District Punishes Teacher Over Stanford 9

The Fullerton School District informed the state that it has disciplined an elementary school teacher whose class had an unusually high number of erasures on a standardized test, changing answers from wrong to right.

A school board member said last month that an employee at Commonwealth Elementary School was being investigated for helping students change the answers.

The eight-paragraph letter from Supt. Ron Cooper to the state Department of Education said the teacher denied “engaging in any testing irregularities� on the Stanford 9 test. Interviews with students and others, however, “would indicate that the student answer changes could have resulted from inappropriate activity by the teacher.�

The letter said the problems occurred in a single class.

The district has declined to provide further information, including what the discipline was.

The Times obtained Cooper’s letter by filing a public records request with the district.

Commonwealth was one of about 50 schools where state officials suspected irregularities in the test.

The state uses the Stanford 9 to calculate Academic Performance Index scores.

The API evaluates schools on how well students do on the Stanford 9 and on how much scores improve from year to year. Schools that post big gains are eligible for significant financial rewards, including $25,000 bonuses to teachers in high-achieving classes.

Cooper asked the state to exclude the grade level in question and issue an API score for the school.

Linda Lownes, a consultant with the Department of Education, said she doubted that would happen.