July 25, 2015
Thom Carroll/PhillyVoice
The School District of Philadelphia headquarters on North Broad Street.
A pair of former Philadelphia school administrators became the 10th and 11th district educators to surrender their credentials following an investigation into cheating on standardized tests.
Darlynn Gray, 54, and Ellen Berson, 45, gave up their certifications after allegations that they violated the "integrity and security" of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
The state declined to provide details of the misconduct, which encompassed 14 Tier 1 Philadelphia schools, including 11 District schools and 3 charters. More than 130 Philadelphia educators were implicated in the cheating when it was disclosed in 2011, according to The Public School Notebook.
Among those facing discipline, 7 teachers and administrators have been charged criminally.
Gray, a former principal at South Philadelphia Delaplaine McDaniel Elementary School, and Berson, an assistant principal, both retired in 2013.
The investigation relied in part on a forensic analysis of 2009 state exams that revealed suspicious patterns of erasures on exams in schools throughout Pennsylvania.
