And a state-commissioned review of 2009 PSSAs found a suspicious pattern of erasures on Cayuga's fourth-grade reading tests, with the odds of them occurring naturally greater than 1 in 100 million.
"My son came home one day and said his teacher kept telling him to erase his answers and write different answers," one parent said.
The descriptions of cheating on state exams, known as PSSAs, are similar to those detailed to The Inquirer last year by teachers at Roosevelt Middle School in East Germantown.
Both Cayuga and Roosevelt are among the 13 Philadelphia public schools being investigated by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the state Inspector General's Office for possible cheating on the 2009 exams.
Penny Nixon, the district's chief academic officer, said in an interview that "the district takes these allegations very, very seriously." Nixon said the district had stepped up security for the tests to be administered next month, and also enhanced test-security training.
In 2007, Cayuga did not make AYP, or Adequate Yearly Progress, an important measurement under the federal No Child Left Behind law. That began to change the next year.
Cayuga's 2009 PSSAs had suspicious results in every grade tested, a state analysis found. Experts flagged the school 10 times for statistically unexpected results and earmarked the tests of 18 students as suspicious, mostly due to erasures. The flags do not prove cheating but indicate that further study is warranted.
In 2009, fourth-grade reading scores rose from 53 percent passing to 89 percent, and math scores saw an even larger increase, from 39 percent to 84 percent passing.
No school in the state had more flags for fourth-grade results.
