What success isn't: Another new teacher learns disillusionment

A Teacher Grows Disillusioned
After Principal turns a ‘Fail’ into a ‘Pass’

Several weeks into his first year of teaching math at the High School of Arts and Technology in Manhattan, Austin Lampros received a copy of the school’s grading policy. He took particular note of the stipulation that a student who attended class even once during a semester, who did absolutely nothing else, was to be given 45 points on the 100-point scale, just 20 short of a passing mark.

Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course.

That student, Indira Fernandez, had missed dozens of class sessions and failed to turn in numerous homework assignments, according to Mr. Lampros’s meticulous records, which he provided to The New York Times. She had not even shown up to take the final exam. She did, however, attend the senior prom.

Through the intercession of Ms. Geiger, Miss Fernandez was permitted to retake the final after receiving two days of personal tutoring from another math teacher. Even though her score of 66 still left her with a failing grade for the course as a whole by Mr. Lampros’s calculations, Ms. Geiger gave the student a passing mark, which allowed her to graduate.

Ms. Geiger declined to be interviewed for this column and said that federal law forbade her to speak about a specific student’s performance. But in a written reply to questions, she characterized her actions as part of a “standard procedure” of “encouraging teachers to support students’ efforts to achieve academic success.” ...

This from the New York Times; photo by Tom Pidgeon for The New York Times.

Principal prompts uproar. Teachers, parents angry over charges of grade-changing.

Angry parents confronted Chicago Public Schools administrators Tuesday about allegations that a Southwest Side elementary school principal faked grades for 23 eighth-graders.

The principal, Eugene Taylor, was removed from McKay Elementary last week but continues to be paid while school officials investigate.

In his first public remarks since his removal, Taylor denied the allegations and dubbed it a "witch hunt" by disgruntled staff members and Chicago Board of Education officials. Taylor, who was not present when parents confronted school officials, shifted the blame to an assistant principal who he said ordered teachers to change the grades.

"It was not me . . . No one is questioning [the assistant principal]. It's all me because I'm the fall guy, I'm the principal," Taylor said. "They are out to get me . . . this is ridiculous."

During their meeting with administrators at the school, parents and teachers blasted Taylor's leadership during his 18 months at McKay. They also lashed out at administrators for not informing them that Taylor, 59, had been suspended for five days in February without pay over alleged mismanagement of school funds and personnel issues.

This from the Chicago Tribune.