35 former employees of the Atlanta Public Schools, including ex-superintendent Beverly Hall, face criminal charges in connection with a 2009 cheating scandal. But while the adults prepare to duke it out in court, some students are paying a price.
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Justina Collins’ daughter was a third grader at Cascade Elementary school in 2006. She failed a school-issued reading test. However, she excelled on the state-issued Criterion Referenced Competency Test at the end of the year. Collins questioned officials about the discrepancy.
“Everyone kept telling me, from the school to the board of education, ‘She’s just an exceptional child that does well on a test,’” Collins said. “Once again, that did not register with me.’”
Collins says her daughter struggled with reading throughout her third grade year. She says she spoke with teachers, administrators, and members of the school board trying to find help and figure out what was wrong. Then, Collins said, she hit what seemed to be a dead end.
“At the end of speaking with everyone, I was also confronted by Dr. Beverly Hall, saying there was nothing to go into further about the situation,” she said. “'There’s no evidence of anything. There is nothing we can do to assist you because we don’t see anything wrong.'”
But a psychological test revealed Collins’ daughter qualified for special education services. She’s in the ninth grade now in another district, but Collins says she reads on a fifth-grade level. She summed up her response to the district’s apparent lack of concern in one word.
“Disappointed,” she said. “As a parent that wants the best for their child. I'm very disappointed.”
District officials say they’ve spend an estimated $6 million on tutoring services to help students catch up. But that hasn’t diminished the effects the scandal had on some students, like Juwana Guffey.
She was a fourth grader at Dunbar Elementary school in 2009. She says her teacher gave students answers during the CRCT, but she refused the help. Juwana says she was glad to see the indictment, which includes four teachers and a testing coordinator from Dunbar.
“This happened when I was in the fifth grade, and now I’m in the eighth, doing good, but I still have to live with this for the rest of my life and I still have to remember that I was in the cheating scandal at my old school,” she says.
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said it was stories like these that gave his staff the courage to complete their investigation of APS and present the indictment to the Grand Jury.
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