Calling themselves Justice for 375, a group of Orange County parents and students says it's ready to fight a decision to cancel the high schoolers' Advanced Placement test scores amid allegations of numerous testing violations at the school.
They gathered at a Rancho Santa Margarita park Wednesday evening to protest actions by the College Board and the Educational Testing Service to invalidate the scores of 690 college-level exams taken in May by hundreds of Trabuco Hills High School students.
By the end of the evening, they had a plan to mount public and legal pressure to force the testing agencies to reinstate scores for students who say they are innocent of cheating and fear that the score cancellations will jeopardize years of study.
It is one of the largest AP test imbroglios in a decade, according to the Educational Testing Service, and perhaps the most memorable in Southern California since 1982, when the scores of more than a dozen students in Jaime Escalante's AP calculus class at Garfield High School were invalidated because of suspected cheating. The students retook the exams and passed, and the events were later turned into the film "Stand and Deliver."
Parents and students are pointing fingers at Trabuco Hills High officials for mismanaging the exams taken by 385 students in early May. They say there were insufficient proctors in exam rooms and there was inadequate monitoring of students, who were allowed to sit too close together and face one another. Some proctors were seen reading or sleeping, and some left the rooms, according to students.
Amid the alleged lax attention, 10 students later conceded having cheated on statistics and macroeconomics exams by using cellphones to send text messages. Use of electronic devices is not allowed in rooms.
The Mission Viejo school, meanwhile, has reassigned an assistant principal who had been in charge of administering the exams, and it might mete out more punishment.
The Saddleback Valley Unified School District is weighing its legal options, consulting the counsel for the Orange County Department of Education in advance of a third appeal to the testing agencies to reconsider their decision.
In a statement released Thursday, district Supt. Steven L. Fish said that "the arbitrary decision by the Educational Testing Service to cancel all student scores for 10 different Advanced Placement [exams] is of great magnitude and affects nearly 400 students."
