In Atlanta, the government-operated school system was caught earlier this year in long-term cheating on standardized tests. Although the Washington Post is a big defender of government schools, even the Post called the details “shocking.”
Teachers, principals and administrators were all caught up in cheating by a system that was said to use fear and intimidation to get teachers to go along with the scheme. (At the same link, you can find links to PDFs of the full state report, which details just how corrupt the system has been.)
The people who are most cheated by this are the students and parents. Students have resources that are supposed to be used to educate them being used instead to finance a world-class cheating operation. Parents who send their kids to schools and see positive test scores believe their kids are getting the education they need, so they have been cheated and lied to. The kids are too young to understand how they’re being cheated, but the parents would be justified in feeling intense rage.
The parents, it turns out, aren’t angry. In fact, at a public meeting Tuesday night in southwest Atlanta, they lined up to sing the praises of their schools and defend the teachers who had been cheating their kids. Seriously. I’m not making this up.