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Principal encouraged cheating, staffers sayBy Kristen A. Graham and Dylan Purcell Inquirer Staff Writers Posted: Sun, Feb. 12, 2012, 6:35 AM Teachers got the message in meetings and during visits to their classrooms in the days before they were scheduled to administer state exams. Multiple staffers at Cayuga Elementary said they were instructed by principal Evelyn Cortez to do what they had to do in their rooms to get good scores. Cortez, reached Friday night, was emphatic: "I disagree with these allegations." The school, in a tough Hunting Park neighborhood, produced strong test results for several years running, and Philadelphia...

Dear Friends -- There's something happening in Richmond that I think you should know about. Right now, Republican legislators are going out of their way to make it harder for Virginians across this Commonwealth to vote. Republicans are pushing legislation to prevent thousands of Virginians who do not have government-sponsored identification from casting a regular ballot on election day. They want to make people who register to vote wait five days before casting an absentee ballot. They are also trying to make it illegal to help more than two people with an absentee ballot application in the same election year....

In schools around the country, 2011 was marked by test cheating scandalsBy Associated Press, Published: December 31 ATLANTA — It was the year of the test cheating scandal. From Atlanta to Philadelphia and Washington to Los Angeles, officials have accused hundreds of educators of changing answers on tests or giving answers to students. Just last week, state investigators revealed that dozens of educators in 11 schools in Georgia’s Dougherty County either cheated or failed to prevent cheating on 2009 standardized tests. **SNIP** At President Obama’s invitation, states have begun filing waivers to get relief from the law. Under the 11...

Earlier this summer, Newt Gingrich passed on the opportunity to sign The Family Leader Marriage Vow, which asks political candidates to commit to take specific actions to support traditional marriage upon election. Gingrich didn’t object to the pledge so fiercely as Mitt Romney, whose campaign staffers called parts of the pledge “undignified and inappropriate,� but the former House Speaker did suggest he thought the pledge could use some tweaking. At the time, at least one pundit jokingly speculated that Gingrich didn’t like the inclusion of the phrase “personal fidelity to my spouse.�Turns out, he’s on board with that. The GOP...

For decades we were warned that when the Baby Boomers started to retire that this country would be facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Well, that day has arrived ladies and gentlemen. Back on January 1st, the Baby Boomers began to retire and more than 10,000 of them will be retiring every single day for years to come. Most of them have not saved up nearly enough money for retirement. At the same time, private sector pension plans are failing all over the place, hundreds of state and local government pension plans from coast to coast are woefully...

The stress was overwhelming. For years, this veteran teacher had received exemplary evaluations but now was feeling pressured to raise her students' test scores. Her principal criticized her teaching and would show up to take notes on her class. She knew the material would be used against her one day. "My principal told me right to my face that she — she was feeling sorry for me because I don't know how to teach," the instructor said. The Los Angeles educator, who did not want to be identified, is one of about three dozen in the state accused this year...

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., introduced a bill in Congress Wednesday that would prohibit all states from requiring photo identification at the polls. “The Voter Access Protection Act” comes at a time when states across the nation, including Minnesota, have moved to establish photo ID laws as a protection against voter fraud. Legislatures in 20 states introduced such a bill in 2011, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. “This legislation would prohibit one of the most pernicious forms of voter suppression, requiring a strict photo identification card at the polls,” said the bill’s co-author, Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., in...

In the Running World, They're Called 'Bandits' and Race Officials Don't Like to Discuss Them; the Cockroach Analogy For anyone without an official slot in Sunday's New York Marathon, here's a thought: Run it anyway. But don't expect the running establishment to cheer you on. Peter Sagal tried that at last month's Chicago Marathon. Without paying the $145 registration fee, he joined the nearly 38,000 official marathoners on Oct. 9, partaking of free Gatorade along the way. "I know it's wrong," Mr. Sagal, host of National Public Radio's "Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!," wrote afterward in a blog for Runner's...

Atlanta schools caught up in cheating scandal get federal standing yanked over inflated scoresArticle by: DORIE TURNER, Associated Press Updated: November 2, 2011 - 9:32 AM ATLANTA - Georgia has revoked the federal standing for more than 40 Atlanta elementary and middle schools named in a massive cheating scandal. **SNIP** That means the schools can face sanctions under federal law and may have to return thousands of dollars in federal money for each year they reported inflated test scores.

Mayor Bloomberg likes to boast of the “gains” made in city schools during his tenure, but the test scores and graduation rates he cites have long been suspect. Want to know why? As Susan Edelman reported in last Sunday’s Post, the folks at struggling Washington Irving HS in Manhattan apply a major, um, fudge factor. Can’t make the passing grade of 65 in some class? No sweat: Under Washington Irving policy -- spelled out in a school handbook and other documents obtained by The Post -- a failing grade of 60 automatically gets changed to a 65. Sweet! Score as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A real estate investment by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's husband went undisclosed for years and has opened a window into a loophole that allows House members to avoid specifying some of their financial assets. In 2010 and 2011, Pelosi voluntarily reported the Sacramento, Calif., land investment as an asset of her multimillionaire husband, Paul. She had not reported the investment for about 10 years previously because it was held by an S corporation her husband had set up, said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for the California congresswoman. Under House financial disclosure rules, lawmakers are not obligated...

Atlanta student 1 of 7 charged in SAT cheating scandalReporter: The Associated Press Posted: 3:26 PM Sep 27, 2011 GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) — A Georgia college student is facing charges he stood in for New York high school students and took the SAT exam for them. Six current or former Great Neck North High School students also were arrested on Tuesday. Nassau County prosecutors say Sam Eshaghoff was paid between $1,500 and $2,500 for each exam. Eshaghoff is a 19-year-old Great Neck North alumnus who now attends Emory University in Atlanta. He spent his freshman year at the University...

Twenty-two California schools had their test scores thrown out this year. Nearly half the campuses lost their Academic Performance Index scores because of cheating by teachers. Several others were penalized because of help teachers gave students that violated rules. Additionally, some school scores were rejected because of what appeared to be accidental actions. In most cases, schools or school districts turned themselves in. Because of budget cuts, the state Education Department no longer conducts random audits at schools or scans test booklets for irregularities. The number of schools with invalidated test scores remains relatively small but is edging upward. In...

Grade Tampering Allegations Rise In New York City SchoolsAugust 23, 2011 12:10 PM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – New York City’s special investigation commissioner says allegations of grade changing and test tampering by city teachers and school administrators have more than tripled since 2003. The commissioner, Richard Condon, attributed the rise to the higher stakes attributed to standardized tests and to the increase in the number of schools to 1,700 from 1,200 in 2002. “For a number of years you had bonuses being paid to schools that did better and that is one possible reason why there was an increase,” Condon...

Fulton County grand jury issues subpoena for probe of APS cheating scandalPosted by Miranda Sain on Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 2:15 PM A criminal investigation has begun into the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal — and former Superintendent Beverly Hall could play a large role, the AJC reports: The subpoena, issued by a Fulton County grand jury, seeks comprehensive information dating back to 1999 regarding teacher transfers and demotions, bonuses paid to employees for improved test scores and copies of complaints from parents, teachers or students of possible improprieties related to Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. The subpoena also seeks signed...

Hall: 'I Deeply Regret' Atlanta Cheating ScandalWSB-TV Updated: 2:44 pm EDT August 10, 2011 **SNIP** Hall retired from Atlanta schools just days before state investigators released a scathing report implicating nearly 180 educators in the scandal. Educators accused in the probe said they were under immense pressure to improve students' scores by any means possible amid a culture of "fear and retaliation," investigators said. Educators, who said they were either directed to cheat by superiors or felt they had no other option, huddled in back rooms at night erasing wrong answers and filling in correct ones or led students to...

Records: $645K In Bonuses Paid To Schools Named In ScandalRecords Detail Bonuses Paid To APS Staff, Teachers Updated: 6:37 pm EDT August 9, 2011 ATLANTA -- Channel 2 Action News has obtained records detailing bonuses paid to teachers and staff at schools implicated in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal. Channel 2's Tom Regan put in a request for the documents on bonus payments two weeks ago. He received the records on Tuesday and has been poring over the documents. Regan said the documents detail bonuses that were paid out from January 2009 to the present. According to the documents,...

Julie Rogers-Martin had started to doubt her teaching skills. After 30 years in education, working mostly with underprivileged inner-city students, Rogers-Martin felt she had developed a level of competence and professionalism that can only be gained from hard work and experience. Her superiors at East Lake Elementary School in the Atlanta Public Schools system where she taught for six years seemed to agree. Administrators held her up as a model, praising her classroom management skills and use of technology and showcasing her class to parents and administrators, she says. But between 2007 and 2009 a strange thing started happening: Some...

State and local education officials have been begging the federal government for relief from student testing mandates in the federal No Child Left Behind law, but school starts soon and Congress still hasn't answered the call. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will announce a new waiver system Monday to give schools a break. The plan to offer waivers to all 50 states, as long as they meet other school reform requirements, comes at the request of President Barack Obama, Duncan said. More details on the waivers will come in September, he said. The goal of the No Child Left...

Parents defend Atlanta school caught up in scandalBy Ty Tagami The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 9:39 p.m. Tuesday, August 2, 2011 Parents of students at an Atlanta public school where cheating was alleged to have occurred on a statewide test on Tuesday night defended their school and teachers at a town hall meeting. “We’ve been extremely pleased with the instruction my children have received,” said Quinnie Cook-Richardson, one of several parents at the troubled West Manor Elementary School who spoke at the meeting. Her son’s teacher had him reading within a year, she said, adding, “They are an example of what is...

In the wake of school cheating scandals across the country, several states are racing to implement new testing protocols before classes resume. In New York, Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. created a task force last month to review all aspects of student assessment. "The Commissioner will be announcing a series of measures to ensure the integrity of our testing system before our students return to school in September," New York State Education Department spokesman Jonathan Burman said in a statement Monday. Specific measures haven't been announced, but state officials said they want to avoid problems that have plagued school...

Pennsylvania Joins the List of States Facing a School Cheating ScandalMonday, August 01, 2011 By MICHAEL WINERIP, The New York Times **SNIP** Mr. Herold's first day was July 6. On July 8 about 9:30 a.m., Ms. Mezzacappa suggested he look at the enormous state file, and by 11:30 that night The Notebook had posted its biggest scoop. A total of 89 schools -- 28 in Philadelphia -- had been flagged by the state for, among other things, an improbably high number of erasures, as well as questionable gains on reading and math tests. Mr. Socolar, a data fanatic, calculated that...

Ch. 2 Special: APS Cheating Scandal- July 31Updated: 10:42 am EDT July 31, 2011 A Channel 2 Action News special looks into the weeks developments in the APS cheating scandal. This week Justin Farmer discusses how the district is hiring 109 new teachers amid the news APS is facing an $8 million deficit and will have to pay $1 million a month for teachers implicated in the scandal while they remain on leave. Also, Channel 2's Tom Regan and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Alan Judge join Justin for analysis on the week's developments.

APS Teachers On Paid Leave Cost $1M Per MonthUpdated: 5:57 pm EDT July 29, 2011 ATLANTA -- The superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools says the school system is in a state of crisis. The school board held an emergency meeting Friday morning where Superintendent Errol Davis described the school system’s financial crunch amid a scandal involving test cheating. Channel 2’s Tom Regan attended the meeting. “It’s a crisis in the sense that we didn’t plan for it, but it’s certainly one that we’re going to solve and work through,” Davis said. With the first day of school fast approaching, the...

A national scandal hit the news when Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal released a 413-page report describing how hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals had been cheating during the past 10 years on standardized tests in order to falsely report that their schools were doing a good job and the kids were improving. A total of 178 teachers and principals (38 were principals), 82 of whom have already confessed, had fraudulently raised test scores so their schools would meet test targets set by the district and thereby qualify for federal funds. The truth came out after a 10-month inquiry...

Atlanta Cheating Scandal Teachers Blame Testing!by Jaymie Pierce July 11, 2011 06:55 PM EDT Teachers caught in the big Atlanta schools cheating scandal complain about the pressure of achieving scores and targets from administrations in the school districts. Furthermore, they are attesting that it is the fault of the "No Child Left Behind Act." The Atlanta Journal reported today that the findings from the investigations gave three primary areas for the wide-spread cheating. The report indicates that all schools would be considered failing under the "No Child Left Behind Act" expecting 100% proficiency. The stern actions of sanctions against teachers...

A national scandal hit the news when Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal released a 413-page report describing how hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals had been cheating during the past 10 years on standardized tests in order to falsely report that their schools were doing a good job and the kids were improving. A total of 178 teachers and principals (38 were principals), 82 of whom have already confessed, had fraudulently raised test scores so their schools would meet test targets set by the district and thereby qualify for federal funds. The truth came out after a 10-month inquiry...

Former APS deputy superintendent's new job in doubtUpdated: Jul 25, 2011 8:51 AM EDT By Christopher King ATLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) - The former deputy superintendent of Atlanta's public schools will find out Monday whether she gets to keep her new job. The Desoto Independent School District, in a suburb of Dallas, TX, is scheduled to vote on whether to keep Kathy Augustine as its new school chief. The board selected Augustine as superintendent last spring. Her job is now in doubt following revelations that she is a key figure in the investigation stemming from allegations of widespread cheating in Atlanta...

Three Hudson County schools one each in Bayonne, Union City and Jersey City have been flagged for having a high number of erasures on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge standardized tests, the state Department of Education announced.

APS To Pay Teachers Fighting DismissalUpdated: 9:31 am EDT July 21, 2011 ATLANTA -- They may be out of the classroom this fall, but scores of teachers targeted for firing in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal will continue to receive their paychecks. **SNIP** Wednesday was the deadline for 178 educators accused of misreporting CRCT test scores to resign or face termination. Bromley told Channel 2's Tom Regan the tribunal will hear evidence in the case, and then make a recommendation to the superintendent on whether employee terminations go forward or get dismissed. While their appeal is under way, the...

Thirty-four schools in New Jersey are being investigated for possible cheating after an examination of standardized test data revealed irregularities and raised questions, the state Department of Education said. State education officials said some schools showed especially high deviations from the normal amount of wrong test answers being erased and a right one marked. In numerous U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington, accusations and findings of test cheating being condoned and organized by teachers to make their schools look better have put the issue in the national spotlight, and prompted education officials across the country to re-examine testing procedures...

Panagiotis Ipeirotis, a computer science professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, recently shared in a blog post that he caught a bunch of his students cheating last fall, but says he will never do it again because the school punished him financially for it (via Bloomberg Businessweek). He found many cases of cheating through Turnitin, which compares documents to a giant database of sources in order to detect plagiarism. Some of the students had blatantly cheated, and Ipeirotis confronted the entire class about it by email. By the end of the semester, 22 of the 108 students...

Georgia lawmaker wants cheating educators to return bonusesUnder the proposed legislation, any educator found guilty of cheating would forfeit all promised salary increases or bonuses and would have to repay any money handed out based on test results. Updated: 10:33 AM Jul 19, 2011 Reporter: The Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — **SNIP** State Rep. Billy Mitchell, a Democrat from Stone Mountain, said Monday he plans to introduce legislation that would affect educators who get raises or bonuses for improving students' test scores. Mitchell said he wants to introduce the bill during the special legislative session next month. Under the proposed...

Cracking a System in Which Test Scores Were for ChangingBy MICHAEL WINERIP Published: July 17, 2011 ATLANTA — There had long been suspicions that cheating on state tests was widespread in the Atlanta public schools, but the superintendent, Beverly L. Hall, was feared by teachers and principals, and few dared speak out. Last summer a supposedly Blue Ribbon Commission, headed by a businessman volunteering his time, produced yet another flimsy report, urging further investigation. Gov. Sonny Perdue said he was fed up and determined to conduct a thorough investigation. For this, he called on three men who had spent a...

Quit or be fired, educators implicated in Atlanta scandal toldJuly 15, 2011 By the CNN Wire Staff The superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools has ordered that 178 educators allegedly involved in a teaching scandal resign or face termination proceedings. In a letter, Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr. gave them the opportunity to resign by Wednesday, said Keith Bromery, director of media relations for the schools. The letter was sent Thursday to educators listed on a report about the state Criterion-Reference Competency Tests as having confessed to or having been implicated in testing improprieties. On Monday, at a school board meeting,...

Atlanta schools created culture of cheating, fearPublished July 16, 2011 Associated Press ATLANTA – Teachers spent nights huddled in a back room, erasing wrong answers on students' test sheets and filling in the correct bubbles. At another school, struggling students were seated next to higher-performing classmates so they could copy answers. Those and other confessions are contained in a new state report that reveals how far some Atlanta public schools went to raise test scores in the nation's largest-ever cheating scandal. Investigators concluded that nearly half the city's schools allowed the cheating to go unchecked for as long as a...

A jilted ex-lover in Stillwater is accused of going to his former flame's home, where he killed her pet snake and wrote "I loved you" with its blood. When police arrived at the ex-girlfriend's home, Jonathan Paul Utecht, 21, was standing outside with blood on his hands and told the woman, who was with the officers, "that she did not want to go inside the apartment and see what he had done," according to a criminal complaint. Utecht was charged today with felony counts of burglary and terroristic threats. His initial court appearance will be July 28. Police were alerted...

Link only - Teachers' attorney: Atlanta test cheating report inaccurate, falsely accuses the innocent

PITTSBURGH -- The Pennsylvania Department of Education is looking into a newly surfaced report indicating possible cheating on state standardized tests. The data forensics report examines results of the 2009 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA. The annual tests measure math and reading skills in students statewide. The report flags exam scores in about 35 districts, plus some charter schools. It does not assert cheating occurred, but says that certain answer patterns and erasures make the results suspicious.

Atlanta announces anti-cheating planpublished Friday, July 8th, 2011 by Associated Press ATLANTA — As the Atlanta school district grapples with a cheating scandal that has drawn national attention, the interim school superintendent said Thursday that the district will automatically investigate suspicious test scores and require ethics training for all employees. The changes announced by interim Superintendent Erroll Davis Jr. come two days after state investigators said 178 educators had cheated on standardized tests used to meet federal benchmarks dating back to 2001. Davis reiterated Thursday that none of those educators will work in an Atlanta classroom again. The educators face...

Hey Teachers … Leave Them Kids Alone! Thursday, July 07, 2011 – by Staff Report America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta ... At least 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta Public Schools cheated to raise student scores on high-stakes standardized tests, according to a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Award-winning gains by Atlanta students were based on widespread cheating by 178 named teachers and principals, said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Tuesday. His office released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed...

The majority of the nation doesn’t know that investigators have turned up a hatched-scheme in which Union bosses coordinated efforts with public education officials. Further that 44 of 56 school districts in the Atlanta Public Schools system strategically convinced Superintendents, Principals and teachers to cheat–primarily by going back and erasing answers on tests and replacing them with correct ones–in order to have a higher means score for the No Child Left Behind funding qualifications. The evidence is overwhelming. 2100 Interviews… 178 educators involved… 38 principals involved… 80 confessions to the schemes… 800,000 documents as evidence…

Link only - Atlanta Public School teachers who cooperated in cheating investigation granted immunity

Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes. Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets. Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible. Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn

ATLANTA — Educators at nearly four dozen Atlanta elementary and middle schools cheated on standardized tests by either helping students or changing the answers once exams were handed in, according to the results of a yearlong state investigation released Tuesday.The report said that 178 teachers and principals cheated, though only 82 educators actually confessed to misconduct dating as far back as 2001 and affecting thousands of school children, according to a synopsis handed out by Gov. Nathan Deal's office. More than half of the district's 100 schools were examined, and 44 of those had cheating, the synopsis said.The investigators also...

Dozens of Atlanta public school educators falsified standardized tests or failed to address such misconduct in their schools, Gov. Nathan Deal said Tuesday in unveiling the results of a state investigation that confirmed widespread cheating in the city schools dating as far back as 2001. "I think the overall conclusion was that testing and results and targets being reached became more important than actual learning for children," Deal said. "And when reaching targets became the goal, it was a goal that was pursued with no excuses." Falsifying test results made the schools appear to be performing better than they really...

Jon Austin's wife, Amy, had a blunt assessment for her husband as the Minneapolis couple watched Rep. Anthony Weiner's stunning confessions on television this week. "You'd be dead," she told him. Regardless of his professional future, it's Weiner's predicament at home that seems to be launching countless discussions among couples like the Austins. And this time, it's not a question of actual physical cheating — a la Eliot Spitzer and his prostitution scandal — but the murkier backdrop of Internet relationships: sexting, tweeting lewd photos, emailing.

Test Results Thrown Out in 3 DC Classrooms Because of Alleged CheatingBy BOB BARNARD/myfoxdc Updated: Thursday, 19 May 2011, 11:31 PM EDT WASHINGTON - There is more fallout from the standardized test score scandal rocking D.C. Public Schools. Three elementary school teachers are now accused or suspected of cheating. At issue is the 2010 DC Comprehensive Assessment System or CAS Test. Three classrooms (out of 3,800 across the city) just had test results thrown out because of alleged cheating. "At one [classroom], there was clear evidence of cheating and the teacher admitted it," says D.C. State Superintendent of Education Hosanna...

As if the situation in Wisconsin wasn't tense enough, it appears that one county in particular is going to a new extreme. This comes after word that there may have been voter fraud in the nonpartisan State Supreme Court election yesterday between incumbent David Prosser and JoAnne Kloppenburg. For some reason one of the counties in the state is destroying ballots that 'were not counted' yesterday. Apparently this is a very bizarre and egregious move. There is now a call for an injunction to preserve the 'discarded' ballots: I have filed a Wisconsin Open records request with the City of...

A batty Brooklyn mom who admitted to inducing the abortion of her two-timing husband's love child was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison. Kisha Jones, 40, who has already been jailed for 17 months following her diabolical deed, has about two more years to spend in the clink when factoring time off for good behavior. The mother-of-five tricked her hubby's mistress Monique Hunter, 26, to take cytotec, causing early labor on October 2009. When the baby was born alive, she tried to deceive hospital workers into taking the premature newborn off the respirator. Both Hunter and her child are...