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Atherton Elementary principal resigns amid test doctoring scandal
by Jonathan Cribbs
jonathan@dekalbchamp.com
Atherton Elementary School’s principal has resigned and an assistant principal has been reassigned within the DeKalb County School System after a state investigation discovered school administrators changed students’ answers on state-standardized tests.
Principal James Berry resigned on June 11, and Assistant Principal Doretha Alexander has been reassigned within the system. Atherton was part of a larger state investigation into four Atlanta-area schools suspected of changing scores on the state CRCT test to meet federal school improvement standards. Four schools, including Atherton Elementary, were named in the investigation.
Neither Berry nor Alexander could be reached for comment.
The probe, performed by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, looked at the number of times a wrong answer on a math test scorecard was erased and replaced with the correct answer. The CRCT test is given to students in grades one through eight statewide and designed to measure how well students at each grade level have learned the state curriculum.
The governor’s office looked at a summer retest of the exam’s math section in 2008 – the first year schools were allowed to use their retest scores to determine whether they would make Adequate Yearly Progress, a federal designation under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Of the four schools named, Atherton Elementary’s tampering was the most severe. The state looked at 32 students’ tests and determined someone changed wrong answers on a student’s test to the right one an average of 15.19 times, according to the state report. Atlanta’s Deerwood Academy had a 3.44 average number of changes.
No teachers or students were involved in test tampering, deputy superintendent Robert Moseley said.
“They do a good job at Atherton. This is an isolated incident,” he said.
The trouble started to unfold when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article questioning the test results validity in December. The results showed that, first, half of the school’s fifth-graders failed the initial spring test. On the summer retest, however, 26 of them scored at the highest level.
Superintendent Crawford Lewis conducted his own investigation and determined there was no evidence of wrongdoing – though he didn’t have access to the test sheets, which were already in the state’s possession, district spokesman Dale Davis said.
“We were limited in terms of what we could do,” he said. “That’s why we welcomed the state’s investigation.”
The district is in the process of rehiring a principal to lead Atherton Elementary, Moseley said – a process that may take two or three weeks.
“That’s going to be a priority – to make sure we win [parents’] confidence back,” he said.
The district has also created a special learning plan for each student who failed the retest, Moseley said.
When asked about Berry and Alexander’s motivations, Moseley didn’t go into detail. Test performance is not linked to administrative pay, he said, and Berry didn’t tell district officials anything more about why he changed the grades other than to improve scores.
“There is a lot of pressure on school districts across the nation due to accountability,” Moseley said.
Lewis also plans to meet with each principal and reiterate the district’s testing policies and procedures, he said.
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