Schools bent rules on ‘credit recovery’

Some top-rated schools were among 36 that the Department of Education found bent the rules on “credit recovery” and online courses — potentially giving their students an undeserved leg up, The Post has learned.

They include the NYC iSchool in Soho, which was offering online courses that weren’t “aligned to DOE expectations,” and six socalled “consortium” schools whose students are exempt from the requirement that they pass all five Regents exams to graduate.

The names of schools flagged in a February 2016 report on potential cheating was made available a full six months after a public-disclosure law request was filed by The Post.

CUNY Graduate Center Professor David Bloomfield chided the city for not making the names public from the get-go and mini- mizing the findings.

“They’re treating this as a legal matter, not an instructional matter,” he said. “And there needs to be wall-to-wall prevention and systematic auditing to make sure that kids are getting the education they deserve.”

Other no-no’s uncovered in the report were schools “incorrectly coding” noncredit courses as credit courses, teachers leading classes for which they weren’t certified, and ineligible students enrolled in credit-recovery courses.

Credit-recovery courses are generally fast-paced bids to get students back on track to graduate.

DOE officials characterized the behavior as a policy-compliance issues rather than outright attempts to game the system — so schools were simply asked to fix any errors and no discipline or further investigation ensued.

However, 10 of the 36 schools are being monitored in the coming school year, officials said.

“Our academic policies are nonnegotiable and proactive interventions and monitoring are critical,” said DOE spokeswoman Devora Kaye.

NYC iSchool principal Isora Bailey said her school’s inclusion in the report was based on a misunderstanding of course coding.

“Once it was explained, it was resolved with no impact on kids,” she told The Post.