Class Cleared of Cheating Charge

Los Angeles Unified School District officials Friday completed the first leg of their investigation into cheating allegations at a nationally acclaimed charter school, exonerating a fourth-grade class of any wrongdoing on the Stanford Nine standardized test.

But the district officials were continuing their probe into test irregularities in two other classes at the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center. Questions remain over whether answers were doctored in first- and third-grade classes on the Spanish-language Aprenda test, which was administered with the Stanford Nine for the first time last spring.

“There were no discrepancies found with the fourth-grade Stanford Nine teacher,” said Joe Rao, the school district’s reform coordinator. “We are still working on the others.”

The district, which hopes to wrap up its inquiry next week, released Vaughn’s Stanford Nine test scores Friday, nearly two weeks after results for other district schools were released.

Rao hand-delivered the scores to Vaughn Principal Yvonne Chan.

The scores showed mixed results on the Stanford Nine for students at Vaughn--a charter school that has attracted widespread attention from educators and political figures, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Four of the school’s five grades posted higher scores than their counterparts at neighboring campuses in reading, language, spelling and math.

For example, the median first-grade score at Vaughn was in the 36th percentile nationally in the four subjects combined, the highest composite rank any grade at the school achieved. That compared to the 25th percentile for the median first-grade score in the school district’s administrative cluster of schools covering Pacoima and San Fernando.

But Vaughn’s students showed less impressive results compared to students districtwide. Only Vaughn’s first- and fifth-graders outscored their district counterparts in the four subjects.

Indeed, Vaughn’s students ranked about the same nationally overall as other elementary pupils in the district.

Fourth grade proved to be a trouble spot. Vaughn’s fourth-graders ranked in the 12th percentile in reading and the 11th percentile in math, placing them at the bottom of the academic barrel. Chan attributed the low scores to the fact that fourth grade includes many Spanish speakers who are making the transition to classes taught in English.