12 Atlanta principals reassigned, among 108 employees to face state review in test scandal

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall announced late Friday she will report 108 employees to the state next week for alleged testing violations and will immediately reassign 12 of them -- all principals -- until the state completes its review.

With classes set to start Monday, students and staff at a dozen campuses will report to school under new and possibly temporary leadership. City schools spokesman Keith Bromery said officials did not expect problems despite the changes coming so close to the new school year.

"There will be effective leadership," at the 12 schools come Monday, Bromery said.

The schools include Gideons, Usher, Peyton Forest, Perkerson, Venetian Hills, Scott, Connally, Dunbar, F.L. Stanton and Capitol View elementary schools as well as Parks Middle. Bromery could not identify the 12th school, which is affected because its principal previously led a now-defunct school, Blalock Elementary, listed in the report as having had a serious problem.

Hall's action follows the release earlier this week of a long-awaited investigative report into alleged cheating in Atlanta Public Schools. The report, compiled by a commission appointed to study suspicious erasures on standardized tests at city schools, recommended possible sanctions against 109 educators, including 40 principals or other administrators.

In it, investigators hired by the commission said widespread cheating appeared to be limited to 12 schools, with limited problems at another 13, among the 58 flagged as suspicious by state officials. The commission's investigators used a different standard to assess test data.

The commission's report cited no evidence that either Hall, who created an aggressive accountability system tied to test scores, or other top officials orchestrated or condoned cheating.

All the principals reassigned Friday led the 12 schools which appeared to have widespread problems. They will be moved temporarily to jobs in the system's central office, Bromery said.

One employee out of the 109 does not hold a teaching certificate and will be be investigated further by the school system. All but the 12 principals will stay in their current jobs in the interim, Bromery said.

The state agency receiving the reports is the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, which polices state teaching credentials. Possible sanctions it can mete out range from a reprimand to loss of license.

The report's release followed a nearly six-month investigation into possible cheating last year on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, the exam that helps determine whether schools are meeting national and state education standards. Students in first through eighth grade take the exam every year.

The state ordered the investigation after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on statistically improbable increases in CRCT scores at schools in Atlanta and elsewhere in Georgia. According to the state's audit released in February, 191 Georgia public schools in all required review because they showed unusual patterns of erasures on the CRCT.

Atlanta had the most schools flagged in any system, 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 now being reviewed for thoroughness by the state

Investigators in Atlanta conducted 292 interviews, including 12 with students and parents. They zeroed in on the 109 system employees through data and statistics, as well as through "qualified allegations," described by the report as backed by plausible though indirect evidence.

Seventy-eight of the employees -- 30 administrators and 48 teachers -- worked at the 12 schools.

At 13 other schools, 25 employees, including eight administrators, appear to have acted individually, as did six other employees, including two administrators, in some of the remaining 33 schools under investigation, according to the report.

Both the state and Atlanta took extra precautions for this year's tests, including test monitors and other security measures. Many of the flagged schools saw substantial declines in CRCT scores. At some elementary and middle schools, Atlanta students failed at two, three or four times the rate they did last year.