LAUSD Encourages Teachers to Cheat

For 7 years, this exact scenario was practiced at NYC Public Schools, where assessments were fixed and Black and Latino students’ parents were falsely told that their children were doing better. Finally, the State of New York gave an independently proctored assessment that showed that Black and Latino students were actually doing worse than they were 7 years ago. Did any of the corrupt NYC Public School administrators lose their jobs for this fraud?

LAUSD’s latest little program of education illusion is the online Apex classes that cost the District $350 per student. This is money taken away from actual teachers, but the school district likes it because it makes a school appear better by being able to offer more and higher level courses, irrespective of whether the students can actually do the work. The fact that Apex gives the same assessments for credit to all students taking the classes for credit or the rampant cheating that goes on, where students who take the assessments in 1st period share it with everybody else who takes it the rest of the day, doesn’t seem to bother LAUSD as long as it looks good. At LAUSD appearances are everything and substantive public education hasn’t carried any weight for a long time.

So at Crescendo, John Allen, the founder of Crescendo becomes the scapegoat for cheating, which is applauded by incoming LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy who said, “While it’s a long time coming, it’s definitely the right decision.” Sad that Romer, Brewer, Cortines, and now Deasy couldn’t clean their own house before going after others.

If “Integrity is the essence of success,” I think we can clearly understand why LAUSD has not been and continues not to be successful in the rather straightforward process of educating all students. The regrettable conclusion is that they have precisely the purposefully failed system of institutionalized racist public education that they want. Getting Black and Latino administrators to go along with it doesn’t make it any better than when Whites were doing it.

Leonard Isenberg
Perdaily.com

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