Atlanta School Year Begins Amid a Testing Scandal

I am sure that those students have heard their parent say all sorts of things this summer. I just hope that the School Board has hired enough certified teachers and administrators to fill the gap left by those vacancies. They can ill afford to fail their students again.

After a summer of scandal, Michele Alford will welcome her new third-grade class on Monday the way she always has: with a test. After her students realize that the school year has begun and their grumbling subsides, she will ask the children, “Where did I go to college?” and “What are my interests?”

“I call it the Teacher Test,” Ms. Alford said last week as she readied Room 111 at Toomer Elementary School. “I do it so that they can ask me questions and see me as a real person.”

One month after Atlanta was rocked by revelations of a widespread school cheating scandal — nearly 200 teachers and principals admitted to tampering with standardized tests to raise students’ scores — Ms. Alford and her Toomer colleagues are bracing for some much more difficult questions from students this year, and a test of their own.

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