Phila. teachers interviewed in PSSA cheating probe

The Pennsylvania Inspector General's Office is assisting the state Department of Education with its probe of allegations of cheating on 2009 state exams.

Agents arrived in Philadelphia this week to begin interviewing teachers at the 13 Philadelphia district schools and three charter schools that are part of the inquiry, according to educators and others with knowledge of the probe.

The Inspector General's Office has set up a hotline that teachers may call if they have information about cheating at their schools: 855-448-2435. The "PSSA test-integrity hotline" is operational statewide and allows callers to provide information anonymously about the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests.

"We're in the next phase of the investigation," Timothy Eller, a spokesman for the Education Department, said Tuesday. Secretary Ronald Tomalis asked the inspector general to join the probe, he said.

The inquiry, according to sources, is beginning at Roosevelt Middle School in East Germantown, where teachers told The Inquirer in May they had witnessed deliberate test security breaches in the recent past.

Teachers said that they had seen test answers written on a blackboard, students given improper test assistance, and other violations.

The School District hailed skyrocketing test scores as "a miracle," but analysts who examined 2009 test scores for the state found a suspicious pattern of erasures and corrections. They judged the odds of that happening naturally as nearly 1 in 10 quadrillion.

Earlier this month, the Education Department informed more than 20 school districts across the state and several charter schools that a review of 2009 test information had cleared them of wrongdoing.

Eller said there was no deadline for completing the investigation and said the inquiry would review administrators and teachers who were involved in the 2009 PSSA tests.

"Everyone from administrators to the rank and file," he said. "The inquiry will lead where it leads."

Philadelphia teachers at some schools where cheating allegedly occurred said they had been contacted by state investigators who are trying to interview them this week. The agents have said they want to talk to teachers away from their schools.

Roosevelt instructors said test security was tighter in March 2011 after the state received a complaint about possible cheating.

Under the heightened security, Roosevelt - once lauded for its astonishing results - saw its scores tumble. Its 2011 math scores were down 23 points, to 52 percent passing; reading scores dropped 18 points, to 69 percent passing. The school did not meet the state's academic benchmarks.

Tomalis began the testing investigation last summer after he learned that a "data forensics technical report," prepared for his predecessor at the department in 2009, had flagged roughly 60 schools for multiple statistical irregularities, including improbable scores.

The report was revealed in July by the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, which obtained it through a public records request.

The list of schools that have not been cleared include Snyder-Girotti Elementary in Bristol Borough; Chester Community Charter School; and Philadelphia charter schools Imhotep Institute Charter, Philadelphia Electrical and Technical Charter, and Walter Palmer Leadership Learning Partners Charter.

The 13 Philadelphia district schools that remain under review are Roosevelt and Wagner Middle Schools; Strawberry Mansion High School; and Catharine, Cayuga, F.S. Edmonds, Lamberton, John Marshall, Thurgood Marshall, McClure, Munoz-Marin, Olney, and Ziegler Elementary Schools.