Specifically, this post is about two somewhat related stories. The first story is about a false allegation made by a sitting Board trustee at a candidates forum a few years ago in order to help explain why test scores were higher during previous Board leadership and plummeting during their own administration.
The second story is about an actual cheating scandal (erasure of wrong answers to correct answers) that took place specifically in order to raise state test scores. The two stories are more than tangentially connected as you will see since they center around the same then board trustee. The false accusations were part of a political attack, the real cheating scandal under a political group known as "Kids First" was quietly passed as part of a consent agenda in April of 2015 and was discussed at a public meeting.
This serves as an interesting case study for aspiring educational leaders at all different levels and will be used in a forthcoming presentation. - Dr. Petrosino
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| Hoboken Board of Education Candidates Forum October 2012 |
In October, 2012 a forum for candidates seeking election to the Hoboken Board of Education was held in the Demarest School Auditorium. A total of seven candidates participated in the forum that evening, one of them was incumbent Board of Education trustee and Kids First member Ruth Tyroler (then McAllister). The forum is well documented in an October 28, 2012 article by Hoboken Reporter staff writer Amanda Palasciano. At one point in the forum, Trustee McAllister (now Tyroler) responding to comments about low district test scores, a drop in school and district rankings, and the designation of the district as a "District In need of Improvement" under Kids First leadership blamed previous high test scores on cheating. As the Hoboken Reporter described:
McAllister (Tyroler) rebutted by saying that in the past, district testing was not being administered correctly. “[In the past] those were cheated test scores. And we got an award for that cheating. It is an embarrassment that the administration did that.” -Hoboken Reporter 10/28/12An embarrassment? The award that Ms. Ruth McAllister (Tyroler) was referencing was either the fact that in 2008 Hoboken High School was named the 2nd most improved high school in New Jersey by New Jersey Monthly or possible the back to back Bronze Medal awards in 2008 and 2009 by US News and World Report. Both awards were unsolicited and relied on objective state reported data and presented a high bar that Ms. Tyroler and her Kids First colleagues could not match let alone surpass. Dr. Lorraine Cella, former Hoboken High School principal and I replied to Trustee Tyroler's accusations in a Letter to the Editor on the Hoboken Reporter published on November 12, 2012. Trustee Tyroler, to the best of my knowledge, never brought up the accusation of cheating again in public as her argument was completely discredited.
Why is this story relevant? Well, it places the rest of this post into context. Because one would think that Kids First/"reform" Trustee Tyroler and the rest of her Kids First/"reform" running mates and supporters who were at the forum that evening would hold cheating in very low regard and be at least as "open and transparent" about actual cheating as candidate Tyroler was about her imaginary, accusatory, and fictitious cheating scandals under previous administrations.
Ironically, while McAllister (Tyroler) was making false accusations of past cheating at a candidates forum there actually WAS a cheating scandal occurring in one of the Hoboken Public Schools she and her colleagues were overseeing.
The events occurred at Calabro Elementary School and the infraction was eventually for "unusually high wrong to right erasures for the 2012 NJ ASK 4 SCI assessment (somewhat similar to what happened in Washington DC during Michelle Rhee's term as superintendent). An investigation ensued and eventually the matter was finally settled in April of 2015. The district was required to submit a corrective action plan and the special investigation by the NJ Department of Education was officially concluded. The approval of the plan was quietly passed by the Hoboken Board of Education on or around April 14, 2015.
"Based upon the preponderance of evidence collected during the investigation, the OFAC concluded one examiner breached the security of the 2012 NJ ASK 4 SCI by interfering with the independent work of students during the administration of the test and the School Test Coordinator breached the security of the test by failing to ensure accommodations/modifications as specified in the students’ Individualized Education Programs were properly implemented during testing" - Special Investigator, Department of Education (March, 2015)
Documentation below includes the CAP (corrective action plan) approved by Trustee Tyroler and her colleagues as well as correspondences concerning the erasure issue and the full Calabro Report.
A few years later there was a similar incident at another school in the Hoboken School District- Connors School.
