Camden (NJ) school administrators get a public spanking:
The nearly 18,000-student system has long been plagued by a high dropout rate, low test scores, and violence. The district has been under state oversight since 1999. Superintendent Annette Knox has been criticized for everything from her handling of racial tension to her $185,000 salary in a city where nearly half the children live at the poverty level.With so much holding them back, is it possible for so many Camden kids to surge so far ahead so fast? That's what my colleagues Melanie Burney and Frank Kummer wondered as they reviewed statewide standardized tests results from 2004-05. Crunching the numbers, they noticed dramatic performances at two Camden elementary schools, H.B. Wilson and U.S. Wiggins.
Wilson posted the highest average fourth-grade math scores in the state, besting more than 1,300 elementary schools. Wiggins placed sixth.
In fourth-grade science, both schools posted 100 percent proficiency, ranking far ahead of the district average and putting them in the ranks of traditionally high-performing schools in wealthy suburbs......my colleagues' questions sparked a state inquiry and the discovery that education officials already had been looking into a related issue at Charles Brimm Medical Arts High School brought up by a most unlikely tattletale: principal Joseph Carruth. A high-ranking district administrator reportedly pressured Carruth to help rig scores of last year's 11th-grade tests. Carruth resisted and reported the incident to state education officials...
...would they really be so stupid as to fake success so grand even Camden cheerleaders would doubt it? Much as he'd like to believe them, Angel Cordero said, he thinks the numbers are just too good to be true. And that makes the Camden education activist (and frequent Knox critic) both sad and mad.
As well he should be.