As FREE MINDS, FREE PEOPLE heads toward its July conference in Oakland, teachers around the country will increasingly focus on the cheating scandal in Atlanta that pushed good people to make disastrous choices.  The US is deeply embroiled in a battle over widespread testing demands that punish students and threaten teachers with accusations of poor skills and worse.  Those Atlanta professionals who changed answers on exams were trying to protect their jobs, despite their awareness that such actions raised the risks of exposing bad adult behavior and student frustration.  Now that the penalty phase of the Atlanta trial has arrived, we can only be amazed that the “corporate reformers” remain enamored by a testing protocol that leaves students mired in the worst kind of failure; a failure to encourage creativity and deep thinking among young people.  As we move toward the July conference for FREE MINDS, FREE PEOPLE in Oakland, California, we look forward to hearing from students and teachers on this blog about their efforts to overcome the mindless multiple choice questions that depress the creative and inspiring attitudes that ought to dominate our classrooms around the country.  Feel free to join in and speak out here.