SCANDAL!: February 2014

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

February 11, 2014

Columbus Dispatch, February 11 - columbus-reshuffles-top-staff

Oh Great - another Professional Politician.

Columbus Dispatch, February 11 - Mary-Jo-Hudson-named-to-school-board

Columbus Dispatch Letter to the Editor, February 9 - zahniser

February 10, 2014

Wall Street Journal, January 28 - (you have to have a subscription to read the story, so here is the copied text...)

Columbus, Ohio, School District Hit By Cheating Allegations

STEPHANIE BANCHERO

Jan. 28, 2014 7:28 p.m. ET

A state investigation of Columbus, Ohio, public schools found a "top-down culture of data manipulation and employee intimidation" in connection with changes to test scores and student grades, officials said Tuesday, in the latest testing scandal to engulf a school district.

Auditor of State David Yost said staff in Ohio's largest district believed they would be demoted or fired if they didn't alter data—changes that artificially inflated schools' academic performance.

He said he would recommend to city, county and federal law-enforcement officials that some administrators be criminally charged. He wouldn't say how many names he would refer, but he said that no teachers were involved in the alleged wrongdoing.

Mr. Yost said interviews with Columbus district employees showed that some of the alleged manipulation was led, in part, by data chief Steve Tankovich, who Mr. Yost said directed principals to make changes. Mr. Tankovich, who resigned last year, couldn't be reached for comment. Mr. Yost said he believes former Columbus schools Superintendent Gene Harris "was aware" of what was going on. Ms. Harris couldn't be reached.

Current Superintendent Dan Good, who arrived at the district after the data rigging was alleged to have taken place, said four current or former principals were put on paid leave Tuesday and would be recommended for termination. "We intend to continue holding accountable those whose willful, deliberate and inappropriate actions can be clearly documented," he said.

The district launched an internal probe after the allegations first surfaced, and officials said the district has overhauled its data-collection policies to ensure employees don't manipulate data. Eleven people whose names surfaced during the investigation have either chosen to leave or been encouraged to leave, said Jeff Warner, spokesman for Columbus City Schools.

The investigation into the academically and financially struggling school district is part of a growing national drama over alleged cheating in public schools. In the past few years, teachers or administrators in Philadelphia, Atlanta and El Paso, Texas, have been accused of everything from scheming to change test answers to stopping low-performing students from taking state exams—all in an effort to boost academic performance numbers.

Experts say the recent spate of cases has come, in part, because data-investigation techniques have become more advanced and because states and districts are ramping up their analyses.

James Wollack, an educational-psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin and co-editor of a handbook on testing security, said the issue has "escalated to a point where parents and others should put pressure on districts and states" to verify test results and "ensure schools are as good as they say they are."

The Columbus schools investigation grew out of a 2012 statewide probe into student-attendance manipulation. Nine school districts were accused of tampering with attendance records to make it appear that low-performing students were absent for chunks of time. That broke their enrollment and nullified their state test scores for school-accountability purposes.

But Mr. Yost also launched a probe into broader data-rigging allegations in Columbus schools. He said investigators discovered evidence that nonteaching personnel changed more than 7,000 student grades from failing to passing, and found thousands of cases where students were dropped from the rolls and re-enrolled later in an attempt to drop their scores from the overall school rating.

He also said he found dozens of instances where students were kept on the rolls even though they didn't attend classes—what one staffer called "zombie 12th-graders." Mr. Yost said keeping such students on the books could boost state funding.

Write to Stephanie Banchero at stephanie.banchero@wsj.com

Columbus Dispatch Editorial, February 9 - public-awaits-accountability