LAUSD Encourages Teachers to Cheat

LAUSD Encourages Teachers to Cheat on Assessments, So Why Get Angry When Crescendo Charter Does It?

As most of you know that follow my writing, I am in the process of being dismissed by LAUSD for alleged wrong doing that the school district steadfastly refuses to authenticate or support with evidence, other than what their administrators can fabricate. The fact that I had a 23-year teaching career with excellent teaching evaluations and no prior negative marks against me seems to have no relevance to LAUSD that hit me with four notices of unsatisfactory acts and 4 suspensions totaling 49 days, starting less than a month after I reported their own assessment fixing and fraudulent graduation of 79 students from my school with low elementary school reading abilities on the STAR Reading Assessment with some as low as second grade.

Now, one can only be astounded by the blatant hypocrisy of LAUSD in going after Crescendo Charter Schools for some of the same practices that continue to take place on a regular basis in LAUSD schools, where teachers like myself are given answers to assessments that we are supposed to administer but not score. So why do we have the answers? Hmm…

No one at the school district in administration or on the Board questions this or the results in their own schools, when students with low elementary levels in English, math, science, and social studies, somehow get passing grades on assessments that they objectively do not have the foundational skills to even understand, let alone do well on.

In addition, clearly written on the proctor’s copy of these assessments are statements that these assessments are going to be give again, so what the teachers not just at Crescendo, but throughout LAUSD are tacitly encouraged to do is help their students cheat.

So why would honorable teachers do this? Could it have anything to do with the not so subtle threat that LAUSD administration holds over their heads with value added assessment (45% margin of error), negative teaching evaluations, and overt threats if these teachers don’t knuckle under to the dishonesty that is promulgated by the school district administrators who are more concerned with creating the appearance of education then actually doing something that would accomplish it. Ask any teacher how their administrator would respond if they gave an  “F” to a student who did no work, was habitually truant, and deserved it.

Implicit in LAUSD’s approach is an accommodation to failure in our public schools, rather then pragmatically addressing it once and for all. Worse yet is the misbegotten tacit acceptance of racial inferiority that makes the school district leadership think that Black and Latino students are incapable of achieving unless we fix the assessments, which only ensures their continued unnecessary failure- instead of doing something really radical for LAUSD like actually educating them. While the school district is quick to talk about all students going to college, its longstanding failed approach to education is designed to assure that the predominantly Latino and Black population of its schools never reach their potential.

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