Atlanta Public Schools said Monday it would not fire employees who refuse to incriminate themselves in a criminal investigation of cheating on standardized tests.
The announcement came during a court hearing for a principal, Lucious Brown of Kennedy Middle School, who has been subpoenaed to appear before the special investigators looking into irregularities with the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.
Investigators have told Brown he could face prosecution for orchestrating cheating, his lawyer, Brian Steel, said. Brown is one of several dozen school officials summoned for questioning this week.
Chief Judge Cynthia Wright of Fulton County Superior Court denied Brown’s request to cancel the interrogation. Wright rejected Steel’s arguments that the special investigators appointed by former Gov. Sonny Perdue — Mike Bowers, Bob Wilson and Richard Hyde — lack subpoena power.
Steel said the investigators have assumed broad powers without judicial oversight. But Bowers said state law gives the governor the authority to appoint investigators such as himself.
Steel also said that an “edict” by Superintendent Beverly Hall, instructing district employees to cooperate with the investigation, illegally deprives employees of their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. “My client,” Steel said, “is being put between a rock and a hard place: job or jail.”
But Wright said the district’s promise to not fire employees rendered the argument moot.
Brown’s school posted dramatic gains on the CRCT in 2008 and 2009, but was flagged by state officials for excessive numbers of wrong-to-right erasures on test papers.
In court documents, Steel said Brown “has done nothing unethical, immoral or criminal.”
Bowers said only that the interrogation is “an interview of someone about whom we have information.”
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