NYTimes Spins for Bloomberg - Leonie Haimson blows a hole through Times coverage on cost overrun on HS Admissions

Two articles below about a new City Comptroller’s audit, showing huge cost overruns in DOE’s HS admissions system that everyone hates, with a $3.6 million contract for a computerized enrollment system to balloon to more than $23 million . The audit is not yet posted, but there is a good summary in the NY Post and a longer article in the NY Times, reprinted below.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/computer_bungle_in_doe_blackboard_qfwJgsduRYUo0USDZdYf0J#ixzz1EK68EJ59

Yet David Chen of the NY Times writes, adopting the PR spin of DOE: “With the advent of mayoral control of the schools shortly after Mr. Bloomberg took office in 2002, the Education Department overhauled the nerve-wracking and lotterylike process by which students were admitted to high schools.” 

Clearly Mr. Chen has no children who have recently applied to HS.

The HS admissions process in this city has become even more nerve-wracking and downright confusing for most students and parents, with the closing of many of the zoned neighborhood schools, the advent of a HS catalogue more than three inches thick, w/ new schools proliferating like mushrooms, w/ no track record, no accountability, and no oversight as to whether they actually provide the programs they claim. Can you imagine how confusing this is for most parents who have little time to attend all the information sessions or even get through the catalogue? 

In addition, ELL and sped  and immigrant kids are locked out of most of these new schools, and the DOE allows no chance of transferring out of a HS if your child is miserable in the school that s/he is assigned to.  The system is ridiculously difficult to navigate; for some recent observations about how much parents hate the current HS admissions process, see Inside Schools here:

http://insideschools.org/blog/2011/02/17/high-school-hustle-no-more-tears-why-and-how-admissions-must-change/

Finally , when the bureaucrats at Tweed  took over the preK, middle school and G and T admissions process from the districts, in the name of equity but really a power grab, the process has consistently led to botched results, and even more agony for parents, esp. those w/out internet access, and even less equity for poor and minority kids. 

The NY Times article, w/ four consecutive paragraphs w/a consistently pro-Bloomberg spin, follows.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/nyregion/18schools.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion

Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.