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Breaching test security

Breaching test security
Settlement of disciplinary charges

The School District filed disciplinary charges against a fifth grade teacher alleging that she had allowed students to correct their incorrect answers in a district-wide mathematics proficiency test, thereby compromising the test?s validity.

The disciplinary action was settled prior to holding a Section 3020-a disciplinary hearing when the teacher agreed to:

1. Acknowledge that she had ?inappropriately assisted students? in the examination;

2. Pay a fine of one month?s salary, $5,800; and

3. Accept reassignment as a sixth-grade ?resource teacher.?

Penalties vary in such cases.

In an earlier case filed under the ?old? Section 3020-a, a teacher was suspended without pay for one year after being found guilty compromising the integrity of a standardized examination. [Decisions of the Commissioner of Education 11776]

The teacher had been charged with disclosing the essay topics of a standardized test to his class just prior to its participation in the ?New York State Writing Test.? The Section 3020-a disciplinary panel found the teacher guilty of the charge and recommended a three-month suspension without pay. The school district, on the other hand, wished to have the teacher dismissed and appealed the panel?s recommendation to the Commissioner of Education.

The Commissioner agreed with the school board that the penalty imposed by the hearing panel was disproportionately lenient in light of the misconduct involved. But he said that he was not convinced that dismissal was the appropriate penalty.

The Commissioner determined that a suspension without pay for one year was ?commensurate with the offense and sufficient to serve as a deterrent to future misconduct?, explaining that primary purpose of a Section 3020-a disciplinary hearing is not punitive but rather to determine a teacher?s fitness to teach and carry out his or her professional responsibilities.

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on September 17, 2009 (boomark / email).