Guilty as charged! Cuff ’em and ship them off to jail.

Here in Atlanta, the trial against the teachers in the cheating scandal in the Atlanta Public Schools is over. Of the twelve teachers charged eleven of them got guilty verdicts. One was judged innocent. As soon as the verdict was announced, they were cuffed and put on a bus and hauled off to the slammer. The smart teachers were the ones who copped a plea, testified, and got reduced sentences mostly probation. Twelve teachers rolled the dice and went to trial. Eleven of them lost. They were convicted of racketeering, which is a felony and they can get up to twenty years in prison.

For those who don’t know, the test scores for the students in Atlanta Public Schools were abysmally low, so we had a bunch of teachers change the answers on the tests. Some teachers even gave answers to students taking the tests. Meanwhile, the head of the APS at the time, Beverly Hall, was held up as a model educator for the incredible improvements of the test scores on the tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind law. She and her fellow cheaters got bonuses for improving the test scores. The improvement aroused suspicion because statistically, it was next to impossible to have improved that much and furthermore, all the erasures on the answer sheets from wrong answers to correct answers were also out of range of what would be considered statistically normal. I’ll have to hand it to the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation, they have been all over this story from the get go.

Meanwhile, the ringleader, Beverly Hall won’t face the music because she died of cancer a last month. Another one of the teachers died as well.

Every single one of the convicted educators was black. They can’t scream racism because the majority of the students, if not all of the students were black as well. These were all under-performing schools in poor neighborhoods that magically showed drastic improvements in test scores. So, what these “educators” did was falsify test grades and promote the students on to the next grade. They cheated their students out of an education. They masked their incompetence as teachers by cheating and they got performance bonuses for doing so. Throughout the entire investigation and trial Beverly Hall, also black, claimed she didn’t know what was going on. Yeah. That makes her either a liar or incompetent. In my opinion she’s guilty of both. Some of these guilty “educators” threatened other “educators” or flat out told them to lie to the investigators.

Black on black crime. Next comes the sentencing. I wouldn’t lose a night’s sleep if some of them got twenty years in the slammer. I know of at least one who deserves it.

From the AJC

After more than eight days of deliberation in a case that rattled the region and garnered unwanted national attention, a jury found 11 of 12 former Atlanta Public Schools teachers, principals and administrators guilty of conspiring to change student answers on standardized tests.

A racketeering indictment could mean a 20-year prison sentence. The other felonies carry prison sentences of as much as five and 10 years each.

The trial stretched five months with 162 witnesses who took the stand. Thousands of pages of testimony was introduced. Closing arguments lasted three days.

The former educators are accused of conspiring to change answers on the 2009 CRCT to artificially inflate scores to satisfy federal benchmarks. The prosecution said bonuses and raises were awarded based on test scores.

That’s stealing money right there.

The alleged cheating was discovered when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported inexplicable spikes in test scores. Eventually, a criminal investigation was opened which led to a 29-count indictment two years ago. Two of those counts have been dropped, leaving 27 for the jury to consider.

I make fun of the AJC a lot, but they deserve kudos for their investigation and reporting on this scandal. This is what the media is supposed to do and seldom does anymore.

Before the cheating was exposed, the narrative of the Atlanta school system was it was a vastly-improving district that took a no-nonsense approach to teachers and administrators who did not meet its high academic standards. Its superintendent, Beverly Hall, won national awards. City leaders used the rising test scores to make the case to businesses that Atlanta was the place to be.

All lies.

The narrative rapidly changed. Hall resigned amid the investigation. Abhorrent tales of cheating parties emerged. Dismayed parents wondered what their children really learned.

Not much except it’s OK to cheat. Some of them had to know they didn’t do well on the tests.

Hall was the ringleader of the cheating, prosecutors said. She was not tried because she was being treated for breast cancer when jury selection began. Hall died earlier this month after testimony ended. One other former educator named in the March 2013 indictment also died. Twenty-one others pleaded guilty to lesser charges and were sentenced to probation.

Some community leaders, activists and civil rights icons like Ambassador Andrew Young argued criminal investigations and trials were an unnecessary approach to holding those accountable for their actions.

Sorry dudes, the race card doesn’t work in this case ’cause the victims were black as well. Throw the book at them!

A state-commissioned report found organized, widespread cheating. Investigators found cheating in Dougherty County, but prosecutors did not indict any teachers because they said the cheating was not organized.

I’m a little surprised at the verdict because the Fulton County DA is Paul Howard the same DA who botched the Ray Lewis investigation and although Ray Lewis or someone in his entourage murdered some dude in Atlanta a few years ago no one was convicted of the crime and everyone involved got off.