If teachers couldn’t meet high standards for student performance, “Walmart’s always hiring,” former Dobbs Elementary School principal Dana Evans told her teachers, according to testimony in the Atlanta schools test-cheating trial today.
The suggestion made her feel “disposable,” former Dobbs teacher Shayla Smith testified.
Evans’s attorney, Bob Rubin, disputed that account and said Evans never suggested that teachers who didn’t measure up should apply at Walmart.
The trial resumed today with Smith’s testimony after a two-week winter break. The trial of 12 former Atlanta Public Schools employees is expected to continue well into 2015.
Smith pleaded guilty in 2013 to a misdemeanor count of obstruction and agreed to testify for the prosecution.
Her testimony focused on cheating at Dobbs Elementary School, where a state investigation found a third of classrooms in 2009 had high rates of wrong-to-right changes on state test answer sheets. It was part of the prosecution’s case against Evans, former Dobbs teacher Angela Williamson and former regional supervisor Michael Pitts.
In 2007, teachers bombarded with Atlanta Public Schools’ “no excuses” mantra changed answers on state tests, Smith said.
That helped the school meet district test-performance targets. It also won Dobbs staff a seat on the Georgia Dome field and a serenade by a Mardi Gras-style band during a district celebration, Smith said.
The next school year, Evans became the school’s new principal. She asked a group of teachers why they had been so successful.
The room was silent, Smith said.
“Everybody just looked around like … is she going to figure it out?” she said.
But at Dobbs “no excuses” wasn’t code for cheating, Bob Rubin, Evans’ attorney, said to Smith during cross examination.
“It’s code for achieving without whining,” he said.
One could say that, she responded.
Smith testified too that she had several opportunities to tell Evans about the cheating, but did not do so.
In earlier testimony in the trial and in a district hearing, fellow teachers said Smith said she had to cheat on state tests because her students were "dumb as hell."
Today, Smith denied ever saying that.
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