Effects of APS cheating linger

Scandal tarnishes Atlanta, leads to new look at testing.

In recent years, national conferences for education experts often included a sober warning about the dangers of highstakes testing in schools, and that warning typically involved this city.

“Nobody wanted to be the next Atlanta,” said Greg Cizek, a professor who measures student learning and was an expert witness in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial. “People start off by saying, ‘As we all know, what happened in Atlanta ... .”

The scandal tarnished Atlanta’s national image, with unknown effects on the city’s attractiveness to businesses and potential residents. Some, though, including a former official who helped expose cheating, have so much confidence the school district is rehabilitated they are willing to move their kids into it.

After four months of

The magnitude of the 17th week of testimony in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial can be summed up in three little words: “The state rests.”

The milestone was reached Wednesday morning, exactly six months to the day after jury selection began on Aug. 11.

It came once the prosecution called its final witness, a 16-year-old girl, who left jurors with the image of having to spend three years in the eighth grade because the Atlanta school system did not prepare her.

The student said she was promoted to the eighth grade while in the Atlanta district, but had to repeat that grade twice when her family moved to Clayton County.

“How are you doing?” Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis asked.

“Not good,” the girl answered. “I don’t get none of the math.” She wasn’t cross-examined. And with that, the prosecution rested. “Your honor, it’s a great honor. The state rests,” Willis said to applause from the jury.

It took four months of testimony from more than 130 witnesses, but the prosecution at last made way for an army of defense lawyers to begin telling their respective clients’ side of the cheating story. Twelve former APS educators are fighting charges that they engaged in a racketeering conspiracy to ensure higher scores on standardized tests.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter on Wednesday quickly dismissed the bulk of defense attorneys’ motions for acquittal. And not long thereafter, Robert Rubin, lawyer for former Dobbs Elementary principal Dana Evans, called the first defense witness: APS educator Mario Watkins.

Watkins’ testimony was slated to resume at 9 a.m. Thursday. But things didn’t go as planned. The momentous week ended in a muddled manner, tripped up by tardiness (a lawyer and a witness), then cut short by illness (a juror). At 10:50 a.m. Thursday, Baxter called it a wrap.

Here are more highlights from Week 17: Judge Jerry Baxter and defense attorney Ben Davis clashed over Davis’cross-examination of a witness. comfortable being a spokesperson for an issue that had not been resolved,” Simms testified.

A week after she turned down the second invitation, she was given a bad performance evaluation and was put on an improvement plan for the first time in her career, Simms said.