Wagner HS cheating scandal report delayed

by Jim Callaghan

Dec 6, 2007 4:43 PM

Six months after Schools Chancellor Joel Klein promised that a report on a cheating scandal at Susan Wagner HS in Staten Island would be released, it is still being kept under wraps, much to the consternation of teachers who reported the cheating.

In May, Klein told UFT President Randi Weingarten that the report would be issued “shortly.” According to sources at the Department of Education, all the interested parties have been interviewed and the report is finished.

One hint of the report’s volatility might be gleaned from a last-minute decision to move a City Council-sponsored forum on peace, tolerance and unity in schools on Nov. 29 out of Susan Wagner. According to a source, the forum was moved “because Klein said he can’t go near that place because of the investigation.”

During a visit to the school in November, Weingarten said it was baffling to her why the report has not been released and promised teachers that the union “will get to the bottom of this.” She also told the worried teachers, who feel as though they have been left twisting in the wind, that they are covered by the city’s whistle-blower law.

The principal of the school, Gary Giordano, allegedly told whistle-blowing teachers that they will “pay” and threatened them with the loss of their pensions.

Weingarten reminded teachers that their best weapon against such threats was to stick together.

Teachers at Wagner voluntarily came forward in June 2006 to report the cheating. They accused administrators of changing the grades on English, science and social studies Regents. Among other things, they claimed an assistant principal took the tests home to score them.

Nearly 100 people have been interviewed by the DOE Office of Special Investigations, including a school aide who witnessed the shredding of important documents and was later sent to a rubber room. One school administrator resigned in the middle of the school year, thus averting an interview with OSI. The OSI interviews with teachers were completed last December.

Staten Island Borough Representative Emil Pietromonaco said he hoped the failure to make the results public is not a cover-up.

“I’ve never seen a case like this where there is no outcome, especially after all the money spent on this investigation,” he said. “I am very concerned about the DOE investigating the DOE.”

Among the allegations investigated by OSI:

• One of the administrators accused of changing scores had transferred from a junior high school and had previously been teaching out of license.
• The same administrator reportedly broke down in the presence of other teachers when she saw the questions on the physics Regents exam. “There is no way my kids will pass,” she said. “I did not teach half this stuff.” (Interestingly, in light of that admission, 85 percent of the students who took the physics Regents passed.)
• A Scantron machine used to mark the tests malfunctioned. A number of teachers said they saw another educator with an eraser-tipped pencil and grew suspicious that the answer key could be changed.
• An administrator wrote a passing percentage on the blackboard and told teachers: “This is what Gary [Giordano] wants. We have to get them to pass.”
• After science teachers reported the cheating, they were subjected to negative reports by the principal which they viewed as an act of intimidation.
• Initials were forged on the test results. A teacher told investigators that she started finding essays that were already graded were given more points than the test permitted. Some were found to have been graded with four points when the limit was three points.
• Teachers with expertise in the field were locked out of the grading committee.
• An administrator tried to sabotage the investigation by demanding that a teacher call local newspapers to say the scandal was a hoax perpetrated by a few disgruntled educators.
• The same administrator called teachers into her office and instructed them how to answer questions from OSI. They were told to keep their answers terse, to keep them simple by saying yes or no.
• There were pre-punched time cards with per-session hours to be used by administrators as well as per-session time cards that did not match time sheets.
• Old Regents exams were being shredded on a Saturday.

“I get a sense here that a profound injustice has happened,” Weingarten told members at the Wagner meeting. “Justice delayed is justice denied. Equally important, it’s an injustice to you as human beings and the whole system.”