The Atlanta Public Schools Scandal

“The moral imagination is an enduring source of inspiration that elevates us to first principles as it guides us upwards towards virtue and wisdom and redemption.”
- Russell Kirk

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if you’d any imagination.”
- Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables

I was recently amazed by a testing scandal within the Atlanta public school system, a story rife with pedagogical and moral lessons. What amazed me most was the fact that so many school administrators and teachers could cover up such widespread and horrible corruption for so long. The story is not only a case study in the power of self-deception and organizational corruption, but it also illustrates some of the systemic problems within American public education, problems that cannot simply be blamed upon federal programs like No Child Left Behind.

I cannot imagine cooperating with the practices described in this article. Teachers actually held parties at their homes in which they erased their students wrong answers on standardized tests. Could I do such things and still be able to look at myself in the mirror? If I am honest, my own frailty as a public school teacher ought to give me pause here. Granted, I have not be involved in deceit to the degree described in this article, but I have at times been dishonest in my vocation.

The investigators into this scandal in Atlanta described a system that encouraged corruption

"APS became such a ‘data-driven’ system, with unreasonable and excessive pressure to meet targets, that Beverly Hall and her senior cabinet lost sight of conducting tests with integrity,” the report said.

I know of the pressure that the report describes. There are certainly many systems (not just school systems) that encourage self-deception and dishonest behavior. For example, all schools today have a system, a technology that ascribes numeric value to student work, and in this system is also the constant pressure to lower academic standards in the name of spurious notions of love or self esteem or even specious educational theories like multiple intelligences. Such systems are present in varying degrees everywhere public education today, and like the scandal in Atlanta, they very often merely produce a mere illusion of learning, rather than genuine student achievement and growth.

And then there is also the more domestic dishonesties of some parents, who like the Dursleys in Harry Potter, are appalled at any teacher who might question the work or behavior of their little Dudleys. In addition to, as Professor Dumbledore put it, the "appalling damage" that such pandering afflicts upon children, it also can wear down good teachers.

Indeed, many of our country's fine public school teachers, rather than lie to students in sappy, pandering ways, genuinely attempt to teach them by demanding that they learn grammar, math, and science. Many teachers demand that students learn self-discipline and care about their work. But these teachers can and often do eventually wear out and choose the path of least resistance, perhaps even citing what "research shows" in justification of their choices.

I confess that I have at times succumbed to the temptation to dumb instruction down, for among the innumerable pressures of teaching, there is rarely pressure to raise standards by demanding more of students, only voices who accuse conscientious teachers of not loving students or demand "differentiated instruction” to “multiple intelligences." And over the course of careers and even generations, fueled or accused by toxic progressive fads or "research," teachers and administrators can and often do eventually find excuses to wrong and rob students of genuine education, like those teachers in Atlanta who held "cheating parties.”

Today if a teacher dares to expect kids to actually demonstrate a grasp of grammar by diagramming sentences, understand mathematical equations, or write complete sentences and cogent paragraphs, then then they better be convinced of the value of what they teach. They better be like Annie Sullivan, the intrepid young teacher of Helen Keller in William Gibson's 1956 play The Miracle Worker:

""Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye."

"I can't unteach her six years of pity if you can't stand up to one tantrum!"

"I'll tell you what I pity, that the sun won't rise and set for her all her life, and every day you're telling her it will. What good will your pity do her when you're under the strawberries, Captain Keller?"

"The more I think, the more certain I am that obedience is the gateway through which knowledge enters the mind of the child..."

"I don't think Helen's worst handicap is deafness or blindness. I think it's your love. And pity."

Annie Sullivan was honest in ways that the teachers in Atlanta were not, and the fact that she was willing to get down and dirty and wrestle with likes of Helen Keller is how we ought to envision what it means to truly love one's neighbor in the teaching vocation. To her, language is not merely an excuse for touchy-feely English classes; rather, words and sentences were a lifeline to a young girl imprisoned. I confess that at times I have been more like the former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools than Miss Sullivan.

It is so easy to imbibe the false, knee-jerk belief of our postmodern culture that teaches us to make excuses for our failure. For example, ABC News explained away the sins of Atlanta educators:

Everyone here is pointing the finger at No Child Left Behind, the federal policy that made test scores king , closing schools with low scores, and rewarding schools with high ones. This former superintendent is accused of encouraging the cheating. She received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses tied to improved test scores. I'm personally friends with a good number of teachers in this community who tell me that they’re under tremendous pressure. They say that the same parents who are angry about all the cheating would be even more furious if the schools started reporting lower test scores…

Is such tremendous pressure an excuse? Granted, school systems can encourage or even, as in Atlanta, demand dishonesty upon threat of punishment. But we cannot blame a government programs for our sins, regardless of how misguided the programs may be.

Systems of education, along with our postmodern culture as a whole, scoff at the very idea of transcendent truth, goodness, beauty, or morality. Such toxic systems, when charged with the education, certainly impoverish the minds and imaginations of our youth. But the fact that so many people today in education or the media, are incapable of being honest, even when sins are appallingly clear. Should it surprise us that teachers, products of the system in which they propagate, end up unwilling or even incapable standing alone and against lies of a corrupt school system or even being honest about their own moral failures? As C.S. Lewis put it, "We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful

So what keeps us honest even in systems of dishonesty? What makes us men with chests who would never for an instant cooperate with such scandalous lies like those perpetrated by dozens or even hundreds of educators and school administrators in Atlanta? What makes teachers or anyone willing to lose their jobs rather than lie? I think that the safe place to begin is with the grace of God, for we are all prone to wander and lie, and the grace of God in Jesus enables us to be honest about things, including ourselves. That is the place to start as a teacher and human.

And perhaps a related starting point would be to stop talking of "systemic pressure" altogether, for can such powers actually force us, against our will, to be dishonest to our students and their parents. If I tried such an excuse during individual confession, my pastor would rightfully cut me off with the Law, probably with the Eighth Commandment. No, we ought not lie. Teachers are commanded to never bear false witness against their neighbors, our students to whom we owe our honest and prudent love as we serve them our vocations as teachers. It is much, much better, both in private confession or in the classroom, to remain grounded in reality by admitting with that furry cartoon character Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."