Back in November, I mentioned that Clarence Mumford, a longtime teacher in Memphis, had been indicted for being the ringleader of a massive cheating ring in which prospective teachers in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi paid him to send in people to take their teacher certification tests for them over a 15-year period. Yesterday, Mumford pleaded guilty to two federal fraud charges related to the scheme.
The former Memphis City Schools guidance counselor pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identification-document fraud, counts that carry a maximum combined sentence of seven years in prison. He will be sentenced in May by U.S. Dist. Judge John Fowlkes.
Mumford admitted charging up to $3,000 or more for teachers and aspiring teachers to have someone else take their certification tests, a scheme repeated up to 90 times since 1995, authorities said.
Those involved were from Memphis City Schools and from other school systems in West Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. None of the Memphis teachers are still with MCS, a spokesman said.
The feds had originally offered a sentence of nine to 11 years, but Mumford turned it down. Apparently the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison if convicted on all 63 counts must have changed his mind.
Also on Friday, 18 teachers accepted five-year bans from teaching and agreed to make restitution for having Mumford send in one of his henchmen to take their PRAXIS tests for them. So far, 36 teachers have been caught, though federal investigators think as many as 50 were involved. A good number of those teachers had flunked the test as many as six times, and turned to Mumford as a last resort. Now they may never teach again. Even after the five-year ban expires, there aren't too many principals who would hire an admitted cheater. After all, they proved that they lack the integrity to teach.
As it turns out, some of Mumford's ringers weren't that good.
Prosecutors said some who finally passed only by hiring a stand-in were denied certification anyway because their scores had changed too dramatically or handwriting discrepancies invalidated the test.
In some cases, the hired test-takers — who were paid between $200 and $1,000 by Mumford — did not pass the exam either. Some teachers paid up to $6,000 for multiple exams.
The NYT
reports that the scheme was discovered in a bit of opera buffa in 2009. Shantell Shaw, a high school science teacher from Memphis, was caught trying to take the test for someone in the afternoon after taking it under another name in the morning. Proctors at Arkansas State University recognized Shaw because of the pink cap she was wearing. When they went to look for her, they found another ringer, John Bowen, taking the test instead. As it turns out, Bowen
was taking a test for a woman after taking a test for a man earlier in the day. Both Bowen and Shaw have pleaded guilty.
Educational Testing Service, which administers the PRAXIS test, says that cheating is very rare. Let's hope after this episode, it becomes even rarer.