Under Principal Christopher Waller, teachers would gather for “erasure parties,” secretly hauling standardized tests in a blue cooler, according to investigators.
Facing extraordinary pressure to improve scores, they took extraordinary measures, a state report said.
Waller got seemingly miraculous results, raising Parks Middle School student test scores to unbelievable levels between 2006 and 2010. In math, the percentage of eighth-graders who met or exceeded standards increased from 24 percent to 86 percent in one year.
During those years, investigatory reports of alleged cheating, sexual harassment and mismanagement of federal money at Parks Middle disappeared from Atlanta Public Schools’ central office. Superintendent Beverly Hall denied attending a meeting with an investigator about his findings, but a former human resources director who has pleaded guilty said Hall was there.
Now that Waller plans to plead guilty Friday in exchange for his cooperation, prosecutors will have added ammunition in their attempt to convict Hall and Michael Pitts, the area superintendent whose region included Parks Middle.
Hall has maintained her innocence, and her attorney said this week she’s resolved to fight the charges against her.
Waller pressured teachers to reach lofty academic standards set by Hall at any cost, according to a plea agreement with the school’s former vice principal, Gregory Reid.
“Get on the bus!” Waller would tell teachers, according to Reid. “You gotta make the targets.”
A complaint to the school system alleged that Waller gave teachers a document titled, “Tips for Passing the 8th Grade Writing Test.” Students were told in advance to focus on question No. 7, which asked them to write about a rule they thought was unfair, and a similar question appeared on the actual test, private investigator Reginald Dukes told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year.
Over time, the network of teachers and administrators at Parks Middle who fudged answers on standardized tests grew, and it had the highest percentage of classrooms — 89.5 percent — in the state flagged for high numbers of wrong-to-right erasures in 2009, the state investigation found.
“We were told that failure was not an option,” Damany Lewis, a math teacher at Parks, said during a hearing in March 2012. When the hearing ended, Lewis became the first Atlanta teacher fired as a result of the massive test-cheating scandal.
To hide the erasure parties, Waller would send the school’s testing coordinator out of the office while they were happening, the state investigation said. On separate occasions, Waller asked the testing coordinator to supervise an impromptu after-school dance and attend a retirement party.
The list of allegations against Waller also included favoritism, intimidation, manipulation of attendance records, inappropriate relationships with staff, and mishandling of more than $2,000 in student fundraiser money, according to a plea agreement reached this week with Millicent Few, the school system’s human resources director at the time.
In one case, when Waller wanted a pay raise but wasn’t eligible based on his background and tenure, Hall secured $10,000 from the Annie E. Casey Foundation for Waller, according to Few’s plea agreement.
Despite the complaints and Dukes’ investigations, Few acknowledged in her plea agreement that she couldn’t recall a single instance where Waller was warned, reprimanded or disciplined by Hall.
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