Investigators from the Virginia Department of Education are looking into possible Standards of Learning testing irregularities at Roanoke's William Fleming High School.

State officials received an anonymous tip May 8 alleging that some students "were being excluded from Algebra I testing," said department spokesman Charles Pyle. The state referred the allegation to the school system, which started its own investigation. School officials found that the allegations may have involved students with disabilities, and referred the investigation back to the state. Virginia officials are required to investigate issues related to special education.

Officials from the Department of Education visited Roanoke last week, and are now working on their final report, Pyle said.

A second anonymous tip from the district later alleged that this is not the first time students have been excluded from tests at Fleming. The tipster pointed to geometry testing last year, which the state is also investigating, Pyle said.

Roanoke Superintendent Rita Bishop declined to comment on the investigation.

Pyle said the state receives reports of "dozens and dozens of irregularities during the testing cycle," but that very few of them involve attempts to compromise the tests' security.

In 2007, a state investigation found that 56 students in Stafford County were inappropriately held back from testing. Two years earlier, state investigators found that an elementary school in Richmond had improperly allowed teachers to help students on tests. The principal of the school was fired as a result.

Fleming earned state accreditation last year but did not perform well enough on SOL tests to meet federal standards under the No Child Left Behind Act. The school posted high pass rates on English SOL tests but struggled on the math tests. Roughly 66 percent of students with disabilities passed the math tests.

Under No Child Left Behind, 75 percent of test-takers from different demographic groups must have passed state math tests last year in order for a school to meet the federal benchmark known as Adequate Yearly Progress. The federal standard is supposed to get increasingly stringent every year until 2014, when 100 percent of all test-takers will be expected to pass.

Fleming made the standard in 2007-08, but missed in 2006-07. It is too soon to know how the school performed during the just-ended testing cycle.

Staff researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this story