Another former Philly principal charged in cheating scandal
The former principal of Locke Elementary was the eighth educator snared in the investigation, which began in 2012.
ANOTHER FORMER Philadelphia principal has been snared in an investigation into wide-spreading cheating on standardized tests.
Lolamarie Davis-O'Rourke, 43, of Williamstown, N.J., was arrested yesterday for allegedly tampering with the tests while she was principal of Locke Elementary School in West Philadelphia from 2009 to 2012, Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced yesterday. Davis-O'Rourke is the fourth principal and eighth educator overall to be arrested in connection with the probe.
The charges come as no surprise. Davis-O'Rourke resigned from the district in August 2012 and voluntarily surrendered her credential in 2013 amid the investigation into widespread cheating in the district.
According to a grand-jury presentment, Davis-O'Rourke created a culture of cheating at Locke. Several current and former faculty and staff members testified before the grand jury that Davis-O'Rourke proctored students to change answers from wrong to right, directed teachers to help students switch answers and rewrite written responses, and moved the test booklets from a secure storage room to a room adjacent to her office.
Witnesses also allege that Davis-O'Rourke changed answers personally and instructed her staff to correct wrong answers, according to the presentment.
"This type of public corruption in our education system deprives children of opportunities for learning," Kane said. "It undermines educators' abilities to evaluate progress and set a course for our children's successes."
The investigation began after a suspicious pattern of wrong-to-right erasures was discovered by Data Recognition Corp., the company responsible for grading the tests. DRC found that in 2010 - the first year of testing under Davis-O'Rourke - the probability of erasure patterns for four grades and subjects was less than 1 in 100,000,000. The suspicious erasure patterns increased the following year.
In 2012, when the district implemented stricter testing procedures, the proficiency rates dropped dramatically across every grade and subject, except for eighth-grade reading. For example, the proficiency rate of third-grade students in reading plummeted from 90.2 percent to 27 percent, while third-grade math scores fell from 85.4 percent to 16.7 percent.
According to the presentment, Davis-O'Rourke confessed to changing some answers, but blamed a testing coordinator for most of the changes. She claimed there was tremendous pressure from the district to meet target scores or face consequences.
The first arrests in the investigation came back in May when five current and former educators from Cayuga Elementary in Hunting Park were charged. The former principals of the now-closed Communications Technology High School and Bok Technical High School were charged in September.
Locke was among 53 city schools investigated either by the district or the state Department of Education.
A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office said the investigation is ongoing.