Reason 114 to HomeSchool: Teachers Would Rather Cheat Than Educate

Atlanta has some of the worst schools in the country. Instead of churning out graduates, they churn outdropouts, welfare cheats and criminals. When standardized testing was implemented to highlight which schools needed help, instead of teaching children to improve their testing scores, 35 educators conspired together to defraud the county and falsify their test scores. Now they are all indicted and facing RICO charges. Some could spend up to 45 years in jail.

From CNN here:

In what has been described as one of the largest cheating scandals to hit the nation’s public education system, 35 Atlanta Public Schools educators and administrators were indicted Friday on charges of racketeering and corruption.

The school system was once touted as a model for the nation’s school districts after the district’s test scores dramatically improved in some of its toughest urban schools.

Among those indicted by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury was Beverly Hall, the former schools superintendent who gained national recognition in 2009 for turning around Atlanta’s school system.

“She was a full participant in that conspiracy,” Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard told reporters during a news conference announcing the charges. “Without her, this conspiracy could not have taken place, particularly in the degree in which it took place.”

A state review determined that some cheating had occurred in more than half of the district’s elementary and middle schools. About 180 teachers were initially implicated in the scandal.

For at least a period of four years, between 2005 and 2009, test answers were altered, fabricated and falsely certified, the indictment said.

By the time the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, as the standardized test is known, was administered in Atlanta Public Schools, “cheating was taking place in a majority of APS’s 83 elementary and middle schools.”

Of the 65 counts in the indictment, Hall and 34 others were charged with one count of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as RICO. In addition to racketeering, Hall also is charged with making false statements and writings and theft by taking. If convicted on all counts, she could face a maximum of 45 years in prison.

Among those also indicted were four of Hall’s executive administrators, six principals, two assistant principals, six testing coordinators, 14 teachers, a school improvement specialist and a school secretary.

And of course, it should be noted, these are all Democrats. The only schools that didn’t have to cheat were white majority schools. But it shows that the teachers, who are often heralded as pious people doing the most noble of jobs, really don’t care about teaching. They care more about tenure and spectacular union benefits.