CONTINUING COVERAGE
In 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution broke the first of what would be several stories highlighting suspect test scores in Atlanta Public Schools and other Georgia districts. In the years that followed, the newspaper kept digging, and eventually special investigators appointed by the governor exposed widespread cheating in the 50,000-student APS district. The APS trial is the latest chapter in that coverage. It began on Aug. 11 with a jury-selection process that lasted for six grueling weeks. And on Sept. 29, opening arguments started in a trial that could extend well into 2015.
Beverly Hall hasn’t been in court since the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial started because of her battle with breast cancer, but she was the focus of some of the trial’s most dramatic testimony Thursday.
Millicent Few, who once headed the school system’s human resources department, testified in Fulton County Superior Court that then-superintendent Hall ordered staff to shred a critical internal investigation into cheating, ignore other signs of cheating and wrongdoing, and keep information away from the public because “it would indicate there was cheating in the district.”
Cover-ups went back to the 2006-07 school year, she testified.
Few’s explicit testimony came near the end of the prosecution’s case against 12 former educators on trial since September for the cheating scandal.
“By the end of next week we should be down to our last three or four witnesses,” Senior Assistant District Attorney Fani Willis said.
Then the defense attorneys for the educators will present their cases. The trial is expected to end in late March or early April.
Much of Few’s testimony was about an internal investigation sparked by an inquiry from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. It notified Atlanta Public Schools in 2009 that it suspected cheating because of significant improvements in scores of students who took makeup Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests at Deerwood Academy in 2008.
The school system hired an independent investigator, Penn Payne, to look into the test results. Payne produced a draft of an investigative report that said it was “highly likely” that cheating had taken place, Few said.
Hall discussed it with her leadership team, told them how Payne’s draft report should be changed and then ordered her staff to destroy the draft, Few testified.
“The directive to shred came from Hall,” she said.
Hall concluded that since Payne did not find direct evidence of cheating, the report should not say cheating had taken place, Few said.
Few continued, saying Hall told the state an outside investigator had looked into the concerns and found nothing to support the agency’s suspicion that answers had been changed on some of the fifth-graders’ tests.
Hall wrote, “There is no evidence, no basis in fact that someone altered student answers,” even though the investigation was far from over.
Hall not only kept information from the state, but from the media and the public as well, Few testified.
Staff created a new log of investigations in response to a request for records made by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which first reported on alleged cheating.
Few said files were missing and officials didn’t know if the files were about cheating investigations. So they decided it would be safer to erase evidence of those missing files by falsifying logs.
Few said an earlier system investigation into allegations that former Parks Middle School principal Christopher Waller had misused federal funds, sexually harassed other employees and was involved in cheating went nowhere.
Defense attorneys will cross-examine Few on Monday.
She is among almost three dozen former educators who were indicted in 2013 for allegedly conspiring to change student answers on standardized tests. Few was faced with the possibility of 20 years in prison if convicted of the charge of racketeering. She and 20 of the educators pleaded guilty.
In return for her guilty plea last February to a lesser charge of malfeasance of office, a judge sentenced Few to 12 months on probation, fined her $800 and ordered her to perform 250 hours of community service. She also had to testify.
Though Hall was also charged with racketeering she is not on trial because she has Stage IV breast cancer. Her doctors said she was physically unable to endure hours in a courtroom, but Judge Jerry Baxter told her attorney he wants an update on her health by the end of next week.
The list of defense witnesses totals more than 325, yet some of the attorneys told the judge they only planned to call five or six people to testify.
Prosecutors complained Thursday that critical contact information for defense witnesses is missing. Baxter gave defense attorneys until next Friday to fill in the gaps.
Attorney Ben Davis said he didn’t provide a list because he told prosecutors he will be calling the same witnesses he called two years ago when his client, Tamara Cotman, was acquitted of trying to influence a witness in connection with the APS cheating trial.
Baxter did not take the excuse well.
“Now I have to listen to all this … hysterical behavior,” Baxter said.
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