ATLANTA — The trial promises to be both bizarre and tragic, with elementary teachers facing the possibility of prison, a major metropolitan school district named as a racketeering “enterprise” and the likelihood that students’ stray pencil marks on bubble-lined testing sheets will be scrutinized like hanging chads.

Jury selection will begin here Monday for 12 former Atlanta Public Schools employees accused of conspiring to alter and boost students’ standardized test scores. The courtroom drama that follows could serve as the climax of a cheating scandal that has reverberated through this city for five years, scorching careers and reputations, reconfiguring the school district’s leadership and raising questions nationally about the role that standardized test results should play in driving education reform.

The pain has been felt particularly keenly among African-Americans, who make up 54 percent of Atlanta’s population. It is largely black educators who have been accused, and largely black students who have been harmed by bogus evaluations of their educational progress.

Even as some Atlantans dreaded the start of the high-profile criminal trial, there was also hope that it may represent the beginning of the end.