A private investigator testified Monday he was stunned when Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall and other top APS officials did not seem overly concerned about his conclusion that test-cheating occurred at Parks Middle School.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” Reginal Dukes testified during the APS test-cheating trial. “I thought it was pretty serious. … I just anticipated more from them.”
Dukes said he reported his findings on May 10, 2006, during a meeting with Hall and other top APS officials, including then-regional superintendent Michael Pitts, one of 12 defendants on trial.
But Pitts’ defense attorney, George Lawson, questioned whether the meeting occurred at all.
“I understand you are contending you met with Dr. Hall,” Lawson told Dukes, repeatedly making that point to jurors. During Lawson’s questioning, it became clear that he will argue to jurors that the meeting never happened.
Lawson did all he could to contradict Dukes’ recitation of what happened, even noting discrepancies of his account with APS visitors’ sign-in sheets. Meanwhile, Fulton County prosecutor Clint Rucker tried to bolster Dukes’ testimony by calling on a caterer who delivered lunch to Hall’s conference room that day.
Dukes’ testimony is particularly important in the case against Pitts. Prosecutors are trying to show that Pitts, who oversaw Parks Middle School, was told about test-cheating there and did nothing about it. Dukes could also be an eventual prosecution witness against Hall, who is not on trial at this time because she is recovering from treatment for Stage IV breast cancer.
Even though Dukes said he found test cheating at Parks, the school’s principal, Christopher Waller, was never disciplined. Waller has pleaded guilty and acknowledged he continued to pressure his teachers to cheat on state-mandated standardized tests.
Dukes, a former Atlanta cop, said he was hired by APS in 2006 as an external investigator to look into allegations of test cheating at Parks Middle, as well as other misconduct by Waller.
During his investigation, Dukes said, he learned that a “prompt” had been given to students weeks before they were administered the writing test. The students, he testified, were given several questions but told to focus on Question No. 7: Identify a rule you think is unfair in your home, school or community and describe why you think it’s unfair and explain why you would change it.
On the actual writing test the word “rule” was replaced by “law,” he said.
This was strong evidence that cheating had occurred, said Dukes, noting he interviewed more than a dozen students who corroborated the misconduct.
On May 10, 2006, Dukes said, he was called to the APS central office to present his findings to Hall. At this meeting, he also told Hall, Pitts and other APS officials that he had “unsubstantiated information” that Waller had persuaded his staff to cheat on the 2006 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.
“Everybody in the room heard me say that,” Dukes testified.
Hall sat eating chicken wings and a salad during his presentation, he recalled. Her only question, Dukes said, was, “Do you have any more evidence?”
Pitts stood up for Waller and noted Waller was relatively new to the job, Dukes recalled. “He was very supportive of Mr. Waller and the way he was running the operation over there.”
Also present were former Human Resources Director Millicent Few, former Deputy Superintendent Kathy Augustine and Damaris Perryman-Garrett, who headed the office of internal resolution, Dukes said.
Few has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify. Her plea agreement says that while she does not have an independent recollection of the May 10, 2006, meeting, she does not dispute Dukes’ account of it.
Lawson questioned Dukes about the APS central office’s visitors’ log from that day. It showed Dukes signed in at 11:25 a.m. It also indicated Dukes was signed out at 11:47 a.m.
During his testimony, Dukes said his meeting with Hall lasted the better part of an hour or longer than an hour. He said he had no explanation about the apparent discrepancy on the log and suggested someone else signed him out that day, putting in the incorrect time.
Lawson also noted that another person had signed in at 11:17 a.m. that same day and signed out at 3:44 p.m. Moreover, this person said he was meeting with Hall and Augustine, while Dukes wrote that he was meeting with Perryman-Garrett, Lawson said.
Dukes said he wrote that he was meeting with the internal affairs director because he first went to her office on the third floor before both of them took the elevator up to Hall’s office on the eighth floor.
When asked by Rucker how certain he was that he met with Hall, Pitts and the others, Dukes said, “100 percent.”
After Dukes stepped down, Rucker called Dwynell Williams, who runs a catering business and told jurors she brought lunch to Hall’s conference room at 11 a.m. on the date in question.
Williams’ log from that day showed she brought “2 meats,” “salad” and other food and beverages. At least one of the meat items was certainly chicken, Williams testified, although she made no mention of chicken wings.
This lack of specificity prompted defense attorney Gerald Griggs, who represents former teacher Pamela Williamson, to jump up and ask Williams a single question.
“How many ways can you prepare chicken?” he asked.
“Why, 50 ways,” Williams replied.
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