Report: Atlanta whistle-blowing teachers targeted

ATLANTA - Atlanta Public Schools administrators sometimes punished employees who reported cheating on standardized tests and rewarded those who kept silent, a newspaper report has found.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's report Sunday came after a review of the school district's internal investigations and interviews with more than a dozen current and former Atlanta educators.

It found that, in some cases, the whistle-blowers ended up under scrutiny themselves. Some were subjected to questions about their mental health. Some lost their jobs.

"It's just this thing that everyone knows is going on but nobody says anything," said former teacher Sidnye Fells, who claimed administrators at Dobbs Elementary cheated. She resigned in 2008 after a dispute over sick leave.

"It's the elephant in the room," she said. "If you say anything, you lose your job."

The school district told the newspaper it has adopted "strict policies prohibiting any form of retaliation" against whistle-blowers. A statement released Friday said Atlanta Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall "strongly believes it is important to maintain an open and retaliation-free workplace culture."

In one case, Benteen Elementary School teacher Ryan Abbott said the principal opened an ethics case against him after he leveled charges against a popular colleague. He said his job security still remains tenuous even though state authorities have corroborated his claims of cheating.

"It's a tough place to be," he told the AJC.

The newspaper reported that Humphries Elementary School teacher Lillian Lockhart told her principal she witnessed another teacher cheating on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in 2009. But the disclosure led to a series of events that cleared her colleague and raised questions about Lockhart.

Ultimately, an attorney hired to look into the matter concluded that Lockhart had an "over-active imagination" and didn't witness what she thought she'd seen.

Former Douglass High School teacher Gautam Saha reported two instances of possible cheating in 2004, and each time state officials reprimanded the administrators involved. But the newspaper reported the school district filed a complaint of its own claiming that Saha made up one of the allegations. His contract wasn't renewed in 2005.

Former Carver Early College High School Japanese teacher Paul Landerman said he was also under investigation after he reported 45 to 50 students in a room assisting each other under the supervision of another teacher.

Investigators said the allegation was unsubstantiated, partly because it was denied by other educators and Landerman couldn't identify the students he saw cheating. A school district official suggested he be reprimanded for bypassing the school's principal when he reported the cheating.

Landerman left the district in May 2008 and is unemployed.

Abbott, meanwhile, said his sense of professional ethics led him to report the cheating. But he said the case may have caused as much anxiety for him as it did the school administrators.

"A lot of my colleagues don't think very highly of me," he said, adding: "I'm definitely not on the principal's good side."

http://accesswdun.com/article/2011/1/235543