The investigative results surrounding the standardized test cheating scandal within the Atlanta Public School system cause much hurt and sadness for those of us who care deeply about the education of America’s school aged youth. This is especially true when you consider that the majority of the APS students are from low income groups whose access to meaningful learning options is already limited. The students and parents of the school district have essentially been victimized and failed by almost 200 elementary and middle school teachers and principals who participated in organized and systemic cheating. By any reasonable measure, this is an astounding number of educators to have been involved in this kind of scandal. And to be honest, the whole fiasco feels like organized criminal behavior, like a mob culture in a school district. You simply can’t make this kind of stuff up.

I’ve written about educators cheating when administering student standardized tests in the past, but this one takes the cake. How is it that teachers can plan “erasure parties” that are designed to actually change student test answers? There was a time when standardized test booklets and score sheets were not even supposed to be taken out of the school building by anyone other than those charged with maintaining the integrity and security surrounding the tests. Since when did it become acceptable for teachers to provide students with answers to tests, in place of actually monitoring the students as they complete the tests? Where did we go wrong or better yet, why are so many teachers so willing to compromise the nobility and ethical and moral standards of the profession? Do they not understand or care that they’re actually crippling the students, not helping them, academically?

APS leadership is responsible for allowing a culture that created this kind of organized and systemic cheating across the teacher corps. Whatever pressures, fears, and intimidation that classroom teachers and principals felt related to improving student test scores has to be attributable to an APS culture where integrity, ethics, and morals were not endemic or valued throughout the school system. Leadership failed at the highest level, which means that Dr. Beverly Hall, the outgoing superintendent, is ultimately accountable, even as she denies any involvement or knowledge of what went on in so many of her schools. As the chief executive officer of APS, she should have known. As CEO, her mandate and responsibility are to always have an evaluation or sense for the culture and operations of every school, either through her deputy officials, actual school visits, meetings, or analysis of data and information pertaining to the academic progress of schools.

A few years ago, as Dr. Hall was being recognized as superintendent of the year for the great job she had done in raising the test scores for an urban school district, she accepted the accolades and praise freely and with no noticeable trepidation. In other words, Dr. Hall was given credit for and she accepted responsibility for her work as the leader of APS when student test scores were shown to have improved. However, now that the state of Georgia has uncovered widespread cheating across the majority of APS elementary and middle schools, Dr. Hall is not accepting any responsibility for this tragedy. CEOs are always accountable for the results or performances of their organizations and they should not hide behind the excuse that they were not aware or had no direct knowledge of what was going on. They’re hired and paid to know what is going on across every level of their organizations; their task is to either find out themselves or hire sufficient and competent staff to monitor what’s going on in the trenches and on the ground.

So where do we go from here? One thing for sure is that we don’t give up, because our young people are counting on us to prepare them for productive careers and lives. Parents need to be able to trust educators to do their best to educate their students by applying the highest level of competence, ethics, and professional standards. Unfortunately, in the case of APS, parents must feel as if they can’t win for losing. Many have been led to believe that their children were progressing academically to be ready for grade advancement, based on improved test scores. Now, a whole lot of them are in for a rude awakening as they discover that their children are actually not doing well at all. What’s even more tragic is the fact that students whose scores have been fabricated have been ill-served because they haven’t received the specialized or remedial instruction they need.

The pressures to raise test scores are real and must be addressed as the Congress moves to reauthorize No Child Left Behind. Pressures, fears, and intimidation are real across teacher ranks; however, we must not allow these realities to be used as legitimate excuses for professional educators to engage in cheating schemes. We know for sure that there are excellent teaching professionals all across the nation who would never even think of compromising their students’ education by supplying answers to tests or changing test answers. There are also teachers all over the country who feel the same pressures as those in the APS system, to improve student test scores, but they don’t yield to the pressures to compromise their professional integrity and ethics. These unintended consequences of NCLB must be addressed not only to ensure that the goals for raising academic standards and improving accountability are achieved, but also to make sure that teaching professionals and school administrators are given sufficient tools and resources to prepare students to perform well on standardized tests.