Atlanta Public Schools announced plans Monday to offer extra help to struggling students in response to a widespread cheating scandal, but the district may never know for sure how many were victims of academic fraud.
Existing intervention programs designed to help students during the school day will be increased from 12 weeks to 25 and expanded from 58 to all 100 schools. The program will target students who failed to score on grade level on the 2011 Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT). Teachers will be given additional training, and the district is planning to reach out to parents to increase help at home.
The academic aid will help the district’s neediest students, but not necessarily those impacted by cheating. That’s because the state’s cheating investigation, which uncovered impropriety at 44 schools, focused mainly on the 2009 CRCT. In the two years since, some have recovered and some have not, said Superintendent Erroll Davis.
“The plan was to address students harmed by the CRCT scandal. Identifying those students turned out to be a much more difficult challenge than we anticipated,” he said.
A state investigation released in July named about 180 educators as participants in cheating. The report claims educators erased and corrected mistakes on students' answer sheets or gave verbal cues on test day. More than 80 APS employees confessed, and investigators said cheating likely went on as long as a decade. The investigation came after a series of stories in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution raised questions about improbable gains in test scores.
Davis, who took over in July, originally said he would like to see all 50,000 students reassessed so the district could get an accurate measure of each student's ability. But Monday, Davis said the district would use the CRCT because it’s a broad test that provides data on many students. He said increased security measures in the last two years make him comfortable with the validity of the 2011 results.
Officials estimate 5,500 students will need help in math and 3,000 in reading. Students will be pulled out for individualized aid during non-core classes like music and art. The district is also looking for ways to fund before- and after-school programs, and Saturday school twice a month.
Officials said the existing in-school program has helped increase CRCT scores in previous years. They did not have a cost estimate for the expansion, or for the extended day and weekend programs.
Board members questioned how the expanded program would be staffed, and whether students would lose out on a well-rounded education. Parents had a mixed reaction as well.
Mother of four Shawnna Hayes-Tavares believes her children were affected by cheating, but she'll never know for sure. She's frustrated the plans focus only on students who are failing the CRCT, and not middle or high scorers who could have been cheated.
"To me, that is not the only population that was affected," she said. "For those of us trying to be competitive, to have greater opportunities, they have fallen short."
But parent Cynthia Briscoe Brown, co-president of North Atlanta Parents for Public Schools, said she was pleased with what she heard.
"I like that we are not trying to drill down too far in who was harmed and who was not," she said. "We're remediating every child who needs it."
The academic aid will help the district’s neediest students, but not necessarily those impacted by widespread cheating. That’s because the state’s cheating investigation, which uncovered impropriety at 44 schools, focused on the 2009 CRCT
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