Class size rally urging Speaker Corey Johnson to bring Int. 2374 to a vote; though he apparently will not allow this to occur

See also my new opinion piece in the Nation:   To Reduce Inequality in Our Education System, Reduce Class Sizes

On Thursday, December 9 there was parents, teachers, and elected officials rallied outside City Hall, to beg City Council Speaker Corey Johnson to bring the class size bill, Int 2374, to a vote.  Among the speakers who spoke passionately spoke about the need to lower class size and to finally bring equity to NYC children were UFT President Michael Mulgrew, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, parent leader and PEP member Tom Shepherd, and Council Members Mark Levine, Eric Dinowitz and Council Member-to-be Rita Joseph, the latter three all former classroom teachers. I wish you could hear hat they said but sadly, no one apparently taped them.

But despite the disingenuous claims of the Speaker on NY1 that  "they're in the process of making changes to [the bill] to make it feasible" and that “We’re trying to figure out the right, responsible and enforceable way to get that done,” Johnson has inexplicably turned his back on this critical reform,  and apparently will not allow a vote on the bill during this session, which means we will have to start from scratch with a new Council and a new Speaker in January. 

Below are some news stories on the rally and our effort. Also below is my impromptu response to a question from a reporter who asked about the new Adams administration's apparent intent to blame teachers for the low levels of achievement in our schools, and fire them to get improvements.  This was tried during the Bloomberg administration and in fact, nationwide over the last decade through the combined efforts of Bill Gates and Arne Duncan, and miserably failed.  Thanks to Kathy Park Price for taping this on her phone.

Video: NYC parent activists get a moment to challenge the corporate reform movement on Education Nation

Last week, NBC ran three days of programming called Education Nation, filmed at Rockefeller Plaza, which was primarily dominated by representatives from the corporate reform movement, who define accountability as more high-stakes testing and promote privatization through charter school expansion, both trends that in the view of many public school parents undermine our public schools and offer simplistic solutions to complex problems.

Many of the panelists and speakers were from organizations funded by the program's sponsors, which included the Gates and Broad Foundations, and echoed their pro-testing and pro-privatization views.  There was much talk about how we need "great principals" and "great teachers" and "great schools" with little realistic discussion of how we get there.  One panelist, Ralph Smith of the Annie Casey Foundation, offered a contrary thought:  that perhaps instead of relying on "greatness" we should build a system that enables ordinary people to be successful.

In general, there was little or no recognition of the frustration parents feel about the overwhelming obsession with standardized testing in our schools, the devastating impact of deep budget cuts and growing class sizes, and the way our voices have been increasingly shut out of the debate over education reform.   Even the panel on the role of parents included only one person who identified herself as a parent leader.  Rather than invite  any NYC parent to sit on the panel, Chancellor Walcott was included instead, despite the fact that the Bloomberg administration has consistently ignored parents and  treated our priorities with utter contempt.

This panel discussion, called Stepping Up: the Role of the Parent Advocate, focused  on the controversial proposal known as the “Parent Trigger", developed by the organization the Parent Revolution, which is headed by a Beverly Hills attorney named Ben Austin.  The Parent Revolution was started with funds from the Broad Foundation to encourage charter school expansion.  More information on this astroturf organization can be found on the Seattle 2010 blog, and on Diane Ravitch's blog Bridging Differences, where she calls the Parent Trigger "a stealth assault on public education."   ALEC, the secretive right-wing organization, has written a model Parent Trigger bill that has been introduced in state legislatures all over the nation, and reportedly, DFER and other pro-charter organizations are busy hiring staff to try to get a Parent Trigger bill passed here in NY state this session.  The Parent Trigger is particularly deceptive, because while it claims to empower parents, it is actually offering them only a limited number of damaging options, imposed from above. The Parents Across America position paper on the Parent Trigger is here.

At Education Nation, I challenged both Ben Austin and Dennis Walcott, pointing out that the Bloomberg administration as well as the US Department of Education have completely ignored our voices.  Most parents don’t want their schools closed or turned into charters, but yearn instead for their neighborhood public school to be strengthened with smaller classes and a well-rounded education, but this is not the choice they have been offered. 

Ben Austin responded with a sleazy attack that Parents Across America is entirely funded by the National Education Association, which is untrue.  (We received a $25,000 start up grant from the NEA, and have since raised money elsewhere, including a $5,000 gift from Diane Ravitch.)  I was followed shortly afterward by two other questioners, parent activists Mona Davids of the NYC Parents Union and Ocynthia Williams of the Coalition for Educational Justice.

But even during Ben Austin’s remarks the truth occasionally shone through.  He admitted that no parents want their schools closed, and that charter schools "are not remotely scaleable” – that is, they cannot be replicated on a large scale.  (Never mind that Walcott, who was sitting right next to him, appears to see both continued school closures and rapid charter expansion as the DOE’s top priority over the next two years.)

Other valuable moments on Education Nation were provided by Diane Ravitch during her debate with Geoffrey Canada.  Ravitch pointed out that Canada had fired his whole 6^th grade class when they didn’t test well enough; countered by Canada’s misstatement that he had “closed” the school instead.  Also you should check out the student panel,  which, among many other issues, discussed how important class size is, in allowing  them to develop closer relationships with their teachers and enabling teachers to show how much they care.

Below is video of my remarks and Austin’s response; followed by the comments of Mona and Ocynthia.  The entire segment on the Power of a Parent Advocate is here.  And don't forget to check out the video of MisEducation Nation  that followed on Tuesday night.

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters and Parents Across America on what most parents really want:



Mona Davids of NYC Parents Union on Ben Austin's divisive tactics and her version of the "Parent Trigger":



Ocynthia Williams of the Coalition for Educational Justice on the failure of Bloomberg administration and Chancellor Walcott to collaborate with parents:

More on Education Indoctrination

We held a press conference yesterday at Rockefeller Center, in protest of the one-sided coverage of NBC's Education Nation, which has turned out to be an infomercial brought to you by the Billionaire boys club of Gates, Broad and Bloomberg. Here is some coverage from Gotham Schools, and the Epoch Times.

As made clear by this media extravaganza, a handful of wealthy men and their corporate-style, free-market views were allowed to completely dominate the media, as they already control much of the output of the education research organizations and think-tanks in DC, despite any evidence that their methods will improve our schools, all in the name of "innovation." They are wreaking destruction not only on our public education system, but waging a massive misinformation campaign, with even the National Academy of Sciences powerless before them.

Bloomberg was allowed to make a 15 minutes speech on MSNBC, uninterrupted, without a single reporter allowed to ask questions, in which he claimed great progress in our schools. At the same time, during Council hearings downtown, members of the public and local elected officials were lambasting his record, and pointing out that his claims of improvements were based on fraudulent and inflated state test scores.

And yet this highly damaging model of education reform that has utterly failed to improve our schools here in New York City is being held out as a model, and foisted on the nation as a whole, in the form of charter school expansion, wasteful teacher merit pay, and even more emphasis on high stakes testing, all of which which hurts our neediest students most of all.

In essence, NBC's entire media extravaganza should have been called Education Indoctrination, an opportunity for the corporate influences that are engineering their hostile takeover of our public schools to broadcast their distortions, without little or no fear of being contradicted. Here is our press release from yesterday, here is my Huffington Post column about it, and here is a letter of protest to NBC that you can sign.

There were a few bright spots; check out NYC teacher Brian Jones, who managed to infuse a few words of truth amidst the heated rhetoric of Geoffrey Canada, Randi Weingarten, Steven Brill, and Michelle Rhee. On the same panel, Allen Coulter, the head of the Gates Foundation education division, managed to spread more of the special Gates' brand of misinformation, such as claiming that there is no evidence of benefits from class size reduction after 3rd grade, which is simply false.

There are at least 15 studies showing correlations between smaller classes in the middle and upper grades and higher student achievement and lower dropout rates, no matter how much the Gates Foundation would like to deny this. Like their support of the anti-evolution organization, the Discovery Institute, Gates seems to have no respect for research and evidence. Instead, the foundation would rather waste millions on incentive pay tied to test scores, and other free-market "experiments" that have repeatedly been proven to be worthless.

See our press release from yesterday, my Huffington Post column, and then send a message to NBC, by signing our protest letter, with 400 signatures so far and growing fast.

Here are some excerpts from the press release, from outraged parents, teachers and citizens:

Natalie Beyer, a founding member of Parents Across America and a school board member in Durham, NC: “Strong public schools are our most fundamental public resource and the foundation of our democracy. In recent years, a few wealthy philanthropists have profoundly influenced education policies and programs. Parents Across America believe that our public schools and our children’s educations are not for sale. Across this nation, we elect citizens to serve on local Boards of Education, to insure local accountability, transparency and oversight of our public schools. As a public school parent and elected school board member, I am disappointed that NBC’s Education Nation has excluded the voices of parents and critics. Your relationship with your sponsors seems to have turned what could have been an important news event into an infomercial. As your program concludes and you dismantle your Learning Plaza, rest assured that those of us who work in public education will continue the important work of challenging students every day.”

Karran Harper Royal, New Orleans parent leader and member of the Community Education Coalition: “The entire premise of this show is very offensive. The rest of America does not need another Hurricane Katrina, and certainly doesn’t need the kind of education reform that we’ve had in New Orleans. Parents are largely left out of the decisions being made by the State of Louisiana, and the claims of success of our Public Schools are being greatly exaggerated. In a recent report, the Brookings Institute and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center admitted that "Statistically, academic growth has not been correlated with reforms." And despite Paul Vallas’ claims to the contrary on MSNBC’s panel discussion today, charter schools in New Orleans often push out students with disabilities or do not serve them well, and there have been many instances where such children have been turned away. We resent NBC using our tragedy to promote an agenda financed by big business, and that does not include the very people who use our public schools.”

Mona Davids, head of the NY Charter Parents Association, said: “Contrary to the claims made by NBC’s Education Nation, charter schools are not a magic bullet to improve our public school system. Too many of them have very high student and teacher attrition, exclude special education students, feature abusive disciplinary practices, and demonstrate disappointing levels of student achievement. What we need in this city and elsewhere is to learn from the practices of our best charter schools, and apply them to all public schools, including small class sizes, a supportive and welcoming environment for parents and teachers, and a well-rounded curriculum, featuring art, music science, all of which are being driven out of our public schools by Bloomberg and Klein, and the other so-called “experts” featured on these panels."

Lisa Donlan, NYC public school parent leader in lower Manhattan: “It is outrageous that NBC is allowing Joel Klein and our Mayor to portray our public schools as a model for reform, given the never-ending scandals, reorganizations and failed experiments that have damaged our kids over the last eight years. Charter schools, merit pay, competition among schools for students and resources, high stakes standardized tests as the basis for teacher bonuses, student promotions and school closings - -none of these things have worked in NYC, or anywhere else in the country for that matter. Bloomberg's experiments on our children have not improved teaching and learning, have not narrowed the achievement gap, have not increased equity of access to quality schools for most families, and any claims to the contrary are simply lies.”

Julie Woestehoff , Executive Director, Parents United for Responsible Education, in Chicago and founding member of Parents Across America: “Over the past few days, NBC, Oprah, "Waiting for Superman" promoters and other corporate-funded propagandists have waged war against public school parents and teachers, hoping to break their traditionally strong ties, to vilify, label, and destroy public schools, and to fool the nation into accepting a vision of education that consists of replacing open, democratically-run school systems designed to serve all children with a system of strip mall franchise schools where families are forced to "shop" for education and children are
served differently depending on how they score on standardized tests.

That's not the vision of education that will lift our nation or give our children a strong future. We reject NBC's corporate vision of education and instead support and dedicate ourselves to the rich, well-rounded, ennobling vision of education offered by true school reformers, beginning with John Dewey and embodied today by the millions of dedicated, hardworking teachers who are doing their best under ever-worsening circumstances. We choose to listen to our teachers first, and support their efforts rather than join corporate media's war against them."

Education Indoctrination

Send a message to NBC News, by signing the petition protesting the monolithic presentation of views in Education Nation.

You would have to be living on Mars not to notice all the commotion the past week proclaiming the ills of our public education system, particularly our inner city schools. From the much-hyped opening of the documentary "Waiting for Superman," two Oprah shows this week featuring the movie's director, Davis Guggenheim, along with Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerman of Facebook fame, and NBC's "Education Nation" series, the mainstream media has given a huge amount of attention to the view that our inner-city public schools are dysfunctional, primarily as a result of selfish and incompetent teachers and their unions.

The latest outrage is the panel discussion scheduled for Tuesday as part of Education Nation, originally entitled, "Does Education Need a Katrina?" Though after protests, the name of the panel was changed, it still is being described as a discussion to examine "the advantages to the New Orleans school district of starting over post-Katrina."

When Arne Duncan made a similar statement about New Orleans schools benefiting from Hurricane Katrina, he was roundly and justifiably criticized. Hurricane Katrina killed thousands of people, and destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. Since then, the poorest and neediest students have been increasingly concentrated in the New Orleans' public schools, while charter schools are attracting the highest achieving and wealthiest students. This two-tier educational system is a pattern that has been replicated in New York City, Chicago and elsewhere.

NBC has disinvited prominent experts from its panels who disagree with these policies, including Diane Ravitch and Yong Zhao of Michigan State, invited few if any public school parents, and has given up any pretense of providing a fair and balanced presentation of views. The panel on teacher quality will be moderated by Steve Brill, a journalist who has made a second career out of attacking teacher unions and promoting charter schools, in articles full of exaggerated claims and factual errors. (See my earlier column "Steve Brill's Imperviousness to the Facts")

Indeed, the vast majority of panelists appear to have been pre-selected by the Gates and Broad Foundations, Education Nation's co-sponsors, who by spending billions have been able to impose their rigid prescriptions on the nation's urban public schools. NBC has also asked the president of the University of Phoenix to participate, the nation's largest for-profit online chain and yet another co-sponsor, although this institution has been widely criticized for fraudulent practices. As the independent Poynter Institute commented, "it looks like the University of Phoenix bought access" onto the show, which "undermines the credibility of the project." Indeed, it is apparent that for NBC, money rather than real expertise talks.

The same monolithic cast of characters dominate "Waiting for Superman", which despite numerous cogent critiques, is likely to draw support from viewers who are otherwise ignorant of the real problems plaguing public education.

What are the rigid solutions that this film and NBC's "Education Nation" offer instead? The closing of neighborhood schools to make way for charter schools, more emphasis on standardized testing, performance pay, and the firing of more teachers, all based on student test scores.

Yet these simplistic and largely punitive policies have no backing in research or experience. There is no consensus among experts that they would work to improve our public schools, and plenty of evidence that they could make them even worse, as the National Academy of Sciences pointed out in comments on the federal program known as "Race to the Top". Why?

Evaluating and firing teachers on the basis of standardized tests scores is highly unreliable, with a recent study done for the federal government showing that there is a 25-34 percent likelihood of mislabeling the best teachers as the worst.

Such policies are likely to encourage even more mindless test prep, narrowing of the curriculum, and unfairly target teachers who working in our most disadvantaged schools. There is also not a single research study showing that teacher incentive schemes, which the US Department of Education just spent nearly half a billion dollars of taxpayer funds to support, have ever worked to improve public schools. Instead, studies out of New York City, Chicago, and now Nashville, in what is called the most rigorous experiment yet done, by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University, have shown no positive results.

These top-down policies are being promulgated not by educators, parents, or experts in the field, but by corporate billionaires, including Bill Gates, Eli Broad , the Walton family of Walmart fame, and Michael Bloomberg, all of whom adhere to the sort of deregulatory, free-market philosophies that have recently found to have disastrous results in our financial system.

Indeed, given the recent recession and the resulting anger at Wall Street elites, it would be hard to find any other field of public policy in which a few billionaires have so easily controlled the dominant narrative, convinced most of the politicians in both parties and the mainstream media that they know what's best for our children.. Yet none of these moguls have ever sent their children to an urban public school, and seem totally unaware of what really ails our urban public schools.

As charter schools proliferate, they have led to more segregation, according to UCLA's Civil Rights Project, as well as a growing concentration of poor, immigrant, homeless and English language learners in our neighborhood public schools. For example, in New York City, fewer than one percent of charter school students are homeless, whereas many of the public schools in the same neighborhoods, and even in the same buildings, are composed of ten percent homeless students or more.

During the recent primary elections, the charter school lobby donated millions of dollars to candidates that supported their top-down agenda, including Adrien Fenty, DC mayor, and Basil Smikle, running for State Senate in Harlem. Yet these candidates were roundly defeated, because by and large, most public school parents and community residents would rather support candidates who are interested in improving their local neighborhood schools, instead of closing them down or forcing them to sacrifice more space to expanding charters.

As the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote, "Mr. Fenty was cheered by whites for bringing in the cold-blooded Michelle Rhee as schools chancellor. She attacked D.C.'s admittedly failing school system with an unseemly ferocity and seemed to take great delight in doing it. Hundreds of teachers were fired and concerns raised by parents about Ms. Rhee's take-no-prisoners approach were ignored. It was disrespectful."

Similarly, according to a recent Gallup national poll, support for President Barack Obama's education agenda is slipping, among members of all parties, with just 34 percent of respondents giving the president an A or B for his education policies. According to the poll, the majority of Americans oppose closing low-performing schools, and would rather improve them by providing more support.

Another national poll, financed by Time magazine, showed that the vast majority of Americans believe that test-based accountability has either not worked or has been harmful, though interestingly enough, Time omitted this finding from their coverage.

Yet perhaps in order to control the message, there are practically no public school parents or dissenting views among the scores of participants on the three day line-up for Education Nation, despite a letter sent by Parents Across America to NBC, urging them to invite public school parents, weeks ago.

Gates and Broad have also backed "Waiting for Superman", with the Broad Foundation contributing half a million dollars to its marketing campaign One of the documentary's producers is yet another billionaire, ultra-conservative Philip Anschutz, well known for financing Colorado's anti-gay marriage amendment. (Anschutz and Gates are also partners in financing another project without any research backing, the anti-evolution, pro "intelligent design" Discovery Institute.)

Attacking the teacher unions may be convenient, but is essentially wrong-headed. Well-financed suburban school systems throughout the country, as well as schools in other countries like Finland which result in high achievement levels are also unionized, with very low teacher turnover rates. No, the reason so many of our inner city schools are failing is that they are confronted with educating our neediest students in the worst, most overcrowded conditions, and given these systemic inequities, neither these children nor their teachers are given a real chance to succeed..

One of the appealing children focused on in the film is named Francisco, a first-grader from the Bronx. The movie describes how his school is overcrowded and his teacher is "overworked with too many students"-- conditions that are sadly all too common in city schools. Class sizes in New York City public schools are often overflowing, at thirty students or more, and have increased sharply in recent years, exceeding class sizes in the rest of the state by 25 to 70 percent.

Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institute and Stanford, one of the few so-called "experts" interviewed in the film, has spent much time as a witness in court, defending states when they are sued for not providing equitable education funding. Hanushek's claim, which he has personally profited from, is that resources and class size do not matter.

Yet the SEED charter school, also featured in the movie as a major success, spends $35,000 per student; about four times the average spending, requiring a special act of Congress to fund.

Another one of the stars of the movie, Harlem Children Zone founder Geoffrey Canada, has built facilities that rival that of any private school, and he caps all class sizes at no more than eighteen students. Canada is now constructing a new branch of HCZ costing $100 million, with $60 million paid for by New York City taxpayers, with another $20 million contributed by Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, HCZ is sitting on more than $200 million in assets, and last year, reported a a $25 million surplus, while our city's public schools have seen their budgets slashed to the bone, and are facing even more cuts this year.

Alan Krueger, economist of Princeton, has convincingly shown that Hanushek's published work has consistently distorted the research, by minimizing the number of studies that show positive results from reducing class size and increased spending. If honestly reported, the research overwhelming shows that smaller classes improve outcomes for children.

This is especially true for the poor and minority children that the film so poignantly depicts, since reducing class size is one of the very few reforms that have been proven to narrow the achievement gap. And yet Bill Gates and many of his grantees, including NYC Chancellor Joel Klein, consistently dismiss the need to provide smaller classes to poor and minority children in the public schools that they control, and have encouraged class sizes to grow sharply, while they send their own children to private schools where class sizes are capped at fifteen.In the movie, Hanushek calls for firing six to ten percent of all public school teachers each year, a la Jack Welch of General Electric fame. Instead, these slash and burn policies would likely have disastrous effects, and lead to even fewer effective and experienced teachers in our highest-need schools.

In short, though the current propaganda campaign, financed and promulgated by billionaire entrepreneurs, promoting ruthless corporate-style tactics, may currently be the rage, the true experts, including teachers and parents who send their own children to public schools, realize that there's a better way.

As John Dewey wrote, what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child is what the community should want for all children. When all the hypocrisy and and furor has died down, the clear findings of research and the wisdom of ordinary Americans will hopefully be recognized once again, and the truth will emerge: that all our children, whether or not they attend charter schools, deserve a better chance to learn.