Paula Veggian knew there was trouble when her rookie principal commented that he had seen the students' names before - on a failure list.

Now the principal, Joseph D. Carruth, wanted Veggian to figure out how four seniors at Camden's elite Dr. Charles E. Brimm Medical Arts High had graduated even though records showed they should have been held back.

"We were both shocked," Veggian recalled. "I had never seen anything like this in my 37 years of employment with the board."

In her first extensive interview, Veggian described a tumultuous ordeal that began in July 2004 when she became a whistle-blower in an alleged grade-fixing scheme that would later snowball into a cheating scandal that has rocked the Camden School District.

"I'm outraged about what was done to the children, that they didn't immediately do something about the children," said Veggian, who remains in her job as scheduler at Brimm. "The very first thing they should have taken care of was the students."

The grade discrepancies, combined with later revelations about test rigging, set in motion a chain of events that shook South Jersey's largest district, eventually forcing the resignation of Superintendent Annette D. Knox and triggering a continuing and widespread state criminal investigation into the Camden schools.

For her part, Veggian was vilified and ostracized by critics who blamed her for tarnishing the reputation of the city's top magnet high school. Throughout, she remained stoic while trying to mount a legal battle against the district, contending she was harassed in retaliation for disclosing the alleged scheme.

She agreed to break her silence after a report last month by a district-hired investigator praised her for her "personal integrity and courage."

He wrote: "Ms. Veggian almost single-handedly corrected a festering problem at no small personal risk."

While she's relieved that the district finally admitted the grade fixing, she said, she can't get over what she's been through, including an aborted attempt by the district to demote her and send her to another high school.

"I was trying to do the right thing for the children, and their answer was to demote and transfer me against my will to a lower-paying job," she said. "Talk about outrage. They forced me to hire a lawyer and seek a legal avenue outside the educational community."

The investigator, former county prosecutor Edward F. Borden Jr., also determined that Brimm's high 2005 state standardized math test scores were due to illicit tampering and blamed cheating.

A state investigation in August said that "adult interference" explained the dramatic rise in test scores in two elementary schools. The probe began after The Inquirer raised questions about the scores.

Veggian, a former mathematics teacher, explained how, as Brimm's scheduler, she painstakingly combed through computer records in July 2004 to create a "failure list" of students who would not be promoted to the next grade.

"It started out with me just doing my job, and I continued to just do my job," Veggian said. She is responsible for compiling the master schedule of classes.

It actually started with Carruth, who became Brimm's principal that summer, she said.

"When he perused the total accumulated credit list, some of the names jumped out at him," Veggian said.

They learned that four seniors graduated that year without earning the needed credits, and that three underclassmen were wrongly promoted.

As she pulled more records, they came up with scores of students with questionable grades. They suspected that longtime guidance counselor Frederick Clayton was responsible for the grade changing. Ultimately, the district agreed and is trying to fire him. Clayton denies the accusations.

Carruth called Knox, and a meeting was scheduled the following day with Assistant Superintendent Luis Pagan, Veggian said.

Veggian said Pagan asked her and Carruth to provide proof of the grade changing. They were told to keep quiet while district officials reviewed the information. She expected action over the summer, but nothing happened. It would take two years for the district's internal investigation to confirm what she and Carruth had uncovered.

"I did what I was told," she said. "I kept my mouth shut and then they came along in December with a transfer and demotion, and I still hadn't said anything."

When the 2004-05 school year began, angry parents demanded to know why students weren't promoted. Their ire grew when Clayton, a popular guidance counselor, was suspended pending an investigation into the alleged grade changing.

Meanwhile, Veggian faced growing pressure at Brimm, where a secret petition was circulated to oust her. Plans were in the works to demote her and transfer her to Camden High as a math teacher. She said she also felt resentment as a white administrator in a predominantly minority district.

The school board backed down after Veggian hired a lawyer and filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit in January 2005. But Veggian said the stress took a toll on her health, and she went on sick leave for a month.

"It kind of looks like [district officials] reward the bad guys and punish the good people," Veggian said during an interview at the law office of her attorney, Morris Smith. "What kind of message is that to our children?"

But former school board member Dwaine J. Williams, a Clayton ally, said Veggian should not be viewed as a hero. In his experience, he said, grades could be changed at other city schools if students did extra work.

"She's a whistle-blower, but she's whistling nothing," Williams said.

Carruth - as a new principal - relied on Veggian, 61, a veteran of the district for nearly four decades. She had been transferred to Brimm the year before from Camden High.

"We depended on each other. People who might not know her that well see a hardness and directness," Carruth said. But there was another side to her, he said. "She reminded me of my mom."

Karen Borrelli, a health and physical education teacher at Brimm, described Veggian as "an outsider and a loner who knows operation and policy."

Evans Roebuck, a former guidance counselor at Brimm, called Veggian very credible and "a highly professional person."

"I know she did her job and did it to the letter of the law," Roebuck said.

Veggian began her career in the city at Camden High in the '60s, during the civil-rights riots and the upheaval in the Parkside section, which changed from a predominantly Jewish neighborhood to a mostly black one.

Her passion for teaching never wavered. She devised new teaching methods and contacted parents at home.

A longtime friend and neighbor, Linda Ivins, said Veggian had always had high ethical standards and a knack for details.

"If she tells you something, it is so," Ivins said. "She doesn't shoot from the hip."

Carruth said he confided in Veggian shortly after Pagan allegedly asked him in January 2005 to rig Brimm's math scores. Veggian confirms that Carruth talked with her but insists the conversation occurred two weeks later in February.

Borden cited the discrepancy as among seven reasons that he deemed Carruth's allegations about Pagan as untrue.

Smith, Veggian's attorney, said the discrepancy is not significant and should be expected given the pressures faced by Carruth and Veggian.

In its first public acknowledgment that grades likely were altered at Brimm, possibly for years, the school board in November filed charges with the state against Clayton that could lead to his firing.

The district alleged that Clayton made 200 fraudulent grade changes from 2002 to 2004, and kept two sets of grade books - a true set for report cards and one doctored for college transcripts.

The alleged grade changing appears to have affected records as far back as 1998-99, the freshman year for the Class of 2002, documents suggest.

Clayton, suspended without pay, "vigorously denies" any wrongdoing, his attorney, Keith Waldman, said. Clayton did not return a telephone message.

In 2004-05, Brimm was among the top-performing schools in the region, when 92 percent of its 11th graders were proficient in math on the state's High School Proficiency Assessment.

After the state sent monitors to oversee testing last spring, 75 percent scored proficient, a drop of 17 percentage points.

The Camden County prosecutor has investigated the alleged grade fixing and Carruth's allegations but has taken no action and made no comments.

Smith, Veggian's attorney, said he believed she would be fully vindicated in her pending federal lawsuit seeking unspecified damages. A judge last year dismissed the whistle-blower count, leaving two counts alleging that her due process and civil rights were violated.

"The board needs to be taught a lesson. They succeeded in making her life very difficult," Smith said.

Despite all that she has endured, Veggian said she had no regrets about coming forward.

"I was trying to do right for the children. The children are the reason we are all here."

For previous coverage of the controversy over test scores in the Camden schools, go to http://go.philly.com/camdenscores