Under the terms of a plea deal, Former Gideons Elementary School Principal Armstead Salters agreed to testify that because of pressure from former superintendent Beverly Hall and former regional executive director Michael Pitts, he had no choice but to encourage and aid cheating at his school.
But on Tuesday, he changed his story. He testified several times that neither Hall nor Pitts ever put pressure on him to cheat.
“I may have to go to prison for it, but they never placed pressure on me to cheat under any circumstance,” he said.
State’s witness changes story at Atlanta cheating trial - 3:26 p.m.
Meeting school performance targets set under former Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall was a struggle, the former principal of Gideons Elementary School said in court today.
Armstead Salters, who worked for the Atlanta schools for 44 years, said he wasn’t concerned about the targets at first. He hired highly qualified teachers, kept his school open on weekends and brought in volunteers to help students.
For two years the school met the targets, and Salters got to sit on the floor at Hall’s district convocation—an honor reserved for staff at top-performing schools.
“I wanted my school to glow,” he said.
But at some point, Salters said, meeting the targets became “a struggle.”
He told the school’s testing coordinator to allow teachers to review completed student answer booklets, he said in court today.
Salters was indicted in connection with the cheating scandal. He took a plea deal, pleading guilty to a felony charge of making false statements in connection with certifying that the 2009 state tests had been administered properly. He agreed to testify in the trial and was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to complete 1,000 hours of community service. He also agreed to return bonuses he received.
But Salters’ testimony today differed from the facts he agreed to in his plea agreement in key areas—including whether or not he directed teachers to change answers and the years in which he did so.
Defense lawyers objected to not receiving notice that Salters had changed his story and asked Judge Jerry Baxter to declare a mistrial or exclude his testimony.
Baxter declined to do so, but allowed lawyers to question Salters about the discrepancies.
“I think he’s a hostile witness trying to make himself look better,” Baxter said. “I’m not prepared to just kneecap the state because this happened.”
Witness: APS human resources boss ordered rewrite of cheating report - 11:17 a.m.
Five years after an Atlanta Public Schools investigator found likely cheating at Parks Middle School, former Atlanta Public Schools human resources chief Millicent Few told her assistant to write a memo summarizing results of that investigation. That memo said it was unlikely cheating had occurred at Parks, according to testimony in the Atlanta schools cheating trial today.
In 2006, external investigator Reginal Dukes filed a report indicating likely cheating on the eighth grade writing test at Parks, Dukes testified Monday. Dukes found that students had been given a sample writing prompt nearly identical to an actual test question in advance of the test.
Few’s special assistant Nicole Lawson reviewed the file in 2011, while the state was investigating suspected cheating in the Atlanta schools. She found key parts of the file appeared to be missing, she testified in court today. That included indications of the investigation’s final result.
Lawson said Few, who has pleaded guilty to pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge of malfeasance in office, told her to interview Executive Director of Research, Planning and Accountability Raymond Hart about the Parks investigation.
After speaking with Hart, Lawson wrote a memo summarizing Hart’s conclusions:
“Dr. Hart stated that testing materials are typically sent 1 week prior to the administration of a standardized test and it is highly unlikely that test materials for this test would have been sent to schools prior to the Christmas break,” she wrote in the memo.
Given that timing, a teacher would not have been able to provide students with the actual writing test prompt. And “coaching students on pre-approved sample writing test prompts” is not considered a test irregularity, she wrote.
Through her questioning, Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis established that Hart was not employed at APS in 2006. Lawson also acknowledged that she did not talk to Dukes or the Parks Middle School teachers and students he interviewed during his investigation.
A day after she submitted the memo, Lawson was summoned to meet with state investigators. During that meeting, the investigators wanted to know why the memo was created. Lawson said she was following a directive from Few, who at that time was also acting director of the Office of Internal Resolution.
Afterwards, Lawson testified, she sought out Few and told her she’d just been up to see the special investigators.
Few appeared nervous, Lawson said. “It was just odd.”
Willis asked Lawson how she felt after that meeting.
“After I felt, like, used,” Lawson said.
Testimony to focus on Gideons - 6.22 a.m.
Testimony in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial on Tuesday is expected to focus on what happened at Gideons Elementary School.
Possible witnesses include the school’s former principal, Armstead Salters, a career educator who in December became the first APS principal to enter a guilty plea.
Gideons, located in southwest Atlanta, had a challenging, transient student population after nearby housing projects closed in the early 2000s. Its students performed slightly below average in reading, language arts and math.
According to Salters’ plea agreement, he knew that Beverly Hall, after becoming superintendent, began firing teachers whose schools did not meet desired results. The superintendent “publicly boasted about this fact on many occasions, ” only increasing the pressure to make sure his school did well, the plea agreement said.
Test tampering began occurring at Gideons as early as 2005 and continued until 2009, Salters told prosecutors. This was possible because the school’s testing coordinator, Sheridan Rogers gave teachers access to their students’ tests so they could correct wrong answers, Salters said.
Salters pleaded guilty to a felony count of making false statements and writings. He was sentenced to two years on probation and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service and return $2,000 in bonus pay.
Rogers, who was also indicted, pleaded guilty to obstruction. She admitted to following orders from Salters to give Gideons’ teachers access to their tests and answer sheets. This allowed teachers to change wrong answers to right ones. Her sentence: one year on probation, 250 hours community service, return $1,000 in bonus money.
