http://www.thenation.com/article/205065/why-were-atlanta-teachers-prosecuted-under-law-meant-organized-crime
In Atlanta, eight teachers, administrators, and testing coordinators have been sentenced to prison terms of one to seven years for falsifying results on standardized tests. Twenty-one others who accepted plea deals will serve lesser sentences. The Fulton County district attorney accused the educators of having “altered, fabricated, and falsely certified” answer sheets as part of a cheating conspiracy that touched a majority of the city’s public elementary and middle schools. Remarkably, the educators were charged under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act—an unprecedented application of a law intended to attack organized crime.
By press time, Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter, facing widespread criticism, had announced that he will resentence three administrators given seven-year prison sentences.
Meanwhile, the policies that motivated cheating remain in place. Back in 2002, President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act ushered in a high-stakes standardized-testing regime that enshrined “Adequate Yearly Progress,” a measure demanding high test scores, as the mechanism by which to evaluate schools. The Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative leveraged billions of federal dollars to tighten those screws, pushing states to tie their teacher evaluations to test scores. Administrators were expected to deliver extreme improvements, including an impossible mandate that every single student score as proficient in reading and math by 2014. Schools that failed to make the grade could be—and were—shut down or taken over by private charter-school operators.
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