Los Angeles Area Schools, Teachers Accused Of Cheating

Student test scores from two Los Angeles-area schools have been thrown out based on evidence of cheating by teachers.

Three teachers at Short Avenue Elementary are accused of correcting answers on student answer sheets or instructing students toward correct answers -- or both. A science teacher at Animo Leadership Charter High School is also accused of correcting answers after exams have taken place.

As a result, neither school will receive Academic Performance Index scores, which were released last week and are state measures of school performance. Both schools are among the state's top performers.

A testing "irregularity" was noted in the state's API database for Animo Leadership, the Daily Breeze reports. The high school is a part of Green Dot Public Schools, a group of 12 public charter schools in the area.

Green Dot officials reported testing irregularities to the state Department of Education after noticing high rates of erasures on science exams.

"We went after it pretty hard and aggressively," Green Dot Schools CEO Mario Petruzzi told the Daily Breeze. "We did not try to sweep it under the rug. Will people every now and then try to cheat? Of course. But how you react to it sends a strong signal about how the organization feels about it."

One student at Short Avenue said she had left answers to math questions blank because they were too difficult, but her answer booklet carried correct responses, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"Students take tests independent and alone," LA schools Superintendent John Deasy told the LA Times. "We don't coach them and give them answers... it's obviously wrong behavior, but it's more than that.... It's not the behavior we want to model -- ever."

News of testing irregularities in these LA-area schools comes amid cheating allegations surfacing in schools in the state and across the country.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is shutting down six charter schools run by Crescendo schools after teachers were found to have prematurely opened standardized tests and prepared students with the materials.

In Atlanta, more than 40 educators accused in the nation's largest cheating scandal have resigned or retired. Schools in Washington D.C. are under investigation for high erasure marks on exams from 41 schools, taken during former chancellor Michelle Rhee's tenure.

Baltimore and Philadelphia are also among several districts across the country facing cheating allegations.

Comments

[Eileenla]

09:55 AM on 09/09/2011

The pressure to succeed at any cost, or your capacity to support yourself in our society and survive will disappear, is a root cause of all this. By making people afraid for their lives and for theirvfamilies, we've created a society where morality must take a back seat to self-preservation - then we chastise each other for behaving immorally. Why must we make it so HARD for people to survive in our modern world? Why are we making life harder, instead of easier? Why not redesign society where people dont need to struggle to survive, but have the spaciousness to self-actualize and thrive? What have we been doing with ourselves for thousands of years, if not aiming to achieve that goal?

[ghorialtaf]

03:26 PM on 09/08/2011

Our world is not for only bad work,good works should be the main feature of our life,as this world produces good people similarly produces bad people.This is a bad news for about accusation of teachers .if they are guilty really so the part of punishment should be their fate.

[hatenomor]

02:32 PM on 09/08/2011

Why is there any debate about what to do with teachers caught cheating? Why all the excuses? You cheat, you get fired. Period. And you should be fired with the blessing of the Union.

[hatenomor]

12:48 PM on 09/08/2011

This is what I have been saying tor years. The public educational system we have in this country has ceased educating our children in favor of social promotions, which this case is but one example of how this is accomplished. It is very prominant in inner city schools. Funny, no one seems to see any connection between the rise of teachers unions, and the the lowering of educational expectational that result in a fairly high number of our children leaving school, uneducated.

[trespanieli]

07:51 AM on 09/08/2011

This is what happens when you link teacher evaluations/raises to a bunch of worthless standardized tests that are totally unrelated to what is really being taught in the classroom. Teachers are blamed when they play by the rules and the test scores are low. They are pilloried for teaching to the test or fudging the rules so the scores will be high. Social promotion is alive and well, now it is disguised as NCLB.

[Eileenla]

10:01 AM on 09/09/2011

Exactly. The notion of educating all children toward "sameness" is a reflection of the mechanical mindset of the industrial era. In our modern information age, which is (hopefully) headed toward establishing a wisdom culture, we dont want ouepr kids growing up the same. We NEED to foster uniqueness, so that very uniqueness can aid us in finding novel solutions to our many social and environmental challenges. Teach children HOW to think critically, not what to think or how to memorize and regurgitate data. Given the rapid expansion of knowledge today, nobody can "know it all" anyhow. Let's start nurturing the talents, skills and unique capacities of each child according to their passions, and see what comes of that instead.

[MSROADKILL612]

08:53 PM on 09/07/2011

My girlfriend has seen the process first hand. A law lecturer. What was a brand to be treasured, she is under pressure to pass incompetent students because it has become a business here in OZ - catering to asian students.

[CrzyRussell]

08:20 PM on 09/07/2011

I love the selective use of the term alleged depending on the political leanings of the accused......

[MSROADKILL612]

08:54 PM on 09/07/2011

Thats quite an allegation.

[china6]

12:38 PM on 09/07/2011

Fire the teachers involved!

[jenxgal70]

10:22 AM on 09/07/2011

Wow! Another cheating scandal, big surprise! While the teachers involved in this are wrong, on many levels, the real culprit is NCLB. The purpose of this law only recognizes assessment based performance, and only in certain subject areas. It also promotes a 'college for all' curriculum, which just isn't working. College for some, yes, but we should be focusing on 'skills for all.' Let's make sure kids have hard skills in a particular career cluster, soft skills so they understand how to work well with others, and applied skills, the academic standards that connect to real life professions. We've wasted a lot of time blaming others--teachers, unions, schools, parents, administrations, etc. when really, the flaw is the law itself. NCLB needs to be repealed so teachers can get back to teaching students and not teaching tests.

[Bill Bensie]

01:15 PM on 09/07/2011

Good teachers can do both. Teach curriculum and prepare students for the test. Too much blame on NCLB which by the way was supported and sponsored by many Democrats. Before NCLB there were tests used to measure student achievement such as the CAT. Most teachers have never read NCLB. The just rely on the misguided information fed to them by the unions because it was proposed by Bush which meant that it was bad. The testing is up to the states. There are many good aspects of NCLB. Laws do not make people cheat. Lack of ethics will.

[jenxgal70]

02:34 PM on 09/07/2011

I disagree Bill. As a teacher for the past 18 years, I feel that NCLB has left many children behind, particularly in the area of learning specific skill sets. As far as assessments go, I think states should be able to develop their own and use the results to measure growth, develop standands and evaluate curriculum. Not as a tool to gage teacher effectiveness or the only model used to assess student performance. Our students deserve more than just a test--they deserve real skills that lead to real jobs that prepare them for either college or a career.

[FunctionOfTheCrisp]

10:50 PM on 09/07/2011

Yes, good teachers can do both. But it's the "do more with less" ability. Sure, some good teachers can do that, but perspective is needed. For example, good students can get master's degrees. However, only a little over 7% of American adults do so. Good students can get doctorates. Only 3.5% or so achieve this.

I'd submit that the qualifier accompanying "good teachers can do both" is a percentage which is perhaps the 90th percentile or close to that. In other words, the top 10%, for instance, can both teach curriculum and prepare students for tests. Another way to clarify is to specify what a good teacher is capable of. If good means top 10%, then it makes sense.

[Greg34]

12:20 PM on 09/08/2011

No the real culprit are the people that cheat. NCLB is not a good thing but if you cheat you should be held responsible and are 100% at fault. Your stance of blaming someone else for their actions sounds very union like. Are you a part of the NEA? Teachers caught cheating should be banned from teaching for life, and all pension and helath benefits terminated.

[whodo1952]

10:15 AM on 09/07/2011

Society has been breeding cheaters and liars for decades now.
It's not only found where children should have every good example, it is eminently found in those who were voted in to lead the way.
What we are waking up to here is the realization that we have created a monster society where cheating teachers, teaches, and cheating, lying, leaders mislead.

[Eileenla]

10:10 AM on 09/09/2011

I agree that the very structure of our society - which rewards destructive competition over intimacy and cooperation- is a significant part of the problem. Our systems have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and they fail to support the advancements in human values that have occurred over the centuries. They're still designed to entrains people using rewards and punishments instead of fostering the expression of our higher intrinsic values. Thus society is now stunting us, not helping us advance. Individuals in a society that makes them struggle to survive cannot "afford" to cling to their higher values if starvation, homelessness and suffering are the result. Fear drives us to behave in ways we're not proud of, and desperation makes us put our values on hold. To realize this and quit blaming the individuals for doing what they have to do to survive would enable us to look at our systems and redesign them so people can have enough breathing room to experiment with new ways of doing things and figure out what works better for us all.

[FunctionOfTheCrisp]

09:48 AM on 09/07/2011

I remarked on the Georgia cheating that I saw no serious effort to prosecute. I surely think that this is fraud. So why is suspending/firing teachers and invalidating the scores the limit we are seeing? Some people ought to have some of their life's freedom removed in the event they are found guilty.
Look, teachers. I could not sympathize more with what has been done to your profession over the last 10-15 years; you don't deserve any of what hasn't been your fault. However, there reaches a point where you are obligated to make a change when you feel your only option is to compromise your ethics in a manner as serious as this. Either seek another/different teaching position or change careers. C'est La Vie, but maintaining your current job and paycheck isn't necessarily the most important variable. If you can't identify the most ethical option and choose accordingly, you deserve all the potential consequences.

[fredpa]

08:52 AM on 09/07/2011

Interesting thing about this story is how it contrasts with other cheating stories. Proof is cheating is hugely difficult to prove because it happens out of sight. Circumstantial evidence [20 trillion to one odds against happening by chance]. Invalidating the scores is a good consequence because it impresses on all staff that they are affected by cheaters even when they don't do it.

[wayne the pain]

08:14 AM on 09/07/2011

Charter schools were heralded as the savior of public education by non educator elitist. We now see that they are no better than the traditional schools they replaced and maybe worse. Charter schools self segregate along various lines other than race and is just as bad or worse! The testing scam as a validation of good education has now gotten to them as well! The billion dollar testing industry is destroying the best free public education system in the world. Charter schools are private schools at tax payers expense wit big profits for the charter operator!

[carester]

09:34 AM on 09/07/2011

Good charter schools are saviors for inner city kids who want to have a shot in life. Both my children attend TITLE I charter schools (90%+ free/reduced lunch and 70% English Learners). Both schools are FANTASTIC SCHOOLS. We don't live in the neighborhood and are part of a very small minority of families there who don't qualified for any government assitance (including free/reduced lunch). What do we do there? Well, the school is an A school for the last 9 years and Blue Ribbon Award winner. At this school, struggling kids school day ends at 5, not at 3. They need more help than the high performing kids, so the school offers the extra help. If it wasn't for that charter school, those poor kids will be rooting at the local C school. You should hear the horror stories that those parents tell. They are more than glad for having escaped that school and to have the opportunity of getting a decent education for their children. What is wrong with that?

[hatenomor]

12:51 PM on 09/08/2011

A perfect example of a local community thinking out of the box to fix a local problem. Big brother in washington is not the answer to failing schools, they are the cause, in many ways.

[wayne the pain]

02:14 PM on 09/08/2011

Your type of charter is one in a thousand! Charters are used to set up essentially private schools at public expense! The type of charter you talk about are statistically no better than the public school they replaced. There are numerous studies that show charters do no better on average than the public schools that they draw students from! You may be that rare, rare exception, I hope so! Charter schools are just a backdoor approach to privatizing all of American public schools! Don't underestimate you role in your children's Educarion where ever they attend, you are vital!

[elleanor]

10:09 AM on 09/07/2011

Perfectly stated!

[Joseph Schmoe]

08:06 AM on 09/07/2011

For any professional educator to cheat regarding any aspect of standardized testing is as indefensible as the very act of administering such worthless standardized tests to begin with.

I call on all teachers to call in sick every day of state testing.
I call on all parents to simply keep their children home from school on all state testing days.
Refuse to play this stupid game.

[Bill Bensie]

01:29 PM on 09/07/2011

Calling in sick when you are not is just as bad as cheating. In fact it is worse because it is unethical, it costs the tax payers, and it hurts all of the students. Shame for the suggestion!

[hatenomor]

12:54 PM on 09/08/2011

So, you promote lying? I see. And you are educating our children? You should be ashamed of yourself. And what's wrong with actually showing, via testing, that you have actually taught our children something? Seems to me, teachers have a problem with be held accountable.

[Ariel Bonzai]

05:04 AM on 09/07/2011

These EducRAT$ keep finding new ways to cut the teaching costs (hmmm... ), and this is ruthless and unethical stuff they do, too.Yet administrators making at least twice our average saleries to do non essential jobs (many stained by corruption and incompetence) are multiplying. Now that education is a business it is all about the $ By low balling our profession and treating kids like livestock the suits keep that gravy train coming. By increasing class size and replacing veterens with newer, cheaper models they are staying on top. Taxpayers pay for that instead of the school supplies, educators, book and technology the children need.Thanks to NCLB and this test the people that are the very core of education, students and their teachers, are not being left behind. They are being mangled and crushed.

[Bill Bensie]

01:31 PM on 09/07/2011

NCLB is not a test. The law requires that individual states come up with their own testing system! In most states this is done with input from teachers.

[pepper1311]

08:01 PM on 09/07/2011

Labor in any business is always the highest expense.