Not since General William Tecumseh Sherman have we seen such carnage in Atlanta. And just like General Joseph E. Johnston . . . the people working in the Atlanta education system never had a chance.
Standardized tests, pay for performance and other education system destructive forces has brought down another city. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation found 44 out of 56 schools cheated on the Georgia standardized test. 178 principals and educators were found to have corrected answers on the test.
Why would teachers and principals risk their careers? Certainly, these must be "bad people." No good person would do this . . . off with their heads.
Oh, wait a minute, principals and teachers claim that the pressure to improve scores was "inordinate." A poor evaluation or termination if targets aren't achieved. Lives and careers destroyed by a bad system, not bad people.
Sound familiar?
This is corporate America . . . minus the testing of course. Corporate America gets inspections instead.
The standardized testing in education makes it easy to score and track, but does not reflect anything close to preparing students for the real world. CEOs are saying workers are lack ing "critical thinking, creativity and communication skills." Ignore the fact that corporate organizations don't enable the use of these skills for a moment and let's focus on the Atlanta education systems misguided purpose of increasing student test scores.
Let's face it, there is no reason to design systems in government, health, education or corporations with targets paired with incentives and/or threats. We wind up with people focused on meeting targets and not on our students education or making us better or providing service.
Atlanta will recover just as they did after the Civil War, but will they learn?
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