CBSNews.com:
The Atlanta public schools are embroiled in a massive cheating scandal. It's a situation that's rippling far beyond the city's borders, because the alleged cheating involved the same sort of standardized tests used all over the country.
Most surprising is that it's not students who are accused, but 178 principals and teachers. Fifty-six schools were investigated, and cheating was found in 44, or nearly 80 percent, as CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports.
It's a scathing report: A decade of systemic cheating in Atlanta's school system by the adults. Dozens of educators erased wrong student answers on state standardized tests, and inserted the right ones.
In all, investigators accused 38 principals of cheating and said 82 of the 178 educators they identified as part of the scandal confessed.
"When educators have failed to uphold the public trust and students are harmed in the process there will be consequences," said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.
The motive for cheating? It was to show phony progress at often troubled schools, what the report calls "the pressure to meet targets in the data-driven environment."
Regardless, some parents are calling for heads to roll.
Atlanta's scandal is the biggest in recent years, but other school systems, in Baltimore, Houston and Detroit, have had isolated cheating issues on state-wide tests.
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Teachers over here in the UK have been caught cheating too, it's all about targets with us!
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