Georgia educators who cheat would have to return any bonuses or incentive pay they earned through falsified standardized test scores under a bill passed unanimously Monday by the state Senate.
House Bill 692 comes in the wake of a national scandal for Atlanta Public Schools, where a state investigation last year named 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating, including erasing and correcting mistakes on students' answer sheets. It concentrated on, but was not limited to, state tests given in 2009.
The state investigation followed reports by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of statistically unlikely gains on the state's Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.
Educators from some of the APS schools implicated in the state investigation received about $500,000 in bonuses through the district's payout program, according to records obtained from APS.
The sponsor of HB 692, Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, had at the time investigators released their report promised to fight for a law to make cheating educators give the money back. He said the law does not affect employees' due process rights.
State investigators also found problems in Dougherty County's school system, where they say 49 educators were involved in testing misconduct and 18 confessed to cheating.
The percentage of flagged classrooms in Dougherty was 10 times higher than the state average, and the report disclosed that principals in at least 11 schools urged teachers to provide correct answers.
The bill now heads to Gov. Nathan Deal for his signature to become law.
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