Education, Test Cheating | featured news

Thirty-five Atlanta Public Schools educators and administrators were indicted Friday on a myriad of charges in connection with alleged cheating in standardized testing, one of the largest cheating scandals to hit the nation's public education system.

For 15 years, teachers in three Southern states paid Clarence Mumford Sr. — himself a longtime educator — to send someone else to take the tests in their place, authorities said.

Teachers helped students correct mistakes on standardized tests, prepared them with actual test questions or left instructional posters displayed in the classroom during testing, according to school district reports.

Educators say John Allen asked Crescendo principals to show teachers the state standardized test. L.A. Unified was going to suspend him, but the board voted to fire him and close the campuses. The meeting at Crescendo Preparatory South was progressing as usual when the acting principal dropped a bombshell: She had been given copies of the upcoming standardized tests.

An investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows that hundreds of school systems nationwide exhibit suspicious test scores pointing to the possibility of cheating.