Brightly Shining Light

(New York City) A 38-year-old teacher, Wayne Brightly, at Middle School 142, one of the worst-performing in the city, repeatedly flunked his state teacher certification exam so he paid $2.00 to a formerly homeless developmentally disabled man to take it for him. The state knew something was amiss because the stand-in test taker, 58-year-old Rubin Leitner, scored significantly better than Brightly ever had in previous tests.

"I was pressured into it. He threatened me," the bogus test-taker Rubin Leitner told the Daily News yesterday after Special Schools Investigator Richard Condon revealed the scam.

Of course, he also got two bucks.

"I'm tired of taking this test and failing," Brightly told Leitner, according to Condon's probe. "I want you to help me."

Along with being much smarter than Brightly, Leitner is 20 years older. He also is white and overweight while Brightly is black and thin. Yet none of those glaring differences apparently worried Brightly.

"He said no one would ever know," Leitner said outside the Brownsville, Brooklyn, building he has called home since briefly living on the streets.

Obviously, Brightly could conceivably lose his $59,000 per year job.

This story just cracks me up. It also strongly hints at one of the possible reasons Middle School 142 performs so poorly. At least one of the teachers is a complete moron.

[Update] Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice has more.