The Career of Santiago ("Santi") Taveras Comes Hopefully To A Crashing Stop

DeWitt Clinton High School

There is alot written about Santiago ("Santi") Taveras on the internet, all of which was ignored by the NYC DOE always.

Why that is, politics. It's always politics.

Betsy Combier

Here are some posts:

The (Mis)-Education of Santiago Taveras

The Blackboard Award 2009 Goes To Dr. Jose Maldonado-Rivera

Santiago Taveras, public face of DOE, leaving for private sector

Principal installed his own on-campus shower

By Susan Edelman

Santiago Taveras

Santiago Taveras, principal of DeWitt Clinton HS, installed a shower in the school for his personal use, The Post has learned.

But it’s OK, says the Department of Education — he installed it himself.

“Principal Taveras purchased the materials for the shower with his own funds,” DOE officials said, adding that an investigation “did not substantiate any wrongdoing.”

Asked whether a contractor was hired, officials said Taveras “installed it himself outside of school time.”

DOE officials said “the bathroom is open to the principal, the principal’s secretary, the APs [assistant principals], parents and guests, and students who need it for emergency reasons. Principal Taveras is not the only staff member with a key.”

But DeWitt Clinton staffers said no one except Taveras and a custodian can get in. Taveras uses it to wash up after exercising at the school in the morning, they said.

The shower was put in without a required building permit.

Responding to a complaint of illegal plumbing work at the school, city Department of Building inspectors were “unable to gain access” to the locked room on two visits last January, records show.

Staffers accuse Bronx principal of fixing grades so students pass

by Susan Edelman

LINK

Santiago Taveras

The principal of DeWitt Clinton HS, a struggling Bronx school in Mayor de Blasio’s multimillion-dollar Renewal program, changed students’ failing grades to passing without teachers’ knowledge or consent, insiders told The Post.

In one case, Santiago Taveras gave a senior who received a “no show” in a global-history class a 75 and changed her failing 55 grade in gym to a minimum passing 65, records show. She then got a credit for each class, which she didn’t deserve, several staffers charged.

“He thinks he’s God and can do whatever he wants,” one said.

The office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools is probing the allegations, said spokeswoman Regina Romain. Taveras did not return a call or e-mail seeking comment.

Taveras, 50, a former deputy chancellor in the city Department of Education who closed failing schools, left a private job to lead DeWitt Clinton in 2013, vowing to revive the once-great Kingsbridge school. Its many VIP alumni include playwright Neil Simon, writer James Baldwin and comedian Tracy Morgan.

But last July, the state Education Department gave DeWitt Clinton and other lagging schools two years to show “demonstrable improvement” or face a takeover.

The 2,100-student school boasts an honors program and winning sports teams but has overall low attendance and 45 percent graduation rate. It’s also one of 94 Renewal schools the mayor and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña say they’ll fix with an extra $400 million in three years.

Normally, a teacher requests a grade change if warranted. The teacher submits a written request to an assistant principal.

But in several cases reviewed by The Post, Taveras signed the forms himself. The teacher’s name is printed on the forms, but space for the teacher’s signature is blank.

Taveras changed a student’s failing 55 grade in an English class to 90, granting a credit. He submitted the forms last summer.

For another student, a failing 55 in algebra for a summer class in 2014 was changed to 65. Taveras filed the forms that October.

A student who got a failing 55 in gym in 2013 saw it changed to 65 after Taveras filed the forms in October 2014. Insiders said the teacher was unlikely to dispute the change because her mother is Taveras’ secretary.

The senior whose two grade changes were signed by Taveras had failed to take repeated offers to make up missed class time and work, staffers said.

In weekly e-mails, Taveras has prodded teachers to raise their “pass rates,” citing some as low as 7 percent. He urges them to give failing kids makeup work or extra projects so they can get the class credit.

“Our goal is to have a pass rate of 80 percent for the year,” he wrote last December.

In January 2014, Taveras urged teachers to follow “surprising grading policies” that seem to let lousy performance slide at prestigious high schools and colleges. For instance, Columbia University defines a “D” as “poor but passing.” At Harvard University, a “D” or “D”-minus is given for “work that is unsatisfactory but that indicates some minimal participation in class activities that is worthy of course credit toward the degree.”

“I believe we as a school need to better define our grading policies and practices,” Taveras wrote.

DeWitt Clinton High School Principal Santiago ("Santi") Taveras Keeps Going Even As His School Fails

Carmen Farina has been the Person of Interest in the cases of Santiago Taveras for too long:

Santiago Taveras

Santiago Taveras, public face of DOE, leaving for private sector

Santiago Taveras, a former DOE official, returning as a principal

Staffers accuse Bronx principal of fixing grades so students pass

Principal installed his own on-campus shower

The Career of Santiago ("Santi") Taveras Comes Hopefully To A Crashing Stop

The (Mis)-Education of Santiago Taveras

The city’s worst high schools for dropouts

Chancellor Farina must be fired, along with Santi..

Betsy Combier
President, ADVOCATZ and The E-Accountability Foundation 
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Bronx Principal Accused of Changing Grades, Installing Own Office Shower
LINK

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The principal of a failing Bronx school was under investigation Monday night on allegations of grade fixing – changing scores so more students would pass.

As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, the mayor is vowing “serious consequences” for any wrongdoing.

DeWitt Clinton High School

DeWitt Clinton HS at 100 W. Mosholu Pkwy. South in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx, is a struggling school. Low attendance and a graduation rate of just 45 percent put it on the endangered list.

But now, principal Santiago Taveras has come under investigation in the grade-fixing scandal – and it happens that Taveras is a former deputy chancellor in the city Department of Education.

His job was to close failing schools.

The investigations surrounding Taveras now alleges that he changed failing grades to passing grades without teachers’ consent.

For example, a senior who got a “no-show” grade in global history reportedly got it changed to a 75. Another student’s 55 in English was reportedly changed to a 90, and a failing algebra grade of 55 was reportedly changed to a passing 65.

Other grade-fixing scandals, such as that at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, were reported by teachers. In this case, the city Department of Education discovered the problem itself.

“My Department of Education initiated that investigation,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, “and that investigation will proceed promptly, and if we find any wrongdoing, there will be very serious consequences for the individual involved.”

Students at Dewitt Clinton, part of the Department of Education renewal program for failing schools, were outraged.

“It makes me upset. It’s going to make us look bad,” said student Kevin Bacchus. “I have 90s and I’m going to be questioned about my 90s.”

“Changing the grades is not going to help anything,” said student Shanice Cerby. “It’s not going to help the students. It’s not going to save the school.”

“We all have to earn our grades,” added student Sarojnie Dhanpat. “At some point, everyone has to earn their same grade.”

The principal reportedly urged teachers to raise their pass rates to 80 percent.

Devora Kaye, a spokeswoman for schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, said that when Department of Education staffers “identified possible improprieties” at the school, the issues were immediately reported to prosecutors for investigation.

Santiago ("Santi") Taveras is Demoted/Removed As Principal at DeWitt Clinton High School For Misconduct, But Gets a Higher Salary. Payoff?

I can almost hear the despair of Carmen Farina behind closed doors at the stupidity of Santiago ("Santi") Taveras. She placed him in one of the New York City Department of Education failing Renewal Schools - ALL the Renewal Schools are failing as well as the program/policy itself - namely DeWitt Clinton HS, thinking that his dumb moves would or could be excused, if someone found out and exposed it, by blaming it on the program itself rather than him, personally. He is protected. I call his actions the "arrogance of immunity".

Here is the OSI report on Taveras' misconduct:
Taveras OSI Report
He knows too much, so the Department will never fire him which might force him to reveal his little black book.

Santiago ("Santi") Taveras

Carmen as usual misunderstood the media, the public, and the distaste for wrongdoing that she enjoys. For her, doing things the "right" way means taking alot of time to follow rules and procedures, which Carmen never has. When grades are changed, when records of attendance, class assignments and numbers of IEP students in ICT classes can be erased and replaced, that's good and fast. All Carmen has to do is have a statement of fake news to accompany whatever the fraud/forgery is.

Santi is all over the internet. But he will never be fired, because that would mean a probable lawsuit, and he would name names of "important people" at the DOE who told him to do whatever he could to make them look good. I betcha he has been promised immunity for his wrong-doing more than a few times. My opinion.

Pushing for Change, Bronx Principal Is Undone by Investigation

Principal removed for changing grades to boost graduation rates

Santiago Taveras

Principal Reassigned After Accusations Of Grade-Fixing At Bronx High School

The Career of Santiago ("Santi") Taveras Comes Hopefully To A Crashing Stop

De Witt Clinton High School Principal Santiago "Santi" Taveras Removed From His Position

The random and arbitrary protection of certain individuals in the public arena who are paid with public money, is disgusting, unfair, and a liability for the Department when exposed. Let's start getting this system straightened out.

Let's get rid of the main protector first, Carmen Farina.

The New York City Rubber Room Anti-Teacher Charging Process Shows How Corrupt the Carmen Farina-Bill De Blasio Department of Education Really Is. by Betsy Combier

A Question For Carmen Farina, NYC Chancellor: Where is the Money?

The Arrogance of Immunity and the "Resignation" -or Retirement - of NYC DOE Deputy Chancellor Carmen Farina

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com

Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org

Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Principal in grade-fixing scandal loses gig — but spared ax

By Susan Edelman

, NY POST, March 26, 2017

Veteran educator Santiago Taveras has been stripped of his high-profile job as principal of DeWitt Clinton HS — one of the biggest schools in Mayor de Blasio’s stumbling “Renewal” program — but spared the ax for academic misconduct.

Taveras was demoted to “educational administrator,” with a $5,000 pay cut from $154,826 to $149,826.

“Mr. Taveras is no longer a principal,” a DOE spokesman said.

Taveras changed the grades of students from failing to passing without the knowledge or consent of their teachers, and threatened an assistant principal who refused to pass a student who didn’t deserve it, a city probe found.

A report by the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation quotes a school source saying that Taveras “may have made more than 900” grade changes over three years, but mentions no effort to probe that accusation. The Department of Education would not comment.

Taveras agreed to pay a $5,000 fine for “academic impropriety.”

Based in a Bronx field office, Taveras will “develop and implement strategies to improve school climate and promote positive behavior among students,” the DOE said.

Last school year, Taveras collected $198,150 — $48,000 on top of his salary. Officials would not explain the extra payments. He did not return messages.

Taveras’ downfall is an embarrassing blow for the mayor’s Renewal program, which is pumping an extra $754 million into struggling schools. The program started in 2014 with 96 schools, including DeWitt Clinton, but after closings and mergers will continue with 78 in the fall.

Known as “Santi,” the burly, boisterous ex-deputy chancellor under Mayor Bloomberg took the principal’s job in 2013 to save the declining high school, once a powerhouse with star alumni like attorney William Kuntsler, actor Judd Hirsch and playwright Neil Simon.

Supporters say Taveras injected new energy and school spirit, while getting rid of scores of teachers he deemed ineffective.

“He was gung ho about bringing Clinton back, and we were so disappointed when we heard what happened,” said John Barbarette, a 1964 graduate and president of the alumni association.

Clinton’s academic performance remains poor. Last year, only 46 percent of seniors graduated, with 19 percent deemed college-ready.

In November 2015, an anonymous whistleblower sent SCI records of four cases in which Taveras changed grades. The Post exposed the tampering and Taveras’ installation of a shower for his personal use.

In one case, Taveras changed a girl’s failing grade of 55 in physical education to a passing 65, and a “no-show” in global history to 75. The history teacher told probers the girl had “horrendous” attendance, and failed to complete even a make-up assignment.

Another student admitted she rarely attended or completed assignments in a summer algebra class. Taveras changed her failing 55 to 65, telling SCI she passed the Regents exam. But DOE academic policy says Regents exams may not be the only reason a student passes or fails a course.

Taveras asked an assistant principal whether any changes could be made for a student who failed algebra with a rock-bottom 45. The AP found the student was absent much of the semester and did not complete the course work — and told Taveras nothing could be done.

Two days later, he ordered the AP to speak with the student’s teacher about a way to “fix” the grade. The teacher agreed to raise the grade if the student completed a packet of work. But when the student turned it in, “everything was wrong.” The AP refused to change the kid’s grade.

Soon after, Taveras gave the AP an “unsatisfactory” rating for the year, but promised to reverse it to a “satisfactory” if the AP left. When the AP joined another school, Taveras drafted an “S” rating and backdated it.

Santiago Taveras and The New York City Schools That Did Not Close

 

Santiago Taveras

The New York City Schools That Didn’t Close; 

What Can We Learn From Regional Enrichment Centers?

Parentadvocates.org, Betsy Combier, Editor, September 14, 2020

---

In a cold, drizzly Monday morning in late March, Santiago Taveras left his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, before the sun rose. Traffic was light as Taveras merged onto the George Washington Bridge, crossed over the Hudson and Harlem Rivers into the Bronx, passed the shuttered Cardinal Hayes High School, and steered toward a big, boxy building in Mott Haven. Already, the city had begun to feel like the national epicenter of what people would come to call the pandemic. The previous week, the city had implemented shelter-in-place rules, shutting down offices, restaurants, and schools. Ninety-nine people had died in the city so far and another twelve thousand New Yorkers had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, fifteen percent of them in the Bronx. Taveras’s wife, Alexandra, had fretted as he left the house that morning, wearing a dress shirt and slacks. What if he caught the virus? What if he carried it home?

---

Santiago Taveras

The New York City Schools That Didn’t Close

What can we learn from regional enrichment centers, which hastily opened just before the peak of the coronavirus pandemic?

By Casey Parks, The New Yorker, September 14, 2020

In a cold, drizzly Monday morning in late March, Santiago Taveras left his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, before the sun rose. Traffic was light as Taveras merged onto the George Washington Bridge, crossed over the Hudson and Harlem Rivers into the Bronx, passed the shuttered Cardinal Hayes High School, and steered toward a big, boxy building in Mott Haven. Already, the city had begun to feel like the national epicenter of what people would come to call the pandemic. The previous week, the city had implemented shelter-in-place rules, shutting down offices, restaurants, and schools. Ninety-nine people had died in the city so far and another twelve thousand New Yorkers had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, fifteen percent of them in the Bronx. Taveras’s wife, Alexandra, had fretted as he left the house that morning, wearing a dress shirt and slacks. What if he caught the virus? What if he carried it home?

Taveras, a Dominican who was born in the Bronx, is six feet three and, as he often points out, weighs about three hundred and fifty pounds. He has worked for the New York City Department of Education for thirty years as an elementary school teacher, assistant principal, high-school teacher and principal, student-support manager, and deputy chancellor, among other roles. Now he was taking on a role for which there was little if any, precedent in the department’s hundred-and-seventy-eight-year history. He would open a temporary school in the middle of a worldwide health crisis.

Around 5:30 a.m., Taveras parked his Toyota Sienna minivan outside of the Mott Haven Educational Campus. Most of the city’s 1.1 million schoolchildren would stay home that day, as they had every day the previous week, but a deputy chancellor and a team of administrators had rushed to put together a plan for what they’d begun calling “regional enrichment centers”—schools for the children of essential workers. Department officials had warned Taveras that they weren’t sure how many students would show, or when. Fourteen thousand families had registered to send their children to one of ninety-three centers. The night before, officials had assigned a hundred and seventy students—ages three to fifteen, nearly all of them the children of health-care workers in the Bronx or Harlem—to the school that Taveras would oversee.

He stepped inside and found that the custodial staff had arrived before he did. The lobby reeked of bleach and disinfectant, which he found reassuring. He walked the building’s halls, looking for classrooms with sinks. Most of the doors were decorated with children’s art: skylines, butterflies. Some of the desks still had notebooks in them—supplies that students left behind before lockdown. One classroom had the remnants of a bean-growing project. Normally, the Mott Haven campus holds half a dozen schools; it sits on six and a half acres, and when it opened, a decade ago, architects called it the largest single school-construction project in New York City history. Even if hundreds of kids came today, Taveras thought, he’d have plenty of space to house them.

Half a dozen paraprofessionals arrived, some wearing gloves, goggles, and face shields. By 7 a.m., a school nurse stood in the entrance, waiting with a no-contact thermometer for the first families to arrive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not issue recommendations for face masks until April 3rd, so the children who barrelled in were barefaced and beaming, ready to return to school after a week off.

“Welcome,” Taveras said, bumping elbows with the kids. “I’m Big Santi.” He spaced the kids out as they came in, careful not to fill any classroom with more than nine children. He sent four- and five-year-olds to a room on the north end, then he directed nine- and ten-year-olds toward desks that still bore other children’s names.

The parents were mostly nurses from the Montefiore, Harlem Hospital, New York Half a dozen paraprofessionals arrived, some wearing gloves, goggles, and face shields. By 7 a.m., a school nurse stood in the entrance, waiting with a no-contact thermometer for the first families to arrive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not issue recommendations for face masks until April 3rd, so the children who barrelled in were barefaced and beaming, ready to return to school after a week off.

“Welcome,” Taveras said, bumping elbows with the kids. “I’m Big Santi.” He spaced the kids out as they came in, careful not to fill any classroom with more than nine children. He sent four- and five-year-olds to a room on the north end, then he directed nine- and ten-year-olds toward desks that still bore other children’s names.

The parents were mostly nurses from the Montefiore, Harlem Hospital, New York Presbyterian/Columbia University, and Lincoln Medical Centers. Some of them were crying; nearly all of them looked exhausted. The city was weeks away from reaching its peak infection rate, but already, Taveras said, he could see “it” in the parents’ faces. “It wasn’t even necessarily the hours,” he said. “It was what they were seeing at work.”

Taveras walked every parent down the well-lit basement hallway that he’d commandeered for the center. He pointed out the hand wipes and the bottles of disinfectant that city officials had sent over the weekend, and he spread his arms wide to show that custodians had spaced each desk six feet apart. Kids rushed to pick their spots. Their parents lingered. At 10 a.m., Taveras led the last of them through the sterilized lobby and out the exit doors. Then he returned to a classroom, washed his hands, and doused them with disinfectant. “I said to myself, ‘If these people are putting their lives on the line, at least let me make sure that their kids are good.’ ”

By the second week of March, many parents, teachers, and elected officials were asking Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the city’s public schools. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo had confirmed the city’s first coronavirus case on March 1st. School attendance had plummeted. Three dozen infectious-disease experts signed a letter, delivered March 12th, urging the Mayor to act. But de Blasio resisted. New York’s schools, he said, were “interrelated deeply” with its health-care and mass-transit systems. Leaders of 1199 S.E.I.U., the city’s largest union for health-care workers, had urged the Mayor to recognize that closing schools would leave many of them with no one to care for their children.

“We are worried about a cascading effect,” de Blasio told MSNBC’s Joy Reid, on March 14th. “You’re not going to have a functioning health-care system if the folks in the medical field, the doctors, the nurses, the techs, everyone has to stay home with their kids.” De Blasio told Reid that he was “trying to hold a line,” but, behind the scenes, a group of education administrators had begun acknowledging what would become a months-long debate. For some students, school is the only place where they can eat a warm meal or access medical care. Schools provide clothes and psychological support. For hundreds of thousands of families, they provide child care that is otherwise unaffordable. And back in March, even for families who could afford it, there seemed to be little child care available at all.

It started to register,” Karin Goldmark, the deputy chancellor for school planning and
development, said. “We are going to have to do something so that people can still go to work so that they can save the .lives of New Yorkers.”

 

  Goldmark, an administrator who normally manages the department’s building utilization

Karin Goldmark

—“Basically, I do for space what the C.F.O. does for money”—agreed to take the lead in" creating a network of emergency child-care centers. On the afternoon of Friday the 13th, she started brainstorming with the help of other D.O.E. departments. By Monday morning, New York City schools were closed, and Goldmark had a plan.

She’d spent the weekend calling the health-care-workers’ union to find out where their members lived. When the union sent her a list of popular Zip Codes, she started casting for buildings in those neighborhoods. During a regular year, students attend classes in a wide array of structures. Some have high ceilings and windows that open, but others contain narrow hallways and broken H.V.A.C. systems. Goldmark began her search with a detailed checklist. She wanted A.D.A.-accessible spots with a mixture of indoor and outdoor space, and she preferred large, new buildings, like the ones at the Mott Haven campus. The centers planned to serve three hot meals a day, so Goldmark searched for schools with big kitchens, places wide enough for cafeteria workers to stand far apart from one another.

The department initially limited enrollment to children whose parents were health-care workers, transit employees, or emergency responders. They allowed some Sanitation Department staff to apply, but, even with those caps, Goldmark knew that she’d need at least five thousand Department of Education employees to volunteer at emergency centers with no promise of additional pay. Most of the city’s seventy-five thousand instructors would be working from home, teaching their students remotely, so Goldmark assembled a motley crew of high-school principals, paraprofessionals, and social workers.

 

Midlevel administrators like Taveras volunteered, and Ursulina Ramirez, the department’s chief

Ursulina Ramirez

operating officer, (who quit her position at the NYC DOE on or about Sept. 17 2020), agreed to run a center in Queens temporarily after the original appointee fell sick just before it opened.

A few hours before the centers opened, Goldmark was still assembling her team. At 10 p.m. Sunday, a school official called Juliette Giorgio, a retired teacher and social worker who had spent thirty-three years in the department, to ask if she could be at P.S. 128, in Queens, by seven o’clock the next day. Giorgio retired last year to take care of her mother, who has Parkinson’s and dementia, but she didn’t hesitate that night. She arranged for a home health aide to stay with her mother and reported to the Queens center the next morning.

“There’s a lot going on now about fear,” Goldmark said, alluding to the ongoing debate about how to reopen all of New York City’s public schools safely, which recently resulted in de Blasio, under pressure from the United Federation of Teachers, delaying the first day of in-person instruction to September 21st. “But people stepped forward at that moment. It was people who were willing to put themselves at risk in order to serve the city. They were just, like, 'People need us, so we’re here'

Taveras volunteered because he missed being around children. He hadn’t worked full time in a school since 2016, when he was removed as principal of DeWitt Clinton High School, in the Bronx, after an investigation found that he had changed grades for four students without following proper procedures. He’d spent the last three years working as a climate-and-culture specialist, doing therapeutic crisis intervention and conflict resolution for the high schools in Districts Seven, Nine, and Twelve, a job that takes him into schools but doesn’t allow him to form day-to-day relationships with young people. By 10 a.m. on the first day, he had twenty kids, a little crew that reminded him of the children he had taught in his first job, at Central Park East 1 Elementary School.

Other centers sat empty that day. A school nurse from the Bronx told the Web site Gothamist that she’d woken up at 5 a.m., driven past signs warning her to stay home, then waited alongside two dozen other staffers for families who never showed up at a center on the Upper East Side. For some families, the centers felt like a last resort. Joan Curcio Williams, a physician who was working sixteen-hour days at Elmhurst Hospital Center, in Queens, said that she hesitated when hospital staff e-mailed her about the centers. “The idea of going was scary,” Williams said. “The first wave of students were going to be the children of first responders, people who were tremendously exposed. You’re basically making a decision that you’re going to trust in the system.”

De Witt Clinton High School Principal Santiago "Santi" Taveras Removed From His Position

Santiago Taveras

...for doing what he does best: changing grades to make a school and his alma mater the NYC Department of Education look good.

Pushing for Change, Bronx Principal Is Undone by Investigation

We know Santi very well. He is one of the many so-called "educators" who float through the United States getting positions high enough to have immunity from public ridicule, harassment and lawsuits. Tony Alvarado, Alan Bersin, Dr. Mike Moses,  John King,

Alan Bersin

Dorita Gibson (and see here), and even NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina (E-Accountability article July 2004) are on the list to take positions of power and authority, no matter what kind of job they did in the past. They all try to fit round pegs into square holes.

April 4, 2011 - Deputy chancellor Santiago Taveras steps down, the third to leave during Black's brief tenure.

Is Tony Alvarado On His Way Back To New York?

Anthony Alvarado

The San Diego Story: Alan Bersin’s six long years at the helm

Education Funding is a Mess and State Education Finance Lawsuits Hope to Change This.:New York, Texas, then Missouri, then...

The Train Wreck of Everyday Math

Norman Scott on Tony Alvarado's Return to New York City, Courtesy of Gifford Miller, NYC Councilmember

I posted my daughter Marielle's article (see below) about 'fuzzy math' at PS 6 when Carmen Farina was principal  to show the despair that I and other parents at PS 6 were feeling when Carmen ended the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program at the school, and required all teachers to implement the dumbed down math program called TERC. Carmen does not believe in TAG programs. She believes that all students can remain at a nice, comfy level 2 or 3 (not 1 or 4) and this satisfies the "all are equal" slogan she lives by.

We parents took matters into our own hands and started tutoring our kids in traditional mathematics, something we were told not to do, and then told our children to hand in their answers with "fuzzy" work, just as mandated by TERC guidelines. The investigations part is hard to stomach, even today. But we all did a great job with the effort to deceive Carmen into thinking that our kids were doing the required fuzzy math as we drew the hats over the computations. Ridiculous and time-consuming, but several teachers told us to do it that way so that they would not be put into 3020-a, or terminated outright if they did not have tenure. It was a group effort, with parents, students, and teachers all in the know. Everyone but the administration. The great, courageous teachers of PS 6 are to be commended for undermining Carmen secretly. We all succeeded in reaching our individual goals for our children with their help. Carmen Farina was removed from PS 6 in 2001.

Carmen Farina

However, immediately after Marielle's article was published by the NY SUN, the PS 6 administration retaliated against her. Marielle was removed from the math team and told she was 'no good at math'. I asked Marielle if she wanted to take the Johns Hopkins' Center For Talented Youth test, she said yes, and she got in, for both math and ELA. Self-esteem saved!

I saw first hand the retaliation and vindictiveness of Carmen Farina and the DOE, and it was not pretty. In fact, if I had not taken a stand to fight, my daughter would not have succeeded in her academic career as she did. When Marielle graduated from PS 6 she was accepted to NEST+M, a very excellent, rigorous academic school on the lower east side.

I won.
WHY TERC? Asks a 9 year old, Who Questions the Value of 'Fuzzy Math' For Her Future Academic Goals

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Principal removed for changing grades to boost graduation rates

By Susan Edelman and Selim Algar

A high-profile Bronx principal was ousted Wednesday after an investigation found that he changed grades to boost faltering graduation rates, The Post has learned.

DeWitt Clinton HS Principal Santiago Taveras was removed after a Special Commissioner of Investigation probe into allegations he tinkered with grades for failing students and pressured teachers to follow suit.

As first reported by The Post, disgusted staffers blew the whistle on the former Department of Education deputy chancellor a year ago after saying they were tired of his dependence on fraud to rescue DeWitt’s reputation.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

Taveras, who knew of his fate since Monday, greeted students arriving for school and left in his car, according to a source.

About an hour later, DOE officials arrived and changed the locks.

Clinton teachers confided to The Post that Taveras frequently doctored grades without their knowledge or consent while leaning on them to advance students, regardless of their classroom attendance or performance.The DOE confirmed that Taveras — a favorite of Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña — was officially severed from Clinton. “Mr. Taveras has been reassigned away from DeWitt Clinton pending a disciplinary matter,” said spokeswoman Devora Kaye. “The superintendent will work closely with the school community to support a new temporary acting principal and focus on serving the needs of its students.”

“He thinks he’s God and can do whatever he wants,” a staffer said at the time.

In one case, Taveras gave a “no-show” senior a 75 in a global-history class and hiked her failing 55 grade in gym to the minimum passing grade of 65, records provided to The Post show.

Taveras was installed at Clinton — which boasts writer James Baldwin and comedian Tracy Morgan as grads — to reverse a steep downward spiral.