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How high-stakes testing led to the Atlanta cheating scandal
- 07-22-2011
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By Dana Goldstein/Slate
On July 5, Georgia released the results of a state investigation into suspicious test scores in the Atlanta public schools. The state reported that 178 educators in 44 of the district's 100 schools had facilitated cheating—often with the tacit knowledge and even approval of high-level administrators, including Atlanta's award-winning former superintendent Beverly Hall, who conveniently parked herself in Hawaii for the investigation's denouement. In the wake of this appalling ethical lapse, which resulted in thousands of Atlanta children—largely poor and black—being told they had acquired crucial academic skills they actually lack, the national media and education policy elite have mostly rushed to defend high-stakes testing policies. "The existence of cheating says nothing about the merits of testing," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argued in the Washington Post this week, agreeing with such commentators as the editors of the New York Times, David Brooks, and influential school reform philanthropist and blogger Whitney Tilson. (more...)
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