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shoot the messenger
October 29, 2009
City officials will investigate whistleblowing Lehman HS teachers
Click here to view Lehman transcripts and school records. Multimedia feature by Maura Walz.
The Bloomberg administration will investigate the whistleblowing teachers at Herbert Lehman High School who are accusing the school’s principal Janet Saraceno of tampering with students’ grades.
The teachers approached GothamSchools with students’ transcripts after some of them had submitted the same transcripts to the Office of Special Investigations, but had not heard back for months and assumed the investigation was dead. A spokesman for the DOE, David Cantor, said the investigation into the alleged grading manipulation is still open.
The city now plans to investigate the teachers as well.
Students’ education records are protected under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act Regulations, commonly known as FERPA. Transcripts can be shared provided that “personally identifiable information” is not transmitted.
“All I can say is we are going to investigate the release of the student records publicly to the press,” Cantor said.
“The privacy of student records is protected by federal law. School staff are not permitted to provide their students’ transcripts to reporters,” he wrote in an email.
Mayor Bloomberg is hinging his campaign partly on a claim of raising graduation rates. The story at Lehman offers his opponent, Comptroller Bill Thompson, ammunition to fuel his claim that Bloomberg’s school success is exaggerated.
The transcripts given to GothamSchools reporters contained records of students’ grades as well as grade-change forms that Saraceno, an assistant principal, and a teacher had signed. Students’ identifying information had been redacted.
Former Lehman teachers stood by their decision to share the documents.
The principal “has a three-year contract and it takes the DOE an average of two years to complete any investigation,” one teacher said. “So she gets her bonus for increasing graduation rates and we’re supposed to keep quiet?”
A spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers declined to defend the teachers, saying only that the sharing of students’ transcripts is regulated by FERPA and the teachers union has no rules about it.
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October 30th, 2009 5:31 am
Good ole’ UFT. Once again, standing behind their teachers…way behind.
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October 30th, 2009 6:14 am
Unfortunately, the UFT leadership has been complicit with the degeneracy caused by high stakes testing. Randi Weingarten would occasionally put out a few sound bites for member consumption when controversies arose, but in fact is a big supporter of testing, as she is of mayoral control. Michael Mulgrew has not been in office long enough to have established a track record on the issue, although as the above story indicates, so far, not so good.
The UFT is a one-party state, totally governed by the Unity Caucus, which has controlled the union since its founding. It’s really the last of the great urban political machines, complete with an extensive patronage system, and even loyalty oaths. Having come up and been groomed in that milieu, Mulgrew’s ability to reform it - even assuming he might want to - it is questionable, although we can always hope.
High stakes testing is one of the strategic keys in the attacks on teachers and public education. The tests are an axe perpetually held above the heads of teachers and schools, and as currently used they will inevitably lead to cheating and corruption, as we are now (hopefully) seeing the tip of the iceberg exposed. It’s a shame that this boil is being lanced so close to the election, otherwise it might go further in leading New Yorkers to ask why we should “keep it going.”
The ideology and current use of high stakes testing is also a major vehicle in the socialization of students into the 21st century workplace, which is really not much more than an electronic version of the 19th century sweatshop.
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October 30th, 2009 11:03 am
Isn’t there a whistleblower law passed by the City Council (over the mayor’s veto, by the way) to protect teachers in this position?
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October 30th, 2009 12:31 pm
Can someone (are there any lawyers out there reading this?) clarify this paragraph:
Students’ education records are protected under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act Regulations, commonly known as FERPA. Transcripts can be shared provided that “personally identifiable information” is not transmitted.
It would seem to me that in the name of transparency, as long as the student names are redacted there should not be any problem with this information being made public.
And let’s see the whistleblower law too.
This situation is a disgrace and if the principal is actually guilty - and that evidence looks pretty darn damning - then she should be drawn and quartered (well, at least the civil, modern day version of that).
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October 30th, 2009 12:59 pm
This is a disgrace! That principal should be fired. As a parent of a child in the public school system, I trust the teachers and school leaders/principals to educate my child. This is what they’re paid to do and MUST be held accountable.
We live in a global economy and if our children cannot read and write, we will not be able to compete globally. I don’t believe all school leaders/principals are fudging their grades to increase graduation rates but when a school leader/principal is found to be doing that - they MUST be fired.
Lehman teachers - THANK YOU! It took great courage to come forward and expose this disgrace.
The Lehman teachers went through the proper channels and were ignored. What else were they supposed to do - sit idle and watch children graduate unprepared for their future?
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October 30th, 2009 1:19 pm
We are pre-judging this situation without having all the facts. Let’s try to look at it rationally.
1. The Principal is ther chief rating officer in the school. His or her word is final on matters of grading. Grades have been changed for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps a Principal finds a teacher is not following proper guidelines in grading. This is his or her right.
2. There has been a history of antagonism between teachers and administrators at Lehman High School.
Having said that, here is the issue. Did the Principal change grades for valid educational reasons? In the era before all this garbage of grading Principals and schools on the basis of statistics, there is a great deal of pressure being put on the Principals. Also this Principal is supposedly a star and was put in place by Klein under his executive Principal program. Were the grades changed to feather the Principal’s nest? Were the grades changed to protect her reputation? Or were the grades changed for valid educational reasons?
My point remains this is the problem with merit pay, bonus pay, retention of personnel based on statistics. There is too much pressure to do things such as this that can cloud the judgment even of excellent educators.
Finally as far as the UFT contract is concerned, all it says on this issue is that the Principal must provide in writing the reason for changing a grade. It does not preclude the Principal from exercising his or her duties under state law of being the chief rating officer in school. All the more reason, Mr. Klein, that a Principal has to be an experienced educator, not some sort of CED whiz.
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October 30th, 2009 3:16 pm
Yes, Leonie, but I was told by two different lawyers with extensive knowledge of the workings of the system and the SCI that being a whistleblower is dangerous and that proving retaliation is really difficult.
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October 30th, 2009 7:03 pm
Is anyone surprised? The teachers have HAD IT!!!! They are tired of being harassed and bullied into cheating and doing trivial things in order to make their principals look good. BloomKlein have set up a system that in the end will hurt the school system as a whole and ultimately hurt the students. But of course, if they were educators, they would know that. Their policies of intimidation, especially, of veteran staff is appalling. Their policy of placing inexperienced and incompetent administrators in our schools is an abomination. Their claims of “improving” scores are a scam! I could go on forever. They have set up a system where administrators and teachers are on opposite sides of a battleground. They are truly the worst thing that has ever happened to our schools. EVER!
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October 31st, 2009 4:48 pm
In 2005, Principal Antony Rotundo, a former AP of Lehman HS and still Principal of Kennedy HS, removed Maria Colon and placed her in the Rubber Room. Why? Here’s the reason:
Colon was brought up on dismissal charges shortly after she, in her capacity as chapter leader, confronted Rotunno about Regents grades that teachers discovered had been changed.
Colon said she refused to look the other way when grades were being changed. “What happened to me is a 21st-century version of McCarthyism,” she said.
Fortunately, in 2007 she was exonerated and her testimony was one of the forces to have the whistleblower law was passed.
Yet, a law is only as good as its true enforcement. The teachers followed the procedures by redacting the information. Isn’t this the same procedure that principals follow when teachers are being charged with either corporate or verbal abuse of a student where the principal must redact the students’ names from the witness statements? I am baffled that teachers will be looked at as the culprit and now the scapegoat when they brought attention to blatant corruption and fraud. Yes, the principal is the Chief rating officer, but teachers’ grades are to be respected (UFT contract - Article 8D)! Principals are supposed to have conversations, discussions, and a look at the grading system that the teachers used. Here’s something that truly bothers me. How is possible that another teacher signed off on a grade change form to change another teacher’s grades? Double-Whammy Disrespect!
One of the grades that was changed was from two semesters ago and it was changed because the student passed the regents with a 65. If I understand the NYSED guidelines (Part 100), a grade can be changed only if the student achieved an 85 in the term that student received a failing grade. Moreover, there was a DoE memo (2005 or 2006) from Carmen Farina, then Deputy Chancellor of Teaching and Learning, where she clearly emphasized that a grade on a transcript cannot be based on a passing score on a regents. A grade is based on criteria such as hw, classwork, attendance, projects, etc. So for Saraceno to change grades because she’s the chief rating officer is unethical on so many levels.
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October 31st, 2009 4:57 pm
I finally found the memo: It was to all HS principals, From Carmen Farina, Eric Nadelstern, re: Guidelines to the use of Regents scores in calculating coruse credit and to practices concerning re-rating of Regents Examinations. Year 2005. She quotes it from the NYSED School Administrator’s Manual, page 25. Did Saraceno forget to read the manual?
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November 1st, 2009 8:42 pm
I’m not a lawyer, but I did go to law school before teaching, and it’s pretty clear that the DOE doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
First, according to NYSED’s Commisioner’s Decision 13,437 ““The United States Department of Education has sole authority to enforce FERPA.”
Now, it’s true that Chancellor’s Regulation A-820 incorporates FERPA, but neither FERPA nor the Chancellor’s Reg. contain any mechanism for individual enforcement against teachers. Translation, even if the teachers violated FERPA there isn’t much the DOE can do about it, save some internal slap on the wrist (and only if the these teachers still work in the system).
Second, FERPA says:
Education records or information from education records may be released without
consent after the removal of all personally identifiable information provided that a
reasonable determination that a student’s identity is not personally identifiable
(whether through single or multiple releases, and taking into account other reasonably available information) has been made.”Since the teachers made a “reasonable determination” that no “personally identifiable information” was on the released records, there was clearly no FERPA violation. The DOE is just posturing, probably to dissuade the hundreds of other teachers from coming forward with similar stories (anyone who has taught in the system for a bad administrator has a story like this…lord knows I do).
Regardless of whether the teachers were right or wrong to release the information, there is no legal issue here. And if the DOE is worried about legal liability, it should probably spend less time threatening teachers, and more time cracking down on unscrupulous (and illegal) grade manipulation.
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November 1st, 2009 9:14 pm
Whether or not the DOE has the “legal right” to do something is immaterial. Maria Colon of Kennedy HS was sent to the rubber room for a year and a half for allegedly faxing copies of student transcripts to the press, after similar allegations of corruption were made about the principal. She was ultimately excessed and lost her job. Meanwhile, the principal is still there. See our NYC parent blog for this story which prefigures this one.
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November 2nd, 2009 8:10 pm
The only ones that could attest to the game of Ms Saraceno are Hanna Thacht and Dyanand Sugrim from Media Communication HS in Manhattan who aided her in changing the grades so much that in less than 4 years the Media Communication school’s grading went from an “F” school rating published in all of the Manhattan Newspapers to an “A” school. If the investigation system was a serious one, they should start by investigating those who worked with her previously and figure out many things that the rest of the world know…
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