If a student genuinely needs extra credit due to circumstances particular to him/her, then, of course, we support the teacher working with the student on credit recovery, extra homework, etc. All kids need a chance to succeed. But few students (there are special circumstances, IEPs, etc.) need to be socially promoted to graduation if there has been no effort or attendance.
If you are told to change the grades of your failing students, and you feel that the request is improper, then read further.
The department is trying its' best to shove great teachers under the bus, and we understand that game: put the blame on the teacher/Assistant Principal before someone blames the principal or goes to the media. Principals are always immune to prosecution, so the best thing that a teacher/AP can do when a Principal calls him/her into the main office and tells the person to change the grade on a Transcript Update Form or on something else, say "let me take this and I will get it back to you". Go to your computer immediately, and write up the meeting, send the transcript update form to your UFT rep and the Superintendent with your reasons why this is improper. Ask for assistance in what to do. Stop the principal from cleaning his/her wheels with your career.
If you are charged with 3020-a specifications which charge you with any of the above, contact us. We got this.
Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials
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| Wade Goria is a former teacher and whistleblower at John Dewey HS in Brooklyn -- and he's still pushing for the scandalized city school system to clean up its act. |
Dear Mr. Chancellor, please stop the grade-fixing in NYC schools
NY POST, April 14, 2018
Five years ago, teacher WADE R. GORIA exposed a massive grade-fixing scheme at John Dewey HS in Gravesend, Brooklyn, along with his colleague Michael P. Klimetz. Their revelations led to a state audit, released last month, that confirmed the shocking truth: School leaders had committed wholesale fraud — and cheated students out of the education the city was required, by law, to provide. Here, in an open letter, Goria says how grade-fixing fraud is still widespread throughout the system and asks the new schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, to stop the rot . . .
A cancer has metastasized in NYC’s school system. It was deliberately planted by your predecessor, Carmen Fariña, with the sanction of the mayor, the State Education Department and the United Federation of Teachers.
In the face of Mayor de Blasio’s ambitious demands for dramatic increases in graduation rates, Fariña and her superintendents found a reliable means of achieving success: grade-fixing. John Dewey HS students sardonically called it “Easy Pass” amid a nightmarish flurry of corrupt practices that I witnessed as a social-studies teacher during the tenure of Principal Kathleen Elvin from 2012 to 2015. She came to Dewey as part of the mayor’s Renewal program for struggling schools.
Elvin’s creation of “Project Graduation” involved many schemes. Elvin created bogus titles such as “College Explorations” to give students a way to accumulate credits for courses they had failed or lacked. Many sham “credit recovery” courses covered a dozen or more academic subjects — math, science, English, Spanish, you name it — supposedly taught concurrently by a lone teacher who had no certification in most of the subjects. One rookie teacher was listed as having taught a total of 52 classes in all academic disciplines in a single semester. Little or no actual teaching went on. Most students didn’t even attend. Elvin’s assistant principals strong-armed teachers into giving passing grades. If they refused, the assistant principals and guidance counselors entered the data system and passed the kids anyway.
Elvin retaliated against unwilling teachers with endless disciplinary hearings. She and her assistant principals stormed into classrooms to do teacher observations guaranteed to slap them with the lowest rating: “ineffective.” After Michael P. Klimetz, a revered science teacher, refused to grade students in subjects he didn’t teach, he was moved to another room without lab equipment.
Our union failed us. The UFT chapter chair in all NYC public schools is required to review each teacher’s program to ensure compliance with the contract. Had this been done, the rug would have been pulled out from Elvin’s scam. The UFT’s Brooklyn representative was fully aware of the violations but failed to address our pleas for protection.
[Editor’s note: The UFT said Friday it gave “full support” to teachers who exposed the “principal’s destructive practices.”]
Michael and I reported Elvin’s massive fraud to Brooklyn Superintendent Michael Prayor, the Department of Education’s Office of Special Investigations, the Special Commissioner of Investigation and members of the state Board of Regents. We naïvely assumed the system would intervene and halt these unconscionable practices.
More than 1¹/₂ years later, on June 30, 2015, the OSI finally issued a scathing report. But it detailed just some of the fraud and named only Elvin and two assistant principals, though most of the assistant principals and guidance counselors took part. A week later, Elvin was removed from Dewey amid intense media coverage. Yet, as we would learn a year later, it was all a charade. We believe Fariña never intended to hold Elvin accountable.
It took the state Education Department five years from the time they were first alerted about this outrageous scandal to issue an audit on March 25, finding that thousands of improper credits were awarded to Dewey students. But the audit gave no explanation of how the scam was carried out. It was like confirming a murder without describing how the victim was killed or who committed the crime.
The Board of Regents has yet to hold any guilty parties accountable by revoking their licenses or certifications, or by levying fines. This stands in stark contrast to the handling of a major cheating scandal in Atlanta 10 years ago, when prison sentences were meted out to corrupt educators. More recently, the Washington, DC, school system issued a swift and far more thorough report following media reports that Ballou HS had fixed grades and graduated students whose low attendance failed to meet requirements.
A once vaunted and proud institution, Dewey now boasts an 80 percent graduation rate, but last year 48 percent of the grads didn’t have test scores high enough to enroll in CUNY without remediation. Several assistant principals and other staffers who conspired with Elvin still work at the school. Elvin was awarded a post at the DOE’s Tweed headquarters and now collects $170,000 a year in the Office of Safety and Youth Development.
Chancellor Carranza, at the outset of your tenure, you are faced with a choice: You can stop the spread of the grade-fixing contagion by finally applying consequences for criminal fraud, or you can let the DOE further descend into self-serving degeneracy.
Wade R. Goria taught social studies for 20 years at John Dewey HS, retiring in 2015 after Principal Kathleen Elvin’s ouster. He also taught international relations at NYU for 18 years. He earned a master’s degree at Oxford University and authored the book“Sovereignty and Leadership in Lebanon, 1943-1976.”
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| Kathleen Elvin (picture by Gregory Mango) |
Grade-fixing ex-principal lands $157K job as DOE administrator
by Sue Edelman, May 14, 2016
The city will not appeal a decision to dismiss cheating charges against former Dewey HS Principal Kathleen Elvin, and will keep her on as a six-figure administrator, officials told The Post.
An internal probe had found that Elvin and her assistant principals at the Gravesend, Brooklyn, high school ran a grade-fixing scheme called “Project Graduation.” Hundreds of students — who dubbed it “Easy Pass” — got credits for sham classes with no instruction.
But Jay Nadelbach, a hearing officer assigned to conduct Elvin’s administrative trial, last month dismissed misconduct charges after the Department of Education failed to turn over records revealing it later approved all the credits. Nadelbach ordered Elvin, ousted in July 2015, “reinstated” and awarded back pay.
The city had 10 days to appeal the dismissal in court. “We did not appeal,” a city Law Department spokesman said.
Instead, Elvin “will be assigned to a position as a DOE administrator in a central office,” officials said. Her salary: $157,040.
“Ms. Elvin will not be placed in a school,” said DOE spokeswoman Devora Kaye.
Officials would not explain why they didn’t fight to uphold the charges against Elvin, but a court appeal would have cast light on a major cheating scandal at a time when Mayor de Blasio is seeking extension of mayoral control of schools.
Dewey teachers who exposed the fraud aren’t surprised at Elvin’s victory.
“It completely substantiates the lack of sincerity in their ostensible effort to terminate her,” said retired social-studies teacher Wade Goria. “They never had any intention to fire her in the first place.”
The DOE probe found Elvin led a scheme in which students lacking credits in all subjects were listed on class rosters and given “packets” of work but got no instruction by certified teachers, as required by state law.
Whistleblowers believe Elvin planned to contend at trial that her actions were sanctioned by higher-ups, including Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
“Elvin would spill the beans on a system-wide policy,” another Dewey teacher said.
When the charges were tossed, Elvin said she was a victim of “character assassination” and the case was based on “misrepresentations, half-truths and misinformation.”
“It completely substantiates the lack of sincerity in their ostensible effort to terminate her,” said retired social-studies teacher Wade Goria. “They never had any intention to fire her in the first place.”
The DOE probe found Elvin led a scheme in which students lacking credits in all subjects were listed on class rosters and given “packets” of work but got no instruction by certified teachers, as required by state law.
Whistleblowers believe Elvin planned to contend at trial that her actions were sanctioned by higher-ups, including Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
“Elvin would spill the beans on a system-wide policy,” another Dewey teacher said.
When the charges were tossed, Elvin said she was a victim of “character assassination” and the case was based on “misrepresentations, half-truths and misinformation.”
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| CSA General Counsel David Grandwetter, Kathleen Elvin, Former CSA President Ernest Logan, Bon Reich |
wnyc.org, Schoolbook, · by Yasmeen Khan
An arbitrator ruled to dismiss all disciplinary charges against Kathleen Elvin, the former principal of John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, who was removed from her position on charges that she ran a sub-standard credit recovery program.
On Wednesday, Elvin expressed relief at the ruling. She said the allegations, her removal as principal and the media coverage of the issue amounted to a "character assassination."
This was the latest twist in a story dating back at least to last school year when investigators looked into teachers' complaints that even students who did little work and had low attendance rates passed courses designed to help them accrue credits required for graduation.
The arbitrator, Jay Nadelbach, wrote in his ruling that city education officials validated the credit recovery program when it certified the credits received by students, thereby allowing students to graduate.
"If all the course credits were accepted and validated," wrote Nadelbach, "how can the Respondent be charged with misconduct for allegedly administering substandard courses?"
The union representing public school principals, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, applauded the ruling, and called the Wednesday press conference with Elvin.
"It was very difficult to actually read about myself and not recognize that person they were describing in print, because virtually none of it was true or accurate or clear in communicating what had gone on in the school," Elvin said.
After she was removed from John Dewey in July she was suspended without pay. In March, she returned to the payroll, following an earlier ruling by the arbitrator. The most recent decision entitled Elvin to full back pay and reinstatement as a principal.
"We are disappointed with this decision, and we are continuing to review our options," said Devora Kaye, a Department of Education spokeswoman, in a statement on Wednesday.
City education officials, according to a summary in the arbitrator's ruling, called the motion to dismiss disciplinary charges "premature and inappropriate." Instead, they wanted a full hearing to terminate Elvin's employment.
