Former M.A. Jones Elementary School teacher Corliss Love has become the fourth Atlanta Public Schools educator to win an appeal of her firing before a tribunal after being implicated in a state investigation in the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test cheating scandal.
APS attorneys argued during Love’s hearing last November that she signaled students to change wrong answers to right answers during her administration of the tests. But testimony from a GBI agent who had interviewed Love showed his summation of the interview was at odds in many places with a recording of it played during the hearing.
According to the APS charge letter Love “confessed” to the GBI agent that she instructed students to change answers when she repeatedly implored them to “check your work.” Under cross-examination by her attorney Bill Amideo, GBI agent Eugene Howard said he did not write in his summation that Love had “confessed” to cheating.
More than 20 character witnesses testified on Love’s behalf during the second day of the tribunal in December. Amideo said Monday that playing the tape of the GBI agent’s interview was the key to winning the appeal and said APS attorneys had not immediately made that tape available before the hearing.
“They built their case on the GBI report, and it was terribly misleading,” Amideo said.
Love could not be reached for comment. APS spokesman Stephen Alford declined to comment on Love’s case, saying it would be inappropriate to comment on a personnel matter.
The Atlanta School Board is scheduled to decide at its Jan. 14 meeting whether to follow the tribunal’s recommendation and reinstate her. About 180 APS educators were implicated for cheating in the state investigation released in July 2011.
Of the four educators who have appealed before tribunals and won their cases, one, Angela Williamson, lost at a second tribunal after APS brought an additional witness. Williamson filed suit against APS in Fulton County Superior Court last September contesting her termination. A hearing date is not yet set.
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