Jury selection began today in the case of 12 former Atlanta Public Schools employees accused of trying to alter and boost students' standardized test scores, The New York Times reported.
The defendants, including former principals, administrators and teachers face charges of influencing witnesses and lying to investigators in connection with an alleged conspiracy to fudge Georgia's state standardized tests, known as the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.
What happens in the courtroom may serve as the height of a cheating scandal that has tarnished the city, its teachers' careers and their reputations for the last five years. The strain has been tough particularly for African-Americans. It is mostly black students and teachers who have been harmed by phony evaluations of education, raising questions across the country about the role these tests play in education reform.
Beverly Hall was named by the national superintendent in 2009, but articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had started raising questions about big jumps in student test scores in the district, according to the New York Times. An indictment came two years later that charged Dr. Hall and other teachers with violating the state's Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which can carry a 5-to-20-year prison sentence. Dr. Hall retired from the school district in 2011 and is currently suffering from breast cancer. She has proclaimed her complete innocence in the case.
Prosecutors claim the cheating dates back to 2005 and was due to the culmination of pressures to meet federal and state testing standards, qualify for bonuses and avoid termination, according to the Associated Press. Roughly 21 of the defendants have accepted plea bargains, but may be called to testify against their former co-workers.
The district is now being run by Superintendent Meria Carstarphen, formally from Austin, Texas, according to the Associated Press.
