A lawyer overseeing the tribunal of an Atlanta Public Schools educator accused of cheating delivered a blow to the school district Thursday. Tribunal hearing officer Hugh Dorsey ruled that attorneys for the school district could not use or mention the contents of a 2010 state investigative report that highlighted widespread cheating in APS.
This marks the first time the report’s allegations have been completely excluded from evidence at an APS tribunal.
The decision came during the tribunal of Tonya Saunders, the former principal of Toomer Elementary School.
According to the report from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, Saunders cheated by telling teachers to instruct students to “recheck” their incorrect answers on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test and fifth-grade writing test. Test results from some Toomer classrooms also showed an unusually high number of wrong-to-right erasures, the report said.
Saunders’ attorneys asked Dorsey to exclude the contents of the report from consideration.
“If APS wants to prove wrongdoing by Dr. Saunders, bring in witnesses who have knowledge of what she did wrong,” attorney Michael Kramer said. “Under our American system of justice, [wrongdoing] has to be proved here in front of these three impartial tribunal members.”
Kramer also said McGraw-Hill, which scores the CRCT, has refused to turn over raw statistical data about other types of erasures, such as right-to-wrong changes. Withholding that data, he argued, unfairly deprives Saunders of the ability to question the data contained in the GOSA report.
The tribunal hearing officer agreed.
“There is some element of fair play in being able to challenge it, which has been denied to the respondent,” Dorsey said.
Dorsey also noted that the report relied largely on Saunders’ recorded interviews with the GBI. Since those tapes are available, Dorsey ruled, they are better evidence than the report.
The ruling may not have much practical effect, as all three of the tribunal members have served on cheating tribunals where the widely publicized report was admitted in some form, so they are familiar with it.
APS attorneys moved forward after the ruling, calling Superintendent Erroll Davis to testify. Davis was not allowed to discuss the contents of the report, but said that its allegations led him to lose confidence in Saunders.
Saunders’ attorneys countered that not only did she do nothing wrong, but she was not even able to cheat.
“Dr. Saunders was not at school during the entire 2009 CRCT testing,” Kramer said, telling tribunal members she was hospitalized due to a botched surgery.
The second day of the tribunal has been scheduled for Sept. 13.
