Six Atlanta Officials Replaced Amid Cheating Scandal

ATLANTA -- The fallout from the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal continued to spread as four area superintendents were replaced and a school district in Texas put the superintendent it recently hired from Georgia on paid leave.

Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis replaced the four superintendents late Monday, hours before trustees of the DeSoto Independent School District near Dallas placed Superintendent Kathy Augustine on leave as they re-examine her previous post. Augustine has denied having any knowledge of test cheating as Atlanta's deputy superintendent.

The four removed from their area superintendent jobs – Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts, Robin Hall and Tamara Cotman – were implicated in the scandal. Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis did not say whether they will stay with the school district.

Georgia investigators say 178 educators in 44 schools cheated on standardized tests used to meet federal benchmarks. Educators told state investigators they were pressured by administrators to improve test scores. The testing problems first came to light after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that some scores were statistically improbable.

Davis also said two year-round elementary schools named in the state investigative report made public last week will get new principals before classes start Wednesday.

In Texas, trustees of the DeSoto Independent School District held a lengthy closed-door meeting that lasted late into the night before Augustine read a statement announcing she was taking the leave of absence effective Tuesday.

"Please know that I understand your need for thoughtful deliberations about my appointment," Augustine told the trustees after announcing the decision, which she said was reached after "mutual consideration."

After Augustine announced she was taking leave, the trustees took no immediate action on a proposal to terminate her employment. DeSoto schools hired Augustine in April to the $188,000-a-year job in the district, which has some 9,000 students in the Dallas area.

Also Monday, Atlanta Public Schools board member Khaatim El announced he was resigning from the board.

"I just concluded in the end it just shouldn't be this hard to do the right things for kids," El said as he fought back tears. "I failed to protect thousands of children who come from homes like mine. It remains to be seen, no matter how deep this thing goes, whether the soul of Atlanta has been stirred."

The state investigation revealed the nation's largest cheating scandal yet on standardized tests, with nearly half of Atlanta's 100 schools involved, and highlighted the immense pressure put on educators to produce better scores. Criminal charges are likely for some of the educators who confessed and the rest who were implicated by colleagues.

Comments

[Nishnabe]

10:57 AM on 07/14/2011

Some things to consider in this scandal. Post WW II, real estate companies pushed "single family homes" as a way to maximize profits on small plots of land. The result? Breakdown of the large extended families living together in proximity and providing a support network for mothers and fathers who had to produce dual incomes in order to survive. Mass migration from rural to urban areas. Result? Grandpas and grandmas and aunts and uncles living far away and unavailable for previous support network. Motive for these changes? Maximize profits for real estate investors and factories. These events did not start post WW II but reached their apex in the 1950's. Public school doctrines were to establish an educational system that shuttled kids into jobs in factories and long hours (eight perhaps?) sitting or "paying attention" for those "shifts" in school or in the factories. Post industrial age. More brain power needed, however, school systems were designed to produce automatons. So, standardized testing is introduced. First SAT and ACT to identify potential college material. Then applied to all as a way of breaking unions and blaming teachers for the above profit motivated systems which destroy individual incentive. Now, scandals over cheating. Once again, blame teachers and schools while the real culprits lie hidden in Repug social dogma which puts profits over humanity and intellectual pursuits.

[rrickarr]

01:22 PM on 07/14/2011

Nishnabe: this is a very interesting and perceptive line of thought--you might consider writing more about this. It really is worth considering. I think the only way to correct the educational system is to have a complete overhaul of society and values and what people consider to be important.

[insidious]

05:55 PM on 07/13/2011

Again, if one thinks cheating on standardized tests is bad, take a look at grade/GPA inflation and course/subject equivalency across districts/states. It's a downright shame...

[quillerm]

02:21 PM on 07/13/2011

This story should be on the Huffington Front Page as it could affect millions of students in America. These Atlanta Union Educators were sent all over the country to duplicate their success in raising academic achievement levels. How many other systems have been compromised or maybe Atlanta is just one system in a larger NEA conspiracy.

[quillerm]

02:06 PM on 07/13/2011

Typical, what do liberals do when faced with a challenge, cheat. This is why Union control of our Education System is a dismal failure.

The Atlanta School System voluminous report names 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating. More than 80 confessed. The investigators said they confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined.

The investigators conducted more than 2,100 interviews and examined more than 800,000 documents in what is likely the most wide-ranging investigation into test-cheating in a public school district ever conducted in United States history.

What is even more disturbing about this story is in the last decade several senior members of the Atlanta School Systems have been recruited to improve academic achievement in other school systems, such as Washington DC. That may explain the rapid improvement in scores for other systems, institutionalized cheating. The NEA leftists that continually harp on how their 'progressive' caring ideology will help children excel, are really self-serving corrupt individuals demanding performance based pay increases by cheating to avoid meeting performance measures.

[insidious]

05:52 PM on 07/13/2011

The NEA doesn't support cheating teacher's or administrators. Out of over 3000 educators, 178 cheated (mostly by coercion or direct threatening of their jobs). If those teacher's were in Unions, it wouldn't have happened.

[graywolf68]

12:34 PM on 07/17/2011

"Typical, what do liberals do when faced with a challenge, cheat."

Well, now isn't that the pot calling the kettle black.

You imply that conservatives are paragons of virtue when that couldn't be farther from the truth.

[Xu Yang]

09:00 PM on 07/12/2011

Liars and Cheats and still able to collect a pay check and pension! Those unions sure are wonderful for us!

[historyrepeatsitself]

09:14 PM on 07/12/2011

What's ridiculous is the impossible to meet mandates put on these teachers by educational deformers who have little to no professional experience in education. Teachers realize that just as their myriad learning styles measuring progress should include multiple assessments rather than relying solely on high-stakes standardized testing. It's nice of you to try to shoehorn your right-wing talking points about unions into the discussion, but this scandal has nothing to do with teachers' unions.

[blindjester]

12:39 PM on 07/13/2011

These are the teachers' BOSSES.

They are not union members. They are more likely to be union busters.

[quillerm]

02:11 PM on 07/13/2011

I beg to differ. The Atlanta School System voluminous report names 178 educators, including 38 principals­, as participan­ts in cheating. More than 80 confessed. The investigat­ors said they confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined.

[rrickarr]

08:36 PM on 07/12/2011

Please do not overlook the crux of this issue as is explainedin this article, and which all teachers know. Teachers are threatened with their jobs if they do not raise scores!!!!!!! So, it is not teachers to blame--it is the administrators. If you think teachers are incompetent---come and meet some of the administrators, and you will really be in for a surprise.

[methnkng]

09:03 PM on 07/12/2011

Are you kidding me! Are you saying teachers are entitled to cheat in order to keep their jobs and cheat the kids out of an education? Anyone with such a lack of moral values has no business anywhere near children.

[rrickarr]

01:28 PM on 07/14/2011

methnkng
I am not saying teachers are "entitled" to cheat--they were threatened. And now we see and hear that there were whistle-blowers and the famed Dr. Hall chose to ignore them---so think about that for a while!!!!!

[quillerm]

02:13 PM on 07/13/2011

Sure they did, I wonder if they were concerned about it when they cashed in their Performance Based Bonus checks.

[Educare]

08:11 PM on 07/12/2011

Now why am I not surprised.

[Educare]

08:08 PM on 07/12/2011

And why am I not surprised!

[JasonJM]

06:02 PM on 07/12/2011

The country need standardized testing EVERY year so the teachers in grades that are not mandated to test their kids dont get a pass and stick it to the teachers who have to test.

[changing]

10:02 PM on 07/12/2011

So if you weigh the lambs all the time, they get fatter? Giving tests does not make kids smarter.
It does have lots to do with genetics, environment, etc. Is there a magic formula to make all kids smart?

[MASH4077]

05:25 PM on 07/12/2011

Some many comments in my brain, so little time to post...

Superintendent in Dallas gets $188,000 for running a district with only 9,000 students. My goodness... and I thought they paid Supts. in California too much. So much for the theory that Texas is efficient (cheap) with their tax money. Maybe when it comes to paying the little guys, but that pay for managment is outrageous.

As for the cheaters... I agree... they should lose their jobs, and then some. They set an example for students that should NOT be followed.

As for using testing as the sole means of judging education... I'm against it, but until we wake up and start paying more attention to our schools, politicians will continue to vote for the easy out on evaluating our educational system.

As for future policy in this area... people should start looking closer at charter schools. It's the fad of the past 20 years in education reform, and they are lying about their scores as well. Too bad we don't have newspaper reporters investigating the claims of charter schools across the nation. People are in such a rush to the quick fix that the media loves to cover the shining stars without much investigation. Sad!

[JDINTX]

05:18 PM on 07/12/2011

I would like to know what "replaced" means. Have they been suspended with or w/o pay? Are they being reassigned? With 188 Atlants school employees implicated, what action is going to be taken prior to the new school year?
Unfortunately, this sounds all too familiar; scandal happens, no one is fired, prosecuted or even suspended.

[edwcorey]

05:05 PM on 07/12/2011

When I was growing up, kids were channeled. Some were college bound, others received manual-arts training. Now the system tries to throw everyone at college, even though some are not intellectually or emotionally geared for that. Now if you want to learn to repair cars you have to go to a private school AFTER you graduate your college-preparatory school. And all these for-profit colleges and test-preparation organizations are making unconscionable profits because the government has been taken over by people who try to commodify everything, creating a false anxiety that you must go to college to be employable. Now college graduates are jerking sodas and flipping burgers at the mall. You will all be serfs soon.

[truegroundspeed]

04:44 PM on 07/12/2011

The PC pressure to produce dramatic results in urban public schools is relentless. Heart warming stories of incredible turn-arounds has the media scrambling to uncover any example when they should be looking behind the facade. Reality would suggest that there's another shoe that would drop but the media is too busy being PC compliant.

[TheRealestRealist]

04:19 PM on 07/12/2011

Beverly Hall needs her Superintendent of the Year stripped, plus her pension, perhaps some jail time.....

[JDINTX]

05:23 PM on 07/12/2011

She retired days before the school cheating report was made public; that should tell all of us that the fix is in, no one will be held to account.

[seawillow]

03:57 PM on 07/12/2011

Our students were failing the test. Simple; we fixed the tests so they'd pass. To the public education establishment, this is creative thinking.

[blindjester]

12:42 PM on 07/13/2011

Really? This is the plan you suppose all educators subscribe to?

I don't know the particulars of anyone's case here, but I can tell you that the educators I know--teachers as well as administrators--do NOT condone cheating.

[seawillow]

04:20 PM on 07/13/2011

Well, they claim they cannot and should not be tested, that failures of students and schools are not their fault, that they are unappreciated despite the jillion teacher awards given out each year, that reforms and initiatives that include vouchers and charters are not to be attempted, so why should I trust them?