"MALDEN - The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted unanimously yesterday to close a Springfield charter school, two months after a state investigation revealed widespread cheating among administrators and staff on the MCAS exams last year."
“The kids and the parents are the victims,’’ Thomas Fortmann, a state board member from Lexington, said before the vote, which was held at a senior citizen center near the state’s education headquarters. The state has shut down five charter schools over the years for poor academic performance or other reasons.
Mitchell Chester, the commissioner of elementary and secondary education, recommended last month that the Robert M. Hughes Academy in Springfield be closed at the end of the school year, after an investigation by his department found the school’s principal orchestrated an extensive plan to cheat on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests last spring, enlisting the support of several teachers and other staff members.
The investigation revealed, among other things, that the principal or another administrator had instructed teachers to tell students to double-check answers when they spotted wrong answers and that one teacher helped a student write an essay for the exam, fearing that the principal would otherwise fire him.