4th-graders say principal urged MCAS cheating

A Boston principal was put on paid leave yesterday, after a teacher and her fourth-graders alleged that the veteran educator urged the youngsters to cheat on the English MCAS test.

Jennifer P. Day's fourth-graders at the Eliot School in the North End accused their principal, Antoinette Brady, of asking them to change or add to their answers on the exam after they had finished. In the shaky, misspelled scrawls of 9- and 10-year-olds, the class recounted the alleged cheating in letters to their teacher, who reported it May 24 to the state Department of Education.

The children probably will not have to retake the test, a state official said.

Boston public school officials said an investigation had been underway for more than two weeks, but they did not place Brady on leave until yesterday when the allegations became public in the Boston Herald. Last year, 58 percent of Eliot's fourth-graders failed the English section and 81 percent failed math. Brady, who has worked at Eliot for nearly all of her 31 years in city schools, could not be reached for comment. A top district official told her not to come to work yesterday.

She did not respond to e-mails or telephone calls, but her husband, Bob Brady, spoke to the Globe last night from the door of the couple's home in Groveland.

He said his wife, in a conversation with him, denied that she told the students to cheat on the May 21 exam.

"When the truth comes out, she'll be vindicated," he said. "When every kid in the class writes a letter, you have to wonder."

He said he believed the teacher pressured the children to write the letters, adding that his wife was upset about the incident and school administrators told her not to talk to the media.

Day, who has worked for Boston public schools for three years and been a teacher since 1990, spoke with reporters yesterday. Day said a union official suggested she get letters from the students to get something on the record in the children's own words.

Day, who spoke after her classes yesterday, said that on the day of the alleged incident she was proctoring the exam and Brady came in and asked her to leave. Day said she thought "that was odd," but left since she hadn't had a break all day. She was told to pick up the students in 30 minutes. When she returned, she said she noticed that her students were bothered by something.

"My children were very upset," she said. "They knew it was wrong and they were told they had to do it."

When one of the students blurted out what happened, Day said she was "sort of stunned." She waited until Monday to speak with her students in depth, then called the Department of Education. Two weeks later, on June 8, the principal gave her a letter of termination.

Day, who never spoke with the principal about the alleged cheating, said she didn't know why she was being terminated. Day said that on her written review in February, the principal checked a box that recommended her for permanent employment. She was considered a provisional employee because she had been there only three years.

State Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll said he hopes Day was not dismissed because she reported the incident. Whistleblowers "shouldn't be fired. They should be rewarded . . . We want people to be forthright," Driscoll said.

Michael Contompasis, chief operating officer of the Boston public schools, said the district will meet the state's June 24 deadline for an inquiry.

"If these allegations prove to be correct, I'm sure the superintendent will deal with it in a necessary fashion," Contompasis said. "He does not condone any of this, if true."

Barbara Peterlin, mother of a first-grade student and member of the parent council, said Brady has a "fabulous reputation" at the school.

Luisa Zauli, also a mother of a first-grade student, said she doesn't believe the allegations. She said she has had a great experience working with Brady on numerous occasions.

But the mother of one of the fourth-graders involved in the testing incident had a different view. The mother, who asked not to be identified, said she is "quite upset" that her son was put into a compromising situation.

"She's supposed to be an authority figure that he's supposed to respect," she said. "It's teaching such a bad lesson to our children."

The mother's fourth-grade son, who asked not to be identified, recounted how Brady told the students they could fix their answers. The boy said the principal told the class that the school's scores were low and the students needed to boost them, the boy said.

The 10-year-old said he followed Brady's instructions to correct questions from the first two parts of the three-part test because he was afraid of getting in trouble. He said he also feared that the superintendent of schools would severely punish him and the others if they tattled on their principal.

"We all knew we weren't supposed to do that . . . Usually cheaters get caught somehow," the boy said.

After testing, the children went to lunch, and when they returned, one student told Day what happened. Gathering on a rug to read aloud, other students raised their hands and told what they remembered, according to Day's written statement handed out by union officials.

The Boston Teachers Union provided about 20 of the children's letters, including one in which a youngster wrote, "We had to do what she said because she was older than us."

The state has three open investigations into cheating, including at the Eliot. Statewide, education officials said they received 130 calls this year of alleged improprieties on the MCAS, up from 80 last year. Fourteen of them were violations, and four or five involved teachers, Driscoll said. In those cases, the state invalidates the test scores but leaves the disciplinary actions to school systems.

Globe staff writer Peter Schworm contributed to this report.