It only took five years but the DOE finally removed the Principal of Hillcrest High School. The Principal, David Morrison, was found to have committed academic fraud by passing and graduating students by giving them credit for phantom online courses. The question is why did it take five years for the DOE to remove the Hillcrest Principal after an investigation substantiated the academic fraud?
Part of the answer is that we have a new Chancellor Richard Carranza, who owes no allegiance to the people at Tweed as Carmen Farina did. Another reason is that under Farina, the District Superintendent protected principals while the supervisory superintendents have no such loyalty to principals.
In my opinion. any Principal caught doing academic fraud should be subject to 3020-a hearings and if found guilty, should be fired.
30 comments:
YAY! FINALLY... and why it takes this long is only the DOE way but still..... I am sure she will be paper pushing in some office and 'not really fired;
Yet, they leave Namita Dwarka of Bryant HS and her half witted APs alone (Moises Moreales, I'm talking about you bitch)..
They left his AP Harvey Weinstein Jr. though. He’s sexually harassed every good looking woman in the place. Those that slept with him got cushy positions and those that didn’t, non-stop harassment. The staff liked and respected Morrison. This has nothing to do with grade inflation , this is pure payback. Carranza is a brainless twit.
What do you think should happen to any DOE chancellor caught doing academic fraud or encouraging principals to commit academic fraud? Or looks the other way?
Moises Morales is such a short turd, I ate an apple off his bald head.
Chaz some of these comments are inappropriate. Regardless of the story there should be a level of professionalism and respect. Not sure why you allow it.
Come on guys??? Are you naive? Principals have to cheat to get the DOE the numbers they need. Read the article: The DOE confirmed Wednesday that those charges were eventually substantiated — but he only received a “counseling letter.” He stayed on the job for four years. His biggest mistake is not cheating enough the second time and getting them better numbers. Isn't this obvious? Don't you guys teach students to read between the lines???
Carranza is not doing anything more or less than Farina. Farina was actually the dumbest chancellor the city ever had. Remember she was one of us - an insider. Look around and honestly tell me you'd trust one of your colleagues, assistant principals, principals or superintendents to become chancellor.
A couple of years ago I was in a mental institution and the one thing I learned was: No mental patient was ever promoted to head of the mental hospital. Farina was the only mental patient who became chancellor. Doesn't that tell you something? I served rubber room time with Carmen. She was a weird one. While we played chess, did yoga and played poker - she was standing in front of the room trying to PD us. We'd laugh like hell. Then Klein fired her old ass into retirement. That was 2005. She then came back in 2014 looking for vengeance. Trying to prove herself a chancellor. Remember this is the idiot who held the yard stick upside down and thought we had only 2 inches of snow instead of 18 inches.
The system is broken. It is never going to get fixed. Nobody is changing anything. Only thing we will ever change is our diapers when we get old.
Just this week I had to take 4 regents exams for seniors who needed to graduate. When I asked my principal for a 10 minute break she flipped out on me. Ten minutes later she screamed at me that my essays are too similar and I need to change my handwriting. Okay, now she did pay me per session but is this any way to treat your favorite dean?
I am too old. Too tired. I have 3 years to go and there are days I dream I was back in the ATR pool swimming with the other fish.
Morales dresses worse then the kids with his pants hanging off his ass. Deans are encouraged to have students "write up the teacher" and let then continue to bully their classmates and smoke pot in the hallways. Dwarka is visibly on 4-5 psch meds and can barely keep her eyes open. Rather then working collaborative and professionally with staff they just "write up" the teacher and never follow up or follow through on anything. The guidance AP looks like he works at starbucks, it's sad when ALL the AP's are visibly scared of the principal and she has the highest turn over rate of teachers, year after year, year after year, year after year
Can anyone answer this- How is it physically possible for all the "bad teachers" or "worst new teachers in Queens high schools" to magically apply only to Bryant high school, year after year, year after year, and again year after year????
And all the school to have the highest amount of ineffective observations, year after year, year after year, year after year?
Nobody is asking Dwarka why she has the highest teacher turnover (40%) and gives the worst observations???? it PHYSICALLY and MATHEMATICALLY impossible to HAVE the HIGHEST TURNOVER RATE and WORST OBSERVATIONS year after year, year after year! DO THE MATH
It is always entertaining and funny when I hear teachers say "principals who are caught cheating should have a 3020a". Do you know how many principals were caught cheating and had a 3020a? Maybe 5 in 15 years. I can name about 3 or 4. Do you know how many of these cases the city won? ZERO ... Can anyone guess why? Take a wild guess... the answer is very simple...
Though many of these comments are not written in a serious manner, fraud is an epidemic problem in education, at least around here. Anyone who has been around for a while has seen enough examples. Whether it is a billionaire mayor doing it [buying a third term, or juking numbers up and down for political reasons], a Chancellor [credit recovery schemes], Principal [rampant cheating on exams to get bonuses, raise accountability #s], Admin [using the evaluation system as a weapon] the Unions [not supporting dues paying members, colluding with DOE], the DOE [engaging in multiple examples of hypocrisy, but notably allocating enormous resources to people who do not directly work with students while underfunding schools], a Governor [who was anti-teacher until it went out of style], Charter schools [making their own illegal rules and outright lying], and more.
Ironically, it is the teachers who bring most of the integrity to the system, who are still the ones who, in each room if things are going well, try to actually provide a quality education to students each day. Of course some teachers are struggling, it is not perfect, but most are trying to make it work and teachers know classrooms full of cheaters don't work. It is also true that if a teacher was caught in a cheating scheme the hammer would come down fast and hard as compared to all of these other actors who are not accountable.
If an admin gets fired, terminated, or moved, it is because he/she did not play "the game" properly, not because there is such a burning desire for integrity in the system.
Did Principal Rob Perralta come up on anyone's principal radar? There is a negative track rating going on in his current school now
@10:00AM
If it's the teachers who bring most of the integrity to the system, how is it that there are schools that have massive grade fraud like MS 244 revealed by Susan Edelman at the Post, see - http://chaz11.blogspot.com/2019/07/schools-still-practicing-academic-fraud.html
Where 94% of students were passing their math classes but only 2% were passing the state exams. Who is perpetrating the academic fraud at that school? How is it not the teachers?
At this point most people working in the system have no integrity. I lost mine 3 years ago on June 14th when I submitted grades and was told I will be u-rated (rated ineffective) if I do not change my grades. At this point the only teachers with integrity are the ones in specialized high schools. I would have to assume they grade students fairly and accurately. However, 90 percent of the other schools have no integrity. I have to agree with @ 2:17 . You are absolutely correct. How can 94 percent of the students pass their math classes and only 2 percent pass a state exam?
Teachers need to pass every student in order to survive and not be rated unsatisfactory (ineffective). Principals need to show their graduation rates are above a certain % or else they are removed.
I wrote 2 books back in the day. The first one was titled "Suspend them ALL" which was very controversial but a favorite among most teachers. Years later I wrote "Fuck it Pass them ALL" which got me many accolades among school administrators.
The amount of nonsense, cheating (whether intentional or look the other way) is beyond comprehension. My passing rate when I proctor regents is well into the 90 percentile. I proctor 2 to 3 Regents a day and I am well compensated. Not only am I the principal's favorite proctor but students have fist fought over who takes the regents in my room. Even parents now request me as a proctor. In August my superintendent is the only one can direct me to which schools to go and grade at.
If any teacher wants to keep their sanity and integrity then go to Long Island or Westchester. Even there you must be in a good district or the same will happen as in NY City.
@2:17. Yes I agree. The teachers are the ones doing whatever the admins say. Unfortunately, I refused to inflate my grades at FHS and I wasn't rehired. Those that did were rehired. Now the school is boasting a huge increase in graduation because the admin kept teachers that inflated grades and hired newbies who have no integrity and who would do whatever admin said. I know there are teachers who will say they don't inflate grades, but giving extra credit out like its chicken feed is grade inflation. When a student gets 65 in a class, isn't that really a failing grade? So unfortunately as long as Danielson, tenure and rehiring is used as a weapon teachers are still going to inflate grades. Nobody is going to say enough is enough.
2:17
I don't think teachers commit the fraud without pressure from above to pass as close to 100% of students. Now, if the numbers you quote are accurate, then there are multiple massive failures at that school. I know in so many schools, across the boroughs, there is pressure to pass students. But, if we trust the state exams as an indicator, if instruction is working the exam scores and class grades should correlate. In my communication with many teachers across a range of high schools and subjects, that correlation exists. I imagine what you describe is caused by teachers in fear of negative evals, poor administration, lack of effective instructional support and implementation, probably poor discipline, and more.
Personally, I may be passing kids that I wouldn't pass if it was just up to me, but if they pass the Regents exam [as they almost always do], I can reconcile myself to giving them a low pass, since the exam is made to carry so much weight in accountability. But if I passed kids and had a high exam failure rate, I agree that would be a problem. But, if I had a low pass rate in class grades I would attract a lot of negative admin attention and be forced to give students make up work or some other means to raise their grades, or face a negative eval. As a veteran I don't want to walk into that trap, so I leverage what I can [using whatever instructional strategies that work] to get my kids to pass, even if it is low.
Can't speak for over 100,000 adults in the system. But, everywhere I have worked it was the teaching staff that is the real lifeblood of the school. But, yes, there can also be staffs with bad teachers - I have experienced that 2 times in my life and was happy to leave those places.
Can we all encourage schools' staffs to call for votes of No-confidence. It seems that there is a precedent being established where a vote of no confidence, along with parent support and a friendly press (NY Post) can bring enough bad attention to a school that the DOE is willing to reassign incompetent principals. Lets keep the momentum going.
2:17 - No doubt the criteria to get a 65 (or more) in the class (homework, quizzes, class participation, projects, unit exams, etc. ) differs from the criteria to pass a single state exam (65 or more). Not a shocker. Beyond that, the teachers have to be responsive to administrative directives (written and unwritten) regarding classroom grades. Admins want to pass the kids along, teachers are outranked.
Teachers who fail kids wind up in all sorts of trouble - seen that scores of times in my 30-year career.
217,
Last year, I covered a leave replacement in Brooklyn until April.
The AP flat out told me,’do yourself a favor. Pass everyone!’
He also stated no one will give you a hard time if you go along to get along.
He was right. You can’t read? Who cares? 70.
You control yourself and read on a 3rd grade level? Cool! 75.
This system is not about teaching. It’s about survival.
Name names insider
It is sort of a farce [the grading scenario these days], but if I start with the idea that I am going to pass just about everyone, and then figure out ways to get the kids to do as much as I can to justify that, it sort of works out. There are many ways teachers can justify - drop lowest grades, etc. It isn't what I would like to do ideally, but this is the DOE in 2019, this is what they want. I am not going to die on the hill of giving a kid a 55 instead of a 65, and jeopardize my career. I'll get that kid to do a little more work if I can. We are passing the problem on to the next person to some degree, but we are not working in a system that is dedicated to really helping kids get better right now - that is sacrificed for the higher pass rate and the blame game is always on the teacher.
I have seen young and veteran teachers get absolutely f'effed over on this issue - it can lead to a discontinuance, extension of probation, and lots of stress. We are not living in the time when a teacher, no matter how good, can have a 80% or lower pass rate safely.
Shady wrote: "Teachers need to pass every student in order to survive and not be rated unsatisfactory (ineffective). Principals need to show their graduation rates are above a certain % or else they are removed."
Truer words were never written!
This is the LAW in my school. Even though only about 20% of the students in my school could fairly be passed according to more traditional academic expectations, if you don't pass everyone the target is slapped on your back faster than you can say, "Okay class..."
I sent my kids to private school and paid a bundle so they would have teachers who do not FEAR failing a student. Up until about 20 years ago, this was most public school teachers too, but then the 'education reform' movement happened (because POC students were not measuring up, so it must be those raciss' teachers!)
Thus the focus of the 'reform' movement has been almost 100% on how to get rid of those evil, white racists in the classrooms all over the country. Danielson's was their ultimate weapon and has been effective in driving good people out and allowing social justice knuckleheads in, who either pass everyone or leave quickly.
We are a society in rapid decline. Don't depend on a comfortable retirement. In 20-30 years socialist revolution will replace the Constitution and we will be Venezuela.
As I enter my mid-40’s and am making top salary, who cares about the doe and the kids? The mayor doesn’t, the principals don’t care, the APs are sheep and most teachers are playing the game. I am as well.
Where else can I make 120 k and do absolutely garbage easy work?
anon 104
You are not a teacher. If you were you would know this job is not "garbage easy work". You are likely a cyber troll that hates teachers. Pitiful you.....
728,
I have 20 years in.
I wear a shirt and tie, use the rhetoric and never talk back to admin. Oh, I pass everyone and rarely use sick days.
In the doe, that’s a good teacher. I wrote lessons how my AP wants but all I’m really doing is having kids copy off the board.
This job is a joke.
728, at one point I did care.
Caring almost cost me my job.
This is not teaching. It’s survival.
Stop caring and start being a shill. It’s less stressful.
@Shady...please please write a book. You are so friggin hilarious. Thanks for the laughs
@10 am Touche
@ Jordan; That's what I ssid.
@8:43 or should I say spineless shill...you win today. When you're taxes go up due to the number of folks on welfare, you will pay for that win. Lol.
@8:43 or should I say spineless shill...you win today. When you're taxes go up due to the number of folks on welfare, you will pay for that win. Lol.
*your
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