SAN JOSE — Santa Clara County schools chief Xavier De La Torre’s former school district in Texas is under investigation for possibly skewing federal and state test results during the time he was in charge.

A 55-page audit, commissioned by the Socorro Independent School District in El Paso, Texas, did not place blame on any school employees, including De La Torre. However, four top administrators were immediately placed on leave, and the school board will do a second investigation to find those responsible, board president Cynthia Najera said.

“We’re disappointed,” she said. “We had not received any indication that anything like this was going on in our district.”

De La Torre, who was Socorro superintendent from 2009 to 2012 until he was hired as Santa Clara County superintendent of schools, said the findings were overblown.

“I don’t think anyone was attempting to circumvent state assessments,” he said. “I’m disappointed that the (Socorro) board and superintendent have elevated and presented it as potential cheating. I don’t think it is.”

The investigation, commissioned in March because of irregularities in surrounding districts, found varying anomalies in records for 1,630 former Socorro students, or 12 percent of four graduating classes from 2009 through 2012.

The most serious ones involved special-education, English-learner and transfer students from Mexico not being placed in 10th or 11th grades, when critical federal and state standardized tests are administered. In some cases, students repeated ninth grade, then were promoted to 11th or 12th grade.

The district referred the audit results to the state education agency, the federal Department of Education and the FBI.

When De La Torre became Socorro superintendent in 2009, a similar investigation was unfolding next door in the El Paso Independent School District. The former superintendent of that district is now serving a 3½-year prison sentence for a cheating and contract-steering scandal.

De La Torre said he convened his cabinet and made clear that similar practices of grade-skipping were not to happen in Socorro.

He said the evidence found in the current investigation could be due to residual practices. The class of 2012 began its sophomore year in 2009, just as De La Torre was beginning his tenure; the other classes investigated were sophomores before he arrived.

Or, he said, anomalies could result from well-intentioned counselors.

“When you run a 45,000-student school district with four very large high schools, there are times when people with the best intentions make decisions about what’s in the best interest of the students,” he said.

That, he said, could involve retaining a newcomer in the ninth grade to shore up English skills before advancing to higher grades. As a border town, El Paso received hundreds or more new students from Mexico annually.

However, audit investigator Pam Padilla, wrote that campus staff reported being directed by an administrator to change students’ classification from 10th to 11th grade, midway through the 2010 and 2011 years, contrary to district rules.

Najera, the board president, blamed some of the anomalies on a regulation imposed by a previous superintendent in 2007, requiring schools to place all Mexican transfer students in ninth grade regardless of age or high school level. “The board did not know this regulation existed,” she said.

The Santa Clara County Board of Education hired De La Torre in 2012 with great fanfare, but this year gave him a less-than-satisfactory review. Employees have complained bitterly about how he has reduced staff and said an atmosphere of fear exists at the County Office of Education.

Contact Sharon Noguchi at 408-271-3775. Follow her at Twitter.com/NoguchiOnK12.