A former Cedar Grove Middle School principal is expected to enter a plea to charges that she manipulated standardized tests and attendance records, the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office said today.
Agnes Flanagan will be in court on May 20, facing nine charges. She was indicted in 2013 on three counts each of forgery, making a false writing and public-record fraud.
The charges stem from allegations of cheating on Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. An examination of the tests, according to a release from the district attorney’s office, found a “statistically improbable” number of wrong-to-right answer changes.
A DeKalb County grand jury initially returned indictments on three school administrators two weeks after 35 Atlanta Public Schools educators were indicted in 2013 in that district’s cheating scandal. DeKalb school officials turned over information to the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office from its internal cheating probe, which was begun as information began to leak out about Atlanta’s woes.
Rock Chapel Elementary School Principal Angela Jennings pleaded guilty to five charges and received a $1,000 fine along with five years on probation, during which she cannot seek or accept employment in a Georgia school system. Jennings, officials said, removed students temporarily from enrollment records so their 2010 CRCT results would not count toward the school’s average scores.
A case involving Stoneview Elementary School Assistant Principal Derrick Wooten was delayed because Wooten’s attorney was also involved in the long-running Atlanta Public Schools trial.
None of the three now works for the district.
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