Here’s a piece of good news to start your week.
Do you remember the massive cheating by principals and teachers of the Atlanta public school system?
In July 2011, news came that 80% (or 44 out of 56) of the public schools in Atlanta, Georgia, were found to have cheated on tests — for the last 10 years. The cheating wasn’t done by students, but by 178 principals and teachers who erased wrong student answers on state standardized tests, and inserted the right ones. Whistleblowers had been intimidated and threatened.
Beverly Hall was the superintendent of Atlanta’s public school system during those ten years. Atlanta schools showed such astounding progress during her term that in 2009, Hall was named America’s superintendent of the year. But investigators say Hall either knew of the cheating, or should have, which she denied. Instead, when she retired as superintendent in June 2011, a month before the cheating scandal came to light, she blamed other employees: “I am confident that aggressive, swift action will be taken against anyone who believes so little in our students and in our system of support that they turned to dishonesty as the only option.”
The wheels of justice grind slowly, but justice is finally brought to this pig of a woman.
Arturo Garcia reports for The Raw Story that the former school superintendent was among 35 people indicted last Friday (March 29, 2013) on racketeering and conspiracy charges in connection with a cheating scandal that dates back to 2001.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Beverly Hall, former Atlanta Public Schools human relations director Millicent Few and other administrators were indicted on 57 counts of making false statements, along with five counts of theft, two counts of influencing a witness and one count of racketeering.
According to WAGA-TV, a grand jury recommended bail be set at $7.5 million for Hall. She, along with her fellow defendants, is expected to turn herself in to authorities by Tuesday. Hall faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted.
The indictment contends that Hall and her colleagues created a culture of “fear and intimidation” while trying to boost the district’s scores on the state-mandated Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.
The indictment accused Hall and the other administrators — which include teachers, principals and assistant principals, testing coordinators and human resources personnel — of conspiring to “either cheat, conceal cheating or retaliate against whistle-blowers” in order to win the district the financial benefits that were afforded to high-scoring schools.
According to The New York Times, Hall resigned from her position in 2011, shortly before the release of an 800-page investigation that uncovered a history of institutional cheating that came to involve 178 educators in 44 schools. Hall has consistently denied that she was involved in the conspiracy.
†
Racketeering and conspiracy….
Hmm.
Hey, you mockers of “conspiracy theories”!
Here’s one massive CONSPIRACY that’s real. How come you’re not mocking this one?
~Eowyn
