This Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation revealed a culture of secrecy and deference that protected doctors who sexually violated vulnerable patients. In light of the findings, the Georgia medical board is re-examining its handling of sexual misconduct, and lawmakers in several states are considering strengthening patient protections.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s series on irregularities in standardized testing revealed that pressure for ever-higher scores led to apparent cheating by teachers and school administrators across the nation. The reporting, based on analysis of tens of thousands of test results, initiated a national conversation about the long-term effects of the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act.
In 1998, Atlanta, like many other American cities, was made the beneficiary of a federal E-rate program to provide poor children with access to the internet. In the six years since the program began almost $13 billion was gathered for this purpose, and as reporting by Paul Donsky and Ken Foskett of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed, Atlanta took its share of the money and ran with it, literally.
Atlanta Public Schools misspent or mismanaged nearly $73 million, overpaying for a lavish computer network that cost taxpayers millions more to run and maintain. The district spent money without requiring bids for the best price, with little oversight from the school board members and few questions from the check writers in Washington who subsidized the work. At one elementary school, equipment powerful enough to operate a small school district was installed to support just 20 computers. At another, Atlanta billed the program for electronics for twice as many classrooms as the school had. Officials applied for and received millions for schools they knew they were going to close within a few years. Elsewhere, boxes of costly computer equipment, some still wrapped in plastic, gathered dust in storage.
As a result of the investigation, the federal pipeline to Atlanta Public Schools went dry, and in 2007, Arthur Scott, the former APS technical director who ran the district’s E-rate program, was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for accepting nearly $300,000 in bribes from vendors.