Five people in Texas have been charged with certifying over 200 unqualified teachers. Prosecutors say that the scheme began in May 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing anyone with $2,500 to spare to pay proxies to take their teacher certification exams on their behalf. The alleged kingpin of the operation is a man named Vincent Grayson, a high school basketball head coach. Collectively, the scheme is suspected to have made the defendants well over $1 million.
The thriving scheme eventually unraveled in mid-2023 when the TEA, the Texas Education Agency, noticed that candidates who had previously failed the certification exam at the Houston Training and Education Center would later travel from distant locations to then pass the test with flying colors. An anonymous tip eventually led to the identification of the masterminds.
The people charged in the case include the aforementioned Grayson; a woman named Tywana Gilford Mason, an assistant principal who is being accused of being a proxy test-taker; Nicholas Newton, also an assistant principal who acted as a proxy test-taker; LaShonda Roberts, another assistant principal who aided in recruitment; and Darian Nikole Wilhite, a proctor at a testing site.
Altogether, the investigators found that the group submitted over 400 fraudulent tests that led to the hiring of hundreds of “educators,” including “at least two” sexual predators. The Houston Independent School District has fired all of the indicted employees, and TEA is currently reviewing its certification protocols.
The District Attorney’s office admits that the full extent of the scheme will never be fully known, so there may be even more teachers in the state of Texas who are woefully unqualified for their positions. The charges against the group include money laundering and tampering with government documents. These charges carry sentences that range anywhere between two years to life in prison.
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