Report: School faculty told to cheat, whistle-blower rebuked

NORFOLK

A middle school principal coerced teachers into fabricating students' work to help win state accreditation, then lied to get a teacher fired who refused to cheat and who reported testing problems to the division and the state, according to an investigatory report.

In addition, the school division's top administrators refused to demand that Lafayette-Winona Middle School Principal Cassandra Goodwyn comply with state testing standards and dismissed the whistle-blower's evidence that he refused to bend testing rules.

Norfolk Public Schools Superintendent Stephen C. Jones will hold a news conference at 2:30 this afternoon in the School Board meeting room on the 12th floor of the Central Administration Building. He will address the report into testing irregularities at Lafayette-Winona and steps the school system is taking to address testing issues.

The report was viewed by The Virginian-Pilot and depicts few controls on principals. High-level administrators demand little accountability even when aware of testing irregularities, the report says.

The panel was appointed in December by Superintendent Stephen C. Jones after a state investigation found mandatory testing rules were violated at Lafayette-Winona.

School officials refused to release a copy of the report, saying the text contains confidential personnel information. However, The Pilot obtained it from a source close to the School Board. A two-page, six-paragraph executive summary was sent to the newspaper last week. The executive summary in the report The Pilot looked at Tuesday contains eight pages.

According to the report, the panel found there is "an unreasonable presumption" by some central administrators that principals would never willfully violate law or policy, and "they are hesitant to adequately investigate possible wrongdoing, even in the face of documentary evidence that negates the presumption."

Jones said Tuesday that he and the School Board would meet in a closed session today to talk about how to respond to the report's findings.

"We're going to be completely transparent as we review the findings from the report and take all the steps necessary to ensure the public feels we're administering the assessments in an equitable way," he said.

Reached late Tuesday, Goodwyn denied any wrongdoing and said she has evidence to prove it.

"I did not at any time ask, coerce, encourage, pressure, prompt, suggest or support any form of irregularity or violation pertaining to SOL testing" or any other allegations of wrongdoing in the report, she said.

School Board member Kirk Houston said he is deeply troubled by the report, and board member Jim Driggers called the panel's findings "damning" in many aspects.

"There were so many things that fall into that category that I wouldn't know which one to say was worst," Driggers said. "I don't see how anyone down at that school thought they were doing things for the right reason."

City Councilman W. Randy Wright said he and the rest of the council should get the report. "Apparently, they have been sitting on this information for months and months. It's just unacceptable. "

Councilwoman Daun S. Hester had another view: "I have all of the faith in the world in Cassandra Goodwyn."

The panel reviewed Lafayette-Winona's use last school year of the Virginia Grade Level Assessment, or VGLA. It was created for elementary and middle school special education students whose disabilities prevent them from demonstrating their knowledge on a multiple-choice test - the format of most Standards of Learning exams that the state uses to determine a school's accreditation.

With the alternative, students are scored on a body of their work collected throughout the year.

Pass rates on the alternative are significantly better than those on SOL tests - in some cases, nearly twice as high.

Under state guidelines, a team consisting of teachers, administrators and a parent or guardian determines whether a student participates in the alternative. To qualify, students must be achieving at their grade level.

Lafayette-Winona disregarded those rules, and division administrators inappropriately altered the state's criteria to include whether a student failed his or her most recent SOL test, according to the report. It also found that Goodwyn, the principal, largely determined which students participated in the assessment.

The panel recommended that Superintendent Jones review both Cathy Lassiter, the division's executive director for middle schools, and Goodwyn as a result of their "serious" improprieties.

The panel said that over the last three years, Goodwyn directed her special education department leaders to draft lists of students with disabilities for inclusion in the VGLA.

The panel found that in her job evaluations, Goodwyn had received high standards in most things but was rated "below standard" in the area of student outcomes because Lafayette-Winona had failed to win full accreditation. The evaluations said more attention was needed in special education achievement.

The panel, which interviewed teachers and special education staff, said school staffers largely determined which students would participate in VGLA based on whether their prior SOL scores were 375 or below. That standard was inappropriately adopted by the division's central office, the report states.

Goodwyn also used the division's score-based standard despite repeated requests from subordinate special education staff that the measure did not comply with special education law or state guidelines, the panel reported.

Teachers interviewed by the panel said "they knew they had to prepare 'passing' VGLA binders for their students or they would have a 'difficult life,' " the report says.

"The teachers stated that they did not want to get on the principal's 'list.' "

The teachers named colleagues, including the whistle-blower, who had been on the principal's "list," the report says. "They indicated that these teachers had all suffered negative consequences."

The panel also found that at least two teachers fabricated work for student VGLA portfolios "to ensure that they could submit VGLA binders that would obtain 'passing' scores." T he portfolios contained identical answers, including identical punctuation and spelling errors.

"The panel also finds that during VGLA binder reviews, the principal would reject student work samples that would not receive a passing score."

One teacher refused to fabricate VGLA work samples, telling the principal he was concerned that some of his students did not meet VGLA criteria. He asked that meetings be held on the matter.

In a May 9 e-mail to Goodwyn, the teacher stated: "two years of thinking about this has led me to the conclusion that we have to draw an ethical line somewhere in terms of how far we are willing to go to prepare binders." He also reported the irregularities to the state around the end of the school year.

Although the teacher received excellent midyear performance reviews, Goodwyn gave him a negative year-end evaluation and accused him of not turning in VGLA binders, "causing seven students to receive a failing score."

The panel rejected that depiction, saying the teacher "refused to commit assessment fraud by submitting fraudulent binders."

The teacher appealed his evaluation to Cathy Lassister, Goodwyn's superior, but she apparently took little action.

After the state began investigating Lafayette-Winona, Goodwyn, in consultation with Lassiter, sent the teacher to the division's Professional Review Board, which weighs complaints about employee behavior.

The report says that Goodwyn accused the teacher, among other things, of throwing out student work samples and assaulting a student. The review board failed to examine documents the teacher provided showing his concerns about testing at Lafayette-Winona.

Although Goodwyn's statements were unsubstantiated, the review board recommended that the teacher attend counseling, be transferred to another school and fired.

Although she had documents backing the teacher's performance, Lassi ter endorsed Goodwyn's inaccurate depiction of the teacher, the report states.

"It is almost unfathomable that Dr. Lassiter did not know that the principal's evaluation [of the teacher] contained inaccurate and false information," the panel reported. "She failed to fulfill the prescribed duties" of her position and to uphold the division's core values, the report says. The panel recommended that all inaccurate information be removed from the teacher's file. The teacher was not dismissed but was moved to another school.

In general, the panel found a "laissez faire policy of central office administration" in overseeing principals. Central administrators defer to a principal's autonomy and actions "even when presented evidence that questions the propriety of the actions."

The 73-page report ends with a note from a teacher at another school who phoned the panel. The teacher stated that similar problems are occurring at other schools, the report says.

"They have me cut and pasting out correct answers from failing tests and pasting them all together in the VGLA binder which makes it look like the student is getting all questions right even though they may have gotten failing scores on the various papers I cut from."

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com