CONTINUING COVERAGE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first investigated improbable improvements on standardized tests in 2008 and then conducted a computer analysis of schools with unusual changes in test scores in 2009, reporting the results to readers.
A state investigation ordered by Gov. Sonny Perdue, following the AJC reports, exposed widespread cheating in the 50,000-student APS district. The investigators found suspicious rates of changed answers on standardized tests and concluded in July 2011 that 185 APS teachers and administrators in 44 schools participated in cheating on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. The investigation formed the basis for the criminal charges brought against the educators on March 29, 2013.
Testimony in the trial has exposed how then-Superintendent Beverly Hall created a “no excuses” campaign that led to severe pressure on teachers and principals to meet rising test goals, with threats of firings and even closing schools unless students showed progress. Many educators who participated in cheating made plea bargains with prosecutors, testifying that they erased and corrected test answers and did so in concert with others; or they reported cheating within the system to no avail and they saw students who were unskilled and below where they should be, but whose tests scores showed them as passing. Some educators who cut plea deals backed off their testimony in court. Testimony of direct orders to cheat was rare, but former teachers who testified spoke often of overwhelming pressure to produce the mandated results “by any means necessary,” with winks and nods and a sense of a shared understanding of what was going on.
After four months of grinding testimony about statistical analysis, impoverished students and desperate teachers, prosecutors finally rested their case Wednesday in the Atlanta schools test-cheating trial.
More than 130 witnesses told a story of a school system run amok, with employees engaging in or condoning behavior that compromised the educations of untold numbers of children. Still, the severity of the possible punishment has stoked controversy.
The dozen defendants were hit with a charge that could land them in prison for up to two decades. Administrators and even teachers were indicted like mobsters under Georgia’s Racketeer and Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act. Under that law, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard’s office tried to prove a coordinated criminal conspiracy to erase test sheets and fill in correct answers.
Denying defense motions, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter let the conspiracy charges stand.
The scale of the scandal is enormous: an investigation ordered by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue concluded that 185 teachers and administrators in 44 schools participated in cheating on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. Many of the witnesses admitted guilt and only testified after prosecutors let them plead to lesser charges.
With so many let off the hook, some question why a handful should face such severe penalties. Others look to a generation or more of children who were cheated out of an education and say justice must be done.
Prosecutors allege that the acts shortchanged children because false scores cloaked their need for help and schools that reported inflated scores lost access to federal grant money that might have paid for tutors. The image prosecutors left with jurors as they ended their case was of a 16-year-old girl who had to spend three years in the eighth grade because the Atlanta school system did not prepare her.
Defense attorneys maintain the conspiracy rap is overkill.
Kevin Franks, who represents Diane Buckner-Webb, a former teacher at Dunbar Elementary School, believes the state did not prove an elaborate scheme to cheat, and said his client was “caught up in a political witch hunt.”
Franks told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week that many witnesses who testified under immunity agreements had committed “far more grievous acts than these defendants.” He also said the conspiracy charge vastly compounded the case’s complexity and made the trial longer and costlier. In addition to racketeering, Buckner-Webb is charged with two counts of false statements and writings, which might have taken mere days to try alone, he said.
Bill Thomas, a former federal prosecutor who represented an unindicted witness in the case, said Howard’s office over-reached with the conspiracy charge while also cutting too many “crazy deals” that let suspects plead to counts far lighter than racketeering.
“It’s a tenuous prosecution and it’s built on a house of cards,” Thomas said.
In many cases, the district attorney’s office had to rely on compromised witnesses. One, a former teacher, delivered a memorable line about the pressure to cheat, alleging that a former principal who is a defendant told teachers who were not meeting testing goals that “Wal-Mart’s always hiring.”
That teacher, Shayla Smith, then had to defend her own behavior, denying on the witness stand that she’d uttered the phrase attributed to her by a teacher at her termination hearing three years ago: “I had to give your kids … the answers because they’re dumb as hell.”
Smith, who admitted to changing students’ answers and prompting them during tests, pleaded guilty in 2013 to a misdemeanor count of obstruction and agreed to testify for the prosecution.
Others say the potential punishment is merited.
“This was about the alleged abuse of little children in terms of depriving them of their education,” said Mike Bowers, the former Georgia attorney general who was hired by Perdue to investigate after the AJC reported highly unlikely test score jumps in Atlanta classrooms.
“Is that worth erring in bringing to light?” he asked. “Hell yes!”
He defended Howard's strategy, saying it is common to cut plea deals with low-level suspects to secure their testimony against "higher ups."
The highest-ranking defendant, former Superintendent Beverly Hall, is not on trial because she has advanced cancer.
Bowers said he felt sympathy for some suspects, especially the low-ranking single moms who felt cornered and told him they needed a job. But he said people had to be called to account because the scandal was “a disaster for a couple of generations at least.”
Lori Revere-Paulk, a former Atlanta math coach, knows what Bowers is talking about. The whistle-blower testified that she was persecuted after reporting cheating and getting no results. She was transferred and demoted before she decamped to another school district. Now she is back in Atlanta as an administrator at a middle school.
She became the guardian of an impoverished 9-year-old student who had excellent test scores in Atlanta. When she took him home and to school in Henry County she discovered he was actually far behind. She and her husband have paid for tutoring to catch him up.
“I have firsthand knowledge of how the cheating scandal hurt kids,” Revere-Paulk said. Despite that, she is conflicted about the severity of punishment warranted.
“That’s kind of hard because a lot of teachers had pressure to do things,” she said. Then, she added: “But as an adult you have to know right from wrong.”
The trial, she figures, is worth the investment.
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