Copy Link
Gene Harris sentenced
Will Gene Harris be charged?
Tankovich sentencing delayed again
Columbus schools fires four principals
Bunker culture contributed to problems
School Data Scandal Dissected
Police seize Columbus school records
Cheating on school enrollmentThe Allegation
Columbus City Schools employees - and perhaps others in schools throughout the state - are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards.
The Method
School workers withdrew students they knew to be still enrolled, deleted their absences, and then re-enrolled them. The district is accused of choosing children with many absences or low test scores.
The Motive
By withdrawing and re-enrolling students, employees can break a student's string of "continuous enrollment." Only the test scores of students who have been enrolled nonstop from October through the time they take state tests in the spring are counted in a school's overall test-passing rate.
Former superintendent Harris pleads to dereliction of duty in data scandal
The former superintendent of Columbus schools pleaded no contest this morning to a misdemeanor dereliction of duty charge for failing to fully investigate and stop data fraud in the district. A judge placed her on probation for a year and sentenced her to 100 hours of community service.
LATEST STORIES
Columbus schools’ data-scandal legal bill: at least $1.4 million
The legal tab paid to a Downtown law firm representing Columbus City Schools in data-rigging matters continued to swell over the second half of this school year. The Columbus Board of Education approved $275,000 more on Tuesday night, to be paid to Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur by the end of this month.
In wake of school data scandal, state investigating more teacher misconduct
The state education department investigated more educators for misconduct last year than it has in at least a decade, a surge driven in part by its scrutiny of dozens of educators caught up in the student-data tampering scandal. In 2014, the Office of Professional Conduct, the educator-discipline arm of the Ohio Department of Education, investigated 997 of the more than 9,000 referrals of potential wrongdoing it received, according to the annual report the office released this week.
Ginther’s documents show Columbus school audit started, then stalled
Responding to attacks by his political opponents that he didn’t do enough to uncover the Columbus schools data scandal, Columbus mayoral candidate Andrew J. Ginther says his campaign has unearthed documents that show the investigation continued at least as long as he was on the school board. But one of the key documents — a list of school-district audits active as of November 2006 — also shows that about two years after the student data audit started, investigators had spent just 114 hours on it. That’s equivalent to about a week and a half of work for two auditors.
School board fires ex-principal who altered grades at Marion-Franklin
The Columbus Board of Education voted unanimously last night to fire former Marion-Franklin High School Principal Pamela Diggs. A hearing examiner ruled last month that her role in district data manipulation was “dramatically wrong.” Diggs changed 186 grades at her school during the 2010-11 school year. At Marion-Franklin that year, 31,079 absences were deleted and 43 students were withdrawn retroactively at year’s end.
Columbus schools auditor gets three-year contract, raise
The Columbus school board approved a three-year contract for its internal auditor last night and gave her a raise. Carolyn Smith, who is most well known for investigating and helping to expose the district’s student-data scandal, had been working under a series of one-year contracts. Her salary will increase to $131,000 a year from $97,500.
Report: Firing former Marion-Franklin principal is justified
The Columbus school board would be justified in firing a former principal for falsifying student data at her school, a hearing officer ruled yesterday. Pamela Diggs, the former principal at Marion-Franklin High School, is the second principal the district moved to fire more than a year ago in connection with its data scandal. Diggs and other educators at her school had to return bonuses that were based on the altered data.
Ex-administrators from Columbus schools stripped of licenses
Two former Columbus schools administrators — one involved in the district’s data scandal and another who used school email and students to send sexually explicit notes to a teacher — lost their educator licenses yesterday.
Columbus school board dumps ‘policy governance’
It was out with the old last night, as Columbus City Schools ridded itself of the controversial “ policy governance” oversight model that it instituted in 2006, fired a principal accused of data-rigging and announced it would sell three unused school buildings. Policy governance, the hands-off model that put extraordinary power to run the district in the hands of the superintendent with minimal board oversight, is officially revoked. In a unanimous vote, the board put the final nail in the coffin of a system that began crumbling soon after it became apparent that a major data-altering scandal had been allowed to unfold under the board members’ collective noses.
Most Columbus schools staff repaying unearned bonuses
Most of the Columbus school workers who were told to repay unearned bonuses have started making payments, district financial data shows.
Columbus school board justified if it fires ex-principal, hearing officer rules
The former Linden-McKinley STEM Academy principal cared for her students, but overwhelming evidence that she knowingly cheated gives the Columbus school board good reason to fire her, a hearing officer has ruled. In a decision sent yesterday to lawyers for Columbus City Schools and for former principal Tiffany L. Chavers, the hearing officer agreed that evidence and witnesses in an 11-day employment hearing proved Chavers withdrew undesirable students and gave passing grades to some who failed.