In 2010, state officials showed former Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Beverly Hall a list of Atlanta schools suspected of cheating on state tests, Kathleen Mathers, the former executive director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, said during the Atlanta cheating trial Tuesday.
The schools were listed in order of suspicion of cheating, with schools least likely to have cheated at the top of the page.
“So, we don’t look so bad,” Hall said, according to Mathers’ testimony.
Mathers said she then instructed Hall to flip the document over and look at the second page.
There was an awkward silence as Hall realized most APS schools had been flagged for possible cheating, Mathers said.
APS trial: Subterfuge used to get Deerwood report to Hall — 10:50 a.m.
A former state education official testified Tuesday she thought it was “absolutely critically important” that former Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall get the office’s 2009 audit that found test-cheating at Deerwood Academy before it became public.
But Hall could not find time on her schedule to arrange a meeting to discuss the audit, Kathleen Mathers, the former executive director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, said. Hall had initially scheduled a meeting for June 8, 2009 — two days before the report was to be presented to the state Board of Education — but she cancelled it, Mathers testified in the APS test-cheating trial.
For this reason, Mathers said, she sent two of her top deputies on an undercover mission to get the report in Hall’s hands.
Mathers had learned that Hall was supposed to address APS principals on June 9, 2009, at the Georgia Tech Conference Center and Hotel. She dispatched her deputy director Eric Wearne and Adrian Neely, the office’s audit program manager, to Georgia Tech with the office’s Deerwood report in hand. The report found that cheating had occurred during a summer re-test taken by Deerwood students in the summer of 2008.
Wearne and Neely, who purposefully did not wear their state badges so Hall would not identify them, stood with the principals when Hall approached the group, Mathers said. When they had the chance, they handed the report to Hall, who acknowledged she had it and said she would contact the office if she had any questions, Mathers testified.
The following day, Mathers presented the report to the state board. A month later, it voted to nullify Deerwood’s Adequate Yearly Progress designation. This triggered more services for students who needed help, Mathers said.
Mathers, whose testimony continues today, was asked by Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis if she ever talked to Hall about the Deerwood findings.
“Not directly,” Mathers said.
Hall was one of 35 former APS educators indicted in the test-cheating scandal. She is not standing trial at this time with the remaining 12 defendants because she is suffering from Stage IV breast cancer.
APS trial — 6:45 a.m.
The former head of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement will be the first witness called Tuesday by Fulton County prosecutors in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial.
Kathleen Mathers oversaw an analysis of erasures on answer sheets statewide from the 2009 administration of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, the standardized exam that largely determines whether schools in Georgia meet federal standards.
The analysis found strong indications of cheating at 191 elementary and middle schools across the state — 58 of them in Atlanta. The findings led Gov. Sonny Perdue to appoint special investigators Mike Bowers, Bob Wilson and Richard Hyde, who uncovered cheating throughout the school system.
Also this week, prosecutors on Tuesday are expected to return their focus on Parks Middle School, where rampant test-cheating occurred.
One of the state’s witnesses in the coming days is expected to be the school’s former principal, Christopher Waller, who was initially indicted in the case but entered a guilty plea and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.
There was no testimony Monday in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial because a defense lawyer had to attend a family funeral.
Last month, two former Parks teachers testified about the pressure exerted by the overbearing Waller, who implored his teachers to join his “team” and correct students’ answers on standardized tests.
One former teacher, Stacey Johnson, testified that she left Parks two months before the school’s students took the 2006 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test because she didn’t want to participate in the cheating she feared would occur.
Her fears were realized. In 2005, 1 percent of Parks’ students exceeded expectations on the math test; in 2006, 46 percent did. The percentage of students who met expectations on the reading test jumped to 78 percent in 2006 versus 35 percent the year before.
Waller, once hailed by former APS Superintendent Beverly Hall as a model educator because of the test performance of his school, now concedes the gains were the result of criminal wrongdoing. He has admitted he orchestrated test-cheating by getting his teachers to correct their students’ wrong answers. In February, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of false statements and writings.
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