Fla. teacher faces criminal charges for helping kids on standardized test
A former teacher in Florida’s Panhandle is facing criminal charges after authorities say he helped students during an end-of-course exam at Newpoint High in Escambia County, the Pensacola News Journal reports.
Christopher David Fowler, 30, was charged Monday with four misdemeanor counts of violating the state’s Test Administration and Security Law, the Journal reports.
Don’t know which EOC that was or how exactly he “helped” but the paper says more arrests may be coming.
This comes not quite two months after an Atlanta jury convicted 11 teachers of racketeering and other crimes in a test-cheating scandal reportedly fueled by teachers and administrators who feared the consequences if the students failed.
(Note: This is not the Georgia district from which incoming superintendent Robert Avossa hails. He’s from Fulton County schools. The ring of cheats come from the Atlanta Public School district. )
Investigators said the educators worked together, sometimes holding erasure parties or dinners, sometimes working alone, to correct answers on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. The cheating robbed students, who were passed up to the next grade without being prepared to succeed, and caused the schools to miss out on grants that could have provided tutoring or other help for those who were failing.
The investigation revealed student test sheets that had inordinate numbers of erasures changed to correct answers. One expert testified that the odds that students in one classroom would have so many wrong-to-right erasures without some kind of intervention was one in 284 septillion, 284 followed by 21 zeros.Fla. teacher faces criminal charges for helping kids on standardized test | Extra Credit:
