Fired Camden principal to get $860,000 to settle suit

The rookie principal fired in 2006 after he alleged Camden school officials pressured him to change test scores at Dr. Charles E. Brimm Medical Arts High School will be paid $860,000 by the school district to settle his civil lawsuit.

The school board unanimously approved the settlement with Joseph Carruth last week, according to a copy of the resolution made available Tuesday. Carruth's possible reinstatement also is being discussed, according to several sources familiar with the case.

Carruth, who earned $107,000 a year at the Camden magnet school where he had been principal for two years, was fired on a recommendation by then-Superintendent Annette D. Knox. No reason was cited then, but officials later said it was due to poor job performance.

A year later, Carruth filed a 30-page whistle-blower lawsuit in Camden County Superior Court, alleging that the district dismissed him for publicly reporting in 2005 that he had been asked to tamper with the scores.

Reached Monday at his home in Delaware, Carruth referred all questions to his attorney, Ross Begelman. Begelman did not return calls for comment Tuesday.

Lawyer Jordan R. Irwin, who has worked with Begelman on the case, said Carruth wanted to get his job back as a principal in the Camden School District.

Before entering Tuesday's board meeting, district solicitor Lester E. Taylor 3d said he was not at liberty to discuss any reinstatement talks.

Taylor said that the settlement saved the district a lot of money and avoided "the uncertainty of litigation," which he said could have taken about a month. Carruth sought more than $1 million in his lawsuit.

Citing a confidentiality agreement, school board members said this week that they could not discuss the case.

Carruth, a former math teacher with a master's degree in administration, became Brimm's principal in July 2004.

In January 2005, Carruth claimed, he was pressured by then-Assistant Superintendent Luis Pagan to alter results of students' math High School Proficiency Exam, to be administered in March. He refused, he said.

Pagan denied having had the conversation with Carruth.

When test results came in, Brimm was among the top-performing schools in the region: 92 percent of its 11th graders had scored proficient in math. When the state sent monitors to oversee testing the following year, scores plummeted, with 75 percent scoring proficient.

In January 2006, an internal investigation concluded that the first set of Brimm scores had been altered by Roger Robinson, who was in charge of testing for the district. Robinson, who denied wrongdoing, was suspended with pay and later reinstated by the board.

A district-hired investigator, Edward F. Borden Jr., said he found inconsistencies in Carruth's account and deemed his allegations about Pagan untrue.

Carruth stood by his claim and was fired after the end of the 2005-06 school year.

State education officials concluded in August 2006 that "adult interference" by school staff had helped boost Camden's 2005 scores to among the highest in New Jersey. The state's report was inconclusive on Carruth's allegations about Pagan.

Longtime board member Jose Delgado, who retired from the board earlier this year, said Tuesday that he could not talk about Carruth's firing because it had been decided in closed session. But he said that he considered Carruth to have been a well-liked principal.

"I never heard anything bad about him" before his test-rigging allegations, Delgado said.

In prior interviews with The Inquirer, Carruth said he had trouble finding employment after the scandal. In June 2007, he was hired as a deputy chief academic officer at the West Oak Lane Charter School in Philadelphia, but his stint there was short-lived.

Irwin said he believed Carruth has been unemployed since then.