Ex-principal, assistant suspended in cheating scandal

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The state banned two DeKalb County officials from its public schools Thursday for as much as two years for cheating on state tests.

In handing down what one official called among the toughest sanctions ever given for cheating, members of the Georgia Professional Standards Commission set the tone for what is now the penalty phase of a statewide scandal.

Abiding by a committee recommendation, they suspended former Atherton Elementary School Principal James Berry for two years. Former Atherton Assistant Principal Doretha Alexander was suspended for one.

Members also approved formal investigations of eight other educators in Atlanta and Fulton and Glynn counties caught up in the same probe.

“It is severe punishment,” said Kelly Henson, executive secretary of the commission, which polices Georgia teaching credentials. Sanctions the commission could have meted out ranged from a reprimand to permanently revoking the educators’ certification.

Henson has not seen tougher punishment for cheating. Gary Walker, director of educator ethics for the commission, said the state was serious about protecting “the integrity of the [student] assessment system.”

The commission typically sanctions about 50 educators a year for cheating, which Walker said amounts to “less than half of 1 percent of educators in the state.”

The commission voted in July to formally investigate Berry and Alexander, the same month that the state Board of Education threw out some test results for students from four Georgia schools — DeKalb’s Atherton, Fulton County’s Parklane Elementary, Glynn County’s Burroughs-Molette Elementary and Atlanta’s Deerwood Academy.

The results were from 2008 fifth-grade math retests on the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. An audit by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement 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.

The state investigation followed an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December about improbably steep gains at some schools on tests taken first in spring and then in summer.

State officials said the higher scores helped the schools meet federal standards. They also said that students were not the ones they suspected of cheating.

With the commission’s action Thursday, Berry and Alexander now have 30 days to appeal.