EAST PROVIDENCE — Statewide testing procedures were violated at Whiteknact Elementary School last October when at least 14 third graders were given extra time, the state Department of Education has concluded.

And now school officials are looking into whether another violation occurred when the standardized tests for students in grades 3 through 5 were administered at Whiteknact.

All this was discussed Tuesday night — two weeks after administrators praised the test score improvements made by the district’s students. Whiteknact was singled out during that presentation because some of its students had made significant progress.

When tests were administered Oct. 22, School Committee member Shannon Barbosa’s son, a Whiteknact third grader, told his mother that he and others had additional time to fill out answers that they initially left blank.

Barbosa called state officials, they called Principal Linda Succi and Succi notified school administrators. School officials “thoroughly investigated” the matter two days later — they talked to the principal and test administrator, who admitted she gave the students more time — and immediately reported their findings to state officials, Supt. Mario Cirillo explained.State officials confirmed their finding of a violation in didn’t a conference call with school officials in early February and in a letter sent Monday. “The Department of Education has determined that the additional testing time provided to third-grade students at Whiteknact School following the regularly scheduled 2008 ELA [English language arts] and Math NECAP examinations violated the testing protocol,” wrote David V. Abbott, deputy education commissioner. “… The test results of these students will be removed from the calculation of scores for the Whiteknact School.”

The state is requiring additional training for Whiteknact’s test coordinator and that the district submita monitoring plan for the school by Sept. 15.

Cirillo also said Abbott emphasized during the conference call that the state didn’t think the incident was done with any “malicious intent.” Said Cirillo, “It was simply a mistake.”

Barbosa complimented the district’s prompt response but criticized the depth of the investigation because the students were not interviewed.

“I’m not okay with it,” she said, “and I think it is being swept under the rug. I believe there are more 14 students.”

Barbosa also said her daughter, also a Whiteknact student, told her that the person who administered the standardized tests in her classroom prompted the students with answers. Barbosa did not disclose what grade her daughter is in Tuesday night and she could not be reached Wednesday morning.

The school’s fourth graders were well above the state and district averages in math and reading. Eighty-seven percent were proficient in both subjects, which was a 43 percent increase over the school’s reading results for that grade last year and a 16 percent increase over the previous year’s math scores.

The fourth grade average for the district this year is 73 percent proficient in reading and 63 percent proficient in math. The state’s average this year for the same grade is 68 percent in reading and 63 percent in math.

The school’s fifth grade results were below the district and state averages in reading, math and writing. However the percentage of proficient readers in that grade increased by 19 percent over the previous year; the math scores went up 10 percent in one year and the writing results also improved from 26 percent proficient to 33 percent proficient.

The state didn’t release the school’s third grade scores in late January with the rest of the district’s results because of the violation and they are still not available.

“In all the years I’ve been around, I have never seen our teachers do anything wrong,” said Priscilla Sousa, a Redland Avenue resident in the audience Tuesday night. “They are role models… And our principals would never allow prompting by the teachers.”

Cirillo said Barbosa’s additional allegation “piqued my interest” and he plans to follow up on the matter.

But the superintendent also said, “There’s no evidence of anything else [other than the violation that has already been investigated].”

The East Providence violation and Barbosa’s second allegation are not the only standardized test concerns reported to the state this year. State officials are investigating whether students at Gorton Junior High School, in Warwick received improper advantages while taking the standardized tests last fall, including an allegation that some received extra time.

apina@projo.com