Chandrema Gallashaw has a problem — and she is smart enough to know it.
In less than a month, the 14-year-old eighth-grader at Atlanta’s Parks Middle School will sit down and take the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, which will measure her reading, language arts, math, science and social studies skills.
But Chandrema is not ready.
“I don’t know things that I should know,” she said. “I think I am going to fail the language arts and math portions of the CRCT.”
To help students such as Chandrema, Atlanta Public Schools is spending upward of $6 million to offer after-school classes and Saturday academies so that hundreds — or possibly thousands of students — can catch up in the wake of the cheating scandal.
More than 5,000 students have enrolled in Saturday academies alone, APS spokesman Keith Bromery said.
As educators begin appearing before district tribunals in APS’s bid to fire those implicated in cheating, some students are battling test anxiety and a shaken confidence in their ability to master their schoolwork — yet more fallout from the scandal.
Nowhere was the cheating worse than at Parks, where the state found suspicious erasures that improved test scores in 89.5 percent of Parks’ classrooms.
Chandrema was a sixth-grader at Parks at the time in question.
“My child came home and said, ‘I am scared to take the test,’” said Chandra Gallashaw, Chandrema’s mother. “The children are suffering.”
After an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution questioned the validity of test scores in Atlanta schools, a state-directed investigation found cheating on standardized tests at 44 APS schools, involving about 180 educators.
In September, APS expanded existing academic intervention programs to help students who may have been harmed, though the district has no way of knowing for sure which students were affected.
APS says it hasn’t determined how much this tutoring costs. But last November, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that expanding the school remediation program could top $6.4 million. At the time, Superintendent Erroll Davis said he would also seek private donations to cover some of the remediation costs.
“I am checking on them periodically,” Davis said of the programs. “... But to what extent of success they are having, it is much too soon to know.”
‘They are so behind’
At the time APS was expanding its remediation programs, Davis appealed to churches and community groups to help by offering private programs.
Denean Smith, whose husband is the pastor of New Horizon Baptist Church, answered the call by expanding the church’s Saturday academic programs to include more Atlanta students.
“The investigation opened the eyes of the community because some of us had no idea,” said Smith, who has a doctorate in educational leadership and teaches math in DeKalb County.
Every Saturday at the Horizon Saturday Academy, the program’s 27 students gather in one of the computer labs or small offices for individual tutoring on the CRCT, SAT prep and basic math, reading and social studies enrichment.
“I am shocked at the level that some of the kids come in,” said Daphne Massey, a volunteer teacher at Horizon. “They are so behind not just in the work they should be doing, but also compared to what students at other schools are doing.”
Alexis Leaks, an eighth-grader at Young Middle School, did not pass the math portion of the CRCT, and she’s been getting help from the church.
“I wish more students would take advantage of this program because I think it can have a grander impact on the community at large,” said her mother, Leticia Leaks. “But a lot of times, the issue is not with the students but the parents who have to dedicate the time.”
Dedication is not an issue in a little brick house in the Pittsburgh area of Atlanta. The house is a hub of activity, with constant chatter. In addition to her own three children, Chandra Gallashaw invited a cousin and her three children from Detroit to move in with her.
Moment of truth
Every Saturday morning, Chandrema and her 14-year-old cousin Stephen Garlington get up, eat breakfast and walk a couple of blocks to catch a 7:40 a.m. school bus to Price Middle School for Saturday academy.
Chandrema, who is scheduled to attend Carver High School next year, is taking math. Stephen, who has been making A’s and B’s at Parks, is taking math and language arts.
“I am doing well, but I need more help in language arts,” he said. “I don’t even know what a hyperbole is. I am still not clear on subject/verb agreement.”
For Chandrema, April’s CRCT test will serve as a moment of truth.
In 2009, Chandrema passed all sections of the test, while making steady B’s, her mother said.
The next year, she failed the math portion.
“In her case, the question has to be asked, How much was she helped [by cheating teachers]?” said Doug Fuchs, a professor of special education at Vanderbilt University, specializing in remediation and reading and math disabilities.
Chandra Gallashaw is unsure.
“I believe cheating has been going on for a long time,” Gallashaw said. “But I don’t believe cheating happened for my kids. I make sure I go over their homework every night.”
Gallashaw does think the response to the cheating scandal weakened Parks and is affecting the quality of instruction at the school.
Parks was purged of its best teachers and administrators, she said. A recent decision to close Parks as part of a system-wide rezoning project hasn’t helped.
“This is because of the lack of teachers. Their grades are going down because they don’t have adequate teachers,” Gallashaw said. “My child is scared and I am scared for her. Chandrema is nothing but a number to them.”
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