District Addressed Cheating Allegations Monday

School District of Philadelphia officials said at a news conference Monday they don't have enough information to substantiate claims that there was widespread cheating on standardized tests throughout its system.

Daniel Piotrowski and Frances Newberg, who both are in the district's accountability office, said at district headquarters that the red flags raised by the Data Recognition Corporation—which has worked with the state to look at potentially irregular scores—aren't necessarily valid.

That's because some information isn't available to the district, the officials said. The concerns are based on 2009 PSSA scores, but both Piotrowski and Newberg said they'd like to see 2010 and 2011 data before making any further judgments on skewed numbers.

Piotrowski said 13 out of 28 schools cited by the state potentially merit further investigation because of large jumps in scores and high rates of erasure on the tests. (He declined to name those schools or any specific institutions during the news conference.)

But the officials also pointed out that in some cases, there was only an average of two answers changed from wrong to right across the board in a given grade level. That doesn't necessarily mean there was cheating, they said.

"We don't think that's adequate," Newberg said.

Roosevelt Middle School, which serves some students from Mt. Airy, has been named in media reports as one of the schools with highly irregular test scores.

But Newberg, without directly naming the school, said in response to a reporter's question about "a certain middle school" that the district has already stepped up monitoring there.

She said district officials came to the school for three days to inquire about the possibility of cheating, but said no one came forward to name names about specific teachers or administrators who were taking part in activities related to cheating.

The district must now wait for the state to provide additional information before deciding how it will proceed.

The other 15 schools named in the state report were deemed by the district to not be institutions that were engaged in cheating. Piotrowski said the information didn't substantiate any charges that there was irregular activity going on as part of the schools' testing system.