Hey Teachers … Leave Them Kids Alone!

America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta ... At least 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta Public Schools cheated to raise student scores on high-stakes standardized tests, according to a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Award-winning gains by Atlanta students were based on widespread cheating by 178 named teachers and principals, said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Tuesday. His office released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed – in what's likely the biggest cheating scandal in US history. This appears to be the largest of dozens of major cheating scandals, unearthed across the country. – Yahoo News/USA Today

Dominant Social Theme: How can this happen after all the billions poured into America's public schools? It seemed finally that the system was headed in the right direction. What a setback.

Free-Market Analysis: No doubt there will be thousands of articles written about this most recent "teacher and principal cheating scandal." (See excerpt above.) Yet, what is taking place is entirely predictable and, as the article reports further down, cheating is taking place throughout the country. This only happens to be largest outbreak and therefore is most newsworthy.

It was President George W. Bush who, in addition to presiding over several unsuccessful and questionable wars, pushed through "No Child Left Behind" legislation that mandates national testing on a regular basis. The only rational way to improve the educational system is through competition – the Invisible Hand. But the Bush Administration and Congress, loathe to open up the system to competition, substituted legislation for competition with predictable results.

There is no law in the world that cannot be subverted; most laws of any significance are disobeyed on a regular basis. This is why the more laws a society has the more corrupt it gets. This is happening in the US public school system, which was always dysfunctional and corrupt and is only more so now. Here's more about the scandal:

The article allegations point an ongoing problem for US education, which has developed an ever-increasing dependence on standardized tests. The report on the Atlanta Public Schools, released Tuesday, indicates a "widespread" conspiracy by teachers, principals and administrators to fix answers on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT), punish whistle-blowers, and hide improprieties.

It "confirms our worst fears," says Mayor Kasim Reed. "There is no doubt that systemic cheating occurred on a widespread basis in the school system." The news is "absolutely devastating," said Brenda Muhammad, chairwoman of the Atlanta school board. "It's our children. You just don't cheat children."

On its face, the investigation tarnishes the 12-year tenure of Superintendent Beverly Hall, who was named US Superintendent of the Year in 2009 largely because of the school system's reported gains – especially in inner-city schools. She has not been directly implicated, but investigators said she likely knew, or should have known, what was going on. In her farewell address to teachers in June, Hall for the first time acknowledged wrongdoing in the district, but blamed other administrators.

Brenda Muhammad, above, is "devastated" by the scandal, which she claims "cheats children." But American school children have been cheated since the inception of public schooling. Pre-Civil War literacy rates in America are said to have been very high; today, in America, a significant minority of students do not even finish high school and the literacy rate is abysmal.

The simple reason for this is lack of competition. By draining the school system of competition by creating a public school monopoly, the US educational powers-that-be virtually guaranteed the dysfunction that is currently taking place. Unionization has only made matters worse.

The Atlanta cheating scandal, the article tells us, is not by any means the first cheating scandal affecting schools. It is perfectly predictable. Set up a non-competitive system which does not reward excellence to begin with and then use testing to try to improve it and people will ... cheat: students, teachers and principals alike. Many schools now "educate for the test" – a situation in which rote memorization of test facts substitutes for learning.

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