Newspaper Page Text
SCANDAL SHOWS SCHOOL PROBLEMS
MURDOCH'S TROIKA
You could cite many reasons for the cheat
ing scandal that has blown up the Atlanta
public school system and given Georgia
another black eye in the national media. The
major reason, however, was probably the ego
and arrogance of the now-departed superin
tendent, Beverly Hall, and the culture within
the school system that she perpetuated. Hall
evidently cared little about actually providing
children with an education. She wanted the
ego gratification that came with "reforming"
an urban school system and figured the best
way to do it was by boosting student scores
on standardized tests.
It didn't matter how those test results
were achieved, either. Many admin-
: strators and teachers, under enor
mous pressure to bolster scores,
took part in schemes to erase and
change answers on test forms so
;hat they could bring the results
up to Hall's standards.
The report compiled by state
investigators expressed it this
way: "APS became such a 'data-
driven' system, with unreasonable
and excessive pressure to meet targets,
that Beverly Hall and her senior cabinet lost
sight of conducting tests with integrity...
In sum, a culture of fear, intimidation and
retaliation permeated the APS system from the
highest ranks down," the report said.
The final tally: 178 educators, including 38
principals, took part in cheating. More than
80 of those educators confessed. Cheating was
confirmed at 44 of the 56 schools that were
investigated.
In some ways, the Atlanta school system
mess is an outgrowth of bad policy decisions
made at the federal and state levels more
than a decade ago. George W. Bush, first as
governor of Texas and then as president, initi
ated an education reform program now called
"No Child Left Behind" that requires extensive
testing of students in grades K-12. Schools
whose students do not achieve federally
mandated test scores can be penalized or shut
down.
Roy Barnes was enamored of the Bush
school program and used it as the model for
his own "A-Plus" education reform proposal
that he pushed through the General Assembly
while he was governor.
School testing is important as a way of
measuring a student's improvement, or lack of
it, and pinpointing areas where more teaching
might be needed. But programs like "No Child
Left Behind" put so much emphasis on test
ing that educators are driven to "teach to the
test" rather than focus on the subject matter
students really need to learn.
When you take an egotist like
Beverly Hall and combine her with
an education program where so
much of your success depends
upon test scores, you wind up
with cheating scandals like the
one that has all but destroyed
the Atlanta school system.
This is not a problem isolated
just to Atlanta. State investiga
tors are still examining similar cur
riculum test cheating allegations in the
Dougherty County (Albany) school system.
School systems in other states have been
caught up in cheating scandals, including
Baltimore, Houston, Michigan and Florida.
In Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee was
praised for the improved test scores that were
seen at some underperforming schools while
she was the superintendent there. Questions
were raised and schools were flagged for high
numbers of test questions that were changed
from the wrong to the right answer.
Elected leaders at both the federal and
state levels should take a hard look at get
ting back to a system that puts more focus
on teaching subjects like reading, math and
science and less emphasis on getting students
ready for tests. Our kids deserve much better.
The troika hurtles across the frozen plain.
The wolves are close behind, and from time
to time a peasant is hurled from the sleigh
in the hope of letting the more important
people escape. But nothing distracts the pack
for long, not even when the occupants of the
sleigh move up the pecking order and throw a
couple of minor aristocrats to the wolves.
Wait! What's this? They have thrown a
newspaper to the wolves? An entire newspa
per, with two hundred full-time employees and
hundreds more freelance contributors? How
do they think that that will help them to get
away?
The troika is called News International, the
newspaper wing of Rupert Murdoch's globe-
spanning media empire. The paper that has
justbeen sacrificed is the News of the World,
a Sunday tabloid that claims to have more
readers than any other paper in the English-
speaking world.
The NoW makes a tidy
profit, but this Sunday's edi
tion will be its last. After 168
years, the institution that
pioneered the art of persuad
ing the emerging class of
semi-literate English people
to buy newspapers has been
shut down by its owners.
Semi-literates were con
sumers too. If it took a
steady diet of salacious and
scandalous stories about the
rich and/or famous to get
them to read a newspaper,
the publishers of the NoW
were always willing to provide
it. The advertisers flocked in
and the "News of the Screws,"
as the magazine Private Eye
dubbed it in the 1970s, flour
ished like the green bay tree.
It used to get its salacious and scandalous
stories by paying celebrities' friends to betray
them, or just by going through celebrities'
garbage in search of letters, receipts, etc.
Starting as long ago as the late 1990s, how
ever, the NoW also started hacking new com
munications technologies, even though that
was against the law.
Over the past decade the NoW has paid var
ious shady characters to hack the voice-mails,
emails and other electronic data of literally
thousands of people, from members of the
British royal family to Z-list celebrities. A few
of them, suspecting they had been hacked,
launched lawsuits against the paper, and the
whole shabby enterprise began to unravel.
The first peasants to be thrown from the
troika were the NoWs royal correspondent,
Clive Goodman, and the private eye he had
paid to hack into the royal family's phone
messages, Glenn Mulcaire. Both men went to
prison in 2007. The management at the NoW
insisted that they were just a couple of "bad
apples"—but it paid their legal expenses, and
probably much more besides, in order to buy
their silence about any further hacking.
The stone-walling worked for a while, as
the police soft-pedaled the investigation (the
NoW had been paying them for stories, after
all). But details of the hacking continued to
leak out anyway, and during this year sev
eral more senior NoW journalists have been
arrested for questioning, including former edi
tor Andy Coulson.
James Murdoch, the 80-year-old Rupert's
son and heir apparent, was moved from
London to New York in March, at least partly
to put him beyond easy reach of the British
legal system. (He was ultimately responsible
for the NoW at the time of the crimes.)
Last week it was revealed that the NoW had
been hacking not only celebrities' voice-mails,
but also those of a murdered schoolgirl, of
the grieving families of British soldiers killed
in Afghanistan and of victims of the terrorist
attack in London in 2005. Public disgust was
intense, and it was clearly time to throw the
wolves a really big meal.
The obvious candidate was Rebekah Brooks,
who was the editor of the NoW in the early
years of phone hacking (2000-03). She is now
the chief executive of News International, and
a close personal friend of Rupert Murdoch, so
firing her would create the impression that
Murdoch's empire was serious about cleaning
house. Instead, Rupert Murdoch closed the
News of the World itself down.
His son James made the announcement,
lamenting the loss of a paper with a "proud
history of fighting crime, exposing wrong
doing and regularly setting the news agenda
for the nation." How true. Why, in its last edi
tion it had a front-page story about Florence
Brudenell-Bruce's revelation that her new boy
friend, Prince Harry, was "fantastic in bed."
The only picture they could find to illustrate
the story, alas, showed her in her underwear.
News International isn't really going to lose
money by closing the NoW. It will be replaced
almost immediately by a new Sunday edition
of its weekday stable-mate, the Sun: new
web addresses for thesunonsunday.com and
TheSunOnSunday.co.uk were registered last
week. As British Justice Secretary Ken Clarke
said: "All they're going to do is rebrand it."
But why didn't they just blame it all on
Rebekah Brooks and fire Her? Because if
Rebekah Brooks goes down, the next person
in the line of fire will inevitably be James
Murdoch himself. That cannot be allowed
to happen, because he is leading News
Corporation's bid for control of British Sky
Broadcasting, which would give it utter domi
nance in the British media and huge profits.
So, leave Brooks out there to draw fire at
least until the British government approves
the BSkyB takeover bid. Then, if necessary,
she can be thrown out of the troika, too.
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journal
ist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Tom Crawford tcrawford@gareport.com
I W3CYCOA LW133 c.n
SALUTATIONS, SENTlENTS.' OUR TOP
STORY THIS NANOSECOND: DUE TO
A PENDING LEGISLATIVE FORMALITY,
OUR LAND MASS FACES AN IMMI
NENT ACCOUNTING CRISIS'.
SUPREME LEADER ORZAK MAS SIG
NALLED HIS WILLINGNESS TO COM
PROMISE—AGAIN AND AGAIN--
—AND AGAIN—\J—AND AGAIN'.
AND IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT
WE CANNOT SOLVE THE ACCOUNTING
CRISIS BY REDUCING THE BUDGET
OF THE WARRIOR CASTE!
SO CLEARLY THE REST of US ARE
GOING TO HAVE TO CONTRACT OUR
DIGESTIVE POUCHES AND MAKE Do
WITH LESS!
EXCEPT FOR THE
WARRIOR CASTE,
AND THE UPPER
MOST ACCUMU
LATORS Of SHINY
STONESJ
MX MXVMVl
BUT OPPOSITION PARTY OVERLORDS
CONTINUE TO RESIST THE IDEA Of
A TAX INCREASE ON EVEN THE
WEALTHIEST of sentients.'
THEY SHOULD NOT BE
PUNISHED For their |
DEXTERITY IN ACCUMU
LATING SHINY STONES. 1
COMING UP NEXT*. SHOULD WE
resolve the Accounting crisis
BY ABANDONING THE £l0£fli.Y ON
THE NORTHERNMOST PLAINS—TO
BE CONSUMED BY THE GREAT AND
TERRIBLE BEASTS WHICH ROAM
THERE?
q
FIRST THESE
MESSAGES
FROM THE
MERCHANT
CASTE.
8 FLAGPOLE.COM-JULY 13. 2011
