District officials respond to allegations of cheating at hearing held Saturday

By Daniel R. Brown

Of The St. Louis American

“The test irregularities, as you all call them, never occurred,” NiRita Bradford, communication arts teacher and MAP senior leader at Wellston’s Eskridge High School, said at a hearing held Saturday to discuss the district’s accreditation status and options for its future.

“There was no cheating. I had three teachers, one lead teacher and two proctors, and those proctors had eagle eyes. We spread those desks out so far that those kids couldn’t see nothing.”

The hearing, which was required by state law, gave Wellston School District officials an opportunity to outline their plans for improving the district’s academic performance and also gave Wellston residents an opportunity to voice their concerns about the district’s future.

On June 30, 2003, the Missouri Board of Education informed the Wellston School District that it would no longer be accredited within the state, and that it would have two years to regain its status or be taken over by the state. The preliminary results of the district’s February 2005 Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP) review seemed to indicate that the district had made enough progress over the two-year period to regain a provisional accreditation status by the June 30, 2005 deadline.

However, according to a letter dated May 13, 2005 and sent to Ronald Stodghill, Wellston’s superintendent, by state Deputy Commissioner of Education Bert Schulte, a subsequent “external analysis of the district’s Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) results has confirmed irregularities in high school MAP scores that prevent these scores from being considered for the purpose of accreditation.”

Schulte further stated, “Because of the irregularities in the high school MAP scores and the district’s dropout data, the district is not eligible to receive points for these two indicators on the performance report.”

The letter also notified the school district’s officials that they had until June 15 to submit updated or corrected data to show that the district has made sufficient progress to qualify for provisionally accredited status.

The “external analysis” of the district’s MAP results identified five possible ways in which unauthorized collaboration could have occurred, including “the answers may have been given to the students” and “the student(s) may have copied answers from the teacher or another student(s).”

Also included within the report were specific instances where students gave similar answers to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions.

For example, in response to the prompt, “Write a paper to convince a parent or guardian to allow you to travel to a new place,” Student A responded, in part, “I have always wanted to travel to places where I can use the experience to have conversations with my parents and friends. Mother, I would like to visit Paris because I think it would be exciting as well as educational.”

Student B wrote, “I have always wanted to travel to places where I can use my experiences in conversations with my parents. Mother I would like to visit California because I think it would be educational and exciting.”

Stodghill provided the American with the Wellston School District’s 6-page response submitted on June 9, which addresses the concerns raised by the external analysis.

The district responded, “In analyzing the constructed responses, it was the judgment and conjecture of the authors of the report that the responses are similar. The district presents reasons in part two of this paper why responses are similar (e.g., all the students have the same teacher).”

The district’s response concludes that “the facts and the documentation point unequivocally to a district that is showing significant progress in improving the quality of education to the young people we are honored to serve.”

Chavanica Wright, a student at Eskridge High School, said, “If you consider going, working hard, buckling down, doing what you have to do ‘cheating,’ then I guess we did. You can say that we cheated.”

State Board of Education member Vanetta Rogers, who heard testimony on Saturday, said, “We will have to make a decision whether this district’s accreditation will be regained or not. The state board, by state law, will make the final judgment. There is a meeting of the state board once a month on the 4th Thursday. On that agenda will be the accreditation status of the (Wellston) school district.”

“Wellston would not be a viable situation if this school district isn’t here. It is that crucial to this community,” Henry Anderson, Eskridge High School’s principal, testified.

“If you want to contribute to violence, if you want to contribute to an uproar here that will shatter St. Louis, take it out of here. Trouble will come.”