The arrogance of Bloomberg and Klein, according to Matt Bromme

At the City Council hearings yesterday, Ernie Logan, head of the principal’s union, said that according to principals, the first time their superintendent had ever visited their schools this year was to tell them that their schools were being closed.

This is despite two lawsuits, two consent decrees, and strengthened language in the new governance law, all supposed to make superintendents the manager and the head support officer for districts once again.

See these observations from Matt Bromme, former superintendent of District 27 in Queens:

In a system of over 1 million children, there will always be dysfunction.

What is the tragedy is that instead of looking into improving school boards the Mayor chose to look at every school board member as a potential criminal and someone whose mental capabilities were below his and the Chancellor's. In their desire to improve education, they took the stand that "we rich and influential people," will take care of education because you the parent are not able to help your school improve.

There were a number of school boards and members who were dedicated to making their district a better school community. There were another group of school board members were interested in only themselves and most of them became members of the City Council or the legislature in Albany.

Superintendents, who had districts that were manageable were removed and replaced by Regional Superintendents who did not have manageable regions. Therefore the Chancellor created a second reorganization, and then a third and now a fourth. Bill Thompson stated that as a City Comptroller, he would never invest city funds in an organization that went through so many reorganizations in such a short period of time.

So now, we have superintendents without staff or power. We have principals who do not look at education as a lifetime position but a stepping stone to another career. We have the Tweedites who stay a year or maybe two and then disappear, none of whom even know the outer boroughs.

We have schools who have abandoned the arts, history and science in order to test drill students until they are bored and turned off to learning. We do not allow trips to museums or the theater until after testing is completed.

We can sell Doritos, but we will not allow parents to sell brownies.

Diane Ravitch is right. We need to educate the "whole" child and not just focus on two subject areas via test prep. Children no longer read for enjoyment. Children no longer study math for long term use. They read and answer math problems solely to pass two exams that make or break their school's future.

-- Matt Bromme

Jedi vs. the Sith at the December PEP meeting

Last night’s meeting in the Bronx was devoted to the DOE answering questions from members of the Panel for Educational Policy.

Patrick Sullivan, the appointee of the Manhattan borough president, had prepared questions on a range of important issues including class size, overcrowding, charter schools, special ed, low achievement in middle schools, cell phones, SLTs, and others. The responses to these questions and the ensuing discussions were surprisingly illuminating. There were also a few questions submitted by Brooklyn rep Wendy Gilgeous (who wasn’t there to hear the answers) and one from Mayoral appointee Richard Menschel. None of the other ten members of the panel bothered to submit a single question.

Neverthless, Patrick’s list was comprehensive, and he asked astute follow-up questions and debated the Chancellor and other members of his SLT (Senior Leadership Team) on several points. He effectively engaged with Chancellor Klein, Linda Wernikoff, Marcia Lyles, Chris Cerf, Kathleen Grimm, and Garth Harries. As my nine-year old son would say, he was like a Jedi warrior, fighting off a whole army of Siths.

Here are some of the highlights:

• In response to a question on class size, when Klein was droning on that what’s really important is teacher quality, Patrick pointed out that one of the main reasons qualified teachers leave our schools to work elsewhere is the fact that they can have smaller classes almost anywhere else, which deprives our kids of an experienced and effective workforce. Even Klein had to concede Patrick's point.

Though all the DOE officials had seen the questions in advance, Chris Cerf seemed especially shaky in his responses on the two questions that Klein sent his way.

• The first involved the new, somewhat bizarre new management structure, in which district superintendents have been instructed to spend 90% of their time on the road, coaching schools outside their districts on how to analyze and improve test scores. Patrick asked whether this wasn’t a violation of the consent decree in the Kruger/Sanders lawsuit, and whether it was a waste of valuable time, forcing them to spend hours traveling all over the city.
  

Cerf argued that there was no violation of the consent decree since supers still would perform all their statutory responsibilities, including appointing and evaluating principals, and fulfull their disciplinary responsibilities. (But how well? And based on what knowledge?) He also said that the fact that supers are working outside their own districts was based on their own preference, since they had said it would put them in an “awkward” position to evaluate the schools they were supporting (why?). He added that this redefinition of their roles was not necessarily permanent, and would be re-evaluated each year.

In response, Patrick pointed out that their new duties would make it impossible for supers to achieve their core mission, including grooming new principals, and that one could argue that the district superintendent's role was essentially eliminated. He added that he thought that this was a grave error, since many important problems are not getting resolved, but are “bubbling up into the political apparatus” – and that the whole structure doesn’t make any sense, even on a temporary basis. He compared superintendents to divisional regional VPs in the corporate world – and said that they should have a deputy to perform the sort of data analysis involved in the accountability initiative. Chris Cerf said that he “respectfully disagreed”.

• Patrick also asked him how many people were employed in the press office, what were their salaries, and why it was appropriate to spend taxpayer dollars having them tape Diane Ravitch and prepare a dossier against her, which smacked of a “Soviet-era approach to stifling dissent.”
  

Cerf said that there were only 12 members (!) of the communication office, with a budget of $1.3 million, which he argued was not excessive given a total education budget of $17 billion.

( But do any other city agencies spend nearly that much?)

Cerf also said it was totally “appropriate” to tape Diane (though he refuted that it had happened more than twice), and to prepare a document tracking her positions (though he said there was no dossier). Diane was a very prominent commentator, he said, and had supported several policies and then had seemingly turned against them once adopted by DOE. He said there were no other critics who were being tracked in this way, although Richard Menschel humorously suggested that the DOE should also be “keeping an eye" on Patrick.

• On the cellphone ban, Patrick asked the Chancellor why the Mayor was so condescending and dirisive to public school parents, in his suggestion that the only reason a child might want call home is to ask what was for dinner. Klein had no convincing response, except to say that the Mayor did not intend to be condescending.

There was a lot more said on both sides, and it is a pity there weren’t more people there to hear it.

A unique evening at the PEP, where, for once, the serious concerns of parents got equal time with DOE blather. Hats off to Patrick!