100 Atlanta school employees implicated in test cheating scandal

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An investigation of suspected cheating at Atlanta Public Schools has concluded that as many as 100 employees at 12 schools violated testing protocols, the chairman of a special investigative committee told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday.

Gary Price, chairman of the independent panel that was formed to investigate irregularities on state standardized tests at city schools, did not detail the violations, which could range from inadvertently violating test security rules to outright cheating. Price’s committee will release the key findings and recommendations from its exhaustive three-month inquiry on Tuesday.

"I'm outraged, primarily because I think about 50,000 kids in this system," said Price. He has also declined to name the schools where these employees work, although school names will be included in the findings, he said. "If [students] don't perform well on these tests, if we've been passing people along through the system, that's the important issue."

The committee’s release on Tuesday will be a watershed for the Atlanta system and its acclaimed superintendent, Beverly Hall. Hall will either respond to the report in a way that engenders confidence in the system or that provides more ammunition to critics who want new management.

The school system continues to win national awards — as does Hall — for closing an academic gap that appeared unbridgeable when Hall took over in 1999. But the cheating investigation comes at a time when APS is undergoing increasing scrutiny for some of those gains, as well as for its financial management.

State monitors watched over schools caught up in the investigation. Scores on the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests went down this year, according to preliminary data. Meanwhile, the AJC reported this month that the system’s central office payroll, on a per-student basis, is more than twice the metro average and that, again on a per-student basis, the district spends more money on employee travel that other metro systems.

Price said Thursday that there is no evidence “at this point” that anyone in the system’s central office had a direct role in cheating on tests. But he made clear that the panel expects action, starting with the individuals caught in the probe and continuing throughout the city school system.

Others expressed the same concern this week.

“I have no reason to believe they won’t do the right thing,” said parent Abby Martin, the parent of three children who attend Atlanta schools. “But I want them to do the right thing.

“What I want to see next: You’ve got the report. It tells you where to go look next. I want to see you look there without bias and preconceived notions. Address the problem. Be transparent. Be committed. And then you can move on.”

Atlanta school board Chairwoman LaChandra Butler Burks said the system is identifying students whose scores may have been compromised. "APS is committed to addressing these issues and has launched a personnel investigation to determine the appropriate corrective action – from a warning to dismissal," she said. "

National officials as recently as May lauded Atlanta elementary and middle school students for posting double-digit gains in reading that are among the biggest for urban systems nationwide. Those gains came on the benchmark National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is independently administered by federal contractors. Local school staff have no control over the assessment's content or distribution.

The same can't be said of the state's annual CRCT. The panel's findings mean dozens of elementary and middle school students, attending some of the most challenged campuses in the city, likely spent the school year without the extra help their real scores would have delivered.

The cheating report will be disclosed almost 11 years to the day after Hall took her job with Atlanta Public Schools, a lengthy tenure considering the average urban superintendent lasts less than half that time. When she came, 90 percent of the system's kindergarten teachers said they did not believe their pupils would graduate.

By last summer, Hall boasted in her annual "state of the system" address that a system once derided as a basement dweller "is becoming a model urban school district" with double-digit test score gains, higher-than-ever corporate support and groundbreaking initiatives garnering national attention.

Among notable achievements: a 33 percent increase in graduation rates and one in three elementary students exceeding state standards.

But in December 2008, the AJC published an analysis that showed improbable gains at schools -- including some in Atlanta -- on tests taken first in spring and then in summer by students struggling to master core skills.

A subsequent state investigation named four schools that turned in questionable results for tests taken in the summer of 2008, including Atlanta's Deerwood Academy. The state eventually threw out those scores, which were from fifth-grade math retests on the CRCT. The audit found evidence of an abnormal number of erasures at those schools on those retests, in which the wrong answer often was replaced by the right one.

Then, in October, the AJC published a second investigation that showed 19 schools statewide reporting extraordinary gains or drops in state test scores between spring of last year and this year. A dozen of those schools were in Atlanta, including schools where students went from among the bottom performers statewide to among the best in the course of one year. According to the AJC analysis, the odds of making such a leap were less than one in a billion.

The state launched a statewide audit. According to its report, released in February, Atlanta had the most schools flagged in any system -- 58 -- more than two-thirds of its public elementary and middle schools. It is the last of the 34 systems to complete its investigation, which is being overseen by a 15-member panel of city business and community leaders.

The panel hired investigators from Caveon Test Security and auditing company KPMG. Over the last three months, they have interviewed more than 260 city school employees, poured over thousands of testing documents, policies and procedures and reviewed 26,000 e-mails. Their goal was to determine who had access to the tests, when they did and how. At least two investigators conducted each interview. Price said no one refused to meet them, although some declined to say much.

Based on early findings, investigators prioritized work involving the 12 schools due to multiple red flags, including the number of erasures, inconsistent scoring or unusual grade increases. They said they had moderate to minimal concerns about the other 46 city schools; the report may make recommendations involving some of them, but there is no indication employees at those remaining schools will be implicated.

"I think it's shameful," said John Sherman, president of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation. "This is massive organized cheating, in my view. We believe the sheer magnitude of the number of erasures deserves an investigation by the state."

Price, who is a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, said the panel is considering whether to continue in an advisory role to see its work through.

"I'm optimistic that the district will take these recommendations seriously and act on them," Price said. "I think that's the litmus test. We can't change the past. We will provide them a path forward."

191 schools

According to a report released in February, 191 Georgia public schools in 34 systems required investigation because they showed unusual patterns of erasures on tests taken in spring 2009. The tests, of students in first through eighth grade, help determine whether schools meet federal benchmarks. Systems all over the state were affected, including five in the metro area: Atlanta and Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties. Testing violations may result in sanctions ranging from a reprimand to loss of license.

Continuing coverage

Be sure to check in with ajc.com throughout the day Tuesday when a panel releases its report on alleged cheating on standardized tests in Atlanta Public Schools. In Wednesday’s newspaper, you’ll find complete coverage of this ongoing story — a story that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has followed each step of the way.

Meet the reporter

Kristina Torres joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2003. She has covered many issues involving metro Atlanta schools, including Cobb County's aborted effort to give students laptops, Sembler Co.'s negotiations with the DeKalb County school system over a mammoth mixed-use project and last year's statewide test-cheating scandal that saw 13 educators banned from Georgia's schools for 90 days or more. A Colorado native, Torres graduated from the University of Colorado in 1994.