Teacher caught up in cheating scandal files suit

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- An HISD teacher accused in a cheating scandal at her former school is filing a lawsuit. You may remember the probe at Jefferson and Atherton elementary schools last year. The district says it found inconsistencies in state test scores.

Some of the teachers were cleared in the investigation but one teacher says she might have kept her job but her reputation was already lost.

The district and the law firm facing the lawsuit are not commenting, but the teacher, her husband and her attorney have a lot to say about it...

Elsa Rodriguez has been a teacher for 22 years, never expecting she'd be the one accused of causing trouble.

Rodriguez was one of several teachers accused in a STAAR test cheating scandal at Jefferson and Atherton elementary schools in 2013.

"It's not easy," she said. "It's terrible, it destroys your life."

Elsa's husband Brian Bishop said, "They really smeared her reputation."

Just weeks before the testing period in question Rodriguez says she was struck by an accused drunk driver. She was in the hospital and on medical leave.

Bishop said, "Right away they knew that she was not there from attendance records."

The lawsuit against the firm that handled the investigation claims negligence and mental distress, adding she was falsely accused, shamed and "perp-walked" out of Jefferson.

During the investigation Rodriguez was reassigned to duty at Butler Stadium.

Attorney Larry Watts suggested, "It shouldn't be hard for these very expensive lawyers, very educated, talented, lawyers to simply look at the...medical records."

The documents state Rodriguez's leave of absence was from April 7 to June 3, 2013. They say the tests were administered the end of April.

"What I want to get back from her? I want each feather, I want Terry Grier or someone, the school district, the law firm, to pick up each feather of her reputation that they've shredded," Watts said.

Elsa Rodriguez was never fired, but she believes a permanent mark was left on her reputation...

This fall she returned to the classroom, but not at Jefferson, and teaching a different subject.

She said, "I was expecting to go back to my school."

Bishop said, "Now they are treating her like a substitute teacher."

Rodriguez says she wants a jury to hear her story next. The school district and law firm did not provide a comment.