Former DOE Official Michael Duffy: It's All About the Adults

Don't you just love it when every ed deformer says it's about the children not the adults -- like teachers--- when in fact an entire charter school industry has sprung up where adults like Michael Duffy go into the DOE for a short time before using that "service" -- a very loose term here --- to enrich themselves on the backs of children.

Here Leonie Haimson takes Duffy and Victory down. (By the way -- Victory used to be run by Peg Harrington, with a deep resume of working as a teacher, principal and top level official at the old NYCBOE. I think she got nudged out by Klein and went on to run Victory.)

Before you get to Duffy, check out Leonie doing about a 200% better job than any UFT official in defending teachers in her appearance on WPIX- 11 this morning: who is to blame for struggling schls. Hint: it’s not teachers. http://goo.gl/ZpqeI

Michael Duffy and the "turnaround" of Victory charter schools

A new charter school called Great Oaks is applying to the state to start in NYC’s District 2, to be located on Governors Island, though Downtown Express reports that the Education Committee of Community Board I opposes it.  The charter school’s letter of intent to NYSED lists as the lead applicant Benjamin B. Carson, described as a former “statistician” for the NYC DOE charter office, as well as the Co-Founder of the Great Oaks Charter School in Newark. 

The Newark branch only started last August and has no track record, but the letter of intent says the network has formed to “replicate the successful methods of the MATCH Public Charter School in Boston," featuring “high academic expectations, a No Excuses school culture, a focus on engaging classroom instruction and individualized attention to students’ needs via high-dosage tutoring.”

One of the co-founders of the proposed NYC school and a board member will be Michael Duffy, who is the former head of the NYC DOE charter office, well known for his blase attitude towards protesting parents during intense co-location hearings.   Duffy is also listed as the key contact for the Great Oaks Charter School in Newark on the NJ State website. 

Michael Duffy

Duffy is now employed by a company called Victory, which has started at least 16 charter schools in NYC, Philadelphia and Chicago.  
Victory has had a generally dismal reputation in NYC for charging large management fees while running some of the lowest-performing charters in the city. Here is what Kim Gittleson of GothamSchools wrote about the chain in 2010, after analyzing their management fees and results:

“I found that the five Victory Schools that had progress report scores in 2008-2009 placed in the bottom 35 percent of all charter schools and in the bottom 20 percent of schools citywide… These middling performance numbers come despite the fact that the seven schools paid around $2,163 per pupil to Victory Schools for the company’s services. This is 17 percent of these charter schools’ per pupil revenues from the state.”

DOE now intends to close Peninsula Prep charter, a school run by Victory until recently.  Unfortunately when NYT /School Book ran a story about DOE’s plan to close the school, Duffy was quoted as a approving of the decision, as an apparently disinterested observer, without noting that he currently works for the company that ran the school until June 30, 2010.  Indeed, in Peninsula Prep’s  most recent annual report to DOE, dated July 2011, the board made clear that they had dropped Victory as their management company, in an apparent attempt to persuade DOE to allow the school to stay open:

a. Peninsula Preparatory Academy Charter School disassociated itself from Victory Schools as a management company.
b. PPACS adopted the New York City Department of Education scope and sequence for Social Studies instruction instead of the Victory proprietary Core Knowledge Program. and: c. PPACS increased the student enrollment to from 300 to 350.

In the NYT/Schoolbook article, Duffy supported DOE closing of the school: “I definitely think in 2012, what was good enough even five years ago is no longer good enough,” Mr. Duffy said.  (He should know!)

Duffy left DOE to work for Victory in July 2010, shortly after Victory’s Albany charter school, New Covenant, was shut down by SUNY because of poor performance.  

 Read more:  Michael Duffy and the "turnaround" of Victory charter schools

Conflicts of Interest Galore at Tweed - Duffy Leaves to go to Victory Charters and Cami Anderson to Run Charters While Still at DOE

Last Updated Mon, July 19, 2010, 10:14pm


Has Klein passed another lemon?

Garth Harries, Christopher Cerf, and now— Duffy
(Thanks to MM - Magnificent Mona for the heads up.)

The NYCDOE might as well declare itself a hiring hall for top executives using their positions to better themselves at the expense of public school community. We just learned that DOE Charter school chief Michael Duffy is leaving to go to Victory Schools charter management organization, which manages to skim a tidy sum off the top of the schools they manage.

There are lots of comments floating around about what a loss Duffy will be to Klein. I have not had enough personal contact other than some friendly greetings at meetings, insiders have not been impressed. Another case of Klein's passing the lemon?

See Wall St. Journal article on Duffy going to Victory which includes an analysis of the current for profit category and how it may now figure out how to scam the public by switching to non-profit.

And...

Alternative high schools district supt. Cami Anderson gets a pass from the conflicted interest board. Leonie said:

The city’s Conflict of Interest board approves DOE’s Cami Anderson to run a chain of charter schools; big surprise since they go along with anything the mayor and/or the city agencies want. It is a shame when this is how low the people running our public schools have sunk.

Here is Yoav Gonen's article in the NY Post. Even Yoav seems shocked.

City ed. big OK'd for schools role

7:37 AM, July 19, 2010

The city's Conflicts of Interest Board is letting a district superintendent play a pivotal role in opening three charter schools that would serve the same group of students she oversees.

Alternative High Schools District leader Cami Anderson got permission not only to help open and advocate for the alternative charters but also to raise money and recruit board members -- all on city time.

That's despite concerns about an education official's having a stake in schools that fall outside her district's purview and that might compete for students. If approved, two charters would open in The Bronx and one in Brooklyn in 2011.

WAVE Editor Howard Schwach on State Senator Malcolm Smith's Ties to For Profit Victory Charter School and its $750,000 Slice of Public Money

In this article published last Friday, my editor at the Wave, former long-time teacher Howard Schwach, nails Malcolm Smith and his ties to Peninsula Prep Charter School, the connections to the Victory Charter School chain, and builds a bridge to what seems like a political decision to close Beach Channel HS to make room for Smith's charter.

Don't you love the use of the corporate term "divested"? Hmmm, what exactly did he divest? Not interested in moving into the Beach Channel building, Malcolm? Make a public divestiture by declaring you will oppose moving the charter school you founded into BCHS building even if it's the last building standing.

You might ask your self whether the UFT has supported Smith in his election campaigns - don't know off hand, but I bet they did. Which just goes to show that this den of thieves all lie in the same bed. Why does it take a community newspaper to expose these guys when the UFT had a fully staffed newspaper that should be doing this kind of work all along. But the UFT doesn't really want people to know about the political crew they play footsie with.

Question Smith’s Ties To Local Charter School

By Howard Schwach

State Senate President Malcolm Smith, who represents Rockaway in that body, says that he has divested himself from the local charter school he founded in 2004.

State Senator Malcolm Smith (center) joins children and officials of the Peninsula Preparatory Academy in cutting the ribbon for the school’s new home in Arverne By The Sea. The ceremony took place in September of 2008, four years after, Smith says, he divested himself from the school. “Senator Smith has been completely divested from any involvement in the governance or the administration of the [Peninsula Preparatory] school for about four years,” his Albany spokesperson Austin Shafran said recently.

Shafran’s comment was in response to questions of Smith’s involvement specifically in the Peninsula Preparatory School (PPA) in light of the fact that he recently earmarked $100,000 in public funds for the school. In addition, his stated goal is to double the number of charter schools allowed by New York State.

Although Smith was the founder of the school, and an original board member, Shafran said, Smith divested himself in 2004 when he was named the Senate Minority Leader.

Tai White, the local spokesperson for the senator said last week, however, that Smith remains “involved and active with the school.”

When White was asked if Smith has a financial interest in the school, she told a Wave reporter that somebody would get back with a comment, but no comment was forthcoming by press time, nearly a week later.

While Smith says he is not involved with the school, in 2008, when the PPA moved from its temporary home in Far Rockaway to several trailers set up on Beach 67 Street in Arverne By The Sea, Smith was front and center in the ribbon cutting ceremony, the only politician who was so honored.

There have been questions about the school from the first, and those questions have deepened over the years, and especially over speculation that the phase-out and closing of Beach Channel High School is part of a political plan to clear the school to make room for a PPA high school component.

Smith’s office denies those allegations.

When the PPA was chartered with Smith as its founder in 2004, it shared space with Middle School 53 in Far Rockaway.

Within a year, however, the state began renovating a building on Foam Place, right next to MS 53. Shortly thereafter, the PPA quietly moved into that building.

At the time, The Wave questioned the genesis of the money used to renovate the building, but no answers were forthcoming, either from the state, Smith, or the school.

From the first, the school, which is a private non-profit charter run by public money, has been administered by the Victory Schools, a for-profit organization that administers many public charters in New York City.

Records show that PPA pays Victory more than $750,000 a year.

Records also show that in 2006 and 2007, Smith received a total of $12,000 in campaign contributions from Seven Kilnsky, who founded the company.

No recent donations from Kilnsky to Smith were recorded.

A company spokesperson told Daily News political reporter Kenneth Lovett that the donations were meant as a show of support for Smith’s pro-charter stand.

Sources say that PPA pays no rent for the trailers in Arverne By The Sea, and that the school will one day move into a new building in that development, a building that the developers must build with their own money as part of the contract they signed to get the land for development.

Experts say that, as long as Smith has no financial stake in PPA, there is nothing illegal about his involvement and his steering money to the school he founded.

The president of the state’s teachers union, however, thinks that, while probably not illegal, Smith’s involvement shows that special interests are driving the recent move to double the number of charter schools, which generally do not fall under union contracts.