take the time required to painstakingly go over the state report so that we address each and every issue it identifies.
Most APS parents and guardians already know that the vast majority of our principals, teachers and staff are dedicated, honest and hardworking people who always have the best interests of children in mind in everything they do in thousands of classrooms throughout the district.
Rest assured that we will correct any remaining deficiencies in the testing area, while moving forward with our urban education reform programs and implementing others as required so that we continue to escalate student academic achievement.
Erroll Davis, the former chancellor of the University System of Georgia, is the new Interim Superintendent of APS.
