Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Former Atlanta schools superintendent reports to jail in cheating scandal

(CNN) -- The former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools was among the educators who surrendered to authorities Tuesday after being indicted by a grand jury in a cheating scandal that rocked the district and drew national attention.

Beverly Hall resigned from her position in 2011 after a state investigation into large, unexplained test score gains in some Atlanta schools. She has denied any role in the cheating scandal.

A Fulton County grand jury last week indicted 35 educators from the district, including principals, teachers and testing coordinators. They were ordered to turn themselves in by Tuesday, District Attorney Paul Howard said.

By 10:00 p.m., 27 of 35 educators had turned themselves in at the Fulton County Jail to face charges including racketeering, theft by taking and making false statements about their roles in an alleged plot to falsify students' standardized tests. Eight of them had been released on bond late Tuesday, the Fulton County Sheriff's office said.

In 2009, Hall was named the National Superintendent of the Year by the Schools Superintendents Association, which at the time said her "leadership has turned Atlanta into a model of urban school reform."

4 comments:

  1. I believe Ms. Hall is also a product of the Broad Academy.

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  2. Dana Tofig came from Georgia public school administration.

    ReplyDelete
  3. On NPR, defenders of the test fixers complained that No Child Left Behind drive them to it; that the standards were impossible.

    Well, yes. You only just NOW noticed that?
    100% of all groups including minorities and special education passing a competency test?

    No red flag there?

    Here's my standardized test: 2 + 2 = ?
    I can get 100% success from all groups every year, I'm pretty sure.
    You get just ONE Vinny Barbarino who decides to write 5? Trouble.

    NCLB is a program designed to get people to abandon public schools. I've no idea why the Democratic party didn't say anything at the time. Neither did teachers' unions who should be sharp enough to have spotted the time bomb.

    It won't surprise me if every single school in Maryland including Churchill and Walt Whitman are deemed "failing" given the 100% passage requirement.

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  4. Oh please. Take some responsibility. If you cheated, you cheated. Don't make excuses, like, the NCLB made me do it.

    ReplyDelete

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