Bob Hughes, announced as member of NY's "Race to the Top" team and criticized by the EEOC the same day

According to Gotham Schools, Bob Hughes of New Visions will be part of the NY State team to appear before the panel of judges to determine the federal “Race to the Top” awards.

As EdWeek puts it, "How a state’s delegation performs in a 30-minute presentation and a 60-minute question-and-answer session with a panel of judges could make or break its chances in round one of the competition.”

This dog and pony show, which might be likened to “American Idol”, is a function of the politicization of these grants, which should be honestly won or lost on the basis of substance alone.

Unmentioned in the Gotham Schools are Hughes’ close ties to the Gates Foundation, which financed many of the small schools in NYC through his organization as an intermediary.

Some have said that the Gates Foundation is really the power behind the throne in determining who wins these awards – as well as many of the pro-privatization policies being pushed by the US Dept. of Education; the foundation also helped states write their RTTT applications.

The woman who head’s the RTTT program at the US Dept of Ed, Joanne Weiss, is former COO of New Schools Venture fund, which finances charter school expansion with large infusions of Gates money; accordingly, states can win “points” on their applications depending on how charter-friendly they are.

Other members of the NY State RTTT team are Laura Smith, formerly chief of staff under former deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf, and before that, an employee of the NYC Charter School Center, and deputy Commissioner John King, formerly head of the Uncommon Schools charter chain.

According to Gotham Schools, New Visions has a financial interest in NY State’s winning the funds:

Hughes has also said that New Visions would be a likely applicant for a program, proposed by the Regents, to allow alternative organizations to bypass education schools to certify teachers. [Merryl] Tisch also cited Hughes as an expert on how schools can effectively use data to guide their work with students and on launching high schools, an area that will become key as the state attempts to replace its lowest-performing schools. “Bob has a track record on this, and he is respected in every corner on this subject,” Tisch said. “I trust him, I trust his judgment.”

Hughes was also cited in the just-issued decision of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about the discriminatory dismissal of Debbie Almontaser as the principal of Khalil Gibran school: New Visions "concurred in DOE's judgment that she should resign and acted as agent in advising her to do so . . . . In the course of its advisory services to the Community Superintendent in the selection process, it concurred in DOE's conclusion that the circumstances of her resignation were such that continuing her candidacy was not desirable." (The EEOC decision is here.)

Hughes tried to get Almontaser to resign, but she refused until she could meet with the Chancellor, who was conveniently"unavailable." Instead, Deputy mayor Walcott acted as the designated hit-man, and threatened her that the school might be cancelled if she did not resign.

As David Bloomfield, expert on education law, pointed out, “Thus, while New Visions was found not liable since it was not in an employment relationship with Almontaser, it served as willing handmaiden to her illegal discriminatory dismissal 'on account of her race, religion, and national origin.'”

Schools slated for closure -- resulting from the failure of the administration's policies

The DOE announced yesterday that they intend to close four schools, with more such announcements expected in the near future. (The Mayor recently announced he would like to close 10% of all NYC schools over the next four years – which would mean more than 35 a year.) Yet the low performance of these schools signals the ongoing failure of the administration's educational policies.

The schools targeted for closure include William H. Maxwell CTE (Vocational) HS; a school that has been flooded with high needs student for many years. Last year Maxwell was at 94% utilization; not long ago it was the most overcrowded high school in NYC. It has target cap of 1055 – which was raised from 722 originally -- so you can see how overcrowded it really is.

From Inside Schools:

An Oct. 4, 2004 Daily News article by Elizabeth Hays details the severe overcrowding at Maxwell. In the article, Ms. Hays refers to Maxwell as "Sardine High" and notes: "the former all-girls technical school in East New York is the most overcrowded high school in the city, the city Independent Budget Office said in a recent study. In the past three years, enrollment at Maxwell has skyrocketed more than 30%, from 1,341 to 1,757. And that's in a building designed for 722 students."

In many ways Maxwell is emblematic of DOE’s failures – as they have overloaded large high schools, including vocational schools, with the students that none of the small schools would accept– including many uninterested in the vocations that the school specialized in.

It always astounded me that the small schools could get away with not admitting any student who didn’t tour the school and apply, but vocational schools, which require students not only to pass Regents, but to pass exams in specific technical/vocational areas, could be sent students with no interest in those careers. The DOE says that part of their reason for closing the school is its low four-year graduation rate, but vocational schools should probably be judged on a different standard, because of all the extra courses and tests that students have to pass.

I met a teacher from Jane Addams HS in the Bronx who told me that the school was until recently the second highest performing school in that borough, after Bronx Science. Yet the new administration had wrecked his school, he said, by barring them from admissions fairs and ensuring that all the best students would enroll in the new small “New Century” high schools, funded by the Gates foundation. As a result, Addams and many other large Bronx high schools got sent all the kids that nobody else wanted.

As for Maxwell, this year the school had classes in at least twelve subjects at the contractual maximum of 34 students per class (Class sizes supposedly averaged 28.2 – though I don’t trust those numbers.) It shows how little effort the DOE has put in trying to improve these schools before closing them down.

Ironic that DOE says they are intent on trying to start new vocational schools yet if this one is closed, we will have fewer students overall in these programs than before.

Moreover, as the large schools are closed, the same sort of high needs population is sent to other large high schools nearby, overcrowding them and bringing down their performance level, like dominoes falling one by one.

See this report from Policy Studies Associates, which New Visions tried to suppress, and our analysis from November 2004, highlighting the increased pressure on the host or neighboring schools, “as a huge influx of transfers, including many "at risk" and special education students excluded from these schools, flooded other schools nearby.”

This “collateral damage” was recently conclusively shown by the recent report from the New School, “The New Marketplace: How Small-School Reforms and School Choice Have Reshaped New York City's High Schools, ” which points out:


As the city closed large troubled high schools and opened small schools in their place, thousands of students, most of whom had low levels of academic achievement were diverted to the remaining large schools in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. Enrollment increased at three-quarters of those schools, while attendance and graduation rates declined at more than 40 percent of the remaining large schools in those three boroughs.


The DOE to this day continues to deny the damaging effects of their school closure policies, and to this day has not yet devised a process to implement it more effectively.

Also, as a recent report on discharges that I co-authored with Jennifer Jennings reveals, discharge rates spike when a school is closed or phased out– meaning hundreds of students are sent elsewhere or “pushed out”, to GED programs or nowhere at all; students who never have a chance to graduate with a diploma but are not counted as dropouts. Click on this chart, for more details

As to the other three schools slated for closure, they are all smaller schools, recently created under this administration.

They include the Academy of Environmental Science Secondary High School in East Harlem, with lots of classes at 30 or above. Also, Frederick Douglass Academy III in the South Bronx, with middle school classes at 33 – while the schools it was modeled after, FDA I and II, in Manhattan have significantly smaller classes.

KAPPA II middle school in East Harlem is also being closed, has had as many as five principals in five years, as well as classes at 30 students or more. I imagine they probably want the space in these three buildings to house charter schools, or perhaps even newer small schools.

The apparently poor performance of FDA III and Kappa II shows how hard it is to replicate successful schools. How many FDA’s have there been created -- eight or more? And there are nine other Kappas.

In reality, DOE is breeding new small schools each year like rabbits, with no thought of quality control, sustainability, or collateral damage on the system as a whole.

For more on this story, see City to Shut 4 Schools for Poor Performance; More Closings Expected (NY Times); City announces plans to shut four “failing” public schools (GothamSchools ); DOE Puts Four Schools On Performance Chopping Block (NY1); City education officials to close three schools least likely to succeed (News).

Update, 12/05: sure enough, according to the EIS (Educational impact statement), DOE wants to close the Academy of Environmental Sciences to put a new charter school in its place. Check out the public notice. Bet you that school won't have any classes at thirty or above. Comments due Jan. 25.

No evidence of improved outcomes at NYC's small schools

Joel Klein and his friends at New Visions often trumpet the results of their small schools initiative, claiming these schools have improved achievement and graduation rates for their students, compared to those attending other NYC public schools. And in a recent speech, while Bill Gates admitted to the overall failure of the small school initiative, which he had funded to the tune of nearly $2 billion, he still claimed that the small schools in NYC had succeeded:

“Their graduation rates were nearly 40 percentage points higher than the rates in the schools they replaced. In 2006, the small schools' graduation rates exceeded those of comparable schools in the district by 18 percentage points.”

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), of the Institute for Education Sciences, the research arm of the US Dept. of Education, produces objective analyses of education research. In a recent report, the WWC summarized all the available research on dropout prevention programs and strategies, including 84 evaluations of 22 programs, and found only four that had positive results, in terms of helping students stay in school longer and/or progressing more rapidly. A few programs showed some evidence of helping students to graduate from school.

Guess which programs/schools had no convincing evidence of improved results? The NYC small schools funded by Gates. The WWC analyzed twelve different studies of NYC’s small schools, called “New Century High Schools” and found:

No studies of the New Century High Schools Initiative that fell within the scope of the Dropout Prevention review meet WWC evidence standards. The lack of studies meeting WWC evidence standards means that, at this time, the WWC is unable to draw any conclusions based on research about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of New Century High Schools.

Here is an excerpt from the New Visions press release, boasting about the results of these schools, as reported in the final Policy Studies Associates study, a supposedly independent evaluation that was also funded by the Gates Foundation:

New York, NY October 16, 2007 -- An independent research study of 75 New Century High Schools (NCHS) reports a significantly higher average graduation rate than the citywide average in the first schools with graduating classes. The study also notes higher rates of student retention, promotion, and attendance than in other New York City public high schools...…“We conclude that the NCHS intervention was notable with regard to dropout prevention and on time graduation,” the PSA researchers found. “Keeping youth in school earning credits and passing exams is a significant accomplishment, and it is a basis on which to build deeper accomplishments."

What did WWC say about this and the other PSA reports, as well as two West Ed studies, also funded by Gates?

These studies were rejected, because “the intervention and comparison groups are not shown to be equivalent at baseline” – meaning that the students who attended the new small high schools were not shown to be similar to those to whom they were being compared.

Six other studies of the NYC small schools were rejected, “because [they do] not examine the effectiveness of an intervention,” including this one from the Carnegie Foundation, “Small schools in the big city: Promising results validate reform efforts in New York City high schools.

The Institute for Education Studies has concluded, by the way, that that class size reduction is one of only four, evidence-based reforms that through rigorous, randomized experiments have been proven to work – the "gold standard" of research. None of the strategies attempted by the NYC Department of Education under Joel Klein's leadership were cited.

The truth behind the new small schools

Andrew Wolf has a good column in the Sun about the deceptive ads from the Fund for Public Schools, called "Evander Childs Turnaround". The statistics clearly show that the students who were recruited for the new Gates-funded small schools now housed in the Evander building were much higher achieving before they ever enrolled in these new schools than those who had previously attended the school, undermining the administration's claim that it was its reforms that improved graduation rates.

The NY Times last spring ran both a credulous article and an editorial that read like press releases about the rise in graduation rates in these schools, without mentioning this salient fact. An excerpt from Wolf’s column:

The Fund for New York City Public Schools, a charitable group run by the Chancellor that once raised money to buy things to enhance the education of our public school children, is now spending millions on television commercials to convince the public that the programs are working. One of these commercials, highlighting "progress" at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, has drawn particular attention on the growing network of blogs that critique the conditions in city schools.

Wolf credits the statistical findings that the students enrolled in these new schools started out way aheadto a recent Eduwonkette column and one posted last spring on the UFT blog by Leo Casey . Both were terrific pieces of work, and it’s great that this issue is finally receiving the attention it deserves, but it is long overdue.

Almost two years earlier, I pointed out some of these same facts to the Panel on Educational Policy and the United Parents Associations, in a summary posted here. Much of it was based on a report by Policy Studies Associates completed in March 2005, but suppressed for many months by New Visions before it was finally leaked to the NY Times eight months later. The authors of the PSA report based their analysis on background student data received directly from DOE. Too bad the reporters – and editors – of the Times seem to have conveniently forgotten its findings.

The PSA report examined not just those new schools placed in Evander but throughout the Bronx, those Gates-funded New Visions schools grandly called the New Century High Schools. It described how the creation of these schools had led to worse conditions and more overcrowding for those students left behind in the large schools who shared their facilities, and/or those who had been diverted to other already overcrowded schools nearby. And it pointed out how these excluded students were far needier academically than those who had been recruited for the new small schools:

Here is an excerpt from my summary:

“By gaining access to student records, the [PSA] analysis substantiates what DOE officials have long denied – that these schools recruit students with better scores, attendance, and overall records than the population from which they are drawn. See for example the recent [Sept. 2005] NYC Partnership report -- which misleadingly compares NCHS students to the average student citywide.

As the Policy Studies report points out, "These citywide comparisons are of only limited usefulness, since [this] initiative is intended to improve education opportunities and outcomes for students who might otherwise attend some of the city's most troubled high schools." Thus their evaluation properly compares the earlier records of students at the new small schools to those attending neighboring or host comprehensive high schools.

The students at the small schools had eighth grade math and reading scores significantly higher than their peers in the comparison schools; and 97% of them had been promoted in the prior year, compared with only 59% of the students at the comparison schools. They had better attendance records (91% compared to 81%), and were less likely to have been suspended. They were much less likely to need special education services. Only six percent of Bronx NCHS students had IEPs, compared with 25% at the comparison schools; and none of the NCHS special education students had the most serious disabilities. Indeed, teachers at the new small schools praised their principals for "recruiting more high-performing students".

I also pointed out that these schools did appear to be doing a better job keeping their students engaged – something ignored by the recent exposes – but not because of the size of the schools, as New Visions and the Gates foundation claim, but primarily because of their smaller classes:

While the students attending small schools maintained their previously good attendance, even the subset of students who previously had good attendance who enrolled at the larger high schools experienced a 10% drop in attendance in 9th grade. And while 6% of NCHS students transferred schools, and 10% were discharged from the system entirely, the transfer rate among incoming students at the larger schools was 14% and the discharge rate was 20% -- showing that more than a third of these students departed from the larger schools each year. …

Why were the new small schools more successful at keeping their students engaged? Students reported that their teachers were able to know them well, give them individualized instruction and help, and provide lots of attention in and out of class. As one pointed out, "the teachers I have had at other schools never knew me."

While class sizes at the larger high schools average 30 students or more, class sizes at most of the new small schools were between 13 and 20 students, as pointed out by the first year evaluation. The fact that these schools provided much smaller classes was noted by students themselves in surveys as their most valuable quality. As a result, “Teachers listen to you and get your opinion.” “In a normal high school, they don’t talk to you when you have a problem. They don’t care.” Another student said, “Slipping through the cracks? Not at this school!” Indeed, without smaller classes it's hard to see how these schools could succeed in their mission at all. …

If you take higher achieving students, and give them smaller classes, it should be no surprise to anyone that they will do far better and graduate in larger numbers than the lower-achieving students left behind in classes of 30 or more, attending overcrowded schools on double and triple shifts.

In the New Visions interim report there is a timeline in which by 2010, "innovative educational methods from NYC's small high schools" are supposed to "improve teaching and learning at the city's traditional high schools." This is critical, since even if its ambitious goal is achieved of 200 new smaller schools, fully two thirds of NYC students will continue to attend larger high schools.

As the smaller classes in the small schools appear to be their most successful elements, without a plan to eventually reduce class size and provide more individualized help to all high school students, it is difficult to see how this will ever occur.

As one parent recently asked, where did all those students who once attended Evander go? I wish I knew. Probably into the great ranks of the desaparecidos -- those thousands of poor souls who each year, magically disappear from the system, without being counted as dropouts.

My more recent City Council testimony from last November is here, with more about how the new small schools not only excluded our neediest students, but also provided them with much smaller classes -- and how the administration has no plan to deal with the increasing inequities of the system it has created.

See also our earlier post about the Fund for Public School's deceptive ads that claim class sizes have been reduced in our schools -- and how this organization, which was founded to provide more resources and programs for students in our turned into a PR arm for the Mayor's political image.

Small schools success?

See articles from the NY Times and NY Post about the Gates-funded small schools boasting of much higher graduation rates than the larger schools that they replaced. A few points omitted or glossed over in these articles:

First of all, these comparisons assume that the students who attended both sets of schools were similar. Yet the independent evaluation done by Policy Studies Associates (in pdf) revealed that the students who were admitted to the small schools in all respects were much more likely to succeed. (This study was suppressed by New Visions until a copy was leaked by a critic to the NY Times in 2005.)

Not only were there far fewer English language learners and special education students among them, two groups with the worst graduation rates in the city, but on average, their students also had higher test scores, higher grades, better attendance, and were far less likely to have been held back than students at the large host schools. For example, only 10% of the students at the small schools scored below basic in their 8th grade ELA exams, compared with 35% at their host schools -- with a similar disparity in math. Moreover, 97% had been promoted in the prior year, compared with only 59% of the students at the host schools.

They had better attendance records in middle school (91% compared to 81%), and were less likely to have been suspended. Only 6% of Bronx NCHS students had IEPs, compared with 25% at the comparison schools; and none of the students at the small schools had the most serious disabilities. Indeed, teachers at the new small schools praised their principals for "recruiting more high-performing students."

The new small schools also had significantly more resources, more space, and much smaller classes than the large schools that they replaced. While class sizes at the larger high schools averaged 30 students or more, class sizes at most of the new small schools were between 13 and 20 students, as the first year PSA evaluation (in pdf) noted.

Students observed that their smaller classes were their most valuable aspect: “they liked the small class sizes, the willingness of teachers to provide extra help…” One student said, “I like the close thing with teachers and that you can discuss your problems with them.” According to another, “I like that it’s small, and we each get attention. There’s not one person who doesn’t get attention from our teachers. And they treat us all the same. In a normal high school, they don’t talk to you when you have a problem. They don’t care.”

I don’t think that it should be any surprise that if you take higher-performing students and give them smaller classes, they will be more likely to graduate on time than lower-achieving students with much larger classes.

Another important point to note that as the small schools take up more space, and exclude so many special ed, ELL, and low-performing students, large schools throughout the city have become even more overcrowded with "at risk" students, undermining their chance of success. Many affected high schools have since been put on the state failing list, including Murray Bergtraum, Washington Irving, Norman Thomas, Jane Adams, etc. etc.

The question is if this is equitable and sustainable, with so many of our large schools destabilized. Sadly, the administration has no strategy to improve these high schools, rather than close them down, exclude the neediest students, and cause more overcrowding and failure elsewhere.

As more than two thirds of our HS students continue to attend large schools, there needs to be some plan in place to increase the capacity of these schools so they can provide their students with some of the same sort of opportunities, including smaller classes.

Unfortunately, no such plan exists.

For more on these issues, see the recent Class Size Matters testimony to the City Council.

Also, Tilden HS teachers fight for their school’s survival. Though the school has one of the few bilingual programs for Haitian students, and a good record of graduating ELL students, the administration is determined to shut it down. Yet it is these very students who will be likely be excluded from the small schools taking Tilden’s place.

Even some of the older generation of small schools face the same fate --- being closed down prematurely so that the administration can establish yet another generation of small schools in its place: see the statement from teachers at the New School for Arts and Sciences, a small high school in the Bronx, that has improved results for its population of about 40% ELL and special ed students.

This just in: see Diane Ravitch's take on the media's unthinking acceptance of the administration's small school spin in Ed Week.

Schools choose their partners!

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

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

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

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

The Fix is (No Longer) In

A recent Daily News report that the NY City Department of Education is using school repair money to build a $38,000 luxury lounge facility may be just the tip of the iceberg. According to a source inside the DOE, the consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal (A&M), has decided to close the Division of School Facilities and will then take over its Long Island City headquarters. The Division is responsible for school repair and maintenance, but A&M has determined that repairing schools is not cost effective. It is far cheaper, they decided, to simply close down those schools which are in need of repair, and to put their students into “small schools” within the remaining school buildings that do not have repair or maintenance problems. The Facilities Division will thus become superfluous, and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has agreed to sell its building to A&M for the price of $1.

Apparently, the lounge that was the subject of the news report is only the beginning of a complete luxury renovation of the former Facilities headquarters building. The building is to become a sort of private “clubhouse” where A&M executives and those of DOE partners such as Edison Schools and New Visions can relax and decompress after a hard day of plundering the city school system. The cost of the renovation, which will be borne by the DOE, is to be defrayed in part by applying the $1 price that A&M will pay for the building.

This entire plan has been a closely guarded secret, but, according to the DOE source, there is more to the secrecy than meets the eye. There has reportedly been growing concern among DOE staffers as to the Chancellor’s state of mind since he reportedly became addicted to playing the new monopoly-like game, “Children First: A Game of Irony”, and these staffers have become convinced that the Chancellor has been confusing the game with reality. Blaming an “overzealous” aide for the recent ill-advised sale of a historic school building may, according to this view, have been simply a way to cover up the Chancellor’s own misconception that this sale was part of the game. It is unclear whether the decision to renovate and sell the Facilities Division building represents a similar circumstance, but speculation is that A&M Co-Chairman Bryan Marsal may have actually “acquired” the building from the Chancellor playing “Children First”.

In other education news, Chancellor Klein was said to be so pleased with the success of his appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as School Transportation chief, that he is looking to employ other notables with a proven track record in public relations. For example, Mr. Klein has reportedly offered an unspecified position to recently fired radio “Shock Jock” Don Imus. However, Mr. Imus spurned the offer, saying that the DOE was “just too controversial”.

New Visions Caves

NYC Public School Parents orginally told the story of how New Visions, an organization seeking to become one of the DoE's Partnership Support Organizations (PSO), was using its control of Gates Foundation grants to force schools to select it as a PSO. Today, Erin Einhorn of the Daily News reports they have backed down on this controversial practice:

Late yesterday, New Visions director Robert Hughes issued a statement saying all schools that qualify for grants will be entitled to them regardless of whether they hire New Visions. He declined to elaborate on why he had changed his mind.

While this decision is a positive development, the episode shines a harsh spotlight on the rushed preparations to eliminate the DoE regional support structures.

"Visions of Cash"

Today, intrepid reporter Erin Einhorn of the Daily News followed the trail of the story that we first broke on our blog last Wednesday, "A Free Choice for Principals?" In the article entitled "Visions of Cash", she describes how the organization New Visions is distributing Gates Foundation grants to new schools but has "decided to attach strings to the cash: It wants a payoff of sorts."

Officials at New Visions have told principals at the start-up schools that they will not get any funding unless they also sign New Visions up as their PSO, or Partnership Support Organization, for the next five years, which means paying them substantial funds out of their limited school budgets.

A principal was quoted that she feels "blackmailed":

"I thought, 'Oh, my God, what a huge conflict of interest,'" the principal said. "We have to join their PSO and pay them for support in order to get this grant that we qualified for?"

The Gates foundation refused to comment; a DOE spokesperson said that "it's too early to comment on what rules PSOs will be required to follow or whether New Visions had broken them."

Just like the Children's First game, or the new Survivor version, this reflects the administration's way of making up the rules up as they go along, to make sure that no one will know what they are until it's too late! Luckily, in this case, the DOE may not be the final arbiter -- there are laws about this sort of thing.

In related news, the LISs (or Learning instructional supervisors, whose positions were established just a few years ago and are now being eliminated) are running scared. They have been reportedly warned by DOE officials in charge of the internal Learning Support Organizations that they will get jobs only if they persuade enough principals that they still supervise to sign up -- and promise to pay cold hard cash -- to the LSO.

A message from an insider at Tweed:

"LISs and others seeking to stay employed have allegedly been told that their invitation to join an LSO will be dependent upon how many schools they bring in with them. Principals are reaching out to colleagues and friends across district and borough lines to put together networks. Parents seem to be out of the loop. The Chancellor made it clear that the choice of support organization is the PRINCIPALS alone."

Is this the sort of school system we want for our kids?

"Children First" Game Rule Clarification

The post below, "A Free Choice for Principals?" requires a rule clarification for the new Monopoly-like game, "Children First: A Game of Irony":

According to the rules, if someone lands on one of your schools, they pay you but you must then kick back 10% to the support organization you have chosen. If you have not chosen a support organization, you collect nothing and also lose 10% of your budget due to your "ineffective leadership".

However, remember the "Chancellor" can change the rules of the game at any time. The only check on his power to do this is that he must first consult with the "real stakeholders": Edison Schools, New Visions, and Alvarez and Marsal.

A free choice for principals?

Under the proposed reorganization, the Department of Education is asking principals to choose a support organization – either an external Partnership Support Organization, (PSO), an internal DoE-led Learning Support Organization (LSO), or if their school becomes an empowerment school, they can draw on that network for support.

This initiative is being described as freeing up principals to choose the best services and deals possible from a range of possible sources – which of course, will have to be paid for out of their limited school budgets.

Here is an excerpt from a letter to principals by Joel Klein explaining the rationale:

As you know, an important priority of our Children First school reforms is making sure that all of our principals and school communities are held accountable for meeting rigorous goals for our students and are empowered to make the critical decisions about how best to succeed. You and your school community, not someone who works outside of your school, should determine what you need to be successful and you should have the resources and authority to make it happen. …. When you choose a School Support Organization, you and your school community have the chance to select the team that is best suited to help you, your staff, and your students succeed.

Not until mid-April are principals supposed to receive ”detailed information” about the services being offered by each organization, and in April and May, there are supposed to be a “series of citywide and borough forums to “meet representatives of the School Support Organizations, learn more about the packages of services each is offering, and make informed decisions.”

In the letter, Klein adds that is “too early for you to come to a conclusion about the most appropriate support organization for your school. The School Support Organizations are still in development and will be described to you in detail in the coming months. Any 'decision' to affiliate before these options are fully developed and made known to you would be premature and would very likely short-change your school and your students.”

In fact, the DOE has not yet officially chosen among the organizations that have applied to become PSOs, though New Visions confidently announces on its website that it will be one of them.

Yet in many cases, this choice appears to be more illusory than real.

A recent email from a top staffer at New Visions says they will delay giving out grants to the small schools with the Gates Foundation funds, until and unless these schools choose them as their PSO.

Here is an excerpt: “Remember, by signing this grant agreement you also agree to become a member of the New Visions Partner Support Organization. This is a clear stipulation for receiving funding support.”

And, in case that wasn’t clear enough:. “Only after each of you signs on to our NV PSO will we be able to issue a grant implementation letter.”

Is this an inventive kickback scheme on the part of New Visions, to ensure that funds keep flowing to their organization, in this case in the form of taxpayer dollars? Clearly this will restrict the ability of principals at the small schools to freely choose which PSO might be best for their needs, given the fact that they rely on Gates-funded grants to keep these schools going.

Comments anyone? Do you think the practice of forcing schools to choose New Visions as their Partnership support organization is unethical, illegal, or just business as usual, in the ruthless world that Tweed is intent on establishing in our public school system?