By Dr. John Trotter 

  I have seen the Professional Standards Commission (PSC) recommend three years of suspension of a teacher's certificate for a much less offense.  Let's just face the facts:  The PSC was set up by the administrators and their legislator-friends to keep teachers in line, not administrators.  There is a clear double standard in the State.  When Beverly Hall did not report any serious disciplinary offenses a few years back for about 40 or more Atlanta schools, people just raised their eyebrows is disbelief, but nothing was done.  When Alvin Wilbanks in Gwinnett did not report thousands and thousands (wasn't it over 30,000?) serious disciplinary offenses, the PSC just slapped him on the hand. 

  I received just yesterday an email from a Gwinnett teacher who says that Gwinnett in engaging in systematic cheating and that she has been trying to report it to Gwinnett officials, but that they are turning a deaf ear.  This type of anecdotal evidence comes into the MACE Office on a fairly regular basis, and this is why MACE was the lone wolf howling in the desert about the systematic cheating taking place in places like DeKalb and Atlanta.  Heck, State Senator Ronald Ramsey simply summarily shut down a grievance hearing wherein teachers were apparently prepared to testify about systematic cheating taking place at Clarkston High School.  We presume that Ramsey was just doing the job of his boss, Crawford Lewis.

  Trust me:  These incidents at the named schools are not the only places of malevolent conduct.  I think that it is just the tip of a huge cheating iceberg.  MACE will continue to speak out against such conduct, even though MACE will be reviled as some educational pariah to these weasel administrators.  It is the adminstrators who are destroying our public schools, not the teachers. (c) MACE, September 10, 2009.