video: Public Education Nation panel on charter schools

At Public Education Nation, hosted by the Network for Public Education, North Carolina journalist Jeff Bryant hosts a panel discussion on charter schools, with New Orleans parent activist Karran Harper Royal, New York teacher and blogger Gary Rubinstein, and Connecticut attorney and activist Wendy Lecker.

Charter Schools from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

video of Public Education Nation panel: Support our Schools, Don't Close Them!

The second panel at Public Education Nation last Saturday featured Chicago teacher and Network for Public Education board member Xian Barrett moderating a panel featuring the dynamic speakers Yohuru Williams, Professor of History at Fairfield University and Tanaisa Brown of the Newark Student Union.  Please watch!

Support Our Schools, Don't Close Them from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

Videos up from Public Education Nation!

Last Saturday at the Brooklyn New School, the Network for Public Education held a terrific forum.  Here are two videos, Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown, who wrapped up the day.  Diane needs no introduction; Jitu is aneducation organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) in Chicago, and the national director of the Journey for Justice campaign. He also teaches African-American history at St. Leonard’s Adult High School, the only accredited high school in that nation that exclusively serves people who have been formerly incarcerated.

Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

See also the wonderful panel of Carol Burris, Takiema Bunche-Smith, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen and Alan Aja, speaking about testing and the common Core.

Testing and the Common Core from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

Funny if it weren't so sad: SUNY charter committee switches location of Success charter and switches it back

After the rally protesting the vote by the SUNY charter committee to approve 17 new charter schools for NYC-- including 14 more for Success Academy, despite the fact that two thirds of their schools are already underenrolled, a representative from the city told us that at the last minute Eva Moskowitz decided to switch the location for one of her charters from District 2 to District 1 or District 6, and the SUNY committee had approved this change.

Susan Miller Barker, Joseph Belluck and Ralph Rossi

This appalling practice is not all that surprising, given the way SUNY approves whatever Eva Moskowitz wants.  They allow her charters to repeatedly expand, despite the fact that she fails to enroll and retain equal numbers of high-needs students, which is required under the charter law and in fact, pushes out at risk kids with stunning regularity.  The committee also approved a stunning 14 more charters despite the public comments were overwhelmingly against allowing these charters to go forward.

You can see the tepid discussion of the last-minute switch and vote by the charter committee to approve it at about 30 minutes in a video of the meeting at the SUNY website.  You can also see that the committee members did not mention any of the public comment, or even appeared to have bothered to have read the summary beforehand.

The three members of the committee are Joseph W. Belluck,  the chair, Angelo Fatta and John Murad; two lawyers and a retired corporate executive, none of them with any background in education. Also present sowing more confusion in their wake, were Susan Miller Barker, the head of the SUNY Charter Institute, and the Counsel Ralph Rossi.

Understandably, parent leaders from District 1 and 6 and their elected City Council Members were quite angry that there were no hearings or outreach in their districts before this vote.  Despite the fact that SUNY considers this a "non-material" change -- switching the charter from one end of Manhattan to another -- it makes hash out of the public process, including district hearings, required by the law.  Few would argue that Washington Heights and the Lower East side are the same in terms of student population as the more middle class areas encompassed by District 2.   So these elected leaders, including Councilmembers Chin, Dromm, Mendez and Rodriguez , along with the presidents of Community Education Councils in Districts 1,2, and 6, wrote a letter to the SUNY board President Carl McCall, which is below, saying that their practice of switching districts and ignoring public input at the last minute reveals their "extreme and marked disregard for a transparent, democratic process."  Here's an article in tomorrow's Daily News about the letter and the anger aroused by this switcheroo.

Meanwhile, the NY Times had reported earlier that SUNY had not made any changed but had approved the charter for District 2, as earlier planned: "The new Success charters are approved for Districts 2 and 3 in Manhattan; 9 in the Bronx; 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, and 23 in Brooklyn; and 24, 27, 28 and 30 in Queens."

I contacted the reporter, Liz Harris, who assured me that SUNY had told her that there was no such change and that the school had been approved for District 2, though this might later be changed if Eva wanted.  They told the same to the DNA Info reporter, who posted a correction to an earlier article that had reported on the last-minute switch:

However, SUNY did not allow Success Academy to change its application, said a spokesman. Instead, it approved its District 2 charter “after undergoing the legally required process, including a public hearing,” he said.“The Institute was notified that Success may pursue alternative arrangements in Districts 1 or 6, an adjustment which, for a variety of reasons, is not uncommon for a charter school,” he said in a statement.
“Should they follow that course, under the law and well established practice the Institute can amend the charter accordingly, and there will be a process for additional public input.”

But as the DNA info story noted, SUNY posted the following document tonight, showing the charter had  been moved to District 1 or 6 after all.  Check out the time stamp of 6:25 PM.

CM Chin saw the new document and tweeted it:

Now SUNY claims it didn't approve a Success charter for District 1 or 6. Let's look at the list of approved charters: http://t.co/XY6RotMhAV
— Margaret S. Chin (@CM_MargaretChin) October 14, 2014

Apparently noticing the article or CM Chin's tweet, someone at SUNY Charter Institute took down the document and revised their version of reality once again -- that the switch to District 1 or District 6 had not occurred after all:

It would all be a comedy of errors if it weren't so terribly sad.

Who knows what happened and how many ways back and forth the truth was revised? The indisputable reality is that these three men make such consequential decisions by authorizing and randomly siting 17 new charter schools,  in such a cavalier fashion, without any knowledge or apparent interest in the views of the community or impact on their schools, and our public education system as a whole. 

Oct 14 Letter to SUNY protesting last minute switch to1/D6 Re protesting last minute switch to1/D6 Re Success by leonie7851

Damaging impacts of charters on Harlem's public schools

Empty room at Success charter school taken from PS 175

On October 8 I gave a presentation to the Community Education Council in District 5 on the impact of charters on their public schools in Harlem.  Our analysis, among other facts, revealed how much more disadvantaged the students are in their district public schools .  The power point is below.

Another empty Success charter room taken from PS 175

Parents have also sent me these photographs.  The first two are classrooms that Success Academy charter school took from PS 175 this year,that are now sitting empty.

This further suggests that these rapidly expanding charters are indeed under enrolled as this article and this analysis of DOE school enrollment data from the Blue Book suggest--  facts that SUNY apparently ignored when they authorized 14 more Success charters last week.

Below is another photograph, showing how the expansion of another Success charter has taken so much space within PS/MS 149 in Harlem that the speech therapist now has to share the room with the PTA office; with the two spaces only separated by sheets.

PTA office/speech therapy room at PS/MS 149

I emphasized at the meeting how important it is for parents and teachers to speak out about the negative impact of charter co-locations on their schools. If you have stories to tell or photos to share, please share them with us at info@classsizematters.org.  Thanks!

District 5 Charter Impacts in Harlem

Eva Gets Cozy With Bill

October 10, 2014 (GBN News): NY City Mayor Bill DiBlasio may be regretting the decision to rent out his Brooklyn apartment and live in Gracie Mansion. GBN News has learned that Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the Success Academy charter school chain, plans to co-locate one of her 14 recently approved charter schools into the Mayoral residence. Under a deal pushed through by Governor Andrew Cuomo last spring, the city must provide rent-free space for charter schools. Thus Mayoral control over charter co-locations is now significantly restricted, and Ms. Moskowitz appears to be taking full advantage of that fact.

It is unclear just how much of the Mayor’s residence will be taken up by the new school. Many charters have appropriated classrooms, lunchrooms and other common space from co-located public schools, and have relegated those facilities to using separate entrances. Mr. DiBlasio has tried to curry favor with the Governor, helping him secure the Working Families Party endorsement and supporting him in the Democratic primary. But given Ms. Moskowitz’s considerable influence over Mr. Cuomo, the Mayor might soon be making up some extra sets of keys to the back door of Gracie Mansion, and collecting takeout menus from local restaurants.

Tory Frye on the questionable claims of supporters of Success Academy and charters in general

On Thursday, as the NY Times revealed, Eva Moskowitz closed her Success Charters for the day, and told parents that they had to accompany their children to a rally near City Hall or find alternate baby-sitting for them. NY1 reported that all 32 of her schools had the morning off and parents got a wake-up call reminding them to attend. She bussed parents, students and staff to the rally; as did Achievement First charters.  One can only imagine the criticism in the media if any public school had called off classes and demanded that parents do the same for a political rally.

Here is an analysis of Victoria Frye, parent and CEC member in District 6 in Washington Heights on the claims of those who support Success Academy and charters more generally, with data and links for those who want to explore the issue further.

Waitlists

Looking at “demand” data for schools is obviously a market-based approach to education.  Even if one does believe that market or business models are ideal for educating children, waitlists prove nothing.  Guess how many kids are on the wait list for District 6 schools? Over 3,000.  How is that possible? The same families applied to multiple schools, probably including charter schools. 

 Charter school waitlists are equally inflated.  Even a D6 elementary school that is labeled as failing by “Families for Excellent Education” in their laughable “research” report TheForgotten Fourth,  PS 132 (The Juan Pablo Duarte School) had 152 applicants for just 50 seats; what does that demonstrate?  Some D6 schools had hundreds of students wait listed last spring. School acceptance rates were  18 and 14% for PS 311 and 314 -- both smaller than the acceptance rates of 19% percent claimed by Success Academy in its SUNY application, asking for the authority to establish 14 new charters across the city. 

Data on enrollment at the Success Academies in D2 shows that good portions, from a quarter to a third of students, come from outside the district.  How does that demonstrate “demand” within D2 for a Success Academy?  So the “evidence” (if you choose to interpret it that way) is clear: the demand for public schools eclipses the demand for charters.  So, no, charters should not get space or resources until we replicate the "high demand" and "high performing" public schools in our city.  For more on this see this analysis.

Apples to Apples Comparisons

Luckily some serious researchers have looked at this issue.  Bruce Baker, a professor Education at Rutgers, for example put together this chart: 

According to 2013 school report cards, “PS 149 has nearly double the number of special needs students compared to Academy 1: 20.6% compared to 12.6%, and more than four times the number of English Language learners  --18.9% compared to only 4.1% at Success Academy.”  (As described here: )  Success also suspends students at double the rate of their local public schools, for example Harlem Success 1, 2, 3, and 4 suspended students at a rate of 22, 15, 14 and 19% as compared with 6, 7, and 9% in Districts 3, 4, and 5. And again the IBO reports that special needs students leave charters at a much higher rate than comparable public school students (). And when charter students leave or are counseled out of a charter they do not go to another charter, they go to a public school.  Even SUNY, as the charter authorizer, acknowledges that attrition at Success is problematic.  

Regarding inclusion at public schools, we have a citywide policy of inclusion that mandates that local neighborhood schools must accommodate special needs students.  Budget realities constitute real barriers to schools being able to do this, so there is a tension between the relatively new inclusion policy and years and years of budget cuts.  The Chancellor has acknowledged this issue; but as of yet, I have heard of no solution to it.

Space

Our D6 public schools do not have space – FULL STOP.  We are over 90% capacity district-wide with the faulty capacity formula and we have numerous schools that are desperately in need of new facilities. We have the largest average class size in D6 since 2006. Last year, 6 D6 schools have K class averages of 25+. Ten D6 schools had grade 1-3 class averages of 25+. Five D6 schools had at least one 1-3 class with 30+. 14 D6 had at least one 4-8 class with 30+. PS 366 had a K class with 28 students. PS 153 had a 1^st grade class with 32 students. PS 28 had a 2^nd grade class with 31 students. PS 132, a struggling school, had a 3^rd grade class with 29 students. The average D6 utilization rate is 94%.  

Thirteen schools are over 100% utilization, including PS/IS 187, which is blocks away from the Mother Cabrini High School, which the DOE handed over to Success Academy.  D6 also has 19 “TCUs” (aka trailers) at 3 schools, not including the “mini buildings” at schools like PS 192/325.  Mott Hall is in a building that is dilapidated and dangerous; it ought to be condemned. So someone please explain to me how our D6 public schools have “space” for charter schools?  Taking space from D6 schools will HARM D6 students.

Hedge Fund supporters

Hedge fund people do not donate to systems that educate the masses; if they did, they would have been donating to public schools all along and/or advocating for increasing taxes on capital gains and investment incomes to levels that would fund public schools at the same levels of private schools.  Why have they not been doing this?  I thought they cared deeply about public school students?  Why do they only donate to charter schools or PACS that advocate vouchers and charters?  They see a business opportunity wrapped in a bogus charitable donation; they are about creating new “markets” and the best way to do this is to engage in "disruption," which is exactly what charters do.  The fact is they see public education as a 700 billion dollar (now 1T?) industry waiting to be privatized; and they need an education "crisis," a private-public "solution" (created by ALEC) and then lobbyists and politicians to pave the way for them.  This is well documented, for example here.  

Just a taste of what they have in store for children in the future: virtual schools. “Baird Equity Research, in a giddy note to investors this year about the potential growth of K12 Inc., noted, “capturing just two million (3.5%) of the addressable market yields a market opportunity of approximately $12 billion … Over the next three years, we believe that the company is capable of 7%+ organic revenue growth with modest margin expansion.” How will it achieve this growth? According to Baird, K12 Inc.’s “competency in lobbying in new states” is “another key point of differentiation.” The analyst note describes “K12’s success in working closely with state policymakers and school districts to enable the expansion of virtual schools into new states or districts” as a key asset. “The company has years of experience in successfully lobbying to get legislation passed to allow virtual schools to operate,” Baird concludes.”

Funding

The Independent Budget Office, which is just what its name says, reports that charters get more money per student than public schools. As well, each new charter gets $500K to start up, along with renovations etc.  This new round will cost us a cool 7M just to start.  If we accept that a competition-/market-based model of education is the way to go, and schools should be marketing to and competing for students, then we need an even playing field where public schools can offer the same programs and resources that charters do, with their hedge fund donor-money and extended days.  

 Eva Moskowitz earns 475K per year and according to Wikipedia has 4 assistants.  She runs 22 schools.  The NYC schools Chancellor earns $200K.  Eva also moved her offices to Wall Street recently.  So let's start paying public school teachers and administrators similar salaries and see what happens.  The truth is that Eva is getting paid this much because it is expensive to be the face of the destruction of the public education in the US, which is what she will go down in history as, if we let her do it.

Quality Schools

First, I have to point out that one of the schools included in The Forgotten Fourth report is D6’s Harbor Heights middle school, which is a school for new arrivals to the US.  The research was so sloppy that they did not even eliminate schools where students who just arrived in the US and do not speak English AT ALL attend and - as would be expected - do miserably on the state ENGLISH tests.  It’s also incredibly disrespectful to the educators and students in the school. 

According to CEC1 President, a D1 school for new arrivals was also included in the report.  Ignoring this, but accepting charters’ definition of “success,” if they are doing something unique, why is it not being replicated in public schools? If some children flourish under this model, then we do not need to remove the charter school cap statewide; we can just start doing what charters do.  If it is the longer school day, then lengthen it and pay teachers for their time.  If it is instruction that has been replicated many times over at various charter schools, then teach public school teachers to do it and implement it in magnet public schools to which parents can choose to send their children.  

But the truth is that this is not about implementing successful strategies in a public system to the benefit of all public school students.  It is about privatizing public education in the US and opening up a trillion dollar market to investors.  And the best way to go about this is to make it look like and to help public schools “fail” and that there is a “demand” for charters and thus we should just turn the whole system over to charters.  That’s what today’s rally was about; next is to try to lift the charter cap. 

  

 And, finally, teacher attrition…

Teacher attrition at Success is stunning.  As noted in this recent article: “In Harlem Success Academies 1-4, the only schools for which the state posted turnover data, more than half of all teachers left the schools ahead of the 2013-14 school year. In one school, three out of four teachers departed.”  The model is clearly unsustainable and obviously not “family-friendly” (which may explain their relatively young and inexperienced teachers and principals), but then again they only have to sustain it long enough to disrupt the system, buy the politicians, pass the legislation and open the market…

Plenty of NYC public schools stink and need very serious attention - don't get me wrong.  The current state of racial, ethnic and social class-based segregation must be addressed.  School funding must be addressed and child poverty must be addressed.  And no we cannot wait to get all of that right before we implement evidence-based education strategies that drive student achievement, like integrated schools and small class sizes (both shown to drive performance).  And if the research shows (using apples to apples comparisons) that some charters use techniques that improve achievement that public schools do not, given the same students, resources and environments, then we should implement the techniques in public schools.  

-- Victoria (Tory) Frye

Why SUNY should not allow Success Charters to expand.

On Wed., October 8, 2014, the SUNY charter committee is due to vote on authorizing a gazillion new Success charters for nearly every area of the city -- though without telling us exactly where they will go, and how much space they will take from our public school students.  Where: 116 E. 55 St., Boardroom;  Time: 9:30 AM.

Eva Moskowitz is determined to occupy as much real estate as possible as quickly as possible at city expense,  and is preparing with a massive rally this Thursday where she will gather the troops, closing her schools for the occasion, and ordering every parent, teacher and student at her command to show up.

In addition, her hedge fund supporters have given $1.75 million in the past week alone to GOP State Senators, determined to fix the election in her favor. .Of that,  $350,000, came from Paul Tudor Jones II,  of the Robin Hood Foundation and Tudor Investment Corp., a hedge fund in Connecticut. Here is a picture of him with his wife at his 60th birthday, where John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater and Jon Bon Jovi sang.

Not to mention millions more they have given to the best friend of the charter schools, Governor Cuomo. Truly, the charter movement is not an educational movement, but a political one, in the worst sense of the word -- and their billionaire backers are intent on using their outsized wealth and power to get their way, whether it is in the best interests of NYC children or not. Check out the column by Prof. Dan Katz on their collective hypocrisy.

On Monday night there were hearings at the District 2 offices on 7th Ave, where many eloquent teachers, parents, community leaders, and Assemblymember Deborah Glick spoke in opposition to this land grab, and several parents from Upper West Success spoke plaintively in support.  The Community Education Council in Districts 2 and 3 are also opposed, as is the Community Board in District 2, whose representative suggested that if SUNY liked Success charters so much they give them space in their own buildings, instead of invading our local public schools.  Interestingly, not a single parent who said they wanted to enroll their own children in any of these schools showed up, and the representatives from her charter network refused to speak, though as usual, they had hired a cameraman to take videos.  I told the videographer that he must have filmed hundreds of hours of hearings of parents protesting  Success charter schools, and he just shrugged.
Norm Scott has posted some videos here of the MORE contingent, and DNA info covered the hearings here, as did the Columbia Spectator.  I  spoke briefly, and today I sent my comments to two out of the three members of the SUNY charter committee  (the only two I could find emails for.) 

To: jbelluck@belluckfox.com, jmurad@hancocklaw.com, charters@suny.edu 

Dear Mr. Belluck and Mr. Murad:  

I urge you not to allow Success charters to expand, on the grounds that they do not enroll their fair share of high needs students, receive more per student funding in public funds than public schools, and drain our public schools of the resources and space necessary for a sound basic education.

I will briefly explain these points, but for back-up material or citations for any of these points, you can refer to the attached document, called the Six Myths of Charter school, also  posted here:  http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/testimony-charters-5-6-14-final1.pdf

1.        Charter schools are NOT public schools. Charter schools are publicly funded but governed by private corporate boards, and do NOT have to follow the same laws or rules that public schools do.  They are able to cap their enrollment and class sizes at any levels they like, they enact extreme disciplinary policies, and often exhibit high suspension rates.   In NYC, they can and do expel students –forbidden by NYC public schools for any student under 17.

2.      Charter schools DO NOT educate the same exact kind of students as public schools.  Charters have fewer special needs students, English language learners, students in poverty. This is especially true of Success Charters. According to the 2010 Amendments to the Charter Schools Act , when charter authorizers  renew or allow charter schools to expand, these schools are obligated to show they are meeting or exceeding enrollment and retention targets of students with disabilities, English language learners and free and/or reduced price lunch, yet despite this, Success charters has been allowed to rapidly expand without showing this.

3.     NYC charters receive MORE in per student public funding than district schools.  As the NYC Independent Budget Office has pointed out, the two thirds of NYC charters that are co-located receive MORE per pupil public funding than public schools when their free space and services is taken into account.  The large disparity in public support will grow even greater with the boost in charter funding  in the new state budget, and the guarantee of free space for all new and expanding NYC charters moving forward, .

4.   Charter schools DO NOT get higher test scores because of some secret formula. 

The test scores of charter chains like Success is likely not due to superior teaching or curriculum, but to increased funding, and their much higher suspension and attrition rates. Of course, the more a school pushes out struggling students, the higher their test scores will likely be. According to the latest available figures, Success Academy charters lose half of their students by 6^th grade.  Suspensions are especially high among special education students.

5. Charter schools DO NOT have huge waiting lists. According to DOE figures, there are many public schools whose acceptance rates are the same or smaller than charters.

6.    The new state law which guarantees free space paid for by city for all new charters going forward will further drain the city’s schools of resources they cannot afford.  The new law actually provides unprecedented privileges to charters, as there are overcrowded communities in NYC that have waited twenty years for a new school to be built in their neighborhoods, but now any charter that wants to open up shop in a district will now be guaranteed space free of charge.  Already NYC is spending over $1 billion per year on charters, while our public school budgets have been cut 14% in recent years.

While hundreds of thousands of NYC public school children continue to sit in overcrowded classrooms, in trailers, and on Kindergarten waiting lists, and wait for smaller classes, which is the state’s highest court said was their constitutional right, the charter schools will get a free ride at the city’s expense.  This will further exacerbate a dual system of separate and unequal schools and is fundamentally unfair.:

NYC DOE still putting out false discharge data and inflating the graduation rate

Throughout the Bloomberg years, when the administration would trumpet rising graduation rates, I noticed how the discharge numbers were very high and seemed to be increasing. Every student listed as a “discharge” rather than a “dropout” can inflate a school’s figures,  as he or she are no longer counted in the cohort  -- in either the denominator or the numerator for the purposes of calculating the graduation rate.

So in 2009, I co-authored a report with Jennifer Jennings, entitled High School Discharges Revisited: Trends in NYC’s Discharge Rates, 2000-2007.   Our analysis showed that discharge rates had increased over this period, especially among Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, and English language learners.  

 Between the classes of 2000 and 2007, the discharge rate for students with disabilities increased from 17 to 23 percent, including in the class of 2005 where it spiked at 39 percent.  The report provided evidence that a thousand students had been “moved” into the special education cohort that year, possibly in order so DOE could claim an increase in the overall graduation rate.  Finally, we pointed out how some of the students categorized as discharges according to the DOE codes, such as students who left school to attend GED programs or because of pregnancy, should have been listed as drop-outs instead, according to state and federal standards. 

Our report led the DOE to change its coding for some of the categories and the City Council to pass a law called Local Law 42, to require detailed and disaggregated discharge reporting each year.  The results of that reporting are here.

A related law, Local Law 43, was also passed required the reporting of discharge rates at closing high schools, shown here; in these schools the discharge and drop out rates increase sharply.  Here is my testimony in support of both these bills.

Also as a direct result of our report, Betsy Gotbaum, then the Public Advocate, asked the NY State Comptroller to audit DOE’s discharge rates.  When the results of that audit were finally released in 2011, they revealed that 14.8% of students who were labelled as discharged should have been identified as dropouts instead, and fully 20% of the special education students. Moreover, the auditors found that DOE had no evidence to show that more than half of their sample of discharged students weren't actually dropouts; taking DOE months to come up with documentation. 

Just a few weeks ago, on Sept. 9, 2014, the NY State Comptroller’s office released a little noted, follow-up report showing almost no improvement in this area. According to a DOE internal audit from 2012, as many as 14% of reported discharges still should have been reported as dropouts.  A subsequent audit from December 2013 continued to find unspecified errors in DOE’s discharge classifications. 

I have now FOILed DOE and the State Comptroller for these two audits; we will see how long it takes them to respond.  Yet it is disappointing that there has been so little progress in the accurate reporting of this data, whether out of sloppiness or to inflate NYC's graduation rate, especially given DOE’s claims of being a “data-driven” agency.