![]() STORY HIGHLIGHTS • 178 teachers and principals at 44 Atlanta Public Schools implicated in cheating report • Teacher says at first she second-guessed her classroom skills because of scores • Teacher feels vindicated by report which confirmed her suspicions • She is not gloating; has compassion for teachers cajoled into cheating Atlanta (CNN) -- Julie Rogers-Martin had started to doubt her teaching skills. After 30 years in education, working mostly with underprivileged inner-city students, Rogers-Martin felt she had developed a level of competence and professionalism that can only be gained from hard work and experience. Her superiors at East Lake Elementary School in the Atlanta Public Schools system where she taught for six years seemed to agree. Administrators held her up as a model, praising her classroom management skills and use of technology and showcasing her class to parents and administrators, she says. But between 2007 and 2009 a strange thing started happening: Some of her colleagues' students began to outperform her students on the state's standardized test. Ex-superintendent responds to scandal Like similar tests throughout the nation, Georgia's is given annually to every public school student in grades 1-8. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Comment. Name * Email * Website. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new. ![]() Test performance is tied to school, teacher and district evaluations and heavily linked to the fierce state competition for federal funding. 'I started believing that I wasn't a good teacher,' Rogers-Martin says. 'Other teachers were coming in with these perfect scores and mine are not so perfect. ![]() I mean they weren't bad, they were just normal.' Last month, 178 teachers and principals at 44 Atlanta public schools were found to be responsible for, or directly involved in, cheating on the state's standardized test, according to a report issued by the Georgia governor's office following an extensive investigation. Monday is the first day back to school for the Atlanta system since the report was issued. The report found that cheating occurred as early as 2001 and that repeated warnings were ignored by those high up in the Atlanta school system. Eighty-two educators acknowledged involvement, according to the report, and six principals declined to answer investigators' questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. About 30 people have resigned or retired under threat of termination proceedings, according to APS. Educators who cheated 'should lose the right to be in front of students,' said Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis, adding that those implicated in the report 'will not be appearing in front of children in the fall.' Some educators could face criminal charges. Beverly Hall, who was Atlanta superintendent during the years the alleged cheating occurred, has retired. She has repeatedly denied any direct knowledge of wrongdoing. But Rogers-Martin knew none of this in 2007. She only saw a growing gap between her students' standardized test scores and those of some of her colleagues -- leading her to doubt her teaching skills. Eventually, however, she began to suspect that something else was at work.
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