Investigators are also looking into whether teachers who blew the whistle on the scandal improperly shared student records.
The back story is that teachers notified Joel Klein last March and he supposedly ordered an investigation - a very s----l----o----w investigation. When the school year began and they hadn't heard from investigators (I say investigate the investigators), teachers felt they were facing the same crap this year and went to the press with the phonied up student records. Now the DOE is investigating them for releasing student records (though phony, were they really student records?) I bet the teacher investigation takes priority over the cheating scandal.
Manhattan member of the Panel for Education Policy Patrick Sullivan pointed to the hypocrisy by comparing it to the case of the release of the test results of a 4th grader:
The Bloomberg administration has a double standard on student privacy.Leonie Haimson followed with:
On Wednesday, the Daily News covered the story of a 4th grader who was told she couldn't be in her school's dance program because she instead needed to attend test prep sessions.
DOE spokesman Will Havemann, in a feeble defense of the decision, proceeded to broadcast to the News readership that the girl scored "a low level 3" on her ELA.
By their twisted internal logic, releasing student data to smear a nine year old in defense of the Bloomberg administration is acceptable, yet furnishing transcripts with redacted personal information requires an investigation. This from the people who tell is their mission is to "put the needs of the children before the needs of the adults".
If anyone is interested, I plan to raise these issues with Chancellor Klein on the record at the Nov 12th PEP meeting.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_ local/education/ 2009/10/28/ 2009-10-28_ student_forced_ to_study_ not_dance. html
Why is this acceptable behavior David [Cantor]?
To reveal confidential test score information on a little girl, while investigating teachers who exposed major corruption? Not to mention the absurdity of barring a girl from taking dance classes because she tested at a “low level 3” – which by the way, means she is on grade level.
Over and over again, the administration has claimed that the emphasis on testing has not led to a decrease in arts education, yet we know this has happened. This case is a perfect example of the insanity that has taken over our schools.
In the response put out by the Bloomberg campaign to the candidate survey put out by the Center for Arts Education, asking about his elimination of the dedicated funding called Project Arts, they wrote: “rather than tying the hands of school leaders by dictating their budgets for them, we need to give principals control over their resources and hold them accountable for learning outcomes.
”http://www.scribd.com/doc/21817208 /Bloomberg- CAE-Mayoral- Candidate- Questionnaire- FINAL.
In other words, as long as those test scores go up, arts education be damned.
1 comment:
Leonie,
David and his PR people cannot allow for others to tarnish the BloomKlein administration. If it means publicly humiliating a 4th grader by chastising her so that BloomKlein still seem as though they care about education, then the double-standard is permitable by the DoE ruling. However, teachers who valiantly, morally, ethically exposed grade changing corruption done by a superprincipal (she's not affected by Krytonite Klein), is punishable by the Bloomberg's campaign people who now must send out, probably, another $25 million worth of damage-control pamphets and flyers before 11/3. The DoE's motto of Children First should now be changed to: What's good is bad and what's bad is good! Children Last; Children None!
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