The myth of accountability under Mayoral control: my comments at the Manhattan hearing last night

Yet another great hearing where the vast majority of speakers, parents, teachers and students speaking out against Mayoral control.  You can watch the video here.  My three-minutes are below.

My name is Leonie Haimson, and I am the Executive Director of Class Size Matters. There are many myths surrounding Mayoral control, including that it somehow provides more accountability.  Yet as we have seen over the last twenty years, when it comes to class size and the basic conditions in our public schools, one-man rule has not provided even the most minimal accountability.

When he first ran for mayor more than 20 years ago, Bloomberg promised to lower class size in the early grades. His 2002 campaign flyer put it this way: “Studies confirm one of the greatest detriments to learning is an overcrowded classroom … For students a loud packed classroom means a greater chance of falling behind. For teachers, [it] means a tougher time teaching & giving students attention they need.”

Yet class sizes increased sharply during the Bloomberg years, especially in the early grades, and by 2013, his last year in office, they had risen to the highest levels in 15 years, By that time, Bloomberg had renounced his earlier pledge, and proclaimed that he would fire half the teachers and double class sizes if he could, and that would be a “good deal for the students.”

Not only did Bloomberg fail to lower class size, but the DOE during his administration also failed to use state funds meant for smaller classes appropriately and according to law, according to not one, not two, but three different audits from state and city comptrollers.

When Bill De Blasio ran for office, he also promised that he would commit to specific class size reduction goals in all grades, and achieve them by the end of his first term.  He made that promise verbally at a mayoral debate on June 14, 2013, and then checked off a box in a document handed to him at the event, while signing this promise with his name . His campaign also pledged to lower class size, according to a different  survey filled out by his campaign. And yet once elected, he renounced that promise, and said he would wait until all the CFE funding was fully provided by  the state. 

Now that NYC schools are finally receiving their full complement of CFE funding amounting to more than $1.3 Billion in additional annual Aid, the State Legislature overwhelmingly passed a law in June 2022 requiring NYC to phase in smaller class sizes in all grades. 

And yet Mayor Adams is doing everything he can to oppose the law, has increased class size for the last two years, and by his actions is making it impossible for the city to comply, by continuing to cut school budgets and slashing the capital plan for new school construction.

I see no accountability in these actions of any of these mayors. Under Mayoral control, instead, autocratic and failed administrations have repeatedly violated laws concerning special  education, bilingual education, as well as student privacy, the last leading to repeated breaches of the most personal information of literally over a million current and past NYC students.

Moreover, the corruption scandals under local school boards were relatively minor in terms of their scope compared to the millions wasted by corrupt DOE officials over the last 20 years.  It is time for this failed experiment of Mayoral control to end.  Thank you for your time.

Talk out of School: Top education stories of 2021, De Blasio record, what we might expect from Mayor Adams, and school safety during the Omicron Surge

Check out our latest Talk out of School podcast:  Daniel Alicea and I recap the top education stories of 2021, discuss the De Blasio record, what we might expect of Mayor Eric Adams, and whether current school safety protocols are strong enough during the Omicron surge.  Please leave your comments below! 

Episode Notes

Gotham Gazette, The Sizeable Downside of de Blasio’s education record

NY1, At many schools, the DOE is testing fever kids for Covid than you might think

NYC Public School Parents, Deceptive messaging and multiple gaps in the level of protection from Covid that the DOE is providing students -- but why?

NYC Public School Parents , Update on Omicron and what's happening in schools in NYC and elsewhere to limit transmission

NYC Public School Parents, The city's claim of low in-school transmission is unreliable at best

Reddit , I Am a New York City Public High School Student. The Situation is Beyond Control.

New Yorker, Who Gets the Blame When Schools Shut Down

Gothamist, NYC Schools Bought Weaker Air Purifiers. Now Underventilated Campuses Are More Prone To COVID Cases

Nature: Real-world data show that filters clean COVID-causing virus from air

Adams' comments on class size, remote learning and year-round schooling; and Maya Wiley and Danny Dromm on the ensuing controversy

On Friday, a furor erupted when the Matt Skidmore Show tweeted a video excerpt from a Citizen's Budget Committee Mayoral forum that took place on February 25. The clip is above,  in which Eric Adams said that if elected, he would create a summer school program in which each teacher would have a class of 300-400 students.

Here are Adams' exact remarks, from the transcript:

And so if you do a full year school year by using the new technology of remote learning, you don't need children to be in a school building with a number of teachers, it's just the opposite. You could have one great teacher that's in one of our specialized high schools to teach 300 to 400 students who are struggling in math with the skillful way that they're able to teach. 

Let's look at our best mastered [sic] teachers and have them have programs where they're no longer being just within a school building. We no longer have to live within the boundaries of walls, of locations. We can now have a different method of teaching and I'm going to have the best remote learning that we could possibly have, not just turning on the screen and having children look at someone or really being engaged.

After the video was tweeted,  it was retweeted thousands of times, commented upon and disputed by the other candidates.  Here are just some of the articles about the controversy in Intelligencer, NY1, Politico, and Daily News, among others.

In response, Adams claimed he "misspoke and meant to say 30 to 40 students. He also said he was referring to summer school classes and optional enrichment for high school students." 

But neither of those statements are true.  As Mercedes Schneider pointed out in her blog,  Adams had said something very similar in an interview in Bloomberg News, in an interview with political consultant, Howard Wolfson, on  February 22, just three days before the CBC forum: 

So just dealing with summer school — we could use remote learning. We should have the best remote-learning experience on the globe. We should reach out to Google, we should reach out to Facebook, we should reach out to our tech industry, and we should build out a state-of-the-art remote learning experience so that children don’t have to sit in the school building. We should require two to three hours a day where our young people during the summer months are receiving continuous instruction. And you could have a great teacher, math teacher, English teacher, from one of the specialized high schools, who can do this remotely, or one of the great teachers of schools, public, middle schools.

Covid has revealed to us we can do remote learning — we just have to do it right. We can’t go through the motions. Too many students — they’ll sign on, they just put a screen up. That is not remote learning. We need to master remote learning. You could have one teacher who could instruct remotely 200 to 300 students, and give them the instruction that they deserve. We can do this if we bridge technology with the learning experience, and it would be cost-effective.

Yet if we've learned one thing from this pandemic, is that remote learning doesn't work, especially with large classes -- as too many NYC kids have been subjected to this year.  (See my Council testimony on this.) 

Moreover, these remote classes would not be "optional" as he now claims, but an essential part of year-round schooling that would be required of all students, if Adams has his way.

Mostly skipped over in the class size controversy is Adams' proposal for mandatory year-round schooling.  The below is the top education item in his 100 Steps Forward for NYC campaign document.

Year-round schooling is a highly unpopular idea among most parents, nearly as unpopular as large classes, as shown in this recent nationwide survey of parents on what steps should be taken to make up for the Covid disruption of learning, like extending the school year. 

On Sunday, Maya Wiley held a press conference in Jackson Heights Queens, to discuss her proposal to reduce class size, as well as her other education priorities.  All the parents and teachers who spoke also agreed about the need to invest in smaller classes and criticized Eric Adams' claim that remote classes with hundreds of students could ever "give them the instruction that they deserve."  

Wiley specifically pointed out that though most all student suffer from a regime of remote learning, the research shows that those who suffer the most are disadvantaged students: "online learning is not racial equity because kids of color fall further behind in online learning,”

Videos of all the speakers at the rally,  including Wiley, are posted here.  Below is what she said when she was asked by the NY1 reporter about the Adams proposal of instituting remote summer school classes with hundreds of students:

Here is what Council Member Danny Dromm, a former teacher who was at the rally, said on the same topic:

The Adams campaign continues to deny that the candidate ever meant what he clearly did mean, with his campaign spokesperson insisting to the Daily News that "the only thing that matters” is the candidate is “not going to require any student to attend 300-400 person classes or any teacher to teach them."

“He believes in in-person classes and small class sizes. He’s always said so."  

After looking carefully at his education record and campaign proposals, I see no mention of this. 

For Adam's education proposals on a host of other issues, check out our comparison charts, summarizing his education agenda and those of the other Mayoral candidates.