Amid stormy scenes in an Atlanta court on Tuesday, 10 corrupt educators who orchestrated a long-running test-cheating system in the city were given heavy prison terms after refusing to take a sentencing deal offered by the judge.
As relatives of the convicted sobbed and lawyers yelled, Judge Jerry Baxter told the court in a raised voice that “hundreds, thousands of children were harmed. This was not a victimless crime … It’s one of the sickest things that has ever happened to this town.”
Five of the educators were given sentences of five years each, with two ordered to serve two of those years in prison and three ordered to serve one year; just two of the 10 accepted a sentencing deal and admitted their guilt in return for much lighter sentences.
Three of the regional education directors who ran Atlanta’s public school system were given hefty 20-year sentences, with orders to serve seven of those years behind bars and the rest of the time on probation, on the most serious charge of racketeering.
“She’s convicted and she’s at the top of the food chain,” Baxter said of regional director Sharon Davis-Williams.
He ordered Davis-Williams and fellow regional directors Michael Pitts and Tamara Cotman each to spend seven years in state prison, pay $25,000 in fines and carry out 2,000 hours of community service.
The three were among 11 convicted earlier this month, of whom 10 were sentenced on Tuesday on charges relating to racketeering, lying under oath and trying to cover up a decade-long cheating scandal where teachers, school principals and senior administrators tampered with children’s test scores.
Inflated achievements for Atlanta schools brought accolades, federal grants and bonus payments, until state investigators began to probe the uncanny results and reports that teachers were allowing young pupils to change their answers on tests.
Of the 10 sentenced on Tuesday, only two took a sentencing deal offered at the last minute by the judge, which involved them accepting responsibility for their part in the corruption, admitting wrongdoing and apologizing. Baxter on Monday gave the defendants until 10am Tuesday to accept.
When it became clear on Tuesday morning that the bulk of the convicted educators planned to maintain their innocence and reject the deal, Baxter became involved in shouting matches with several defense lawyers who loudly proclaimed their clients’ good characters and ignorance of the systematic cheating.
“We are not retrying this,” Baxter said forcefully at one point, as the phalanx of lawyers in court repeatedly interrupted him.
State investigators had uncovered evidence that the educators in court, and others who had previously taken plea deals, had been part of a scheme where children were told the answers to standardized national tests or allowed to alter test papers. Administrators ignored children who queried the misconduct.
Tampering with their test scores earned extra federal funding for the schools, but Judge Baxter said the pupils themselves were harmed. Many children advanced in the system beyond their skill levels in ways that damaged their education and their futures, Baxter told the defendants on Tuesday. He had even had some of those children up in court before him charged with crimes and had sent them to jail, he said.
“These kids could not even read and when they got to middle school. Their test scores were totally bogus,” Baxter said.
Many of the children affected came from poverty-stricken backgrounds in African American neighborhoods in Atlanta.
“These kids were passed on and passed on [within the school system] and they had no chance to begin with because of where they lived and who their parents were. The only chance they had was the school, to get a good education,” he said.
Of the five educators who declined the judge’s sentencing deal, one – a former test coordinator – will spend weekends in jail for six months; the other, a former teacher, must observe a curfew at home from 7pm-7am every night for six months.
Both were also fined and ordered to do community service that specifically involves educating prison inmates.
The 11th defendant convicted in the case had her sentencing delayed because she was heavily pregnant at the time of the verdict earlier this month, and will be sentenced in August.
