RUSH: Now, Atlanta. The subject of our Morning Update today. Atlanta is being rocked by an education scandal so widespread that it almost defies imagination. In a report to Governor Nathan Deal and other authorities, special investigators have named 178 educators involved in cheating. Those educators rigged the standardized tests to falsify educational gains among students. In other words, they rigged the tests to make it look like the students were getting better grades than they were.
Now, while this is going on, from the Wall Street Journal: “In a press release issued this morning, the NAACP condemned 24-hour cable news channel CNN for its recently announced prime time news lineup, calling the lack of diversity in its collection of news anchors a ‘glaring omission.’ ‘The NAACP is deeply concerned with the lack of African American journalists in prime time news, both on cable and national news shows,’ NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said in the statement.” How would you like Mark Halperin to be talking about you and your name is Benjamin Todd Jealous? I mean you can put the words together for yourselves here, folks, you don’t need me to do this. Mark Halperin is talking about you, and your name is Benjamin Todd Jealous?
Anyway, he said, “‘We have come to expect this from the likes of Fox News, but not other networks. While we understand that news is now a 24-hour cycle, most Americans get their news from the morning and evening prime time broadcasts.’ The new CNN news lineup, which was announced yesterday, features John King [white guy], Anderson Cooper [white guy], Erin Burnett [white babe] and Piers Morgan [British white guy]. CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” The NAALCP has yet to utter one word of protest or anger or whatever over the massive cheating in Atlanta public schools, and we’re talking for the most part, black students, not all, but a lot of black students, a lot of black principals, teachers, administrators here, a lot of cheating going on against the education of black children in Atlanta, and the NAALCP today is after CNN.
Now, here are the details out of Atlanta. Thirty-eight of the 178 accused are school principals. So far, 80 cheaters have confessed. They said they did it. Investigators said that 44 of the 56 schools they looked at were involved, and this organized cheating has been going on for ten years. According to the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation, a local newspaper, investigators believe former Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall — who just quite — either knew or should have known what was going on. Incidentally, Ms. Hall was honored as the national superintendent of the year last year, and she’s involved here in the cheating scandal. Liberals always elevate their failures. (interruption) Yeah, I think it was to avoid no child’s behind left alone. But in addition to that — well, you know, I guarantee if you run up to any liberal today who knows about the scandal, if they don’t know about it, tell ’em about it, run up to any liberal, and you know what their reaction’s gonna be? “Well, what do you expect when you have all these testing requirements on the teachers? What do you expect?” That’s what they’ll say.
Your average liberal, when confronted with these liberal teachers and principals and so forth cheating and cheating the students, “Well, what do you expect? Those damn testing requirement.” You say, “Well, okay, I guess next time a bank’s robbed I’ll blame the banker.” How will that fly? Now, the governor, Nathan Deal, and school board members are vowing there will be consequences for the cheaters. The school board chairman, Brenda Muhammad, says the cheating scandal is devastating because you just don’t cheat children. Well, Ms. Muhammad, I, El Rushbo, have news for you. American children have been cheated for decades now, not just in Hotlanta. The phony test scores in Atlanta, the real test scores from almost every blue city in America prove how American children are being cheated, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Every single institution tribunals control, including education, is in deep decline and plunging fast. We all think cleaning house is necessary. The Atlanta school system is just the starting point. I mean it is a debacle, folks, what has happened there with all this admitted cheating going on. Snerdley, do you think nobody will be fired? You think heads are gonna roll here? You do. You think people are gonna be charged with something? You do. You don’t think they’re gonna try to sweep this under the rug? I guess they can’t now because too much is known. All right.
I have the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation story here. “Investigation Into Cheating Finds Unethical Behavior Across Every Level — The investigators describe highly organized, coordinated efforts to falsify tests when children could not score high enough to meet the district’s self-imposed goals.” Not Bush’s. “The cheating cut off struggling students from the extra help they would have received if they’d failed. At Venetian Hills, a group of teachers and administrators who dubbed themselves ‘the chosen ones’ convened to change answers in the afternoons or during makeup testing days, investigators found. Principal Clarietta Davis, a testing coordinator told investigators, wore gloves while erasing to avoid leaving fingerprints on answer sheets.
“At Kennedy Middle, children who couldn’t read not only passed the state reading test, but scored at the highest level possible. At Perkerson Elementary, a student sat under a desk, then randomly filled in answers and still passed. At East Lake Elementary, the principal and testing coordinator instructed teachers to arrange students’ seats so that the lower-performing children would receive easier versions of the Fifth Grade Writing Tests. Principal Gwendolyn Benton, who has since left, obstructed the investigation, too, the report said, when she threatened teachers by saying she would ‘sue them out the ass’ if they ‘slandered’ her to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.” Gwendolyn Benton, say hi to Mark Halperin.
“Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes. Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets. Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible. Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn.”
As I said, it’s been going on for as long as ten years. This was how the Atlanta school district produced gains, improvements on state curriculum tests. The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to the superintendent Beverly Hall in the district, and she got an award. “In the report, the governor’s special investigators describe an enterprise where unethical — and potentially illegal — behavior pierced every level of the bureaucracy.” It’s liberals, folks, this is what you get when liberals run institutions.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, so why, folks, why are the liberals and the reverends, the Justice Brothers, where are they in regard to the Atlanta school scandal? Where are they? This primarily effects African-American kids. They’ve been cheated. They’re not marching in the streets of Atlanta over this misplacement of trust. And these teachers are not unionized. Imagine that.
Ed in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I want to go back to the debt negotiations, and I think the Republicans ought to go in and say, “Okay, we want all these reductions and everything else, and you want taxes on the rich, so our bargaining chip is we want a national estate tax,” and that would work like this, it’s kind of like a real estate tax. You total up all the things you own or control, and if it exceeds $20 million bucks, including your foundations you control, and so forth, then you gotta pay 5% of tax on that and I’d call it the Pelosi-Buffett tax.
RUSH: (laughing) Well, it would ensnare a lot of other people, too.
CALLER: Well, and it would also kind of help all those with affluenza, and it would be a way to really get at the democratic base because that is what so much of it is.
RUSH: It is. It is. So basically a tax on the nonprofits, an estate tax on the nonprofits of what did you say, 5%?
CALLER: Yeah, whatever it is. There’s a million people in this country with net worth of over five million bucks, so you say okay maybe there’s 500,000 with net worth of $20 million, that would bring you a chunk of change and then the Democrats could say, “Okay, we’re taxing the rich, the millionaires and the billionaires.”
RUSH: Yeah, you’ve just nailed why there isn’t a wealth tax, why they only talk about raising income tax on “the rich,” starting at $250,000. Income taxes are designed to prevent the creation of wealth, or the accumulation of wealth. But your average Warren Buffett does not face a tax on his accumulated wealth. Nobody does. That’s why the left is all for raising taxes on the rich. The Kennedys, they didn’t care, they’re coupon clippers. So it would be an idea. (laughing) It would be funny to see Obama’s face if it were actually proposed.
By the way, the reverends in this Atlanta story, like I mentioned before, they’ll blame “no child left behind,” or “no child’s behind left alone,” whatever they call it. But that’s what they will do.
END TRANSCRIPT
*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.