- April 18, 2024
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The investigation into the "placebo" Advance Placement Seminar exams given to the 329 Mainland High School students in May has resulted in the reprimand of the school principal and the resignation of a District employee.
In the aftermath, students and their parents will have to decide whether to participate in an elective research course next school year, with the opportunity to retake the AP exam at no cost at the end of the class in May 2020, the District said in a statement on Monday, July 15, following the release of the investigation documents. With only 85 students having taken the official test, those who scored a 1 or a 2 will also be able to retake the test. Letters and calls about the issue will go out to families by July 19, according to the statement.
"The primary reason for the preparation and retake opportunity is that the Pilot Program offered at Mainland failed to make it clear to parents and students that only a sample of the 400 plus students enrolled in the course would be administered the official AP exam, while the rest of the students would receive a school-based end-of-course exam," the statement reads.
The investigation into the "placebo" AP tests began after a whistleblower sent a letter about the situation to Assistant Deputy Commission Jason Gaitanis with the Florida Department of Education. In the letter, the whistleblower said that Mainland Principal Cheryl Salerno cheated students out of the opportunity to gain college credit for the AP course by only giving the test to three of the 18 classes. The whistleblower claimed the teachers were told not to tell the students or parents about this.
Documents provided to the Ormond Beach Observer by the District reflect that Salerno and former Chief Academic Officer Teresa Marcks were both reprimanded. Marcks — who had been demoted from her position to assistant principal at a local school by former Superintendent Tom Russell by the second semester of last year — resigned in late June.
School Board Member Carl Persis said people have asked him why Salerno wasn't demoted, and he explained it was because she was issued a written reprimand instead. The District can't put a person in "double-jeopardy" for an action, he said.
“I think we’ve all learned something from this experience," Persis said.
The investigative summary for Salerno shows that she told the investigator that she believed the whistleblower was a non-reappointed teacher, and explained that the AP Capstone Program was made up of two courses: AP Seminar, and AP Research. There was no traditional AP exam for the Seminar course, and that it was a prerequisite for the AP Research class. The AP course given for the Seminar course was a sorting factor for future placement in AP Research, she said, and the school could not afford to have every student take the AP Seminar exam at the end of the school year.
Marcks told the investigator that she believed Salerno agreed that the school would self-fund the cost for the students to take the AP Seminar exams. The investigator also spoke with Bard Keeler, senior director of the Florida State and District Partnerships and the designer of the current Capstone project, whose initial statement after hearing the situation was "holy crap," according to investigation documents.
Keeler said both AP Seminar and AP Research courses offered were eligible for college credit, and that AP Capstone doesn't recommend standalone courses like what Mainland offered, but that they do authorize them, and that there was a signed agreement with Salerno.
He said there was no obligation for a minimum or maximum number of course participants, and that neither AP Capstone and College Board had a problem with the low number of students who took the real test. Keeler said he saw the way these students were tested as a problem because parents and students weren't "properly notified about the different exam tracts."
Salerno told the investigator that she hoped to get funding to test all the students in the AP Seminar course. Testing only a fraction of them was the backup plan.
“I’m expecting [Salerno] to rebound," Persis said. "She loves that school and she will probably try even harder than ever to do whatever she needs to do to set the ship right.”
Enrolling in the elective research course will require students to change an elective they have already registered for. The Pilot Program has been discontinued for the 2019-2020 school year, and incoming freshman schedules are currently being revised.
Persis said many parents are still upset. One parent of a student who took the fake test told him that her daughter had an A in the AP Seminar class, and that she would have likely passed the real AP exam.
No "good answer" can be given to a parent like that, Persis said, as the students cannot be retested at the present time. He said the District is going to do everything it can to ensure the students' success following the matter.
“I am deeply sorry and troubled by the deception that occurred at the Mainland High School," Persis said. "At the same time, I am confident that something like this will not happen in the future and believe that the administrative team and all of the great teachers at Mainland are going to do everything possible to restore their faith and trust in the system.”
