According to Chalkbeat, Chancellor Carmen Farina has appointed a (yawn) task force to investigate the "credit recovery" programs that is now responsible for an astounding 50% of all credits students received at one school. This task force is supposed to identify schools who abuse the "credit recovery" programs (more yawns) and refer the more egregious cases to SCI (even more yawns). Interestingly, enforcing the rules will be the staff members at the new Borough Support Centers, many of them worked for the now disbanded "Children First Networks" who aided and abetted schools in awarding the "easy credits" to artificially improve the graduation rates. It's like the fox guarding the chicken coop!
Jame Eterno, Chapter Leader extraordinaire, stated it best in the ICEUFT blog by saying the following:
"The goal of education today is to graduate the students, not to educate them in too many instances".
This is exactly what the DOE is doing presently. It's not about educating the student but to graduate them, regardless if they are academically prepared for the adult world. Will the task force end up to be what is really needed? A truth commission? or will it be simply a sham that will hide the abuses in the "credit recovery" program? I bet my pension on the latter.
The DOE policy is to delay, deny, and defend administrators who pressure teachers to pass as many students as possible through scholarship (>85% passing), pressure, threats, and the use of "easy credits" that required little or no work. Remember what Chancellor Farina said about the John Dewey cheating scandal? The bottom line as James Eterno pointed out:
"Manipulating numbers is the inevitable result of tying teacher and principal ratings to student performance. Many students are not interested in school and when they find out educators will take the blame if they fail, they play the game to their advantage".
To me the Chancellor's new task force is simply a public relations ploy by the DOE to take the pressure off them to truly reform the abusive "credit recovery" system and the bogus graduation rate that sees over 78% of them needed remediation if they even bother to apply to college. Academic fraud is alive and well in the New York City public schools, be it Bloomberg or De Blasio as Mayor and the real losers are the students who are handed worthless diplomas while unable to academically survive in the real world like obtaining and keeping a good job or succeeding in college.
In the DOE its "Childern last.....Always".
Apex credit recovery offers a Phys Ed unit to get a credit. How do you get an online credit in Phys Ed? (hysterical!)
ReplyDeleteChaz,
ReplyDeleteI can't tell you how many kids in a particular Queens middle school who did nothing all year, but were passed. Teachers would have to answer to the principal, who would tell the teachers that their teaching techniques needed serious attention. This is not just a high school cancer. The malignancy begins in middle schools boro-wide. UFT reps at certain MS's turn a deaf ear. AP's downgrade observations if you don't play "The Game."
Academic fraud and worthless diplomas go hand in-hand--especially for NYC high school graduates that go to CUNY colleges as more than 50% of these students must take non-credit remedial English/Math courses. This has been going on for several years -even before the Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott and DeBlasio/Farina.
ReplyDeleteChaz, in your expert opinion, should doctoring IEP's and not following said IEP's, fall into academic fraud?
ReplyDeleteYou can chalk one up for Discovery High School on the Walton Campus in the Bronx. The administration forces us. The stats are super inflated.
ReplyDeleteLet Farina go back to Florida, if she so wishes. Perhaps Mulgrew can go with her? She has done nothing and is the same as all the previous chancellors. I'm sure the next one will be the same as well. She shouldn't get a pass just because she is doing same things as all the other chancellors. Let them go back and investigate them all.
ReplyDeleteAs the DOE's fondness for grade fixing comes home to roost and threatens to topple Farina, a de Blasio spokesman commented: "Carmen Fariña never tolerated cheating as an educator, and she won’t tolerate it as chancellor. She has taken aggressive steps to hold schools accountable and make sure everyone follows the rules.”
ReplyDeleteNot exactly. Read the excerpt below from OSI's 2005 investigation of Farina for allegedly covering up allegations of Regents cheating at the Cobble Hill School of American Studies.
At the time she was Klein's Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning. The investigator was sure that she was lying, not only because of her pinpoint amnesia, but also her preposterous claim that nobody is the system ever clued her into Cobble Hill's Regents scandal.
"This investigator asked M. Farina when she first became aware of the cheating at Cobble Hill. She said, “I don’t think it was when I was Superintendent [in charge of Cobble Hill]. I don’t remember.” She was asked if she had any discussions with [her successor] Superintendent Lyles about the Cobble Hill situation prior to mid-April 2004 [when NYSED intervened at my request]. She said, “I don’t remember.” She was asked if she discussed [the Principal's] removal from Cobble Hill with Superintendent Lyles. She said, “We discussed it, not specifics, just general background, I can’t remember.” She added, “I didn’t know the tests [under investigation] were Regents. I thought it was something between [the Principal] and an A.P. with inflated grades. She said that she had never heard of the complainant, Mr. Nobile. "
"This investigator asked Ms. Farina if she spoke to [LIS Kathy] Pelles after she realized that Ms. Pelles had failed to inform her about the cheating at Cobble Hill while she was Regional Superintendent. Ms. Farina was also asked if she spoke to Ms. Pelles about her failure to follow standard operating procedure, which Ms. Farina said, required reporting tampering allegations to O.S.C.I. and the state. Ms. Farina said that she did not call Ms. Pelles for an explanation. She said, 'I was at Tweed. I was not her superior.'”
Is Farina the sort of Chancellor we can trust to clean up the DOE's cesspool of cheating? Is the Grand Mufti Catholic?
It's worse than academic fraud it's 100% illegal and the families should sue!
ReplyDeleteThe "families" are perpetuating this type of situation. They're children do not have a strong work ethic.
DeleteThis is a setup for the charter schools to come out in the press as squeaky clean. Thus the media will look at public schools as a totally corrupt organization. Cheating has been around for a long time, not that it should be accepted but that charter schools have their own way of cheating and it is hardly in the news print. Lets ask for All those who educate children to be transparent and open their doors for investigators. Real investigators not those appointed by the same cheats.
ReplyDeleteThe city has reached a new labor agreement with 8,000 firefighters.
ReplyDeleteThe pact with the Uniformed Firefighters Association includes a raise of 11 percent over seven years.