Diane Ravitch asks: "Are we in an age of National Stupidity or National Insanity?"

In her latest posting, The Great Accountability Hoax, Ravitch points out that the so-called "accountability" policies being promoted by the Billionaire Boy's Club, the foundations, and now the Obama administration are a "great fraud and hoax, but our elected officials and policymakers remain completely oblivious to the harm caused by the policies they mandate."

Not only has the Chicago program of teacher merit pay proven to be ineffective, but a recent study shows that the similar NYC experiment that the administration spent $38 million on last year has shown no positive results:

"...we find little effect of the bonus program on student achievement in the first or second year of the program. We find no discernible effect on in-class or school-wide policies reported by students and teachers, such as additional tutoring sessions or increased use of student achievement data. Finally, we show that the bonus program had little effect on teacher turnover or the qualifications of newly hired teachers."

Roland Fryer's much bally-hooed experiments with paying kids for good test scores also failed miserably.

Nevertheless, the US Dept. of Education insists on increasing funding for merit pay through the Teacher Incentive Fund program to $900 million next year!

It appears that no amount of negative results will stop the privateers from continuing to promote their wasteful experiments on our kids in the name of "accountability," without acknowledging how their own behavior exhibits a failure of both financial and moral accountability.

Follow up letter to Harvard President about Fryer's large scale experiments on inner-city youth

Dear President Faust;

Thank you for your email from Sept. 12. I was relieved to hear that though Harvard may be hosting Roland Fryer’s new institute, you do not endorse the large-scale experiments being carried out on inner-city students to pay them for good test scores and the like.

However, I was disturbed to discover from a recent Washington Post article that Harvard’s name is printed on the checks that DC students receive from participating in this experiment, which appears to be a blatant attempt to exploit the good name of Harvard, and implies a literal endorsement by your institution:

“Others [students] sat quietly and studied the pale green checks with "Harvard University" in boldface across the top. Sixth-grader Kevin Sparrow-Bey, who took in $20, said he was annoyed by the assumption that he and his classmates have to be paid to take school seriously.” (Washington Post, “Delighted -- or Deflated -- by Dollars”, October 18, 2008).

Moreover, today’s Washington Post discusses the research that points to the possibility of a long-term decline in student morale and motivation resulting from such incentives – especially when the money runs out. As DePaul University Professor Ronald Chennault, is quoted as saying,

“…there are ethical issues involved, most of which are experimental and dependent on private funding and local political support. "The potential for harm is, what happens after the incentive no longer exists?" Chennault asked. "Not everything is worth trying." (Incentives Can Make Or Break Students,” November 2, 2008).

I wonder what Harvard’s attitude would be if this were instead a large-scale medical experiment on inner-city students, which earlier research had indicated posed a long term risk to their physical health – and whether you would want your institution’s name associated with it.

Finally, your letter did not respond to the question posed in my earlier email about whether it was appropriate for Professor Fryer to be in charge of evaluating the results of his own experiments – a practice contrary to accepted academic practice, which requires independent evaluation.

Please let me know if you think that 1- Harvard’s name on the checks awarded inner-city students does not imply Harvard’s endorsement of this experiment; 2- whether these experiments, if they are to occur at all, should not be small scale in nature -- rather than applied to half of all middle school students, as they in DC public schools, especially as the research points to a substantial risk of long-term harm; and 3- whether you think its appropriate that Prof. Fryer should evaluate the results of his own experiments.

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Despite all the advertising, the cell phone experiment is a flop

Yesterday’s NY Times features an article about the new institute at Harvard run by Roland Fryer with Eli Broad’s money, which is going to evaluate the results of Fryer’s large scale experiments to pay students for good test scores, also backed with Broad money. For more on this shockingly conflicted enterprise, which appears to violate academic standards on research practices, see Paola De Kock's earlier entry here.

But the Times article also mentions in passing that Fryer’s cell phone experiment – in typical hyperbolic fashion, called “The Millions” -- has collapsed due to lack of funding:

"A separate Fryer initiative, which rewarded 3,000 New York middle school students with cellphone minutes for academic performance and classroom behavior, was discontinued because the city did not raise enough money from private donors to pay for it this fall."

This cell phone experiment got huge attention when it was first announced, and lots of people found it a ridiculous idea, given the fact that cell phones are officially banned in school through the fiat of Mayor Bloomberg. There was also much criticism about running ads by commercial vendors on these phones, that could lead to even more consumerism on the part of teenagers, as well as text messages from the likes of Jay-Z , urging students to work hard and stay in school -- especially given the fact that he was himself a high school dropout.

Yet I wonder if this is the whole story. Did the cell phone experiment collapse for lack of funding? Or was it canceled because the first year results were so poor? Clearly if this project had trouble getting second year funding, the results were probably dismal.

What’s amazing to me is that through the summer, even when Tweed must have known that the project was foundering, the PR office continued to put out one press release after another about it.

See this one released in June: DOE's Student Motivation Campaign Wins 2008 Cannes Lion Titanium Award:

The unprecedented initiative began operating in late February 2008 as a pilot program in seven City middle schools. Approximately 2,500 students received a free cell phone, known as the “Million” for the million-plus City students, that operates based on how well students perform academically. As the pilot expands, the phones will be used as a platform to communicate directly with students through a messaging campaign designed to “re-brand” achievement. Mentoring programs will cement core messages of the campaign while providing students with workplace experience, life coaching, and academic support. The Million concept was developed in collaboration with Droga5, with extensive input from students. The program is entirely privately funded.

But not, apparently, funded enough to continue.

Instead, the cell phone experiment turned out to be a flop -- falsely promoted as a great success.

Like his colleagues at Tweed, Fryer seems to be a terrific snake oil salesman --attracting attention and building support despite the fact that his there is no research to support his large-scale incentive experiments, which already have started, one by one, to fail.

Our Children--Only Pawns in Their Experimental Game

"We will have the willingness to try new things and be wrong — the type of humbleness to say, I have no idea whether this will work, but I’m going to try." --Dr. Roland Fryer; 9/24/08

Perhaps discouraged by the refusal of NYC children to respond to financial incentives by actually performing better as opposed to just taking more tests, Dr. Fryer is returning to Boston to head something called the "Educational Innovation Laboratory" (see the splashy EdLabs website).

Dr. Fryer laments that billions are spent researching drugs and developing airplanes, while little is spent “to scientifically test educational theories.” Thus his friend, Eli Broad, (see picture above) and the Broad Foundation are helping him with the first $6 million of a $44 million, 3-year, “research and development initiative” that will have EdLabs “partner” with NYC’s Department of Education, the Chicago Public Schools, and the District of Columbia Public Schools.

What does this “partnership” mean? EdLabs will “connect” top academics from various fields with its own “R&D teams that will be embedded in these three school districts.” (emphasis added). There, the EdLabs folks will “foster innovation and objective measurement of the effectiveness of urban K-12 school district programs and practices” and “quantify the expected "student return from an investment" (sic.) to help leaders direct their limited resources into high-return programs and initiatives.”

In other words, the cheerleader-in-chief for market-oriented education strategies will evaluate the results of programs devised by ideologically aligned education officials, his own teams or even himself (such as the preposterous scheme to reward student performance with cell phones, which apparently has collapsed.). This passes as “rigorous research.”

When a drug company funds research to study the safety and efficacy of its own product, we have no difficulty understanding that conflict of interest is a problem and means the results are suspect. Imagine what credibility a drug study would have if the research team actually included drug company personnel! And would anyone even entertain the suggestion that the head of Philip Morris USA’s Youth Smoking Prevention Program should be included in any study of teenage smoking?

The incestuous relationships in this new initiative would not be tolerated in a scientific study involving drugs or other products. That the proposal is made with a straight face by people who are smart enough to know better shows the utter contempt they have for our children. This is fundamentally a business enterprise, not a serious attempt to evaluate educational strategies by standards that are applied to scientific research. Calling it a “lab” and putting it at Harvard doesn’t cleanse it of this taint.

And here’s the kicker for all us parents and taxpayers. The Broad Foundation is committing a mere $6 million in “jumpstart” funds--where do you suppose the other $38 million will come from? Need I say it? EdLabs’ sources of support include “the three participating school districts.”

-- Paola de Kock

the response to our letter from the President of Harvard

In response to my letter to Harvard and other foundations about their support for the controversial large-scale experiments in NYC and DC, being carried out by Roland Fryer, to pay students for test scores, good behavior and the like, I received the following email today:

From: Drew Faust [mailto:president@harvard.edu]
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 10:24 AM
To: Leonie Haimson
Subject: RE: re paying for high test scores vs. reducing class size

Dear Ms. Haimson,

Thank you very much for your email and for taking the time to share your concerns with me. I appreciate your candor. I must tell you, however, that academic freedom on university campuses, which serves us all well, includes the freedom to express controversial views, with which others may disagree. The views held by Professor Fryer are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Harvard University.

With my best wishes,

Drew Faust

What do you think, folks? Does this response invoking academic freedom get Harvard off the hook? And what about allowing Fryer to evaluate his own experiment and not requiring an independent assessment of the results -- which is contrary to accepted practices and was not mentioned in her reply?

An open letter to Harvard's President about its support for large-scale experiments on urban public school students

See this Washington Post article about the large scale experiment that will pay 3,000 middle school students up to $100 per month for good attendance, behavior and grades; this experiment is being partially funded by Harvard Univ. and is directed by Prof. Roland Fryer, who is carrying out a similar experiment in the NYC public schools.

Cc: The National Science, Kaplan, Smith Richardson and Broad foundations.

Dear President Gilpin Faust:

I applaud your efforts to reduce class size, which according to the AP, led to Harvard regaining the top spot in the recent US News and World report. According to US News, 75% of Harvard’s undergraduate classes now have fewer than 20 students

At the same time, I want to protest Harvard’s participation, and that of the other foundations copied on this email, in financing the large-scale experiments in Washington DC, New York City and elsewhere that will pay cash rewards to high-needs public school students for high test scores. An article in yesterday’s Washington Post reported that approximately half the cost of a new $2.7 million experiment in DC schools is being covered by Harvard’s American Inequity Lab.

Roland Fryer, the Harvard professor and author of this experiment, as well as the experiment in NYC schools which gives up to $500 to middle school students who have high test scores and provides them with free minutes on their cellphones, claims that “Surveys of students and parents show support for the concept.”

To the contrary, our survey of over 1,000 NYC parents showed that over 70% strongly opposed paying students for good scores. Another survey done by EdWeek showed that an overwhelming majority (81%) of respondents were against schools offering cash rewards to students.

These views would matter less if the research indicated that such programs were likely to be successful. A similar NYC program that paid $2 million to reward students for high AP scores led to fewer students actually passing the exam. Numerous studies show that in the long run, cash rewards undermine the intrinsic satisfaction that otherwise results from positive behavior. This particular scheme is also likely to lead to increased economic disparities and resentment between those students who would do well in any case, and others who simply need more academic help and support.

Moreover, there are far more effective strategies to enhance student engagement and learning, particularly among low-achievers and in high-need schools. Many studies show that providing smaller classes narrows the achievement gap and creates more student engagement and focused learning in the middle and upper grades. See this recent study by Thomas Dee of Swarthmore and Martin West of Harvard, showing that smaller classes in 8^th grade are associated with significantly higher levels of student engagement and eventual earnings, with the expected benefit from reducing class size in urban schools nearly twice the estimated cost.

Prof. Peter Blatchford also recently released a detailed observational report, showing that when secondary students are place in smaller classes, much greater time is spent “on task” and focused on learning, with special benefits for low-achievers and twice as much negative behavior per student exhibited in large classes than in small.

Clearly, Harvard believes in the importance of smaller classes for its own students, having devoted considerable resources to reducing class size, and limiting the size of freshman seminars to 12 students or less.

Yet despite the abundant evidence, urban and minority students tend to be placed classes much larger than this. Indeed, more than 70% of middle school students in NYC are in classes of 26 students or more, and about 40% of eighth graders crammed into classes of thirty or more.

I urge Harvard, the National Science Foundation, and the other foundations that are supporting these large-scale experiments to instead shift their considerable resources towards research on the multiple benefits of smaller classes, and towards the effort to provide the same sort of individualized attention to public schools students that are currently enjoyed by students at our more elite private institutions.

I also hope that you make sure that the results of any experiments you help finance are fully evaluated by a completely independent investigator, not by the author of the experiment himself, and examine the long run as well as the short run effects.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters

Please send your own letters to Harvard’s President and the other participating funders at the following addresses: president@harvard.edu; msantona@nsf.gov; info@kaplanedfoundation.org; jhollings@srf.org; dk@broadfoundation.org

DOE Announces Cannes Festival Lion Titanium Award

As the 2007/08 school year drew to a close, the DOE’s public relations machine churned out a little-noted press release entitled, “Chancellor Klein Hails Department of Education’s Student Motivation Campaign for Winning Cannes Lion Titanium Award for Best ‘Breakthrough Idea’ of 2008.” The “breakthrough idea” turned out not to be an educational initiative or new instructional technology, nor a new concept for school operation or administration. The “breakthrough idea” award was not even for the DOE’s pilot program to give free cell phones to 2,500 students in seven middle schools. Rather, the award celebrated the packaging concepts for the underlying “cell phone minutes as motivator" idea, and it was given not to the DOE but to its advertising agency, Droga5, for its Million Motivation Campaign and The Million cell phone.

The Million? That’s the ostentatious but quietly shepherded name of the DOE’s free cell phone. The name is apparently premised on the idea that the City’s one million public school students from Pre-K-12 (you have to include Pre-K to top one million students in the DOE’s official 10/31/07 register) are all potential recipients. Doubtless among that million are hordes of Pre-K to Grade 4 children whose parents relish the idea of cell phones in their wee ones’ hands, just as there are doubtless equal hordes of NYC high schoolers simply salivating over the prospect of a DOE-monitored and DOE–controlled, limited functionality cell phone.

Back to the award, though. The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is exactly that – an advertising industry awards extravanza. Winners are chosen not for the merits of their products or programs but for their promotional packaging effectiveness. Otherwise, the DOE’s free cell phone idea would certainly have difficulty standing next to some of its competitors this year: anti-smoking, homelessness, HIV testing, Down Syndrome, environmental awareness, and drinking water shortages in the less-developed world, to name several. Droga5’s, and by inference the DOE’s, Titanium Award was not granted by experts in the field of academics, but by experts in the arts of style over substance, of emotion and misdirection over logic and content. A truly fitting award, indeed, for the City’s current educational regime.

A look at Droga5’s video submission (it's worth watching the whole thing) to the Cannes Lion Festival makes it clear why the advertising industry was so enamored of their campaign. Yes, it’s graphically slick, as expected from an agency whose client list includes Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Adidas, ecko unltd., and MTV. Better from an advertising standpoint, though, are the prominent displays of the names Samsung and Verizon on the cell phone itself. Better still are the “rewards” programs, featuring among others AMC Theaters, Adidas, Apple Computer, Macy’s, Foot Locker, Sean John, Virgin Megastores, all members of an innocuously described “responsible, on-screen corporate partnership” whose participation ensures that “The Million pays for itself.”

What branded product executive wouldn’t positively drool at the prospect of reaching into the purported Million young minds every day through a free, school system certified, advertising message delivery system? No wonder the folks at Cannes handed The Million its Titanium award -- they could probably barely contain themselves over the prospect of a captive student cell phone rollout across America’s major urban school systems. In Droga5’s video, DOE’s Chief Equality Officer Roland Fryer was already alluding to inquiry calls from the Chicago and Houston public school systems. The video closes with gushing accolades from the education experts at Esquire Magazine (a Droga5 client), Conde Nast, and (wonder of wonders!) Bloomberg News.

The DOE also proudly announced that The Million program was piloted in seven middle schools this year (starting back in February). While those schools are seldom if ever mentioned by name, The Million’s own website identifies four of the seven as KIPP charter schools – Academy Charter, A.M.P. Charter, Infinity Charter, and S.T.A.R. College Preparatory. The remaining three are Ebbetts Field Middle School (K352), JHS 234 - Arthur Cunningham (K234), and IS 349 – Math, Science & Tech (K349), all in Brooklyn. All three of the non-charter middle schools received grades of B on their last year’s School Progress Reports. Although the cell phone rewards were ostensibly connected to positive student behaviors, all three schools declined from between 0.2% to 1.0% in attendance rate this year compared to last year. All three schools did, however, show positive increases in the percentage of students who scored proficient (3 or 4) on the Math and ELA exams despite noticeable longitudinal (cohort) declines from Grade 7 to Grade 8 in Math (-9%) and ELA (-12%) at Math, Science & Tech and a smaller decline (-4%) in Math from Grade 6 to Grade 7 at Ebbetts Field.

The DOE’s press release closed with the declaration that, “Pending available funding, the plot will grow to reach 10,000 students during the 2008-09 school year.” Funding from which corporate sponsor(s), do you think?

The million program: DOE's new cell phone project as ingenious marketing tool?

See the article in Advertising Age, revealing a new twist in the DOE project, originally devised by Roland Fryer to offer cell phones to students, supposedly as an incentive to improve their academic performance.

It’s now being branded as “The Million program” – referring to the 1.1 million students in the NYC public schools. This proposal was originally described as an “experiment” but is now said to involve 10,000 to 11,000 students in its first year alone - and is apparently being pitched to potential sponsors as a way to market their products to all NYC students in the near future.

According to David Droga, an ad maven involved in the project, who revealed details to Advertising Age's Idea Conference last Thursday,

“There'll also be some room for advertising on the phone. After all, the phones, while provided for free to the students, won't be completely without cost. As such, marketers will be able to infiltrate the students' world through "responsible" sponsorships….There's lots and lots of brands out there that have a place in the students' lives," said Mr. Droga, who wouldn't disclose the specific advertisers because of ongoing negotiations.”

There may also be product “discounts” offered in text messages, according to Droga – a good way to sell more products.

So let me get this straight: this administration will continue to deny cell phones to students who need to communicate with their parents on their way to or from school, or in case of an emergency. But they will be offered as a way to sell them products?

This project is quickly turning into a potential goldmine for some lucky advertising agency as well as a host of possible commercial sponsors, and yet another opportunity to drain the pockets of NYC kids and their parents.

Bling instead of books: how low can they go?

Every time you think the DOE can’t stoop any lower they do.

Roland Fryer’s experiment, originally supposed to be small-scale and privately funded, has now mushroomed into an expensive project to provide tens of thousands of students with cell phones, free tickets to sports games, and text messages from famous athletes and rappers --– to “convince” them that staying in school and working hard is worthwhile.

Because the ban on carrying cell phones to school will continue, students will still be unable to communicate with their parents, or be alerted in case of an emergency , but celebrities will be able to text message them at home. See the Inside Schools blog on this:

This week's plan, according to the Times, is to have famous people, such as Jay-Z and LeBron James, send poor New York City kids text messages telling them to stay in school. Really. Because a rap artist who dropped out of high school and a basketball player who skipped college for a multi-million-dollar professional contract are the perfect figures to teach kids about the long-term benefits of doing well in school.

Here is an excerpt from the NY Times article describing the rationale for this project:

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said the project was the city’s first attempt to bring about change in the culture and behavior of low-performing students after years of efforts focusing on school structure and teaching.

“How do you get people to think about achievement in communities where, for historical or other reasons, there isn’t necessarily demand for that,” Mr. Klein said yesterday in an interview. “We want to create an environment where kids know education is something you should want. Some people come to school with an enormous appetite for learning and others do not — that’s the reality.”…. Dr. Fryer said he viewed the project in economic terms, arguing that while the administration’s previous efforts have focused on changing the “supply” at schools, this one is proposing to change the “demand” for education by making students want to seek learning.

“You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody wants it, it doesn’t matter,” Dr. Fryer said.

If Fryer thinks that NYC schools are the “best product in the world,” he must be blind. And Klein says there have been “years of efforts focusing on school structure and teaching”!

Just yesterday, the Daily News revealed the fact that at the ACORN high school, which received a “F,” every student is forced to share a text book with five others. Why don’t we start on providing kids with books, before we move on to bling?

I know Fryer just recently arrived from Harvard, but are the rest of these guys so insulated from reality in their chandeliered palace that they don’t know how overcrowded and deprived most of our classrooms really are?

Here are the words of Ms. Frizzle on the latest twisted scheme coming out of Tweed:

The blame here is so misplaced it is unbelievable. If motivation is the issue, perhaps the city would do well to take a look around the schools we ask poor children to attend. In mine, at least, a building that serves grades K-8, they eat in a nasty-smelling, ugly-as-hell cafeteria, learn in classrooms that are perpetually uncomfortable because someone cannot figure out how to heat our building properly (we’re talking upwards of 80 degrees with the windows open in the winter), … The school building - despite the efforts of those of us who work there - lacks the kind of magic that inspires, lacks the comforts that communicate care and importance - and let’s be frank here, the kids are needy as hell and there is never enough… never enough mental health services, never enough school supplies, never enough teacher attention, never enough paraprofessionals. Classes need to be smaller so each one of these kids can get the attention he or she needs to make up for very real challenges that accompany being poor in the richest city on earth. School buildings need to say “You are welcome and cared for here and will enjoy the time you spend here, and what happens here is our priority.” And then, when we’ve made our schools beautiful and filled with the talented people and plentiful resources to provide what children need in order to do well, only then we can turn our attention to whatever gaps in motivation might exist and start sending out edgy little cellphone messages about the value of education. Christ.

It’s kind of startling, the amount of effort, time and money going into this “rebranding” campaign – but I guess when you’ve given up actually trying to improve schools, as they seem to have done at Tweed, what’s left? If you run Tweed via PR, you think that’s PR is all that exists.

It’s like Karl Rove, who said: ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out.”

So which students at which schools are going to be offered the thousands of new tickets, cell phones and the rest? Those attending KIPP and New Visions schools. I thought these schools were already so expert at motivating students…but I guess not. If nothing else, this will probably lead to a surge of applicants, so they can even more effectively skim off the top.

And I guess we’ll just continue to disregard all those hundreds of thousands of students, left attending our large, overcrowded high schools, in classes of 30 or more, with not enough books, not enough desks, and not enough attention from their teachers. In time, they will eventually figure out that nobody in power real cares enough about the quality of their education so they might as well drop out or in other ways disengage. But it won't be the fault of those at Tweed, because as Eli Broad, Bill Gates and every other billionaire knows, NYC schools are already the best product in the world.

Paying for test scores: Anti-social, bone-headed perversity?

Check out the scathing critique in the Huffington Post by Diane Ravitch, contributor to this blog, of the Mayor's proposal to pay students for getting library cards and good test scores, as well as their parents each time they show up for parent-teacher conferences. An excerpt:

It demeans the poor parents who do meet their children's teachers; who do have library cards; who do care desperately about their children's schooling. And it insults the kids who are trying their best but having trouble because New York City has the most overcrowded classrooms in the state of New York.... The pay-for-behavior plan is anti-democratic, anti-civic, anti-intellectual, and anti-social.

There have also been negative columns in the New York Post from the Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas here (called "Mayor Mike's Poverty Perversity") and from Andrea Peyser here, who writes that it is the " the most insulting, bone-headed plan ever cooked up. "

We now have an unusual consensus of the Huffington and NY Posts, which rarely agree on anything, that this proposal is morally repugnant. Too bad our Mayor doesn't appear to have the same scruples.

Paying for test scores

Harvard Professor Roland Fryer who intends to experiment on our students by giving them cash awards if they score high enough on their interim assessments is going to become "chief equality officer" at Tweed, according to the NY Times.

So much for these supposedly "no-stakes" exams.

The results of this experiment will be monitored by Fryer.

So much for independent evaluations.

The Mayor apparently loves the idea of paying kids cold hard cash for performance, just as much as he approves of the "pay for play" arrangement in his controversial Randall's island deal, now in court, in which exclusive rights to most of the fields in a public park would be granted to private school students for the next twenty years.

But what if you're a conscientious student and you are trying hard, but still can't make a perfect score? What about kids with disabilities, or ELL students?

Too bad for you.

Question: can anyone tell me why this experiment is likely to lead to more equality, rather than even more disparity between high and low achieving families and kids?

This and other similar experiments (in pdf) involving cash incentives to kids for high scores are being funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Robin Hood, the Open Society Institute (George Soros' foundation), and the insurance company AIG, as well as the Mayor himself.

Students who pass all five Regents would be paid $3,000. If the program is seen as "working" and is expanded, it could cost the city "hundreds of millions" a year, according to Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs in the NY Post.