A few years ago, I reviewed Shani Robinson’s book “None of the Above,” about the Atlanta cheating scandal. Teachers were charged as racketeers for allegedly changing answers from wrong to right. When questioned by investigators, they were offered immunity if they confessed or accused someone else. Shani pleaded innocent and accused no one. She was sentenced to prison, although there was no evidence against her other than an accusation. She was a first-grade teacher whose student scores did not affect the city’s ratings, nor was she eligible for a bonus. She has appealed and is waiting, years later, to learn whether she will be sent to prison.
Valerie Strauss posted this story and wrote the introduction.
Back in 2015, an Atlanta jury convicted 11 teachers of racketeering and other crimes for cheating on student standardized tests, one of many such scandals reported in those years in most states and the District of Columbia. The fallout continues.
The key difference between all the other scandals and the one in Atlanta: Prosecutors used a law ordinarily used to prosecute mobsters — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO — to go after those they deemed guilty.
A grand jury in 2013 indicted Beverly Hall, the now-deceased superintendent, who was accused of running a “corrupt” organization that used test scores to financially reward and punish teachers. Thirty-four teachers, principals and others were also charged. All but one of the charged was Black. Many pleaded guilty. Twelve went to trial; one was acquitted of all charges and the 11 others were convicted of racketeering and a variety of other charges.
The cheating scandals — including some broad-based ones in the District of Columbia over several years — came during a time when standardized test scores had become the chief metric to evaluate teachers, principals, schools and districts because of federal policy during the Bush and then the Obama administrations. Teachers’ jobs were on the line if student test scores didn’t improve (despite questions about whether the tests really showed improvement in student achievement).
In Georgia, the prosecutions were pushed by two Republican governors, one of whom, Sonny Perdue, used the test scores that resulted from cheating to win federal funding in President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top school reform initiative.
This post looks at the current state of things in this scandal. It was written by Anna Simonton, who is a journalist for the Appeal, a worker-led nonprofit newsroom covering the U.S. criminal legal system. She is the co-author with Shani Robinson of “None of The Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators.” Simonton says she is a proud graduate of Atlanta public schools.
Robinson is one of the teachers who was indicted and who maintains her innocence. “None of the Above” is revelatory about how the prosecutions were handled — the news media virtually ignored the many times the case was nearly dismissed as well as clear examples of prosecutorial misconduct. The judge in the case called the cheating scandal “the sickest thing that’s ever happened to this town,” never mind slavery, Jim Crow laws and their continuing effects, the dismantling of public housing, etc.
Here’s Simonton’s piece.
By Anna Simonton
Teachers have faced unprecedented burdens during the coronavirus pandemic — the risks of teaching in person, the challenges of online schooling, and the furor over critical race theory. Now another threat looms on the horizon for a group of former educators in Atlanta: prison.
The Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal rose to national attention in 2015 when 11 Black educators were convicted of racketeering and conspiracy for allegedly cheating or enabling cheating on students’ standardized tests. The reaction from many corners was outrage.
Commentators asserted that charging teachers with RICO — a federal statute which was originally designed to prosecute mobsters — was overreaching and harsh, that Black educators were scapegoated for a widespread problem, and that sending them to prison wouldn’t solve the systemic failures that led to cheating.
Eventually, the news cycle moved on, and the case was largely forgotten outside of Atlanta. But it’s far from over.
Seven educators who maintain their innocence are still appealing their convictions in a process that has moved at a glacial pace. Last month brought the first major development in several years: Former principal Dana Evans had her appeal rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court on Jan. 11. Evans will soon be incarcerated for one year, followed by probation, unless the trial judge agrees to modify her sentence.
Retired Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter has the power to resentence these educators to time served or any number of alternatives to prison. Now local education advocates are petitioning Baxter, District Attorney Fani Willis, and other elected officials to bring a just resolution to a case that legal experts have called “a textbook example of overcriminalization and prosecutorial discretion run amok.”
It all began in 2010, when then-Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) launched a state investigation into Atlanta Public Schools because he wasn’t satisfied with the district’s internal probe into a suspiciously high number of wrong-to-right erasures on standardized tests.
The problem was widespread — 20 percent of Georgia’s elementary and middle schools were flagged in a 2009 erasure analysis — but Atlanta became the focal point. Less than a week after launching the investigation, Perdue announced the state won a $400 million federal Race to the Top grant for school reform from the Obama administration. What he didn’t mention was that the grant application touted those same test scores, attributing the rise to “higher standards and harder assessments.”
Meanwhile, agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents interrogated teachers without lawyers present, trading immunity for confessions and accusations against fellow educators. The result was a dragnet that hooked innocent people along with those who cheated. When the investigation concluded by implicating 178 educators in cheating, it was up to the local district attorney at the time, Paul Howard, to bring charges.
At that point, cheating had become commonplace in school districts across the country, due in part to federal laws like No Child Left Behind, which punished schools that didn’t increase test scores each year. In most places, the consequences for cheating amounted to suspended or revoked professional licenses, fines, and community service. When Howard indicted 35 educators (who were almost all Black and all people of color) on RICO charges in 2013, it sent shock waves through the city.
Howard stretched the bounds of RICO — which concerns crimes committed for financial gain — to allege that educators conspired to cheat to receive bonus money awarded to schools that scored well on standardized tests. The indictment was so broad that two teachers at different schools who cheated without any knowledge of the other’s actions could be cast as conspirators. And the claim about bonus money didn’t square with the state investigation, which had found that bonus money “provided little incentive to cheat.”
The 12 educators who went to trial had garnered a total of only $1,500 in bonus money, and some never received any at all. One defendant was a teacher whose students didn’t even pass the test.
Others taught first and second grade, where tests were only taken for practice and didn’t count toward the metrics schools were judged upon. That was the case for Shani Robinson. She was accused by a colleague who was granted immunity by the GBI. A testing coordinator had instructed Robinson and other teachers to erase doodles students had drawn on their test booklets, a practice that was allowed under testing regulations. It wasn’t hard for her accuser to twist the scene to fit what investigators were looking for.
The trial lasted eight months — the longest criminal trial in Georgia’s history — and was marred by unreliable testimony. Most educators who were indicted had taken plea deals that required them to confess, accuse, and testify in exchange for community service instead of prison. Witnesses for the prosecution made contradictory statements so often that at one point the judge said, “Perjury is being committed daily here.” Two people even recanted on the witness stand.
At the end of the trial, prosecutors made a last-ditch effort to convince the jury that educators cheated for financial gain by claiming that their salaries — forget the bonus money — justified a RICO conviction. They reiterated that educators could be conspirators without knowing it. And where reason fell short, they relied on emotion, making impassioned declarations like, “America will never be destroyed from the outside! If we falter and lose our freedoms it will be because we destroyed ourselves!”
As if Atlanta educators were responsible for the downfall of democracy.
That was the tenor of the media surrounding the trial as well. Politicians and pundits used the case to paint public education as a failure and peddle corporate-friendly reforms. On the day the prosecution rested, and the cheating scandal dominated headlines, then-Gov. Nathan Deal (R) announced a plan for the state to take over “failing” schools and turn them into charters.
Even if cheating did signal a need for sweeping change, throwing the book at teachers hasn’t led to a better education system. Some students whose tests were manipulated have said the cheating didn’t take a toll on their academic achievement in the first place. The school district’s remediation program for those who have struggled wasn’t very impactful. And new cheating allegations have surfaced because the policies at the root of the problem have not been addressed.
Instead, two educators have served prison sentences and others are headed that way. Changing their sentences and keeping them out of prison would represent a real step toward rectifying the Atlanta cheating scandal.
NOTHING will change in public schools until the standardized testing and it’s evil twin the Common Core curriculum are tossed out the door.
Bingo, bango, boingo!!! We have a winner, again! Give that lovely Lisa a Kewpie Doll.
Next is to get rid of BYOD (bring your own device) policies and get cellphones banned from use in school. Personal computers can serve a purpose if done correctly but every student must have use of a personal computer in order for good policy to work.
I can agree with that!
Ending testing is a step in the right direction. We should also work to amend the laws that are allowing privatization to crush public education. One step is eliminating the crooked CMOs, but we need even more. We need to stop the privatization bleeding by taking the profit motive out of privatization. We should allow billionaires to donate to scholarships for under served students at better private schools, and even give the wealthy a tax benefit for doing so. However, we should not put public schools in fiscal jeopardy by enabling the draining their funding. If billionaires have an ideological rationale for sending young people to private schools, let them do it without damaging the schools that this nation and so many young people and communities depend on.
Once the data stream goes away EVERYTHING can change. Kill the Hydra instead of trying to lop off it’s many arms.
And this decade-old Atlanta prosecution fits right in.
The perfect 🧩 puzzle piece toward the completion of a Public School Takedown. Teachers enduring 8 months of The Salem Witch Trial. Educator interrogations that more closely resembled Joe McCarthy & Roy Cohn on stage at Abu Ghraib or David Duke at a White Youth Alliance rally.
A Master Plan by the “Master Race”, mapped out and manipulated years ago by Mobsters and political hitmen under contract to a militarized, corporatized, industrialized Educational Complex.
Make no mistake, these people mean business.
If you read Shani Robinson’s book, you will be outraged by the racism and the heavy handed tactics used to jail teachers.
Ah, I think this comment may have just answered my question (below).
“She was sentenced to prison, although there was no evidence against her other than an accusation.”
How was that possible?
That is a great question.
Somehow the Trump administration can do all sorts of corrupt activities and it was never “enough” evidence to charge them. There can be multiple corroborating witnesses to what happened, and it isn’t “enough”.
Trump uses charitable foundation funds to make a donation to the campaign of a DA investigating his fake university AND uses charitable funds to buy a portrait of himself to hang in one of his businesses, and that isn’t “enough”.
But somehow a 2nd grade teacher can be prosecuted by the word of someone else who did something wrong and was pressured to name another “criminal”?
Speaks to everything that is wrong with the justice system and what institutional racism is all about.
The amount of evidence required for prosecutors to bring charges against corrupt white Republicans who are rich enough to hire very expensive and politically connected law firms is enormous.
But those without power – especially those who aren’t white – can be jailed for long terms on the very flimsiest evidence.
It isn’t just about race, but when those empowered to pursue “justice” are working not for justice but to please those in power, those who don’t have power suffer. And bias against those without power disproportionately affects those who aren’t white.
So often we have seen those empowered to pursue “justice” demonstrate an extreme double standard where a favored (usually white Republican) defendant requires a ridiculously high burden of evidence to prosecute but prosecutors will happily charge anyone on the flimsiest of evidence if it serves the political aims of those in power.
William Barr’s sycophant prosecutor John Durham wanted to please those who covered up for Trump’s corruption, so he charged a Democrat who correctly reported possible wrongdoing to the FBI. That’s it – it correctly reported a possible crime to the FBI. But his supposed “crime” was that he was supposedly too vague about who gave him the information – and even that fact is disputed! That is the entirety of this Democrat’s “crime”! Even though the FBI knew the person worked for Democrats, and in no way misrepresented himself as someone he wasn’t, he reported possible wrongdoing to the FBI and Durham said that was a crime because during one specific conversation he might have been too vague about his clients.
Had a person with no power been accused of this so-called “crime” by Durham, they might have just pleaded guilty. Instead this wealthy democrat has the financial means to challenge this supposed “crime”, although he could still go to jail for this “crime”.
But Republicans can act in the most corrupt ways – right in plain site – and the double standard that even the so-called liberal media has embraced is that they should not even be charged because there just isn’t enough evidence.
The word of one person being pressured to lie about the most ridiculous non-crime (“cheating”!) to “get” someone for political purposes is considered a perfectly reasonable amount of evidence to convict this teacher.
The word of multiple people with no reason to lie, plus copious documents, plus taped evidence is not enough to even charge a powerful white Republican for committing massive fraud or treason or even perjury. Perjury isn’t a crime when a white Republican testifies because even though what was said was clearly a lie, apparently that isn’t enough evidence.
Double standard. Institutional racism.
Exactly. Now, how do we undo those institutional faults?
Justice isn’t blind; she just prefers cash.
Teachers should never cheat. Teachers should not change the answers that students have given from wrong to right. Administrators should not offer teachers a bonus or any other reward for test scores. Test scores should not be connected to teachers’ evaluations. Teachers who knowingly cheat should have due process; if found guilty, they should be terminated. Not imprisoned for years. Terminated.
I think you know the answer to that question. The fact that her case and others have not been thrown out speaks for itself.
Despite not having seen the details, I am very inclined to agree with you.
Read her book.
I will, as soon as I’ve published Do Better.
What an incredible nightmare for the teachers and the principal mentioned in the article. It’s like something out of Kafka or “1984” only worse because it’s true. After all this time these poor educators are still in a hellish limbo, their lives shattered by the overreach and misconduct of the GBI (gestapo).
There’s one sentence from the article that I question: quote – “At that point, cheating had become commonplace in school districts across the country, due in part to federal laws like No Child Left Behind, which punished schools that didn’t increase test scores each year.” end quote Cheating became commonplace? Does she have the figures for that? I would say that most teachers don’t want to get anywhere near cheating since most teachers are very honest and most teachers don’t want to get involved in the judicial system and its vagaries.
This article is from the WaPo, owned by zillionaire, Jeff Bezos. Our resident contrarian tells us, in so many words and by inference, that the WaPo is bogus, baloney and not to be trusted. The WaPo still has Valerie Strauss who is definitely quite the opposite of bogus and phony. She’s a great education writer. Even with Bezos, the WaPo still has some value and is not completely worthless. You just have to read everything with a wary eye and skepticism and verify, verify and verify.
I sure hope Valerie Strauss will continue to be with WaPo. I’m getting worried. The quality of her articles has not changed, but the once-lively comment section has dwindled terribly over the last year or more.
Example: her recent article on Jill Biden’s reaction to community colleges being dumped from BBB ignited an atypically vigorous conversation – 383 comments. Now take a gander at her previous 10 articles: 132 comments total for all 10 articles– an average of 13 each. Including the very article we’re commenting on here, which got a measly 2 comments. About half of the topics– unlike the Biden article– were addressed by other opinion writers elsewhere in the paper which got hundreds+ comments. Is she being undercut?
Meanwhile Natanson and Meckler get tons of attention to their always-politically-slanted ed articles. Jay Mathews gets tons, too, but he’s in a different category than Natanson/ Meckler. He has a way of provoking a heated discussion, which he joins himself with data or challenges to commenters to back up their opinions. He also has an idiosyncratic slant (pro-“great” charters, pro-AP/ IB courses) which his readership love to heckle him about.
I agree with you, Joe Jersey. Cheating has never been commonplace. It occurred with shocking frequency, however, due to the pressure created by NCLB, with rewards and punishments for teachers attached to the test scores of their students. The superintendent of Atlanta public schools, Beverley Hall, pressured teachers and principals to raise test scores higher and higher, with bonuses for those who did and shame for those who did not. She got a $900,000 bonus when she retired. The American Association of Superintendents named her “Superintendent of the Year” before the cheating scandal broke. After the investigation began, she died of cancer. She was never accountable for the lives she destroyed.
Second that.
I remember the New Yorker article about this. It focused on a young math teacher, originally from Oakland, who was told to change scores by his boss. The outcome for him was tragic—a criminal record, a divorce, and the loss of a career that he loved. And a few years later, celebrities paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to grifters to falsify SAT scores for their darling children, and got truncated prison sentences—two weeks, in one case. No justice there.
I was beside myself with grief and anxiety several years ago when I learned of this. Still makes my blood boil after all this time. I feel the pain of the Atlanta teachers, and it cuts deep. Three thousand miles away. The McCarthyism prosecution did not just harm teachers in Atlanta; they hurt all of us. We all need justice. If anyone should serve time for what happened in Atlanta, it should be Arne Duncan. They can lock his arse up and throw away the key, far as I’m concerned. He’s the criminal.
But LCT: people “are telling me to run for mayor.” (Yeah, the people in his swelled head.)
It’s pretty certain Arne is running for Chicago Mayor in 2023. Lots of press on this (Page 2 full-page articles, with a color picture of an earnest-looking Arnie.
If there was justice (&, believe me, I’ve been searching), he’d be where you suggested, LCT.
Instead, he may well end up on the 5th floor of Chicago City Hall.
I’d venture a guess that the people of Chicago remember him and Rahm unfavorably. Antonio Villaraigosa did to the people of Los Angeles what Arne did to everyone and then ran for governor of California. He came in a distant third. Even a Republican fared better. People who attacked public schools in the past have the support of billionaires, not of voters. So here’s wishing Arne the worst of luck. He deserves a career crushing loss and a life of ignominy in the darkest shadows.
How ironic: the “superintendent was accused of running a ‘corrupt’ organization that used test scores to financially reward and punish teachers.” A precise description of NCLB ‘high-stakes testing,’ where student scores factor majorly in teachers’ annual evaluations.
This is actually a reply to LCT @8:25 AM: I sure hope you’re right.
Me too.