We Need Transparency On The Data And Stat Manipulation At Tweed During The Bloomberg Years

From Newsday:

A former Hempstead school employee who informed state officials about the district's practice of systematically changing some students' failing grades has filed a federal lawsuit alleging wrongful termination in retaliation for his action.

Carlos Ramirez, the Hempstead school district's former director of technology, sent a letter in June to state education officials informing them of his concerns about the district's grade-boosting practice. The district decided to stop rounding up final course grades of 63 and 64 to passing scores of 65 in July -- just days before it fired Ramirez.

Ramirez filed a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn seeking back pay for wrongful termination and an unspecified amount of damages, said his attorney, Aymen Aboushi of Manhattan.

The lawsuit describes Ramirez as an "exemplary employee" who was "subject to unlawful retaliation" because he reported activity that was "in detriment of public school students and their families."

The case has not been assigned a court date, Aboushi said.

"We hope one of the things that comes out of this is some transparency," he said. "Money is not the driving force for this lawsuit."

I would love to see similar lawsuits here in NYC to get some transparency on all the data manipulation and shenanigans the Tweedies under Klein and Walcott have engaged in.

Diane Ravitch has been posting "insider" reports from a NYCDOE central employee that allege widespread data manipulation and statistical fraud at Tweed.

While "philanthropic" organizations and education reform "non-profits" all hail the Bloomberg Years as a wonderful time for education, those of us in the belly of the best know how much fraudulent the academic results in schools have been.

Credit recovery programs that gave out semester credits for reading comic books (thus increasing the graduation rates), earlier test score inflation under NYSED Commissioner Mills that had Bloomberg and Klein hailing themselves as geniuses, such pressure to raise test scores all throughout the Bloomberg Years that many schools cut any program or activity that didn't engage students in state test prep.

It's been an awful time, not withstanding the pro-Bloomberg propaganda you see at corporate education-reform sites like Gotham Schools.

Now that it is almost over, I hope we get some transparency on these last 12 years so that some of the Bloombergian education reform myths can be properly sent to the graveyard where they belong.