Attorneys discuss issue of cheating |
On Board Online • November 5, 2012
By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief
After listening to a Georgia attorney tell a gripping tale about how a team of investigators broke through denials to uncover a top-to-bottom cheating scandal in Atlanta schools, attendees at the 16th Annual Pre-Convention School Law Seminar heard New York’s test security chief describe the State Education Department’s strategy to discourage and crack down on cheating.
Tina Sciocchetti, who has been SED’s head of Test Security and Educator Integrity since March, entitled her presentation “Learning from Atlanta.”
“You do not want to be like Atlanta,” where cheating was found in 44 of 56 schools, said attorney Robert E. Wilson of the Decatur, Ga., law firm of Wilson, Morton & Downs. He described an urban school system where the then-superintendent (Beverly Hall) created a culture of intimidation that placed pressure on principals and teachers to improve scores and meet defined “targets.”
The Atlanta saga began when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published articles questioning the validity of Atlanta’s stellar improvement in test scores in 2001. Nine years later, in 2010, Gov. Sonny Perdue ordered an investigation that involved a team of seven lawyers, two law firm investigators and 50 agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Investigators found no evidence of written or oral directives to cheat. But Wilson gave the example of a teacher whose students had low scores and was told she had to sit under a table at a meeting where better performing colleagues sat normally. “They created a culture of fear and silence. Some bucked it and they lost their jobs.”
Erasure analysis uncovered unfathomably improbable events, such as patterns in which 85 to 100 percent of changed answers were changed to the right answer. Noting patterns of cheating going back eight years in some schools, a statistical expert said one pattern of improvement was so far from what one would expect statistically that it was like flipping a quarter and having it land on its edge, then flip a second that also lands on its edge – on top of the other one.
In interviews in school settings, teachers and principals denied everything. Their explanations for improvements were “good teaching.” But when issued subpoenas to appear for depositions in private law offices with three or four well-prepared attorneys and investigators, “that’s when thing started to change,” Wilson said. Of 178 educators identified by investigators as cheaters, 82 confessed.
The investigation uncovered not only weekend gatherings organized by teachers to communally alter scoring sheets as well as cloak-and-dagger events like stealing the test out of a school office, photocopying it, re-melting plastic security coverings, then teaching the material to students the day before the test. Other teachers arranged classroom seating so that lower performing students could see the answers of higher performing students.
Quoting current Atlanta Superintendent Erroll Davis, Sciocchetti said the lesson of Atlanta is that “the penalty of cheating must always be more severe, more predictable, and more immediate, than any consequence for not meeting a goal or objective.”
She presented a seven-point plan that included using not only the 3020-a disciplinary process but also tapping the commissioner of education’s power to revoke or suspend educator’s certifications based on moral turpitude (Part 83 of the commissioner’s regulations).
In a question-and-answer period, Sciocchetti was asked about the Cadet decision that found a tenured teacher cannot be required to answer questions when the actions being inquired about might be subject to discipline under 3020-a (Commissioner’s Decision 13589).
“It would not deter us,” Sciocchetti said. “You can talk to others in the process.” Also, “documents don’t lie.”
Other speakers at the conference, which was hosted by the New York State Association of School Attorneys and financially supported by several law firms, included a year in review by NYSSBA attorneys and remarks on regulatory issues by SED counsel Richard Trautwein.
A panel that included NYSSBA General Counsel Jay Worona addressed collective bargaining issues that accompany the Annual Professional Performance Review implementation. Unique legal concerns that arise when records are stored in electronic form were addressed by John Miller of Bond, Schoeneck & King and David B. Rubin, a sole practitioner.
Ten attorneys in private practice addressed a variety of issues ranging from legal issues in cloud computing to challenges ahead in implementing annual professional performance reviews.
The audience of 360 included board members, school administrators and school attorneys from throughout the state. Many were repeat attendees. “Every year, this is the best thing at Convention,” said Joseph LoSchiavo, a board member with Eastern Suffolk BOCES.