A Cannon Falls Elementary fifth-grade teacher admitted to helping students cheat on standardized tests in 2015, and a judge recommended her teaching license be suspended.
The teacher, Sarah K. Woodcock, wrote on students' scratch paper, gave them math equations, defined terms and reread questions for them during the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.
An administrative law judge recommended earlier this month that the Minnesota Board of Teaching suspend Woodcock's teaching license. Erin Doan, executive director at the Board of Teaching, did not return a phone call for comment.
Woodcock quit in May 2015, citing personal reasons not related to the cheating issue, according to a previous Star Tribune report. The math results of 26 Cannon Falls students who took the exams, also known as MCAs, were thrown away.
The judge, Barbara J. Case, said the teacher "engaged in gross inefficiency or willful neglect of duty."
The MCAs are state tests that gauge student standards. Reading and mathematics tests are administered for students from third grade until eighth grade and some grades in high school. Students take science tests in fifth and eighth grades, as well as in high school when students take a life science or biology course.
Last year at St. Paul's Linwood Monroe Arts Plus, a teacher/proctor was put on administrative leave after giving prompts and direction on test items, which voided 21 seventh-graders' test scores, according to the previous article.
Cannon Falls is a district of 600 students about 20 miles west of Red Wing.
