Sacramento city school officials and other educators throughout the state are questioning the fairness of audits designed to measure what went wrong at low-achieving schools.

Two dozen California schools were subject to these audits for the first time this year, part of the state's push for school improvement. The schools are subject to extra scrutiny after taking extra funds to improve test scores and failing to meet their goals.

While some districts reported no problems with the scrutiny, such as the Grant Joint Union High School District, several other school systems have complained that the auditors don't conduct thorough, well-rounded interviews and reached conclusions without enough evidence to back them up.

Eric Dyer, a teacher at Compton Junior High School in Bakersfield, said the audit process left teachers and school staff feeling alienated. The audit team didn't ask for or accept teacher input, and the findings were presented in a negative rather than constructive manner, he said.

"We looked to them for guidance and help, and I feel like what we were given was a kick in the teeth," he said in testimony to the state board.

Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent Jim Sweeney denounced the process after an audit of troubled Sacramento High School blasted the district for failing to provide support and leadership to the school staff.

He called it a "flawed piece of work" and criticized the audit team for basing the majority of its findings on interviews with teachers "who had just been told their school was closing," for not corroborating any information with district staff and for not considering ongoing reform efforts.

A divided school board voted to close the school and open it in the fall as a charter, saying such radical reform was the only way to bring meaningful change and improve student performance.

State officials admit that improvements need to be made in the auditing program.

"We haven't accurately focused and prioritized what it is we're trying to accomplish" in the schools, Wendy Harris, director of the state's School Improvement Division, said last week while addressing the state board. She would like to emphasize improving academic content versus research and observation, saying it was crucial improvements are made given that next year as many as 90 low-performing schools could be audited.

But many Sac High teachers have praised the audit. They say its results confirmed their contention that poor administration -- and not the teaching staff -- was to blame for the school's troubles, which included poor test scores and college attendance.

"I feel like it vindicated what the teachers have been saying since the very beginning," said teacher Antonia Damiani, who, among others, had maintained that the school's fate should have been decided after the audit results were released.

The audit team, composed of 17 faculty members from the UCLA School Management Program, said it followed a rubric devised by the state and stands by its findings, which fault the district for high administrator turnover; not providing teachers with sufficient training; allowing low student expectations; and fostering a climate of fear and mistrust, among other things.

The audit teams examined four areas: district and school leadership; curriculum, instruction and professional development; classroom and school assessment; and school culture, climate and communication.

"I certainly understand why the superintendent would be somewhat dismayed," said Dan Chernow, executive director of the UCLA School Management Program. "But we think what was flawed was the level of education being given to students at Sac High."

State education officials refused to comment on Sacramento City Unified's unfairness claims, saying all audit teams contracted directly with districts. "This is a process between the district and their contractor," said Harris, adding the state does not oversee the audits and the results aren't given to the state until the district decides to make them public.

Sixty education organizations, including county offices of education and universities, applied to be audit teams, Harris said; 27 were approved, and districts picked from among them. The state provides minimum guidelines but the audit teams are free to delve beyond them, said Robert Maez, lead auditor for UCLA.

The Sacramento district paid $60,000 for the audit, which was reimbursed by the state's school reform program, district officials said.

State officials said they will seek feedback from schools statewide in a series of meetings over the next few weeks to gauge reaction to the School Assistance and Intervention Teams; two Sacramento City Unified assistant superintendents will be among those in attendance.

"It's important to get feedback, and in fact we need to tune up the process as we go along," said Greg Geeting, assistant executive director of the state board, which voted in March to send audit teams to 24 low-performing schools that included Sac High and Foothill Farms Junior High in the Grant Joint Union High School District.

Some education experts questioned the audit methods, agreeing with district officials and teachers who have criticized the process as lopsided and punitive.

Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, said audits such as the one at Sac High don't do anything to solve the most pressing problem: the lack of achievement among students at troubled schools.

Loveless, who is from Sacramento and taught in the San Juan Unified School District, said similar audits went on in the 1980s.

"If audits improved schools, California would have the highest-scoring schools in the country right now," he said.

He likened it to evaluating a hospital and basing its effectiveness on how clean the rooms are and how happy the patients are, rather than looking at cure rates.

"That's not really the way to judge schools, either," he said. Instead, reform efforts should focus strictly on student performance and how to improve it, not assigning blame, he said.

At last week's state board meeting, Harris pointed out the state has also received positive feedback.

Foothill Farms Junior High in the Grant school district had a constructive experience, said Patricia Newsome, an associate superintendent with the district.

The school contracted with the Sacramento County Office of Education, whose team reviewed reams of documents, conducted extensive interviews with teachers and district staff before and after the school visit, and considered reforms that were under way, Newsome said.

The district chose a local audit team because of their familiarity with the district, Newsome said. "We felt like it was a partnership, and they provided us with some good information to move forward with."

Among the recommendations for Foothill Farms: establishing a school-wide discipline plan to replace a prior, inconsistent one and hiring a second vice principal.

It is unclear what will be done at Sac High. The school, like the others audited, faced state sanctions for failing to raise student test scores two years in a row. The campus, along with 400 others, received extra funding from the state to improve its performance, and was one of two dozen schools statewide that did not meet growth targets and was subject to an audit.

The school was made into a charter to be run by the St. HOPE Corp., despite an outcry from those who wanted to wait for feedback from the audit.

Superintendent Sweeney said he hoped the findings would be instructive to the school's new administrators.

The district is being sued by a group of parents and teachers who want to stop the closure. A ruling is expected any day.

Another parent group, Take Back Our Schools Committee, has launched a recall effort of the four school board members who approved the closure.