Atlanta’s public school system about how over “178 teachers and principals at 44 different public schools” cheated on standardized tests by “fudging” the scores of the student. Most of this is blamed due to Superintendent Beverly Hall and her corporate background which created a “culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation.” This is because the superintendent wanted to see only results on paper and did not care whether or not the students actually learned. She only cared about the big bonuses received and given out the employees. I feel that this is very unethical because it makes the students feel that they actually “learned” when they did not because the public school staff only cared about keeping their jobs and/or getting a big bonus for the results they reported. It is not fair to the students and I feel that all of these teachers and principals should be fired. This reminds me of the Enron scandal because both Enron and the Atlanta public school system are publishing results that are not true so that their supporters keep on investing in them.
The school’s supporters happen to be local businesses which work with and donate money to the schools. However, they come under fire because they are linked to the public school system. The business leaders liked what they were hearing about the schools but never verified any of these results with anyone. This in turn makes the local businesses look bad. All of the business leaders of the community can learn from this event that ethical leadership is important anywhere, even in public schools. An ethical leader needs two-way communication to fully learn and verify results, not only one-way communication. Overall, I feel that the Atlanta public school system showed unethical leadership to receive more money from the state and make their wallets fatter which relates to the many corporate scandals we learn about.
-Dave Harbeck, Team 7
Based on this unethical egoism of the teachers and principals, would you consider...
ReplyDeleteHaving a higher regulated public school system such as hiring an outside firm to score the tests?
Comparing grades to standardized test scores to prevent this in the future?
Why the teachers and principles did this?
-Dave Harbeck