NYTimes.com

Officials Plan to Investigate Revised Regents Test Scores

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: May 18, 2005
State and city officials are investigating charges that the scores of at least a dozen students at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx who failed the English Regents exam in January were changed to passing marks by assistant principals.
The principal of the school acknowledged yesterday that some scores had been revised, but he defended the action, saying some tests were originally graded incorrectly.
The Regents exams are administered by the state, and students must pass them to graduate from high school.
" We are impounding the test materials as requested by the State Education Department, and the matter will be investigated," said Michele Higgins, a spokeswoman for the City Department of Education.
The investigation was begun at the request of Kennedy teachers, who charged that the grades were changed in March or April - more than a month into the spring semester. The teachers said they discovered the changes this month after trying to retest failing students, only to have some of them insist that they had already passed.
" No one was ever notified to the possibility that something was wrong with the exam or there was some sort of discrepancy," said Maria Colon, the teachers' union representative at the school.
In an interview yesterday, the school's principal, Anthony Rotunno, acknowledged that scores had been revised but said that the administrators involved acted appropriately, and with his authorization, to correct grading mistakes.
He said there was evidence that at least some teachers had not followed the proper guidelines, or "rubric," in grading parts of the test.
" There's absolutely no cause for investigation," he said. "It's an administrative decision. It wasn't done maliciously. It wasn't done covertly. It wasn't done to hurt anybody. It wasn't done to beef up any records. It was trying to right a wrong."
But Mr. Rotunno conceded that the situation had been handled badly. Teachers who were involved in the grading of the exams were never informed of the changes. Students whose grades were changed were never given new programs for the spring semester to place them in the appropriate English class.
And, instead of all test papers being reviewed, which is standard procedure in any case of grading irregularities, apparently only the tests of students who had failed by a small margin were re-examined.
Mr. Rotunno and the teachers who have complained agree that the changes were made at the behest of Rhokeisha Ford, the school's new assistant principal for English, and carried out by the assistant principal for administration, Rashid Davis, who is also certified to teach English.
Ms. Ford was not assigned to Kennedy at the time of the January exam. At that point, she was a high-level official in the Region 1 superintendent's office, responsible for special education for Districts 9 and 10.
A spokesman for the State Education Department, Jonathan Burman, said officials were investigating the situation at Kennedy. "We take allegations of cheating very seriously," he said.
But Mr. Burman also said school officials did have authority to review exams.
" It is not beyond the scope of a school administrator's job to review the scoring of a Regents examination," he said. "But we are very clear that any such review must be entirely transparent and consistent with the established scoring rubrics."
Ms. Colon, the teachers' union leader, said school administrators are under increased pressure to raise scores. "It's an open door for cheating and falsifying documents," she said. "It's like you have to get your scores up."

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