One month ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Ian Andre Roberts, a “criminal illegal alien” from Guyana, who was serving since July 2023 as the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS).
In May 2024, a federal immigration judge issued a final deportation order for Roberts, and other criminal indictments against him since the 1990’s include “multiple weapons charges and a drug trafficking charge.”
Furthermore, the current chair of DMPS, Jackie Norris, was former first lady Michelle Obama’s chief of staff between 2009 and 2010.
The former teacher was a Democratic candidate in Iowa’s U.S. Senate election in 2026 but dropped out on Oct. 16, after the intense backlash over her pivotal involvement in the Roberts scandal.
However, three significant aspects of this mind-boggling tragedy have been overlooked in the intense nationwide media coverage.
Iowa has six categories of academic achievement for 1,276 public schools, and Des Moines has 55 schools with 31,000 students.
While the four passing categories are attained by 999 schools, or 78%, the DMPS has 17, or a horrendous 31%.
Secondly, the district’s moral and educational implosion is the latest in an epidemic of leadership scandals in Democratic dystopian city schools in recent years.
In 2017, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools, was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for masterminding a $23 million kickback scheme.
Byrd-Bennett was appointed and effusively praised in 2012 by then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who previously was President Barack Obama’s chief of staff.
In 2009, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered a systemic cheating scandal in the city’s public schools on state academic tests. At least 178 teachers and administrators were implicated, and 11 educators were convicted in 2015.
Beverly Hall, the superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools and alleged ringleader, was indicted in 2013 but was found medically unfit to stand trial until her death from cancer two years later.
Unsurprisingly, miscreants Hall, Byrd-Bennett and Roberts began their teaching careers in New York City’s notoriously corrupt public schools.
In October 2024, New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks was forced to resign, as he was one of Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ top appointees being investigated by federal prosecutors.
A Manhattan federal grand jury in Sept. 2024 indicted Adams for bribery, but U.S District Judge Dale Ho permanently dismissed the charges against him in April 2025.
Moreover, in November 2024, Tracey Collins, the longtime girlfriend of Mayor Adams, quickly retired after the New York Post disclosed that during the previous year she had rarely showed up for high-level position at a $253,000 annual salary in the city’s Department of Education.
Similarly, Richard Carranza’s rocky tenure as New York City schools chancellor between 2018 and 2021 included the demotion of three highly qualified white female administrators and their replacement by less qualified Black colleagues.
They sued Chancellor Carranza and the Department of Education in federal court for racial discrimination, and the city settled for $2.1 million in 2024.
The chancellor also hired in 2018 his future girlfriend, Raquel Sosa, at a six-figure salary
Under Democratic Mayors Bill De Blasio and Eric Adams, students in New York City plunged from 982 to 960 points, or 22 points, on the “Nation’s Report Card” between 2013, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s last year, and 2024.
More granularly, among the city’s four major racial or ethnic groups in 2024, Asian-American fourth and and eighth graders totaled an impressive 1,058 points in math and reading.
White students tallied an excellent 1,030 points.
But Black students scored a disastrous 916 points, and Hispanic students a calamitous 899 points.
Since 12 points equal one grade level, Asian students lead Black students by a humongous 142 points, or 11.8 years; and Hispanic students by 159 points, or 13.3 years.
During the 12-year, incompetent tenures of de Blasio and Adams, they appointed three mediocre Hispanic and two Black chancellors.
Indeed, the third overlooked nationwide aspect of the Des Moines scandal is that many dysfunctional urban school districts have for decades hired unqualified educators as superintendents and other high-level administrative positions, solely based on their race or ethnicity rather than professional competence and experience.
In New York City’s mayoral election next week, front-running Democrat Zohran Mamdani has identified three Black and one Hispanic educators as potential schools chancellor.
But none has the sterling credentials required for the pre-eminent leadership position in American K-12 public education.
In recent days, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., running as an independent, has been chopping away at Mamdani’s lead but has not announced any possible chancellor candidates.
He should consider Eva Moskowitz, the nationally renowned educator with a doctorate in history from Johns Hopkins.
In 2006, Moskowitz, a second-generation alumna of Manhattan’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School (’82), has led the 57 schools in Success Academy Charter network.
The students come overwhelmingly from low-income Black or Hispanic families, and they significantly outperform their counterparts in traditional public schools on state tests of math and reading.
A victorious partnership of Andrew Cuomo and Eva Moskowitz will make New York City and its public schools great again.
And they will take a major step toward ending the deleterious racial and ethnic divisiveness that has ruined many American urban school districts since the late 1960’s.
Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte’s Reports — More Here.
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