Feeling Peppy: The Meaning of January 26

Updated, Feb. 5, 8am
[Jan. 26 activated people in a way we have not often seen. See a parent voice of defiance at the top of the EdN sidebar. If that is one voice of many out there (an interesting sidebar is that high school student leaders attended the GEM meeting on Tuesday) then this could be a game changer.]

I wrote the column below about the implications of the Jan. 26 PEP meeting for publication in today's Wave newspaper in Rockaway a few days ago and even since then things have been moving forward. One of the most significant things about the UFT lawsuit is that the NAACP has joined in. BloomKlein have been playing the race card and the trick is turning against them. Their panic mode response has been to unleash the press in an attack on the NAACP and use their stooge Dennis Walcott as front man.

I didn't have the space to write about it, but a major outcome (and don't the Ed Deformers love to use that word) of the Jan. 26 PEP is the constant pounding the charter school movement took, in particular from people of color. (I'm efforting to get some of that video up). That seems to have been a turning point in the debate on charters. Note these two posts on Norms Notes

Charter Schools' Political Success is a Civil Rights Failure

and the headline from the Amsterdam News:

EDUCATION WAR

....“We’ve been patient. We’ve tried to reason,” continued [NYC NAACP head Hazel] Dukes. “To me, they are hell-bent on knowing everything that is good for the children. That’s disrespectful to the parents, to the community and to our children.”


In the last few days, people, even politicians - sometimes they're people too - have been contacting GEM with requests for sit downs. We're proud that GEM was a strong voice opposing and exposing charter schools for what they were - attempts to undermine public education and divide local communities.


Feeling Peppy: The Meaning of January 26
by Norm Scott

The event inspired exhilaration and despair, disappointment and hope. One day books may be written about it. Class Size Matters' Leonie Haimson called it "the ugly naked face of mayoral control," referring to the now legendary January 26 meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) at Brooklyn Tech HS. Nine and a half hour meetings can get pretty ugly. I got on the speakers' line at 4:30pm on Tuesday and didn't walk out until 3:30am Wednesday.

For the uninitiated, the PEP is the rubber stamp NYC Board of Education. The mayor gets to appoint eight out of the 13 members who serve at his pleasure. Each of the five borough presidents appoint one and even these people are often forced to go along with the mayor because the BPs are so dependent on the mayor for their budgets. Until recently, only Manhattan's BP Scott Stringer had the cajones to appoint someone (Patrick Sullivan) who would stand up to the Tweed goons on a consistent basis. By the end of this PEP meeting, 3 other borough reps had joined Patrick, including our own Dmytro Fedkowskyj, who said, “There very well may come a time when I will raise my hand in support of one of these schools being closed. But I am not there, not because I think closing a school should never be a considered choice, but because I think in order to get to that point, we must first ensure that it is the last choice."

Leonie, who attends an enormous number of meetings, thought this one "was one of the most inspiring and awful events I have ever witnessed. Inspiring because there were thousands of people there to protest the closing of 19 schools, and hundreds spoke out, for more than eight hours: eloquently, angrily, passionately and intelligently, about why their schools should not be closed and why the administration's blind and reckless policies would hurt our most vulnerable children. These English language learners, special education students, poor and homeless, will likely be excluded from the new small schools and charter schools that will replace their schools, and will undoubtedly be discharged in huge numbers as these schools phase out, never to receive a fair chance at a high school diploma. Parents, students and teachers cited facts and numbers, personal experience, trenchant analysis and damning evidence of the DOE's malignant neglect and botched statistics."

Inspiration came from the fact that 2000 people came out to the meeting, with the UFT organizing 50 buses. Hundreds of articulate spokes persons -numerous students, teachers and parents, many young, black, Latin/a. "I'm not a failure," proclaimed one student and after another as they listed their accomplishments and how their school had helped them. Loads of alumni, many in college, also came to support their schools. Many seemed to take the branding of their school as "failing" as a personal affront.

Paul Robeson seemed to have the largest and most organized contingent, along with Jamaica HS and Columbus. In my rough calculation, the size of activity in the school community seemed related to how much the school principal supported them. The Beach Channel turnout seemed very low in comparison. I'll leave you to form your own conclusions. Did you know leadership change was an option to closing Beach Channel, but was not considered?

Most of the activists in the NYC branch of the growing Resistance to the market based education deformist policies of BloomKlein showed up. The Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), one of the groups I helped found a year ago which has been one of the leaders of the Resistance, came out in force with their banner, whistles and high energy. They sat with the mostly Black and Latino/a group, the Coalition for Public Education (CPE), and alliances were being built throughout the meeting.

In addition to the closing schools, the meeting rubber stamped a five year extension of the PAVE charter school (whose founder is the son of a billionaire who gave $10 million to Bloomberg projects) within the PS 15 building in Red Hook despite the pleas of the parents and teachers from the Concerned Advocates for Public Education (CAPE). While being severely disappointed at the deaf ear of the PEP, they came out swinging a few days later: "...one month, culminating in one nearly 12 hour meeting, can both be inspiring and depressing, both a confirmation of our belief in humanity and a questioning of it. If we were spiritually empty, if we were cynical, we would believe that 'the people' should just give up, clearly the game is fixed. Luckily we are not, instead we vow to fight, until our last breath, to protect and preserve public education for our children."

I've been attending PEP meetings since the early years and they mostly took place in a sea of anonymity with little attention being paid by both the press and the public. The January PEP and the December PEP before it have drawn much greater attention with lots of press coverage. This outpouring of interest has shone a light in the dark corners where the roaches gather and hopefully there will be greater scrutiny, though don't be shocked if they try to bury these meetings in the furthest corners of the galaxy (anyone for a meeting on Alpha Centauri?)

Joel Klein and civil rights? Not
Of the significant outcomes of this meeting, none will prove more long term than the breaking of BloomKlein's' manipulation of the Black community, where the claim that closing the achievement gap (sure, by lowering standards, credit recovery and juking the stats) is the great civil rights issue of our time and they are leading the struggle. All the years of Klein traipsing to Black churches every Sunday to cultivate the community came down around his ears on Jan. 26 as one person of color after another condemned Tweed as being divisive and racist, repeatedly using the term "separate and unequal" in relation to the DOE's favoring charter over public schools. When Bloomberg's appointee chairman David Chang turned the mic off on a speaker from the NAACP, as pointed out by Patrick Sullivan, the shield set up by BloomKlein seemed to have been seriously breached.

Klein tried to recoup by appearing on a black radio station, leading one black parent to write "Shame on you KISS FM. Another wrote, "Joel Klein had the nerve to go on KISS FM radio station and try to explain why he is shutting down schools in the Black Community... Joel Klein should be indicted for what he has done to education in New York City. He has been allowed to have 4 major reorganizations. He has shut down the Chancellors district. He has closed over 90 schools and plans to close at least 100 more over the next 4 years. Our students are not failures, they were failed by the Billionaire Mayor and the unqualified Chancellor."


The beginning of a death spiral for mayoral control?
Many people had their first exposure on January 26 to the frustration of seeing hundreds of speakers have their voices ignored. Some felt helpless and walked away in despair. But for many the learning experience through mass activism energize them and may start the ball rolling toward ultimately putting a stake through the heart of mayoral control.

There is no better example than our own BCHS student activist Chris Petrillo. As the vote for Beach Channel closing went through he was in tears at having failed to save his school. NY 1 reporter Lindsay Christ asked him why he was so upset. "My parents met as students at Beach Channel," he said (school closings ignore the important role schools play as community anchors). By the time I dropped Chris off at his house close to 4am, he was back on his feet, ready to fight.

A few days later Chris called from the press conference at the UFT, where the NAACP and many other groups had joined the UFT in filing a law suit contending that "the department violated state law by failing to do the required analysis of how school closings would affect the more than 13,000 students who would potentially be displaced, particularly special needs students; by failing to analyze the effects of the closings on other already overcrowded public schools nearby; by failing to give communities and interested groups appropriate notice of local public hearings; and by failing to answer questions at public hearings."

I have 5 hours of videotape from the meeting, which I have been putting up on my blog (http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/). One of the fun pieces to watch is Joel Klein undergoing five minutes of booing and howling while he tried to give his opening statement. Come on by get a cathartic experience as you watch.

Is UFT telling teachers to withdraw U rating appeal b/c NONE HAVE BEEN WON?

From an angry teacher:

teacher I work with - 17 years in system, no prior U ratings - principal went after him immediately on her arrival, last year - he got a U last June, and appealed - he was just contacted by a union rep to call about his appeal - I don't think he ever got a letter (which I did, for my U appeal hearing) - just a call from the union - he met with the rep - prior to the meeting he wrote up a very well-written statement which he read to me (he wrote it in our staff room and shared it with whoever would listen) - when he met with the union rep he was told that he should "try to get the principal to give him as S "(!) - and then was advised that he should rescind the appeal because NONE of the U ratings have been turned over on appeal! which he did!!!!

I think it is amazing, considering the record number of U ratings, the odds of NOT ONE of them being overturned on appeal is quite mind-boggling!

does the union believe that having teachers rescind their appeals will result in principals - who, as this teacher indicated to me, was given the impression by the principal - when he met with her (as I also did, separately) on the last day of the fall term, about his current "mid-year U rating" - that she was on the carpet for the U ratings she gave last June (3 of us at this small school) - giving such teachers S ratings this year???

is this an actual strategy??? or simply desperation???

anonymous was a teacher

UFT Election Back Stories

Gotham Schools' Anna Philips has a report on the upcoming UFT elections (ballots go out March 7 and must be returned by April 6 - count is April 7 and is open to UFT members). I left a comment.

The reason Randi got 74% in her first election was that New Action, the main opposition at the time, was still a force and able to pull a quarter of the votes. Now they have sunk to below 10%, with many of those coming from retirees.

For a comparison of voting patterns over the lst few elections, see a spreadsheet we prepared 3 years ago at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pgxRf3gM4qtyBFmTshSW1fQ&hl=en

You wiil note that Randi's % dropped in 2007, but her vote total really dropped from 42,000 to 35,000 between 2004 and 2007 while the number of retirees voting for Unity remained constant at over 18,000 votes. Can it be that half if Unity's votes come from retirees? It's late and my eyes are bleary. But here's the skinny on the HS vote.

Elaborating on the high school executive board seats and why they are up for contention:

First of all, our 6 great candidates.

From ICE
Arthur Goldstein, CL of Francis Lewis HS, who you all know very well from his writings on Gotham.

Michael Fiorillo, former CL and current delegate from Newcomers HS who has also commented very astutely on many issues at Gotham.

John Lawhead, CL of Tilden, a soon to be closed school. John used to be at Bushwick HS which also was closed, so he is an expert on the politics of closing schools. He is also has been an expert on the high stakes testing issue for many years and has taught many of us in ICE the implications of the high stakes testing game.

From TJC
Kit Wainer, CL from Leon Goldstein HS, who headed the ICE-TJC slate in 2007. Kit has been a long-time activist and is one of the founders of TJC.

Marian Swerdlow, FDR HS, also a long-time activist in UFT politics and a former delegate.

Peter Lamphere, CL of Bronx HS of Science, who has been active for many years.

Some facts about this particular piece of the election

These 6 high school seats have been Unity's problem for over 20 years (the high school vote always split around 50/50), as they consistently lost them to the opposition, which used to be New Action.

But in 2003/4 New Action started making deals with Randi - they wouldn't run against her if she wouldn't run Unity candidates for these 6 seats, thus ceding them to New Action. Many New Action members also got part-time jobs at the UFT.

This dirty deal led to the formation of ICE (many from the Education Notes circle) for the 2004 elections and an alliance with TJC, which had been around for a decade but had never run in an election before 2003. Both groups had a lot to learn and had to build a new infrastructure from scratch.

With Unity not running candidates for these seats, the direct confrontation with New Action led to ICE-TJC winning those seats, which placed people like Jeff Kaufman and James Eterno (who has been on the EB as a New Action rep but left them over the Unity deal) on the EB. As someone who had been attending the EB meetings for a while, they brought a breath of fresh air to the meetings over their 3 years on the board, forcing Unity to address many issues, including the rubber room (Kaufman's short trip to the RR as an Ex Bd member made some headlines and his experience there and support for his colleagues, plus his legal background, brought many issues into the light.) Their voices were loud and strong in fighting the disastrous 2005 contract.

In order to still these voices, in 2007 Unity guaranteed New Action 3 of the HS EB seats by co-endorsing - which means a Unity vote counted for New Action- and took 3 seats for themselves. ICE-TJC got 36% of the vote and could not top the combined New Action (12%) /Unity (51%) totals, though ICE-TJC outpolled New Action in every division of the union except retirees. (Since New Action sold out their vote totals have dropped consistently amongst working teachers from the mid 20% to single digits in 2007). To make it clearer. New Action got 3 HS EB seats while getting only 521 votes while ICE-TJC received over 1500 votes and got no seats. UFT democracy inaction.

You can see a vote comparison of the 2004 and 2007 elections at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pgxRf3gM4qtyBFmTshSW1fQ&hl=en

New Action also received 5 additional EB seats for a total of 8 as a reward for keeping the independent voices of ICE-TJC off the Board.

We assume that a similar deal will be in operation in this election. If ICE-TJC can increase its vote in the HS to 50%, not an impossibility given the conditions, then the 6 people mentioned above, although an extreme minority out of 89 EB seats, would serve on the Board and give voice to a large group of disenfranchised teachers, paras, secretaries, etc.

And it would further drive a stake through the heart of New Action's bogus claims to be an opposition. If they lose, will it threaten their jobs at the UFT? Probably not, but if you detect an air of desperation on the part of New Action, you know why. Unity will probably offer a similar deal like last time and hand them additional seats in order to make phony claims of bi-partisanship. If ICE-TJC does win these seats, just watch New Action EB members line up on most votes with Unity.

Unlike ICE/GEM people, New Action has been absent from the line of fire of closing schools and charter school invasions (they supported the UFT charter school invasion of 2 public schools in East NY). Will the rank and file be aware of these differences? While the word has been out about New Action to some areas of the UFT, we theorize that a batch of New Action votes come from people who still believe they are the old New Action.


You can follow the UFT elections at the new ICE blog: http://uftelections2010.blogspot.com/

PEP Jan. 26: NAACP Mic Turned Off, Sullivan Makes His Point

In this 3:37 second extract, Patrick Sullivan chastises David Chang after mics are turned off from speakers from the NAACP.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR0eHLefS5k

Excuse video quality: Lousy location to shoot from - constantly having to move around to avoid blocking isles, bad lighting, cheap camera and downsized quality for faster processing.

Exposing the Corporate Puppet Masters... and Some of Their Puppets

Below, just in from Angel Gonzalez. John Tarleton of the Indypendent has done an amazing job. Get in touch and get copies for your schools ASAP. This is the kind of information and reporting the NY Teacher should be doing but doesn't.

Note the role Bill Gates has played. Though people ask me why I always harp on the AFT/UFT connection to these characters, I will keep doing it until people fully understand the complicity of our union. The AFT put Gates and some others on some board. "How could you do that," they were asked? "Oh, we're going to coopt them," was the response. You just can't make this stuff up.
Norm

Below (& on link) are the the privateers, the PEPpette(puppet) Masters, behind the School Closings & Privatization with Charters. Thank you, John Tarleton & Indypendent, for your excellent coverage on this drive to privatize schools with closings & charterization. http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/faces-of-school-reform/

If one traces the background of most of the DOE, the State Regents and the Federal Obama Department of Education, most of these chiefs are linked directly to corporate profiteers of some sort. There is somewhere on the internet (I can't relocate it), a web-chart that list the names of all these local, state, & national education officials and their corporate links. If anyone can find it, please circulate. It illustrates well the big monied-monsters that we fight.

These corporates below need to become the targets of our protests & organizing work. Follow the money & here are your targets.

Thanks again, John T.

Angel Gonzalez

The Faces of School Reform

By John Tarleton
From the January 29, 2010 issue | Posted in John Tarleton , Local | Email this article

ILLUSTRATION: GUERRUNTZ

Led by a band of billionaires, the school-reform movement has gained increasing momentum during the past decade, spreading its reach into urban communities across the country. But instead of truly transforming public schools, private funders want to restructure them. They insist running schools like a business is the solution. At stake is not only control over hundreds of billions of dollars in local, state and federal funding, but also the future of the next generation of schoolchildren.

Bill Gates
Net Worth: $50 billion

Using the Gates Foundation as his instrument, the Microsoft co-founder has channeled tens of millions of dollars into transforming large high schools through the schools-within-a-school model. Critics say boutique public schools tend to enroll (or “cream”) the best students while receiving more per-pupil funding than their large-school counterparts. Gates has also allocated large sums of money to help fuel the growth of charter schools.

During the 2008 presidential election the Gates and Broad foundations teamed up to spend $24 million to influence public education policy. Their shared message: Expand charter schools and tie teacher pay to student performance on standardized tests. President Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has tapped top Gates Foundation officers to be his chief of staff and to head the agency’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. Foundation officers are also spearheading the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, which promises aid to cash-strapped states that eliminate caps on charter schools and agree to place even greater emphasis on standardized testing. “It is not unfair to say that the Gates Foundation’s agenda has become the country’s agenda in education,” says Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Arne Duncan
Secretary of Education

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Duncan led the Chicago school system from 2001 to 2008. He oversaw more than 60 school closings, primarily in people-of-color neighborhoods, while rapidly opening privately run charter schools. The Gates Foundation funneled $63.2 million into the Chicago schools during Duncan’s tenure and now Duncan is taking the “Chicago model” nationwide with the help of top aides recruited from the Gates and Broad foundations.

Spencer Robertson

The son of a hedge-fund billionaire who has donated $10 million to Mayor Bloomberg’s school projects since 2003, Spencer Robertson opened the PAVE Charter Academy in 2008 inside P.S. 15, a successful elementary school in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Tensions further escalated when the DOE recently announced that PAVE would be allowed to expand inside P.S. 15 over the next five years, even though Robertson has received $26 million from the DOE to build his own school. Robertson’s wife Sarah, the head of the board at Girls Prep Charter School, was at the center of a similar controversy when the school recently sought to expand inside public school facilities in the Lower East Side.

James Shelton
Assistant Deputy Director of Education, Director of Office of Inn ovation and Improvement, DOE

Following Obama’s election, Shelton moved seamlessly from deputy director of education at the Gates Foundation to a post at the DOE as assistant deputy director overseeing a variety of grant programs that assist charter schools. Operating at the nexus of the public, private and nonprofit sectors, Shelton previously worked at Knowledge Universe, where he launched, acquired and operated education-related businesses. Shelton’s former Gates Foundation colleague Margot Rogers now serves as Duncan’s chief of staff.

Eli Broad
Net Worth: $5.4 Billion

Broad, a Los Angeles-based billionaire who made his fortune in insurance and real estate, has been at the forefront of the school restructuring movement over the past decade. Using the foundation that bears his name, he has pushed aggressively for schools to be run more like businesses. The Broad (pronounced like “road”) Foundation has seeded charter schools across the country, including in New York. It has also developed a number of programs to train school administrators, including the Broad Superintendent Academy, which instructs business, nonprofit, military, government and education leaders in how to manage urban school districts. A number of top officials at the New York City’s Department of Education have received Broad training. Speaking at the 92nd Street Y in New York City last year, Broad summarized his approach: “We don’t know anything about how to teach or reading curriculum or any of that. But what we do know about is management and governance.”

The Waltons
(Christy, Jim, Alice, S. Robson)
Net Worth: $79.4 billion

The Walton Family Foundation of Wal-Mart is the single biggest investor in charter schools in the United States, giving a total of $150.3 million during 2007-08. In New York, the Walton group has provided $15 million in construction funding plus more than $1 million per year for operating costs in recent years to help the Brighter Choice charter school network establish eight new schools in Albany, according to the Albany Times Union. Meanwhile, Gov. David Paterson has received contributions totaling $55,900 from Christy Walton, as he pushes legislation to lift New York’s current statewide cap of 200 charter schools.

Eva Moskowitz

Moskowitz, a former Upper East Side councilmember with close ties to the Bloomberg administration, earns more than $300,000 annually for running a chain of four small charter schools in Harlem. Like Spencer Robertson, Moskowitz has sparked protests in the predominantly people-of-color community she operates in as her schools move into existing neighborhood schools. Last April, the Broad Foundation awarded Moskowitz’s Success Charter Network $1 million over two years to support its four existing Harlem Success schools and to help it open 40 new schools in the New York City area over the next 10 years.

Joanne Weiss
Director, Race to the Top program, DOE

Joanne Weiss served as a director and chief operating officer for the New School Venture Fund from 1998 to 2008 before being appointed to head the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program. Using venture philanthropy largesse provided by Broad, Gates and other wealthy individuals, Weiss helped incubate networks of privately controlled charter schools and charter management organizations as well as organizations to mold new teachers and principals in the education reform movement’s technocratic image.

Michael Milken and Larry Ellison
Net worth: $2 billion and $27 billion

Michael Milken dominated Wall Street in the 1980s using junk bonds to fuel that decade’s merger mania before landing in federal prison for violating securities laws. Now, Milken has gone into the education business as chairman, co-founder and driving force behind Knowledge Universe, a multinational conglomerate that operates for-profit day-care centers and schools and makes interactive educational toys. Ellison, CEO of Oracle, co-founded the company with Milken.

Democrats for Education Reform

Established by four New York-based hedge-fund millionaires active in the charter school movement — Whitney Tilson, Charles Ledley, John Petry and Ravanel Boykin Curry IV — this political action committee seeks to build and solidify support for corporate educationreform initiatives inside the Democratic Party, lest it be tempted to heed the concerns of teacher unions or other critics of running schools like a business.

Michael Bloomberg
Net Worth: $17.5 billion

Bloomberg spent $75 million to win the New York mayoralty in 2001. Since then, he has used his Midas-like wealth to dominate the city’s political process while pursuing a top-down, data-driven vision of school reform. When New York won the 2007 Broad Prize for Urban Education, education historian Diane Ravitch described it as “a prize conferred by one billionaire on another.”

Rev. Al Sharpton

Sharpton began preaching the gospel of school reform in 2008 when he joined forces with New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to found the Educational Equality Project (EEP). Last fall, Sharpton went on a five-city road trip with “odd couple” buddy Newt Gingrich as well as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to tout the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program. Sharpton’s support for the school reform cause has also yielded its earthly rewards. According to a March 2009 report by Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News, Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) received a $500,000 donation immediately following the establishment of EEP. Sharpton’s benefactor: Plainfield Asset Management, a Connecticut-based hedge fund, where former schools Chancellor Harold Levy is a managing director. The donation came at a time Sharpton was set to pay $1 million in back taxes and penalties he and NAN owed.

Sources: Forbes 2009 Fortune 400, Gates Foundation, newschools.org, The New York Times, Broad Foundation, gothamschools.org, Walton Family Foundation, Albany Times Union, Chicago Public Schools, rethinkingschools.org, wsws.org, U.S. Department of Education, Knowledge Universe, forbes.com, Ed Week, New York Sun, edwize.org, New York Daily News, ednotesonline.org.

For more information see the following articles in this issue of The Indypendent:

“Taking the Public Out of Schools” by John Tarleton

“Inside Columbus High School” by Mary Annaïse Heglar

“Bloomberg’s 12-Step Method to Close Down Public Schools” by John Tarleton

“New York City Schools by the Numbers” by John Tarleton

“FIRST PERSON: Stealing the Best and Brightest from Public Schools” by Seung Ok

Juking Police and Ed Stats

A NYC teacher at Perdido Street School blog has two recent posts that form a perfect square. He breaks down Obama's rewrite of the No Child Left Behind law, which is even worse than the George Bush version:

One section of the current Bush-era law has required states to certify that all teachers are highly qualified, based on their college coursework and state-issued credentials. In the Race to the Top competition, the administration has required participating states to develop the capability to evaluate teachers based on student test data, at least in part, and on whether teachers are successful in raising student achievement.


Educators who have talked to the administration said the officials appeared to be considering inserting similar provisions to the main education law, by requiring the use of student data in teacher evaluation systems as a condition for receiving federal education money.

I don't have the time to pin it down now, but I think I read somewhere that Randi Weingarten said the Obama NCLB modifications were heading in the right direction. Figures. For the Mulgrew fans, keep an eye out for any response from him. Silence means.... well you decide.

In today's post PSS deals with a related item: Bloomberg's NY: Cops Manipulate Crime Stats

Bedford-Stuyvesant's 81st Precinct recorded felonies as misdemeanors and refused to take complaints from victims - all in an effort to drive down the crime rate, sources said.

A man who said he was beaten bloody and robbed - and then told by cops he was the victim of a "lost property" case because he didn't get a good look at the suspects.

That is what you get when the data munchers get going. As long as measured outcomes as determiners of success are used, people will discover ways manipulate data. The Wire so aptly pointed this out when a former cop went into teaching and when told all about the testing game made an instant connection: juking the stats.

PSS jumped on the story in early January when it was announced that NYC had the lowest murder rate in history in 2009, in essence predicting the current scandal of police precincts juking the stats:

...New York City has the most edumacated kids in the country even though many can only pass the dumbed-down, in-house graded state tests but not the more rigorous federal tests and graduation rates have been massaged by a credit recovery program that offers failing students a semester credit for reading a Spiderman comic book.

Just as schools are forced to show improved test scores and graduation rates every year or be closed down and replaced by charters, police precincts have to show improved crime stats every year or the city fires the existing brass at the precinct and brings in new brass.

Given the ease with which schools use Klein-metic to massage stats, I just have to wonder if police precinct captains aren't doing the same thing.

You know, like declaring a guy with four bullet holes in his back an "accident victim" ("We think he accidentally shot himself in the back four times...") or just miscounting the number of dead bodies at the end of every week to keep the math nice and neat (i.e., at zero.)

Ed Notes also blogged on the same story on Dec. 29 and just plain accused Bloomberg of being a body snatcher:

NYC Murder Rate Down? Where Did Bloomberg Bury the Bodies?

Today's good news was that this year NYC will have the lowest number of murders since record keeping began. Bloomberg is crowing. But those of us in education who know how Bloomberg jukes the stats, cannot help but be skeptical.

But how can he juke the number of murders, you might ask? When you're dead, you're dead.

If you are a fan of The Wire, you will remember how Marlo Stanfield's hit crew somehow managed to do over 20 people and leave no bodies by sealing them up in abandoned housing? Don't bet against Bloomberg's having a couple of hundred missing persons being "housed" on empty city property.

Marlo Stanfield and his crew Chris and Snoop hired as consultants by Bloomberg to "keep" murder rate down.

Womb Testing

Updated 12:25pm, Feb. 2, 2010

See piece in NY Times by Susan Engel, Playing to Learn.

How far can we be away from pre-birth testing? I can just see it. Someone comes up with a standardized test where certain phrases are read into a future mother's belly button and a stethoscope is placed in strategic areas to read the unborn baby's responses.

This thought came to mind last night at my wife's retirement party at the Water Club where a couple of people with kids in the first grade, one in a public school in Queens, were talking about all the homework their kids were bringing home. One of the ladies present asked if they had play things in their classrooms and both parents said "No." I chimed in that no elite private school where people like Bloomberg sent their kids too (Spence in his case) would allow such a system to engulf their children.

As we hear the refrain of "separate and unequal" coming back into vogue when describing the education kids get at hedge fund drenched charter schools vs. the public school, often in the same building, one point made is that the children at both types of school are children of color, with the lottery winners getting the better end of the stick. But the basic test driven education goes on in both types of schools.

Not so in the halls of elite private education. where the idea of test driven is laughed at. Wealthy people spend $30,000 a year to assure they keep laughing.

Join in for 5 Minutes of Booing Uncle Joel - Go On, Get it Out of Your System

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3km1iIY0MQ

NAACP NYS Joins UFT Law Suit Against DOE - Press Conference

So much for BloomKlein, those great civil rights activists when the NAACP jumps in. Where is Klein buddy Al Sharpton now?

Note the call:

PLEASE WEAR YOUR NAACP CAPS, JACKETS, ETC.

That will make some photo-op.

In Meredith Kolodner's story in today's Daily News, it is pointed out that last year when the UFT sued to stop the closings of 3 schools, the DOE backed down, though they chopped at the schools by cutting the grades they covered and Klein sent out a letter to parents urging them to place their children elsewhere. While the UFT law suit is a good thing, it should not be the only strategy as courts can take some time. But if there is an injunction of sorts issue to stay the closures, that would throw all the balls in the air. The UFT should also start pressuring the state legislature to take some kind of action on this issue. But with people like State Senator Malcolm Smith having an interest in their own personal charter school and with charter school supported throwing all kinds of money at them, we cannot expect much. But the UFT has to start pulling support for these characters in upcoming elections.


DATE: Monday, February 1, 2010
Place: UFT Building
52 Broadway
New York, NY
Time: 1: 00 p.m.

To announce the joining of the NAACP New York State Conference in an education law suit with MICHAEL MULGREW, as President of the UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, Local 2, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, and THE ALLIANCE FOR QUALITY EDUCATION, [THE NEW YORK STATE CONFERENCE OF NAACP], [Individual Petitioners],

Respondents
THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT OF THE CITY OF NEWYORK, and JOEL I. KLEIN, as Chancellor of the City School District of the City of New York,

PLEASE JOIN US !

PLEASE WEAR YOUR NAACP CAPS, JACKETS, ETC.


Ed Note:
Make sure to check out our buddies on the radio today.
PS 15 parent and teacher on WWRL at 8am and James Eterno om WBAI 7pm

Radio Show ... Monday 8 am 1600AM

WWRL Morning Show -Errol Louis

You can listen in live at http://www.wwrl1600.com/live_stream.asp

James Eterno on WBAI Monday Evening

Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash host Building Bridges on 99.5 FM radio: WBAI. James will be one of three guests talking about school closings. The program airs between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Tune in.

NOTE: Carmen Applewhite will also be on the show. She sent this out:

"Carmen Applewhite the first African American Candidate for President of the UFT will be on WBAI tonight from 7:30 p.m. until 8:00 P.M. along with Mr. James Eterno the other Presidential Candidtate."

Carmen is incorrect in stating she is the first African American candidate for president. Michelle Macklin ran for President on the PAC slate in either 1999 or 2000 or 2001 and Hillcrest HS Chapter leader Marilyn Beckford headed ICE's first election slate in 2004.

Historical Perspective of ICE and GEM: Getting the Message Out

I don't write enough about how proud I am of the role the Independent Community of Educators (ICE) has played over the years in the resistance movement.

With our large-scale petition signing event going on this afternoon and the time I have spent in helping to organize it, time I often resent because I am just not super interested in dealing with UFT elections and view it as worse than a trip to the dentist, I thought it useful to share a few thoughts.

ICE has all too often been viewed only as a UFT caucus battling over internal UFT politics, something we have not always been too effective at doing.

But ICE was founded more as a group to analyze the state of public education and has done a great job at bringing the issues to attention. It was only the sell-out and collaborative policies of the UFT that forced us to get into the pit with Unity Caucus and its sell-out partner, New Action.

Since this the attack on public education began in NYC 7-8 years ago we have seen a big jump in getting our word out. Note how many speakers - even the UFT - are using our analysis.

ICE began in Nov. 2003 (and Ed Notes years before that in 1996) motivated by getting the word out even to our colleagues in the opposition, people who told us mayoral control and testing were not their issues. When ICE people attended all the UFT mayoral control meetings over the last few years and put out a minority position, even someone as astute as Angel Gonzalez said he was beginning to understand the big picture. Michael Fiorillo has been sharing the "big picture" with us for years. Now Leo Casey is giving Michael's speech about privatization at PEP meetings. But over the years, the UFT leadership has consistently coopted positions we took. Some think that is a good thing - look, you all had some influence. But they only took those positions on paper for PR purposes and to undercut the influence ICE might have.

Recently, though we are a tiny voice, our positions on testing (ED Notes as raising resos at the UFT DA as far back as the late 90's), mayoral control, charter schools, merit pay, etc, have been reaching a crescendo.

ICE has attracted deep thinkers about education, some of the highest quality people I have met. What we were missing were people who were activists with experience in organizing. When Angel Gonzalez joined us over a year ago (his retirement in July 2008 made him available) he brought that edge to ICE. Angel suggested ICE form a committee to address the ATR issue. The always amazing John Lawhead added the element that ATRs came from closing schools and closing schools came from the high stakes testing regimen.

A year ago a few of us from ICE held the first committee meeting in a diner. There were 4 of us. At that point I was attending meetings of Justice, Not Just Tests, a NYCORE group focusing on fighting high stakes tests. We invited Sam Coleman to attend our meetings. Others joined in and the concept of GEM was born. Following on the work CORE in Chicago was doing, we held a conference in March, reaching out to some of the Harlem schools under attack by Eva Moskowitz and a march and demo at Tweed in May. Somewhere in this time we picked up the GEM name.

In late June/early July when PS 123 came under attack by Moskowitz, GEM came out in force and started making contacts all over the city.

GEM has been a totally different experience from the more cerebral ICE. Most of the ICE core has jumped in. That has left ICE with less time and resources to devote to the UFT election, which we committed ourselves to a year ago. But I view it all as one movement over the long run. GEM is involved with ICE, NYCORE, TJC, ISO, Teachers Unite, CAPE and goodness knows how many other organizations involved. GEM is not a UFT caucus and is working with student and parent groups.

That TJC and ICE chose James Eterno as our presidential candidate last May has turned out to be a good thing. While James cannot campaign (Mulgrew naturally can visit numerous schools every week) due to the closing of Jamaica HS where he is chapter leader, he has risen to new heights as a fighter for his school. Despite his candidacy, he has worked closely with the UFT leadership and has in no way tried to make hay of his situation vis a vis the campaign.

The election has spurred interest by a batch of younger teachers through the work of Teachers Unite's Sally Lee (just returning to action after giving birth in September) and some members of NYCORE. Some have signed on to run with us and this is a major change from past years. Are there enough to make a big difference in terms of the vote? Hard to say. But in terms of organizing a core of committed activists, we are very early in the game. If the people who are praising Mulgrew as being very different from Randi are correct we will see a turn of the UFT and that would establish a different relationship between ICE, GEM and the UFT/Unity caucus.

But I believe in the long run people will see the differences are due to Mulgew's style and over time he will "evolve" into the traditional UFT leader. In the meantime, he seems to be getting a bit of a honeymoon with even severe critics of Unity in the blogging world seemingly impressed. (Actually, there is no one, including me and even her most adamant supporters in the past, who do not feel Mulgrew is an improvement in style over Weingarten, who has just about wore everyone out.) With people like Leo Casey getting up at public meetings and making speeches that channel ICE's Michael Fiorillo, one would think the UFT has changed. But they have always adopted and adapted ICE and now GEM positions for rhetorical purposes.

Mulgrew has made the union even less democratic than Randi did with new restrictions on the delegate assembly. Until there is a move to democratize the UFT and add diversity to the Exec Bd (Mulgrew would have to end the phony alliance with New Action that allows them to get 8 Ex Bd seats and ICE/TJC none despite their out polling New Action) nothing will change.


Ed Note: I know that new readers, and even some old ones, may have trouble following the acronyms of all the groups. I may have to put up a guide on the sidebar if there are requests.

But here is a guide:
ICE- Independent Community of Educators
GEM- Grassroots Education Movement
NYCORE- NY Collection of Radical Educators
TJC- Teachers for a Just Contract.
CAPE - Concerned Educators for Public Education
CPE - Coalition for Public Education

There are many other groups active currently that we are dealing with and if you were left out email me.

Bill Cala Testifies in Rochester

Everybody's wish for a superintendent, Bill Cala, ran the Rochester schools on an interim basis before Brizzard took over.

Jan. 19, 2010

It pains me deeply to have to come before you tonight to speak. It has become apparent that the mayor is bulldozing his way to a takeover of the Rochester City Schools irrespective of the facts and the consequences to the children and the citizens of this city. I have provided you with an extensive analysis of mayoral takeovers throughout the country using validated statistics and citing current and germaine research studies on this issue. On February 10, 2009 I sent Mayor Duffy an e-mail providing the essence of the paper that I have provided to you. Unfortunately, the mayor was not interested in the facts and never responded. Last weeks phone efforts proved fruitless as well.

While my three minutes will not provide ample time to highlight all of the extant data and research I will focus on New York City as the mayor has raised New York as the nexus for his decision for a hostile takeover. No fewer than a dozen times in the past week Mayor Duffy has cited the success of the NYC takeover as a reason to do the same here.

Here are the irrefutable facts:

New York City has been controlled by the mayor since 2002

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP the only valid measure of student performance in the nation with a 40 year track record

NYC students have shown no gains in:

Fourth-grade reading

Eighth-grade reading

Eighth-grade math

No gains for African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Whites or lower income Students

Graduation rates:

SED statistics cite NYC with a 52% graduation rate virtually the same as RCSD

Mayor Bloomberg, however, has invented his own mathematical formulas, utilizing “Discharge Codes.” These are labels that he has attached to students who leave the system in order to disguise dropouts. In an April 30^th study out of Columbia, the discharge scandal was uncovered:

I quote:

“The findings of this report suggest that the high school discharge system continues to provide a loosely regulated loophole that can be used to inflate graduation rates by pushing at-risk students out of school”

The findings:

The discharge rate went from 17.59% in the year 2000 to 21.1% in 2007

The total number of discharges totals 142,262 kids

Special education discharges went from 17% to 28% in that same time period with a startling 39% discharged in 2005.

The African- American graduation rate for boys is 29%

Enough said about whether mayoral control produces positive academic outcomes. It doesn’t. As in the rest of the country Mayoral control in NYC is a dismal failure and a fraud.

Sunday’s Chicago Tribune headlines tell of the failure of mayoral control in Chicago: “Daley School Plan Fails to Make the Grade.”

So what about DEMOCRACY?

City residents are already disenfranchised by laws governing big cities in New York State. While suburban citizens are empowered with the right to vote on their district budgets, city residents are not entitled to do so. Mayoral control effectively removes Rochesterians from any meaningful input into the education of its children.

This issue outweighs any consideration relative to academic outcomes and political perceptions of economic feasibility.

Eliminating yet one more avenue to parent and citizen participation in government is an outright assault on democracy. I have cited ample research in my report that demonstrates how citizens, especially minorities have lost their voices in cities where schools are controlled by mayors. Mayor Bloomberg has led the way in denying citizen input of any kind.

Would any type of a takeover like this be suggested in the suburbs? Hardly. There would be a riot.

Why are these takeovers occurring? Because the poor have no voice and urban poor are treated like second-class citizens. It is done because mayors can get away with it. They do it because THEY CAN!

Using the logic of the mayoral takeover scheme, Governor Patterson should be calling for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the New York State Legislature and take control of the entire state by himself. I know this has a certain appeal given the reputation of our legislature, but the absurdity of eliminating voters’ voices is autocracy not democracy.

While I have made many suggestions in my paper that can improve the lot of urban children in my report without stomping on the rights of Rochester’s citizens, I recommend that the mayor and city council put the issue on the ballot for the voters to decide whether or not the mayor should take control of the schools and include in the ballot resolution ACCOUNTABILITY. The mayor would be RECALLED if there is no progress in five years. That’s exactly the same accountability the president and secretary of education are calling for when they are insisting that principals and teachers be fired if schools don’t perform. This vote should take place after vigorous debate and BEFORE our legislators go to Albany with a mayoral control bill in hand.

Mayor Duffy has cast opponents as QUOTE “a small group of self-interested adults and cheap politics to sway public opinion UNQUOTE. I hardly call this a desire to debate the issues. Metro Justice, Parents Groups and the Anti-Racism Coalition and the mayor. Who’s the politician in the group??

The takeover is not about kids and student performance. It’s about power, control and money.

My plea to you tonight is to do everything within your power to preserve the voices of the poor and reject a mayoral control.

I would rather live in a messy democracy than in a tidy autocracy.

Thank you for your time and patience.

William C. Cala Ed.D

January 19, 2010

Statement to Council

Related:

Rochester school forums delayed until bill is drafted

Enlightenment vs. Dark Ages

....And Philly Too: The Resistance Grows

Hello friends and colleagues, As you have probably heard, the School District of Philadelphia has announced its plans for dealing with the schools in our District that have been 'under-performing' for years. It's called the Renaissance Schools plan. Instead of giving these schools the vital resources they're in much need of, the District's solution is to turn these schools over to different management and wash their hands clean of responsibility. And, this is all in line with Federal and State initiatives like Obama's Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind. The Renaissance Schools plan could have far reaching negative consequences on the education of tens of thousands of students in Philadelphia. The Teacher Action Group put together this information sheet to explain the situation (it's mostly geared toward educators.) If you work in Philly schools or know folks who do, please forward this to them. We need to get the word out. Teachers and educators need to be talking and strategizing with students, parents and other community members about what we all want to see happen in this District. Here's to the fight to keep public education public!

Anissa Weinraub

The Battle of Rochester: Fighting Mayoral Control

From a contact in Rochester, where Kleinite Jean Claude Brizzard was installed as Superintendent last year. Apparently, that is not enough. In order to fully undermine public education, the forces that be demand mayoral control which will allow them to totally shut out the public from any decision making. Look for the videos I will start posting later today of last Tuesday's PEP meeting to see what mayoral control has wrought.

Norm,
We are gearing up a big battle here. Due to extreme pressure put on the mayor by the community, he decided to have community meetings all this coming week. This came about after he was put on the spot for not having any dialogue on the issue. Last week there were protests at two of the legislators offices who are going to introduce the bill. The mayor then thought twice about having community meetings this week as they are expected to be large and totally opposed to the takeover. He has now cancelled the meetings until AFTER the bill is drafted and submitted (something that he tried to sell early on but was rebuked). Attached is the article where he backs down.


Mayor Robert Duffy released his draft report on mayoral control of Rochester schools today.

“It is important to understand that this draft report is not the legislation that would lead to the reforms I am calling for,” Mayor Duffy said in an accompanying statement. “This is a framework outlining the reasons why change is needed and some of the things that would look different under that change.”

City Council meets tonight at City Hall to discuss mayoral control. The meeting began at 4: 30 p.m. in executive session where council members are discussing the sale of Hemlock and Canadice lakes watershed to the state.

Responding to UFT Shill Peter Goodman

No one riles me more than UFT shill Peter Goodman who blogs at Ed in the Apple. This post is getting credit for being perceptive. What a crock. I left a comment. Head over there and join me.

As usual, Peter, you leave the entire culpability of the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership, of which you have been an integral part of for decades, totally out of the picture.

In May 2001 the day Randi Weingarten came out in favor of mayoral control, I put out out a special edition of Education Notes that pointed to the disaster of the Chicago mayoral control experiment and put a copy in front of every UFT executive board member, you included.

You and the UFT continued to support mayoral control and when ICE urged the UFT task force on mayoral control to adopt our minority report last year calling for an end to mayoral control I seem to remember you speaking against it at the Delegate Assembly. If the UFT had put its muscle behind that proposal we might have seen a different result at the PEP - in fact the PEP wouldn't have existed at all.

You guys pushed the 2005 contract that allowed them freedom to close schools without worrying about seniority rights without which they would be so able to close so many schools.

When 350 students, teachers and parents went to Bloomberg's house on Jan. 21 the UFT was again absent.

When Klein would make his claims about civil rights at every PEP meeting, the UFT was absent and indeed not once challenged him.

I was the only speaker Tues. night to raise the contradiction between Klein's claims and the reality of what was happening at the meeting and ICE/GEM speaker Lisa North talked about Chicago. Glad you were listening.

Full-tilt coverage of the battle over school closings in new issue of The Indypendent

Hi,

We have full-tilt coverage of the battle over school closings in the new issue of The Indypendent that hit the streets today, which includes a four-color pull-out center spread that highlights the influence of billionaire philanthropists in pushing the school "reform" process. We currently distribute the Indy in these places

http://www.indypendent.org/?pagename=distribution_locations

Due to the importance of this issue, we bumped up our usual press run this edition. If you would like to get bundles to distribute at work, in your school or neighborhood, please contact me and we will do what we can to get you extra papers.

Best,

John Tarleton
The Indypendent
www.indypendent.org

Taking the Public Out of Schools
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/taking-the-public-out

Inside Columbus High School
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/inside-columbus-high-school

Bloomberg's 12-Step Method to Close Down Public Schools
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/bloombergs-12-step-method

New York City School's by the Numbers
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/nyc-schools-by-the-numbers

Stealing the Best and the Brightest
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/stealing-best-and-brightest

The Faces of School Reform (Pull-out center spread)
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/faces-of-school-reform

A PDF of the full issue can be found at indypendent.org.

People can reach me directly about getting papers at jt.indypendent@gmail.com.


ED NOTE:
Also see a report on the large Queens schools threatened with closure at Norms Notes:
Almost All Queens HS on State Hit List

PUNS FOR EDUCATED MINDS

The old print editions of Ed Notes always included some humor. I guess things don't seem so funny anymore. But this week it is a good time to share a laugh.

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head..'

13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

15. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

16. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

17. A backward poet writes inverse.

18. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

CORE Organizes to Fight School Closings in Chicago and What We Have to Do in NYC

What role did the actions of Arne Duncan play in the rise of CORE in Chicago? CORE may give them a bigger nightmare than the one I had the other night. Look at the agenda below. People who have not been involved deeply in UFT politics ask me what's my beef with the UFT leadership and I would say where have they been all these years in teaching people at threatened schools how to fight back. There is no strategy (though considering how the leadership has pretty much been copying the GEM/ICE agenda - even handing out buttons that have the look of GEM buttons, we can expect some kind of copycat event). Right now the UFT is talking about going to court. Remember the CFE suit a decade ago? By the time this process is done there will be no public schools left to fight for. GEM hopefully will model itself on CORE and hold a similar conference for schools that are next on the chopping block.

Just Woke Up: I Had a Nightmare That I was at an 8 Hour Meeting

So I got to sleep after 4:30am last night- or this morning. What day is it?

While last night seemed like a loss to so many, or a funeral - don't forget that in addition to the closing of the 19 schools, our friends at CAPE/PS 15 lost their battle to get PAVE out– I thought the overwhelming attack on Klein and the PEP members, mostly by people of color (killing years of cultivation of Black and Latino/a communities by BloomKlein) will forever sear the minds of those who saw it. I don't care what the press says or writes, they were affected - I watched them. The BloomKlein dominance of the debate has been challenged after years of struggle to get our point of view out about privatization schemes and the role of charters and the way certain kids are treated and the way large schools are manipulated into failure.

Though 19 schools may die (and we are never giving up the fight) they lost their lives on the battle field so others may live.

I know it's a long time away, but last night was the beginning of the end of mayoral control the next time it comes up in 5 years I think. But only if we keep up the pressure, which GEM is promising to do. I am making a commentary video to cover all the ground breaking aspects of the meeting. And of course, I have about 5 hours of video of the meeting that seems very daunting to tackle. Perhaps my friends at Tweed who were taping will do the job for me and post their video on the DOE web site (by the way, nice (and expensive) camera David (Can't). You should have asked, I would have lent you one of mine.

Best line of the night: when Tweed counsel Michael Best turned off the mic of a speaker from the NAACP and Patrick Sullivan challenged PEP Chairperson David Chang to do the dirty work himself. "If someone is going to turn off the mic of an speaker from the NAACP, I want it to be one of the mayor's appointees."

Has the tide turned? Here are some signs:

James Eterno posted this on the ICE blog: Juan Gonzalez wrote an excellent piece on closing schools in the News

and Patrick Sullivan posted this:

Column from Gabe Pressman on suppression of the parent role follows last night's PEP. We don't often see this angle covered in the press.


Parents Battle for a Say in Educational Policy
By GABE PRESSMAN Updated 6:01 PM EST, Wed, Jan 27, 2010

When the Mayor took control of the city’s schools, he promised to make them better.

Whether he kept that promise is debatable. But whether he has made parents part of the improvement process is not. They are definitely excluded. And that’s a shame.

The recent meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy made that clear. Critics of the plan to close down 19 public schools screamed in frustration as the panel heard arguments for and against the school closings, which are emotionally draining for many families.

The critics and the audience knew the die was cast. The Mayor controls the panel and, amid boos and a deafening chorus of "Save Our Schools!" the panel members, after a nine-hour hearing that lasted until 3 A.M., voted 9 to 4 to shut down the schools. No Mayoral appointee cast a dissenting vote.

Patrick Sullivan, representing Manhattan, who had dissented from many past decisions, asked the Mayor’s appointees to explain why they approved the plan to close the schools for poor performance. He asked: "Is there anyone who will defend this?"All but one of the Mayor’s people remained silent.

It was a stacked deck. That’s the essence of mayoral control as it’s now practiced---no dissent, no criticism. Even if the schools have been improved----and many parents don’t think they have----there’s nothing democratic about the way this is being done.

It’s easy to understand the frustration and anger of the parents. But they are learning a practical lesson in how a supposedly democratic process can be distorted to suppress opposition.

The Mayor himself could benefit from some education. He could use a crash course in the values of democracy. The educational policy panel is not there just to ratify decisions already made.

There should be honest and vigorous debate on controversial issues. And all points of view should be respected. If Mayor Bloomberg could be persuaded that this is the right way to handle educational policies, he might still get an A in the course.

Commentary on the UFT Bogus "It's DOE Mismanagement" Campaign and Tonight's PR PEP Rally

UPDATED (see last paragraphs): 11am.

It ain't over 'till its over could be the theme of tonight's PEP meeting at Brooklyn Tech, which will be covered live by NY1. People pretty much assume that with the mayor controlling the majority of PEP votes and even some borough reps joining in, there is no way to reverse the vote. Thus I find it interesting that the UFT, the enablers of mayoral control, is urging people to go to the meeting to protest (respectfully).

Then what? The UFT will tell people you put up a good fight but there is nothing we can do. And they are right - from their capabilities. But as our rally on Jan. 21 at Bloomberg's house (ignored by the UFT) indicated, there are people who will not give up the fight. And groups like GEM and CAPE are leading the way.

Yesterday, the Bronx UFT held another poorly organized event at the Bronx courthouse. The had less people than we had at Bloomberg's. How pathetic. Tonight there will be a big turnout, not because of the UFT but because teachers, parents and students at 20 closing schools see it as their last chance to effect a change. Maybe the pressure will cause a few Bloomberg PEP members to waver a bit. But I doubt it. They have no interest in children.

The UFT will make hay of the photo-op and claim: "See, we tried" before folding up its tent. Oh, we will see more events for PR purposes. There is an election to get through and they have to make sure no ICE-TJC candidates slip through onto the executive board to raise sticky questions.

In this video of my speech at the Jamaica HS closing school hearing on Jan. 7, I address the issues of privatization and discuss how the UFT claims that the closing schools are a result of mismanagement is bogus. In fact, BloomKlein and the privatizers are very adept at managing the undermining of public education. The true mismanager is the UFT, which has been their handmaiden.

Could tonight's PEP vote to endorse the closing of the schools and to extend the PAVE charter school be pretty much a fait accompli if the UFT had used every ounce of its energy to stop mayoral control in its tracks? I don't only mean the renewal this summer, but the original implementation back in 2002. Could they close schools so easily and dump the teachers out (the real reason for the closings) if the 2005 contract had not ended the seniority system? Could they undermine the public schools so easily if the UFT had taken a firm stand opposing charters and had not in fact opened its own charters in public school buildings?

I make the point in the speech that this privatization movement is occurring in urban centers all over the nation. Does anyone believe the UFT is not aware of this? Certainly they are. As far back as the day Weingarten came out for mayoral control in May 2001, I put an article by George Schmidt on the Chicago debacle on the table of every single UFT Executive Board member at the meeting that night. Ed Notes from that point on and ICE beginning with its formation in Nov. 2003 and GEM from its formation last year have consistently pointed to this national attack. But the UFT chooses to intentionally keep the membership uninformed and tries to make it look like it is Joel Klein's mismanagement and not part of a national movement by the privatizers.

What can be their motives to intentionally mislead the membership? I have my ideas, but I'll leave it to the readers to come up with your own ideas.

EXTRA! EXTRA!! GET YOUR NEW ACTION HAT

At last week's Delegate Assembly, I got one of the biggest laughs in a long time. There was a crew from New Action, the faux opposition bought and paid for by Unity Caucus - ask unctuous NA leader Michael Shulman to show you his office sometime - and they were giving away New Action hats to people who signed up to run in the UFT election with them.

Now, there's a hat I want to be seen wearing. In the Ed Notes spirit of fellowship for our friends in New Action, we have added our own line of New Action hats. But if you want one you have to wait as most are sold out.

Howie Schwach: It’s All About Charters And Breaking The UFT

Here is as follow-up by Wave editor Howard Schwach on charter schools and Peninsula Prep in Rockaway.

The Rockaway Beat

It’s All About Charters And Breaking The UFT

Commentary By Howard Schwach

Mayor Mike’s agenda from the beginning has been to break the city unions, particularly the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). What better way to do that than set up hundreds of city-funded schools where the UFT is not welcome.

I’m talking about Charter Schools.

Charters are publicly-funded schools that operate outside the rules mandated for regular schools, and that means the teachers who work in charters do not normally come under the UFT contract. Some of the charters are non-profit, but many are for-profit businesses run by high-powered companies such as Victory Schools.

That organization administers the Peninsula Preparatory School (PPA), which has been in existence for about six years and now operates out of a series of trailers at Arverne By The Sea, just waiting for the developers to build a school around them.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education told me that PPA is run by a non-profit board, but that the board contracts with the for-profit Victory Schools for support and administrative services.

Victory Schools, which provides educational but not financial support to the PPA, won’t tell me how much the contract is worth to them, but the Daily News says the contract is worth more than $350,000 a year.

Look at the Victory Schools website, and you will find an administrative team that includes several high-priced ex-public school administrators and I know they don’t come cheap.

The DOE says that Victory Schools is paid by PPA through fundraising, but I am willing to bet that Victory Schools is being paid by taxpayer dollars funded by Malcolm Smith and his cohorts in the State Senate.

A story in the Daily News documented that the head of Victory Schools gave Smith $12,000 in campaign contributions last year. In addition, Smith recently earmarked $100,000 of your money for the school, supposedly to buy computers. When I first called Smith’s office to ask if he has a financial stake in PPA, his spokesperson told me she would check, but that he is on the board and “very involved” in the school’s operation.

Another spokesperson, this one in Albany, told the News, “Senator Smith has completely divested himself from any governance and administration of the school.” From the beginning, Smith was the acting chair of the PPA’s board of trustees.

At first, it operated at MS 53 in Far Rockaway, but it soon moved to its own building on Foam Place in Far Rockaway. The building into which it moved was renovated for the school by the city and state, with the backing of Smith and other local politicians.

There were questions at the time as to why the money was allocated for the school, and those questions were never satisfactorily answered.

Then, when Arverne By The Sea was mandated to build a school, something that is still a few years down the road, the PPA all of a sudden turned up in trailers on the ABTS property, with a tacit promise that the new school that would be built would eventually house the PPA elementary school.

Of course, the fact that ABTS relies on state and city subsidies had nothing to do with the fact that Smith’s school was chosen for the new school, which, at least at first, was supposed to be a public school, not a public charter.

Seems to me that there is some chicanery afoot, since Smith proposed a bill two weeks ago that would raise the cap on charter schools from 200 to 400.

Smith says the state needs to raise the cap in order to get some of the federal money extended by new Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

I believe that he has another motivation, and it concerns the reason that Beach Channel High School is being phased out over the next three years and then closed down. I have heard that Smith has promised the parents of PPA students that they would have a PPA middle and a PPA high school to send their kids to when they finish the elementary unit they now attend.

That is now three years down the road. Does this fact pique your interest and lead you to a conclusion?

The Educational Impact Statement the DOE released in relation to the plan to close BCHS has an interesting sentence. After talking about the public high school “small school” that will start at BCHS next September, the impact statement goes on to say, “The DOE will continue to assess the available space and needs for additional options at Beach Channel in 2011 and 2012.” Is there a charter school in Beach Channel’s future? Might it be Malcolm Smith’s PPA? As one television great said repeatedly, “you can bet your sweet bippy.”

I really believe that a charter school is what this is all about, after all. It’s all about clearing a space for Malcolm Smith’s charter school.

And, by the way, in 2008 the DOE gave the PPA an F report card rating, the worst rating of any charter school in the city.

The fact that it has worked itself up over the years to a B is not very enl because more than 90 percent of the schools in the city got either an A or a B on the last report card run, devaluing every school in the city.

The mayor wants unlimited charter schools. The governor wants unlimited charter schools. Smith wants unlimited charter schools. All that despite the fact that by any independent measure, charter schools do no better than public schools. What, you heard the mayor say that charters do twice as well as public schools? Smoke and mirrors.

Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes recently put out a report that shows that a large number of charter schools are failing to deliver on their promises.

Did you ever hear the mayor or the chancellor say that?

No, and you never will, because it does not fit their agenda of using charter schools to break the UFT.