ATLANTA SCHOOLS CHEATING SCANDAL

Every single day, parents entrust their local school system with providing a quality education to their children, by giving them the tools they need to prepare for a lifetime of success.  But what happens when instead of the kids failing in school, the schools fail the kids?

Such is the horrific case within the Atlanta public school system, where local residents have been shocked to learn of cheating on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT), which was uncovered in 44 of the 56 schools studied. But if that wasn’t enough, the investigation also uncovered “organized and systematic misconduct within the district as far back as 2001.”

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires all federally funded schools within a state to implement standardized testing each year in order to gauge the progress of students. Or in other words, for the administrators of these schools to continue receiving funding, achieving high scores on the standardized tests becomes a high priority.  But that is exactly where the Atlanta school system went wrong.

School administrators wanted to raise poor student scores in order to comply with the law and avoid corrective actions. But instead of assuring students were educated up to the proper levels, what did they do? They cheated — in a BIG WAY!!

According to the investigation, local teachers were pressured by administrators to personally correct wrong answers by students, or even allow students to openly cheat by copying each other’s answers during the test. The investigation identified 178 educators involved in cheating activity, with 82 of those having confessed to wrongdoing. And to add insult to injury, the extent of the cheating is believed to be far more prevalent than investigators even know.

So the million dollar questions are:  how could this have gone on, undiscovered, for so long?  How many students are undereducated as a result of the cheating?  How could Atlanta administrators have allowed such widespread injustice to occur to students over a decade? Well, according to the special investigation report:

“The first person to report cheating to us provided the same information months earlier to his superiors, only to have the wrongdoers quickly exonerated while he was reprimanded. This educator made these allegations known to the proper officials inside of APS. However, the district improperly handled this complaint in violation of its own policies. That inquiry was brought to a swift, and predictable, conclusion. The guilty went free; the whistle-blower was punished. This was not an isolated occurrence and was illustrative of the culture of fear and intimidation which promoted a code of silence.”

So, not only were educators encouraged to cheat, but they were actually threatened with punishment if they told anyone.  Hmmm…

Former Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall was praised and even received a medal for the remarkably high test scores under her jurisdiction at the time.  She has since resigned in light of the scandal and, she and the others involved are in jeopardy of having their teaching license’s revoked, in addition to facing criminal charges. Until then, current Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr. has since ordered the 178 educators allegedly involved in the scandal to resign or be fired. In response to how the Atlanta school system could allow students to be released unprepared into real life, Davis said “we can’t allow that to happen, and we can’t allow anyone who was involved with that remain in our system. We will identify those children, and we will make the requisite investments to remediate the wrongs that were done against them.”

“People felt that it was easier to cheat than to miss their goals and objective,” Davis added. But he was also quick to add that it was important to remember many Atlanta teachers did their jobs well. “There were so many teachers who have not made ethical compromises who were doing wonderful things on a daily basis.”