The Camden Schools Probe
The Camden School District is the focus of a state criminal investigation into allegations of cheating on test scores and other fiscal irregularities. The Inquirer first uncovered unusually high 2005 test scores which were later confirmed by a state Department of Education investigation that found the scores were the result of "adult interference." For the 2006 testing, the state beefed up security and the scores plunged.
LATEST STORY
Despite state findings of rigged test scores, the pupils are not eligible for tutoring for failing schools.
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.
ONLINE EXTRAS
- Audio: Exclusive interview - Joseph D. Carruth
The following are phone conversations that former Camden principal Joseph D. Carruth says he secretly recorded with Camden School Board President Philip E. Freeman. Carruth said the first call was taped on June 2, 2005, and the second one on June 3, 2005.
- State review of Camden test scores, Aug. 15, 2006
The New Jersey Department of Education released a report on Jan. 16, 2007, on its investigation of 2005 test-score results for Dr. Charles Brimm Medical Arts High School.
- The U.S. secretary of education said she would look into waivers for Camden students.U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, visiting Philadelphia yesterday, said she would investigate whether students affected by rigged test scores in two Camden elementary schools should get waivers for tutoring.
- The Camden school system operates under unchecked spending and lax internal controls that resulted in more than $13 million in "questionable expenses," according to a state audit released yesterday.
- The following are phone conversations that former Camden principal Joseph D. Carruth says he secretly recorded with Camden School Board President Philip E. Freeman. Carruth said the first call was taped on June 2, 2005, and the second one on June 3, 2005.
- Still, an internal investigator did not back Joseph Carruth.Scores were rigged at Camden's elite high school by a district official who tampered with test answers, an internal investigation concluded, but allegations by the former principal that a supervisor told him to cheat were deemed untrue.
- Camden district officials have strenuously denied Joseph Carruth's allegations about state exams.Principal Joseph Carruth was riding down the slow, paneled elevator at Camden's district office, ready to cave in to pressure from a superior who he says had just given him a tutorial on how to cheat on state tests.
- It was touted as a bombshell: a secretly recorded conversation between two key players in the growing Camden schools cheating scandal.
- Paula Veggian, who helped uncover an alleged grade-fixing scheme in Camden, says she was "trying to do the right thing."Paula Veggian knew there was trouble when her rookie principal commented that he had seen the students' names before - on a failure list.
- The Camden County Prosecutor's Office was unaware of secret tape-recordings made by a former Camden principal of his conversations with the school board president, according to documents released yesterday.
- Citing pressure from above, teachers said it was a culture that went back at least to the 1980s.Cheating in the Camden School District dates as far back as the 1980s, long before the 2005 school year now under state scrutiny, an Inquirer investigation has found.
- Joseph D. Carruth, principal of Brimm Medical Arts High School in Camden, describes in an exclusive interview with The Inquirer why and how he was pressured to cheat on the 2005 New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment taken by 11th graders.
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