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Pupils prompt cheating probe

Sunday, May 25, 2003

By Eleanor Chute, Post-Gazette Education Writer

It started out as one of those routine, "how-was-your-day-at-school-dear" conversations.

It led to a teacher's suspension, an investigation into cheating allegations, and parents worried their children might be punished for whistle-blowing.

The city school board voted Wednesday to suspend Beth Lynn Boysza, a teacher at Horace Mann Elementary School on the North Side. Based on interviews with parents and school officials, this is how it happened:

Riding in the car after school one day early last month, Denise Yurkovich's fourth-grade son said he was tired of the math testing going on in his class at Horace Mann Elementary.

The teacher kept giving the pupils their tests over and over again, he complained.

"What do you mean?" asked his mom.

Well, he said, the teacher checks the tests, and then gives them back to the class with sticky notes on them. The notes give clues about answers that are wrong. And she also talks to them about the notes.

"Honey, do you know your teacher is cheating?" Yurkovich asked her son.

So on April 7, Yurkovich called Richard Mascari, an elementary administrator for Pittsburgh Public Schools. She explained her concerns about her son's comments about the New Standards math test and asked that someone look into it. She told Mascari she didn't want her name to be given to anyone at the school.

Mascari called Principal Lonnie Folino, who was home ill that day. Folino said he didn't know anything about any improprieties on the New Standards math test. Despite Yurkovich's request, Mascari gave Folino her name, saying he wanted to find out if she was credible.

Then Mascari called Horace Mann Elementary School and found out that testing was going on that very day. He called Folino back, then called another staffer and ordered that all testing materials be collected after lunch and stored in a secure place.

The staff member told Mascari that sticky notes were found in the math test booklets.

Those were the students of Beth Lynn Boysza, who has taught for about 15 years and is in her second year at Mann.

Mascari had the books hand-delivered to his office. When he examined them, there were multiple sticky notes in the books.

Mascari didn't know it at the time, but at least one child had saved three sticky notes from the test and had given them to a parent.

One note said, "Whats is the difference? Subtract!" Another said, "how many choices?" The third said "check."

The next day in Boysza's class, four children, including Yurkovich's son, were called into the school office. One by one, they were questioned by Folino about the math tests.

On May 6, after a call from a newspaper reporter, Folino sent parents a letter on the subject. He wrote that there were "some questions regarding testing protocol" and that the tests in an unnamed classroom were "invalidated," and pupils would have to retake a similar test next school year.

On May 12, Boysza was suspended with pay, an action the board officially approved Wednesday.

On May 14, Folino sent home a letter stating that the school's fourth-grade teachers were on leave "for the remainder of the school year" because of "unforeseen medical/personal issues."

Classroom behavior appeared to be slipping. Folino's letter of May 14 noted that substitute teachers were called in, and that children were "exploiting" the situation. He reminded parents of the discipline code.

Concerns are raised

Kim Marmarosa, a parent representative from Horace Mann, said some children were upset after Boysza left.

"Mrs. Boysza is an incredible teacher. The children love her and want her back," Marmarosa wrote in a letter she distributed to school board members Wednesday.

Wednesday also was the night of the school's Parent School Community Council meeting. Folino had sent a letter saying the agenda would include "discussing how this public relations concern could have been avoided, the communications protocol that is recommended and why this broke down."

Folino said that subject was not addressed at the meeting because of the continuing investigation. Other school and union officials have declined to comment on the record, citing the same reason.

Meanwhile, concerns over how the matter was handled have been growing. Parents have raised questions ranging from whether teachers received proper training to whether parents' rights were violated.

Gary M. Kerchinsky Jr. and his wife, DeNeice, said they didn't know their son had been questioned until this month, when the father received a call from someone whose name he didn't catch asking if his son would testify.

Kerchinsky and Marmarosa said they had difficulties getting copies of the statements purportedly made by their children. Yurkovich said she's been able to get one of the two statements attributed to her child. The parents also question whether the statements they ultimately received actually reflect what their children said.

And, said Yurkovich, every child in the class should have been questioned, so the four children wouldn't be singled out.

William Andrews, a lawyer who has represented several school districts as solicitor, declined to comment on this case in particular. But he said that, in general, the "best practice" is to notify parents and let them see any statement made by their child.

"The statement doesn't do me any good if the parents aren't going to let the kid testify later anyhow," he said.

He said he would want the parent to be involved in a decision that takes a "chance of retribution from that teacher or other teachers later on."

The test in question is the New Standards Mathematics Reference Examination, a standardized test that details strengths and weaknesses of each test-taker. After the teachers give the test, the test is scored by an outside grading service.

This is not a state-mandated test, nor is it a high-stakes test that solely determines whether a pupil is promoted or a teacher is fired.

But the test, in addition to helping fifth-grade teachers know what their classes need, is used for accountability. Each principal can use the test to see how pupils in each teacher's class are faring, and the administration can check on the performance of pupils in each school building.

"No one is going to lose their job solely because of a low test score," said Diane Briars, head of the district's math program. "What it does question is if all of the kids in a particular class are scoring very low, then the question would be to go in the classroom and see what's happening in the classroom."

Recently, math scores have improved at Horace Mann, which has about 265 children.

On the New Standards math test in fourth grade, 65 percent were proficient in skills in 2002 compared with 36 percent in 2001. Also, 33 percent were proficient in concepts in 2002 compared with 3 percent in 2001; and 33 percent were proficient in problem solving in 2002, contrasted with 2 percent in 2001.

On the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment math test given in fifth grade, the percentage scoring "proficient" and "advanced" grew from 21 percent in 2001 to 58.7 percent in 2002.

A growing trend

Nationwide, as testing has become more prevalent and is tied not only to pupil advancement but teacher accountability, reports of cheating have become more common.

Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the national FairTest organization, has a folder of such incidents.

"Teachers, principals feel that test scores have to increase for them to keep their jobs. Under pressure like that, some people do wrong things," he said.

School officials have blamed miscommunication and honest error for some of those cases.

Last fall, a Pittsburgh school administrator erroneously wrote a memo telling ninth-grade teachers that students could use dictionaries and thesauruses on the state writing test. When the mistake was discovered, schools were surveyed, showing about 240 students in eight classrooms in four high schools used the reference aids. The district notified the state. Even so, the state decided to keep the test scores.

Some Horace Mann parents have questioned whether teachers were properly trained to give the test. Folino declined to say whether in-house training had been done this year.

Briars, however, said that some math-test training was conducted at Horace Mann during the 2001-02 school year and that Boysza was listed as attending a Jan. 31 session that included some information on math testing.

An instruction booklet also is provided to teachers. The instructions state:

"Responses to test items must represent the pupil's own independent and unaided thinking and must remain unchanged after test administration is complete."

"All persons" are prohibited from giving "cues, clues, hints and/or actual answers in any written, printed, verbal and/or nonverbal form (including chalkboards and bulletin boards) before, during and after the test."

The teacher may "explain or repeat directions, but you may not provide any assistance with the mathematics questions or give any hints or answers pertaining to the content of the examination."

Briars said, "I think it's pretty clear."

Mascari said once school officials found out about the problem, "we did what we needed to do. We didn't shove anything under the carpet. We did our due diligence. Could we have done it differently? There is always room for that."

Yurkovich said she wasn't looking for the teacher to be fired. She would like the teacher to receive more training, be given the teacher equivalent of what would happen to a child for academic dishonesty and apologize to her class.

"Everybody needs to be held accountable for their own actions," she said.