Former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed talks during a panel discussion after the local premiere of “One Child Left Behind: The Untold Atlanta Cheating Scandal.” The film was screened at the BronzeLens Film Festival at the Southwest Arts Center in Atlanta on Sunday, August 25, 2019. (Photo: STEVE SCHAEFER / SPECIAL TO THE AJC)

The film, which was directed by Jodi Gomes and includes interviews with several former APS educators, questions the role that politics and the pressures of standardized testing had on cheating and the criminal prosecution.

“It’s a cautionary tale about what can happen when high-stakes testing runs amok or goes awry in the disadvantaged schools. Atlanta was just basically, I think, a pawn in a bigger conversation that has to be had,” Gomes said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported on suspicious scores on state standardized tests in 2008. When state investigators later did their own report, they named 178 educators as participants in cheating. More than 80 confessed, according to the report, and investigators said they confirmed cheating in dozens of schools where students' wrong test answers were erased and corrected.

Thirty-five educators were indicted, and many pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Twelve went to trial; all but one was found guilty of racketeering.

The prosecution argued educators corrected students’ answers on tests, and the bogus test scores led to bonuses and pay raises, or allowed them to keep their jobs.

Even though the jury announced guilty verdicts in 2015, the appeals battle is ongoing for seven of those who were convicted.

Former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed listens to Dana Evans, a former Atlanta principal convicted of racketeering, answer questions during a panel discussion after the Atlanta premiere of “One Child Left Behind: The Untold Atlanta Cheating Scandal.” The film was screened at the BronzeLens Film Festival at the Southwest Arts Center in Atlanta on Sunday, August 25, 2019. STEVE SCHAEFER / SPECIAL TO THE AJC

Dana Evans, the former principal at Dobbs Elementary School, is among those asking for a new trial. She maintains her innocence.

She joined Sunday’s panel discussion alongside Reed, Gomes, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and attorney LaDawn Jones, who also serves as the film’s co-executive producer.

Evans said she agreed to be interviewed for the film because she wanted to correct the “distorted” picture that people have of what happened in APS.

“I don’t believe Georgia will give me a fair trial ever. We are fighting an appeal, and I don’t believe it will be fair. So I have to just, with whatever voice I have left, until they imprison me and even after that, I still have to be fighting for what we need to do as a people to come together,” she said.