During her 11 years as superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, Beverly Hall has batted down any controversies engulfing her and the district:
July 1999
Hall, the state-appointed head of the Newark, N.J., school system becomes Atlanta’s fifth superintendent in about a decade.
Hall: “I cannot ride in here on a white horse and say, ‘This is how we’re going to do it, folks. Let’s do it.’ ”
January 2000
New Jersey opens an investigation after reporting that Hall left behind a $57.6 million budget deficit in Newark, a figure later revised to $73 million. Hall: “When it is all said and done, [the investigation] will show there was nothing criminal.”
August 2000
Hall gets a $33,660 bonus despite meeting just 12 of 26 performance goals and failing to increase standardized test scores. The school board president says he wanted scores to “skyrocket.”
Hall: “It’s going to be tough until teachers begin to do things differently.”
September 2001
Atlanta posts huge gains on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, prompting education experts to call for an independent review.
Hall (through a spokeswoman): “We believe the results should be allowed to speak for themselves.”
June 2003
The school district admits filing inaccurate discipline reports to the state. Hall: “Our errors were unintentional and were not an attempt to knowingly falsify or conceal data.”
August 2003
The state labels 49 Atlanta schools as “failing” and orders them to let students transfer. Hall: “What is ironic ... is that the vast majority of these ‘failing’ schools are not failing at all.”
May 2004
The AJC reports that the school district wasted and mismanaged millions of dollars from the federal E-rate program for technology purchases. Two district officials later get prison terms. Hall: “I am not especially proud of our system’s management of E-rate, but I am proud of the results.”
January 2009
State auditors find widespread errors in the district’s finances, which they described as in disarray. Hall: “The reports haven’t caught up with the improvements.”
August 2009
After cheating is alleged on the 2008 summer-school CRCT, the AJC reports the district rarely punished employees accused in such cases. Hall: “Could you cheat in all these schools? You would have to spend your whole life cheating.”
February 2010
Suspecting widespread cheating on the 2009 CRCT, the state orders Atlanta to investigate statistically improbable increases in test scores in more than two-thirds of its elementary and middle schools. Hall: “... As hard as it is for some people to believe, when children are held to high standards, when teachers use appropriate strategies, when there are high expectations ... children do improve, and some of them improve dramatically.”
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