The state on Thursday suspended the educator license of former Heidelberg Elementary School principal Lowanda Tyler-Jones for directing her staff to cheat on standardized tests.
According to the Mississippi Department of Education, Tyler-Jones and her attorney attempted to “unilaterally withdraw from participating and failing to appear without the Licensure Commission’s authority” at the hearing Thursday.
The decision marks the end of a nearly three-year investigation into testing irregularities at the school. The irregularities were first highlighted by a Clarion-Ledger report in 2014. The Mississippi Department of Education then conducted its own investigation.
Three Clarksdale teachers were also charged with cheating. One surrendered her license while the Commission on Teacher and Administrator Education, Certification and Licensure and Development suspended the license of another teacher. A third teacher’s license expired while under investigation, and the teacher has not attempted to renew it.
“Because of Ms. Tyler-Jones’ actions, children in Clarksdale were deprived of the educational services they needed, and in some cases, students fell far below grade level without any intervention,” said Dr. Carey Wright, state superintendent of education. “The Commission’s decision to bar this former educator from applying for any type of educator license for 20 years speaks volumes about the seriousness of her offense and the consequences the Commission determined.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.