Incompetent NY POST Journalists Hide the Identities of DOE Bureauocrats

Angela O'Dowd, Principal PS 62

The NY POST journalists Carl Campanile, Reuven Fenton, and Yoav Gonan went to all the trouble of obtaining the records of Amy Woda's hearing so that they could publicly humiliate her in this article.  However, with all that information at hand, they decided not to include the names of any of the other players in the story.  I think it's unfair to leave out the principal who went to so much trouble to bring Amy up on charges, so I will supplement the POST article with infomation I got surfing the web.

Since the POST article only reveals the name of the school, I had to go to the DOE website to find the name of the principal, Angela O'Dowd.

Then I went to See Through New York, where you can find the salaries of all the people who work for the City.  They have no record of her.  My ex-principal's salary comes up when you type in her name, but O'Dowd's doesn't.  I wonder why. Maybe she's being paid under another name. 

She describes herself in the following way on her twitter feed. "I'm a New York City Principal.  I grew up in Dublin.  I'm passionate about education policy and social justice." 

Then I stumbled on a website called the Teacher's Network . It seems that as of the year 2000-2001 this was Angela O'Dowd's contact information:

Angela O’Dowd
PS 217
1100 Newkirk Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11230
angodowd@hotmail.com
Principal:
Mary Teatum

In addition, they describe her as follows:

"Angela O’Dowd was born in Ireland but attended college in New York. She has an M.S. in Education, has taught fourth grade for three years, and is currently working as a technology staff developer at the District 22 office. She has worked for two years with AUSSIE (Australia, United States, Services In Education) consultants and participated in a national teacher training certificate program for leadership in Internet and video instruction."

O'Dowd seems to have quickly moved up in the DOE bureaucracy, because by 2003 she was already principal of PS 62 according to a 2008 article in the Daily News. This article also praises O'Dowd for the improvement in test scores under her administration.

Unfortuantely, many of my questions have been left unanswered.  The NY POST article states that Amy, a 14-year veteran teacher received her first U-rating from O'Dowd in 2006-2007.  The article in the Daily News stresses how much the test scores had improved by 2008 (In spite of Amy?).  Did Amy transfer to PS 62 from another school where she had always received satisfactory ratings or did she suddenly receive a "U" after receiving "S" ratings from O'Dowd since 2003?  Maybe Amy, or someone who knows about her case can fill us in.

What is obvious, is that the NY POST journalists have this information and did not see fit to divulge it to their readers.  It's important to know why a teacher who had received so many satisfactory ratings suddenly received nothing but "unsatisfactories". 

Note:  As of  May 2, 2011 I have received the following information.  Amy had 14 years with the DOE as of 2008.  That means she started teaching in 1992.  She was teaching at PS 62 "long before" O'Dowd was brought on board.  That means that O'Dowd herself gave Amy satisfactory ratings prior to 2006.  My source did not know the name of the principal who gave Amy satisfactory ratings before that.  

SPECIFICATION OF INCOMPETENCE #2 : NY POST journalists hide the names, credentials, and work history of bureaucrats who are key players in the destruction of a teacher's careers while printing as much derogatory information as possible about the teacher.  Their reporting is slanted and biased.