Four months after state investigators concluded that "adult interference" boosted test scores at two Camden elementary schools, little has been done to help students catch up.

The state has refused to invalidate the rigged 2005 scores at H.B. Wilson and U.S. Wiggins, which could have helped with eligibility for tutoring reserved for failing schools. The state says its hands are tied in instituting a tutoring program because of federal regulations.

For their part, district officials are still "assessing the damage" caused by cheating, interim Superintendent Leonard Fitts said in an interview last week.

"There's a good possibility that they [the students] missed out on some opportunities," Fitts said. "We have to compensate for losses that possibly occurred."

While it could not be determined how the former fourth graders would have performed without the interference, scores at both schools plummeted when state monitors were sent to supervise 2006 tests in the spring.

During the 2004-05 school year, 97 percent of Wiggins' fourth graders achieved proficiency in language arts, and 98 percent were proficient in math.

When those students moved up to fifth grade, 56 percent were proficient in language arts, a drop of 41 percentage points. Math proficiency was 62 percent, a 36-percentage-point decline.

Perhaps more telling is this: In 2005, 75 percent of the students were at the advanced proficient level. In 2006, only 6 percent were at the advanced level.

Parents and community leaders are criticizing the district and the state for failing to take aggressive steps to make up the academic ground lost by cheating at the two schools.

"The damage has been done to the children," said community activist Angel Cordero. "No healing has started."

Neither the state nor the district has held anyone accountable for the cheating in 2005.

But, as an Inquirer investigation showed, Camden has been afflicted by a culture of cheating dating to the 1980s, long before the 2005 school year came under state scrutiny.

In response to The Inquirer's findings, Gov. Corzine pledged that those who took part in the cheating would be held accountable. The state Education Department this month began analyzing test scores to root out possible cheating.

A criminal probe by the state Attorney General's Office is focusing on the alleged wrongdoers, and the district is conducting an internal investigation.

Tenure charges that could result in dismissal have been lodged against five teachers and aides implicated in an alleged phony-voucher scheme at the schools.

Nevertheless, Candy Causey, the mother of a kindergartner and a second grader at H.B. Wilson, worries about whether her two sons are learning. "The education stinks," Causey said.

She doubts that the students earned the 2004-05 test results, which put the school among the best in the state. She expressed anger that little has been done in response to the cheating scandal.

"There's no way those kids could have passed," Causey said. "Most of the kids in our homework center couldn't even read the homework."

Wilson and Wiggins are not eligible for supplemental tutoring available to failing schools under the federal No Child Left Behind law because their 2006 scores put them only at a level known as "early warning."