One of the governor’s former special investigators on Monday leveled stinging criticism on the Atlanta Public Schools system, saying unrealistic test targets installed by former Superintendent Beverly Hall caused the cheating scandal.
Bob Wilson, one of three special investigators who uncovered cheating throughout APS, made note of both the targets and Hall’s threat to oust principals whose schools failed to meet the goals.
“In the end, I don’t think it had anything to do with children,” Wilson testified as a prosecution witness during the test-cheating trial. “… It had to do with image.”
It was one thing for schools to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress goals set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Wilson said. But APS set the rungs higher than that.
“It’s like running hurdles and each hurdle gets higher than the last,” Wilson said, adding that it didn’t matter whether a hurdle was cleared or not.
Wilson recalled what Hall told special investigators during her first interview with them in August 2010.
“She made it very clear that in regards to targets, the principals in the schools had three years to make targets,” Wilson testified. “If not, they would be gone. There would be no exceptions, no excuses.”
During cross-examination, Wilson acknowledged that the school board adopted those targets. At times accommodating, at times combative, Wilson parried with defense lawyers during the cross-examination that continues today.
Wilson was one of three special investigators initially appointed by former Gov. Sonny Perdue to look into the scandal. Their work led to a massive report that formed the basis for an indictment handed down by a Fulton County grand jury, accusing educators, including Hall, of participating in a racketeering conspiracy to inflate test scores.
Hall, who denies the charges, is not on trial at this time because she is receiving treatment for Stage IV breast cancer.
The trial against 12 of the former educators restarted Monday after a recess last week when a defense lawyer came down ill.
Wilson, a former DeKalb County district attorney, accused the school system of trying to thwart the investigation by hiding documents and making promises and commitments that were never kept.
“The system lied to us again and again,” Wilson testified. “… What APS was doing was to hide the truth.”
Wilson’s testimony touched on the alleged culpability of most of the defendants standing trial. Because Wilson was on the stand, defense attorney Bob Rubin asked that jurors be allowed to listen to a recording of a 2011 interview given to the special investigators by his client, Dana Evans, the former principal at Dobbs Elementary School.
Rubin handed out transcripts of the 71-minute interview so jurors could read along. This allowed Evans to, in an indirect way, provide testimony without having to take the witness stand.
At the interview, Evans was questioned by the governor’s three special investigators and four attorneys assisting them. Wilson started off by showing Evans wrong-to-right erasure data that strongly indicated cheating had occurred at Dobbs. He also noted investigators had witnesses from the school who had admitted to cheating.
But Evans said she never cheated, never saw anyone cheat, never heard about it and never looked the other way to let it happen. As for those who confessed, she said, “They did it without my knowledge.”
Even so, Evans acknowledged that only she and the school’s testing coordinator had access to the standardized tests and answer sheets. She also said she didn’t believe the testing coordinator had changed students’ answers.
As for herself, she insisted, “I was not involved in any way.”
When asked about the answer sheets, Evans told the investigators, “I didn’t even touch them. You can fingerprint them.”
“We have,” an investigator told Evans, which Wilson testified was only a bluff.
“Then why am I here?” Evans asked.
Before Wilson took the stand, attorney Scott Smith, who represents former testing coordinator Theresia Copeland, sought to disqualify Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter from sitting on the case any further.
In a court motion filed Friday, Smith cited a hearing a week ago in which he sought a mistrial because Baxter had admitted to having a brief, private telephone conversation with District Attorney Paul Howard about an anonymous threat left on prosecution witness Reginal Dukes’ phone.
When Baxter denied a mistrial, he accused Smith of prancing around like a peacock and grandstanding to the news media.
In his court filing, Smith said he believed his relationship with the judge had deteriorated to such a point that “it is my belief another lawyer may be more effective in representing (my) client’s interest than myself in front of this court.”
Prosecutors opposed the motion to disqualify the judge during a brief hearing Monday. And later Baxter denied it, saying it was legally insufficient and that Copeland was receiving a fair trial.
Baxter then told Smith, “I’m sorry I compared you to a peacock.”
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