Scandal Du Jour Rocks New York City Schools

By Nicholas Stix

January 31, 2000
Insight on the News

Another day, another scandal. That’s life in the New York City public schools, which are responsible for the education of 1.1 million children. The drama that is playing out in New York is playing out in cities across America. It’s all about money, about control, about power.

In early December, as many New Yorkers prepared for the imminent arrival of Santa, they were shocked to find out that many public-school principals and teachers had been naughty indeed. Desperate to raise students’ performance on standardized tests, they deliberately led their pupils to cheat on those tests.

The constant cheating just got to be too much for Stacey Moskowitz, a reading teacher at Community Elementary School 90 in the South Bronx. In an op-ed essay in the Dec. 13, 1999, New York Daily News, Moskowitz wrote, “In an atmosphere of intimidation, the principal [Richard Wallin] and other top administrators had demanded that teachers raise scores on standardized tests by giving children the answers.”

Bearing “cheat sheets” and other evidence of criminal misconduct, in December 1997 Moskowitz had reported what she knew to New York City Board of Education investigators, who did nothing.

With the help of WCBS-TV reporter Marcia Kramer, Moskowitz eventually got through to special commissioner Edward F. Stancik. The board of education’s chief investigator, Stancik is independent of schools Chancellor Rudy Crew. In December 1999, after 17 months of digging, Stancik released his report on cheating, which resulted in the suspension of 52 teachers and administrators at 32 different schools. The report, “Cheating the Children: Educator Misconduct on Standardized Tests,” revealed the most far-reaching scandal of its type in New York City history. (Under a 1976 state law, it is a crime for a school employee to help a student cheat.)

Stancik wrote, “Some [test] proctors directed students to use scrap paper and then corrected wrong choices, others gave answers outright -- and even wrote on a child’s exam. Still others prompted students to check and change answers. Finally, even before the exam was administered, certain classes were prepared by teachers using actual questions from the test.”

But that merely was the scandal du jour. Literally. Only a few days later, Republican Gov. George Pataki’s Moreland Commission on New York City Public Schools issued its report charging systemic attendance fraud. Titled “Presumed Present: An Investigation into the Board of Education Attendance and Enrollment Systems,” the report showed that thousands of students were being marked present -- and even issued grades -- who were in fact attending private schools, attending other New York City public schools, abroad, in jail or even dead. Since the state funds the public schools based on attendance figures, the attendance fraud bilked taxpayers of as much as $100 million per year.

The teachers’ union responded to the revelations with anger. An indignant Karen Crowe, spokeswoman for Chancellor Crew, denounced the report as “pure politics.” The officials all ignored the report’s no-nonsense conclusion: “The affirmative acts required to record a student absent or late, and the issuance of class schedules and report cards, some with passing grades for phantom students, go well beyond mere mistakes or negligence. Some of these acts constitute not just violations of state and local rules and regulations, but violations of federal and state criminal statutes as well.”

Sadly, only by a fluke did the attendance fraud come to light at all. When a civil-rights group sued the state of New York, charging that it was educationally shortchanging New York City -- and thus minority -- children, the state thoroughly investigated the charges. It turns out that the city’s public schools have been getting more money than they legally are entitled to receive.

Poor and working-class parents long have known how bad the city’s public schools are, and some have sought to free their children from them.

But “educrats” and teachers-union officials have fought tooth and nail against school vouchers and charter schools that might help to improve the situation. And while claiming to speak on behalf of black and Hispanic children, civil-rights groups have studiously ignored black and Hispanic parents, more than 80 percent of whom strongly support vouchers and charter schools. Like so many Fagins, educators and activists alike have used public-school children to pick taxpayers’ pockets.

In the course of an ineffectual, four-year tenure, Crew grew as arrogant as the monopolistic system over which he presided. When in light of the school scandals Councilman Stephen Fiala, a Republican from Staten Island, called for Crew’s resignation, Crew, who is about 6 feet tall, mocked the 5-foot-6-inch Fiala to TV reporters, chuckling, “He’s too short to talk to me about that.... He can call for my resignation `til he’s taller.” Eight days later, on Dec. 23, the board of education fired Crew by a 4-3 vote.

New York City needs an independent auditor’s office, whose investigators could appear without warning at each school-district office to pore over its books. It also may need an independent testing authority. The arrest and prosecution of those caught engaging in attendance and test fraud wouldn’t hurt either. More fundamentally, the city needs a universal school-voucher program, along with the aggressive implementation of the state’s 1998 charter-school law, both of which Crew tenaciously fought.

Nicholas Stix teaches composition at the City University of New York and writes on educational and political issues from New York City.