Ohio schools chief: Data changes may spur charges

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s school super­in­ten­dent says the inves­ti­ga­tion of changes made to stu­dent atten­dance data in sev­eral dis­tricts could lead to crim­i­nal charges against edu­ca­tors who com­mit­ted fraud.

The Colum­bus Dis­patch reported that Super­in­ten­dent Stan Heffner dis­cussed that pos­si­bil­ity Wednes­day, the same day the Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion announced the Lock­land dis­trict in sub­ur­ban Cincin­nati filed false atten­dance data to improve its state report card. Chang­ing atten­dance data can change the entire report card by con­trol­ling which stu­dents end up in the final pool of tests that are counted.

The depart­ment is inves­ti­gat­ing claims that Colum­bus and Toledo schools also retroac­tively altered stu­dent atten­dance records to boost dis­trict results. Heffner said he’ll seek simul­ta­ne­ous crim­i­nal and civil inves­ti­ga­tions if there’s evi­dence of fraud.

“I will be ask­ing our office of pro­fes­sional con­duct to launch inves­ti­ga­tions along with the attor­ney general’s office if I find there is evi­dence of fraud so we have civil and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions at the same time,” Heffner said. “Those peo­ple have no busi­ness in our pub­lic schools.”

Heffner said he has the option of down­grad­ing dis­tricts’ rat­ings on their state report cards, fin­ing them and with­hold­ing up to 20 ?per­cent of their state aid if it is deter­mined that dis­trict offi­cials rigged state report-card data.

“How­ever, I also don’t want to do any­thing that hurts the oppor­tu­ni­ties of stu­dents because of the bad behav­ior of adults,” he said.

Heffner said the data ques­tions and a focus on improv­ing stu­dent test scores have cre­ated an overem­pha­sis on state report cards for districts.

The state quickly amended Lockland’s state report cards, which detail how stu­dents do on pro­fi­ciency tests, how fre­quently they attend class and how many grad­u­ate. The state says 36 stu­dents were falsely reported as hav­ing left the dis­trict and then added back to the ros­ter later. The break in enroll­ment led to their test scores not being counted in the district’s over­all per­for­mance rating.

Lock­land offi­cials released a writ­ten state­ment say­ing the school board has not had an oppor­tu­nity to review the alle­ga­tions and that the dis­trict had no comment.

The Blade of Toledo reported Thurs­day that some Toledo pub­lic schools lead­ers had detailed in back-and-forth emails their desires to exclude spe­cial edu­ca­tion stu­dents and those absent for a length of time from their records — appar­ently to affect the weighted aver­age of stu­dent test scores.

The state edu­ca­tion depart­ment ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion after dis­trict Super­in­ten­dent Jerome Pecko acknowl­edged to The Blade last week that schools retroac­tively with­drew and re-enrolled chron­i­cally absent stu­dents to erase their poor atten­dance records.

Posted by AP News on Jul 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.