Bloomberg Curtailment of Parent Role Ruled Illegal By Albany

A year ago, Queens public school parent Marie Pollicino refused to accept Mike Bloomberg's attempt to marginalize public school parents. She filed a formal complaint with the state education commissioner to reverse the Chancellor's changes in regulation A-655 specifying the role of school leadership teams (SLTs). Her action was joined by Queens parent Melvyn Meer, the District 26 Community District Education Council and the UFT.

This week, State Education Commissioner Richard Mills ruled that the Bloomberg administration's attempt to revise Regulation A-655, shifting all decision making power on SLTs to principals was a violation of state education law. The law grants school-based management teams specific powers and duties:

Develop an annual school comprehensive educational plan that is aligned with the school based budget. Such plans shall be submitted to the district superintendent and be made available for public inspection.... (Ed Law 2590 - h(15) (b-1))

In his decision Mills says "The A-655, as revised, strips the SLT of this basic, statutorily mandated authority". The state ordered the city to revise the regulation.

Commissioner Mills also ruled that the method by which the Bloomberg Administration changed the policy was unlawful. State law requires the changes to be developed by the superintendent of each community school district in conjunction with committees "composed of administrators, teachers and parents". The current changes were developed without this input.

A copy of the legal decision can be found here.

For background on the case, see this earlier Daily News article and update here. Gotham Schools has the story here.

Oddly, the NY Post didn't have news coverage but that didn't stop the editorial board from braying about the decision. The Post apparently could not pass on the opportunity to simultaneously take a swipe at two favorite targets: public school parents and Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver.

Restore parent power: send a message to Commissioner Mills today!

On Dec. 31, Marie Pollicino, a parent and Community Education Council member from Queens, filed a class action complaint with the State Education Department on behalf of all NYC public school parents. Her petition says that the new regulations adopted by DOE that strip away the rights and responsibilities of School Leadership Teams to decide on school-based budgets and Comprehensive Education plans are unlawful and unwarranted, and should be reversed.

She also points out that the process of amending these regs was contrary to state law by not involving CECs or any other official parent group, and she asked for a stay, so that the previous regulations that provided real decision-making authority to SLTs should be retained until the Commissioner determines the propriety of the amendments.

Her petition is posted here; it makes a very compelling case. It follows an earlier letter to the Commissioner from the NY State Assembly Education Chair Cathy Nolan, who made several of the same points.

Given more resources and authority delegated to the school level, and the huge pressure put on principals by this administration to raise test scores and spend nearly all their discretionary funds on data analysis and test prep, to the exclusion of nearly everything else, it is more crucial than ever before that parents be able to provide a countervailing force to see that resources are invested properly – on reducing class size and improving learning conditions in our classrooms.

This regulation is yet another insidious way in which the administration is systematically trying to strip any ability for parents to have a voice in the way their children are educated.

Please contact the Commissioner Richard Mills, with a copy of your email to the Regents, Assembly Member Nolan, City Council Member Robert Jackson, Chancellor Klein and the Mayor, as well as your own elected reps in the Legislature and City Council – whose emails you can easily gather by plugging in your address here. A sample message along with email addresses is below; feel free to add anything relevant to your situation or that of your child.

To: richard.mills@mail.nysed.gov; djohnson@mail.nysed.gov;
CC: jackson@council.nyc.ny.us; JKlein@schools.nyc.gov; mbloomberg@cityhall.nyc.gov; nolanc@ assembly.state.ny.us (and your state and city council reps)

Dear Commissioner Mills and the Board of Regents:

I urge you to support the class action petition by Marie Pollicino of the District 26 Community Education Council, on behalf of all NYC parents, and reverse the unauthorized and illegal action of the NYC Department of Education to eliminate the authority of School Leadership Teams to collectively determine each school’s budget and Comprehensive Education Plan. This amendment to the regulations governing the rights and responsibilities of SLTs would remove the ability of parents to help determine the spending priorities of their children’s schools, and was done without consulting Community Education Councils and/or any official parent group, contrary to state law and regulation.

I urge you to restore the regulation to its previous version, which properly recognized the rights of parents to be full partners along with the principal and staff in decision-making at the school level.

Yours, [Name, home address, school, and leadership position if any.]

Assembly Member Jim Brennan on the DOE Progress Reports

As reported here earlier, two members of the State Assembly testified at City Council hearings on the Progress Reports Tuesday. As the Assembly must decide whether to renew mayoral control or replace it with something else, their thoughts are always relevant. News accounts of the hearings did not mention their testimony, most likely because the press was covering the escape of Chief Accountability Officer Jim Liebman from the Council chambers that occurred simultaneously with the testimony. Here is the first part of Brennan's testimony:

Councilmember Jackson and members of the committee, it's a pleasure to share some thoughts with you about the Department of Education's progress reports. I'm Assemblymember Jim Brennan, representing the 44th Assembly district in Brooklyn. Currently, I chair the Assembly Standing Committee on Cities and I have served on the Assembly Education Committee for 23 years.

In a November 20th e-mail that Chancellor Joel Klein sent out to Department of Education faculty members, he stated, "After almost five and a half years as chancellor, I know you can't point to a single number, be it a test score or graduation rate, to prove success or failure. The whole picture is important." Yet, in his November 14, 2007 letter to the editor of the New York Times, he defended the school progress reports by stating, "Everyone knows what A and F mean. Summing up all relevant measure with a single, simple grade draws sharp attention to the great work at many schools and the stagnation that might otherwise escape notice elsewhere."

His first statement seems more applicable to the New York City school system. The DOE has reduced teacher, student and parent surveys, attendance, test scores, one-year changes in test scores, and weights these variables differently, to come up with one letter grade. This "reductionism" has produced results that, for many individual schools, seem on their surface to be utterly irrational and have caused bewilderment, confusion, and rejection.

The State and City of New York already have an assessment and accountability system. The State Education Department calls it the "status" model, and parents, educators and the general public all understand it simply as scores on tests, broken down into levels of proficiency or lack thereof. Whatever its shortcomings, it's generally understood. On top of this, we have the Federal and State "No Child Left Behind" standards, which already hold schools accountable for making adequate yearly progress for the whole school as well as Black and Hispanic children, Asian children, Native American children, English language learners, special education and economically disadvantaged students. The State has a system called School Under Registration Review and we also have School Report Cards, which provide lots of information for parents and educators. The Department of Education has a history of closing poorly performing schools, and principals currently already have evaluation standards in their contract that allow for their removal. The core standards in all of these accountability systems are, of course, test scores. The validity of this system has been under debate for many years.

Along come the DOE's progress report cards. Only 30% of the grade is based on the old performance test score, the remainder is based on criteria completely new to the City and State, 55% on one-year changes in test scores and 15% on surveys and attendance. The main component of the new model, the one-year test score change - the "growth model" - did not get vetted by any other public body other than the DOE. There was no public hearing on the inputs and assumptions into this statistical model, there was no vote by the Panel on Educational Policy, there was no review or approval by the State Education Department and its own division of Assessment and Accountability. I believe concerns had been expressed informally that New York City's new system would produce results inconsistent with the existing system that might cause confusion and consternation. It is my understanding that the SED has never seen the guts of the new statistical system - the growth model, its inputs, its assumptions, its complex weighting. We have no knowledge of whether the new system controls for the probability that measuring test results within one year would fluctuate within a certain range up or down and that therefore no conclusions school quality could be drawn from such results. Last week I sent a letter to the State Education Department asking they review the validity of the statistical models used for DOE's progress evaluations.

...

For full text click here and letter to State Education Commissioner Mills here

The response is unanimous: withhold state funding until DOE comes up with a better proposal!

On August 6, Class Size Matters faxed an open letter to NY State Education Commissioner Mills, with the signatures of over 200 parents, PTA presidents, Community Education Councilmembers, education advocates, and other key leaders, including Robert Jackson, Chair of the NYC Council Education committee and the original CFE plaintiff.

The letter urges the state to reject the city's class size reduction proposal, submitted on July 16 as part of its "Contract for Excellence", and to withhold funding until and unless the city prepares an actual, enforceable five year reduction plan, as mandated by law.

The city is obligated to come up with a five year plan, showing continuous and measurable reductions in class size, to receive the additional funding that will come to our schools as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case, according to the budget passed by the State Legislature last spring.

Earlier, we sent Commissioner Mills a longer letter, explaining in detail why the the city's submission is inadequate. For those who are interested in taking a look at our analysis, it is posted (in Word) here. In brief, the Department of Education's proposal fails to comply with the law for the following reasons:

It does not include even the outlines of a five year class size reduction plan, as required. Even as a one year plan, it lacks sufficient funding, space and direction.

The so-called "Fair student formula" used to allocate dollars deprives resources to reduce class size to half of all schools, including 47% of our failing schools – those that according to law and good policy should be addressed first.

The schools that were selected for “class size coaching” are too few in number, and the process itself of "coaching" will lead to uncertain results.

There is no alignment with the capital plan, as the law mandates -- and thus there is no provision of the additional space that will be necessary.

The class size “targets” mentioned in the document appear to be based on speculation alone, and are so minimal they will be difficult to measure, given the chronic inaccuracy of the city’s class size data. In many grades, the “targets” for class size appear to be higher than would result from enrollment decline alone.

The funds the city wants to spend on its testing initiative, under the heading of additional "time on task" should be disallowed -- as all these new standardized exams will take time away from learning rather than extend it.

Instead of a thoughtful systematic plan, this proposal is fatally flawed -- haphazard, scattershot, and indifferent to the law and the regulations. It is unlikely to lead to a significant reduction in class size in any grade.

We asked that the state require that the city spend at least $100 million next year hiring teachers to reduce class size, targeted first to our failing schools, and immediately prepare a long-term plan, providing sufficient funding and space through a more expansive capital budget, so all students in this city will be able to receive appropriate class sizes within five years.

Since the city revealed its proposal in July, it has met with overwhelming criticism from parents and teachers alike. Here is what Noreen Connell of the Educational Priorities Panel wrote about the response:

Despite the absence of a coherent document and with as little as five days’ notice, close to 900 individuals testified before NYC Department of Education officials, predominantly PTA presidents and other parent leaders. A smaller proportion of those giving oral testimony, but still significant in number, were classroom teachers. Education advocates, elected officials, and civic and union representatives were the balance of participants. ... all substantive public testimony expressed disappointment or anger about the plan’s objectives. Such widespread public rejection calls for the NYS Department of Education to work with city school officials to develop a more acceptable plan.

Her are links to the letters to Mills from Assembly Education Chair Cathy Nolan, Assemblymember James Brennan, City Council Education Chair Robert Jackson, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity ( pdf), Advocates for Children (pdf), the League of Women Voters (pdf), the Women's City Club (pdf), the United Federation of Teachers, and the Educational Priorities Panel -- each asking that funding be withheld until the city comes up with a better proposal.

What will the Commissioner do? Stay tuned.