Public School News and Notes

Gwinnett Schools Sue Charter School Commission, Ivy Prep

On September 11th, Gwinnett County public schools filed suit in Fulton County Superior Court in a constitutional challenge to HB 881, a law passed in 2008 that created the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, a state-level authorizer of charter schools. The law also initiated a system by which charter public schools approved by the Commission are funded at levels closer to their traditional public school counterparts.

In the complaint, the Gwinnett County public school system alleges that the Commission and the charters it approves are unconstitutional. Additionally, they are seeking an injunction that would prevent additional state taxpayer dollars from funding Ivy Preparatory Academy, a public charter school located in Gwinnett County now serving over 300 sixth and seventh grade girls, mostly from minority backgrounds.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are state Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox, the Georgia Department of Education, the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, Commission Chairman Dr. Ben Scafidi, members of the Commission, and Ivy Preparatory Academy.  Dr. Scafidi is also the director of the Center for an Educated Georgia.

You can read more about the lawsuit from articles published in the AJC on September 10, 2009 and September 11, 2009. 

Information about the lawsuit is available through the Fulton County Superior Court website. 

The AJC is also reporting that Bulloch and Candler County will file a similar lawsuit against another Commission charter school, Charter Conservatory for Liberal Arts & Technology (CCAT), in the next week.

 

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Private School Choice Issues

Town Hall Engages Parents, Public about Education Reform

Over 50 parents and citizens from across Atlanta came out on a very rainy evening September 15th to join the Center for an Educated Georgia and Sophia Academy in hosting a town hall meeting on education reform and school choice.

Speaking at the event were parents Nancy Jester, Rich Thompson, and Lynn McInerney, who shared their school choice experiences with the crowd. They were joined by CEG director Ben Scafidi, Senator Eric Johnson, Representative Jill Chambers, Representative Melvin Everson, and Representative Alisha Thomas-Morgan.

An engaged crowd asked the panel of parents and legislators questions about everything from vouchers to public school reform. <br> <br>The event wrapped up with tips from government affairs professionals and the legislators themselves on how to contact your legislators and get involved in making broad school choice and comprehensive education reform a reality.

You can see photos of the event by visiting CEG’s Media Library. 

 

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For Homeschools

Homeschooler Involved in Learner’s Permit Dispute

Learning to drive is a major milestone for any teenager. In Georgia, teens are permitted to get their learner’s permit at age 15 but the Department of Driver Services requires certain documentation to do so, including an attendance certificate from a teen’s school. For homeschoolers, that attendance certificate comes from their local board of education. For most, this process seems to work.

However, this past summer the Richmond County Board of Education chose not to issue an attendance certificate to a homeschool student because her attendance forms had not been submitted to the local school system during the summer months, despite the fact that the student had already completed the state required 180 days of instruction.

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) intervened on behalf of the student and successfully petitioned the school board to issue the attendance certificate needed to get her learner’s permit.

Learn more about this case from HSLDA.

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Commentary

When Educators Cheat Students

Georgia educators caught cheating on test results have harmed much more than themselves
By Eric Cochling, Vice President of Public Policy, Georgia Family Council

The fact that there’s cheating in Georgia schools shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s a problem that has plagued education since Socrates gave his first pop quiz. But when it is public school officials who are doing the cheating, well, that’s something that should get our attention.

Over the past year, an investigation by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement found that student’s answers on the fifth grade CRCT math test were changed by staff at at least four Georgia public elementary schools. Suspicions were raised when the summer retake test results were significantly higher than the spring scores.

To determine what happened, investigators analyzed the number of erasures on test sheets and how many of those changes corrected a wrong answer. At four of the schools, the number of answers changed from wrong to right was statistically impossible barring some form of cheating.

At one school in DeKalb County, the findings were particularly shocking. Every single student who retook the math test passed – an amazing feat considering that the failure rate in fourth grade at the same school was 57 percent. Investigators found that there was an average of 22 answers erased on each test (compared to an average of two in the comparison sample) and that of those erasures, 15 corrected a wrong answer (compared to one in the comparison sample).

So far, the principle and assistant principle at this school have had their teaching license suspended. They also face felony charges for falsifying a state document. Investigations into staff from other schools are underway as well.

Part of what is striking about this scandal is the brazen way in which it was conducted. It’s as though these educators were willing to make such blatant changes to these tests because they were reasonably certain they wouldn’t get caught.

What’s more, it’s not certain the investigation would have ever even happened had the Atlanta Journal-Constitution not reported about the improbable gains on tests scores. Kudos to the AJC for its reporting on this story.

Given that this investigation only involved review of one year of testing, only examined a few schools and only reviewed one test at one grade level, there is considerable concern that this type of cheating is widespread. Although we spend over $14 billion on public education in Georgia annually, we have spent almost nothing on auditing test results.

Consider this: 995,122 school children in grades 1-8 take the CRCT each year, and in all, about 4.2 million CRCT subject tests are given in grades 1-8 annually. Yet, there are only seven people that work in the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement tasked with monitoring all of these tests (and high school ones as well).

All of this makes one wonder how widespread cheating is statewide and what is being done to make its prevention, detection and prosecution as much a priority as the tests themselves. After all, without the assurance that cheating is rare, test results mean next to nothing.

And with so much riding on these test results, their integrity is critical. The fifth grade CRCT tests at the center of this scandal determine whether a student moves on to sixth grade, and more importantly, are the primary factor in determining whether a school meets Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) – the federal standard schools must reach. Not surprisingly, all of the schools that were investigated met AYP because of the scores on these altered CRCT tests.

What happened in these schools is appalling on so many levels. When a student cheats, he is shortchanging himself. But when school officials cheat like this, their actions have a much wider impact. They have violated the public trust, abused their positions of authority, but most importantly, they have sent a message to their students that achievement matters little and dishonesty is ok if the stakes are high enough.

And as bad as this story is, we are confident that the vast majority of Georgia educators labor diligently to help kids learn, and do so with honesty and integrity.

The bigger tragedy, however, is what this misconduct does to kids.

Promoting students to the next grade level when they are not prepared means they will not get the remedial help they need to learn. Instead, kids that were already struggling in school will struggle even more. They will get frustrated, discouraged, and at some point maybe even drop out of school. It’s a tragedy, and all because these educators wanted to elevate their own status and make it appear their school was doing better than it was.

But until there is a more comprehensive auditing system, there will always be questions about significant gains. More effective monitoring will not only root out cheaters, but it will also validate the legitimate improvement in schools where educators are doing their jobs well.

It’s time our state commits the resources needed to ensure student achievement is measured well and that the results are reliable.

Eric Cochling is Vice President of Public Policy at the Georgia Family Council, the parent organization of the Center for an Educated Georgia. He also serves as a Legal Fellow for the Center for an Educated Georgia. You can contact Eric by email at eric.cochling(at)georgiafamily.org

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