3:50 p.m.
A former Atlanta Public Schools reading specialist testified Wednesday that former regional supervisor Tamara Cotman told her she was being involuntarily transferred because she “wasn’t playing for the right team.”
Asked what she took that to mean, Monica Hooker answered, “To cheat. To up those numbers. It was not about the child. It was about the numbers.”
Hooker was called as a prosecution witness in the trial against Cotman and 11 other former educators and administrators who are accused of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy to inflate test scores. Hooker worked two school years at BEST Academy middle school from 2007 to 2009.
She testified that Cotman called her into her office in June 2009 to tell her she was being transferred to Harper-Archer Middle School. Cotman said one of the reasons was that Hooker’s students weren’t progressing fast enough academically, Hooker said.
Hooker said she told Cotman that all of her BEST Academy seventh-grade students passed the reading test and that her sixth-grade students also did well on the reading test. After that, Cotman made the comment about not “playing for the right team,” Hooker testified.
During cross-examination, Cotman’s lawyer, Benjamin Davis, questioned whether his client actually made this statement. He played a tape-recording taken by an APS Office of Internal Resolution official who interviewed Hooker about her complaint over her working conditions. During that internal affairs interview, Hooker never mentioned the “right team” comment.
When Davis asked Hooker about that, Hooker said the internal affairs official “never asked me about cheating during that time.” Hooker said she had told the internal affairs official about the data before the tape recorder was turned on.
When Davis asked Hooker if Cotman ever told her to cheat, Hooke replied, “She has not ever directly asked me to cheat.”
11:55 a.m.
The former principal of the BEST Academy testified Wednesday that when his school did not meet annual targets, he was told to go follow a fellow principal so he could learn from him.
Curt Green, who helped start up the boys-only middle school, said regional director Tamara Cotman placed him on a performance development plan when BEST Academy didn’t meet a key benchmark in 2008. One condition of the plan, he said, was to “shadow” Kennedy Middle School Principal Lucious Brown.
Green, testifying in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial, was not allowed to tell jurors what happened at Kennedy Middle School. But Brown is expected to divulge what happened there later on in the trial.
Brown pleaded guilty in January to a single felony count in the test-cheating case and agreed to be a witness for the prosecution. During his plea, Brown admitted erasing his students’ answers and changing them from wrong to right on standardized tests given in 2008 and 2009.
Cotman is one of 12 defendants on trial, charged in an alleged racketeering conspiracy to inflate test scores. There has been no testimony during the trial indicating that Cotman knew Brown was changing students’ answers on state-mandated standardized tests. Green also testified that Cotman had nothing to do with test-cheating at his former school
Green was hired by APS in 2007 to help start up BEST Academy. Months into its first school year, he testified Wednesday, Cotman began putting pressure on him to meet testing targets. In a February 2008 email, Cotman told him that preliminary data indicated his school was not going to meet its targets, known as Adequate Yearly Progress.
“I know that you are keenly aware that the academic success of the program will be highly scrutinized at the end of this year and not making (Adequate Yearly Progress) is not an option,” Cotman wrote.
BEST Academy did not make Adequate Yearly Progress that year, even though the school met two of the necessary three criteria: students’ test scores for math and reading. The school fell short because it didn’t meet students’ attendance requirements, Green said.
During the school’s second year, Green said, his relationship with Cotman, one of 12 defendants on trial, deteriorated. During that time, Cotman put him on the performance development plan. Green said he felt that was unfair because his students were making progress academically.
During one meeting, Cotman said if she had some of the plastic explosive C-4, she would “explode the building and start all over again,” Green testified.
On April 3, 2009, Green said, Cotman told him that either his employment was going to be non-renewed or he could resign.
That same day, Green sent an email to an APS human resources official and notified her he was going to resign June 30, 2009, at the end of the school year. “The time came and I threw in the towel,” he said.
Weeks later, BEST Academy students took the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. Before the end of the school year, Green learned that BEST Academy made Adequate Yearly Progress, meeting all three of the required targets.
Green testified that no cheating occurred at BEST Academy to achieve that goal and said his school was one of five schools cleared early on in the state investigation because an erasure analysis raised no red flags to indicate test-cheating.
BEST Academy started out with 135 six-graders during its first school year in 2007-08. Only 39 of those students graduated from high school, Green noted.
Fulton County prosecutor Clint Rucker asked Green whether he thought the students’ graduation rate would have been better if he had been allowed to stay on at BEST Academy.
“In my opinion, yes,” Green answered.
7:00 a.m.
The former principal of BEST Academy continues his testimony Wednesday in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial.
Curt Green, who once headed the school, testified briefly as a prosecution witness before court adjourned Tuesday. Green testified in the first trial a year ago against former regional supervisor Tamara Cotman, who oversaw 21 area schools.
Cotman went to trial then because her lawyer filed a speedy trial demand. She was tried on a single count of influencing witnesses and acquitted of that charge.
Cotman now faces a single charge of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy to inflate test-scores on state-mandated standardized tests. Eleven other former educators and administrators are also standing trial.
The trial, expected to last months, is now into its third week of testimony. More than 30 prosecution witnesses have testified so far.
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