An Atlanta educator who became the first principle to be charged in a test-cheating scandal pleaded guilty on Thursday.
Charged in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating scandal, Armstead Salters' sentence included writing an apology letter, McClatchy Company and Tribune Company reported. Salters, former principal of C.L. Gideons Elementary School, became the first defendant in the case to plead guilty to a felony charge by making false statements and writings.
Wendy Ahmed, former Humphries Elementary School teacher, pleaded guilty for her role in the case after Salters entered his plea, MCT reported. Among those charged in the sweeping racketeering conspiracy indictment, Ahmed is the eighth person to be convicted so far.
Gideon's teachers were sent to the school's testing coordinator to get the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, Salters admitted. He wanted the teachers to change the wrong answers on the tests that the students had taken, MCT reported.
It was an "open secret" throughout APS for years that cheating was going on at Gideons, prosecutor Clint Rucker said. Even so, former Superintendent Beverly Hall, who is also charged in the case, constantly praised the gains made by Gideons students on the standardized tests, Rucker said.
According to MCT, sentenced to two years on probation and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service, Salters agreed to return $2,000 he received as bonuses in restitution.
Salters, 74, began his Atlanta schools teaching career in 1966 as a high school science teacher. In 1981, he became principal at Gideons, serving in that job until 2010. Salters confessed to violating the trust of parents and the school system in a letter of apology, a condition required by prosecutors as part of his guilty plea.
"I apologize for my actions in not upholding the ethics of the teaching profession," he said. Salters said he coordinated test cheating "because of excessive and extreme pressure placed on me by the administration."
Other pleas are likely this week as well, MCT reported.
