Pa. Joins States Facing a School Cheating Scandal

The New York Times reports:

The Pennsylvania investigation is only a few weeks old, far too early to judge. But the first step is not encouraging: State officials have directed school districts and charter schools with suspicious results to investigate themselves.

For places that are serious about exposing cheating, there is a new gold standard: Atlanta. In the bad old days, Atlanta school officials repeatedly investigated themselves and found they had done nothing wrong. Then, last August, the governor decided that, once and for all, he was going to get to the bottom of things, and appointed two former prosecutors to oversee an inquiry.

Sixty of Georgia’s finest criminal investigators spent 10 months on it, and in the end turned up a major cheating scandal involving 178 teachers and principals — 82 of whom confessed — at 44 Atlanta schools, nearly half the district.

Public education: a racketeering enterprise.