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    Saint Ann’s Protected Criminal Teacher at Students’ Expense, Report Says

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    The elite Brooklyn school commissioned an investigation after the arrest of Winston Nguyen, who is now accused of soliciting lewd photographs from students.Top administrators at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn knowingly hired a felon to teach math and then “shamed” teachers, students and parents who expressed discomfort with his conduct “as racist or not progressive,” according to a scathing report released on Tuesday.The teacher, Winston Nguyen, is now accused of soliciting lewd images from students and faces 11 felony charges, including using a child in a sexual performance, promoting a sexual performance by a child and disseminating indecent material to a minor.But the report said that while its students were facing a barrage of online requests for naked picture and videos, the school was treating Mr. Nguyen as a valued employee whose unusual behavior was ignored or explained away.“In some instances,” the report said, administrators “prioritized teachers including Nguyen over the concerns of students and their families about the teacher’s background or behavior.”The elite private school — famed for what the report calls its “systematically asystematic” culture, celebrity parents and alumni, high Ivy League matriculation rate and unusual hiring practices — has been hobbled by scandals in recent years. It is unclear how the report will affect its reputation among parents of prospective students and fund-raising efforts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Educator Is Charged With Molesting 8 Children

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      David Braff was first accused of misconduct years ago but has since held a series of school jobs. The authorities are investigating the possibility of additional victims. A Los Angeles assistant principal was arrested on Friday and charged with molesting eight children between 2015 and 2019, while he was working as an elementary school counselor in Ventura County. The defendant, David Lane Braff Jr., 42, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., is accused of molesting children aged 6 to 10 in an office at McKevett Elementary School in the Santa Paula Unified School District, roughly 70 miles west of Los Angeles. The charges emerged out of a cold case sexual abuse unit, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said. He noted that officials at McKevett Elementary had reached out to authorities at the time of the alleged incidents.Nevertheless, Mr. Braff has held several jobs in public education since and has also volunteered in a number of programs for children.Mr. Nasarenko described an “extensive search for the possibility of other victims at other school sites and locations.” “This shakes the very foundation of the notion of a school site as a safe learning environment,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oregon School Leaders on Leave After 2 Teachers Charged With Sex Abuse

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      The police said the St. Helens School District was informed of the abuse allegations as early as 2019 but officials failed to alert the authorities.Two Oregon high school teachers charged on Tuesday with sexually abusing students had been reported as early as 2019 to district officials, who failed to notify the authorities, according to the police.The revelations have prompted online petitions seeking the resignations of school leaders as well as demonstrations at St. Helens School District by parents, students and community members.On Thursday, the principal at St. Helens High School, Katy Wagner, was placed on administrative leave and the school board chairman, Ryan Scholl, resigned, according to the district’s Facebook page. A day later, the district superintendent, Scot Stockwell, was placed on leave, the district said.The teachers, Eric Stearns, 46, a teacher at the high school, and Mark Collins, 64, who recently retired from the school, were each charged with several counts of sexual abuse, the St. Helens Police Department said.Joseph Hogue, the acting police chief, said that investigators had identified nine female victims between Mr. Stearns and Mr. Collins from 2019-23. The investigation is continuing and detectives are still fielding calls, he said.A lawyer for Mr. Stearns, Jennifer L. Myrick, on Sunday night disputed the charges.She said the grand jurors investigating the charges conflated the investigations of Mr. Collins and Mr. Stearns.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I’m 16. On Nov. 5 the Girls Cried, and the Boys Played Minecraft.

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      On the morning after the election, I walked up the staircase of my school. A preteen was crying into the shoulders of her braces-clad peer. Her friend was rubbing circles on her back.I continued up the stairs to the lounge, where upperclassmen linger before classes. There I saw two tables: One was filled with my girlfriends, many of them with hollows under their eyes. There was a blanket of despair over the young women in the room. I looked over to the other table of teenage boys and saw Minecraft on their computers. While we were gasping for a breath, it seemed they were breathing freely.We girls woke up to a country that would rather elect a man found liable for sexual abuse than a woman. Where the kind of man my mother instructs me to cross the street to avoid will be addressed as Mr. President. Where the body I haven’t fully grown into may no longer be under my control. The boys, it seemed to me, just woke up on a Wednesday.What made my skin burn most wasn’t that over 75 million people voted for Donald Trump. It was that this election didn’t seem to measurably change anything for the boys around me, whether their parents supported Mr. Trump or not. Many of them didn’t seem to share our rage, our fear, our despair. ​​We don’t even share the same future.I am scared that the Trump administration will take away or restrict birth control and Plan B — the same way they did abortion. I am scared that the boys I know will see in a triumphant, boastful Mr. Trump the epitome of a manly man and model themselves after him. I was 8 years old the first time he was elected. Now I am 16. I am still unable to vote, but I am so much more aware of what I have to lose.I have seen the ways in which many of the boys in my generation can be different from their fathers. The #MeToo movement went mainstream when they were still wearing Superman pajamas. On Tuesdays in health class, they learn about the dangers of inebriated consent. They don’t pretend to gag when a girl mentions her period or a tampon falls out of her backpack. They don’t find sexist jokes all that funny and don’t often make them in public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Five Charged in Cheating Scandal That Helped Over 200 ‘Unqualified’ Texas Teachers

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      Prosecutors said that the “kingpin,” a high school basketball coach in Houston, had helped educators fraudulently pass more than 400 tests.More than 200 “unqualified teachers” in Texas were able to get jobs or promotions at schools across the state under a board scheme in which impersonators were paid to take more than 400 certification exams for them, prosecutors said this week.Five people have been charged in the scheme, under which they earned a total of at least $1 million, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said at a news conference on Monday.One of those charged, Vincent Grayson, a basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston, Texas, was accused of being the “kingpin of this scheme,” Kim Ogg, the district attorney in Harris County, said. Mr. Grayson, 57, of Houston, worked to help educators, who usually paid $2,500 to have their certification exams taken by an impersonator at testing centers, Ms. Ogg said.“The extent of the scheme will never be fully known,” Ms. Ogg said. “But we know that at least 400 tests were taken and at least 200 teachers falsely certified.”Mr. Grayson’s lawyer, Cheryl E. Irvin, declined to comment and said that she was waiting for more information to be provided by the state regarding her client. Mr. Grayson is scheduled to appear in court again on Friday.The other people charged were an assistant principal at Booker T. Washington High School, a testing center employee, a “corrupt proctor,” and an assistant principal at Jack Yates High School in Houston, Ms. Ogg said. All five have been charged with two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity, Ms. Ogg said. She said that the charges are either first- or third-degree felonies, depending on the level of culpability. The maximum possible sentences range from two years to life in prison.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Social Studies Teachers Rely on Online and Sometimes Ideological Sources

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      A survey of social studies teachers found that many find primary sources online for lesson plans. But a notable minority also rely on left-leaning materials, and a handful have turned to conservative options.As printed textbooks increasingly gather dust in classroom bookshelves, a new and expansive survey published on Thursday finds that social studies teachers are turning to digital sources and primary documents from the nation’s past.While the most popular curriculum providers are not ideologically skewed, the report warned about a trend of “moralistic cues” in some left-leaning school districts, with lessons that seemed to direct students toward viewing American history emotionally, as a string of injustices.In conservative areas, the report said laws restricting the teaching of “divisive concepts” had been “extremely corrosive of teacher morale and detrimental to the integrity of good history teaching.”Still, the report, from the American Historical Association, found that history teachers overwhelmingly affirmed the goals of presenting “multiple sides of every story” and depicting U.S. history as “a complex mix of accomplishments and setbacks.”The survey paints an unusually detailed portrait of how the nation’s history is being taught during an era of intense political polarization. It reached 3,000 middle and high school teachers across nine states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.Nicholas Kryczka, a research coordinator at the American Historical Association and an author of the report, said that overall, the survey suggests that most educators understand the need to exercise self-restraint on political issues.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gaza Debate Reopens Divisions Between Left-Wing Workers and Union Leaders

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      Last week’s Democratic National Convention surfaced differences over the war in Gaza that could widen fissures between labor activists and union officials.When members of the Chicago Teachers Union showed up to march at the Democratic National Convention last week, many expressed two distinct frustrations.The first was over the war in Gaza, which they blamed for chewing up billions of dollars in aid to Israel that they said could be better spent on students, in addition to a staggering loss of life. The second was disappointment with their parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, which they felt should go further in pressuring the Biden administration to rein in Israel’s military campaign.“I was disappointed in the resolution on Israel and Palestine because it didn’t call for an end to armed shipments,” said Kirstin Roberts, a preschool teacher who attended the protest, alluding to a statement that the parent union endorsed at its convention in July.Since last fall, many rank-and-file union members have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,000 people and took about 250 hostages. The leaders of many national unions have appeared more cautious, at times emphasizing the precipitating role of Hamas.“We were very careful about what a moral stance was and also what the implications of every word we wrote was,” the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said of the resolution her union recently adopted.In some ways, this divide reflects tensions over Israel and Gaza that exist within many institutions — like academia, the media and government.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Overlooked No More: Mabel Addis, Who Pioneered Storytelling in Video Gaming

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      She was a teacher when she participated in an educational experiment with IBM. As a result, she became the first female video game designer.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.In the 1960s, Mabel Addis was an elementary-school teacher in a small town in New York State when she was offered a unique opportunity that would make history: Create an educational game with IBM.What resulted was the Sumerian Game, an early video game that taught the basics of economic theory to sixth graders. In it, a student would act as the ruler of the Mesopotamian city-state of Lagash, in Sumer, in 3500 B.C. In Level One, the primary focus was on growing crops and developing tools; Level Two oversaw a more diversified economy; and in Level Three, Lagash interacted with other city-states. In each round, students responded to prompts issued by Urbaba, the royal steward.The video game was text-based, but it is believed to be the first to introduce storytelling and characters, and the first in a genre now known as edutainment. It also made Addis the first known female video game designer, according to several game historians.The Sumerian Game “is pretty rudimentary by today’s standards, but the thing about being ‘first’ is that just existing at all becomes innovative,” Kate Willaert, the author of the blog “A Critical Hit!,” who has studied the game extensively, said in an email. Addis, she maintained, was the first video game writer ever.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Schools Have a Tech Problem

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      We explore some of the tech challenges faced by educators.As the new school year begins, school districts across the United States are cracking down on cellphones in classrooms. Teachers are tired of constantly pressing students to stop watching TikTok and messaging friends during class. In many schools, students have also used phones to threaten or bully their classmates.As a result, as I note in a story today, at least eight states, including Indiana and Pennsylvania, have adopted measures this year to limit cellphones in schools.But the phone crackdowns illustrate a larger issue. Technology rules and safeguards in schools often lag far behind student use and abuse of digital tools.And it’s not just phones — school-issued laptops, tablets and classroom apps can also become sources of distraction and bullying. In today’s newsletter, I’ll highlight some of the tech challenges schools are facing.Student cellphone bansSchools have been trying to limit student phone use for decades. Maryland banned students from bringing pagers and “cellular telephones” to school in the late 1980s as illegal drug sales boomed. In the 1990s, as mobile phones gained traction, some schools barred the devices to stop the chirping from disrupting class.Since the 2000s, though, it’s also gone the other way. As school shootings became more common, many districts began allowing mobile phones as a safety measure. And, after the rise of iPhones, some schools that had barred cellphones reversed the bans in part because some lower-income students who did not own laptops used them for schoolwork.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More