Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 09:45     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:We always say that FARM students are the down fall of certain schools. Yet I think financially strapped teachers and principals can bring down schools faster. Incentives and integrity are not at the opposite ends of the education spectrum. Closing the education gap and the financial divide is too tempting for the most honest people.


You can't even begin to teach if you don't have the resources, and a big part of the reason teachers are financially strapped is because of how central office apportions the resources. The Frontline documentary showed that Rhee discovered 100+ lazy, bad-attitude central office staff just showing up for a paycheck and not doing their job, hanging on to many years worth of textbooks and supplies that were not being distributed to where they were needed, and took swift action to fix that. There has been corruption going back for decades at DCPS, Rhee only scratched the surface, but at least she tried - but doing so meant threatening the meal ticket of hundreds of people who were just showing up for the paycheck, and that obviously created some backlash.


Why should it? Oh that's right... they were ENTITLED to a paycheck. The sense of entitlement needs to be addressed.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 09:41     Subject: Re:Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
I liked that Rhee took on the teachers' union. I don't understand why public school teachers have tenure. Granted I only taught at the college level (untenured) but tenure at the college level was established to protect controversial research. Also most colleges and universities are doing away with tenure. Why should public school teachers NOT be fired. I totally think DCPS needs a MASSIVE shake up. There are some terrible teachers in it. Instead of cheating on standardize tests, why don't they actually teach their students.

80% of the 5th grade could not read at a proficient level, but passed the DC-CAS the year before. We had students who were expelled from the charter schools show up days before the CAS. Some of them were expelled for truancy. HR was a mess. The 5th graders had no recess. It was all really sad. All this, with being told, almost daily, that we could lose our jobs at any time. Thus, we could not just stop and go back to try to teach 1st grade reading to our students who needed the instruction so badly.


This is appalling. No one ever did take the time to go back and teach these kids who were being cheated out of learning to read! Disgusting!

Another PP wanted to extend naps into Pre-K?! Put your child to bed at a decent hour so they are ready to learn! Talk about structuring schools for the lowest common denominator. Is that what everyone wants?

Clearly DCPS is a mess. It was a mess before Rhee. It is a mess under Henderson. Until someone addresses the BASIC problems with lack of quality teaching and administration, it will be a mess. There are plenty of other schools who manage to teach and educate low (or no) income students. Using the kids' SES as an excuse is not addressing the other issues, which the former teacher posted regarding teachers leaving during the day or sleeping in class. Rhee was neither good nor bad for DCPS, it is still very much status quo.
jsteele
Post 01/10/2013 09:33     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:
jsteele wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It was all about the test scores, Rhee used secret mind control and brain washing techniques to turn hundreds and hundreds of honest and upstanding teachers and administrators into her legion of evil minions to do her bidding to fake the results and even now, years after she's gone, she still controls them through threat of Omerta and her roving bands of secret death squads that patrol all the schools. And, she did all that in just three short years.

Uh huh.


What is your explanation for the abnormally high number of wrong-to-right erasures in schools which showed significant test score gains, but then showed significant test score losses when test security was increased?

Do you find that something to ridicule? Is it your position that we should stick our fingers in our ears and chant, "la, la, la"?

How can you support test scores as the basis for judging success while simultaneously joking about concern that the test scores might not be legitimate? Don't you realize that good teachers who are expected to improve upon artificially-inflated scores of their incoming students suffer from this while their cheating colleages prosper? Do you have a joke about that as well? Because that doesn't seem very funny to me.



RHEE is the one who raised security, so obviously she was concerned about eliminating cheating and concerned about the process being more controlled and HONEST. I'm not sure who you are talking about, where it comes to "joking about test scores not being legitimate" - I don't see that in PP's post. You seen to be getting posters mixed up - and your own confusion is no viable basis for attempting to debunk other posters.


1) Rhee only raised security after the USA Today report exposed the high number of wrong-to-right erasures. She dragged her feet on investigating possible cheating and as recently as two days ago denied that there was significant cheating. She continues to assert that the test score gains were legitimate and not influenced by wrong-to-right erasures.

2) You say you are not sure about "joking about test scores not being legitimate" -- a quote that you will not find in my post. Since I didn't write what you are quoting, I am not surprised that you are confused. Please refer to my actual post, not your revision of it. I mentioned "joking about concern that the test scores might not be legitimate", something the post that I quoted does throughout its entirety.

3) I was responding to one specific poster whose post I quoted. I assure you that any confusion is entirely on your part.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 09:27     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:At this point I'm pretty strongly suspecting the poster(s) most fervently criticizing Rhee are probably among the ones that she wanted fired for underperforming.


At this point I'm pretty strongly suspecting the poster most fervently criticizing the people who criticize Rhee are probably DCPS employees trying to discredit any criticism of Rhee.



I was never a DCPS teacher. Heck, I was never a teacher anywhere. I am a parent who had a child in a DCPS under Rhee. I jumped ship and transferred my child immediately upon given a better opportunity. I doubt that there is anything that would allow my child to practiced on in DCPS again.

When Rhee decided to configure DC's elementary from a PS-8, and remove Spanish language instruction, that was the last time I tried to keep my middle class kid in a failing school system. The school was not equipped for middle school children. The school did not have science labs (I dissected frogs in the 7th and 8th grade student). The school did not have a gym. The school did not offer foreign language. The school did not have a field. The school was an elementary school with a child's playground.

In addition to poor planning of school facilities, Rhee decided to fire 242 teachers in September. The classes became crowded as classes were merged. BTW, the improper firing of those teachers, regardless of their capabilites violated labor practices. There was a right way and a wrong way. The tax-payers ended up paying back-pay to many of those teachers. Rhee should have listened to her lawyers. So, unless you actually had some stake (children) in the DCPS under Rhee, you need to keep your trap closed.

My family had options. I felt for those families that did not have options. And, I really felt for the bright kids my child left behind because they did not have parents savvy enough to poke around for better educational options.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 09:08     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It was all about the test scores, Rhee used secret mind control and brain washing techniques to turn hundreds and hundreds of honest and upstanding teachers and administrators into her legion of evil minions to do her bidding to fake the results and even now, years after she's gone, she still controls them through threat of Omerta and her roving bands of secret death squads that patrol all the schools. And, she did all that in just three short years.

Uh huh.


No, she used money as an incentive. Powerful enough for you?


Nothing wrong with financial incentives in and of themselves. The problem was the widespread cultural problems, wherein hundreds of teachers and administrators took it upon themselves to immediately leap to cheating rather than actually trying to do it the right way. The previous posters testimonial makes it clear that the deep-seated culture of corruption throughout DCPS that makes this possible. And here you are, basically DEFENDING that status quo, which had nothing to do with Rhee.


Actually this is what most upsets me. Rhee, when faced with obvious cases of cheating I.e. test scores more than doubling in one year, basically jumped feet first into the culture if corruption by rewarding and highlighting these schools and principals. Faced with evidence of high erasure rates SHE set up bogus investigations. With all of her rhetoric and bluster, her hypocrisy when faced with facts that would make her reforms seem not as great reveals a true coward. And it is not a victimless kind of hypocrisy. While those cheating principal, teachers and schools were being celebrated, what do you think the effect was on the people and students working so hard to make smaller, but real, gains. What about the students in all those schools?
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 08:56     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
7:59, from talking to some of the teachers I know, those stories are far from unique or unusual, the DC school system is chock full of horror stories just like that.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 08:54     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:We always say that FARM students are the down fall of certain schools. Yet I think financially strapped teachers and principals can bring down schools faster. Incentives and integrity are not at the opposite ends of the education spectrum. Closing the education gap and the financial divide is too tempting for the most honest people.


You can't even begin to teach if you don't have the resources, and a big part of the reason teachers are financially strapped is because of how central office apportions the resources. The Frontline documentary showed that Rhee discovered 100+ lazy, bad-attitude central office staff just showing up for a paycheck and not doing their job, hanging on to many years worth of textbooks and supplies that were not being distributed to where they were needed, and took swift action to fix that. There has been corruption going back for decades at DCPS, Rhee only scratched the surface, but at least she tried - but doing so meant threatening the meal ticket of hundreds of people who were just showing up for the paycheck, and that obviously created some backlash.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 08:45     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
jsteele wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It was all about the test scores, Rhee used secret mind control and brain washing techniques to turn hundreds and hundreds of honest and upstanding teachers and administrators into her legion of evil minions to do her bidding to fake the results and even now, years after she's gone, she still controls them through threat of Omerta and her roving bands of secret death squads that patrol all the schools. And, she did all that in just three short years.

Uh huh.


What is your explanation for the abnormally high number of wrong-to-right erasures in schools which showed significant test score gains, but then showed significant test score losses when test security was increased?

Do you find that something to ridicule? Is it your position that we should stick our fingers in our ears and chant, "la, la, la"?

How can you support test scores as the basis for judging success while simultaneously joking about concern that the test scores might not be legitimate? Don't you realize that good teachers who are expected to improve upon artificially-inflated scores of their incoming students suffer from this while their cheating colleages prosper? Do you have a joke about that as well? Because that doesn't seem very funny to me.



RHEE is the one who raised security, so obviously she was concerned about eliminating cheating and concerned about the process being more controlled and HONEST. I'm not sure who you are talking about, where it comes to "joking about test scores not being legitimate" - I don't see that in PP's post. You seen to be getting posters mixed up - and your own confusion is no viable basis for attempting to debunk other posters.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 07:59     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:I was teacher in a low performing DCPS school for several years prior to Rhee. Had she come into position while I was there I might have been able to stay. The culture of dysfunction is deeply ingrained. Trying to buck it at any level is suicidal. Teachers who sleep on the job, leave early every day, don't teach ONE. SINGLE. BIT. of the curriculum, teachers who sleep with students... my stories could go on and on. One biology teacher refused to teach the class and instead preached Christianity the entire year. No biology.
I never once had enough text books.
I bought ALL of my own chemistry supplies.
I was out sick with the flu for a couple of days and no sub ever covered my classes- they just roamed the halls.
The librarian locked the library and would only allow teachers she liked to come in and socialize and eat lunch. Students were not allowed in there.
The counselors routinely lost students' transcripts. I was contacted for 2 years after I left to recreate grades for kids.
The athletic director changed a failing student's grade so she could play basketball.
We had a homeless kid live in the stockroom for a month of two because he broke in every night.
We had a couple of building service personnel who pimped out a couple of girls in the chorus room in the evenings and weekends.
The principal embezzled nearly a hundred thousand dollars from a technology grant from AOL, held a gospel concert that lost nearly all the money and NOTHING happened to him- even after being investigated and the involvement of the mayor.

I have hundreds of other stories of the culture of dysfunction. I was told early on when I went to that school that I landed the perfect job where everyone wants to end up because it is the easiest place to ride out your last years teaching. And so it was for 2/3 of the building. The rest of us got so burnt out from picking up the pieces that we couldn't last for more than 5 or 6 years. It would have been nice to have someone, ANYONE look at the school and notice just how bad and useless most of the adults were in that building.



If this is true (and I have no axe to grind, nor reason to believe you are lying) I think you should write them all down. You have a book of stories in your experience, there are lots of people who would or should read it. To be fair, you would need to include examples of the administration's failings, not just the teachers. Also, it would only be fair to include some examples of the family disfunctionalities that are involved. Tell your story. I'm not kidding.
jsteele
Post 01/10/2013 07:20     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:It was all about the test scores, Rhee used secret mind control and brain washing techniques to turn hundreds and hundreds of honest and upstanding teachers and administrators into her legion of evil minions to do her bidding to fake the results and even now, years after she's gone, she still controls them through threat of Omerta and her roving bands of secret death squads that patrol all the schools. And, she did all that in just three short years.

Uh huh.


What is your explanation for the abnormally high number of wrong-to-right erasures in schools which showed significant test score gains, but then showed significant test score losses when test security was increased?

Do you find that something to ridicule? Is it your position that we should stick our fingers in our ears and chant, "la, la, la"?

How can you support test scores as the basis for judging success while simultaneously joking about concern that the test scores might not be legitimate? Don't you realize that good teachers who are expected to improve upon artificially-inflated scores of their incoming students suffer from this while their cheating colleages prosper? Do you have a joke about that as well? Because that doesn't seem very funny to me.

Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 07:18     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
We always say that FARM students are the down fall of certain schools. Yet I think financially strapped teachers and principals can bring down schools faster. Incentives and integrity are not at the opposite ends of the education spectrum. Closing the education gap and the financial divide is too tempting for the most honest people.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 07:11     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
The almighty dollar bill was the only power needed.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 07:08     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It was all about the test scores, Rhee used secret mind control and brain washing techniques to turn hundreds and hundreds of honest and upstanding teachers and administrators into her legion of evil minions to do her bidding to fake the results and even now, years after she's gone, she still controls them through threat of Omerta and her roving bands of secret death squads that patrol all the schools. And, she did all that in just three short years.

Uh huh.


No, she used money as an incentive. Powerful enough for you?


Nothing wrong with financial incentives in and of themselves. The problem was the widespread cultural problems, wherein hundreds of teachers and administrators took it upon themselves to immediately leap to cheating rather than actually trying to do it the right way. The previous posters testimonial makes it clear that the deep-seated culture of corruption throughout DCPS that makes this possible. And here you are, basically DEFENDING that status quo, which had nothing to do with Rhee.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 06:49     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:It was all about the test scores, Rhee used secret mind control and brain washing techniques to turn hundreds and hundreds of honest and upstanding teachers and administrators into her legion of evil minions to do her bidding to fake the results and even now, years after she's gone, she still controls them through threat of Omerta and her roving bands of secret death squads that patrol all the schools. And, she did all that in just three short years.

Uh huh.


No, she used money as an incentive. Powerful enough for you?
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2013 06:25     Subject: Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I was teacher in a low performing DCPS school for several years prior to Rhee. Had she come into position while I was there I might have been able to stay. The culture of dysfunction is deeply ingrained. Trying to buck it at any level is suicidal. Teachers who sleep on the job, leave early every day, don't teach ONE. SINGLE. BIT. of the curriculum, teachers who sleep with students... my stories could go on and on. One biology teacher refused to teach the class and instead preached Christianity the entire year. No biology.
I never once had enough text books.
I bought ALL of my own chemistry supplies.
I was out sick with the flu for a couple of days and no sub ever covered my classes- they just roamed the halls.
The librarian locked the library and would only allow teachers she liked to come in and socialize and eat lunch. Students were not allowed in there.
The counselors routinely lost students' transcripts. I was contacted for 2 years after I left to recreate grades for kids.
The athletic director changed a failing student's grade so she could play basketball.
We had a homeless kid live in the stockroom for a month of two because he broke in every night.
We had a couple of building service personnel who pimped out a couple of girls in the chorus room in the evenings and weekends.
The principal embezzled nearly a hundred thousand dollars from a technology grant from AOL, held a gospel concert that lost nearly all the money and NOTHING happened to him- even after being investigated and the involvement of the mayor.

I have hundreds of other stories of the culture of dysfunction. I was told early on when I went to that school that I landed the perfect job where everyone wants to end up because it is the easiest place to ride out your last years teaching. And so it was for 2/3 of the building. The rest of us got so burnt out from picking up the pieces that we couldn't last for more than 5 or 6 years. It would have been nice to have someone, ANYONE look at the school and notice just how bad and useless most of the adults were in that building.

Interesting to me that you were a teacher and only found problems with other teachers. So the admin was fine? Parents fine? Thats amazing... and BS


I'm not sure how you got that out of my post. The whole system was broken and some of it was truly corrupt. One teacher had students carry her bags to her car EVERY DAY after lunch and she then left, leaving her afternoon students unattended. There wasn't a single person who worked there (or attended school there) who didn't know of her doing this. In my mind, that is a complete failure of the system and an indication of corruption in the administration.
I was told by an adminstrator that I had to dumb down my curriculum because I didn't have enough students getting A's. When I asked how I was supposed to do that and meet the standards I was told that "it didn't matter if I only accomplished one standard that year as long as everyone mastered it and got an A". But this was high school level and there were no standardized tests or any other measure of accountability for my subject areas (sciences).
One year, attendance records weren't kept for about 5 months. I'm sure someone somewhere got a report of attendance numbers for the school that year- or maybe they didn't? Again, administrative failure. And wondering about how to fix families in poor, urban schools is the million dollar question, now isn't it? When kids need to sell drugs to feed their brothers and sisters you end up with a more problems than any superintendent can fix in any amount of time.

Sorry about typos and grammar issues- in between classes at the moment.



Here is my issue with your original post. The entire first part talks about teachers this... and teachers that. So, as I teacher- do I know that it all comes down to admin- OF COURSE. But I feel like teachers often get the blame for working in a culture of dysfunction The first part of your post you say again and again- teachers did this... teachers did that. Teachers, likely were also doing some heroic work. Also, and this is the tough part- you left. I am not blaming you- as I am now ready to head out the door to, but its hard to take negative feedback about the terrible things that are going on in the schools, from people who left. Those of us who stuck it out- and are trying to make good for the kids of DCPS (ALL the kids, not just the ones in NW) do not need one more thread of parents generalizing us as lazy, or asleep on the job. I would just ask- did you not see good things too? Was everything at your school terrible? I have taught Title I DCPS for my entire teaching career and sure- there is some bogus stuff going on- but there are also things that make me proud to be engaged in this amazing work. So am I 'defensive' teacher. You bet! When teachers are used as a scapegoat to ignore larger issues. (Not saying that is what you were directly doing, but you were laying the groundwork)