DeKalb principal at school in CRCT probe resigns

A principal has resigned and an assistant principal is under investigation at a DeKalb County school implicated by the state in a possible test cheating probe.

Former Atherton Elementary School Principal James Berry and Assistant Principal Doretha Alexander now face accusations of cheating from system officials.

“Atherton is a great school. It’s got great students. It’s got great teachers,” DeKalb chief deputy superintendent Robert Moseley said in an interview Thursday afternoon.

Moseley said no student and “no teacher has been implicated in this mess. It’s all the principal and assistant principal. Cheating? Yes, and that is an understatement. It’s the students who were cheated by the administrators.”

According to state and local officials, preliminary audit results by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement reveal that someone at Atherton and three other Georgia schools deliberately changed students’ answers last summer on fifth-grade standardized math retests.

At Atherton, half of the DeKalb school’s fifth-graders failed a yearly state test in the spring. When the 32 students took retests, not only did every one of them pass — 26 scored at the highest level.