A Parent Guide to the Broad Foundation just released!

Check out the new Parent Guide to the Broad Foundation, its Training Programs and Education Policies, just released by Parents Across America.  (Here is the guide as a handy downloadable fact sheet.)

Jean-Claude Brizard is a Broad Academy graduate, formerly of DOE,  subsequently Superintendent of the Rochester schools.  Just yesterday he was appointed to be Chicago's CEO of schools.

So is Chris Cerf, John White, Shael Suransky and several of the top corporate-style educrats who worked at Tweed and across the country, many of whom have provoked controversy with their pro-privatization policies and autocratic leadership style.

What is Eli Broad trying to achieve by installing his brand of leadership in schools throughout the country? Parents, be forewarned!

A chat with the oligarchy of corporate education reform

Check out this from "Aunty Broad", one of our friends in Seattle: the education oligarchy (Rhee, Broad, Bloomberg, KIPP and Kopp) "should be cloned because they are so smart." More brilliant exposes from Aunty Broad are here.

More on Education Indoctrination

We held a press conference yesterday at Rockefeller Center, in protest of the one-sided coverage of NBC's Education Nation, which has turned out to be an infomercial brought to you by the Billionaire boys club of Gates, Broad and Bloomberg. Here is some coverage from Gotham Schools, and the Epoch Times.

As made clear by this media extravaganza, a handful of wealthy men and their corporate-style, free-market views were allowed to completely dominate the media, as they already control much of the output of the education research organizations and think-tanks in DC, despite any evidence that their methods will improve our schools, all in the name of "innovation." They are wreaking destruction not only on our public education system, but waging a massive misinformation campaign, with even the National Academy of Sciences powerless before them.

Bloomberg was allowed to make a 15 minutes speech on MSNBC, uninterrupted, without a single reporter allowed to ask questions, in which he claimed great progress in our schools. At the same time, during Council hearings downtown, members of the public and local elected officials were lambasting his record, and pointing out that his claims of improvements were based on fraudulent and inflated state test scores.

And yet this highly damaging model of education reform that has utterly failed to improve our schools here in New York City is being held out as a model, and foisted on the nation as a whole, in the form of charter school expansion, wasteful teacher merit pay, and even more emphasis on high stakes testing, all of which which hurts our neediest students most of all.

In essence, NBC's entire media extravaganza should have been called Education Indoctrination, an opportunity for the corporate influences that are engineering their hostile takeover of our public schools to broadcast their distortions, without little or no fear of being contradicted. Here is our press release from yesterday, here is my Huffington Post column about it, and here is a letter of protest to NBC that you can sign.

There were a few bright spots; check out NYC teacher Brian Jones, who managed to infuse a few words of truth amidst the heated rhetoric of Geoffrey Canada, Randi Weingarten, Steven Brill, and Michelle Rhee. On the same panel, Allen Coulter, the head of the Gates Foundation education division, managed to spread more of the special Gates' brand of misinformation, such as claiming that there is no evidence of benefits from class size reduction after 3rd grade, which is simply false.

There are at least 15 studies showing correlations between smaller classes in the middle and upper grades and higher student achievement and lower dropout rates, no matter how much the Gates Foundation would like to deny this. Like their support of the anti-evolution organization, the Discovery Institute, Gates seems to have no respect for research and evidence. Instead, the foundation would rather waste millions on incentive pay tied to test scores, and other free-market "experiments" that have repeatedly been proven to be worthless.

See our press release from yesterday, my Huffington Post column, and then send a message to NBC, by signing our protest letter, with 400 signatures so far and growing fast.

Here are some excerpts from the press release, from outraged parents, teachers and citizens:

Natalie Beyer, a founding member of Parents Across America and a school board member in Durham, NC: “Strong public schools are our most fundamental public resource and the foundation of our democracy. In recent years, a few wealthy philanthropists have profoundly influenced education policies and programs. Parents Across America believe that our public schools and our children’s educations are not for sale. Across this nation, we elect citizens to serve on local Boards of Education, to insure local accountability, transparency and oversight of our public schools. As a public school parent and elected school board member, I am disappointed that NBC’s Education Nation has excluded the voices of parents and critics. Your relationship with your sponsors seems to have turned what could have been an important news event into an infomercial. As your program concludes and you dismantle your Learning Plaza, rest assured that those of us who work in public education will continue the important work of challenging students every day.”

Karran Harper Royal, New Orleans parent leader and member of the Community Education Coalition: “The entire premise of this show is very offensive. The rest of America does not need another Hurricane Katrina, and certainly doesn’t need the kind of education reform that we’ve had in New Orleans. Parents are largely left out of the decisions being made by the State of Louisiana, and the claims of success of our Public Schools are being greatly exaggerated. In a recent report, the Brookings Institute and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center admitted that "Statistically, academic growth has not been correlated with reforms." And despite Paul Vallas’ claims to the contrary on MSNBC’s panel discussion today, charter schools in New Orleans often push out students with disabilities or do not serve them well, and there have been many instances where such children have been turned away. We resent NBC using our tragedy to promote an agenda financed by big business, and that does not include the very people who use our public schools.”

Mona Davids, head of the NY Charter Parents Association, said: “Contrary to the claims made by NBC’s Education Nation, charter schools are not a magic bullet to improve our public school system. Too many of them have very high student and teacher attrition, exclude special education students, feature abusive disciplinary practices, and demonstrate disappointing levels of student achievement. What we need in this city and elsewhere is to learn from the practices of our best charter schools, and apply them to all public schools, including small class sizes, a supportive and welcoming environment for parents and teachers, and a well-rounded curriculum, featuring art, music science, all of which are being driven out of our public schools by Bloomberg and Klein, and the other so-called “experts” featured on these panels."

Lisa Donlan, NYC public school parent leader in lower Manhattan: “It is outrageous that NBC is allowing Joel Klein and our Mayor to portray our public schools as a model for reform, given the never-ending scandals, reorganizations and failed experiments that have damaged our kids over the last eight years. Charter schools, merit pay, competition among schools for students and resources, high stakes standardized tests as the basis for teacher bonuses, student promotions and school closings - -none of these things have worked in NYC, or anywhere else in the country for that matter. Bloomberg's experiments on our children have not improved teaching and learning, have not narrowed the achievement gap, have not increased equity of access to quality schools for most families, and any claims to the contrary are simply lies.”

Julie Woestehoff , Executive Director, Parents United for Responsible Education, in Chicago and founding member of Parents Across America: “Over the past few days, NBC, Oprah, "Waiting for Superman" promoters and other corporate-funded propagandists have waged war against public school parents and teachers, hoping to break their traditionally strong ties, to vilify, label, and destroy public schools, and to fool the nation into accepting a vision of education that consists of replacing open, democratically-run school systems designed to serve all children with a system of strip mall franchise schools where families are forced to "shop" for education and children are
served differently depending on how they score on standardized tests.

That's not the vision of education that will lift our nation or give our children a strong future. We reject NBC's corporate vision of education and instead support and dedicate ourselves to the rich, well-rounded, ennobling vision of education offered by true school reformers, beginning with John Dewey and embodied today by the millions of dedicated, hardworking teachers who are doing their best under ever-worsening circumstances. We choose to listen to our teachers first, and support their efforts rather than join corporate media's war against them."

Education Indoctrination

Send a message to NBC News, by signing the petition protesting the monolithic presentation of views in Education Nation.

You would have to be living on Mars not to notice all the commotion the past week proclaiming the ills of our public education system, particularly our inner city schools. From the much-hyped opening of the documentary "Waiting for Superman," two Oprah shows this week featuring the movie's director, Davis Guggenheim, along with Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerman of Facebook fame, and NBC's "Education Nation" series, the mainstream media has given a huge amount of attention to the view that our inner-city public schools are dysfunctional, primarily as a result of selfish and incompetent teachers and their unions.

The latest outrage is the panel discussion scheduled for Tuesday as part of Education Nation, originally entitled, "Does Education Need a Katrina?" Though after protests, the name of the panel was changed, it still is being described as a discussion to examine "the advantages to the New Orleans school district of starting over post-Katrina."

When Arne Duncan made a similar statement about New Orleans schools benefiting from Hurricane Katrina, he was roundly and justifiably criticized. Hurricane Katrina killed thousands of people, and destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. Since then, the poorest and neediest students have been increasingly concentrated in the New Orleans' public schools, while charter schools are attracting the highest achieving and wealthiest students. This two-tier educational system is a pattern that has been replicated in New York City, Chicago and elsewhere.

NBC has disinvited prominent experts from its panels who disagree with these policies, including Diane Ravitch and Yong Zhao of Michigan State, invited few if any public school parents, and has given up any pretense of providing a fair and balanced presentation of views. The panel on teacher quality will be moderated by Steve Brill, a journalist who has made a second career out of attacking teacher unions and promoting charter schools, in articles full of exaggerated claims and factual errors. (See my earlier column "Steve Brill's Imperviousness to the Facts")

Indeed, the vast majority of panelists appear to have been pre-selected by the Gates and Broad Foundations, Education Nation's co-sponsors, who by spending billions have been able to impose their rigid prescriptions on the nation's urban public schools. NBC has also asked the president of the University of Phoenix to participate, the nation's largest for-profit online chain and yet another co-sponsor, although this institution has been widely criticized for fraudulent practices. As the independent Poynter Institute commented, "it looks like the University of Phoenix bought access" onto the show, which "undermines the credibility of the project." Indeed, it is apparent that for NBC, money rather than real expertise talks.

The same monolithic cast of characters dominate "Waiting for Superman", which despite numerous cogent critiques, is likely to draw support from viewers who are otherwise ignorant of the real problems plaguing public education.

What are the rigid solutions that this film and NBC's "Education Nation" offer instead? The closing of neighborhood schools to make way for charter schools, more emphasis on standardized testing, performance pay, and the firing of more teachers, all based on student test scores.

Yet these simplistic and largely punitive policies have no backing in research or experience. There is no consensus among experts that they would work to improve our public schools, and plenty of evidence that they could make them even worse, as the National Academy of Sciences pointed out in comments on the federal program known as "Race to the Top". Why?

Evaluating and firing teachers on the basis of standardized tests scores is highly unreliable, with a recent study done for the federal government showing that there is a 25-34 percent likelihood of mislabeling the best teachers as the worst.

Such policies are likely to encourage even more mindless test prep, narrowing of the curriculum, and unfairly target teachers who working in our most disadvantaged schools. There is also not a single research study showing that teacher incentive schemes, which the US Department of Education just spent nearly half a billion dollars of taxpayer funds to support, have ever worked to improve public schools. Instead, studies out of New York City, Chicago, and now Nashville, in what is called the most rigorous experiment yet done, by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University, have shown no positive results.

These top-down policies are being promulgated not by educators, parents, or experts in the field, but by corporate billionaires, including Bill Gates, Eli Broad , the Walton family of Walmart fame, and Michael Bloomberg, all of whom adhere to the sort of deregulatory, free-market philosophies that have recently found to have disastrous results in our financial system.

Indeed, given the recent recession and the resulting anger at Wall Street elites, it would be hard to find any other field of public policy in which a few billionaires have so easily controlled the dominant narrative, convinced most of the politicians in both parties and the mainstream media that they know what's best for our children.. Yet none of these moguls have ever sent their children to an urban public school, and seem totally unaware of what really ails our urban public schools.

As charter schools proliferate, they have led to more segregation, according to UCLA's Civil Rights Project, as well as a growing concentration of poor, immigrant, homeless and English language learners in our neighborhood public schools. For example, in New York City, fewer than one percent of charter school students are homeless, whereas many of the public schools in the same neighborhoods, and even in the same buildings, are composed of ten percent homeless students or more.

During the recent primary elections, the charter school lobby donated millions of dollars to candidates that supported their top-down agenda, including Adrien Fenty, DC mayor, and Basil Smikle, running for State Senate in Harlem. Yet these candidates were roundly defeated, because by and large, most public school parents and community residents would rather support candidates who are interested in improving their local neighborhood schools, instead of closing them down or forcing them to sacrifice more space to expanding charters.

As the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote, "Mr. Fenty was cheered by whites for bringing in the cold-blooded Michelle Rhee as schools chancellor. She attacked D.C.'s admittedly failing school system with an unseemly ferocity and seemed to take great delight in doing it. Hundreds of teachers were fired and concerns raised by parents about Ms. Rhee's take-no-prisoners approach were ignored. It was disrespectful."

Similarly, according to a recent Gallup national poll, support for President Barack Obama's education agenda is slipping, among members of all parties, with just 34 percent of respondents giving the president an A or B for his education policies. According to the poll, the majority of Americans oppose closing low-performing schools, and would rather improve them by providing more support.

Another national poll, financed by Time magazine, showed that the vast majority of Americans believe that test-based accountability has either not worked or has been harmful, though interestingly enough, Time omitted this finding from their coverage.

Yet perhaps in order to control the message, there are practically no public school parents or dissenting views among the scores of participants on the three day line-up for Education Nation, despite a letter sent by Parents Across America to NBC, urging them to invite public school parents, weeks ago.

Gates and Broad have also backed "Waiting for Superman", with the Broad Foundation contributing half a million dollars to its marketing campaign One of the documentary's producers is yet another billionaire, ultra-conservative Philip Anschutz, well known for financing Colorado's anti-gay marriage amendment. (Anschutz and Gates are also partners in financing another project without any research backing, the anti-evolution, pro "intelligent design" Discovery Institute.)

Attacking the teacher unions may be convenient, but is essentially wrong-headed. Well-financed suburban school systems throughout the country, as well as schools in other countries like Finland which result in high achievement levels are also unionized, with very low teacher turnover rates. No, the reason so many of our inner city schools are failing is that they are confronted with educating our neediest students in the worst, most overcrowded conditions, and given these systemic inequities, neither these children nor their teachers are given a real chance to succeed..

One of the appealing children focused on in the film is named Francisco, a first-grader from the Bronx. The movie describes how his school is overcrowded and his teacher is "overworked with too many students"-- conditions that are sadly all too common in city schools. Class sizes in New York City public schools are often overflowing, at thirty students or more, and have increased sharply in recent years, exceeding class sizes in the rest of the state by 25 to 70 percent.

Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institute and Stanford, one of the few so-called "experts" interviewed in the film, has spent much time as a witness in court, defending states when they are sued for not providing equitable education funding. Hanushek's claim, which he has personally profited from, is that resources and class size do not matter.

Yet the SEED charter school, also featured in the movie as a major success, spends $35,000 per student; about four times the average spending, requiring a special act of Congress to fund.

Another one of the stars of the movie, Harlem Children Zone founder Geoffrey Canada, has built facilities that rival that of any private school, and he caps all class sizes at no more than eighteen students. Canada is now constructing a new branch of HCZ costing $100 million, with $60 million paid for by New York City taxpayers, with another $20 million contributed by Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, HCZ is sitting on more than $200 million in assets, and last year, reported a a $25 million surplus, while our city's public schools have seen their budgets slashed to the bone, and are facing even more cuts this year.

Alan Krueger, economist of Princeton, has convincingly shown that Hanushek's published work has consistently distorted the research, by minimizing the number of studies that show positive results from reducing class size and increased spending. If honestly reported, the research overwhelming shows that smaller classes improve outcomes for children.

This is especially true for the poor and minority children that the film so poignantly depicts, since reducing class size is one of the very few reforms that have been proven to narrow the achievement gap. And yet Bill Gates and many of his grantees, including NYC Chancellor Joel Klein, consistently dismiss the need to provide smaller classes to poor and minority children in the public schools that they control, and have encouraged class sizes to grow sharply, while they send their own children to private schools where class sizes are capped at fifteen.In the movie, Hanushek calls for firing six to ten percent of all public school teachers each year, a la Jack Welch of General Electric fame. Instead, these slash and burn policies would likely have disastrous effects, and lead to even fewer effective and experienced teachers in our highest-need schools.

In short, though the current propaganda campaign, financed and promulgated by billionaire entrepreneurs, promoting ruthless corporate-style tactics, may currently be the rage, the true experts, including teachers and parents who send their own children to public schools, realize that there's a better way.

As John Dewey wrote, what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child is what the community should want for all children. When all the hypocrisy and and furor has died down, the clear findings of research and the wisdom of ordinary Americans will hopefully be recognized once again, and the truth will emerge: that all our children, whether or not they attend charter schools, deserve a better chance to learn.

The Broad inside game

Check out this posting on “The Broad Effect” , about how the Broad Foundation influences educational policy by inserting graduates of his Broad Superintendents Academy into top positions at urban districts from throughout the country, to pursue its privatization agenda, sometimes provoking controversy in the process.

Just as the Gates Foundation plays the "outside game" by putting its people inside the US Dept. of Education, where they can use the Race to the Top funds to bribe states to adopt their policies, Broad plays the inside game.

The Rhode Island State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who recently ordered the firing of the entire teaching force of Central Falls HS, is a Broad graduate.

Here in NYC we have much experience with the grads of this fabled institution. The first was Chris Cerf, Class of 2004, formerly head of Edison charter schools, who became Deputy Chancellor for “Strategy and Innovation” at DOE, then moved over to the Bloomberg campaign, and is now is selling science curricula in Brazil. (See the inspired illustration above, thanks to David Bellel; sadly Cerf now seems to be excised from the “featured” alumni on the Broad website.) Also:

• Marcia Lyles, class of 2006, former Deputy Chancellor of Instruction, now Superintendent of the Christina School District in Wilmington Del.
  
• Jean-Claude Brizard, class of 2007, former DOE “senior executive for policy and sustainability” and now superintendent in Rochester, NY.
  
• Shael Polakow-Suransky, class of 2008, (currently Chief Accountability Officer at DOE).
  
• Garth Harries, class of 2009, former head of Office of Portfolio Development and now asst. Superintendent in New Haven.


• Currently, John White is in the Broad class of 2010, now Cerf’s successor as “Deputy Chancellor for Strategy” (he now apparently leaves off “Innovation” from his title)

Broad doesn’t stop there. He also gives out his award each year to the top urban school district; conveniently awarded NYC in 2007, despite stagnant gains on the NAEPs, shortly before Bloomberg embarked on his campaign to renew mayoral control. And Broad is a generous donor to charter schools in NYC and elsewhere.

Chancellor Klein persuaded Dan Katzir, the head of the Broad Foundation, to give a million dollars to Eva Moskowitz's chain of charter schools, so she could create an army of parents who would support their initiatives, writing: “she’s done more to organize parents and get them aligned with what our reforms than anyone else on the outside.”

The Times ran a recent rather unflattering profile of Broad . In it, Roland Fryer, whose “institute” at Harvard and large scale experiments in student bribery are funded by Broad: “For me there has been no downside....But I think if you’re not on your game, Eli will crush you." (For more on Fryer's Broad-funded experiments, see here, here, here, and here.)

Bribery seems to come naturally to these guys. More recently, Katzir has admitted that they use an unusual method to "place" their superintendents -- promising cash-strapped districts that in exchange, they will cover part of their salaries.

The Detroit Public School Board has just unanimously voted to file a lawsuit against Robert Bobb, the "emergency" manager of their schools and a Broad graduate, saying the extra $145,000 he receives from the Broad foundation and other "unidentified philanthropic organizations" represents a conflict of interest.

"Because Bobb has sole and virtually unreviewable control over the $1.4 billion DPS budget, it is especially dangerous to allow the Broad Foundation and similar 'venture philanthropists' to fund one-third of his salary," according to the complaint.

In Los Angeles, Broad is paying the salaries of top school officials including Matt Hill, who is “overseeing the district's high-profile effort through which groups inside or outside L.A. Unified could take over new and low-performing schools."

Responds Dan Katzir: "It's common for the foundation to match people it has trained with districts, and initially to help pay for it."

Can you imagine if the people running our public hospitals were trained by the drug companies and had their salaries supplemented by them? There would be justified outrage. But when it comes to our public education system, anything goes, and conflict of interest is the name of the game.

Another brilliant column by Diane

After screwing up our schools, the Gates foundation now proceeds to spread its tentacles into the US Dept. of Education; where Arne Duncan, armed with a $5 billion slush fund to push the agenda of the Billionaire boy’s club agenda of more charter schools and merit pay; with KIPP, Kopp and Klein joining the advisory board of the Broad foundation to further their hostile takeover of public education, Diane asks the very timely question, Will Public Education Survive the Embrace of Big Money?

Our Children--Only Pawns in Their Experimental Game

"We will have the willingness to try new things and be wrong — the type of humbleness to say, I have no idea whether this will work, but I’m going to try." --Dr. Roland Fryer; 9/24/08

Perhaps discouraged by the refusal of NYC children to respond to financial incentives by actually performing better as opposed to just taking more tests, Dr. Fryer is returning to Boston to head something called the "Educational Innovation Laboratory" (see the splashy EdLabs website).

Dr. Fryer laments that billions are spent researching drugs and developing airplanes, while little is spent “to scientifically test educational theories.” Thus his friend, Eli Broad, (see picture above) and the Broad Foundation are helping him with the first $6 million of a $44 million, 3-year, “research and development initiative” that will have EdLabs “partner” with NYC’s Department of Education, the Chicago Public Schools, and the District of Columbia Public Schools.

What does this “partnership” mean? EdLabs will “connect” top academics from various fields with its own “R&D teams that will be embedded in these three school districts.” (emphasis added). There, the EdLabs folks will “foster innovation and objective measurement of the effectiveness of urban K-12 school district programs and practices” and “quantify the expected "student return from an investment" (sic.) to help leaders direct their limited resources into high-return programs and initiatives.”

In other words, the cheerleader-in-chief for market-oriented education strategies will evaluate the results of programs devised by ideologically aligned education officials, his own teams or even himself (such as the preposterous scheme to reward student performance with cell phones, which apparently has collapsed.). This passes as “rigorous research.”

When a drug company funds research to study the safety and efficacy of its own product, we have no difficulty understanding that conflict of interest is a problem and means the results are suspect. Imagine what credibility a drug study would have if the research team actually included drug company personnel! And would anyone even entertain the suggestion that the head of Philip Morris USA’s Youth Smoking Prevention Program should be included in any study of teenage smoking?

The incestuous relationships in this new initiative would not be tolerated in a scientific study involving drugs or other products. That the proposal is made with a straight face by people who are smart enough to know better shows the utter contempt they have for our children. This is fundamentally a business enterprise, not a serious attempt to evaluate educational strategies by standards that are applied to scientific research. Calling it a “lab” and putting it at Harvard doesn’t cleanse it of this taint.

And here’s the kicker for all us parents and taxpayers. The Broad Foundation is committing a mere $6 million in “jumpstart” funds--where do you suppose the other $38 million will come from? Need I say it? EdLabs’ sources of support include “the three participating school districts.”

-- Paola de Kock

Unholy alliance: Al Sharpton and Joel Klein

June 13: See update and correction on funders here.

Lots of publicity for the Klein/Sharpton alliance, inaugurated at the National Press Club yesterday, where no doubt they faced a less skeptical press corps than they would have in NYC -- though the Washington Post pointed out that “It was the kind of odd coupling that seemed more like the premise for a reality show than a news conference on education policy.”

As predicted, this "new" coalition will focus on charter schools, union-busting and teacher scapegoating – with not a single word about the need for any of the reforms that have actually been proven to work to narrow the achievement gap -- like class size reduction.

This strategic alliance, or "beautiful friendship" as Klein likes to put it, appears to be based upon the ideological biases of its funders -- the Gates and Broad foundations.

Accordingly, at the news conference, their statements were full of ignorant and self-serving nonsense:

NY Sun: “Mr. Klein said the achievement gap had "barely narrowed" in the more than five decades since the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of the schools in the landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education.”

This is right-wing tripe that has been repeatedly disproved. The achievement gap, though still significant, substantially narrowed in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (See the analysis in this classic work, for example.)

USA Today: “Sharpton, a Baptist pastor and political gadfly, says that for years, civil rights leaders have been silent on education equity issues.”

Who is he kidding? While he has been missing in action on these issues, the NAACP and other mainstream civil rights organizations have led the charge on educational equity – including, most recently, helping sponsor the Florida constitutional amendment requiring smaller classes in all grades.

Baltimore Sun: “They [Klein and Sharpton] support … more accountability for everyone, including central office staff.”

Sure. Tell me a single educrat at Tweed who has been held accountable for their multiple fiascos, from the bus route disaster last year, to this year’s mix-ups with admissions to G and T programs, preK and middle schools. Not to mention the serial blunders of the Accountability office, from the ridiculous school grading system to failure of ARIS, the $80 Million plus super-computer system.

Meanwhile, according to the Daily News, “The entire English staff at closing Lafayette High School was handed walking papers this week, a move that would leave no licensed English teachers for next year's students, the Daily News has learned.”

Talk about educational equity! I guess those kids don’t need English teachers – another backwards version of equity, no doubt, in the twisted land of Tweed.

An article in the News reports on the continuing harassment of Sikh students, which unfortunately omits the fact that the DOE has refused to comply with a law passed by the City Council four years ago, requiring the reporting and disciplining of anti-bias crimes in schools.

Also see the article in the News about Marie Pollicino, Queens CEC member, who filed a complaint against the attempt by DOE to eliminate all authority of parents on School Leadership Teams to develop school budgets and Comprehensive Education Plans. See our blog in early January about this outrageous and illegal move by Klein et.al., just after the complaint was originally filed.

Meanwhile, this new coalition blathers on about the need for “increased parental involvement.”

As Sharpton said at the news conference, “Who is standing up for the children?"

Not either of these hucksters, that’s for sure. Nor the Gates or Broad foundations, which are bankrolling this unholy alliance.