"I've been over the scores with a fine-tooth comb this week. There's no way he's fudging the numbers," I state, confident in my examination of them. "I poured over the damn things until I wanted to gouge my eyes out, pulling individual score sheets to check against the numbers reported. There's no way he's distorted them to make the school look as if it's performing better than it actually is. The numbers all match."
"What if he's doing it before the tests are turned in?" Lana asks.
"You mean changing answers on the score sheets before they're submitted for grading?" I ask, my tone sharp, sharper than intended. "You have evidence of this?"
She shakes her head. "I don't have evidence. I can't prove anything, but…"
"Tell him, dear," Leslie encourages her.
"Some of the kids with learning disabilities take their tests in a different area than everyone else to allow them whatever special considerations they require," Lana explains and then waits for me to nod. It's a common practice that levels the playing field for students who struggle with learning disabilities.
"One group of the kids who require extra time does the testing in my room," she continues. "Since I'm a music teacher, I don't have an entire class to oversee. When we came back from our lunchbreak, Principal Johnson was in the classroom. He said he was just checking on a shipment of equipment I'd requested. I didn't think anything of it until I collected the tests and noticed that almost an entire row of answers was changed on one of the tests."
"You're sure the student didn't change the answers?"
"Positive. Braxton is a special little boy, very headstrong. Once he makes up his mind about something, there is absolutely no changing it. He wouldn't have changed his answers even if you'd paid him to do it," she says with an indulgent smile. "His attention span isn't very long, so I always make sure to pay extra attention to him during testing to make sure he's staying on task. I never saw him erase one answer, let alone almost an entire column."
Leslie and I share a look. If what she's saying is true, Principal Johnson just became a huge fucking problem. Even if we can't prove that he changed those answers, the fact that it's a possibility is enough to send the entire School Board into a tizzy. The ramifications are massive, not just for Commodore but for the entire city. Cheating on standardized tests to inflate scores is absolutely unacceptable.
"He did a lot better on the test than anyone expected," Lana says. "He's a good kid, but he really struggles to grasp certain concepts."
"Did you notice scores changed on any other tests?" I ask. "Did anyone else score higher than was expected? Anything out of the ordinary?"
She shakes her head. "To be quite honest, we expect the unexpected with most of the kids who take the test in my group. They have a way of surprising us. Some do far better than we anticipated. Others do far worse. So if any of them did perform better than expected, it wouldn't have been something we were shocked to see."
"Shit," I mutter, raking a hand through my hair.
"We can go through scores from previous years, see how they stack up to scores from this year," Leslie suggests.
"If he did it once, he's probably done it before," I say, shaking my head. "We can't trust that he didn't change scores last year or the year before that. We'd be working with potentially corrupted data, trying to establish a baseline that might not even exist."
There's no way to prove he changed anything. All we can do is request that scores for the kids in that class be excluded from consideration when it comes to school rankings and request the kids be retested. But the damage is already done. We can't undo it now.
Even if we could, it wouldn't provide us the proof we need to nail his ass to the wall. The kids tested four months ago. They've had four entire months of instruction that would invalidate a comparison between new scores and old scores.
I sigh heavily and look at Lana. "Thank you for bringing this to us, Miss Winters. You did the right thing," I murmur to her, trying to temper my frustration. I wish she would have brought this to us sooner, but I understand why she didn't.
She has no proof, no evidence…nothing but a suspicion. Johnson has been in education for over forty years. Leveling this kind of accusation against him with no evidence would give anyone pause. The fact that he's a bully probably didn't help matters.
If anyone else has suspicions, they've likely remained silent for the same reasons. I can't go back and undo any damage he caused. All I can do is mitigate any future damage.
"You're welcome," she says, giving me a sympathetic smile. "I know there probably isn't anything you can do about it, but I figured you should know anyway."
"I appreciate that. Why don't you get back to school and we'll deal with it from here?" I suggest, pushing away from the wall to shake her hand. "If we need anything else from you, your aunt will let you know."
"Thank you, Dr. Thorne." She shakes my hand and then leans down to hug Leslie. "I'm sorry I couldn't help more. Um, good luck with everything."
I wait until she scoops up her purse from the floor and then exits before I spin on Leslie.
"I want him out of that fucking school now," I growl, fury seething through me. "It's bad enough that he terrorizes the teachers in his quest to make Commodore the best school in the district. I won't have him changing test scores to accomplish that goal too."
"Then I guess it's a good thing he's already on the agenda for the night, isn't it?" she says, her tone grim and unforgiving.