Teachers being escorted to jail in handcuffs is not something we expect to see as we desperately seek to improve U.S. educational performance. However that is precisely what occurred Wednesday April 1 in Atlanta s Fulton County Superior Court. Ten years since the cheating conspiracy began six years since fraud reports surfaced in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and just over two years since an Atlanta grand jury indicted the late Beverly L. Hall (former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools) and 34 other district employees and two years since I first reported on the scandal 11 defendants were found guilty of running a test cheating scheme designed to bolster their own their schools and their school district s academic standing.
With millions of dollars in performance bonuses and other awards contingent on dramatically improved student results on the Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) a standardized test given to all Georgia public school students the defendants directly inflated and/or enabled the inflation of student test scores falsified government documents and intimidated witnesses to these crimes.
Earlier this year twenty one of those originally indicted reached plea deals with Atlanta District Attorney Paul L. Howard. Fourteen of those indicted decided to go to trial. Two defendants including Hall died before taking the stand.
The convicted educators which included five elementary school teachers a principal and support and testing personnel were also found guilty of lesser charges including making false statements. However the controversial and unprecedented racketeering conviction will carry the biggest wallop when sentencing hearings begin next week. Let us hope that Judge Jerry W. Baxter has the courage to deliver a sentence severe enough to send a clear message to the 40 other states where the U.S. Government Accountability Office has detected testing fraud.
For those apologists busy solidifying the soft bigotry of low expectations let me reiterate that the credibility of American education rests on the sanctity of objective testing. Say what you will about the flaws and frequency of standardized tests they remain the best way to ascertain how disparate students schools and school districts compare with each other.
Yes the Obama administration s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers enabled states to water down testing standards. Nevertheless standardized testing however dumbed down still exists in all U.S. school districts as it has existed for decades long before the testing mandates of No Child Left Behind were enacted. Without various types of standardized testing we would have no benchmark by which to ascertain how students fare in an apples to apples comparison against their peers locally nationally and globally or how best to help failing students schools principals and districts. If educators have a problem with such tests the remedy is not fraud .
As someone who has spent the last 12 years of his life helping poor and minority youth academically succeed I found the audacious depth and breadth of the Atlanta test cheating racket including changing parties in which wrong scores were made right to be particularly galling. How are we to get so called at risk young people to value the discipline moral character and hard work necessary for academic greatness when their purported role models are cutting corners to cover up their own failures
Kudos to District Attorney Howard for adroitly using Georgia s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) statute to bust these edu racketeers . Now let s get back to improving Atlanta s and America s educational performance with a team of educators possessing the moral fiber to put students not themselves first.
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