School board urges closer look at test irregularities

NORFOLK

School Board members said Friday that they want more details about testing problems at Lafayette-Winona Middle School and they expect administrators to check into whether other city schools experienced similar lapses.

Some board members also expressed discontent with the way Superintendent Stephen C. Jones managed the situation.

"I feel the board has been humiliated by the way this was handled," member Karen Jones Squires said. "That's inexcusable."

Chairman Stephen W. Tonelson, however, said he felt better about Jones' actions after talking with him Friday. They agreed to propose working through personnel issues in closed session, holding a public discussion and reviewing sample assessments from Norfolk schools.

"At this point in time, I think that we are doing what we need to be doing in the way we should be doing it," Tonelson said.

In the fall, Virginia Department of Education investigators found problems with state assessments at the struggling middle school, including students who weren't tested and responses with identical answers, including misspellings.

The investigation was triggered by a teacher's complaint in June that Principal Cassandra D. Goodwyn pressured teachers to inappropriately direct special education students to an alternative assessment that they were more likely to pass than the Standards of Learning exams.

Goodwyn denied the allegation, and state investigators published no conclusion on that specific allegation.

Although the investigation was conducted in September and the findings published on Oct. 14, board members first officially heard from school officials about testing irregularities in a Nov. 9 e-mail. That e-mail informed them that The Virginian-Pilot was looking into the situation.

Most board members didn't receive copies of the state's report until Tuesday, which was two days before the information appeared on PilotOnline.com and the school division held a news conference.

Board member Kirk Houston Sr. said Friday that he was "pretty outraged" by the situation. He said he wants to hear from the people involved and make sure they are held accountable.

"This is a major, major problem," he said. "I'm anxious to get to the bottom of it."

Board member Billy Cook said he was saddened to hear more negative news about the school division and worried about teacher morale.

"We look bad," he said. "We look like we're incompetent."

Returning Thursday night from an out-of-town trip, board member Jim Driggers said he learned about the situation from Friday's newspaper. There's a need to "spot-check" tests from other schools, he said, although "I don't think it's a rampant problem."

Like Squires, Houston said he was displeased with how Jones had handled the matter thus far. Squires said she learned of the Thursday news conference about an hour before it happened, and she disagreed with Jones' decision not to attend.

"I can't imagine why he wasn't at that press conference," she said. "He's the one in charge."

Cook and Driggers declined to comment about Jones' actions related to the investigation.

Jones didn't return a message left with the school division's communications director Friday, and board members Ursula Rhodes and Linda McCluney didn't return phone or e-mail messages.

Amy Jeter, (757) 446-2730, amy.jeter@pilotonline.com