Regents slap for B’klyn principal
An administrator at a Brooklyn high school that saw an unusual surge in Regents test scores last year violated state grading policies by urging teachers to re-score exams that fell just shy of passing, a city Department of Education probe found.
Former Science Skills Center HS assistant principal Lisa Lauritzen was reprimanded for urging teachers to review failing scores on the June 2010 English, U.S. History and Global History Regents exams.
Until this year, such reviews were required for scores within five points of passing — but only on math and science tests, and only to ensure accuracy.
The state has since barred the re-scoring of Regents exams in all subjects because the practice was being widely abused to graduate more students.
The Post reported earlier this month that top state Education officials clearly knew for seven years that many teachers routinely boosted their failing students’ Regents scores — yet did nothing to curb the rampant fraud.
Lauritzen told investigators at the Office of Special Investigations that she hadn’t known her directions to teachers were improper, but she also didn’t know of any students who got unearned points.
She now works out of central administration and declined comment.
But several current and former staffers at the Downtown Brooklyn school said the probe seemed to have purposely left many large stones un-turned — particularly given the school’s shocking single-year gains in Regents scores.
From 2009 to 2010, the passing rate increased by 54 percentage points in physics, by 35 percentage points in Algebra and — on what’s considered one of the most difficult exams in high school — by 23 percentage points in Math B.
On the Math B Regents, the state Education Department had found 162 erasures on 24 student bubble sheets — with all 162 answers improbably changed from wrong to right.
Without questioning all the school’s administrators throughout the course of the 10-month probe — including Principal Judy Henry — internal DOE investigators could find no one responsible for the erasures and gave up.
The significantly-redacted report also makes no mention of examining what led to the skyrocketing scores in other subjects — even though the gains helped save the school from all-but-certain closure.
After two consecutive years of getting rated with D grades, the high school leap-frogged to an A last year — landing Henry a $7,000 bonus and her assistant principals $3,500 each.
“The purpose is not to get at the truth, it’s to give the appearance of ‘getting to the bottom of things,’” said Carmine D’Agosto, a former teacher who called for a probe of the school’s miraculous results. “It’s in their best interests to sweep this under the rug.”
A DOE spokesman said Henry wasn’t questioned because no one had made specific allegations against her.
She did not respond to an email seeking comment.
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