Principal tells of pressure to cheat, Camden [NJ] district officials have strenuously denied

Inquirer ^ | Mar. 26, 2006 | Melanie Burney, Frank Kummer and Dwight Ott

[ncountylee]

Principal Joseph Carruth was riding down the slow, paneled elevator at Camden's district office, ready to cave in to pressure from a superior who he says had just given him a tutorial on how to cheat on state tests.

"My head is spinning," Carruth recounted to The Inquirer of his feelings that day in January 2005. "I can't believe it."

Still green on the job at Camden's Dr. Charles E. Brimm Medical Arts High, Carruth needed medical benefits for his ill daughter. He did not have tenure. He was tempted to take whatever steps necessary to keep his job.

"I was thinking, 'How can I do it?' " Carruth said about that day. "And then it's, like, 'What are you doing? You can't do this.' "

In his first public comments about the allegations that have shaken South Jersey's largest school system, Carruth laid out in vivid detail the pressure he said was put on him to keep test scores high.

It wasn't just his career at stake. Carruth said his daughter's condition - and his ability to care for her if he didn't have a job - came up in what he said was step-by-step instruction by Assistant Superintendent Luis Pagan on how to cheat on state standardized tests.

Carruth's allegations highlight the pressures on teachers and administrators to prove that their programs are effective. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, districts can face sanctions, including state takeover, if schools don't improve.

Carruth said he wanted to make it clear that his students had done nothing wrong. "It's adults doing things they shouldn't be doing," he said.

The state Department of Education last month began investigating Carruth's allegations. It also is examining 2005 test scores at Camden elementary schools after questions raised by The Inquirer

[ncountylee]

Will the NEA defend Carruth? Yeah right. LOL

[Gay State Conservative]

I thought Camden was one big crack house.Do they actually have schools there? If so,do kids actually *attend* these schools?

[ncountylee]

Kids have to learn the socialist agenda somewhere and too many parents are in jail or down the street slamming to help.

[Popman]

For the amount of money spent on each child in this country for an education, our land should be leading the world in learning and academics

Our school system can be fixed. First order of business is get the federal government and teachers unions out of the process.

Second order of business is raise the salary of teachers to at least $50,000 annually.

Professionals rather than professional union members will flock to the educational system

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Brave guy. Too bad he's going to be fired and nobody in the education system will want to defend him. He'll wind up paying his defense lawyers out of his own pocket after he gets fired for "poor performance", or somebody plants kiddie porn or drugs in his office. If this guy is smart, he'll take his work computer home with him every night and strip his office clean so that if anybody plants any contraband, it will be immediately obvious.

[ncountylee]

Good advice. The union thugs want him beheaded, so to speak.

[LurkedLongEnough]

May I add, "Get rid of the superintendents"...

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Carruth's allegations highlight the pressures on teachers and administrators to prove that their programs are effective. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, districts can face sanctions, including state takeover, if schools don't improve.

The No Child Left Behind act is not at fault here. No unintended consequences. We need more federal involvement in Education. After all, it's For The Children. /s

[Mephari]

I feel such pain for the children of Camden.

If anyone has been there you'll know what I mean. The city is a slum. It's the forgotten ghetto of Philadelphia. In the morning parents walk their children to school then stand around on the streets like a zombie movie.

The commercial areas are mostly abandoned by businesses. There just are not any jobs. The surrounding area outside the city is too rich and suburban to provide many low wage jobs. Philadelphia provides an massive amount of drugs and it is just going to continue a downward spiral. Cutting funding to a school system with no money isn't going to help.

Rutgers University has a campus down there which is beautiful and well maintained, but one block away is abandoned, condemned and poorly maintained row housing. It really is the armpit of NJ.

[t2buckeye]

Camden, as well as Philly, has massive amount of drugs..and I too feel for the children there. I student taught at Woodbury High School and many children would come to live with "grandparents" and "aunts" in order to get out of the corrupt Camden system...and who could blame them? Yet, the Camden system gets more money than neighboring suburban schools! The original No CHild Left Behind act specifically targeted schools like Camden...if the kids were not learning, then they would be given the opportunity (through other vouchers) to go to other schools! Competition (And I'm a public school teacher by the way)) would help this situation and stop the corruption there. Many years ago, the nepotism ran rampant! (Security guards made as much as teachers there and they were all related to school board members, etc) More money without accountability will NOT help the children of Camden.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Union thugs are above nothing. A tactic that's been used before is to sneak into a person's office in the middle of the night, boot it up, and spend all night downloading kiddie porn off the internet and hitting chat sites for that stuff. Then all they have to do is get a teacher to claim that he/she walked into the principal's office and caught him looking at the porn. During the subsequent police investigation, Viola!, his cache and download history are full of incriminating evidence.

Another thing they'll do is plant drugs in the principal's office and have a teacher call the cops claiming the principal was acting funny and had dilated pupils the day before. When the cops search his office, they find a nice big bag of white powder. Off he goes to the big house, "problem" solved!

[OldFriend]

Our local school actually has a feelings teacher.

No time for basics, tho.

[OldFriend]

The children in Philadelphia deserve our prayers as well.

Children dodging bullets from the nearby crack houses is no way to walk to school.

[TheBattman]

Actually - I think most folks (including many here on FR) have it all wrong.

You see - cheating WILL become an issue as "merit pay" becomes more widespread. And no, I'm not drinking the NEA cool-aid either.

The solution to improving the education system is not giving bonus pay to teachers who actually get more students to perform at grade level (isn't that what they are suppose to be doing anyway?). The solution is to fire administrators and teachers when they DON'T perform. PERIOD.

Now - keep in mind that I am a public school teacher who is fed up with all the schemes to "improve" education that all seem to revolve around an excuse to extract more taxes and throw more money at the problem. There is MORE than enough money in most public school systems to do the job. The problem comes from an abundance of ineffectual teachers (some might say incompetent), wasteful, stubborn, and lazy administrators, and hard-headed school boards. And we won't even mention the NEA who is responsible for much of that condition.

Instead of saying "hey 6th grade teacher - if you can raise the number of kids in your class who score 'Proficient' on the state reading test from 20% to 25% we will give you a $5k bonus this year (can no-one see the danger of such a scheme already?)", how about we say - "hey 6th grade teacher - if the kids can't read on their level by the time they finish your class (with reasonable allowance for the diagnosed 'special needs'....) then you need to look for another job.

Yes, there is a teacher shortage - but would anyone mind paying teachers a "competitive" salary commensurate with the professional they are suppose to be if they are getting RESULTS? To make this totally fair, schools should be allowed to deal with discipline problems (and the parents that are often directly responsible because of their LACK of parenting) in a manner that actually takes care of the problem. If a child refuses to abide by the school rules that are their to keep a learning environment - then they should be removed from the classroom, so that the students who are there to learn can do just that. An alternative learning environment for the children who refuse to behave could then be set up, with mandatory visits by the parents then could be set up.

The ONLY way that education (public) will every improve is with a partnership of responsibility between:

Administrators
Teachers
Students
Parents

And ALL should be held accountable for their part. If the teachers are doing their job, but the student is not - that is where the consequences should fall.

If the problem is the teacher not doing his/her job - there is where the blame should fall.

If the administrators are allowing poor/incompetent teachers to continue to teach - there's another location to put blame. Can the administrator

But in today's blame-everyone-else society, we really don't have much hope to make any real or lasting improvements.

[ncountylee]

Your approach seems logical and could well produce results but due to teacher union contracts we will never know.

As long as public employee unions control education, the taxpayer or parent has little influence.

[Mwallenburg]

I am a student of the class of 2006, the class whose test score are in question, at Brimm Medical Arts HS.

To start, I think that it is appalling the way that people are viewing the situation that is happening at my school. The test rigging scandal that is supposedly going on has nothing at all to do with students or teachers, and the obvious can be stated for the principal involved - he was asked, and he said "No."

The Board of Education for the city of Camden is so corrupt outside of this situation that it is unbelievable.

I have had a few problems and reported to the board meetings to deal with them. Upon doing so, I was just about blatantly ignored and told, "A child has no place speaking to adults." Well, seeing as the superintendent is reportedly drawing well over $200K from such a poor district's funds for salary, chauffeur, and vacation/sick days that were not taken, maybe she is deserving of having such an attitude. Of course not.

The superintendent, Annette D. Knox, is an opponent of the magnet schools in the city. She seems to be doing anything in her power to shut down our school, and it should be noted that our school was never in the press for negative topics such as this before her arrival.

Another complication is Luis Pagan, assistant superintendent of high schools, who is the man that allegedly urged Principal Joseph Carruth to "fix" test scores.

A school that is a college-prep school should not fall into negative light as being "too smart." Should that not be a positive thing? The school is geared to having a math and science program for students who wish to enter college for medicine after graduation. Is it that farfetched to think that we can do well on the math portion of a standardized test?

The students of my class are competitively racing to the top ten percent of the class, and an amazing amount of students having a 3.0 GPA or better. Students from our school have taken five first place prizes from the Corriel Science Fair. Either last year or the year before, we had a young man go from Corriel onto the Delaware Science Fair, and he placed highly there; he also won the American Chemical Societies coveted award for high school students. With all this in mind, is it that unexpected of us to do well?

Besides any of this, has anyone considered that the jump in math proficiency may be related to two new math teachers and tougher, stricter selection criterion for applying students?

So far, we are doing fine. Is it too much to ask just to be left alone?

If test rigging did occur, then shame on the BOE. The students of Medical Arts are the best and the brightest of the city, and we try our hardest to pass every single one of the dozens of standardized tests that the district and state throw at us in an honest way. That is not even to mention the awesomely dedicated teachers we have at the school. I’m sure that all of this will be cleared up, and the true honesty, dedication and positive image of the school will really come out... someday...maybe over the rainbow... in a land far away...

[ncountylee]

Welcome to Free Republic and best of luck to you in high school and beyond.