FRANKFORT — Instructional leadership at the middle and high school levels at Kentucky School for the Deaf is virtually nonexistent, according to a review delivered Thursday to the Kentucky Board of Education.

        A Department of Education official who headed a scholastic audit team during a weeklong investigation said there was a striking difference between the programs for lower grades and upper grades at the residential school in Danville.

        “It was like being in two different worlds,” Tom Peterson, an associate commissioner of the department, told the board.

        The state department oversees the school, as it does Kentucky School for the Blind in Louisville.

        The school has about 200 students from all parts of Kentucky. About 150 are on the Danville campus with others at regional centers in northern and western Kentucky.

        The regional centers, however, were not a part of the review and were not visited by the state team, said Lisa Gross, a spokeswoman for the state education department.

        The Northern Kentucky program's director, Christi Bailey, refused to comment on the audit, but other school officials said the regional center has been a successful program for area deaf students.

        “It's helped our districts a great deal. The special ed directors absolutely love it,” said Marinell Kephart, special education director for both Beechwood Independent Schools and the Northern Kentucky Cooperative for Educational Services, which facilitates the regional center. “I don't think there's been any problems instructionally.”

        The Northern Kentucky program is housed at River Ridge Elementary in Kenton County. It is a cooperative effort between school districts in Boone, Kenton, Campbell and Pendleton counties and the Kentucky School for the Deaf.

        The center's staff are state employees; however, the program is supervised by a local board of superintendents and special education directors.

        The state school board has in the past expressed deep concern about the quality of some instruction at Kentucky School for the Deaf, especially because of students' low reading scores.

        Harvey Corson, superintendent of the school for the last seven years, said reading scores now are on the rise because of a new and heavy emphasis on remedial reading instruction.

        But Mr. Corson said he agreed that poor reading has caused many problems. “It's a problem when teachers become frustrated with children who do not read at a high enough level,” Mr. Corson said in an interview, speaking through an interpreter. Teachers are “trying so hard to teach,” Mr. Corson said.

        The school is divided into two sections. Pupils through fourth grade are in one building, while those in grades five through 12 are in a second building on the Danville campus.

        The audit said that the leadership at the lower-grade level was exemplary. However, “instructional leadership at the middle and secondary levels does not exist,” the audit said.

        “Teachers are often left to use their own ingenuity on critical instructional decisions. Communication between leadership and teachers on instruction, teaching and learning is rare if it occurs at all.”

        For that reason, fifth- and sixth-graders should be moved into the lower school, the report recommends. It also said instruction needs to be tailored more to the different needs and learning abilities of students, the audit said.

        Mr. Corson said he did not necessarily disagree with the criticism. Rather, he said he wanted to find out why the parents, teachers and staff who were interviewed by the auditors felt that instructional leadership was lacking at the upper grades.

        Mr. Corson will be leaving at the end of the month to become executive director of American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, Conn. Vivian Link, a longtime administrator in the state Department of Education, will temporarily replace him.

        Ms. Link said staff and faculty at Kentucky School for the Deaf are committed to their students, but are floundering as they try to figure out the best way to do their jobs.

        “I don't think there's any lack of commitment,” Ms. Link said.

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