It’s not readin’ or writin’ — but roleplay.
A Brooklyn high school gives students English credits for playing Dungeons & Dragons — a practice teachers blast as shameless scholastic sorcery, The Post has learned.
It’s one of the wizardly ways that Gotham Professional Arts Academy achieved a 91% percent graduation rate last year — despite 79% of students marked chronically absent and half deemed unprepared for college.
“During the course of the semester, I’d say I wrote about three to four paragraphs,” ♋said a Gotham student who notched an English credit by enrolling in the twice-weekly D&D meets.
“It’s more of a club,” a classmate agreed.
Last school year, 16 Gotham students received an English credit for D&D — and everyone got an “A” from teacher Jason Smith, records show.
Last semester, eight kids in D&D earned a “P” for passing.
Smith did not return messages ✱seeking an explanation.
In another club masquerading as an academic course, teachers s🐻ay, at least 26 students scored English credits for “𝕴Scrapbooking,” in which students can create a display of photos from their phones.
All students at the Prospect Heights school also get English, social studies, and he🦄alth credits for “Crew” – homeroom-type periods wit🔯hout any curriculum or classwork, staffers say.
Gotham’s parent coordinator is listed on Department ꦗof Education records as one of the teachers, thoughꦗ she is not a licensed instructor.
“For years now, our principal, Robert Michelin, has been falsifying credits by awarding students credits for courses they did not take,” a group of outraged teache🌼rs alerted top D💖OE officials in emails last July.
The 207-student Gotham is the latest DOE high school where teachers have blown the whistle on fraudulent shortcuts aimed at helping administrators look good — and boosting the city’s graduation rate. Major scandals have erupted at Dewey HS in Brooklyn — where kids called a massive scheme “Easy Pass”– and Maspeth HS in Queens, where students dubbed their passing ease the “Maspeth Minimum.”
Micheli✱n also makes Gotham teachers use an “incredibly inflated” grading sಞystem, staffers complain.
On a scal﷽e of 0 to 4, students can earn a passing C-minus with a score a🐠s low as .49, according to the Gotham staff handbook.
“Students can do almost nothing and still pass,” the teachers told a top dﷺeputy to Chancellor David Banks.
The grading scale has no Ds; Fs are “highly diꦺscouraged,” and “teachers are verba𓆉lly pressured to pass students,” they wrote.
DOE data suggest the school takes major shortcuts: All🅰 Gotham students arrived as freshmen last year with failing scores on 8th-grade math and English exams, yet they accumulated credits in 9th and 10th grades faster than peers elsewhere in the city.
The school’s chronic absenteeism is worse than the 40% citywide average — hitting 79% last year with kids missing more than 18 days each.
The “college readiness” rate of students prepared to enroll in CUNY without remedial help was 53% percent last year.
While 50% of Gotham grads enrollꦑed in college,🍨 only 33% of them returned for a second year, the .
With a focus on art and culture, Gotham is one🌠 of the DOE’s 49 “Consortium, International and Outward Bound” high schools.
Students are 𒈔exempt from taking state Regents exams but instead must complete five “thesis-like” papers in c✤ore subjects.
Like all New York students, ⭕they have to earn 44-course credits to graduate.
One of the eight required English credits c🅺an be gained at Gotham via Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop role-playing game, transcripts show.
“Do you enjoy fan💎tastical worlds filled with dragons and wizards and monsters 🌌galore?” Gotham describes the sessions. “We teach the fundamental skills needed to play the game.”
D&D is listed at many DOE high schools as an extracurricular activity or club — not an academic class.
More galling, the teachers say, the school gives all students English and other academic credits for twice-we♛ekly advisory or homeroom periods – called Crew in the consortium, which describes them as “community-building.”
“We basically, like, chill,” as one teen put it.
“It’s like a study hall. There’s no teaching going on,” a Gotham staffer explained, adding that teachers are often not certified in the subjects for which credits are given.
Gotham’s parent coordinဣator, Diamond Stanislaus, is listed as the teacher for “Looking for an Argument” and “Legacy” – Crew periods coded as credit-ꦜbearing English courses.
Stanislaus also is the ಌinstructor listed for “Master Class Barber,” a “human-services” elective.
Reached this꧋ week, Stanislaus, who is not a l𝓡icensed teacher, would not explain her role.
🌠Whistleblowers, who requested anonymity because they fear retaliation, said they have repeatedly complained to Superintendent Alan Cheng, who was hired by Chancellor Banks to oversee the consortium schools.
In an email to Cheng last Julℱy, whistleblowers named two students who haꦜd graduated after moving to a different state, and two who graduated “despite not attending or submitting assignments.”
Other students “were given 2-3 gym credits for classes that did not occur.”
“🦩Most seniors from 2022 graduated with missing PBATs,” it adds, re🥂ferring to the five “performance-based” projects required instead of Regents exams.
The staffers haveꦡ begged Cheng to conduct an audit of Gotham.
As a deputy superintendent in 2019, Cheng was present at Maspeth HS while DOE investigators interviewed students about credit fraud and grade-fixing allegations that led to the principal’s removal.
Cheng ag𓂃reed to look into the Gotham complaints, but took no apparent action, teachers say. Staffers then wrote to Desmond Blackburn, Banks’ deputy chancellor for leadership – whose main duty was to oversee the superintendents.
Blackburn did not respond.
He quit the DOE in February after one year in the $265,000 job.
“It is clear the DOE is complicit in credit fraud, and truly does not care,” a disgusted teacher tol🧔d The Post.
“They need to get the higher-ups to respond,” said David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center education professor. “Did they look into whether anything improper is going on? A DOE respons💦e is necessary to reassure students, parents, and the public that all academic standards are met.”
The Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools received a complaint🌼 about Principal Michelin in September 2020, citing academic misconduct “among many other aܫllegations,” a spokesperson said.
The SCI sent the complaint to the DOE’s Office of Spec🥃ial Investigations, the spokesperson added.
The DOE referred questions about Michelin to CSA, the principal’s union. A CSA spokesman said the 2020 complaint was “unsubstantiated,” but had no further comment.
Michelin did not answer The Post’s emailed questions.
