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A two-year-investigation found that a Bronx principal, Janet Saraceno of Lehman High School, illicitly changed students’ grades.

We first reported the concerns in October 2009, months after Lehman teachers went to the DOE’s Office of Special Investigations with their allegations. The teachers reported that dozens of students, at a minimum, had been given credit for courses they failed or even did not take. They charged that Saraceno was turning Lehman into a “diploma mill” in order to show gains on the city’s school performance metrics.

OSI’s report, sent to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott a week ago, concludes that Saraceno improperly changed some students’ grades but dismisses a host of other test-tampering allegations. It does not include a recommendation for Walcott to follow.

Its existence was first noted today on the Twitter feed of a New York Times reporter, Fernanda Santos. She wrote that it appears that Saraceno is moving on to a position in the DOE’s central administration, advising schools on instruction.

In June, the New York Times reported that Saraceno would not return to Lehman. But the principals union would not confirm her departure. (more…)

Beleaguered Lehman High School could be getting a new principal, just three years after the city gave Janet Saraceno a $25,000 bonus to take the job, the New York Times is reporting.

As a GothamSchools reporter, Anna Phillips broke the story that Saraceno was accused of padding students’ transcripts with courses they didn’t take and grades they didn’t earn. A city investigation followed. Now that she’s reporting for the New York Times, Phillips is continuing to follow the Lehman story, and today’s update is that Saraceno won’t return to Lehman this fall.

Phillips writes that faculty and staff lobbied against Saraceno in an unsigned letter sent to news organizations last month:

The letter, which was not signed, criticized Dr. Saraceno for being “highly unapproachable” and rarely visiting teachers’ classrooms or observing their lessons.

“Perhaps the most egregious example of Dr. Saraceno’s gross negligence is her advocacy for a weak and poorly executed credit recovery program,” the letter states.

“On several occasions Dr. Saraceno has requested, via her assistant principals, that teachers get on board with grade changes simply because we cannot have students not graduate,” the letter says.

A spokeswoman for the principals union told me that the union could not confirm Saraceno’s departure. “We’ve heard that she might leave, but it’s hearsay,” said the spokeswoman, Chiara Coletti. “She’s a very good principal who was put into a school culture very different from the one she came from, and that can’t be easy.”

Principals who worried that new, toughened state math and English exams would hurt their performance reviews had good reason: Far fewer principals earned high marks from the city last year.

Data on principals’ performance ratings, which GothamSchools obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request, show that the number of principals who “substantially exceed” expectations fell by roughly 60 percent from 2009 to 2010. (A full list of all principals and how they scored is at the end of this post.)

The decrease parallels a drop in test scores and fewer schools earning “A” grades on their progress reports. The percentage of elementary and middle schools to get A’s on their city-issued report cards fell from 84 to 25 percent — a drop precipitated by more students failing the exams and the city grading schools on a curve.

With fewer principals earning the city’s highest rating, more fell into the middle. Principals can earn one of five ratings: does not meet expectations, partially meets, meets, exceeds, or substantially exceeds. The number of principals rated as “exceeding” expectations rose from 465 to 608 and the number who “meet” expectations climbed from 114 to 376.

The number of principals earning substandard marks also rose. In 2009, only five principals were rated “does not meet” expectations, but that number more than quadrupled to 21 in 2010. Even with the increase, the percentage of principals earning the lowest rating is now only 1.4 percent of the 1449 on the city’s list. (more…)

City officials brushed off parents’ concerns over an ongoing cheating investigation at a Bronx high school last night, telling them that if the principal had really been changing grades, the school wouldn’t be failing.

In 2009, teachers at Herbert Lehman High School reported that executive principal Janet Saraceno was changing dozens of students’ grades in order to boost the school’s graduation rate. More than a year later, Saraceno remains under investigation and Lehman is teetering on the edge of being shut down by the city after receiving an F on its progress report. Yet when parents asked Department of Education officials about the investigation at a meeting last night, they were told to ignore it.

“Let’s let the investigators do their work,” said Juan Ruiz, a DOE official heading the team assigned to support Lehman. He told parents that if Saraceno had really been changing students’ grades from failing to passing, “we probably wouldn’t have an F.”

In fact, Saraceno is only under investigation for changing grades during the 2008-09 school year and Lehman’s progress report grade for that year was a B. A year later, after DOE officials became aware of the cheating and began to monitor the school more closely, its grade fell to an F. (more…)

As Lehman students walked to school this morning, many noted that they'd likely spend the day waiting for class schedules.

Scheduling snafus are an annual rite at city schools during the first week back. But those problems have been magnified at Herbert Lehman High School, where computer glitches and failed planning have left students sitting in the auditorium rather than in class.

Teachers and students said that since school began last Wednesday, hundreds of students haven’t known where to go or what classes to attend. Instead, many of the school’s 4,000 students have been told to sit in the auditorium while guidance counselors sort out the problem. Many have simply gone home.

Most schools work on students’ schedules over the summer and make adjustments the first week back when a glut of new students arrive on their doorsteps. But teachers said Lehman administrators hadn’t done this.

“The principal is blaming some computers going down, but in your average decent school this is addressed over the summer. The students deserve an education from day one,” said a Lehman teacher. “It’s never been this bad.”

On her way into the building this morning, Stephanie Caceres, 16, said she expected another day of waiting to get a class schedule.

“I haven’t been to class since the first day,” she said. (more…)

Here’s a sign that our reporting on a grade-changing scandal and the intense pressure on schools to perform or shut down have entered the public consciousness: Law & Order used the storyline last night.

Returning to NBC’s 10 pm spot, the series debuted “Boy on Fire” last night, a story that (judging by the sudden flood of emails I got) seemed to strike a chord with the city’s public school teachers. I didn’t catch the episode, but those who did report that it bore some similarities to the case of grade-changing at Herbert Lehman High School in the Bronx, where the executive principal who was hired with a $25,000 bonus  is still under investigation for changing grades in order to boost the school’s graduation rate. (more…)

Teachers at a high school under investigation for grade-changing were surprised to receive the school’s yearly progress report this week. The report was supposed to be under wraps until an investigation into the school’s grading process ended.

But a bureaucratic mistake at the Department of Education led to the letter grade being released and folded into a report that was given to the school and posted online.

Last year, when the DOE published schools’ grades, Herbert Lehman High School was left off the list. Allegations that the school’s executive principal, Janet Saraceno, was changing dozens of grades to boost the school’s graduation rate, were serious enough that the progress report data couldn’t be published, officials decided. The report, which is based on Regents passage, credit accumulation, and graduation rates, heavily relies on data that could be compromised by Saraceno’s alleged actions. (more…)

Progress reports for the city’s roughly 500 high schools are slated to be released this month, but grades for two Bronx schools will not be among them.

One is Herbert H. Lehman High School, where executive principal Janet Saraceno is under investigation for grade tampering, as I reported last month. The Department of Education also may not release the progress report for John F. Kennedy High School because of missing information and inconsistencies in the data it sent to the department, said DOE spokesman David Cantor.

If the problems with Kennedy’s data are resolved by the time the department releases the reports, the school’s report card will be made public on schedule, Cantor said.

Several other high schools are being examined by the Office of Special Investigations for tampering with students’ Regents scores or inappropriately changing students’ grades after they passed the exam, but their report cards are on track to be released. (more…)

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. (more…)