A group of teachers and administrators in the Atlanta schools have been found guilty of altering standardized test results to improve school performance percentages. The situtation leading up to the trial was detailed at length in a New Yorker article, and the trial and its outcome have been discussed widely. People were charged under criminal racketeering laws, and sentences up to 20 years (seven in jail, the remainder on probation) were imposed.

Many accounts of the so-called cheating scandal point out that it is the children who in some way were cheated, by having their results adjusted. I think that these children are cheated from the moment of their conception. They are cheated daily and at every turn by a society that, worse than hating them (although they are certainly hated in some quarters) wants to ignore them. I agree that the schools are also failing them. They do not do well on standardized tests. And I agree that changing test scores is wrong. Punishment is warranted. But years of prison seems wildly excessive.

Putting the onus on cheating teachers for the larger failures of society is an evasion of responsibility. We are all implicated.

Dave Sagarin (April 15, 2015)