Executive summary
The widespread cheating scandal that happened in the Atlanta public school system has illustrated how high-stakes performance pressure, without sufficient risk controls, can drive dangerous behavior. Beverly Hall, after becoming the head of the low-income, under-represented school system in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1999, implemented a new assessment system to motivate and evaluate the performance of teachers and principals. Educators who excelled in standardized tests received bonuses and public recognition; while under-educated educators were condemned, warned, and eventually dropped out. To improve student achievement, teachers and principals began to take drastic measures, including cooperation to change students' test answers, while threatening to expose cheating colleagues. As the results of the Atlanta Undergraduate exam soared, business and political leaders appreciated the fact that Hall turned the backward school system into a data-driven approach to success. Hall has served for more than a decade, and several investigations have revealed the cheating scandal in Atlanta and its terrible impact on students.
This report mainly discusses the three problems of organizational culture, leading and controlling Atlanta school’s cheating scandal issue, and analyzes the reasons for it. Afterward, this report puts forward some solutions to improve the problem of organizational culture, leading, and controlling. Finally, this report proposes three recommendations and establishes an implementation plan.
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Problem Identification and Analysis. Organisational Culture Problem
Organizational culture has a strong guiding role. By guiding the thoughts and behaviors of the whole school, teachers, and students, it can guide the school atmosphere to develop in the right direction, and the teachers and students of the school will be affected by this cultural atmosphere.
Instead of doing a good job, the organizational culture of Atlanta schools has created a culture that encourages cheating. Some education officials and teachers deliberately leak standardized test answers and even help students revise their answers to ensure that students pass exams and do not affect their pay raises. An investigation that lasted more than 11 months found that between 2005 and 2009, there were 44 public schools in Atlanta suspected of serious cheating, involving about 180 people in the education sector, 38 of whom were principals (Simons, & Kindred, 2013).
As a special social organization, the school's organizational culture penetrates teaching, scientific research, management, talent training, and so on, which has a far-reaching and lasting impact on the construction and development of the school.
[bookmark: OLE_LINK41][bookmark: OLE_LINK42]Similarly, once a good organizational culture of a school is formed, it will produce an invisible infectious effect, and all members of the school will be affected. It includes a rich content, according to the principle of the Radar Model, it can be divided into four levels, namely, the material layer, the behavior layer, the system layer, and the core layer (Zhang et al, 2011). Radar Models point out that the deepest value system of organizational culture takes the core value as the base point to form a dynamic scanning needle. This is constantly scanned and checked for the organization's rules and regulations, member behavior habits, and material levels. If 'targets' are found to be inconsistent with value, then it will make rectifications. If it is found to be consistent goals, then it will promote (Zhang et al, 2011).
At the same time, in the process of scanning, the value system will get feedback from the system layer, behavior layer, and material layer, including information feedback, test feedback, and so on. Therefore, for the school such as teaching and educating people, heritage culture, and other organizations, only the four levels of coordination and interaction, can effectively play a great role in schools.
However, with the deepening of the market economy, commercial factors have a growing influence on the construction of university organization culture. Funding input, promotion rate, and so on are very real problems for schools, which has led to the diversity of values of teachers and students, gold worship, individualism, pragmatism, and other ideas and behaviors. While Atlanta schools, only pursuing a material level, will eventually deviate from the original purpose of education.
In addition, At Atlanta Public School (APS), teachers who refuse to cheat or report misconduct will be humiliated, excluded, and fired by principals and district supervisors (Aronson, Murphy, & Saultz, 2016). This kind of organizational culture cannot be in favor of improving school performance.
Leadership Problem
Leadership behavior influences educators and it is the individual's control over the organization. It establishes a follow-up relationship through guidance and influence. Under the leadership of Hall, principals and other leaders put unreasonable pressure on educators to achieve unrealistic performance goals.
The failure of leadership in the APS comes down to two reasons. One is the insular style of Hall and her isolation from the rank-and-file, the other is that Hall and her team are only in pursuit of success but refuse to take responsibility for anything else.
Hall not only sets annual progress goals that exceed the statewide average, but also implements performance-related economic incentives (Catalano, & Gatti, 2016).. Teachers and principals are rewarded if students do well in exams; If students don't do well, teachers and principals are humiliated or even dismissed. Since 2005, 130 public schools in the Detroit area alone have been closed because they failed to meet expectations (Freeman, 2015). This not only subverts the traditional educational concept of the United States with quality education and ability education as its core but also violates the basic educational law. On the face of it, false grades can bring glory to schools, but they ultimately undermine public trust in schools, hurting students.
Controlling Problem
The goal of school management is to improve students' performance, and cultivate talents, and effective control can ensure the effective operation of the school. It also helps to reduce the occurrence of problems and promote the long-term development of the school.
The goal management of the school is not only the management of the elements of teachers, infrastructure construction, scientific research funds, and logistics services invested to achieve the goal, but also the management of the process of transforming resources into the actual economic and social benefits of the school, and also the management of the revision and adjustment of the goal realization efficiency and the goal. The above problems are the performance control problems of school goal management.
Under the accountability system of the NCLB Act, which came into effect in 2002, the test is not only related to the individual student's academic performance, the results of the exam are more important to teachers, schools, and school districts (Patrick, et al, 2018). The NCLB Act has an unprecedented emphasis on the importance of student test scores to teachers and schools, and student achievement is no longer just about the student's personal, but directly related to the work of teachers and principals, and even the existence of schools (Freeman, 2015). To meet the goals set out in the bill, states and school districts place great emphasis on student test scores and take steps to improve student performance (Patrick, et al, 2018). However, such accountability greatly undermines school education and is an important reason for teachers to cheat.
Statement of Key Problems
The key problems in Atlanta schools are mainly organizational cultural problems, leadership problems, and control problems.
Statement of Organisational Cultural Problem
The organizational cultural problem was shown in the investigation of the cheating scandal in Atlanta schools, it found that 44 schools involved 178 educators, including 38 principals involved in cheating (Simons, & Kindred, 2013). In addition, At Atlanta Public School (APS), teachers who refuse to cheat or report misconduct will be humiliated, excluded, and fired by principals and district supervisors.
Statement of leadership problem
Hall is the leader of the Atlanta Public School (APS), under her leadership, principals, teachers, and administrators have cheated on student achievement and purposefully manipulated student attendance and performance data to improve school performance (Simons, & Kindred, 2013).
Statement of controlling problem
In an investigation into the cheating scandal in Atlanta schools, the Atlanta Board of Education established the Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) to investigate the issue. BRC hired an outside company Caveon Test Security to analyze the issues of exam security. After the investigation, the BRC's chairman said APS was out of control and had lost the balance between performance and ethics (Freeman, 2015).
The construction of organizational culture is not a random cultural activity. Organizational culture is not a one-sided exploration of the physical strength of teachers and students, it should also make scientific planning, combine the career planning of teachers and students with the school development plan, fully explore the intellectual resources of teachers and students, and pay more attention to the human factor. The continuous development of human quality is the core content of the construction of the school's organizational culture, especially the education and training of teachers and staff, and the enthusiasm of teachers and students to stimulate the focus. Because, the essential characteristic of school organization culture is to advocate the human-centered philosophy of human-based management, and to advocate the cultivation of progressive organizational culture and the play of the human subject role as the leading link of the management of colleges and universities.
Pay attention to the role of the teaching staff and the adjustment of the training mode of talents. A good school organization culture is concentrated on the school style, teaching style, and learning style. School style is a comprehensive performance of various elements such as school-running thought, school-running idea, training goal, educational effect, and management level. It is not only the precipitation of the school's running tradition and experience but also the comprehensive embodiment of its ability to run a school and the level of running a school. Learning style mainly refers to the student's learning style, which is the psychological and physiological quality that students develop under training and education of the students, and is the inner and external manifestation of the student's growth state. Learning style is also a comprehensive reflection of students' world outlook, outlook on life, will view, and political morality. The teaching style is characterized by the characteristics and style of teachers engaged in teaching activities. It permeates teachers' educational thought, professionalism, academic attitude, teaching quality, knowledge level, teaching method, scientific research ability, and teaching effect. The teaching style is embodied in the educational practice activities through various aspects of the teaching work. It also has an important influence on the student's style of study, school spirit, teaching, and quality of personnel training (Thanomwan, & Buncha, 2014). The modern talent training mode should combine science education and humanities education, cultural education and ideological education, actively take social orientation, take students' needs as the starting point, change the curriculum education system centered on exam-oriented education, and build quality. Education is the main task to maximize the knowledge structure and ability structure of students.
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