Former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 other school employees, including high-level administrators, principals and teachers, were recently booked in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail after being indicted on 65 criminal counts. The charges included racketeering, theft, conspiracy, making false statements and witness tampering.
Just four years ago, Hall was the National Superintendent of the Year. Now, she faces the possibility of 45 years in prison for having allegedly snagged almost $600,000 in bonus income for higher test scores achieved through fraudulently changing students’ test answers.
And this, the nation’s largest-ever cheating scandal, may prove only the highest shard of a proverbial large floating mass of frozen water.
But instead of condemnation, some of the nation’s leading “education experts” seem bent on excusing the cheaters.
“What we do know,” Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss pointed out, “is that these cheating scandals have been a result of test-obsessed school reform.”