Tax Dollars at Work

Georgia officers travel to Vermont to grill anti-testing advocate.

Susan Ohanian, a former elementary school teacher who has writtenseveral books on education, doesn't have much cause for schoolsecurity officers or state troopers to come knocking on the doorof her Vermont home. So she was taken by surprise when officerstraveled all the way from Gwinnett County, Ga., to see her inlate July. The officers were accompanied by a Vermont State Trooperand made threats of fingerprints, search warrants, extradition,and felony-related charges.

The reason? A copy of a standardized test to be given to studentsin Gwinnett County had been leaked to the media last April beforethe test was administered.

Ohanian has never been to Gwinnett County, Ga. However, she isa nationally known critic of high-stakes standardized tests andauthor of the book One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards. Furthermore, some of the photocopied Gwinnett County tests weremailed anonymously and bore a postmark not far from Ohanian'shome in Charlotte, Vt.

The controversy involves the $6 million Gateway test developedby McGraw-Hill for fourth and seventh graders in Gwinnett County,Georgia's largest school district. Officials have mandated thetest even though the district is one of the best in the stateat producing high test scores.

The leaked test involves the fourth-grade test. It isn't clearif the test was stolen out of a school or if the leak occurredat the printers or at McGraw Hill. The Gwinnett County PublicSchools will not comment on the case because the investigationis continuing. The officers visiting Ohanian were employees ofthe school district and are known as School Resource Officers.

The first person the officers wanted to question was Lisa Amspaugh,leader of the parents' group Concerned Parents of Gwinnett, whichhas raised questions about high-stakes testing. Because she wasout of town when the investigation began, officer James Keinardtelephoned Virginia to question Gerald Bracey, author of The War on America's Public Schools, to ask if he knew where she took her vacations. (He doesn't.)Keinard also asked Bracey if he knew anything about Ohanian, whomBracey has never met.

Next stop was Amspaugh's office where, according to her, Keinardthreatened to arrest her receptionist for obstruction after someconfusion about when Amspaugh would be available to meet him.

"Their whole goal was to implicate me in the theft of the test,"Amspaugh says. "Basically, they want to get me out of the way."

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that other parents in the group opposing the tests saythey were contacted by the security officers and felt harassed.

Suspects in the Gwinnett case have been threatened with ten yearsin jail and $50,000 fines.

When Keinard finally did speak to Amspaugh, he also was interestedin how she knows Ohanian. Amspaugh says Keinard must have linkedOhanian to her through phone records, because they had spokenon the phone before, and that both are on some of the same e-maildiscussion lists.

Still on the search for suspects, Keinard and another securityofficer, escorted by a Vermont State Police officer, showed upat Ohanian's door on a Saturday morning in July and questionedher for about 20 minutes. Ohanian says they first threatened herwith jail time and fines. They then switched tactics, saying theyunderstood that she was an innocent dupe. She says they left makingmore threats about search warrants, fingerprints, and extradition.

This is not the first time school officials have threatened actionagainst opponents of high-stakes test. In Chicago, the ChicagoBoard of Education fired and filed a $1 million suit against teacherGeorge Schmidt for publishing parts of that district's tests (aftertest day) in Substance, a teacher-produced newspaper in Chicago. That case is stillpending.

Fall 2000