Prosecutors obtained two important guilty pleas Friday in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating scandal. That leaves 13 other former educators and administrators headed to trial in a high-stakes racketeering prosecution.
Former Parks Middle School principal Christopher Waller and a former top aide, Sandra Ward, became the final pair to enter negotiated guilty pleas. There are now 21 defendants who were initially charged but have accepted responsibility and agreed to help prosecutors.
Waller will testify during the trial that his area superintendent, Michael Pitts, told him to keep his mouth shut about cheating, or else Waller could lose his job, Deputy District Attorney Fani Willis said. Waller will also testify that both Pitts and former Superintendent Beverly Hall put extreme pressure on him to falsify standardized test scores, Willis said.
At the end of the hearing, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter said he plans for jury selection to begin in late April, with the trial expected to start in May. A conviction of the racketeering conspiracy charge alone brings a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
All 21 defendants who pleaded guilty avoided prison time and were ordered to perform community service. Several of the 13 people now headed toward trial turned down similar offers.
Waller’s guilty plea was significant because Hall had hailed him as a model educator whose students obtained remarkable gains on standardized test scores. But Parks also had the most classrooms in the state with suspiciously high test scores, investigators found.
Prosecutors portrayed the towering minister and former principal as an overbearing bully who intimidated his teachers into tampering with students’ scores from 2006 through 2009.
On Friday, however, Waller stood before Baxter a broken man.
He paused a number of times in an effort to collect himself while reading his letter of apology. By the end, his voice was breaking as he fought back tears.
“I orchestrated cheating by several teachers and fostered a culture of cheating that continued even after I was not at the school,” Waller said. “My role was continuous for several years and I accept responsibility for this conduct which was unethical, immoral, dishonest and criminal.”
For years, Waller said, he tried to rationalize what he’d done.
“I am through rationalizing and making excuses and I am no longer interested in blaming others,” he said. “There were others who participated in this conduct with me. But they are not responsible for my criminal acts.”
Waller, 41, pleaded guilty to a single felony charge — false statements and writings — for certifying his school’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test when he knew cheating had occurred.
He was sentenced to five years probation, ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service and required to pay $50,000 in restitution, fines and court costs. He also was sentenced as a first offender, meaning if he successfully completes his probation he will not have a conviction on his record.
Richard Hyde, one of the governor’s special investigators who uncovered widespread test-cheating at APS, sat in the courtroom and observed the plea hearing.
“It’s reassuring that Reverend Waller held himself accountable and admitted to what he did,” Hyde said. “Lord have mercy on everyone else who’s left from here on out.”
Ward, 44, once served as Parks’ Success For All facilitator who was responsible for the school’s reading program. She admitted that she too helped orchestrate test-cheating and then covered up her involvement.
“I helped teachers obtain access to the answer sheets so they could be altered,” an emotional Ward said while reading her own letter of apology.
“I sincerely regret my involvement in this incident,” she said. “I also regret that fact that the leadership at APS was focused more on improving these test scores than helping the students learn.”
Ward pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of obstruction and was ordered to perform 250 hours of community service and pay $5,000 in restitution. She also was sentenced as a first offender.
Parks was in the challenging Pittsburgh neighborhood of southwest Atlanta, Willis said during the plea hearing. Students arrived hungry and poorly dressed. They witnessed gang violence and drug deals on the way to and from school. And many of the students’ poor academic performance didn’t match the higher CRCT test scores they had attained at elementary schools they’d attended before, she said.
When Waller told Pitts that cheating had to have occurred at the elementary schools, Pitts told him to forge a better relationship with Gideons Elementary, Willis said. Waller said he believed Pitts was offering this advice so Parks’ teachers could learn how to cheat on the CRCT like educators were doing at Gideons, Willis said.
Hall, who has pleaded not guilty, rewarded Waller with pay and perks for achieving academic results that she knew weren’t possible, Willis said. Rather than raising questions about Parks’ suspiciously high test scores, Hall treated Waller as one of her favorites, the prosecutor said.
In 2008, Waller flew round trip first-class – at the expense of Atlanta Public Schools – when he interrupted a trip to a Harvard University leadership conference and returned to Georgia to give a speech about how to increase math scores. During the conference, Waller stayed in a Sheraton while other Atlanta school employees slept in a dormitory.
Hall commended Waller’s accomplishments in an article about how he “beat the odds” by raising academics at the historically underperforming school. She also recognized Waller’s work during the Al Sharpton National Network Conference in 2008.
“Hall never questioned the absurd test score jumps from Parks Middle School even though defendant Waller felt that it would have been evident even to a blind man that the scores were not legitimate,” Waller’s plea agreement said.
In early 2006, a private investigator hired by the school system, Reggie Dukes, conducted an investigation of Waller’s conduct at Parks. In his final report, Dukes said he found evidence that test-cheating had occurred at the school.
In May of that year, he presented his finding to Hall, Pitts and former human resources director Millicent Few, who pleaded guilty Monday. However, Willis said, Waller was never reprimanded or disciplined by his superiors.
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