DOE's irresponsibility in employing AI products regardless of whether they protect student privacy

A week ago, the NY Post featured an article about a new AI program call Yourai sold by a company called LINC, or The Learning Innovation Catalyst, that the DOE is piloting in some Brooklyn schools.  The product is supposed to help teachers develop their lesson plans.  On Twitter last week, I pointed out the idiocy of the DOE administrator who claimed this would help teachers "think creatively."

What? “Teachers can enter students’ needs and the standards they want into the app and a lesson plan will be generated, Ross explained..She called it a “game changer” that will give teachers more time to “think creatively”. Ridiculous! https://t.co/aOFbQh3qp6

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) March 16, 2024

I went on to point out that two of the three testimonials on the website from NYC teachers appeared to be fake, as I couldn't find their names in a list of DOE employees.

No evidence that 2 of 3 NYC people quoted with testimonials on Yourwai website were employed by DOE through 2023 after checking payroll records on SeethroughNY. There are NyC teachers named Michael Davis, but no admins w/ below names. If anyone knows differently pl let me know! pic.twitter.com/xkVI7YkqhY

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) March 17, 2024

Today, the NY Post followed up with another article, pointing out that there were apparently eight fake testimonials from NYC teachers on the website, and that after being asked about this, the company said their names "were anonymized for compliance purposes," and have now been taken down..

Apparently, the co-CEO of the company, Jason Green, is a close pal of the Chancellor, and he and his family vacationed with the Chancellor's family on Martha Vineyard last summer.  The article added that LINC has received $4.3 million from DOE since 2018 for "professional development and curriculum," including $2.3 million so far  this school year.

What they did not mention is that, aside from the likely shoddiness of the product and the fake hype surrounding it, there are real concerns about these sorts of products including the risk to student privacy, as I pointed out on twitter.  

AI products are  well known for gobbling up huge amounts of personal student data, and then using it to improve their products and create new ones.  Yet this is specifically prohibited by the regulations of NY State's student privacy law, Ed Law § 2-d.

These regulations clearly state that "Third-party contractors shall not sell personally identifiable information nor use or disclose it for any marketing or commercial purpose" and that "Commercial or Marketing Purpose means the sale of student data; or its use or disclosure for purposes of receiving remuneration, whether directly or indirectly; the use of student data for advertising purposes, or to develop, improve or market products or services to students [emphasis added]."

I also pointed out that any district vendor or other third party with access to personal student data by law is supposed to have a specific privacy addendum to its contract.  This addendum is supposed to be posted on the DOE website here, but none can be found for LINC or YourAi.  Sadly, DOE continues to flout the law when it  comes to protecting student data and the transparency required by Ed Law § 2-d, as we have noted in the past.

On twitter, I highlighted specific weaknesses in LINC's online privacy policy, including that they allow other companies to track user behavior, including “3rd parties that deliver content or offers” meaning marketing.

Correction: I finally found privacy policy on company website saying they comply with 2D but unclear how as provide no details & says they allow other companies to track user behavior including “3rd parties that deliver content or offers” ie marketing. https://t.co/a8jr52LLcR

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) March 17, 2024

I also noted that the Privacy Policy said that the company reserved the right to change it at any time for any reason without prior notification to users by changing wording online.  This violates FERPA, because then, districts are not in control of how student data may be used or disclosed.

 

After noting these red flags on twitter, the co-CEO Jason Green DMed me:

We are a minority company that has been partnering with NYCPS for years. Our mission is to help teachers better support learners. I am also recently married and a dog-lover. Would you be open to learning more about us? I would love to better understand your perspective as well.

I said sure, and then asked to see his contract with DOE, to ensure that it contained the required data privacy and security protections.   I didn't hear back until yesterday, when he said he was "working with his team" to get the contract, but assured me that they don't "directly" collect or use student data.  

When I asked what "directly" means, he said they don't collect student data at all.

Then, later that day, on Friday March 22, I went back to look at the company's Privacy Policy and noticed it had been updated that very day:

Low and behold, there was a bunch of new sections added, including that the company indeed "may have access to student data" or "teacher or principal data" as defined under Ed Law § 2-d: 

They had revised the section that previously said the company may change the Privacy Policy without prior notice.  It now says  "We will send advance notice of any upcoming changes to our Privacy Policy via e-mail."  The section about allowing other companies to use user data for marketing purposes was taken out, but this passage that replaced it is not much more reassuring:

Also, Third Party Companies may want access to Personal Data that we collect from our customers. As a result, we may disclose your Personal Data to a Third Party Company; however, we will not disclose your Personal Data to any Third Party Company for the Third Party Company’s own direct marketing purposes. The privacy policies of these Third-Party Companies may apply to the use and disclosure of your Personal Data that we collect and disclose to such Third-Party Companies. Because we do not control the privacy practices of our Third-Party Companies, you should read and understand their privacy policies.

So what does it say in the actual, DOE contract with LINC, that  legally binds their use and protection of student data?  Sue Edelman of the NY Post FOILed the contract from the NYC Comptroller and sent it to me on Friday.

To make a long story short, the only LINC contract the Comptroller's office had was this one from 2020, which never mentions Ed Law § 2-d, though law was passed in 2014, and doesn't contain its required provisions.  

Instead, the contract glosses over the entire issue of student privacy, and says instead that it complies with Chancellor’s Regulations A-820 "governing access to and the disclosure of information contained in student records." Yet Chancellor's Regulations A-820 has not not been updated since 2009. 

In his blog today, Peter Greene has one of his excellent take downs of the whole notion of AI producing better lesson plans than actual living teachers.  He includes this   quote from Cory Doctorow:

We’re nowhere near the point where an AI can do your job, but we’re well past the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.

But beyond the lamentable mechanization and degradation of education that is being promoted by NYC and other districts nationwide, in the name of mindless innovation, the DOE apparent lack of interest in protecting student privacy and following the law remains appalling.  

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.

 

Brooklyn students fight against the Summit online platform and the Zuckerberg-Gates corporate machine

Students protesting at Secondary School of Journalism    credit: Edin Mejia

Update: this David vs. Goliath story with national implications was reported also on Fast Company , Business Insider; and NY Magazine.

Last week, on November 5, about 100 students at the Secondary School of Journalism in Brooklyn walked out of their schools to protest the Summit online program.  This digital instruction program, funded by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Bill Gates, forces students to spend hours staring at computers, left at sea with little human interaction or help from their teachers, all in the name of "personalized learning." 

As one of the students, Mitchel Storman, said to Sue Edelman who reported on the protest in the NY Post, "I have seen lots of students playing games instead of working....Students can easily cheat on quizzes since they can just copy and paste the question into Google.”

Z. Bonsu, Kelly Hernandez & Akila Robinson credit: Helayne Seidman

Senior Akila Robinson said she couldn’t even log onto Summit for nearly two months, while other classmates can’t or won’t use it. “The whole day, all we do is sit there.”  A teacher said, “It’s a lot of reading on the computer, and that’s not good for the eyes. Kids complain. Some kids refuse to do it.”

Since Norm Scott wrote about the walkout on his blog, and Sue Edelman's reporting in the NY Post, the story has been picked up elsewhere including Fast Company and Business Insider.  The online program, which originated in the Summit chain of charter schools in California, and was further developed and expanded with millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation, Facebook and nowthe Chan Zuckerberg LLC, has now invaded up to 300 or so public schools, and is collecting a huge amount of personal data from thousands of students without their knowledge or consent or that of their parents.

I have been writing and questioning Summit for the past two years, and last year, met with Diane Tavenner, asked her all sorts of questions she never responded to, and toured her flagship charter school in Redwood City.  My description of this visit is here.

Since then, parents in 15 states have reached out to me in huge distress about the negative impact of this program on their children. Many report that their children, who had previously done well in school,  now say that they aren't learning, that they feel constantly stressed, are beginning to hate school and want to drop out. Some parents have told me that they are now homeschooling their kids or have decided to sell their homes and move out of the district.

The student newspaper at SSJ

In response to the student protest last week in Brooklyn, the DOE now says they will eliminate the program for 11th and 12th graders - but not yet for 9th and 10th graders like Mitchel Storman. The NY Post article also revealed that the Bronx Writing Academy, which used Summit last year, has already dropped it.

Yet two other NYC schools are still implementing Summit, including M.S. 88 Peter Rouget in Park Slope and the Academy for College Preparation and Career Exploration in Flatbush; with the latter school just adopting it this year.  One wonders whether DOE  officials are performing any oversight or evaluation of Summit before allowing more and more NYC schools to subject kids to this harmful program, and to examine whether it actually complies with the NY student privacy law.

Recently Diane Tavenner revealed that next year, the online program would spin off to a  separate nonprofit corporation,  run by a board led by Priscilla Chan, Zuckerberg's wife and the CZI Chief Financial Officer.  She also said the new corporation "doesn’t plan to expand the program, but rather, the new nonprofit will focus on meeting current demand."  Yet a few days ago on Twitter , I saw that Summit is still entreating schools to apply .

Below is a fact sheet I have shared with parents and students at the Secondary School of Journalism, and those at Summit schools nationwide, along with some suggestions of questions they can ask their schools and districts about the instructional program, its data collection and privacy protections (or lack thereof).  Summit itself on its website states that parents and students have the right to demand the deletion of their personal data, and opt out of further collection of directory information, which includes their names, email addresses, and ID numbers, etc. and I suggest they do so immediately.  More on this below.  The fact sheet is also available as a pdf you can download here.

Bravo to the courageous students at SSJ, who have taken the lead to fight for their own education, vs Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and the other ed tech oligarchs, who are attempting to control their classrooms and their personal data.  As the recent NY Times series pointed out, Silicon Valley corporate leaders and engineers want one kind of education, largely screen-free, for their own kids, while imposing an experimental form of mechanized education on everyone else.

Will the Mayor and Chancellor halt the practice of allowing charter schools to access student personal information to market their schools, now that the feds and the state have launched investigations of how this violates student privacy?

If you’d like to add your voice, please send a letter to the Mayor and the Chancellor to stop allowing charters to market their schools by giving them access to personal student information.

 Yesterday, Sue Edelman of the NY Post reported that the DOE is under investigation by both the US Department of Education and the NY State Education Department for violating student privacy law by making student information, including their names and addresses, available to charter schools for recruiting purposes.  The letter in which Dale King, Director of the Family Privacy Compliance Office of the US Department of Education, announced the investigation into this DOE practice is posted below.

This investigation follows from Johanna Garcia's FERPA complaint filed a year ago, which pointed

Johanna Garcia

out that the DOE allows charters access to student personal information to send families promotional materials via  the DOE mailing house, Vanguard Direct, without providing parents with the right to opt out, which would be required under the directory information exception to FERPA.

Instead, DOE wrongly claims the right to share this information with charter schools under the "school official" exception, which is reserved for vendors that are performing services on behalf of the district and need the information to carry out their contracted duties. Yet charter schools are not carrying out services for DOE.   In addition, the use of data for marketing purposes is specifically barred by the NY State student privacy law §2-d: "Personally identifiable information maintained by educational agencies, including data provided to third-party contractors and their assignees, shall not be sold or used for marketing purposes."

Here is the NY Post summary of the DOE claim, and our responses:


In response to Garcia’s complaint, the New York state and US education departments said they are probing whether the marketing deal violates FERPA — a federal law which requires schools to get parent permission before releasing student information, except in limited cases.

The DOE claims an exemption lets it give student information to outside entities to perform functions that its own employees would otherwise do. State law “permits outreach to make families aware of their educational options, including both district and charter schools,” Cohen said. 

But Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the national Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said the reasoning makes no sense: “School districts lose funding and space when students enroll in charters. Why would the DOE use its own employees for that purpose?”

Garcia agreed. “Vanguard makes money. Charter schools make money. All on the backs of regular public-school students.”

The DOE long-standing policy of making student information available to charter schools started under charter-friendly Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, in response to a plea from Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz that she needed to "mail 10-12 times to elementary and preK families so she could grow the "market share, " according to emails she sent to Klein and acquired through FOIL by reporter Juan Gonzalez in 2010. Five days after she sent her initial request,  Michael Duffy, then-head of the NYC DOE charter office, wrote back he was trying to "overcome the obstacles" of privacy laws and would do his best to make the mailing addresses of public school families available for this purpose.

The US Department of Education letter from Dale King that is posted below is dated Sept. 25, 2018 and demands a response from DOE within four weeks.  This deadline was October 25 – nearly two weeks ago, yet according to sources, the DOE has not yet responded. Dale King's questions include clarifying how DOE informs parents of their rights under FERPA, and to "provide this Office with information on the relationship between the District and the charter schools to which the District discloses information, particularly Success Academy."

Below the US DOE letter is another letter sent by Council Members, Danny Dromm, Mark Treyger, Brad Lander and Stephen Levin on August 8, 2018, urging Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza to halt this practice and pointing out how it not only appears to violate student privacy but also the administration's stated priority of supporting public schools rather than encouraging charter schools to expand and drain more funds from the system:

Next fiscal year, the charter sector in New York City is projected to cost the DOE $2.1 billion in annual operating funds and is taking up more space every year in our overcrowded school buildings. It is time to put our public-school students first and focus on improving their education and protecting their privacy.

Only after Sue Edelman began asking DOE about whether they had responded to this letter did the DOE respond to these elected members of the City Council, more than two months later.

On October 12,   Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark sent a letter to CM Dromm, in which she repeated the dubious claim that since the state law requires charter schools to enroll high-needs students, including students with disabilities and/or English Language Learners, this somehow exempts DOE from the countervailing restrictions of state and federal privacy law. Though the state charter school law does require charter schools to make efforts to recruit high needs students, this does not mean that DOE is authorized to help them do so by violating student privacy.  
 
Moreover, as Johanna has pointed out, despite multiple mailings, her family has never received a letter from Success Academy in Spanish, even though there are large numbers of Latino families in District 6 where she lives.  And as mentioned in her complaint, the only one of her children to receive Success marketing materials is the one child without an IEP.

A recent Bronx Ink article reports that only ten percent of NYC charter schools enroll  as many English Language Learners as the school districts in which they're situated, including few if any Success Academy charter schools.  The article focuses specifically on Success Bronx I in District 7, where the number of ELLs has fallen in half -- from 8% to 4% -- since being reauthorized by SUNY two years ago.  This percent is tiny compared to the overall numbers of ELLs in District 7 public schools, in which ELLs vary between 16% and 22% depending on the grade level.  So despite millions spent on marketing and mailings, the DOE claim that making personal student information available to Success and other charter schools somehow helps them enroll their fair share of high-needs students doesn't hold water.  

At a Harlem Town Hall meeting last week with Chancellor Carranza, District 5 Community Education Council members and PTA leaders vehemently objected to the supersaturation of charter schools in their community, that drains their public schools of students and funds.  In response,  Carranza insisted that their public schools needed to engage in improved marketing, and that parents should consider "what is the need that charter schools are answering."  (See the video from News 11 here.)

Yet few if any public schools have the resources to put into advertising and recruitment as Success Academy, which spent about  $1,300 for every newly enrolled student in 2011 on marketing.  More recently, Moskowitz had created what is described as a "full service, brand strategy, marketing, and creative division within Success Academy” called the "The Success Academy Creative Agency" according to the LinkedIn profile of its Managing Director, Meredith Levin.  In the previous version of her profile accessed last month, Levin described leading a  "group of over 30 creative directors, designers, copywriters, strategists, e-learning architects & project managers to develop, execute and optimize campaigns to recruit 1,000+ teachers, enroll families, donors, influencers, and cultivate community engagement."

What public school has the resources to compete with that?  And why should the DOE be helping Success Academy, which has repeatedly been sued for violating student civil rights and last year kicked out one quarter of their special needs students in self-contained classes, expand their "market share," especially when it involves violating the privacy rights of public school families?

Let's hope that the Chancellor and the Mayor reconsider this practice and reverse course before the charter schools send out marketing materials to DOE families this fall, via their access to personal student information provided by DOE.

Busing fiasco followed by swift and decisive action by Chancellor Carranza

Update: see the statement from the Parents to Improve School Transportation.

The first week of school was dominated by stories about a major busing fiasco, with 67,075 hotline complaints from parents during the first four days, and many kids left on the sidewalk waiting for school buses which never came, as first reported by Ben Chapman of the NY Daily News.

Ben also broke the story that many bus drivers with criminal records had been allowed to slip through the cracks via faulty background checks, and that a retired police investigator had been let go by DOE for blocking too many hires with questionable records, while his signature was forged to the hiring documents.

As a result,  Chancellor Carranza fired Eric Goldstein, CEO of School Support Services.  Goldstein had led this massive fiefdom for more than a decade, where he controlled the spending of billions of dollars in vendor contracts for transportation, food and athletics.

This was a dramatic move by the Chancellor, as no one at that level has been fired at DOE in many years, at least in my memory.  Carranza also promised that from now on, the method for vetting bus drivers would be handled by the department's Division of Human Capital, with the same careful screening that DOE employees are subject to.

After the firing, Marcia Kramer of CBS News reported that Goldstein was already under investigation for questionable decisions regarding school food contracts: "The probe is said to focus on trips around the world taken by a number of school food executives that were paid for by food manufacturers."

Then Elizabeth Rose, who had already demoted from Deputy Chancellor to a new position called CEO of School Operations, was further demoted and re-assigned to become “senior contracts adviser for transportation," presumably to advise the new transportation head, Kevin Moran.  In April, Rose was said to have improperly overturned firings and suspensions of bus driver and attendants guilty of abusing children or leaving them unattended.  Rose will  keep her salary, however, of nearly $200,000 per year.

Rose was also responsible for making a secret agreement with Eva Moskowitz that she could move a new Success Academy charter school into PS 25 in Brooklyn - until a court order stopped the closure of PS 15.  If this move had occurred, it would have been illegal, as any change in school utilization has to be announced six months ahead of the next school year, and approved by the Panel for Educational Policy according to state law-- neither of which occurred.

Rose was also very dismissive of the importance of class size and school overcrowding, as typical of many educrats who were originally  hired by Joel Klein.  This was especially unfortunate as she oversaw school co-locations and the School Construction Authority.  Rose testified in April in response to a question from City Council Education Chair Mark Treyger that school overcrowding had no negative impacts on students, a claim that was subsequently contradicted by Chancellor Carranza in testimony one month later.

In previous hearing Eliz Rose minimized impact of overcrowding on education; do you agree? asks @MarkTreyger718. @DOEChancellor says when he had fewer students as teacher he could do so much better, with 20-25 vs 45 students; learning environment important but funding limited

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) May 22, 2018

Today, Sue Edelman in the NY Post revealed that 24 staffers at the DOE Office of Pupil Transportation were provided with cars at city expense – including several employees who do little but drive their cars to and from their office each day. Included among them is a Rabbi, a “liaison to yeshivas” who has both a car and a personal driver paid for by the DOE: 

Rabbi Morris Ausfresser, a liaison to yeshivas, who lives in Brooklyn. Another OPT employee serves as his personal assistant and chauffeur. “I can’t answer any questions,” he said Friday

According to the website See Through NY, Ausfresser has been working at DOE as an “Administrative Quality Assurance Specialist” for at least 11 years, and  received a salary of $101,873 in 2017.  (Since Sue didn't report the name of his “personal assistant and chauffeur” I'm unable to look up his salary.)

On twitter, I asked how many yeshiva kids get busing at city expense to schools that deny them a minimally adequate education.  According to Naftuli Moster of Yaffed, "The answer to your questions is: almost all boys attending Hasidic Yeshivas, especially boys. So around 30,000-60,000." (He later amended this to "almost all children, especially boys.")

In 2012, I published a blog post with a link to a spreadsheet obtained by CEC 31 President Mike Reilly through a Freedom of Information request, showing that a higher percent of private school students who request school busing for safety reasons had their waivers approved by OPT than public school kids.

Reilly's FOIL followed the elimination by DOE of middle-school busing in many areas of Queens and Staten Island that have no public transportation,  which may have contributed to the death of at least one public school student. (Reilly recently won the Republican primary for an Assembly seat for the South Shore of Staten Island, and is certain to be elected, as he's unopposed by any Democrat.)

After Mike received the data from DOE, then Queens PEP member Dmytro Fedkowskyj proposed a resolution to create an  advisory committee of stakeholders to oversee the process of granting safety variances to students, a committee that would include parent several CEC members.  The resolution was tabled after a contentious meeting by the mayoral majority of appointees on the PEP. 

One of the DOE staff who has been provided with a private car is the OPT safety director, Paul Weydig,  who oversaw the faulty and likely legally defective vetting of bus drivers.  Weydig made a salary of $110,131  in 2017 - also as an “Administrative Quality Assurance Specialist” – a little more than Ausfresser.  Weydig’s wife also reportedly works at OPT, “Lisa D’Amato, a contract compliance officer whose unit rubber-stamped the questionable bus-driver applications," according to the NY Post article.

Weydig was cited in a Daily News article for questioning a decision to de-certify a driver with ten prior criminal convictions, including grand larceny, identity theft forgery and fraud.  He emailed the investigator who rejected the drive, emailing, "“What are you trying to prove here?”  This investigator, Eric Reynolds, was removed by DOE, apparently for flagging too many bus drivers with questionable records.

Busing has been a perennial problem at DOE.  One recalls how Joel Klein switched bus routes in the middle of winter at the behest of the consulting company Alvarez and Marsal, leaving kids shivering on corners and provoking huge outrage in one of the biggest blunders of his extremely bumpy record.  He actually apologized afterwards, an extremely rare move for him.

Carmen Farina was not adept in dealing with corruption or incompetence.  She pushed through a contract worth as much as a billion dollars with a vendor found to have engaged in a corrupt kickback scheme just a few years before , and refused to act for many months even when confronted with clear evidence of cheating or abusive educrats. (See the Governance section of the NYC Kids PAC report card for a summary.)

At this point, Chancellor Carranza seems to have handled the busing controversy with decisive swiftness,  at least compared to past administrations. 

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.

NY Post sues NYC Department of Education for its abuse of the FOIL process

NYC parents and advocates have been continually frustrated with the delay and lack of response of DOE to Freedom of Information Law requests.  Sometimes I have waited up to two years, to then receive the DOE response that they don't have the document that I requested.

I have almost never received a fulfillment to my request within a reasonable time period -- a few months or less.  Instead, each time I receive the same form letter which says that because of "the due to the volume and complexity of requests we receive and process, and to determine whether any records or portions thereof will be subject to redactions permitted under Public Officers Law §87(2), additional time is required to respond substantively to your request. Accordingly, a response is currently anticipated" in about twenty days.  Then twenty days later I get the same letter again.

A typical instance occurred when I FOILed for the study that DOE had widely proclaimed attested to the accuracy of their teacher evaluation system, based on the value-added test scores of their students, the so-called "teacher data reports."

On December 3, 2008, DOE released a document justifying their this teacher evaluation system, entitled: “Teacher Data Initiative: Support for Schools; Frequently Asked Questions".  Among the claims made was the following: "A panel of technical experts has approved the DOE’s value-added methodology. The DOE’s model has met recognized standards for demonstrating validity and reliability.”

On Feb. 23, 2009, I FOILed for the names of members of this panel and any written materials they had produced.

On May 24, 2010, more than fifteen months later, I finally received a response. When I read the letter, the panel of experts said the opposite of what the DOE had claimed -- that these measurements could not be relied upon to fully evaluate the quality of ANY teacher.  Instead they specifically refused to endorse "any particular use \[of the method\] for accountability, promotion or tenure" purposes.  And:

"Test scores capture only one dimension of teacher effectiveness, and . . . are not intended as a summary measure of teacher performance....If high stakes are attached, there will be potential to game these measures by teaching to the test, selecting students, altering difficult-to-audit student characteristics, or outright cheating...." 
Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez also exposed the hypocrisy of the DOE here; while pointing out how the system utilized inaccurate student and test scores data in many instances, making it an even less reliable gauge for assessing teacher performance. 

In contrast, when reporters FOILed the actual evaluations of 12,000 real-life teachers based upon this unreliable methodology (apparently after being encouraged to do so by DOE), Chancellor Klein was eager to provide the data immediately.  Their release was only temporarily delayed by a lawsuit from the UFT.

When Bill de Blasio ran for office, he promised if elected Mayor he would increase the transparency at the DOE.  Not only did he check off the box on the NYC KidsPAC survey that asked whether he would "Respond to FOILs in a timely and complete fashion" but then added:

I have a record of transparency and will ensure that under my administration, the DOE will be in full compliance with FOIL. As Public Advocate, I monitored and reported on the city’s compliance with the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). I also created a “Transparency Report Card” helps the public track which agencies have complied with their FOIL obligations—and which have not.

Unfortunately, the first thing that happened after he took office was that I was excluded from the customary OMB budget briefings, with the excuse that advocates were no longer allowed in these meetings.

Then DOE closed School Leadership Team meetings to the public, violating the law and reversing the policy that it had previously if inconsistently maintained. (We are still waiting for the Appellate Court to rule on DOE's appeal of the April 2015 Supreme Court decision that closing these meetings is illegal.)

The DOE's responses to my FOILs have also been as slow as during the Bloomberg years -- even as to presumably uncontroversial issues like the approved plans of the PROSE schools, which the DOE has touted as innovative and progressive.  One of my DOE FOILs has been delayed for six months, and five of them for nearly six months, without any apparent progress.

So I was encouraged to hear that in August,  the NY Post had filed suit against the DOE for the months of delay in responding to their FOILs -- sometimes up to two years.  Here is the NY Post Article 78 petition , which makes fascinating reading; here is the memo of law.   An excerpt from the petition:

WHEREFORE, Petitioners respectfully request that this Court grant judgment:

(1) Declaring that Chancellor’s Regulation Chancellors Regulation D-110(VIII)(A) is unlawful and/or is inconsistent with N.Y. Pub. Officers Law § 84 et seq. and is, accordingly, invalid;

(2) Declaring that the DOE’s practice of sending repeated Form Delay Letters is inherently unreasonable and that determinations in its administrative appeal decisions that it may continue to deny access to public records because it has reissued serial unilateral extensions violates its obligations under FOIL, N.Y. Pub.Officers Law § 84 et seq.;

(3) Granting Petitioners’ Article 78 Petition, finding that DOE has constructively denied Petitioners’ requests, that Petitioners have exhausted their administrative remedies, and directing DOE to produce all disclosable records responsive to Petitioners’ outstanding requests within twenty (20) days of the Court’s order;

(4) Awarding Petitioners their costs and attorneys’ fees pursuant to Public Officers Law § 89(4)(c); and

(5) Awarding Petitioners such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.

Included in the petition is a relevant advisory opinion from Kristin O'Neill of the NY Committee for Open Government, an division of the NY Department of State:

....[T]he Post has now waited between five and nineteen months and received between three and fourteen Form Delay Letters for each of the nine pending requests. As you are aware, FOIL provides direction concerning the time and manner in which agencies must respond to requests.

Specifically, §89(3)(a) of FOIL states in part that:

"... it has long been advised that when an agency is unable to deny or provide access to records within five business days, it must provide an acknowledgement within that time indicating an approximate date, not to exceed twenty additional business days, on which it will grant access in whole or in part. If it is determined, either within five business days of the receipt of the request, or at or near the expiration of twenty business days of its acknowledgement, that it is unable to respond within twenty additional business days, it must indicate a "date certain" that includes both the date and the reasons for requiring additional time. Although we recognize that there are occasions when an agency will require an extension of time beyond that which it initially predicted, there is no provision in the statute for an extension beyond the date certain or repeated extensions. The date certain must be reasonable based on attendant facts and circumstances.

....A requester who is neither granted nor denied access to records with in the time limits set forth above or in the acknowledgment letter or any extension letter(s) may consider the request constructively denied and may appeal such denial in accordance with the procedures set forth below." (emphasis mine) As stated earlier, there is no provision in the statute for repeated extensions. ... As such, the agency is not permitted to establish the right to repeated extensions via regulation, where such right does not exist in statute or in the Committee's own regulations.

Also included in the lawsuit are the original reporters' FOIL requests and the repeated boilerplate non-responses from DOE. One of their requests which has not been fulfilled for over a year was for the substantiated cases of test or grade tampering as determined by the OSI -- the DOE's internal Office of Special Investigations.  There is no excuse for covering up any proven instances of cheating in our schools.

I don't agree with all the reporting in the NY Post.  Some of it is overly sensational; and the editors are obviously out to make de Blasio look bad.  Yet several of the Post reporters over the years, including Yoav Gonen and Sue Edelman, have uncovered serious corruption and mismanagement at the DOE, whether under Klein, Walcott or now, Chancellor Farina.  And NYC residents and taxpayers deserve a DOE that will be responsive, transparent and provide the public with its right to know.

The city's use of a non-profit to pay irresponsible preK vendors and get around the procurement rules

Sue Edelman of the NY Post reports on how the Mayor’s office asked a city-related nonprofit called the Fund for the City of NY to cover the costs of preK providers who had evaded taxes, engaged in fraud, failed to hire sufficient qualified staff and/or exhibited other unspecified problems.

Now the DoE is asking the NYC Comptroller to retroactively approve these contracts so the city can reimburse the Fund  to the tune of $1.36 million, in an apparent end run around the  procurement rules.

What the story doesn't mention is that the DoE continues to ask the Panel for Educational Policy to approve payments to preK and/or Special Education providers before background checks are complete- and to approve contracts with vendors where investigations have already revealed serious issues in the past.

This behavior is of questionable legality and risks taxpayer funds and kids' lives.

More details about the problems with these preK vendors  is revealed in the Addendum of this month’s RA's.  Patrick Sullivan and I, on behalf of our Citizens Contract Oversight Committee, highlighted these in our comments sent to the PEP before the vote, as well as other unresolved questions, pertaining to the Amazon contract and special education vendors who were found to have spotty records.

In terms of the Amazon contract, we had pointed out that there was no cost-benefit analysis of how much it will cost to provide e-readers to hundreds of thousands students if they are to receive 30-40% of assigned readings digitally, as the DOE plans; no analysis of the risk to student privacy if teachers will now be able to track student behavior online; and no analysis of how Amazon may access to their digital profiles to engage in targeting advertising to students and enlarge the corporation's massive market share, which further enables their monopolistic and abusive practices, protested by publishers and authors.  Finally, there was no mention of the fact that numerous studies have shown that students who access their reading assignments through digital devices comprehend and retain significantly less.

In terms of the special education and preK contracts, there continues to be a troubling lack of care in the DOE’s practice of rushing these contracts through without sufficient information in advance, or even after background checks have shown them to have engaged in activities that would bar them from other city contracts.

Yet not one PEP member brought up any of these issues during this month’s Contract Committee meeting or during the PEP meeting itself.

I have been told that there are backroom discussions where PEP members privately air their concerns to DOE officials, but the public doesn't have the chance to hear the questions asked or the responses.  The private nature of these discussions sidesteps the open transparent process that is supposed to prevail for a governmental board, and deprives the public of their right to know.

Sue Edelman asked me if the contracting process was better or worse under Bloomberg.  I said that I thought it was about the same because a lot of rotten contracts were also approved during those years. 

Yet at least from 2007 onwards, when Patrick Sullivan served on the PEP as the representative of the Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, he consistently challenged the DOE’s decisions and forced officials to respond to questions in a public forum.

In 2009, as part of the effort made by the Legislature to improve accountability when Mayoral control was renewed, the PEP was given the authority to approve DOE contracts, because of all the abuses that had occurred as a result of corrupt and wasteful spending.  Patrick was frequently supported in his challenges by the Queens rep Dmytro Fedkowskyj, the Brooklyn rep Kelvin Diamond and the Bronx rep Monica Major.

Yet never did the PEP actually vote down a contract during the Bloomberg years, as it was controlled by the Mayoral supermajority and the Staten Island rep which together served as a reliable rubber stamp.  The Panel did retroactively rescind a contract awarded to the tutoring company Champion Learning Center, after the NYC comptroller's office had rejected it due to an ongoing federal investigation.

Neither has the PEP voted down a contract since de Blasio took office, to my knowledge. Even the outrageously inflated $635 million contract for Custom Computer Specialists was approved 10-1, though the company had previously engaged in a corrupt kickback scheme.  Only Robert Powell, the Bronx rep, voted against it. Luckily, this contract was so outrageous and the media attention so intense that City Hall rejected it after the PEP vote.

Patrick resigned from the PEP in 2013, as neither the new Manhattan BP nor the Mayor would re-appoint him, and Robert Powell recently left the PEP as well.

Even so, we remain intent on publicizing the flaws in these contracts and in the DOE’s procurement process because not a dollar should be wasted when hundreds of thousands of NYC children are still crammed into overcrowded schools with classes of 30 or more, with the city claiming they can’t afford to do anything to address these issues.

If you want to volunteer for our Citizens Contract Oversight Committee, or have a tip to share, please email us at NYCschoolcontractwatch@gmail.com  Thanks!