Business leaders pushed pro-APS report despite flaws

In 2010, business leaders backed by the Metro Atlanta Chamber touted a Blue Ribbon Commission report that downplayed cheating in Atlanta Public Schools.

What they didn't say is that some commission members knew the report was flawed and incomplete.

New documents and interviews from the files of the governor's task force on cheating suggest that business leaders were eager to limit the perceived damage to the city's image — and even its housing values.

The AJC found that:

• Commission leaders had misgivings about the independence of the Blue Ribbon Commission, which promised a fair and unbiased inquiry into the cheating allegations, right from the start because it contained a key ally of former school superintendent Beverly Hall.
• Auditors hired by the commission to investigate produced a report using methodology that commission and chamber officials worried was flawed. Indeed, the initial draft of the report to the commission had so many problems that the commission's chairman, himself an experienced auditor of a major auditing firm, called it "garbage" in his testimony to investigators.
• Despite their private concerns about the commission's independence and shortcomings, chamber and commission officials nonetheless attempted to sell the commission's report discounting systemic cheating at APS and exonerating Hall as independent and authoritative.
• The commission's chairman told investigators that he and some other commission members did not believe the commission's report vindicated Hall, as she subsequently claimed it did. But they did not say so publicly or express how "incredibly disappointed" they were when Hall claimed vindication.