Last week, a handful of teachers and school administrators in Atlanta were handed jail terms of up to seven years for fudging standardized test scores to improve their own numbers and thus their paychecks. The judge, Jerry Baxter, called the cheating scandal "like the sickest thing that's ever happened to this town." On Wednesday night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart is about as impressed with the crackdown as The Week's Scott Lemieux — which is to say not very.
Stewart compared the test cheating to the fraud in the mortgage sector that "nearly broke the earth" in 2008, and he found a lot of similarities — and one big difference: The eight former Atlanta educators are going to jail for changing test answers, and how many Wall Street bankers and mortgage officers are headed to prison? One. If that doesn't strike you as a bit unfair and possibly dangerous to America's financial health, watch Stewart try to convince you otherwise. —Peter Weber
The Week
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