Lessons from Atlanta
By Cosmo Garvin
cosmog@newsreview.com
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The Atlanta public school system is feeling the consequences of the obsession with high-stakes educational testing.
There, some 178 teachers and principals and teachers, at 44 different schools, are accused of cheating to raise standardized test scores. And no wonder.
Educators told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of enormous pressure to raise scores, and a “culture of fear” where teachers whose students got low marks could be fired. Same for teachers who blew the whistle.
Can’t happen here? Well, at least a few of the major ingredients needed for a testing scandal are already on hand here in Sacramento.
Here, the daily newspaper has already called for evaluating Sacramento teachers based on student test scores. That echoes the philosophy of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and his (still) fiancée, education reform celebrity Michelle Rhee.
Rhee chose Sacramento for her StudentsFirst lobbying group, which has test-score based