A Teacher Certification Ring in Houston Helped Two Alleged Sexual Predators Get Illegally Certified
"They then drove, sometimes four or more hours, to the Houston area and suddenly they were passing the test with flying colors."
Published Oct. 30 2024, 2:34 p.m. ET
According to the Texas Education Agency, becoming a teacher in the state of Texas is no easy feat. First you have to get a Bachelor's Degree from an accredited college or university. You then have to complete an Educator Preparation Program. Once that is said and done, the would-be educator has to pass a certification exam and apply for a statement application. Finally, all first-time applicants are required to submit to fingerprinting. That last part is probably the most important.
Obviously, this process is somewhat arduous for a very good reason. These people will be responsible for molding young minds and hopefully encouraging them to be curious and love learning. Sadly, there are individuals in the world who want to cut corners while making a profit. A teacher certification cheating ring was discovered in Houston, Texas. Some details of this scam are pretty horrifying. Here's what we know.
The teacher certification cheating ring in Houston, explained.
In October 2024, authorities announced that five people had been arrested in connection to a million-dollar teacher certification cheating scandal, reported ABC13 News. The Harris County District Attorney's Office wasted no time releasing information about those arrested. Vincent Grayson, 57, is the alleged ringleader. He was the head boys basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High School in the Houston Independent School District (HISD).
The test proctor who facilitated this operation, and supposedly made sure it remained undetected, is 51-year-old Tywana Gilford Mason, the former director/VA certifying official at the Houston Training and Education Center. Nicholas Newton, 35, and Darian Nikole Wilhite, 22, were both proxty test-takers. Newton is the assistant principal at Booker T. Washington. Wilhite is a proctor at TACTIX, a certification business, where he accepted bribes to allow Newton to take tests.
Unfortunately, it takes a village to pull off a complicated scheme like this. Enter 39-year-old LaShonda Roberts, the assistant principal at Yates High School. She stands accused of recruiting almost 100 teachers to participate in this massive plot. Each of these people faces two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg traced this back to May 2020, and said the "co-defendants collectively profited in the amount of at least $1 million."
The fraud was uncovered when a former coach had a crisis of conscience.
District Attorney Ogg told Houston Public Media that the ring was busted wide open when a "former coach applying as a police officer in a different part of Texas had an attack of conscience and came forward with a scheme that was apparently well-known among teacher applicants wanting to be certified."
One of the certification testing locations had already been shut down due to "suspicious activity" in 2023. Evidently, teachers had been coming there from as far away as Dallas-Fort Worth, and sometimes even farther. Many of these teachers had already failed the exam one or two times. "They then drove, sometimes four or more hours, to the Houston area and suddenly they were passing the test with flying colors," said Harris County Assistant District Attorney Mike Levine.
Perhaps the most upsetting information to come from these arrests was the fact that two of the teachers who received illegal certification were alleged sexual predators. One had been "charged with indecency with a child, and another with online solicitation," reported Houston Public Media. The HISD is cooperating fully with the Texas Education Agency as well as state and local law officials to determine who else received false certifications.
