Windward District Superintendent Ruby Hiraishi said yesterday that the decision by the district and state Department of Education does not mean officials believe tampering occurred with other students' tests.

The purpose of the retesting is to "relieve anxiety and/or concerns, whether warranted or unwarranted, regarding the validity of the (then-)third-grade test results," she said.

The decision was announced earlier this month in a letter to the Kaaawa school/community-based management council. The fourth-grade class has 30 students.

Kaaawa's principal, Melanie Gibb, acknowledged in an Oct. 17 interview that she had told her staff to fill in a third-grade student's SAT, saying she did so because the girl was a home-school student and missed several days of school when the test was given in April. Gibb said the answers were copied from another student believed to be academically comparable to the girl.

The girl ended up scoring poorly on portions of the test.

Gibb's admission sent shock waves through the tiny rural community and led to calls by many parents for more severe discipline of the principal than the verbal reprimand Gibb said she received.

Some parents want Gibb fired, said Kaaawa PTA president Kathy Waracka, who would not disclose her own wishes. Gibb said yesterday that a small group of parents has long been calling for her ouster, but that those parents do not speak for the entire community and she continues to enjoy support. She said she did not want to talk about the retesting.

The DOE and school district are still investigating the matter. So far nothing has been uncovered to suggest any more tampering occurred than what Gibb has acknowledged, said a DOE spokesman, Greg Knudsen.

"It's not to dismiss the situation, because we're still looking at it and sorting it out, but there's never been any indication that it was anything more than just the one thing," he said.

Selvin Chin-Chance, head of the DOE's Test Development Section, said he has been given several options from the Texas-based company that administers the SAT, Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement. He said fourth-graders will probably retake the test during five days in the winter or spring because the company said it is too late to offer the test this fall. The students will be tested at a slightly higher level to account for the change in grade.

The maximum cost to the school district is $7 per student, Chin-Chance said.

The students' scores on the third-grade test have not been released.

The DOE is expected to release standardized test scores from all state public schools by mid-December.