Chancellor Richard Carranza. (New York City Council)
Nov. 13, 2019 By Allie Griffin
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is hosting a town hall meeting next month in Maspeth, following accusations made over the summer of grade fixing and cheating at Maspeth High School.
The town hall will focus on issues pertaining to the 55 public schools located within Community Education District 24, which covers the neighborhoods of Corona, Glendale, Ridgewood, Elmhurst, Long Island City, Maspeth and Middle Village.
The meeting will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 17 at P.S./I.S. 58 School of Heroes, located at 72-24 Grand Ave. It will begin at 6:30 p.m. and will be followed by Community Education Council 24’s monthly meeting at 7:30 p.m.
The town hall comes on the heels of Council Member Robert Holden’s call on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate allegations of grade-fixing throughout New York City public schools.
Holden’s concerns were first sparked this summer when a group of former Maspeth High School teachers told his office that the school’s administrators encouraged students to cheat on classwork and Regents exams. They also said the high school had an unwritten “no fail” policy, whether or not students attended class.
According to city data, 98 percent of Maspeth High School students graduated within four years in 2018, compared to the city-wide average of 76 percent.
The Department of Education (DOE) is investigating the claims of grade-fixing at the school, with its Office of Special Investigations conducting a probe. The Queens District Attorney is overseeing the investigation.
The alleged grade-fixing at Maspeth High School was not an isolated incident, Holden said. He wrote a letter to U.S. Attorneys Geoffrey Berman and Richard Donoghue on Oct. 25 calling for an investigation of the DOE. He said the issue is widespread across city schools.
“Other whistleblowers have come forward to tell me that this is happening in schools across the city,” Holden wrote.
He added that DOE data shows that many city schools pass nearly all their students in math and English, yet a much smaller percentage of their students pass state exams.
For example, every student at Harbor Heights middle school in Manhattan passed their English core classes, yet just 7 percent passed the state English exam in 2018. In the Bronx, 94 percent of P.S./I.S. 224 students passed their math core classes and just 2 percent passed the state math exam the same year. The large disparities were first reported by the New York Post.
“To me, that suggests that standards have been lowered in the classrooms, and individual school administrations may even be passing students that haven’t performed well or learned much of anything,” Holden wrote.
He said when he brought this up to Carranza in both a letter and a personal meeting at the Chancellor’s office in May, Carranza “completely ignored my concerns.”
Maspeth High School (Google Maps)
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15 Comments
Carranza was in charge of a failing Houston school district. The mayor hired him because he is latino. Don’t expect miracles from this man.He wants to integrate the schools, good luck with that.
What’s Carranza going to say? Well, if he follows his normal pattern, he’ll simply wave his hand, with a smug condescending look on his face, and say ,”There’s nothing to see here. All the accusations were made by racists trying to undermine my great work”. Then he’ll go home and hire a few more friends of his for six figure salaries they don’t deserve.
The school was built as a form of legalized block busting. U think the DOE has our children’s futures in they’re minds??
Lic direct, how old are you 14? thats bs you dont know what your talking about. Years ago they passed you just to get you out of there. 65, you passed! Next teachers problem. Notorious for this. You didnt have to do the work. Just be a headache and you passed. Also it was irish italian german jewish. One or two latin and asian familys ,no black. Not in woodside in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s.
I’ve met principals who were black and could hardly read. They can not write simple memos to save their lives. They claim substitute teachers don’t want to come to the area where the school right down the block has subs coming out of their ears.
Yet teachers have to put their lives in hold just to get through the year unscathed. Sometimes it doesn’t work no matter what you do.
This is so sad. Thank god i was young sometime ago and not a part of this insanity.
In Manhattan those kids that pass by speak in TOTAL EBONICS and are incapable of conjugateing a verb. I worked hard in college and never expected (demanded) a job based on affirmative action. Does ANYONE want an affirmative action doctor that was probably at the bottom of the class? De blasio is the worst mayor of nyc. Corrupt and creepy he and caranza are like laurel and hardy.
their job outlook will make them incapable of ever affording even rent. this is just contributing to future homelessness. bottom line.
So proud of Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and how he supports immigrant and undocumented students and parents to strong here in New York.
and she still work as a principal for W.C. Bryant H.S. – FACT
Send your kids independant private school or a Charter School. Set the bar high for your kids, set high expectations. NYC public schools were the best in the country a couple of Generations back, Italians, Asians, Jews, Irish, Black and Hispanic, all learned, if you didn’t do the work you get left back. Mostmoved on to professions, civil service and skilled jobs. Now you have a generation where the parents of these same kids come from the same system, passed through promoted without doing the work. Now the DOE wants to penalize the parents and the kids who excel at school by dumbing down the standards for G&T and specilized High Schools, especially hard working kids who care about their education who are white, asian, black and hispanic students. With Carranza at the helm and puppet master DiBlasio pulling the strings we are lost.
I know a principal who did fix grades and was going to be caught. She made it so that there was nobody to catch.
Another one of De Blasio’s Men…?
he had a lot to do with this whole thing don’t kid yourself –
Who? Carranza? He’s not accused of fixing grades, the administrators at different schools are. Did you read the article?
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did fix grades.