Candidate: Exam answers are for sale

Terry Webster

Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2000 | 11:05 a.m.

A Clark County School Board candidate Monday said during a Las Vegas ONE news show that a school district employee offered to sell answers for the Nevada High School Proficiency Exam for $400.

District C candidate Beatrice Turner said the employee called her last June and made the offer shortly after Turner's daughter failed the math portion of the exam at Chaparral High School.

"We should be teaching our children so we don't need to sell test scores," Turner said to "DayONE" television host Mark Shaffer.

Turner did not name the employee, who allegedly works in the district's administrative offices on Flamingo Road. "The district needs to check this out and find out who is making money off of kids by selling these," Turner told the Sun after her TV appearance.

Turner said she was so angry that her daughter didn't pass the math portion of the proficiency exam that she did not report the allegations to school officials at the time.

"Look how many concerns we bring to the district," Turner said. "What good has it done?"

Her daughter went on to take the test again and passed it, Turner said.

Last week, a former Rancho High School student and a former Horizon North student went public with allegations that test proctors gave students answers during testing on the High School Proficiency Exam.

After hearing the allegations, School Board members and Superintendent Carlos Garcia called for an investigation.

When presented with Turner's claims, a school district spokeswoman said investigations require hard evidence.

"It has to be more than rumors," Mary Stanley-Larsen said. We need to be able to track it down and pin it down. Anytime there are allegations, we need credible evidence. In the cases where we have that, we go after it."

Stanley-Larsen said the district needs dates, times and witnesses.

State Superintendent Mary Peterson said the Nevada Department of Education has not received complaints from the school district about the allegations at Rancho and Chaparral high schools. She did say that one year ago a teacher was suspended for giving students answers at Horizon high school.

Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union, said he is concerned with the responses school officials are giving. Peck says the school district is not genuinely concerned with the cheating issue. He charged that officials are "willfully blind to the possibility that there is widespread cheating."

"It is the responsibility of the state and the School Board to aggressively and thoroughly investigate these allegations," Peck said, adding that the ACLU supports standards and testing.

"It's not enough for them to say to the people bringing forth the allegations that, 'If you can't prove it, we're not interested.' That's absurd, and it's shameful."

Garcia and Leonard Paul, assistant superintendent for secondary education, could not be reached for comment Monday.

In June, a former Lake Elementary School teacher claimed the fourth grade TerraNova exam booklet was used to teach the test and that the district's internal curriculum test scores were inflated.