Kennedy Middle and D.H. Stanton Testing Coordinators Plead Guilty in APS Scandal

Three more educators have entered guilty pleas in connection with the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal, including a former Gideons Elementary School educator.

Former testing coordinators Sheridan Rogers and Francis Mack along with former teacher Tameka Goodson pleaded guilty to obstruction during plea proceedings before presiding Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter Friday afternoon.

Each defendant was sentenced to one year on probation and ordered to perform 250 hours of community service. Rogers and Goodson also must pay $1,000 in restitution for the bonus money they each received.

These pleas bring the number of defendants who have now admitted guilt to eleven out of the 35 educators indicted for their roles in an alleged conspiracy to alter Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) scores within the Atlanta Public School system.

 The charges against former Gideons Elementary testing coordinator Sheridan Rogers cover a time from 2002-2008. Rogers now admits she provided teachers with access to completed CRCT answer sheets at the direction of her principal, Armstead Salters.  Even when she complained to Salters (who entered a guilty plea on Thursday), the principal ordered her to “give the teachers the tests.”  Rogers says the pressure to cheat was “excessive and extreme.”

Francis Mack, a former testing coordinator at D.H. Stanton Elementary also  now admits she withheld knowledge of a fellow employee changing students’ CRCT answers from wrong to right. Mack says she lied to the GBI about that information because she had been warned by her principal that the employee who cheated had ties to Superintendent Beverly Hall and that disclosing the information could cost Mack her job.

The final person to enter a plea Friday is former Kennedy Middle School Teacher Tameka Goodson. Goodson directly implicated former Kennedy Principal Lucious Brown and Secretary Carol Dennis in the cheating scandal. Goodson says she witnessed both Brown and Dennis personally changing students’ CRCT answers from wrong to right. Goodson says the three vowed to take that secret to their graves.