CONTINUING COVERAGE
In 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution broke the first of what would be several stories highlighting suspect test scores in Atlanta Public Schools. For years the newspaper kept digging, and eventually special investigators appointed by the governor exposed widespread cheating in the 50,000-student APS district. The APS trial is the latest chapter in that coverage.
Reports based on several investigations that confirmed cheating in Atlanta Public Schools were cleansed before being released to the public, a witness in the APS cheating trial testified Wednesday.
In at least one instance, an entire report from an APS-hired consultant vanished because what he found would have hurt former Superintendent Beverly Hall’s legacy, Hall’s former chief of staff Sharron Pitts testified.
Hall, who has Stage IV breast cancer, is not being tried with the 12 former educators accused of conspiring to change students’ answers on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, but she has been the subject of much testimony this week. The charges brought down her administration and ruined multiple teaching careers.
Prosecutors say Hall’s concern with her image were behind decisions to lie to the public, the media and the state.
At that time, Hall was recognized nationwide for raising urban students’ test scores.
“She was a highly regarded educator,” Pitts said.
Pitts said Hall tried to hide findings by various consultants that cheating had occurred. At the same time, she was promising the public transparent and independent investigations into reports of cheating, Pitts said. Hall was concerned about how history would treat her.
Pitts was drawn into those deceptions, but said she did not know Hall lied until after the fact.
Pitts said she began seeing the discrepancies when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked for copies of reports from internal and external investigations that Hall supposedly ordered because the Governor’s Office of Student Accountability found evidence of cheating on a makeup test at Deerwood Academy.
Hall wrote GOSA that internal APS and external investigations found no cheating, and the state agency’s conclusions were wrong. Pitts said she eventually learned there had never been an internal investigation and that the external review had not been completed.
“This was something we really needed to fix. We needed to correct the record with the state,” Pitts said she told Hall.
“We had just made a false statement to a state entity,” said Pitts, who now works in a public school district in Michigan. “I was concerned about the legality of that.”
Hall announced in early 2010 that she'd hired two nationally-recognized experts to look at test statistics and APS policies while continuing to fight a public relations battle as more news stories about cheating surfaced.
Pitts said APS quickly released the findings of consultant Douglas Reeves, who attributed test score improvements to better teaching.
But Hall tried to deny the existence of a report from the second consultant, Andrew Porter. Porter, then the dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Education, found statistics showed cheating had taken place.
After two inquiries from the media, Hall claimed Porter’s report was not “in the district” because she had given it to the Blue Ribbon Commission, an “independent” panel appointed by the Atlanta Board of Education. Yet, the commission’s final report made no reference to Porter’s conclusions. That report went through five versions, and each version was less critical than the one before, Pitts said.
Pitts will be cross examined by defense attorneys Thursday.
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