State joins probe on school cheating

Terry Webster

Friday, July 21, 2000 | 11:25 a.m.

The Nevada Department of Education and the state attorney general's office are joining the Clark County School District's investigation of test cheating allegations at Robert E. Lake Elementary School.

On June 26 former Lake Elementary fourth grade teacher Ramona Johnson alleged in a Sun story that test scores on the district's third grade Curriculum Based Assessment Program (CBAP) were inflated at the school.

She came to that conclusion after comparing the third grade CBAP scores to how the same students performed in her class on the fourth grade Terra Nova exam.

Johnson also produced a copy of the fourth grade TerraNova booklet, a state test also used to evaluate school performance. She says the booklets were distributed at the school and teachers there were encouraged to "teach the test."

Lake Elementary Principal Alma Vining has denied any wrongdoing at her school. Shortly after the allegations came forth, a contingent of 18 Lake teachers supported the principal's stance.

The investigation is now centered on the missing TerraNova test booklet, said Paul LaMarca of the Department of Education's standards, assessment and curriculum division.

The booklet was never returned, Johnson said, because she feared retribution.

Now state officials are vowing to get it back.

"There certainly is a set of security procedures for the test and there are guidelines for what can happen to a teacher or an administrator who breaches security," said LaMarca. "We're concerned about it because the TerraNova was shown to the news media and one of the news (television) stations broadcast its contents."

Tainting security of the TerraNova test can result in license revocation.

"It's our understanding that this is the only one missing from school inventory," LaMarca said.

School district administrators previously said there was no forced entry into the area where the booklets are stored at the school. The booklets are required to be kept under lock and key.

The state plans to review the school district's findings, as well, and may conduct its own analysis of TerraNova testing at the school.

Since the outset of the investigation, school district officials said there appears to be no wrongdoing with the TerraNova exam, a state test, because those scores are low. Concerns remain, though, about the integrity of the district's internal CBAP exam.

"That is still the case," school spokeswoman Mary Stanley-Larsen said Thursday. "We are concerned about the test booklet being out there, but we are really concerned about the CBAP. That seems to be where the concerns have really presented themselves."

Johnson said she and an investigator with the attorney general's office are in the process of scheduling a meeting.

"After all of the injustice that has been done to teachers and kids, they are acting like I am the criminal," Johnson said Thursday.

Shortly after the original allegations were raised, Johnson said a Lake Elementary employee gave students answers to tests by writing them on the chalkboard while he was proctoring in her classroom.

A retired Clark County School District teacher, Dennis Ellestad, has now come forward in support of Johnson.

"The administration in this district knows full well what is going on," said Ellestad. "They use more erasers than anyone else. A bunch of us retired teachers have been watching this and are really saddened by it. We're hoping this gal doesn't take the fall for what is going on."

School Board member Shirley Barber, a retired Clark County School District principal, has claimed test cheating has been going on in the district "for years."