More outrages: DOE advertising charter schools on its home page

According to DOE, 70 of the 99 charter schools are currently housed in DOE-provided facilities.

http://source.nycsca.org/pdf/capitalplan/2010/Feb2010-2014CapitalPlan.pdf


Leonie Haimson does a relentless job in ferreting out Tweed favoritism toward charters followed by Lisa Donlan's response.


While Kindergarten parents are put on waiting lists downtown and on the upper West side, our schools are being deliberately overcrowded and their budgets slashed to the bone, and many of them are being unfairly closed, the DOE’s relentless promotion of charter schools has not ceased. The following appeared on DOE”s home page today:

2010-2011 New York City Common Charter School Application Now Available

For the first-time ever, parents can now fill out one general application and apply to any of NYC’s public charter schools without having to visit each school for an individual application form! Applications, available in nine languages, can be downloaded on the NYC Department of Education’s Charter School page.

Which links you to this:

New: The 2010-2011 New York City Common Charter School Application is now available. You can download, print, complete and submit this application to one of our 99 charter schools citywide.

What is a Charter School?

Charter schools are publicly funded and open to all students in New York City through a non-discriminatory admissions lottery. Each charter school is governed by a not-for-profit board of trustees which may include educators, community members, and leaders from the private sector. Charters have freedom to establish their own policies, design their own educational program, and manage their human and financial resources [

Charter schools are accountable, through the terms of a five-year performance contract, for high student achievement.

Charter schools were established to:

• Provide families with an increased number of high quality school choices;
• Improve student achievement;
• Increase learning opportunities for all students, with an emphasis on at-risk students;
• Encourage use of innovative teaching methods/educational designs;
• Create new professional opportunities for teachers, administrators, school staff;
• Change from rule-based to performance based accountability

More Information:

For Parents

For Charter Schools

For Aspiring Charter School Leaders

Lisa Donlan's response:

Below (click here NYCDOE Charter School Forms) is the common application that is linked to the webpage Leonie posted.

I am hoping this is DoE's response to the unaudited, unsupervised, individual lotteries held in each Charter School that have resulted in "creaming" of students in charters and pushing the most at-risk kids into the DoE controlled schools.
The business model approach to obtaining necessary enrolled student dollars in charters seems to be essentially via Marketing and PR-
bend the Federal privacy laws to send current students and their families direct marketing mailings ( ideally 10-12 times!)
Flood the media with questionable studies and statistics to sell the idea that charter is better.

To avoid charges of creaming, charters are being encouraged to spread a wide net, and now to centralize admissions, ( I assume this is in addition to each schools individual "competitive" methods) and apparently to give admissions priority to "at-risk students.
At-Risk Categories: This information is optional but providing it may increase your student’s chances of admission to certain schools. Note: Different schools have different at-risk criteria. Please contact each school directly to find out what, if any, at-risk criteria the school may have and provide such information in the space provided on the application. You may also have to provide supporting documentation, if required by the school.

I would not consider these tweaks significant fixes to the admissions irregularities until:

1. The lotteries and waiting list methodologies and data are audited and documented.

Each schools admissions data would need to be reported out in terms of numbers and percentages of applications and admits and waiting lists by gender, district, income level ( including students in temporary housing), race and ability/special needs/language status.
Double, triple or other multiple applications from one student would need to be removed to accurately report number of applicants/students on waiting lists that I suspect are inflated by families that essentially hedge their bets with multiple lottery tickets.

2. Audited attrition rates and tracking of "discharged" students throughout the year (especially after the 11/1 funding date) would need to be reported rigorously- to report on demographic changes of markers such as gender, ability/special needs/language status, income, etc in each school.

3. Finally I am wondering if is it legal for schools to give priority to some at-risk categories as they decide/define as this application implies?

5. At-Risk Categories: This information is optional but providing it may increase your student’s chances of admission to certain schools. Note: Different schools have different at-risk criteria. Please contact each school directly to find out what, if any, at-risk criteria the school may have and provide such information in the space provided on the application. You may also have to provide supporting documentation, if required by the school.

What do others on this list think?

Lisa Donlan

Moskowitz/Klein Emails Reveal UFT Intentions on Organizing Charters

I don't have the patience to wade through the emails (here's the link if you want to get your kicks), but luckily people like Elizabeth Green at Gotham did so (we've missed you, Elizabeth).

WHAT RANDI SAID: In an Oct. 8, 2008, e-mail, Moskowitz claims that former city teachers union president Randi Weingarten, and her personal enemy, suggested that the duo write a thin contract together. Presumably that would mean that Harlem Success schools would become unionized, and the resulting work contract would have very few restrictions. Moskowitz said she would but only if Weingarten also agreed to a thin contract at half of all city schools. The union’s first thin contract, with the Green Dot charter school in the Bronx, landed in June 2009.

Could you just imagine the Randi/Mulgrew qvelling and distorting if they actually got Evil to go along with this? We've been predicting that the UFT moves to organize charters will be all about thin contracts with "very few restrictions" on the charter operators. Which will screw the teachers, of course. In ICE and GEM we ask ourselves what to tell charter school teachers who might be interested in having the UFT organize them. My instinct is to say, "Try the exterminators union." But seriously, do you urge them to become part of an undemocratic, narrow, sell-out union?

Panel for Educational Policy, Feb. 24, 2010: Alev, Khem, Julie, Lisa

CAPE and GEM and a few parent activists were few voices heard standing up for public education in a sea of charter school supporters.

"Where is the UFT?" was a constant refrain we heard last night from reporters and even from some of Klein's Tweedies. Good question as the massive charter school outpouring of parents imprinted an anti public school message, with lots of teacher bashing.

The biggest message left to every public school teacher and parent who supports public schools and every political operative there last night was the utter failure of the UFT, the only agent capable of standing up. But that is nothing new as the UFT did nothing for this meeting, feeling I guess it had done enough on Jan. 26.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc0CIP9Y778

Read the CAPE Report:

Another PEPuppet Meeting, An EXPLOSIVE Daily News Article...

From CEJ:

Press Coverage from February 23^rd

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/video?id=7288151

http://gothamschools.org/2010/02/23/protesters-call-for-independent-review-of-charter-siting-practices/

http://www.ny1.com/1-all-boroughs-news-content/news_beats/education/

http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2010/02/23/clamping-down-on-co-location/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-shatzky/educating-for-democracy-c_b_473517.html?view=print

White Flight: PS 92 Lefferts Charter School Hearing Notes - Video to Follow

People in Lefferts Gardens want their own charter school and the DOE decided to house it at PS 92 in Crown Hts. A hearing as is required was held Monday night though everyone know that issue has been decided in favor of the charter and will be voted up tonight at the PEP meeting.

I attended the hearing on Monday night and taped it. I know something about the school. My wife graduated from there in 19$% and her dad had a grocery store on Rogers Ave a block away and they lived over the store. But no matter how hard I tried to pursuade her to join me, she wouldn't go. After I retired, I mentored six teaching fellows at the school and so knew the lay of the land. Also, Vera Pavone, an ICE founder, was the school secretary there for three years.

The mostly white charter school crew claimed to be home grown, talked about options and choice, praised PS 92 as being a great school (but they wouldn't send their kids there) – you know, if you've been to these things before, they all use the same arguments - they are well coached. And of course, it is all temporary since one day they will have a building of their own. Duck, that flying pig is coming straight at you. But then again, why shouldn't Tweed hand over millions of dollars for them to build their own school - as long as they know someone with influence and money like the Robertson clan and Malcolm Smith.

Parent activist Carla Phillip, a PS 92 grad, spoke at the meeting and sent this report to the NYCEducation listserve (Leonie's List- who as I write this is about to appear on Fox after Joel Klein to discuss the charter school invasions- oops, just saw it and it was only sound bite).

Here is Carla's report:

The public hearing at PS 92 was well attended. There were a good amount of parents from PS 92 and Lefferts Gardens. This was the first hearing that I have been to where it was racially divided (blacks and whites). The Charter school tried to convince the public on the benefits of their school. To which I had to correct them on, in the sense of being a modern day form of segregation, where you have the haves and the haves not.

At one point in the hearing, you could literally cut the tension with a knife. I bought to the panel's and community's attention the Chancellor's letter on DOE's website stating the placement of Lefferts Gardens in PS 92 in September of 2010; and asked why are we having this hearing, when the decision was already made on January 8th? Yes, I had to go there. To which they said that the decision would be made on Wednesday at the PEP meeting. Now, we all know its going to be rubber stamped. That's what Bloomberg's appointees do - rubber stamp everything.

All in all, the parents and alumnis of PS 92 kept saying:
- Where were you (Lefferts Gardens), when we were bringing the school up to par?
- Charter schools need their own buildings
- Why your kids cannot attend the school now and help further improve it?

Meanwhile, Lefferts Gardens was stressing the fact that the school is an option and helping the children of the community. If this is a new option, why are they not pushing for their own space, but rather co-location?

And yes, there was a public official in the audience, Mr. Mel Faulkner from Assemblywoman Barron's office came to support. Thank you, Mr. Faulkner for taking the time out to come and its not his district. He understands that it is about the children and empowering the parents.

Finally, thank you Senator Adams for sending out the initial email and informing the community of the hearing.

And the struggle continues.

Carla M. Phillip

Seung Ok on Charter Schools

Seung Ok, who is running on the ICE-TJC slate for Vocational HS VP (Mulgrew's old position) has been pretty active today in the charter school war room.

He posted a superb piece of MUST READ writing on how charter schools harm public schools which we posted at GEM and at the ICE UFT Election blog.

Then he found this article and made some important comments on where charter schools, which have roots in white supremacy in the south, are going to go eventually. Is it any wonder that the NAACP has woken up and seen the charters for what they are?

Seung Ok writes:

Here's an article from Georgia talking about the desire for private school parents to eye charter schools as an access for public money:

"In fighting approval of a regional charter school, southwest Georgia superintendents allege that the Pataula Charter Academy would signal a return to the era in Georgia when blacks and whites attended different schools.

The debate is re-opening old wounds of race and disparate education in districts still under court desegregation orders

One of seven charter schools — public schools that operate with greater autonomy in exchange for greater accountability — approved by a new state commission, Pataula plans to open in the fall as a regional public k-8 school. It will enroll 440 students from Randolph, Calhoun, Early, Clay and Baker counties. Some districts now want the state Board of Education to stop Pataula.

Along with drawing from the majority black schools in the region, Pataula is attracting students from two private academies, which are virtually all-white.

“Initially, you will see more urgency on the side of private school parents who are tired of paying tuition,” said Ben Dismukes, a Pataula founder and himself the parent of two private-school students.

The interest of private school parents has sparked worries that Pataula is a seg academy posing as a public charter school. To counter the innuendo that it is a “white school,” Pataula has held lotteries for slots in the grades that were oversubscribed and encouraged all families to apply. "

---good luck to those minorities winning lottery seats among a mass of white student candidates. Plus, the article goes on to say, that since charter schools are not mandated to provide buses, few of the black students can actually make it out to these charter schools in white districts.

http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2010/02/06/new-regional-charter-school-not-a-blackwhite-issue/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog

ICEers Pass the Info: Goldstein at Gotham, Fiorillo On Obama, Lawhead on Charters, North on New Orleans Privatization, JW Emails

Ok, so I all too often wax poetic about my ICE colleagues. But the fact that so many thoughtful, independent voices work with ICE is meaningful to me. That they have a wide range of interests and play a major role in sharing information is what differentiates ICE, more than a caucus bit an education tool.

Make sure to check out ICE HS Ex Bd candidate, Francis Lewis HS CL Arthur Goldstein's brilliant piece at Gotham Schools. http://gothamschools.org/2010/02/11/the-kids-nobody-wants/

ICE stalwart JW and Ex Bd candidate at-large sends outamazingly informative emails on a regular basis which I post on Norms Notes. Get on her list. See her last 3: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/


Michael Fiorillo, also an ICE candidate for HS EB always goes deep an dug up this interesting factoid: Check out Adolph Reed on Barack Obama, circa 1996 (!!)

"In Chicago we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation- hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program, the point where identity politics converges with old- fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics."

Best,
Michael Fiorillo


John Lawhead, Tilden HS CL and our third HS EB candidate along with Fiorillo and Goldstein attended last night's Cyprus Hills charter school hearing, spoke and took pics. See them at GEM.
John sends this one: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/11/charter_study

Study: Charter Schools Increasing Racial Segregation in Classrooms Encouraged by the Obama administration, efforts to expand the number of charter schools are being organized around the country. But concerns are being raised about the system. We speak to UCLA’s Civil Rights Project co-director Gary Orfield about a new study that suggests charter school growth is increasing classroom segregation. [includes rush transcript].


Lisa North, ICE-TJC candidate for one of the 11 UFT Officer positions, sends this along from Lance Hill at Tulane:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33777.pdf

This is an excellent publication on privatization and government prepared by the Congressional Research Service. It's definition of privatization places charters and vouchers clearly in the privatization category. I think that it is crucial in the debate on school reform to not allow charter advocates to obscure their free market theory theoretical foundation with the use of the word "charters" (Fannie Mae was not a "charter" mortgage company--it is a privatized public service).

The author defines privatization as the use of the private sector in the provision of good or service. Private sector is defined as any non-government entity, including non-profits, religious organizations, and volunteer groups. The heart of the definition is that with the transfer of services comes, to some degree, a transfer of power, i.e. the public loses some measure of control over the service.

I find it very useful that the author, Kevin Korsar, lists the preconditions of free market benefits to prevail, such as that the consumer has to have full knowledge of the quality of the service or good in order to make rational choices. Rational consumer behavior is what brings about efficiency in the market; consumers use services that deliver the most for the least cost. Thus, when we transfer a government service to a private entity (and non-profits are private entities by his definition) we have to have complete transparency, e.g. school operators can't hide special funding that gives them a temporary advantage in the market--which drives out better operators and results in inferior products.

Even food consumers have that kind of transparency necessary for free markets to produce the best product for the least cost: every can of beans has to list it's nutritional qualities on the label so that consumers can make rational, informed decisions on which brand is the best buy. In contrast, charter schools are not bound by that kind of transparency; they don't have to advertise test scores, low school evaluations, accurate teacher-student ratios, etc.

Competition breeds marketing and, as the author points out, while government does only what the law permits and proscribes, private entities may do whatever the law does not forbid. While we are in the midst of a revolution in cognitive science and neuroscience that is making tremendous advances in our understanding of how humans learn, little of this has made its way into the charter reform movement. Free market forces favor marketing over science.

I also like his notion that only government has the common weal at interest (ideally). Private entities, be they profit or non-profit, are driven by narrower goals such as profits, organizational mission, and bureaucratic self-preservation (no one likes putting themselves out of a job, even if they are doing a bad job.)

The issue at stake in New Orleans is privatization, not "chartering." To properly evaluate the charter reforms, as well as the privatization of teacher recruitment (TFA), we need to know the underlying "process change theory." In this case, it is privatization. Understanding the underlying change theory will help us understand the potential benefits and dangers of the reform strategy and how best to measure it against alternative strategies. As we have seen locally, when we privatize teacher recruitment, we lose the government's mandate for equitable employment with respect to race and age.

That outcome was a predictable outcome of free market theory emphasis on lowering overhead costs. The exclusion of special education children from charter schools was also a predictable free market outcome of the tendency of private entities to reduce services to increase profits or to operate within a limited revenue stream. BESE's mandate forcing charters to enroll special education students reflects their understanding that they, as an elected body, had to compensate for the narrow goal focus of privatized groups.

"Which activities are essential to the state and should remain directly accountable to the elected representatives and which may be carried out by the private sector." That's the central question of the public education debate. Children are not municipal services, like garbage collection or parking- fine collections. Bad schooling affects children for a lifetime and can consign them to a life of despair. Education is ultimately a social service that affects the equitable allocation of future resources. To what degree can we safely surrender accountability to the public in this realm?

So, I would propose that in the public debate on charter schools, the following definition is the most useful:

Charter schools are publicly funded schools operated by private businesses or non-profit organizations.

Hence the debate in New Orleans, on both school operation and teacher recruitment, is a debate on the privatization of public services. If the experiment in New Orleans succeeds in bringing about excellent and equitable education, then privatization deserves the credit and the theory can be replicated elsewhere. If it fails to achieve better and equitable outcomes for the same inputs, then privatization, as a theory of educational reform, must be reconsidered.

Lance

Norman Siegel Talks to Parent Meeting About the Protest at Bloomberg's Residence

Norman Siegel tells a parent conference sponsored by Class Size Matters in NYC on January 16 about the recent court victory that gives protesters over Mayor Bloomberg's education policies the right to hold a protest on the side of the street (17 East 79th St) where he lives. Amongst a sea of objections, this protest focuses on the unfair and arbitrary closing of schools, the imposition of charter schools into public school buildings and the unfair treatment of public schools by the BloomKlein administration vis a vis charter schools. He lays out the conditions the protesters will be under. If you intend to attend, heed what Siegel says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fF_QyyTYxA

Teacher Defends Small Schools and Others Respond

A teacher emailed GEM asking for a correction to a leaflet that he felt equated small schools with charters. Here is the original and some reactions:

I received an email from GEMnyc supporting a protest of school closures. I agree with everything in the email, except for the inclusion of small schools in the statement below:

"The little known secret behind charter schools and small schools is that they steal the highest achieving students from district schools, and turn away ELL, Special Education, and struggling students."

I work at a small school. Our incoming class of students were all level 1 and 2. We are just as frustrated as other schools regarding the siphoning away of higher level students by selective schools, whether they be charters or others. The issue is not with the size of the school, but the selectivity of the school. Why should some schools be able to select their students and others not?

Please correct this error. It is hard enough to defend the existence of our school without misinformation being propagated by the "good guys."

Responses:

I disagree w/ this.
I understand that there are dedicated teachers at small schools, who are doing a great job and are equally frustrated. However, the 'attack' or criticism is not on individual small schools, but the strategy of using small schools to dismantle and undermine public education. Small schools, in the larger context, are a piece in the privatization puzzle.
-----

I do think there is a context here for that statement in that the small schools movement has been as much a political one as educational if not more. If the charter school cap gets lifted many of them will be swept away too. I think we need to figure out ways to create small school environments within larger structures. That will not happen unless more power resides in the hands of teachers.
------

I tend to agree. The small schools are not the same as charters. More nuanced wording is needed by us. Since there are ways in which the small school movement is supporting privatization and union busting, but, like he says they are also suffering much the same fate as other schools at the hands of charters etc.
-----
I think an important point is that breaking up a big school into smaller schools doesn't fix it. I started at my school while it was a [large high school] during the time it was being phased out for being a "dangerous" and "failing" school. The folks in the [wehite upscale] neighborhood couldn't wait to get their hands on the school (there is a racist element to this which I won't get into now). Once it was restructured. Long story short - [the old school] hasn't been in the school for at least 4 or 5 years and if you ask the folks who have been there for 20-30 years, things were BETTER under [the old school]. More discipline, more classes being offered, tech classes (auto shop, for example), a bilingual program. And now my school, I fear, could be on Bloomberg's chopping-block. We suffer from the same "failings" as many of the other schools that are being closed - declining enrollment, F's on Student performance, C's and D's on our report card, etc. Making a big school small doesn't fix the problems. What breaking up a big school does is divide an conquer the teachers in a building, weaken the chapters, and if Bloomberg gets his way, gets rid of senior excessed teachers.

Michele Rhee to Close the Washington Redskins Due to Lack of Improvement

Since being declared a TINI - Team In Need of Improvement 3 years ago, the Washington Redskins have been steadily declining despite numerous leadership changes (Spurrier, Gibbs, and the recent scorn of Zorn). With Tweed in NYC proving that leadership change is not the preferred option to closing schools, DC school Supe Michelle Rhee, who has made closing schools an art, has invoked her extraordinary powers and decided to close down the Redskins completely and replace it with a charter football team. "Everyone should have choice when it comes to rooting for teams," said a spokesperson for Rhee, who will be playing quarterback for the new charter team. The team, to be called the Rhee-Jets, will only be drafting players who have never been injured and who score a 3 or 4 on an intelligence test. The Gates Foundation will pay the salaries and Eli Broad will become team president. He declared that the 50 percent of the cheer leaders would be able to apply for the new team, but only if they were qualified.

When has a governmental agency before financed a study, as DOE has done in this case, to publicize its own relative incompetence?

Here is a follow-up to our last post Study Commissioned by Tweed Demonstrates They Can't Run Schools as Effectively as Charter Managers

UPDATE:
Make sure to check out Caroline from SF comments on that post and this post as she adds some interesting info and in fact casts some doubts on the truth of the press release. Caroline blogged about it at: http://tinyurl.com/yaxmheq


I posted the piece to Leonie's NYC Ed New listserve and there was a rousing debate that included Leonie, Steve Koss, Diane Ravitch, Deb Meier and others (a pretty good crew- and for those who support the ed deformers, consider the quality of the opposition). Diane compared it to Macy's telling people to go to Gimbels (I suggested a better comparison for the DOE would be Crazy Eddie). There were questions as to whether this was the Caroline Hoxby study.

Steve Koss says:

I don't believe [this is] the Hoxby study. Further down in the email thread is something sent to Norm from the P.R. firm (Larson Communications) that apparently works for Stanford/CREDO announcing a conference call on January 5 for their new report from a study that, it is explicitly stated, was commissioned by the NYCDOE. This appears to be a study directed specifically at NYC schools, charter and public, and (oh surprise of surprises) that the charter schools are better. I guess they (CREDO) doesn't intend to release the study for anyone to read or critique until after they've had their own chance to spin its findings -- maybe after that, it'll be available for those of us who haven't already sold out.

At this point, I don't see why Klein doesn't just throw in the towel, declare all of the public school real estate up for grabs, and "auction" it off to whomever wants to run charter schools. That's their consistent message -- it's not about choice, it's just about privatizing and de-unionizing. Then they could close down the DOE entirely and just leave a skeleton crew to oversee buying and selling of the rights to run a 100% charter/privatized school system.

Steve Koss


Leonie adds

I'd like to know who funded the CREDO study; is it also coming out of our taxpayer dollars?

DOE not only gives space for free to charter schools, but a host of other financial subsidies, some of them on a purely voluntary basis, and some preferentially to charter schools students (like transportation, which every charter school student has a matter of right.)

The other services that NYC charters receive for free are summarized on our blog at http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2008/09/charter-school-funding-per-child-much.html

School facility
Utilities- heat/electricity
Student transportation
Food services
District for Committee on Special Educations (CSE) Evaluations & Referrals
Assessment & testing accommodations
Safety & health services
Technology integration and infrastructure
Student placement and transitional services
Human resources (limited)
Integration policy (e.g. such as middle & HS choice process, promotion, shared space, etc..)
Public hearings
Serve as authorizing entity


There may be more as well as this list came from Michael Duffy of DOE and we know how forthcoming they are with transparent financial info.

Yet even this list caused Patrick Sullivan among others to estimate that charter schools probably receive a higher per student share of city funding than regular public school students, since the average amount that our schools receive for each gened student is about $8000, while charter schools receive more than $12,000 per student. They also are immune to mid-year cuts, as far as I know, which many principals say are the most damaging of all.

None of this financial analysis, of course, includes the hefty additional funding that most charter schools receive from private donors and foundations.

Charter schools receive more proportional space in buildings as the DOE instructional footprint admits. They are also allowed to cap enrollment and class size at any level they want-- which is the biggest advantage of all, in my mind. I have spoken to charter school teachers who said they left DOE-run schools specifically because they were provided with much smaller classes.

Though the NYC charter school lobby continually grouses about being unfairly underfunded, in the Tom Toch piece for Education Sector on charter management orgs, (that was partially censored to omit the most critical information, leading Toch to leave the organization that he had co-founded) a NYC charter school operator admitted that the financial subsidies they receive in NYC are very helpful:

http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/Growing_Pains.pdf

With the annual funding that they get in New York City (some $12,440 per student, plus additional local and federal monies, a sum that Achievement First estimates to be between 80 percent and 95 percent of the funding that the city’s traditional schools receive), Achievement First’s New York schools are able to operate without philanthropic subsidies once they are fully enrolled, says chief financial officer Max Polaner—in sharp contrast to Amistad in New Haven. Says CEO Toll: “We expanded into New York because of Klein and because the dollars are doable.” But such partnerships have been rare, because school districts are wary of losing students and revenue to CMOs, and charter networks have wanted to preserve their independence.

In NYC they have put charter schools, supposedly temporarily, into newly constructed school buildings like Sunset Park HS, which is of questionable legality because these schools were built with 50% state matching funds -- funds that by law cannot be spent on charter school construction.

I have also looked at the financial statements of charter schools that do not include any estimate of the value of these myriad "in kind" contributions or subsidies from DOE -- which is contrary to good accounting practices that demand such estimates.

Ironically, the only NYC schools to really benefit from the CFE decision may in the end be the charter schools; because they can use the extra per pupil funding to provide the conditions that the court said would be necessary to afford children their constitutional right to an adequate education, including smaller classes. In contrast, since 2007, when the state granted additional aid to settle the CFE case, class sizes have significantly increased in our regular public schools, due to the malfeasance and mismanagement of Bloomberg and Klein.

This leads me to Steve's point: when has a governmental agency before financed a study, as DOE has done in this case, to publicize its own relative incompetence? Or in this case, their malignant failure to remediate the conditions that the state's highest court said would be necessary to provide a sound basic education?


Leonie Haimson

Girls Prep Charter, Hedge Funds, and Space Wars in District One

Sunday's NY Times had an article called "Scholarly Investments" which talked about Hedge Fund millionaires and billionaires and the push for charter schools, mentioning some of the charter invaders we have been covering: Harlem Success, PAVE and Girls Prep.

The Tiger Foundation, started by the hedge fund billionaire Julian Robertson, provides a large chunk of financing for several dozen charters across the city. Mr. Robertson’s son, Spencer, founded his own school last year, PAVE Academy in the Brooklyn, while his daughter-in-law, Sarah Robertson, is chairwoman of the Girls Preparatory Charter School on the Lower East Side.

Ahhh, synergy. And good cash flow.

Still, Mr. Curry has been “knee deep in educational issues” since his 20s, he said. He co-founded two Girls Prep schools and is head of the board of the newer one, in the Bronx. The schools are “exactly the kind of investment people in our industry spend our days trying to stumble on,” Mr. Curry said, “with incredible cash flow, even if in this case we don’t ourselves get any of it.” The reference is to the fact that New York State contributes 75 to 90 percent of the amount per student that public schools receive.

Of course hedge fund characters love charters. We're paying for most of them and they get to raise private funding so they can pay Eva Moskowitz $370,000 a year. "These guys get it," said Moskowitz. They sure do get it. And Moskowitz makes sure to get her share. Why doesn't the reporter question the logic of us paying up to 90% of the costs and charters using the extra money coming in to pay such high salaries and who knows what other perks? These sharks aren't only in this for the kids. Edu-business, indeed.

The reporter, as we usually find, mentioned the tainted Caroline Hoxby (see Ed Notes' Nov. 13 Hoxby Hocked) study on charters in NYC outperforming public schools:

A study released in September by researchers headed by Caroline M. Hoxby, an economist at Stanford who is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, concluded that on average New York City charters outperform local schools. But another study by a different group of Stanford researchers last summer suggested that nationally the numbers are muddier.

What's muddy is the press' insistence on harping on Hoxby despite the flaws and questioning why the data munchers in hedge funds would be so enamored of faulty data.

Make a wish, Mike

And then there's this weak-kneed comment from our fearless UFT leader Mike Mulgrew:

“I think it’s all good and well that these people are finally stepping up to support education,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, referring to wealthy hedge funders. “But I would wish they would do it in a more foundational way, a way that would help all the children instead of just a small group.”

Mike has got to be kidding. Stepping up to the plate? Sure, to kill any remnant of teacher unionism.

Below find reports from parent activists Lisa Donlan and Leonie Haimson regarding Girls Prep charter school and the impact of its attempt to grab more space on the schools and students in District 1 on the lower east side. Sorry but the chart of D. 1 demographics did not come out and trying to fix it did not work. Email me if you want a copy.

From Lisa:

The hedge fund-spawned Girls Prep Charter in District One recently mentioned in a number of news stories wants to add on Middle School grades, by pushing 300 additional seats into one of the local "underutilized" ( offers small class size and more than 3 cluster rooms for enrichment for several hundreds of students) school buildings.

if we compare the demographics of GPC and the schools being targeted for space, it seems that the GCP is not equitably serving students in the local community despite the legal mandate to do so.

GPC serves NO ELL students, offers no CTT or self contained classes and serves no BOYS in a district whose students arew 12% ELL on average and 23% special education ( CTT/SC) and 8% SETTS ( push in pull out)

District One is an all choice district that allows any family to apply to any school in the district.

There are currently a dozen middle school options available to all District students, including the GPC students who are largely from out of district.

see below portions of the DoE's memo:

To: District 1 CEC

Fr: Community Superintendent and the Office of Portfolio Planning

Re: District 1 – Scenarios around Space Needs

Date: November 15, 2009

The following memo outlines the needs as identified by the Department of Education (DOE) in District 1 and the process by which the DOE has engaged with all schools to understand more information about school needs as well as the available space. The memo also outlines potential scenarios to meet these needs. This is a follow-up to the September CEC meeting which underutilized space was discussed.

District Needs:

1. Girls Preparatory Charter School of New York (“Girls Prep”), a charter school currently serving grades K-5 with two sections per grade, is in need of space for their middle school. The Girls Prep middle school will serve grades 5-8 with three sections per grade. Girls Prep is currently housed in M188. There is sufficient space for the K-4 elementary school in M188, but the current configuration of the building does not have enough space for Girls Prep to serve its middle school grades long-term. At scale, Girls Prep requires 10 sections for its K-4 elementary school and 12 sections for its 5-8 middle school (22 total sections).

Available Space

The original list of buildings discussed at the September CEC meeting was as follows:

· M015 (houses P.S. 15 and D75 program; hereinafter referred to by building code “M015”)

· M020 (houses P.S. 20; hereinafter referred to by building code “M020”)

· M056 (houses Henry Street School for International Studies, University Neighborhood Middle School, and Collaborative Academy of Science, Technology & Language Arts Education; hereinafter referred to by building code “M056”)

· M137 (houses P.S. 184; hereinafter referred to by building code “M137”)

· M188 (houses P.S. 188, Girls Prep, and D75 program; hereinafter referred to by building code “M188”)

Since September discussions were held with all principals, Network Leaders, SLTs, and building surveys were conducted of M020 and M137 to understand the space and the current situation in each of the building. Based on those conversations and surveys the following buildings were removed from consideration for having space:

· M015- Given the standard instructional footprint that allocates cluster space there is not additional space in the building for a new program or school

· M056- Due to the high need Special Education population located in the building and the existing programmatic needs in the building it did not make sense to add another organization into the building

Furthermore the following building was added to the list as potentially having space:

• M025 (houses School for Global Leaders, Marta Valle Secondary School, and Lower East Side Preparatory High School; hereinafter referred to by building code “M025”)

GIRLS PREP CHARTER

On its website, the school makes extraordinary claims regarding its success and rights to public school space:

http://www.girlsprep.org/

Girls Prep Closes the Achievement Gap for Latina and African-American Students! Number 1 school in District 1! The results are in! Girls Prep students excelled on this year's English Language Arts exams. 98% of our third graders and 92% of our fourth graders met or exceeded standards. These scores place Girls Prep as the second highest scoring charter school in New York City! We are thrilled that our girls scored so well on the assessment! These results are just one amazing outcome of years of collaboration, hard work and thoughtful planning. Parents, students and teachers, please take a moment to congratulate yourself, each other, and the third and fourth grade students. Save Girls Prep are parents and supporters of Girls Prep Charter School who believe every child must have equal access to a quality education. Girls Prep's ranks among the top 1% of NYC public schools, traditional or charter, in terms of the achievement of its students.
Save Girls Prep believe all children in District 1 should have access to a high performing school such as Girls Prep. Charter Schools are Public Schools and have every right under NYS Law to share space in a public school building.

On the website GPC also offers transportation to parents to the December PEP meeting to make a show of strength for their cause.

---

Let's repeat Lisa's statement we extracted earlier in this post:

Yet, if we compare the demographics of GPC and the schools being targeted for space, it seems that the GCP is not equitably serving students in the local communityt despite the legal mandate to do so.

GPC serves NO ELL students, offers no CTT or self contained classes and serves no BOYS in a district whose students arew 12% ELL on average and 23% special education ( CTT/SC) and 8% SETTS ( push in pull out)

District One is an all choice district that allows any family to apply to any school in the district.

There are currently a dozen middle school options available to all District students, including the GPC students who are largely from out of district.

DISTRICT 1 SELECT DEMOGRAPHICS 2009

	District One	P.S. 184	Girls Prep	P.S. 188	P.S. 15	UNMS	CASTLE	HSISS	P.S. 20
Total enrollment	11,653	640	263	400	235	180	292	525	590
% Charter Students	11%
SC Classes		0	0	1	3	2	2	3	3
CTT Classes		1	0	6	1	2	3	1	5
IEPS	23%(ES) /29%(MS)	2% = 11 stds	8%	21%		36%	27%	30%	16
SC/CTT	15%(ES) /21%(MS)	.7%= 5 stdts	0	15%	18%	20%	21%	22%	10%
% ELL	12	5%	0	16	21	15	7	15	18%
% Title One	80.1	77.8	68.0	92.6	96.5	89.6	80.8	69.9	97.1
#/ %STH	4%		4=2%	51stdts =13%	24stdts =11%	6=3%	3=1%	9=2%	3=.5%
% in district			43
% out of district			57
% Hispanic	48	5%		64	58	65	62.3	58	60%
% Black	19	6%		33	30	26	18.5	28	10%
%Asian	19	80%		3	8	2	15.1	10	26%
%White	13	7%		1	3	6	3.4	3	2%
%Am Indian	1	.9%		0.3	0.5	0.4	0.7	0.4	.7%

Sources and References:

- DCEP 2009-10, p.5, author Sarah Kleinhandler, school district improvement liaison

- ‘Girls Prep at a glance’, author Miriam Raccah, executive director Public Prep

- 8/10/2009 ATS snapshot K students D1

- DOE D1 K-8 Special Ed Percentages base on 2009 projections (08/04/09)

- D1 poverty percentage, author Jean Mingot, budget officer Manhattan integrated Service Center 10/26/09

- School portals DOE website Aug. - Nov 2009

- ATS website 10/23/09

- STH report from ATS 09/22/09, author Cecilio Diaz, Office of Youth Development Manhattan ISC

Lisa Donlan

CEC One

Leonie follows up with: more reasons to reject expansion of Girls Prep: lack of space

More on District 1:

1. The total student population is growing faster in D1 Elementary school buildings between 2007 and 2008 than any other district in the city, according to DOE’s blue book data (which include charter schools already housed in their buildings).

Total student population in elementary school buildings is up 4.1% -- by far the fastest growth anywhere.

(Second fastest growth is D25 at 3.9%; D 20 at 3.2%; D 24 at 3%, D26 at 2.9% and D28 at 2.5%, all in Queens, then D31 Staten Island at 2.4% and finally D2 at 2.3%.)

2- Gened/CTT/G&T Kindergarten enrollment increased in D1 by 10.9% between 2008 and 2009 (not even including charter schools), according to the DOE class size reports. (They are tied with D5 as second fastest Kindergarten growth in Manhattan).

3- Kindergarten class sizes are up 22% since 2007 – probably the sharpest increases in the entire city. Now, more than 51% of Kindergarten students in D1 schools are in classes of 21 or more.

Their schools simply don’t have the space for this expansion, unless in the future they want class sizes to continue to increase even more sharply and/or kick out their preKs.

Meanwhile, the small classes and the access to preK were probably the main reasons that achievement in District 1 schools improved more than any other district in the state between 2001 and 2008, according to the DOE’s own calculations.

For the DOE power point showing this, check out http://www.scribd.com/doc/20954070/New-York-City-School-Performance-October-2009

Rather than further damage the opportunities of students in D1, the lesson should be that whatever D1 is doing, the rest of the city desperately needs: more space, so that schools can provide smaller classes and more preK, not less.

Leonie Haimson