Five Charged in Houston ISD Centered $1 Million Teacher Certification Cheating Scheme
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Monday afternoon that five people — including three Houston ISD (HISD) employees — have been criminally charged in a teacher certification cheating ring.
The charges allege that the cheating scheme was masterminded by longtime Booker T. Washington High School boys basketball coach Vincent Grayson — and involved individuals typically paying about $2,500 for help in fraudulently obtaining teacher certification.
As many as 400 people might have illegally obtained a teacher certification in Texas since 2020 through the cheating ring, which netted the organizers about $1 million, prosecutors said.
The scheme involved conspirators taking and administering tests on behalf of aspiring certified teachers, prosecutors said.
Investigators believe the hundreds of participants are spread throughout the state, with some likely still in classrooms. The licenses likely helped school employees get promotions, earn higher salaries and keep their teaching jobs, prosecutors said.
Ogg said among the several hundred people who were illegally certified, two of them were child sexual predators, adding that it was through this false certification that allowed them to commit the crimes.
In addition to Grayson, 57, others charged in the scheme are:
- Tywana Gilford Mason, 51, former director and certifying official at the Houston Training and Education Center, who is accused of helping conceal the proxy scheme as a test proctor.
- Nicholas Newton, 35, an assistant principal at Booker T. Washington High School, who is accused of acting as a proxy test taker.
- Darian Nikole Wilhite, 22, a proctor at the Houston TACTIX testing center, who is accused of taking bribes to allow proxy testing.
- LaShonda Roberts, 39, an assistant principal at HISD’s Yates High School, who is accused of recruiting nearly 100 teachers to participate in the scheme.
They all face two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity, prosecutors said. HISD officials said they were notified of the charges shortly before they were announced, and that the three HISD employees have been placed on leave.
The first count is a first-degree felony of money laundering, because those charged are accused to have profited over $300,000, and the second charge is tampering with a government document, which is “based on the false statements that are made when you sit down and test knowing you’re not the person that you say you were,” prosecutors said.
The Houston Landing has more.
