What the NY Post left out: how Sharpton was persuaded to ally himself with Joel Klein & stay mum on term limits

Today, the NY Post ran a story about how Al Sharpton accepts money from corporations in exchange for shielding them of accusations of racism.  It contained nothing very new to report, except for Sharpton having met with Amy Pascal of Sony after the company's embarrassing email breach – though the article offered no evidence Sony has paid him a dime.  

Presumably the Post is targeting Sharpton because of his association with the Mayor: “Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.”  Yet the main example cited in the article happened years ago, during the Bloomberg administration:

In 2008, Plainfield Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, made a $500,000 contribution to New York nonprofit Education Reform Now. That money was immediately funneled to the National Action Network [Sharpton’s organization].

The donation raised eyebrows. Although the money was ostensibly to support NAN’s efforts to bring “educational equality,” it also came at a time that Plainfield was trying to get a lucrative gambling deal in New York.

Plainfield had a $250 million stake in Capital Play, a group trying to secure a license to run the coming racino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Capital Play employed a lobbyist named Charlie King, who also was the acting executive director of NAN.

Left out of this account is the most interesting part of the story.  It's not just that the money for Sharpton was ostensibly for “equity” and funneled through Education Reform Now, the non-profit arm of Joe William’s pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform. The larger context is that ERN was merely a pass-through, and the money was directed to Sharpton through the Education Equity Project, founded by then-Chancellor Joel Klein, in exchange for Sharpton agreeing  to co-chair the group and adopt Klein’s aggressive anti-teacher, pro-charter stance.  Juan Gonzalez extensively reported the tangled story of how these funds went to benefit Sharpton in 2009, and how they helped him stay out of jail when he owed millions in taxes to the IRS.  

Also left out of the Post article is how Bloomberg, the Gates and Broad Foundations also put big money into EEP to Sharpton's benefit, though the DOE flack, David Cantor denied any involvement of either Bloomberg or Gates in emails he sent to our NYC Ed list serv, when I speculated about the involvement of both.  Perhaps he was lied to as well.  See my timeline of events here. In fact, Sharpton’s organization directly received a big portion of the $250,000 donation Mayor Bloomberg gave EEP, the day Bloomberg announced he would try to overturn term limits.  As a result, Sharpton never said a word against Bloomberg’s successful coup. 

Despite big infusions of cash and the coupling of Klein and Sharpton, EEP didn’t last long.  It held a  rally in DC on MLK day in January of 2009, at which Sharpton spoke.  After joining forces with Newt Gingrich, he and Klein met with President Obama.  The organization folded in 2011 when it merged with the similar corporate reform group, Stand For Children.  Sharpton had already left EEP by then, replaced by two Gates grantees, United Negro College Fund President Michael Lomax, and Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza. 

Perhaps the Post reporter's omissions are understandable, given that Klein now works for the Post’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, who is also a member of the Billionaire’s Boys Club, pushing for more charters along with his old friend and ally Bloomberg.  But the story should have been told nonetheless. In his new memoir, I highly doubt  Klein explains the full circumstances surrounding his cynical and mutually exploitative partnership with Sharpton.  I certainly didn't read this mentioned in any of the reviews.

Cheating scandal at Lehman: DOE's response and echoes of the past

Everyone needs to check out this terrific investigative report by GothamSchools about the growing scandal at Lehman high school, in which the principal allegedly invented credits and increased student grades by changing their transcripts after the fact.

Janet Saraceno was appointed to Lehman in the fall of 2008, and given a $25,000 bonus as the city's second "super principal," a program supposed to be reserved for principals who agreed to take on the challenge of a low-performing school -- despite the fact that, as noted at the time, Lehman was already one of the city's higher performing high schools. She was due to receive another $25,000 bonus if she managed to raise graduation rates at the school.

The sort of manipulation that appears to have occurred at Lehman is predicted by Campbell's Law, and is just the tip of the iceberg, considering how widespread these practices have become in recent years among NYC public schools. (See for example, numerous comments from teachers on the NY Times blog about the scandal, and our book, NYC Schools under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know.)

Increased teaching to the test, cheating, and grade tampering are all expected results of the DOE accountability system , in which test scores and graduation rates determine a school's grade, whether the staff will receive hefty bonuses, and if the school will be closed-- which in turn determines whether its staff will keep their jobs or be placed on absent teacher reserve.

Regents scores, credit accumulation and graduation rates largely determine a high school's grade in the DOE accountability system. These figures are even easier to manipulate than the state test scores that determine the grades of elementary and middle schools. Why?

Because, incredibly, Regents exams are graded by teachers at their own schools, and principals are allowed to raise both Regents scores and student grades, as long as they inform teachers in writing about these changes.

In this case, the principal of Lehman apparently stepped over this very flexible line, by failing to inform the teachers about the changes made in student transcripts, and not merely raising test scores but also adding credits for courses never taken .

(Graduation rates are also easy to manipulate also by "discharging" or "pushing out" students -- transferring them to GED programs or the like. This raises the graduation rate because all discharged students are excluded from the cohort and never counted as dropouts. A recent report found that the number of NYC students who have been discharged in their first year of high school has doubled in recent years.)

None of this is particularly surprising, but what is is especially disconcerting is the ham-handed response of the administration to these revelations, both initially and since the scandal broke.

According to a message sent by chief press officer David Cantor to our NYC education list serv, Joel Klein learned about these allegations as far back as March of 2009. Yet instead of immediately suspending the principal pending the outcome of investigations, Cantor reports that Klein met with the teachers, referred the case to chief counsel Michael Best, and then:

"Within a few days, I believe--I can get you the dates--Best met with teachers from the school, after which he referred their allegations to the Special Commissioner of Investigation (who in turn referred them to the Office of Special Investigation). "

How aggressively the DOE's Office of Special Investigations pursued this case since that time cannot be known, of course, but the principal cannot have been seriously concerned as she was still changing student transcripts throughout the summer of 2009, according to the records obtained by GothamSchools.

When the story broke this week, Chris Cerf, formerly Deputy Chancellor of DOE and now working for the Bloomberg campaign, responded:

"We cannot comment on any aspects of this, but we certainly do not condone the kinds of things that are alleged. But at the same time, we believe that accountability for student outcomes is a central driver of positive reform and we believe it is critical to hold everybody in the system accountable for student results.”

In other words, accountability has nothing to do with either honesty or transparency, but simply raising test scores. Message to principals: lie, cheat or steal, it hardly matters as long as test scores and graduation rates go up.

Then, DOE announced they would launch an investigation of the teachers who provided GothamSchools with the evidence of grade-tampering. Why? Because, as Cantor wrote, “The privacy of student records is protected by federal law. School staff are not permitted to provide their students’ transcripts to reporters."

As GothamSchools reporter Anna Phillips points out, FERPA, the federal law Cantor was referring to, says that providing transcripts is only forbidden if "personally identifiable information” is transmitted. In this case, student names were all crossed out.

“All I can say is we are going to investigate the release of the student records publicly to the press,” Cantor said.

This scandal is eerily similar to the allegations made by nine veteran teachers in 2004, in which they accused a principal of another large high school in the Bronx, Anthony Rotunno of Kennedy High school, of hiking the Regents scores of 16 students. Two years later, after an extended investigation by DOE's Office of Special Investigations, no report was ever written, not because the allegations were found to be incorrect, but because DOE concluded that Rotunno had the right to change these Regents scores.

Despite articles and columns in the NY Times as elsewhere about the allegations, the only person who ended up punished was Maria Colon, the school's UFT chapter leader, who was charged with faxing student transcripts to a reporter to show that tampering had occurred. Colon was consigned to the rubber room for a year and half for this supposed transgression, before a state hearing officer exonerated her of all charges.

Colon was later "excessed" from the school. According to Randi Weingarten's testimony on before the City Council in 2007, "... the principal excessed every single bilingual social studies teacher in the school in order to get at her."

Meanwhile, Rotunno is still principal at the school.

Chris Cerf, if you’re reading this, your press office is not doing their job!

See Elizabeth Green’s story in the NY Sun about how seven DOE PR officers monitor 24 key education blogs and list servs, and occasionally try to refute the critiques within them, including our NYC education news list serv, and this blog.

They call themselves the “Truth Squad” but we know that the members of our list serv are the real truth squad. I am glad, however, that the powers that be feel compelled to respond to some of our observations, even though it is so often done in a perfunctory and unconvincing fashion.

As I was quoted in the article, "It's good that the press operation actually hears our complaints, because Joel Klein doesn't seem to."

The article does not come as much news to me, since we all figured out more than a year ago that this was happening.

We had a fun time when the now-departed but not-forgotten Robert Gordon, author of the highly flawed “fair student funding” scheme was the first Tweedie to subscribe (Feb. 9, 2007). Gordon answered some of our questions, unsatisfactorily – and then quickly unsubscribed. (Mar 21, 2007)

David Cantor, the chief press officer, soon followed by subscribing in Feb 28, 2007. Adina Lopatin, of the Accountability office, subscribed one week later, around the time that I’d attended one of their screwy focus groups for their screwy parent survey.

Though the NY Sun article says that only one person from the press office is assigned to each blog or list serv, actually three of them, including Cantor, subscribe to our list serv: Melody Meyer (who joined up in Apr 2, 2007) and Lindsay Harr (Apr 11, 2007).

Cantor began to post himself occasionally, in a rather perfunctory manner, but not until December 11, 2007 -- nearly one year after he had joined, initially about the NY Mag article which quoted Klein as saying to parents that they could send their kids to private school if they didn’t like class sizes in the public schools. It later turned out that Klein said something else very similar – that District 2 parents had “choices,” but when I asked Cantor what that specifically meant, if not sending their kids to private schools, he never replied.

Since then he has interjected so rarely (only about ten times ) that the main effect of his desultory comments makes me suspect that nearly everything else that I and the other members of this list serv write, including some extremely inflammatory statements, must be true. I also don’t get the feeling that poor David enjoys the task that Chris Cerf has assigned him to.

None of this is particularly surprising, but what did surprise me is what I learned during a forum a few months ago, in April, on “Grading NY’s public schools.” During the question period, I asked Cerf a question. I began by introducing myself, but he quickly interrupted me to say, “I know who you are; I read your stuff every day.”

Every day? Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined that Cerf or anyone at that high a level at Tweed had the inclination or the time to do this. Sometimes I don’t even read myself every day – I’m too busy. I know my husband almost never does. I doubt most of the people on the list serv do.

But I was happy to hear this, if a bit surprised that Cerf had admitted this, for if I and others on our list can cause him one tenth the headaches that Tweed causes us every day, not to mention the other one million plus NYC public school parents -- that does give me a small sense of satisfaction.

After looking at the historical record, I now conclude that what probably started as a pure monitoring exercise, instigated by Cerf in Feb. of 2007 eventually turned into a rather lame attempt to beat the critics at their own game nearly a year later.

It was in October 2007, after all, that it emerged that Diane Ravitch had been taped by the DOE at various speaking events, and a file compiled of her remarks.

This news was also broken by Elizabeth Green in the NY Sun, following a vicious attack on Diane published in the NY Post the day before, in the form of an oped with the byline of Kathy Wylde, head of the NYC Partnership, but with information put together by the DOE press office. This was a terrific PR blunder on the part of Cerf and Co., as nearly everyone and their mother came to Diane’s defense – not that she needed their help; she offered her own eloquent response in the NY Post.

It was shortly thereafter, in Dec. of 2007 that David Cantor started commenting on our list serv, after the NY Magazine article was published that must have caused them much grief. It was only then that the vociferous rage of public school parents about school overcrowding, which had reached crisis proportions in certain neighborhoods, without the administration even so much as lifting a finger, began to break into the mainstream media.

In Elizabeth’s article, it says that “The squad's latest triumph should appear today on a Listserv operated by the parent organizer Leonie Haimson — in the form of an e-mail message arguing that Ms. Haimson's characterization of summer school programs as underfunded was incorrect.”

We’re still waiting for that email message, by the way. As well as answers to lots more questions we have posed to David Cantor over the last few days and weeks.

Chris Cerf, if you’re reading this, your press office is not doing their job!

Update: the article in the NY Sun has delighted the bloggers, of course, many who have blogged about it already -- for some links click here.

The mystery continues: who is funding the Klein/Sharpton operation?

See the latest email from David Cantor below – DOE’s press secretary-- on the fact that the new Klein/Sharpton operation is being funded "anonymously" -- though apparently not by Bloomberg himself. In our earlier posting, we reported his assertion that the Gates/Broad foundations were not implicated either.

One would think that given the kind of public campaign that these men say they are embarking upon, including staging "events at both political conventions” and attempting to influence the position of the next President, they should be obligated to reveal their source of financing.

David also questions my description of the DOE press office as large and well-funded.

Here is an excel file from last October with the names, salaries and positions of thirteen people employed in the DOE Communications office, as well as many additional PR staffers, including seven in the “Strategic Response Unit”, those tasked with responding to outraged emails from parents, whose canned non-responses usually result in outraging them even more.

According to those in the know, the DOE press office is at least four times the size of any previous administration and much larger than the press operation of any other city agency. It is more than twice as big as the PR department of the US Department of Education.

Not that its members don't earn their salaries, working overtime to cover the blunders and misstatements of their superiors.

Speaking of which, the file also contains the salaries of the top administrators at Tweed as of September 2007 – with Jim Liebman, former Columbia law professor, tied for third at $196,575.00. Liebman was appointed as head of the so-called Accountability office, despite the fact that he had no experience in the fields of public education or testing and proceeded to prove this.

See this newsclip from Channel 2 back in December; with Klein trying to justify the fact that 18 officials at Tweed were paid more than $190,000 a year, saying that they could earn three times their salaries in the private sector. I responded that if so, they should go back there, because they had abundantly proven that they don't know anything about public education.

As to the ongoing mystery about who is funding the Klein/Sharpton operation, I followed up by asking David who is paying his salary when he acts as the chief spokesperson for this effort. Is he getting paid extra by this "anonymous" donor -- or are his additional duties being covered by his regular salary, i.e. through taxpayer money? In the midst of budget cuts to schools, one would think this was rather hard to justify.

Secondly, is he thinking of writing an expose a la Scott McLellan about his adventures in the land of Tweed when Klein's term in office is over? I myself would pay a pretty penny for such a book, and I bet others would as well.

I was forced to turn down David’s offer to come to Tweed to fix his copying machine; as I don't have any particular expertise in that area (not that ever stopped the Chancellor in his hiring decisions.)

Perhaps by cutting down on the high salaries of some of Tweed’s top educrats -- or eliminating one or two positions in the burgeoning Accountability office, they might be able to afford to pay a repairman. Or they could save on Liebman’s salary, as he is supposed to return to his professorship at Columbia in July.

As soon as I receive a response from David, I will let you know.

---

From: david cantor [mailto:cantorrac@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 11:20 PM
To: Leonie Haimson
Subject: Re: question for David Cantor: who is funding this project?

Leonie: The project is being funded anonymously. No public money will be spent. The mayor is not funding the project.

Re comments on your blog: If Class Size Matters ever wants to hold a press conference in Washington, the National Press Club room we used (Zenger Room) is available for $500. Also, I invite you to come over to the press office when next you're at Tweed and check out our "huge" communications "juggernaut" at work. I think you'll be surprised. If you're any good at fixing a copy machine we may put you to work.

David Cantor
Press Secretary
NYC Dept of Ed

Who is funding the Education Equity project?

David Cantor, Press Secretary of the NYC DOE emailed our NYC education news list serv this morning to say that our previous posting was wrong, and that "No Gates or Broad money is going to this initiative. Zero."

This begs the question who is. We have asked Cantor to tell us who is funding this effort, which will likely cost a bundle -- even renting the National Press Club for the kick-off event couldn't have been cheap.

According to USA Today, “Neither Sharpton nor Klein offered details on the Education Equality Project, but said they sent letters to both presidential candidates Wednesday and plan to stage events at both political conventions.”

Cantor himself is listed as the lead of the two spokespersons on the official press release, suggesting that those who say that the DOE's inflated press office does not have enough work to justify its size and expense are correct.

So is this campaign coming out of our taxpayer money? In the midst of an economic slowdown so dire that the Mayor says he is forced to cut all city agencies, including education by $450 million? And/or is this project being subsidized by Bloomberg himself?

We will continue to look into this mystery and if we get any answers we get will let you know. If you have a clue, post in the comments section or if you prefer, send me an email off-line at classsizematters@gmail.com

The cover-up on class size continues

In response to our letter to the Mayor, asking him to correct his misstatements about the results of the Department of Education parent survey, DOE officials and the Chancellor himself continue to deny that they have been disingenuously spinning the results. In the process, they are still trying to cover up the fact that the need for smaller classes was the top priority of parents who responded to the survey.

See this NY Sun article, Mayor Asked To Correct Class Size Statements, in which David Cantor, DOE spokesman said: "Class size is a major concern, but the fact is that more than 40% of parents say improving academics is the most important issue facing our schools."

Here, Cantor is lumping together four different responses -- more enrichment, more arts, more hands-on learning, and more challenging courses. Moreover, two of these are hardly "academic".

And Chancellor Klein on NY1 said: "The numbers are clear; the mayor's representation is accurate...We don't need people to politicize the debate when the facts are all known and all visible. We put them all out there." (Video clip here.)

Ironic that Klein claims that we have "politicized" the debate, when all we asked in our letter is that the Mayor should stop mischaracterizing the results of his own survey.

Indeed, it was Bloomberg himself who tried to politicize the findings, by falsely claiming that the responses showed that class size was not the top priority of parents and casting aspersions at groups like Class Size Matters, asserting at his press conference that that''When somebody stands up and says, 'I speak for all parents and we want smaller class sizes,' that's just not true.''