How Fear and Intimidation Led to Massive Atlanta School Cheating

[marmar]

from ColorLines:




by Julianne Hing
Friday, July 8 2011, 10:54 AM EST


Atlanta Public Schools are reeling from the fallout of a state investigation that confirmed reports of a massive test cheating scandal throughout the district. On Thursday, the interim state superintendent Erroll Davis announced four main reforms the district will adopt immediately, and vowed that educators who participated in the cheating would never teach in Atlanta public schools again.

Earlier this week a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation revealed that 178 teachers and 38 principals had participated in cheating in the district. The new state investigation confirms a cheating scandal of stunning breadth. The GBI investigation confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 public schools they looked into. Eighty teachers confessed to participating in the district’s cheating.

The initial instances of cheating were reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The district ordered an audit of their reporting, which recently confirmed the AJC’s initial findings. The state investigation has been called the largest investigation of standardized test cheating in U.S. public schools. Much of the shock about Atlanta’s cheating scandal comes from the fact that the district had become a reform darling; in recent years it had made unbelievable jumps in test score gains, both in state and national standards tests.

Those results have been called into question now. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/07/atlanta_schools_scandal.html