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None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators
An insider’s account of the infamous Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal that scapegoated black employees for problems rooted in the education reform movement.
In March of 2013, 35 educators in the Atlanta Public Schools were charged with racketeering and conspiracy—the same charges used to bring down the American mafia—for allegedly changing students’ answers on standardized tests. All but one was black. The youngest of the accused, Shani Robinson, had taught for only 3 years and was a new mother when she was wrongfully convicted and faced up to 25 years in prison. She and her coauthor, journalist Anna Simonton, look back to show how black children in Atlanta were being deprived long before some teachers allegedly changed the answers on their students’ tests.
Stretching all the way back to Brown v. Board of Education , the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation in public schools, to examining the corporate-led education reform movement, the policing of black and brown citizens, and widening racial and economic disparities in Atlanta, Robinson and Simonton reveal how real estate moguls and financiers were lining their pockets with the education dollars that should have been going to the classroom.
In March of 2013, 35 educators in the Atlanta Public Schools were charged with racketeering and conspiracy—the same charges used to bring down the American mafia—for allegedly changing students’ answers on standardized tests. All but one was black. The youngest of the accused, Shani Robinson, had taught for only 3 years and was a new mother when she was wrongfully convicted and faced up to 25 years in prison. She and her coauthor, journalist Anna Simonton, look back to show how black children in Atlanta were being deprived long before some teachers allegedly changed the answers on their students’ tests.
Stretching all the way back to Brown v. Board of Education , the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation in public schools, to examining the corporate-led education reform movement, the policing of black and brown citizens, and widening racial and economic disparities in Atlanta, Robinson and Simonton reveal how real estate moguls and financiers were lining their pockets with the education dollars that should have been going to the classroom.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2019
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February 22, 2019
None of the Above is the story of the Atlanta cheating scandal of 2009 as told by one of the educators convicted of cheating. I will make known my prejudice at the start: whatever happened, I believe the sentences were way out of whack for the possible crimes committed. Also, I find it suspicious that it was primarily African-American educators who were targeted when the cheating apparently took place throughout the city.
That being said, I was sympathetic to Robinson's claims of innocence. And if her account is to be trusted (and it is backed up by references), the trial itself was a scandal of frightened people making plea bargains that can hardly be trusted, since naming names was the way to personal freedom. All the makings of a witch hunt. And the scandal served the purpose of distracting the city from plans to turn over more public schools into the hands of charters.
Robinson began as a hopeful Teach For America participant. TFA is devoted to the destruction of public schools and with replacing career teachers with (usually white) Ivy League graduates looking to pad out their resumes with two years of public service before heading off to corporate or political careers. As a public school teacher with strong beliefs that public education is a necessary prereq for a democracy, I am not a fan of TFA. And although there are some excellent charter schools, as a group, despite the ability to choose their students for better test-takers, most charters do not score appreciably better than public schools and often do worse. All of which is not to deny that there is plenty of work to be done to make public education more equitable, providing high quality schools for all. But I believe the answer is to invest in public schools, not destroy them.
It was difficult to read Robinson's book. The destruction of African-American neighborhoods, the effects of mass incarceration, the greed of corporations, and the destructive actions of neo-liberals in both the Democratic and Republican parties is extremely painful to read. And if the trial was accurately described, than the judicial system also comes off looking incompetent at best and indifferent to innocence or trust at worst.
I feel I need to read more accounts of this scandal to reach a better understanding of the case. However, applying RICO charges, designed to catch gangsters, to this group of educators (even if guilty) seems excessive. And, again, the fact that the convicted people (the ones who refused to make plea deals) were people (mostly women) of color seems to me suspicious. As in the case of the charter school takeover after Hurricane Katrina, the people who are held up in one way or another as unfit to teach are less affluent (women) of color, to be generally replaced by young, white, usually from affluent backgrounds women and men also feels indicative of both this country's racism as well as conviction that the best model for education is that of business.
So I recommend this book to educators and to those interested in the destruction of black neighborhoods in the interest of wealthy, white inhabitants and investors with the warning that it is 1) clearly slanted in favor of the author and the other convicted educators and 2) it is an enraging and painful, albeit, I believe, important indictment of the political and corporate powers that are the ones who actually cheat the poorer students of color as well as their families.
I thank LibraryThing.com for providing this book to me free of charge in exchange for an honest review.
That being said, I was sympathetic to Robinson's claims of innocence. And if her account is to be trusted (and it is backed up by references), the trial itself was a scandal of frightened people making plea bargains that can hardly be trusted, since naming names was the way to personal freedom. All the makings of a witch hunt. And the scandal served the purpose of distracting the city from plans to turn over more public schools into the hands of charters.
Robinson began as a hopeful Teach For America participant. TFA is devoted to the destruction of public schools and with replacing career teachers with (usually white) Ivy League graduates looking to pad out their resumes with two years of public service before heading off to corporate or political careers. As a public school teacher with strong beliefs that public education is a necessary prereq for a democracy, I am not a fan of TFA. And although there are some excellent charter schools, as a group, despite the ability to choose their students for better test-takers, most charters do not score appreciably better than public schools and often do worse. All of which is not to deny that there is plenty of work to be done to make public education more equitable, providing high quality schools for all. But I believe the answer is to invest in public schools, not destroy them.
It was difficult to read Robinson's book. The destruction of African-American neighborhoods, the effects of mass incarceration, the greed of corporations, and the destructive actions of neo-liberals in both the Democratic and Republican parties is extremely painful to read. And if the trial was accurately described, than the judicial system also comes off looking incompetent at best and indifferent to innocence or trust at worst.
I feel I need to read more accounts of this scandal to reach a better understanding of the case. However, applying RICO charges, designed to catch gangsters, to this group of educators (even if guilty) seems excessive. And, again, the fact that the convicted people (the ones who refused to make plea deals) were people (mostly women) of color seems to me suspicious. As in the case of the charter school takeover after Hurricane Katrina, the people who are held up in one way or another as unfit to teach are less affluent (women) of color, to be generally replaced by young, white, usually from affluent backgrounds women and men also feels indicative of both this country's racism as well as conviction that the best model for education is that of business.
So I recommend this book to educators and to those interested in the destruction of black neighborhoods in the interest of wealthy, white inhabitants and investors with the warning that it is 1) clearly slanted in favor of the author and the other convicted educators and 2) it is an enraging and painful, albeit, I believe, important indictment of the political and corporate powers that are the ones who actually cheat the poorer students of color as well as their families.
I thank LibraryThing.com for providing this book to me free of charge in exchange for an honest review.
February 12, 2019
Disclaimer: I received a copy via a giveaway on Librarything.
This book about the Atlanta school test cheating scandal is really two books in one body and as such is not as good a book as it could be.
Shani Robinson was a teacher at Dunbar Elementary in Atlanta. After she left the school, she was charged as one of the teachers who allegedly changed answers on standardized tests. Robinson plead not guilty, but sadly, lost in court. She is appealing. I hope she wins.
Part of the book, the first book struggling to get out as it were, is Robinson’s memoir of the trial. Not so much her experience schooling but of the trial and, to a degree, the events leading up to. Because this concedes with her major events in her personal life, the reader is treated to descriptions of these events. And while that might be interesting in a general life type of way, in a book about schools, or at least one where the title suggests schooling as a center topic, every time it comes up it feels like digression or it becomes so tempting to scream, “you shouldn’t be focusing on that”. So, it feels like a quasi-memoir with not enough depth to it. This is particularly true in the Teach for America section. Robinson is even handed when discussing the program, but one is also aware that Robinson herself, one could say, is also an embodiment of what is wrong with the program – she leaves teaching, true she goes into counseling, but she does leave teaching.
The second book struggling to get though is about the circumstances that cause the downfall of public schools. At first, it seems like the reason for why cheating might occur, but then shifts to become a tracing of forces determined to close down public schools and replace them with charter schools, as well to replace poorer and minority (largely African American) residents with richer, predominately white ones.
The problem with this thesis or focus isn’t that its wrong. It’s that in order to see the thesis, to believe in the thesis, it helps if you have read the work of say Diane Ravitch, Marta Nussbaum, and Richard Rothstein. Diane Ravitch for the whole bit about testing and charter schools, Nussbaum for the purpose of education, and Rothstein for redlining and other city development issues. And you can replace those with at least a dozen other books that cover the same material. It’s that the authors don’t footnote their source – they do – but the connections and developed are so crammed and cramped that some things must be accepted by faith, which is fine but you need the background to do that.
So, the book isn’t a full memoir but it isn’t a full societal analysis either. In fact, considering Robinson’s only three years teaching experience the look at the focus driving and pressuring the teachers seems facile. Not that I think she is wrong but one does wonder how an educator with more experience, of the women whom Robinson worked with say. It is so unclear, mostly because Robinson is not in a position to know, whether or not cheating actually occurred. At times too, bias comes out – Robinson’s view of the press is, understandably, negative but it does color parts of her memoir when she uses descriptions that verge on petty. This all contributes to a wanting more feel to the book.
It is like there are two books that could be really good, or one longer book, screaming to get out. And this is a shame because what Robinson and Simonton are dealing with and the conclusions, they reach are vitally important both in the terms of race and education. Robinson is one of the people who should be telling it, not only about education but about the justice system as well. We do need to think seriously about education and the place if any testing has in the educational system. We do need to examine how and if we should hold teachers accountable. We should examine how race is a factor in who is charge for a crime. You should read this book, but you are going to be wanting a bit more afterwards.
Yet, there is much promise in the writing, and hopefully there will be a second book to pick up the themes of this one.
This book about the Atlanta school test cheating scandal is really two books in one body and as such is not as good a book as it could be.
Shani Robinson was a teacher at Dunbar Elementary in Atlanta. After she left the school, she was charged as one of the teachers who allegedly changed answers on standardized tests. Robinson plead not guilty, but sadly, lost in court. She is appealing. I hope she wins.
Part of the book, the first book struggling to get out as it were, is Robinson’s memoir of the trial. Not so much her experience schooling but of the trial and, to a degree, the events leading up to. Because this concedes with her major events in her personal life, the reader is treated to descriptions of these events. And while that might be interesting in a general life type of way, in a book about schools, or at least one where the title suggests schooling as a center topic, every time it comes up it feels like digression or it becomes so tempting to scream, “you shouldn’t be focusing on that”. So, it feels like a quasi-memoir with not enough depth to it. This is particularly true in the Teach for America section. Robinson is even handed when discussing the program, but one is also aware that Robinson herself, one could say, is also an embodiment of what is wrong with the program – she leaves teaching, true she goes into counseling, but she does leave teaching.
The second book struggling to get though is about the circumstances that cause the downfall of public schools. At first, it seems like the reason for why cheating might occur, but then shifts to become a tracing of forces determined to close down public schools and replace them with charter schools, as well to replace poorer and minority (largely African American) residents with richer, predominately white ones.
The problem with this thesis or focus isn’t that its wrong. It’s that in order to see the thesis, to believe in the thesis, it helps if you have read the work of say Diane Ravitch, Marta Nussbaum, and Richard Rothstein. Diane Ravitch for the whole bit about testing and charter schools, Nussbaum for the purpose of education, and Rothstein for redlining and other city development issues. And you can replace those with at least a dozen other books that cover the same material. It’s that the authors don’t footnote their source – they do – but the connections and developed are so crammed and cramped that some things must be accepted by faith, which is fine but you need the background to do that.
So, the book isn’t a full memoir but it isn’t a full societal analysis either. In fact, considering Robinson’s only three years teaching experience the look at the focus driving and pressuring the teachers seems facile. Not that I think she is wrong but one does wonder how an educator with more experience, of the women whom Robinson worked with say. It is so unclear, mostly because Robinson is not in a position to know, whether or not cheating actually occurred. At times too, bias comes out – Robinson’s view of the press is, understandably, negative but it does color parts of her memoir when she uses descriptions that verge on petty. This all contributes to a wanting more feel to the book.
It is like there are two books that could be really good, or one longer book, screaming to get out. And this is a shame because what Robinson and Simonton are dealing with and the conclusions, they reach are vitally important both in the terms of race and education. Robinson is one of the people who should be telling it, not only about education but about the justice system as well. We do need to think seriously about education and the place if any testing has in the educational system. We do need to examine how and if we should hold teachers accountable. We should examine how race is a factor in who is charge for a crime. You should read this book, but you are going to be wanting a bit more afterwards.
Yet, there is much promise in the writing, and hopefully there will be a second book to pick up the themes of this one.
February 9, 2019
This was really disappointing. I tried really hard to like this book; I wanted to learn more about the socio-economic and racial issues that plague Atlanta and how they disadvantage the youth that are stuck in an underfunded school system. Instead, this book presents an extremely cursory and deeply flawed analysis of the impacts of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, crack cocaine, heroin, desegregation, the rise and fall of public housing in Atlanta, and a spree of child killings all in the first 50 pages. Then, probably due to the fact that the book is much too short, it feels like it makes every theme about her personal persecution and prosecution as opposed to illustrating that the actual victims are, in fact, generations of disadvantaged African-American children who are stuck in cycles of poverty, violence, incarceration, and death. It's clear the author understands this and it's more fleshed out at the end, but a book of just over 200 pages doesn't have enough space to make a nuanced argument and also tell her own years-long story. That's why it feels disingenuous when the author puts scare quotes around "failing" schools, especially juxtaposed to the story she tells of a 9th grader that can only read at a 5th-grade level, but had her test results falsified.
It would have been a great book if it focused on the injustices she faced in the courtroom. I would have loved to read a book twice this size about her story and the stories of the other educators, the ridiculous prosecution, the inappropriately emotional judge, and her struggles with stress and PTSD and pregnancy during that time.
I would have also loved a book twice this size about the educational impacts of any of the hundred different socio-economic factors that were briefly touched on in this book. Charter schools alone could have taken a tome over 1,000+ pages; instead, charter schools are depicted as extremely malicious (basically casting charter school CEOs as the school version of slumlords) until 3 sentences at the very end of the Epilogue, which say, in relevant part, "not all charter schools are bad." (p 216).
All in all, I think the book tried to do so much in so little space that everything came out jumbled and it's a shame because I honestly think that the author's story is an interesting one. There's no reason to believe that she actually changed the scores or that she should have been found guilty (although I'm still confused about how the StD was so high in her classroom) and there were certainly procedural issues with her case (ex parte communications, the judge's jury influence, the judge's knowledge of jury deliberation, the jury pool issues, the extremely dubious RICO charge, the consolidations of the cases, the prosecutorial misconduct, the discovery shenanigans, all of the perjury, etc) but sadly the book really glossed over every single one of these issues. Maybe we'll get a sequel when (hopefully) the author wins her appeal.
It would have been a great book if it focused on the injustices she faced in the courtroom. I would have loved to read a book twice this size about her story and the stories of the other educators, the ridiculous prosecution, the inappropriately emotional judge, and her struggles with stress and PTSD and pregnancy during that time.
I would have also loved a book twice this size about the educational impacts of any of the hundred different socio-economic factors that were briefly touched on in this book. Charter schools alone could have taken a tome over 1,000+ pages; instead, charter schools are depicted as extremely malicious (basically casting charter school CEOs as the school version of slumlords) until 3 sentences at the very end of the Epilogue, which say, in relevant part, "not all charter schools are bad." (p 216).
All in all, I think the book tried to do so much in so little space that everything came out jumbled and it's a shame because I honestly think that the author's story is an interesting one. There's no reason to believe that she actually changed the scores or that she should have been found guilty (although I'm still confused about how the StD was so high in her classroom) and there were certainly procedural issues with her case (ex parte communications, the judge's jury influence, the judge's knowledge of jury deliberation, the jury pool issues, the extremely dubious RICO charge, the consolidations of the cases, the prosecutorial misconduct, the discovery shenanigans, all of the perjury, etc) but sadly the book really glossed over every single one of these issues. Maybe we'll get a sequel when (hopefully) the author wins her appeal.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 15, 2019
There were massive problems at the schools in Atlanta. Funding problems choked schools from needed capital investments and programming dollars. There was pressure to perform well on standardized tests under the No Child Left Behind Law, with fewer resources.
That pressure was too much for some principals and school teachers. They cheated and changed answers on their students tests.
Shanti Robinson is one of the teachers who went to trial for cheating on the standardized tests. She tells her story in None of the Above.
The cheating was discovered with statistics. The tests for the whole school system were reviewed to see how often there were signs of erasure which resulted in answers being changed from wrong to correct. They found some statistical anomalies where some classrooms had a much larger amount of those correcting erasures. So much so, that the only way it could have happened was someone changing the answers.
Post-test, Ms. Robinson and other teachers were told to erase “stray marks” from the test booklets. Some teachers interpreted that to mean fix the wrong answers. Ms. Robinson claims that she just erased the doodles in the test booklets.
The problem is that Ms. Robinson’s class was one of those with a statistically high number of erasures from wrong to right answers. Someone changed her students’ answers.
She goes down a common path of criminal mentality by loading up None of the Above with all of the other problems with the Atlanta school system and all of the other people who are doing things that hurt the students in the school system. The authors attack real estate deals that use a projected increase in tax revenue in an area to help fund a real estate development project. They attack charter schools and the state bureaucrats. There were lots of problems in the Atlanta school system greater than Ms. Robinson’s alleged cheating.
Spoiler alert: Ms. Robinson goes to trial after prosecutors play hardball with the principals, teachers and administrators accused of cheating. They bring RICO charges. Ms. Robinson complains about the prosecutor’s zeal and overly harsh charges. She complains about the fairness of the judge.
I didn’t find Ms. Robinson’s story compelling or believe her claims of innocence. I’m not sure she made the changes, but she fails to acknowledge that someone clearly made changes.
There are better sources for discussions of public education, testing and charter schools. I found the authors’ discussion of them to merely be a distraction from the cheating scandal.
Disclosure: The publisher sent me a copy of the book and asked for a review.
That pressure was too much for some principals and school teachers. They cheated and changed answers on their students tests.
Shanti Robinson is one of the teachers who went to trial for cheating on the standardized tests. She tells her story in None of the Above.
The cheating was discovered with statistics. The tests for the whole school system were reviewed to see how often there were signs of erasure which resulted in answers being changed from wrong to correct. They found some statistical anomalies where some classrooms had a much larger amount of those correcting erasures. So much so, that the only way it could have happened was someone changing the answers.
Post-test, Ms. Robinson and other teachers were told to erase “stray marks” from the test booklets. Some teachers interpreted that to mean fix the wrong answers. Ms. Robinson claims that she just erased the doodles in the test booklets.
The problem is that Ms. Robinson’s class was one of those with a statistically high number of erasures from wrong to right answers. Someone changed her students’ answers.
She goes down a common path of criminal mentality by loading up None of the Above with all of the other problems with the Atlanta school system and all of the other people who are doing things that hurt the students in the school system. The authors attack real estate deals that use a projected increase in tax revenue in an area to help fund a real estate development project. They attack charter schools and the state bureaucrats. There were lots of problems in the Atlanta school system greater than Ms. Robinson’s alleged cheating.
Spoiler alert: Ms. Robinson goes to trial after prosecutors play hardball with the principals, teachers and administrators accused of cheating. They bring RICO charges. Ms. Robinson complains about the prosecutor’s zeal and overly harsh charges. She complains about the fairness of the judge.
I didn’t find Ms. Robinson’s story compelling or believe her claims of innocence. I’m not sure she made the changes, but she fails to acknowledge that someone clearly made changes.
There are better sources for discussions of public education, testing and charter schools. I found the authors’ discussion of them to merely be a distraction from the cheating scandal.
Disclosure: The publisher sent me a copy of the book and asked for a review.
April 26, 2019
The subtitle of this book is misleading. The book is much more about how the Atlanta public schools cheating scandal was another event in a long history of the unfair criminalization of black people. Corporate greed doesn't really come up that much.
The book tries to tell several stories. There's Robinson's own experience, joining Teach for America, teaching in an Atlanta school, and being accused and tried for changing test answers. There's Atlanta's real estate development and how it harmed poor people in majority-black neighborhoods. There's cheating on standardized tests in general, which happened in many other cities besides Atlanta.
Unfortunately, none of these stories are told very well. Robinson's own experience is authentic, but it's difficult to accept her story when it comes with anecdote after anecdote meant to show the judge and prosecution being unfair and unreasonable. I'm sure it was incredibly frustrating to sit through a trial like she did, but a fair bit of what she blames the prosecution and the press for just comes across as people trying to do their jobs. The prosecutor is going to try to get convictions; the press is generally going to follow the prosecutor's side.
The story of Atlanta's real estate, and how politicians in Atlanta built their careers by being tough on crime was interesting, but insufficiently argued. There are several instances where Robinson presents a case, then quickly continues with the assumption that the wrong person was convicted - without presenting evidence to show why that's the case. Yes, it is odd that the police arrest a 13-year-old whom a drug dealer named as a murderer, but I really want to know more. Was there other evidence? Did the conviction stand? If the dealer had committed the crime, as the book seems to suggest, what evidence is there for that?
Finally, there was the discussion of cheating on other standardized tests and why the black teachers at APS were the ones prosecuted. This was by far the most interesting part of the book to me - I wasn't aware that there was cheating at so many schools in so many states, and I'd never heard about what happened in other places. Also, I never knew that all teachers and administrators prosecuted in Atlanta were black. Here, the book convinced me, but I also felt that it could have done a lot more. There were some statistics and some school systems mentioned, but I didn't feel like I came away with a complete picture.
After reading the book, I had more questions than I went in with. I assume there was cheating on the tests. (I wish the discussion of that had gone a little more in-depth; standard deviation was discussed as though it's a highly technical calculation, and I didn't quite get what they were taking standard deviations of. And I wanted to hear more about erasure analysis, too). Robinson doesn't clearly say that she thinks there was, though, and she doesn't offer a theory as to who cheated, or how. Apart from the tests, I want to know more about Atlanta's history and real estate development, and I very much want to know more about standardized test cheating in other cities and states and what happened afterwards.
The book tries to tell several stories. There's Robinson's own experience, joining Teach for America, teaching in an Atlanta school, and being accused and tried for changing test answers. There's Atlanta's real estate development and how it harmed poor people in majority-black neighborhoods. There's cheating on standardized tests in general, which happened in many other cities besides Atlanta.
Unfortunately, none of these stories are told very well. Robinson's own experience is authentic, but it's difficult to accept her story when it comes with anecdote after anecdote meant to show the judge and prosecution being unfair and unreasonable. I'm sure it was incredibly frustrating to sit through a trial like she did, but a fair bit of what she blames the prosecution and the press for just comes across as people trying to do their jobs. The prosecutor is going to try to get convictions; the press is generally going to follow the prosecutor's side.
The story of Atlanta's real estate, and how politicians in Atlanta built their careers by being tough on crime was interesting, but insufficiently argued. There are several instances where Robinson presents a case, then quickly continues with the assumption that the wrong person was convicted - without presenting evidence to show why that's the case. Yes, it is odd that the police arrest a 13-year-old whom a drug dealer named as a murderer, but I really want to know more. Was there other evidence? Did the conviction stand? If the dealer had committed the crime, as the book seems to suggest, what evidence is there for that?
Finally, there was the discussion of cheating on other standardized tests and why the black teachers at APS were the ones prosecuted. This was by far the most interesting part of the book to me - I wasn't aware that there was cheating at so many schools in so many states, and I'd never heard about what happened in other places. Also, I never knew that all teachers and administrators prosecuted in Atlanta were black. Here, the book convinced me, but I also felt that it could have done a lot more. There were some statistics and some school systems mentioned, but I didn't feel like I came away with a complete picture.
After reading the book, I had more questions than I went in with. I assume there was cheating on the tests. (I wish the discussion of that had gone a little more in-depth; standard deviation was discussed as though it's a highly technical calculation, and I didn't quite get what they were taking standard deviations of. And I wanted to hear more about erasure analysis, too). Robinson doesn't clearly say that she thinks there was, though, and she doesn't offer a theory as to who cheated, or how. Apart from the tests, I want to know more about Atlanta's history and real estate development, and I very much want to know more about standardized test cheating in other cities and states and what happened afterwards.
January 19, 2019
Riveting and educational. I listened to the audiobook and met the author today!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 7, 2019
Years before “Aunt Becky” and Felicity Huffman were charged in a high profile school bribery case, Atlanta was the focus of an education scandal of its own. But where many would say the situation Huffman and fellow actress Laurie Loughlin found themselves in was born out of privilege, the circumstances in Atlanta’s test cheating scandal evolved from a history of systemic racial and economic injustices.
That’s the case that educator and author Shani Robinson makes in None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators. If it seems a lengthy title, it’s because Robinson covers a lot of ground. While the cheating scandal - in which 35 educators were accused of changing students’ answers on standardized tests in 2013 - could be summarized in fewer than the book’s 220 pages, Robinson and co-author Anna Simonton expand the scope of the event, not only providing autobiographical perspective on Robinson, but also reaching back through the history of public education in Georgia and the U.S. to pinpoint how a situation like the APS scandal could manifest in the first place.
If it sounds ambitious, it is. I was reminded of how much historical ground Ava Duvernay’s masterful 13th documentary covered (slavery, the Black Codes, and Jim Crow laws) to explain the racist engine that drives America’s mass incarceration and school-to-prison pipeline injustices. As Bob Marley sang in “Buffalo Soldier”, “If you know your history, you know where you’re coming from.” This is certainly true in mapping the road that led to the circumstances of the APS cheating scandal.
For Robinson, this means reaching back to the inequities that mar the history of public schools in Atlanta and the south, a list that is both long and thought-provoking. Gentrification, redlining, underinvestment in urban schools, the failures of public housing, and the cyclical trappings of poverty are all highlighted as parts of the recipe for the testing scandal.
Charter schools, viewed as an educational version of ‘white flight’, and President Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act come under some of the greatest scrutiny as 21st century plagues on the public school system. Certainly, the pressure on performance that standardized testing has brought into the classroom is something most teachers, parents, and students can relate to, regardless of race or economic status. The frustration that second semester was spent mostly in preparation for the CRCT (or now, the Milestones) rather than learning critical curriculum in social studies, math, science and other classes has been well documented as an ongoing issue.
Like a societal game of Whack-a-Mole, it appears every time someone in power tried to address and potentially rectify these injustices inherent to the system, other forces within the government and society found a way to circumvent the efforts.
The other story driving None of the Above is the trial of Shani Robinson and her fellow educators, accused of changing answers on the standardized CRCT test forms their students had filled out. The prosecution claimed that teachers were forced to erase “stray marks” on the tests, which translated into cleaning up incorrect answers. Thirty five educators were indicted, 34 of which were African-American. The charges focused on racketeering, and were leveled through the RICO Act, a 1970 federal law designed specifically for combating organized crime in America.
Given a total of 178 educators were implicated in correcting test answers, and that the RICO Act was more designed for the likes of John Gotti than Mrs. Crabapple, Robinson makes a strong case for politics playing a huge part in determining who got thrown under the school bus, as it were.
A case could also be made, as Robinson shares her perspective of the eight-month trial, that we’re only getting one side, and the essential telling of this story might be best served by a more objective party. Certainly, the more personal elements of her story - including the birth of her son as the trial was culminating, an event that postponed her sentencing - adds a human dynamic to the story that would likely be missing in a purely journalistic retelling of the trial.
However, perhaps the bigger lesson to walk away with from this story isn’t about the guilt or innocence of the educators in question, but the broken system itself and the students who suffer from it, be it because of flaws of high-stakes testing, the pressure on teachers to meet district-set targets, or the long history that preceded these issues.
I finished None of the Above feeling, both, upset and somewhat unsatisfied. Upset that the system was, and remains, broken, and the people who seem to be invested in doing something about it are often the ones most helpless to do so. The educators who are on the front lines for Atlanta’s (and America’s) children receive less support than they deserve as they walk a tightrope to ensure kids learn, targets are met, and budgets are honored. However, I wanted more from this book, and I’m not sure it’s Robinson’s fault that something more isn’t there. Her themes open up a Pandora’s Box of a broken system, and then feed into one defining court case, rather than offering possible solutions to the issues presented.
Perhaps, though, that’s not her job. Perhaps that’s the job of a lot of people, from politicians and educators at the highest level to engaged parents, teachers, and citizens. As a culture, we spend a lot of time complaining about all the ills of the education system. None of the Above shows us plenty of symptoms we should have been treating all along, even if it can’t provide a panacea. Maybe that’s enough to make readers work to improve our own scores, lest the next generation of kids find they’re out of right answers.
That’s the case that educator and author Shani Robinson makes in None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators. If it seems a lengthy title, it’s because Robinson covers a lot of ground. While the cheating scandal - in which 35 educators were accused of changing students’ answers on standardized tests in 2013 - could be summarized in fewer than the book’s 220 pages, Robinson and co-author Anna Simonton expand the scope of the event, not only providing autobiographical perspective on Robinson, but also reaching back through the history of public education in Georgia and the U.S. to pinpoint how a situation like the APS scandal could manifest in the first place.
If it sounds ambitious, it is. I was reminded of how much historical ground Ava Duvernay’s masterful 13th documentary covered (slavery, the Black Codes, and Jim Crow laws) to explain the racist engine that drives America’s mass incarceration and school-to-prison pipeline injustices. As Bob Marley sang in “Buffalo Soldier”, “If you know your history, you know where you’re coming from.” This is certainly true in mapping the road that led to the circumstances of the APS cheating scandal.
For Robinson, this means reaching back to the inequities that mar the history of public schools in Atlanta and the south, a list that is both long and thought-provoking. Gentrification, redlining, underinvestment in urban schools, the failures of public housing, and the cyclical trappings of poverty are all highlighted as parts of the recipe for the testing scandal.
Charter schools, viewed as an educational version of ‘white flight’, and President Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act come under some of the greatest scrutiny as 21st century plagues on the public school system. Certainly, the pressure on performance that standardized testing has brought into the classroom is something most teachers, parents, and students can relate to, regardless of race or economic status. The frustration that second semester was spent mostly in preparation for the CRCT (or now, the Milestones) rather than learning critical curriculum in social studies, math, science and other classes has been well documented as an ongoing issue.
Like a societal game of Whack-a-Mole, it appears every time someone in power tried to address and potentially rectify these injustices inherent to the system, other forces within the government and society found a way to circumvent the efforts.
The other story driving None of the Above is the trial of Shani Robinson and her fellow educators, accused of changing answers on the standardized CRCT test forms their students had filled out. The prosecution claimed that teachers were forced to erase “stray marks” on the tests, which translated into cleaning up incorrect answers. Thirty five educators were indicted, 34 of which were African-American. The charges focused on racketeering, and were leveled through the RICO Act, a 1970 federal law designed specifically for combating organized crime in America.
Given a total of 178 educators were implicated in correcting test answers, and that the RICO Act was more designed for the likes of John Gotti than Mrs. Crabapple, Robinson makes a strong case for politics playing a huge part in determining who got thrown under the school bus, as it were.
A case could also be made, as Robinson shares her perspective of the eight-month trial, that we’re only getting one side, and the essential telling of this story might be best served by a more objective party. Certainly, the more personal elements of her story - including the birth of her son as the trial was culminating, an event that postponed her sentencing - adds a human dynamic to the story that would likely be missing in a purely journalistic retelling of the trial.
However, perhaps the bigger lesson to walk away with from this story isn’t about the guilt or innocence of the educators in question, but the broken system itself and the students who suffer from it, be it because of flaws of high-stakes testing, the pressure on teachers to meet district-set targets, or the long history that preceded these issues.
I finished None of the Above feeling, both, upset and somewhat unsatisfied. Upset that the system was, and remains, broken, and the people who seem to be invested in doing something about it are often the ones most helpless to do so. The educators who are on the front lines for Atlanta’s (and America’s) children receive less support than they deserve as they walk a tightrope to ensure kids learn, targets are met, and budgets are honored. However, I wanted more from this book, and I’m not sure it’s Robinson’s fault that something more isn’t there. Her themes open up a Pandora’s Box of a broken system, and then feed into one defining court case, rather than offering possible solutions to the issues presented.
Perhaps, though, that’s not her job. Perhaps that’s the job of a lot of people, from politicians and educators at the highest level to engaged parents, teachers, and citizens. As a culture, we spend a lot of time complaining about all the ills of the education system. None of the Above shows us plenty of symptoms we should have been treating all along, even if it can’t provide a panacea. Maybe that’s enough to make readers work to improve our own scores, lest the next generation of kids find they’re out of right answers.
March 30, 2020
The No Child Left Behind program, while sounding like it would help children achieve higher academic scores, had some very serious repercussions.
One of the primary ones was the money that flowed into schools as a result of scores. It forced many schools to close because of low scores, encouraged cheating by school personnel in order to survive, took money away from working to strengthen schools by providing better supplies, more teachers and aides, and more training. Instead, it blamed teachers, demonized schools, and encouraged more charter schools.
Atlanta, Georgia, was one of the hardest hit and became a famous target. In 2013, thirty-five black teachers and administrators were charged with racketeering and conspiracy for changing answers on students’ tests to improve their scores by a vindictive judge. The media went wild pushing the scandal theory. While there were incidents of that occurring in both schools that were primarily white as well as integrated or primarily black, only the black educators were charged.
The trials went on for an excessively long time. Eventually, many of those charged, even if they were not guilty, admitted guilt so they could get on with their lives and stop increasing their costs for court and attorney fees.
One of them did not. Shani Robinson was the youngest of the accused, was a three-year teacher and pregnant. She taught first grade. While her students all had to take the tests, their scores had no effect on the results that determined the school’s ranks. Before turning in the answer sheets, she was ordered to erase some extraneous scribbling on some of them. She did not change any of the answers and was charged. She kept fighting the charges despite facing a jail term of twenty years. She was told she could avoid jail if she pleaded guilty. She refused to do so.
NONE OF THE ABOVE is her story. It is very well-written and I shared her frustration and disgust with the city, school system, and courts.
I received a copy of this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers
One of the primary ones was the money that flowed into schools as a result of scores. It forced many schools to close because of low scores, encouraged cheating by school personnel in order to survive, took money away from working to strengthen schools by providing better supplies, more teachers and aides, and more training. Instead, it blamed teachers, demonized schools, and encouraged more charter schools.
Atlanta, Georgia, was one of the hardest hit and became a famous target. In 2013, thirty-five black teachers and administrators were charged with racketeering and conspiracy for changing answers on students’ tests to improve their scores by a vindictive judge. The media went wild pushing the scandal theory. While there were incidents of that occurring in both schools that were primarily white as well as integrated or primarily black, only the black educators were charged.
The trials went on for an excessively long time. Eventually, many of those charged, even if they were not guilty, admitted guilt so they could get on with their lives and stop increasing their costs for court and attorney fees.
One of them did not. Shani Robinson was the youngest of the accused, was a three-year teacher and pregnant. She taught first grade. While her students all had to take the tests, their scores had no effect on the results that determined the school’s ranks. Before turning in the answer sheets, she was ordered to erase some extraneous scribbling on some of them. She did not change any of the answers and was charged. She kept fighting the charges despite facing a jail term of twenty years. She was told she could avoid jail if she pleaded guilty. She refused to do so.
NONE OF THE ABOVE is her story. It is very well-written and I shared her frustration and disgust with the city, school system, and courts.
I received a copy of this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers
January 23, 2022
A book about the outrageous witch hunt that was the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal. Fueled by racism and mass hysteria, Fulton County spearheaded an effort to incarcerate dozens of APS teachers (all black, except for one who was also non-white) under the RICO act, enacted by President Nixon in the 1970s to crack down on racketeering and other gang crimes. RICO is a federal felony. It was used successfully to convict teachers for allegedly changing answers on the CRCT standardized test for a meager bonus sum. Except for a few issues with the case: first, the teachers didn't have enough time or the means to review 70 questions per student with like 25 students in their room and change answers in only 30 minutes. Second, the GBI used threats and dirty tactics to force false confessions that were inconsistent during cross-examination. Third, the teachers didn't even get a bonus; the crct was a national test, while it was the state benchmarks that affected the bonus. The schools in question still missed the state benchmarks. Someone DID change the answers, but it more heavily points to the admin, who actually would have access to answer keys and enough time to change the answers, plus the incentive of receiving increased funding at the expense of the livelihood of teachers. Yet the prosecutors and corrupt Judge Baxter were deadset on prosecuting innocent black teachers. And they succeeded, with two teachers even getting the max sentence of 20 years; 7 in jail and 13 probation, plus $25,000 fines. Even it had been actually proven that the teachers had cheated, a RICO charge is excessive. Maybe a suspension of teaching licenses temporarily and a smaller $1000 fine in a CIVIL COURT would have been more fair. But still, all the evidence presented against the defendants was shaky and full of holes, the teachers are innocent. Blatant corruption in the admin of APS! Governor Deal just wanted an excuse to have the state takeover APS, close black schools, and open more for-profit charter schools. Read this book if you want to be pissed off at Georgia's criminal justice system!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 16, 2024
AN INTERESTING BOOK BY A DEFENDANT IN THE SCANDAL
Shani Robinson is a former first-grade Dunbar Elementary teacher, who gave birth to her son just days after she and 10 co-defendants were convicted. She was sentenced to one year in prison, 4 years of probation, a $1,000 fine, and 1,000 hours of community service.
She wrote in the Preface to this 2019 book, “in 2013, RICO was applied to an unlikely group: the educators of Atlanta Public Schools. Including me. At issue were the district’s scores on a Georgia standardized test called the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, or CRCT. In 2008, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigated suspiciously high score increases on CRCT retests … This prompted a state agency to conduct an audit… analyzing the number of wrong-to-right erasures on students’ test booklets and finding a high likelihood that cheating had occurred… Governor Sonny Perdue eventually ordered a special investigation to probe Atlanta and one other school district… thirty-five employees of Atlanta Public Schools were indicted on RICO charges. All but one were black…
“I never cheated… But Perdue’s investigation was conducted like a witch hunt… Investigators used threats to get teachers to talk and offered immunity deals to those who told the ‘truth.’… This approach produced false accusations against two of my colleagues, me, and probably many more people. The trial that followed… was a tragedy for Atlanta Public Schools, which had long served a majority-black student body under majority-black leadership in a city known as the Black Mecca, a place where black folks have thrived economically, politically, and culturally in spite of bitter opposition.” (Pg. ix-x)
She states, “Also missing from the public dialogue was a sense of historical perspective. How badly were children ‘cheated’ by their teachers, relative to decades of racist policies and practices that had torn their families and communities apart? From urban renewal, to the drug war, to the dismantling of public housing… With the cheating scandal, some of the same people responsible for these attacks hypocritically declared cheating the worst thing to befall the children of Atlanta… apparently forgetting about things like slavery and Jim Crow.” (Pg. xiii)
In the first chapter, she explains, “Charter schools did not have to abide by the same regulations as traditional schools so long as they met the goals set forth in their contracts … This enabled charter school administrators to spend their budgets with far less oversight than traditional schools… Many of them racked up allegations of mismanagement, cutting corners, and plain wrongdoing nearly as fast as they raked in the money… The wheels of corporate education reform were already in motion in Atlanta when [Beverly] Hall was tapped for superintendent. With her arrival in 1999, Atlanta’s power players got what they wanted: someone who would drive that train full steam ahead.” (Pg. 16)
She goes on, “The [No Child Left Behind] law set what some education experts said was an unlikely goal… To get there, states had to create standardized tests to annually assess students… schools had to meet their… benchmarks or face consequences that increased in severity each year that they fell behind… By year five of failing… schools could be forcibly converted to charters or taken over by the state. The stakes had never been higher.” (Pg. 19)
She points out, “It was in the context of displacement and economic insecurity that crack entered black communities… Before crack, parental involvement was high, students were more or less studious, and the school had a ‘gifted’ program… Once crack took hold, that all began to change. Parents became estranged… Children started… losing interest in learning, seemingly because their lives at home were increasingly volatile.” (Pg. 36-37) Later, she adds, “This was the world my students inhabited… white politicians suppressing black votes and gunning for the criminal justice system to swallow black families whole, and an education system telling black students to forget all that, just bubble in the right answer.” (Pg. 43)
She recounts, “The testing environment was extremely taxing for six-year-olds who weren’t used to sitting silently for hours on end… By the end, their test booklets were covered with doodles, and the testing coordinator instructed me to go to the media center and erase them… We had to erase any stray marks so that the booklets would be graded correctly by a machine.” (Pg. 32-33) The next year, “‘[Administrator] sent me to watch your class while you erase stray marks,] a kindergarten paraprofessional said… It was April 2009… my first-graders had just completed the last round of testing. Again, it had been excruciating as the children struggled to sit still and focus… their test booklets were covered with doodles of airplanes, flowers, cartoon characters, you name it. Just like the preceding year, the school testing coordinator instructed teachers to erase these doodles, which we called ‘stray marks.’ … the four of us mostly worked in silence, erasing stray marks…” (Pg. 44-45)
She continues, “‘Can you believe this?’ [a colleague] asked. ‘Sixty-nine percent of classes at Dunbar were flagged for high erasures.’ ‘So they’re saying that someone changed the answers?’ I responded.’ … [The company that designed the test] used a statistical method … to plot the average number of wrong-to-right erasures for each class… One in five Georgia schools had classes flagged for an abnormally high number of wrong-to-right erasures… When testing time rolled around, everything was closely scrutinized… No one was summoned to erase stray marks, and no Dunbar staff or administrators were alone with the tests.” (Pg. 57-58)
She was interviewed by an agent with Georgia Bureau Investigation (GBI), and told him, “‘We erased stray marks because the children wrote all over the test booklets’… ‘Did you know you didn’t have to erase stray marks on those tests?’ He asked. I was taken aback. Was that true? ‘No,’ I said. ‘I was told the marks would cause errors when a machine graded the tests.’” (Pg. 71) Later, she notes that “another teacher had accused me… What a fool [her accuser] was to assume that ‘clean up the tests’ meant ‘change the answers’ … Later I would find out that some teachers throughout the district did use this coded language to refer to cheating… Had she been pressured to name others to receive immunity?” (Pg. 77)
She states, “July 2011 was a hard month for me. I… attempted to quell my outrage at the naked hypocrisy of some of the public figures who scrambled to condemn educators for ‘cheating the children.’ There were so many ways that … black children, were being cheated of a decent life… During the decade that some … staff were tampering with tests, most teachers were doing the best they could with few resources for contending with kids who suffered generational trauma stemming from urban renewal, racialized violence, the drug epidemic, mass incarceration, and the obliteration of public housing. Meanwhile, real estate moguls and financiers were finagling ways to line their pockets with the education dollars that should have been going to the classroom.” (Pg. 81-82)
About her testimony before the grand jury, she says, “I already knew what I was going to say. I would assert my Fifth Amendment right to silence… in response to each question the prosecutor posed… Even if you had done nothing wrong, it was better not to give prosecutors any information they could somehow find a way to use against you… when her questions turned to the CRCT, I invoked the Fifth Amendment…” (Pg. 91-92) Later, she saw on television “a letter I had signed… I had received the letter stating that the commission believed I was involved in wrongdoing. They gave me the option of accepting a two-year suspension, appealing, or facing further sanction if I didn’t respond… I knew before signing the letter that to do so would not be considered an admission of guilt, and accepting the two-year suspension seemed like the most reasonable way to bring closure to the matter… I had no interest in going through an appeal process to save a [teaching] certificate that was about to expire… Now a reporter was describing the letter as if it proved that I had cheated.” (Pg. 99-101)
She observes, “It was true that out of the thirty-five indicted educators none were white, and only one wasn’t black, even though there were white educators from majority white school implicated in the 2011 GBI report.” (Pg. 103) Later, she adds, “a report by the US Governmental Accountability Office found that forty states had reported allegations of standardized test cheating… Yet nowhere else were teachers dragged to jail, paraded before news camera, or slapped with felony charges punishable by decades in prison. That treatment was reserved for the black educators in Atlanta… Why were the black educators of Atlanta being dragged through the mud in an unprecedented, unparalleled fashion?” (Pg. 116-117, 125)
In the trial, she says of her fellow defendants, “It was clear no one wanted to admit that they hadn’t carefully scrutinized what they had signed.” McConnell, one of the prosecutors, asked a defendant, “‘Why would you feel forced to sign a statement that you contend is true?’ … I shuddered at this exchange… Ivey either had to claim she cheated and was coerced into making a false statement to the contrary or that she didn’t cheat and wasn’t coerced… Of course, reality was more complicated than McConnell made it out to be. Ivey and some of the other defendants had been wary of signing the statement declaring that they did not cheat, not because it wasn’t true but because they sensed it had the potential to draw them into the very trap in which they now found themselves. But they signed anyway because they were compelled by the investigators’ bullying tactics … to cooperate.” (Pg. 126-127)
Robinson heard that another defendant had accepted a plea deal: “She told prosecutors that she had given Dunbar teachers answer sheets after testing was completed and that she believed we had changed incorrect answers… I didn’t feel angry at her for throwing us under the bus the way she said Principal Greene had done to her. I only felt depressed. They were breaking us.” (Pg. 128) She continues, “Mine became an increasingly lonely position as other defendants began to enter plea deals… Ivey received 250 hours of community service and one year of probation … she was forced to retire… With that, half of the defendants had pleaded guilty, and only seventeen were left facing trial.” (Pg. 137-138) But another defendant testified, “‘they never placed any pressure on me to cheat under any circumstances’… I could have fallen out of my seat. Here was a key witness admitting that he had succumbed to pressure from investigators and prosecutors and lied to get a plea deal… I held no hard feelings toward him. I just wondered how many others had done the same thing, how much of the trial was based on trumped-up accusations and lies told under the gun.” (Pg. 155)
One of the prosecutors summed up before the jury, “They robbed them kids!... Passed them on from one grade to the next. Just set them up for failure… Why is crime so high?... What are they supposed to do?... These defendants and them others, they failed our kids…’ Was he serious? Blaming us for poverty and violent crime? Forget about racialized disinvestment and the intentional destruction of black neighborhoods, the influx of drugs and militarized policing… budget cuts to public education and billions of dollars redirected to the for-profit education and market and real estate schemes.” (Pg. 191)
She concludes, “My appeal is still pending, along with those of my codefendants. Our lives have been forever altered by the tribulations we endured throughout the state’s bungled and vindictive response to cheating in Atlanta Public Schools. We support one another as best we can while we work to recover from the damage to our relationships, careers, finances, and health.” (Pg. 218)
I didn’t find much of Ms. Robinson’s apologia particularly compelling---but many of us can certainly reject the ‘Teach to the Test’ mentality that is becoming common in schools, as well as the seemingly disparate harsh treatment given to Atlanta Public Schools, relative to other schools faced with similar accusations. (P.S. – watch for the upcoming film, ‘Wrong Answer,’ starring Michael B. Jordan, that deals with this scandal.)
Shani Robinson is a former first-grade Dunbar Elementary teacher, who gave birth to her son just days after she and 10 co-defendants were convicted. She was sentenced to one year in prison, 4 years of probation, a $1,000 fine, and 1,000 hours of community service.
She wrote in the Preface to this 2019 book, “in 2013, RICO was applied to an unlikely group: the educators of Atlanta Public Schools. Including me. At issue were the district’s scores on a Georgia standardized test called the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, or CRCT. In 2008, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigated suspiciously high score increases on CRCT retests … This prompted a state agency to conduct an audit… analyzing the number of wrong-to-right erasures on students’ test booklets and finding a high likelihood that cheating had occurred… Governor Sonny Perdue eventually ordered a special investigation to probe Atlanta and one other school district… thirty-five employees of Atlanta Public Schools were indicted on RICO charges. All but one were black…
“I never cheated… But Perdue’s investigation was conducted like a witch hunt… Investigators used threats to get teachers to talk and offered immunity deals to those who told the ‘truth.’… This approach produced false accusations against two of my colleagues, me, and probably many more people. The trial that followed… was a tragedy for Atlanta Public Schools, which had long served a majority-black student body under majority-black leadership in a city known as the Black Mecca, a place where black folks have thrived economically, politically, and culturally in spite of bitter opposition.” (Pg. ix-x)
She states, “Also missing from the public dialogue was a sense of historical perspective. How badly were children ‘cheated’ by their teachers, relative to decades of racist policies and practices that had torn their families and communities apart? From urban renewal, to the drug war, to the dismantling of public housing… With the cheating scandal, some of the same people responsible for these attacks hypocritically declared cheating the worst thing to befall the children of Atlanta… apparently forgetting about things like slavery and Jim Crow.” (Pg. xiii)
In the first chapter, she explains, “Charter schools did not have to abide by the same regulations as traditional schools so long as they met the goals set forth in their contracts … This enabled charter school administrators to spend their budgets with far less oversight than traditional schools… Many of them racked up allegations of mismanagement, cutting corners, and plain wrongdoing nearly as fast as they raked in the money… The wheels of corporate education reform were already in motion in Atlanta when [Beverly] Hall was tapped for superintendent. With her arrival in 1999, Atlanta’s power players got what they wanted: someone who would drive that train full steam ahead.” (Pg. 16)
She goes on, “The [No Child Left Behind] law set what some education experts said was an unlikely goal… To get there, states had to create standardized tests to annually assess students… schools had to meet their… benchmarks or face consequences that increased in severity each year that they fell behind… By year five of failing… schools could be forcibly converted to charters or taken over by the state. The stakes had never been higher.” (Pg. 19)
She points out, “It was in the context of displacement and economic insecurity that crack entered black communities… Before crack, parental involvement was high, students were more or less studious, and the school had a ‘gifted’ program… Once crack took hold, that all began to change. Parents became estranged… Children started… losing interest in learning, seemingly because their lives at home were increasingly volatile.” (Pg. 36-37) Later, she adds, “This was the world my students inhabited… white politicians suppressing black votes and gunning for the criminal justice system to swallow black families whole, and an education system telling black students to forget all that, just bubble in the right answer.” (Pg. 43)
She recounts, “The testing environment was extremely taxing for six-year-olds who weren’t used to sitting silently for hours on end… By the end, their test booklets were covered with doodles, and the testing coordinator instructed me to go to the media center and erase them… We had to erase any stray marks so that the booklets would be graded correctly by a machine.” (Pg. 32-33) The next year, “‘[Administrator] sent me to watch your class while you erase stray marks,] a kindergarten paraprofessional said… It was April 2009… my first-graders had just completed the last round of testing. Again, it had been excruciating as the children struggled to sit still and focus… their test booklets were covered with doodles of airplanes, flowers, cartoon characters, you name it. Just like the preceding year, the school testing coordinator instructed teachers to erase these doodles, which we called ‘stray marks.’ … the four of us mostly worked in silence, erasing stray marks…” (Pg. 44-45)
She continues, “‘Can you believe this?’ [a colleague] asked. ‘Sixty-nine percent of classes at Dunbar were flagged for high erasures.’ ‘So they’re saying that someone changed the answers?’ I responded.’ … [The company that designed the test] used a statistical method … to plot the average number of wrong-to-right erasures for each class… One in five Georgia schools had classes flagged for an abnormally high number of wrong-to-right erasures… When testing time rolled around, everything was closely scrutinized… No one was summoned to erase stray marks, and no Dunbar staff or administrators were alone with the tests.” (Pg. 57-58)
She was interviewed by an agent with Georgia Bureau Investigation (GBI), and told him, “‘We erased stray marks because the children wrote all over the test booklets’… ‘Did you know you didn’t have to erase stray marks on those tests?’ He asked. I was taken aback. Was that true? ‘No,’ I said. ‘I was told the marks would cause errors when a machine graded the tests.’” (Pg. 71) Later, she notes that “another teacher had accused me… What a fool [her accuser] was to assume that ‘clean up the tests’ meant ‘change the answers’ … Later I would find out that some teachers throughout the district did use this coded language to refer to cheating… Had she been pressured to name others to receive immunity?” (Pg. 77)
She states, “July 2011 was a hard month for me. I… attempted to quell my outrage at the naked hypocrisy of some of the public figures who scrambled to condemn educators for ‘cheating the children.’ There were so many ways that … black children, were being cheated of a decent life… During the decade that some … staff were tampering with tests, most teachers were doing the best they could with few resources for contending with kids who suffered generational trauma stemming from urban renewal, racialized violence, the drug epidemic, mass incarceration, and the obliteration of public housing. Meanwhile, real estate moguls and financiers were finagling ways to line their pockets with the education dollars that should have been going to the classroom.” (Pg. 81-82)
About her testimony before the grand jury, she says, “I already knew what I was going to say. I would assert my Fifth Amendment right to silence… in response to each question the prosecutor posed… Even if you had done nothing wrong, it was better not to give prosecutors any information they could somehow find a way to use against you… when her questions turned to the CRCT, I invoked the Fifth Amendment…” (Pg. 91-92) Later, she saw on television “a letter I had signed… I had received the letter stating that the commission believed I was involved in wrongdoing. They gave me the option of accepting a two-year suspension, appealing, or facing further sanction if I didn’t respond… I knew before signing the letter that to do so would not be considered an admission of guilt, and accepting the two-year suspension seemed like the most reasonable way to bring closure to the matter… I had no interest in going through an appeal process to save a [teaching] certificate that was about to expire… Now a reporter was describing the letter as if it proved that I had cheated.” (Pg. 99-101)
She observes, “It was true that out of the thirty-five indicted educators none were white, and only one wasn’t black, even though there were white educators from majority white school implicated in the 2011 GBI report.” (Pg. 103) Later, she adds, “a report by the US Governmental Accountability Office found that forty states had reported allegations of standardized test cheating… Yet nowhere else were teachers dragged to jail, paraded before news camera, or slapped with felony charges punishable by decades in prison. That treatment was reserved for the black educators in Atlanta… Why were the black educators of Atlanta being dragged through the mud in an unprecedented, unparalleled fashion?” (Pg. 116-117, 125)
In the trial, she says of her fellow defendants, “It was clear no one wanted to admit that they hadn’t carefully scrutinized what they had signed.” McConnell, one of the prosecutors, asked a defendant, “‘Why would you feel forced to sign a statement that you contend is true?’ … I shuddered at this exchange… Ivey either had to claim she cheated and was coerced into making a false statement to the contrary or that she didn’t cheat and wasn’t coerced… Of course, reality was more complicated than McConnell made it out to be. Ivey and some of the other defendants had been wary of signing the statement declaring that they did not cheat, not because it wasn’t true but because they sensed it had the potential to draw them into the very trap in which they now found themselves. But they signed anyway because they were compelled by the investigators’ bullying tactics … to cooperate.” (Pg. 126-127)
Robinson heard that another defendant had accepted a plea deal: “She told prosecutors that she had given Dunbar teachers answer sheets after testing was completed and that she believed we had changed incorrect answers… I didn’t feel angry at her for throwing us under the bus the way she said Principal Greene had done to her. I only felt depressed. They were breaking us.” (Pg. 128) She continues, “Mine became an increasingly lonely position as other defendants began to enter plea deals… Ivey received 250 hours of community service and one year of probation … she was forced to retire… With that, half of the defendants had pleaded guilty, and only seventeen were left facing trial.” (Pg. 137-138) But another defendant testified, “‘they never placed any pressure on me to cheat under any circumstances’… I could have fallen out of my seat. Here was a key witness admitting that he had succumbed to pressure from investigators and prosecutors and lied to get a plea deal… I held no hard feelings toward him. I just wondered how many others had done the same thing, how much of the trial was based on trumped-up accusations and lies told under the gun.” (Pg. 155)
One of the prosecutors summed up before the jury, “They robbed them kids!... Passed them on from one grade to the next. Just set them up for failure… Why is crime so high?... What are they supposed to do?... These defendants and them others, they failed our kids…’ Was he serious? Blaming us for poverty and violent crime? Forget about racialized disinvestment and the intentional destruction of black neighborhoods, the influx of drugs and militarized policing… budget cuts to public education and billions of dollars redirected to the for-profit education and market and real estate schemes.” (Pg. 191)
She concludes, “My appeal is still pending, along with those of my codefendants. Our lives have been forever altered by the tribulations we endured throughout the state’s bungled and vindictive response to cheating in Atlanta Public Schools. We support one another as best we can while we work to recover from the damage to our relationships, careers, finances, and health.” (Pg. 218)
I didn’t find much of Ms. Robinson’s apologia particularly compelling---but many of us can certainly reject the ‘Teach to the Test’ mentality that is becoming common in schools, as well as the seemingly disparate harsh treatment given to Atlanta Public Schools, relative to other schools faced with similar accusations. (P.S. – watch for the upcoming film, ‘Wrong Answer,’ starring Michael B. Jordan, that deals with this scandal.)
March 10, 2019
None of the Above from Shani Robinson and Anna Simonton tells a contextualized version of the Atlanta cheating scandal. Events in the public sphere do not happen in a vacuum and knowing the background helps to keep everything in perspective.
First, this book reviews the various forces that have come together to undermine this country's public education system. While some may complain that this is not on a par with a book devoted to analyzing these ills, that is a disingenuous way of displaying their inbred elitism. I don't rewrite Foucault every time I use his ideas. This book summarizes accurately the studies and theories used. That is sufficient for a book using this as context for the main narrative. Applaud the person who wants applause for name dropping as a way of denigrating but pay it no mind, it is empty pseudo-intellectual blustering.
Also, while Robinson maintains her innocence she does, contrary to what another "reviewer" (with a red ballcap agenda no doubt) claims, acknowledge that there must have been cheating and the work she did contextualizing the entire situation in Atlanta points toward motivation for whomever did it. Not condoning or approving but making the motivation at least understandable. Such is the nature of testing in contemporary American schools. Maybe you'll believe Robinson about her innocence maybe you won't, but she is not claiming there was no cheating and she is not condoning cheating.
To look at any issue within a public school system in the United States one can not, in good conscience, do so in isolation from the other facts that have contributed to the larger problem. To do so either means you don't understand how these things work together or, worse, you condone hurting poor children and children of color for political and economic gain.
The value of this book far outpaces the writing. At times it was slow and plodding and, probably, caused some of these "reviewers" to quit reading and run their little dog whistles out to show their true allegiance. If you have an interest and care at all about the children being hurt in this current regime's joke of an education system, you should read this book. Less for whether you believe Robinson and more to understand what, using Atlanta as the example, is wrong with the corporatization and privatization of the education of our future generations.
Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads' First Reads.
First, this book reviews the various forces that have come together to undermine this country's public education system. While some may complain that this is not on a par with a book devoted to analyzing these ills, that is a disingenuous way of displaying their inbred elitism. I don't rewrite Foucault every time I use his ideas. This book summarizes accurately the studies and theories used. That is sufficient for a book using this as context for the main narrative. Applaud the person who wants applause for name dropping as a way of denigrating but pay it no mind, it is empty pseudo-intellectual blustering.
Also, while Robinson maintains her innocence she does, contrary to what another "reviewer" (with a red ballcap agenda no doubt) claims, acknowledge that there must have been cheating and the work she did contextualizing the entire situation in Atlanta points toward motivation for whomever did it. Not condoning or approving but making the motivation at least understandable. Such is the nature of testing in contemporary American schools. Maybe you'll believe Robinson about her innocence maybe you won't, but she is not claiming there was no cheating and she is not condoning cheating.
To look at any issue within a public school system in the United States one can not, in good conscience, do so in isolation from the other facts that have contributed to the larger problem. To do so either means you don't understand how these things work together or, worse, you condone hurting poor children and children of color for political and economic gain.
The value of this book far outpaces the writing. At times it was slow and plodding and, probably, caused some of these "reviewers" to quit reading and run their little dog whistles out to show their true allegiance. If you have an interest and care at all about the children being hurt in this current regime's joke of an education system, you should read this book. Less for whether you believe Robinson and more to understand what, using Atlanta as the example, is wrong with the corporatization and privatization of the education of our future generations.
Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads' First Reads.
July 2, 2019
"None of the Above" is likely both exactly what it set out to be and an inevitable disappointment, since indicting the corporate education reform movement and the criminal justice system while telling one person’s side of one city’s story is just about the tallest of authorship orders.
Shani Robinson, a teacher convicted of conspiring to change test scores, and Anna Simonton, a journalist, take on the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal and the massive criminal trial that followed, offering a wealth of fascinating, essential information.
The problem is that the most important part—the background story of how the nation got to a place where educators in underinvested schools would be incentivized to cheat and how those forces played out in Atlanta—is the most difficult to absorb thanks to spotty pacing and an overwhelming level of detail. The portions of the book that cover the trial are more readable, but they’re infused with the understandable anger and lack of objectivity of a person who claims innocence. And therein lies the book’s fatal flaw: even with Simonton’s help, Robinson doesn’t achieve the remove necessary to plead her personal and societal cases effectively.
(Take, as examples, the fixation on the state citing the fraudulent test scores in its Race to the Top grant application and derisive passages like the following: “At one point, she concluded a monologue about how she was just a pawn for Principal Greene with a dramatic flourish, saying ‘And I stand on that, on everything that I love.’ Again I had to suppress laughter. ‘On everything that I love?’ She might as well pinky-swear the jury!”)
That said, "None of the Above" undeniably adds value to the public discourse. I was unaware that “Atlanta’s school board funded gentrification on the backs of students by handing millions of education dollars to private developers.” The discussion of the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, such as the ballooning number of children left without an involved parent, is just one of many important topics addressed. And the book includes several instances of complex analysis that only resonate because of adept stage-setting:
"Then again, didn’t Terry’s plea deal expose the absurdity of this case? If the punishment for an alleged crime could range from nearly half a century in a cage to a few months of volunteerism, wouldn’t people see that the scales of justice were more than a bit off-kilter?"
"Although the crisis of the cheating scandal was in many ways the result of years of corporate-driven education reforms, it was often construed as a problem of government corruption and an argument for privatizing the public sector."
"None of the Above" isn’t terribly written, and the prose occasionally soars (e.g., “She had a loud, snarky attitude that could be hilarious, withering, or both”), but it got repetitive and slow in parts, and the relevant legal standards could have been better explained. While these flaws, and the aforementioned pervading bias, make "None of the Above" an imperfect read, it remains a worthwhile one.
Shani Robinson, a teacher convicted of conspiring to change test scores, and Anna Simonton, a journalist, take on the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal and the massive criminal trial that followed, offering a wealth of fascinating, essential information.
The problem is that the most important part—the background story of how the nation got to a place where educators in underinvested schools would be incentivized to cheat and how those forces played out in Atlanta—is the most difficult to absorb thanks to spotty pacing and an overwhelming level of detail. The portions of the book that cover the trial are more readable, but they’re infused with the understandable anger and lack of objectivity of a person who claims innocence. And therein lies the book’s fatal flaw: even with Simonton’s help, Robinson doesn’t achieve the remove necessary to plead her personal and societal cases effectively.
(Take, as examples, the fixation on the state citing the fraudulent test scores in its Race to the Top grant application and derisive passages like the following: “At one point, she concluded a monologue about how she was just a pawn for Principal Greene with a dramatic flourish, saying ‘And I stand on that, on everything that I love.’ Again I had to suppress laughter. ‘On everything that I love?’ She might as well pinky-swear the jury!”)
That said, "None of the Above" undeniably adds value to the public discourse. I was unaware that “Atlanta’s school board funded gentrification on the backs of students by handing millions of education dollars to private developers.” The discussion of the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, such as the ballooning number of children left without an involved parent, is just one of many important topics addressed. And the book includes several instances of complex analysis that only resonate because of adept stage-setting:
"Then again, didn’t Terry’s plea deal expose the absurdity of this case? If the punishment for an alleged crime could range from nearly half a century in a cage to a few months of volunteerism, wouldn’t people see that the scales of justice were more than a bit off-kilter?"
"Although the crisis of the cheating scandal was in many ways the result of years of corporate-driven education reforms, it was often construed as a problem of government corruption and an argument for privatizing the public sector."
"None of the Above" isn’t terribly written, and the prose occasionally soars (e.g., “She had a loud, snarky attitude that could be hilarious, withering, or both”), but it got repetitive and slow in parts, and the relevant legal standards could have been better explained. While these flaws, and the aforementioned pervading bias, make "None of the Above" an imperfect read, it remains a worthwhile one.
March 12, 2019
For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators by Shani Robinson and Anna Simonton is a non-fiction book about the experiences of Mrs. Robinson who has been involved in this humiliating and undignified event. Mrs. Robinson. After several years, Mrs. Robinson, whose appeal is still pending, is able to talk about this issue.
I like to point out right off the bat that I am a cynical man. I don’t believe everything I read, and if I do I check it with a several reliable sources.
Most of the time.
I’m also a big supporter of public education.
None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators by Shani Robinson and Anna Simonton was an interesting as it was informative, it actually tells two stories though. One that of Mrs. Robinson who was charged as one of the teachers who allegedly changed the grades of her students to conform with standardized testing requirements, the other is about the circumstances that caused public schools to be considered failures.
I will start with the second part, as it has to do with the reasoning behind schools changing grades. The book goes to blame politicians working together industrialists, as well as “do gooders” (mostly evangelical Christians) who are rich enough to have their voices heard as to the issues with public schools. The politicians and industrialists set out to take over poor neighborhoods, demolish them, and build more expensive residences (and thus higher tax revenue), at the expanse of the lower socioeconomic class who are mostly African American. The rich “do gooders” mainly want vouchers and charter schools as a form of subsidy (one might even say government welfare) for private schools.
The part where Mrs. Robinson claims her innocence, is where my cynicism takes over. Not that I think Mrs. Robinson is guilty, I’m simply not convinced either way and this book is very one sided in that regard (please note that I have no reason not to believe her). The part about her short teaching experiences, trial, and the media circus that followed, even though it is from her point of view, is fascinating and I did feel as if her and her friends got steam rolled over by an overzealous prosecutor. I feel justified in saying that because out of all the teachers that were prosecuted none where white, or rich, even though it was proven that the rich white districts “cheated” by a larger margin than the poor ones.
Also, a twenty year sentence for changing scores on a test?
Even if true, it is outrageous.
This book, I felt, is a short, incomplete introduction to a much larger problem. The conclusions the authors reach are very important to our society and justice system and do deserve a longer, more thorough book or most likely a series of books.
None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators by Shani Robinson and Anna Simonton is a non-fiction book about the experiences of Mrs. Robinson who has been involved in this humiliating and undignified event. Mrs. Robinson. After several years, Mrs. Robinson, whose appeal is still pending, is able to talk about this issue.
I like to point out right off the bat that I am a cynical man. I don’t believe everything I read, and if I do I check it with a several reliable sources.
Most of the time.
I’m also a big supporter of public education.
None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators by Shani Robinson and Anna Simonton was an interesting as it was informative, it actually tells two stories though. One that of Mrs. Robinson who was charged as one of the teachers who allegedly changed the grades of her students to conform with standardized testing requirements, the other is about the circumstances that caused public schools to be considered failures.
I will start with the second part, as it has to do with the reasoning behind schools changing grades. The book goes to blame politicians working together industrialists, as well as “do gooders” (mostly evangelical Christians) who are rich enough to have their voices heard as to the issues with public schools. The politicians and industrialists set out to take over poor neighborhoods, demolish them, and build more expensive residences (and thus higher tax revenue), at the expanse of the lower socioeconomic class who are mostly African American. The rich “do gooders” mainly want vouchers and charter schools as a form of subsidy (one might even say government welfare) for private schools.
The part where Mrs. Robinson claims her innocence, is where my cynicism takes over. Not that I think Mrs. Robinson is guilty, I’m simply not convinced either way and this book is very one sided in that regard (please note that I have no reason not to believe her). The part about her short teaching experiences, trial, and the media circus that followed, even though it is from her point of view, is fascinating and I did feel as if her and her friends got steam rolled over by an overzealous prosecutor. I feel justified in saying that because out of all the teachers that were prosecuted none where white, or rich, even though it was proven that the rich white districts “cheated” by a larger margin than the poor ones.
Also, a twenty year sentence for changing scores on a test?
Even if true, it is outrageous.
This book, I felt, is a short, incomplete introduction to a much larger problem. The conclusions the authors reach are very important to our society and justice system and do deserve a longer, more thorough book or most likely a series of books.
February 21, 2019
This is a story of the 2009 Atlanta standardized test cheating scandal, from the perspective of one of the teachers, Shani Robinson, who was accused and convicted. Yes, it is self-serving. All books of this type are. We know, when we sit down to read a book like this, that the protagonist will be kind, virtuous and full of integrity, that prosecutors will be over-zealous, politically-motivated hacks, that prosecution witnesses will all be liars, hoping to save their own skin, and that the judge will senile, impatient and incompetent. In sense, "None of the Above" delivers a solid exemplar of the genre.
Where the book does best is in retelling the core story, from the initial interview of Robinson by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, to grand jury testimony (she pleads the Fifth) to indictment, booking, trial, judgement and sentencing (As the book ends, Robinson is free on bond, awaiting appeal.) This part works well, a good pace, told smartly, engaging the reader, hard to put down.
However, padding out the rest of the 250+ pages, are less-interesting passages discussing the evils of urban gentrification, arguments against charter schools, land speculation, racism, and a full litany of complaints. It is enough that the author professed her innocence. It is not required that she solve all of society’s ills at the same time.
So, is Shani Robinson guilty or innocent? Hearing only the case for the defense, one cannot really say. But, the book does make a good argument for the case being over-charged, in that RICO statutes, created to prosecute organized crime, were stretched nearly to the breaking point, to take what, at most, should have been a matter for discipline within the school district, and turned it into a felony. This should concern us all.
(I received a review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.)
Where the book does best is in retelling the core story, from the initial interview of Robinson by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, to grand jury testimony (she pleads the Fifth) to indictment, booking, trial, judgement and sentencing (As the book ends, Robinson is free on bond, awaiting appeal.) This part works well, a good pace, told smartly, engaging the reader, hard to put down.
However, padding out the rest of the 250+ pages, are less-interesting passages discussing the evils of urban gentrification, arguments against charter schools, land speculation, racism, and a full litany of complaints. It is enough that the author professed her innocence. It is not required that she solve all of society’s ills at the same time.
So, is Shani Robinson guilty or innocent? Hearing only the case for the defense, one cannot really say. But, the book does make a good argument for the case being over-charged, in that RICO statutes, created to prosecute organized crime, were stretched nearly to the breaking point, to take what, at most, should have been a matter for discipline within the school district, and turned it into a felony. This should concern us all.
(I received a review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.)
July 18, 2020
I started scanning the library for books on “Black Lives Matter” to educate myself. This was the first book available, and well worth reading. In 2013, 35 educators and teachers in the Atlanta Public Schools were charged with racketeering and conspiracy, also known under RICO with charges as high as 20 years or more in prison—the same charges used to eradicate organized crime in the United States—for allegedly changing students’ answers on standardized tests. All but one was black. While some teachers convincingly claim innocence, even for those who changed answers, the charges are irrationally out of proportion. The whole trial seems a smoke screen, hiding much more material corruption, while terribly and unfairly criminalizing and publicly shaming black teachers. I am shocked, sad and disappointed this injustice can happen in 2013 in America.
The book is co-written by one of the accused teachers and a journalist, who elaborates on a wide array of context, such as the public-school system in Atlanta since segregation was outlawed in 1954, school choice and busing, privatization of the school system with charter schools, mass incarceration, displacement gentrification and the intended and unintended consequences programs such as “No child left behind”, “Race to the top, and “Teaching for America”.
I am looking forward watching the documentary movie “One child left behind” released in August 2019 and even more attention drawn on this injustice.
The book is co-written by one of the accused teachers and a journalist, who elaborates on a wide array of context, such as the public-school system in Atlanta since segregation was outlawed in 1954, school choice and busing, privatization of the school system with charter schools, mass incarceration, displacement gentrification and the intended and unintended consequences programs such as “No child left behind”, “Race to the top, and “Teaching for America”.
I am looking forward watching the documentary movie “One child left behind” released in August 2019 and even more attention drawn on this injustice.
May 25, 2019
Written by a teacher convicted for altering student test score in the Atlanta School Public System, this book is not an unbiased journalist tome. Readers will find that education is a big business in which the providers of education are not valued. At the core of the cheating was an organized plan to alter student scores in order to receive more money. There is discussion about the environmental factors that lead to limited resources and low scores in Atlanta schools. Statistical reviews showed Robinson is one of the teachers that had a high percentage of test scores changed. While she admits that she erased stray marks on the tests, she maintains her innocence regarding changing answers on her first-grade students’ tests. Even if she had changed answers, it would not matter since the results were not included in the benchmarks that affected funding. The jury determined that is did matter and found her guilty. What is missing from the discussion is the impact on the students. Cheating may have gotten additional resources for education in the short term, but changing student test scores implies a competence for the students that is not there and those students will set up to struggle for a life time. Endnotes and an index are provided.
June 10, 2019
This is a strange book, because there are two authors -- and the stories they tell have distinct tones. The first is the account of a Atlanta teacher who was accused of doctoring answers on her students' standardized tests. The second is the larger, more journalistic story of Atlanta real estate and the role of school assignment and school choice within the larger process of neighborhood change. While I don't think that the two narrative voices mesh well, I do like the way that the book places a contemporary scandal in its broader historical context.
June 2, 2019
Very detailed account of one of the defendants in the Atlanta Cheating Scandal, with tons of detail about systemic racism, so-called urban renewal, and No Child Left Behind mandated testing. This is one side of a complex tale of lies, bias, and manipulation, with a bonus of possible judicial misconduct. And it's not over yet, with multiple pending appeals. If even half of it is true, there is outrage for days.
September 17, 2019
This is an interesting book that takes a look at one of the scandals surrounding the public-school system in this century. It’s sad to think that people use the public-school system to get rich and it’s even worse that innocent people are then blamed. This is a book that should be interesting for a number of different reasons. It’s not an overly long read but it does have a lot of facts. Obviously, it’s from a certain viewpoint but facts are facts regardless of where you stand on a subject.
December 10, 2022
Yeesh. This was a horrific account of teachers falling victim to a crappy education system with policies that incentive and punish in ways that make choices to cheat seem like a way out. This story is harrowing, though I’m not sure it’s objective, and the mix between reporting on a well-known criminal case while also talking about getting married and having a baby seemed a little odd to me. Not to self: steer clear of rooms with standardized tests.
August 24, 2019
Essential reading for Atlanta residents or anyone interested in education. Money was taken from education to fund the Beltway (a trail for walking, biking, skating, etc that is a ring around the city) and lined by new expensive homes that are gentrifying the neighborhoods. Yet public schoolteachers are accused of cheating children and convicted of racketeering.
April 12, 2020
A. MUST. READ. People who don’t care about educating children have been directing behind the scenes for too long, and this book explained so much to me. I feel for these educators who gave their whole heart to helping these kids while having precious tax dollars taken away to build gentrification centers. A moving personal story framed by excellent journalism.
October 2, 2023
I lived through the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal, my children were in those schools. I work in a metro Atlanta public school and understand first hand how a small group of teachers took the fall for corrupt business leaders, politicians, and the legal system. Teachers are not the problem. Thank you for this well written account of what really happened!
July 8, 2020
Honestly, the details about Atlanta's history and its deliberate deletion of Black neighborhoods, the BeltLine and how corrupt it is, all of this was way more fascinating in the book than the actual cheating scandal. Every Atlantan should read this book.
Read
June 8, 2024If a want a left wing book advocating Marxism, read this one
The book was a.left.wing social democratic book. Its anti capitalism and I sorry I brought it. She is a black lives matter member and it shows.
The book was a.left.wing social democratic book. Its anti capitalism and I sorry I brought it. She is a black lives matter member and it shows.
March 4, 2019
Some parts were interesting but I skimmed a lot of this book.
April 6, 2019
This was just painful to listen to.
August 12, 2019
Interesting and horrifying that teachers were targeted like this. However her comical redistribution of wealth argument is ridiculous. Opportunities abound, take advantage.
February 15, 2020
I couldn't put it down. Chilling.
April 26, 2020
2.5
good luck
good luck
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