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A parent stands in front of the Cherry Street entrance to the Lower East Side's Shuang Wen elementary school.

A sprawling investigation into the leadership of a controversial dual-language school in Chinatown concluded that the school’s principal had falsified attendance data and accepted money from a non-profit hired to administer after school language lessons.

The Department of Education will move to fire Ling Ling Chou, who was removed from the school in September while as many as 16 different investigations were underway.

According to the report, she frequently faked numbers when reporting information about the school to the city and the United States Department of Education, including student attendance records and the length of the school day. The report does not conflict with a different report released last year by the special commissioner of investigations, which found that Chou and other staffers committed multiple improprieties, but did not outright steal public money.

“For years, Principal Chou engaged in dishonest behavior, unbeknownst to her students and school community,” said Chancellor Dennis Walcott in a statement. “Principal Chou’s conduct has failed to meet the standard we set for our principals, and I am filing charges to terminate her employment.”

Shuang Wen consistently boasts some of the strongest test scores in the city, but divisions between the staff and parents at the Lower East Side school have led to numerous allegations of and investigations into misconduct. (more…)

The principal of a high school under scrutiny for cheating has resigned — but not because investigators concluded he did anything wrong.

Henry Rubio, principal of Manhattan’s A. Philip Randolph High School informed staff members this afternoon that he was stepping down. He is taking a job with the principals union, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, where he is already a vice president.

An investigation into Rubio concluded on Thursday and found no evidence of wrongdoing on his part, according to Chiara Coletti, a CSA spokeswoman. She said the union had waited until Rubio was cleared of suspicions before giving him the job, as a member of the union’s “supervisory support panel” that helps the Department of Education mentor principals. A prerequisite for that job, Coletti said, is that candidates must be “standing principals,” and the investigation had put Rubio’s status temporarily in jeopardy.

We reported in August that the city’s Office of Special Investigations had opened an inquiry into the school after receiving reports that students had been given passing grades that they had not earned. Teachers and administrators told us that students had been allowed to complete credit recovery work under illicit circumstances and, in some cases, cheated on the work itself.