Carranza's new gig with IXL Learning, and its defective and stressful product that DOE has paid millions for & subjected NYC students to use

In the NY Post today, Sue Edelman wrote an expose of an ed tech company, IXL Learning, that recently hired former DOE Chancellor Richard Carranza two weeks after he left office.  As I was quoted as saying, 

"I have no gripe about Carranza getting whatever job he can after the stressful experience he was put through in NYC. However, he shouldn’t be working to promote a product with such distressing impact on kids...No district should use it."

Why did I say that?  Check out the abysmal parent reviews of this product at Commonsense Media, including this comment: “IXL is an absolutely disgusting method of teaching children.”  

Check out the even worse student reviews, like this one: "I think that IXL, is the worst site ever created. My teacher gives us lessons daily, and it's pure torture. Shouldn't this be illegal because it is considered child abuse?”  

Or this one: "Ixl causes kids a lot of stress and anxiety. it is a terrible learning website and i really don't recommend it. i come home crying everyday because of ixl. please, please save your children from this devil website! PLEASE SAVE YOURSELF! i have even thought about leaving my school so i wouldn't have to do it. i HATE it. so much."

I have never seen such terrible reviews for any ed tech product.  

IXL also gets very poor privacy ratings from Commonsense Media, earning a "WARNING" and a low grade of 69:

"The terms of IXL do not disclose whether users can interact with trusted or untrusted users on the service or whether a child or student's personal information can be displayed publicly in any way. ... the terms do not disclose whether IXL may sell data from school or parent users to third parties. ...the terms state that IXL and their third-party partners may use cookies and tracking technologies for the purpose of displaying advertisements on other websites or online services on their behalf. ... IXL works with third-party online advertising networks which use technology to recognize a user's browser or device and to collect information about their visit to IXL in order to provide customized content, advertising, and commercial messages to school, teacher or district administrative users and other non-student users on other websites or services, or on other devices they may use."

It's not even clear if the use of IXL complies with NY state's student privacy law, since DOE has failed to post the privacy provisions of its contract with the company, despite the fact that the state law and regs require this.

Nevertheless, the DOE has preloaded IXL on every one of the more than 400,000 Ipads purchased for NYC students, and has paid IXL about $5.6 million since 2011.  This amount greatly exceeds the maximum payments specified in the DOE's most recent contract with the company of $1,041,869, and thus may be "against procurement rules," as the NY Post article reports.

On its website, IXL has also made false claims that its programs have been "proven effective” and that research “has shown over and over that IXL produces real results.” 

Yet as an article in Hechinger Report points out, "IXL’s research simply compares state test scores in schools where more than 70 percent of students use their program with state test scores in other schools. This analysis ignores other initiatives happening in those schools and the characteristics of the teachers and students that might influence performance. ...IXL declined to comment on critiques that its studies weren’t adequately designed to make conclusions about the impact of its program on student test scores."

More wasted millions by DOE that could have been far better invested in helping kids learn, instead of subjecting them to a program that provokes unneeded anxiety and distress and that may violate their privacy.

 

Sexual harassment and the complicit culture of corruption at DOE

Abusive principals who kept their jobs (credit NY Post)

More terrific reporting by Sue Edelman of the NY Post, to follow up on her earlier exposes,  on the dysfunction that allows predatory principals to repeatedly harass teachers and yet keep their positions and six figure salaries, because DOE has dragged their feet so long they can no longer be fired.

Instead, DOE chronically ignores teachers' claims and instead informs the principals of their accusations, who then retaliate by firing them or making their lives miserable.  In one horrible case that Sue describes, the principal of PS 15 in Queens Antonio K’tori was protected by District 29 Superintendent Lenon Murray, who himself was subsequently accused of sexual harassment.  Earlier, several young girls were molested by a teacher at PS 15, who is now in jail.  The girls won a $16 million jury award against the city, with the parents blaming DOE and the K'tori for “negligent supervision.”

Yet even now, after teacher Shaunte Pennington filed a civil lawsuit against K'tori in court, who fired her after she reported harassment starting in 2012, the DOE has delayed doing anything for so long about her complaints that the three year statute of limitations has lapsed and he can't be dismissed.

“It’s a system that gives predators a platform and access to victims,” Penniston told The Post. “Nothing is done, and there are protections for perpetrators.”

In case after case, even when administrators are removed from their schools, the DOE is forced to pay them their full salaries until they choose to retire.  As I'm quoted in the article, "It’s a terrible burden on the teachers who are complaining, and a terrible burden on taxpayers, because we have to pay large amounts to settle these cases — and then the salaries of the principals in perpetuity."

I've written frequently about the well-known dysfunction at the OSI, the DOE's internal investigative office, as well as the problems at the Special Investigator's office (now under the authority of Commissioner of Investigation Mark Peters).  Both offices have records of refusing to aggressively pursue the valid accusations of whistleblowers, who are then forced to go to the media or to court to get their reports of corruption taken seriously.

The DOE's malign neglect is likely the reason there are so few sexual harassment claims compared to other city agencies, only 570 over four years, considering there are roughly 135,000 full-time workers, mostly women; and an even tinier number -- only seven-- of substantiated complaints.  Teachers are clearly afraid to complain for good reason, knowing that if they do, their jobs may be at risk and DOE and/or the SCI will whitewash their tormentors. Yet when asked why there were so few substantiated reports of harassment at DOE, de Blasio blamed a "culture of complaint" at the Department;

There has been a history, it's pretty well-known inside the education world, of some people bringing complaints of one type or another for reasons that may not have to do with the specific issue — and this is not just about sexual harassment it's about a whole host of potential infractions,

Later, the Mayor was forced to take this statement back, especially after a critical editorial in the NY Times.  But he still hasn't managed to confront how an ingrained culture of corruption has been allowed to fester and grow for many years at DOE.

On the other hand, Chancellor Carranza has said that this is a "Before Richard'” problem and pledged to take the allegations of harassment "extremely seriously." Let's hope he does.  In my experience, I haven't yet noted a single Chancellor who has.

DOE and Success Academy respond to Johanna Garcia's student privacy complaint

Johanna Garcia

Last night, Chalkbeat reported on Johanna Garcia’s complaint to the US Department of Education about DOE’s ongoing violation of student privacy rights by releasing her child’s personal information to charter schools, including Success Academy, for the purpose of sending multiple mailings of marketing and recruiting materials. Johanna's FERPA complaint makes the legal arguments clear.

Though the DOE claims they can disclose this information without parental consent under the “school official” exception to FERPA, because it has an “educational benefit” in their eyes, they fail to explain how charter schools can be defined as school officials.  Federal law and guidance reserves this term for school or district staff, volunteers, or contractors who are under the control of the district and perform an institutional service or function for the district. How charter schools can be seen as under the district's control or to be performing a service for DOE is impossible to maintain.

And while DOE and Success Academy claim they only receive student names and addresses for this purpose, they don't explain how charter schools are apparently able to differentially recruit students according to their academic records, as Johanna reported from her own experience, with charters sending her masses of pamphlets and flyers, urging her to enroll one of her three children, but none sent in the names of her other two children, who have IEPs.

The Chalkbeat article cites similar controversies over the non-consensual release of personal student information to charter schools for recruiting purposes in Chicago, Nashville and Memphis, but omits these facts:

• In Nashville and Memphis, elected school boards are refusing to provide student information to charters, despite a state law passed this summer which ordered them to do so.  Even after the state launched a lawsuit against them, they are standing fast, and their attorneys argue that the privacy protections and district authority outlined in FERPA supercede the state law. In any case, here in New York, there is no such state law and our state privacy law bars the release of personal student information for commercial purposes.

• In Chicago, after public school student information was disclosed to Noble charter schools without parent consent, resulting in parents receiving postcards urging them to enroll their children in their schools, this sparked a huge controversy and led to an investigation by the Inspector General.  As a result, the Chicago staffer who released the information to Noble was fired and the the district apologized to parents in mailings paid for by Noble.  And this occurred in a city where the Mayor controls the schools and is openly pro-charter.

Here in NYC,  we also have mayoral control, but with a newly re-elected progressive Mayor, who claims to be focused on improving the opportunities of public school students over the interests of charter operators.  Yet for some reason, DOE officials are intent on continuing this practice voluntarily, even if it violates federal student privacy law. 

That the DOE seems intent on continuing this practice though it began under the previous  Mayor is also hard to explain, given how it is aimed at helping the charter schools to expand their “market share” as Eva Moskowitz put it in emails to former Chancellor Joel Klein, which will inevitably lead to further diminishing the funding, space and stability of our public school system.

The release of this information without parental consent also violates specific promises Bill de Blasio made to parents when he first ran for Mayor.  See his responses to the NYC Kids PAC 2013 survey here, as recorded by his campaign manager Emma Wolfe, in the midst of the controversy over inBloom:

 

If the DOE and the de Blasio administration were wise and respected children's right to privacy, they would immediately cease this practice and apologize to parents, as Chicago officials did.   At the very least, DOE should be obligated to ask parents for their consent before releasing their children's information to  charter schools.  Unfortunately, their response to Johanna's FERPA complaint as reported by Chalkbeat signals otherwise,  that they intend to dig in their heels and continue to violate the law.

Update on lead in school water and AM NY on need for more transparency from DOE

Credit: Metro NY

AM New York just ran an editorial decrying the lack of transparency of  DOE's findings on excessive levels of lead in school water,  as well as a handy map and other visuals showing the extent of the lead problem, with more than 80% of NYC public schools having at least one affected water outlet. 

The editorial highlights two schools where the levels found were especially alarming: PS 723, a District 75 school for special needs students in the Bronx where the lead levels were 6,000 times the "action" level of 15 parts per billion,  and William E. Grady Vocational High School in Brooklyn, which had more than 100 samples that violated this level, with three that tested above 30,000 parts per billion.

On May 9th, the DOE released an updated spreadsheet with information on every water fixture's lead levels on May 9th but it contains no information about remediation efforts or retesting after remediation was done. Here is a link to the DOE web page on lead; and here is a link to the  latest DOE lead test results.  

As the AM New York editorial pronounced,“Of course, most NYC school buildings are old, and finding some lead in the pipes is not a surprise. But the extent of the findings, both in the levels and the number of schools affected, is stunning. The problem has been exacerbated by the DOE’s insufficient public response....

While the DOE followed the guidelines in state legislation passed last year by sending letters home to parents and posting the letters to school websites, city officials should do more. A more comprehensive and user-friendly response by school and city officials is warranted. DOE should make sure its online school search functions include faucet-by-faucet lead levels, and explanations of the risks they pose. (Right now, none of that information is easily searchable.) It should publish lists of schools with the worst levels of lead, and issue clear explanations of the results and what parents need to know. The state health department should do more, too, perhaps by analyzing the city’s by-faucet data and providing resources and guidance.”

On May 16,  the City Council Committee on Education and Finance held hearings where Chancellor Rose testified that the remediation of the outlets would not be completed until sometime next year.  She also minimized the seriousness and the extent of the problem by emphasizing how most children drink out of outlets after the water has flowed for awhile -- which really misses the point.  For more on the lead issue, including how DOE was months late doing the mandated retesting according to the new state law, and how even the action level of 15 parts per billion is too high according to the American Pediatric Association, see our previous posts here and here.

New revelations of DOE's irresponsible contracting and lax PEP oversight

See today's NY Post article about Yeled v’Yalda, a special education vendor proposed to be awarded a new contract from DOE.  This is despite the fact that the NYS Comptroller found the vendor had submitted fraudulent invoices to the State Education Department amounting to nearly $3 million. This audit was released just a few months ago, on December 31, 2015; and was well publicized, including several articles  including here. 

Most egregiously, any disclosure of the audit or its findings was omitted from the DOE’s Request for Authorization documents, despite DOE claims that the vendor’s background check revealed nothing. See the section of the RA on p.12 that reads: “No significant adverse information has been revealed to date” about the vendors listed, “except as noted below” – which then proceeds to list problems with numerous other vendors but not this one.

The excuse offered to the NY Post reporter? “A DOE spokesman said the omission was an error.”

Since the Custom Computer Specialist scandal, it is unclear that the DOE has shaped up its act as regards awarding contracts in a responsible fashion. In fact, the following serious issues with DOE’s procurement process have recently surfaced:

·         As reported on Sunday, Panel members who speak up against egregious contracts are bullied and shunned by the DOE. This was the experience of Robert Powell, the lone member to vote against the egregious CCS contract,.  This company was originally slated to receive $1.1B contract from DOE despite having been involved in a multi-million kickback scheme,. Powell recently resigned from the Panel as a result.

·         Though the CCS contract was later rejected by City Hall after the PEP approved it, and rebid saving of hundreds of millions of dollars, it was just revealed that the company still has several active contracts with the DOE.  In fact, CCS has received  $21.5 million  since May 2011, when the special investigator issued his report  revealing the company’s collusion with Ross Lanham, who later went to jail for stealing millions from DOE.

·         There continue to be numerous contracts in which the DOE asks the PEP for retroactive approval, after the services have been provided and the funds have already been spent.

·         The DOE has proposed to get around the contracting rules by reimbursing a private organization that had paid preK vendors, presumably because their records were too spotty to be approved for city contracts in the first place.

·         There are numerous proposed contracts submitted to the PEP without background checks and/or checks that reveal that the vendors had previously engaged in fraud or other improper behavior.

·         There are many contracts for which DOE either minimizes the problems with the vendors' previous performance (as, for example, with CCS or Pearson contracts) or in which DOE entirely omits information of past improprieties, as  in the case of Yeled v’Yalda.

·        There are numerous contracts -- either sole source or competitive - which provide no evidence that any quality control or cost-benefit analyses by DOE – for example, in the Amazon contract and the vast majority of PD and curriculum contracts.

      Despite all these problems, the DOE proposed contracts, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, are often unanimously approved at Panel meetings with little or no discussion or debate.

·         The DOE also has refused  to comply with the state law requiring financial training for Panel members, even after Isaac Carmignani, a current Panel member and mayoral appointee, asked for such training.

      Here is a link to the 2005 state law, which is quite detailed and mandates that at least six hours of training be provided all school board members on their "financial oversight, accountability and fiduciary responsibilities.”  The law also requires that an internal audit committee be formed, which must hold regular meetings to address “any indications of suspected fraud, waste or abuse,” among other responsibilities.

      NYC is exempt from the mandate as long as there is financial training and an audit committee  “that meets or exceeds these requirements.” Yet according to current and past Panel members, there is no real financial training and no audit committee exists.

Now that at least two past Panel members – including Bronx rep Robert Powell and former mayoral appointee Norm Fruchter – agree that the current system creates no real checks and balances, what is the answer?  

Certainly Panel members should all receive their legally mandated six hours of financial training, but is that enough? Please offer your views below.

If others want to take a look at the contracts up for a vote on May 18, they are here.

If you have comments or want to join our Committee, please email NYCschoolcontractwatch@gmail.com.  

thanks!  Leonie 

The Occupy Activist Teacher that the DOE Spent $1,000,000 to Try to Fire and Lost

Here is the story of David Suker, a US Army veteran who taught at-risk students for 14 years, and was removed from a Bronx GED classroom in December 2011 after he’d spoken out about the horrendous conditions experienced by the students there. As reported by Sue Edelman in the NY Post, DOE spent four years and more than $1 million trying to fire him, a case that they lost at every level; first the arbitrator, then at the State Supreme Court level, and at the Appellate Court.  Now yet another arbitrator has ordered him reinstated, and that he be given $260,000 in back pay, though he has to pay a $7000 fine.

The saga of my current ordeal, the three year termination of my ability to teach in NYC schools, and subsequent reinstatement by some of the highest courts in New York, specifically the New York State Supreme Court and the Appellate Division, oddly began back in August of 2008 on my way to the Democratic National Convention in Denver to witness history. Barack Obama was being nominated, and as a licensed high school social studies teacher, I wanted to say that I was there. Well that didn't happen.

While riding my Vespa Scooter to the convention from New York City, about 100 miles from Denver I was blindsided by an 18 wheeler from behind. It's safe to say I was lucky that I escaped with my life -- a broken jaw, some really bad scrapes and nothing more. I took three months off to recuperate, but when I came back to teach I was placed in a stairwell, outside of the main office, where the main office to my program, GED-Plus was located, with no teaching responsibilities. At the time I thought this was odd, but I was just glad I was alive and back to making a living. I didn't view this as punishment, but now with hindsight, I see how vindictive this system can be.

The reason I was sitting in the stairwell – I sat there for over a month before the administration of GED-Plus grudgingly sent me back to my site to teach my GED students -- had nothing to do with my competency but did have everything to do with my big mouth. You see, my principal, Robert Zweig, had been appointed Deputy Superintendent to District 79 (the district composed of alternative high schools and programs) a year previous, but his appointment was held up because of  allegations that he had a liaison with an assistant principal. The investigation took about a year and I'm pretty sure he was cleared, but I suspect that now he was in a position of even more power, he felt emboldened to go after those teachers who had been speaking out about him and his leadership of the program.

The previous incarnation of GED-Plus was called OES, or Offsite Educational Services, and that was closed in June of 2007. Principal Zweig was promoted, the teachers had to reapply for their jobs, and we were all very nervous. Few people spoke out, but I did and now I see the price was huge. I was put in the Rubber Room for 18 months shortly after being placed back in the classroom in 2009, but no charges were ever brought.

The Rubber Rooms were supposedly closed in June of 2010, and in October of that year I finally went back to teaching. I wasn't sent back to my old site on 145th Street in Harlem where I had previously been so successful, helping get over one hundred students their GED's over a three year period in a one teacher site.

No, I was sent to a dumping ground for teachers and students alike at Bronx Regional High School, a GED-Plus "Hub" with multiple classrooms where our 17-21-year-old students were the most disenfranchised in the system. This ESL/Literacy/Pre-GED site was where I was to be kept an eye on by my principal. I know this because I was standing outside my AP's door on my first day there and I overheard his conversation with her.

Things at this new site were not terrible by NYC standards, but even I was surprised at the lack of concern for moving our students into more advanced programs. All the administration cared about was attendance and enrollment. At the end of the year I was given an Unsatisfactory rating and a $1,000 fine for the ten absences. Most of my absences revolved around the care for my dad who has Parkinson's, but Zweig didn't bother to ask.

Then Occupy happened. I was arrested at the lead of the march across Brooklyn Bridge and four more times.  I plead guilty to one violation, and was found guilty of of another because I ignored the lawful order to get off the bridge. I was happily an "Occupier" and teacher and felt the two could coincide. That thought didn't last very long. At the time of my third arrest, the DoE removed me from the classroom, placed me in a "working" Rubber Room and started a full-on 3020-a termination hearing against me.

The DOE started digging up the most minuscule offenses from my past to charge me with.  When  even that  wasn't enough to silence my criticism of the DOE and its policies affecting at-risk youth,  a "memo" was sent. The DoE wanted to know where my daughter lived because she was at a NYC high school and in 10th grade, and I was living part-time in Long Island, taking care of my dad.

Without my knowledge, they interrogated my daughter at least three times, finally getting her to admit that she lived in the Bronx with her mom. My daughter never told me or her mother about any of this because of the shame and responsibility that she felt for getting me in trouble. They sent undercover investigators to her house and to the management company for the apartment in which she lived. They also knew her mom's and my dad's automobile license numbers and were secretly watching them for some substantial amount of time, which I learned from all the details in the Special Commission of Investigations report that I first saw during the middle of my 3020-a proceedings.

This final charge of "defrauding" the DoE was what got me fired. The problem with that charge is that I never committed fraud, plus the charges went back years ago, to when she was in kindergarten, 1st grade, and 5th grade, when I applied and enrolled my daughter into the three public schools that she attended. This fraud charge was erroneous because I was living in multiple addresses in the districts where my daughter’s schools were located and I didn’t have a permanent address from the time my daughter was in kindergarten.

There is a three year limit for which you can bring 3020-a charges and this "fraud" charge was clearly past that point, because my daughter was in her 2nd semester of 10th grade. They tried getting around this by arguing that this was "criminal" conduct, but never attempted to prove this was a criminal offense to the arbitrator, let alone in criminal court.

The fraud charge was thrown out in 2013 by the New York Supreme Court and the remaining charges were remanded to another DOE arbitrator for punishment less than termination.  Here is an excerpt from the Supreme Court decision from Judge Alice Schlesinger:  

As this Court stated earlier, the school’s leadership did not want petitioner Suker to remain there as a teacher. They did not like him or approve of his actions. They believed he was insubordinate, that he did not conduct himself properly, that he was getting arrested too often, and probably that he was not a team player. It is possible that much of that is true. But with the exception of the two episodes involving disruptive students, which had occurred almost three years earlier in 2009 and had not resulted in discipline, no one has claimed that David Suker is not a good and/or effective teacher.  

Finally, it should be noted that the conduct spelled out in Charge 3, regarding a false address for his daughter, never involved Suker’s own school and never would have been discovered but for the DOE’S decision to target Suker to see if an investigation could find something to be used against him, which it did. But that “something” should not be a basis for terminating this tenured teacher, for the reasons already discussed.”

But the DOE refused to give up, and appealed the case to the Appellate Court, where they lost once again, wasting another two years of my life and thousands more in taxpayers’ dollars.

The lesson that I've garnered from this more than seven year odyssey is that the system is irrevocably broken, but that at least a few teachers can seek out and find justice, myself included. Imagine though for a second what happens to the student that is caught up in a similar Orwellian nightmare, which I'm guessing is not all that uncommon.

If I almost succumbed to multiple threats over the past several years and I'm a veteran, father, and "educated professional," with everything to live for, then what are our students and their parents facing? It's those nightmares that I try to avoid when I fall asleep at night, but the reality isn't so kind.

Thank you for listening. :)

-- David Suker

Class sizes NOT reduced to low enough levels at Renewal schools: my testimony today

Update: It was mostly a love fest yesterday at the City Council hearings on Renewal schools, though Council Member Danny Dromm, the chair of the Education Committee, asked good questions and Jumaane Williams said he thought class size was more important than Common Core. (Yay!) 

The UFT sent the VP of  middle schools, Rich Mantell, and two teachers from Renewal schools extolling the virtues of the program, though one of the teachers at a school in District 9 admitted to Dromm she still had classes of 30 – with many high needs students, including homeless children from shelters. 

She bewailed the fact that the school was co-located with a charter and squeezed for space.  See more news coverage of the hearings at Schoolbook/WNYC and Chalkbeat.

Testimony of Leonie Haimson before the NYC Council Education Committee

On the Renewal Schools

November 23, 2015

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.  My name is Leonie Haimson; I run Class Size Matters, a citywide advocacy group devoted to providing information on the benefits of smaller classes to NYC parents and concerned citizens nationwide.

Since last year, the Department of Education has repeatedly claimed in their Contract for Excellence presentations that they would focus their state-mandated efforts to reduce class size on the 94 Renewal Schools.  This claim was made in December 2014, in their response to public comments to last year’s (2014-2015) Contract for Excellence plan,  and in two presentations, in the spring of 2015 and this fall, for this year’s (2015-2016) C4E plan, posted online and provided at borough hearings and Community Education Council meetings.

 “To better align with the Chancellor’s priorities, C4E’s class size reduction plan will now focus on the 94 schools in the School Renewal Program. For more information and for a list of Renewal Schools please visit: http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/schools/RenewalSchool. [1]

A link is provided to the School Renewal page where no mention of class size can be found.[2] 

This fall I received complaints from parents and CEC members about the increase in class sizes at their schools, including PS 111, a Renewal school in District 30 Queens where Kindergarten class sizes increased to 27 and first grade class sizes to 31.  Though the CEC co-chair communicated with the Aimee Horowitz about this, the Executive Superintendent of the Renewal Schools, Ms. Horowitz refused to express any view or to take any action to lower them. [3] On October 19, the UFT also reported that there were hundreds of classes in Renewal schools that violated the union contractual limit of 34 students per class in high schools, and 30 in Title I middle schools. [4]

This fall, Class Size Matters and parents have repeatedly asked DOE officials at CEC meetings and by email for the list of Renewal Schools in which class size has been lowered, what funds are being used to accomplish this goal, and what oversight DOE is exercising to see that this goal is accomplished.[5]

On November 12, I attended an hour long briefing at City Hall by Ms. Horowitz about the various programs the DOE was implementing in the Renewal schools.  She made no mention of class size.  When I asked her specifically which Renewal schools had reduced class size, and what funding and strategies were employed to accomplish this, she said that all 94 Renewal schools were expected to have “proper” class sizes through the use of their additional Fair Student Funding. [6] When I followed up with an email asking what the definition of “proper” class sizes was, I received no response.

After the DOE released their annual class size reports on November 15, we analyzed the average class sizes at the 94 Renewal schools this year compared to last year. We found that 36 out of 94 schools (about 38 percent) did NOT reduce average class size this year.[7]  The highest rates of non-compliance were in Queens, where 50 percent of Renewal schools failed to reduce class size, and in the Bronx, where 40 percent of schools failed to reduce class size.We further found that 56 schools (about 60 percent) had at least some classes at 30 or more, and only seven schools  (about 7 percent) capped class sizes at the C4E goals of 20 students per class in grades K-3, 23 per class in grades 4-8, and 25 in core high school classes.[8] 

In June 2003, in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, the state’s highest court wrote that “[T]ens of thousands of students are placed in overcrowded classrooms … and provided with inadequate facilities and equipment. The number of children in these straits is large enough to represent a systemic failure.” [9]  The Court of Appeals said that our students were deprived of their constitutional right to a sound basic education because their class sizes were too large, and yet class sizes have not decreased significantly since then. 

 In fact, class sizes in grades K-3 have significantly increased since 2003 – and are more than 14 percent larger than when that decision was written. This year there are over 48,000 K-3 students in classes of 30 or more, and more than 351,776 students in classes that large overall – more than one third of all NYC public school students in general education, inclusion and gifted classes.[10]  

Though all students need and deserve smaller classes, students in the struggling schools should receive them first.[11]  We strongly urge the DOE to adhere to their promises to parents and the state, and ensure that students in the Renewal schools receive the support they need to succeed by capping class sizes at C4E levels.  There is no other education reform that has as strong an evidence base as class size reduction, which has been shown not only lead to better grades, higher test scores, more student engagement and improved graduation rates, but fewer student disciplinary referrals and lower teacher attrition rates as well.[12]

Thank you for your time.

---

[1] NYC DOE Assessment 2014-2015 Contracts for Excellence Public Comment, December 30, 2014, p. 4 at: 
http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/AF304521-9C1E-4EA6-B694-5F9CC80487E9/175614/C4EPublicCommentAssessment20142015FINAL.pdf 

See also DOE Contracts for Excellence Proposed FY 2016 Citywide Plan – (Borough Wide Presentation), July 2015, slide 14 at: http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/26881653-C4C8-4ACC-AD13-537D6B93B486/184676
/2016C4EBoroughPresentation071515FINAL.pdf and DOE Contracts for Excellence Proposed FY 2016 Plan (CEC presentation),  July 2015, slide 14 at: http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/26881653-C4C8-4ACC-AD13-537D6B93B486/187463/2016C4ECECPresentation.pptx

[2] http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/schools/RenewalSchool
 

[3] Letter from Aimee Horowitz to Valerie Lamour, October 07, 2015.

[4] See http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2015/10/are-5485-classes-this-fall-that-violate.html and the list of Renewal schools with the most class size violations as of October 19 below.

[5] See http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/C4E-questions-10.12.151.pdf

[6] For more on this see,  http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2015/11/my-frustrating-thursday-does-evasions.html

[7] DOE data for school specific class sizes as of Oct. 30, 2015 by grade and subject area can be found here: http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/schools/data/classsize/classsize.htm   We averaged the sizes of general education, inclusion and gifted classes at each school. As middle schools report class size two ways, by grade and subject area, we averaged the schoolwide data across both those categories.

[8] The DOE does not report on the distribution of class sizes at individual schools, only the largest class sizes, so we cannot ascertain through the data alone how many classes of 30 or more are at the Renewal schools.

[9] Court of Appeals decision, Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc., et al. v. State of New York, et al., 100 N.Y.2d 893, 911-12, June 2003.

[10] Class Size Matters, “Summary of 2015 Class Size data,” Nov. 16, 2015, at https://shar.es/1cpXyu See also: Ben Chapman and Lisa Colangelo, “More NYC public elementary school students in overcrowded classes, study reveals”, NY Daily News, Nov. 21, 2015.

[11] Leonie Haimson, “Real Solutions to the Scandal of Struggling Schools,” Gotham Gazette, Aug 17, 2015.

[12] Institute of Education Sciences., Identifying and Implementing Educational Practices Supported by Rigorous Evidence: A User Friendly Guide, 2003.  See also fact sheets at http://www.classsizematters.org/fact-sheets-on-the-benefits-of-class-size/