It’s back to school season, and all week long we’re talking about education in America, and schools under pressure – with budgets decreasing, and the pressure to raise student achievement increasing. Today our subject is cheating teachers; specifically, those who’ve altered their students’ work or taken other measures to help them score higher on standardized tests. We’re speaking with Heather Vogell, a reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who first uncovered – with the help of data analyst John Perry – inconsistencies in Atlanta’s school test scores two years ago. Her reporting eventually led to a state investigation that found evidence of cheating in 44 out of 56 schools in 2009. Dale Mezzacappa also joins us. Mezzacappa is a contributing editor at The Notebook in Philadelphia.
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