<p>Georgia governor Nathan Deal revealed an enormous cheating scandal:
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His office released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals 82 of whom confessed in what's likely the biggest cheating scandal in U.S. history...</p>
<p>The report on the Atlanta Public Schools, released Tuesday, indicates a "widespread" conspiracy by teachers, principals and administrators to fix answers on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT), punish whistle-blowers, and hide improprieties.
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<p>Kind of sad - Atlanta won awards for progress, too bad some portion of it was phony. Equally sad that some competent students who succeeded on their own will now be viewed as possible cheaters.</p>
<p>I agree with Roger_Dooley. How can you not get caught with that many teachers participating in it? I actually hope Atlanta loses its awards, cheaters don’t deserve it. Though, as it was mentioned before, it’s sad that the students were pulled into this.</p>
<p>This is ludicrous. This is nothing compared to what I’ve witnessed. Teachers cheat on a daily basis. I know some kids with 4.3 GPA’s that score 14’s and 15’s on the ACT.</p>
<p>Rewarding high performing individuals and shutting down poorly performing operations works fairly well in business, but mainly because most businesses have plenty of checks and balances to ensure there’s no massive cheating. Accountants who keep score often report directly to headquarters, and then there are auditors who check the accountants. It’s not impossible to cheat, but it’s likely to be exposed sooner rather than later. And you can invent test scores, but you can’t invent cash.</p>
<p>The whole idea of standardized tests was to create a way of verifying results. Grades alone, as Reedan notes, are often meaningless. While there’s definitely motivation to cheat on standardized tests, school systems need to have systems to make that difficult.</p>
<p>Yeah I see the point that if the worse you are the more funding you get, then no one will want to get better. Maybe instead of money for bad schools, they get taken over by an education special ops squad that comes in and teaches.</p>
<p>That’s why standardized tests should be emphasized more. Schools are not equal, that’s a fact. Some parents criticise standardized tests for destroying creativity, but with events like this, at least they give everyone an equal playing ground.</p>
<p>Roger- cheating and cooking the books happens everyday in the business world- Enron, the credit agencies rating junk mortgages AAA so they could be sold to investors etc, etc, etc.</p>
<p>Better, IMO, to link articles from the local paper, not the CSM
That said-- its not all believable. The 800 pg report implicated the Atl Public Schools Superintendant, Beverly Hall, who earned huge bonuses as a result of the test score improvements. No one believes she “did not know”.