How the Atlanta Teaching Scandal was Uncovered

A recent article in Business Insider shed some light on how a teaching scandal in Atlanta was uncovered. The scandal involved teachers who were changing their student’s answers on a standardized test so that their students could score higher and the school district and teacher could get better funding and bonuses. (See more about the scandal at these previous posts: Teaching by Example: Fraud in Public Schools and More on the Cheating Scandals in Public Schools.)

More on the Cheating Scandals in Public Schools

Imagine if the response to Enron and WorldCom was to say that business leaders are set up to commit fraud because the market is too interested in accounting information so we should have businesses report less economic data about their performance. According to an article in The New Republic, that is essentially the reaction by some in education to the recently reported cheating scandals in Atlanta and elsewhere. Here are a few quotes:

More Teaching Scandals in the News

Last October, I wrote about a teaching scandal in Georgia schools where teachers were apparently erasing and correcting students answers on standardized tests so as to obtain funding and accolades. Yesterday, Freakonomics discussed this and linked a news report showing that Atlanta has had massive teacher fraud going on for several years. In addition...

Teaching by Example: Fraud in Public Schools

NPR is reporting that over 50 schools in Georgia have been found manipulating students' test scores by erasing erroneous answers and replacing them with the correct answers. As in any fraud, pressure and opportunity have become too much for teachers and administrators in the Georgia school system to resist making these changes. Here is a quote from the article: