"A culture of fear and a conspiracy of silence…”: EDUCATORS IMPLICATED IN ATLANTA CHEATING SCANDAL + THE STATE OF GEORGIA’S FULL REPORT ON THE CHEATING SCANDAL
BY JASON KOEBLER | US NEWS & WORLD REPORT | HTTP://BIT.LY/ONJSVD
July 7, 2011 | For 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history, according to a scathing 413-page investigative report released Tuesday by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.
More than three quarters of the 56 schools investigated cheated on a 2009 standardized state test, with 178 educators implicated, including 38 principals. Eighty-two teachers confessed to erasing students' answers and correcting tests. The report says widespread cheating has occurred since at least 2001 and that orders to cheat came from the top.
[Read about testing scandals in other states.]
"Superintendent Beverly Hall and her senior staff knew, or should have known, that cheating and other offenses were occurring," the report says. Hall retired in June, after serving as the Atlanta Public School System superintendent for