Thursday's arguments in our charter co-location lawsuit, & what Tisch and Klein said to Brill about this issue

Arguments in our  lawsuit vs. charter co-locations will be heard this Thursday, Sept. 15 at 10 AM ; 60 Court St,  2^nd floor, Judge Feinman’s courtroom. 

Please join us to show your support at our press conference beforehand and in the courtroom afterwards.

Where: the Plaza across from 60 Centre St., near City Hall, map here. 

When: Thursday, Sept. 15 at 9AM

What: Press conference before charter co-location court hearings

Class Size Matters, along with the Parents Union and several public school parents, sued DOE this summer to block their practice of providing free space and services to charter schools,  which we believe violates state law, and which has led to co-located charters receiving more per student public funds than regular public schools.  

The value of these services and space is estimated at more than $100 million annually, and the amount is growing every year.   

Moreover, the provision of free space has created a separate and unequal school system across the city, sparked divisive battles between parents and community members, and encouraged charter school expansion at the expense of our public schools.  For more on our lawsuit, see here.

In Steve Brill's new book, (see Diane Ravitch's brilliant review) Merryl Tisch, head of the NY Board of Regents, is quoted as arguing with Klein against co-locations, echoing a thought many of us have had:  "The charters are supported by billionaires.  Let them buy buildings."  But Klein remains adamant: 

"I got $250 million put into my capital budget in 2005-6 for the work necessary to do co-location," Klein recalls."But nobody noticed..."  Klein was facilitating the growth of these alternative schools at the expense of the schools he was in charge of.

In the book, Brill is admiring of Klein's strategy, while those of us who actually believe that it was his first responsibility to strengthen rather than undermine the public schools that he ran see this behavior as nothing short of horrifying. 

If we win this lawsuit, it will help put the brakes on those who are unfortunately still in charge, intent on damaging our public schools to benefit the billionaires, the privateers and their hedge-fund buddies.

Our side is represented by one public interest attorney, Arthur Schwartz of Advocates for Justice, while the other side is represented by the Corporation Counsel of NYC as well as an army of attorneys from three major private law firms, Kirkland and Ellis, Paul Weiss, Mayer Brown, representing charter schools, as  well as SNR Denton, representing the NYC Charter Center.

But we have right, as well as the law on our side.  Come join us and show you care.

More on Steve Brill's imperviousness to the facts

Steve Brill wrote a pro-charter article in the NY Times Magazine , comparing the results at PS 149 and Harlem Success Academy, the charter school that shares its building. Brill implied that they served the same sort of students. These were his exact words: "Same building. Same community. Sometimes even the same parents."

Last week, Brill responded to online questions at EdWeek; one concerned the claims he made in his NY Times article:

Mr Brill, given the importance of these issues and the crisis in funding for public education today, I was troubled by the unbalanced nature of your recent NYT Magazine cover story. Specifically, Where was balanced discussion of conflicting research on the diversity of the charter school movement, showing that many charter schools - even in new york - underperform district schools; that charter schools enroll significantly smaller proportions of ELL and SPED students than district schools; and that some charter schools do counsel out students, in which cases declining cohorts of students correlate powerfully with increasing test scores? Where was serious discussion from experts on both sides of the education reform divide of the inadequacy of standardized testing as a metric for evaluating student and teacher performance? ....

This is how Brill responded:

The way i stepped through that debate was 1) to acknowledge clearly that not all charters schools are good for kids (didn't you see that statement?); and 2) to use a building that had two schools in it -- one a charter, one a traditional public school -- and compare expenses and results side by side. I labored over this, and think the comparison is valid FOR THOSE TWO schools. And taxpayers pay nothing extra for the school choice that these two schools provide, so i don't understand you statement that the government is using "valuable funding as a stick to spur undemocratic reforms." Choice is usually thought of as being pretty democratic. As for empirical evidence, one thing is clear, we keep spending more money than all other countries with worse results. And the charter i spent time examining spends less with better results.

First of all, nowhere in his article or the above is it mentioned that Eva Moskowitz raises millions of dollars for her schools. According to this spreadsheet, she raised $2.4 million for her four charters in 2009, and pays herself a very hefty salary.

Secondly, it is clear that Steve Brill still hasn't learned a thing.

Numerous blogs have shown since the publication of his article that these two schools have widely different student populations.

Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post, The Answer Sheet - Charters vs. public schools: Behind the numbers; Kim Gittleson in Gotham Schools, Brill-ing Down: Adding to Steven Brill’s NYT Magazine Report, and I at the NYC public school parent blog, Journalistic malpractice at the NY Times, have all pointed out in detail the disparity in the sort of students enrolled in Harlem Success Academy compared to PS 149; and how the charter school enrolls far lower numbers of free lunch, English language learners, sped students with serious learning disabilities, and homeless kids.

Here are the figures side by side (taken from each school's NY State report cards from 2008-9, Kim's analysis of sped reports and homeless figures from here and here):

STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS
2008-9	PS 149	Harlem Success Academy
% free lunch	68%	49%
% Limited English Proficient	10%	2%
% IEPs	21%	14%
% of IEPs; more than 20% of day	67%	35%
% homeless students	10%	1%

Apparently, Brill is impervious to correction, with PS 149 serving many more poor students, five times the percent of LEP students, twice as many seriously disabled students, and ten times the number of homeless.

Taking a closer look at the state report cards, I also examined the data relating to teachers and staff:

TEACHER CHARACTERISTICS
2008-9	PS 149	Harlem Success Academy
teacher turnover (2007-8)	22%	50%
total no. of teachers	41	27
% no valid certificate	10%	15%
% teaching out of certification	29%	15%
% <3yrs.exp.	20%	30%
% classes by teachers w/out appr. certificate	27%	18%
total no. of other professional staff	7	26

What’s so interesting about this? HSA had twice the teacher attrition than PS 149 in 2007-8 (the latest available data); with fully half of all teachers turning over that year.

This is not the sign of a good working (or learning) environment. Apparently as a result of this high level of attrition, 30% of HSA teachers had less than 3 years experience in 2008-9– compared to 20% at PS 149.

I’m not all that interested in the comparative figures as regards teacher certification; as there is little convincing research to show that this matters. But the comparative data on “other professional staff” is quite striking: HSA had 27 teachers and 26 other “professional staff” in 2008-9.

Compare that with 41 teachers at PS 149, with only 7 other professional staff. I don't know who all these other “professionals” are, whether they are administrators, fundraisers, PR flacks, or people who actually provide instruction or services to kids; but so little proportional investment in classroom teachers seems to me an indication of poor educational priorities.