"They're supposed to be helping us, not cheating."

"They're selling us short."

"I think they're really taking education away from us."

Students in the Atlanta Public Schools are angry. They feel betrayed -- cheated, in fact -- after learning last week that nearly 180 educators in 44 schools doctored students' answers on state competency tests. These, they said, are the very people they had looked up to as models of good behavior, the people who regularly instructed them on the basics of right and wrong.

More than a dozen students interviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- including Tony Hughley, Valencia Tucker and Sebastian Mathis, quoted above -- said all students are victims of the corrupt educators who, they believe, put their jobs above the student's education.

It was all about greed -- "to make sure the money is there," said Tucker, 18, a student at Carver school of the arts.

The students whose answers were changed on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests were robbed of an honest reflection of their academic progress and the additional resources needed to boost it, the students said. All other students were robbed of some measure of legitimacy, they said, because the entire district and all its students now carry the taint of scandal. Some said they feared that their college prospects have been damaged.

"They're cheating us," said Mathis, who just finished eighth grade at Parks Middle School, one of the campuses flagged as having some of the worst cheating.

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