smf: These will not be the last words in the Crescendo affair. The Times article describes Allen as the Crescendo Executive Director – yet previous Times articles say he had already been fired/demoted from that position: which is it? The Crescendo board is delusional: if ever anyone was fired ‘for cause’ it is Allen.The Times article also intimates that a substantial severance package had been agreed to - but the Crescendo board refuses to disclose it? These are public funds, taxpayers’ money folks. Crescendo’s are public schools. And a legal question exists – can public charter funds be used to sue another public agency?
The Daily News Editorial’s twisted logic is so convoluted it could be a headliner at Cirque do Soleil. Spinning this story about malfeasance, ethical and moral bankruptcy and the wholesale failure of charter school governance and accountability into an editorial that shows that charter schools work? Step away from the Kool-Aid – we’ve all had enough!
Diana Chapman’s piece shows the danger of both what happened and the greater evil of what almost happened – and that route was suggested and approved by the LAUSD Charter Office, The Charter School Association, UTLA and the incoming superintendent.
FOUNDER OF CRESCENDO CHARTER SCHOOLS FIRED: John Allen is accused of promoting cheating on standardized tests; L.A. Unified closed all six schools in the group.
By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/gy2BN4
Just after the charter group’s governing board decided unanimously to fire him as executive director, John Allen, founder of Crescendo schools, leans against a wall. Shortly thereafter, he left the meeting. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times / March 4, 2011)
March 5, 2011 -In an attempt to fight off a looming closure, officials with a charter school organization caught in a cheating scandal fired the group founder Friday evening and threatened to sue the Los Angeles Board of Education, if necessary, to stay open.
Both announcements drew sustained cheering from more than 300 parents, students and supporters packed into a meeting hall at a South L.A. church that serves as a campus and main headquarters for Crescendo charter schools.
"Please be assured that one of the most, main reasons we're here tonight … is to keep the Crescendo schools open and operating for the sake of our future, which is your children," said Anthony Handy, who chairs Crescendo's governing board.
Crescendo, which operates six schools south of downtown Los Angeles, had its operating charter revoked this week by the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The board acted in response to both the cheating and Crescendo's response when it was discovered.
Crescendo founder John Allen allegedly ordered principals and teachers to break the seal on state standardized tests last spring and use actual test questions to prepare students, a violation of state law.
A group of teachers reported the alleged improprieties to the school district, eventually leading the state to invalidate the schools' 2010 test scores. Crescendo did not deny the cheating, but neither Allen nor anyone else was fired.
"Cheating is never right. It's always wrong and should not be tolerated," Handy said Friday, noting that five of the seven members of the Crescendo board joined after the cheating scandal to restore order. "The teachers who stood against the cheating were courageous and should be commended."
Handy also criticized L.A. Unified's revocation of Crescendo's charter.
"We believe this action was taken prematurely without all the facts and was not made in compliance with California's open meeting law," he said, adding that an action to revoke Crescendo's charter was not on the L.A. school board's agenda when it acted Tuesday.
The L.A. board, which authorizes the publicly funded, independently run charter, had been scheduled to decide whether to renew the charters of two of Crescendo's schools. Instead, board members decided to shut down all six.
Incoming L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy applauded the firing of Allen. "While it's a long time coming, it's definitely the right decision," Deasy said.
Allen sat stoically in a corner of the room as the meeting convened. When the board left for a private session to discuss his fate, he exited also, apparently to join them. He was roundly jeered. One parent waved a sign that read: "Integrity is the essence of success: Fire Allen." Other signs bore similar messages.
The board returned after about 30 minutes to announce it had dismissed Allen "without cause." An attorney for Crescendo would not disclose severance terms, citing employee privacy and saying Crescendo was under no legal obligation to disclose more.
Speaker after speaker lauded the quality of the academics and the teachers. Some also praised the principals. But parents also insisted that anyone involved in cheated deserved to be fired.
"I raised my son and daughter to be people of integrity," said Geoffrey Morris. "I think they all should go," he said, referring to top administrators implicated in wrongdoing.
Allen returned to the room when the board resumed open session. He did not respond to a reporter's request for an interview and, after a few moments, he strode into the night.
Shutdown of campuses shows charter school model allows more accountability
LA Daily News Editorial | http://bit.ly/h9qpVK
3/04/2011 - Imagine what would happen if the following occurred at one of Los Angeles Unified's traditional schools: A district official orders principals to give students the actual test questions to practice for the standardized state test.
It would cause a scandal, no doubt. The district official would be reprimanded, maybe even quietly removed from the job (though that seems unlikely). School board members would utter sharp rebukes to principals who followed the orders, maybe suspend them for a week or two. Everyone involved would profess contrition, hang their heads and apologize repeatedly - and then, after a short while, go back to work.
Now imagine what might happen if that same scenario unfolded at a charter school. Wait, you don't have to imagine that because it did happen. And thanks to action by the LAUSD Board of Education Tuesday, we know that cheating on standardized tests will get a charter school shut down faster than you can say "SAT."
The board voted to shut down six charter schools operated by Crescendo in south Los Angeles County - yes, to be completely closed at the end of the year - because of allegations by teachers of widespread and school-sponsored cheating on standardized tests.
If this seems like an excessively harsh reaction, that may only be because of how used we are to the black hole of accountability at traditional public schools, where bad teachers can't get fired and unpopular administrators are just moved from school to school.
But this swift action illustrates what makes the charter school movement so revolutionary: If the school or the people running it fail, it can be shut down immediately and students spared any long-term effects to their education.
Not just can be shut down, are shut down. There are currently 912 charters schools in California. During the 2009-2010 school year, 11 charter schools were shut down for a variety of reasons including low enrollment, financial problems or misconduct. The year before, 30 were shut down.
That's what will happen to Cornerstone Preparatory in Florence after the end of this school year. Also on Tuesday, the LAUSD board voted to shut down Cornerstone not because of any suspected impropriety but because it hasn't been doing an adequate job of teaching students. It's a chronically low-performing school and won't be able to fail its students next year.
By comparison, the school board did not shut down any of the many poor-performing traditional LAUSD schools that day - or any other day. Unlike charter schools, LAUSD schools can continue failing generations and generations of students with impunity.
Even the California Charter School Association - the lobbying group for charter schools - calls out bad charters. The organization last month outed poor-performers across the state, including Cornerstone, in a report called "Portrait of the Movement." If that seems odd, then consider that CCSA officials know that even one lousy charter school can taint the entire movement.
We're not passing judgment on Crescendo, but we are celebrating what the story of its punishment says about the potential of the charter movement to change education in California for the better.
The flexible nature of charter schools allows educators to find new ways of doing everything from teaching science to funding programs, and to try them out. If they succeed, those ideas and practices can be replicated in other schools. If they crash, they can be used as models to avoid for future academic endeavors.
It wasn't all bad charter news on Tuesday. The school board also approved the charter conversion of one of the district's crown jewels - El Camino High School in Woodland Hills. The faculty supported the conversion because it will allow the budget-plagued school more money for education, and more flexibility in spending it than traditional schools have. It's no wonder that more and more LAUSD schools are opting to convert.
Charter schools may not be the answer to all of education's problems. But they are certainly one of the solutions, giving options to teachers, administrators and parents striving for academic excellence in the midst of budget cuts and endless state and federal mandates.
A Los Angeles Daily News editorial.
TEACHING TO DECEIVE: Giving Kids Lessons in Cheating - One Scary Lesson
Diana L. Chapman | CityWatch- Vol 9 Issue 18 | http://bit.ly/g801gL
(CityWatch Ed Note: On Tuesday, the LAUSD Board reversed the Administration and voted to close the six Crescendo Charters. This column was written before the Board action was taken.)
Mar 4, 2011 - Students at Crescendo’s six charter schools in Los Angeles learned the most extraordinary lesson ever recently. If you cheat, like some of the adults at their schools apparently did, you can get off the hook and still keep your job.
In a story broken by the Los Angeles Times, I was infuriated to read that Crescendo Charters – whose top official encouraged its principals and teachers to cheat by using the actual questions its students would face in state exams – were simply reprimanded by top administrators of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
In fact, no one even lost their jobs – despite overwhelming evidence of cheating, the Times said, which allowed Crescendo charters test scores to improve dramatically and place them at the top of the charter chain.
After investigating, school district officials gave the charters less than a slap on the hand and agreed to let them continue running their facilities after the charters demoted the director, suspended the principals for 10 days and agreed to overhaul Crescendo’s board.
The matter goes before the Los Angeles Unified School Board Tuesday and I’m hoping it will do the right thing: Refuse to renew contracts at two schools that are up for the extension, Crescendo Charter Academy in Gardena and Crescendo Conservatory in Hawthorne.
Los Angeles Unified has the responsibility to protect its nearly 700,000 kids under its wing from many things – including cheating. This type of cheating promotes lies to the parents, lies to the students and has to lob into question what kind of education Crescendos students are truly receiving – if any at all.
Should the school board renew the contracts, I’d suggest Crescendo needs to revise its mission statement which currently says its goal “ is to produce a community of scholars who desire to be lifelong learners.” Perhaps it should read that the goal of the adults there is to produce a community of scholars who have learned how to cheat for a lifetime.
The good news is that some teachers were honest; They stepped up and blew the whistle and deserve a medal. No they deserve more than medal for their honesty. They risked their jobs to do so.
But what if they hadn’t?
In my book, nothing less than this should happen if the contracts are renewed:
Each principal, who apparently participated, and the now demoted director, Allen, must be fired. Crescendo’s seven-member board needs to be entirely overhauled and must have at least three parents – not just one. Parents are one of the few watchdogs that exist for public schools -- especially charters.
What bothers me the most is adults inability to understand just how intelligent children are. They absorb what’s going on. By now, they’ve already figured out what happened and are likely wondering if it’s OK to cheat. That’s why this is much more tragic than the embezzlement charges of an administrator. This is more horrific than a teacher being bad.
This is about laying down an entire system that shows students a nasty game plan to dupe the educational system.
This is more than unacceptable; it’s criminal and grossly unfair and neglectful to students.
Crescendo has been considered a top-notch organization, with test scores making magnificent leaps in 2010. For example, the Crescendo Charter Academy leaped from 57 percent in 2009 to 74 percent in language arts in 2010 at the second grade level.
The second grade class also earned great strides in math as well for the same time period, jumping from 86 percent to 91 percent.
While its third graders actually did a severe drop in test scores, the fourth grade class ascended dramatically from its 2009 45 percent in English rate to an astonishing 85 percent. The third graders also made significant leaps from 70 percent to 90 percent in math.
If these 2010 test scores were received through cheating – which appears so – then we are not doing these students any favors.
We are sending them out to face the rest of the educational system without the proper skills – not to mention the world.
I can’t think of anything more wrong and negligent than that – to pretend we are just educating our kids.
(Diana Chapman has been a writer/journalist for nearly thirty years. She has written for magazines, newspapers and the best-seller series, Chicken Soup for the Soul. You can reach her at: hartchap@cox.netThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or her website theunderdogforkids.blogspot.com ) -cw
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