Nick Kristof Strikes Again, and Gets It Wrong Again

Updated: Oct 17, 9PM (GO YANKEES!)

The letters in today's Times in response to Kristof's column were unanimously thumbs down, something I've never seen before. I posted them at Norms Notes.
Times Letters Respond to Kristof Column

Here is my original compilation of reactions I posted Friday, with some additional add-0ns from Accountable Talk.


I was going to write about Nicolas Kristof's column in yesterday's Times supporting the education deformers but Steve Koss does it so much better. Not the first time Kristof has ventured into territory he knows nothing about.

Ed Notes covered his previous lame attempts:

Education Notes Online: Updated: Skoolboy Savages Kristof

Feb 19, 2009

And I would usually believe Kristof. But when you actually know something about something and see a guy getting it so wrong, I wonder why I should take anything he writes seriously. Word to the wise: Don't write glowing reports about ...

a ground zero for kristof on education knowledge

Mar 22, 2009

today we have another in a long line of low-level, almost amateurish columns on education in the ny times from nicolas kristof. he can write all the great stuff about darfur or wherever, but when someone can get education so wrong, ...

Before I let you get to Koss, I want to list the hackisms, platitudes and recycled nonsense used by Kristof, stuff that came directly from a Joel Klein press release.

cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools...it’s difficult to improve failing schools when you can’t create alternatives such as charter schools and can’t remove inept or abusive teachers...But there’s mounting evidence that even in such failing schools, the individual teacher makes a vast difference.Research has underscored that what matters most in education — more than class size or spending or anything — is access to good teachers. A study found that if black students had four straight years of teachers from the top 25 percent of most effective teachers, the black-white testing gap would vanish in four years...This is the central front in the war on poverty, the civil rights issue of our time. Half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, isn’t it time to end our “separate but equal” school systems?

These ed deformer supporters love to talk about the research - often proven tainted by people with a dog in the race - call it Hoxbyisms. Do they ever mention the gold standard Tennessee study on class size? To talk about teacher quality out of the context of class size and general school conditions is like blaming crime on the quality of the police or fires on the quality if firemen. They just wouldn't dare.

Kristof should check out the separate but unequal charter schools vs the public schools they are implanted in.


Nick Kristof Strikes Again, and Gets It Wrong Again
by Steve Koss (posted to the NYC Education News Listserve)

I can think of few journalistic practices more damaging and wrongheaded than the reporter who helicopters into a complex problem for a few days, sniffs around a bit without really understanding the context in which he or she is observing, and then drops an "expert opinion" editorial on the matter. No one in my recent memory appears more prone to this, and more badly misled, than the NY Times's periodic editorial contributor, Nick Kristof, particularly with regard to education.

Back in 2002, Mr. Kristof dropped himself in on some schools in Shanghai and then wrote a ridiculous column on China's "super kids" whose schooling and intelligence were apparently going to bury the U.S. competitively in the future. He could not have gotten the Chinese education system more wrong in 750 words than he did at that time; reading his 2002 column today (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/22/opinion/22KRIS.html is still an embarrassment for anyone who really understands what's going on in the Chinese education system.

Now, Mr. Kristof has inserted himself into education once again, and just as foolishly, with his latest contribution to the NY Times. In an October 15th piece oddly entitled "Democrats and Education" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/opinion/15kristof.html), Mr. Kristof elects to beat on that favorite old dead horse of education critics, that the problem with US education is bad teachers and their unions who simply won't let schools get rid of them. In his article, he talks about NYC's system where "failed teachers" are sent at full pay to "rubber rooms," clearly not understanding that the purpose of such centers is to hold teachers against whom potentially serious allegations of misconduct (such as, for example, sexual misconduct or verbal or physical abuse of students) have been made while their cases are being investigated. Whatever one may think of rubber rooms, they are not holding pens for teachers who have merely been judged incompetent.

Of course, Mr. Kristof trots out a couple horror stories about bad teachers to "prove" his point, and there's certainly no argument here that abusive teachers who degrade their students or show up drunk do not belong in classrooms. As his column progresses, he slyly manages to conflate the clearly unacceptable behavior of his "horror stories" with the term "ineffective teachers," as though the U.S. education system is suffering from an epidemic of school-based child abuse. Ineffective and drunk (or telling a failed suicide that next time the student should cut his wrists more deeply) are not equal.

Anyway, these horror stories are old news, and Mr. Kristof writes as though he just discovered this issue. Beyond making it easier to remove such "ineffective" teachers, what are his solutions? Two of them are more charter schools and "objective measurement to see who is effective." Of course, while calling for better teachers with better compensation, he conveniently ignores the fact that under NCLB, teachers of all stripes and levels of ability are being hamstrung by precisely those types of measurement systems, all of which begin with state-defined standardized exams which place enormous pressure on school administrators and teachers to show ever-improving results. The damage these exams are doing to real education is incalculable, since they distort both teaching and curricula by narrowing content, detracting from coverage of other subject areas, and focusing on test-taking rather than education as an exploration and learning experience.

In his closing, Mr. Kristof writes, "I’m hoping the unions will come round and cooperate with evidence-based reforms, using their political clout to push to raise teachers’ salaries rather than to protect ineffective teachers," as if this is the essential either/or choice. It's merely another false dichotomy -- the two items have nothing to do with one another.

More charter schools, more "objective" measurement of teachers' value added based on standardized exams, less intrusion from the teachers' unions -- this is what Mr. Kristof wants the Democrats to be doing. Sadly, President Obama (through his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan) appears to be working from Mr. Kristof's playbook, acting more like a conservative Republican than the Democratic reformer for whom we thought we had voted

Steve Koss

Related: From Accountable Talk

Kristoff, Revisited.

I've written a number of posts on Nicholas Kristof's off the wall views on education. See here, here, and here, for example.

I thought I was going to have to do it again after reading Kristof's latest diatribe in today's Op-ed section of the Times, but Thoughts on Education Policy saved me the effort. Well worth a read.

Cornell Students Protested Rhee's Speech On Campus

I'm cross posting this important piece from Candi Peterson's blog as the Rhee blowback continues. Ok, I do disagree with this point:

"I bet that special teacher of yours loves his or her union because it empowers him or her to fight to improve the quality of your education. Teachers unions are democratic expressions of teachers and their values. Each teachers union is not comprised of external forces but is instead comprised of the teachers themselves. As such, the goals of teachers unions are the goals of teachers."

Not in NYC or most teacher unions under the thumb of totalitarian dictators who make Putin jealous of their power.


visit: http://thewashingtonteacher.blospot.com/

Oct 15, 2009

Cornell Students Protested Rhee's Speech On Campus

This opinion article appeared in the Cornell Daily Sun and explains why students from Cornell University protested Rhee's speech.

Cornell Students Explain Why They Protested Rhee's Speech on Campus

link: http://www.cornellsun.com/

Teachers Unions Protect Teachers: Will Chancellor Rhee '92 Listen?
October 14, 2009
By Andrew Wolf

"Everyone remembers that special teacher who touched his or her life. We all have had that teacher who would go the extra mile to help usindividually - a teacher who dug into his or her own pocket book to buy colored pencils for our art projects.

We remember this teacher because he or she did not just make us feel cared for, but also made us feel capable. Due to his or her skill, we were empowered; we were motivated. This teacher clearly did not become a teacher for fame, for glory and certainly not for fortune. This special teacher picked his or her profession because of a desire to help our
country reach its full future potential.

In public schools in most states that special teacher was probably in a union. Furthermore, I bet that special teacher of yours loves his or her union because it empowers him or her to fight to improve the quality of your education. Teachers unions are democratic expressions of teachers and their values. Each teachers union is not comprised of external forces but is instead comprised of the teachers themselves. As such, the goals of teachers unions are the goals of teachers. That special teacher used his or her voice in his or her union to fight for you; teacher unions fight for small class sizes, for more computers and for the right of every American to receive a high quality education.

What does that teacher expect in return? As we all know, teachers have never been paid at a level that matches the amount and quality of their of work, so clearly pay is not their motivation. Basically, in return for their service, teachers ask for a basic degree of fairness. They ask that if they are laid off or fired, that it be for a just cause and not because of discrimination.

Above all, they ask for respect and the right to be included the shaping of their classroom. Who would know better how to improve the delivery of education than those who do just that day in and day out? People become teachers because they want to improve students' lives and they use their unions to help them accomplish this goal.

The Cornell Organization for Labor Action, of which I am a member, protested Michelle Rhee's '92 talk last week because it does not believe she respects the important role teachers and their unions play in shaping the future of education in this country. We feel that Chancellor Rhee, instead of working with teachers to fix the problems afflicting our education system, has presupposed that the problem is teachers themselves. Our quarter card, which was criticized in The Sun last week in both a column and editorial, outlined the ways in which Chancellor Rhee denies teachers the right to participate in the education reform debate.

First, my fellow members of COLA and I take issue with the fact that Rhee wields layoffs as a key component to education reform. While layoffs are an unfortunate result of our current economy, Rhee often uses layoffs to fire experienced teachers based on the unfortunate assumption that youth and vigor is always better than experience.

Second, COLA disagrees with Chancellor Rhee's belief that standardized tests hold the key to education reform. Furthermore, we disagree with Rhee's attempts to evaluate teachers based on these standardized scores. In a 2008 report "Grading Education" by the Economic Policy Institute found that measuring teacher and school performance by these tests was an utter failure. The study found that these tests forced teachers to "teach to the test," stifling creativity and vastly under serving top-performing students. It found that such programs result in teachers fighting with each other to keep successful techniques hidden instead of encouraging cooperation. Overall, the study found that these tests narrowly focused on reading and math, while ignoring the whole growth we should expect from our students. Perhaps most horrifying, though, the EPI report found that schools, fearing that under-performing children would drag their schools funding down, often stuffed these children into special education classes or falsely suspended them on the day of the standardized test. The EPI report concluded that measuring performance solely on standardized test scores can in no way properly evaluate the success or failure of schools or their teachers. Yet, Chancellor Rhee wanted to institute this type of policy and she tried to do it unilaterally without anyone else's input. COLA disagrees with these actions.

Third, COLA, myself included, disagrees with the arbitrary nature of Rhee's policies. In 2008, the US Congress, worried about Rhee's approach, asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate her practices. The Government Accountability Office found Rhee at fault and criticized her for instituting policies without clear guidelines and without consulting teachers, parents or the community. COLA joins in this criticism as we find the exclusion of teachers, parents and the community in shaping education reform counter-productive.

Fourth and finally, I demand more accountability from Rhee in regard to her policies. Last year, Rhee fired numerous principals without explaining her criteria or evaluation process. This was troubling because many of these principals were from the District's top-performing schools including the Oyster-Adams Bilingual Elementary School where Rhee's children attended. My fellow members of COLA and I worry that without transparency, Rhee abuses her authority to silence her critics.

These were the four points outlined on COLA's quarter card, which I helped to compose last week. COLA believes these issues directly relate to the future of education reform. We believe that Rhee denies teachers their right to participate in the process of reform where their voices and commitment are so deeply needed. Instead, she silences them and vilifies them through firings. COLA believes this is counter-productive and we again ask Chancellor Rhee to include teachers in the process of education reform.

Every year, Cornell sends more students to Teach for America than any other university, often including a COLA member. These students enter TFA excited at the prospect of making a difference in young peoples' lives. Hopefully, many of you who join Teach for America will become teachers in the long term. I know that those same values that drove you to service will drive your efforts in your union and in reforming our education system. The only question, then, is: Will Rhee listen?

Andrew Wolf '10, a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, is a member of COLA."

Posted by The Washington Teacher featuring Candi Peterson, blogger in residence, opinion article courtesy of Cornell Daily Sun, picture courtesy of Education Next

Endorse Thomson Resolution Trashed at DA Fearful UFT Leaders Surrender to Bloombergs’s Reich

Special to Ed Notes

By Philip Nobile

Sometimes union loyalty asks too much. Like heeding the advice of UFT leaders at yesterday’s Delegate Assembly NOT to do the right thing by endorsing our ally Bill Thompson in favor of our enemy Mayor Bloomberg and avoiding his payback in contract negotiations.

Stretching for the offensive historical allusion, President Mulgrew, Political Action Director Egan, and Staff Director Barr told us not to join the Resistance because the Fuehrer might get mad. And the delegates, who originally voted enthusiastically to discuss the endorsement resolution, turned around and cheered Barr’s full throated, morally compromised, debate ending cri to postpone a decision. If things change in the next three weeks, he said, we can bring you back. As if.

Mulgrew telegraphed his Thompson position prior to the debate when he said, “I suspend my emotions” (read conscience) and voiced his mantra, repeated ad nauseam by the non-endorsers, about acting “in the best interest of the membership” and “our job is to protect their well being” … without adding “because a sweeter contract is more important than our integrity,” thus killing his shot at a Profile in Courage Award.

Speaking relentlessly against the resolution, Political Non-Action Director Egan earned the Dick Morris Triangulation Award for ticking off realistic political reasons for icing Thompson—the polls are bad, there’s an eight point gap, the best an endorsement can do is move three points, no winning strategy, other unions back Mayor, negotiations would end, why take the risk. Egan went further to ridicule the highroaders—“It’s not the Alamo. There’s nothing virtuous in falling on our sword.” So don’t fight Santa Anna in City Hall. Mulgrew profusely thanked the Triangulater for justifying surrender.

Speaking boldly for the resolution was a delegate who dared to unleash his emotions: We’re dying with bad data, U-ratings, reassignments, Bloomberg regime is brutal to teachers, to students, Thompson has supported us and he’s not Bloomberg who’s making hay on education. And virtuously falling on candor, the delegate conceded that Thompson would probably lose. Camus would love this guy, but not the Vichyites in the room.

In the end, Barr killed with his let’s-wait argument. “If we endorse Thompson,” he said, negotiations end. Now we are players. We have to do what’s best for the members.”

Contract, contract über Alles.

To understand all is not to forgive all.

Philip Nobile is a former staff writer for Esquire, New York, and the Village Voice. He has been reassigned to Brooklyn’s Chapel St. rubber room for the past two years on two trumped up (he says) corporal punishment complaints. Although OSI substantiated the complaints, to date the DOE has failed file charges.

Note: Ed Notes has not endorsed Thompson due to his refusal to rigorously attack Bloomberg's education record but urges people to vote for him to keep the Bloomberg winning percentage as low as possible. Nobile points to UFT political director Paul Egan's point that a UFT endorsement would at most mean around 3% points for Thompson (now we know the value of all the time and money the UFT spends on endorsements). The closer Thompson comes the weaker Bloomberg would be in the future based on a lower perceived mandate which would weaken him politically. We will add our own thoughts on the DA later.

See James Eterno's report at the ICE blog:

The Disastrous UFT Policy on Charter Schools

Hard copy of the October edition of Education Notes distributed at the UFT Delegate Assembly, Oct. 14, 2009. If you want a copy to distribute at your school email me at normsco@gmail.com.


Education Notes has been reporting on the charter school invasions all over the city with lots more to come. Bloomberg announced he wants a hundred thousand students (that’s one tenth) of the students in NYC to be in charter schools. He wants competition with a public school system that he wants to abandon. His real dream is to have all schools be non-unionized charter schools and have no public schools left.

Now where to put all these schools? Simple. Shove them into any public school they can. (And when they can’t, find space in public housing complexes.) It has been clear that BloomKlein always tilt in favor of charters over public schools. The Ed Notes blog has been chronicling some of these battles. One of the biggest has been taking place at PS 15 in Red Hook, where the teachers and parents have been fighting back against the invasion of the PAVE charter school by forming CAPE (Concerned Advocates for Public Education). PAVE originally asked for 2 years in the school before moving to their own digs. When teachers started to organize and called in the UFT they were told not to worry, 2 years go by quickly. It didn’t take long before PAVE asked for 3 more, which CAPE has been fighting with a petition campaign and other actions.

Those of us involved in the battle against the charter invasion have come to refer to the machinations of charter school operators as “bait and switch.” Come in and ask for a little, lie about your numbers so you can get more space, change your charter to ask for more grades. “Oh, out kids love our school so much. How can we release then to the awful local public school when they graduate? We need to be k-12. Give us your entire building.” Tweed uses its footprint of schools to declare them under utilized (clusters should travel, special Ed only need hallways, etc.) In every request, in every conflict, the BloomKlein administration comes down on the side of the charter as they purposely destroy targeted public schools, even purposely putting in principals they know will be incompetent and will alienate staffs and parents to undermine the school and make the local climate favorable to a charter. This has happened in so many places as to reveal a pattern.

At a meeting to discuss the issue in September, a UFT official said we have to make sure PAVE doesn’t over stay the 3-year extension (that adds up to 5). Some teachers were a bit incredulous at the acceptance of a fait accompli. But they haven’t gotten, nor do they expect to get, help from the union in this battle.

The same at PS 123 in Harlem, where Eva Moskowitz’ Harlem Success Academy has invaded 4 schools and parents and teachers at PS 123 have been demonstrating against the separate but unequal conditions of the 2 sections of the schools, with Eva’s section newly painted and all spruced up. When all the HSA doodads blew the electricity, the DOE ordered electricians to give them what they need. At PS 15 the same thing happened and when one DOE employee balked at authorizing the installation of new lines for PAVE, he was told to do it or be fired. There’s so much more to tell about this story, but I’ll refer you to the Ed Notes blog for fuller explanations and videos (look for links on the side panel).

We all know that the entire charter school movement is not about education but a political attack on teachers and their unions. These are not mom and pop teacher/parent run charters, but corporate type chains. Thus KIPP has 5 charters around the city but runs them like a chain, as they do their over 60 schools nation-wide. Basically, we can end up with 1500 independently operated schools in city, with no community basis – the end of the neighborhood school with any semblance of being run in a democratic manner with some public oversight over policy. Teachers and parents in these systems are totally marginalized. At least in urban school systems, while the suburbs, with many unionized schools I might add, have a totally different venue where parents have no choice but the local public school and get to vote.

The problem rank and file teachers face is that the UFT itself has bought into so much of the system, having 2 charter schools of its own, both occupying space in public schools in East NY and competing for public school kids. That very fact has removed the UFT’s ability to help teachers in schools being invaded by charters to fight back. Thus, in schools like PS 123 and PS 15, the UFT remains on the sidelines. I mean, how can they complain about charter invasions? That the UFT schools are union based is beside the point. That means the UFT schools needs more money than non-union charters to run since the charters have the advantage of lower pension (if at all) and health care (if at all) plus free labor in forcing teachers to work longer days and longer years. The UFT should get out of the charter school business and start fighting back for the public schools.

In the past 9 months, the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), which began as a committee of the Independent Community of Educators (ICE), grew to encompass members of just about every activist group in NYC and has now become an independent organization. GEM has begun to fill the gap left by UFT inaction by reaching out to public schools invaded by charters. GEM’s next meeting (Oct. 20) will address some of these issues. GEMers will be handing out a leaflet at this meeting with details. Make sure to take one. If you are in a school invaded by a charter, or in danger of being invaded by one, come to the meeting.


Addendum (no room in the hard copy):
The UFT's response is to organize charter school teachers into the UFT and the AFT has sent in a full-time organizer to facilitate that. This should be fun to watch as the UFT has to sell them on what they will win for them while losing gads of stuff for the teachers they actually represent.

I can't speak for the rest of the opposition, but Ed Notes will support the efforts to organize charter schools but will also communicate to teachers exactly what kind of union they are thinking of joining: a dues sucking undemocratic top-down union. Example: 100% of the members of the exec board were endorsed by Unity Caucus in the last election (including the 8 New Action members.) We will urge them to demand the same contract UFT public school members enjoy. (I'm guessing there will be just a few sweetheart contracts.) ICE, TJC and any other groups that pop up will also urge these teachers to join them in the struggle to create a more perfect union.

More on NAEP from Steve Koss

Koss to the NYC Education News listserve:

In Jennifer Medina's NY Times story today ("No Gains by New York Students on U.S. Math Tests, Unlike State Scores" -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/education/15scores.html?hpw), she cites Joel Klein as saying that, as she puts it, "the city has no choice other than to use the state exam to reward and penalize schools, because it is the only test that measures all city students."

Of course he has always had another choice, and that was not to "reward or penalize schools" based on a narrow, standardized, and predictable exam in which the bar for passing is being consistently lowered year after year. To argue otherwise is no different than a street thug who murders an old lady for her handbag and defends his actions on the grounds that there was no one else around at the time for him to rob and there were no gas stations handy. It's the same sort of false dichotomy that Klein and Bloomberg have been practicing for eight years, the type first inspired by George Bush with his infamous, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists." We're not talking terrorists any more, but Klein's policies have been, in their own way, nearly as devastating for our schools and children as terrorism.

Ms. Medina's article goes on to quote Mr. Klein's self-defense in light of the extraordinary embarrassment of the just-released NAEP results, the ones that show the world just what the emperor's new clothes have really been all along. “I have said many, many times that we should raise the bar,” Mr. Klein said. “The state’s definition of proficiency needs to be tethered to a more demanding standard.”

In these two sentences, the chancellor of over one million children in NYC's public schools proved just how badly he doesn't get it. Let's just leave aside for the moment the fact that over the past six years, Klein and Bloomberg have positively crowed over the grade 3-8 NY state exam results, preening like peacocks over the numbers without ever suggesting in those moments that they found fault with the standards or the exams or worried that NYC schools' extraordinary results might be overstating students' real gains. Instead, they and their crony owners of the NY Daily News and NY Post have consistently used the results in furtherance of their own political careers and/or agendas at the expense of NYC's children and their families.

What Klein's statement above shows, most significantly, is that even at the height of his regime's biggest embarrassment to date, he's not calling for a rethinking of his strategy. Instead, he's essentially asking for more of the same, and simultaneously blaming unidentifiable others for his failure! "We just need to change the tests," he's implying. "Make them more demanding."

Never mind that his policies have subverted the educational process, converting classrooms into test prep mills and teachers into Kaplan-style advisors on test-taking-strategy, demotivating students and removing exploration and creativity from the classroom, narrowing the curriculum, shoving aside other subject areas like science or social studies (and art and gym) because schools are not measured on them and principals and teachers are not incentivized with bonuses on them, and threatening principals and schools with closure if they did not "get on board" with their exam scores. No, if only the NY State exams were made a little more difficult, then all would be well and NY students would be champions on the NAEP and truly well-versed in their understanding and use of mathematics. Yes, that's it, it must be the tests that are at fault.

Clearly, this man does not, and never will, get it. Nor will he ever admit that, just maybe, he has been wrong.

If someone wanted to devise a strategy for destroying the efficacy of America's pre-high school public education system, they could not have developed anything more devious than the one Chancellor Klein has imposed on NYC schools with Michael Bloomberg's blessing and the encouragement of many others who should have known better (and probably did).

Steve Koss

P.S.: Interesting as well to note how quickly Mr. Mulgrew (UFT) jumped on the "the NYS exams are no good" bandwagon. Yes, let's all blame the amorphous NYSED rather than look in the mirror and ask ourselves, "What have we done?" Where has the UFT been the last six years other than teaching to the tests when they knew better while shoveling multiple pay raises into their collective pockets. They've allowed themselves to be bribed into looking the other way.

For me personally, the latest NAEP results mark a new low in the saga of NYC public education.

See Ed Notes' posting on NAEP results earlier in the day:

Proof of NY State Grade Inflation: NAEP math scores just released; no gains for NY State

Letters to the NY Post on ATR situation

CONTRACT WITH DISASTER: HELP KIDS AND TEACHERS

Click on the link below to access the story.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/letters/contract_with_disaster_help_kids_LoHGKcxI5Dm02yoH5SONCO

THE ISSUE:What City Hall should seek in negotiations over the teachers contract.

Winters shamelessly espouses the opinions of The New Teacher Project and ignores its vested interest in having new teachers hired through the Teach for America or the Teaching Fellows programs.

In yet another example of the Bloomberg administration's rush to privatize public education, The New Teacher Project gets paid to recruit and provide training for the inexperienced teachers hired through these entities.

Winters states that teachers hired through these programs are "younger and more energetic than teachers in the ATR." Has he personally met them?

Most of the certified teachers in the absent teacher reserve pool have received "satisfactory" ratings and were placed in the pool through no fault of their own. They were sent there because their schools were closed down or reorganized by the city.

What Winters espouses amounts to privatization and age discrimination. It is precisely why we have labor unions to defend the rights of all workers.

Scott E. Bayou

Maspeth

***

Winters suggests that the city should hold its line on salary increases, while no longer paying the salaries of teachers in the ATR.

Under the terms of the Taylor Law, an old contract remains in effect until the teachers agree to a new one. In other words, the city cannot force teachers to accept a worse contract than they have now.

The city has already paid out some $200 million over the last two years to satisfactory teachers who aren't teaching, but this is due to a colossal blunder by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

The teachers union is not going to accept a loss of job protection for satisfactory, tenured teachers, and the city cannot and should not ask them to.

Paul S. Cohen

Brooklyn

Foreign and Domestic

For my School Scope column in the October 16 edition of the Wave, www.rockawave.com.

By Norman Scott

The day after Obama’s election, working on my column for the Wave, I posed the question, “Will Obama turn out to be a great president or a failure? An FDR or a Herbert Hoover, who had an even lower approval rating than W? It could go either way. When you think of great presidents, they seem to emerge only in times of crisis. Think there are just a few lurking? FDR ran for president with a very different agenda than he ended up enacting due to desperate times. He showed the kind of flexibility that was needed. Policies that had a major impact for generations.”

“The problem I have had with Republicans is that they are driven by a narrow ideology that has helped put us into this mess. Like if you breathe government action, you are a socialist. But when it takes forms of socialism to bail out millionaires, why go right ahead. It was this sort of thinking that led to handing over billions to banks that should have had the requirement to be used as loans to free up credit but instead is being held onto by banks to buy other banks. One day soon we will have only 3 or 4 banks in this country. The only thing I have to fear is fear of Obama's dependence on the same old, same old Clinton people, who come out of places like Goldman Saks when we need some truly radical thinking. Bill Ayres, where are you when we need you?”

Well, almost a year later, it’s looking a lot more Hoover than FDR. Now don’t get me wrong. This is no tea-bag right wing criticism of Obama. I am coming from the far left, which has been just as critical. When the Republicans went after FDR’s radical (at the time) call for things like social security, he laughed at them and organized his core supporters in a form of class warfare (even though he as from the upper class) and became the most loved president by working people ever. Instead of following in FDR’s footsteps, Obama has kowtowed to his critics. For those of us itching for a class warfare fight, it is sickening.

Obama’s education policy is even worse than Bush’s as he supports all the evils that we have seen here in NYC as a result of the BloomKlein policies.

On the economy, Obama seems to have sided with the banking class that got us into the mess. Goldman Saks seems to be running the country – and making billions. Worse for Obama has been the rising unemployment rate. Remember the Hoovervilles – tent cities of homeless that sprung up all over the country between 1929 and 1932? Tampa recently rejected a Catholic charities proposal to create a tent city for the homeless. They didn’t call it Obamaville, but that is coming soon to a tent city near you.

How fast can you say “President Sarah Palin?” I’m already looking for a safe haven, like a condo in Kabul. Speaking of which….

Let’s talk Afghanistan

I must venture into foreign policy here before the raging debate on Afghanistan gets totally out of hand. First, a little historical perspective. Before Bush invaded after 9/11 that country had a rough stretch – of around 2000 years. Well, certainly 200 years. Take a look at a map of where Afghanistan sits. Iran on the east, Pakistan on the west and south and a bunch of small states that were part of the Soviet Union. The British controlled India/Pakistan until 1949 and ended up fighting 3 wars in Afghanistan to protect these areas from Russia. Every one was a disaster, with an entire British army being wiped out in the 1841. The more you look at history the more you can blame British colonial policy for many of the problems the world faces today as they created many artificial nations ignoring tribal realities. Can you spell I-R-A-Q? Add Palestine/Israel, India/Pakistan and the entire Middle East.

The Soviet Union took a crack at Afghanistan in 1979 when the Afghan government asked for help against a Mujahideen Islamist revolt, which was supported by Muslim nations, including Pakistan, while the government was supported by Pakistan’s enemy, India. (The results of those British colonial machinations again.) President Carter punished the Soviets by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and started sending aid to the rebels. But when Regan took over, he went much further, sending a great deal of support to the Mujahideen in an attempt to undermine the Soviet empire. The nine-year war really did in the Soviets and was instrumental in the ending of the Cold War. But watch out what you wish for. One of the people the Regan administration supported was a guy named Osama bin Laden and that led to the rise of Al Qaeda.

One of the strengths of the Taliban in defeating the Soviets was the moral imperative of fighting an incredibly corrupt and lawless government. With all the horrors they brought to the table, the Taliban also created such a harsh environment, the crooks and rapists couldn’t operate. All the Taliban did was cut off the heads of girls who wanted to go to school.

Now, jump ahead to George Bush and the post 9/11 invasion. Instead of focusing on solidifying Afghanistan and dealing with Pakistan’s support of Al Qaeda, he invaded Iraq, while leaving Afghanistan in the hands of one of the major crooks, Harmid Karzai. The “defeated” Taliban went back to work and “Voila”, 8 years later (one year less than the Soviet fun time in Afghanistan) we have the major pickle we are in.

Think back to Vietnam in the 60’s, with a fraction of the population and land area of Afghanistan. Our ally in South Vietnam had a corrupt and ineffective president. The CIA solution was to have Ngo Dinh Diem assassinated on November 2, 1963, an assassination approved by Kennedy. Three weeks later, he was dead himself. Remember, we pumped in over 500,000 troops. Estimates are that we would need at least double that in Afghanistan, not the measly 80,000 the military wants now. No matter how many troops end up there, the problem is Karzai and his band of merry thieves. That gives the Taliban the moral high ground. I wonder if the Obama administration sometimes doesn’t think of the assassination option as a “solution” to that part of the problem. No matter what they decide to do, all options lead to disaster – lose/lose no matter what Obama decides to do. No one wants see the Taliban in power again, but it may be inevitable given the lack of an effective Afghani government forever. (Hey, maybe they could use Mayor Mike running the country?) The question on the table is whether to also lose thousands of American lives and untold billions of dollars and still lose the war.

But no matter what, let’s never forget that this no-win position is a result of the Bush disaster. And no matter how bad the Obama presidency gets, I wouldn’t go backwards to a Bush-like Presidency for anything. But I’m afraid that’s exactly what will be happening in 2012. Hmmm, maybe I can get a deal on a condo in South Waziristan.

Proof of NY State Grade Inflation: NAEP math scores just released; no gains for NY State

Watch BloomKlein spin themselves into the ground. Thompson, of course, will take little advantage because he hasn't hit Bloomberg hard on the phony ed gains. Even better, watch the UFT spin since it has tied itself to the BloomKlein phony test gains.


This just in from Leonie Haimson.

http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/

No significant change since 2007 for NY State in either 4^th or 8^th grade math. Since NYC is such a large part of NY State, this means it is very likely the same for NYC – ie no significant improvements since 2007.

This is yet more compelling evidence that the NY state exam scores, which showed big jumps statewide at both levels, were badly inflated.

See http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/gr4_state.asp for 4^th grade math.

Esp. map: NY state surrounded by states with significantly higher results in 4^th grade math.

http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/gr8_state.asp for 8^th grade math.

In both 4^th and 8^th grade math, the big increases in scores occurred between 2000-2003 ; before the Bloomberg/Klein policies put into place.

Webcast of results starting shortly.

Follow-up from Leonie:

Let’s see how Bloomberg/Klein et al, and the editorial boards that are in their thrall, try to spin this one!

Gotham Schools' Anna Philips reports:

No improvement for New York state on national math exam

by Anna Phillips

Math scores for students in New York state have hardly budged in the last two years, challenging results from the state’s own exams that show significant score increases.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as NAEP, or the nation’s report card, is out today and New York’s results on the math exam have changed little from 2007.

Two years ago, 43 percent of the state’s fourth graders were proficient or higher in math, while this year, that number is 40 percent. In 2007, 31 percent of eighth graders scored at or above proficient, and in 2009 it was 34 percent.

While the NAEP scores, released this morning, show no significant changes, the state’s yearly math exams tell a different story. Between 2007 and 2009, fourth graders gained nine scale score points and eighth graders gained 18 points. According to the NAEP exam, fourth graders’ average scale scores decreased by two points and eight grade students’ scores rose by three points.

Philly Student to Sharpton, Duncan and Gingrich: Why are you on a "listening" tour...

...but don't listen or learn from the community?

The Philly Student union puts the ed deformers on the spot.

"We wanted to put forth some input as to what educational reform should look like in Philadelphia and the nation."

But they aren't interested.

See the video, From the Other Side of the Fence, at Philly Student Union.

Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire - Another Deep Throat Emerges

Deep throats at HSA seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Starting tomorrow: lie detector tests. Can't wait for the people who left to start talking.

I saw that you posted on the principal (Jacqui Getz) leaving Harlem Success Academy. It's true! She and two school leaders left with her. This is the second principal to leave in two years. Last year's principal was fired mid year, just before the third grade exams. He was good, just didn't fit Eva's idea of what a principal should be.

I don't know how she can get away with not having an Administrator in that school. Doesn't the State follow through on it. She should be out of compliance somehow!

I think they'll be bleeding teachers and staff by the boat-loads this year.

They already lost a teacher this year. So you have a number of people leaving in the first two months already.

Earlier in the year, she told teachers that it was not in her "vision" for the school to have teachers unionize - I bet you they would, if there was anyone planning on staying longer than a year or two. Plus, people are too afraid to even attempt that.

Reacting to Rhee in DC

The next time the Post's editorial board tells you that Rhee's plans are wonderful, reread Gittleson's story of how a grade-school principal fired the school's only third-grade teacher, and dealt with the problem that created by kicking some third-graders up to the fourth grade and demoting the others to the second grade.

Gary Imhoff in TheMail

Some people are looking at what appears to be a Michelle Rhee meltdown in DC as a victory for the forces opposing the attack on public education. I take another tack.

One could ask: Was Michelle Rhee placed in DC with one of the weakest teacher unions in the nation by the ed deformer conspiracy to privatize public education to test the waters by pushing things to the extreme so they can see just what they can get away with? In other words, could they get away with hiring 900 mostly white newbies and then fire hundreds of teachers of color? Pushing the union to the edge of oblivion? Closing numerous schools and riling parents? With 35% of the schools already charters, things were looking bleak indeed.

And don't forget to add the newly installed AFT president, Randi Weingarten, a collaborationist supreme, who would work not as a strong advocate of the DC teachers, but as a mediator of sorts with Rhee. Bleak indeed.

There isn't even an opposition caucus in DC to push the leadership. But there was Candi Peterson's Washington Teacher blog and union VP Nathan Saunders and others who I do no know, but clearly something is getting organized.

The Washington Post has been shameless in cheer leading for Rhee. Except for Bill Turque, some of whose reporting has been suppressed (Cover Up of DC Teachers Protests by The Washington Post).

See

Bracey: The Washington Post--Union Buster?

I'm guessing the ed deform forces will retrench a bit and come at them from a different direction. But they may no longer find it so easy as mayor Adrien Fenty's dictatorship alienates more regular DC people, who after all do vote. Obama may be the last DC resident to let him go.

And it will be worth watching upcoming union elections this spring as Saunders may make a run at Parker, who will undoubtedly enjoy Randi's underhanded support. (See my upcoming report on the growing opposition in the Chicago Teachers Union.) Boy are we far behind here in NYC where we reside in the belly of the beast. where even a long-time supporter like Bill Thompson can't get an endorsement from the union against the Bloomberg monster.

Today's DC based TheMail has this encouraging report from Gary Imhoff

Rally

Dear Ralliers:

The protest rally on Freedom Plaza last Thursday marks a turning point in DC politics. Chancellor Michelle Rhee's war against DC school teachers and their union led her to overreach with a maneuver that was too cute by half — to hire many more teachers than she needed for this school year in order to provide an excuse for largely arbitrary firings, calling them a Reduction in Force. That offended not just veteran teachers, but also younger teachers who realized that they, too, would be the targets of Rhee's iron whims. It showed students and DCPS parents how Rhee's methods, when put in practice, would harm them. And it energized government workers and unions — not just local unions, but national union leaders — in recognition that the Fenty administration is engaged not in an effort to improve education, but in an effort to bust public employee unions.

That changes the momentum in the 2010 mayoral race. Here's how things stand. The anybody-but-Fenty voting blocs include the unions; most city workers, whether they are unionized or not; young people and students, who see what Fenty and Rhee are doing to their schools, including the University of the District of Columbia; most black voters, who see Fenty as being uninterested in their issues; the poor and those concerned about the welfare of the poor, who see Fenty's cuts in homeless programs, neglect of job creation programs, and closing of child care facilities as being hostile to their interests; the good government voters who follow city affairs closely and who oppose his giveaways of government property and land to favored developers; and the traditional values voters who are offended by his promotion of gay marriage and his other snubs of organized religion.

The pro-Fenty voters include white voters, largely in sections of Wards One, Two and Three, who have little involvement with or knowledge of DC government; those gays for whom the gay marriage issue trumps all other issues; monied contributors who have given three million dollars to his reelection campaign; developers and contractors who have benefited at the trough of District government; and twenty-somethings who are newcomers to the District of Columbia and who believe Fenty's claims that recent economic development projects are due to him, rather than being the culmination of his predecessors' work.

What last Thursday's large, well-organized, and enthusiastic protest rally shows is that the passion in this race is mostly on the anybody-but-Fenty side. Even among Fenty's contributors, support is tempered by resentment at how the Fenty campaign has coerced them to contribute with barely veiled threats that if they want to do business with the city, or want to continue to do business with the city, they had better give generously. Many of Fenty's strongest supporters in the 2006 race do not support him now, or support him only in the absence of any credible opposing candidate. Fenty's strengths, on the other hand, are his three million dollar campaign fund, the unwavering support of The Washington Post, the absence of a credible challenger, and the possibility that the various groups that oppose him will not be able or willing to work together and to agree on a single candidate. There are tens of thousands of traditional values voters and tens of thousands of government workers and union voters. Together just these two groups could sway the election, but do they have any willingness or ability to work together?

The Post's editorial board's penchant for covering up for and excusing Fenty's and Rhee's mistakes, which will be a great benefit to Fenty in his campaign, is particularly evident in today's editorial on the rally, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/10/AR2009101001914.html, which is replete with mistakes and misrepresentations. The editorial board's ignorance and bias is especially obvious when compared with more accurate information elsewhere in the same paper. Read Thomas Toch's “Five Myths about Paying Good Teachers More,” which confronts and takes down Rhee's claims about the magic of performance pay, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/09/AR2009100902571.html; Robert McCartney's admission, as a Rhee supporter, that he's not convinced by her explanation of her firings, “Did Rhee Overplay Her Hand or Seek a Showdown?” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/10/AR2009101001956.html; and Jodie Gittleson's account of her own firing and its aftermath, “Pink Slip for a First-Year Teacher,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/07/AR2009100702643.html. The next time the Post's editorial board tells you that Rhee's plans are wonderful, reread Gittleson's story of how a grade-school principal fired the school's only third-grade teacher, and dealt with the problem that created by kicking some third-graders up to the fourth grade and demoting the others to the second grade.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics

When the long-term discouraged workers are added back into the total unemployed, the unemployment rate in September 2009 stands at 21.4%.

Wait a minute! Those Obama socialists at it again? Nooooo. This was written by, Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration in an article called Marx and Lenin Reconsidered, (Counterpunch) Roberts continues:

In Marx’s day, religion was the opiate of the masses. Today the media is. Let’s look at media reporting that facilitates the financial oligarchy’s ability to delude the people.

The financial oligarchy is hyping a recovery while American unemployment and home foreclosures are rising. The hype owes its credibility to the high positions from which it comes, to the problems in payroll jobs reporting that overstate employment, and to disposal into the memory hole of any American unemployed for more than one year.

POW!

Marx predicted the growing misery of working people, and Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods to financial capital’s accumulation of profits based on the purchase and sale of paper instruments. Their predictions are far superior to the “risk models” for which the Nobel Prize has been given and are closer to the money than the predictions of Federal Reserve chairmen, US Treasury secretaries, and Nobel economists, such as Paul Krugman, who believe that more credit and more debt are the solution to the economic crisis.

BAM!!

In this first decade of the 21st century there has been no increase in the real incomes of working Americans. There has been a sharp decline in their wealth. In the 21st century Americans have suffered two major stock market crashes and the destruction of their real estate wealth.

Some studies have concluded that the real incomes of Americans, except for the financial oligarchy of the super rich, are less today than in the 1980s and even the 1970s.

The main cause of this decline is the offshoring of US high value-added jobs.

SPLAT!!!

The expansion in debt that underlies this bubble has further eroded the US dollar’s credibility as reserve currency. When the dollar starts to go, panicked policy-makers will raise interest rates in order to protect the US Treasury’s borrowing capability. When the interest rates rise, what little remains of the US economy will tank.

If the government cannot borrow, it will print money to pay its bills. Hyperinflation will hit the American population. Massive unemployment and massive inflation will inflict upon the American people misery that not even Marx and Lenin could envisage.

CRASH!!!!

The entire Roberts piece is at Norms Notes.

And here is Paul Krugman's response in today's Times where he says not to worry so much about inflation in a deflationary time and calls out people like Roberts who talk about the falling dollar as a bad thing.

Principal of Harlem Success 1 Departs....

....and it was not a joyful event. But we have no details yet.

Our deep throat mole in the evil empire declared that HSA schools are awful where the theme is Bubble, Bubble, or there will be Test Prep Trouble.

Fundamental Truths in the Battle Over Girls Prep Charter School

I've been so busy following the wild debate, mostly between parents, over this post about Girls Prep charter school at Gotham Schools that I forgot to blog. There is some amazing stuff being said there with District 1 (lower east side) parents exposing the DOE tilt towards charters and the purposeful disempowerment of parents. One of our fave parent activists Lisa Donlan has been in the thick of it and her comments are required reading for the way they reveal the machinations of the DOE. Lisa is chairperson of Community Education Council (CEC) 1 and has come under spurious attacks while lots of others defend her passionately.

Ken Hirsh, who supports Girls Prep and Harlem Success Academy financially (and is also a major funder of Gotham Schools), has put up comments that are worth parsing. When I challenge him on the political agenda of charter schools he doesn't respond. On the surface he seems like a decent well intentioned guy. But when you read between the lines, who knows? His comments vis a vis Lisa and her responses are certainly interesting.

Go on and feast (and join in the fray.)

http://gothamschools.org/2009/09/30/girls-prep-charter-wants-more-space-but-doesnt-want-a-fight/

Is Arne Duncan Guilty of Murder? Will BloomKlein Be Next?

The violence around Chicago schools has received national attention. Today's Times has a major story, but as usual only tells half of it. "Derrion Albert, the 16-year-old who was beaten to death recently with wood planks after getting caught on his way home between two rival South Side gangs, neither of which he was a member..."

George Schmidt told a different story where he blames the corporate reform which closes schools, turns them into "reform" schools which only take select students and force thousands of students out of their own neighborhoods and into schools in hostile territory:

"It's just seven and a half days since Derrion Albert had his skull crushed in that now-world-famous gang fight on 111th St. in Chicago. And most people still don't realize that "turnaround" was a partial cause of that death.

And the White House is sending Arne Duncan and Eric Holder to Chicago next week to keep the cover up alive and well.

And most of Chicago's media will go along with that cover up, just as they've been cheerleaders for corporate school reform for 14 years now, since Mayor Daley became dictator over Chicago's schools.

But since Arne Duncan is going to force every state in the USA to do Chicago-style "turnaround" or lose stimulus money, let's take a close look at what just happened in Chicago. Not the hype. From the streets around Fenger High School I've been walking the past few days as a reporter, blacklisted Chicago teacher, and former "director of security and safety" for the Chicago Teachers Union. And, oh, as editor of www.substancenews.net.

"Turnaround" and a decade of corporate media manipulation in Chicago and now beyond Chicago's lies, hoaxes, and Orwellian nonsense.

I published the full piece over the weekend: 'Chicago Turnaround' the deadliest 'reform' of them all

Now, the amazing stuff Schmidt writes at Substance doesn't often get into the mainstream press, and of course the Times' article did not give a hint. I loved this opening about Arne Duncan's replacement, Ron Huberman:

The new chief officer of the public schools here, Ron Huberman, a former police officer and transit executive with a passion for data analysis, has a plan to stop the killings of the city’s public school students. And it does not have to do with guns or security guards. It has to do with statistics and probability.

It's just too funny to see how a former cop and transit executive is making educational decisions, just as Duncan and Paul Vallas before him created the Chicago ed deform movement called Renaissance 2000 something or other.

But low and behold, I am listening to a report on NPR this morning on the murder of Derrion Albert and they make exactly the same point George made in linking the gang violence to the forced evacuation of thousands of students from their own neighborhoods, even pointing to the fact that the local high school was turned into a military academy by Duncan.

Is Duncan guilty of murder? Maybe not. How about an unindicted co-conspirator along with Mayor Daley, Huberman and the rest of the ed deformers, which unfortunately includes our current president.

Happy Birthday, Evil Moskowitz

This evening was Evil Moskowitz' big birthday bash for Harlem Success Academy held at Roseland, with guests of honor Joel Klein, Michael Bloomberg, and Dracula.

I hear there was a loud group there to greet them. Here is a brief first report from a GEMer who attended:

PS 123 protested tonight at the HSA opening night dinner party. The picket line was predominantly made up of kids from 123. I think they may have made it a bit difficult for some of the people waiting on line to enjoy their party. They had to wait on line for a half hour listening to these kids chant and picket. I talked to one grandparent who said she was planning to leave HSA because "they never listen" to her concerns about her granddaughter's education. She said the teachers there cannot differentiate instruction.

I"ll add to this post as more pics and reports come in and I'll be following up with a piece on how HSA may be violating its charter.

Brooklyn middle school students squeezed out of study space by 3 charter schools sharing building

MS 126 is a school I knew real well as I did tech support there for about 5 years. First they had Bard HS take over the 4th floor, have the DOE (under Harold Levy) put a million dollars into the renovation, which cut classroom space in half, then move out to the lower east side, leaving room for the charter invasion.

This Daily News article is really an effective piece.

Example of the farce in this library sharing situation:

Period 1: Believe charter school teachers may utilize the left side of the library. The IS 126 library has sole use of the right side of the library.

Brooklyn middle school students squeezed out of study space by 3 charter schools sharing building

BY Elizabeth Lazarowitz <https://mail.nycboe.net/authors/Elizabeth%20Lazarowitz>
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, October 6th 2009, 4:00 AM

At JHS 126 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, memo grants its three charter schools the lion's share of access to the library (below), which got an overhaul just last year.<http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/10/06/alg_eriksson_school.jpg>
Adams for News

At JHS 126 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, memo grants its three charter schools the lion's share of access to the library (below), which got an overhaul just last year.


Students and parents at a Brooklyn <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Brooklyn> middle school are fuming after they were pushed out of their newly spruced-up library by an expanding charter school.

Junior High School 126 kids have severely limited access to the cozy, mural-painted reading spot this year so the three charters sharing the Greenpoint <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Greenpoint> building can use the space for planning, meetings and small classes.

"It's unfair," said JHS 126 parent association President Janeen Echevarria <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Janeen+Echevarria> . "Kids need to get in there to get books out to do their reports, to read, to further their education."

Access to the library for more than 400 middle schoolers will be restricted to one side of the space for less than two hours each day, with an extra hour on Wednesdays.

Eddie Calderon-Melendez <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Eddie+Calderon-Melendez> , founder of the Believe High School Network, which runs the charters, said the use of shared space is negotiated every year.

"We figure out what's in the best interest of all the children in the building," Calderon-Melendez said.

While the charters are using the auditorium and the library this year, they gave up their half of the gym space, he said.

That's of little comfort to JHS 126 eighth-grader Ashley, who said she's been stuck with a fifth-grade-

level independent reading book because she hasn't been able to get into the library yet. She's also worried about completing final projects required for graduation.

"We have no way of researching," said the 14-year-old student. The area near the library in her Bushwick <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Bushwick> neighborhood is dangerous, she said.

"There's this whole library full of new books bought for our school, and we can't even use it," Ashley said.

Williamsburg Charter High School <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Williamsburg+Charter+High+School> , the first school to share the Leonard St. space, opened in 2004. This year, Believe opened two more charters - Believe Northside and Believe Southside - promising that Williamsburg <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Williamsburg+(Brooklyn)> 's upper grades would move to private space.

The move to a new Bushwick building was stalled this summer, Calderon-Melendez said. He said he expects the building to be ready next year.

That means about 1,400 kids are packed into a building made for about 1,320.

To accommodate the extra charter students, JHS 126 Principal Rosemary Ochoa <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Rosemary+Ochoa> opted to give up shared space rather than relinquish classrooms, said Education Department spokeswoman Ann Forte <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Ann+Forte> .

Students will get library skills lessons in their classrooms using laptops, she said.

"The principals have been able to work together to solve the problems on the ground," Forte said. "[The JHS 126 principal] is confident that the kids are still getting the access and the quality of library instruction that they need."

The space scuffle comes as Mayor Bloomberg <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michael+Bloomberg> vows to double the number of charter schools in the city to 200.

Last year, the library got an overhaul, with volunteers painting the walls with a castle motif. Now, the 13 donated computers, comfy recliners and futon have been removed.

"It's a beautiful library; 126 should have first priority, and the charter school should wait or get their own building already," lamented parent Doreen Sudano <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Doreen+Sudano> .

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/10/06/2009-10-06_kids_slam_library_land_grab_jhs_126_squeezed_out_of_study_space_by_3_charter_sch.html

<http://www.nydailynews.com/img/hdr_print.gif>

Girls Prep Charter Plays Bait and Switch

We've been reporting on the PAVE charter/PS 15 struggle in Red Hook. Today I stopped by the CAPE group table at the Atlantic Antic street fair in Brooklyn, where they were getting a great response calling on PAVE to adhere to their original agreement to stay at PS 15 only 2 years. (Check the CAPE blog for updates - CAPE'n the Atlantic Antic.)


Many of us view charters as a political wedge to undermine public schools. Girls Prep Charter, based at PS 188 on the lower east side may be a good school with dedicated people. But we have to examine charters as to how they function in the political context. If they use bait and switch schemes and manipulations to gain control over space in public schools, then they are working against the long-time public good. If that leads to a divided and balkanized system that is taken out of the hands of public management then we can’t just focus on whether they are “good” because they serve a small portion of the public.

Thinking ahead, is the goal to have 1500 schools under separate management using public money? Do we think that is a good thing? Especially since only urban school systems with their racial component are the ones affected, while the suburban schools will have few charters and function under public control?

A good discussion has been taking place at Gotham Schools over Girls Prep charter school. Ken Hirsh, a charter school financial backer (he also backs Gotham Schools) and Lisa Donlan, Chairperson of Community Education Council in District 1 had a rigorous back and forth. I have a lot of respect for Ken's passion about education despite the fact I disagree with him on most points. He brings a level of civility to the debate that I just cannot match. I tend to go along with Lisa on most issues and I extracted some of her comments focused on the bait and switch tactics of Girls Prep. Lisa provides the nitty gritty of many of the aspects of the public charter struggle, though I am leaving out her description of her struggle to get basic info from the charters in her district. I'll let her take over, but be sure to check the link to read what Ken and others wrote.

Comments by Lisa Donlan

GPC admitted 3 classes of 5th graders his year, one year after they moved into PS 188.
GPC had been “incubating” in nearby PS 15 since its inception in 2005, and had long outgrown the space there, necessitating a move.

Despite the agreement between the two schools whereby GPC was not to ask PS 188 for additional space beyond the agreed upon joint plan, GPC hired a Middle School Principal and admitted 3 times as many students as they had room for.

GPC had to rescind the extra 50 invitations to keep to one class, which is all they had room for.
GPC also got the names of all of the enrolled students in the district in ATS and used that enrollment information to send out glossy post cards recruiting kids and their parents BY NAME: “Last Chance to Apply! Girls Prep is FREE, all girls, and a proven success…” in English and Spanish, thus breaking the other ground rule for moving in to 188- no predatory marketing or recruiting away of the 188 students.

The SUNY Charter Schools Institute in a notice pursuant to ed law 2857(1) gave notice that the Board of Regents approved the charter renewal application on Sept 16th, 2008 for:
Girls Preparatory Charter School Of New York: Located at 333 East 4th Street, 5th floor, New York, NY, NYC CSD1; charter renewal commencing March 23 2009, and terminating July 31, 2010: proposed final enrollment /grades served- 248 students/K-5.

SUNY Trustees approved the same on June 9, 2008
This renewal was received on March 9, 2008.

On September 17, 2009 SUNY Trustees announced that Girls Prep had applied for a 5 year charter renewal commencing on July 2, 2010, with a proposed 1st year enrollment/grades/served-268 students/K-5; proposed 5th year enrollment /grades served -525 students/K-8.

Interestingly, in the charter application renewal questions, GPC states that it:” plans to open a Middle School in August 2009… to serve grades K-8 at full capacity.

…at full capacity, during the 4th year of the second charter term Girls Prep will serve 437 students in grades K-8, including approximately 242 students in grades K-4 and 195 students in grades 5-8.”

Let’s hope they teach math better than they use it!

At the CEC One meeting, OPD agreed that the targeted space Girls Prep had requested was for 3 classes of 25 students each per grade for grades 5, 6, 7, 8th or for 300 seats, and handed out a “fact sheet” that stated they would serve 300 students in grades K-5 at capacity.
Anyone not getting this new math????

The issue is not whether or not the 57% of students out of district and the 43% in district students who attend GPC on the LES deserve 300 more seats to create a middle school.

The question is who will need to give up what in order to make those seats available to this privately managed charter that serves no ELL’s (in a district that averages over 12% ELL), while 8% of their students have IEPS requiring SETTS, in a district with the same 8% average of SETTS IEPs, plus additionally 15% on average of our district elementary students requiring the More Restrictive Environments of either CTT or Self Contained classes, classes that Girls Prep does not offer, while in middle schools the district average is 21% of students requiring CTT or self contained classrooms.

Will GPC take in thsoe students with IEPs requiring those settings if they do not offer them?
Will more high needs students be pushed into the remaining schools in the remaining real estate?
Is this the way we want to make decisions about serving children? What happened to Children First?
It is starting to look a lot like private management first, or maybe certain children first….

On the OPD chopping block are:

PS 20 (w/ostensibly 19 spare rooms according to OPD)
PS 184 (w/ supposedly 20 unused rooms)
JHS 56 (on paper has 30 rooms over capacity)
PS 188 (that has 11 extra rooms)

These numbers are based on the flawed blue book and principals use survey that fail to take into account real capacity and use, as they are based on unreal constructs that don’t “count” cluster rooms used for art, music, dance, theater, speech therapy, counseling, OT, PT, administrative offices ( there are more offices in school buildings housing one or more schools), etc.

JHS 56 for example houses 3 separate schools (2 MS, and one 6-12) which all have administrative offices; the NYC DoE’s NASA space center; as well as the District Office (with full time employees: the CEC AA, the DFA and the district superintendent’s temp worker); but these rooms can not be part of the “footprint” since they are unique and not formulaic.

The 3 schools in the JHS building serve 27, 30 and 36% special education students requiring CTT or self contained class, respectively. Two school surpass the district average for ELLs with 15% of students classified as ELL’s, and one school is a Title III school.
In fact at one of the middle schools only 21% of the population is not either ELL or Special Education designated.

How does the new governance law that requires local hearings and an impact statement (to be created by DoE) operate to take into account the kinds of students being served, how well they are being served and how best to use the limited space in public school buildings? What will be the value of “consulting” with the CEC or DLT in the case that the recommendations favored by the chancellor do not sway the elected local governing bodies? Keep your eye on cases like these to see how good the new governance laws are at providing transparency, accountability and community input and oversight to these thorny issues.

Lisa continues in another comment

The GPCharter folks were spinning/telling stories when they grabbed me after our CEC meeting to explain away the disconnect between the previous chartering info and the newest proposal.

Planning year snafu my…well, you know what!

I saw that: “ the school’s original charter application and charter originally granted authority to provide instruction in K through 5th grade.

The school’s decision planning year … the charter was amended in May 2004 and limited expansion to 4th grade.

I also learned that there have been several ”deviations from the design elements in the original charter:

From 8am to 5 pm to the current 8 am to 3 or 3:45 pm ( 3/4th grades)

Initiating Spanish instruction in 3rd grade instead of K

Increasing class size from 22 to 25

Reducing number of classes on each grade form 3 to 2

Reducing the school year form 200 to 190 days…”

Interestingly I learned that the school has been provided space at essentially no charge by the NYCDOE.

At PS 188 that translates into: 13 classrooms, 3 administrative offices, and shared use of the: auditorium, Library, Computer lab; Lunch room, Gymnasium, Yard provided at no coast by NYCDoE.