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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Teacher Cheating Scandals Spur Obama Administration Call To Address Growing Problem

Teacher Cheating Scandals Spur Obama Administration Call To Address Growing Problem:

Teacher Cheating Scandals Spur Obama Administration Call To Address Growing Problem

The first time Bob Wilson, a former DeKalb County, Georgia, district attorney, interviewed educators suspected of cheating on exams in 56 Atlanta schools, he got nothing. The second time, armed with information, lawyers and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents, the teachers began to crack.

By last summer, the investigation by Wilson and his colleagues gave Atlanta the notoriety of hosting the largest recorded teacher cheating scandal in American history.

The lesson? "Reinterview," Wilson told testing experts gathered this week in a small Washington, D.C., hotel conference room to help the government create recommendations to quash teacher cheating. "Keep going back. Good investigators act like they're dumb as a brick."

Steve Ferrara, testing chief at the education company Pearson, said malfeasance was obvious to the naked eye when he went to observe a school in Maryland. The teacher of the year was about to administer a third-grade