Amazing evening - parents and teacher sit in at CPE I demanding principal's removal

Update:  Apparently on the Brian Lehrer show this morning, Mayor de Blasio said he would meet with the parents at CPE I.  Let's hope he follows through and removes the principal post-haste.

Yesterday afternoon I attended an amazing School Leadership Team meeting at Central Park East I, the renowned East Harlem progressive elementary school founded in 1974 by Debbie Meier. Since Monica Garg was appointed the principal last year, the school has devolved into angry accusations by parents, teachers and alumnae that she is intent on undermining the morale and democratic spirit of the school and destroy its progressive traditions.

School Leadership Team meetings are now open to the public since we won our lawsuit in October vs. the DOE and Chancellor Farina in a unanimous decision by the NY Appellate Court. 

More than 100 people crowded into the music room at CPE 1 to watch the meeting- advocates, parents and teachers from throughout the city, UFT reps, newly elected City Council Member Bill Perkins and former CM Robert Jackson.

At the meeting the CPE parents repeatedly brought up how the principal, Monica Garg, had repeatedly lied to them, had ruled the school in an authoritarian manner, had victimized children by her actions, and had removed at least two teachers who opposed her and put them in the rubber room -- the latest one the UFT chapter leader Marilyn Martinez.

A teacher on the SLT said that every single teacher who challenged her were put under investigation one by one by the DOE. One parent on the SLT, K.A. Dilday, made the point that not a single teacher said they trusted the principal on last year's DOE survey, and the majority of parents at the school have signed a petition asking for her removal. The principal, Monica Garg, then said that many of those teachers have since left the school -- and the audience erupted - of course they did -- you pushed them out!

Finally, parent and SLT member K.A. Dilday read a letter signed by many other members of the SLT, asking her to resign. Garg said she refused to resign and that she answers only to her superiors, the Superintendent Alexander Estrella and Chancellor Farina.

There were so many people crowding the room that the meeting they had to move it to the auditorium. At that point, one after another parent stood up and passionately spoke out how the principal had lied to them, had refused to respond to their concerns about events that had happened at the school, and one parent stood up in tears to say that Garg had grilled her child without her present, and tried to make her admit that her teacher had abused her.

The latest outrage was putting beloved teacher Marilyn Martinez in the rubber room with charges DOE has refused to make public. Only one parent at the school spoke in support of the principal. LeRoy Barr of the UFT spoke and said that Carmen Farina was responsible for this problem and she needs to fix it.

Finally, when the meeting was over and everyone had their say, a bunch of parents and a teacher on the SLT held up a banner and said they wouldn't leave until the principal resigned or was removed.

They explained that they had attended every PEP meeting for the last year, directly urging the Chancellor to take action, where she had responded with a dismissive shrug to their concerns.They had sent letters to the Mayor and had petitions signed with over 2000 people asking for him to intervene, with no success.

They then began to sing, we will not be moved, and this little light of mine. They even sang in honor of Debbie Meier's birthday, the renowned founder of the school, who has also tried to intercede on their behalf. The custodian asked for them to leave and said he was going to turn the lights out, and they refused.

Ten to twenty police were there and outside, where a rally for CPE I was taking place, along with Marilyn Martinez, the chapter leader who had tape over her mouth.

The police were constantly on their radio, and apparently, someone in the Police Department or the Mayor's office decided it would not look good to arrest parents, especially in an election year.

The parents and teacher spent the night in the auditorium, with the heat off and temperatures fell to the 30's, according to Jen Roesch, one of the parents sitting in. Their press release is below.

Whatever side you are on, whether you believe the principal or the parents, the reality is that the principal must be removed for the school's survival.Below is a video from Deb Meier and a press release from parents at the school this morning.

The truth is despite all his promises and talk about how unlike Bloomberg, he would listen to parents, our supposedly progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina have been just as high-handed and dismissive of their concerns.

From: Jennifer Roesch <jenroesch@gmail.com>
Date: April 7, 2017 at 7:51:08 AM EDT
To: "jenroesch@gmail.com" <jenroesch@gmail.com>
Subject: Parents Occupy East Harlem School Overnight Demanding Principal's Removal

***Breaking Update: Following a meeting of more than 100 parents, teachers and community members, families have been occupying their school at CPE1 since 6:30pm on Thursday, April 6th. The DOE has promised to send someone to meet with occupying families at 8am. Parents are asking Mayor de Blasio to step in and resolve the crisis at CPE1 by removing Principal Garg immediately. Supporters and families will be holding a press conference and rally at 8:30am to explain their demands and next steps in their struggle.***

BREAKING NEWS RELEASE

CONTACT: Jen Roesch (917) 319-7008 or jenroesch@gmail.com

Kaliris Salas-Ramirez (718) 704-7387

Kenya Dilday, kdilday@gmail.com

Parents Sitting In at Central Park East 1 to Demand Principal’s Removal

Letter Sent to Mayor DeBlasio asking him to personally intervene after DOE’s failure to address long-standing issues

Majority of Families Want ‘Worst Principal’ in NYC Out; Retaliation Against Teachers, Abuse of Parents, Children Must Stop

Afternoon of April 6th, Central Park East 1 at 1573 Madison Avenue: Parents, including members of the Parents’ Association leadership and School Leadership Team, are currently refusing to leave their school until their principal, Monika Garg, either resigns or is removed. They say they represent a majority of parents who have signed a statement of “no confidence” in the principal. This letter was presented at the School Leadership Team immediately preceding the sit-in. Other parents and supporters are holding a solidarity rally outside.

Parents say they have appealed to the DOE for over a year about significant concerns but have not had their needs adequately addressed. Garg is statistically the WORST principal in NYC: she has had the greatest drop in ratings from parents and teachers on the 2016 DOE school survey of any principal in the city and oversaw the city’s largest drop in test scores after her traumatic first year at the helm (2016). NYC has approximately 1800 public schools. They are refusing to leave until Mayor De Blasio intervenes. They cite his claim that his administration will make parent voice and building trust in our schools a top priority.

Parents cite serious concerns about Principal Garg’s leadership, including abuse of teachers, children and families. Two teachers have been removed from the school for investigations that parents consider retaliatory in nature. The investigations come in the wake of an open letter signed by tenured staff expressing concerns. Another third of the teaching staff left at the end of last year. All tenured teachers have faced investigations and disciplinary action under Garg’s tenure.

Parents say that children have been harmed as a result of these investigations. Garg interviewed very young children without parents’ knowledge or consent. Many only found out as a result of other parents whose children had told them. In one instance, a 7-year old child had documented emotional issues and was being assisted by the school guidance counselor. This child was interviewed without his parent or his guidance counselor being informed. He was asked about 2-year old incidents and told that his cooperation was necessary in order to keep his school safe. This parent failed to receive an answer to her concerns from either Garg or the DOE. More than 55 parents filed complaints with the DOE without any response. Children in the classes with teachers removed are suffering emotional and social distress and have not received proper support.

Since her appointment in 2015, which came via a questionable process, Garg has deliberately fomented division, mistrust and turmoil at the iconic public progressive elementary school. With the support of District 4 Superintendent Alexandra Estrella, Garg has harassed and retaliated against teachers, mistreated students and families, and undermined the school’s successful practices.

In defense of Diane Ravitch (not that she needs it!)

UPDATE and Correction: Alter is no longer working for Newsweek; also check out Salon's withering critique of his column, pointing out the conflict of interest involved in his attack on Diane, a prominent Bloomberg critic, while working for Bloomberg's personal media company.

Today, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek let loose an attack on Diane Ravitch for her recent oped in the NY Times, in which she pointed out how the claims made many of the charter advocates of   "miracle schools " are often based on inflated or distorted data.  

Last night, Diane won the Daniel Patrick Moynihan prize, given annually by the American Academy of Political and Social Science to outstanding civic leaders and social scientists who  "champion the use of evidence and informed judgment in the policy process. "  She richly deserves this award for standing up to the corporate reformers and venture philanthropists who consistently distort data to suit their own ideological biases. 

Below  is my response to the Alter column; I also reprint comments sent him directly or submitted online by NYC parent Jennifer Freeman, celebrated education reformer Debbie Meier, education advocate Robert Skeels, and Nancy Flanagan, a former teacher who writes a column in EdWeek.

If you'd like to send your own comment, you can email Jonathan at alterjonathan@gmail.com and/or submit them online.

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Jonathan:   What you call "beefing up accountability and standards" is what others call high-stakes testing.  In case you were not aware, the National Academy of Sciences has just come out with a new report, showing how damaging and unfair to both kids and teachers these sort of high stakes accountability schemes are.  Perhaps you should read this report rather than attacking Diane Ravitch.  Last night, she won the Moynihan award from the American Academy of Political and Social Science, which recognizes outstanding civic leaders who champion the use of evidence and informed judgment in the policy process.

Your column is the opposite; using rhetoric and invective instead of evidence and careful reasoning to attack one of the leaders in the efforts to preserve our public schools from the corporate reformers who want to impose a free-market, competitive business model.  Many of them are being funded by Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family, who argue that resources and large classes don't matter for poor kids, while sending their own children to private schools where the tuition is $30,000 per year and class sizes are 20 or less.

The move towards privatization (and yes, charters are schools that are privately run, with public money) is leading to even more inequitable conditions, as charters enroll far fewer of our most at risk students (ELL, homeless, free lunch and special education), students who instead are increasingly concentrated in our public schools.   Charter schools also have very high attrition rates, for both students and teachers. The silliest comment above is from Duncan, who claims that Diane is "insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country" whereas it is she who has been defending them against Duncan, who has called for mass firings of teachers and wants to impose unfair evaluation and merit pay schemes, policies that don't work and will further undermine the teaching profession.

Moreover, Diane  supports real education reforms that work:  like equitable funding, experienced teachers, smaller classes, and a well-rounded curriculum.  I guess your attack,  as well as Duncan's, is a sign of how threatened the corporate reformers are whenever someone who opposes their policies has a chance to air their views in the mainstream media, because they fear that an open debate will lead to more people understanding their systematic distortion of  data.

Let the debate begin and let all sides have a chance to air their views in the mainstream media, and not be frightened off by this sort of  underhanded attack.  I'm sure Diane won't be.  - Leonie Haimson

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Hi Jonathan-

I think it's so weird the way you attacked Diane Ravitch today. You sounded like Glenn Beck attacking climate scientists, all hyperbole. Ravitch is a serious person, and her view has nothing to do with "we should throw up our hands and admit that nothing will change". How do you get from her view that we should put more resources into holistic programs to fight poverty in conjunction with improving education to "we should throw up our hands and admit that nothing will change"?  I have had a ringside seat with 2 kids in NYC public schools for the past 10 years (we live just a couple of blocks from your and Emily's old apartment) and my experience at ground zero of the reform movement more closely reflects Diane Ravitch than Joel Klein or Arne Duncan. I hope in the future as a thoughtful columnist you will try to be more nuanced than Glenn Beck when you disagree with someone's perspective. One last thought--as an employee of Bloomberg you should be careful to remain objective about education. This piece did not sound very objective.  Regards, Jennifer [Freeman]

--------------------------

I didn't get beyond the first paragraph.  Diane is a Whittaker Chambers?  Are you out of your mind?  I couldn't get past that absurd slander--wherever did that come from???  It was impossible to take your other criticisms seriously once you went down that path.

Of course, her allies (like me) have spent, you seem to forget,  their adult lives working daily, year after year, to reinvent the way we "do" schooling for the sake of our faltering democracy.   Odd as it seems to call folks like me defenders of the status quo to call someone like Ravitch akin to a "reformed" Communist  and a "reformed" traitor is...I can't find a word for it.  It's also utterly puzzling as a metaphor.  I'm not clear in this usage of history whether you see Chambers or Hiss as the hero or villain?  The only similarity is that Chambers changed his mind.  Is that the sin?

We all make mistakes--but you owe Ravitch and many others an apology. -- Deborah Meier

_______
 Mr. Alter:  Yours is perhaps the most mendacious essay I've ever seen. The outright dismissal of Dr. Ravitch's use of the very same statistics that privatizers use to tout their lucrative education schemes is humorous. The fact that she can derive the correct conclusion from them is what scares those bent on profiting from education.

"[C]harter schools are in fact public schools?" Is it their unelected boards that make them public? Is it their negligible accountability to the community what makes them public? Is their nearly complete financial opaqueness (like a Form 990 really tells us anything) that makes them public? Is it their ability to avoid teaching children with special needs or disciplinary issues what makes them public? Oh, yes, Mr. Alter et al will remind us that since they take public funds, that that must make them public. How quaintly Randian. 

Blackwater/Xe takes public funds, are we to understand that they are a public institution as well?

Indeed the most absurd part of your unmerited attack on Dr. Ravitch is the quote from Arne Duncan, who is a pariah amongst not only teachers, but  most community activists. Duncan's disdain for public school teachers is legendary, his talk of "insulting all of the hardworking teachers" rings both duplicitous and insincere. His very occupying of his post is the ultimate insult to anyone that supports public education. ---  Robert D. Skeels

------

Speaking of straw men, Jonathan Alter, you have just provided a textbook case in media manipulation:

#1) Begin with a sports analogy, Arne's go-to technique when the data isn't really on his side.

#2) Choose a person, rather than policies or solutions, as your target, because it doesn't require as much intellectual horsepower in analysis. For good measure, compare her to a Communist, "in denial."

#3) Trot out resonant cliches--"favor the status quo," "phenomenal results," "hardworking teachers," "sophisticated evaluations," "take down...an inner-city school"--and, my personal favorite, "working with unions." As if.

#4) Use lots of little deceptive captions, like "Classroom Malpractice" and "Misuse of Statistics" so that your average column skimmer will come away with an impression, rather than a more complex analysis of what's really going on in this your-research vs. my-research policy skirmish.

#5) Frost it all with incendiary language: "slimed," "pernicious," "malpractice."

Educators across the board respect Diane Ravitch's scholarship and conclusions. She made your buddy Arne look bad by uncovering the real data on his miracle schools. Assassinating her character makes you look bad in turn. For shame. -- Nancy Flanagan

New book on Bloomberg/Klein record

Check out our new book on the Bloomberg/Klein educational regime: "NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakes Need to Know."

With chapters by contributors to this blog like Diane Ravitch, Steve Koss, and Patrick Sullivan, and by other experts like Debbie Meier, Hazel Dukes of the NAACP, Udi Ofer of the NYCLU, Aaron Pallas of Columbia University and Jennifer Jennings (A/K/A Eduwonkette), it is must-read for anyone concerned about the future of our schools in this city -- and indeed the nation.

Our findings go behind the headlines to present an inside view on how the Mayor's unfettered authority has affected students, families, teachers, and communities -- you can purchase a copy now or download one for free at the Lulu website here.

How true student progress can be measured by Debbie Meier

Debbie Meier, famed education reformer and founder of Central Park East, was quoted in the recent Daily News article about the current principal of CPE High School, who urged teachers to pass at least 65% of their students, whether they deserved it or not.

In the article, Debbie pointed out how the new school grading system devised by Jim Liebman encourages such practices, by giving higher grades to schools the more credits students gain each year.

Here she provides more illumination about how the original schools she founded, unconnected to CPS High School, defined student progress through projects and portfolios, and how this vision of education works against the sort of empty credit accumulation that the new grading system encourages:

Central Park East in question, and Principal Bennett, are unconnected to either the CPE elementary schools or the now defunct Central Park East Secondary School. It had a nice fifteen year history and then ended its life--on a downer.

Amusingly, the entire thrust of CPESS, based on Ted Sizer's book Horace's Compromise, is that modern high schools are about credit accumulation, not becoming well-educated, learning to use one's mind well. Thus CPESS did not count credits or courses past, and one could graduate having failed every single course.

Its "evidence" was based on putting together seven (originally 14!) portfolios of work and defending that work before a committee that consisted of faculty of CPESS, family, peers and outside experts! Over and over; demonstrating both the quality of one's work, and one's capacity to explain and defend it in a conversational setting. It sometimes also included a set on-site task as a kind of additional check on validity and on process.

It was designed to prevent the kind of cheating CPE H.S. engaged in, and which all schools and students subtly do by the very nature of the way they are organized.

For reasons best known to I don't know who, CPE High School, and something now called CPE Middle School, have insisted on using the CPE name! But they make no claim whatsoever to be following in the Coalition, Sizer, CPESS tradition. They are traditional to-the-core, and are so intentionally.

The nice thing is that a former student saw the News story and wrote me about his life. He was a special ed kid who now teaches special ed!

And he remembers us well enough to tell us all the things we'd most like to hear about what we did for and meant to him.

---Debbie Meier