About Those Atlanta NAEP Scores Beverly Hall Said Were So Good
Even during the aftermath of the Atlanta cheating scandal, APS’s former superintendent Beverly Hall continued to defend the district’s academic record. Not so fast says Binghamton University Professor Lawrence C. Stedman:
The Atlanta Public Schools system has been rocked by a series of reports documenting widespread cheating on the Georgia state tests. Its reputation, and that of its leaders, has come into question. In response, former superintendent Hall asserts that, despite any cheating, the city’s students made “real and dramatic” progress during her tenure and cites the district’s trends on NAEP as part of her evidence (Hall, 2011). In this report, I analyze Atlanta’s performance on NAEP during the 2000s to assess this contention. I use diverse indicators: district trends, national comparisons, grade equivalents, and percentages of students achieving proficiency. My preliminary
