Future of Atlanta Public Schools

What lies in the future of Atlanta Public schools is to be determined however under the leadership of Brenda Muhammad’s and its new Superintendent Erroll Davis the consensus amongst the two  is they will do what’s best for children.
 Brenda Muhammad is the executive director of the Atlanta Victim Assistance, Inc. (AVA), an organization that advocates for the fundamental rights of victims and witnesses of crime with compassion, dignity and respect. AVA provides comprehensive services which remove barriers, strengthen victims and their families and foster a healthy transition from victim to survivor. Passionate about children and their educational needs, particularly those who are undeserved, Brenda currently serves as the School Board Representative for District 1. She has also served the Atlanta School Board in times past as president and vice president.

 Atlanta is facing a genuine crisis of character based on fear, intimidation and retaliation. In order to change the stigma that is plagued the school system certain questions need to be asked:

1. Why was the cheating scandal so exclusively pronounced for some children and not for others, splitting sharply along racial lines, and yet equal in its mistreatment of the poor and disenfranchised? Why were these children — mostly low income and African-American — so cavalierly denied access to America’s promise?

2. How did we — the elected officials, business leaders and the system itself — become complicit in, through our actions and in our silence, a deal with the devil that sold out a generation of children for the sake of the city’s image and the district’s “perception of success”?

3. Who, in the end, benefited from this collusion? Why did powerful people use their positions to punish those who dared to speak out? Why was legislation created to expressly limit the voice of the electorate, the people? What was behind the decision to place into state law a provision to restrict the powers of the board as outlined in the APS charter?

APS and the community at large will finally be forced to tackle topics and issues relevant to the future of public education. These topics encompass race relations, social class and political power.  Some people will proclaim that we must move forward now to put this episode behind us, but to honestly move forward you must recognize that there is a problem!
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/three-questions-for-atlanta-1012866.html

New Superintendent Chief Erroll Davis discusses the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal with Randy Kaye.

On July 1, 2011, Erroll B. Davis, Jr. began serving as superintendent for Atlanta Public Schools (APS). Prior to joining APS, Davis served as chancellor of the University System of Georgia, where he was responsible for the state’s 35 public colleges and universities, approximately 302,000 students, 40,200 faculty and staff, and an annual budget of approximately $6.3 billion.

Before leading the University System of Georgia, Davis served as chairman of the board of Alliant Energy Corporation – an energy holding company with $8.3 billion in total assets and annual operating revenues of $3 billion at that time – since 2000. Davis joined Alliant in 1998 as president and chief executive officer. He retired from his dual roles as president and CEO in July 2005, and retained the chairman’s post until his move to the University System.

Prior to the creation of Alliant Energy, Davis served as president and CEO of WPL Holdings, from 1990 to 1998. From 1978 to 1990, he rose through the senior management ranks at Wisconsin Power and Light Company, starting as vice president of finance and ending as CEO and president.

Davis’ higher-education experience includes serving as a member of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents from 1987 to 1994, and as a former chairman of the board of trustees of Carnegie Mellon University, of which he is a life member. He presently serves as a member of the Southern Regional Education Board and the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pa., Davis earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1965, and a M.B.A. in finance from the University of Chicago in 1967. He is a member of the board of directors of General Motors and Union Pacific Corp., and serves on the National Commission on Energy Policy along with numerous professional associations and civic organizations. He is a former member of the U.S. Olympic Committee Board (2004-2008).

Davis and his wife, Elaine, established the Davis Family Foundation, which makes annual grants to numerous students in need. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including recognition as one of Georgia Trend magazine’s “100 Most Influential Georgians” in 2008, the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s “100 Most Influential Atlantans” in 2006 and 2007, one of the “75 Most Powerful Blacks in Corporate America” in 2005 by Black Enterprise magazine, one of the “Top 50 Blacks in Technology” at the Black Engineer of the Year 2005 Awards Conference and the Carnegie-Mellon Alumni Distinguished Service Award in 2004. Davis also was named one of the “50 Most Powerful Black Executives in America” by Fortune magazine in 2002 and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business in 1993, the same year he received a Bronze Medal in Financial World’s “CEO of the Year” competition. In addition, Davis was honored by the magazine U.S. Black Engineer as the “Black Engineer of the Year” in 1988.
http://www.atlanta.k12.ga.us//Domain/52

Interim Davis Discusses Atlanta Public School Cheating Scandal

http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/12/interim-davis-discusses-atlanta-public-school-cheating-scandal/

TIMELINE OF EVENTS:

December 2008: An analysis by AJC reporter Heather Vogell and computer-assisted reporting specialist John Perry finds suspiciously high gains on state curriculum tests in schools in Atlanta and elsewhere in Georgia.

June-July 2009: A state examination uncovers unusual numbers of wrong-to-right erasures on summer retest answer sheets at four schools, including one in Atlanta. The state revokes the schools’ status as having met federal standards that year.

October 2009: The AJC publishes a new analysis of Criterion-Referenced Competency Test scores that shows 19 schools statewide with highly improbable gains or drops on the test. A dozen were in Atlanta.

February 2010: The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement analyzes 2009 CRCTs statewide, revealing suspicious erasure marks on thousands of tests from hundreds of classrooms. The state Board of Education orders 35 systems with suspicious erasures to investigate 191 schools statewide. Atlanta has the most schools flagged: 58.

March 2010: Atlanta school officials appoint a panel called the Blue Ribbon Commission to oversee the investigation. Many of the business and civic leaders on the panel have personal or professional ties to the district, raising questions about their independence.

August 2010: That commission’s consultants find serious problems at only 12 of the 58 Atlanta schools. Questions were immediately raised about the approach and thoroughness of the group’s final report.
Then-Gov. Sonny Perdue appoints special investigators Mike Bowers, a former attorney general, Bob Wilson, a former DeKalb County district attorney, and Richard Hyde, who investigates cases for the Judicial Qualifications Commission, to examine possible cheating in Atlanta.

October 2010: Fifty GBI agents begin questioning Atlanta teachers and administrators about falsifying test results.

December 2010: The AJC reports that school district officials, including Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall, carried out a broad campaign to suppress mounting allegations of cheating. For months, officials kept secret a consultant’s report that validated the AJC’s initial analysis of testing irregularities.
January and February 2011: AJC articles report that district officials are accused of retaliating against employees who reported testing irregularities.

June 2011: The AJC publishes a story saying a letter by a lawyer for a former employee alleged Hall had ordered subordinates to destroy or withhold from the media investigative documents detailing “systematic” cheating on standardized tests.

June 30, 2011: The three special investigators deliver their scathing report to Gov. Nathan Deal. He
releases it to the public on Tuesday.

Cited: www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/aps-timeline-the-story-1007315.html

Adequate Yearly Progress/Merit Pay

Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, is a measurement defined by the United States federal No Child Left Behind Act that allows the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school and school district in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized tests,initiated during George W. Bush administration's.

 Meeting or exceeding AYP + Merit Pay = Equals high stakes for teachers!

Ten states now use standarized testing scores as the main criterion in teacher evaluations. Other states reward high-scoring teachers with up to $25,000 bonuses – while low scores could result in principals losing their jobs or entire schools closing. Experts say it remains fairly easy for teachers and principals to get away with ethical lapses as cheating scandals continue to unfold nationwide!

Overview: Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal

Award-winning gains by Atlanta students were highly based on widespread cheating by 178 teachers and principals within the city of Atlanta.

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal,on a official report released from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed – in what's likely the biggest cheating scandal in US history.

Unfortunately this appears to be the largest of dozens of major cheating scandals, across the country. The allegations of this rampant problem for US education, which has routinely developed an ever-increasing dependence on standardized testing.

The report on the Atlanta Public Schools, indicates a "widespread" conspiracy by teachers, principals and administrators to fix answers on the standardized testing system know as the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT).The penalties of in subornation centered on punish whistle-blowers, and hide improprieties.

Dr. Beverly Hall Former 15th Superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools(APS):

Dr. Beverly L. Hall became the 15th appointed superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) on July 1, 1999. She promised to transform the district into a world-class school system, using nationally proven reform models, facility upgrades and business operations redesign. Under her leadership, standardized test scores have risen, aging facilities have been renovated and a new blueprint for business operations is being implemented. The district’s vision is that APS will be one of the nation’s highest performing urban school systems, where 90 percent of its ninth-graders graduate from high school in four years ready for success in college or career.

In addition to setting an aggressive reform agenda to accelerate student achievement, Dr. Hall has worked actively with the community to gain support for public education in the city of Atlanta. She has developed relationships with the business community, civic organizations, nonprofits and government leaders. As a result, APS has an extensive network of partners who donate time, resources and volunteers to help individual schools.

Prior to her post in Atlanta, Dr. Hall was state district superintendent of the Newark Public Schools, the largest school district in the state of  New Jersey. Before then, she served as deputy chancellor for instruction of the New York City Public Schools; superintendent, Community School District 27, Queens, New York; and principal, Junior High School 113 and Public School 282, Brooklyn, New York.

www.atlantapublicschools.us/.../lib/.../Superintendent_Hall_bio_052110.pdf

HISTORY OF APS

Established by ordinance of the Atlanta City Council, the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) opened schools in 1872 to educate the youth of Atlanta. These school openings brought the total number offering free education to the city’s “Negro” children to seven.

The primary objective of the district is focused on student success, and emphasizes preparation for the future through effective and innovative teaching while meeting the needs of the individual learner. APS encourages families, teachers, students and the community to participate in the educational process that offers rigorous academic growth, relevant to everyday life and strong relationships. 

 Atlanta Public Schools under the leadership of its 15th appointed superintendent, Dr. Beverly L. Hall. The number of Atlanta Public Schools learning facilities has grown from 7 to 99 state-of-the-art facilities -- 59 elementary schools, 16 middle schools, 14 high schools, seven charter schools, one adult learning center and two non-traditional programs.

The Atlanta Public Schools is distinguished as a leader in urban school reform. These reforms are centered on preparing students to become critical thinkers, leaders, and lifelong learners resulting in making meaningful contributions to society.