By Dr. John Trotter

Dear Governor: At least this is a start. There is, in my lowly opinion, massive systematic cheating taking place in the Atlanta Public Schools and in the DeKalb County School System. Both systems want teachers to essentially give the students grades for the semesters, and if the teachers, because of conscience, refuse to just give the students these grades, the teachers are basically “corporately executed” by using the evaluative system in a very manipulative, retributive, and punitive manner. The principals even taunt the teachers with this “weapon” that they have. Today, it is so easy to engage in “corporate execution” because any dumb-ass administrator (and believe me, Gov., there are many of them out there) can bubble in a form, but if they had to write a cogent paragraph stating the real reasons why they are giving a teacher a bad evaluation, so many of these hellion and heartless administrators would flunk a freshman essay assignment. The urban systems are broken. Plain and simple. Perhaps this is not politically correct to say this, but no one has ever accused me, Norreese Haynes, or anyone else on the MACE Staff with being politically correct. We tend to pride ourselves in politically incorrectly telling the truth. This is the truth…the urban systems in Georgia are completely broken mainly because the thugs are running the systems — the thug administrators and the thug students. It is as if the is a detente between the thug administrators and the thug students. A social contract, if you will. The thug students to the thug administrators: If you will let us do what we want and just give us the grades that we want and allow us to graduate, then we will not sic our irate and irresponsible parents on you, and you will keep your high-paying jobs and your luxury cars and plush houses. We [students and administrators alike] can just blame the teachers. If a teacher does not go along with the game plan (remember LBJ’s “go along to get along”}, then together we can just get rid of the teachers. Standard essentially do not exist anymore.

I remember when one teacher conscientiously reported (as was her duty) another teacher for cheating on the standardized test. This happened, so I was told by a teacher at this school, at an elementary school in Atlanta. The teacher who did the reporting was “corporately executed” (contract non-renewed), and the teacher who was accused of cheating was made (no doubt by the principal, not by fellow teachers) “Teacher of the Year.” This is how Atlanta works, Gov. So, don’t be too dismayed that Beverly Hall has not investigated the situation at Deerwood Academy. There is a cheating culture in the Atlanta Public Schools as well as in the DeKalb County School System, in my opinion, and I have seen a lot in my days.

Governor, I have always thought of you as an independent, competent, and honest man. If you really want to expose more on these questionable and near-impossible gains (considering the Law of the Large Numbers), how about checking into the scores (100% on the four reading and math tests) at Atlanta’s Capitol View and West Manor Elementary Schools? Atlanta’s school culture is a cesspool, despite all the accolades that the media and the local Chamber of Commerce apparently seek to heap upon Beverly Hall. I still say that the three biggest educational hypocrites in Georgia are Beverly Hall, Crawford Lewis, and Mark Elgart. © MACE, July 10, 2009.