6:12 p.m.
Day three of the Atlanta cheating trial ended with testimony from Leah Cauley, a teacher who was fired after she reported seeing an educator at her school coach students during state testing.
She got hate mail in her school mailbox and a letter from district investigators that accused her of filing a false report.
“I had a really hard time reading it beginning to end because I was so shocked by the findings,” said Cauley, who taught at C.W. Hill Elementary School during the 2004-05 school year.
Lawyers for some of the 12 defendants noted that Cauley did not work with their clients and that their clients did not work at C.W. Hill Elementary, implying that her testimony was irrelevant.
Prosecutors are trying to prove that there was a widespread culture of cheating that stemmed from pressure by then-Superintendent Beverly Hall to produce huge performance gains on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.
Cauley was obviously pained by the reaction of her former colleagues when she reported what she saw as cheating.
She received anonymous, profanity-laced letters in her school mailbox: “You are still here?? You are a big liar!!!!,” said one.
C.W. Hill Elementary received brief mention in the 2011 state investigation into cheating that led to this trial: A lot of erasures on tests were noted, but there was “limited” statistical data to indicate cheating. Only one unidentified witness was interviewed at the school, which closed in 2009.
Cauley was new to her teaching career when she was fired by APS but was still teaching at a private school until December, when she stopped to care for her newborn baby.
3:15 p.m.
Carver High School was the state’s lowest-achieving school when Tony Overstreet took over as principal in 2003.
Two years later, Carver students had made 12 percent gains in their testing performance, Overstreet testified Wednesday in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial. In fact, it was the first time the school made Adequate Yearly Progress, an official measure of school performance.
“I was very proud,” he said.
But it would be the last year Overstreet would serve as Carver’s principal, a development that led him to ask then-Superintendent Beverly Hall why he was no longer needed.
“I’m in there begging,” Overstreet testified, recalling his private meeting with Hall. “I said to her, ‘What did I do wrong?’ ”
“You did nothing wrong,” Hall responded, Overstreet testified. “You did everything I asked you to do. I don’t have time for incremental gains.”
Prosecutors called on Overstreet to support allegations that Hall instilled a culture at APS that put enormous pressure on educators to achieve substantial – not moderate – gains in test scores. The former superintendent also set unrealistic targets there was no way educators could meet without tampering with the standardized tests, prosecutors allege.
Hall, who has pleaded not guilty, is not being tried at this time with the 12 former APS educators and administrators because she has been receiving treatment for Stage IV breast cancer.
When Hall convened the private meeting with Overstreet, she told him he could take an assistant principal job, Overstreet testified Wednesday. But Overstreet said he declined the “demotion” and left APS in June 2005.
Overstreet, who is white, later filed a federal lawsuit alleging race discrimination was the behind the system’s motivation not to let him keep his job as principal. The school system settled the case in October 2007.
12:00 p.m.
The third day of the Atlanta schools cheating trial started with testing expert Gregory Cizek, who explained everything from the history of standardized testing (he started with ancient Israel) to the modern technology involved in analyzing exams for erasures or tampering.
The Israelites tested interlopers by their ability to enunciate the word “shiboleth,” and failure often meant death.
Testing in Atlanta Public Schools wasn’t life-or-death but prosecutors allege careers were at stake in the high-stakes Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, leading to a widespread conspiracy of cheating that has led to this trial of 12 former Atlanta educators.
They were implicated in part by erasure analyses. Optical test-scoring machines today can scan test sheets and inspect the bubbles, scoring them for their degree of darkness to indicate whether they were intentionally filled or might have been erased. Cizek, who teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the machines are so sophisticated they can even differentiate between styles of bubble-darkening: The act is as individual as a signature, with some people scribbling up and down and others side to side and numerous styles between.
Still, technology alone can’t prove guilt in this case. Cizek said statistical evidence that indicates a lot of erasures or spikes in test scores, as happened in Atlanta, “can mean there was cheating.” But, he added, “statistical evidence doesn’t prove something happened.”
Therein lies the burden for prosecutors: proving that the defendants had active roles in the alleged conspiracy.
10:02 a.m.
At the opening of the third day in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial, another juror was excused from service.
Judge Jerry Baxter dismissed an alternate juror who did not arrive for court Wednesday.
It’s expected to be an endurance trial that will take several months. During jury selection in prior weeks, numerous prospective jurors expressed concerns about the effect on their livelihoods and personal lives of serving.
Earlier this week, Baxter had released another juror. The new dismissal leaves the court with 12 jurors and nine backups.
The first witness called by the state Wednesday: Gregory Cizek, testing expert from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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