Department of Education probers took nearly three years to clear a Manhattan high-school principal of test-tampering charges and issue a report that some teachers are deriding as a whitewash.
Former Bayard Rustin HS Principal John Angelet, who retired in February after leaving the F-rated Chelsea high school under pressure in 2008, was cleared of having changed or directed his staff to change science and social studies Regents test scores in 2006 and 2007.
His exoneration came despite evidence that all the school’s social studies exams had been regraded in 2006.
The reason given for regrading science Regents exams in 2007 was “mitigating circumstances,” even though one teacher told probers he had “scrubbed” dozens of tests — a term for adding points to a test score that’s near the passing mark.
Among the critics of the drawn-out probe was former program chair Michael Brocoum, who according to the report says that “in all the years that he had worked in the program office, he had never been asked to make changes to a large group of exams as he was on this date.”
“The evidence I had was that there were a lot of changes made — a change from fail to pass,” said Brocoum, who retired last year.