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Barlow posted:If a system puts teacher in a situation where they can cheat or they will lose their jobs it hardly seems just to send them to prison for doing so. Cheating in such circumstances might even be seen as moral in a Les Misérables sort of way as it helps their students by preventing the school from closing. If we are going to talk about prison terms those who wrote No Child Left Behind deserve prison far more than some black teachers in an impoverished school because they created this entire situation. It's immoral for all the usual reasons criminal behavior is immoral: short-sightedness. Now the kids don't have their teacher, the teaching staff gets extra scrutiny and the school will probably close anyway.
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Apr 16, 2015 04:46
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SedanChair posted:It's immoral for all the usual reasons criminal behavior is immoral: short-sightedness. Now the kids don't have their teacher, the teaching staff gets extra scrutiny and the school will probably close anyway. This is a really bad argument. If what matters as to whether or not something is "moral" is short-term consequences then the people leading the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 were behaving immorally because it caused the police to beat a bunch of them. Those short-term effects only exist because of the law. If you believe that the specific law itself is immoral then breaking it to ensure the school remains open is the moral act. The "failing public school system" is a meme that is without basis in fact. The public school system appears to work fine in richer neighborhoods where it is funded properly. It shouldn't be shocking that it fails when it is not funded properly. School-funding should be equalized per child, and not doing so should be a violation of equal protection. ErIog fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 05:12
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Something to keep in mind is that the only thing unique about this case is that it was investigated. And it's heinously hosed up to make the impoverished students responsible for the fate of their schools, which is literally what this system does. I don't know if debating whether it's moral or immoral to cheat to prevent this is as useful as pushing back against the supposedly morality and effectiveness of the system.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:22
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Bel Shazar posted:Had they not acted the way they did, it is likely that people would have been fired and schools would have been closed. Now, people have been fired, sent to jail, and schools will likely be closed. They have made the outcomes worse. This is a kind of dumb and wrong way of looking at the situation. You're ignoring the fact that 1. they still caused positive change during the years before they were caught by keeping the school open and funded and 2. there are possibly/probably many more teachers who do this and manage to not get caught. Also, on a basic moral level it's wrong to punish them for this. While there may be a negative effect as a result of what the teachers did, they were effectively forced into committing their crimes by a terribly flawed (and, to be honest, flat out malicious/intentionally harmful) set of laws and standards. An extreme, but completely accurate and appropriate, analogy is to compare it with a father with a deathly ill daughter stealing life-saving medicine from a doctor that is only willing to sell it for more than he can afford. Oracle posted:Especially considering Georgia politicians who've been convicted of corruption have gotten less, which in my mind should be the only capital crime because gently caress you if you undermine the tenets of democracy. Ah, someone else who also believes this! White-collar crime and corruption (not just among politicians, but also other wealthy people with a lot of power, like bank executives) also causes far, far more harm than something like a single murder. Many of the people who helped contribute to the financial crisis caused far more harm to far more people than any violent criminal could ever dream of causing. Also, unlike many/most violent criminals, these people commit their crimes with full realization of what they're doing and without the excuse of being a poor person with an incredibly stressful life. What I'm not actually for the death penalty in those situations (since I'm against it on a basic moral level), I still definitely consider those sort of criminals one of the closest things to pure evil that exists and believe they should be given a far harsher punishment than the perpetrators of any other form of crime, including violent crimes like murder. While I can imagine a murderer being rehabilitated, I can't imagine the same for a serious white collar criminal. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 05:23
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I have more than a passing familiarity with the machinations of a large urban school district and as far as I can tell, only three of the educators sentenced were in a classroom teaching position. They received the lighter sentences and I can easily imagine scenarios where their cheating was understandable. The other seven, however, appear to be coordinators and assistant principals, and others even higher up the food chain. These are people who are paid substantial salaries and who should know loving better. There is no need to show them the benefit of the doubt that you would give to a haggard classroom teacher struggling in difficult conditions. They could easily be useless sleazebags promoting fraud to hide their incompetence.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:27
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ErIog posted:This is a really bad argument. If what matters as to whether or not something is "moral" is short-term consequences then the people leading the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 were behaving immorally because it caused the police to beat a bunch of them. Its not just the funding though. Kids coming in to kindergarten have gaps in their abilities between neighborhoods and growing up in poverty affects how the mind develops. These kids are more likely to experience hunger, stress, and trauma. Many schools, in order to accomplish their missions, are having to outreach into areas social services should be covering, like ensuring the kids are fed and clothed. As the article mentioned, getting parents in these communities to conferences is hard, when they aren't working multiple jobs to make a living, some of them come in obviously drunk and or high.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:39
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Mandy Thompson posted:some of them come in obviously drunk and or high. lol if you think that's just a working-class issue. 
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Apr 16, 2015 05:42
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ErIog posted:This is a really bad argument. If what matters as to whether or not something is "moral" is short-term consequences then the people leading the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 were behaving immorally because it caused the police to beat a bunch of them. Faking test results and getting caught is not exactly civil disobedience.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:46
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SedanChair posted:Faking test results and getting caught is not exactly civil disobedience. I'm not really trying to say that it is. I'm just pointing out that your logic of evaluating morality via short-term immediate consequences of an action is wrong. I agree that it would have been more moral to engage in the better civil disobedience of refusing to give the tests in the first place. Your logic might also consider even that better civil disobedience immoral, though.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:52
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SedanChair posted:Faking test results and getting caught is not exactly civil disobedience. It seems like you're mixing up what's pragmatic with what's morally right/wrong. What the teachers did, in light of them being caught, was probably* a bad decision with a bad result, but this was only the case because of the actions and decisions of other human beings (in creating/enforcing the NCLB and related laws in the first place). Either way, why in the world waste time and words condemning the teachers when you could be condemning the absurd and harmful laws and people who created them instead? *I don't know what the statistics are on what portion of cheaters like this are actually caught (if we even know or can know). If only a small portion of teachers who cheat in this manner are caught, it's possible that what the teachers did in this particular situation actually wasn't a bad decision and that there was a higher chance of a net positive result.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:54
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7 Years is beyond ridiculous. You don't even get that in College cheating scandals. But I don't see what is exactly illegal about what they did.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:01
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PerpetualSelf posted:But I don't see what is exactly illegal about what they did. Racketeering.The only persons charged with the 7 year jail sentence were high level administrators whose compensation was directly tied to school performance. Not that this implies they did it for the money, but it does mean the DA can then use RICO.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:08
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I don't understand what is difficult about this. The verdict is racist and vindictive, the law is stupid, and the teacher did the stupidest and most irresponsible thing he could have done. I don't consider civil disobedience during Jim Crow to have any relevance whatsoever to my reasoning. In the best possible outcome for this scenario, the truth would remain a secret. In cases of civil disobedience you want your actions and punishment to be as well-publicized as possible. There's just no comparing the moral culpability.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:11
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I don't really see how it's racist, agree that it is vindictive and unnecessary.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:12
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In 2011, a similar scandal happened in Georgia in Dougherty County - perhaps minus the racketeering - and pretty much zero happened, except a few firings. Their attorney believes it's because they handled it better. They didn't. Dougherty County schools has long had a reputation as being beyond awful. Albany is just fortunate enough to be well away from major media. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggests that no indictments were handed down in Albany because it didn't seem organized. Dougherty had 14 schools flagged in 2011, which is over half. RC and Moon Pie fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 06:31
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RC and Moon Pie posted:In 2011, a similar scandal happened in Georgia in Dougherty County - perhaps minus the racketeering - and pretty much zero happened, except a few firings. Once again, I ask, what was the race of the individuals involved in Atlanta
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Apr 16, 2015 06:36
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Seems like something Georgia would have had to come down on aggressively to avoid having trouble with the Department of Education. It sucks that NCLB is written in a way that incentivizes cheating in the very districts where authorities most need good data and where teachers arguably have the least ability to influence students' real outcomes.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:14
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The most amazing thing to me in this case is that the justice system reached for a racketeering charge; some of the people involved stood to receive bonuses of up to $2k for improving test performance, therefore they're obviously directly comparable to loving mobsters.My Imaginary GF posted:Once again, I ask, what was the race of the individuals involved in Atlanta I'm fairly sure they're all black. edit: oh yeah, and the shithead judge presiding over the case had the balls to say "I don't like sending people to prison, but..."
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Apr 16, 2015 14:38
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Heavy neutrino posted:The most amazing thing to me in this case is that the justice system reached for a racketeering charge; some of the people involved stood to receive bonuses of up to $2k for improving test performance, therefore they're obviously directly comparable to loving mobsters. Is there a reason I shouldn't believe that to be racketeering?
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Apr 16, 2015 14:39
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My Imaginary GF posted:Once again, I ask, what was the race of the individuals involved in Atlanta It is a point, but not in comparison to Dougherty County, who is even more minority-majority than Atlanta.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:41
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Baron Porkface posted:Is there a reason I shouldn't believe that to be racketeering? Depends on what you mean by the question. If you're asking whether their behavior contravenes RICO, it probably does. If you're asking whether it's part of the scope of RICO as declared when it was introduced in congress as acting for "the elimination of the infiltration of organized crime and racketeering into legitimate organizations operating in interstate commerce," well, it's just utterly silly. Maybe I'm just being cynical but my hunch is that if they were white and affluent, the charges would be different and much less severe.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:54
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SedanChair posted:This is so stupid. No matter the pressure folks, DON'T FIX FOR YOUR BOSSES. They will leave you twisting in the wind. Except if you actually read what the gently caress is going on, everybody snitched out their bosses, got immunity, and the bosses are getting the Racketeering charges?
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Apr 16, 2015 17:21
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anglachel posted:Except if you actually read what the gently caress is going on, everybody snitched out their bosses, got immunity, and the bosses are getting the Racketeering charges? And teachers are going to prison so what on earth can you be talking about?
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Apr 16, 2015 17:28
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Heavy neutrino posted:Maybe I'm just being cynical but my hunch is that if they were white and affluent, the charges would be different and much less severe. If they were white and affluent, they wouldn't be teaching in depressingly low income inner city public schools. Their students wouldn't have bigger problems to worry about than reading comprehension. NCLB and school funding is set up to gently caress with the poor, not the affluent. These teachers did what they thought was right, but they did something arguably illegal, at the very least unethical, to resist a system they were otherwise powerless to influence.
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Apr 16, 2015 17:29
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SedanChair posted:And teachers are going to prison so what on earth can you be talking about? To be more specific, two teachers are going to prison out of the 110 that were placed on administrative leave for cheating.
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Apr 16, 2015 19:27
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Sharkie posted:Something to keep in mind is that the only thing unique about this case is that it was investigated. Pretty much. Also NCLB/etc are programs specifically designed to destroy public schools
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Apr 16, 2015 19:38
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For those who keep asking, the faces of those convicted in this case were all posted on the AJC front page and they were mostly or all black. I live near Atlanta too and have been semi-following the story. RICO charges for the organizers was a bit much but it's depressing how little, if any, of the story has been about the forces that lead to the situation. I'd like to say the right thing to do as a teacher here would be to openly refuse to do the test - but think for a minute how that plays out in reality. You're basically saying, to all the parents, that their students are too dumb to pass. No matter how well you articulate the point, how much you intended to say something else, that is what they hear, and that's how the story plays out in the news. "Teacher refuses to test black students because he says they're too dumb to pass a test white students take, teacher also covers up own incompetence in teaching students". Even organizing a huge number of teachers to do so simultaneously will likely end the same way. It comes down to the same basic attitude toward education you see across almost all demographics in the US - that education exists as a means of increasing income potential, first and last, and the responsibility for education rests exclusively on the teacher, and not the parents who spend the other 16 hours a day with the kid and hold them accountable to the grades they need to get early on so they have the base to understand (or even care about) everything that they get taught later. I don't see a solution within this generation, just hoping for gradual shifts over time.
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Apr 16, 2015 21:23
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esquilax posted:To be more specific, two teachers are going to prison out of the 110 that were placed on administrative leave for cheating. It seems to have an understandable basis. The teacher that was witnessed erasing and changing answers got probation. The teacher who coached her class to cheat and to lie about it to any adults investigating got two years. The latter seems unambiguously bad for students, even if the testing regime is worthless.
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Apr 16, 2015 21:31
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Coldbird posted:I don't see a solution within this generation, just hoping for gradual shifts over time.
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Apr 16, 2015 21:36
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Not to interrupt the pity party but this generation is better than every generation before it. The world isn't ending no matter how much everyone wants it to. What the gently caress, we've been becoming worse off with every generation since about the 70's in just about every measurable category.
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Apr 16, 2015 21:44
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Baronjutter posted:What the gently caress, we've been becoming worse off with every generation since about the 70's in just about every measurable category.
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Apr 16, 2015 21:49
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Baronjutter posted:What the gently caress, we've been becoming worse off with every generation since about the 70's in just about every measurable category. Real wages up, life expectancy up... sure does suck, yep.
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Apr 16, 2015 21:49
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Mandy Thompson posted:Absolutely, you have people in bowties with the ideology of privatizing everything because everything works better for profit (because it is working so well for healthcare) who need to vilify teachers and teachers unions to do it. I know of a charter school where poo poo like this was happening as of last year.
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Apr 16, 2015 21:52
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If we're going to expand a thread about school cheating to the general state of society lets go with "some things have become better, some worse, and some changed so that they seem superficially better/worse"
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Apr 16, 2015 22:37
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The school system in my city does this, I figured it was just "a thing" that they all did. A month or so before the test they take all the worst students and in little groups start cramming with them, it's semi-mandatory depending on the student. Then right before the big standardized test, like a day or two before, there will be a "walk through quiz" which is open book and the questions are suspiciously exactly the same as the ones on the standardized test. If they don't keep the scores up then funding starts to dry up for various programs.
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Apr 16, 2015 22:40
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Zeitgueist posted:Pretty much. If we got rid of standardized tests, we could pretend that all schools are equal, and just let it be an open secret that some schools will destroy the future of a child. Inequality solved.
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Apr 17, 2015 01:04
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on the left posted:If we got rid of standardized tests, we could pretend that all schools are equal, and just let it be an open secret that some schools will destroy the future of a child. Inequality solved. If we make things more unequal we will eventually flip the dial over and it becomes equal.
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Apr 17, 2015 01:47
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anglachel posted:Except if you actually read what the gently caress is going on, everybody snitched out their bosses, got immunity, and the bosses are getting the Racketeering charges? Not immunity exactly, they had to admit guilt and I am pretty sure they lost their licenses. Some teachers wanted to fight it because they were put in a no win situation.
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Apr 17, 2015 04:14
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Zeitgueist posted:If we make things more unequal we will eventually flip the dial over and it becomes equal. So that's why they call it a "revolution"
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Apr 17, 2015 04:15
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VideoTapir posted:I know of a charter school where poo poo like this was happening as of last year. Yeah, propaganda like "Waiting for Superman" cherry pick EXTREMELY well funded charter schools used as a model for what all charter schools will be when in reality those schools are well funded by foundations specifically to make public schools look bad. Also I can tell you Charters and private schools throw problem students out all the time. "We can't fulfill his IEP" so the kid goes to the public school to tear poo poo up and create disruption.
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Apr 17, 2015 04:19
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