NBC’s Rock Center puts the national spotlight on the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal at 10 p.m. Monday.

Former School Superintendent Beverly Hall says she never put test scores above integrity.

“I did not know, and if I ever knew it would have been dealt with,” she told newsman Harry Smith of the cheating.

If fear and intimidation were part of the climate, why did the vast majority of staff choose not to participate, she argued. “I can’t make you cheat,” she said.

Former Attorney General Mike Bowers and former DeKalb District Attorney Bob Wilson, who lead the cheating investigation, paint another picture, describing the cheating parties where answers were changed and the fear that motivated some to cheat.

In interviews with some of the participants in the scandal, Bowers tells Smith: “We gave away more handkerchiefs than you can imagine. It was a pitful mess.”

The investigation by Bowers, Wilson and investigator Richard Hyde found cheating involving more than 170 teachers and more than 40 schools on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT).