AUDIT WILL CLEAR PROGRAM ACCUSED OF INFLATING GRADES, DIRECTOR SAYS

By John Lyon/ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU

LITTLE ROCK — A state audit of a college studies program for high school students will show allegations of grade inflation are false, the head of the educational cooperative that operates the program says.

The state Division of Legislative Audit launched an investigation last week into the Arkansas Early College High School Program, which allows high school students across the state to earn college and high school credits concurrently by taking distance-learning classes. The program is conducted by the Southeast Arkansas Education Service Cooperative in Monticello.

Arkansas Department of Higher Education Director Jim Purcell requested the audit because of allegations the cooperative’s management pressured teachers to give students grades they did not deserve or raise grades that were deemed too low. The allegations came from “multiple sources,” Purcell said in a June 12 letter to legislative auditor Roger Norman.

“I think when all of the facts come out that the truth will come out, and it will be made clear that that did not occur,” Karen Eoff, the cooperative’s interim director, said in an interview last week. She said she could not comment further on specific allegations.

Susan Orenstein, now teaching at Rider University in New Jersey, resigned as a teacher for the cooperative at the end of her first semester last year. She said the pressure to inflate students’ grades reached the level of harassment.

“I was literally harangued for not passing people,” she said.

An educator with 36 years of experience, Orenstein has master’s degrees in literature and education from New York University and Hofstra University, and a doctorate in American literature from NYU. She said she took the job at the cooperative because she thought it would allow her to teach in a way she had never experienced.

What she found, she said, was a system in which teachers were expected to give students passing grades regardless of their performance. Teachers with impressive backgrounds were hired so the cooperative could tout their credentials, but if they gave students low grades they were harassed into leaving, she said.

“It’s a great scam,” Orenstein charged. “There’s not anything legitimate about it.”

Laura Creach, who resigned as coordinator of the early college program in April, alleged Bruce Terry, then director of the cooperative, once directed her to write a letter of reprimand against Orenstein because Terry believed Orenstein’s class work was too demanding and the grades she gave were too low.

“He was afraid she was going to lose students,” Creach said.

Creach provided the Arkansas News Bureau with a July 17, 2007, email in which she claims Terry instructed her to pressure teachers to inflate students’ grades — by threatening the teachers’ jobs.

“As we have discussed before you have to be very careful discussing grades; I know you know what I am talking about,” Terry was quoted as saying. “I think you might sit them down and simply ask if they think that they are going to be happy with the job. I would explain that if they are not happy then it might be best to explore other options.”

Phone calls to Terry’s home went unanswered Friday. Terry’s attorney, Charles Sidney Gibson of Dermott, did not immediately return a phone message left at his office Friday.

Creach has also filed a grievance with the cooperative’s board alleging Terry sexually harassed her. A hearing on the grievance is scheduled for Monday.

The board suspended Terry with pay on June 20. Eoff said she could not comment on the reasons for the suspension.

The cooperative’s Web site lists 40 Arkansas high schools that it says have students enrolled in the early college program. A week ago, the site listed 24 colleges and universities as partners in the program, but on Friday only nine were listed.

Frank Adams, chancellor of Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas in De Queen, said he ended the college’s involvement in the program because he was “very concerned and apprehensive” about awarding college credit to students enrolled in a program the college did not control.

“I don’t like awarding credit for anything that’s out of our control,” he said.

Though the program is free to students, Creach said Arkansas taxpayers have supported it in the form of about $1.6 million in grants over the three years it has been in operation.

“It definitely needs to be taken away from the Southeast Coop,” she said.

Orenstein said she would like to see the state take over the program.

“This is supposed to be giving these kids a chance at being something more than what we are,” Orenstein said. “Is that a fair hand to deal them? They deserve the best teachers, not just somebody who’ll play the game.”