A principal and four teachers changed students’ wrong answers on statewide standardized tests to right ones and committed other crimes involving cheating, a grand jury in Philadelphia has charged, the Associated Press reports via NPR. Charges include racketeering, forgery, records tampering, and conspiracy.
The defendants “perpetuated a culture of cheating” on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests for five years, Attorney General Kathleen Kane said. According to the grand jury, there was a suspiciously high number of wrong-to-right erasures on the standardized tests, and fifth-grade reading proficiency fell in 2012, after the alleged cheating had stopped, from 50 percent to 16 percent at Cuyaga Elementary School, with math falling from 62 to 22 percent.
The grand jury laid the blame on the desire to look good as a school:
Significant pressures existed for the various schools to increase PSSA performance. When PSSA scores went up, school principals received promotion and accolades. Others avoided demotions and terminations.
Individuals indicted were
- Principal Evelyn Cortez, 59
- Jennifer Hughes, 59
- Lorraine Vicente, 41
- Rita Wyszynski, 65
- Ary Sloane, 56
Corroborating coverage
A report by The Notebook, with a copy of the indictment, can be found here, while a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer details the charges and discusses the evidence found by the grand jury in greater depth, here.
