Chapter 6 - The Red Folder
I asked Emma once.
With Dr. Rhodes present.
No pressure.
No repeated questions.
“Do you remember a red folder at school?”
Her entire expression changed.
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened?”
She hugged her stuffed rabbit.
“Ms. Preston got mad.”
Dr. Rhodes intervened.
“You don’t have to tell us everything at once.”
Emma nodded.
After several minutes she said:
“Those weren’t their papers.”
“Whose papers?”
“The kids.”
She couldn’t explain more.
Investigators searched Preston’s classroom after obtaining proper authority.
No red folder.
Then Natalie Foster remembered something.
Benchmark assessments.
St. Catherine gave early elementary students internal reading and math assessments each quarter.
Private-school scores were used heavily in marketing.
96% performing at or above grade level.
Exceptional foundational literacy outcomes.
Unlike state public-school testing, these internal benchmarks weren’t government exams.
But parents, donors, accrediting reviewers, and admissions committees relied on them.
Natalie had once suspected scores were being “cleaned.”
“How?”
Children who scored poorly were sometimes retested individually.
Not improper by itself.
But teachers were under enormous pressure to produce high results.
Preston was famous for having almost no below-grade-level students.
Emma had been struggling.
Yet her winter report showed:
On grade level.
I had been delighted.
Now I wondered if it was true.
The forensic review recovered deleted spreadsheets from Preston’s laptop.
Several assessment scores had been manually changed after testing.
Not only Emma’s.
Eight students.
Sometimes up.
Sometimes down.
Why down?
That made no sense.
Then Natalie explained.
Higher scores protected the school’s academic reputation.
Lower behavior or classroom-readiness evaluations could support counseling unwanted students out.
Numbers were being used in two directions.
Make the school look successful.
Make particular children look unsuitable.
Emma had apparently walked back into the classroom after art class and seen Preston replacing papers inside the red assessment folder.
She could not understand what was happening.
But she recognized names.
“She said Noah’s paper had different stars.”
Noah Blake.
A classmate.
His mother had recently challenged a recommendation that he repeat first grade.
The school insisted his scores were low.
His mother had asked for originals.
There were none.
Now investigators had a reason to believe Emma had seen Preston manipulating assessments.
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That still didn’t explain Caldwell’s presence.
Unless Caldwell already knew.
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