It must have been very quiet in teachers’ lounges throughout Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama this week.
On Wednesday, 11 former Atlanta educators were convicted of racketeering for their role in a scheme to inflate students’ scores on standardized tests in one of the biggest cheating scandals in the country.
The 11 — teachers, a principal and other administrators — were accused of falsifying test results to collect bonuses or keep their jobs in the 50,000-student Atlanta school system between 2005 and 2013. They face up to 20 years in prison, and most will be sentenced on April 8.
“This is … absolutely the biggest development in American education law since forever,” University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson told Atlanta reporters recently. “It has to send a message to educators here and broadly across the nation. Playing with student test scores is very, very dangerous business.”
Indeed — especially since this teacher cheating was clearly about looking out for themselves rather than the children’s education.
In all, 35 Atlanta educators were indicted in the 2013 case that began with a state investigation that found the educators had fed answers to students or erased and changed answers on completed tests. Many pleaded guilty, and some testified during the lengthy trial. Investigators said evidence of cheating was found in 44 Atlanta schools, with nearly 180 educators involved. Teachers who tried to report the cheating were threatened with retaliation.
Investigators also believed the cheating scheme went right to the top of the school system. Among those indicted was Atlanta School Superintendent Beverly Hall, who died a month ago of breast cancer. She had insisted she was innocent, but other educators said Hall, who had been named Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009 and credited with raising student test scores and graduation rates, was among supervisors pressuring them to inflate students’ scores to show gains in achievement and meet federal benchmarks that would unlock extra funding.
One teacher was acquitted of all charges by the trial jury, but the convicted defendants (save one who will give birth very soon) were led out of the courtroom in handcuffs and jailed immediately — even while they await sentencing.
Tennessee in recent years proposed then abandoned legislation that would tie teacher’s evaluations and licenses to student test scores on standardized exams. Teachers and teachers unions reacted loud and long, saying students who don’t care would often “Christmas tree” their tests, and teachers shouldn’t be held accountable for that.
No, but teachers should be held accountable for student learning.
This Atlanta case — and similar cheating scandals in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Nevada — show the pressures that linking scores to licenses, as well as to school funding and staff bonuses, can produce.
Nonetheless, we desperately need teaching accountability. If anything, this case points up that need more than ever.