Broken clock is right twice a day: Huffington Post just ran a good article

Howard denies conflict of interest in APS cheating case
[ajc] [Fulton County Taxpayer Foundation] is demanding Fulton County's top prosecutor step aside from the criminal investigation of the Atlanta Public Schools test cheating scandal. District Attorney Paul Howard's wife, who was not named in the investigation, works at a school where staffers are accused of altering answers to improve test scores.
...Attorney General Sam Olens said Howard had no obligation to step aside unless his wife became an investigative target or a witness.

I'll go along with this. No, he has no legal obligation to recuse himself, and nobody's accusing him or his wife of anything. But his presence in the investigation will impair the perceived trustworthiness of the DA's office. Err on the side of caution: There must be other qualified prosecutors who can take the lead on this.

Does APS have any other choice but to pay suspected cheaters?
[ajc "Get Schooled"] There is indignation tonight over news that APS must dig into its savings to pay $6 million in salaries and benefits to educators accused of cheating. But does the district have any other real choice in view of the unresolved legal issues? At this point, the educators have not had their day in court.

I'll accept that. I'm not happy with the thought of all these accused employees sitting around collecting wages for doing nothing, but I'll accept it in the name of due process. But here's a question: If they're found guilty, should they have to give the money back?

Schools Caught Cheating In Atlanta, Around The Country
[Huffington Post] In an Ikea-sized warehouse turned de facto crime lab last fall, professor Gregory Cizek got his first look at the Atlanta test papers that would beget an education scandal of historic proportions.
...In the Indianapolis warehouse, far from both his office and the schools where the suspect tests were taken, he saw clear evidence of what has become the most widespread episode of cheating ever documented in U.S. public schools, one which has diminished one of the nation's few education success stories of the past decade.
"Here you have a kid, this fourth-grader who sat down to take a test, who wrote his name on top of an answer booklet," Cizek recalls. "You see it was obviously changed through an awful lot of erasing. That's when you say, 'Something is going wrong here.'"

I can't believe I'm citing the Huffington Post. I also can't believe I am pleading with you to read the whole thing, but I am.