Report: Norfolk students were shown answers during test

NORFOLK

Lafayette-Winona Middle School staff cheated by using an overhead projector to show students correct answers during a mandatory assessment exam last spring, according to a summary report by an investigative panel.

The panel, tasked last December to review allegations of cheating at the school on state accreditation tests, also reported that students who arrived after testing had started were sent to another classroom and recorded as present that day but absent from the test.

The answers were given to students to ensure that portfolios of their work would get passing grades.

The Virginia Grade Level Assessment exam is an alternative given to some students with learning disabilities who don't take the Standards of Learning tests.

School leaders released a two-page, six-paragraph summary of their findings Friday. They refuse to release the full report, even stripped of staff and student names, claiming the text contains confidential personnel information.

The School Board received the report and summary Thursday and discussed the findings in a 5 1/2-hour meeting, Chairman Stephen Tonelson said.

The summary does not say who violated testing procedures, whether anyone was disciplined, whether the principal and school administrators condoned the cheating, whether the division's central office knew of the inappropriate assistance or whether similar violations took place in previous years.

Tonelson said two teachers gave the inappropriate assistance.

The panel also found that the division's central testing and special education officials "do not have the authority to hold schools accountable for compliance with either local policy/regulations, or state and federal law/regulations."

Tonelson said the School Board plans to fix that by proposing greater authority to the central offices.

In December, the division accepted the state's finding of VGLA violations at Lafayette-Winona ranging from special education students who weren't tested to assessments with identical answers, including misspellings.

The school failed to test at least two dozen special education students who should have been assessed according to the state. The Virginian-Pilot revealed the findings, which it obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

State investigators placed some blame on the school division's lack of an oversight system for tracking the testing of special education students.

The division initially blamed the violations on teachers who had not participated in voluntary training on how to give the VGLA tests.

But on Dec. 17, Superintendent Stephen C. Jones appointed the panel, noting that "many in our community have lost confidence in our school division because of the wide publicity of this issue."

The panel's members were Assistant City Attorney Derek Mungo; Leigh Butler, director of teacher education services at Old Dominion University; and Dennis Moore, senior coordinator of pupil personnel services for Norfolk schools.

At least four schools violated division and state guidelines last year while conducting Standards of Learning tests or the VGLA, according to state and local findings.

While the division has revealed some discoveries and details of testing irregularities, it also had kept confidential an in-house memo on violations at Dreamkeepers Academy.

The 2009 memo came to light only after the division sent it to the state Education Department. The state disclosed the memo to The Virginian-Pilot in response to the newspaper's Freedom of Information Act request last month.

In a letter to Tonelson on Dec. 14, Jones noted that "our team has publicly pledged to become more proactive in communicating with our community about all types of Norfolk Public Schools information, good, neutral and bad."

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