ATLANTA — A jury has begun hearing the case against 12 former Atlanta Public School educators and administrators accused of cheating and lying in a widespread conspiracy that affected thousands of students.
They are accused of changing answers on 2009 CRCT exams to make it appear students were doing much better than they were.
It has taken years of investigations and legal motions to get to the trial that began Monday. A grand jury indicted more than 30 educators. Twenty-one took plea deals, and another defendant died.
The trial is expected to last several months. It began with a bit of drama and some humor from the judge on Monday.
Before the prosecution even got a chance to begin its opening statements, Judge Jerry Baxter was told that two jurors wanted off the trial.
One juror asked to be excused because she had child care issues. Baxter wondered why she had not brought it up during the six weeks of jury selection, and then dismissed her.
“Ma’am, you’re excused, and you can go back. You can go back up to North Fulton County. You’re excused. I just can’t deal with this,” said Baxter.
Baxter was able to convince the second juror to stay.
The defendants in the case include three top officials in former superintendent Dr. Beverly Hall's administration. Hall herself is not on trial as she continues to battle stage four breast cancer.
Acknowledging how long the trial could run, Baxter tried to lighten up the mood by showing the lawyers a joke T-shirt. He said he plans to award it to the lawyer who talks the most.
“After the trial is over, it may be awarded, but I hope not. But anyway, I wanted to show it to you,” said Baxter.
Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis told jurors that the offs of the number of wrong to right erasures on the 2009 CRCT in Atlanta Public Schools was one in a quadrillion.
She called it a vast conspiracy.
“And the purpose of this conspiracy was this: To illegally inflate test scores and to create a false impression of academic success for many students in the Atlanta Public School system,” said Willis.
Willis told the jury that educators were under intense pressure to make target student achievement goals on the CRCT. Those goals were attainable only by cheating.
Some teachers, said Willis, gave students the right answers in the classroom. Others, she said, held erasure partiers to change wrong answers to right ones.
“And the answer that students wrote down on their exam that were wrong, they erased them, and they put the right answer. That’s the only way you’ll hear they cheated,” said Willis.
Attorney Bob Rubin, who represents Dana Evans, former principal at Dobbs Elementar, said his client is really innocent.
“She was a servant leader. Know who else was a leader? Jesus Christ,” said Rubin.
Rubin and other defense attorneys are trying to convince the jury that their clients did not engage in the cheating scandal.
But Willis told jurors that APS was steeped in a culture of cheating, where those in power used threats to exert pressure on teachers to cheat. In return for changing answers, she said, educators got bonuses, or were just able to keep their jobs for another year.