Probe of Atlanta schools finds principals & teachers cheating to improve test scores

[pwaldo]

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...ing-on-tests/1

On Tuesday, Gov. Nathan Deal released only a two-page summary of the report showing organized, systemic cheating in Atlantic Public Schools by scores of educators, including 38 principals.

Deal says "there will be consequences" for educators who cheated and has forwarded the findings to three district attorneys as well as state and city education officials.

According to the report, the alleged culture even prompted one third-grade teacher to tell investigators that the culture at APS is that if you are not a "team player," there are ways that the school system can get back at you. The teacher was afraid of retaliation if she did not go along with cheating, saying, "APS is run like the mob."

The report calls teacher test-tampering "an open secret" at at least one school, Gideons Elementary, where a group of teachers one weekend brought students' answer sheets to a teacher's home and held a "changing party."

Other teachers changed students' answers at school after hours. In one case, the school's principal told teachers, "If anyone asks you anything about this just tell them you don't know. You did not. Stick with it … just stick to the story and it will all go away."

--50% of the classes at one middle school showed unusual signs of erasures of wrong answers on state-mandated tests and substitution of correct answers. The report says the principal at the school ordered a teacher and two staff members who find wrong answers to "make them right."

--Teachers at one elementary school used "non-verbal signals" to get students to change wrong answers and also arranged the seating so that some students could cheat off others.

--Cheating was detected at 44 of 56 schools examined.

--178 educators, including 38 principals, were found to have engaged in cheating. Of that group, 82 confessed to cheating.

[andrewhoya]

This is crazy.

[INTIMADATOR2007]

As a resident of georgia 20 miles south of Atlanta , and I work in Atlanta , I can say this is not shocking to hear concidering what comes out of that cesspool of a city .Beverly Hall should be jailed for what she has done to the screwel system in Atlanta .

[AUTaxMan]

Not surprising at all. Probably goes on in a lot more places than we would like to believe.

[mrveggieman]

I live in Georgia too. I'm not going to comment on some of the nonesense that goes on here but I will tell it to you like this. It's not a black or white thing nor it is a republican or democratic thing. Everyone has their hand in the cookie jar here. SMH.

[AUTaxMan]

I live in Georgia too. I'm not going to comment on some of the nonesense that goes on here but I will tell it to you like this. It's not a black or white thing nor it is a republican or democratic thing. Everyone has their hand in the cookie jar here. SMH.

I'd be willing to bet that 90+% of all teachers and administrators in the Atlanta city schools vote democrat.

[redsoxx11]

I'd be willing to bet that 90+% of all teachers and administrators in the Atlanta city schools vote democrat.

I'm willing to bet 90% of the people on wall street that almost caused the 2nd great depression vote Republican

I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people in the BUsh administration that thought going to Iraq to settle a beef were Republican
I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people who kill abortion DR's are Republican
I'm willing to bet that 90% of the people who thought Obama was born in Kenya were Republicans

[pghin08]

This is not a party issue, it's a corruption issue. It also helps highlight some of the issues in our education system, namely our dependence on standardized testing.

[mrveggieman]

I'd be willing to bet that 90+% of all teachers and administrators in the Atlanta city schools vote democrat.

How are you going to call me out for playing along party lines and you just did the same thing. Do I need to provide examples of republican corruption too? Or you simply going to to dismiss it and say the devil made them do it?

[AUTaxMan]

How are you going to call me out for playing along party lines and you just did the same thing. Do I need to provide examples of republican corruption too? Or you simply going to to dismiss it and say the devil made them do it?

I don't deny that there is much corruption on both sides of the aisle, but my comment in this particular instance is correct, and you know it.