How the NYCDOE Lies? Let Me Count the Ways

Not a day goes by that we are not flooded with information on the kinds of lies and misinformation coming out of the NYC Department of Education and Mayor Bloomberg's office. That objections to the outrages are coming from both teachers and parents is worth noting, though it is ignored by the media (see report on WNYC Beth Fertig report yesterday). I'll be posting some of this when there is time, but it is only scratching the surface. Check with the NYC Public School Parents Blog for consistent updates.

That the school community is totally ignored when school closings are announced or new schools are placed or forced into existing buildings, is not in question by anyone involved. But the BloomKlein spin machine spits out lies by the second. (Today there will be a demonstration from 3-4:30 by parents and teachers at PS/IS 72 in the East NY section of Brooklyn, 605 Shepherd Ave. UFT officials will be there to assure them the closing is a fait accompli.)

Leonie Haimson sent this post:

On Monday night, at the mayoral control forum in Queens, Dina Paul Parks, Senior Policy Advisor to Deputy Mayor Walcott, insisted that parents in general and district leadership teams in particular are consulted and their input is solicited before any decision is made on where to site new schools in the district. The video with her comments are here: Debate on Mayoral control; check it out!

Parent activist Lisa Donlon from District 1 on the lower east side responded. I don't know what most of the labels she is using mean, but you'll get the gist of what Lisa is talking about.
Note in particular the role being played by Tweed's CEO of Parent Involvement, Martine Guerrier, who a long, long, time ago in a galaxy far away, was actually someone who questioned the actions of Tweed when she was the Brooklyn rep on the Panel for Education Policy. That was before B'klyn Boro Pres. Marty Markowitz signed on as a total BloomKlein flunky and Martine started to drift. Then on the day of the big anti-BloomKlein rally in Feb. 2007, she was hired for the $150,000 job by Klein. (See Ed Notes, Say It Ain't So Martine and Leonie's report on the Feb. 28, 2007 Rally to Put the Public Back in Public Education.) From what I hear, Martine has become a virtual spin machine all by herself.


Lisa

I bet someone at DoE tells her (Dina Paul Parks) that is true.
It is not.

One example- tonight was the public hearing for the OPD planned move of Ross Global Academy into Eastside Community High School in District One.

The RGA board discussed the plan in mid October, according to their minutes.
I was informed by OPD in mid November of a plan that was calibrated down to the number of classrooms needed vs the number available, yet no one at Eastside, including the principal, had at that point been told.

The matter has not to date been brought to my DLT for input of any kind although I have informed the members of the plan.

Last spring Martine told CEC members that OFEA had worked with a number of DLT's to plan school closings and new school openings.

I'd be happy to share the correspondence by which I tried to ascertain the validity of the claims; I asked for meeting agendas and attendance lists, that were never provided to back up the claim (that buck stopped at Brian Ellner).

Some of the CEC members in the districts cited by Martine as having had these conversations told me that a sort of shadow DLT was convened by OFEA and OPD to have these discussions.

DLT core membership is defined by state law and Chancellor's Regs but
I had the impressions that these other groups would pass a sniff test.

Lisa Donlon follows up in another post with these questions:

Why does everyone buy into the demonizing mythology of the "bad old days" of school boards?
Why glorify the current system which has many more serious flaws?
Why is the legislature not threatened with a close down when corruption, scandal and cronyism are revealed?
Why are only poor, urban, non-white school systems subject to "control" by autocracy?

Parent Ellen Bilofsky of Brooklyn wrote this email to Beth Fertig of WNYC after her report on the Brian Lehrer show on mayoral control yesterday. (I was on hold to talk about the drive-by diplomas and reports of teachers being pressured to not give kids level one scores after I heard Fertig repeat the DOE bull-stat that Level ones had dropped significantly under BloomKlein without considering the real reason.)

As a public school parent for 17 years, I'm disappointed at your presentation of the issues around mayoral control (although I missed the first few minutes).

For one thing, you seemed to accept the DOE's line that test scores are a solid--and the only--indication of improvement, without questioning the increased focus on those scores. If low-performing schools raise their scores, but the students learn nothing except how to take standardized tests, how much better off are these children?

You also repeated that principles have been "empowered" to control their own schools, without realizing how hamstrung they really are by the DOE's requirements for constant testing and by requiring the schools to absorb some of the services the districts formally paid for but with slashed budgets.

Finally, you dismissed parental involvement under the previous governance system as "theater" and merely "feeling listened to." Yet parent leaders in many districts, and to an extent at the city level, had considerable influence on the policies of their superintendents and had substantial information about district policies and budgets.

I personally felt my years of involvement were denigrated by that comment.

The current DOE turns the notion of "accountability" on its head by being accountable to no one for its policies--not to parents, not to the City Council, not even to the State legislature. Being able to vote the mayor out of office once every four years is not sufficient to hold him accountable for his chancellor's educational policies, when we are voting on his performance in so many other areas. And schoolchildren can't wait four years to rectify the DOE's grave mistakes.

Only a system of checks and balances, with true accountability and oversight, can fix this.

There is much, much more that could be said about the problems of mayoral control and what needs to be done to improve our system without "throwing the baby" of what was done right under the old system "out with the bathwater."

I hope future segments will give a more balanced view (well, actually, more tilted toward the parents' point of view) and will give parents some time to respond.

I'll close with this comment from NYC Parent Steve Koss

So many of us on this listserv believe fervently that the Klein regime's relentless focus on "measurable results" -- graduation rates, standardized test scores, etc. -- has utterly perverted the education process and led to all sorts of machinations to fudge the numbers (credit recovery, scaled exam scoring, discouraging participation in exams, changing student answers, etc.). This is an inevitable outcome of basing people's compensation, performance reviews, bonuses, even their jobs on those "measurable" outcomes. More than 30 years ago, this was formally identified by what is now known as Campbell's Law: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decisionmaking, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."

My point is this. WE all know this is going on, WE all believe that the system has been turned upside, leading to these behaviors, but most of the public and most of the media (especially the major NYC newspapers) either don't know, don't believe it, or simply don't care to report it. Until we can get a respectably large group of teachers and school administrators to get up and, as they say, speak the truth to power, nothing is going to change and we'll remain on this same road to well-measured ruin (although, ironically and tragically, it will look to most like a magnif icent, quantifiable success).

Perhaps we can start collecting/cataloging these stories and get the individuals who report them to also stand behind them (even if anonymously). I suppose I'm being naive, but wouldn't it be great, for example, to have a press conference where people from the classrooms told these stories? What WE all believe and know to be happening will never become common knowledge and public perception until we can get those closest to this to speak out about what they see going on every day in their schools. How can people who care about children's education stand silently by and watch this happening?

The Video the UFT Doesn't Want You To See: The ATR Rally

A Tale of Two Rallies
or
A Tale of a Rally
and
A Wine and Cheese Party

[Make sure to see Part 2 also]

On November 24, 2008, teachers without positions, known as ATRs, held a rally at Tweed. They had forced the UFT to endorse the rally but in the interim the UFT signed an agreement with the DOE. The leadership called for an information meeting at UFT HQ, a mile away at the very same time the rally was due to start. Mass confusion. I taped the UFT HQ while David Bellel did the rally. The back story is how desperate UFT leaders were to suppress the tape I made. In fact, today at the Delegate Assembly they will pass a gag rule to try to prevent future embarrassment.

Part 1
Concurrent events at Tweed and the UFT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ac-Ul1m8-0



Part 2
UFT leaders with some ATRs who went to the info session march -er- meander up Broadway to Tweed where the 2 forces meet. Unity is outnumbered and Randi is heckled as she speaks. Note: She congratulates the people who called for the rally, saying there would not have been an agreement with the DOE if not for the rally. Less than an hour before she gave the people at the info meeting the reverse message: that in these bad economic times, things like rallies and militancy are not wise. No wonder they didn't want me to tape.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG4xrbgiGqU

When Schools Close

My column for the Dec. 12 edition of The Wave (www.rockawave.com)

The geniuses at the Tweed Courthouse (the HQ of the NYCDOE) have done it again. Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg have been in charge of the NYC schools for seven years and they still don’t have a clue. But they have to make it look like they’re doing something, so they race around closing schools. Closing schools has been a failed policy. The mantra should be, “fix schools, don’t close them.” Like, have they ever tried the idea of drastically reducing class size?

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters has written on the NYC Public School Parents blog:
The Institute for Education Studies has concluded that that class size reduction is one of only four, evidence-based reforms that through rigorous, randomized experiments have been proven to work – the "gold standard" of research. None of the strategies attempted by the NYC Department of Education under Joel Klein's leadership were cited.

But Joel Klein has always pooh-poohed class size reduction with the response that high quality teachers are more important. Our response has been that with smaller class sizes the overall quality of teaching will go up across the board.

The act of closing a school is a deflection of responsibility and an open admission by Klein that he has no answers. After all, he is in charge. He can change the administration of a school at any time. But that’s not the fish Klein wants to fry. His minions have put in these administrators to run most schools in the city and their continued problems can be laid directly at his door. So, it becomes “blame the teacher” time.

The most recent list of schools to be closed includes PS 225 on Beach 110th Street here in Rockaway. Howie Schwach’s front page story has a list of exactly how this plan will be implemented. Tweed arrives at these plans by tossing a bunch of post-it notes in the air and those that land inside a square are the ones implemented. More of that rearranging of deck chairs on a sinking ship.

They have a particular problem with PS 225. In Schwach’s article, a parent says, “This school was closed once before. They got rid of all the teachers, some of who were very good. They kept the administration and the kids, who are the real problems in the school. What good did it do?” Over two-thirds of the teachers had to find new jobs and the others had to reapply and be accepted by the administration.

In the world of the BloomKlein model of education reform, the lack of quality teaching is the problem with poor academic performance. So how did changing the teachers three years ago at PS 225 work out?

Now let’s get this straight. We know there have been some problems at PS 225. But Tweed doesn’t care about the problems parents and teachers worry about. They care about data. And the widgets (or idjits) at the DOE looked at some numbers and made the decision to close the school – again. Guess what? Watch them do it again in three years.

There’s been a lot of focus on the “D” grade the school received on the school report card, another bogus attempt to create a phony accountability system by Klein, where everyone is accountable but him. These grades are 85% test-driven and ignore so many other factors. Leonie Haimson suggested we focus less on the grade and explore the more reliable state accountability status of PS 225 and compare it to other schools that are not closing down. “We simply have no idea why DOE chooses certain schools to close and others to keep open,” she said. “If there is a problem with the principal the DOE can remove him and put another in place without closing the school.” People who want the school to stay open can do this and make their case to the public. But with a union that goes along and gets along, teachers are left to the wolves. Imagine if there was a real union out there that made a big issue of this! Nah, not in this universe.

The “new” plan for PS 225 now calls for two separate schools instead of the current K-8, which was supposedly forced down the throats of the school administration to relieve the pressure on the other middle schools in Rockaway. Beginning in September 2009, a Pre-K to 5th grade school will open, which will ultimately go up to 5th grade and a 6-8 middle school with a different administration will open. See, now we can have two high priced principals and sets of administrators and office staffs all fighting over the same space. Like, I said, geniuses. The “old” DOE policy seems to have been to form lots of K-8 and 6-12 schools. Is that policy now dead? Or will it be resurrected when the “new” policy become old. How about trying this? Form two separate schools with odd and even numbered grades. We can have a school with grades 1, 3, 5 and 7 and another with K, 2, 4, 6, and 8. Ok, I’m joking. But don’t be surprised if it doesn’t happen.

The teachers at PS 225 now face the prospect of being added to the growing ATR (Absentee Teacher Reserve) list, where those that don’t get jobs (while brand new teachers do) will be relegated to substituting and doing scut work around the school or being sent off into the hinterland to other schools while many of whatever union rights they had left disappear. Oh, yes, there is always that Open Market System of job searching, so vaunted by the UFT (Unfortunate Federation of Teachers.)

I’ve been working with groups around the city to defend and rally around the ATR atrocity created by the disastrous 2005 contract agreed to by our wonderful UFT leaders, who have broken a Guinness record by selling more teachers down the river in the shortest amount time.

Teacher quality
Speaking of sell-outs, I’m really getting sick of the line being pushed that the single most important factor in student achievement is teacher quality, something the UFT unfortunately signs onto. That has lead to a focus on so-called accountability where teachers are being measured by the scores of their students (again, something agreed to by the UFT). Many teachers in NYC will be getting report cards supposedly based on the value added approach, which measures how much their students have grown (not height, unfortunately). But researchers have pointed out that the value added approach is an unproven commodity. And even if it was, we still question whether the narrow test score approach that leaves so much out about what teachers do is an adequate way to judge a teacher’s quality. There will never be a true measure. But here is what I know about judging whether someone is a good teacher: you know one when you see one.


Related: No evidence of improved outcomes at small schools

NYC Deputy Chancellor Cerf "Chided" About Soliciting Donation

Chided? That's it?
Would you buy a used car from Christopher Cerf?
A teacher would be hung.
Remember the librarian at Brooklyn Tech who was hounded for promoting his daughter's book?
Don't they have rubber rooms for deputy chancellors?
Five years ago I spoke at a PEP meeting and said one day the entire gang would be taken out of Tweed with their coats over their heads.

Mr. Cerf’s relationship with the company, now called EdisonLearning, first made headlines in February 2007, when he assured a citywide parents’ group that he had “zero” financial interest in Edison. He later acknowledged that he had relinquished his equity stake in the company only the day before.

“Raising money for a not for profit, tell me, what’s wrong with that?” he added.

Graphic by David

Interesting how the DOE imposes all kinds of crap on schools and teachers attempting to raise money.

The NY Times had to get the Condon report using Freedom of Information. Good for them.

The Rally at Tweed Video: Part 2

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8472301528763563153&hl=en
(Thanks to David B.)

NEW: Lots of good photos by John Lawhead at the ICE web site: http://www.ice-uft.org

It is clear that the UFT's actions around the rally created a level of anti-Unity caucus sentiment that almost matched the feelings against Tweed.

There's going to be more to come with some video I have from the UFT info meeting occurring at the same time, the meander up Broadway, mostly by the Unity hardcore, and the meeting of the two groups at Tweed.

On the way, Randi came over and suggested I turn over the tape to her because "people are upset" over my taping. She tried to make it seem the ATRs were upset over appearing on You-tube (in fact I had no intention of doing that and told her so). The extreme hostility of Unity (you will see that when I put up the video) was due to the fact that I was documenting their sell-out of the rally.

What was interesting was the level of arrogance Randi and Unity, which includes the entire UFT staff, have when they are in a room overwhelmingly dominated by them as it was at 52 Broadway (and is at Delegate Assemblies). Randi's open attack on me ("Norman, put down that camera") and the screams of outrage by the Unity throng was reminiscent of the same kind of attack she made on former NY Sun Reporter Elizabeth Green (now at Gotham Schools) at the October DA. But creating bogus enemies is a common tactic of dictators as a way of keeping their own supporters (there are enough honest Unity people who see the disaster the state of the union is in) pumped up with perceived threats from within.

It was a different ballgame when they got to Tweed, surrounded by demonstrators who had grown hostile by their absence and were particularly inflamed when they heard there were UFT staffers across the street directing people away from the rally over to the union. Some of them heckled Randi when she spoke, something she is clearly not used to.

Rather than put up my raw tape (a lot of shaky stuff due to the Unity harassment and attempt to block me from filming) David and I will edit both tapes into a 10-minute more watchable piece with excerpts from some of the speeches and a contrast to the wine and cheese munchers at 52 Broadway while the people at Tweed were out in the cold for hours.

Tweed Public Relations Head Gets Mail

David Cantor, from the Tweed PR Department, responded on the NYC Education News parent dominated listserve to some of the critical comments on Joel Klein and got an earful. Or a basket full of email. His post and responses from parents Steve Koss and Leonie Haimson (just 2 out of numerous) are posted on Norms Notes. (I'll add some more to the post as they come in.

Teaching Fellow RTRs Rally at Tweed

Despite a driving drizzle a hardy band of NYC first year Teaching Fellows who have not yet been appointed and are threatened with being fired, losing their provisional teaching certification and being tossed from the Masters degree grad program, attempted to meet with DOE officials at Tweed yesterday afternoon. Marjorie Stamberg from the Ad Hoc ATR committee and Michael Fiorillo from ICE were there to show support. No one from UFT officialdom showed, But they only show if there might be press around. The RTRs do not seem to expect much help from the UFT in defending their jobs.

Kelly Vaughan from Gotham Schools was there to report. (Photo by Kelly)

According to DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte, 115 new Teaching Fellows are still without jobs, down from 139 in mid-October. Teachers tonight told me they are working as substitutes and assistants while they seek permanent positions

Read Kelly's full report here. I'm borrowing Kelly's excellent photo as I only had a video camera. I will put the interviews up if they came out ok.

Robert from ICE posted this on ICE mail:

Although the numbers were modest, the RTR rally today in the rain at Tweed was spirited. We had signs supporting the RTRs and ATRs. Several RTRs were there, including concerned relatives of the one of the RTRs. Members of the Ad Hoc Committee to support the ATRs were also there, as well as members of other groups. Passersby were engaged, and several stopped to talk and get more information. Dan, the coordinator of the RTR group, dressed in the prison suit of a condemned man, gave a speech on the steps movingly pleading the case for a reprieve of the RTRs. Then the entire body ascended the steps of Tweed in an effort to go inside and talk someone in Chancellor Klein's office. Although Tweed is a public building, it is managed by a city agency and Tweed is a tenant of this entity, and security personnel of the management barred the way. A DOE representative was fetched, however, and took material to bring to the Chancellor's office. A reporter for the Gotham Schools blog took interviews.

We must keep up the pressure on the DOE not to fire the RTRs and work to ensure a maximum turnout for the ATR rally on the behalf of the ATRs on November 24.

Robert

What's in YOUR Wallet? Ask the Tweedies

One minute it was there. And the next it was gone. Meredith Kolodner's article in the Daily News about the wealth of top Tweed officials suddenly disappeared from the web site soon after it was posted when Tweed complained to the higher ups at the newspapers. The lost story was reported by Elizabeth Green at Gotham Schools.

My understanding is that the story was slated to run today both in the newspaper and online, but then got scrapped late last night. This appears to have happened because of an outside intervention, since the story had already been uploaded to the paper’s Web site, meaning it had gone all the way through the editing process. Word of the decision to kill the story — not postpone or delay or just put on the Web, but kill — came to both print and Web designers, who dutifully destroyed it, except for one thing: the Web headline, which was still visible this morning.

Leonie Haimson and the gang at the NYC Public School Parent blog used mouth to mouth resusication to bring the story back to life.

After a slew of negative revelations about the way Tweed botched the Gifted and talented admissions process so that it became much less diverse, schools have remained hugely overcrowded, they are paying through the nose for personal couriers and consultants, and the $80 million supercomputer ARIS that is a massive failure and waste of money, one wonders why the extreme sensitivity on this particular issue?

More from Leonie and the revived story at the NYCPSP blog.

Ed Note: When Meredith Kolodner was at The Chief her reporting on NYC education and other matters was always outstanding. And we hope the gig at the Daily News which seems so much under the Bloomberg heel will allow her the freedom to continue that work. Elizabeth Green is continuing her great work from the NY Sun at Gotham. While teachers generally mistrust members of the press, these 2 have always been reliable in getting a teacher point of view out there.

Teachers to Be Rated on Chronic Absence - parody

The release of the Milano report finding that

... more than 20 percent of the city’s elementary school pupils were chronically absent during the 2007–08 school year—that is, they missed at least 20 days of the 185-day school year. In districts serving poor neighborhoods, the numbers are even higher. In the south and central Bronx, in central Harlem, and in several neighborhoods in central Brooklyn, 30 percent or more of the pupils were chronically absent, according to the analysis. In contrast, only 5.2 percent of pupils were chronically absent in District 26, which serves the middle class neighborhood of Bayside, Queens… Of the 725 public schools serving elementary grades (excluding charter schools and schools serving severely disabled children), 165 have chronic absentee rates of 30 percent or more… [MORE and NY Times article]

has led to a landmark agreement between the UFT and Tweed to rate teachers on their ability to prevent chronic absence of their students, Ed Notes News is reporting.

Joel Klein said, "These high absentee rates are clearly due to teachers who do not do lessons interesting enough to get their kids to want to come to school."

"No excuses," proclaimed his able assistant Christopher Cerf when asked about the vast differences in the numbers between the poorer and wealthier areas of the city. "Teachers have to figure out ways to get these kids into school. You do what you have to do. If mouth to mouth is necessary, then damnit do it. That is the way to show a spirit willing to close the achievement gap."

Surgical masks, rubber gloves and hazmat suits will be issued to teachers making visits to sick beds. "See, we're not as heartless as they make us out to be," said Cerf. Schools that do not improve will be closed and replaced by condos.

Randi Weingarten agreed to sign on to a plan to grade teachers based on their attendance figures as long as the results are not publicized. "This once and for all ends the public pillorying of teachers based on the attendance rates of their kids," said a UFT spokesperson. "The results will be used by teachers solely to improve by looking at what is wrong with their teaching to keep so many kids away from school for a month.

Ask but don't tell
The spokesperson said, "And the best part of this is our victory on the Klein-Cerf demand that teachers looking for a job have to show the results. Principals may ask but teachers don't have to tell."


Deputy Mayor for Education and Community Development Dennis M. Walcott will speak at a forum addressing the impact of chronic absenteeism in New York City public schools, following the release of a report from The New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families. Deputy Mayor Walcott will talk about the importance of creating in all schools a culture that recognizes that failure for our students, regardless of their family or life circumstances, is not an option. He will also reinforce the Department of Education’s efforts to hold schools accountable for students’ academic achievement, and highlight efforts to combat chronic absenteeism and the role of community collaboration and partnerships in that work.
[Last paragraph NOT a parody.]

Rumor Mill: Upset at Canarsie High School

UPDATE: Link to the Canarsie Courier --- you got to read this! Including the student account of their counselor being excessed and other chaotic excessing.
http://www.canarsiecourier.com/news/2008/0925/TopStories/014.html

UPDATE 2 (from a Canarsie teacher):
As a result of a letter writing campaign by a couple teachers, and multiple correspondence to Randi, she (took time off her busy schedule and) 1) sent Charlie Turner, who got a hostile reception, then 2) came herself , and was not treated so badly, and 3) sent Leon Casey and Charlie Turner who came today (Oct. 8).

Our teachers are concerned that they will become ATRs and forced to take a no-paid leave after one year, and more so, in the next contract, ATRs will be sacrificed. Randi reassured them that job security is paramount, "over my dead body", and they made her promise to write those assurances in the NY Teacher.

[So many] voted for the '05 contract, so the "chickens have come home to roost."



Original Post (Oct. 7, 12 pm)
This came in over the transom. Canarsie high school is in southeast Brooklyn. Canarsie is one of the big schools that are closing or closed (Tilden, South Shore, Jefferson) in the area, putting tremendous pressure on the education system. A free floating pool of ATR's -teachers without positions in all the schools has paralled the free floating pool of students looking for places to land. The chaos of the shock doctrine of the BloomKlein reforms.

I'm hearing that something big has been going on at Canarsie HS. There are reports that Randi was there last Friday and again today to try and control things. They had a large number of ATRs this Fall.

A teacher told a friend a couple of excessed teachers had written an article that appeared in the Canarsie Courier, a real estate newspaper. She also mentioned that Randi had discussed the possibility of striking if there were layoffs. Maybe she's rehearsing a new line for next week's D.A.?

They ought to give Randi a fire hose. Gee, who is running the AFT? Jeff Zahler, I hear. (Having fun, Jeff?)

Randi use of strike statement interpreted (if she said that.)
Randi's use of the word strike is more of a threat to teachers - like - do you want to strike - over this? She knows full well the newer teachers would laugh at the idea. So would older teachers who would have more confidence in the US economy's recovery that they would in Randi's willingness and ability to run a successful strike.

Guess What? "Bonuses Are Us" Tweed/UFT Plan Lead to Cheating

...DOE alchemists turn a 4 into a 1.

Elizabeth Green's piece in the NY Sun on how South Bronx principal John Hughes got great scores by urging teachers to give a little bit of help, is more prevalent than is imagined. That was the modus operendi in my school for 25 years. Just as in this article, teachers at the school we fed into used to laugh themselves silly when they saw the scores. That the school just happens to be a bonus/merit pay school is gravy, but the bonuses are a new thing and will only exacerbate a problem that has existed for a long time.

The covert and overt cheating - and I look at the artificial pump of test prep as part of this - goes a long way to explaining how kids' scores drop dramatically from the 4th to the 8th grade.

Hughes tried to solve the problem by moving up from the feeder to the fed school - IS 301, where he immediately alienated teachers, including a TFA who refused to "help" the kids in the way Hughes wanted and was driven from the system while TFA supported the principal - naturally. TFA apparently believes in closing the achievement gap by hook or crook.

The big problem facing all the Regressive Ed Reformers is to figure out a way to get the same level of cheating in the 8th grade, where kids will blab more freely than younger kids.

If you want a reality check, have teams go into randomly selected schools in mid-September to give tests. Assume a summer loss drop but I bet it will go way beyond that.

The perfect example, as Green wrote:

"These kids didn't know how to write, they didn't know how to add," a math teacher at M.S. 201 who is leaving the school, Elizabeth Cano, said. "How could they be getting level 4?" Ms. Cano said the discrepancy would be clearest when the teachers gave pre-tests in the first week of school. "They used to all get a level 1," she said.

Tweedies Choose Leadership Academy in Competetive - ahem - Bidding

As the press releases from Tweed get more and more bizarre, this one announcing the Gestapo-inspired Leadership Academy as the winner of a $50 million 5 year contract to train principals is one of the best.

"The NYC Leadership Academy was selected from among multiple vendors through a competitive procurement process and will begin providing services to the Department of Education (DOE) on July 1, 2008."

The rejected bidders included the CIA - water boarding division and a consortium led by Osama bin Laden. "The didn't demonstrate the kinds of advanced techniques in the treatment of teachers we were looking for," said a Tweed spokesperson.

Leonie Haimson said:
This is perhaps the most absurd press release I've ever seen come out of the land of Tweed-- DOE's version of competitive bidding! Gary (Babad) are you sure you didn't take a job at Tweed after all?

Gary responds:
If you'll remember, GBN News has the sole distributorship rights to DOE
press releases. I don't know who these impostors are, but not to worry - if it doesn't say "GBN News" on the press release, it's not authentic.

Special Ed Placement: ETTTTS Part 2

If you need a reminder of the meaning of ETTTTS: Everything Tweed Touches Turns To Shit
Today's lesson, kiddies, is on the placement of special ed middle students, or the lack thereof.
The great civil rights advocates (aka Klein, Sharpton, Rhee, etc.) talk about the shame of the nation, when they daily commit do shameful things. Oh, and good luck to the DOE's Sandy Ferguson, who is new to the job but stepped in the doo doo right away. Well, at least he's sad about it. And the buck stops at him - next year - if he's still there.

Report from Inside Schools:

Parents and special-ed committee members met with DOE <http://schools.nyc.gov/> officials tonight at in the far reaches of Brooklyn, to ask about two-week delays in middle-school admissions for students with special needs.

Parents spoke passionately of frustrations in getting information about the process; of second-rate attention for special-needs students; of questions long unanswered, from parents, guidance counselors and principals. Many protested the punishing rate of DOE change, and charged that a similar pace -- four major reorganizations in five years -- would likely have cost a CEO in the marketplace his or her job.

Sandy Ferguson, in his first year as executive director of middle-school enrollment, listened with equanimity and responded with welcome candor. "To be frank, we never expected this [process] would run as long as it did," he said. "We did not communicate with parents. This was a mistake and we will look to correct this for next year." According to Ellen Newman, executive director for special ed enrollment, letters went out to parents and to school guidance counselors today, Wednesday -- except for one set that were hand-delivered to The Children's School <http://insideschools.org/fs/school_profile.php?id=451> , which held graduation today (thanks to a coordinated email campaign spearheaded by parent coordinator Roxana Velandria).

One PS 295 <http://insideschools.org/fs/school_profile.php?id=449> parent noted a "general air of secrecy" regarding special-ed placements, and said that "when the general-ed kids got placed first, that hurt more than anything else." (The parent asked not to be quoted, out of concern that she might somehow threaten her child's still-unknown placement.)

Ferguson agreed, saying "It's the thing I'm saddest about. Frankly, we just ran out of time, and [the burden] came out on exactly the wrong folks. It's something I'm not proud of, and something we plan to correct next year."

Broad and deep issues persist -- space, crowding, access, and the practical fact that students with special needs are essentially excluded from a process ostensibly geared to inclusion, as they're not permitted to interview or audition for middle schools along with their gen-ed peers. Whether these issues can be effectively addressed for the coming year is unknown; for this year, it's moot.

But for those who ask, where does the buck stop? Sandy Ferguson answered, loud and clear, it stops at his desk. He's aware of the problems (although he was unaware of their historic dimensions, as special-ed results have been consistently delayed), and seems sincerely committed their resolution -- next year.

David Brooks and the Status Quo at the NY Times

I've been thinking about how to address David Brooks' ridiculous op ed in Friday's NY Times on education where if you don't agree with the likes of Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Andrew Rotherham and, best of all, Al Sharpton (read all about his extortion racket,) you are labeled a status quoer. On first look, I thought it was a Tweed press release. Well, now that I think about it, it read a lot like Tweed PR chief David Cantor.

NYC Educator's brilliant piece today pretty much nails Brooks, who ought to visit the lovely trailer NYC teaches in, but I want to add a few points.

Brooks focuses on where Obama will go on ed policy. Brooks puts him between the regressive ed reformers and the progressive ed reformers whom the RER zombies are branding as "status quoers." NYC Educator focuses on the fact that none of the so-called regressive ed reforms seem to have worked, but Brooks wants to continue to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic anyway.

In his own fit of rhetorical gibberish, Brooks refers to the "patina of postpartisan rhetoric" as he writes about the competing vision of the Progressive Ed Reform Movement (PERM):

The status quo camp issued a statement organized by the Economic Policy Institute. This report argues that poverty and broad social factors drive high dropout rates and other bad outcomes. Schools alone can’t combat that, so more money should go to health care programs, anti-poverty initiatives and after-school and pre-K programs. When it comes to improving schools, the essential message is that we need to spend more on what we’re already doing: smaller class sizes, better instruction, better teacher training.

Does Brooks really believe we're spending more on smaller class size? Maybe in the private schools his friends attend. What does he think about the fact that the class sizes in NYC are 25%-35% higher than the rest of the state? Who really supports the status quo, people like Brooks or the PERMs? Brooks and the RER's are really about busting teacher unions. Lucky for them they have a compliant AFT/UFT that is frightened of being branded as SQ's to deal with.

Brooks says, "the crucial issues are: What do you do with teachers and administrators who are failing? How rigorously do you enforce accountability? Tough decisions have to be made about who belongs in the classroom and who doesn’t. Parents have to be given more control over education through public charter schools. Teacher contracts and state policies that keep ineffective teachers in the classroom need to be revised.

What irony. Has he seen how parents in NYC have less control over their schools than ever as regressive ed reformers use mayoral dictatorships to hand entire urban public school system over to Bill Gates and Eli Broad, while Brooks' friends in the suburbs actually get to elect school boards and vote on budgets?

What to do with reporters and editors who are failing?
Who belongs in the NY Times newsroom?
As NYC Educator points out, Brooks and the NY Times were vigorous war hawks and don't seem to worry about accountability and failures when it came to their own promotion of the weapons of mass destruction and general coverage of the Iraq war.

And then there's the issue of how a trillion dollars can appear out of nowhere, but those who call for even a fraction of that expenditure to lower class size are branded status quoers.

Let David Brooks take a look at the failure of the NY Times, not only in relation to Iraq, but in the biased coverage of education in NYC. True accountability starts at home.


Check out this review of Susan Ohanian's new book for some sanity.

Who's Funding the Education Quality Project?

Reformatted: Thread is in reverse order. Leonie in blue, Cantor in red.

GBN News discovers answer to secret funds for Educational Equity Project.

Sometimes all you need to do is put up a thread without comment. Do you need more to understand why just yesterday someone characterized Leonie as a true heroine of the education wars against the regressive ed reform zombies. Of course, Leonie would be characterized by the NY Times' David Brooks as a "status quoer."

From Leonie Haimson on nyceducationnews listserve:

See David Cantor's comments below -- on the fact that this Klein/ Sharpton alliance is being funded by an "anonymous donor" -- though apparently not by Bloomberg.

I would think that the kind of public campaign that the Chancellor is embarking upon, including staging "events at both political conventions” and attempting to influence the position of the next President should be obligated to reveal its source of financing.

David also questions my description of the press office as large and well-funded -- though I still maintain that is larger than the press office of any other city agency and much larger than under any previous Chancellor. I have an excel file from October with the names, salaries and positions of thirteen people employed in the Communications office, in case anyone would like to see it. Not that they don't earn their salaries, working overtime to cover the blunders and mistatements of their superiors.

David: two questions -- who is paying your salary when you write press releases for this Klein/ Sharpton effort and/or answer calls from reporters about it? Are you getting paid extra by this "anonymous" donor -- or does your official salary funded by taxpayer money cover your efforts?

Secondly, are you thinking of writing an expose a la Scott McLellan about your adventures in the land of Tweed when Klein's term in office is over? I myself would pay a pretty penny for such a book, and I bet many others would as well. Let me know if you'd like some contact information from publishers who would likely be interested. Unfortunately, I must turn down your offer to come fix your copying machine; I don't have any particular expertise in that area (not that ever stopped the Chancellor in his hiring decisions.)

Perhaps by cutting down on the high salaries of some of the top educrats at Tweed -- or eliminating one or two positions in the burgeoning Accountability office, you might be able to afford to pay a repairman.

thanks as always,

Leonie Haimson



From: david cantor [mailto:cantorrac@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 11:20 PM
To: Leonie Haimson
Subject: Re: question for David Cantor: who is funding this project?

Leonie: The project is being funded anonymously. No public money will be spent. The mayor is not funding the project.

Re comments on your blog: If Class Size Matters ever wants to hold a press conference in Washington, the National Press Club room we used (Zenger Room) is available for $500. Also, I invite you to come over to the press office when next you're at Tweed and check out our "huge" communications "juggernaut" at work. I think you'll be surprised. If you're any good at fixing a copy machine we may put you to work.

David Cantor

Press Secretary

NYC Dept of Ed

On 6/13/08, Leonie Haimson wrote:

So tell us then, David, who is funding this, if not Gates and Broad?

I see that on the webpage of http://www.educationequalityproject.org/press/ , you are one of the two contact people listed:

Contact: David Cantor - NYC Department of Education (212) 374-5141
Rachel Noerdlinger - NAN/Al Sharpton Media (212) 876-5444

USA today: "Neither Sharpton nor Klein offered details on the Education Equality Project, but said they sent letters to both presidential candidates Wednesday and plan to stage events at both political conventions."

So is this campaign coming out of our taxpayer money? In the midst of an economic slowdown so dire that Bloomberg says he is forced to cut all city agencies, including Education by $450 M? And/or is this project being subsidized by Bloomberg himself?

It's easy, though, to see how people including myself could assume that Gates and Broad were funding this. If you go to the Ed ''08; webpage it says:

Strong American Schools is a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, two of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world, have provided grant funding for Strong American Schools. Roy Romer, the former governor of Colorado and most recently superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is our chairman and lead spokesman.
You click on Roy Romer's link and you get to:

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Bringing Equity to the Education System
Today I joined with New York City Schools' chancellor Joel Klein, the Rev. Al Sharpton and a host of other civil rights leaders, elected officials, and education reformers to announce the launch of the Education Equality Project. The new project will challenge politicians, public officials, educations, union leaders, and others to view fixing public schools as the foremost civil rights issue of the early 21st century.

Other quotations from press release:

"Our nation's economy and individual family income is tied to improving our skills through education," ED in '08 Chairman Roy Romer said. "Americans cannot afford to sit back and watch its schools fail our students. We need to raise expectations and opportunities for every single student, regardless of race, color, creed, or income. Most importantly, we need strong leaders to take initiative. Today, I am joining these influential leaders to call for change."

"Nationally, our public education system is failing to provide our students with the skills they need to compete for the best jobs in the global workforce," said former Congressman J.C. Watts, Jr., who serves as a spokesperson for ED in '08. "Too many of our students are not graduating from high school and too many who do graduate are not prepared to face the challenges of college, the workplace, or life. This crisis in education is destroying the foundation of our economic success and national prosperity. I am glad to join the bi-partisan coalition to sound the national alarm to improve our schools."

Bloomberg is well known for his generosity to many organizations through the Carnegie Corporation– see this today's news, about his latest contributions of $60 million: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/nyregion/13charity.html?ref=nyregion ( full list is here: http://www.carnegie.org/sub/news/VGrelease.html )


All in all, very confusing and mysterious. Please enlighten us, David!

Leonie Haimson

Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 12:16 AM
To: nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [nyceducationnews] Klein, Sharpton Ally on Achievement Gap

No Gates or Broad money is going to this initiative. Zero.

David Cantor
Press Secretary
NYC Dept of ED

On 6/12/08, leonie@att.net wrote:

as I predicted, this "new" coalition will focus on charter schools and union busting-- not a word about the need for the critical reforms that have actually been proven to work to narrow the achievement gap -- like class size reduction.
This strategic alliance, or "beautiful friendship" as Klein likes to put it, appears to be based instead upon the ideological biases of its funders -- the Gates and Broad foundations.

Klein, Sharpton Ally on Achievement Gap

By
RUSSELL BERMAN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 11, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/national/klein-shaprton-partner-on-racial-gap-in-education/79786/

Results from Principal Survey relevant to the heat wave

In our recent principal survey, 38% of principals said their schools lacked sufficient electrical power, and many commented on the need for more air-conditioning.

18% of principals reported that their schools have classrooms with no windows. Many said that special education classes and services were being given in inadequate spaces, including closets.

Clearly these would lead to unbearable conditions given today’s temperatures.

492 principals completed our survey in full -- representing more than one third of all NYC public school principals. Their schools contain about 350,000 students or 37% of our total public school population.

For the results in full, please go to http://www.classsizematters.org/principalsurveyresults.html

Leonie Haimson

LITTLEST PROTESTORS “STORM” Tweed

I'm curious as to how this takes place during school hours. Are kids being pulled by the parents? Maybe it is an official school trip. It is hard to believe the teachers or admins can in any way be involved without repercussions. Yet, these cuts seem to have made some principals bolder in their criticisms. And, there could be bad pub for Tweed if they do retaliate.

LITTLEST PROTESTORS “STORM” DOE:

Public School Kids Barrage Steps of to Demand Klein Rescind Budget Cuts;

Experience Democracy in Action

WHO: NYC Public School Kids

WHAT: Rally, deliver protest letters and signed posters;

protest $450 Million NYC Public Schools Budget Cuts;

learn what it means to have their voices heard.

WHEN: Every school day in June until Chancellor Joel Klein

appears on the steps of the Tweed Courthouse to announce

full restoration of the DOE budget (see full schedule for week

one, below).

WHERE: Tweed Courthouse (52 Chambers Street, Manhattan)

WHY: Despite increased state allocations for NYC schools, Klein

has chopped NYC public school budgets already by $180

million this year. An additional cut of as much $450 million is

planned for next year.

WEEK ONE: Monday, June 9th – PS 75M students arrive at Tweed

Courthouse, 12:30

Tuesday, June 10th – Central Park East II –10:00

Wednesday, June 11th – TBA

Thursday, June 12th – Six Schools from District 2 – 12:30

Friday, June 13th – High School Kids Express Solidarity

Murrow/Stuyvesant – 4:00

Contact: Paula Seefeldt, PA Board, PS 87; kennapj@hotmail.com;
646-734-0182

Cynthia Wachtell, PA Board, PS 87; wachtell@yu.edu;

917-392-2486

http://www.kidsprotestproject.org/

Pssst, Kid. Have I got a pre-k school for you

Two articles in today's NY Times touches on the utter incompetency of the BloomKlein regime.
The pre-k debacle and the principals of schools with problems getting bonuses.

Note how the "NO EXCUSES" Joel Klein administration always has, well, excuses. "The dog ate my ARIS." I love the "bad algorithm" one that somehow left out accounting for siblings.

A teacher who might make one mistake is sent immediately to the rubber room. If Tweed had a rubber room, it would be filled and all those cubicles filled with zombies would be empty.

Entropy Sucks

With the universe expanding almost as quickly as the number of administraters at Tweed, this week's NY Times science section delivers the very bad news that this expansion may go on forever, very bad news for those who want to close the achievement gap. It all has something to do with Einstein's constant which he may or may not of erred in calculating, (which would earn him a trip to the rubber room if he wrote E=Mc2 on a blackboard instead of a chart tablet. Why do things for free when you can funnel money to companies that make the stuff.)

Gravity having a greater than usual effect on the NYC Department of Education, as Tweed (upper right) accelerates expansion at double the rate of the rest of the universe.

Chaos at Ross Charter at Tweed

There's a lot more of this stuff as reported by Elizabeth Green in the NY Sun going on in a lot more schools around the city. But in their own building? Tweedles can't manage their way out of a paper bag.

Leonie Haimson posted this on her listserve:

Here is an excerpt [complete email at Norm's Notes] from an email that Garth Harries of DOE sent to Patrick Sullivan of the PEP on April 16 of this year– and copied to Mary Silver of CEC D2 and Lisa Donlan of CEC D1;

Ross School Quality: it is absolutely true that last spring, Ross was a struggling school – as authorizers committed to school quality, through our Charter office we explicitly called that struggle out to ensure that the school took appropriate action. The oversight played out exactly the way that it should – the school has stabilized, and made substantial improvements. That progress is documented in the same place as the original report, and is evidenced by continued strong parental interest and support from the Lower East Side, around Manhattan , and the City. (As an aside, we have been frustrated by the various aspersions cast about the school, insofar as they cherry picked the original report, and not the more recent review noting the improvements.) Certainly, Ross has work to do to continue to improve, as we note in our more recent report – but so do all schools, and Ross has done a good job recovering from their first year difficulties.

This clearly contradicts the information in today’s NY Sun, at http://www.nysun.com/new-york/charter-school-at-tweed-being-probed/79083/
The Sun article reports on continued loss of teachers, letters of protest from parents, hand delivered to Tweed, and a cheating scandal, which they first learned about last spring, and has now led to the fifth principal in two years departing in a cloud.
The article specifically says that “Before Ms. Clagnaz's abrupt departure in May, eight staff members had left by the middle of this school year.” And 10 more out of 37 do not intend to return next year.

Please see that Harries’ email is copied to Michael Duffy, head of charter schools for DOE, who now says that the school is “on probation” and may even be closed.

Yet their actions show the opposite: that DOE is determined to keep the school open at any cost. By giving them new space in the School of the Physical City, the DOE is enabling the school to expand into new grade levels and in overall enrollment – which the Bd of Directors of Ross admitted in a letter to parents at the school was necessary to ensure its financial stability.

Mismanagement had led to a real fiscal crisis at the school. As DOE pointed out in January, http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/3A42B137-91F8-4243-A5B4-75148DD7CD03/31248/RGAFollowUpVisit_12208.pdf

”The school spent only 56% (excludes start-up costs) of its funds on educational programs, 41% on administrative expenses, and 2.68% on fundraising…”


In letter sent to parents on March 17, the Board of the Ross school said that they were canceling their summer program and their mandatory Sat. program and had to focus on expanding the middle school in order to be financially viable. http://www.rossglobalacademy.org/home/pdf/Summer_Program_RGA_Board.PDF

“It is clear that the focus of our faculty and administration this summer needs to be on middle school, planning for the expansion of grades for next year and on the continued development of the curriculum and professional development of our faculty. Additionally, this expansion is necessary to ensure the continued financial sustainability of the school.”

Only by expanding enrollment could they reap more taxpayer funds through increased per capita payments.

Interesting that DOE seems determined to allow a school to expand by means of taxpayer funding in the midst of a cheating scandal and continued serious problems at the school.