Carranza's new gig with IXL Learning, and its defective and stressful product that DOE has paid millions for & subjected NYC students to use

In the NY Post today, Sue Edelman wrote an expose of an ed tech company, IXL Learning, that recently hired former DOE Chancellor Richard Carranza two weeks after he left office.  As I was quoted as saying, 

"I have no gripe about Carranza getting whatever job he can after the stressful experience he was put through in NYC. However, he shouldn’t be working to promote a product with such distressing impact on kids...No district should use it."

Why did I say that?  Check out the abysmal parent reviews of this product at Commonsense Media, including this comment: “IXL is an absolutely disgusting method of teaching children.”  

Check out the even worse student reviews, like this one: "I think that IXL, is the worst site ever created. My teacher gives us lessons daily, and it's pure torture. Shouldn't this be illegal because it is considered child abuse?”  

Or this one: "Ixl causes kids a lot of stress and anxiety. it is a terrible learning website and i really don't recommend it. i come home crying everyday because of ixl. please, please save your children from this devil website! PLEASE SAVE YOURSELF! i have even thought about leaving my school so i wouldn't have to do it. i HATE it. so much."

I have never seen such terrible reviews for any ed tech product.  

IXL also gets very poor privacy ratings from Commonsense Media, earning a "WARNING" and a low grade of 69:

"The terms of IXL do not disclose whether users can interact with trusted or untrusted users on the service or whether a child or student's personal information can be displayed publicly in any way. ... the terms do not disclose whether IXL may sell data from school or parent users to third parties. ...the terms state that IXL and their third-party partners may use cookies and tracking technologies for the purpose of displaying advertisements on other websites or online services on their behalf. ... IXL works with third-party online advertising networks which use technology to recognize a user's browser or device and to collect information about their visit to IXL in order to provide customized content, advertising, and commercial messages to school, teacher or district administrative users and other non-student users on other websites or services, or on other devices they may use."

It's not even clear if the use of IXL complies with NY state's student privacy law, since DOE has failed to post the privacy provisions of its contract with the company, despite the fact that the state law and regs require this.

Nevertheless, the DOE has preloaded IXL on every one of the more than 400,000 Ipads purchased for NYC students, and has paid IXL about $5.6 million since 2011.  This amount greatly exceeds the maximum payments specified in the DOE's most recent contract with the company of $1,041,869, and thus may be "against procurement rules," as the NY Post article reports.

On its website, IXL has also made false claims that its programs have been "proven effective” and that research “has shown over and over that IXL produces real results.” 

Yet as an article in Hechinger Report points out, "IXL’s research simply compares state test scores in schools where more than 70 percent of students use their program with state test scores in other schools. This analysis ignores other initiatives happening in those schools and the characteristics of the teachers and students that might influence performance. ...IXL declined to comment on critiques that its studies weren’t adequately designed to make conclusions about the impact of its program on student test scores."

More wasted millions by DOE that could have been far better invested in helping kids learn, instead of subjecting them to a program that provokes unneeded anxiety and distress and that may violate their privacy.

 

Yaffed's press conference responding to the revelation of foot-dragging by the city and state in taking action to ensure Yeshivas provide an adequate education to their students

One day after a Department of Investigation inquiry revealed that in 2017, the Mayor had delayed the release of an interim report into the quality of the education received by Ultra-Orthodox Yeshivas students in exchange for the Legislature extending his control over the public schools, the NYC Department of Education finally released its letter to the State Education Department, summarizing the results of its long-awaited investigation into ultra-orthodox Yeshivas.

Even as the DOE letter reported that only two of 28 Yeshivas they visited provided anywhere near a substantially equivalent education compliant with state law, as found via pre-announced visits that ended last spring, they also soft-pedaled the results, with the Chancellor writing that, "The DOE recognizes and applauds the significant progress made as a result of the proactive steps many schools have taken. The DOE is committed to working collaboratively with the schools to assist them as they continue on the path of providing improved instruction."  More on the letter from the Forward, Gothamist and Politico.

In response, Yaffed held a well-attended press conference this morning.  Here is a story about today's presser from the Daily News.

Abbreviated excerpts of the points made are below in the form of  tweets; first from Naftuli Moster, Executive Director of Yaffed, who organized the formal complaint of Yeshiva graduates issued four years ago and has been pressing the state and the city to take action ever since.

Then David Bloomfield, professor of education policy and law at Brooklyn College, who maintains that by interfering in the Yeshiva investigation the mayor himself violated the law, as well as important support expressed for the city and the state to take strong and immediate action, expressed by State Senator Robert Jackson, former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messenger, and Beatrice Weber, a mom and a grandmother, who is suing the DOE and the Yeshiva that her son attends for educational neglect.

I spoke briefly about the fact that though it is nearly 2020,  it is shameful how thousands of NYC children are still receiving schooling that was basically designed in the middle ages - with high school students consigned to study the Talmud 12 hours a day, with no instruction in English, math, social studies or science -- and with the mayor refusing to take steps to address this for the most selfish of political reasons.

Below the tweets  are the full, powerful statements Naftuli and Ms. Weber made at the presser. 

Good media turnout for ⁦@yaffedorg⁩ press conference pic.twitter.com/SEpwITDJ6n

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) December 23, 2019

.⁦@NYCMayor⁩ don’t trade these children’s future says ⁦@yaffedorg⁩ pic.twitter.com/NdUZGZfvNL

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) December 23, 2019

Naftuli Moster recounts long trail of political deal-making and cover-ups led by ⁦@NYCMayor⁩ that delayed real investigations into sub-par education of Yeshiva students & how pre-announced visits of DOE led to superficial improvements cc ⁦@yaffedorg⁩ pic.twitter.com/jL1WUE7PIZ

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) December 23, 2019

.⁦@BloomfieldDavid⁩ says there was illegal collusion between ⁦@NYCMayor⁩ & Yeshiva leaders. It’s time for action & it’s time for NYS to step in ⁦@yaffedorg⁩ pic.twitter.com/pbyqQuU1so

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) December 23, 2019

.⁦@RJackson_NYC⁩ here to say when it comes to children I will fight for their rights. And if Yeshivas don’t follow the law public funds should be denied them. pic.twitter.com/JXijdJjC02

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) December 23, 2019

Ruth Messenger says it’s Hannukah which means light and we must shed light on this denial of children’s rights . Four years is too slow for all these children denied their basic human rights pic.twitter.com/pbrBGfueDq

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) December 23, 2019

As a mother and grandmother of boys receiving an inferior education in Yeshivas - she saw how her older sons as adults couldn’t attend college or get the job he wants. So she sued on behalf of her youngest son. Her son’s school wasn’t even mentioned in the DOE report. pic.twitter.com/j8lWwoP2nC

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) December 23, 2019

The Chancellor says no final decision has yet been made on the issue of providing student information to charters for marketing purposes

More on this fast-developing if infuriating story in the Daily News here.

This morning at Tweed, Chancellor Carranza spoke about his opposition to the long-standing DOE practice of allowing charter schools to use the DOE mailing lists.  He said no final decision has yet been made to change this practice– contrary to what reporters had already been told about this as late as last night and parents this morning.  He asked for parents to make their voices heard about whether they wanted this practice to continue or not.

For more on this issue, see our press release here, with quotes from parent leaders, which among other things points out that DOE is the ONLY school district in the country that provides this info to charters voluntarily, helping them recruit their students, take their space and their funding, which is now costing our schools more than $2.1 billion per year.  See also Diane Ravitch's blog, which hypothesizes that the Mayor chickened out when the news leaked out prematurely and he got blowback from the wealthy and powerful charter lobby.

Grace Lovaglio streamed Carranza's remarks to CPAC on Facebook live.  He addressed the student privacy and charter school recruitment issue for about ten minutes at 36.25 minutes in.  A rough transcript of his remarks follows:

Carranza says that he has not gone to any parent meetings where he has not heard about the “predatory nature” of charters and all the mailings.   He tells the story of one parent who told him that only one of her children not to get the mailings is the one who tested gifted and not the ones w/ IEPs.  The Mayor has spoken that this is not okay. …now somehow this has become that the district is going to cut this off. I cannot speak to whether or not this is going to happen.

The charter organizations are going to the media saying that this is unfair….I want parents to have all the info they need to make an informed decision. I do not believe that it is  the responsibility of the DOE to provide this info to charters and help in some cases to  destroy our public schools.

Then he talks about co-located charters with millions in private funding to ramp up their programs…. So they should use some of those millions to do your own recruitment.

It’s a fundamental fairness issue, I cannot tell you what’s going to happen.  If parents feel strongly about that it is not ok and that your child’s personal info  should not be subject to corporate charter organizations out to recruit your kids, this  should not be painted as big bad mayor or big bad chancellor wants to take away parent choice. [clapping]

Important that parent voices I’ve heard all across the city are speaking up about how you feel about this issue. It’s going to be critically important now is the time as conversations are already happening.  What we’re going to release about supervision we are going to do and about access. . We are not announcing anything today…But the conversation should absolutely start today.

A parent says something…

Then Carranza talks about asking for possibly requiring affirmative parent consent –I’ve heard from parents, the mayor has heard from parents.  I have to get on a call about this very issue….

Parent asks a question about schools and funding –

A lot of issues.  I want to speak transparently, unvarnished.  I personally as an educator I’m not  anti-charter b/c I can’t tell you that every one of 1800 schools I’d be comfortable sending my child to, but that drives me every day to make sure they are.  But how can I support any system structure or practice that denigrates the very work we’re trying to -  how can I help someone load up a moving van and give him the gas for the van and steal my furniture.

I have responsibility as chancellor of DOE to call this out.  But what you’re going to hear, they’re going to characterize this that I’m fighting with charter schools and its going to get  personal that I’m trying to destroy charters.  That doesn’t bother me but what bothers me is this… is that it gets confused.

When I’m in Harlem and D3 and they show me how they’re doing the hard work to improve their schools and recruiting families and yet about the saturation of charters in that district, we fight it in Albany but Suny approves it.  At some point you have to take care of your own..

[parent, says that’s right, finally, finally]

Parent Grace Lovaglio ends the session by saying to her phone: Thank you so much! You heard it heard first that the charter school issue is going to be addressed finally after years of abuse and getting funds…getting student info because Bloomberg sold out. I’m just so happy that Chancellor going to address this issue.

Will the Mayor and the Chancellor allow the School Siting Task Force to comply with Open meetings law, or insist on keeping their deliberations private?

Update 5/619: After the City Comptroller Scott Stringer sent a letter urging the DOE to comply with Open meetings law and allow members of the public to attend these meetings, Chancellor Carranza and SCA President Grillo responded in a letter today, saying the public be would be allowed to do so, though they didn't agree that they were obligated to do so.  Thanks to Comptroller Stringer and Robert Freeman of the NYS Committee on Open Government who wrote the advisory guidance saying these meetings are indeed subject to Open Meetings Law because the task force was a public body created by city law. 

In City Limits, Jarrett Murphy reports on the continuing lack of transparency of Mayor de Blasio and this administration.  Freedom of Information requests take months, sometimes years to be responded to.  Meetings of public bodies are closed when they should be open.

In January 2015, we were forced to sue Chancellor Farina and the NYC Department of Education to keep School Leadership Team meetings open to the public.  When Farina decided to close these meetings, we intervened in a lawsuit to keep them open, along with Public Advocate Letitia James, and our pro bono attorneys Advocates for Justice and NY Lawyers for Public Interest.  When we won in the Supreme Court in April 2015, Chancellor Farina still insisted on keeping these meetings closed, and appealed the decision to the Appellate Court.

We eventually eventually succeeded in our lawsuit in October 2016, in a unanimous decision of the Appellate court, but only after Farina had effectively kept these meetings private for nearly two years.

Now there is a new example of the Mayor and his administration to keep private what should be public.  This fall, the City Council passed Local Law 168, to create a School Siting Task Force that would include representatives from several city agencies and government bodies, including the DOE, the City Council, City Planning and the School Construction Authority.  This Task Force is supposed to meet and come up with a report by July 31 about how the city can more quickly acquire sites for new schools to alleviate school overcrowding.

This is a crucial issue, because in many cases, twenty years or more have lapsed because of the apparent inability of the SCA and the DOE to find sites, even when the neighborhood schools are at 120% or more.  This happened in Sunset Park Brooklyn before parents, members of the community and CM Carlos Menchaca became involved in pushing for new schools and identifying appropriate sites.

The SCA itself has very few people on staff and only four real estate companies citywide on retainer tasked with this assignment, and we've been told that they never "cold call" or reach out to owners to see if they might consider selling their properties before they are put up for sale, even though this is the best way to acquire sites for development in the hot NYC real estate market.

As I said last week to a Queens Courier reporter writing about Councilmember Holden's plan to get a new high school built in Maspeth, nearly the only way public schools get built in NYC is for parents and local elected officials to find available sites and then advocate like mad for them to be acquired. 

After I heard that the School Siting task force had already met once in secret, I solicited an advisory opinion from Robert Freeman, the Executive Director of the NY State Committee on Open Government.  He confirmed my view that because the task force was created by law, it is a public body subject to Open Meetings Law.  See his letter below.  NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer has also written to Chancellor Carranza and other city officials in support of opening these meetings to the public. His letter is below Freeman's

Yet even after I had shared the opinion from the Committee on Open Government with members of the School Siting Task Force, I heard second-hand that the NYC Corporation Council was holding firm that these meetings should remain private.

Now, in response to City Limit's query, the DOE apparently is reconsidering this position:

A spokesman for the DOE told City Limits, “We are committed to continue partnering with parents and community on this issue, and are exploring how to best solicit input moving forward.”
The agency says it is reviewing whether or not the law requires opening the meetings to the public. If so, those deliberations puzzle Haimson. “This is really a no-brainer,” she says. After all, there’s not a lot of time left to meet: “The report of the task force is due in July.”

Given the acute nature of school overcrowding, with more than half a million students crammed into schools that are at or over capacity, one would think that the officials would welcome public attention, input and support to help solve this ongoing crisis.  Chancellor Carranza himself speaks frequently about wanting to "listen" to parents and "empower" them, but this is impossible if they don't even know what is being discussed behind closed doors.

Why is the DOE stigmatizing CSI schools and encouraging families to transfer out?

See this item from last week’s March 12 NYC Principals Weekly:

The Public School Choice (PSC) program offers students enrolled in schools identified by NYSED as Comprehensive Support & Improvement (CSI) schools, the opportunity to apply for a transfer to a higher performing public school. This transfer program is required under the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. [emphasis mine] Principals of sending schools (i.e., CSI-designated schools), received an email about their status in January from sfesupport@schools.nyc.gov. Principals of receiving schools (i.e., schools with non-CSI status that may be eligible to accept PSC transfer students), should have received an email from psc@schools.nyc.gov on March 5, with the number of seats identified for PSC transferring students in September, for the 2019–20 school year. If you are the principal of a receiving school, you can also use the link that will be provided in the email, to review and give feedback on identified seats at your school by March 29. 

For more information, please visit the PSC website. For questions about the PSC program, email Arnab Banerjee

Yet the sentence in bold is completely untrue.  Neither the federal government nor the state require DOE to offer transfers to kids in CSI schools, which in many cases can be begin a death spiral for these schools as they lose students and funding.

In fact, unlike NCLB, ESSA left the decision up to states as to whether to require districts to offer “Public school choice” i.e. encourage parents to transfer their students out of CSI schools. See this memo:

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA… allows states to exercise flexibility in granting NCLB transfers for students enrolled in schools in PI [program improvement] status. Two guidance letters sent out by the U.S. Department of Education, in January and February 2016, respectively, explain states’ new flexibility under ESSA, under which states can determine not to require local educational agencies (LEAs) to offer public school choice transfers.

Most states including California did not include transfer options at all in their ESSA plans though New York did – but only by the fourth year of a school’s CSI status. NY’s ESSA plan said that if a school’s CSI index declined for two years in a row, a district would have to offer parents “choice” after that point.  Before the fourth year, the state leaves it up to the district to decide whether to offer “choice."

… New York State will make Public School Choice an option, but not a requirement, for any district with a CSI school, when the district believes that Public School Choice will support stronger outcomes for students and for CSI schools. In districts offering Public School Choice, a parent of a student attending a CSI school may request a transfer to a school classified as In Good Standing. …, in any instances in which the Achievement Index of a CSI school declines for two consecutive years, public school choice will no longer be an option, but, instead, will be a requirement, and the district must offer Public School Choice for parents of students attending that specific CSI school.

This is the first year of CSI designations so no transfer option is required by the state, and certainly not the feds.   Yet here is the letter sent to parents this week in at least two schools – wrongly calling them “among the lowest performing statewide” based on an unreliable formula that counts opt out students as having failed the state exams.

Chancellor Carranza at  the City Council budget hearings today spoke at length about how parents shouldn't judge the quality of schools on test scores alone.  Neither should they be told that schools are "low-performing" based on an unreliable formula that relies on  test scores plus opt outs - and worse, be encouraged to transfer out.

CM Treyger described how the stigma of being identified as a Renewal school hurt these schools chance of improvement.  Let's hope that the Chancellor reverses this unwise decision to label these schools as "low-performing" and stops encouraging parents to take their kids out of them  before its too late.

Community-based PreK directors urge the Mayor and Chancellor to change course or their centers will be forced to close

Articles about this issue have now been published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the Daily News.

For immediate release: March 20, 2019

For more information: Alice Mulligan, oslpreschool@oslp.nyc

Community-based PreK directors urge the Mayor and Chancellor to change course or their centers will be forced to close

Fifty-eight directors of community-based preschool programs from all five boroughs have now written letters to Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza, warning them that the expansion of PreK and now 3K has put their centers on the brink of financial collapse.

They explain how despite having worked for decades with DOE to provide early education, they have lost thousands of students as DOE built too many of their own free-standing PreK centers close to existing CBO-run programs.  These free-standing DOE PreK centers cost taxpayers $811 million, and many themselves now stand half-empty.

.In addition, the DOE insists on placing excessive numbers of PreK children in public elementary schools – even in schools that are already overcrowded and have waiting lists for Kindergarten.  As documented in a recent report by Class Size Matters entitled The Impact of PreK on School Overcrowding in NYC: Lack of Planning, Lack of Space, the DOE’s inserted PreK classes in 352 public schools that were at 100% utilization or more, thus contributing to worse overcrowding for about 236,000 elementary school students.

The letters from the CBO directors describe how many of them shared their concerns with Deputy Chancellor Josh Wallack and his staff at a meeting in November 2018.  Though Wallack admitted that mistakes had been made by the city in building too many PreK centers, he refused to change course or correct the DOE’s practice of overfilling elementary schools to the detriment of the community-based programs that are suffering severe economic distress as a result.  

Though the CBO directors suggested to Wallack that the DOE assign more students to their centers to help ensure their financial viability and to use their own PreK centers for Kindergarten classes, which would relieve some of the overcrowding at nearby elementary schools and offer these children smaller classes, he refused.

During a subsequent phone conference with the DOE, CBO directors were informed that there was no plan to limit further expansion of PreK or 3K in district elementary schools. The new proposed five-year capital plan allocates another $95 million to build 3K centers and $85 million for PreK centers. Thus, this initiative will continue to come at the expense of the city’s long-time CBO partners, city taxpayers, and hundreds of thousands of elementary school students, who will experience even worse overcrowding in NYC public schools as a result. 

The letters from the PreK directors conclude with this heartfelt plea:

“Community-based organizations like ours have been the backbone of early childhood education in our city for generations.  When the DOE needed us as their partner, we provided.  When the Mayor needed us to help reach his goal of serving 70,000 children, we provided.  Again and again, the DOE has come to us when they needed us and now we are being dismissed and ignored. Why must our centers, dedicated to helping families and improving early education opportunity for NYC children be the collateral damage of the Mayor’s signature initiative? “

The fifty-eight letters, 25 of them from Pre-K directors in Brooklyn, 17 in Queens,  seven in the Bronx, five in Manhattan and four in Staten Island, are posted here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ja02hEMkExJfFr193eg-F_vJxRHrjbI-/view?usp=sharing

###