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Philip Nobile: New report claims he made unfounded charges

When Philip Nobile reported in 2004 that the assistant principal of the Brooklyn high school where he taught had ordered other teachers to cheat on the scoring of Regents exams, he was embraced by a powerful city investigator as a whistle-blower.

His charges led to a full-blown investigation of the Cobble Hill High School of American Studies by the city’s Department of Education that backed up his story of failing scores being raised to passing. In short order, the assistant principal, Theresa Capra, resigned; the principal, Lennel George, was removed; and a string of education officials were caught up in questions about a coverup.

But, as it turns out, more than one person can blow a whistle.

Acting on a tip in July 2005, Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for New York City schools, began a separate 23-month investigation into what happened at the high school in 2002 and 2003.

It resulted in a scathing 67-page report released yesterday that called Mr. Nobile a subpar teacher with poor evaluations who wrongly accused Ms. Capra of engineering a cheating scheme because she had given him a negative review that could have led to his firing....

Mr. Nobile, in an interview, dismissed the new report. “I was an eye and ear witness to the tampering by Ms. Capra and the coverup by Mr. George,” he said. “I know what I saw, I know what I heard, and I know tampering when I see it.”

He said that the new allegations against him were without merit and that he expected to be reinstated to his teaching job. “There are two Mickey Mouse allegations of corporal punishment,” he said. “In the first case, the boy retracted his complaint because he realized he was being manipulated. Case No. 2 was when I tried to break up a fight and the boy jumped me.”...
Read entire article at NYT