All but one of the 10 sentenced on Tuesday received jail time, The Associated Press reported, with sentences ranges from one to seven years.
One educator who did accept a sentencing deal negotiated overnight, Donald Bullock, a testing coordinator, was ordered to spend six months of weekends in county jail and five years on probation. He was also fined $5,000 and ordered to do 1,500 hours of community service.
Among those declining deals were three higher-level administrators, Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts and Tamara Cotman, all regional directors at Atlanta Public Schools. An irate Judge Jerry W. Baxter of Fulton County Superior Court sentenced each of them to 20 years, with seven to be served in prison, and the remainder on probation. Each must also pay a $25,000 file and perform 2,000 hours of community service.
A principal, Dana Evans, who also declined a deal, received a five-year sentence — a year in prison and four years of probation — and was ordered to do 1,000 hours of community service.
Sentencing had been expected to take place on Monday, but after spending most of the day listing to character witnesses — friends and family members — plead for leniency for the educators, Judge Baxter asked prosecutors and defense lawyers to try work out agreements and ordered them back into court Tuesday morning.
The atmosphere in the downtown Atlanta courtroom was highly charged Tuesday morning. In one exchange over the status of appellate bonds, Judge Baxter threatened to put a lawyer in jail if he did not quiet down.
The judge grimaced and bellowed throughout the proceedings, apparently piqued that some of the defendants have declined to take deals. Notably, the sentencing arrangements would have forced the educators to acknowledge their guilt. By refusing the deals, they are able appeal their convictions.
“I think there were hundreds, thousands of children who were harmed in this city,” the judge said. “That’s what gets lost. Everybody starts crying about these educators. There were thousands of students who were harmed by this thing. This was not a victimless crime in this city.”
The educators had been convicted of racketeering, a charge more typically associated with traditional organized crime rings. Prosecutors said they had participated in a wide-ranging conspiracy to artificially inflate student standardized test scores and give a false sense that struggling schools were improving. The motive, the prosecutors said, was to protect their jobs or win bonuses or favor from their superiors.
Prosecutors maintained that some of the most vulnerable students in the struggling system were victims of the scheme, with the false accomplishments ascribed to them obscuring the fact that they actually needed extra help.
The issues came to light more than six years ago as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution began publishing articles that questioned the drastic improvements in scores that some schools were reporting on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, a standardized test once given throughout Georgia.
A state investigation completed in 2011 found that nearly 180 school system employees were complicit, in some cases gathering at cheating parties to erase incorrect test answers and fill in the correct ones. A Fulton County grand jury later indicted 35 educators, including the former schools superintendent Beverly L. Hall, who had previously been celebrated for her data-driven management style and the gains she appeared to have made at the school system.
Twenty-one of the educators reached plea agreements. Dr. Hall maintained her innocence but died before she could stand trial, as did one other defendant.
