Howie Schwach Remembers Beverly Hall, Former CSD 27 (including Rockaway) Superintendent

People forget that cheating scandal plagued Atlanta Supt. Beverly Hall, who just passed away, was a local Supt and DOE official here in NYC and was District Supt of District 27 (Ozone Park, Howard Beach and Rockaway).

I moved to Rockaway in 1979 but never paid much attention to the local school stuff in District 27 other than to read The Wave's Howie Schwach's reports in his School Scope columns (I took over the column when Howie became Wave editor over a decade ago.)
Howie left the paper after Hurricane Sandy and how has an online presence reporting on Rockaway events.

Here is Howie reporting on Hall's death and recalling events around her superintendency almost 25 years ago. Scandals in District 27 and other districts helped bring the death-knell of community control and the rise of the even more disastrous Bloomberg mayoral control. In fact, controls were being put in place to control these scandals when community control was killed. I would go back to that a modified version of that system in an instant.

http://www.onrockaway.com/page-16.html

Dr. Beverly Hall, former CSD 27, dies of cancer

Posted at 4:45 p.m. on March 6
    Dr. Beverly Hall, the woman who sparked a contentious battle for the superintendence of Rockaway’s School District 27 in the early 1990’s and later led the Atlanta (Georgia) schools when it was hit by a massive test cheating scandal died of cancer on March 2 at the age of 68.
     She will be memorialized at a service to be held on March 28 at 10 a.m. at Trinity St. John’s Church, 1142 Broadway in Hewlett.
     Many who worked in Rockaway schools at that time will remember Hall as a tough boss who brought the Carnegie Middle School Reorganization Program to the district.
     The battle between Hall and several other candidates for the position of School District 27 Superintendent quickly became racially-tinged and contentious with now- State Senator James Sanders, who was then the president of the school board, tainted by a vote-swapping plan to give Hall the job.
     Hall, then the principal of a Brooklyn public school had been nominated by Sanders, as the new superintendent of schools for the district. There were a number of other candidates, both black and white, and the district, in the wake of a contentious school board scandal in which three members were indicted for crimes that danced around racism and cronyism, was sensitive to the issues.
     Hall is black and many black parents demanded a minority superintendent for the district’s schools, which included Rockaway, Broad Channel and a large chunk of the mainland as well.
     Hall won a contentious election when one board member was removed for trading votes and others were charged with unethical acts. The entire scenario was one that forced to city to do away with school boards and go to the community education council model that still exists today.
     In 1994, Hall left to lead the city’s special programs. Then, she went to the Newark Public Schools as superintendent. From there, in 1999, she went to Atlanta, Georgia and made history be being indicted in a cheating scandal. She resigned from the Atlanta schools in disgrace in 2010, after being named National Superintendent of the Year” the prior year. Hall was charged, along with dozens of teachers and administrators.
     Hall pled not guilty to a racketeering charge and other lesser counts. Because she was battling cancer, however, she was deemed unfit to stand trial, and her case was continued even as the others went on trial last year.

 Dr. Beverly Hall, who sparked a contentious local school election and then was the center of a massive state cheating scandal in Georgia. 

Atlanta and Philly Cheating Scandals Would Pale in Comparison to NYC...

UPDATE: WEDS AUG. 3 - 9AM - SEE BELOW THE FOLD FOR DAILY NEWS ARTICLE POINTING TO INTENTIONAL REMOVAL OF CHEATING CONTROLS BY TWEED.  OR CLICK HERE.

 ...but don't expect there to be any where near the investigation needed. Here are a few excerpts from today's NY Times piece:  Review Aims to Avert Cheating on State Tests

 Before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg won control of the schools, the city did conduct erasure analyses, but they were stopped by the Board of Education because of concerns about cost and effectiveness, city officials said. ---Sharon Otterman, NY Times

That about sums it up. Bloomberg was "worried" about "cost-effectiveness" when it came to monitor cheating. How far did Sharon have her tongue planted in her cheek when she wrote that?

New York does not conduct statistical analyses of its high-stakes third- through eighth-grade tests to scour for suspicious results that could signal cheating, like unusual spikes in a school’s scores or predictable erasures on multiple-choice questions, officials said. 

Another knee-slapper.

While New York City conducts investigations when questions about results are raised at a particular school, the city’s Education Department does not look systemwide for suspicious patterns on the tests. Those tests are the primary way the city judges the performance of elementary and middle schools on its annual school report cards.

I can tell you about schools where teachers were ordered to put up large sheets with the answers in front of the room. Guess who would get in trouble, the principal or the teachers?

What would it take to really expose cheating in NYC?

Read Mike Winerip's ripping piece in Monday's NYTimes on what it took in Atlanta.
In Pennsylvania, Suspicious Erasing on State Exams at 89 Schools

By MICHAEL WINERIP

A large data file contains evidence that suggests cheating on state exams at 89 Pennsylvania schools.

For places that are serious about exposing cheating, there is a new gold standard: Atlanta. In the bad old days, Atlanta school officials repeatedly investigated themselves and found they had done nothing wrong. Then, last August, the governor decided that, once and for all, he was going to get to the bottom of things, and appointed two former prosecutors to oversee an inquiry.

Sixty of Georgia’s finest criminal investigators spent 10 months on it, and in the end turned up a major cheating scandal involving 178 teachers and principals — 82 of whom confessed — at 44 Atlanta schools, nearly half the district. 

Once the questionable schools have been pinpointed, the serious work begins. In Atlanta, the investigators chosen to conduct the cheating inquiry were given the necessary legal tools (subpoena power) and generous resources (over 100 people were involved). Then they went out and worked the schools like police detectives, flipping one cheating teacher, who in turn would identify others.

Where there's no will there's no way. And no matter what Meryl Tisch or John King say, there's no will on the part of the State Ed Dept  to do what Atlanta did because they are complicit up to their eyeballs.

But the NY Times has resources to at least do what the tiny Notebook in Philly did. Does the Times have the will?

More links: The state is reviewing test security measures. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Times, Post, WSJ)

AND HERE IS A LATE ENTRY FROM THE DAILY NEWS PROVING THE POINT THAT BLOOMBERG INTENTIONALY REMOVED CHEATING CONTROLS. BELOW THE FOLD: