Hall defiant until the end

Instead, she blamed staff for not having the courage to speak out or for acting unscrupulously, even as she told investigators she never pressed personally for answers.

"There was obviously something for great concern here [but] my job was not to go into every classroom and [to] every teacher, but to have someone look at that and tell me what that meant from their vantage point," Hall said, without knowing what investigators had found. "I don't think of my principals and others as witnesses to the crime. I just don't think of them as criminals."

The report, released July 5, said Hall ignored a culture of cover-ups and obstruction that blossomed during her 12-year tenure. It named 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating, including erasing and correcting mistakes on students' answer sheets. More than 80 APS employees confessed.

Investigators said they uncovered evidence of cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined. There are 104 schools in APS.

In her interview, held on May 18 over a six-hour period, Hall said she could not recall or remember information more than four dozen times. Under the watch of four lawyers, Hall came off as careful and deliberate in her responses.

A clearer picture of Hall emerged as a detached and isolated leader who listened only to the few in her inner circle. Top administrators told investigators they felt the need to protect Hall from too much information in order to allow her "deniability." Hall said she was unaware they did that.

Some APS employees could face criminal charges. More than a half-dozen of Hall's top staff have already lost or left their jobs in the scandal's wake, with more likely to fall.

An attorney for Hall did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment. Hall accepted responsibility and apologized in a statement to the AJC two weeks ago, though she has repeatedly denied she knew of or encouraged test cheating.

Hall said she had come to believe in using academic targets, which increased annually for each school, during her work in New York City public schools. She put targets in place immediately when she came to Atlanta in 1999 and never let up, saying in the interview she had replaced 90 percent of the district's principals in a quest for improvement.

Yet after more than 2,000 interviews with APS educators, investigators told Hall that not only did APS educators not buy in to the concept, but they were "terrified" by them.

"My perception is that this was the first time they were being held accountable for results," Hall responded. "And so, yes, it probably was something that was going to be very uncomfortable for them." Later on, she said, "what I underestimated was, in my view, the ability of some of these teachers to change their practice so they would be successful."

When the state last year first released an audit identifying APS schools with suspicious scores, Hall did not pore over the data. Instead, according to the interview, she waited to look at an in-house report showing only testing gains or drops from the year before -- ignoring the mathematical improbabilities pointed to by the state.

A handpicked panel that came to be known as the Blue Ribbon Commission turned in its final report last summer concluding that major testing irregularities in APS were limited to 12 schools. Hall at the time publicly exonerated other campuses the commission probed, but said in her interview she privately worried about "very shoddy" work.

Hall acknowledged that in the last two years, she’s had less contact with staff. She said it was because of the investigation – she needed to “stay out of the mix,” meaning not as many meetings with principals to discuss academic targets.

But she disputed the idea that people were afraid to talk to her.

“People who have known me and worked for me have never described me as a tyrant or they've never said they're afraid of me,” she said. “They're very clear that I hold them accountable for their performance. But this is the first in my 40 plus years that I've heard those words associated with Beverly Hall.”

Hall is known for her hard stance on accountability, but when it comes to her closest staff members, Hall chalked up some questionable decisions to “poor judgment.”

Regional superintendent Tamara Cotman was reassigned earlier this year for allegedly telling principals during the probe to pen "go to hell" memos to GBI agents. She was also accused of retaliating against an employee who answered questions about the memo.

In response to the incident, Hall said every once in a while, people make bad judgment calls.

“Well, again, when people are under stress, you know they do bizarre things,” Hall said. “Clearly from my view as a professional, I never would have behaved that way.”

Beverly Hall under oath

Here are excerpts from former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall’s May 18 interview with state investigators, in which she spoke under oath:

In this part of the interview, Hall is asked about her background and her decision to move to Atlanta. "I came with a lot of reservation, not even anticipating that I would survive a year. My husband did not come for a year. We did not relocate because we didn't think it would work. I wasn't foolish enough to think I was going to do that much better than the [other superintendents] before me and fully anticipated that it might not work, but here I am 12 years later in Atlanta.”

Later in the interview, Hall is asked to clarify statements she made in press releases in August in response to the Blue Ribbon Commission report on alleged cheating.

Hall: OK. (Inaudible). And unfortunately in any large organization, if you (sic) people did cheat to try to meet the demands, we will ferret them out and the consequences will be severe.

Investigator: My question is, did you really say that? Not pulling off on it, did you in fact say that?

Hall: I believe I've used the term we will ferret them out.

Investigator: Let me tell you the part I'm most interested in. That first intense, if we are guilty of anything, we are guilty of demanding high standards for our teachers, students and staff.

Hall: That's a phrase that the -- the communication department puts that together. But that is something that started this morning. Remember when I said if I'm guilty of anything it's guilty of assuming that the teachers could teach so the students could learn, that's that kind of reference.

Investigator: All I'm asking is..

Hall: It sounds like something I would say, yes.

Investigator: Did you say that?

Hall: I will accept that.

Investigator: This other one is -- it says August 3, from APS superintendent Dr. Beverly Hall, and I'm looking right here at this four paragraphs from the bottom. Okay. The Blue Ribbon Commission report makes it clear, and this is a quote from the investigative report I assume the investigative [team] did not find any data or evidence that qualified allegations made that there was any district wide or coordinated effort to (inaudible) CRCT scores and outcomes of APS students. That's a quote from the Blue Ribbon Commission. Today do you believe that that is an [accurate] statement?

Hall: The investigative team did not find any data or otherwise, nor were there qualified allegations made that there were any districtwide or coordinated effort to manipulate the 2009 CRCT scores and outcomes of students at 58 schools. I believe that that's what the Blue Ribbon Commission did.

Investigator: OK. Let me rephrase my question. Do you believe today that in light of what you earlier told us with respect to the 12 schools, that can still say that there was no districtwide cheating?

Hall: I believe still that there was no coordinated districtwide centrally orchestrated cheating.

Investigator: OK. Drop all those modifiers. Just use districtwide. Do you believe there was no districtwide cheating? And I'm not just asking this idly.

Hall: I know districtwide meaning many schools involved?

Investigator: Yes, ma'am. Spread around?

Hall: Spread around, OK. I have now come to believe based on information I'm getting that it is wider than we could have anticipated.