A former Atlanta high school registrar says she was fired in retaliation for reporting improper grading practices at Booker T. Washington High School.
In a whistleblower lawsuit filed agaianst the district this week, former registrar Ailisha Jones says that hours after she reported the problems, a school administrator drummed up a false accusation to get her fired.
“They didn’t want the complete story to come out. They just wanted her out of their school,” Jones’ lawyer Harry Daniels said. Jones is seeking millions of dollars in back pay and damages, Daniels said.
An Atlanta Public Schools spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit. The school administrators also named in the suit — Washington High School principal Tasharah Wilson and assistant principal Tracy Harrell — did not respond to messages from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But a lawyer for APS said at an earlier employment hearing that Jones had betrayed the public “faith and trust.”
The AJC has reported on how APS' lax supervision of grading practices led to a host of problems.
In recent years, APS administrators monitored how many students failed classes and insisted on fewer F's. But when more than 7,700 student grades were changed over the past three years, about a quarter of them from failing to passing, no one in the district's central office checked to see that the changes were justified.
At some schools, principals or other staff changed grades with little or no justification or ordered teachers not to fail students. In several cases, staff claimed they were retaliated against for reporting grade manipulation, though district investigators have said retaliation claims were justified in only a few cases.
A district review of grading practices released after reports from the AJC and Channel 2 Action News identified security gaps for the district’s online grade book, but did not find additional instances of “serious inappropriate actions.”
In her lawsuit, Jones says someone was using log-in information for former Washington High School staff to enter grades for current students — a practice the district does not allow. Soon after she told her supervisors, she was accused of changing a student’s grade from a 69 to a 70 without following proper protocol.
In an employment hearing, Jones denied changing the grade, but said she may have corrected the number of credits the student earned as part of an effort to "clean up" transcript errors.
The alleged grading problems at Washington and other schools took place even as APS Superintendent Meria Carstarphen vowed to change the culture of a district where dozens of educators were indicted in connection with a test-cheating conspiracy.
But Daniels, the former registrar’s lawyer, said little has changed within Atlanta schools.
“It may be a new day, but they’re up to their same old schemes,” he said.
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