Testing fraud lasted 15 years

Prosecutors:Aspiring teachers paid stand-in to take exam

— It was a brazen and surprisingly long-lived scheme, authorities said, to help aspiring public-school teachers cheat on the tests they must pass to prove they are qualified to lead their classrooms.

For 15 years, teachers in three Southern states paid Clarence Mumford Sr. - himself a longtime educator - to send someone else to take the tests in their place, authorities said.

Each time, Mumford received a fee of between $1,500 and $3,000 to send one of his test ringers with fake identification to the Praxis exam, and his customers got a passing grade, federal prosecutors in Memphis said.

The scheme affected hundreds - if not thousands - of public-school students who ended up being taught by unqualified instructors, authorities said.

Mumford faces more than 60 fraud and conspiracy charges that claim he created fake driver’s licenses with the information of a teacher or an aspiring teacher and attached the photograph of a test-taker. Prospective teachers are accused of giving Mumford their Social Security numbers for him to make the fake identities.

The hired test-takers went to testing centers, showed the proctors the fake licenses, and passed the certification exams, prosecutors said. Then the aspiring teacher used the test score to secure a job with a public school district, the indictment alleges. Fourteen people have been charged with mail and Social Security fraud, and four people have pleaded guilty to charges associated with the scheme.

Mumford is said to have “obtained tens of thousands of dollars” in the scheme, which prosecutors said lasted from 1995 to 2010 in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Among those charged is former University of Tennessee and NFL wide receiver Cedrick Wilson, who is accused of employing a test-taker for a Praxis physical education exam. He was charged in late October with four counts of Social Security and mail fraud. He has pleaded innocent and is out of jail on a $10,000 bond. He has been suspended by the Memphis City Schools system.

If convicted, Mumford could face between two years and 20 years in prison on each count. The teachers face between two years and 20 years in prison on each count if convicted.

Lawyers for Mumford and Wilson did not return calls for comment.

Students were hurt the most by the scheme, prosecutors and standardized test experts said, because they were being taught by unqualified teachers. It also illustrates the lengths to which people will go to get ahead.

Cheating on standardized tests is not new, and it can be as simple as looking at the other person’s test sheet. The Internet and cell phones have made it easier for students to cheat in a variety of ways. In the past few years, investigations into cheating on standardized tests for K-12 students have surfaced in Atlanta, New York and El Paso,Texas.

Still, most of the recent test-taking scandals involved students taking tests, not people taking teacher certification exams. Cheating scams involving teacher certification tests are more unusual, said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

Schaeffer notes that a large-scale scandal involving teacher-certification tests was discovered in 2000, also in the South. In that case, 52 teachers were charged with paying up to $1,000 apiece to a former Educational Testing Services proctor to ensure a passing grade on teacher certification tests.

Teachers from Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi took tests through Philander Smith College in Little Rock in 1998. The college was not accused of wrongdoing.

Prosecutors in the Mumford case say he, the teachers and test-takers used the Internet and the U.S. Postal Service to register and pay for the tests, and to receive payment. The indictment does not say how much he is accused of paying the test takers.

An experienced educator, Mumford was working for Memphis City Schools at the time he is accused of defrauding the three states by making the fake driver’s licenses.

Mumford was fired after news of the investigation came out, and others, like Wilson, have been suspended. But at least three teachers implicated in the scandal remain employed.

Front Section, Pages 3 on 11/26/2012

Upcoming Events