Sue Edelman, with help from some teacher whistleblowers, has exposed what looks like completely out of control grade fraud at Maspeth High School in Queens. This is not pretty and commenters here will tell you this is the norm in NYC high schools.
From the article:
At highly rated Maspeth High School in Queens, students know they can play hooky, skip course work, flunk tests — and still pass.
They call it the “Maspeth Minimum,” meaning everyone gets at least the minimum grade or score needed to pass or graduate, no matter what.
Whistleblowers call it fraud. The secret to the school’s 98% graduation and 90% Regents pass rate, they say, is simple: “Cheat!”
Four teachers told The Post that the 2,100-student high school — awarded a prestigious National Blue Ribbon in 2018 by the federal secretary of education — has an unwritten but iron-clad “no-fail policy,” even for kids who repeatedly don’t do the work or even show up.
“Teachers are not allowed to fail students,” a staffer said.
One recent Maspeth graduate posted on Instagram about taking Mandarin in 11th grade, writing, “there was no way I should of passed that class.”
But in the end, someone raised the student’s failing grade just high enough to earn a credit.
“At the time, I didn’t believe in the ‘maspeth minimum’ thing but I almost never showed up to class and vividly remember having multiple 0’s on quizzes I never took,” the student wrote. “My average was a 45 and then magically turned into a 65 when my report card came in.”
There's plenty more. I have very little doubt that all of it is true although the allegations should be fully investigated and all should receive due process. The DOE reaction is clueless as usual:
"We take any allegation of academic misconduct very seriously, and there are strict protocols in place to ensure complaints are reported, investigated and addressed. These allegations are currently under investigation,” said DOE spokeswoman Danielle Filson.
Our readers tell us again and again how Sue Edelman has barely scraped the surface of DOE fraud.
We ask once more where is the UFT to stop the fraud? Teachers are afraid to go to their union or the UFT can't or won't help them. Maspeth HS's cheating looks blatant and incredibly arrogant.
It seems to me the biggest problem in way too many schools is lack of academic integrity. The UFT should be leading the charge to bring integrity back to the system. Instead, the Union engages in happy talk. Check out the UFT back to school commercial for evidence.
Par for the course.
ReplyDeleteThis happens in every school.
ReplyDeleteI failed 1 senior last year, who was a no show at a school in Brooklyn. Just 1. That wasnt good enough. Had to give make up work. This whole job is a joke.
ReplyDeleteI see no discernible difference between the DOE and UFT. The CSA has taken to riding Mulgrew and his district reps like ponies at a country fair. There's no way anyone should be paying dues. The UFT know and ignore tremendous academic fraud, dangerous schools and Scarface principals who are ready, willing and able to terminate any teachers career.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what a school’s Quality Review Reports would look like if Sue Edelman were the Lead Reviewer.
ReplyDeletewww.nycenet.edu/OA/SchoolReports/2015-16/Quality_Review_2016_Q585.pdf
www.nycenet.edu/OA/SchoolReports/2013-14/Quality_Review_2014_Q585.pdf
Unfortunately this article has teachers ratting out other teachers.....Weakens any union presence!
ReplyDeleteJust like we cant use red or blue folders because those are gang colors. This is what the doe has become. The most pathetic job in existence. The inmates are really running the asylum.
ReplyDeleteAnother day, another school administration exposed. It will not make a difference.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Susan Edelman's article in the Post, you can replace the name "Maspeth" with any of the DOE high schools in NYC and the article would read the same. I do not see it as teachers ratting out teachers, because everybody knows this is happening. I think it is a given by now.
I do not know one teacher working for the DOE who is not pressured by their administration into passing students. Most teachers do pass the students or the failing grade is mysteriously changed to a passing grade. The teachers who do not pass the students either leave the NYC DOE or just leave teaching.
As the number of inept and unqualified administrators increase, so will the cheating. These people have no sense of morality nor do they care about the damage they are causing the students, the teachers, the schools or the rest of society.
Will any mayor or school chancellor have the moral backbone to stop all this cheating?
They won't stop it as it is rewarded handsomely. Only getting caught because you aren't skilled enough at cheating and covering up your tracks is looked down upon.
ReplyDeleteBlue ribbon schools where students cant write a proper sentence. Lol.
ReplyDeleteMy school, Brooklyn institute for liberal arts plays that same game. No grade under 45 even if student gets zero on a test or refuses to hand in assignment. Gets them to an automatic 65.
ReplyDeleteHaha, yeah, then they get rewarded for pressuring teachers or setting up a grading policy where it is impossible to fail students.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the main stream media? Ny Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Fox News .... report on school bogus numbers.
ReplyDeleteI don't work at an academic institution.
ReplyDeleteI work at a liberal institution.
So does almost everyone else in NYC public schools.
And passing kids who in no way deserve it is a form of social justice reparations for past injustices; money will come later. Get woke and get with it already.
About 90% of teachers at my school pass 100% of their students, even those ltas in Rikers, etc.
ReplyDeleteFor them it's about social justice.
See, these white liberal teachers and others need to atone for something...or something; passing absentee students and the like is a way of signaling their virtue or making that spiritual connection...
Y'all must have seen them before. They're everywhere.
No one in my school has ever been pressured on grades.
The pressure comes from the dominant liberal Narrative.
I remember my Maspeth High School days, my first day of freshman year all the teachers said “no matter what everyone will pass” that made me feel like that would be helpful and be a good source but I didn’t literally think that “everyone will pass”. I was never the best student not to expose my story or that anything of you need to know but I been threw shit that no teenager should go threw so I wouldn’t never go to school or if I do they would always look to talk about my race, because I’m Hispanic. The dean Daniel Sapovida call me a “Spick” one time to my face than when I brought it up to school they didn’t believe my cause of the rating up the school which is total bullshit cause they pass everyone. For everyone reading this how the fuck some kids that never when to school or if they went to school they come off fucking xans and weed past and graduate at junior year when there are people that go to school everyday and do what they have to do in school and get good grades cause they earned it still waiting to graduate high school, if you ask me that’s fuckin bullshit. I’m so glad that everyone cause understand that the “Maspeth High School” all you dumbfucks love is a fuckin freebie, a fuckin free diploma and the staff and teacher and faculty are fuckin lying pieces of shit. I feel so sorry for the people that work there ass off for he or she’s high school diploma and for the parents that were lied to, this doesn’t mean stop what you are doing and don’t keep working towards success!
ReplyDeleteWhy is this breaking news?
ReplyDeleteIn 20 plus years, I have not failed students since my first year. By failing students, I was reprimanded.
Now, in 2019, APs just tel you,”pass them all. What difference does it make?”
As a 45 year old burnt out teacher, I go along to get along.
I’m a terrible teacher, but a good employee.
Grade welfare.
ReplyDeleteBlack students make up 1.3% of Maspeth HS population. It is a diverse school. Keep that in mind when commenting.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the rest of nyc grade fraud?
ReplyDeleteRumor has it that the ears of the NYS Education Department have perked up.
ReplyDeleteSend your specific complaints to NYSED General Counsel Alison Bianchi, Esq., and copy Chancellor of the Board of Regents Betty Rosa and Interim Commissioner of Education Beth Berlin.
You can blind copy Susan Edelman to let her know that her article is encouraging people to file complaints.
Alison.Bianchi@nysed.gov
Regent.Rosa@nysed.gov
Commissioner@nysed.gov
SEdelman@nypost.com
Please email me off list 4:13 if you seriously want us to help with informing SED.
ReplyDeleteThere will be consequences if I come forward. I don't trust the DOE, the UFT, the NY Post, or anyone else related to education in NYC. Yes, I know this is a problem. I have suffered enough consequences for speaking up; all within the contract.
ReplyDeleteThis story will pass and nothing will change. Perhaps the principal at Maspeth will get a promotion.
From NY Post by Sue Edelmam:
ReplyDeleteA teacher quit working for the city Department of Education “because to stay would require my being complicit” in corruption.
In a scathing letter to investigators and shared with The Post, the teacher describes a horrendous experience at Maspeth High School in Queens.
“I made the difficult decision to resign rather than endure another year of intimidation and harassment, or be forced to pass students who did not earn it.”
The teacher describes calling a parent about her daughter’s excessive absences.
“The student’s mother was very upset that her daughter was telling her that it didn’t matter if she went to school or did her work because all students got 65s, no matter what.”
The teacher didn’t tell the mom, but admits, “Sadly, it was the truth.”
The teacher said athletic coaches bullied classroom teachers into passing members of their sports teams.
One student “was extremely disruptive in class and never completed any assignments,” despite multiple calls home and informing the dean and a guidance counselor.
At the end of a marking period, the baseball coach warned the teacher in “an aggressive tone” that failing the student would keep him off the team and “the student had the power to take down the whole school if he didn’t play baseball.”
The teacher gave the student notes, a workbook and readings to complete to get back on track. But the student returned the workbook filled only with “joke random sentences.”
Still, the teacher was admonished by colleagues close to administrators for not fixing his grade. She reported the harassment to the only assistant principal “I did not consider corrupt.” But that AP later vanished abruptly.
The letter describes Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir as a “non-presence” in the school. “He only engages with the ‘inside crowd.’ If you are not a member of that group, you are invisible.”
The letter concludes: “I left the school because to stay would require my being complicit in Maspeth maneuvers and because I was not going to be a victim of any further acts of dishonesty and strong-arm tactics — even if, for now, it has cost me my career.”
The DOE has said it is investigating the charges.
From NY Post by Sue Edelman:
ReplyDeleteMayor Bill de Blasio was personally alerted to evidence of grade-fixing and fraud at Maspeth High School in mid-August, but ignored pleas to remove the school’s allegedly crooked leaders before the new school year, The Post has learned.
“It was like I had witnessed a crime,” said City Councilman Robert Holden, who demanded to speak with the mayor after meeting whistle-blowing teachers with documents showing a culture of cheating at the highly rated school.
“I wanted him to put it on the fast track. I wanted him to step into this and get those people out,” the Queens lawmaker told The Post.
But the mayor did not act with urgency, Holden charged, prompting him to go public and to meet with acting Queens District Attorney John Ryan, who has launched an investigation.
Maspeth HS, awarded a National Blue Ribbon in 2018 for a near-perfect graduation rate, enforces an unwritten “no-fail policy,” even when kids do little or no work, eight teachers have told The Post.
Assistant principals strong-armed faculty members into passing students no matter what, they said. Some teachers helped kids cheat on Regents exams or fixed wrong answers. Failing grades were changed to a passing 65, which kids call the “Maspeth Minimum.”
Even chronically truant, drug-addled students got diplomas — some of them pushed out the door months early, as former student Thomas Creighton and his parents came forward to confirm. But last week his father, Daniel Creighton, said the family had not heard from any investigators.
“If that doesn’t prove there’s no urgency, I don’t know what does,” Holden said. “Not only did they steal city money meant to provide services, but they stole the education from these students.”
The city Department of Education has said only that it will investigate the allegations.
Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbi, who remains at Maspeth’s helm, has not addressed his faculty to discuss the probes or a series of Post exposés.
The stunning allegations surfaced on July 30, when Holden first met a Maspeth teacher who brought him a binder full of evidence, including schedules with non-existent classes, records of no-show students who graduated, and statements by students who said they received passing grades or test scores they didn’t deserve.
Holden called the mayor’s office immediately. On Friday, Aug. 2, he met with Lydon Sleeper, the mayor’s intergovernmental affairs director, asking him to bring in the city’s Department of Investigation.
Holden then forwarded the evidence to DOI, which sent it to the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, Anastasia Coleman.
The next week, four ex-Maspeth teachers came to Holden’s office to speak with investigators, but SCI said it had no one to send.
Coleman, whose SCI office is independent, handed off the academic-fraud allegations to the DOE’s own investigative office, which falls under the mayor’s office.
After two weeks, when no investigators had contacted him, Holden emailed de Blasio on Aug. 13, a day after the mayor returned from Iowa for his now-defunct presidential campaign.
The mayor called back the following evening. Holden went over the litany of alleged misconduct at Maspeth HS, including grade-fixing, Regents rigging, fake classes to give students credits toward graduation, and intimidation of teachers who didn’t play ball.
“They’re gangsters,” Holden said he told the mayor. “They should not be in there one more day.”
But de Blasio seemed more concerned about Holden, a fellow Democrat, going to the press.
“It’s good that you gave it to me, but if you want to be on my team you have to play like a team member,” Holden quoted him as saying.
The mayor noted that Holden was fortunate to speak with him. “You have your district. I have to run the whole city. I’m the big leagues.” he said, according to Holden.
“I just kept saying, ‘Maspeth High School needs attention,’” Holden said.
Classes started Sept. 5 without any sign of attention. The Maspeth whistleblowers finally asked to meet with a reporter, Holden said.
Been working at Maspeth for several years now, and everything you hear and read in the news is 100% TRUE!!!!
ReplyDeleteI must remain anonymous due to the administration coming after me.
All the teachers there are walking on egg shells, afraid to speak up and do anything!
Shame on the Principal for creating such a hostile work environment for everyone.
Email us at iceuft@gmail.com. We will try to help. A anonymity respected.
ReplyDeletePart of the major problem at Maspeth HS is that the UFT rep and delegate are buddies with the administration. They go fishing together, go on long weekend retreats, and even work out together before the school day begins. Many of my colleagues do not want to complain to the union bc they know it will get back to the administration and they will be targeted for harassment. The Principal is aware of everything that is going on bc the UFT rep and delegate tell him everything.
ReplyDeletePlease email us. We know how to keep things confidential when necessary. We will do what we can to help.
ReplyDelete