A month before retiring as Atlanta’s schools superintendent, Beverly Hall finally acknowledged this week that educators cheated to help students pass state-mandated achievement tests. And, she said, the findings of a criminal investigation into the matter will be “alarming.”
In a videotaped farewell address to district employees, Hall abandoned her long-standing denial of significant cheating on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in 2009.
“It’s become increasingly clear over the last year that a segment of our staff chose to violate the trust that was placed in them,” Hall said on the video. “I am confident that aggressive, swift action will be taken against anyone who believes so little in our students and in our system of support that they turned to dishonesty as the only option.”
Hall, who is leaving after 12 years as superintendent, recorded the message Thursday and emailed it the same day to district employees, many of whom were beginning their summer breaks.
“That was her way to say goodbye to all of them,” said Keith Bromery, a school district spokesman. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained a copy of the video on Friday.
Although intended as a valedictory speech, much of Hall’s five-minute, 31-second talk focused on the cheating scandal, which has called into question the district’s academic progress during her tenure. Her usual tone of defiance in discussing alleged cheating had softened to one of acceptance.
“Truthfully, this has been a tough year for all of us,” Hall said. “Unfortunately, it may get tougher before it gets better.”
The criminal investigation began last summer by order of then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, who found the district’s own inquiry into suspicious changes on test papers to be inadequate.
That investigation, Hall said in the video, will conclude in the next few weeks, and “I expect it to draw some troubling – no, some alarming – conclusions.”
Hall did not say whether she expects district employees to face criminal charges. Nor did she address her own culpability in the matter. Many teachers and other district employees have said that through intimidation and retaliation against whistle-blowers, Hall created a culture that implicitly encouraged raising test scores through any means necessary, including cheating. Bromery said Hall was attending graduation ceremonies Friday and was not available for comment.
Investigators have interviewed Hall at least twice, most recently in mid-May. On that occasion, she appeared with the criminal defense lawyer who is representing her, Richard Deane, a former U.S. attorney for north Georgia.
Investigators did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
The district has been addressing the possibility of cheating since 2008, when the AJC reported that some Atlanta schools had shown statistically improbable increases in CRCT scores from the previous year. In 2009, Hall dismissed the suggestion that cheating was anything more than an isolated occurrence.
“Could you cheat in all these schools?” she said in 2009. “You would have to spend your whole life cheating.”
A state examination later found excessive numbers of wrong-to-right erasures on test papers from 58 Atlanta elementary and middle schools – far more than in any other Georgia district. Again, Hall said no “widespread” cheating had been proven.
“It’s always possible,” Hall said last year, “for some individual to cheat.”
The scope of the cheating scandal is reflected in Hall’s addressing it so prominently in her last mass communication with district employees.
In the video, Hall appeared in front of a chart of achievement data, with the headline, “A Decade of Progress.” But she immediately spoke about the investigation that dominated the school year and seemed to be preparing employees for what is likely to be a damaging report from investigators.
“With all that is going on in the district,” she said, “I wanted to take a moment and speak with you one final time.”
“I don’t yet know the full extent of the findings” of the investigation, she said. “But what I do know is that the report will serve as a new point for the district to move forward with hope.”
She encouraged employees to look back “honestly and confidently at all that we’ve built and accomplished together,” regardless of the investigation’s outcome.
She cited long-term advances in CRCT scores, as well as on other standardized examinations, since 1999, when she came to Atlanta from Newark, N.J. She said preliminary results of the 2011 CRCT show gains in four of five subject areas, but she gave no specific results.
Still, the cheating scandal cast a pall on her final remarks.
“Despite the challenges ahead,” Hall told employees, “please continue learning, growing and believing. Please continue the noble work that you do. It has been a great privilege to provide leadership to all of you. I will cherish forever my time in Atlanta, and I will continue to hold you and our students in my heart.”
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