A Slater Elementary School teacher allowed her colleagues to cheat as they erased stray marks on 2009 state exam sheets, resulting in the "ultimate betrayal" of students, an Atlanta Public Schools lawyer said at the teacher's termination hearing.
The teacher and test coordinator, Vanessa Jackson, denied the allegations, saying she went "beyond my call of duty" in her job. The termination hearing will continue next Friday as the defense presents its case.
Atlanta Public Schools officials said Jackson was responsible for checking in exams, monitoring them and providing securing protocol for her school, but failed to protect testing integrity resulting in rampant cheating.
Jackson was recommended for termination by APS Superintendent Erroll Davis in the district’s sweep to purge classrooms of educators involved in a widespread cheating scandal. She was charged with willful neglect of duties, immorality and ethics violations.
On Jackson’s watch, 30 percent of Slater’s 99 classrooms were flagged in a state investigation as having a suspicious number of wrong-to-right erasures on the 2009 Georgia Criterion Referenced-Competency Test. That number dropped to 5 percent in 2010 when stricter monitoring was enforced by the district and some teachers didn't test their own kids.
“She turned a blind eye to cheating at that school,” Sherry Culves, attorney for APS, said of Jackson. “The effects of Miss Jackson’s failures are far-reaching. Students have moved forward without accurate assessments of their abilities. They have moved forward without the immediate and necessary remedial support that would have been available to them. This is the ultimate betrayal.”
Jackson has denied any knowledge of cheating by teachers or students during the administration of the 2009 Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test and previous exams.
“I fullfilled my duties of maintaining the security of the test, making sure the teachers had training and making sure they knew the procedures. I went over and beyond my call of duty as the test coordinator,” she said.
As a tribunal of retired educators with more than 100 years of experience in education listened to testimony, three witnesses for APS said cheating had occurred under Jackson's watch in 2009 and during a previous exam in 2007.
Former Slater teacher Nettie Walker, who resigned during the cheating investigation, testified Friday that she cheated in the presence of Jackson. While Jackson and other administrators collected tests in the media center, Walker said she sat down at a table alone and took out an eraser. The teacher said she was alone for 15 minutes without interruption as she cleaned up marks on student answer sheets and changed answers. She had a copy of the test book with her.
“No one was standing over me at the time, Walker said. “I was under pressure . I had new students enrolling in my class and I just felt like there was just not enough time to prepare them for the test. I was still responsible for them passing.”
Borquaye Thomas, Jackson's lawyer, said the testing coordinator had no idea cheating was going on: “Miss Jackson as testing coordinator never told you to cheat. Would you acknowledge that there was training on how to properly administer the CRCT?”
“That is correct,” Walker said.
“To your knowledge, Miss Jackson, didn’t see you change answers?"
“No,” Walker said.
Another former Slater teacher said that in 2007 she saw a teacher erase "sections' of the state exam while Jackson was in the media center. The teacher said she brought it to Jackson's attention twice.
Culves said Jackson failed to report that teacher, Ellen Grant, for cheating and did not prevent it from happening again. Grant, who could not attend the hearing due to illness, admitted in a written statement to cheating again in 2009: “Grant encouraged her fourth graders to go home and look up answers to CRCT questions. While her test proctor took students to the restroom, Ellen Grant changed her student’s answers …”
As a test coordinator, Jackson should have stopped the cheating, said Melissa Fincher, state Associate Superintendent of Assessment and Accountability.
“No human being can control another human being,” Fincher said, but test coordinators are trained to recognize problems and react. "If they know something inapproriate is going on they can stop that."
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