I don’t discriminate on who gets criticism – parents, teachers, administration, school boards. While there’s enough blame to go around, I strive to maintain objectivity about who gets what portion of that blame. Still, seeing African-American teachers being led out of a courtroom in handcuffs had quite a jolting effect on me.
There’s no defense for cheating, and I’m not here to mount a defense for those black teachers caught up in the scandal to raise test scores in Atlanta public schools. But still, being charged under the racketeering law and getting sentences that exceed some murder sentences! The RICO Act was intended for use on organized crime, like the Mafia. Yet, it was used on black teachers – most with no criminal records.
It’s been several weeks now since the sentencing phases of the cheating trials ended and my reaction is just as intense now as it was then.
I don’t mind that it was white reporters at the Atlanta Journal Constitution who broke the story. It wasn’t just news but an expose to get to an intervention, a solution to a serious problem.
Maybe I can get past the fact that it was a white, Republican governor who ordered the investigation into the cheating on test scores. And maybe I can get past the white judge who dished out the harsh sentencing, surprising even the prosecution.
I cannot get past the fact that such cheating has occurred in other school districts and no one has gone to jail. Or that right here in the STL, white firefighters who cheated on the promotion tests didn’t serve any time.
I don’t remember anyone going to jail in the Veterans Administration scandal where intake data and other records were deliberately misreported to project higher numbers of veterans being served.
And I know damn well none of the Wall Street thugs who brought the U.S. economy to its knees served a day in prison. Cooking the books for financial gain only gets you in trouble if it hurts the gains of the wrong people.
This is what our justice system boils down to: who is going to take the fall? It has nothing to do with justice or rectifying a situation. It’s a cowardly system, preferring to take out the most vulnerable – poor people, those with mental or emotional impairments, those with political connections, etc. The bullies with power and wealth continue their dastardly deeds regardless of the extent of their harm.
I’m clear that cheating on standardized tests only hurts the students in public education and that it compromises their futures on so many levels. I’m angry that a school system that incentivizes harm to children isn’t on trial. (Teachers received monetary bonuses for increases in their students’ test scores.)
I’m also painfully clear that indicting 35 teachers for cheating has done nothing to change a dysfunctional educational system. To perpetrate a myth that getting rid of these teachers has cleaned out the system once and for all is the real crime.
