Peoria School District 150 says special education teachers at a primary school violated state testing rules the last three years. Alex Rusciano (ruu-shee-AH-noh) reports the school’s principal also allegedly failed to report spikes in the Illinois Standards Achievement Test scores:
Those are the main conclusions from an internal investigation the district sent to the Illinois State Board of Education last week. The report says 26 special education students from Charter Oak Primary School got inappropriate help from teachers giving the math and reading exams. District Attorney Michelle Todd says the help violated I-SAT protocol:
“Encouraging students to use the context of the question to figure out the answer during the assessment. Reviewing students answer books after the tests are collected to clean up extraneous markings or blacken in answer bubbles if a student has marked multiple answers in response to a test question.”
The report says the students saw a more than 40-percent decrease on I-SAT performance when they moved onto another school from Charter Oak. The district shared details of the investigation in front of hundreds of supporters for Charter Oak principal John Wetterauer (WET-er-ow-er). He remains on paid administrative leave. The School Board says it will give Wetterauer (WET-er-ow-er) a chance to respond to the report’s findings before making any employment decisions. I'm Alex Rusciano