State Comptroller Thomas Di Napoli has released an audit on bullying in NYC schools. Guess what? There are none reported in hundreds of NYC schools.
From the press release on the audit:
For school
year 2015-2016, DoE did not report any material incidents to SED for 670 of
1,600 schools and in 2016-2017, it did not report any material incidents for
570 schools. Moreover, in both years, DoE did not report any material incidents
at 387 of those schools. Among the schools with no reported incidents for three
years running are some of DoE’s largest.
The audit
notes that the high number of schools reporting no material incidents,
particularly middle schools (20 percent) and high schools (17 percent), is
indicative of a risk of significant underreporting.
Well duh!
From the NY Post:
Hundreds of public schools never reported a single instance of bullying to the state, as required by law — including some of the largest in the city, according to a report Wednesday from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Leading the pack in the hard-to-believe statistic was Hillcrest High School in Queens, which has 3,354 students and claimed not one complained about bullying or harassment over a three-year period ending in June 2017.
At the same time, in a separate school survey, 18 percent of students confided that they were bullying victims.
City Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Queens) accused the Department of Education of trying to camouflage a crisis.
“It’s hard to believe,” Dromm told The Post. “We’ve seen this pattern over and over again. It’s a cover-up.”
You think?
Further down we learn:
Students at Hillcrest were perplexed by the absence of officially reported incidents.
Sameer Bhutta, 15, said immigrant kids are the primary victims of schoolyard torment.
“Bullying goes on in this school, definitely,” he told The Post. “Basically kids that come to this country get bullied by kids from here. They call them ‘FOBS’ — fresh off the boat.”
The recommendations in the audit are kind of comical. Read them for yourself. This is from page 16:
Recommendations
1. Institute
proactive measures to identify schools at risk of underreporting bullying
incidents and/or incorrectly categorizing incidents as “other” and take
corrective actions. Such measures could include analyzing incident data,
considering student population as well as school survey results.
2.
Periodically share information on material incidents with the public to provide
a more current picture of the school environment.
3. Align the
Discipline Code definition of bullying with the NYCRR§100.2 definition.
4. Require
more frequent mandatory RFA training and track whether such training took
place.
5. Ensure
all school employees responsible for entering incidents into OORS have had
appropriate training to adequately and accurately document incidents.
6. Ensure
that schools comply with timeliness requirements established by the
Chancellor’s Regulations.
What we really need is a South African style truth commission where everyone can admit what they have been compelled to do by the DOE's Bloomberg era mandates that have been continued by Mayor de Blasio. The system rewards happy data and therefore penalize honesty because the reality is not so pretty in many schools.
14 comments:
Here’s where our mayor has failed. He has continued Bloomberg policies and has not removed bullies that are superintendents or principals.
Have requirements like you cannot be a principal unless you have taught for 10-15 years.
A Bronx teen charged with fatally stabbing a high school classmate and slashing another in what he said was an act of self-defense is suing the city’s Department of Education, saying school officials failed to protect him from fellow students who tormented him for years with homophobic slurs and physical attacks.
see also
Teen stabbed to death in NYC high school
In September 2017, then-12th-grader Abel Cedeno lashed out with a switchblade against fellow students at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, Matthew McCree and Ariane LaBoy, who Cedeno said were physically assaulting him in a classroom with two teachers present, according to authorities.
McCree died in the altercation and LaBoy was seriously injured. Cedeno was charged with manslaughter and assault and remains free on bail.
Before his release, Cedeno had a three-month stretch on Rikers Island and Tom Shanahan, his lawyer in the civil suit, said his client felt safer jailed among accused violent felons than he did in the hands of the Education Department.
“We sincerely hope that the attention given to Abel’s situation will lead to greater protection for other children who are facing unrelenting bullying in what is supposed to be a safe place,” the attorney said.
Cedeno alleges in his suit that the fatal encounter was the culmination of six years of abuse by fellow students, to which he says teachers and staff often turned a blind eye.
The DOE shuttered the school early last year.
see also
Mom of slain teen says DOE failed her son — and his killer
“Our students deserve to feel safe and supported in our schools, and any allegation of bullying must be treated with the utmost seriousness,” DOE spokeswoman Miranda
Barbot said in a written statement. “Bullying can impact a student’s social and emotional well-being, and we’re committed to preventing and addressing it in our schools.”
Cedeno says that he and his mother first approached DOE staff about him getting bullied when he was 12 and repeatedly complained about bullies, but he says the treatment didn’t stop, the bullies often evaded discipline and staff didn’t take action.
In one example, Cedeno alleges that he once approached a guidance counselor about the bullying but that the counselor told him it’s “not such a big deal” and that he should “get over it.”
“We tried to see what was going on but he would not tell us,” said Cedeno’s sister Vanessa, who declined to give her last name. “We go to the school to get help but there wasn’t any help at all. The school would say there is nothing going on.”
She added: “No child should have to go to school and go through this. You go to school to learn and not to be bullied over your sexual orientation or anything.”
I hoped when Bloomberg left the obsession with fake data would ease up. But since schools are punished for anything identified as bad data, incidents will go under-reported. This may just be the reality of schools surviving. I hope though that problems are being solved inside the schools, because under-reporting and not being proactive inside the building will combine in a terrible way.
The DOE and NYC learned statistical creativity from Mayor Bloomberg and are keeping his abject legacy strong.
That is what happens in many schools 9:26.
No bullying ever. Welcome to NYC.
Whites not allowed at teacher job fair. The 5th annual Progressive Public & Charter School Job Fair for Teachers of Color takes place March 16th and you're invited! Finding the right school can be hard - the goal of this job fair is to connect progressive educators of color with progressive schools that share their educational beliefs, values, and goals. Register today, and invite your friends!
**Registration for teachers is encouraged, but not required.
Huh
This type of racism is ok, right James?
Yes, anti white is fine.
No it is not.
I let that bit of hijacking stand on the job fair because anti-white is bullying too and it is not acceptable.
I am totally against racism and hate the way race is used to divide working people. You won't find me singing from the identity politics music sheet.
Well, it is a form of bullying, which is the topic. And you know, if it had been anti black, every media outlet would have been all over it. I have not seen it discussed anywhere.
Turn over school video recordings to investigators. They will reveal vast numbers of crimes that are not being reported to Police.
Post a Comment