File photo of a teacher in a classroom full of students. (Photo by FRANK PERRY/AFP/GettyImages)
ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – A former fifth-grade teacher implicated in a cheating scandal reportedly gave students the illegal assistance because she thought they were “dumb as hell.”
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, math teacher Shayla Smith was accused of offering students the answers to a test they were taking at the time. She had reportedly been responsible for supervising them while the tests were being completed.
Schajuan Jones, who taught a fourth-grade class across the hall from Smith’s former room, overheard her talking to another teacher about the test.
“The words were, ‘I had to give your kids, or your students, the answers because they’re dumb as hell,’” Jones was quoted as saying about the interaction between Smith and the unidentified third teacher.
A former student also allegedly accused Smith of cheating, adding that the educator offered the girl, now in eighth grade, the answers to a math test in 2010.
The tribunal deliberated for just one hour before handing down a guilty verdict. Smith had been charged with willful neglect and immorality, and she subsequently lost her job.
Smith’s case was part of a larger investigation that implicated approximately 180 public school teachers in the city, sparked by investigations performed by the newspaper.
All tests proctored by Smith were allegedly marked with suspicious erasure marks, amounting to what was termed a “practically impossible frequency of changes from wrong to right [answers].”
