If DeKalb County Schools paid a consultant $10,000 for a report that seems overly broad and overly academic, the district was irresponsible with taxpayer funds. But if DeKalb keeps an employee on staff who copied other people’s material for that report, then it’s communicating to students that cheating can be overlooked.
Ralph Taylor was hired by DeKalb to produce an analysis of its alternative education program in 2011, then offered a job as an associate superintendent in DeKalb shortly after finishing it, according to the AJC.
Following a tip, AJC reporter Ty Tagami discovered that Taylor copied more than a third of his report from publications accessible via the Internet.
DeKalb school chief Cheryl Atkinson offered an odd rationale to the AJC for retaining Taylor in his $117,461-a-year associate superintendent job. “The infraction pertains to his work as a consultant, not as an employee,” she said through a spokesman.
Tagami interviewed one of the authors of
