Clark County School Board finds fault with state’s cheating allegations
After seven months of silence over a black mark against Kelly Elementary School, the Clark County School Board on Thursday spoke out on state test cheating allegations involving the campus made by the state superintendent of public schools.
“I have not been silent. I just didn’t respond until all the facts, as we know it, are out,” said Clark County School Board Vice President Linda Young, who represents the school near Lake Mead and Martin Luther King boulevards and is critical of the state’s allegations. “People were maligned who were not proven guilty.”
She faulted the state’s investigation for not being thorough.
“There were some named individuals who were not proven guilty,” said Young in reference to the school’s principal and assistant principal, who were admonished by state Superintendent Dale Erquiaga at the end of the state’s investigation in April and immediately suspended by Clark County School District Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky.
Young’s statement came exactly a week after the district released the findings of its own investigation into Kelly for a test score spike in 2011-12. While cheating couldn’t be ruled out as a potential reason for a remarkable rise in test scores at the school, it definitely wasn’t proved, Skorkowsky said. No evidence of cheating could be found, he said.
That is a far different conclusion than the one presented in April by Erquiaga when he released investigation results from the Nevada Department of Education and the state attorney general’s office.
“I have no doubt that … student answer sheets were altered by one or more adults in the system,” Erquiaga said at the time.
Erquiaga’s conclusion was based largely on the state’s analysis of student scorecards that found an unusually high number of erasures showing answers changed from wrong to right. However, Erquiaga said no culprits could be identified. He also didn’t provide any direct evidence that adults made the erasures.
Board member Carolyn Edwards shared the opinion Thursday that the erasures couldn’t be summed up as cheating.
“There was not enough proof to lay blame on any one person,” she said. “In the future, I hope we do better investigations.”
Young recommended no more action against the school’s principal and assistant principal, who were reinstated by Skorkowsky in August after a Review-Journal story showing the state’s allegations were without direct evidence.
Young asked that the district restore the $200,000 in extra supports taken from the school in 2012-13, which includes a federal grant.
“Let’s move on,” she said. “Enough is enough. Let’s get the adult bickering out of the way.”
Stephen Augspurger, executive director of the union representing Clark County school administrators, commended board members for taking the stance that the cheating allegations were baseless. He has been vocal about holes in the state’s investigation and criticized Erquiaga for making such allegations without presenting evidence.
“I couldn’t agree more,” he told board members Thursday. “I think you’re right on target with everything.”
However, the district shouldn’t try to forget it and move on, he said. Higher standards need to be demanded in future investigations over testing irregularities, he said.
“We’ve had a serious injustice here by the state’s highest education official (Erquiaga),” Augspurger said.
Contact Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279. Find him on Twitter: @TrevonMilliard.
