I'd never heard of Beverly Hall, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, but if Ed Trust's Kati Haycock vouches for her, that's a pretty strong endorsement. This cheating "scandal" is so typical – sadly, there's probably quite a bit of this in every major city, but her enemies (and defenders of the status quo), are trying to use it to force her out:

Early on in Beverly L. Hall's 11-year tenure as superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, she figured that the academic gains she intended to make with the city's mostly poor, black students would face skepticism.

"I knew the day would come when people would question, was the progress real?" she said in an interview last week.

So Dr. Hall took a risk, signing up for a trial program to track and compare urban school districts. Since then, Atlanta has made the highest gains in the program in reading and among the highest in math, making it a national model and Dr. Hall a star in the education field.

But that has not insulated her from a cheating scandal that initially threatened to engulf two-thirds of the district's 84 schools. Even after an independent investigation recently found that the problem was much less widespread, critics have called for her resignation and attacked the investigation's credibility.

…Dr. Hall is not a stranger to tough situations. In 1995, when she was second-in-command at the New York school system, New Jersey chose her to lead its hostile takeover of Newark schools. Residents marched in protest with placards that read "New York sent us a rotten apple."

When she came to Atlanta in 1999, she wrestled with a dysfunctional board, closed more than 20 schools and replaced 90 percent of the principals — proof, she said, that she is not afraid to clean house. She has offered blistering criticism to teacher-training schools for failing to keep up with the most effective techniques.

"She's widely liked, but not for the reason some people are liked," said Kati Haycock, the president of Education Trust, an advocacy group focused on closing the gaps in opportunity and achievement. "She's not fuzzy-wuzzy, right — she is a tough lady."

Dr. Hall shrugs at the notion that she has failed to take responsibility for the cheating problems. She has strengthened test security and requested future screenings for suspicious erasures. But she also wants to get on with recruiting better math teachers and designing personalized 12-week courses for students who did not pass the achievement test.

"We've got to get back in the classroom," she said. "We've got too much to do."

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