The test score cheating scandal in Atlanta just disappoints and disgusts me to no end. As this NY TImes article points out, not only were teachers and administrators given bonuses for their work in “raising tests scores,” by inflating the scores for students, they were making their schools ineligible for federal funding that could have been used for programs to help their students.

Now, I can’t think of any federal programs that I think actually help students – so I don’t quite consider this tragic. But it does add another layer of shameful behavior to the actions of the administrators and teachers.

This is a different scandal from the Clarence Mumford/Praxis teacher test scandal in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

I had a conversation recently with a teacher friend where she described a colleague with an advanced degree who spent most of his class time proving how much smarter he was than his high school students. Nothing good happens if you enter the classroom and student learning isn’t your first priority.