Robert “Boo Lee” Williams was still fuming days after a popular basketball coach and two assistant principals from Houston’s first two historically black high schools were arrested in an alleged teacher certification scheme.
“It almost brought me to tears, man,” Williams, a 1967 graduate of Jack Yates Senior High School in the predominantly black Greater Third Ward, told Friday night. “We’re fighting hard to prevail, to show that we’re more than qualified. … I’m just being honest with you.”
Prosecutors say more than 200 people paid to have someone else take the state certification exam and are now scattered in classrooms across Texas. Local and state education officials are scrambling to track down the now-certified teachers who cheated.
The Houston Independent School District employees arrested were Vincent Grayson, a veteran teacher and head basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High School, described by prosecutors as the ringleader of the scheme, along with Nicholas Newton, the school’s assistant principal and the alleged test taker who helped teachers fraudulently pass hundreds of tests.
“The most important thing to me is that the ringleaders have been identified and removed from our home school district … and the fact that they were in positions of power there, where they were held in high regard by the children, is the most egregious part of this crime,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg told reporters Monday.
“They didn’t deserve the respect of those kids and I think it makes kids feel betrayed because they don’t know who to trust.”
LaShonda Roberts, assistant principal at Yates, was also arrested for what Ogg called her role as “a recruiter and referral agent who brought in many individuals who sought the services of the impersonator test taker.” Two other individuals not employed by the district were also charged.
“The extent of the scheme will never be fully known, but we do know that at least 400 tests were administered and at least 200 teachers were falsely certified,” Ogg said.
Prosecutors said all five defendants face two felony counts of engaging in organized criminal activity: one felony count of money laundering because the scheme allegedly generated more than $300,000; and one count of engaging in organized criminal activity based on tampering with a government document stemming from false statements made when the tests were administered. They have yet to enter pleas.
Two other suspects not employed by the school district were identified as Darian Nikole Wilhite and Tywana Gilford Mason, who prosecutors say were supervisors during the certification exams. CNN has requested comment from Wilhite’s attorney. Gilford Mason is in another state and has not been arrested, a spokesman for the Harris County district attorney said.
HISD, with nearly 200,000 predominantly black and Hispanic students, is the largest in Texas and the eighth-largest in the country. Booker and Yates, respectively, were founded as the city’s first two black high schools before desegregation.
How the cheating scandal worked
Grayson, described by Ogg as the “kingpin and orchestrator” of the scheme, worked for nearly 20 years at Booker T. Washington — which was originally known as “Colored High” when it opened in 1893, according to the HISD website. It was later renamed after the famous black educator who helped found the Tuskegee Institute.
Grayson’s attorney, Cheryl Irvin, acknowledged the seriousness of the charges but said she is waiting for the evidence against her client. Grayson has been released on bail.
“We all know that a community struggles when the education system struggles,” she told CNN affiliate KHOU after a court hearing Friday. reached out to Irwin for comment.
“The state has an obligation to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Mr. Grayson is presumed innocent at this point, so we’re going to wait and see … what evidence they have against him to allow us to evaluate what we need to do next,” she said.
Grayson typically got paid $2,500 by teaching certification candidates to take their exams through an impersonator at testing centers, where he paid proctors about 20 percent of that amount to facilitate the cheating, prosecutors said.
Grayson allegedly made more than $1 million from the scheme.
“It’s almost certainly more than that because there’s cash here as well — which is harder to trace,” Mike Levine, chief prosecutor for the county’s Public Corruption Division, told reporters.
Certification candidates would arrive at the testing center, sign in and leave, and “a few minutes later, Nicholas Newton, the proxy tester, would sit in their chair, take and pass the test,” Levine said.
Sometimes, Levine said, Newton allegedly took more than one test at a time.
“When he was caught in the act in February 2024, he was signed up for one test,” Levine said. “He told investigators, ‘Look at the screen behind you,’ and he was logged in as a different person who took a different test on a different terminal that same day.”
Newton’s attorney, Feroz Merchant, declined to comment Friday, saying he has not yet seen any evidence against his client. Newton was being held on bail.
Roberts’ attorney, Brandon Leonard, called the charges “baseless” and said his client “has dedicated more than a decade of her life to serving students and supporting teachers, often under challenging and highly stressful circumstances.” She has been released on bail.
“In this country, everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and so far all we have seen is allegations — no evidence, no proof. These allegations are simply baseless claims and we will aggressively defend against these baseless allegations. Ms. Roberts looks forward to her day in court, where we are confident the truth will come out.light,”
The scheme began to unravel in 2023, when the Texas Education Agency “became aware of certain irregularities” at a testing center in Houston, Levine said.
A former coach in the district who was applying for a job as a police officer in another part of the state had what Ogg called “an attack of conscience” and alerted the education agency.
“The most interesting irony in this cycle of greed to me is that even though the perpetrators are the type of people we trust our children to … it was actually a good Samaritan with a conscience who exposed this scheme,” she said.
A curious pattern immediately became apparent: Investigators discovered that aspiring teachers, many of whom had failed the certification exams in other parts of Texas, traveled hours to a center in Houston where Levine said they passed “with flying colors.”
“Often these individuals had previously failed one or more attempts at the certification exam. Then they would drive four or more hours to the Houston area and suddenly pass the exam,” Levine said.
The HISD employees charged in the scheme have been placed on administrative leave. “All three of these employees have been arrested and will be notified of their immediate termination,” district spokeswoman Alexandra Elizondo said in a statement.
“HISD was notified of the investigation into an alleged conspiracy to cheat shortly before the arrests were made. “Any teacher who engages in such behavior is derelict in their responsibility to our students and staff and violates the public trust,” Elizondo said.
A scramble to find teachers who cheated
Now, local and state education officials are working to find the falsely certified teachers.
“If it is determined that teachers currently employed by HISD participated in this program or fraudulently passed their certification exams, we will take swift action to terminate their employment,” Elizondo said.
Pearson VUE, a vendor that develops the teacher licensing exam for the state education agency, said it “continues to cooperate with the TEA in their active investigation.”
“Maintaining valid, reliable assessments and public trust is of the utmost importance to us,” Pearson spokeswoman Allison Bazin said in a statement. “We are committed to integrity in professional certification and licensing testing and actively monitor, investigate, and report suspicious activity or anomalies to our customers. When issues arise, we take decisive action and fully cooperate with customers and law enforcement as required.” The Texas Education Agency said in a statement that it “will review all information shared by law enforcement and take appropriate action against any teacher involved in this scheme.” The State Board for Educator Certification “will make a final determination on potential sanctions,” according to the statement shared with KHOU.
“The fraudulently certified teachers are diverse,” Levine said. “They’re not just in the Houston area. They’re not just in the Dallas area. They’re literally spread throughout the state.”
The scheme dates back to at least May 2020, prosecutors said.
Worse, the cheating teachers included at least two sexual predators who were once falsely certified and had access to minors on and off campus through their work,” Ogg said. “One has been charged with indecency with a child, another with online solicitation … We only know of those two cases now, but there could be more.”
Levine said some teachers were hired without passing certification exams, but were required to pass them within a year or two. In other cases, he said, positions such as teaching assistants required the exams for promotions.
Investigators have interviewed dozens of teachers, and about 20 of them have cooperated and given nearly identical versions of events, Levine said.
“Teachers and coaches who help influence children’s behavior, we rely on their moral compass,” he said. “It’s absolutely disturbing to think that so many people without what I would call a good moral compass were trying to educate and influence children across the state.”
Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, told KHOU, “Anyone who chooses a different route than what is legal or ethical is very disappointing … It’s concerning because we have thousands of teachers who put in the time to study, who work hard for the assessments and who pass.”
Williams, 76, a Yates High graduate, said he was shocked when he first heard about the arrests of staff at the predominantly black schools that have long been a source of identity and pride for the city’s poorest and most needy students. Founded in 1926, Yates is named after a former slave who became an influential Houston minister.
Over the years, Williams said, Yates graduates have included journalist and broadcaster Roland Martin, actress Phylicia Rashad and her sister, choreographer Debbie Allen, as well as numerous city leaders and professional athletes. Williams also helps run a Facebook page dedicated to Booker T. Washington High School.
“This is not just another black school in Houston. This is now the oldest black school in the state of Texas. This is history,” he said of Booker T. Washington High School. “We need people to keep our history alive.”