Atlanta Teachers Convicted in Cheating Scandal. Some get 20 Years in Jail.

CONVICTED

Fulton Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter made two comments today that explain the severity of the sentences he imposed on eight Atlanta Public Schools administrators and teachers.

He sentenced the three highest-level administrators, Tamara Cotman, Sharon Davis Williams and Michael Pitts, to serve seven of 20-year sentences for their roles in the APS cheating scandal. And he imposed $25,000 fines on each of them. Five other educators — Angela Williamson, Diane Buckner-Webb, Tabeeka Jordan, Theresia Copeland and Dana Evans — got five years, with one to two to serve.

Baxter’s wrath stemmed from two issues. The first was what he considered misplaced sympathies. The focus should not be on the harm to lifelong educators who held positions of power, he said, but on the lives of students who were powerless.

“Everyone starts crying about these educators. There were thousands of children harmed in this thing. This is not a victimless crime…The only chance they had was the school. When you are passed and you can’t read, you are passed and passed on, there are victims that are in the jail that I have sentenced, kids.”

His second concern was the failure of defendants to acknowledge they cheated. “All I want for many of these people is to just take some responsibility, but they refuse. They refuse,” he said in court today. In the end, only two of the 10 convicted educators, Donald Bullock and Pam Cleveland, received lesser sentences today because they waived their right to appeal, admitted their guilt and apologized in court.