Atlanta To Repay $363,000 In Federal Funds For Cheating Teachers

ATLANTA -- Officials say the school district in Atlanta has agreed to repay more than $363,000 in federal money the district won by teachers and administrators cheating.

State schools Superintendent John Barge told The Associated Press on Friday that the district has 90 days to return the money.

A state investigation in July revealed widespread cheating by educators in nearly half of the Atlanta's 100 schools dating back to 2001. In all, nearly 180 teachers and principals were accused of giving answers to students or changing answers once the tests had been completed.

Schools serving low-income students that consistently get good test scores receive extra money from the U.S. Department of Education each year. That money can be spent wherever the schools need it most.

• James Wilson, Former Georgia Schools Superintendent, Caught On Tape Bullying State Official Over Cheating Probe
• Cheating Teachers Implicated: 49 Dougherty County, Georgia Educators Accused Of Test Tampering
• Beverly Hall In First TV Interview After Atlanta Cheating Scandal: 'I Can't Make You Cheat'
• Beverly Hall, Former Atlanta Schools Superintendent, 'Can't Accept' Culture Of Cheating

Comments

[LadiesloveCJ]

01:01 PM on 01/23/2012

What happened in Atlanta is the reason WHY NCLB doesn't WORK! I am willing to bet if NCLB wasn't in place, this would have never happened.

[belinda poltrino]

12:40 PM on 01/23/2012

Tragic and sad.

[Greg34]

12:02 PM on 01/23/2012

I say let the schools keep the money but you fire and strip any of the guilty teachers and administrators of their pensions and retirement benefits to pay for the grants. They breached their contract with the public and thus the public should not be obligated to perform and provide any contract benefits stated in the contract. Those kids deserve that money to make up for the criminal and despicable actions of those adults that cheated and did not care about those kids futures. Kids first, teachers and adminstrators last.

[novabird]

06:54 AM on 06/14/2012

A criminal and despicable system (high stakes testing) designed to dumb down the population produces desperate teachers and administrators.

[Tuigim]

10:17 PM on 01/22/2012

All schools deserve enough money to give kids a decent education and
no school should feel insecure about whether they will get the money or not.
No school should get more money based on performance. It is not a business; it's a right.
Remove fear from education:
it's bad for kids and for teachers,
it encourages cheating and
it disrespects children and teachers alike.
Government wake up and do your job and be fair. No two areas are alike.
Don't blame and punish the disadvantaged
especially when your negligence made them disadvantaged!

[RedDonnaAnn]

06:43 PM on 01/22/2012

I do not condone cheating. Let me say that up front. But you have put these underperforming school districts in a no-win situation: they get less money and succeed less and then get less money.

I taught in a low-income, underperforming district. It is hard to get parental support, the kids travel through dangerous territory just to get to school, they are surrounded by people who not only don't have an education but don't value it, they are illiterate and below grade level in most subjects.

Now I ask you, if you're in charge of these kids and you all are barely making it, what are you going to do when the time comes to get these kids funding? I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying it's the wrong position to put these teachers in. Administrators? I could care less about. They are over paid and usually most concerned with their pensions and not getting sued. But teachers? It's a thankless job done for our most vulnerable segment.

[eceresa]

09:19 PM on 01/22/2012

If they cheat, it's wrong, but they get the kids extra funding for the extra help that they need. If they don't cheat, it's wrong because they're denying the kids that extra help. There is no ethical course available to them.

[RedDonnaAnn]

06:38 PM on 01/22/2012

The Feds punish and withhold our own money from the schools that need it the most. They suck. The entire quality of education in America has gone down the tubes since the introduction of the Department of Education. They brought us No Child Left Behind which has been a disaster. They pay waaaay too much at the top and suck up all the money that should go to the classroom with their paper pushing, evaluations, findings reports and other bunkie.

Let's let teachers teach and bureaucrats go mess up something else.

[yooperz michigan]

08:12 PM on 01/22/2012

oh sure, just let the teachers have a free hand in sucking the tax payers dry, the end of this will start in wisconsin..

[eceresa]

09:20 PM on 01/22/2012

Perhaps your disdain for education explains your unfounded belief that people underpaid by 20% or so are "sucking the tax payers dry."

[eceresa]

04:59 PM on 01/22/2012

Let's consider this one for a moment.

Some of the employees at these schools cheated. They knew they weren't supposed to. Those of then who were reasonably well-informed realized that the test scores didn't reflect the quality of instruction; standardized test scores are mostly based on student and parent factors. But they knew they weren't supposed to cheat, and they did anyway.

So they got more money. Their students, who clearly needed extra help, were given extra funding and, presumably, more help. Because their teachers cheated.

But then they were found out. So to punish the cheating teachers, we take funding away from the school district. From the children. Children who clearly need it.

We hold the teachers responsible for parenting, forcing them to meet goals that, with some populations of students, are effectively impossible. If they cheat to meet the impossible goals they've been set, we punish them by taking funding away from the kids who need it most.

And this makes sense... how, exactly?

[JoeHurley]

04:03 PM on 01/22/2012

I haven't seen a followup on this situation recently. Of the 178 teachers and administrators who were either caught, confessed, or who have just been accused of this cheating, how many have actually been fired?

Because the last I heard, it might take years.

[RedDonnaAnn]

06:39 PM on 01/22/2012

I haven't heard either but Atlanta's school district is non-union so there isn't anybody to defend them en masse. That's gotta speed up the process, I would think.

[JoeHurley]

01:15 AM on 01/23/2012

Actually, there are teacher's unions in Georgia. The American Federation of Teachers has a chapter in Atlanta. It's just not compulsory to join.

Apparently nothing has been done yet about these cheating teachers. The investigation has been suspended until May,

[shelvern]

08:37 AM on 02/15/2012

Thanks for your information on teachers union or non-union. I could not understand why the teachers did not file a lawsuit demanding that the people accusing the teachers of cheating prove that they cheated. Starting with erasures, who made them, teachers or students? Another question is why the company administering the test did not have control of the test. Security of the test should have been in the contract.

The teachers shoould have joined the union, individually, teachers do not have a voice to match the polical system.

[deridaa]

03:59 PM on 01/22/2012

As long as the bible and prayer is kept out of school everything will be fine- keep throwing money at the unions lol

[SoylentGreenIsPeople]

05:00 PM on 01/22/2012

No teachers unions in that school district. Information from Fox or Rush is unreliable.

[eceresa]

05:04 PM on 01/22/2012

Unions probably would have helped in this case, since the teachers wouldn't have been as easy to intimidate into cheating. But they didn't have unions.

[deridaa]

03:58 PM on 01/22/2012

Are you kidding this shocks people??? Sat in a classroom lately? Spoken with students lately? Unemployed or unemployable?

[SoylentGreenIsPeople]

05:00 PM on 01/22/2012

What state ?

[SYVELLA]

09:27 AM on 01/22/2012

Hey...just learning from the folks in Chicago...they have been doing this FOR YEARS!!! SOP!!!

[luapmi2]

06:31 AM on 01/22/2012

We need to get to the root of this problem: who provided the answers to the teachers?

[Jasonperkins]

11:50 PM on 01/22/2012

great post i luv it

[Ariel Bonzai]

12:56 AM on 01/21/2012

This is not the only state guilty of cheating. All the schools should b audited and forced to repay . Atlanta and other schools that fired whistleblowers and so called low performers must also face these wronged teachers and restore hem in every way. Those involved must be unissued, particularly officials and administrators who forced teachers into complicity. Hen we need to call a time out on testing. Arne Duncan should bring together the nations best educators, students , parents and experts to create a viable tes. To better evaluate teachers I suggest all grades, assignments and materials be posted on a central site that admin. has access to .they can tell more about a teacher by the book keeping than Nything else. If they can't, they should not be in school leadership.

[Extremely Moderate]

12:53 AM on 01/21/2012

Want a teacher's perspective on the Atlanta scandal? Why would an entire district succumb to the lure of fudging test scores? What's behind the testing craze in this country? Are we really worse than other nations? What's that based upon? How reliable are these tests? Who writes them?

Further, are schools really in crisis? If enough people say we're failing our students, does that make it true?

For more questions, and some answers, from a teacher in the trenches, visit my blog at www.edu-truth.com

[TheNextVoiceofYouth]

11:53 AM on 01/21/2012

I agree with you when you say that a school is a reflection of its culture. It wasn't that long ago that I was a student in high school. One thing I remember hearing a lot from the teacher is "We need you all to pass the graduation tests well so we can make our academic yearly performance and keep our accreditation." While I do think that a school should know what it's doing, the pressure teachers put on us made me feel like we were being used to make the school look good and that they didn't really care about giving an education.

Another thing I remember being discussed was the "No Child Left Behind Act". We had A LOT of students in our school and some of those students were messing up the privleges for the other students. Us intelligent students who cared about graduating blamed "No Child Left Behind" for making the students who don't want to be in school attend school.

It is about a culture that treats a student not as a single person, but as a generalization such as a race, gender, or sexuality in order to make some look good and others look bad. In turn, this affects how students act. As a minority student who loved to read and made good grades I was bullied badly. Why? Because it wasn't considered "cool" for a minority student to show intelligence.

[dimplesmile7]

03:23 PM on 01/20/2012

Newt's state caught cheating.

[pepper1311]

05:27 PM on 01/20/2012

Newt was born in Pa., educated in Pa, moved to Georgia.

[stopnlisten]

03:10 PM on 01/21/2012

and?

[BrighterStar]

05:29 PM on 01/22/2012

And now lives in Virginia.