Schools

APS Defendants' Vow: Take Cheating Secret to the Grave

Three more former educators, including a former testing coordinator at D.H. Stanton Elementary School, pleaded guilty on Friday in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating case.

By Patch Editor Bob Pepalis

Three more educators have entered guilty pleas in connection with the Atlanta Public Schools' (APS) massive test-cheating scandal, including a former testing coordinator at D.H. Stanton Elementary School.

Former testing coordinators Sheridan Rogers and Francis Mack along with former teacher Tameka Goodson pleaded guilty to obstruction during plea proceedings before presiding Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter Friday afternoon.

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Each defendant was sentenced to one year on probation and ordered to perform 250 hours of community service. Rogers and Goodson also must pay $1,000 in restitution for the bonus money they each received.

These pleas bring the number of defendants who have now admitted guilt to eleven out of the 35 educators indicted for their roles in an alleged conspiracy to alter Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) scores within the Atlanta Public School system.

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The charges against former Gideons Elementary School testing coordinator Rogers cover a time from 2002-2008. Rogers now admits she provided teachers with access to completed CRCT answer sheets at the direction of her principal, Armstead Salters. Even when she complained to Salters (who entered a guilty plea on Thursday), the principal ordered her to “give the teachers the tests.” Rogers says the pressure to cheat was “excessive and extreme.”

Mack, a former testing coordinator at D.H. Stanton Elementary also now admits she withheld knowledge of a fellow employee changing students’ CRCT answers from wrong to right. Mack says she lied to the GBI about that information because she had been warned by her principal that the employee who cheated had ties to Superintendent Beverly Hall and that disclosing the information could cost Mack her job.

The final person to enter a plea Friday was former Kennedy Middle School teacher Goodson, who directly implicated former Kennedy Principal Lucious Brown and Secretary Carol Dennis in the cheating scandal. Goodson said she witnessed both Brown and Dennis personally changing students’ CRCT answers from wrong to right. Goodson said the three vowed to take that secret to their graves.

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