Trabuco Hills High Is Having a Rough Summer

Pity the folks at nearby Trabuco Hills High. First 690 Advanced Placement Test scores were thrown out for cheating and mismanagement of the testing process, the principal gets reassigned because of the AP snafu, and now some kid manages to fall through a skylight while skateboarding on the gym roof:

MISSION VIEJO – A 14-year-old boy who was skateboarding on the gym roof at Trabuco Hills High School fell 40-feet when he stepped on a skylight Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

The teen managed to move 40-yards across the gym floor where he landed to open a door and get help from his friends, said Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Darren Sandberg.

The boy had fractured his right wrist, ribs, pelvis, and had a bruise to his right lung.
The boy and three friends were on the roof to skateboard when the accident happened.

The teens climbed up the lifeguard tower onto a nearby roof and crossed two buildings to get to the gym. Sandberg said he has responded at least twice to the site in response to reports of skateboarding on the roof.

At least that kid won't ever have to worry about taking an AP test there.

Trabuco Hills Principal "Reassigned" After AP Test Flap

In a follow-up to this post, the principal of a local high school has been removed following a huge mess involving AP test scores at his school:

MISSION VIEJO – Trabuco Hills High School Principal Dan Sullivan, who was blamed by students and parents for the invalidation of 690 Advanced Placement exams at his school earlier this month after his staff failed to follow national testing protocols, has been removed from his post, district officials confirmed today.

Sullivan will become a "principal on special assignment," working out of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District offices, said school board President Suzie Swartz. Retired district administrator Bob Metz, a former high school principal, will serve as interim principal of Trabuco Hills.

"The whole purpose in the shifts that are being made is to provide an opportunity for everyone to continue to move forward," Swartz said. "They already have a very solid team there, and Bob Metz will help them to move forward."

Trabuco Hills parents will be notified of Sullivan's reassignment in a letter that will begin arriving in mailboxes today.

The captain goes down with the ship.

In a related story, some students had tried to sue their way into reinstatement of their test scores, but a judge said "no":

SANTA ANA – An Orange County judge today denied a request from a student group to block the national administrator of the Advanced Placement exams from retesting 375 Mission Viejo high school students.

The student-led Justice for 375 Trabuco Scholars coalition sued the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service last week over the invalidation of 690 AP exams at Trabuco Hills High School in Mission Viejo, accusing the company of not adequately investigating allegations of cheating and improper proctoring on the May exams and demanding a "good faith" investigation.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Jamoa Moberly listened to nearly two hours of arguments before making her decision.

"It's been very well-argued by both parties, but there are 266 students who anticipate retaking the tests," Moberly said. "The testing should go forward. It's in the best interest of everyone."

I feel sorry for the kids who were innocent victims in this case, but the school screwed it up so badly that Educational Testing Service really had no choice but to disallow all scores since it couldn't really be proven which student might have benefited from the school's incompetence.

This really should never have gotten to the point of a lawsuit. The case was doomed from the start. Studying would have been more beneficial than suing

690 Advanced Placement Test Scores Tossed by the National Administrator

Oops:

MISSION VIEJO - Chanting "We want our scores!" as passing drivers blared their horns in support, about 150 Trabuco Hills High School students, parents and teachers rallied in front of the school Wednesday afternoon to protest the invalidation of their Advanced Placement exams by the test's national administrator.

The students demanded that the New Jersey-based Educational Testing Service reinstate 690 college-level exams scrapped after the company learned of numerous testing irregularities that potentially compromised the test's administration.

"We did nothing wrong," said student Dan McClure, 18, chair of the Justice for 375 Trabuco Scholars student-led coalition. "We took our AP courses, we took our AP exams, and we took our tests just as we were instructed to do."

A total of 385 students who took AP exams in 10 subject areas in May were affected by ETS's decision, handed down earlier this month to the Mission Viejo high school.

AP officials were tipped off to the school's violations of testing procedures, including allowing cell phones in testing rooms and seating students facing one another, during an investigation by school administrators into alleged cheating on the AP exams. Ten students were found guilty of cheating.

In a harshly worded report, ETS said Trabuco Hills administrators had failed to follow "a number of established test administration procedures as clearly set out in the 2008 AP Coordinator's Manual."

The report, dated July 11, cites 10 major violations of ETS testing protocols, including not meeting the proctor-to-student ratio, allowing students to choose their own seats instead of randomly assigning them, not seating students according to spacing and seating requirements, unsupervised restroom breaks during testing, hiring "inattentive" proctors, and not enforcing the no-cell-phone policy, among other things.

"Your school district knew about cheating since May 18," state Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, told students at the rally. "For the past two months, they tried to take care of it without letting you, the students and the parents, know about it."

The students have been given the opportunity to retest Aug. 6-12, but many say their summer schedules are filled and they'll have a hard time attending the retesting dates – much less finding the time to brush up on the material.

Mrs. HolyCoast has proctored lots of these tests (plus SATs) at her high school (not Trabuco Hills) and as she heard them read off the violations on TV she kept saying "you can't do that, you can't do that either". The kids and their parents want to blame the testing service, but it appears the real problems are with the school proctors. They've really messed some of these kids up.