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DeKalb police arrest two Atherton Elementary principals for test tampering
by Jonathan Cribbs
jonathan@dekalbchamp.com
DeKalb County police arrested the former principal and assistant principal of Atherton Elementary School following a district attorney’s investigation into tampering with a state-mandated test last summer.
Former Atherton Elementary Principal James Berry was arrested at his home on June 19 at about 8:30 a.m., said Bettina Durant, police spokeswoman. Former Assistant Principal Doretha Alexander turned herself into police June 18 at about 8 p.m., she said. Durant said police were not releasing more details about the arrests.
Both educators were charged with falsifying state documents, which could earn each between two and 10 years in jail, said Don Geary, chief assistant in the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office.
Berry resigned on June 11, and Alexander had been reassigned within the DeKalb County School System last week. Atherton Elementary 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.
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 right one. 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 number 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.
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