Two career educators took turns last week pointing fingers at each other in the Atlanta Public Schools trial, but by the time they stepped down from the witness stand it appeared they had done more harm to themselves than anything else.
Armstead Salters, a longtime principal of Gideons Elementary School, and Sheridan Rogers, the school’s former testing coordinator, were the first two prosecution witnesses who had pleaded guilty to reduced charges in the test-cheating case. But their testimony during Week 2 did not go as planned.
Salters, 74, all but disowned a plea agreement he entered into with Fulton County prosecutors last December. He freely acknowledged what he was doing could land him in prison.
Rogers, 70, insisted she had given and was now providing truthful information. But Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter apparently disagreed. Defense attorney Scott Smith, who represents one of the 12 defendants on trial, wondered if she'd committed perjury.
From the bench, Baxter said he was going to stop the clock running on both witnesses’ sentences on probation and said he will hold hearings on the matter at the end of the months-long trial. It’s possible Salters and Rogers will later be resentenced to more severe punishment.
On Friday, Fulton prosecutors filed a court petition seeking to revoke Salters' probation. It alleged he perjured himself, was misleading and failed to fully accept responsibility for what he'd done.
“Pray for me,” Salters said Friday after the motion was filed. “I had to do what I thought was right.”
Baxter’s announcements took place outside the presence of the jury, which must ultimately decide if the 12 former educators and administrators engaged in a racketeering conspiracy to inflate test scores. Testimony continues Monday.
What jurors did see in court last week was a sad spectacle. They saw how cheating steadily consumed Gideons’ teachers and how the misconduct left their careers in tatters.
Gideons, located in the Pittsburgh community of southwest Atlanta, had a challenging student population throughout the 2000s, according to testimony. Most of the school’s students performed below grade level and many showed up in the morning not having eaten since their school lunch the previous day, teachers testified.
On Dec. 19, Salters, who served almost 30 years as Gideons’ principal, pleaded guilty to a single felony count for certifying his school’s 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test when he knew cheating had occurred. He received a two-year sentence on probation.
Salters was expected to be a key witness for the prosecutors in their case against former regional supervisor Michael Pitts. Salters’ plea agreement, which he swore to be the truth when he pleaded guilty, said he faced overbearing pressure from Pitts and former Superintendent Beverly Hall to meet unobtainable test targets. This made him feel as if he had no choice but to encourage or aid cheating at Gideons, the agreement said.
On Tuesday, however, Salters completely disowned that statement. “Mr. Pitts nor Dr. Hall ever encouraged me to cheat,” he said. “… I may have to go to prison for it, but they never placed pressure on me to cheat under any circumstance.”
Rogers, who worked 43 years for APS, told jurors Salters ordered her to give Gideons’ teachers access to standardized tests and answer sheets so they would erase wrong answers and bubble in the correct ones. Rogers testified she resisted yet another Salters directive to do this in 2009 until he pounded his fist on his desk to drive the point home — an incident Salters testified never happened.
Like Salters, Rogers would be among those indicted in the scandal. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction in exchange for her cooperation. But over the course of hours on the witness stand, Rogers gave testimony that appeared in conflict with statements in her plea agreement. This apparently prompted Baxter to stop the clock running on her probation as well.
All told, five former Gideons educators — with collectively more than 130 years of time at the school — took the stand last week as prosecution witnesses. They left no doubt that test-cheating at Gideons was rampant.
But they also gave conflicting accounts, some that muddled the picture as to exactly how the cheating was coordinated. And some accounts must have left jurors scratching their heads over the most trivial details.
Former fifth-grade teacher Oliver Banks testified that he spent hours one weekend changing answers on students' exams with members of his "team" at the Douglasville home of fellow teacher Bernadine Macon. Macon even served fish and grits for the occasion, he said.
Macon later took the stand and admitted hosting the erasure sessions at her home that weekend after the 2009 CRCT. But she insisted she did not serve food to her fellow test-cheaters.
In 2010, Banks and Macon signed immunity agreements that said they would not be prosecuted if they cooperated and provided truthful testimony.
Last week on the witness stand, Banks, 76, paused a number of times when overcome by emotion. He said he loved his students and, even though most of them could not perform at grade level, “I thought that we could put our children up against anybody’s.”
But an overarching emphasis on meeting targets made test-cheating part of the school’s culture. “Data, data, data,” he said. “That was a problem with me. They were concerned with data, data, data. But what about the children?”
Banks left Gideons after serving 49 years there, humiliated over his role in the cheating scandal. “I felt bad,” he said. “I could not stand it and stay there and face those people every day knowing what I’d done.”
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