Atlanta School Workers Sentenced in Test Score Cheating Case

Photo Angela Williamson, an elementary teacher, leaving court after being sentenced to seven years. Credit Pool photos by Kent D. Johnson

ATLANTA — In an unexpectedly harsh sentence after a polarizing six-year ordeal, eight of the 10 educators convicted of racketeering in one of the nation's largest public school cheating scandals were sentenced to prison terms of up to seven years Tuesday after they refused to take sentencing deals that were predicated on their acceptance of responsibility and a waiver of their right to appeal.

As a result, the sentences, meted out after a raucous court hearing, offered a conflicted, inconclusive coda to a scandal that has brought shame and soul-searching to Atlanta and its 50,000-student public school system. Some were furious with the sentences, and some were pleased.

And as some of the defendants vowed to appeal, it ensured that this city would continue to grapple with two harrowing and interrelated questions: How much mercy should be due a roster of educators with otherwise spotless records? And what kind of justice is due the thousands of students, most of them poor minorities, whose falsely inflated standardized test scores obscured their academic shortcomings?

Photo Tamara Cotman, a regional director, also got seven years. Credit Pool photo by Kent D. Johnson

Many here, amid widespread calls for leniency before the sentencing, were shocked at the severity of the sentences handed down by Judge Jerry W. Baxter, who had seemed to indicate on Monday that he wanted to avoid prison terms. But after the deals fell through, and while declaring the cheating scandal "the sickest thing that's ever happened in this town," he imposed sentences that appeared to be more harsh than those in similar cheating scandals elsewhere and that exceeded what criminals sometimes receive for violent crimes.

The racketeering charges carried a 20-year maximum sentence, and some defendants were also found guilty of lesser crimes. Prosecutors said the teachers had participated in a wide-ranging conspiracy to artificially inflate students' standardized test scores and give a false sense that struggling schools were improving, all within a system led by a superintendent, Beverly L. Hall, who demanded that administrators meet ambitious testing targets.

A 2013 grand jury indictment named 35 Atlanta Public Schools employees, including Dr. Hall. Prosecutors said the educators who engaged in the conspiracy did so to win bonuses, protect their jobs or please their superiors.

Most of the accused took plea deals and avoided trial, and two other defendants, including Dr. Hall, died before they could have a day in court.

Some Atlanta residents said Tuesday that they were shocked at the severity of the punishment.

"I know a lot of people who do illegal things every day, and maybe they get like a month," Malik Andrews, 19, said near the courthouse. "So I think they went overboard."

But the judge also ordered all of the educators released on bond from county jail, where they had been held since their April 1 conviction. Lawyers said that those ordered to prison would probably remain free unless their convictions were upheld in the appeals process, which could take months or years.

Episodes of misconduct by educators elsewhere in the United States previously led to short terms of incarceration. In Ohio, for instance, a former administrator in Columbus's public schools served 15 days in jail after pleading no contest to attempted tampering with records.

Erica O. Turner, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the Atlanta sentences "entirely unprecedented."

"In other places, I haven't seen quite the same resources and the same desire to prosecute educators for cheating," she said.

Along with pleas for lenience here, there was acknowledgment that the real victims were the children whose education was tainted by falsified test scores that misrepresented what they had learned.

Fani T. Willis, a trial prosecutor, said the outcome showed that the poor African-American children who were the real victims "have dignity, and they matter."

"That, I think," she said, "is what Atlanta should be proud of."

Among those declining deals were three higher-level administrators: Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts and Tamara Cotman, all regional directors at Atlanta Public Schools. Judge Baxter sentenced each of them to seven years in prison.

These sentences exceeded prosecutors' recommendations. Also sentenced after refusing a deal were Angela Williamson, an elementary teacher, and Tabeeka Jordan, an assistant principal, who each received two years in prison. Three other defendants received one year in prison each: Dana Evans, a principal; Diane Buckner-Webb, a teacher; and Theresia Copeland, a testing coordinator.

Two educators accepted sentencing deals: Donald Bullock, a testing coordinator, was ordered to spend six months of weekends in county jail and five years on probation, and Pamela Cleveland, a teacher, was sentenced to five years' probation and one year of home confinement in the evenings.

All 10 educators were also fined and sentenced to probation and hundreds of hours of community service, and in some cases directed to give remedial instruction to the students whose scores had been altered.

All of them were also sentenced under a "first offender" statute that allows them to have the convictions removed from their records once the terms of their sentences have been satisfied. But arriving at this and other terms of the sentences proved to be an ugly process Tuesday as defense lawyers sparred with an exasperated Judge Baxter, who bellowed at them numerous times and threatened to throw one lawyer in jail in an effort to quiet him.

Judge Baxter, who presided over the complex six-month trial, was angry that some of the defendants would not stand before the court and take responsibility for what they had done.

"She didn't need to apologize to me; she needed to apologize to this community and these children," the judge said to lawyers for Ms. Buckner-Webb, who had questioned the prosecutors' demand that she make such a statement. "I want the community to have the apology, and I want these children who were shortchanged and cheated to have the apology."

At a news conference after the hearing, the Fulton County district attorney, Paul Howard, was joined by the Rev. Bernice King, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said she would serve on the board of an "Atlanta Redemption Academy" offering remedial help for students harmed by the inflated scores.

Mr. Howard introduced Colleen Banks, a woman whose daughter attended a school where cheating took place; the daughter later had to repeat seventh grade twice.

"I felt like justice was somewhat served," Ms. Banks said, adding: "I have no pity for what happened to them today, because it is what it is. I'm sorry."

Outside the courtroom, some family and other supporters of the defendants were livid over the outcome. Some said that the practice of granting a pass to struggling students had never been criminalized before.

"Social promotion has been around since we were children," said Barbara Holly-Lutalo, 53, a friend of Ms. Evans who had appeared as a character witness for her in court Monday. "So why is it that social promotion is on trial for these educators?"

Ms. Holly-Lutalo said she believed that racism played a role in the treatment of the educators, noting that all of the defendants were black. (Later, Mr. Howard, who is black, as are several members of his team, responded by simply saying, "Look around you.")

Shani Williams, an elementary teacher, was also found guilty of racketeering April 1, but she was not sentenced because she gave birth to a boy over the weekend. On Tuesday night, Patrice Williams, her sister, was spreading the word of a rally at a church to show support for the 11 defendants.

"We are thrilled that they're able to come home and they didn't fall into the trap of taking a plea deal and admit to something they didn't do," she said. "It has been a lot of coercion: Do what the D.A. says, or you might not go home."

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White House Memo: Abraham Lincoln, the One President All of Them Want to Be More Like

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Economic Scene: A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development

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Dozens Arrested During Brooklyn Bridge Protest Against Police Violence

Photo Demonstrators protesting police violence crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on Tuesday. Dozens were arrested, several assaults on officers were reported and traffic was disrupted for several hours. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Dozens of participants in a march intended to protest police violence were arrested on Tuesday as the demonstration crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and caused major delays there during the evening rush.

Stephen Davis, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said 34 people had been arrested by 6:40 p.m. That number was expected to rise overnight as precincts in Brooklyn and Manhattan reported arrests, he said.

There were also reports of assaults on police officers, including one involving an off-duty police sergeant who was punched in the face when he got out of his car, Mr. Davis said. The officer was treated at Lower Manhattan Hospital, and the assailant has not been caught, Mr. Davis said.

The police said they were also investigating a report of an officer being struck in the head by a beer bottle.

In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the violence against the police officers was unacceptable.

"And any other person who might use the right to peaceful protest as cover to initiate violence, cause mayhem or incite disorder — whether against the police, the people or property of our great city — should consider themselves on notice that New York City will not stand for it."

Witnesses and accounts on social media described protesters being rounded up and put in police vans. There were also reports of objects being thrown at police officers and scuffles between officers and demonstrators.

The Stop Mass Incarceration Network organized the march, one of several across the country. About 400 people participated in the early part of the demonstration, which began at Union Square at 2 p.m. and wound down Broadway toward Police Department headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

Around 4:15 p.m., some of the protesters split off and went to the Brooklyn Bridge, where they broke through a police barricade. Some jumped over a fence and onto the westbound traffic lanes.

Traffic in those lanes was disrupted for several hours.

Some protesters continued on Flatbush Avenue toward the Barclays Center.

The demonstration follows the most recent in a string of fatal police encounters with unarmed black men.

Walter Scott, 50, of North Charleston, S.C., was shot and killed by a police officer on April 4. A cellphone video showed the officer, Michael Slager, firing eight shots as Mr. Scott ran away, and later dropping his service Taser next to the body. Mr. Slager was fired and was charged with murder.

Before the march, Cornel West, a prominent black scholar, spoke at Union Square about what he said was his frustration with black leaders' inability to produce charges and convictions against the officers involved in the shootings.

"Don't be confused by some black faces in high places," he said. "For seven years, there have been black and brown brothers and sisters shot down by the police."

He noted that the president, the attorney general and the secretary of homeland security were all black. "And not one policeman sent to jail," Mr. West said.

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Student Coalition at Stanford Confronts Allegations of Anti-Semitism

Photo Molly Horwitz, a Stanford student council candidate, said she was horrified by questions asked of her by a student coalition. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — The debate over what constitutes anti-Semitism has spilled into Stanford University's student government election, with a Jewish student claiming that she was asked how her Judaism affects her view of divestment from Israel, morphing what was a contest about campus issues into a fierce discussion on identity and loyalties.

Like other candidates, Molly Horwitz, a junior from Milwaukee, was eager to receive an endorsement from the Students of Color Coalition, an umbrella group that has helped dozens win seats in the student senate. Ms. Horwitz, who was adopted from Paraguay, wrote extensively in her application about navigating both Jewish and Latino circles. Like many other students, she had paid close attention to the campus debate over divestment earlier this year.

But Ms. Horwitz said that what happened in the interview with the student coalition left her shocked and horrified. After talking about issues such as student mental health services with the eight representatives, Ms. Horwitz said, the interview changed topic: "Given your Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?"

"I was really taken aback by the question, and it took me a minute to process it, so I asked for clarification to make sure I knew what they were really asking," Ms. Horwitz said in an interview. "They said they saw in my application that I had a strong Jewish identity, and how would that impact my decision?"

Ms. Horwitz said that she responded by explaining that while she was supportive of the process the student senate had used to vote in favor of urging Stanford to divest, she opposed divestment and found the ultimate outcome of the vote disappointing. "There was an awkward silence, and the interview ended a minute later," Ms. Horwitz said. Although she did not receive the group's endorsement, she is still a candidate in the election, which begins Thursday.

Tianay Pulphus, the president of the campus chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., said that Ms. Horwitz's charge was "baseless."

"At no point was she asked whether her Jewish identity impacted her view on divestment," said Ms. Pulphus, a senior who was one of the students who conducted the interview. "We ask all candidates how they would navigate issues that have come up in the previous year. We in no way singled out a candidate based on their ethnic or religious identity."

Ms. Horwitz, like others interviewed, was asked about a range of issues including sexual assault and mental health services, Ms. Pulphus said, and her view on divestment was not the basis of the coalition's decision.

Stanford officials are investigating the incident, as well as charges that the Students of Color Coalition, a group that unites six campus groups representing blacks, Latinos, Asians and Muslims and that supported the proposal for divestment, asked its endorsed candidates to sign a contract promising not to affiliate with Jewish groups on campus. The coalition denied both charges in an article in The Stanford Daily on Tuesday, which was published along with an account by Ms. Horwitz.

This is not the first time the roiling debate on college campuses over divestment from Israel has led to charges of anti-Semitism. Earlier this year, students at the University of California, Los Angeles, asked a Jewish student who was a candidate for a campus judicial committee whether her religion would influence her decision-making. While that incident was captured on film and in official minutes, the case at Stanford is far more murky, with no official record.

"Allegations that any of our endorsees are precluded from affiliating with or receiving endorsements from other groups are unfounded," the Students of Color Coalition wrote. "We reject the notion that religious or cultural identification might prevent someone from being an effective senator. Such a stance is in direct conflict with S.O.C.C. values."

Stanford's undergraduate senate voted in February to ask the university to divest from companies doing business in the West Bank as a way of punishing Israel, but the university's board of trustees said Tuesday that such a decision would be divisive and it would not take up the matter again. 

After her interview with the coalition, Ms. Horwitz filed a complaint with university officials, who met with her and promised a swift investigation.

Lisa Lapin, a Stanford spokeswoman, said that officials had found "conflicting accounts of what occurred" and expanded the investigation after The Stanford Review, a student publication that has criticized the Students of Color Coalition in the past, published an article about Ms. Horwitz. The article also said that the student group had asked candidates it chose to endorse to sign a contract prohibiting affiliation with Jewish groups, and Ms. Lapin said university officials were investigating that as well.

"This is a particularly important teaching moment," said Vlad Khaykin, the associate director of the Central Pacific Region of the Anti-Defamation League. "Having aspersions cast on their ability to reflect the interest of the student body on the basis that they are Jewish is obviously very troubling to us. The university needs to make it clear to students and student groups that singling out identity and questioning on those kind of issues is discriminatory."

But several students interviewed on campus said they did not see it as problematic to connect a stance on divestment with Judaism.

Julia Duncan, a freshman from the Bay Area, said that Ms. Horwitz and other candidates should have expected such questions.

"It's not entirely discriminatory to know your take on divestment," she said. "It is their money, and they do have their political agenda. And if their stance is pro-Palestine, I think it's a fair question."

During the debate over divestment earlier this year, Ms. Horwitz wrote several posts on Facebook against it. Miriam Pollock, a friend and campaign manager for Ms. Horwitz, said in an interview Tuesday that before Ms. Horwitz started gathering signatures for her campaign, the two scrubbed her Facebook page to hide all posts indicating support for Israel, including a photograph of a pair of shoes decorated to look like the Israeli flag.

"We did it not because she isn't proud — she is — but the campus climate has been pretty hostile, and it would not be politically expedient to take a public stance," Ms. Pollock said. "She didn't want that to be a main facet of her platform. Of course she was going to be honest if she was asked about her stance on divestment."

Correction: April 14, 2015

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Molly Horwitz's friend and campaign manager. She is Miriam Pollock, not Pollack.

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China’s G.D.P. Slows to 7 Percent, the Weakest Rate Since 2009

Photo Recent indicators suggested that the economy of China could be slowing more rapidly than many observers expected. Credit Jianan Yu/Reuters

HONG KONG — China's economy grew in the first three months of 2015 at its slowest quarterly pace in six years, dragged down by an industrial slowdown and a weak housing market, the government announced Wednesday.

Gross domestic product rose 7 percent from a year earlier, in line with economists' forecasts. While the growth rate means China still ranks as one of the world's fastest growing major economies, it marked the country's slowest quarterly expansion since early 2009, when it was still feeling the effects of the global financial crisis.

China's Communist Party leadership has lowered its official growth target for this year to around 7 percent. This would be the nation's slowest annual expansion in 25 years, but leaders have said this is a price that needs to be paid in order to reduce the economy's reliance on credit-fueled growth and get everyday shoppers to spend more of their savings.

Recent indicators suggest that the economy could be slowing more rapidly than many observers expected. In March, industrial production rose 5.6 percent from a year ago, its slowest increase since late 2008. Land purchases by real estate developers plunged 32 percent by area in the first three months of the year.

Premier Li Keqiang told a forum of Chinese economists on Tuesday that economic performance in the first quarter "has a strong role as a weathervane," according to a report in the Beijing News newspaper.

The pace of growth in the first quarter "supported quite ample employment, and residents' incomes have also risen in step," the Beijing News said, summarizing Mr. Li's comments.

"But on the other hand we must see that downward economic pressure indeed continues to grow," Mr. Li said. "Some of our traditional sources of strength are receding, and at the same time there are newly emerging sources of growth, and some sunrise industries are experiencing explosive growth."

For example, retail sales in March rose 10.2 percent, the slowest increase in nearly a decade. But online merchandise sales increased 41 percent in the first quarter, and now account for about 9 percent of all sales of consumer goods in China.

Foreign trade, by contrast, has been buffeted by lackluster overseas shipments and signs of even weaker demand at home. Exports of goods by value rose only five percent in the first three months of the year, while imports slumped 17 percent, weighed down by lower global prices for oil and other commodities.

The housing market continues to struggle, with home prices falling and new construction starts declining. This has far-ranging effects at home and abroad, including on domestic steel production, pricing of imported iron ore from Australia and the employment of sales agents at property brokerages across China.

Sheng Laiyun, the spokesman for China's National Bureau of Statistics, said that "downward pressure" on the Chinese economy came from both external factors, including the tepid recovery of many economies, and also from domestic factors. New sources of growth were emerging, he said, "but in the short term it's difficult for them to make up for the subsiding of traditional drivers."

China's leaders have responded to the slowdown by easing monetary policy but have held off from introducing more aggressive stimulus measures. Since November, the central bank has cut interest rates twice and freed up banks to lend more. Most economists expect further cuts in the coming weeks or months.

These measures do appear to be having an effect, with key short-term borrowing rates in China's money market, an important indicator of the real cost of funding for smaller banks and other financial institutions, falling to around 3 percent in the past week, down from around 5 percent in February.

Despite this, there are still few signs that the government's efforts at weaning the country off of credit fueled growth are succeeding. Total credit growth has slowed in recent months, but it is still outpacing G.D.P. growth, meaning China as a whole is growing more indebted. The biggest factor here continues to be the increase in corporate borrowing.

In his remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Li emphasized that the government would persist with planned economic and financial overhauls despite slowing growth.

"Our toolbox still has many policy tools, and the biggest tool is reform," Mr. Li said. "There certainly is pressure now, and the pressure on some sectors is quite heavy. But there is also impetus, and many businesses take a positive long-term view of this market," he added.

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Homaro Cantu, Science-Minded Chicago Chef, Dies at 38

Photo Homaro Cantu in 2005. Credit Peter Thompson for The New York Times

Homaro Cantu, a Chicago chef who kept a Class IV laser as a cooking tool and dreamed of eradicating hunger with nutrient-soaked edible paper, was found dead Tuesday on the city's North Side. He was 38.

The police said Mr. Cantu appeared to have taken his own life. The Chicago Tribune reported that he appeared to have hanged himself inside a brewery he had been building.

His blend of science and dining put Mr. Cantu among a small vanguard of American chefs who used chemical-laboratory techniques to coax food into novel and sometimes peculiar new forms. After four years in the kitchen at the Chicago restaurant Charlie Trotter, he was hired for his first job as chef, having impressed the restaurant's owner by cooking fish at the table in a small polymer box, among other feats.

The restaurant, Moto, opened in 2004 and has held a Michelin star since 2012. Mr. Cantu eventually took over most of the ownership.

In his early days, when Moto served synthetic Champagne squirted into a glass by a large black medical syringe, Mr. Cantu sometimes seemed as if he was out to shock. As time went by, though, critics and diners began to pay more attention to the quality of his cooking as well. And as the number of his patent applications grew to six, he revealed a more serious purpose to his fascination with gadgets.

Customers may have giggled as they ate a picture of a cow that tasted like filet mignon, but Mr. Cantu said in interviews that his technology for flavoring and fortifying edible paper could help feed soldiers at war, astronauts in space and people in refugee camps.

"My goal with this is to deliver food to the masses that are starving," he said in an interview with the magazine Fast Company. "We give them something that's healthy, that has an indefinite shelf life, and that is supercheap to produce."

Born in Tacoma, Wash., in 1976, Mr. Cantu was homeless between ages 6 and 9. He traced his interest in helping people through technology and his skills as a chef to that experience.

More recently, his ideas about ending hunger shifted to the miracle fruit, a berry that temporarily makes sour or bitter foods taste sweet. He called this "flavor-tripping," and it was the inspiration for his second restaurant, iNG, now closed, as well as a coffee shop, Berrista.

Last month, Alexander Espalin, an investor in iNG and Moto, sued Mr. Cantu in Cook County Circuit Court. Mr. Espalin, who claimed that he had never received any share of Moto's profits, alleged that Mr. Cantu had misused restaurant funds to promote his own businesses, including a book he had published, "The Miracle Berry Diet Cookbook."

Mr. Cantu lived in the Old Irving Park neighborhood with his wife, Katie McGowan, and their two young daughters.

The Chicago police said an autopsy was scheduled for Wednesday.

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Owner of a Credit Card Processor Is Setting a New Minimum Wage: $70,000 a Year

Photo Aryn Higgins at work at Gravity Payments in Seattle. She and her co-workers are going to receive significant pay raises. Credit Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

The idea began percolating, said Dan Price, the founder of Gravity Payments, after he read an article on happiness. It showed that, for people who earn less than about $70,000, extra money makes a big difference in their lives.

His idea bubbled into reality on Monday afternoon, when Mr. Price surprised his 120-person staff by announcing that he planned over the next three years to raise the salary of even the lowest-paid clerk, customer service representative and salesman to a minimum of $70,000.

"Is anyone else freaking out right now?" Mr. Price asked after the clapping and whooping died down into a few moments of stunned silence. "I'm kind of freaking out."

If it's a publicity stunt, it's costly one. Mr. Price, who started the Seattle-based credit-card payment processing firm in 2004 at the age of 19, said he would pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from nearly $1 million to $70,000 and using 75 to 80 percent of the company's anticipated $2.2 million in profit this year.

The paychecks of about 70 employees will grow, with 30 ultimately doubling their salaries, according to Ryan Pirkle, a company spokesman. The average salary at Gravity is $48,000 year.

Mr. Price's small, privately owned company is by no means a bellwether, but his unusual proposal does speak to an economic issue that has captured national attention: The disparity between the soaring pay of chief executives and that of their employees.

The United States has one of the world's largest pay gaps, with chief executives earning nearly 300 times what the average worker makes, according to some economists' estimates. That is much higher than the 20-to-1 ratio recommended by Gilded Age magnates like J. Pierpont Morgan and the 20th century management visionary Peter Drucker.

"The market rate for me as a C.E.O. compared to a regular person is ridiculous, it's absurd," said Mr. Price, who said his main extravagances were snowboarding and picking up the bar bill. He drives a 12-year-old Audi, which he received in a barter for service from the local dealer.

"As much as I'm a capitalist, there is nothing in the market that is making me do it," he said, referring to paying wages that make it possible for his employees to go after the American dream, buy a house and pay for their children's education.

Under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect. Corporate executives have vigorously opposed the idea, complaining it would be cumbersome and costly to implement.

Mr. Price started the company, which processed $6.5 billion in transactions for more than 12,000 businesses last year, in his dorm room at Seattle Pacific University with seed money from his older brother. The idea struck him a few years earlier when he was playing in a rock band at a local coffee shop. The owner started having trouble with the company that was processing credit card payments and felt ground down by the large fees charged.

When Mr. Price looked into it for her, he realized he could do it more cheaply and efficiently with better customer service.

The entrepreneurial spirit was omnipresent where he grew up in rural southwestern Idaho, where his family lived 30 miles from the closest grocery store and he was home-schooled until the age of 12. When one of Mr. Price's four brothers started a make-your-own baseball card business, 9-year-old Dan went on a local radio station to make a pitch: "Hi. I'm Dan Price. I'd like to tell you about my brother's business, Personality Plus."

His father, Ron Price, is a consultant and motivational speaker who has written his own book on business leadership.

Dan Price came close to closing up shop himself in 2008 when the recession sent two of his biggest clients into bankruptcy, eliminating 20 percent of his revenue in the space of two weeks. He said the firm managed to struggle through without layoffs or raising prices. His staff, most of them young, stuck with him.

Mr. Price said he wasn't seeking to score political points with his plan. From his friends, he heard stories of how tough it was to make ends meet even on salaries that were still well-above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.

"They were walking me through the math of making 40 grand a year," he said, then describing a surprise rent increase or nagging credit card debt.

"I hear that every single week," he added. "That just eats at me inside."

Mr. Price said he wanted to do something to address the issue of inequality, although his proposal "made me really nervous" because he wanted to do it without raising prices for his customers or cutting back on service.

Of all the social issues that he felt he was in a position to do something about as a business leader, "that one seemed like a more worthy issue to go after."

He said he planned to keep his own salary low until the company earned back the profit it had before the new wage scale went into effect.

Hayley Vogt, a 24-year-old communications coordinator at Gravity who earns $45,000, said, "I'm completely blown away right now." She said has worried about covering rent increases and a recent emergency room bill.

"Everyone is talking about this $15 minimum wage in Seattle and it's nice to work someplace where someone is actually doing something about it and not just talking about it," she said.

The happiness research behind Mr. Price's announcement on Monday came from Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist. They found that what they called emotional well-being — defined as "the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience, the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant" — rises with income, but only to a point. And that point turns out to be about $75,000 a year.

Of course, money above that level brings pleasures — there's no denying the delights of a Caribbean cruise or a pair of diamond earrings — but no further gains on the emotional well-being scale.

As Mr. Kahneman has explained it, income above the threshold doesn't buy happiness, but a lack of money can deprive you of it.

Phillip Akhavan, 29, earns $43,000 working on the company's merchant relations team. "My jaw just dropped," he said. "This is going to make a difference to everyone around me."

At that moment, no Princeton researchers were needed to figure out he was feeling very happy.

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Sheldon Silver’s Son-in-Law Is Arrested and Charged With Securities Fraud

A son-in-law of the former State Assembly speaker was arrested on Monday and accused of defrauding investors out of $7 million, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court.

The defendant, Marcello Trebitsch, 37, of Brooklyn, told investors that he would use their money to trade in securities through his investment fund, and promised them double-digit returns with very low risk, according to a statement from the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Mr. Trebitsch's wife, Michelle Trebitsch, is the daughter of Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, the former speaker who has been indicted on corruption charges.

Agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Mr. Trebitsch, and he appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan. He was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud.

The complaint said that Ms. Trebitsch, a certified public accountant, was a co-owner and managing partner of the investment fund, Allese Capital. She has not been charged.

According to the complaint, Mr. Trebitsch told his investors that he would use their money to buy large-cap stocks and promised returns of 14 to 16 percent. The investors, a Maryland real estate developer and his accountant, gave him $7 million between 2009 and 2013.

But Mr. Trebitsch invested only a portion of the investors' money and principally used the money for his own personal benefit and to repay other investors, the complaint said.

With the money that he did invest, the complaint said, Mr. Trebitsch suffered losses that he hid from investors by sending them "phony" monthly account statements and tax forms showing returns ranging from 15 to 19 percent.

The complaint said Mr. Trebitsch lied to investors about clearing his trades through a Wall Street bank that he claimed agreed to invest $50 million.

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Study Finds Broad Rise in Medication Use by Those Newly Joining Medicaid

Photo In Miami, an ad for the Affordable Care Act. Expanded access to Medicaid led to a 25 percent rise in prescriptions in 2014. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images

People newly covered by Medicaid drove a significant increase in prescription drug use in 2014, even as those with private commercial coverage filled fewer prescriptions and, over all, patients did not visit the doctor as often, according to a new report by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, which tracks the health industry.

The report, released on Tuesday, offers a window into how consumers used their insurance in 2014, the first full year after millions of Americans gained coverage through the health care law, which expanded eligibility for Medicaid in many states and set up marketplaces where consumers could shop for insurance.

Patients with Medicaid in states that expanded access to the program filled 25.4 percent more prescriptions than in the previous year, before the expansion. In states that opted not to expand the program, the increase was much smaller at 2.8 percent.

Sabrina Corlette, a senior research fellow at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, described the difference as "stark," adding, "it suggests that in the Medicaid expansion states, people are accessing the health care system. They are seeing physicians and other prescribers and getting needed drugs."

The report also provided some new details on the overall growth of spending on prescription drugs, which, it said, rose substantially in 2014 — by 13.1 percent, to $373.9 billion. The increase is the highest since 2001 — mainly because of the arrival of expensive new drugs for conditions like hepatitis C, cancer and multiple sclerosis, at the same time that sales eroded less for brand-name drugs because of new competition with generic drugs. Spending on so-called specialty drugs — high-priced treatments that typically treat serious chronic diseases — accounted for one-third of drug spending in 2014, up from 23 percent five years ago.

Last year "was a remarkable year in terms of growth in spending on medicines," said Murray Aitken, executive director of the IMS Institute. But he added that while growth in specialty drug spending was expected to continue, the eye-popping increase in 2014 was unique and spending would most likely not rise as sharply in future years.

The report sheds some light on who enrolled in coverage through the new marketplaces. The IMS Institute found that 70 percent of people who used a marketplace plan to fill a prescription in 2014 had been covered by commercial insurance in 2013, either through an employer or through purchasing an individual plan. Nearly a quarter — 24 percent — paid cash in 2013, meaning they may have been uninsured. In all, the number of prescriptions paid in 2014 with cash declined by 5.5 percent compared to 2013.

Steven Jacobsohn, a retired financial analyst who lives in Manhattan, said his prescription drug coverage improved in 2014, when he switched from individual coverage through EmblemHealth to a less expensive marketplace plan sold by Health Republic. He said two common generic drugs to treat high cholesterol and blood pressure cost $10 a month under his old policy, but were free under the Health Republic plan. "It's a very good plan," said Mr. Jacobsohn, who is 57.

But even as some have seen their options improve, the report found that many are cutting back on prescription drug use and doctor visits. Many marketplace plans — and, increasingly, plans through employers — come with high deductibles and co-payments, forcing some patients to make tough choices.

Over all, patients made 3 percent fewer office visits and had 1.7 percent fewer hospital admissions. They filled slightly more prescriptions — 2.1 percent — but that was mainly driven by the large increases among Medicaid patients, the report found.

Researchers found that patients who took one type of diabetes drug were less likely to take the drug after their own costs reached $30, and even more so when their costs exceeded $125. Patients who had recently changed to a plan with a deductible took their drug for 25 fewer days, on average, compared to those with more comprehensive plans.

Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said it was difficult to generalize about consumers' coverage under high-deductible plans because they can vary widely in how they are set up. Still, he said, previous studies support the idea that "with more cost-sharing, you get less use."

Mr. Jacobsohn counts himself among patients who have let costs drive his health care decisions. Last year, he said, his doctor suggested that he switch from his generic atorvastatin prescription to Crestor, a more expensive brand-name drug, because his cholesterol was too high. When he learned that the Crestor prescription came with a $60 co-payment, Mr. Jacobsohn said he decided to wait six months to give the cheaper drug another chance to work. His cholesterol improved at the next visit and he never switched to Crestor.

"Not that I couldn't afford it," Mr. Jacobsohn said. "I just didn't know if I wanted to pay for it."

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