On Nov. 17, I appeared on the BronxNet TV show Perspectives, which asked the question, "Are We Experiencing an Education Crisis?" The show was hosted by Darren Jaime, and the other panelists included Aaron Pallas of Columbia University; Sophia James, consultant, and Dr. Danielle Lee, head of the Harlem Education Activities Fund (HEAF).
The entire show is well worth watching. Here is an excerpt focused on who is ultimately responsible for the failure of NYC public schools:
Some parents have asked me why I am involving myself in such a controversial issue as charter schools, seemingly unrelated to class size. But I don’t think it is.
District public schools that have a higher concentration of high-needs students are losing classrooms, libraries and intervention spaces to charter schools, which is neither equitable or good policy.
This is especially damaging, given the fact that only three out of 13 district schools slated to lose space next year to charters have reached their mandated class size reduction targets. For more on this see here, my comments on the charter co-locations that were voted on by the PEP last night.
Yesterday, on Good Day NY, when asked why the Chancellor seems biased towards charters, I said I didn’t really know, but that I suspected that many of the charter school operators are receiving preferential treatment because of their political connections.
Not only did the Chancellor intercede repeatedly with his own staff to get her chain of charter schools more space, when she had already received more than the formula would allow, helped her recruit parents for her schools by giving her access to their names and addresses, and also appeared at numerous fundraisers and helped her raise a million dollars from the Broad foundation, explaining how politically useful she was in organizing thousands of charter school parents to support Bloomberg, the continuation of mayoral control and raising of the charter school cap.
As Klein wrote to Dan Katzir of the Broad Foundation, “she’s done more to organize parents and get them aligned with what our reforms than anyone else on the outside.”
In her emails, Moskowitz repeatedly refers to her “army of parents” and many of them were indeed at attendance last night in the PEP meeting, along with their kids, cheering and chanting in support of their expansion into district buildings – all of which were approved, except for one.
Click on the email above, and check out the others on the Daily news website here. You'll be amazed.
I hope everyone remembers that NY Times was a great cheerleader for continued mayoral control – including his authority to appoint a supermajority of members to the Board of Education (which Bloomberg likes to call the Panel for Educational Policy, to make clear it has no real power to overrule him.) The paper also supported his overturning of term limits, without a peep of dissent.
Well, yesterday the Times came out with an editorial lambasting Albany, with a bunch of proposals , including that no one man should decide over state pension investments, as the State Comptroller currently does. Along with the State Attorney General, the editors agreed that there should be a thirteen member oversight board, with appointments made by various different state leaders and state employees:
New York’s comptroller is the sole trustee watching over $116.5 billion in pension investments. This should not be happening anywhere, but especially not in Albany.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has proposed a 13-member commission to manage pensions. The idea is a good one, requiring appointments to the board by state leaders and employees with pensions. But this new board should not become another parking place for political hacks. While we need a better system than one person controlling so much money, it must be done right — with a board picked for its financial expertise with fiduciary duties to protect the pension.
What about accountability for the spending of billions of dollars in tax funds for our public schools, and the policies that will doom our children either to success or failure? Funny, instead in the mind of the NY Times, this meant that one man alone, namely Bloomberg, should have total control.
In their endorsement of the Silver bill that continued mayoral control, the editors wrote in praise: “It would preserve the mayor’s right to appoint a majority of the members of the board that advises him on school matters.”
In the editorial, they also implicitly supported the mayor’s right to fire any of his appointees at will, at any time, for any reason – which ensured that the board would continue to act as a rubberstamp , no matter how destructive and/or irrational the mayor's decisions might be.
Yet somehow, on something really important, like state pensions, the Times editors realize that for the sake of true accountability, we should have an independent oversight board with members appointed by a variety of different elected leaders and state employees.
Why the apparent contradiction? Could it have anything to do with the fact that, according to this week’s New York magazine, Bloomberg has used his political power and personal fortune to buy the support of opinionmakers, and effectively owns this town, lock, stock, and barrel, including the publishers of the three major dailies?
The article starts off with a description of a dinner party Bloomberg recently gave for the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson:
Johnson is in New York to promote U.K.-U.S. tourism. Bloomberg is a longtime Anglophile, and his company’s second-largest office is in London. The clearest sign that this Sunday evening holds special resonance for Bloomberg is the presence of Rupert Murdoch, Mort Zuckerman, and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publishers of New York’s three daily newspapers. They’re here because Bloomberg asked them to be. Those three are at anything that really matters to Mike, a dinner-party veteran says.
Indeed, in contrast with the past, when the business and media establishment were allowed to have different views from the mayor, this no longer occurs. Instead they all seem willing to serve as his lackeys.
The article describes how when Randi Weingarten tried to woo certain establishment figures to her side in her battle with Joel Klein, the mayor made it clear that “for business leaders, stepping forward and trying to become a civic leader would be at some risk to your relationship with the mayor, a corporate insider says. Only a crazy person would step out without Bloomberg’s say-so.”
So instead of a circle of wealthy and influential people who make policy in this town, there is one man alone, a billionaire who holds a monopoly on power. As the reporter writes:
…. there is a one-man Establishment: Michael Bloomberg. Certainly there are other figures with real power. But in a way that wasn’t true two decades ago, their influence is circumscribed, confined to their narrow categories: real estate, culture, health care, banking. And, in terms of civic life, little of their power exists independent of their relationships with Bloomberg. The mogul-class push for the mayor’s term-limits extension felt like the last gasp of what’s left of the city’s old-line ruling class….Bloomberg gets what he wants more than any mayor in modern memory. The foundation of Bloomberg’s imperial mayoralty is, obviously, money.
So much for checks and balances and the public having any say when it comes to our schools. Democracy in NYC: RIP.
Come to a meeting on charter schools, sponsored by Sen. Bill Perkins; Wed. Sept. 2 at 6 PM. More info by clicking on the flyer at the right.
Many schools and students are being deprived of classrooms and equitable conditions because of the forced insertion of charter schools into their buildings.
How should we deal with the growing trend towards privatization that is ripping our communities apart?
At the rally at City Hall today on school governance, Assemblymember Inez Barron, a former principal, denounces the Senate deal on governance and offers a blistering critique of the Bloomberg/Klein education record. (For more on the outlines of the deal, see GothamSchools, Daily News, Times, Post.)
From class size and "creative confusion" to the NAEPs, Barron tells the real story behind the Bloomberg myth. She even quotes John Dewey and Martin Luther King Jr. on the meaning and purpose of education. Inez Barron for Schools Chancellor!
See the great opedby Arthur Goldstein in today’s Daily News against Mayoral control:
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our federal and state governments have checks and balances so no one person has total control, which is a synonym for dictatorship. City kids need reasonable class sizes and decent facilities. Under Mayor Bloomberg, class sizes just took their biggest leap in 10 years.
An oped from the opposite point of view by Marc Sternberg, the principal of Bronx Labis here, with the headline “Accountability saved my dying school.” The truth is very different, of course.
Bronx Lab is one of the small schools that replaced Evander Childs, a large failing school in the Bronx.Yet rather than save Evander Childs, DOE allowed it to die, and instead opened new schools with completely different types of students in its place.
AsEduwonkettenoted in 2007, before Evander had been finally closed:
“On every dimension, the Evander incoming 9th graders are lagging behind academically - they are more likely to be in special education or to be classified as ELL, they are much more likely to be overage for their grade (i.e. they had been retained before), their attendance rates in junior high school were much lower, and they were much less likely to be proficient in reading and math.
Of particular note is the praise showered on Bronx Lab at the end of the 2004-2005 school year - see this NY Times article - but 46.6% of their kids were proficient in reading and 52.7% in math when they walked in the door, while Evander's entering students passed at rates of only 11.1% in reading and 12.8% in math. How did the reporter miss this? ….Comparing these schools is either incredibly foolish or incredibly dishonest - and I don't think the folks running NYC schools are foolish.”
What else? Oh yes, according to the DOE’s statistics, Bronx Lab has class sizes this year ranging from 13 to 25. Meanwhile, most of our large high schools – including the one that Arthur Goldstein teaches at – continue to have class sizes of 34, and the DOE refuses to help them improve by giving them the space and resources to reduce class size, despite a state mandate that would require this.
In fact Joel Klein recently saidthat if he had his way, he would shrink the teaching force by 30% -- which would consign the schools attended by most of our neediest students to class sizes of 45 or more.
This is the future we face, if Bloomberg and Klein are left unimpeded by any checks and balances, as is currently recommended by the billionaire boys club of Bloomberg, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Mort Zuckerman and Rupert Murdoch. None of whom, incidentally, would ever send their own children to a school where class sizes are larger than fifteen.
Mayoral control (or what some would call mayoral dictatorship) will either sunset, be renewed or amended in June.
If you believe in accountability and checks and balances...
If you believe in democracy....
If you believe that parents should have a real voice in how our children are educated....
If you believe in billionaire bullies not having autocratic power over our schools....
If you believe that the key to improving the quality of education lies in improving classroom conditions and reducing class size rather than spending more time on testing and test prep....
“The president of the pro-business Partnership for New York City …. acknowledged that parents are frustrated and want more of a role in the school system…..A group called the Parent Commission …. said the law should be changed so the mayor can't have ultimate power over school policies.” ----WNYC radio, March 20, 2009
“[Comptroller] Thompson also echoed critics of mayoral control in calling for more channels for parental participation, an independent body to audit data and more power for local education councils. “The current administration has sought to avoid debate and public scrutiny,” Mr. Thompson said, “while fundamental decisions regarding education reform have been made by executives with very little education background.”
As the day progressed, city officials sparred with lawmakers over test scores, class size, test preparation and no-bid contracts. Parents booed, hissed and applauded, flashing signs and passing out pamphlets… Laura Acosta, an organizer for LearnNY ... said that every parent she had spoken with agreed that parents should have more of a voice in education decisions.” –NY Times, March 21, 2009
“Hundreds of parents and community leaders turned out for the last state Assembly hearing about mayoral control over city schools. …Patricia Connelly, of a group called the Parent Commission, told lawmakers the Department of Education routinely makes decisions about opening and closing schools without community involvement. CONNELLY: The parent commission rejects the condescending autocracy that currently masquerades as parent engagement. …: Connelly's group called for a partnership with the mayor, by diluting his power over an existing panel on education policy.”- WNYC radio, March 21, 2009
“The strong thrust of Friday’s hearing, the last of five that have taken Assembly members on a tour through the boroughs, was that lawmakers are not happy with the system they created. Some have become even less happy during the hearings in every borough over the last few months… Lawmakers repeatedly raised concerns that charter schools are causing a “two-tiered system” where some students get excellent educations while others languish in failing schools.” –Gotham Schools, March 23, 2009
About recent poll results
“Chancellor Klein’s approval rating continues to fall – 7 points in the last month alone. And even though he often claims to be a civil rights hero, his disapproval ratings are highest among blacks and Hispanics.” – NYC Public School parents, March 24, 2009
“One person who is not particularly popular, though, is Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who is Mr. Bloomberg’s point man on the issue of mayoral control of the schools. Voters approve his job performance by 37 percent to 35 percent, but that figure has slipped several percentage points over the last few months.” – NY Times City Room, March 24, 2009
“Approval for how Mayor Bloomberg is handling the public schools has also dropped, to 47 percent from 50 percent a month ago, giving him the lowest approval rating on his education efforts since May 2003. Just 46 percent of New Yorkers said they thought the mayor’s takeover of the public schools has been a success. Public school parents rated the mayor the worst: Just 41 percent of them said they approved of the job he’s doing, and 54 percent said they disapproved.” – Gotham Schools, March 24, 2009
“When voters were asked if the mayor should share power over the schools with the City Council… 53 percent support joint authority, and 37 percent don't...”-New York Post, March 25, 2009
About DOE spending practices
“A cost-cutting plan to close city day-care center classrooms will actually cost taxpayers almost $7 million, according to insiders and a Daily News analysis…. insiders say the average cost to the city for each kindergartner in public school is about $4,000. Tack on $2,800 apiece for after-school care, and the tab for 3,200 kids comes to $21.7 million. …
Evelyn Segura's 4-year-old daughter Ashley Nicole Triz will have to leave the Williamsbridge NAACP day care in the Bronx to attend Public School 21, a school that buses its kindergartners to other schools because it is overcrowded. "My daughter is very happy where she is now," said Segura, 40. "With the economy today, I don't understand why this is happening." -- Daily News, March 26, 2009
“City Councilman Bill DeBlasio released a report accusing the education department of wasteful spending, especially on testing....DEBLASIO: We're going far beyond the federal requirements and the basics and spending a lot more on additional testing and pre-testing that we don't need in the middle of a fiscal crisis….DeBlasio singled out an $80 million computer network for tracking data, and more than $20 million a year in benchmark testing. He also complained about the department's $1.3 million communications budget.” .- WNYC radio, March 26, 2009
About 2,000 teaching jobs could be cut if the state denies the city its fair share of federal stimulus funding, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein warned Thursday….Teachers union chief Randi Weingarten railed against the suggestion that cutting teachers and school staff is a necessary evil. "We need to cut things that ... aren't core," she said. – Daily News, March 27, 2009
On Charter schools and the lack of community input on their siting
The biggest uproar has been sparked by DOE's aggressive policy of putting new charters in existing public schools without seeking parent approval. "It's the same in every neighborhood," said Monica Major, president of the Community Education Council in District 11 in the Bronx. "The DOE just tells you they're putting a new charter in your building and you have to force them to even have a conversation about it." ….
Public school parent leaders say they don't oppose charters. They just want the DOE to abide by state law and consider the views of the local Community Education Councils, the successors to the old community school districts, before making those decisions. "They continually create this atmosphere of animosity toward parents," Major said. That's why she joined the Parent Commission on School Governance, a volunteer group that just released a proposal to sharply curb mayoral control of the schools. -- Daily News, March 24, 2009
The United Federation of Teachers and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Tuesday charging that the city’s Department of Education violated state law by moving to replace traditional public schools with charter schools without proper consultation of neighborhood school boards….The lawsuit accuses the department of “utilizing its powers over school creation to alter attendance zones unilaterally without the consent or involvement of the people the community school serves,” and adds that it “continues to act by fiat.”…
Since the mayoral takeover, the local school boards have declined in influence, with zoning among their few remaining powers. “This is our last shred of authority,” noted Jennifer Freeman, a member of the education council that represents much of Harlem, and a plaintiff in the suit. – NY Times, March 25, 2009
Check out the first part of a March 26 forum on "Demystifying Mayoral control" sponsored by South of the Bridge Parent & Youth Association, starring Diane Ravitch.
Diane was in peak form, talking about how the Bloomberg version of Mayoral control is unlike any in NYC's history, how there's no accountability in the current system, and how the administration's claims of improved achievement results are dubious at best.
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This blog is edited by Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters and who was a NYC public school parent for 15 years. If you'd like to write for the blog, please email us at info@classsizematters.org
