A popular Houston ISD basketball coach is being called the kingpin of a $1 million teacher certification cheating ring that allegedly put hundreds of unqualified educators in classrooms across Texas.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said this week that at least 400 tests were taken and at least 200 teachers were falsely certified through the scheme.
Nusaiba Mizan, who covers education for the Houston Chronicle, said Vincent Grayson, the head boys basketball coach for Booker T. Washington High School, is one of five people facing criminal charges for organizing the cheating ring.
“Essentially, he is accused of charging usually about $2,500 to [Texas Education Agency] certification candidates, and then he would roughly share about 20% of that money with a proctor at a testing site to allow for cheating to happen, according to officials,” Mizan said. “The candidate seeking to cheat would check in at that testing site, sign in, and then the candidate would leave and a proxy test taker, Nicholas Newton, who is an assistant principal at Booker T. Washington, would take the test in place of the candidate.”
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The Texas Education Agency noticed testing irregularities at the first site and shut it down, Mizan said. The cheating operation was then moved to another testing site where another proctor was involved.
“The TEA saw testing irregularities at the testing site. So that was one pattern that they were seeing, that candidates who had previously failed and were in ‘far flung cities,’ sometimes as far as DFW,” she said. “They would be failing and then they would drive four hours or more to Houston and pass with flying colors.
“A former coach seeking to be a police officer in another part of Texas had come forward to shed light on the scheme and essentially was a whistleblower who gave details on the scheme that was apparently known among teachers.”
Newton, the proxy test taker, was eventually caught red-handed while taking an exam for a candidate, Mizan said. The scheme encompassed a wide range of teacher certification exams and involved several HISD staff members, including LaShonda Roberts, the assistant principal at Yates High School. Roberts is accused of recruiting nearly 100 candidates to the cheating ring.
The TEA is still reviewing the situation and has yet to make a determination about what will happen with the teachers who were certified via the cheating ring.
“The TEA commented Tuesday that it would review information shared by law enforcement and pursue ‘appropriate action’ against any educator in this scheme,” Mizan said. “And the State Board for Educator Certification would make a final determination on the action.”
