Contest caption winners!

We asked for captions for this intimate moment captured by a NYT photographer the night Bloomberg told Klein we was going to fire Cathie Black. Leave your own caption as a comment!

"Fine, Mike but we only have one, two minutes to make our couples' tanning salon appointment. I booked it three months ago."

Winner: Rachel Levy of VA.

Runners up: "Step 3: Profit!"

--Bill Fitzgerald

"We can use Cathie over at Fox News, I hear Glenn Beck is leaving."

-- Tom Perran

WHY FIGHT?

Stunned by the appointment of a friend-of-Mike with no qualifications for the job and resigned to the possibility of her getting it in spite of protests from all corners, some parents have suggested finding ways to work with Ms. Black. They reason that, given Bloomberg's penchant for appointing business people to run things in any event, someone who is tabula rasa on education may be a better bet than someone with a bit of experience since the latter would have instant legitimacy to finish the wrecking job begun by Chancellor Klein.

BUT.....Accepting a pig in a poke because the alternative might be worse is not responsible citizenship. Why is the fight worth fighting no matter what the outcome? Because the issue goes beyond Cathie Black herself—she could be good, she could be bad, who knows? (though from all that’s been made public about her, the odds of her making a good chancellor are pretty long).

It’s about our petty despot simply calling one of his friends for a job on which the future of the city’s children depends.

It’s about the stunning arrogance of presenting someone with no apparent interest in education as the best qualified person to run our schools.

It’s about not even bothering to prep her before the press conference, so that she might at least pretend to have a vision beyond “100 more charter schools” and “technology” in the classroom.

It’s about peddling as self-evident the proposition that a business person supported by educators will make a great chancellor although the converse—an educator supported by business people—is at least equally plausible.

It's about passing off the appointment of a non-educator as necessary to alter the status quo when our schools have been"managed" by non-educators for the past ten years--in reality, that is the "status quo" that needs to be "shaken up."

It’s about reducing education to a business dedicated to the production of a workforce instead of educated citizens who value curiosity, knowledge for its own sake, artistic expression and all that makes life worth living in addition to the technical competence required to hold down a job.

To all this we must say “no.”

If thousands speak up, they can’t be labeled “the disgruntled few.”

PLEASE SIGN BOTH PETITIONS to make your voice heard:

The quick-and-easy KidsPAC petition , which will automatically send letters on your behalf to Commissioner Steiner, the Board of Regents and the entire NYS legislature without you lifting a finger. Of course, you may follow up with a call to Commissioner Steiner's office (518) 474-5844.

The Online Petition that's been getting all the attention in the press because it's growing like wildfire (closing in on 8,000 signatures as of this post).

Gates-funded project leaves parents off the list of key stakeholders, once again

The research organization AIR was funded by the Gates Foundation to commission a series of papers on the Bloomberg/Klein education reforms, and to “convene a working conference….to inform future educational improvement efforts in the city.”

Reportedly, the papers will be published in a collection by Harvard University Press.

On November 10, they are holding an “invitation-only” forum at the downtown Hyatt hotel to discuss the results of their findings in what has been described as “an opportunity for dialogue and conversation among NYC stakeholders, DOE staff, and researchers…” (see invitation below.)

Yet the only NYC public school parents who have been invited to participate in this “dialogue and conversation” of stakeholders are the five borough-appointed members of the Panel for Educational Policy.

This exclusion of parents is reminiscent of the definition of stakeholders put forward by Secretary Arne Duncan and Joanne Weiss, when she ran the federal “Race to the Top” program (both of them former Gates grantees as well).

In their list of “key stakeholders”, they included education administrators, the teachers union, the business community and charter school operators, but not public school parents, as those groups that states were supposed to elicit support for their proposals. (They put in parents in afterwards, and only pro forma, after receiving negative feedback.)

Here is what Patrick Sullivan wrote in his comments to the US Education Department at the time:

One factor considered in awarding the grants to each state is the extent to which support and commitment of key stakeholders is enlisted (Overall Selection Criteria E3). While the administration has a long list of stakeholders, parents are not on it. Charter schools, teachers unions and foundations are deemed to be important stakeholders but not parents.

For this conference, once again, the concept of stakeholders appears to exclude public school parents and their children, who have been most affected and disenfranchised by the policies of this administration.

Parents aren’t even at the bottom of the list. In fact, they don’t exist at all.

On Oct 26, 2010, at 4:00 PM, nycretrospective <nycretrospective@air.org> wrote:

Dear all,

I just wanted to remind you of the conference invitation attached. The meeting will take place in two weeks (November 10th) and will be an opportunity for dialogue and conversation among NYC stakeholders, DOE staff, and researchers from inside and outside NYC about the findings of the NYC Education Reform Retrospective project. This is an invitation only conference and has been designed to offer an intimate venue for sharing ideas and considering implications for reform efforts in NYC and elsewhere. You have been invited based on your involvement in the NYC education reforms or your relevant research or practical experience. We hope that you will be able to join us and contribute to this discussion.

We have extended the RSVP and registration date to November 1st.

If you plan to attend, please fill out the attached registration form and e-mail it back to nycretrospective@air.org by November 1st.

If you are unable to join us, please reply to nycretrospective@air.org by November 1st to say you will not be attending.

We look forward to seeing you in NYC on the 10th!

Jennifer O'Day, Project Director for the New York City Education Reform Retrospective

Revelations concerning SED's secret backdoor deal with DOE on class size

See today's Juan Gonzalez column here, about the backdoor deal made nearly seven months ago between State Education Commissioner Steiner and Joel Klein, to allow the city to nullify its legal and moral commitments to reduce class size, and to let class sizes increase this fall to any levels they like, while continuing to call this a “class size reduction plan”.

I made the letter available to Juan Gonzalez, because it had been kept secret up to now, despite the transparency and public process required before the city can amend any aspect of its Contract for Excellence and/or class size reduction plan.

Even more importantly, this deal makes a mockery of the entire notion of class size reduction. It clearly contradicts the language of the C4E law, passed in 2007, mandating that NYC reduce class size in all grades, in exchange for receiving over $2 billion in state funds. Rather than the full public disclosure promised, and the tracking of every dollar to ensure that it would be spent according to its specified purpose, the Contract for Excellence program has become yet another slush fund for the DOE.

Despite receiving billions from the state, class sizes have risen sharply the last two years, and are expected to rise even more sharply this year. After Class Size Matters, the UFT and others filed a lawsuit last January in the State Supreme Court against the DOE for its failure to reduce class size, the DOE went behind our backs and negotiated this secret deal, which apparently even the Board of Regents have not been aware of until now.

In the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, the state’s highest court concluded that our children’s constitutional right to an adequate education had been violated, in large part because of excessive class sizes. The State Education Department, as a result of its negligence and active collaboration with DOE, has shown itself to be a willing partner to this continuing violation.

SED, by the way, has still not posted the city’s approved class size reduction plan for last year (2009-2010). When I asked the state last spring why the plan was not posted, contrary to the regulations, they put me off, and first claimed it due to technical difficulties with their website. When weeks went by and the city’s plan was still not posted, they admitted to me that someone high up in the State Education Department did not want to make it public. When I was forced to FOIL the plan, they ignored my FOIL and I finally had to threaten to sue.

They finally relented, and on Sept. 14 sent me a long document, originally submitted by DOE in October 2009, full of the usual obfuscation and gobbledygook. To add insult to injury, they followed up with another email three days later, saying that what they had just sent me was just a preliminary draft and not actually the city’s final approved plan for 2009-2010, which they have so far been either unable or unwilling to provide. So much for the accountability, transparency and oversight that is the state’s fiduciary duty under the law.

The secret letter signed by Steiner and Klein in February that Juan writes about today is posted here; the city’s apparently unapproved class size reduction plan for 2009-2010 is here; and here is a summary of all the billions of C4E dollars the state has thrown at the city since 2007, and apparently intends to continue to provide, despite the city’s long string of broken promises and now open defiance of the intent of the law. Finally, here is the DOE’s recently posted C4E presentation that first tipped me off to the existence of this secret deal.

There are CEC hearings on the city's C4E happening this week and next. I will provide a sample resolution soon concerning this moral and legal outrage that you can forward to your CEC or other organization to consider passing. Thanks for your support during these dark days, as always.

Here is an interview I did with WBAI on this today.

More hypocrisy from Bloomberg and Klein on class size

Check out this account, from the Queens Chronicle about a recent Town Hall meeting in Forest Hills:

The mayor said the school system in the city “is getting better,” but when Jenny Fisher, an Iraq War veteran who just earned a degree in elementary education asked Klein when the Department of Education would lift a hiring freeze on teachers, Bloomberg stepped in.

“We don’t have the money to hire new teachers,” he said. “I don’t want to lay off teachers and Joel just has to work with that restriction. Don’t blame him, blame me, I guess.”

Klein, speaking directly to Fisher, added, “I wish I could hire you. Our kids need it — lower class sizes and young, enthusiastic teachers.”

What utter hypocrisy! The city received $200 million in federal funds this summer specifically meant to hire more teachers for the 2010-2011 school year; (see the federal guidance here.) And yet the administration wants to hold onto these funds until the following year, despite the fact that they are anticipating a loss of 2,000 teaching positions and an increase in at least 18,000 students this fall.

Over the last four years, the DOE has misused hundreds of millions of dollars in state funds meant for class size reduction. They are canceling the Early Grade class size reduction program that had existed since 1999, which was dedicated to reducing class size in grades K-3^rd.

There are currently 1700 teachers on Absent Teacher Reserve, getting paid full salaries, and yet the administration refuses to assign any of them to classes to lower class size; and would rather leave them in limbo, no matter what the damage to our children, to bolster their case for laying them off.

Bloomberg and Klein have done everything they can to resist providing our children with smaller classes that the New York's highest court said was their constitutional right. The result is that this fall we will likely see the sharpest increases in class size in twelve years, particularly in the early grades.

Kindergarten classes will probably be substantially larger than they were when Bloomberg first came into office, just as new research is revealing huge academic and economic benefits to keeping Kindergarten class sizes below twenty.

Already last year there were districts in the Bronx and Queens where nearly half of all Kindergarten students were in classes of 25 or more.

What a waste. We have new tests, new teacher evaluation systems based on unreliable test scores, a new organizational structure, and new experimental online learning systems, and yet our class sizes will be more overcrowded than ever.

Despite all their claims, this administration could care less about providing proven educational reforms such as smaller classes, in their zeal to waste money devising more damaging experiments on our children.

Wishful Testing in this week's New York magazine

Check out the just-published piece in NY Magazine called Wishful Testing, featuring the comments of Steve Koss, blogger here, and which analyzes the state test score bubble, Campbell’s law, the over-hyped Harlem Village Academy, and connects the dots.

Between this, the recent Robert Kolker piece on the national craze of scapegoating teachers, and features by Jeff Coplon on Eva Moskowitz’ chain of charters and school overcrowding, the magazine has shown itself to be most valuable in dissecting the Bloomberg/Klein mirage.

Especially as compared to the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, whose reporting on the subject has been execrable.

Read it and leave a comment on the website!!

Please sign our letter to Klein and Liu re federal jobs funds

Yesterday the President signed an education jobs bill that will provide $10 billion to save an estimated 160,000 teaching jobs nationwide

According to news reports, it will send about $608 million to NY State; and an estimated $200 million to NYC. Thanks to those of you that called or emailed the Congress about this critical bill. (You can see how your House member voted here.)

These funds are desperately needed to prevent the projected loss of 2,000 teaching positions in NYC schools this fall, which, along with a continued growth in enrollment, would otherwise lead to drastically increased class sizes.

As you know, class sizes have already risen on average for the last two years; and last year, more than half of Kindergarten students were in classes of 25 or more in many schools. This is simply unacceptable, especially as the city promised to reduce class sizes in all grades in return for receiving nearly a billion dollars in extra state funds.

Please sign onto our letter to Chancellor Klein below, urging him to use these new federal funds to avert the loss of any teaching positions so that class sizes do not increase, and the City Comptroller to provide rigorous oversight to ensure that these funds are used appropriately.

Please email me at leonie@att.net with your name, school, borough, and leadership position or other organizational affiliation (if any). If you would like that affiliation to be starred with an asterix (meaning affiliation for identification purposes only) please let me know that as well.

Thanks for your support, and please forward this message to others who care.

___
Dear Chancellor Klein and Comptroller Liu:

As you know, the Congress passed and the President signed an education jobs bill that will provide approximately $200 million in federal funds for New York City schools.

Chancellor, we urge you to use these funds immediately to avert the loss of any teaching positions. Otherwise, the budget cuts already imposed are expected to lead to the elimination of 2,000 teaching positions and cause damaging increases in class size, especially as student enrollment is increasing.

Comptroller Liu, we urge you to implement strict oversight to ensure that these funds are used appropriately. Over the last two years, class sizes have risen sharply despite the city’s promise to reduce them in exchange for taking nearly a billion dollars in additional state aid.

The need for smaller classes has been the top priority of parents in the Department of Education’s parent surveys for as long as these surveys have been given.

Class size reduction is one of the very few reforms that, according to the federal government’s Institute for Education Sciences, has been proven to improve student achievement.

It is critical that these federal funds go directly to the classroom where they belong, so that the city’s children can learn in classes that are as small as possible .

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Add your name here: Name, school, borough, leadership position or other affiliation (if any)