Is Clarence Mumford a criminal mastermind and Public Enemy Number One in education? Or is he this year’s version of Logan Young, the late Memphis football booster who was hauled into federal court and convicted in 2005 for paying a football coach to influence a recruiting prospect?
The United States Department of Justice and federal prosecutors in Memphis seem to think the former. Mumford was in court Friday to change his plea to guilty to charges that he organized a scheme to get stand-ins to take certification tests for teachers in Memphis, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Mumford made money on the deals, probably quite a lot of it. He charged his customers $1,000 to $6,000 for multiple tests, according to a presentation of the case Friday. He started arranging bogus tests in 1995, and wasn’t sniffed out until 2010 when a phony test taker wore the same pink cap to two sessions in one day and caught the attention of a monitor.