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.

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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.

NYC Educator: Teachers Left Out in The Cold When Grading Students' Work

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Tisch-Bloomberg Genius Leaves Teachers Out in the Cold

LINK

 

 

Because teachers cannot be trusted to grade the papers of their students, in NY State they're prohibited by law from doing so. Thanks Merryl. Teachers might be prejudiced in favor of the kids, and pass them. How unforgivable. They might even find ways of taking 64 papers and finding another point, and that would be a disaster. It's far better to make kids sit in classes for half a year, a whole year, or the entire summer because that's how you really make them love a subject with which they're struggling.

A 64 paper is far different from a 65 paper. A kid who scores 65 knows the subject adequately, while one who scores 64 is an abject failure and must suffer for sins against humanity. That's a given, and we can all be thankful that Merryl Tisch and John King and their gaggle of privately-funded interns protect us against such outrages.

But Michael Bloomberg took this brilliant law and brought it to the next level. Not only do city teachers not mark the papers of their students, but they also are not permitted to mark the papers of anyone in their school. You see how that works? Teachers are so thoroughly corrupt that they may not only support their students, but also support their schools. Therefore, it's far better to send their papers to people who don't know them at all, who don't give a crap how they do, and who won't bother looking twice for any merit they may have missed. Because it's a tough world out there, and kids may as well begin now to face the fact they can expect kindness from absolutely no one.

Today a bunch of English teachers went to a Queens high school to anonymously mark papers. To welcome the teachers on this sub-freezing day, the great minds who run that building decided they would check driver licenses. Naturally, they had them wait on line, and if the line had them standing out in the freezing cold, well, too bad for them. This was the way the kids were treated, so why shouldn't the teachers be treated that way too?

Why the hell should this school accept DOE ID from these teachers? That could be dangerous, and it's a well-known made up fact that people counterfeit school ID left and right, because who doesn't want the privilege attendant to being a high school teacher? The half-price donuts, the women throwing themselves at you, the money pouring in from virtually everywhere.

I understand this beautiful scene was sullied when the chapter leader went out screaming for reasonable treatment of these people, but the sensible minds over there prevailed and would not give in.

Thank goodness we have such a great system.

NYS Ed Commissioner John King Renews His Listening Tour

New York Principal Sounds Off at First of King!s New Listening Tours: by dianerav LINK NYS Commissioner John King After Commissioner John King had a disastrous meeting with parents in Poughkeepsie, he canceled his remaining five open meetings. But the Board of Regents decided what was needed was even more meetings, so King is now holding more meetings around the state, though so far not in New York City. At his first new round of meetings, one principal got up and spoke fearlessly about what was happening in the state. This was his statement: "Dr. King, My name is Tim Farley, from Kinderhook, NY, and I am the proud father of four school-aged children and I happen to be an educator of 22 years. Since this is now a listening tour, I would like to offer you three suggestions from the field followed by a question. 1. We do not want your corporately-backed Common Core. We don't like it. We don't like it as parents and we certainly don't like it as educators. Common Core has not been properly field tested and we do not want our children used as guinea pigs for one of Bill Gates' newest whims. 2. We do not want inBloom or any 3rd party vendor to have access to our children's once private and confidential information. We know it's now legal because those in power literally changed federal law in 2011 just so they can do what they are currently doing. We demand and immediate cease and desist on this wide-spread data collection and specifically, the now mandated "Data Dashboard". 3. We demand an end to high stakes testing. It isn't NYSUT that wants to curtail tying student scores to teachers' ratings of effectiveness; it is us, the parents. We know that the ratings are meaningless and it is unfair to the students and to the teachers. Now for my question: We know that the NYS Education Department used SAT scores of 560 in reading, 540 in writing, and 530 in mathematics, as the college readiness benchmarks to help set the "passing" cut scores on the 3-8 NYS Tests. These NYSED scores, totaling 1630, are FAR higher than the College Board's own "college readiness" proficiency cut scores for students as young as 9 years of age. Why did you anchor the cut scores to 1630 on the SATs instead of the College Board's 1550? And I have NYSED's benchmark study here for your reference. Thank you."

New York State Seeks to Scale Back Student Testing

NYSED Commissioner John King Caves In To Protests And Scales Back Standardized Testing

New York State Education Commissioner John King

New York Times
LINK
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ

The New York State Education Department, responding to concerns that standardized exams in reading and math have become excessive and unwieldy, will seek to ease the burden of testing.

Under the plan, students struggling in English would be given exams in their native languages. A math test would be eliminated for some eighth graders. Students with disabilities would take tests matched to their level of instruction, not their age.

The proposals are modest, but they represent a rare concession from state leaders, who have faced attacks from parents and teachers in recent weeks over the rollout of a tougher set of standards known as the Common Core.

John B. King Jr., the state education commissioner, said that there was “more testing than is needed” in some districts and that some schools were too focused on rote memorization in preparing for exams.

“The amount of testing should be the minimum necessary to inform effective decision-making,” Dr. King wrote in a letter to superintendents and principals on Thursday.

Critics of high-stakes testing, however, said on Friday that the plan amounted to tweaks around the edges that would do little to change the culture of schools.

“It’s duplicitous,” said Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, a group based in Massachusetts that opposes the use of high-stakes tests. “The political intention is to try to get students and parents to accept the bad system.”

Dr. King is also looking to eliminate some tests administered by local school districts. As part of the plan, the state would offer grants to districts to study the usefulness of exams and to eliminate redundancies.

The state would also seek to do away with a class of exams known as field tests, which are administered for the purpose of weeding out bad questions from future tests.

Elected officials and parents have denounced field tests in recent years, calling them unnecessary exercises that benefit testing companies and exhaust students. In New York City, a small number of families have protested field tests by boycotting the state exams.

In place of stand-alone field tests, the state would embed more field test questions into math and reading exams. That would require the Education Department to seek more money so it could print more versions of each exam. That could cost $12 million a year.

The department will pursue the changes over the next few months. In January, it will ask the federal government to allow English-language learners to take language arts exams in their native language; currently, students who have been in the United States for at least a year must take those exams in English.

The state will also seek permission for some 57,000 eighth-graders studying algebra to take a Regents exam in lieu of a traditional math test. Those students are currently required to take both.

Responding to an outcry over lax standards, the state has taken several steps since 2009 to improve the quality of exams, including developing new tests in reading and math that are aligned with the more rigorous Common Core curriculum. Student passing rates fell sharply when the new exams made their debut last school year, a demoralizing blow for many educators.

Leaders of teachers’ unions and parents have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of the state’s efforts. In recent weeks, some parental leaders have called for Dr. King to resign, saying that the state is rushing to adopt the Common Core and that it should not use results from the new exams to evaluate schools, teachers and students.

In New York City, where concerns over testing have seeped into the mayoral race, there was criticism of the state’s plan.

“All this emphasis is being put on testing, instead of developing an enriched curriculum that produces real learning for children,” said Jane Hirschmann, co-chairwoman of Time Out From Testing, a statewide coalition. “This is not going to satisfy any of us.”

The city’s Education Department, however, praised Dr. King’s efforts. “It’s a thoughtful response to schools’ concerns on this issue,” Erin Hughes, a spokeswoman for the department, wrote in an e-mail. “We welcome the additional flexibility.” 

Petition To Fire John King 

A Mom Asks For Commissioner John King To Be Censured, Reprimanded, or Asked To Resign

Parent: I was at the Poughkeepsie Meeting

Common Core Failure