More Cheating On Standardized Tests

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution: 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.
For years — as long as a decade — this was how the Atlanta school district produced gains on state curriculum tests. The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to Hall and the district, according to an investigative report released Tuesday by Gov. Nathan Deal.
In the report, the governor’s special investigators describe an enterprise where unethical — and potentially illegal — behavior pierced every level of the bureaucracy, allowing district staff to reap praise and sometimes bonuses by misleading the children, parents and community they served.
The report accuses top district officials of wrongdoing that could lead to criminal charges in some cases.
http://www.ajc.com/news/investigation-into-aps-cheating-1001375.html
The reason teachers, principals, administrators and school district cheat is because of the federal government and No Child Left Behind.(NCLB) NCLB was the brain child of Ted Kennedy and George Bush.
The idea behind NCLB was admirable but as time went by, the law makes it almost impossible for school districts to pass the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). It is so unrealistic, that is couple of years, they will require everyone to be proficient in math reading and writing, even those children with severe disabilities.
While those administrators in Atlanta got caught cheating on the answers, almost all schools, school districts and states do cheat. They do this by teaching to the test. Curriculum is now designed around the tests that are given. Education is now about the tests and the hell with electives and expanding the general curriculum.
What Atlanta did was pretty outrageous, especially when the superintendent is involved. My guess is that she will be charged with a crime and may even do some time behind bars.
But the real crime is how much damage No Child Left Behind is doing to education.