ATLANTA -- For the first time, jurors heard specific damaging testimony Thursday against one of the 12 defendants in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating trial.
A whistleblower testified she was asked to cheat more than once, but when she refused, she was harassed and eventually, escorted from the school by police.
All three witnesses Thursday focused on just one school, Parks Middle School. considered by prosecutors to have the most shocking evidence of alleged cheating.
Stacy Johnson got emotional when she recalled her reason for becoming a math teacher.
"I know the difference one person, one educator, can make in a person's life and I wanted to be that person for kids," said Johnson.
That's why she became so upset about her principal at Parks Middle School, Christopher Waller, who she said asked her to cheat.
Waller is not on trial, but was one of the 35 educators originally indicted in the cheating scandal.
Waller apologized last February when he pleaded guilty. He will testify for the state.
Johnson said that when Waller became principal, he began pressuring the staff to improve scores to match the high levels at the elementary schools
"He would say, 'We all know they cheating at the elementary schools,'" Johnson said. "'They're making 90 percent and they get here and the scores plummet, we're going to look bad. We got to do what they're doing, or we're going to look bad.'"
Johnson took her concerns to Waller's immediate supervisor, defendant Michael Pitts, an executive director at the time.
"I basically told him that Mr. Waller was coercing and pressuring me and other staff members to cheat on upcoming state assessments," Johnson said.
But, nothing happened, so she wrote four anonymous letter and sent them to nearly a dozen administrators.
Johnson resigned. When Waller found out, he had her escorted out of the school by police. She called it humiliating.
In other testimony Thursday, Merita Brown, a former testing monitor at Parks Middle School, said she walked into a classroom and discovered students violating testing protocol with the teacher present. Brown said she saw students in the class with their textbooks open during testing.
Brown says she whispered to the teacher that the textbooks were not allowed and stayed until the students put them away. She then told Waller about it, but nothing was ever done.
Waller is expected to testify next week. The judge has given everyone Fridays off for the duration of the trial.
