Test Cheating vs Charter School Fraud - Justice for All?

Risking Public Money: California Charter School Fraud | Center for Popular Democracy:

Deals offered to educators convicted in cheating scandal

Donald Bullock, left, former Usher-Collier Heights Elementary testing coordinator in Atlanta, reacts April 1, 2015, as a jury finds him guilty in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial. (Photo: Kent D. Johnson, AP)

ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has offered convicted Atlanta Public Schools educators last-minute deals that would keep them out of prison.

The sentencing hearing for 10 of 11 convictedAtlanta Public Schools educators is happening now. The educators have been in jail since they were convicted on racketeering charges April 1.

One witness, Cynthia May, called defendant Sharon Davis Williams, found guilty of racketeering but not guilty of two counts of false statements, a woman with a strong faith in God. May pleaded with the judge to show mercy when she is sentenced.

Relatives of other former educators also are testifying.

USA TODAY

11 Atlanta educators convicted in cheating scandal

Under the deal, teachers would avoid prison and instead would serve home confinement, a lawyer for one defendants said. They would waive their right to appeal, apologize and pay a fine, believed to be around $5,000. They would not be considered first-time offenders.

Convicted administrators were offered a similar deal, but they were not offered home confinement. Instead, they would serve a year in jail, rather than prison.

Donald Bullock, left, former Usher-Collier Heights Elementary testing coordinator in Atlanta, reacts April 1, 2015, as a jury finds him guilty in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial. (Photo: Kent D. Johnson, AP)

It's not yet known if Judge Jerry Baxter of Fulton County Superior Court has approved the deal, or whether any of the defendants plan to accept them.

Community activists have been pushing for leniency. They've requested no jail time and an alternative sentence.

Baxter has the authority to sentence them to probation or prison. The maximum penalty on the racketeering charge is 20 years, and many educators were convicted of multiple charges.

One defendant, who was pregnant when she was convicted, will be sentenced later. One of the 12 defendants was acquitted of all charges.

The case is one of the nation's largest cheating scandals of its kind.

The former educators were accused of falsifying test results to collect bonuses or keep their jobs in Atlanta Public Schools. In all, 35 educators were indicted in 2013 on charges including racketeering, making false statements and theft. Many pleaded guilty and some testified at the trial.

Philip Holloway, a criminal defense lawyer in Marietta, Ga. and WXIA-TV's legal analyst, said the deal benefits all sides.

"Any post-trial deal makes great sense because it would save taxpayers countless thousands of dollars," Holloway said. "With a trial that complicated and lengthy, there's a good chance that there may be reversible error, and it would be in the state's interest to eliminate the risk of having some or all of the convictions overturned. It would also be in the interests of the defendants because it takes the 'unknown' out of the equation."

USA TODAY

Ex-Atlanta school chief, charged in cheating case, dies

A state investigation found that as far back as 2005, educators fed answers to students or erased and changed answers on tests after they were turned in. Evidence of cheating was found in 44 schools with nearly 180 educators involved, and teachers who tried to report it were threatened with retaliation.

Former Atlanta School Superintendent Beverly Hall was among those charged but never went to trial, saying she was too sick. She died a month ago of breast cancer.

Hall insisted she was innocent. But educators said she was among higher-ups pressuring them to inflate test scores to show gains in achievement and meet federal benchmarks that would mean extra funding.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Click here to Go to GEORGIA CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

State audit finds evidence of fraud, conflicts of interest by Oakland charter school operator

 Ben Chavis, founder of the American Indian Public Charter School, listens to the deliberations of the Oakland Unified School District Board, as they reached a decision to renew the school's charter, on conditions, for another two years, at the conclusion of a special meeting Wednesday, April 4, 2012 in Oakland, Calif. Chavis had been accused of financial malfeasance and the school of having teachers without proper credentials. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff Archives)

State audit finds evidence of fraud, conflicts of interest by Oakland charter school operator

Risking Public Money: California Charter School Fraud

Mar 19, 2015

Executive Summary

In 1992, California became the second state in the nation to pass legislation authorizing the creation of charter schools. Since the law’s passage, which originally authorized 100 charter schools, the number of charter schools in California has grown rapidly. Today, California is home to the largest number of charter schools in the country, with over 1100 schools providing instruction to over half a million students. In the 2013-14 school year, California charter schools received more than $3 billion in public funding.

Download the full report here.

Despite the tremendous investment of public dollars and the size of its charter school population, California has failed to implement a system that proactively monitors charters for fraud, waste and mismanagement. While charter schools are subject to significant reporting requirements and monitoring by oversight bodies, including chartering entities, county superintendents and the State Controller, no oversight body regularly conducts audits.

In 2006, California took a step in the right direction by amending the Charter Schools Act to permit county superintendents who suspect fraud or mismanagement at charter schools to request an “extraordinary audit” from the Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a state agency charged with helping local educational agencies fulfill their financial and management responsibilities. Although FCMAT only conducts an audit when requested to do so, its findings reveal internal control deficiencies and various forms of mismanagement ranging in severity and form—from inappropriate self-dealing by charter school staff to the spending of thousands of public dollars without documentation. Even after 2006, charter schools in California continue to operate year in and year out without regulator-level audits that are designed specifically to determine whether the public dollars funding these privately managed schools are being spent properly. This lack of appropriate government audits is a problem, especially given the findings of FCMAT’s audits.

The number of instances of serious fraud uncovered by whistleblowers and the FCMAT suggests that the fraud problem is likely not isolated to the charter operators that have been caught. In fact, California’s charter oversight system’s deficiencies suggest that the $81,400,000 in fraud, waste and abuse by charter operators that has been uncovered to date is likely just the tip of the iceberg. Based on conservative estimates, California stands to lose more than $100 million to charter school fraud in 2015. The vast majority of this fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because California lacks the oversight necessary to identify the fraud. In this report we describe three fundamental flaws with California’s oversight of charter schools:

• Oversight depends heavily on self-reporting by charter schools or by whistleblowers. California’s oversight agencies rely almost entirely on audits paid for by charter operators and complaints from whistleblowers. Both methods are important to uncover fraud; however,neither is a systematic approach to fraud detection, nor are they effective in fraud prevention.
• General auditing techniques alone do not uncover fraud. The audits commissioned by the charter schools use general auditing techniques rather than techniques specifically designedto detect and uncover fraud. The current processes may expose inaccuracies or inefficiencies; however, without audits targeted at uncovering financial fraud, state and local agencies willrarely be able to detect fraud without a whistleblower.
• Oversight bodies lack adequate staffing to detect and eliminate fraud. In California, the vast majority of charter schools are authorized by local school districts that lack adequate staffing to monitor charter schools and ferret out fraud. Staff members who are responsible for oversight often juggle competing obligations that make it difficult to focus on oversight and identify signs of potential fraud and abuse.

To address these serious deficiencies in California’s system, we recommend the following reforms:

Mandate Audits Designed to Detect and Prevent Fraud

• Charter schools should be required to institute an internal fraud risk management program, including an annual fraud risk assessment.
• Charter schools should be required to commission an annual audit of internal controls over financial reporting that is integrated with the audit of financial statements charter schools currently commission. These integrated audits should require auditors to provide an opinion on the quality of internal controls and financial statements.
• Oversight agencies, such as the State Comptroller’s Office and Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a state agency, should conduct audits on charter schools once every three years.
• Auditing teams should include members certified in Financial Forensics trained to detect fraud.

Increase Transparency & Accountability

• Oversight agencies should create a system to categorize and rank charter audits by level of fraud risk they pose to facilitate public engagement.
• Oversight agencies should post the findings of their annual internal assessments of fraud risk on their websites.
• Oversight agencies should determine what steps charter school nonprofit governing boards and executives have taken to guard against fraud over the past 10 years and issue a report to the public detailing theirs findings and recommendations.
• Charter school authorizers should take fraud risk assessments into account when evaluating whether to renew a school’s charter.
• Until the state implements the oversight mechanisms described above, authorizers should only approve new charters that commit to the fraud controls recommended above.

Given the rapid and continuing expansion of the charter school industry and the tremendous investment of public dollars, California must act now to reform its oversight system. Without reform, California stands to lose millions of dollars as a result of charter school fraud, waste, and mismanagement.

Download the full report here.

Campaigns: 

Holding Charter Schools Accountable

Risking Public Money: California Charter School Fraud | Center for Popular Democracy:

CURMUDGUCATION: Arne's New History of CCSS on MSNBC

CURMUDGUCATION: Arne's New History of CCSS on MSNBC:

Arne's New History of CCSS on MSNBC

 Arne Duncan sat down with Chris Hayes on MSNBC to explain why folks are just so all-fired fire-up about Common Core. Let's see what the current story is.


Hayes starts by saying that CCSS has trouble because it has been conflated with high stakes testing which was linked to all sorts of stuff because of NCLB. This skips past the Obama/Duncan administration's role in bolting high stakes testing to everything from school evaluation to teacher evaluation, but okay. We're only seven seconds in.

Hayes leads with a fun question-- what, if anything, has been achieved in the years since NCLB was signed by Bush?

Duncan: Fixing achievement gaps is the big achievement, but NCLB "has been broken for a while" (which raises the question-- was it ever not broken) and Congress also sucks. So the administration "partnered with states" to provide waivers which allowed them to part ways with the most onerous parts of the law. Which begs a huge question-- outside of the absurd 100% above average test scores requirement, was there any part of NCLB that wasn't given a huge shot of steroids under waivers? Sadly, Hayes is not going to ask that question.

Hayes: My reading of the data (and one of the problems is that there's so much data you can read anything) is that the testing gap (and I love him just a little for calling it a testing gap and not an achievement gap) hasn't really narrowed at all, "certainly not the narrowing that we were promised back in 2001."

Duncan: We have a long way to go. (Which is true in the same way that I have a long way to go to get to Chicago because I'm still sitting in my office at home.) Anyway, we've seen gains over the past twenty-thirty years, but it's not fast enough. So this law has to be about equity. So put politics aside (says the guy who's got no political juice left in his thermos). This law also has to be about early childhood education, because that will level the playing field. Also, we have to bring more dollars to disadvantaged communities. The children who need the most get the least, says the man whose administration likes to frame all aid and grant proposals as competitions. But he thinks maybe Congress can fix inequity.

Hayes: I want to talk about Common Core for a second. (And he smiles a little smile, like "let's do this silly thing, I'm going to ask a question, you're going to sling baloney, it'll be fun"). Are you surprised by how controversial Common Core (which he characterizes as "kind of an obscure issue in certain ways") has become?

Duncan: "It's actually very simple. The goal's to have high standards." So, kids, the whole national consistency issue, the whole being able to compare kids in Idaho and Maine, the whole keeping everyone on the same page so mobile students will never get lost-- that's no longer the point.

Duncan goes on to display how much he doesn't understand about how this works. He talks about how, under NCLB, too many states dummied down standards. He says this was "to make politicians look good." I'd be more inclined to say "to avoid punitive consequences for their schools." If Arne had reached my conclusion (and really, given that he was in charge of a large school district at the time, it's kind of amazing that he didn't reach my conclusion) then perhaps he wouldn't have figured that the solution was to make the consequences of high stakes testing even more punitive than before.

Insert story here of how schools lied to students about how ready they were for college. So brave governors decided to stop lying to children. "Let's have true college and career ready standards for every single child." As always I wonder why reaching that conclusion leads to a next step where one says, "Let's hire a couple of guys who have no real education experience, either pedagogical or developmental, and have them whip something up."

Hayes: When you say it like that, it sounds swell. But instead this is very polarizing. Arne looks dumbfounded like "I know, right, dude? What is up with these crazy people?" and Hayes continues to point out that Jeb Bush is going to have to spend a bunch of time in Iowa confronting people (unless his huge ad buy actually helps and....nahh).

Duncan: It's only polarizing to politicians. If you talk to parents, to real parents--

And Hayes cuts him off to say "I disagree. I strongly disagree" which is an appropriate response to Arne's deep-fried fluffernuttery. It's ironic. Duncan is all "let's keep politics out of this" and yet the whole "this is polticians raising a stink and real parents just love it" is, of course, pure political spin.

Duncan soldiers on. If you ask parents if they want their children to really be college and career ready, do you want them to be able to write well, think critically, have a real chance at life, parents think that's just swell.

Hayes: That's right. But if you go in and say Common Core-- and he cuts to specific examples all across the country of kids coming home with dumb crap or taking a terrible test and the source of their kid's anxiety is Common Core. Common Core has become the name for all testing related stress.

And I'm going to interrupt to say, yes, that's right, because at this point "Common Core" is a deeply meaningless term. Duncan's point is also deeply dumb, because it assumes the sale. Sure parents CURMUDGUCATION: Arne's New History of CCSS on MSNBC:

Why Populist Progressives Must Embrace the Education Spring | National Education Policy Center

Campaign for America’s Future: Why Populist Progressives Must Embrace the Education Spring | National Education Policy Center:

Campaign for America’s Future: Why Populist Progressives Must Embrace the Education Spring

Is there really “a populist energy building in America, and beginning to drive the debate in the Democratic Party,” as my colleague Robert Borosage recently wrote?

If your inclination is to answer that question, “Yes,” the evidence you’re most apt to cite is the popularity of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and her crusade against Wall Street dominance of public policy. And you’re apt to point to, as Borosage does, activism like the “Fight for 15” campaign, demanding a $15 an hour minimum wage and union representation in the workplace.

Other issues that often make the checklist for progressive activism are debt-free higher education, Social Security expansion, clean-energy, and affordable healthcare.

Does all this grassroots activism matter at the ballot box?

Borosage contends it does, and points to, among other evidence, the recent Chicago mayoral election where Democratic incumbent Rahm Emanuel, “tagged as the mayor of the 1 percent,” went from an “expected coronation” to “an unprecedented runoff against a populist challenger.”

Borosage is not the only person making this argument.

David Sirota, writing for Salon, argues that Emanuel’s surprisingly contentious reelection is evidence that “the old corporate Democratic assumption” is being challenged by “a massive grassroots organizing campaign” opposing Wall Street.

The fact Emanuel won doesn’t refute the argument. As another of my colleagues, Richard Eskow, observes, “The fact that Emanuel was forced into Chicago’s first mayoral runoff is itself a sign of vulnerability for corporate-friendly politicians.”

So, Eskow asks, “Why was a powerful mayor forced into a runoff in a city known for patronage and machine politics, despite the backing of wealthy interests and national party leaders?”

Why indeed.

Eskow cites a number of reasons for Emanuel’s vulnerability, including “privatization of many government functions” and his ties to Wall Street “investors and other financial interests.”

But if you want to get more specific, what likely animated voters’ desire to oust Emanuel was his attacks on public schools and school teachers. That’s the argument John Nichols, writing for The Nation, makes. “The fact that there is a race at all,” he contends, “owes everything to the evolving debate over education policy.”

Nichols argues, “Emanuel would not have faced serious competition had he not ordered the closing of dozens of neighborhood schools, as part of an ongoing fight with public-education advocates and the Chicago Teachers Union.”

In fact, the leader of the teachers’ union, Karen Lewis, was considered to be a formidable opponent for Emanuel until she was sidelined for health reasons.

Although Nichols praises Emanuel’s eventual opponent, Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, for being “an outspoken champion of teachers and neighborhood schools,” Garcia was likely not outspoken enough to press his advantage on the education issue.

That’s the conclusion that Black Agenda Report’s Bruce Dixon makes. In an interview with the senior editor for The Real News, Paul Jay, Dixon argues, Garcia likely fell short of victory because “he couldn’t denounce the mayor’s educational policies” with the fervor and authenticity that Karen Lewis would have done.

Anger at the mayor’s public education policies was at its height in 2012, when public school teachers went on strike to defy the mayor’s agenda of cutting school budgets, expanding class sizes, increasing the number of charter schools while closing neighborhood schools, and requiring teachers to work longer hours for the same pay.

As I observed in 2013, the Chicago teachers’ strike became a symbol, as well as a catalyst for other actions, for a national movement – an Education Spring – that has since swept the country and now defines the political debate in education policy.

That national movement continues to coalesce around four common grievances voters have with public school policy, which include: resource deprivation, inequity of funding, public disempowerment in the system, and the widespread perception that governing policies are driven by corruption.

Dixon’s contention is that Garcia didn’t fare as well with African-American voters – a significant part of the Chicago electorate– because he failed to connect his candidacy to that national movement and its anger with “federal education policy that’s Campaign for America’s Future: Why Populist Progressives Must Embrace the Education Spring | National Education Policy Center:

Students Can’t Hide From Common Core No Matter What School they Attend:

Students Can’t Hide From Common Core No Matter What School they Attend

APRIL 13, 2015 BY NANCY BAILEY LEAVE A COMMENT

The more I read about Common Core and education reform, the more I am convinced that one of the most important issues is that all students will have to be instructed with these standards if they choose to attend college.

A misconception exists about students in private or parochial schools being lucky that they won’t have to mess with the Common Core. But this is a myth, unless these schools will be willing to take criticism when their seniors wind up not answering correctly on the SAT/ACT tests to get into their dream colleges.

I’m not saying students will be better prepared for college, but they will have to learn what is on the test in order to get there.

Still, many are under the assumption that the Common Core State Standards are only found in  public schools!

Even Nancie Atwell, who recently won an award for teaching, and whose book In The Middle is seen as a great reading resource for teachers, implied that teachers should only go into teaching if they go into the private sector. She said, Public school teachers are so constrained right now by the Common Core Standards and the tests that are developed to monitor what teachers are doing with them. It’s a movement that’s turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners. She rightly criticized the Common Core.

But as much as Nancie, and anyone else running a private or parochial school, might dislike the Common Core, they will also be hamstrung to teach to the standards! Homeschooled students are not exempt either if they want to attend college.

The tie that binds all schools together is the SAT/ACT tests which are aligned to the Common Core State Standards. The Advanced Placement (AP) tests and even the General Education Development (GED) tests are aligned to Common Core too!

David Coleman who helped write the English/Language Arts part of the Common Core, is now in President of the College Board. He is aligning SAT HERE.  The ACT is also aligned HERE. 

Here is a side-by-side description from the College Board comparing the SAT and Common Core.

Here are the comments by Dr. Sandra Stotsky who was on the Common Core Validation Committee but who now argues against it, said:Students Can’t Hide From Common Core No Matter What School they Attend:

Hillary Clinton On Education: 8 Things The Presidential Candidate Wants You To Know - Forbes

Hillary Clinton On Education: 8 Things The Presidential Candidate Wants You To Know - Forbes:

Hillary Clinton On Education: 8 Things The Presidential Candidate Wants You To Know

 Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton announces her long-anticipated bid for the 2016 presidential nomination today. During her four years as Secretary of State and the last two years giving speeches and promoting her memoir, “Hard Choices,” she has said little about education issues.

These remarks come from then-New York Senator Clinton’s appearance at the April 2007 convention of NYSUT, the federation of New York teachers’ unions, during her last presidential campaign. Back then there was no Common Core curriculum debate and she never uses the phrase “school choice” in her speech. She does mention that it “takes a village” to educate a child. A lot has changed since that event eight years ago when she called newly elected New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was ousted from office less than a year later, “a leader in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.” We’ll see if her other views have evolved:

Vouchers:

I’ll tell you why I won’t support vouchers. Number one, I don’t think they’re constitutional. But number two, I don’t see how you would implement them without having a lot of people get vouchers for schools that would be teaching things antithetical to American values.

Supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton get ready in Manhattan on Saturday for the upcoming announcement of her run for president. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Charter schools:

I actually do believe in charter schools.

Teacher pay:

Not only don’t we pay teachers what they deserve to be paid, in other countries that have better test scores than ours–you hear about that all the time–actually teachers get paid much more on an even standard with professionals who are engineers and in other walks of life.

We have to face the fact that we have a lot of people who come out of school burdened with student loans and decide they can’t go into teaching, so we lose a lot of good young people.

How to spend tax money:

Let’s put money into what we know does work, like smaller class sizes, higher teacher pay and better curriculum.

Let’s use interventions that work. That means extended learning time, it means summer school, it means stronger parental involvement from the very beginning of a child’s schooling.

Character and behavior education:

I believe it is time we get back to teaching discipline, self-control, patience, punctuality. The biggest complaint that I hear from employers is that young people who show up for jobs don’t have those habits. They don’t get there on time. They don’t know how to conduct themselves appropriately.

There are wonderful pictures in museums in New York that I’ve seen where at the turn of the last century there were all the immigrants who were coming into New York and the schools were basically the place where kids were socialized. Where they were given the chance to learn how to fit in and behave and conduct themselves. And I think we’re leaving too many kids to raise themselves. They don’t have adult supervision and responsible mentoring in the way that every child needs. And we all know that education starts at home. And if we don’t have parents who appreciate that, it’s very hard for the schools and the teachers to make up that deficit… It does take a village to raise and teach a child.

Public schools:

The public school system has been, I believe, second to the Constitution, the most important institution in making America the great country that we have been over the last 200 plus years…

Public education must be defended, yes it has to be modernized but never doubt for a minute if we turned our back on public education we would be turning our back on America. I will not let that happen.

Universal preschool:

I want to start by making preschool available to all the children who need it in order to prepare them to be successful at school.

For every dollar invested you get a seven dollar return. Children stay in school, their behavior is better and their academic performance improves over what it would have been without preschool.

Personal background:

Clinton, 67, graduated near the top of her class at Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, in 1965. She went on to graduate with a degree in political science fromWellesley College, a women’s school in Massachusetts, in 1969. She earned her law degree at Yale Law School, where she met her future husband, President Bill Clinton, who had attended Georgetown University. Their daughter, Chelsea, went to Sidwell Friends School in Washington (the same school the Obama daughters attend). Chelsea has a history degree from Stanford University, a master’s degree and doctorate in international relations from Oxford University in England, and a master’s in public health from Columbia University.Hillary Clinton On Education: 8 Things The Presidential Candidate Wants You To Know - Forbes: