Elizabeth Rose resigns from DOE; who will take her place but hopefully not adopt her positions and policies?

Former Deputy Chancellor Elizabeth Rose resigned yesterday.  Her resignation letter to DOE colleagues below recounting her record omits the countless school co-locations she pushed through despite huge parent and community opposition, her failure to address school overcrowding honestly with accurate reporting and reasonable enrollment projections, and her view that neither class size nor school overcrowding matters in terms of student learning.  

All these attributes and beliefs reflected the same ideological biases that she carried over from Joel Klein, who first plucked her from the corporate world to appoint her as Director of Portfolio Planning in 2009. This division was in charge of pushing through unpopular school closings and charter school co-locations, and throughout multiple hearings, Rose appeared indifferent to parent and student concerns. Others who preceded her in this job during the Bloomberg years include the current Superintendent of Louisiana schools John White and the head of the pro-charter Walton Family Foundation Marc Sternberg. Rose then rose through the ranks swiftly to become Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm's chief of staff, and after Grimm died, inherited her position.

Though Rose mentions the removal of PCB lights in her resignation letter as one of her proudest achievements, she omits the fact that DOE faced lawsuits and EPA pressure that forced them to speed up the PCB removal process.  She also doesn't mention the months of delay before DOE began to test school water for lead according to the new state law, and the confusing and even dishonest messages she put out about this issue to reporters and parents. 

It probably didn't help her case either that Rose was revealed to have engineered a secret, illegal deal with Eva Moskowitz that she could move a new Success charter middle school into the PS 25 building after DOE closed the school, without going through any of the legally mandated process for changes in school utilization.  This move was only forestalled when the parents of PS 25 won a temporary restraining order against closing their school.

Her resignation comes after her two major demotions in recent months; first her removal by Chancellor Carranza from the Deputy Chancellor position to a new post entitled "CEO of School Operations," and then, after the busing scandal broke, a further demotion to “senior contractors advisor for transportation." 

No one person seems now to be exactly filling the powerful position of Deputy Chancellor for School Operations that Rose once held.  The new organizational chart appears to divide her responsibilities between former Mayoral adviser Karin Goldmark, now Deputy Chancellor for School Planning and Development, Chief Operating Officer Ursalina Ramirez, Deputy Chancellor for School Climate and Wellness LaShawn Robinson, and Josh Wallach, Deputy Chancellor for Early Education and Student Enrollment. 

Goldmark served during the Klein years as Vice President of  the controversial Leadership Academy, which was known for training non-educators to be principals, who when assigned to schools were too often shown to be inept and/or corrupt.  Moreover, the DOE's spending on the program was later found to be riddled with "waste, fraud and abuse," according to a scathing audit by the City Comptroller.

Incidentally, in  emails recently released by the Mayor's office after the NY Post and NY1 successfully obtained them via a Freedom for Information lawsuit, both Goldmark and Wallach were revealed to have been in favor of adopting a Unified Enrollment plan for the DOE in 2015 that would have helped recruit NYC students to charter schools. 

Preliminary draft of Mayor's 2015 speech

 
This enrollment system has been supported by the Gates Foundation which awards additional funding to districts that agree to adopt it, and has been heavily promoted by Gates-funded pro-charter advocacy groups like the Center for Reinventing Public Education.  

Though as Chalkbeat notes,  "De Blasio's aides quickly worked the idea into a draft of his 2015 speech," an excerpt of which is to the left, the Mayor deleted this passage and did not adopt the system. The final speech delivered September 15, 2015, and entitled "Equity and Excellence" is posted here.

Rose's resignation letter sent yesterday is below.

__________________________

Dear Colleagues,

When I first joined the DOE in 2009, I never imagined that I would still be here nine years later.  I can honestly say it is because I have loved the work we do, and loved serving our students and this City.

The last 9 years have been the most interesting, fulfilling, and exciting stage in my professional career.  I have had the opportunity to see long-term projects from inception to completion: the building of new buildings, the first graduating classes of new schools I helped open, the removal and replacement of all PCB lighting fixtures, identifying gender-neutral bathrooms in all our schools, and expanding universal free lunch to all schools. 

Other initiatives will continue, including significant reductions in suspensions and persistently dangerous schools, systematic improvements to accessibility and transparency of information about accessibility, major initiatives to expand and improve physical and health education, to build new gymnasiums, and upgrades to school cafeterias that increased both the number of students eating lunch and their enjoyment of their meal. Over the past three years alone, the PEP approved 174 proposals related to our schools and buildings, and we worked with CECs to approve 18 re-zonings. 

None of these would have been possible without the incredible dedication and effort of all the talented people I have had the pleasure and privilege to work with, including those on my teams, those with whom we have collaborated in our shared commitment to improving learning conditions and outcomes for all our students, the parents and advocates I have met, and especially those who have mentored me along the way.

I have served under five Chancellors, and am proud of the work my teams and I have accomplished. 

I have decided it is time to leave the DOE, both to spend additional time on some personal needs, and to figure out my next adventure.

 New York is a big city, but a small world; I hope we will cross paths again.  It has truly been an honor to serve with you.  Elizabeth

More on the worst schools in NYC, and their principals

Out of the 33 schools with the lowest Environment scores in 2009-2010, only four of them have new principals this year, according to the DOE website. At least five of their principals were Leadership Academy graduates, from simply checking the web.

Six schools had the absolute worst score: a “0”. One of them is Ross Global charter. An account from Mariama Sanoh, a parent at the school, was posted a few days ago here.

Another school that got a zero is PS 50 in the Bronx. Its principal, Francisco Cruz, was removed from his job last summer, after he was found to have rigged the bids for an afterschool program he had financial interest in.

Tied for seventh worst in the city is MS 571 in Brooklyn. The principal, Santousha Troutman is a graduate of the Leadership Academy, and remains in her job. Eighth worst, tied with four other schools, is PS 11 in the Bronx, run by another Leadership Academy alumni, Elizabeth Hachar. Ms. Hachar appears to be quite a tyrant and has a long history of infuriating parents.

According to a 2008 article in the Highbridge LowDown,

Hachar first made headlines when she fired popular parent teacher coordinator Charles Woods on the final day of term last June. Hachar is in her third year as principal and is a graduate of the New York City Leadership Academy (NYCLA). This June NYCLA was designated the city's official principal training program in NYC's efforts to implement new "Children First" school reforms. A linchpin of the initiative is "empowerment", giving principals "broader discretion over allocating resources, choosing their staffs and creating programming", according to the New York City Department of Education's website.

Problems began before Wood's dismissal, says Nelson Mar, senior staff attorney and education law specialist at Legal Services NYC-Bronx, a civil legal service for low income individuals. On May 2nd of this year, Mar's firm, along with a coalition of community activists, teachers and staff, filed a complaint with school superintendent Dolores Desposito.

Among the allegations was a claim that Hachar's mandate to lock bathrooms led some children to soil themselves. "One mother told me her daughter had to be hospitalized because of an obstruction in her bowel," said Mar. On Sept. 10th at the first PTA meeting of the 2008 school year, the principal addressed the bathroom issue, said attendee Theodore Garcia, first vice president of the Community Education Council for the district. Hachar "stated that 'all the teachers in the building have keys to the bathrooms to let students in'", said Garcia, but did not explain why they were locked at all. Hachar did not respond to multiple attempt s to contact her, and ordered the removal of a reporter from the September 10th PTA meeting by six police officers…. Hachar is currently under investigation because of those allegations, said Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the DOE. Hachar is credited with raising test scores. English proficiency has nearly doubled according to data from New York State School Report Cards, the government's yearly schools assessment….

She's made other changes as well. According to the community organizer, over 30 teachers from the school's full-time teaching staff of 59 have left or been fired in the time she's held office.

Yet perhaps because of her ability to keep test scores up, Hachar remains in her post.

Tied with the above school at no. 9 was the Academy of Business and Community Development. Last year, the principal and founder of the school was Clyde Cole, yet another graduate of the Leadership Academy, who received a bonus of $7,000 from the DOE in 2008-9. Here is an excerpt on his alumni page at NYU’s Steinhardt School:

After graduating from NYU Clyde joined the Aspiring Principals’ Program at the New York City Leadership Academy because he’d be guaranteed a principal position within one year. A few months into the program the Department of Education’s Office of New Schools presented the group with the possibilities and the process of opening a new school in New York City. As per Department of Education requirements, Clyde assembled a Planning Team, which included Urban Assembly, a nonprofit organization that has been founding schools since 1997, a fellow Aspiring Principal, a parent, a high school senior, three middle school principals, his former high school basketball coach, and two teachers, one of whom was once Clyde’s student.

Mr. Cole is gone now, replaced with Simone Mcintosh.

Also tied at 9^th worst last year was PS 52 in Staten Island, whose principal was Evelyn Mastroianni. Ms. Mastroianni made headlines last year when she threatened to suspend a 9 year old student who was holding a 2- inch plastic Lego gun. She only relented when the parents threatened to sue. The school has a new principal this year, Jane McCord.

The parents at Muscota, at 15^th worst, managed to rid themselves of their much-despised principal Tomasz Graski, another Leadership Academy alum, but now he has been installed instead at ms45/ in East Harlem.

The 20^th worst school, according to the surveys, was PS 6 in the Bronx, whose principal is Darlene Mcwhales. That school was afflicted with mold in the portable classrooms last year, and yet the DOE resisted allowing students into classrooms in the main building even though there was apparently room for them. Here is a comment from a teacher on the Yournabe website about Ms. Mcwhales:

I worked in a portable classroom for many years. In one of the classrooms the mold was so bad there was a big gaping hole in the wall. When principal, Darlene Mcwhales at PS 6 saw the hole she responded to the teacher, "place a bookshelf in front of the hole so parents won't complain." I was infuriated with her response, so I contacted every possible agency to respond to the serious mold problems. Mrs. Mcwhales even went as far as firing one of the teachers she believed contacted DOSH.”

Gregory Hodge is the well-known principal of Frederick Douglass Academy, which has the 25^th lowest score for environment in the city. Mr. Hodge is famous for his “no excuses” attitude to teachers and students;

“In my final interview with the [teaching] candidate, I lay down the law,” says Hodge. “As quickly as you’re hired, you can be fired. If you don’t perform—

you’re gone.” At this point Hodge says certain candidates get squeamish and ask how they will be evaluated. “How will you evaluate your students? Through test scores,” Hodge replies. “That’s how I’ll evaluate you—through their test scores.”

A former teacher describes the harrowing environment at the school in an article in the Indypendent last month:

The worst part of working at FDA was the principal, whose management style was described by the district United Federation of Teachers representative as “abrasive.” In my experience, shouting was the norm, often peppered with derogatory words and phrases. Neither children nor teachers were spared the kind of verbal abuse one expects from a drill sergeant, not a school principal. But seeing most of my colleagues cowed or resigned to it, I rolled along, until he threatened me one day — saying, “teachers are gonna get their throats cut” — shortly after I and a couple other teachers had called the city and the state to complain about the lack of a certified special education teacher for the sixth grade.

FDA’s not the grittiest school in the city or the country, but its shortcomings highlight many of the problems with urban education. Social services and counseling are almost nonexistent. But as I began to advocate further for certain students, I directly exposed myself to the potential loss of my livelihood. But even our calls didn’t solve the special ed problem. Instead, the sixth-graders got a certified teacher at the expense of another class.

This was only the most obvious example of our principal not doing his job. As the year went on I began to compile documentation of harassment. I first called our district superintendent, whose secretary helpfully suggested I look for a job at another school. I also called the DOE ’s office of special investigations and was told that unless children were being physically harmed at the school, that office was unlikely to investigate any further than calling the school principal. The person I spoke with in the office of special investigations helpfully added that it might “come back on me” if I decided to file a complaint.

Mark Clarke, principal of the Bronx Mathematics Preparatory School, 23^rd on the list, strangely took on the job as the chair of East NY Prep charter’s board, right before it was closed down by SUNY last year, because of alleged mismanagement, the principal’s self-dealing, and the pushing out of students with low test scores. According to Gotham Schools, Mr. Clarke said the school had not forced students to leave, but that “they left on their own,”

25^th worst school in the city was E. Flatbush Community Research School, run by David Manning, who is another Leadership Academy grad and received a bonus from the DOE in the fall of 2009.

The 27^th worst school last year was PS 24 in the Bronx, led by Donna Connelly, known for turning down a grant for two years of music appreciation for the students at her school, apparently because “there was no educational value to it.”

The Leadership Academy: the real deal?

Last week the Aspiring Principals Program of the New York City Leadership Academy, made headlines. On August 24, a NYU press release announced:

“Public elementary and middle schools in New York City led by ‘Aspiring Principals Program’-trained principals have achieved comparable or higher rates of student improvement than schools led by other new principals ... These results were obtained even though APP-trained principals were more likely to be placed in chronically low-performing schools.”

The New York Times chimed in: “Graduates of a program designed to inculcate school principals with unconventional thinking have gone on to help drive up English test scores even though the graduates were often placed at schools with histories of academic failure.” The article went on to explain that the APP graduates helped increase English Language Arts scores at elementary and middle schools “at a faster pace than new principals with more traditional résumés”; while in math the APP principals made progress, but “at a pace no better than their peers.”

The report

What did this report actually say? Written by Sean P. Corcoran, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Meryle Weinstein of NYU’s Institute for Education and Social Policy, it compared the performance of schools under the leadership of graduates from the Aspiring Principals Program (APP) with that of schools under other new principals.

Both groups had to have been placed as new principals and to have remained in their positions for three years. Of the 147 graduates in the 2004 and 2005 APP cohorts, 88 (60 percent) met the inclusion criteria. 371 non-APP principals met the criteria; of these, 334 were in schools with comparable grade configurations. So there were 88 APP principals and 334 comparison principals in the study.

The schools in the two categories were significantly different. Compared to other new principals, APP principals tended to be placed in lower-performing schools and schools trending downward in ELA and math. There were also demographic and geographic differences.

The study used two types of comparison: (a) a straightforward comparison of average achievement in both types of schools and (b) a regression analysis (controlling for various school and student characteristics). It was the regression analysis that suggested an APP edge in ELA (but not for math) for elementary and middle schools.

The findings

The study found that test scores at schools in both groups improved over the period of the study in terms of test scores– but not as much as schools in the rest of the city. More specifically, the regression analysis indicated that the ELA standardized scores of APP elementary and middle schools were relatively stable, compared to schools headed by new principals who were not APP graduates. In math, APP elementary and middle schools fared slightly worse than comparison schools in relation to the city, but the differences were not statistically significant.

At the high school level (not mentioned in the NYU press release or NYT article), the differences between APP and comparison schools were “minor and inconclusive.”

Unanswered questions

There are many questions that the study did not address. Only 88 out of 147 graduates in the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 cohorts met the inclusion criteria. More than 18 percent of APP graduates were never placed as principals at all. The rest stayed in their positions for fewer than three years.

Is this a high or low number? The authors wrote that they did not have comparative mobility information for the non-APP principals, but they presumably could have reported the average attrition rate for New York City principals overall.

Also, the study only analyzed test score data – which alone are insufficient to fully evaluate a school’s performance. Wasn’t there other data that could have been examined? What about the parent and teacher surveys at APP-headed schools compared to schools run by other new principals?

Though the study compared the size of the schools for both cohorts (APP graduates on average headed smaller schools) they did not compare class sizes – or other school-level conditions that could have contributed to the relative performance of both groups.

Most intriguing is the finding that the relative test scores at both sets of schools continued to decline compared to the rising achievement of schools citywide, but schools headed by APP principals declined less –at least in terms of their ELA results:

“... relative student test performance falls modestly in the years following the installation of a new principal, in both APP and comparison schools…..we find a statistically significant negative relationship between new principals and achievement in both mathematics and ELA.”

It was only after doing a regression analysis, by controlling for various factors (including student background), that they found that the relative performance of APP schools was relatively stable while the comparison schools continued to decline. See this graph:

Thus, the reigning philosophy of the Klein administration – that new leaders properly trained in the methods propounded by the Leadership Academy will spark significant improvements in low-performing schools does not seem to hold true. Instead, these appointees may stabilize what otherwise would be expected to be continued decline resulting from a new principal.

As a way to deal with ongoing attrition and fill positions in elementary and middle schools, the Leadership Academy might be said to be “promising”. But as a way to “turn around” schools it does not seem to be promising at all.

Unmentioned in any of the news articles was the fact that the research organization Mathematica had originally been commissioned by DOE to do an in-depth, multi-year study of the Leadership Academy. Yet after several years of analysis, this study was cancelled by DOE, just months before the results were supposed to be released. What Mathematica might have been discovered about the program and its graduates will probably never be known.

For another close look at this study, see Aaron Pallas’ critique at Gotham Schools.

No-bid contracts at DOE have reached $342 million

NY Post reports today that the $12.5 million DOE no-bid contract to All Kinds of Minds, founded by Dr. Mel Levine, trained fewer than 1/5 of teachers promised; more recently Levine has been accused of child sexual abuse.

According to the Post, since 2004, DOE's spending on no-bid contracts amounts to $342 M. (click on summary to the right, courtesy of the NY Post.)

More recently, the number of official no-bid contracts has lessened somewhat, to “only” $12 million last year, but one wonders if this is in name only. There is little or no accounting or explanation of the 944 contracts that last year that cost the taxpayer $1.9 billion. During the budget hearings, City Council Speaker Quinn asked the DOE to cut back or limit these contracts, but they continue to soar upwards each year.

For example, see the recent DOE announcement that the NYC Leadership Academy “was selected from among multiple vendors through a competitive procurement process” to receive a five year contract. Yet how competitive this process is questionable, given the fact that the Leadership Academy was founded by the Chancellor, is run by his appointee, and he was chair of the board until just weeks before he granted it this $50 million, five year contract.

Joel Klein devises a plan in which he can stay in power....forever!

Last week, the DOE announced, with a straight face that, after competitive bidding, it had awarded a five year, $50 million contract to train principals to the (drum roll please) NYC Leadership Academy.

Ten million dollars a year of taxpayer money that will continue for five years, long after Bloomberg has left office. This news, delivered with a straight face, went mostly unreported in the press, with a few exceptions.

That the Leadership Academy – created by Joel Klein, with Joel Klein chair of the board, Joel Klein who had selected the other board members, Joel Klein who had appointed the director, Joel Klein who had raised $75 million in private money to start it through the Fund for Public Schools, an organization which is also chaired by Joel Klein….had now been awarded a $50 million contract by Joel Klein, went mostly unreported. (see partial correction below)

The press has had a field day reporting much smaller City Council grants to organizations that employ relatives of City Council members. But when Joel Klein awards a $50 million to an organization that he himself heads, nothing but….silence. The bare faced absurdity of it all cannot be outdone.

Encouraged by the lack of critical reception, Klein and his overpaid deputies have devised a new plan by which they can remain in power indefinitely, even after the Mayor leaves office, even if Mayoral control is significantly amended.

How? Simple. Before leaving office, Joel Klein will grant himself a contract to run the schools for the next twenty years, running the entire operation from an outside corporation, and eliminate DOE altogether. Whether this device is legal or not is uncertain, but that has never stopped him before.

At the same time, by eliminating the need for the entire central office at Tweed, he can claim a great victory by having shrunk the bureaucracy.

News update and partial correction:

A savvy reporter informed me that Joel Klein took himself and Chris Cerf off the board at the Leadership Academy about a month ago – just before awarding them the $50 Million competitively bid contract. Not that this would fool anyone, but…

Sure enough, when you go to the Academy's website here , you see the original board listed; but the links are missing for the bios for Klein, Cerf and Robert F. Arning, who is head of the NYC office of KPMG and has a huge contract with DOE as well.

And when you go to another page listing the board, their names are omitted.

Wonder if any of this is legal….since Klein stepped off the board right before granting the contract, presumably he thought there might be a problem.

UPDATE (July 27); the DOE's Truth Squad at work has made sure that the first of these links has been removed, eliminating any trace of Joel Klein's previous leadership of the Board, as well as Cerf's participation. When you go to the second link, there are eight current members listed, including Kathy Wylde of the NYC Partnership and two emeritus directors of McKinsey and Co. Two of the Leadership Academy's board members received awards from the Partnership in 2007, and another serves on their board as well.