YOU BE THE JUDGE
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Week 16 of the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial was, based on the testimony, extraordinary — as in the extraordinary efforts that APS leaders allegedly made to hide evidence of cheating from the public, and in the extraordinarily remote likelihood that improved test scores were achieved legitimately.
On Monday, Colinda Howard, former head of the APS Office of Internal Resolution, testified that some school district leaders exchanged personal email addresses with one another so they could share information about the 2009 investigation without concern that those writings would become public.
Howard also said district officials were worried that the investigator’s reports would be made public before any negative findings were removed. So the investigator was told to label all versions of the report as “drafts,” which would shield them from the media under the Georgia Open Records Act.
On Wednesday, a key prosecution witness testified that investigative reports that confirmed cheating were cleansed before being released to the public. In at least one instance, an entire report from an APS-hired consultant vanished because what he found would have hurt then-Superintendent Beverly Hall’s legacy, Hall’s former chief of staff Sharron Pitts said.
Because Hall is battling Stage IV breast cancer she is not being tried with the 12 former educators accused of conspiring to inflate test scores. But she remains the subject of much testimony.
The trial week ended with this jaw-dropper from another key prosecution witness: Students in one fourth-grade class at Dobbs Elementary School had a one in 288 septillion chance of doing as well as they purportedly did on a 2009 standardized test.
“That’s 27 zeros,” University of Michigan professor Brian Jacob said Thursday.
Another fourth-grade class at Dobbs also saw dramatic improvements on the CRCT over what was expected. The odds? One in 4 quintillion, said Jacob, an authority on statistical analysis and education policy.
Opening arguments in the APS trial started on Sept. 29 following a jury-selection process that began in August. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Baxter presides in a courtroom that had to be modified to accommodate all the defendants and their lawyers. The trial takes place Mondays-Thursdays, barring breaks for holidays, sick leave, bereavement, etc.
Here are more highlights from Week 16:
MONDAY’S MOMENT
Judge Jerry Baxter exploded, “Hey!” when a defense attorney started to ask witness Millicent Few if she took a plea deal because the judge had told the defendants their punishment would be severe if they went to trial.
“Interjecting me into this is not going to be allowed,” Baxter said.
“It is totally in my discretion, the sentence, and you are not to go into that,” Baxter said. “That is not a burden for the jury. … If somebody broaches the subject of sentencing in this case, I’m going to send them to jail for contempt.”
TUESDAY’S MOMENT
Colinda Howard, former director of the APS Office of Internal Resolution, testified that virtually everything former superintendent Beverly Hall had written in a letter to the state about cheating was untrue. Hall wrote to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement after the agency said there had been cheating on a makeup of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test given at Deerwood Academy in summer 2008. Hall wrote on July 6, 2009, that extensive internal and external investigations found no cheating. But Howard said there hadn’t been an internal investigation and the external investigation was not finished in early July. Moreover, Howard said, the investigator eventually found it was “highly likely” there had been cheating, a declaration that was removed from the final report.
WEDNESDAY’S MOMENT
Defense attorney Angela Johnson confronted Judge Baxter about how he spoke to her the previous day. Specifically, when Johnson told Baxter on Tuesday that she could not hear him speaking to the jury, he snapped, “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Johnson said the judge had been rude throughout the months-long trial, and she sought an apology. “I’d like it to be done with class and not as if it’s something you have to do,” Johnson said.
“I will do my utmost to be classy,” Baxter grumbled.
With the jurors in place, Baxter began his apology by reminding them of his exchange with Johnson the previous day.
“That was rude and I apologize to Ms. Johnson,” he said.
THURSDAY’S MOMENT
Former Atlanta School Board member Yolanda Johnson recounted how Beverly Hall reacted when asked whether she planned to try to remain superintendent when her contract expired. Johnson said the question offended Hall, and the superintendent responded by turning to someone and saying, “‘How dare Ms. Johnson discuss my personnel matters in front of others.’”
Prosecutor Fani Willis asked Johnson, “Who hires and fires the superintendent?”
Johnson, who left the school board in 2013, answered, “I thought we did.”
WHAT’S NEXT
University of Michigan professor Brian Jacob returns to the witness stand Monday and possibly Tuesday.
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