Complaint Investigation Report
Soifer v. RSU #54

February 5, 2013
Complaint #13.037C
Complaint Investigator: Jonathan Braff, Esq.

I.  Identifying Information

Complainant:   John Soifer
          	            61 Academy Cr.
	            Skowhegan, ME 04976

Respondent:     Brent Colbry, Superintendent
	            196 West Front St.
	            Skowhegan, ME 04976

Special Services Director:   Ann Belanger

Student:            Student
	            DOB: xx/xx/xxxx

II.	Summary of Complaint Investigation Activities

The Department of Education received this complaint on December 26, 2012. The Complaint 
Investigator was appointed on December 28, 2012 and issued a draft allegation report on 
January 3, 2013. The Complaint Investigator conducted a complaint investigation meeting on
January 18, 2013 (rescheduled from the original date of January 7, 2013 at the Respondent’s
request), resulting in two stipulations. On December 26, 2012, the Complaint Investigator
received a two-page memorandum and 13 pages of documents from the Complainant, plus
one additional page on January 18, 2013, and received a three-page memorandum and 23 
pages of documents from R.S.U. #54 (the “District”) on January 28, 2013. Interviews were
conducted with the following: Ann Belanger, co-director of special services for the District;
Antoine Morin, special education teacher for the District; John Soifer, special education 
teacher for the District; Elizabeth Ireland, special education teacher for the District; and
Gordon Small, teacher for the District.

III.	Preliminary Statement

The Student is xx years old and is currently receiving special education under the eligibility
criterion Specific Learning Disabilities. This complaint was filed by John Soifer, the 
Student’s public school case manager, as an Interested party, alleging violations of the Maine

Unified Special Education Regulations {MUSER), Chapter 101, as set forth below. The
Student’s father granted express written permission to Mr. Soifer to receive personally 
identifiable information about the Student.

IV.	Allegations

	1. Failure to fully and adequately implement the Student’s IEP with respect to
	    provision of assessment accommodations in connection with a math assessment
                 conducted on 11/16/12, in violation of MUSER §IX.3.B(3).

V.	Stipulations

	1.  The Student was proctored by Mr. Morin, a special education teacher, during the
                  time he was taking the math quiz on 11/16/12.

	2.  The IEP dated 10/20/12, attached to the complaint, was the IEP in effect at the
                  time the Student was taking the quiz.

VI.	Summary of Findings

1.  The Student lives in Norridgewock with his father, and is attending xx grade at
Skowhegan Area High School (the “School”). He has been receiving special education 
services since November 2005.

2.   The Student’s IEP dated October 20, 2012 lists, as needs of the Student (Section 3.D),
“remediating assessments when warranted,” as well as “improved math skills.” In Section 8,
the following assessment accommodations are provided: “can use notes/formulas/reviews for
all assessments; allow verbal prompts for all assessments;…allow assessments in special
education setting;…modified (differentiated) content for assessments corresponding to
differentiated curriculum from instruction.” The IEP further states that these accommodations
“are available for [the Student] at all times unless exempted by the case manager.”

3.  On November 16, 2012, the Student went to a special education classroom to take a math
quiz. Two other students were present in the classroom to take the quiz, and the quiz was
proctored by Antoine Morin, a special education teacher. Mr. Morin administered the quiz by
providing a short review of relevant concepts to the students prior to presenting to them the
quiz questions. Students worked on their answers individually, although there were one or 
two occasions when one of the students announced the answer that student had gotten, and
asked Mr. Morin to confirm that it was correct. Mr. Morin did not indicate whether such
answers were or were not correct. Mr. Morin continued to proctor the quiz, and did not
observe the students looking at one another’s papers or otherwise sharing answers.

4.  The answers of the three students to the quiz questions were substantially identical,
including one incorrect answer that appeared on all three answer sheets. When the regular
education teacher, Gordon Small, asked one of the students about the quiz, that student
told him that the students took the quiz as a group. Mr. Small understood this to mean that

the students had collaborated on their answers, and he therefore asked the students to retake
the quiz with no penalty attached to this, In the interim, a score of “0” appeared in the
Student’s record for this quiz.

5.  Following meetings involving Mr. Morin, Mr. Small and others, Mr. Small retracted his
request that the Student retake the quiz. Instead, he proceeded to combine the Student’s score
on the quiz with his score on a section of a subsequent unit test covering the same material.
This resulted in the Student’s quiz score (94%) being combined with his score from the 
section of the unit test (61%), yielding a final score of 78%. This score was entered in the 
Student’s record.

6.  During an interview conducted by the Complaint Investigator with Antoine Morin, Mr.
Morin stated the following: He is a special education teacher at the School, and has had the
Student in his G-5 math lab classroom approximately once every other week for 80 minutes,
when he provides support to the Student for math assessments and homework.

On November 16, 2012, he administered a math quiz to the Student and two other students.
As part of the accommodations to which those students were entitled, he prefaced each
section of the quiz with a mini-lesson on the concepts covered by that section. He did not
explain how to do the specific problems on the quiz, but discussed the concepts underlying 
those problems and provided sample problems. He then read the quiz questions relating to
each mini-lesson aloud, and the students worked individually on the answers to those
questions. while the students were working on the quiz problems, there was some discussion
about the methods to be used to solve those problems, but he would not give them answers
nor tell them whether an answer was correct or not (once or twice a student asked whether a 
certain answer was correct). To his observation, the students did not look at one another’s
answers nor otherwise collaborate on the answers.

He believes that he administered the quiz in a way that met the Student’s needs as required by
the Student’s IEP. Although there may have been several subsequent meetings to discuss how
math assessments are going to be administered in the future to accommodate the needs of
special education students, those meetings will not result in a change to the methods he used
in administering the quiz on November 16th.

At one of those meetings, involving Mr. Small, Mr. Wilson (the principal of the School) and
himself, Mr. Small decided on a method for grading the Student’s November 16th quiz. H
did not participate in this decision as the grading of the quiz was not his responsibility.

17.  During an interview conducted by the Complaint Investigator with Ann Belanger, Ms.
Belanger stated the following: She is a co-director of special services for the District. She
reviewed with Mr. Morin the method he used in administering the math quiz to the Student
and two other students on November 16, 2012. She was satisfied that Mr. Morin’s methods
were appropriate. Her only concern in that regard was with the lack of adequate advance
notice Mr. Morin received regarding the quiz and the students who would be taking it.

The math department has since agreed that they will provide more advance notice of the
contents and purpose of each assessment and will identify which students are to take the
assessment, so that the teacher administering the assessment has time to review those
students’ IEPs and better prepare before the assessment is given. She is also working on
getting the special education math teachers to spend more time in the regular education
classrooms so they have a better knowledge of what their students are working on.

Mr. Soifer was under the impression that the Student had initially been given a score of zero
on the math quiz, but he was mistaken. Until a grade is assigned by the teacher, the computer
registers the assessment score as zero as a place holder; once the grade is entered it replaces 
that zero. Mr. Morin met with Mr. Small and they came up with a formula to assess the
student’s performance on the quiz. The score that came out of that meeting was entered in the
Student’s record.

8.  During an interview conducted by the Complaint Investigator with John Soifer, Mr.
Soifer stated the following: He is a special education teacher at the School, and has been the
Student’s case manager since the Student was in the xx grade. He spoke with Mr. Morin about
the math quiz and reviewed Mr. Morin’s written description of the methods he used to
administer the assessment. Based on that information, he feels that the Student’s
accommodations were being implemented exactly as intended. He believes that all of the
special education teachers at the School use those same methods when administering
assessments to students with similar assessment accommodations.

He doesn’t know whether it was as a place-holding default setting or was intentional, but for 
considerable period of time the Student saw a score of “0” when he looked at the record of his
quiz grade. He believes that this had a psychological effect on the Student and affected his
school performance for a couple of weeks. He heard comments from other teachers that the
Student “shut down” during that period.

He understands that the Student’s quiz grade was eventually adjusted using a formula that
combined the Student’s performance on the quiz with his performance on another assessment,
but he is not satisfied with that resolution. He thinks that the Student should have received his
actual score on the quiz, and his actual score on the later assessment, with the option to retake
that second assessment as provided by the Student’s IEP.

He also believes that the math quiz did not reflect the “modified (differentiated) content for
assessments corresponding to differentiated curriculum from instruction” provided by the IEP.
The quiz given to the Student was identical to the quiz given to all other students in that class.
Only the supports provided to the Student were different. In the classroom, differentiated
instruction often takes such forms as providing formulas for the student to use in solving
problems (rather than their having to reply on their memories), fewer problems to solve, and
practice problems leading up to the actual problems. He agrees, however, that the methods
used by Mr. Morin replicated some of those techniques. He also agrees that the score
achieved by the Student on the quiz (94%) suggests that the Student didn’t require
differentiated content of the quiz beyond the supports provided by Mr. Morin.

9.   During an interview conducted by the Complaint Investigator with Elizabeth Ireland, Ms.
Ireland stated the following: She is a special education teacher and the head of the special 
education department at the School. She has the Student in one of her classes, but she has not
worked with him very much in math. After the math quiz became an issue, she discussed
with Mr. Morin the methods he used in administering the quiz, and she read his written
summary of the events of that day. She believes that Mr. Morin administered the quiz in a 
manner that was appropriate for the assessment accommodations in the Student’s IEP.

She also spoke about the issue with Mr. Small, who was concerned because he believed that
the quiz was not worked on individually by those students but was done as a group. She
understands that Mr. Small graded the Student’s quiz by averaging in the relevant portion of a
test that was given at the end of that unit. She doesn’t think that it was appropriate to do that,
because so long as the quiz was given in a manner consistent with the Student’s
accommodations the Student should have received whatever score he was entitled to without
modification.

As to whether the Student’s accommodations required that the quiz being given to the Student
had to be differentiated in some way from the quiz given to regular education students, that
would depend on the supports that were being given to the Student. The Student has memory
deficits, so that if the Student were given notes, formula cards and/or example problems at the 
time he was taking the quiz, the content of the quiz might not need to be differentiated.

As a result of the dispute surrounding this quiz, there have been conversations among the
special education department staff as to how to better educate regular education staff members
about these assessment accommodations so that a common understanding might result.

10.  During an interview conducted by the Complaint Investigator with Gordon Small, Mr. 
Small stated the following: He is in his first year as a math teacher at the School, and the
Student (as well as the two other students who took the math quiz) is in his class. On the day
of the quiz, he notified Mr. Morin that the three students would be coming to take the quiz.
He assumed that, although the students would be provided with certain prompts, they would
be taking the quiz on an individual basis.

When he graded the quizzes at the end of the day, he discovered that all three answer sheets
were exactly the same, including the same mistake appearing on all three. The work also
looked unlike what he had seen before from those students. He asked one of the students why
the quiz sheets looked the same, and she told him that they had taken the quiz together as a
group. He later spoke to Mr. Morin (the quiz was given just before the Thanksgiving break,
and it took a while before he was able to connect with him), who told him that the students
appeared not to understand the material, so he did the quiz with the group on the board.

Having the students work on the quiz as a group was not consistent with his expectations, and
neither did the IEP accommodations include working on assessments as a group, so he offered
to allow the students to retake the quiz individually without any penalty. As Mr. Morin had
remediated a deficit in the students’ understanding of the concepts being tested, this would be
a way of assessing if their understanding had improved after remediation. He reviewed the

situation with Mr. Campbell (his department head) and Mr. Wilson, both of whom supported
his taking that position. Mr. Soifer, however, objected to the Student retaking the quiz. He
then attended a meeting with Mr. Wilson and Mr. Morin to discuss the grading of the quiz,
and from that meeting came a solution to the problem. The students had subsequently taken a
unit test (administered to the students in the special education classroom) which included a
section covering the same material as appeared on the quiz. The students’ scores on that
section of the test were combined with their scores on the quiz, and the combined scores were
recorded as their grade on the quiz. This was explained to the students. The students also
received their full scores on the unit test. There was also discussion at the meeting that in
future test problems would not be worked out for a group of students on the board. He know
that Mr. Campbell had further discussions on the subject of assessment accommodations with
members of the special education department.

He did not understand from Mr. Morin’s description of how the quiz was administers (he felt
that Mr. Morin was vague about how he administered the quiz) that the students worked on
the quiz problems individually after receiving a general review of the concepts underlying the
problems from Mr. Morin, and he believes that neither Mr. Wilson nor Mr. Campbell had that
understanding. If he had understood this to be the case, he would have responded differently
to the quiz grading, although he would still have had concerns about the answers being
identical.

VII.	Conclusions

	Allegation #1: Failure to fully and adequately implement the Student’s IEP with respect
	to provision of assessment accommodations in connection with a  math assessment
	conducted on 11/16/12 in violation of MUSER §IX.3.B(3)
	NO VIOLATION FOUND

There is no dispute that the November 16, 2012 math quiz was administered to the Student in a
manner consistent with the Student’s IEP assessment accommodations. The complaint
underlying this investigation was with regard to the grading of the Student’s quiz. Although
grading of tests is a matter within the responsibility of the classroom teacher, were a teacher
to penalize a special education student for having received designated accommodations this
could violate the rights of the student to those accommodations. That is not what happened in
this instance, however.

Mr. Small’s response to the Student’s quiz was based on the fact that the three students’
quizzes all showed identical answers (including one identical wrong answer), and his
misunderstanding of the methods used by Mr. Morin in administering the quiz. Mr. Small
intended that the Student’s quiz answers would be the result of the Student’s individual
efforts, rather than the combine efforts of the group of three students taking the quiz. He

believed that not to have been the case, and his belief was supported by the description
provided by one of the students and by the students’ answers themselves. Mr. Small, having
found Mr. Morin’s description of his methodology to have been vague on the details. Given
his understanding and the basis for it, Mr. Small’s grading of the Student’s quiz was not
unreasonable.

Mr. Soifer’s complaint regarding the quiz appears to have highlighted a need for more and
better communication between the special education staff and regular education staff with
regard to assessment accommodations. Steps have already taken place to address this need,
and further efforts are being considered. The improved communication should help avoid
similar misunderstanding in the future.

VIII. 	Corrective Action Plan

As no violations were found, none is required.