What is this world coming to?

What is this world coming to? DCPS chancellor, Kayla Henderson recently respond to allegations of cheating by claiming that it was the media's fault for blowing things out of proportion, and that many people believe that minority children couldn't achieve such high test scores.

Now, besides some saying that Henderson is playing the "race card," there are obvious other problems with her logic.

(1) Why is she so concerned about the media actually doing their job?

(2) Who is it who says that minority children can't preform?

(3) Why isn't she addressing the allegations of a cheating scandal? (She would of course say that the media has blown everything out of proportion and in essence created the scandal.)

(4) Does she honestly believe that there is no possibility of a scandal?

(5) Lastly, why is she playing games by using the students as a defense, when the real question is the rate of right-to-wrong erasures, which is a result of the all-or-nothing atmosphere of the high stakes testing. Teachers want to keep their jobs. The DC-CAS determines their jobs (to a very large degree). You do the math. Why isn't she addressing this?

Last week, at a conference for teaching integrity (oh the irony!), Henderson announced that we need  new standards to determine what cheating actually is.

Huh?

Just because there are a lot of erasures doesn't mean that cheating is going on. We all know that. The problem is that there were A LOT of instances of that happening, in specific classrooms, and the right answers just happened to appear magically.

And know we need new standards! As if we didn't have enough already! What will these new "standards" mean for teachers? For students? Will they hold people like Henderson accountable?

Why do we even need standards? Since when is cheating not cheating? If it doesn't meet the standard of cheating?

Perhaps, this can be explained by the drive towards standardization that we are seeing in schools all across the US, of which Henderson is a huge proponent of. Now, cheating standards may or may not come, but her sentiment is based of the (false) notion that standards somehow equal success. Though, this is not true. Once size does not fit all, and by standardizing everything individual student achievement and innovation is quenched. But, does Henderson really care?

In reality, she is too busy playing games with our students, as she defends her neck. And you know who the real losers are? The kids who are being left behind. Isn't that a shame?

What is this world coming to when we spend more time debating kids education rather than acutally educating them.