The human resources chief of Atlanta Public Schools has resigned, the latest casualty in a cheating scandal that has cost more than a half-dozen system leaders their jobs.
Millicent Few's resignation was accepted quietly Monday night by the city school board, which made no mention of her departure despite an announcement of other staff changes by interim Superintendent Erroll Davis. It became public Tuesday after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained a copy of the board's personnel report.
Her departure came the same night APS school board member Khaatim Sherrer El resigned his post. El has accepted a new job as chief of staff for the Foundation for Newark's Future in Newark, N.J. He was one of the first on the board last year to question if APS was doing enough to respond to cheating concerns.
It also came as Davis replaced four area superintendents -- all tainted by the scandal -- with principals promoted from local schools.
Separately, Joyce McCloud, special assistant to the superintendent, will retire Friday, according to the personnel report. Though McCloud was not implicated in the cheating investigation, she worked closely with former Superintendent Beverly Hall, who left the system June 30 -- five days before Gov. Nathan Deal released the results of a report by a state investigators.
The staff moves were the first by Davis in response to report, which details what may be the largest test-cheating scandal to erupt in K-12 public education. They will not be the last. Davis has estimated it will take four to six months to deal with everyone, given employees' contractual and legal rights to due process. The report implicated 178 employees in 44 schools and could result in criminal charges. The scandal stemmed from reports by the AJC about unusual test score gains at some schools.
Few, who worked for the system since 1999, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
According to the state report, she "illegally ordered" the destruction or alteration of documents and made false statements to investigators.
That included the destruction of early, damning drafts of an outside lawyer's investigation of test-tampering at Atlanta's Deerwood Academy, the report said. Separately, Few ordered staff to destroy a case log of cheating-related internal investigations after the AJC requested it, the report said. Few told staff to replace the old log with a new, altered version. When the district finally produced the complaints, the investigators wrote, it illegally withheld cases that made it "look bad" -- either because its investigation was poor or because wrongdoing received minimal sanction.
She denied to investigators that she tampered with documents or ordered anyone else to do so.
Lying to investigators and destroying or altering public records are felonies under Georgia law with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Davis has not yet named Few's replacement.
Culminating a 10-month investigation, the report found widespread cheating in Atlanta schools. It said Hall ignored a culture of cheating, cover-ups and obstruction that blossomed during her 12-year tenure as she stressed annual academic targets by whatever means necessary.
More than 800 pages in length, it named 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating, including erasing and correcting mistakes on students' answer sheets. It concentrated on, but was not limited to, state tests given in 2009.
More than 80 APS employees confessed. The investigators said they confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined. There are 104 schools in APS.
Hall accepted responsibility and apologized in a statement to the AJC last week, though she has repeatedly denied she knew of or encouraged cheating.
For El, who this time last year led a coup of the board to sound an alarm all was not right within APS, the timing was bittersweet.
"I take no solace in knowing my disbeliefs have been confirmed by the recent report," he told supporters in a letter that he also read aloud Monday night to fellow board members. The board, he said, "was told to stop asking questions, stop visiting schools and fell for the micromanaging ruse [by Hall]. It took a little civil disobedience to challenge the status quo and get to this very uncomfortable but necessary day."
His frustration at the time had been building for months, fed, he said, by a lack of candor from Hall and a blind loyalty some on the nine-member board showed her. It led for a time to his holding the chairmanship, a position in which he saw the board turn against itself and falter as Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and business leaders blamed El for disruption and guile.
The fighting resulted in the board being put on probation by the district's accrediting agency. There it remains, with a hearing expected later this month before the state school board to assess its progress. Depending how the hearing goes, Gov. Nathan Deal could remove the board's other eight members from office. El, who served on the board seven years, said city leaders should ask themselves whether it was more important to fight for control of the board or to fight for the city's public school children, who are predominantly African American and poor.
"I didn't always agree with him but I do commend him for having the guts to say, ‘Enough,'" said Patrick Crabtree, an APS elementary school teacher and longtime advocate who lives in the southwest Atlanta district represented by El on the board. It was there, in District 2, that state investigators found some of the worst test fraud, including an elementary school where the now-retired principal ran a schoolwide cheating scheme.
"The board should have listened," Crabtree said. "Khaatim S. El took a stand and the ‘powers to be' came after him. This and previous boards should be ashamed for giving so much power and not monitoring [former Superintendent Beverly] Hall. An old saying comes to mind, ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"
Departed leaders
Beverly Hall, superintendent -- Left June 30
Kathy Augustine, deputy superintendent -- Left June 30
Millicent Few, HR chief -- Resigned Monday
Veleter Mazcyk, general counsel -- Left June 30
Tamara Cotman, area superintendent -- Removed from job; status pending
Michael Pitts, area superintendent -- Removed from job; status pending
Sharon Davis-Williams, area superintendent -- Removed from job; status pending
Robin Hall, area superintendent -- Removed from job; status pending
Latest developments:
· Shanda Beadles, a top science teacher, was appointed principal at Hutchinson Elementary School, replacing Rebecca Dashiell-Mitchell. Hutchinson Elementary, one of three APS schools on the year-round schedule, opens today for classes.
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