Cheating in Atlanta

Something like this was bound to eventually happen:

"More than 100 Atlanta educators may be sanctioned for suspiciously erasing wrong answers on elementary school students' standardized tests and replacing them with correct responses, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports."

Having worked in a public high school for only one year, I already know how No Child Left Behind has influenced our school system for the worse. I have sat in meetings where the principal breaks down the subgroups, where the names of specific students are put up onto a screen, and where we are told to focus primarily on these students when teaching because they are where the money is at. This is not to say we shouldn't ever be afraid to test students to measure for accountability, or look at how subgroups of students perform. But when you put the livelihoods of teachers and administrators into ONE TEST, I promise you, these things will happen.

Other info on this story:

"In a report released Monday, investigators wrote that widespread cheating seemed to be limited to 12 schools—far fewer than the nearly 50 initially flagged by state officials as suspicious. But more than a third of the educators deemed at fault are principals and other school administrators, indicating the possibility of inter-school collusion in the cheating scam."

I hope that the administrators and the people at the top are held more responsible than the teachers below. This is not to say that teachers shouldn't be held responsible (they should), but this story is greater than a few bad teachers. With something this big, it is the ones at the top that more likely pushed and pressured teachers to cheat. They are the ones in charge, and they set the tone for how the rest of the school tests their students.

It will be interesting to see where this story goes next. Here is one more bit of information:

"Though Atlanta may be sanctioned for failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress—a measure used to determine if states are meeting standards set by Bush’s No Child Left Behind law—and federal funding may be withheld as a result, these cheating adults could get off scott-free, in spite of the investigators' reccomendations. In a 5-4 decision made late Monday night, the Atlanta Board of Education voted to formally decline the findings of the investigation it ordered. The report is now being sent to state education officials, who may still levy penalties against the teachers who have been implicated in the cheating scandal.?"