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State investigators found suspicious patterns of changed answers on tests at Philadelphia's Roosevelt Middle School - Philly.com

State investigators found suspicious patterns of changed answers on tests at Philadelphia's Roosevelt Middle School - Philly.com

State investigators found suspicious patterns of changed answers on tests at Philadelphia's Roosevelt Middle School

July 25, 2011|By Dylan Purcell and Kristen A. Graham, Inquirer Staff Writers
  • Theodore Roosevelt Middle School in East Germantown. (Michael Bryant/Staff)

When one seventh-grade student at Philadelphia's Roosevelt Middle School took state reading and math exams in 2009, answers were erased 35 times - changed from wrong to right every time.

The odds of that happening naturally are more remote than 1 in 100 trillion. Winning the Powerball lottery, whose odds are still an astronomical 1 in 195 million, is much easier.

Eighty-two students at Roosevelt - one-quarter of the school's seventh and eighth graders tested - had statistically suspicious patterns of changing answers on state tests in 2009, state-appointed investigators have found.

The East Germantown school - hailed by Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman last year as a district pacesetter - came under scrutiny in May after several Roosevelt teachers told The Inquirer that they