Watch the interview here.
 

Baltimore (WBFF) — It’s being called a scandal and a cover-up. There are calls for an investigation into the Maryland State Department of Education after the agency changed the way it reports state test scores, hiding certain results from the public.
 

“I'm irate,” said Sean Kennedy from the Maryland Public Policy Institute. “That data is utterly useless. They made it completely useless, and they did it on purpose.”
 

Kennedy was simply stunned by what the Maryland State Department of Education recently did.
 

“Instead of coming clean and saying that they failed the students of Baltimore City and students across the state, they're trying to hide it, and now they're piling lies on why they're hiding it,” Kennedy told Project Baltimore.
 

Here’s what happened. In January, the state uploaded a spreadsheet to its website, containing detailed state test results from last school year. Project Baltimore downloaded the spreadsheet and began analyzing the data.
 

Fox45 News was first to report the results on social media in late January. Soon after, MSDE removed the data from its website.
 

But remember, Project Baltimore already had it. And on February 6, we published a devastating report detailing how there were 23 Baltimore City Schools with zero students, among those tested, who scored proficient on the state math exam. The story went viral.
 

The data remained off the state’s website for weeks. It wasn’t until mid-March that the spreadsheet was reposted. But this time, much of the data was gone.
 

Here’s an example. Collington Square Elementary/Middle in Baltimore City is one of the 23 schools with zero students who tested proficient in math. On the original spreadsheet posted to the state’s website, we can see the number of students tested and the percent proficient, or not proficient, in each level. We compared that to the new version, where most of the data has been replaced with an asterisk. No one can see how many students at Collington Square are proficient in math. The state has hidden the data from the public.
 

“This is nothing but a cover-up,” said Kennedy. “It's a cover-up with statistics. They're hiding what happened from the public on purpose, and they're only doing it because they got caught.”
 

It’s not just Collington Square. Project Baltimore can no longer see certain results at many schools throughout the state.
 

Maryland State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury declined an interview with Fox45 to discuss why the test score spreadsheet was taken down and modified.
 

But MSDE provided a statement explaining the original spreadsheet was “prematurely posted by MSDE’s web vendor” and “was removed from the website because the data was still undergoing the federally required data disclosure methods” for student privacy.
 

According to MSDE, those methods include replacing the data with an asterisk if there’s fewer than “10 students” in a sample, but that’s not the case at Collington Square. In the original spreadsheet from January, we can see 19 students were tested in third-grade math, 18 students took the fourth-grade math test, and 23 were tested in fifth-grade math.
 

In the revised data, the number of students has been replaced with an asterisk, even though each grade had more than 10 students.
 

“The fact that the state Education Department is instituting a cover-up of what's going on in public schools - it’s outrageous. It's absolutely disturbing,” said Kennedy.
 

But that’s not the only change the state made. At Collington Square, 78.9 percent and 21.1 percent of students scored in level 1 or 2 for math, the lowest levels. Those scores were also replaced with an asterisk, even though MSDE’s own guidelines say that should only happen if the percentage is less than or equal to 5 or great than or equal to 95 percent.
 

According to the state’s own statement, this data does not violate student privacy and should be visible to the public.
 

“That's the definition of a cover-up to avoid getting caught doing something wrong,” Kennedy told Project Baltimore. “In this case, failing the students of Baltimore City and students across the state. They're hiding information from the public.”
 

MSDE’s statement to Project Baltimore created more questions than answers. So, Project Baltimore sent a follow-up email, asking why the state isn’t following its own guidelines for reporting the data. We will stay on this story and keep you updated.
 

“The fact that they would try to hide the ball is a scandal,” said Kennedy. “People should lose their jobs. There needs to be an independent investigation.”