White Collar Crime and the Department of Education

White Collar Crime
A grade fixing scandal emerged at William Cullen Bryant High School in Long Island City in 2015. The principal of the school, Namita Dwarka, had been adamant with teachers that they help students to pass so that they can meet their graduation quotas (Gonen, Edelman & Golding, 2015). Several teachers and some students began to speak out about the pressure they were getting from the principal. Mary Bozoyan was one of them. She blew the whistle on what became known as the grade fixing scandal at William Cullen Bryant. Her reward was retaliation from the principal (Edelman, 2015). This paper will describe the issues and criminal activity that really goes all the way up the chain of command to the Department of Education. The major issues concern falsifying student grades but more importantly the quid pro quo conditions placed on schools and states by the federal government, which wants to show the public that it is improving America’s schools through its Education policies. The reality is that there are many stakeholders who are complicit in this crime of fraud and what amounts to bribery on the part of the US government: it promises federal money to states if they will show that they are meeting the Department of Education’s graduation goals. Dwarka was just a cog in the machine—and Bozoyan did said what everyone already knew was happening. The problem is that most people do not care. They accept the situation and its corruption for what it is—the way of the world. At the end of the day, that is the effect of white collar crime on society: it creates a culture of cynicism and acceptance of the misdeeds that trickle down from the top, infecting everyone at the bottom so that crime is heaped upon crime and the only ones punished are those who dare to object.
Part of the problem is that Dwarka was not applying pressure on teachers to pass failing students because she wanted to make herself look good. She was doing it because she was getting pressure from the district and the state, both of which had to produce the number of graduations needed to get federal money from the Department of Education. That federal agency placed stipulations on subsidies—arbitrarily and without real sense of what the reality at the local level is or was. By producing a quid pro quo type of environment, however, the problem that Bozoyan ultimately blew the whistle on was one that originated at the top with the federal government creating an environment in which schools felt that in order to survive they needed to pass students regardless of their academic performance. The federal government wanted to see numbers that it could show to the public in order to indicate that it was taking education seriously and making improvements by getting kids graduated. The government did not care how it happened—it just wanted schools to make sure kids were getting their diplomas and that was made clear to Dwarka—and she made it clear to her teachers at William Cullen.
When one student bragged to the media that she was given a degree even though she had failed her class and even skipped the final, the media began investigating the story (Gonen et al., 2015). That was when Bozoyan made it clear in no uncertain terms that the principal was pressuring teachers to give students better grades than they deserved just so they could meet their graduation quotas (Gonen et al., 2015). In response, the principal had the locks on the restroom doors outside Bozoyan’s classroom changed so that the handicapped teacher could no longer use them. It was a subtle form of retaliation and a crime—but not one that Bozoyan could necessarily prove. Dwarka could justify her actions, all of them, by saying that the locks were changed for security reasons and that Bozoyan could use the restroom down the hall without being too inconvenienced. Dwarka could also claim that she never explicitly told teachers to falsify grades. She had simply pressured them to graduate students. A good principal at any school is going to pressure teachers to graduate students—it does not mean the principal is advocating for grade fixing. One could argue it just means that teachers need to put in more time with their students. Of course, the reality was that grades were being fixed—but, again, no one could prove anything.
Dwarka is still the principal at William Cullen, which shows that the school district never removed her from her post—which shows that the district and the state approve of her pressuring teachers to pass students. The district and state know what the federal government expects. The government does not expect education to really transpire: that would require more resources than most schools have. The government just wants to see the numbers. It is a political game—and it should be considered a crime. But when the justice system is broken, organizational crime goes unnoticed and unobserved.
The Queens community and students at the high school protested the actions of Dwarka (Granata, 2015). However, nothing changed. Dwarka threatened to prevent students who participated in the protest rally from taking part in the graduation. Again, it could easily be perceived as a principal instilling discipline and exercising her authority to stop rebellion. That is the way the district perceived it for Dwarka was not punished in spite of the unfolding scandal. As far as the district was concerned, Dwarka was doing her job in pressuring teachers.
But that was not the way Bozoyan saw it. She argued that if students were not coming to class and not caring about their grades they should not be graduating. What Bozoyan was arguing against, however, was a system of white collar crime that was set up to keep those running the system in power. She could not blow the whistle in reality because there was no one to blow the whistle to. She could alert the public—but the public has no power in the system, which is governed by way of organizational white collar crime. Bribery, fraud, deception—these are all the tactics of those pulling the levers in the system.
The affects of this system on society and the economy are not positive. It creates a sluggish economy overall because students are being graduated and sent on to college with no real education. Colleges are forced to dumb down their curriculum in order to accommodate uneducated students, and so college graduates are entering the workforce having essentially been handed everything. Businesses do not want these workers so they look elsewhere for talent—i.e., outside the country, where students are less privileged and entitled and have had to work for their degrees. Without jobs growing in the US, the economy becomes dependent on dollars printed by the Federal Reserve, which is just another act of fraud that goes unpunished because it is all part of the same system of organizational crime. Society as a whole becomes used to this type of fraud and deceit and accepts it as the way things go. Yet as they see the value of their dollar declining as housing rates soar, education costs soar, medical costs soar, and the stock market soars making the rich richer, they become angry. From Occupy Wall Street to the election of Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president one thing is clear—the public is angry about the fraud and deception going on. And yet the system is so big that it is unlikely it will be changed. The organization of crime running the country is in firm control of all the levers.
References
Edelman, S. (2015). School ‘retaliates’ against disabled teacher for criticizing principal. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2015/11/01/school-retaliates-against-disabled-teacher-for-criticizing-principal/
Gonen, Y., Edelman, S. & Golding, B. (2015). City finally decides to probe rampant grade-fixing. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2015/08/03/city-finally-decides-to-probe-rampant-grade-fixing/
Granata, K. (2015). Queens Community Demands Removal of High School Principal. Retrieved from https://www.educationworld.com/a_news/queens-community-demand-removal-high-school-principal