Heather Vogell, Alan Judd, and John Perry of the Atlanta Journal Constitution won the 2012 Hillman Prize for Newspaper Journalism for their expose of suspicious standardized test scores in the Atlanta public school system. They found a pattern of suspicious erasures that pointed to the biggest academic fraud in American history.

The State of Georgia has taken the AJC’s reporting very seriously. The coverage sparked an official investigation that proved wrongdoing once and for all. Thirty-five educators linked to the scandal were indicted on Friday, including ex-superintendant and alleged ringleader Beverly Hall:

In a scathing report released in July 2011 that was the blueprint for the grand jurors, state investigators uncovered what they called a decade of systemic cheating in Atlanta Public Schools and concluded that Beverly Hall knew or should have known about it. Investigators named nearly 180 educators, including more than three dozen principals, as participants in cheating on state curriculum tests.

The report’s release culminated more than two years of inquiries into Atlanta’s huge gains on the state-mandated Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in 2009. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis first detected statistically improbable increases in test scores at one Atlanta school in 2008. The following year, the AJC published another analysis that found suspicious score changes on the 2009 CRCT at a dozen Atlanta schools. The newspaper’s reporting ultimately led to the state investigation.

ProPublica has compiled a brief history of America’s greatest standardized test cheating scandals from 1987 to the present day, including the Atlanta scandal.

As Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post yesterday, “It is time to acknowledge that the fashionable theory of school reform — requiring that pay and job security for teachers, principals and administrators depend on their students’ standardized test scores — is at best a well-intentioned mistake, and at worst nothing but a racket.”

[Photo credit: Jasper Nance, Creative Commons.]

• Sara Horowitz reinvented the union for freelancers, Steven Greenhouse reports.

• Your iPhone kills jobs.

• New evidence from the home of the Newtown shooter, including an unlocked gun safe.

• Herbalife: an $8 billion pyramid scheme.

• A deal has been reached to create paid sick days for workers in New York City.

• The former superintendent of Atlanta’s public school system has been indicted in connection with wrongdoing uncovered by 2012 Hillman Prize-winners.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

Canada’s top election official is calling for sweeping changes to the country’s elections law to make sure that voter-suppressing robocalls, like the ones uncovered by Canadian Hillman Prize-winners Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor, never happen again:

OTTAWA — Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand wants Parliament to overhaul Canada’s elections law to prevent deceptive telephone calls by adding stiffer penalties and giving new powers to investigators.

In a recommendation aimed directly at the calls received in Guelph, Ont., on the 2011 election day, Mayrand says Parliament should close a loophole in the Criminal Code and make it illegal to impersonate an Elections Canada official. He advises maximum penalties on conviction of violators of $250,000 in fines and five years in jail.

Read the rest in the Ottawa Citizen.

At the Hillman Foundation, we’re all about shedding light on society’s ills. Usually we hail journalists exposing white collar criminals. But today we bring you a fun piece by Justin Peters of Slate exposing a more down-market racket known as the “broken bottle scam.” In this con game, the conman bumps into the mark and starts yelling about how the mark broke his expensive bottle, or his glasses, or something else. The mark is intimidated and shamed into coughing up cash on the spot.

My favorite tip for avoiding the mark’s fate:

Extend the encounter. Here’s an interesting example of how to deal with a scammer: “Nair (Naim) Jabbar had two pairs of broken eyeglasses in a bag when cops arrested him last month. The ex-con bumped into his latest victim on W. 53rd St. and Fifth Ave., court records show. ‘You broke my glasses! You own me $125!’ Jabbar, 41, yelled. But when his victim asked him to come back to his office to figure out a solution, Jabbar slunk off, court papers said.” This strategy makes sense, and is perhaps something to consider. Who doesn’t hate going up to offices?

[Photo credit: Funkyeah, Creative Commons.]