GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

All but four of the three dozen schools that monitors visited in April as part of the city’s test security program had previously been the subject of cheating allegations.

Last spring, the Department of Education sent test monitors into 37 schools during a six-day period when students take standardized state tests, the results of which weigh heavily in how schools and teacher performances are measured.

Officials had previously billed the visits as a randomized tool to deter school staff from violating test security guidelines.

“Even schools that don’t actually get a visit … know that they could get a visit at any moment,” spokeswoman Connie Pankratz said of the program in August.

But it turns out that 33 of the 37 schools were not randomly selected at all, according to officials. Instead, the department was taking a hard look at the test administration practices of schools where it had already dispatched investigators to look into allegations of cheating. (more…)

This week’s issue of New York Magazine has an in-depth profile of Nayeem ­Ahsan, the 16-year-old Stuyvesant High School student who helmed the school’s recent cheating scandal.

Last June, school officials caught Ahsan using his cell phone to help dozens of students cheat on Regents exams, which students must take before graduating. Since then, the city has launched an investigation and threatened many of the students involved with lengthy suspensions. And the school’s principal has retired, to be replaced by a former network leader who is also a Stuyvesant parent.

In the wake of these events, many GothamSchools readers told us that cheating is more widespread than officials would admit, and expressed suspicions of Principal Jie Zhang’s suggestion that the cheating ring was an isolated incident.

“I have not been made aware … or have a reason to believe that there is ongoing cheating there,” Zhang told reporters in a phone call shortly after being appointed.

The magazine piece also suggests otherwise. In addition to detailing Ahsan’s methods, which included sharing homework answers, procuring exams given by teachers in previous years, and texting students photos of entire exam booklets during last spring’s Regents exams, it describes a culture that encouraged cheating among many.

Ahsan said Stuyvesant’s educational environment put a premium on high-performance and competition. The structure of his classes often presented opportunities to game the system: (more…)