Schools choose their partners!

The DOE sent out a press release , with a tally of how many schools chose which School Support Organizations (SSO’s). (For an earlier posting explaining this byzantine system, see here.)

35% of schools decided to enter the Empowerment Zone, Judith Chin’s LSO (Learning Support Organization) came in second at 27%. Of the PSOs, (private Partnership Support Organizations) the losers were AIR, Success for All, and WestEd, none of which received enough votes to “remain eligible providers of support,” according to Tweed.

The belle of the ball with the fullest dance card among the PSO's was New Visions, chosen by 5% of schools. No doubt the fact that they will continue to be able to hand out hefty Gates grants made them even more alluring than they otherwise might have been.

Updated: Here's the full list (in Excel) of schools by borough, and their SSO's.

City Council Opposition to the Bloomberg Schools Reorganization

The Jackson-Liu resolution outlines the City Council's objections to Mayor Bloomberg's latest restructuring. The resolution, drafted by Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson and Queens Councilman John Liu, has been joined by a broad swath of the council.

We also have links to well-researched and thoughtful letters of concern from two councilmembers, Dan Garodnick and Gale Brewer of Manhattan. Click here and here to read them. Both letters make the obvious point that the unnecessary rush to implement these changes and the lack of input from stakeholders makes little sense.

More Information on the New School Support Organizations

On Monday, Chancellor Klein revealed more details of the options for school support organizations (SSOs) available to schools under the latest reorganization. See the DoE press release here.

In this chart just now provided to us by DoE staffers, each SSO option is defined along with pricing to be charged each school for the services provided.

There are three types of SSO:

1) Empowerment Support Organization (ESO): schools choosing this option will join other schools in a network and choose how to receive support
2) Learning Support Organization (LSO): four organizations to be led by former regional superintendents
3) Partnership Support Organization (PSO): non-profit groups under contract to provide services

We also have a list of entities that applied to become a PSO. Those that were accepted are noted. Princeton Review, St. John's University and a unit of New York University were not accepted, nor were any for-profit entities who applied. We note that the NYU entity is headed by Pedro Noguera, one of the more outspoken critics of the Bloomberg education policy in the academic community.

Principals will learn more at an April 23rd briefing and have until May 15th to decide which SSO to choose. Parents will be invited to "borough fairs" to learn more. The press release does not specify dates for these events.

UPDATE: Principals' Guide to School Support Organizations has been released by the DoE. Click here.

Parent Opposition to Restructuring

Tuesday's Daily News editorial contains more of the same anti-teacher and anti-parent ranting we’ve come to expect from the News editors. As an alternative viewpoint, we thought parents should hear from an elected parent leader. Below we offer some insights from David Bloomfield, President of the Citywide Council on High Schools. From David’s testimony on the restructuring before the City Council:

Many, many questions exist regarding the recently-announced restructuring of our public schools. All we have are speeches and press releases from which to divine the new direction. And surely there is much to look forward to in a system that promises accountability, principal discretion, central support rather than micro-management, assurances of greater teacher quality promoted through rigorous tenure review, and funding equity that encourages enrollment of students who might otherwise be marginalized. I and many others might get behind these changes if they were more thoroughly explained, if weaknesses were discussed in good faith, and if we thought this restructuring was more than the reform-of-the-day. The caprice with which these changes seem to have been formulated and peremptorily announced leaves many stakeholders on the sidelines when our hearts and minds are needed to move the system forward.

More recently, David testified on the Empowerment Schools aspect of the restructuring:

In their zeal to wring quick rewards from worthwhile reforms, the Mayor and Chancellor do themselves, their initiatives, and students great harm. To prevent organized opposition, they shut out parents and the larger community. They deride cautionary advice from educators as incrementalism. They do everything in their power to evade checks and balances, whether it is sole source contracting or telling this very body that it has no power to legislate on education.

Parent leaders like David are deliberately ignored by the editorialists at the News and Post, whose agenda is merely to blame the teachers union for everything wrong with our schools. For David's full testimony see these links on restructuring and empowerment schools. The CCHS passed this resolution in opposition to the restructuring on March 14^th.

Council Hearing on Empowerment Schools

The City Council Education Committee held a hearing yesterday on empowerment schools with testimony from Eric Nadelstern, CEO of Empowerment Schools. Under questioning, Nadelstern, a veteran NYC administrator, resorted to the familiar DoE tactic of laying down a smokescreen of obfuscation. Today's NY1 and NY Times coverage give some sense of the Council's frustration but leave out important points made at the hearings.

Councilmember John Liu was the sharpest in his criticism. Nadelstern, despite assertions that empowerment schools have much better results in terms of graduation rates, dropout rates and college placement than other schools, couldn't say whether those schools were better before they joined the empowerment zone. Liu's response: "How can say you don't know these numbers when you testify they are improving?" and again "We never get straight answers." Councilman Dan Garodnick, one of the more lucid of the city's politicans, asked a simple question about what distinct services would empowerment schools provide compared to the two other support models being offered to schools, Learning Support Organizations and Partnership Support Organizations. In response, Nadelstern droned on and on, never answering the question. After two more attempts at asking the same question, Garodnick gave up.

Most ominously, David Bloomfield, President of the Citywide Council on High Schools, and himself a parent at an empowerment school, testified on the weaknesses of the DoE plan. Ten years ago, working with the NYC Partnership and the School Governance Task Force, he helped draft a plan that is conceptually very similar to the empowerment initiative. The key difference is that the task force report called for "real authority" to be vested in school leadership teams. Yesterday, David testified on how that essential ingredient is completely missing from the Empowerment Schools we have today: "Parent after parent after parent after parent has complained that Empowerment Schools lack functional School Leadership Teams."

Update: Councilman Garodnick's office shared his excellent letter to the Chancellor.