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Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy's bribe to the guy who fixed their daughter's SAT scores was disguised as a charitable donation for "educational programs [for] disadvantaged youth." Charming. 
Huffman and Macy also seem to have abused the disability accommodations provisions of the SAT to facilitate their cheating—getting their daughter extra time on the test, and using that as a pretext to put in place the crooked proctor who fixed the test scores.
From the fake fdn's GuideStar page: "With programs that are designed to assist young people in every day situations, and educational situations, we hope to open new avenues of educational access to students that would normally have no access to these programs."
Well, yeah.
Well, yeah.
Also: "Our contributions to major athletic university programs, may help to provide placement to students that may not have access under normal channels."
Again, that's one way to put it.
Again, that's one way to put it.
What really burns me, though, is Huffman and Macy's abuse of the disability accommodations process. Using such accommodations as a backdoor to cheating your way into college poisons the well, and screws over honest kids—both with and without disabilities.
Since I've been asked, here's how the scam worked...
When you take the SATs under standard conditions, you take it with a large group of other students. If you require special accommodations, it can be possible to arrange for a specific proctor.
In this case, Macy and Huffman got extended time on the SAT for their daughter, claiming disability, then used that accommodation as the lever to get the daughter to take the test alone, with a proctor they arranged.
That chosen proctor was affiliated with the admissions scammers, and either coached their daughter during the test or corrected her answers afterward to get her score up to the level they wanted.
Oh, and hey, look! Because the bribes were structured as donations to a fraudulent 501c3 for poor kids, they were tax deductible!
One clarification of the above: I have no idea whether either or both of Huffman and Macy's daughters' disability claims were legitimate. It's possible that the time accommodations were based on actual need. HOWEVER...
One daughter's school planned to have her take the SAT there, and the family and scammers conspired to move the test to the site where they could cheat. So even if the initial accommodation was legit, it was leveraged for gain.
Looking over the criminal complaint again, a few things leap out. First, "HUFFMAN and [the guy behind the scam] exchanged multiple e-mails about how to obtain 100 percent extra time on the SAT for her daughters." So there's that.
Second, yes, William H. Macy was in this up to his neck. He's SPOUSE in this phone transcript, arranging the fraudulent SAT.
Just a sidenote for folks who stumbled on this thread: I teach at an inner-city community college. I'm not gonna be a receptive audience for your "disability accommodations are a scam" snark.
I have students every semester who rely on accommodations to get through my classes. None of them are faking. None of them are scamming. None of them have rich and connected parents.
And on the subject of why Macy wasn't indicted, it appears that the prosecutors only have evidence of his involvement in the scheme regarding his and Huffman's second daughter, and they didn't actually pull the trigger on the SAT-fixing for her.
With Huffman they have a string of emails and calls relating to both daughters, but with Macy they have much less evidence both qualitatively and quantitatively. That may not be the whole reason he wasn't indicted, but it's surely a big part of it.
You do kind of get the impression that what saved Macy from indictment today was the gendered character of household domestic labor. May not be the case, but kind of looks that way.
The wife sets up the playdates, The parent-teacher conferences, the SAT cheating. The wife handles the emails, so the wife gets indicted.
Hello, strangers responding to the previous two tweets! Allow me to introduce you to the distinction between individual choices and structural forces!
Day Two: Yes, William H. Macy is in a show called "Shameless." Yes, there are humorous parallels between the current situation and his film "Fargo." Thank you.
So there's an interesting tidbit I found this morning, relating to the "extended time" aspect of the scam.
(To recap: The scammers arranged for disability accommodations for the students to get them extra time NOT because the extra time would itself improve their scores, but to change the venue of the test to allow cheating by the proctor.)
In one of the cases, the company that oversees the ACT test denied the extra time request twice, and only accepted it the third time "at the request of law enforcement."
In at least one instance, in other words, the standardized test cheating was only successful because the scammers had been flipped and were cooperating with what was in essence a sting operation.
