Liberal Free Chat Zone

[realfast95]

Flashback: The Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal
April 16th, 2015
(John Lewis's District GA-5)


http://www.georgiapolicy.org/2015/04/the-atlanta-public-schools-cheating-scandal/

In 2011, Lisa Coston of Courthouse News Service reported the findings of the Governor’s office of Student Achievement about widespread cheating at Atlanta Public Schools. (The report follows.)

On April 10, 2015, following a six-month trial, 11 of 12 people in APS were convicted on charges that included racketeering. Atlanta Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall, stricken by cancer, was excused for much of the proceedings and died during the trial. The prosecution team discussed the trial afterwards with WSB-TV. Watch it here.

WABE interviewed Kathleen Mathers, who was the Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, that gives some background to the issue and the role played by her small staff, including Eric Wearne, Senior Fellow at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Listen here.

This is a link to the full text of the report from the special investigator to the Governor.

ATLANTA (CN) – A stunning and exhaustive report for the governor concludes that “thousands of school children were harmed by widespread cheating in the Atlanta Public School System,” in institutionalized corruption of standardized tests, directed from the central office, for a decade. Teachers and administrators gave children answers, erased incorrect answers, hid and altered documents, offered monetary incentives to encourage the cheating, and punished employees who refused to cheat, according to the report.
More than 178 administrators and teachers from 56 elementary and middle schools in the Atlanta Public School System participated in the cheating on the standardized Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, according to the 3-volume report of more than 800 pages. (Volume 2, Volume 3, interview with retired superintendent.)
Investigators found cheating in 44 of the 56 schools they examined about the 2009 standardized CRCT tests, “and uncovered organized and systemic misconduct within the district as far back as 2001. Superintendent Beverly Hall and her senior staff knew, or should have known, that cheating and other offenses were occurring. Many of the accolades, and much of the praise, received by APS over the last decade were ill-gotten.”
All quotations and references in this article are to the 3-volume report, and an accompanying 405-page interview with former Atlanta Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall. Throughout the report, prepared for Gov. Nathan Deal and delivered to him on June 30, the Atlanta Public School System is referred to as APS.