Assembly hearings in the Bronx: the Parent Commission makes their debut

There were hundreds of parents, advocates and union members filling the seats at the Assembly hearings on governance at Lehman College on Friday. The morning started off with a bang with testimony from a panel of Parent Commission members, putting forward their proposals on how the current governance system should be reformed.

Monica Major, president of Community Education Council 11 in the Bronx, Don Freeman, former principal in the Bronx, Lisa Donlan, president of CEC 1 in Lower Manhattan, Josh Karen of CEC 6 in Upper Manhattan, and Vern Ballard of Community Board 9 testified; a position paper is posted here. Class Size Matters is a member of the Commission and has endorsed these proposals.

The theme of the Parent Commission’s recommendations is the need for a real partnership and collaboration with parents rather than Mayoral dictatorship. We are proposing that the Chancellor and his policies be subject to both state and city law – and that there needs to be a truly independent and responsive Board of Education to provide necessary checks and balances. The Board should consist of 15 members, including six parent representatives, elected directly by Community Education Council members – who themselves will be elected directly by parents in each district. The Mayor will have three appointees, the City Council and the Public Advocate each one, and together the Board will appoint four more members to build up their expertise in specific policy areas, like the needs of ELL and/or high school students. It is our hope that the process of coming together to appoint more members will act as a consensus building exercise.

The Parent Commission also recommends the formation of an Independent Accountability Office, a truly independent Inspector General, answerable to the public, and an Ombudsperson, to respond to and resolve parental complaints. We have also put forward reforms on restoring the role of school districts, strengthening parent input, improving special education, and forming a commission to create a Constitution for the NYC school system. Check our position paper here; the full report will be out next week.

Following the Parent Commission panel, the DOE testified, with Maria Santos the head of Office of English Language Learners leading off. Despite the fact that Assembly member Carmen Arroyo accused Santos of being a liar, I thought Santos’ testimony was among the most honest of any from the DOE in years. Santos admitted that the achievement levels of middle school ELL students has been stagnant, and that graduation rates among this population has been flat. She did not try to spin the data, and twice said smaller classes would be necessary to improve results for this high needs population. (Indeed, the much-praised NYC International High schools for ELLs offer classes much smaller than the city average.)

Santos’ frank testimony was quite a contrast to the arguments of her fellow panelist in the Bronx, Chris Cerf, Deputy Chancellor, who consistently downgraded the importance of class size, criticized class size reduction as too expensive, (citing an hugely inflated estimate of $800 M for a 10% reduction) and said that this reform was not a top priority for the DOE -- despite the state law that mandates a move towards smaller classes in NYC.

Assemblymember Aurelia Greene of the Bronx and Education Chair Cathy Nolan were both very piercing in their questioning of Cerf, and asked him repeatedly why the DOE had failed to reduce class size, and indeed why class sizes had increased this year. Nolan asked him whether he thought the program was voluntary. He admitted it was not, but did not explain if DOE intended to improve their compliance in the future.

Other highlights included the questioning of Cerf and Deputy Mayor Walcott by AM Daniel O’Donnell of Cerf about their policy of replacing the neighborhood zoned schools with charter schools. He honed in on PS 241 – a school in his district, with 45% special education and ELL students, that DOE intends to replace with a branch of Harlem Success Academy, a chain of charter schools which as of this year according to state data had only two ELL students.

Cerf claimed that charter schools have high proportions of Hispanic students, and that DOE didn’t care about what kind of school was offered, as long as it has results. Later Luis Reyes offered testimony that while the NYC public schools have 14% ELL students, charter schools enroll only 4% ELLs, according to data provided him the City Comptroller. (Not surprisingly, the DOE does not make this information available to the public.)

Both AM Mark Weprin and AM Ruben Diaz Jr. were critical about the amount of testing and test prep in our public schools. AM Michael Benjamin asked about the decline of minority students at Bronx Science, his alma mater, and the other specialized high schools. What was interesting is that among the ten or more Assembly members who spoke, there did not appear to be a single one who supported the administration’s policies or Mayoral control in its current form unchanged. Where the Mayor will obtain backing for his continued chokehold on our schools is unclear – but perhaps he is relying on a backdoor deal.

There are accounts of the hearings in the NY Times blog; Gotham Schools, and WNYC radio. On each you can leave comments. Also, check out the Parent Commission website here.

Civil war in Harlem over charter schools: shame on DOE!

An excellent description in Gotham Schools of the bitter hearings that took place yesterday about the DOE's plan to eliminate PS 194, a zoned neighborhood school in District 5, and move another branch of Harlem Success Charter School into the building: A divided house spars over charter schools’ growth in Harlem.

As we have pointed out previously in relation to the intention to close PS 241 in District 3, this unilateral decision is illegal according to state law -- one cannot eliminate school zones, according to Section 2590-e of NY State education law, without the approval of the Community Education Council. It is also immoral.

I have witnessed these charter school hearings before. They are the worst experiences one can imagine. Shame on the DOE for creating this situation by throwing crumbs before starving parents.

The Daily News Lies, Another NYC Public School Dies

Once again, the Daily News has run an editorial following in fawning lockstep behind the Bloomberg/Klein schools agendea. This time, the subject is the new, “value-added” teacher report cards that claim to reduce teachers’ effectiveness to quantifiable measures drawn from (yes, again) standardized test scores. The Daily News is now cheering on the advent of these test-driven report cards as the way to root out “bad teachers.” Unfortunately, but hardly surprisingly, the Mort Zuckerman editorial board has stooped to an all-time low to make their case, generating dishonest propaganda in a manner that would make the Communist Party editors at Pravda (Moscow) and Xinhua (Beijing) proud.

No doubt unable to find a NYC teacher from whom they could extract a positive, supportive quote, the Daily News resorted to excerpting the blog posting of a first-year teacher named Ruben in the Bronx (although they appear to have missed the delicious irony in citing a blog site entitled “Is Our Children Learning?”). Here’s what they quoted from poor, young Ruben (without, of course, letting him respond):

"I wasn't really expecting a great report. What I didn't expect was how low my percentile score would be, even after my rating was adjusted for years of experience. And while it was a blow to my self-esteem, it was also a way to focus my expectations for this year. I know I've come a long way since last year, so I expect a big improvement on the next report card I see."

The Daily News editorial finished with this little congratulatory line: "That's the spirit, Ruben." As if the young man was in full agreement with their position and their (mis)statement of his position. What Ruben says is rather more ambiguous than the Daily News would have us believe. Ruben doesn’t say the report card will make him a better teacher; he says he now understands how to "focus his expectations for next year" (i.e., how to improve his score on the report card, not necessarily how to educate his students better).

But that’s far from the worst thing the Daily News did, not by a long shot. Here’s more of what Ruben actually wrote in that very same blog posting, in the very next paragraph!

That said, the whole thing has to be taken with a grain of salt. As much as my job has been overwhelmed by testing, I refuse to judge my performance on test scores alone. Ultimately my job is to prepare my students for a life of learning and success. Tests that measure students' academic performance is one way to assess my own performance. But I'd like to believe that there are intangible aspects to my job - for example instilling a love of learning and proper work ethic - that can't possibly be measured quantitatively. I think any attempt to rate teachers without accounting in some way for these aspects of teaching will be fatally flawed. [Emphasis mine]

Of course, the Daily News conveniently overlooked Ruben’s bottom line assessment of the teacher report cards, scrambling instead for any convenient piece of text that even remotely suggested that teachers (as in, all teachers) support it. This is first-order journalistic fraud, a major metropolitan newspaper engaged in propaganda disguised as reasoned opinion. Shameful, disgraceful, appalling. Somewhere, the likes of Joseph Stalin and Deng Xiao Ping are smiling. And why not? Their side is winning.

24 new charter schools looking for space. Watch out -- your school could be next!

Someone is creating space for new schools in NYC – unfortunately it’s not the DOE. See below article from NY Observer, about a private school company snapping up lots of real estate in a down market.

Meanwhile, our public schools are increasingly overcrowded, with class sizes increasing in nearly all grades, and likely to become more so next year – with little or no plans to relieve this ongoing crisis. Actually, because of DOE policies, it’s likely to get much worse.

According to Inside Schools, while 24 new charter schools are expected to open in fall 2009, only a handful have an announced location so far – and most of the rest are likely to be crammed down the throat of some unsuspecting existing public school.

Charter schools are approved one year prior to their opening in September, but the Department of Education doesn't determine whether DOE space is available until January, said Mike Duffy, executive director of the city's charter school office. Although charter schools can choose to obtain private space and determine their location sooner, most decide not to for financial reasons.

In New York State, charter schools do not receive money for operating expenses, such as facilities, but in New York City, charter schools housed in a DOE facility reside rent-free. "They don't pay a dollar," said Duffy.

Now if charter schools were required to find their own buildings, they might help relieve the intense overcrowding at NYC public schools. But DOE would rather allow the overcrowding to increase, in order to give charter schools buildings for free. Charter schools in NYC also don’t pay a dollar for heat or electricity, food, transportation or all of the other expenses that charter schools are required to pay elsewhere in the state and the country. Even as our public schools are facing big budget cuts, the charter schools are due for a big increase.

Though it is difficult to do an exact comparison because of DOE’s lack of financial transparency, these hidden (and voluntary) subsidies mean that in the end, Tweed appears to be sending a greater per student amount of taxpayer funds to charter schools than to most of our regular public schools. This may partly explain how charter-operator Eva Moskowitz was able to afford to pay herself a hefty $371,000 salary in 2006-7, as well as continue to expand her aggressive PR, fundraising and recruitment operations. Not to mention the sixteen openings for administrators currently posted on her school’s website.

Watch out for DOE announcing the closing of more and more neighborhood elementary schools in the near future, not because they are failing, but simply because our educrats are intent on finding good real estate for all the new charter schools they want to house – at the expense of our existing schools.

Check out the recent NPR story about the separate but unequal system that NOLA’s public school system has become with the growth of charter schools – with the regular public schools receiving worse facilities while saddled with a far larger proportion of the kids that nobody wants. Is this the future we face here in NYC?

Randall's Island redux: the city tries again

Last year, a bunch of public school parents brought a lawsuit against the city’s deal to lease most of the sports fields on Randall’s Island to twenty private schools for twenty years.

The plaintiffs won in court, aided by attorneys Norm Siegel and Alan Klinger of Stroock, by showing that the acreage involved should have triggered ULURP, a process of Community Board and City Council review, which the city had refused to pursue. We wrote about the court victory here.

Yet according to a Juan Gonzalez’ column in today’s Daily News, instead of going through the proper legal channels, the Mayor and the city are still trying to do an end-run around the public – and the law -- by negotiating a new deal with the private schools without going through any sort of formal public review. Instead, they promise a series of “community meetings” to get input.

Why does this sound familiar? Stay tuned.

Madoff Sentenced to Life Term as NYC Schools Chancellor

March 11, 2009 (GBN News): In a dramatic plea bargain, accused financier Bernard L. Madoff reportedly agreed today to be sentenced to a life term as NY City Schools Chancellor. Madoff’s attorney was apparently able to convince both the judge and prosecutor that this would be a form of “work release” whereby Madoff’s talents can be used to benefit society.

J. Fredrick Runson, Dean of the Manhattan University Law School and an expert on educational Ponzi schemes, said that this plan might eventually even lead to a rehabilitation of Madoff’s image. “If Madoff can sell his investors on the idea that their inflated ‘profits’ are real, he can certainly sell parents and politicians on the idea that inflated test scores are real. So instead of making people think they’re rich, he’ll make people think they’re smart. It’s what Joel Klein has been trying to do for years, but Madoff can actually pull it off.”

It is unclear what will become of the current Schools Chancellor. GBN News has been unable to confirm a rumor that Mr. Klein will be replacing Mr. Madoff in his penthouse, under house arrest.

One Parent's Response to NY Times Article

Ms. Gootman,

It is truly unfortunate that your article on Chancellor Klein (Taking Sides on New York 's Chancellor, March 6) misses the point. Most of us, parents, are not fighting against Mr. Klein's values. We do not question his intent and motivation. Surely only a truly dedicated person can take on the job of the Chancellor in this city. Many of us also understand that sometimes unpleasant decisions must be made for the greater good. We are not fighting because we don't like the decisions Mr. Klein makes: what we are fighting for is democracy.

Mr. Klein has made most of his decisions without consulting the people who actually know a thing or two about education and children -- parents, teachers, and administrators. When one man makes all the decisions without public input, that is not democracy. Democracy is hard work. It is much easier to take a top-down, dictatorial approach when policy changes are made, as Mr. Klein has done in his haste to reform the system. But educating our children is worth every bit of hard work and deserves the time and effort a democratic process requires.

It is peculiar to read Ms. Rhee quoted as saying that Mr. Klein " ... doesn't try to act like he knows everything." With parents of New York City , he has certainly acted as if he knows best and that we should leave him be to do whatever he wishes. No education reform will succeed if you eliminate meaningful participation by parents.

Is This the Real Face of NYC School Policy?

On April 2, 2008, the NY Daily News gave its Be Our Guest editorial slot to Kyesha Bennett, a founding member of Harlem Parents United (HPU) and mother of a student at Eva Moskowitz’s Harlem Success Academy Charter School. Ms. Bennett’s article was titled, not surprisingly, “NY Parents Must Unite to Demand Better School Choices,” and in her story, she alluded to her mother helping her get into P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side.

On February 26, 2009, Errol Louis wrote his Daily News editorial column that was nothing less than free advertising for the Harlem Education Fair held on Saturday, February 28 and organized by Harlem Parents United (HPU). Ms. Sabrina Williams is quoted extensively in his article and is identified as a co-founder of HPU.

Last Saturday, March 7, the Daily News has once again turned over its editorial page to HPU, this time to Ms. Natasha Shannon, mother of two children at Harlem Success Academy and a founding member of HPU. And her story begins just like Kyesha Bennett’s, harkening back to the days when her mother was faced with her daughter’s public elementary school (non-)choice. Is anyone out there starting to see a pattern in all this?

As with everything that comes from the DOE these days, Ms. Shannon’s editorial submission is filled with false choices. Parents don’t want a voice in school policy, she argues, they just want a choice of schools. In fact, giving parents a voice “might actually do more harm than good for me and my daughters.” (Try telling THAT to the parents of every suburban school district within 50 miles!!!!). Since when (and for whom) are parental voice and good schools mutually exclusive? After the country just rediscovered its political voice by electing Barack Obama after eight nightmarish years of Republican rule, isn't this rather an odd position to take, just to surrender our voice and trust unquestioningly in the benevolence of our billionaire leaders?

Ms. Shannon continues. “[The parents who want to make policy] may want resources spent on decreasing class size - when I may think money should be spent on improving teacher quality. Or the parents on a Community Education Council may not think a public charter school should be sited in a failing zone school - when to me and my neighbors, that's a saving grace.” Strangely close to DOE-speak, and two more false dichotomies, only to be topped by this one. “I don't want my girls to be assigned to a failing zone school, and then be told by so-called elected parent representatives that I should be happy with it,” Ms. Shannon opines. I have yet to meet an “elected parent representative” who would think such a thing, let alone say it.

Ms. Shannon continued with self-congratulatory props for last Saturday’s Harlem Education Fair. A quick Internet check (I wasn’t there) reveals that the fair was a charter school/Catholic school advertising orgy attended by a modest handful of public schools (9 out of 51 by my count, including the highly selective Hunter College HS and Columbia [University] Secondary School for Math, Science & Engineering - see list below).

Reportedly, Joel Klein was present at the Fair. Did anyone think to excoriate him for leaving the state of public schools in Harlem (as elsewhere) such that parents like Ms. Shannon and Ms. Bennett are fleeing in droves? Why should public school parents anywhere in NYC have to be lottery winners to get their children into a good school? Isn't the rush for charter schools in Harlem a tacit vote that the Klein Chancellorship has failed for the public schools for which he was made responsible? Is it surprising that those parents are reading the too obvious hand-writing on the school walls, seeing that the DOE under Chancellor Klein has abandoned the Harlem public schools in favor of “charterizing” the entire community? Is it surprising that they are following the money and resources to schools like Ms. Moskowitz’s?

Of course, the dark presence behind all of this is Ms. Moskowitz herself, the prime beneficiary of the Harlem charter school movement. It’s no coincidence that Ms. Moskowitz, (a former Chair of the City Council’s Education Committee who now appears bent on dismantling public education for her own profit) is behind Harlem Parents United. They are not only a peculiar version of her school’s PTA, she helped organize the group according to the New York Times! Thus, it hardly seems coincidental that prime guest editorial space in the Daily News (a huge mayoral control and charter school backer) is being granted to HPU and Harlem Success Academy parents. Even in elementary school, we learn that one hand washes the other.

The Daily News is so completely in the tank with the entire Bloomberg/Klein school agenda, they’re now routinely printing DOE propaganda under the guise of "independent" parent submissions, acting as an unpaid arm of the DOE public relations machine.

List of schools advertised as attending the Harlem Education Fair (downloadable as an Excel file from Inside Schools:

All Saints School, Amber Charter School, Annunciation School, Ascension School, Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science & Engineering, Corpus Christi School, Cristo Rey High School, Democracy Prep Charter School, DREAM Charter School, Future Leaders Institute Charter School, Harbor Science & Arts Charter School, Harlem Academy, Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy I Charter Elementary School, Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy II Charter Elementary School, Harlem Day Charter School, Harlem Link Charter School, Harlem Succes Academy Charter School, Harlem Success Academy 2 Charter School, Harlem Success Academy 3 Charter School, Harlem Success Academy 4 Charter School, Harlem Village Academy Charter School, Harlem Village Academy Leadership Charter School, Hunter College High School, Incarnation School, Isaac Newton Middle School for Math & Science, JHS 13 Central Park East Middle School, KIPP Infinity Charter School, KIPP S.T.A.R. College Prep Charter School, Mount Carmel-Holy Rosary School, New Heights Academy Charter School, New York Center for Autism Charter School, Opportunity Charter School, Our Lady of Lourdes School, Our Lady Queen of Angels School, PS 125, PS 242M Gwendolyn Powell Brown Computer School, PS 36, PS 46 The Tappan School, PS 76 A. Philip Randolph School, Rice High School, Sisulu Walker Charter School, St. Aloysius School, St. Ann School, St. Charles Borromeo Elementary School, St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's, St. HOPE Leadership Academy Charter School, St. Joseph of the Holy Family, St. Mark the Evangelist School, St. Paul School, The Cathedral School, The Urban Assembly Institute for New Technologies

Complaint on CDEC Elections Filed With US Department of Justice by District 26 of Queens

The Community District Education Council of District 26 in Queens has filed a complaint with the Federal Department of Justice regarding the Voting Rights Act. The complaint asserts that the Bloomberg administration's requirement that votes in the CDEC elections may only be cast via an internet site is discriminatory and asks the DOJ to review the voting procedure.

The full text of the complaint filed can be found here.

Sorry. The DOE Says You Weren't Invited

A few days ago, word appeared that the DOE’s proposed revisions to the Chancellor’s Regulations A-660 (which provide guidelines for governance of PA’s and PTA’s) contained the following provision under the section Parent Association Bylaws Minimum Requirements:

Other than the principal or his/her designee, outside observers and speakers are prohibited from attending unless the PA bylaws specifically allow attendance by invitation of the association after the vote. A PA must vote to invite an outside speaker for a specific purpose at a particular meeting.

Leaving aside the incomprehensible English wording of the first sentence, this regulation effectively states that outside speakers and perhaps even observers could only be admitted to a PA/PTA meeting if pre-approved by the membership in a prior meeting. From my vantage point as a high school PA President, this rule rates a veritable 12 on the 1-10 scale of my absurdity meter.

In the last twelve calendar months, our PA meetings have welcomed outside speakers and visitors/observers from Con Edison, Columbia Presbyterian, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, NYS Department of Health, City Councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito, Manhattan BP Scott Stringer's office, State Senator Jose Serrano's office, Making It Count, Students or Soldiers? Coalition, NY Lawyers for the Public Interest, the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, Citibank, AXA Financial Advisors, NYPD 25th Precinct, Bucknell University, and Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO).

Each of these visitors has a purpose, either to address real issues in our school building, provide political leverage to help our issues get addressed, or simply to educate and inform parents. Many of the details for these presentations are worked out between monthly meetings as our Executive Board works to create meaningful meeting agendas.

Speaking for myself at least, there is ZERO chance we are ever going to comply with anything as ridiculous as this. Furthermore, I'm willing to take the same accountability position as the Mayor -- if parents have a problem with what I and my Board are doing, they can vote me (us) out. That’s certainly a lot more accountability leverage than we have with our Schools Chancellor.

It’s not as though parents who volunteer their time as PA/PTA officers aren't doing enough already. Now they have to be micromanaged by some disconnected bureaucracy and treated like children incapable of acting on their fellow parents’ behalf. Just more of the haughty disdain the Chancellor and Mayor have repeatedly expressed toward public school parents.

NO SNOW DAY FOR YOU!!!

While school children around the City enjoyed a rare snow day yesterday, a New York Times story this morning reveals that a small group of third graders were not so lucky. Those eight-year-old students at Harlem Success Academy, one of Eva Moskowitz’s four charter schools, were informed by automated telephone messages that they were expected to show up for four hours of classes, from 10:00 to 2:00.

The reason? Those 50 children were the only ones in the school due to take State standardized exams tomorrow, as of course will third through fifth graders all over NYC. One child in the Times story is quoted enthusiastically about being able to "ace the exam.”

Maybe it's just me, but I find this story so disturbing on so many levels -- making third graders (and their teachers) go to school on a day when the rest of the city school children had a day off, just so they could prepare for a test. It’s not as though they were the only ones taking exams this week, but Ms. Moskowitz apparently decided that four more hours of test preparation was more important than letting those eight-year-olds enjoy the rare opportunity of a little free time playing in a heavy snowfall with their friends. Who does “education” like this really serve, the children? Or the adults like Ms. Moskowitz and Mr. Klein who benefit politically (and, as we recently learned thanks to Juan Gonzalez, quite substantially financially)?

Some of my most cherished childhood memories growing up in Indianapolis involved the thrill of waking up to snow days – sledding on any hill we could find, building snow forts, having snowball fights, and, yes, even shoveling a neighbor’s driveway for $5. I know Manhattan isn't Indianapolis, but still. Furthermore, I don't ever remember my school days being driven by the overwhelming desire to "ace" a standardized exam (other, perhaps, than the SAT, but we were 17 by then and knew the stakes in that exam were personal, directly affecting our future – and almost nobody thought in terms of “acing” that test).

Perhaps for these third graders, their future, less glowing memories will include the time all their friends stayed home and played while they alone studied for a State exam. I guess if it's test-acing little third grade robots you want, this is what you do to get them.

Bloomberg's School Closing Message for Parents

Notification that public schools would be closed due to the snow went out at 5:40 am Monday morning. WNYC reported on the press conference where "Mayor Bloomberg expressed little sympathy for parents who complained they were caught without childcare:"

Bloomberg: If you got up this morning, looked outside and it didn't come to you right away, the thought that, gee, I wonder of school will be closed today, and you didn't know enough to call 311, I'd suggest another day in school is probably a good idea.

Bloomberg & Klein Send the State Assembly A Message

Today's New York Times covers the Harlem Education Fair including School Chancellor Joel Klein's "impassioned" speech defending charter schools. Klein links the continued proliferation of charters to the renewal of mayoral control of the schools now being considered by the Assembly. The Times also confirms that PS 241 in Manhattan's District 3 will be replaced with a branch of the Eva Moskowitz charter chain, Harlem Success Academy.

What's news here is not just a new charter school opening but that the Bloomberg administration will convert a public school to a charter school without a majority vote of the parent body as required by state law. The elimination of the public school will also require the neighborhood to be rezoned to reassign children to other schools left by the gap created by 241's closure. The administration has signaled that it will not seek the approval for rezoning from Distirct 3's Community Education Council, also required by state education law.

Clearly there is a message here. It was only a few weeks ago that members of the Assembly heavily criticized both the style and substance of Klein's management of the schools at a Manhattan hearing. In fact, PS 241 sits in the district of Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell, the Education Committee member who captivated the hearing audience with his incisive questioning and witty responses to the usual DOE deflections. By openly flouting the law, Bloomberg and Klein are making it clear they are above any law and will do precisely as they please.

Bloomberg to Host Charter School in Living Room

February 27, 2009 (GBN News): According to sources close to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, his recent purchase and renovation of property adjacent to his East Side townhouse is not merely intended to increase his living space. The Mayor will instead use the extra space to house a charter school right in his own home.

The Mayor is reportedly hedging his bets due to his concern over the fate of Mayoral control of the school system. Legislative hearings have not been going well for Mr. Bloomberg, and he could lose at least some measure of the total control that he has been exercising over the public schools for the past seven years.

Mr. Bloomberg has bristled over the prospect of ceding some of his authority to stakeholders like parents and their elected representatives, who he feels are “annoying”. He is said to feel that it is preferable to have total control over one school than to have to share control over the entire system.

However, GBN News has also learned that the Mayor does not plan to stop at just the one charter school. Once the school gets large enough, the Mayor plans to break it up into an increasing number of small charter schools, all housed under his own roof. Moreover, the Mayor is said to be negotiating with Education Secretary Arne Duncan to direct billions in Federal stimulus money to his charter schools, so that Mr. Bloomberg does not have to tap into his own dwindling billions.

J. Fredrick Runson, chair of the political science department at Manhattan University and an expert on education politics, says he is not surprised at the Mayor’s plans. “He hates giving up control and he’s really competitive,” Dr. Runford said. “He may be trying to create his own charter school empire here, and if it gets big enough - with the billions in stimulus money he can buy up all the adjacent property from river to river if need be - he may just be able to put the public schools out of business. At the very least, he certainly won’t stop until he has more charter schools than Eva Moskowitz.”

Bijou Miller on DOE's illegal intention to eliminate a zoned school -- and give the building to a charter

The DOE intends to close PS 241 on W. 113 St., the only zoned school in the neighborhood, and give the building over to a charter school, yet another in Eva Moskowitz' ever-expanding chain of charters, the Harlem Success Academies.

Here is a short description of PS 241 from InsideSchools:

Once PS 241 was known as the Family Academy, supported by a not-for-profit foundation that raised enough money to offer classes until 5 p.m., a summer school, a health clinic, and a team of social workers. The Friends of Family Academy developed a carefully structured curriculum with an emphasis on phonics. When that curriculum was supplanted by the one that the chancellor mandated for most schools in 2003 (and that took a more progressive approach to teaching reading) the foundation pulled out, and with that support went the extras.

Clearly, the malignant neglect (and poor curriculum choices) of DOE officials have brought down this school, and rather than endeavor to improve it, or put another regular public school in its place, they are trying to push through their unilateral decision to replace it with a charter school.

What's especially awful is that by closing this school, the DOE will essentially eliminate the school zone and leaving these children without any zoned school to attend. By Section 2590-e of NY State education law, any change in zoning has to be approved by the district's Community Education Council. Yet in this case, no one from DOE consulted the CEC, no less gave them the chance to approve or disapprove.

This action would be an extremely dangerous precedent if allowed to stand. It would essentially allow the DOE to convert any and all zoned schools in NYC to charters, to essentially privatize the entire public school system without anyone being able to stop them. For more on this, see Juan Gonzalez column here: Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein determined to keep parents seen not heard.

Bijou Miller is co-President of the President's council in District 3 and a member of the District 3 Leadership Team. Here is her account:

In December, the DOE announced that it was phasing out two of our schools in District 3. The reasons given were dropping enrollment and poor performance (though in one case, those were not the original reasons given but that is another story). I was informed as a member of the District Leadership Team (DLT) and told that the DLT would be the group that took community input, looked at new school proposals and then gave a recommendation to the DOE.

Long story short, it did not turn out that way for either school. One of those schools is PS 241. We have had three open meetings on this - one in December and two in January. At the second meeting, John White from Portfolio, had two proposals for PS 241, one a charter school (and it seemed to be Eva Moskowitz's chain, Harlem Success). White had even invited Harlem Success parents to comeand "testify" about how great their school was. So the deck seemed to be definitely stacked.

The other option was a public school but John did not offer any information on it and to date has never said anything about this other option. He said that PS 241 was no longer attracting zoned families and that only thirteen families had applied to the kindergarten class. The DOE felt that replacing 241 with another public school would not solve the under enrollment problem.

They felt that a charter school would attract more parents. At this meeting, he brought up the idea that if they put a charter school in, it would hold its lottery for catchment children first so as to accept as many 241 children as possible and then open the lottery to the district after 241 children had been accommodated.

At the third meeting and last meeting we had (we were expecting more meetings but unbeknownst to us, the process was over!), White added on to this scenario. In addition to having the charter school hold its lottery for 241 kids first, he said that they would also have first priority at five other area schools.

Parents asked about the zoning issues. For all intents and purposes, this scenario would make one group of families be zoned for five different public schools, all of them outside their original zone. Additionally, because the DOE is not replacing 241 with a public school, they are in essence not giving the families of that zone a neighborhood school. Charter schools do not qualify as zoned schools because they take from throughout the district. This is also not to mention that some of these five schools do not have the room to take in children from another catchment.

Last night, there was a joint Presidents' Council/CEC meeting tonight. Our Pres.Council meeting began at 6 P.M. Upon arriving, I noticed that therewas a huge crowd already in the auditorium. I assumed that it was people getting there early for the 6:30 CEC meeting, which had a very long agenda. Instead, to my surprise, I discovered a rally being held for the Harlem Success Academy.

I later found out that this "hearing" was being held under the auspices of the Charter School Institute of the State University of New York. I also foundout that someone had bused in a group of children who were given caps blazoned with the Harlem Success Academy logo. If this was a hearing to get community feedback, it certainly had a very biased atmosphere. I was told that PS 241 parents had not known about this hearing and apparently, if you wanted to speak, you had to somehow contact the "Hearing Registration Officer" on the day of the hearing BEFORE it started (the window of opportunity was from 5 to 5:30p.m.)

I did not attend this "hearing" as I had to conduct our own meeting but from what I gleaned, I do not think the State University got the response they had expected. In fact, many parents were angry and outraged and that anger and outrage carried over into the CEC meeting (which was delayed forforty five minutes because of this hearing).

At the CEC meeting, parents from 241 and other schools were understandably upset. The upshot is this: There was no consultation with the CEC about putting a new school into PS 241. There was no consultation with PS 241 parents about whether or not they wanted a charter school put into their building.

It now turns out that the DOE is putting in an already established branch of Harlem Success so the first and second grade classes are already full and will not have space for PS 241 children. So much for giving PS 241 children a charter school choice.

The bottom line is that the DOE is radically changing the zone by eliminating it --and the CEC has not been asked to approve. Zoning is the CEC's department and the DOE has no right to proceed with this plan without getting approval from the CEC. The DOE also has decided to place a charter school into 241 without any discussion with the families. I suppose the hearing last night was that "discussion" but, as I said, many parents had no idea it was even taking place.

---Bijou Miller, Co-President of District 3 Presidents' Council and DLT member

Teacher performance reports to be expanded; how reliable are they?

In the midst of all the massive budget cuts, DOE intends to contract out with a company to expand the production of the controversial teacher performance reports. Check out Gotham Schools: City will spend $1.5M to extend judging of teachers via test scores.

Lots of people have disputed the utility of these reports -- despite the comments in Gotham Schools from a DOE contractor. As Skoolboy points out here, even if the model is correct, "the Teacher Data Report provides no evidence whatsoever about why a teacher is successful--the many daily practices that promote student learning."

But I'd like to point out another problem. The model used to evaluate teacher effectiveness, as pointed out on our blog here, includes class size at the school and classroom level, meaning that DOE indeed recognizes that teachers should be expected to produce smaller gains the larger their classes. In fact, this is the only external factor included in the model that is assumed to increase teacher effectiveness policies – the rest are teacher and student characteristics.

That's fine and reasonable of course -- far more fair than the school progress reports -- and the teacher bonuses that are based on them, that judge all schools as though they had an equal chance to succeed, despite the fact that some may have classes of under 20 and other at 30 or more.

The problem is that the reported class size data in NYC middle schools and especially at the high school levels is extremely unreliable – so much so that these evaluation reports are likely to be wrong.

Most CTT (inclusion) classes in high school are still misreported as two classes, years after we have pointed out this problem to DOE. In middle school, the reported class size in most cases is actually the homeroom or advisory, not academic classes. Many high school classes, including quite frequently, two different levels of a subject taught by a teacher at the same time to the same group of students are counted as two separate classes. This means that some teachers may be judged as if they had class sizes of 20 or less, when their real class sizes are up to 34 or more.

I’d like to hear how useful these reports are from teachers who have received them – and also if they are sufficiently transparent as to the data they assume, especially when it comes to class size. Otherwise, it would be impossible to check it for accuracy. Please leave a comment.

ELL, Federal Stimulus, and Technology Updates at February Panel for Educational Policy

Monday's Panel for Educational Policy meeting covered three topics. Presentations are available here:

English Language Learners Update

The ELL Performance Report for 2007-2008 is still not available although some statistics are provided here.

Federal Stimulus Bill

The DOE has looked closely at what funds will be available and intends to compete aggresively for discretionary funds, including the $650 million in "Innovation Funds". Given the apparent education priorities of the Obama administration, the focus for grants will likely include technology, testing, teacher merit pay and charter schools.

Technology Update

Growing the bureaucracy: but guess which office at Tweed has actually shrunk?

The Daily News carried an article this morning, showing that despite the budget cuts, and the increasing class sizes in our schools, and the fact that there is supposed to be a “hiring freeze” at Central, Tweed continues to hire more educrats – with nearly a hundred new ones since last February: Bureaucrats and class sizes are up sharply

Here is where you can see the headcount as of November 2008 (the latest available data)-with Central at 2422 full time employees; as of February 2008, there were only 2342. In October 2004, the earliest data I could find, there were only 1984 – which means the bureaucracy has increased by 22% since then.

In October 2004, the Department of Assessment and Accountability had 19 employees. As of Nov. 2008, this number has grown to 89 – an increase of 421%. Enough to create more useless and misleading test score data.

The Chancellor’s office had seven positions, while now he has16 underlings, a growth of 129%. Enough to help him run around the country and brag about his non-achievements here in NYC.

Office of School Enrollment Planning and Operations (OSEPO) had 19 employees, and now has 35 – an increase of 84% --enough to screw up preK admissions royally!

The Office of Public Affairs had 13 employees as of 2004; now Communications, Communications, Media Relations & Community Affairs is up to 23 – an increase of 77% -- enough to spread disinformation far and wide.

But not all offices of Tweed have grown.

For example, the Office of the Deputy Chancellor for Teaching & Learning had 133 positions in October 2004. Now it is down pitifully to 23 – a reduction of 83%. This is symbolic of the actual interest in teaching and learning at DOE.

The teaching staff has also shrunk since last year. According to a DOE spokesperson, there are “440 fewer teachers working directly with students than … the year before.”