DOE May Fire AP For Altering Student Exams; Had Tests in Her Care

Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard J. Condon Dec. 4 released a report recommending the firing of an Assistant Principal at a high school in The Bronx who he concluded tampered with a math Regents examination and then lied to investigators about it.

RICHARD J. CONDON: Evidence points to AP.

In his report to Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, Mr. Condon stated that Assistant Principal Ruth Ralston of the High School for Contemporary Arts should be terminated because of irregularities reported on some exams that had passing grades on them, including 1,013 erasures and changes on the tests altering the response from incorrect to correct 94 percent of the time.

A Suspicious Disparity

The investigation began Aug. 13, when the SCI received a written complaint from New York State Education Department Assistant Commissioner David Abrams on the high school's scoring of the integrated algebra Regents exam. The NYSED's contractor had discovered inconsistencies between the multiple-choice section and the constructed-response section of the exam, with students getting multiple-choice questions right far more often.

Students were then questioned by SCI investigators, with most of them recalling they had made a few changes to sheets that contained dozens of erasures. The Principal of the school, Francisco Sanchez, directed investigators to two Assistant Principals, including Ms. Ralston, who were in charge of Regents examinations. Ms. Ralston had been the exam organizer at the school for about two years. Mr. Sanchez noted in a second interview that school staff could get a monetary bonus, to be distributed among administrators and Teachers, if exam scores were good.

Scorers of the exams, when questioned, remembered being surprised at how well students had done on multiple-choice questions and also found the number of corrections that had been done unusual, but did not recall anything abnormal about the testing process itself.

Means and Opportunity

But Mr. Sanchez confirmed that Ms. Ralston collected all the tests from proctors and delivered them to the Guidance Counselor's office, where they were stored, and that she possessed the only key to that office at one point.

Although Mr. Sanchez admitted that he told his Teachers "we must pass," and put pressure on them to get results for the students, he vehemently denied asking his staff to tamper with exams, saying he wanted results only through effective teaching. SCI noted that the Principal seemed "genuinely surprised" when shown the number of changes made to the tests.

At another interview with Ms. Ralston, SCI investigators accused her of tampering with the exams after she gave vague answers on the timeline of the test scoring. She consulted with her union representative and then said that the exams had been housed in her office overnight, rather than the Guidance Counselor's. When asked if she was trying to suggest someone had stolen the tests at night, changed the answers and then put them back, Ms. Ralston shrugged.

Later interviews with the Principal and another Assistant Principal revealed that Ms. Ralston had been performing poorly and that the Principal had removed $140,000 from the school budget, then excessed Ms. Ralston to meet the cut, which meant Ms. Ralston had to work three classes a day while looking for another position, in accordance with union rules.

The SCI decided that Ms. Ralston had not followed protocol in keeping the tests in her office, and while she didn't stand to gain financially from higher test scores, she could have used them as a leg up to a new job. They found that her account of what had happened to the tests "[defied] common sense and logic" and that she had not immediately denied changing the answers until consulting with a union representative.

In the decision, First Deputy Commissioner Regina A. Loughran recommended that Ms. Ralston's termination be considered should she apply for any city school position in the future, and forwarded the decision to Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau for "whatever action he deems appropriate."