Atlanta schools soft on cheats?

Considering the hundreds of thousands of test-takers each year, formal complaints about test cheats are relatively rare.

The Atlanta district, however, has received more such claims given its size than any of the five other large metro districts, an AJC investigation shows. The newspaper also found the district’s handling of 20 cheating complaints in three school years raises questions about how it polices its educators.

Atlanta’s investigations differed from those of its metro peers in key ways, the AJC found. Investigators sometimes left allegations unresolved, turning up fresh questions about suspected irregularities but never scrutinizing them. The district was more likely to mark complaints unsubstantiated. Fewer teachers stepped forward to help investigators and more complaints were anonymous, making eye-witnesses harder to find.

And in three years, records show, just two teachers left after the district found cheating. Departures were more frequent in Cobb, Fulton and DeKalb.

Atlanta officials said in a prepared statement that they take allegations seriously, investigate fairly and don’t tolerate cheating.

This summer, a cheating scandal propelled the district into the news when its handling of suspected test-tampering at one school elicited sharp criticism from Gov. Sonny Perdue.

A state investigation found someone had altered tests at Atlanta’s Deerwood Academy. But Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall challenged the findings. Perdue called her stance outrageous, saying “any reasonable person” could see cheating occurred.

Educators who cheat do more than teach bad behavior: False scores rob schools of an important warning sign that students are academically underwater. Extra tutoring is often there for students after they fail. Dequayvious needed such help, Clark said, but he didn’t get it because his scores weren’t low enough.

“What they’re doing is just passing them through and, in the long run, they’re not going to know what they need to know,” she said.

Hall said she does not believe cheating is “pervasive” in Atlanta schools and is satisfied with the district’s investigative process. She attributed anonymous allegations to “poor performers” and disgruntled employees, questioning the merit of the claims. She said some educators resent being held accountable.

She said the district has a broad record of achievement. “Could you cheat in all these schools?” she asked, adding, “You would have to spend your whole life cheating...

“It’s been nine years of consistent progress,” she said.

Districts investigate selves

In the Blalock case, records show an investigator from the system’s Office of Internal Resolution interviewed 11 students.

Some of the children’s explanations changed over the course of the conversation. One of the students who said the test proctor gave Dequayvious answers later said she only gave the boy’s friend answers, district notes show. Other students said they didn’t get help from the proctor. She denied the allegations, as did another teacher in the room during testing.

In the end, at least three students said she had provided forbidden assistance.

Through a district spokeswoman, the proctor declined to comment. The district said in a statement that it stands by its investigation.

The state inquiry this year into soaring scores at Deerwood and three schools in other districts included analyzing erasures on answer sheets. Officials studied summer-school retakes of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, the state’s main measure of student academics through eighth grade.

While they said evidence of cheating was overwhelming, Atlanta maintains its own investigation found insufficient proof.

Schools and districts typically do the initial investigation when allegations of cheating surface. Educators must report such improprieties to superiors; systems must report testing irregularities to the state.

At least one national testing expert has questioned the practice of leaving the initial probe to school districts, which are measured by test results, too.

“The incentives are for the districts to get high scores,” said Gregory Cizek, a University of North Carolina testing expert.

The AJC reviewed 98 complaints of testing irregularities reported to the Atlanta, Clayton, DeKalb, Cobb, Fulton and Gwinnett districts. The investigative reports filled 2,445 pages obtained through the Georgia Open Records Act.

When Cobb determined a serious breach was committed, records show, the outcome was often severe: Five teachers resigned in three years.

DeKalb and Fulton reported fewer complaints — 17 total — but stiff consequences. Seven educators left the two districts after the districts found test misconduct. Gwinnett had one resignation. Clayton reported few complaints and no departures.

In Atlanta, one of the teachers who left after an investigation had been disciplined for breaking testing rules before, records show.

In April 2007, a tearful student at A.D. Williams Elementary said teacher Barbara White told her to change three students’ answers to match hers, records show. Seven years before, White had been suspended after giving students a page from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to study before taking the exam, records show.

After the second testing complaint, the teacher licensing agency suspended her for a year. White denied the allegations, records show. Hall, the superintendent, recommended firing her. She resigned. By phone, White denied cheating and declined to discuss her case further.

Misconduct sometimes drew a gentler response in Atlanta, however, than in Cobb or Fulton, records show.

After investigators found Bolton Academy teacher Theresa Powell had given students answers to CRCT questions by nodding and shaking her head or pointing, Atlanta and state licensing officials suspended her for 45 work days. When similar allegations of coaching were substantiated against two teachers in Cobb and two in Fulton, all four teachers resigned.

Through a district spokeswoman, Powell declined to comment. She denied cheating at the time.

Few eyewitnesses involved

The Atlanta district uses its own employee relations officers and outside investigators – who are often lawyers – to conduct investigations. When those investigators come across new allegations beyond the initial claim, however, they do not always explore them, records show.

A teacher at Thomasville Elementary, for instance, reported during an investigation last year that answer sheets and test booklets were placed differently in a stack returned to her after being locked up overnight. She noticed at least two answers had been changed. They no longer matched the student’s markings in the test booklet.

And at Walter White Elementary, a student said a different teacher — not the one who was the subject of the investigation — gave answers to CRCT questions, records show.

The new allegations generated little, if any, scrutiny, records show.

Documents suggest that at times, Atlanta’s investigations of testing deception were hampered by a lack of willing eyewitnesses. Five complaints were anonymous. While teachers were a regular source for initial reports of test irregularities in districts such as Cobb and Fulton, few stepped forward in Atlanta.

One who did sounded regretful. “I didn’t realize the effect that it might have on the school and my new principal,” a White Elementary teacher wrote in a statement for the district. She had reported two students said their teacher told them to look ahead in the CRCT – a violation – and ask her questions.

In another complaint, a teacher said the last time he had answered truthfully about a problem, he had been reprimanded. “I don’t want any more questions from Atlanta Public Schools,” the teacher said.

Hall, the superintendent, said employees are protected by the state’s whistle-blower act, which prohibits retaliation for speaking up. The district also has a policy against reprisals. Hall said no employee has ever written her to complain of being fired for coming forward.

Good scores bring bonuses

Potential whistle-blowers may have another incentive to keep quiet: All Atlanta school employees can earn bonuses when scores rise.

Each year, the district sets targets for raising test scores. Bonuses range from $50 for bus drivers to $2,000 for teachers and principals if the school meets 70 to 100 percent of the district’s targets.

Last year, 50 of 83 eligible schools qualified at some level, with three schools meeting all targets. The district spent more than $2 million on the bonuses. Hall received an extra $82,000, partly due to test scores.

Jeff Schiller, a partner with Instructional and Accountability Systems, an Atlanta Public Schools consultant, said the incentive focuses teachers on effective instructional programs. “If you take a look at the amount of money they get, after taxes, it’s hardly enough to motivate somebody to do something illegally or unethically,” he said.

Low scores matter for students. In one case at Cascade Elementary, a parent complained that her daughter should have repeated the third grade. On classroom work and other tests, the child’s results were among the lowest in her class and in national comparisons with peers, records show. But her CRCT scores were stellar.

How, the mother asked, could those test scores be valid? One top district official’s answer: Some kids may make lucky guesses.

Clark, whose son Dequayvious said a test proctor gave him answers, was disappointed the district’s probe seemed to go nowhere in her case. “Just giving him the answers is not giving him an education,” she said.

Blalock closed this year and Dequayvious began classes at another Atlanta school – Deerwood Academy.