We have been following this unbelievable story, turned criminal case, for several years.
July 2011 Story – March 2013 Update – March 2015 Update
It should have been the biggest national educational story of 2011/2012. Alas, it was swept under the rug due to political correctness and pressure. Why?
Because in 2009 President Obama’s Education Department named Atlanta’s Beverly Hall “School Superintendent of The Year”, the educational equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
From 2011 […] The original investigation named 178 educators in the corruption, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating. More than 80 confessed. The investigators said they confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined. The investigators conducted more than 2,100 interviews and examined more than 800,000 documents in what is likely the most wide-ranging investigation into test-cheating in a public school district ever conducted in United States history (2011).
More than three dozen educators were indicted in 2013. 21 educators pled guilty before trial. 12 Educators and Administrators went to trial and faced felony charges. Today 11 of the 12 were found guilty.
BEVERLY HALL was the School Superintendent and ringleader of the cheating scheme. (Via AJC) […] She [Hall] was not tried because she was being treated for breast cancer when jury selection began. Hall died earlier this month after testimony ended. One other former educator named in the March 2013 indictment also died.
[…] After more than eight days of deliberation in a case that rattled the region and garnered unwanted national attention, a jury found 11 of 12 former Atlanta Public Schools teachers, principals and administrators guilty of conspiring to change student answers on standardized tests.
A racketeering indictment could mean a 20-year prison sentence. The other felonies carry prison sentences of as much as five and 10 years each.
The trial stretched five months with 162 witnesses who took the stand. Thousands of pages of testimony was introduced. Closing arguments lasted three days.
The former educators were accused of conspiring to change answers on the 2009 CRCT to artificially inflate scores to satisfy federal benchmarks. The prosecution said bonuses and raises were awarded based on test scores. (link)
The trial, which began on Sept. 29, 2014, involved educators who did not take plea deals. Five are former teachers, three were central office administrators, two were principals. The 13th defendant, former Superintendent Beverly Hall, did not face trial, on account of her illness with breast cancer, which eventually took her life on March 2, 2015.
Others named in the original indictments included:
•Beverly Hall, former superintendent, died of breast cancer on March 2, 2015.
•Tameka Goodson, former instructional coach at Kennedy Middle, pleaded guilty on Dec. 20, 2013, to obstruction and was given probation. Goodson admitted to changing answers on student standardized tests in 2008 with secretary Carol Dennis under the direction of their principal, Lucious Brown.
•Gregory Reid, former assistant principal of Parks Middle, pleaded guilty on Dec. 16, 2013, to two counts of obstruction. His decision to testify for the prosecution likely influenced Christopher Waller’s move (see below) to enter a guilty plea.
•Sandra Ward, former testing coordinator at Parks Middle, pleaded guilty on Feb. 21, 2014, to one misdemeanor count of obstruction and was given probation. She is expected to implicate Hall and Pitts in her testimony.
•Starlette Mitchell, a former teacher at Parks Middle, pleaded guilty on Jan. 6, 2014, to one misdemeanor count of obstruction. She received one year probation.
•Sheridan Rogers, a former testing coordinator at Gideons Elementary, pleaded guilty on Dec. 20, 2013, to obstruction. She admitted to following orders from her principal, Armstead Salters, to give Gideons’ teachers access to their tests and answer sheets. This allowed teachers to change wrong answers to right ones.
•Wendy Ahmed, a former teacher at Humphries Elementary, pleaded guilty Dec. 19, 2013, to a misdemeanor count of obstruction. She admitted telling her students the correct answers while they took the 2009 test.
•Lisa Terry, a former teacher at Humphries Elementary, pleaded guilty on Nov. 20, 2013, to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction, the first educator to enter a guilty plea. Terry admitted that she allowed students to go back and change their answers on the 2009 CRCT.
•Ingrid Abella-Sly, a former teacher at Humphries Elementary, pleaded guilty on Dec. 13, 2013, to a misdemeanor obstruction charge and admitted she gave students answers on standardized tests.
•Sheila Evans, a former teacher at Benteen Elementary, pleaded guilty on Dec. 16, 2013, to one misdemeanor count of obstruction.
•Gloria Ivey, a former teacher at Dunbar Elementary, pleaded guilty on Jan. 6, 2014, to one misdemeanor count of obstruction. Ivey admitted to admonishing students to rethink incorrect test answers as she walked around her class; she pointed to the correct answers in some cases.
•Millicent Few, a former APS human resources director, pleaded guilty on Feb. 17, 2014, to misdemeanor malfeasance in office. Few is expected to testify that Hall ordered the destruction of internal investigative reports.
•Clarietta Davis, a former principal of Venetian Hills Elementary, pleaded guilty on Jan. 6, 2014, to one felony count of false statements. She admitted to changing answers from wrong to right on standardized tests in 2007 and 2008.
•Armstead Salters, a former principal of Gideons Elementary, pleaded guilty on Dec. 19, 2013, to a felony count of making false statements and writings since he signed off on tests taken by his students.
•Francis Mack, a former testing coordinator at D.H. Stanton Elementary, pleaded guilty on Dec. 20, 2013, to obstruction. Prosecutors said Mack did not participate in test cheating but had previously been told about testing irregularities and did not disclose that information to investigators.
•Willie Davenport, the former principal at D.H. Stanton Elementary, passed away in September 2013 while still scheduled to go on trial.
•Christopher Waller, the former principal of Parks Middle, pleaded guilty on Feb. 21, 2014, to a felony count of making false statements. Waller is expected to implicate Beverly Hall and Michael Pitts in his testimony.
•Derrick Broadwater, a former teacher at Dobbs Elementary, pleaded guilty on Jan. 6, 2014, to one misdemeanor count of obstruction.
•Shayla Smith, a former teacher at Dobbs Elementary, pleaded guilty on Dec. 17, 2013, to a single misdemeanor count of obstruction. She is expected to testify against others at her school, including her former principal, Dana Evans, and Michael Pitts.
•Kimbery Oden, a former teacher at Parks Middle, pleaded guilty on Jan. 6, 2014, to one misdemeanor count of obstruction.
•Lucious Brown, the former principal of Kennedy Middle, pleaded guilty on Jan. 17, 2014, to interfering with government property. He admitted erasing students’ answers and changing them in 2008 and 2009. He is expected to testify against Sharon Davis-Williams.
•Lera Middlebrooks, a former testing coordinator at Dunbar Elementary, pleaded guilty on Dec. 18, 2013, to one misdemeanor count of obstruction. She admitted to giving teachers answer sheets for standardized tests after students had taken the tests.
•Carol Dennis, a secretary at Kennedy Middle, pleaded guilty on Jan. 6, 2014, to one misdemeanor count of obstruction. She said she corrected student answers on the 2008 and 2009 CRCTs at Lucious Brown’s request.
