Is there a test for real learning?

"Who's cheatin' who, who's being true, and who don't even care anymore?"

-- Alan Jackson

How to describe the teacher cheating scandal in Atlanta?

Stunning?

Jaw-dropping?

Un-bee-leeve-able?

Pick one. If you haven't been keeping up on it, the whole mess came to light after the newspaper there began asking questions about amazingly good test results in the city's public school system. Maybe the best way to catch you up is to quote the beginning of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution story:

"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.

"For years -- as long as a decade -- this was how the Atlanta school district produced gains on state curriculum tests. The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to Hall and the district."

But the accolades were all a big cheat. The scam included at least 178 teachers and 38 principals (80 of them have already confessed). In the 56 schools examined by investigators, 44 cheated.

Teachers held cheating parties in which keys were provided to more quickly facilitate the erasure of wrong answers on students' tests. Children who could not read passed the test at the highest level.

As each passing year produced better test results, the pressure to cheat more became stronger and stronger.

This all went on under the nose of the much-acclaimed Hall, who has since retired. She says she didn't know a thing about it and has left the city for a Hawaiian vacation.

Hall's attorney issued a statement saying that she "most definitely did not know of any widespread cheating," a claim columnist Jay Bookman addressed with the proper amount of ridicule.

Bookman (who wrote editorials for the Review-Journal many moons ago) says that's probably true "because Hall 'most definitely' chose not to know of any widespread cheating."

Then, in his blog, he dropped in a picture of actor John Banner, who played Sgt. Schultz on the old TV show "Hogan's Heroes." The bungling Sgt. Schultz, when in trouble, always said "most definitely" and "I know nothing."

Sadly, when all is revealed, we may find that a generation of children in Atlanta may be the ones who not only "know nothing," but also had little chance of doing so.

Some of the teachers who have already confessed said they cheated because of the pressure to meet the unrealistic goals of standardized tests. Shame on them for cheating, and double-shame on them for using higher standards as an excuse for cheating.

Atlanta isn't the first school district caught engaging in wholesale cheating. But it's the latest and probably the worst. It ought to bring us as a nation to a moment of clarity.

We've somehow perverted the lofty ideal of public education into a nationalized educational industrial complex dedicated not to real student learning, but to the ironclad protection and economic well-being of those who make a living in the system: teachers, administrators and their unions.

Teaching has become more a cushy government job than a calling. Sidney Poitier's character in the movie "To Sir, With Love" no longer need apply to most school districts.

If kids emerge from a public school with a thirst for learning and an appreciation of education beyond whatever numbers they can post on a standardized test, it's just a nice (but unnecessary) by-product of the system.

Atlanta knows. Teachers there learned quickly. And don't think for a moment that shaving scores doesn't happen at least in isolated cases in your state or town.

The concept of actual learning has become so 19th century. Just ask one of those lost generation Atlanta kids who scored at the highest level in reading.

Don't put it in writing, however.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@reviewjournal.com), the former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and a member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.