Suspended Teacher Returns

An Orange teacher placed on paid leave after giving students work sheets with questions lifted directly from the standardized Stanford 9 exam returned to her Cerro Villa Middle School classroom Monday after a school district investigation.

The eighth-grade math teacher was placed on paid leave April 6, after Orange Unified School District officials learned she had distributed the questions to 214 students.

State rules forbid the use of actual test questions, or even creating preparatory materials that too closely parallel the high-stakes test.

“She returned [to Cerro Villa] today,” district spokeswoman Judith Frutig said Monday. “The investigation has been concluded.”

Frutig declined to say what punishment, if any, the teacher received, saying it was a confidential personnel matter.

The Stanford 9, given to public school students in second through 11th grades, has become a centerpiece of California’s efforts at educational reform. Many educators have criticized the test because it does not yet match the curriculum California’s teachers must follow.

For the time being, Stanford scores are the sole data used in a statewide ranking of all public schools, the Academic Performance Index. A school’s progress toward meeting a goal on the index will determine which campuses and teachers are eligible for rewards and which are sanctioned.

The incident in Orange was reported to the California Department of Education, which will not count scores from inappropriately prepped students in Cerro Villa’s average Stanford scores or its API ranking, said Phil Morse, the district’s director of research and assessment. The school’s marks for math will be based only on scores earned by students who did not see questions beforehand.

“Parents will receive the scores,” Morse said, “with the caveat that they’re probably a little inflated because students were allowed to do some questions on their own” before the testing date.

It is unclear how the omission of some scores affects the school’s standing, Morse said.

Officials in the California Department of Education’s standards and assessment division could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

Orange teachers union President John Rossmann has said that the action was a procedural misstep by a new teacher.