A parent of an Atlanta Public Schools student on Tuesday lashed out at defense attorneys, telling one “don’t make my baby out to be a monster.”
Keylina Clark broke down in tears on the witness stand during the APS test-cheating trial when defense attorney Annette Greene recounted instances when Clark’s son was disciplined or suspended from school for bad behavior.
“Don’t keep putting up all this negativity about my son,” Clark said in an angry exchange with Greene, who represents former teacher Shani Robinson. Later, Clark asked, “What does this have to do with the CRCT?”
Prosecutors called Clark to testify because her son told her he had been given answers to the 2008 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. Even though the boy was performing well below grade level, he passed all sections of the test, Clark said.
Clark’s outburst in response to Greene’s pointed questions about the boy’s behavior was the latest twist in an extraordinary trial that has already seen one prosecution witness disown his plea agreement, people bickering about the food served at a teachers’ erasure session, even a mass rendition of “Happy Birthday” to a juror by the judge, jury, prosecution, defendants and their attorneys.
Clark’s son, now a 14-year-old ninth-grader who is not being identified because of a court order, later followed his mother to the stand.
Before he testified, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter sought to make sure the teenager understood the gravity of his situation. Because he had just taken an oath to tell the truth, did he know what could happen if he didn’t tell the truth? Baxter asked.
The student thought a moment, then said he guessed he’d “go to hell.”
“I guess he’s good to go,” said the judge, satisfied.
During his second-grade CRCT, the student testified, a teacher gave test answers to him and other students. She would either point to the correct answer or hold up a hand signal in the shape of the correct letter on the multiple choice test — fingers steepled for an “A,” curved into a “B,” and so on, the boy said, holding the letter shapes above his head in the witness stand.
The teacher acted nervous when she shared the answers, he said. The teacher later told district investigators that she did not cheat on the CRCT, according to court records.
Clark testified she became concerned when her son returned home after taking the 2008 test and said he knew he’d passed it because a teacher gave him the answers.
Clark said she believed her son when test results came in and showed he’d passed. Upset, she filed a complaint about test-cheating with former regional supervisor Tamara Cotman, one of 12 defendants on trial.
The APS Office of Internal Resolution launched an investigation and, although some students corroborated the cheating allegations, the school district found insufficient evidence. In a Sept. 12, 2008, letter to Clark, then-Superintendent Beverly Hall said that based on the totality of the evidence, “I am unable to determine that a reasonable basis exists to conclude” that test-cheating occurred.
Clark said she remains convinced that cheating occurred and believes the school system covered it up.
Clark said she knew her son was having tremendous difficulty keeping up in reading and math, so she got him on an Individualized Education Program for special-ed students during his third-grade year.
Clark was one of a number of witnesses who testified Tuesday for the prosecution.
Patricia Wells, a former principal, testified that some of her Benjamin Carson Middle School students couldn’t read and some couldn’t write.
But results from state tests taken when they attended elementary school suggested otherwise, Wells testified, adding she was flummoxed why these students weren’t performing at grade level at her school.
In August 2007, Wells convened a group of students over pizza and asked them what could be done to get them to perform at the level of their prior test results.
The students’ answers shocked her.
It was cheating, she confirmed Tuesday in response to a prosecutor’s questions.
When Wells told Cotman what the students had told her, Cotman asked a single question: “Do you have any proof?” Wells said.
“I have what the children said,” Wells said she told Cotman. “I’m concerned about it because, again, their grades don’t align with their test scores.”
After that meeting, Wells’ relationship with Cotman deteriorated, Wells said. Under cross-examination, she acknowledged Cotman never ordered her to cheat and that she was the subject of an internal investigation over ineligible student athletes.
But Cotman never followed up with her about the cheating allegations, Wells said. Months later, she said, she was called into a meeting and told she would be terminated if she did not accept a reassignment to a different school as an assistant principal.
“That was the worst day of my career,” she said.
Wells took the transfer to South Atlanta High School and resigned at the end of the school year.
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