It is starting to look like unless I can time-travel and come back to the present day with a video tape of my son’s teacher cheating on his Chemistry Regents Exam and using that phony test to fail him in her class, nothing I say, no documents I present, no evidence I submit, no logic I apply will be sufficient to satisfy David Abrams, NYSED Assistant Commissioner, Office for Standards, Assessment & Reporting.
It has now been more than 18 months since I first contacted the State of New York State Education Department (NYSED) about the many improprieties surrounding the handling and scoring of my son’s June 2007 Chemistry Regents Exam. At that time, I alleged that my son’s teacher had purposely reported a score 10 points lower than his actual score in order to cause him to fail her course in order to wreck a tentative resolution agreement that would have avoided months of hearings and hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funded legal services. Confront with the wrongdoing of the teacher and possible three other district employees, the administration at the high school circled the wagons to defend the teacher. The administration of the school district then circled the wagons around the high school administrators and likewise the Board of Education circled the wagons around the central office administration. In order to pull this off, school officials have falsified records, perjured themselves and otherwise engaged in numerous illegal acts. The matter long ago stopped being about my son’s exam and instead has become about the willingness of school officials to engage in criminal conduct. It is precisely the same sort of criminal conduct we have documented throughout the district — aided and abetted by school district administrators, our elected members of the board of education and officials of the “teachers” union.
It has now been 6 weeks since I escalated the matter to David Abrams.
It has now been a month since Abrams received, per his request, scanned copies of the “second” answer sheets which NRHS Principal Don Conetta told Abrams did not exist.
Not once during that time has Abrams picked up the phone to call me, return my phone calls or otherwise initiate communication with me to keep me informed. His only response has been to send email replies to mine that his office is “evaluating the situation”, “determining next steps”, “doing our internal due diligence”, “reviewing the original complaint” and otherwise, making determinations, doing analysis and considering things.
Mr. Abrams has twice said his office is “taking this seriously”. Really? As a parent who has been subject to years of abuse, lies and personal attacks at the hands of the district — all in response to my efforts to protect the interests of my son and make sure what happened to him does not happen to anyone else — it sure doesn’t feel that way.
Before Christmas, Abrams wrote that he spoke to Don Conetta:
I spoke with Mr. Conetta earlier today and he assured me that the information you requested has been shared with you. He also informed us that there was never a second answer sheet generated in the school.
See how that works? My son is the victim here not the school system. I have made documented allegations. Yet, I cannot get the time of day from Abrams. I am required to produce documents before my request for an investigation will even be considered but the lying crook who runs the high school can make a verbal denial and his word is considered good enough.
As you can see from the exchange below, yet another week has come and gone and still nothing all of which is starting to make me think that Mr. Abrams is a lot less interested in investigating the behavior of the school district and a lot more interested in joining the effort to circle the wagons which makes me wonder: who is David Abrams?
From his recommendation letter to the New York State Board of Regents:
David M. Abrams comes to us from the Albany City School District. As the Director of Instruction, he has extensive experience in areas pertaining to testing and assessment, collection and analysis of student achievement data, preparation and presentation of the District’s School Report Card, school management, staff development, budget development and personnel evaluation. Previously David served as the Learning Standards Coordinator for the Capital Region BOCES where he coordinated regional test administration and data systems. He serves on the SED State Assessment District Advisory Group, is the district liaison of the Northeastern Regional Information Center Data Analysis Team, and is a member of the New York Schools Data Analysis Technical Assistance Group (DATAG). David has also been a teacher at Albany and Amsterdam High Schools and an Adjunct Instructor at the College of Saint Rose and Skidmore College. He has delivered many presentations statewide on data, testing and standards.
He was recommended by James Kadamus.
Both of them have taken some heat regarding standardized test and NCLB. I suppose these are the same guys who do not want to know about the cheating going on over at Isaac E. Young Middle School; in that case to inflate the scores.
For the record, here is the entire exchange with Mr. Abrams since December 7, 2009 until last week.
From: Robert Cox
Subject: Owen Cox case
Date: December 7, 2009 8:07:09 PM EST
To: David AbramsMr. Abrams,
I would like you to help me understand why your office has shown so little interest in my long-standing allegations of improprieties regarding my son’s 2007 Chemistry Regents Examination including my claim to have two different versions of my son’s answer sheet. I believe that my son’s teacher purposely lowered his score to cause him to fail in order to derail a deal that had been made by her boss, Don Conetta, the principal at New Rochelle High School and Yvette Goorevitch, Director of Special Education and then offered to me in order to resolve a pending Impartial Hearing request. In order to cover this up, the District has piled lie upon lie until finally their lies caught up with them. The New Rochelle Board of Education now knows that Schools Superintendent Richard Organisciak repeatedly lied to them when he told them to ignore my requests for copies of the 8-25-08 letter from your office. As you should have seen from a previous email, the BoE President has now “found” a copy of the letter and provide me a copy of the “cover letter” only.
I was led to believe by someone in your office that the official reply to my complaint was contained in the 8-25-08 letter. Today, for the first time, I read the letter. I can see that there are enclosures still missing but from that I have seen it appears that your office confined your “investigation” into re-rating my son’s test. I tell your office that I have two copies of my son’s answer sheet, a clear violation of your protocol, and you tell me that he got question 65 correct (as I had stated) but got question 78 wrong so “no harm, no foul”.
Well, there has been a very big harm to me and my family.
My request for a FULL investigation by your office from June 2008 still stands. After 18 months of misdirection, am I not still entitled to a reply?
Robert Cox
From: Robert Cox
Subject: Fwd: Owen Cox case
December 15, 2009 9:57:02 AM ESTMr. Abrams,
The school board is holding their last meeting of the year tonight and I would appreciate getting a response to the email below from you prior to the board meeting.
Also, last week I mentioned to someone in your office that the document provided to me on December 7th is not the complete record of what was sent by Meg Overocker to the New Rochelle High School principal in August 2008. It is a cover letter and references “enclosures”. The district has ignored repeated requests to provide me copies of the “enclosures”. I do not want to have to wait another 16 months to obtain the “enclosures” and would ask that you have someone in your office scan and email me the enclosures. In fact, I would like to obtain a copy of everything in the file you reviewed with Regent Cohen last March.
Thank you,
Robert Cox
Dear Mr. Cox,
Thank you for you inquiry regarding your son, William Owen Cox, and his Chemistry Regents Examination from June 2007.
We did review your complaint when it was made to Tom Schoeck and we did determine that this did not warrant an official investigation from the State. As you pursued your complaint with the school district, they did request that we rescore the examination. Requests for rescoring an examination can only be made by a school district administrator to the State. We did rescore the exam and you have seen the correspondence dated August 28, 2008 to the school regarding the results of that process. The enclosure with that letter is with the school and since the letter is addressed to the principal, Mr. Conetta is responsible for sharing that information with you; I spoke with Mr. Conetta earlier today and he assured me that the information you requested has been shared with you. He also informed us that there was never a second answer sheet generated in the school.
As to your new request that we conduct a “full investigation,” we believe that the results of the rescoring do not indicate a need to conduct further investigation. You have already been advised that the school had the option of accepting our rescoring results or keeping its original scoring results, but in either case your son ends up with the same score. While we understand your concern, we do not see sufficient evidence of impropriety to support additional investigation.
As to your request to see everything in the file, other than your letter of June 11, 2008 to Mr. Schoeck, a copy of Meg Overocker’s letter, and your e-mails sent to us during the past week, we do not have a file of information.
My understanding is that your son has also graduated from high school, and is now attending university. I hope his college studies are going well and I wish him the best of luck.
Thank you,
David Abrams
David Abrams
Assistant Commissioner
Office for Standards, Assessment & Reporting
NYS Education Department
Robert Cox 12/17/2009 5:30 PM >>>
Mr. Abrams,
The reason you do not “see sufficient evidence of impropriety” is because you have not seen the two different versions of my son’s answer sheet and that is the point of my email last week. I have sought for 18 months to present the evidence to someone from your office. What I do not understand is why your office is not even willing to LOOK at these documents.
I have in front of me right now 2 different versions of the answer sheets from my son’s 2007 Chemistry Regents Test. If need be I am willing to drive to Albany next week and present them to your or your designee for inspection. As will be instantly clear, there is
absolutely no doubt that there are two versions of the answer sheet.Robert Cox
David Abrams 12/21/2009 >>>
Dear Mr. Cox,
Please do not drive to Albany to present these documents. If you have a second answer sheet and wish for further review from the Office of State Assessment, please have the answer sheet scanned and PDFd. Please e-mail the answer sheet to me. Given that during a Regents Examination, all information is part of the test and does not leave the test room, along with your PDF version of the second answer sheet, please provide a detailed explanation of how you were able to obtain the answer sheet and why you think it is a real answer sheet from the test in question. This explanation needs to be detailed so we can better understand the chain of custody as it pertains to your complaint. Thank you,
David
David Abrams
Assistant Commissioner
Office for Standards, Assessment & Reporting
NYS Education Department
From: Robert Cox
Date: December 22, 2009 12:38:03 PM EST
To: David Abrams
Subject: Re: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochelle High
SchoolMr. Abrams,
Per your request, attached is a PDF scan of the “no initials” version of my son’s answer sheet.
As for how I came to obtain two different versions of my answer sheet, I received one copy in June 2007 and the other in May 2008 both from Joyce Kent, the Chair of the NRHS Science Department.
In June 2007, Joyce Kent offered to meet with my wife to review Owen’s answers to the June 2007 Chemistry Regents Exam. The meeting was held in anticipation that he would be taking the August 2007 Chemistry Regents Exam; the purpose was to tell my wife what my son had gotten wrong on the test so that he could spend the summer working on his relative areas of weakness in Chemistry. During that meeting Joyce Kent told my wife which questions he got wrong on the multiple choice section. She also gave my wife a copy of the Answer Booklet which includes Part B-2 and Part C, the written portions of the exam. This is the version with 5 blue pages with no initials; what I have taken to calling the “no initials” version. For reasons I have described elsewhere my son did not take the August 2007 Chemistry Regents exam, the answer booklet was filed away.
In May 2008, per the stipulation agreement signed in February 2008, my wife and son met with a chemistry tutor to map out a game plan for how my son would prepare for the Chemistry exam in August 2008. The plan included weekly tutoring sessions, independent study, completing practice exams, and take classes at night at NRHS during the summer session. To get started the tutor wanted to review what Owen had gotten wrong on the June 2007 exam. It had been almost a year and my wife could not recall where she had put the information and Answer Booklet she had gotten from Joyce Kent and was unable to locate it. My wife informed Joyce Kent that she wanted a copy of the test; Joyce Kent agreed that would make a copy of the answer sheet and give it Owen. My son met with Joyce Kent and she gave him a copy of the answer sheet. This appears to be the version the district sent to the State Office of Assessment in June 2008. This version has all white pages and has two initials of the raters on the tally sheet, what I have taken to calling the “two initials” version (there is also a third set of initials “above” the other two).
By way of background, I wish to explain how we first came to notice the problems with the answer sheets. It was in May 2008, that the tutor went through the “two initials” version of the test with my son to review what he had gotten wrong. When they got to question 65, the tutor realized the answer my son had given was correct. At the end of the tutoring session he informed my wife that there was an error on the test and that my son should have been given an 18 on Part C which would change his scaled score. My wife went to the state web site to see what a 53 raw score would convert to and it was in looking at the tally sheet she realized that the raw score total on the answer sheet was also wrong, that the four parts added up to a 62 not a 52 and that with the extra point for question 65 my son actually should have received a 75 on the test not a 67 — that he has PASSED the course (as of 12/7/09 I now know that the state found that Question 78 was marked as correct when it should have been marked wrong but the tutor was only looking at questions marked as incorrect).
For the record, I presented BOTH answer sheets to the school board and the administration of the district in executive session in September Overocker to Don Conetta, they are lying about there being two different versions of the answer sheet. They know full well that there are two versions because (a) they created them; (b) the entire leadship of the district has seen them.
Robert Cox
Robert Cox 12/29/09 10:10 AM >>>
Mr. Abrams,
Can you please confirm receipt of this email?
Robert Cox
From: David Abrams
Subject: Re: Fwd: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochelle High School
Date: December 29, 2009 10:30:00 AM ESTMr. Cox,
I have received the e-mail. I am out of the office. Thank you,
David
From: Robert Cox
Subject: Re: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New RochelleHigh School
Date: January 4, 2010 11:43:14 AM EST
To: David AbramsMr. Abrams,
I trust you are back in the office now. I recognized you are a very busy man but I have been waiting for an answer for 18 months. I complied with your most recent request two weeks ago. You have a statement from Don Conetta of New Rochelle High School which the document I sent shows to be false.
I would like to know how you to intend to proceed.
Robert Cox
From: David Abrams
Subject: Re: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochell High School
Date: January 4, 2010 12:39:09 PM EST
To: Robert CoxMr. Cox,
We are currently reviewing your materials; thank you for your inquiry. I cannot guarantee a response date to you though at this juncture; at this point, we see no need to interview your son; if that need were to arise, I am sure his being in college will not be a hindrance. Thank you.
David Abrams
David Abrams
Assistant Commissioner
Office for Standards, Assessment & Reporting
NYS Education Department
From: Robert Cox
Subject: Re: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochelle High School
Date: January 4, 2010 1:22:31 PM EST
To: David AbramsMr. Abrams,
I did not ask you to “guarantee a response date”. I asked you how you intend to proceed.
You now have a scan of the document as you requested and an account of its provenance which ought to at least suggest to you that the principal of New Rochelle High School has made a false statement to you, that there IS evidence of a second version of my son’s answer sheet and therefore that the linchpin of my allegations against school officials in New Rochelle ought to have some merit in your eyes — at least enough to warrant further investigation.
The fact is that I long ago presented the two answer sheets to the school board and most, if not all, of the administration of the district including Superintendent Richard Organisciak back in September 2008 in an executive session so this notion the district has put forward that they are unaware of their being two versions is simply an attempt to deceive. More to the point, the district was the source for BOTH version so this idea that they know nothing about it is absurd on its face.
Again, I am not requesting a specific time line. I just want to know how you to intend to proceed now that I have complied with your request.
There are crimes that have been committed here. I expect them to be taken seriously.
Robert Cox
From: David Abrams
Subject: Re: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochelle High School
Date: January 4, 2010 2:16:30 PM EST
To: Robert CoxMr. Cox,
We are taking this seriously; we are reviewing the original complaint and response and your subsequent refiling of the complaint to the Department. We have not made a determination as to how we are going to proceed, hence our review. Based on our analysis, we will write to you regarding what the Department’s position is. Thank you,
David Abrams
David Abrams
Assistant Commissioner
Office for Standards, Assessment & Reporting
NYS Education Department
From: Robert Cox
Subject: Re: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochelle High School
Date: January 11, 2010 1:02:09 PM EST
To: David AbramsMr. Abrams,
For the record, I did not REFILE my complaint. My complaint was ignored. I was not aware that it had been ignored until 12-7-09 because Mr. Schroeck refused to send me a copy of the Meg Overocker letter of 8-25-08 (or even explain what it said) and the school district improperly withheld the letter from me and then lied about it for 16 months. As soon as I became aware it had been ignored I escalated the matter to your attention and asked you to look into it.
It has been more than a month since I contacted you about this matter and you have had the evidence you said you needed since 12-22-09. These matters go back to problems with my son’s Chemistry teacher from the Fall of 2006. It is now 2010. Given this, I trust you will understand my concern with a long-standing pattern of kicking the can down the road that has manifest itself in my son’s case.
I do not know you at all. Perhaps you are an outstanding individual with with the highest degree of probity and integrity. But if you had been through what I have been through you might understand why I have no reason to trust anyone at NYSED or with the City School District of New Rochelle and every reason to doubt. As a result, I have no reason to believe that anything is happening or that anyone at NYSED is taking my concerns seriously until I can see it for myself.
You have not said that you do not accept the evidence of two answer sheets I provided. I have not heard that anyone at the district is claiming I fabricated the document or questioning the provenance of the document So, you now have evidence of significant wrongdoing regarding my son’s test; evidence which flatly contradicts claims made by the District. I do not understand why “reviews” or “analysis” are then required to determine a “position”. When I hear that all I hear is that people are coming up with some new excuse to kick the can down the road.
I would note that you have not once initiated a response to me or picked up the telphone to call me or taken any of my phone calls but you did extend this courtesy to Mr. Conetta. How about showing the same consideration to my family that you have shown to school officials here in New Rochelle. How about requiring Mr. Conetta to make his claims in writing and signing his statements so there is sworn record of his responses to you.
You might consider that my son is the victim here. Mr. Conetta is one of the perpetrators.
Robert Cox
From: Robert Cox
Subject: Fwd: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochelle High School
Date: January 15, 2010 12:26:59 PM EST
To: David AbramsMr. Abrams,
It has now been over 18 months since I first contacted NYSED about this matter. Another week has come and gone without an answer as to whether you now intend to investigate the school district. You SAY you ARE taking this seriously but I have absolutely no evidence of that nor any idea what precisely is being done — if anything.
Based on my past experience dealing with education officials at the state and local level, I have no reason to believe that your ongoing failure to communicate whether you intend to investigate my complaint and what precisely that investigation would entail and whether I will have an opportunity to speak directly to investigators is anything other than just another game of “kick the can down the road”. I have asked many times for you to call me and you have, so far, refused.
I am at the point of concluding that you are simply putting me off in the hope that I will go away and have no intention of ordering an investigation let alone taking any sort of disciplinary action or otherwise holding people in New Rochelle accountable for the abusive, despicable treatment my family has experience over the past several years.
Next week I will began exploring my options on how best to move forward on the premise that you do not intend to act even after being presented clear evidence of wrongdoing my school officials and staff here in New Rochelle.
Sincerely,
Robert Cox
From: David Abrams
Subject: Re: Fwd: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochelle High School
Date: January 15, 2010 6:48:20 PM EST
To: Robert CoxDear Mr. Cox,
Thank you for your e-mail below. I have had the opportunity to read all your e-mails and, as I wrote back to you, am in the process of evaluating the situation and determining next steps. While I realize that you have already determined that wrongdoing has occurred, I am not in a position yet to comment on that. To that end, we are doing our internal due diligence. We have every intention of giving your allegations a full review and we will then determine next steps and will contact you. Thank you,
David Abrams
David Abrams
Assistant Commissioner
Office for Standards, Assessment & Reporting
NYS Education Department
From: Robert Cox
Subject: Re: The “found” letter/William Owen Cox – New Rochelle High School
Date: January 15, 2010 7:30:46 PM EST
To: David AbramsMr. Abrams,
Thank you for getting back to me.
Please understand that I have thousands of pages of transcripts, hundreds of pages of exhibits and various additional documentation all of which indicate a massive amount of wrongdoing. As you were willing to accept at face value the knowingly false statement by Mr. Conetta — that the school had not produced two different answer sheets for my son’s exam — my concern is that you will continue to depend on the school district as if they are a reliable source of information when I have documents in my possession which show a longstanding pattern of falsifying records, making false statements under oath and more.
The district ROUTINELY lies to parents and state officials and has a well-deserved reputation for retaliating against families who do not acquiesce to them. I have published on my web site police records which show the district has fabricated VADIR reports, published photographs of the conversion of public property to personal use by district employees, published fire department records which significantly understate the occupancy at the high school (a building which has had two major fires in the past three years and much more. The district has falsified special education records to overstate the delivery of services to special needs students then used the records to file for reimbursements including Medicaid reimbursements. The district has denied FOIL requests for records on the ground records do not exist when I have emails from the highest levels of the administration discussing the very same records. I have a copy of another email where an administrator orders a staff members to falsify records (when the staffer refused the records were changed anyway).
You do not have to take my word for it. Ask the Westchester District Attorney. They have already made one arrest here on charges of grand larceny and falsifying financial records for an employee was looting the district of HVAC supplies then using those supplies in a private HVAC business he worked at all while drawing a salary of $80,000 a year plus benefits in what the DA has charged was a “no show” job. Not a single administrator in that department has been held accountable by the district for signing off on the phony invoices or time sheets for this individual.
There are many similar examples. One security guard is involved in running an illegal gambling operation, another was paid for working as a proctor on City civil service exams despite never having proctored exams, another’s boyfriend was arrested for selling ecstasy to undercover investigator’s from the DA’s office — when police raided the home they found dozens of marijuana plants in her home, another security guard obtained a nude image of a 7th grade girl and then transmitted the image to two other district employees, one of whom then widely disseminated the image, a school nurse threatened to call CPS on a parent because the mother of a child who broke arms in a schoolyard fall insisted that the school call an ambulance for a child (ultimately the mother took the child to the hospital in a taxi). This is all just in the past year — and there is much more.
Or you could try asking the New Rochelle Police Department about Mr. Conetta’s truthfulness: http://bit.ly/7hSbfT
I can also put you in touch with a former school board member who knows far more than I do about illegal meetings, sweeping criminal behavior under the rug, and worse.
In short, the New Rochelle school district is a criminal enterprise with an education mission.
Given this, it is particularly irksome to be told that you are taking the word of Don Conettta — a man who has documented liar and fraud.
These people belong in prison not running a school system.
Sincerely,
Robert Cox
Latimer
Why not call George Latimer now?
How might he help?
I am willing to accept support on this where I find it.