A Queens elementary- school teacher brazenly helped fourth-graders cheat on the state’s high-stakes English exams, even though there was a second proctor in the room, investigators found.
Former PS 19 teacher Joel Rauch walked around the test-taking room with an answer key in his hands, and told pupils when they had answered questions incorrectly, teachers and some students testified.
To boot, Rauch appeared to help only the kids in his class — and not those taught by other teachers, according to students.
When a teacher who had seen Rauch’s conduct told him what he had done was unethical, he “shrugged his shoulders, saying he wanted to know ‘how [his] kids were doing,’ ” the report found.
Seven fourth-graders said they saw Rauch providing answers to other kids in the classroom.
However, none of the identified students admitted to being provided with any help — a fact that Rauch told The Post proves his innocence.
“These kids were questioned by the principal, the assistant principal and an investigator right down the line, and each one of them said, ‘Mr. Rauch didn’t give me the answers to the test,’ ” he said. “All I wanted to do was make sure they were following a complicated [test-taking] procedure.”
Rauch, 64, said his students scored among the highest of any class in the Corona school the following year, when he wasn’t even proctoring the exam.