80% of Atlanta schools cheated on testing, investigators find

WASHINGTON — Georgia investigators have found evidence of cheating at close to 80 percent of the Atlanta schools where they examined the 2009 administration of state tests.

The result was inflated test scores that led to thousands of children being denied the remedial education they were entitled to, state officials said Tuesday in announcing the results of the investigation. More than 80 educators have so far confessed to misconduct, and investigators said the cheating dated back to at least 2001.

The 48,000-student Atlanta district has been under a cloud for the past two years, ever since an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found improbably high results on the state's Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, or CRCT. Georgia uses those tests to determine whether schools have made adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Based in part on what appeared to be Atlanta's strong results on standardized tests, Superintendent Beverly Hall has been hailed as a model for urban superintendents. In 2009, she was honored by the American Association of School Administrators as superintendent of the year. But amid the investigations and instability on the school board, she announced that she would not be seeking a contract extension, and left the district this June after 12 years.

Under Hall, the district investigated the allegations and said there was no evidence of cheating. Then-Gov. Sonny Perdue called the district's own investigation "woefully inadequate" and appointed an independent investigator. About a month before she stepped down, Hall acknowledged in a videotaped farewell that the results of the report would be "alarming."

The full report is not yet available. The governor's office released an outline of the investigation, saying that the evidence allows for "no other conclusion other than widespread cheating."

The investigation states that 178 teachers and principals in the Atlanta Public Schools System were involved in cheating. Of the 178, 82 confessed to this misconduct.

Six principals refused to answer questions on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves, which, "under civil law is an implied admission of wrongdoing," the report states. "These principals, and 32 more, either were involved with, or should have known that, there was test cheating in their schools." In all, the investigators reported finding cheating in 44 of the 56 schools they examined.