Cheaters Prosper: Disgraced Crescendo CEO Wins $240,000 Settlement

The Crescendo cheating scandal in Los Angeles is old news (see here, here, and here). All of Crescendo’s schools have since been closed, their teachers let go, and their 1,400 students forced to relocate as a result of the 2010 scandal in which teachers were given advance copies of the state standardized exams to help better prepare their students. However, two separate investigations have now blamed the organization’s founder and CEO, John Allen, for ordering his schools’ principals to implicate the teachers in the scam.

The Los Angeles Times quoted an anonymous former Crescendo administrator who said, "He [Allen] said anyone who doesn't get with the program, this will be their last day at Crescendo." The Times article went on to say that most principals complied, according to an unreleased internal Crescendo report. The scandal broke when teachers reported the cheating attempts to LAUSD officials.

Despite LAUSD’s knowledge of the scandal, Allen was kept on as head of the charter network due to the help of Marguerite Poindextor LaMotte, a friend of Allen’s and a member of the Los Angeles School Board. LaMotte even got then Supt. Ramon Cortines (who is now enmeshed in his own sexual harassment scandal) to back Allen and keep the Crescendo schools open. However, once the scandal became public, LAUSD had to do damage control and gave Allen a 6-month, unpaid suspension, while still allowing him to come back as an administrator. The principals received wrist slap suspensions of 10 days.

While Allen supposedly admitted his guilt to a Crescendo trustee, he apparently did not admit guilt publicly and has since sued for wrongful dismissal, arguing that the allegations of testing irregularities were "unfounded." In April, he settled with Crescendo for $245,000 of their remaining assets.

Charter School Fires Founder, Threatens to Sue LAUSD

Slap on Wrist or Decertification for Crescendo?

Crescendo Charter Schools, embroiled in a scandal over it administration’s mandate for teachers to cheat on state standardized exams, has fired its founder, John Allen, and threatened to sue Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in order to keep its six schools open. Last week, the Los Angeles School Board voted to close the schools. John Allen had ordered principals at the schools to require teachers to open the sealed exams in advance and allow students to study them before taking the exams in earnest. Several teachers risked retaliatory actions and reported the corruption to authorities.

Crescendo had been making miraculous, unbelievable gains on its exam scores, which had originally prompted LAUSD to recertify their charter. However, when it became clear that faculty had cheated, these miraculous gains became suspect. As a result of the cheating, there was no way to know if Crescendo had been making any real progress at all.

Anthony Handy, chair of the Crescendo governing board criticized LAUSD for “acting prematurely,” and in violation of California’s open meeting law (the decision to revoke all six charter was not included in the board’s published meeting agenda). One should wonder why Crescendo should get a second chance? They initially gave Allen a slap on the wrist (a six-month suspension, with his job preserved for him upon his return) and the guilty principals only received ten-day suspensions. It seems that LAUSD is only guilty of waiting too long to revoke their charter and doing so only after public outrage became more damaging than the guilty administrators.

In a calculated and cynical move, incoming LAUSD superintendent John Deasy lauded the firing of Allen, saying it was “a long time coming.” Deasy was hand-picked for the job of superintendent by pro-charter school billionaires and had served as head schools official at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a pro-charter school philanthropy. Deasy’s criticism was damage control, an attempt to show that the system is self-correcting and fair, that charter schools are essentially wholesome and good, and the occasional bad eggs are quickly removed.