Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal Worsens

Ordinarily, a headline such as the one above would portend a story about a group of high school students who have stolen the answers to a test, or something similar.  Not this time.

In what can only, in my opinion, be blamed directly on government pressure on school systems nationwide to either improve test scores or lose funding, the scores on standardized tests administered to students throughout the State of Georgia were altered or otherwise fudged by teachers and/or administrators in 44 of the 56 Atlanta Public Schools (APS) examined by special prosecutors appointed by former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue before he finished his term in 2010.  There are a total of 100 schools in APS.

The two special prosecutors were asked to look into allegations of cheating by Atlanta Public Schools on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) state exams. The appointments were made after a locally-appointed Blue Ribbon Commission failed to determine what happened.

The investigation determined that 178 teachers and principals cheated, with 82 of that number confessing.  Thirty-eight of the 178 were principals. Many of the 140 teachers questioned in the probe reported overt and highly inappropriate threats to their jobs and, in at least one case, to their person issued by individual school principals or instruction directors.

When I owned the home across the street from where I now live, my property taxes were more than $6,000 annually.  About $1500 of that amount went directly to APS for its operating costs, whether or not I had children in school.  The schools were notoriously poor to begin with, and I really had to take a deep breath each time I wrote that tax check, because it seemed like tossing money into the four winds.


I worked with APS in my official capacity as AT&T’s Community Relations Director for the Southeast.  I initiated appropriations for millions of dollars of investment to bring that system into the technological present by sending employee volunteers to wire schools for the internet and by funding other programs designed to instruct teachers in the application of technology in the classroom.

I was appalled by the relative quality of those schools.  There is no way anyone visiting these places could ever allege there is a level playing field among public schools.  Yes, there were far too many teachers I met who seemed woefully inept.  But there were also highly-effective teachers who spent a large portion of their paltry salaries on basic supplies for their classrooms.  I'm talking mundane supplies such as pencils and staples.

Children arrived at school each day from homes with all manner of dysfunction and deprivation.  Some had to dodge bullets (literally) just to stay alive long enough to arrive at school.  Some went days without a meal outside the school-provided breakfasts and lunches. Parents in some cases had to be bribed with incentives just to get them into parent-teacher conferences. 

So these under-funded, under-supported and under-staffed schools were getting dismal results in the classrooms of Atlanta and producing under-achieving students.  What a shock!

Anyone with only a passing knowledge of human nature could have predicted what would happen when the No Child Left Behind Act was implemented. When faced with only two choices – fail for reasons beyond anyone’s control OR cheat – those 178 folks decided they couldn’t fail.

I would submit that the principals involved are the more culpable of the group.   Although I’m sure there were teachers who became creative with their own results in order to avoid disfavor with the principal, some of them were probably pressured into changing answers by an equally motivated principal.  As a leader, they should be more resistant to the temptation.

In the end, who loses more than the children themselves?  They are still poor, they are still under-educated and they are still likely to fall through most or all of society’s cracks.  And on top of that, if they should find the moxy to actually get through high school, they will have diplomas from soon-to-be unaccredited schools. 

Shame on the adults responsible for this mess.  What a fine example they have all set for the children of Atlanta.