No grade audit results at Corona del Mar High after cheating scandal

Corona del Mar High School teachers either did not perform an optional grade audit recommended by the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in the wake of the Corona del Mar High School cheating scandal or simply failed to turn in results, officials confirmed Tuesday.

Parents of some of the disciplined students warned that the grade-fixing scheme could have spread beyond the 11 students implicated last year. The school district then requested that teachers perform an audit of 52,000 student grades to look for changes that hadn’t been approved.

The audit was expected to be completed over the summer. However, the district never received any results.

“It was the teachers’ option if they chose to go through the records. It was not mandatory,” district spokeswoman Laura Boss wrote in an email. “We consider the matter to be closed.”

In March, the district implemented a system that flagged changed grades for approval so teachers could more closely monitor them, Boss said.

Principal Kathy Scott could not be reached for comment. However, in a Monday night email to CdM staff she said the school has “moved beyond the incident” and directed employees not to discuss with students or parents the arrest Monday of an adult tutor in connection with the cheating incident.

“We do not need to revisit the past, and we do not need to engage ourselves in serving as the `judge and jury’ for this case,” she wrote. “Our top priority is maintaining a positive and safe learning environment for all students, and any discussion with anyone, including the media, has the potential to become disruptive, divisive and counterproductive.”

Data files illustrating at least a year of grade entries were provided to CdM teachers after 11 students were expelled in January for alleged involvement in the cheating scheme. Officials have said that the students’ involvement ranged from knowing that cheating was taking place to breaking into the school to install keylogging devices, which track keystrokes, on the backs of teachers’ computers to swipe logins and passwords.

With the recorded information, the students could change grades and access tests.

Officials allege that a private tutor, Timothy Lance Lai, 29, of Irvine, was the mastermind behind the cheating scheme. After evading police for 10 months, Lai, who was initially wanted for questioning, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport.

Jane Garland, the district’s former director of student services, said the audit had the potential to provide district officials with information necessary to discipline students who had changed grades and exonerate those who had no involvement.

In December, campus officials and police interviewed an 11th-grader who admitted to placing a keylogger on his teacher’s computer. He identified 11 other teens allegedly involved in the cheating.

Garland said the district should have investigated to determine each student’s level of involvement before doling out a one-size-fits-all punishment.

“We don’t know enough,” she said. “Of course some of these kids did things they shouldn’t have done, but there was no investigation ever done after the first names were provided to the district. They’re kids. You don’t prosecute or chastise them if you don’t have all the information.”

The parents of an expelled CdM student warned in a letter to district officials at the time that as many as 150 students could be implicated in the cheating.

Parents have suggested that a “culture of cheating” pervades the high-performing school.

“You cannot simply throw a handful of students to the wolves,” the parent wrote at the time. “There are plenty more kids walking around your campus who are as guilty if not more so than any of the kids wrapped up in this scandal.”

While several students who were expelled from the high school have since graduated or enrolled in private schools, others spent a semester at Newport Harbor before transferring back to CdM this school year. The students’ eventual return to CdM was a stipulation in the expulsion agreements negotiated by the district and parents.

The legality of at least one of the agreements is still being argued in Orange County Superior Court.

Boss issued a release Monday evening stating that the situation “no longer involves the campus or school district.”