All that’s missing is a few hookers

Aaron Pallas fact checks the Klein/Sharpton Education Equality Project over at Gotham Schools.

Leonie Haimson talks about that was the week that was in NYC with the Klein/Sharpton/Bloomberg/Duncan/Biden/Fenty caravan in town at the EEP convention, renamed, "We're Not Really Crooks, at least as long as you can't prove it."

Read this in full to get a sense of the depth of corruption in education under BloomKlein control.
Posted at Norms Notes: Leonie Haimson on: That was the week that was!

A few choice tidbits from Controller Thompson on no-bid contracts:

CTB McGraw budgeted for $1 m; spent $4.2M.
Continental Press – textbooks etc; budgeted $15 K, spent $6.5 M! an increase of 43,000%!!!!
Creative Media Agency to place ads (for what?) was contracted for $589K and yet spent $6.9 Million!!!
According to the Comptroller’s office, in FY 07 and O8, there were 372 contracts – which exceeded the contract amount by 25% or more – w/ DOE spending over $1 billion on these contracts. 127 of these contracts had little or no competition – amounting to $525 million in all.

This year (FY 09) the rate of overspending on contracts is already at 27% -- with three months yet to go.

Follow the No-Bid doins from Columbia School of Journalism Students:
No Bid Tip Sheet Public Eyes on Public Schools

Chaz has a few comments:
Tweed Just Continues To Spend More Money On Non-Educational Items While The Schools Suffer

EEP, I'm Not a Crook Either

The money reportedly did not go directly to Sharpton but was channeled through Education Reform Now, a group Gonzalez said is headed by former Daily News reporter and charter school advocate Joe Williams, who also heads Democrats for Education Reform. Williams (another busy guy), who is president and treasurer of the Education Equity project, would not tell Gonzalez how the donation was handled or what it was used for.

Williams did tell his former colleague that the project’s board has not met in the 10 months since Klein and Sharpton formed it and city Education Department employees have so far made all day-to-day decisions.

More of the story from Gail Robinson
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2009/04/02/public-schools-private-money/

I'm Not a Crook

Former Chancellor Harold Levy and Al Sharpton. Levy preceded Joel Klein as a corporate no-nothing about education chancellor, both having been granted waivers by the NY State Education Department's Richard Allen and the State Board of regents. The whole gang should be taken out with their coats over their heads.


Leonie Haimson to the NYC Education News listserve:

In today’s Daily news, Juan Gonzalez hits it out of the ballpark again – just in time for Al Sharpton’s big pow-wow this week w/ Klein, Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and Mayors and charter school advocates from throughout the country – all singing the praises of Mayoral control and the wonders of charter schools. At the same time, according to the column, Sharpton seems to be disavowing his support for mayoral control, and expresses opposition to “privatizing schools and corporate payoffs in education."

Yet at the time when Sharpton joined up with Klein to form the “Education Equality Project”, some of us were rather suspicious, given that he had just come up with $1 million, enough to settle w/ the feds who were about the indict him for tax fraud.

Now it looks like at least half of these funds were provided by Plainfield Asset Management, the hedge fund of former Chancellor Harold Levy. This hedge fund is heavily invested in gambling and is lobbying the city and the state to acquire Off Track betting and Aqueduct race track. The funds for Sharpton were officially donated to a 501C3 organization that promotes charter schools, a “charitable” organization that allows the donors to take a hefty tax deduction, but then apparently funneled to Sharpton’s operation, which is a 501C4 lobbying group, with no tax-deductibility allowed.

At the time EEP was announced, we wrote on the blog the following:

Until recently, Sharpton was under the cloud of numerous investigations. Most prominently, federal officials accused him of owing nearly $10 million in payroll taxes, and threatened him with criminal prosecution. According to news reports, “Sharpton’s civil rights group had failed for several years in a row to file income tax returns, obtain workers compensation insurance, or disclose how much it was collecting in donations or paying its top employees, as required by law.”

Just ten days after launching the Education Equality Project, Sharpton came up with $1 million, which he promptly handed over to the IRS as a downpayment; in turn, the feds agreed to drop criminal charges if he paid back what he owed the government over the next few years.

….So where did he get the $1 million? As Sharpton explained to the Daily News, “"I make money, so I can pay." Another mystery is who is funding the Education Equality Project. Until recently, David Cantor, the chief communications officer of the DOE, was listed as the main press contact on all its press releases; now they are being sent out without any names attached. Is this effort being subsidized by tax dollars that should be going towards improving our schools? Or as Cantor recently announced to our list serv, is the source of funding an “anonymous” donor, but someone other than Bloomberg? If so, who might that be?

Mayoral control = lack of corruption? I don’t think so.

There is still the question of where the other half a million came from that allowed Sharpton to settle with the feds.

See Juan Gonzalez’s dynamite column.
Rev. Al Sharpton's $500G link to education reform

The Real Face of Ed Reform in NYC - Oops! or EEPs!

Want to see the real face of the "reform" movement in NYC? Try reading through some of these pieces without gagging. I'm not sure what's worse. What BloomKlein are doing or the happy face the UFT is putting on things.

The Full Horror of the ATR Situation in NYC
There's probably no issue that illustrates the BloomKlein commitment to pushing their ideology over education than the ATR (Absentee Teacher Reserve) situation. The open market concept, which the UFT has signed onto, has created a chaotic situation with every man and woman and school for themselves. Why hire 4000 new teachers when you have a reserve of over 1000 experienced teachers waiting for work? IDEOLOGY! That the UFT concurs - don't get me started.

Start off by reading Jamaica HS chapter leader James Eterno's account on the ICE blog of the conditions at his school, where there are overcrowded classes while Absentee Teacher Reserves are kept out of classrooms. James reviews the wonderful news the mouthpiece of the UFT, the NY Teacher, is reporting on the opening of the schools.

UFT Once Again Joins Happy Talk on School System

The same story is being played out all over the city where ATR's are kept out of classrooms while colleagues teach overcrowded classes.

At Lafayette high school:
There are 18 atrs at Lafayette HS plus 2 counselors and 3 paras w/o regular assignments.

At Tilden HS:
There are over 20+ ATR's at Tilden HS. All teaching duties have been taken away from us. The classes are crowded and an extra class was given to a health teacher on a per session basis. Our office was taken away and made into a book room just to make us feel uncomfortable and the locks were also changed. They told us we could move into another office which already had four teachers in it and was too small too begin with. We keep hearing that we be out of the school by Friday (9/19 and sent to another school as an ATR and ATR's from another school will take our place. Whose brilliant plan is this? And what is the UFT doing about this? They told me to go on the Mass Market Transfer. Brilliant!

A commenter said: These stories are insane.

Yoav Gonen in the NY Post confirms the dire ATR situation.


I can't locate the story about 38 kindergarten kids in a Staten Island classroom. And how about throwing standardized tests at those 5 year olds? Just collateral damage in the EEP reform movement.


It is almost impossible to keep up with the enormous body of work the prolific Leonie Haimson produces. One day, when someone writes the history of the BloomKlein stewardship of the NYC school system, if they don't shrink away in horror, will find some of this stuff incredibly useful. I'm including excerpts from each piece but make sure to click on the links for the full stories at Norm's Notes to get all the gory details.

BRONX SCHOOL CHILDREN 'LOST' IN THE SYSTEM

Congrats to Bronx BP Carrion for speaking the truth. Despite the widespread attempt to make it seem like there were few problems this year, the problems of overcrowding, lack of placements, and poor transportation appear rampant. According to his new report,

“...we have seen that there is a systemic problem in the way that the Department of Education approaches, and plans for the new school year. A systemic problem that has not gone away despite all the changes the Department has undertaken; a problem that if allowed to persist,will continue to leave countless New York families out in the cold, waiting for their children to receive the quality education they have been promised, and deserve."

Regents and State Ed demand real accountability from NYC DOE on Class Size!

Today, the State Education Department and the Regents announced that despite being provided with millions of dollars in additional state aid last year, dollars that should have been used to reduce class size, in nearly 54% of NYC schools, class sizes and/or student-teacher ratio increased. In seventy NYC schools that received $100,000 or more to specifically reduce class size, both class size and student-teacher ratio increased. Those seventy schools alone account for nearly $20 million in wasted funds.

Leonie Haimson Questions Jim Dwyer on F Grade at PS 8

Does this school report card have important information about the school, or is it merely an artifact of an absurd evaluation system?

The latter. In addition to all the other statistical problems – basing 85% of the grade on the results of two high stakes exams, with the gains/losses up to 80% random -- the tests themselves are not “equated” or aligned to make the sort of cross year comparisons that Liebman uses them for.

Check out eduwonkette – actually today’s EdWeek commentator is Aaron Pallas, prof. of sociology at Columbia Univ, named Skoolboy: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/2008/09/let_the_spin_begin

Throwing BB’s at EEPs – With a Dollop of Common Sense

The following column will appear in The Wave on Sept. 19, a reworking of some of the material on this blog.

Note: Thanks to Tom Hoffman's comment for the heads up on misplacing the word "bigger" for "broader." An added redundant adjective ended up replacing the intended word. A good lesson for using spell/grammer check without proof reading. Can I get away with blaming a rushed deadline?



What lies between the Joel Klein/Al Sharpton Education Equality Project vision of education reform and the Broader, Bolder approach signed onto by many other education reform advocates?

EEP believes the solution to the buzz word of the century – read in a loud stentorian voice - THE DREADED ACHIEVEMENT GAP - is in a competitive, market based, narrow outcome oriented based on standardized tests system that punishes schools, teachers and kids or rewards them with incentives like merit pay. Create competition by turning whole chunks of school systems over to charter schools run by semi-public and private operations supported by money from outside the school system. EEP says bringing up other factors like class size, home life, behavior, and socio-economic status are just excuses and calls for a “no excuses” approach to education reform.

This is the reform model that is sweeping the urban landscape, in most cases led by a mayor who has been given dictatorial control over the school system. Klein and Sharpton led their troops to the Democratic and Republican conventions to attempt to influence both parties. John McCain signed up immediately.

This summer a counter group called the Broader, Bolder approach to ed reform counters with the idea that schools can't do it alone without significant investment in support services.

Broader, Bolder does not claim schools cannot be improved at all and also seems to sign on to some of the accountability themes of EEP, while calling for an expansion beyond narrow test scores of how schools are held accountable. Broader, Bolder's main themes are:

* Continue to pursue school improvement efforts (with a big component being reducing class size.)
* Increase investment in developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school, and kindergarten education.

Common Sense, Rational Education Reform

This week, a 3rd group organized by two parent activists, has come on the scene. Calling itself "Common Sense Educational Reforms," it is led by New York based Leonie Haimson of “Class Size Matters” and Julie Woestehoff of the Chicago-based "Parents United for Responsible Education" (PURE). They wrote a letter to both presidential candidates outlining their vision for what could be called a rational approach to Ed reform based on common sense instead of ideological prescriptions upon which both EEP and BB seem to operate. Like, how much research is necessary to prove that lower class sizes, enjoyed by the wealthy, would have a positive impact on children, while also improving teacher quality?

The EEPs constantly downplay class size, arguing that there are not enough quality teachers to make a difference. CSER argues that teacher quality deteriorates in large classes no matter what the level of the teacher and lower class sizes would also serve to dam the attrition rate of teachers who often run off to the better working conditions of suburban schools.

CSER certainly comes down closer to the BB’s, calling for:
–Safe and uncrowded schools with more counselors.
–Smaller classes.
–Adequate resources and teacher support to assure that all students receive a rich, well-rounded curriculum including the arts, physical education and project-based learning in a curriculum connected to their own lives and culture, with progress evaluated by high-quality, appropriate assessment tools that are primarily classroom-based.
–More parental involvement. A high level of involved parents at the school level leads to better outcomes for students.

They enter the fray as major critics of the Klein/Sharpton EEP approach, claiming “the top- down, corporate approach to school governance currently used in cities throughout the country such as Chicago and New York has consistently and systematically worked to eliminate the ability of parents to have a real voice in decision-making and thus to be true partners at the school and district level.” I find it interesting that poorer urban parents are being denied the right to elect school boards and control school funding, a right enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of parents in this nation.

The NY Sun’s Elizabeth Green wrote about CSER this week:

They dismiss Mr. Klein's as offering only a beefed-up version of President Bush's unpopular No Child Left Behind law. Mr. Klein's prescriptions are "NCLB on steroids." They also reject charter schools, which are embraced by Mr. Klein and his supporters as a means of giving opportunities to poor children. The Common Sense group says charter schools actually further exacerbate income disparities by admitting only children who can do well at their schools and leaving the rest to flounder. Admission at charter schools is regulated by strict lotteries in New York, but the parents argue that only the savvy students apply to them, and they say that the schools encourage more troubled students to leave.

CSER has a new blog at: http://commonsensereforms.blogspot.com/


Separate and Unequal: When Parents Hire the Teachers

When I taught in Williamsburg, the PTA raised money, mostly through candy sales. They used the money to buy books for the library and reading programs. But the idea of buying extra teacher services? Why that would take a hell of a lot of money. This week, we read about the enormous amounts of money PTA’s in wealthy areas raise to buy all kinds of services that are beyond the realm of schools in poor areas. Major differences in spending per pupil in charter vs. public schools have also emerged, allowing charters to offer lower class sizes and other services.
What all this means is perpetuating a system of "separate and unequal” for the kids most in need.

Democrats: All On Board in Attack on Teacher Unions

Revised 8/26, 11:30 pm- for The Wave, School Scope column to be published Friday, Aug. 29.

We've been pointing out that when it comes to the ed reform movement, Democrats have not been all that far away from the Republican agenda. Joel Klein, Joe Williams, Al Sharpton, Cory Booker and the rest of the Educational Equality Project gang are Democratic Party (I won't call them democratic because they are in favor of dictatorship over the schools of poor minority kids while white suburban parents get to vote on school boards and budgets.)

A typical anti-union cartoon

The Bigger, Bolder approach would seem more in line with traditional values of the Party but as Phylissa Cramer and Kelly Vaughan have been pointing out at Gotham Schools, they may not be all that different. Are the EEP and Bigger, Bolder approaches all that far apart? Both call for accountability. But what does that mean? Where is the accountability on the part of politicians and the business community?

Kelly writes:

And as a society, it makes no sense to put the whole burden on schools. I will know that our nation really wants to leave no child behind when I see a complete package of funded legislation that takes on health care (physical and mental), housing, environmental justice, early childhood education, and a host of other issues that affect the development and opportunities of our kids. “Our schools are failing,” is nothing but an excuse when the rest is left unaddressed.

To me, it looks like common sense: no excuses schools in a no excuses society.

Let’s move beyond the “false choice” and explore what two-way accountability could look like in practice. Anyone?

When Randi Weingarten jumps on the one-way accountability bandwagon - "Yes, we do want to be accountable" - we know we are in trouble. I've been asking Randi for a decade, "Accountable for what and to whom?" Listen, I jumped on her from the day she first uttered her support for mayoral control in 2001 when I knew from the Chicago experience that the only answers politicians will have is to blame teachers and their union.

What I want my union leader to say is: We have always been accountable to our children and to our parents and to our principals. But to some federal, state and city government that raises itself above accountability? No way!

So yesterday she had a golden opportunity in her speech at the Democratic convention to make an important point for teachers. Naturally, she failed the test.

Chapter leader Lisa North commented on ICE-mail:

Wow, Randi's speech basically said nothing about education except that public education is important and too must testing is not a good idea. It seemed very weak.

Lisa, I didn't expect anything more. Like did you hear her mention class size and the studies that support it? Did you hear her call for full funding of education instead of wars and bailouts? Did you hear her call them on No Excuses - on their part?

Randi has always tried to play both sides against the middle by bending over backwards to try to show she is a reasonable union leader and "progressive" in a willingness to give up teachers.
To be perfectly fair, she is just following the trail blazed by Al Shanker back in the early 80's when he jumped on board the same bandwagon. (plug- plug - get a pdf of our review of the Kahlenberg book on Shanker.)

But what good as it done the AFT/UFT as they still keep coming under attack? Thus, read yesterday''s Michelle O'Neill report at Ed Week

Union Tensions at DNC

The education event that followed the NEA luncheon showed the growing tensions within the Democratic Party over school reform, and the role of teachers’ unions.

Though it’s no surprise an event sponsored by the Democrats for Education Reform would have a slight anti-union message; many of the speakers at the event took several shots at unions during the press conference announcing the Education Equality Project in June.

Today, the sentiment was strong and persistent at standing-room-only, three-hour forum called Ed Challenge for Change. In fact, some of the big-city mayors who participated predicted that had such a forum been held four years ago, a mere five souls would have showed.

Here at the Denver Art Museum, Democratic mayors from Newark, N.J., Washington D.C., and Denver joined education reform darlings including New York City’s Joel Klein and Washington D.C.’s Michelle Rhee. The group was referred to as the “misfits” of the Democratic Party by DFER's Joe Williams, a nod to their willingness to speak up against the influence of teachers’ unions, which have formed the backbone of the party.

The educators, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, kicked off the event with a nearly hour-long press conference to tout the event. There, Rhee (who left early to catch a flight home; D.C. schools open on Monday), took the Democrats to task, saying the party is “supposed to be the party that looks out for poor and minority kids,” when that’s not actually happening.

The anti-union sentiment spilled over into policy forums that followed. The fight against the teachers’ unions and other special interests is a “battle at the heart of the Democratic Party,” said Newark Mayor Cory Booker. “As Democrats, we have been wrong on education. It’s time to get right.”

Even former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who has tried to avoid controversy in his position as the ED in ’08 leader, earned some murmurs from the audience when he said that reformers cannot be “wedded to someone else’s union rules and that politicians, practically speaking, need to work with unions even thought they are “wedded to the past.”

See more reports at Slate and Dana Goldstein at The American Prospect who says:

if ...teachers... embrace the Democrats for Education Reform agenda -- giving up tenure in exchange for higher starting salaries and merit pay tied to student achievement -- the unions will have to get with the program. If they don't, they'll risk becoming irrelevant to their own members.


Unions are already becoming irrlevant (how many vote in elections?) to their own members for the opposite reasons: capitulation to the BloomKlein Educational Equality Project agenda. Unfortunately, Randi Weingarten will not resist the "advice" Dana Goldstein offers and will continue to lead the teacher union movement into oblivion.

EEP Marches to Denver

The true agenda of the EEP revealed: It's all about politics, not education. Children First, indeed.

Schools in Washington and NYC are about to open. A major contract issue exists in DC. Yet the leaders of those school systems are in Denver trying to get the Democrats to endorse their program:

credit recovery
false graduation rates
over crowded buildings
rote learning
inflaming racial tensions

(thanks to Voice for the list and to David B for the graphic)

Level Playing Fields Are Full of Weeds

Skoolboy over at Eduwonkette's place has an analytical post on education and socio-economic status, one of the issues addressed by the Broader/Bolder approach to ed reform. He starts off with:


skoolboy doesn’t know who was the first to say that the true measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members, but it’s an appealing proposition. All societies have children and adults who vary in their economic, social and cultural status within the society. In virtually every modern society, the more advantaged, as a group, do better than those with lower status, although individuals can rise or fall in relation to their peers. Today’s visit to the Olympics looks at the relationship between a child’s socioeconomic status and proficiency in math and science across countries.


His post made a connection to a fascinating program I saw on PBS yesterday (Wide Angle) on the rigid exam system in China and the pressures on students. When Aaron Brown questioned a defender of the system, she claimed that this was the closest to a level playing field where the child of a peasant has an equal chance with the child of a high government official. Brown was skeptical. "Well," she said, "naturally there are advantages and the peasant may have to be 10 times smarter than the official's child but if he/she is then the playing field is equal."

It's worth checking out just to see her justification at the end of the program. All rote learning all the time and you get weeded out before you reach high school Of course, China invented the examination system over a thousand years ago.

With the US schools, especially in urban poor areas, heading in the same direction, we hear the same claims of a level playing field from the Joel Klein/Al Sharpton Educational Equality Project. What they are really doing is picking off the 10 times smarter kids and pushing them into charter and other privatization situations while leaving the other kids behind in large, overcrowded, under serviced high schools.

Sort of like they weed them out in China in the 8th grade.

Level playing field indeed.

The Magnificent Five Amigos

Update

The Amazing Randi video at Pseudointellectualism

Why has Randi Weingarten been added to the Education Equality Project amigos when she has endorsed the Bigger, Bolder agenda with her acceptance speech at the AFT convention?

We recently pointed to the "Weingarten contradiction" when she wanted credit for cooperating with the "reforms" pushed down the throats of the NYC school system by Joel Klein.

Remember how she stood on the stage when they got the Broad Prize for pushing EEP ideas?

And she stood next to them when they had a bragfest for getting high scores that everyone in NYC knows are not real.

And signed onto a bonus/merit pay plan for teachers based on high test scores while out of the other side of her mouth she laments how high stakes testing curriculum doesn't address the needs of the whole child.

Those of you outside of NYC unfamiliar with Weingarten's "I want to have my cake and eat it approach" will be seeing a lot more of that in years to come. Try not to choke on it as we have.

Photoshopping by DB