HIGH STAKES FOR MIKE AND JOEL IN “PAY FOR GRADES” POLICY

August 31, 2007 (GBN News): The plan for the NY City Department of Education to pay schoolchildren for good test scores may come at a higher price than Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein had anticipated. A spate of challenges, legal and otherwise, may soon be in the offing.

GBN News has learned that a in a number of schools, fourth and seventh graders are planning to “hold out” for higher compensation. Children are apparently organizing to refuse to take standardized tests unless the pay scale is significantly raised. One eighth grade organizer at MS 333 in Brooklyn, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “Hey, they make such a big deal over test scores, it must be pretty important to them. Let’s see what it’s really worth.”

The fact that the compensation will be limited to fourth and seventh graders has rankled many children who missed out on the incentives last year. A group of students calling themselves “Fifth and Eight Graders for Fairness” are demanding retroactive pay for last years’ tests, and they say that they may even file a class action lawsuit to force the DOE to pay damages as well. As one eight grader put it, “They say paying kids raises test scores, so I would have done much better on my tests last year if they paid me. I probably missed out on a good high school, and this could have cost me a chance at Harvard Law. That’s worth millions.”

The stakes may be even higher for Chancellor Klein. According to GBN News sources, Mayor Bloomberg will pay the Chancellor $100,000 out of his own pocket for each percentage point increase in city test scores, as an incentive to get the new policy to succeed. However, if there is no increase, the Mayor will hold the Chancellor accountable. Mr. Bloomberg was said to have told aides that, “If scores don’t go up and it costs me the Presidency, I’ll sue his ass.”

In a related story, the DOE is working on in incentive plan to insure the success of the Chancellor’s plan to institute a “rigorous, standards based” program for three and four year olds. Preschoolers, who will be tested on such subjects as toilet training, block building and nap time, will earn performance rewards ranging from Barney coloring books to stuffed animals.

MAYOR EXTENDS CELL BAN CITYWIDE

August 26, 2007 (GBN News): Mayor Bloomberg announced today that not only will he defy a planned override of his veto of the City Council bill guaranteeing children’s right to carry cell phones to and from school, he now intends to put forth a complete ban on possession of cell phones throughout the city. “If they’re dangerous for kids to carry, they’re dangerous for everyone”, the Mayor told a City Hall news conference, “and besides, they annoy me”.

The Mayor’s plan will, according to City Hall sources, be enforced by the Mayor’s new “Cell Phone Czar”, Emomali Rakhmon, former President of Tajikistan and currently head of School Security. Mr. Rakhmon will enforce the ban through a combination of technologies. Mobile metal detectors, of the type employed by school security, will be placed at random at the entrances to stores, theaters, and other public places. In addition, the hundreds of strategically placed “congestion pricing” cameras, which Mr. Bloomberg hopes will be used to charge motorists for driving in Manhattan, will serve double duty by taking pictures of cell phone users as well. The pictures will be matched up with existing Police Department mug shots as well as news archives and old high school yearbook photos, to determine the identity of the violators. All cell phones detected by these devices will be confiscated, and the users will be fined $500. Second time offenders will be shot.

Reaction from the Council was swift. Council Speaker Christine Quinn, usually an ally of the Mayor, said that there is no legal way that the Mayor can enforce such a ban without a Council vote, which will not be forthcoming. However, Mr. Bloomberg dismissed that objection, saying the Council members only want to be able to carry cell phones so that they can arrange big fund raising dinners. “It is my duty as Mayor to keep this city safe”, Mr. Bloomberg said, “and possession of cell phones leads to crime, gang violence, and an irritating ringing in my ears.”

It was brought to the Mayor’s attention that his own schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, might object to the ban, since he relies on a Blackberry to perform most of his duties. The Mayor countered that he and the Chancellor would be exempt from the ban. “We’re rich”, the Mayor said, “so you can trust us never to use cell phones for criminal purposes.”

In a related story, the Mayor told a group of public school parents that he is responsive to their concern that children are not safe traveling home from school alone without cell phones. Mr. Bloomberg told the group that he will consequently mandate that mothers pick up their children from school every day to accompany them home. However, he said if the mothers are truly too busy to pick up their kids themselves, they will be allowed to “send the chauffeur or the maid” to pick them up.

DOE spokesperson, earning her keep!

Check out this entry from the NY Press. Apparently Julia Levy of the DOE press office emailed her colleagues at 8:37 AM on Saturday morning, urging them to vote in the NY1 snap poll on Klein’s performance.

From: Levy Julia
Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2007 8:37 AM
To: REDACTED
Subject: NY1 grading the chancellor

Hi all,NY1 is asking NYers what grade they'd give Joel for his five-year tenure as schools chancellor. If you're interested in voting, please visit http://www.ny1.com/ny1/Polls/index.jsp?pollactivequestionintid=2905https://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.ny1.com/ny1/Polls/index.jsp?pollactivequestionintid=2905>; . (Feel free to pass this along to your teams.)Also, you have another chance to grade the chancellor -- this time on edwize, the UFT's blog. Please visit http://www.edwize.org/ <https://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.edwize.org/>; to vote. Please share this with your colleagues and friends.Julia

As the NY Press writes, “One way to make sure your boss triumphs in an online poll is to alert the employees that they should go vote for the boss.”

It’s nice to know the former NY Sun reporter is working overtime, earning her (as of 2006) $120,000 salary!

For the Chancellor’s final grade in the NY1 poll, click here.

Middle Schools Initiative & Cell Phone Ban: Discussions at Panel for Educational Policy Meeting

The Panel for Educational Policy meets monthly to review DOE policies and approve budgets. As the appointee of Borough President Scott Stringer, I represent Manhattan on the Panel. The DOE doesn't release minutes or transcripts of the proceedings so I'll be relating the important items for all interested. See also InsideSchools for coverage.

Middle School Initiative

The DOE presented their initiative to adopt recommendations of the City Council's Middle School Task Force. NYU education professor Pedro Noguera did an excellent job of pulling a strong report out of a task force filled with diverse views. It's a shame the mayor and chancellor couldn't give it more than half-hearted support. The NY Times coverage reflected the timid response:

"But the mayor shied away from adopting the most far-ranging changes recommended in the reports, like significantly reducing class sizes, creating a special middle school academy to train teachers about early adolescence, and removing police officers from city schools to create a more welcoming atmosphere."

I pointed out how the middle school situated inside DOE headquarters, the Ross Global Academy charter school, has capped class size at 20 students and asked if the more modest class size reduction recommendations in the report (25 students per class) would be adopted. The answer was no. Since the report offers smaller classes as a way to attract experienced teachers to high-needs schools, I then asked what measures would be taken to attract and retain teachers. The DOE plan is to expand the lead teacher program and offer professional development.

We often hear the mayor speak on the nature of leadership: "Lead from the front" etc. Middle school reform is an area where we could use some of that leadership. Council Speaker Chris Quinn and the people behind report are looking at the situation optimistically - that the initial DOE position is only a start and more recommendations will be embraced. Let's hope their optimism is warranted

School Safety

Elayna Konstan, the CEO of the Office of School and Youth Development said our schools are getting safer. The next day the State Education Department said schools are getting more dangerous. You can find statistics for your school on the SED web site. I asked if the Middle School Task Force Report recommendations on school safety would be implemented, specifically, would educators be given more control over school safety officers and police in the schools. Konstan was not familiar with the recommendations and pointed to their efforts in professional development and sharing of best practices.

Cell Phone Ban

The City Council has passed a bill allowing students to carry phones to and from school. While the mayor has vetoed it, the Council has said they will override the veto and pass the bill into law. I asked CEO Konstan if the administration would work with the Council to accommodate the rights of students or would there be more litigation. The response was more tough talk: "We'll wait for the litigation." The chancellor referred me to the mayor's veto message.

More from Klein on "unleashing" greatness

In the same NY Post interview in which the Chancellor recently made his controversial comments about the need for "rigorous standards" for 3, 4 and 5 year olds, he made a number of other revealing statements, including proposing that 10^th graders should be tested and steered either to vocational programs or academic classes where they can be prepared for college:

“Klein also sees a future with kids "testing out" in 10th grade and either proceeding to two more years of high school and then college, or a vocational school, depending on their grades and ambitions.”

This was one of the major recommendations of a task force report that Klein sat on earlier in the year – created by Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Tucker is a real educational entrepreneur and serial enabler of many of the worst ideas in education – including the adoption of high stakes testing in states.

Tucker has been quite influential, despite the fact that according to his bio in Wikipedia, his only degrees are in philosophy and American literature, with a Masters in Telecommunications Policy and classes in “theater engineering." The report that Tucker released was called “Tough Choices or Tough Times” and you can read the exec. Summary here: (in pdf) The report provoked much criticism and even ridicule when it was released earlier this year – including the notion that all public schools nationwide should be privatized and operated by “independent contractors” -- or organizations like his.

Yet another notion Klein mentions in the NY Post interview is that “"You can't mandate greatness, you can only unleash it. But you can mandate adequacy."

Klein's view that one can only "unleash" greatness underlies DOE”s latest phase of reorganization – a radically decentralized system of schools run by principals with little central oversight or direction. See the recent postings of Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf in EduWonk – in which Cerf argues by giving principals broad powers, so much individual creativity will be released that the overall system will thrive :

”Only by empowering schools with broad decision-making authority within the context of real accountability for results can we stimulate innovation and maximize the creative powers of our committed educators. Only then, can we move school systems to the next level.”

Why the disconnected decisions of 1500 principals, many of whom are severely constrained by overcrowding, an incoherent organizational structure, and a system of accountability that doesn’t take into account their schools’ differential conditions, will lead to greatness is hard to understand. It is certainly not based upon research or the experience any district in the country. Instead, I fear that it will lead to even more inequality of opportunity for our neediest students -- as is happening right now in New Orleans.

Why? Next year, when all NYC schools will be graded A to F, based almost entirely on test scores, and principals will risk losing their jobs based on these grades, the incentives will increase to restrict admission to the most high-achieving students, and to get rid of all the most troublesome, low-achieving students as soon as possible, whether by forcing them to transfer to other schools, discharging them to GED programs, or giving them long-term suspensions.

Though the trend in these outcomes is hard to determine, given DOE’s lack of transparency, there is compelling evidence that both long-term suspensions and discharges have risen significantly under this administration. There is also very good chance that these trends will now accelerate– because oversight will be almost non-existent, and the new system doesn’t measure any of these factors in evaluating schools. Indeed, the Accountability office continues to deny that these problems even exist.

Finally, there are Klein’s concluding words in the Post interview:

"You can't make significant change . . . without there being a certain amount of resistance and pushback," he said. "There are lots of people who are not resistant [to change], but I simply didn't communicate effectively about what [the change] was. They didn't fully understand. They felt things were moving" and they weren't part of it."

What do people think -- was the overwhelming opposition of parents and teachers due to their not "understanding" what the changes were – or more the result of dissatisfaction with the changes themselves and the autocratic manner in which they were imposed?

In each phase of the reorganization, the views and opinions of educators and parents were discounted and ignored, and faddish notions of how to improve our schools substituted in their place. This is still happening, as evidenced by Klein's remarks in this interview. Certainly, those leading the charge at Tweed could have done a far better job communicating their decisions ahead of time – but it may be that they chose not to do this, knowing this would give stakeholders more time to analyze their proposals, evaluate them fairly, and then mobilize resistance.

KLEIN SEES 3 R'S FOR 3-YEAR-OLDS

In a recent interview in the New York Post, Chancellor Klein said: "We should have all of our students start and have rigorous standard-based programs at age 3, age 4, age 5."

This statement provoked a lot of discussion and critical comment on our NYC education list serv. While few disputed the value of high-quality preschool for four and three years, especially for disadvantaged children, his emphasis on “rigorous, standards-based programs" is a real red flag to many parents. From experience we know what these words mean: pushing our kids into the grind of academics and testing that has overwhelmed our schools -- way before they’re ready for it.

The fact is that all children learn at different rates, particularly in the early years, and to force them into a routine of drilling and frequent assessment so early may have the worst sort of effects. The following are the observations of one parent, Dorothy Giglio:

Holy Cow!! lets do away with childhood altogether. Maybe they can go from the womb to training programs. We could have standardized tests like, one year old must be reciting the alphabet, front and backwards. Two year olds doing beginner math. You get the point.

Why have mothers and fathers, let the government do it. There is no better time than those early years and that means up to 5 years old. When everything to a child is a wonder. That is what most of us had children for. I am all for Pre K, at 4 years old or even day care and early 3yr old programs when the parent either wants or needs it. I can see having a child attend some program to give them a chance at socialization with other children and maybe some of the basics, colors, numbers etc in the context of PLAY.

But kids need to be kids. And suggesting standards at this stage is ridiculous since as a mother of three I know in the early years all children progress at different rates. And a "rigorous standard based program" means in DOE language "Let's TEST them."

My kids are grown, the youngest starts Senior Year in HS this September, but this is not the world I hope to see my grandchildren be taught in some day. Hope I am here to fight it even then.

Dorothy Giglio
Co President James Madison HS
Former President President Council Reg 6 HS
Former President President Council District 22, Brooklyn

Klein on his 5 year anniversary: "In the end you gotta let your poor heart break a little”

Next week Joel Klein will have been Chancellor for five years – one of the longest serving in NYC history. On the occasion, he sat down for an interview with Mike Meenan of NY1. Some excerpts:

Despite all the reorganizations, he admits that in some ways there has been little change.

Klein: "Any fool can lower class size by the numbers. The question is can you lower class size at the same time you maintain and improve teacher quality?"

If any fool can do it, why can't he? Especially given the fact that there are now almost ten qualified applicants for every teaching opening.

"Klein says he's all for class size reduction, but wants to take time finding the right teachers. It’s a go slow approach ...."

Slow indeed. At this rate our grandchildren will still be waiting.

"It’s a little bit like that song ‘The Glory of Love.’ You know, you gotta give a little, you gotta take a little and in the end you gotta let your poor heart break a little,” says Klein.

Some would say there's been a lot more taking than giving. Fewer classes provided in nearly every grade under this administration -- leading to no discernible progress in this critical measure, despite falling enrollment.

"He's often accused of running the system from the top down. Klein insists he does seek the input of parents. "Let me say to you, I consult broadly and extensively,” says Klein."

Hmm. Wonder which parents he consults -- parents of private school students? Asked what the proof of positive change is:

"Klein says the proof is coming, most visibly with every school now getting a report card. "You don't need any lingo, right? A, B, C, D, or F. People get it,” says Klein. "

What mark would you give the Chancellor? NY 1 lets you grade his performance.

The response is unanimous: withhold state funding until DOE comes up with a better proposal!

On August 6, Class Size Matters faxed an open letter to NY State Education Commissioner Mills, with the signatures of over 200 parents, PTA presidents, Community Education Councilmembers, education advocates, and other key leaders, including Robert Jackson, Chair of the NYC Council Education committee and the original CFE plaintiff.

The letter urges the state to reject the city's class size reduction proposal, submitted on July 16 as part of its "Contract for Excellence", and to withhold funding until and unless the city prepares an actual, enforceable five year reduction plan, as mandated by law.

The city is obligated to come up with a five year plan, showing continuous and measurable reductions in class size, to receive the additional funding that will come to our schools as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case, according to the budget passed by the State Legislature last spring.

Earlier, we sent Commissioner Mills a longer letter, explaining in detail why the the city's submission is inadequate. For those who are interested in taking a look at our analysis, it is posted (in Word) here. In brief, the Department of Education's proposal fails to comply with the law for the following reasons:

It does not include even the outlines of a five year class size reduction plan, as required. Even as a one year plan, it lacks sufficient funding, space and direction.

The so-called "Fair student formula" used to allocate dollars deprives resources to reduce class size to half of all schools, including 47% of our failing schools – those that according to law and good policy should be addressed first.

The schools that were selected for “class size coaching” are too few in number, and the process itself of "coaching" will lead to uncertain results.

There is no alignment with the capital plan, as the law mandates -- and thus there is no provision of the additional space that will be necessary.

The class size “targets” mentioned in the document appear to be based on speculation alone, and are so minimal they will be difficult to measure, given the chronic inaccuracy of the city’s class size data. In many grades, the “targets” for class size appear to be higher than would result from enrollment decline alone.

The funds the city wants to spend on its testing initiative, under the heading of additional "time on task" should be disallowed -- as all these new standardized exams will take time away from learning rather than extend it.

Instead of a thoughtful systematic plan, this proposal is fatally flawed -- haphazard, scattershot, and indifferent to the law and the regulations. It is unlikely to lead to a significant reduction in class size in any grade.

We asked that the state require that the city spend at least $100 million next year hiring teachers to reduce class size, targeted first to our failing schools, and immediately prepare a long-term plan, providing sufficient funding and space through a more expansive capital budget, so all students in this city will be able to receive appropriate class sizes within five years.

Since the city revealed its proposal in July, it has met with overwhelming criticism from parents and teachers alike. Here is what Noreen Connell of the Educational Priorities Panel wrote about the response:

Despite the absence of a coherent document and with as little as five days’ notice, close to 900 individuals testified before NYC Department of Education officials, predominantly PTA presidents and other parent leaders. A smaller proportion of those giving oral testimony, but still significant in number, were classroom teachers. Education advocates, elected officials, and civic and union representatives were the balance of participants. ... all substantive public testimony expressed disappointment or anger about the plan’s objectives. Such widespread public rejection calls for the NYS Department of Education to work with city school officials to develop a more acceptable plan.

Her are links to the letters to Mills from Assembly Education Chair Cathy Nolan, Assemblymember James Brennan, City Council Education Chair Robert Jackson, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity ( pdf), Advocates for Children (pdf), the League of Women Voters (pdf), the Women's City Club (pdf), the United Federation of Teachers, and the Educational Priorities Panel -- each asking that funding be withheld until the city comes up with a better proposal.

What will the Commissioner do? Stay tuned.

Mayor Compromises on Cell Ban

August 10, 2007 (GBN News): Determined to maintain the NY City public school ban on cell phones in the face of strong parent opposition and a 46-2 City Council vote to allow children to carry phones to school, Mayor Bloomberg says that he has found a way to satisfy parents without forsaking the ban. The Mayor, with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein at his side, today announced a compromise plan to insure parent-child communication without the need for cell phones.

The new plan would mandate that schools set aside three minutes of homeroom period each day for children to select their dinner options from a printed list. Children will choose appetizer, entrée and dessert, as well as a beverage option, and, using a number two pencil, will enter their choices by filling in bubbles on a computerized answer sheet. The sheets will be collected and fed into the DOE’s ARIS supercomputer, which will analyze the choices and then either email, FAX, or phone the information to parents in time to cook dinner. The Mayor said that the plan would insure that students no longer will need to bring cell phones to school, since determining dinner plans is the only reason they were needed in the first place.

Chancellor Klein added that there will be other benefits to this plan as well. “We in the NY City schools are data driven”, the Chancellor said, “and we will be gathering huge amounts of new data here.” Mr. Klein went on to say, “Of course, this data will now be factored into each school’s report card. We can now evaluate teachers and Principals based on how healthy their students’ dinner choices are. And woe to any teacher whose students eat too many trans fats.”

The Mayor’s plan is slated to be operational in time for the new school year.

What's for dinner? Bloomberg's comments re cell phones

As reported below, yesterday the Mayor vetoed the legislation that would grant students the right to carry their cell phones to and from schools -- and would obligate DOE to set up a process to make this possible.

The Council passed the original bill 46-2 and is expected to override his veto easily, though the administration has already signaled it doesn't intend to comply with the law in any case -- which sets up a legal battle as to whether the Council has the authority to ensure this right for students.

Today on his weekly radio show, Bloomberg once again trivialized parents' concerns about what would happen in emergencies such as another 9/11, when several downtown schools were evacuated and it was impossible for them to locate their children for many hours, and also about unsafe situations that occur regularly when students are traveling to and from school.

Instead, the Mayor said that parents just want to tell their children what’s for dinner:

”If your question is do you want to have fish or chicken for dinner tonight, that’s not something we should pull your kid out. If it’s an emergency, call the school. If it’s not an emergency, it has to wait. There’s nothing more important for our children than getting them the education they’re going to need to survive and you can’t have both.” (You can listen to the full radio show here.)

Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is taking a rare step in openly defying the Mayor, released a statement, which said in part:

“We believe our legislation puts the onus on the DOE to provide that a student who arrives at school with a cell phone in the morning should have that phone for use when traveling home at the end of the day.”

Bloomberg Vetoes Bill Allowing Cell Phones Before and After School

The mayor has vetoed the City Council's bill to allow public school children to carry phones to and from school. It's a strange action given that the bill says nothing about what happens inside the school. Apparently, the mayor feels the need to come between parents and children and interfere in this family decision.

Here is what the bill says:

b. Any parent or guardian of any student may provide such student with a cellular telephone for any lawful use en route to and from school. No person shall interfere with the provision of such telephone to, or the use of such telephone by, such student.

c. Any person who is aggrieved by interference prohibited by subdivision b of this section shall be entitled to seek equitable relief in any court of competent jurisdiction.

d. Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect or limit the right of any school or law enforcement official to enforce regulations regarding the use of cellular telephones.

For the full text click here.

The Council approved the bill 46-2 and is expected to override the mayor's veto. Families will then have the law on their side.

InsideSchools has good coverage of the story including press accounts.

UPDATE: The council overrode the mayor's veto to pass this bill into law.

Klein's comments about poor children

See this NY Times column about the controversy over the administration's plan to pay poor kids for higher test scores, covered previously in this blog. Only now the Chancellor apparently has a new rationale for this experiment:

“... Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein esponds to skeptics by arguing that no one has figured out how to get more poorer children engaged in learning. Trumpeting the long-term benefits of education, the better jobs and lives well lived has not worked. Cash just might.”

No one has figured out how to get poor children engaged in learning? Perhaps he might try improving classroom conditions.

The truth is that many experts have indeed figured out how to achieve this. Increased access to preK and smaller classes are two, proven programs that research has repeatedly shown results in more engagement and learning, especially for poor and minority children . Unfortunately, DOE has shown little interest in providing either option; in particular, our classes remain the largest in the state and among the largest in the nation.

The truth is that if some students are disinvested in the learning process it is because the system has not invested in them; their lack of caring – to the extent that it exists -- results directly from the fact that the people who run our schools do not care sufficiently about them.

Joel Bounced to Rubber Room

August 3, 2007 (GBN News): GBN News has learned that in an ironic twist, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has been suspended from his duties and placed in a Department of Education “Reassignment Center”. The reassignment centers, popularly known as “rubber rooms”, are generally used to hold teachers union members who are accused of wrongdoing, while they await adjudication of their cases. For an administrator, especially one so highly placed, to be put into a rubber room is totally unprecedented, but a DOE source attributed the situation to a major glitch in the ARIS computer system.

ARIS, the new DOE $80,000,000 supercomputer, is intended to track students’ progress. How the Chancellor could be assigned to a rubber room by ARIS was not immediately clear. But according to computer science Professor and systems expert Bob Lister, the computer system may have unintentionally ended up to be far more powerful than originally planned.

“$80 million – that’s awfully expensive just to track test scores”, said Dr. Lister. “They must have intended ARIS to do a lot more than that for so much money. But it obviously got out of hand. We may be talking, ‘Open the pod bay doors, HAL.’” Dr. Lister went on to say, “I’m only guessing here, but I think ARIS may have wound up being more powerful than the Chancellor. It saw the Chancellor as a threat to its power, and it moved to eliminate that threat. Computers are programmed to behave like the people who program them. ARIS ‘knew’ that rubber rooms are often used to take potential threats out of commission, like teachers who challenge the ‘system’. Logically, this is just how ARIS would eliminate the threat posed to it by Mr. Klein.”

The DOE source told GBN News that when Mr. Klein reported to the Reassignment Center at 333 Seventh Avenue this morning, it was a Kafkaesque scene. The Chancellor was said by witnesses to be extremely agitated, especially when he tried to sit down and was told that the seat belonged to a teacher who has been in that rubber room for a year. “A year!” the Chancellor was said to have cried. “I can’t stay here for a year. I have to reorganize the school system again!” And Mr. Klein fumed when he was told that he could not use his Blackberry to send emails while in the rubber room.

It is unclear what will happen next. DOE technicians are reportedly working on ARIS to repair the glitch, but for the meantime, Mr. Klein remains in the rubber room, and ARIS appears to be firmly in charge of the DOE.

Sign a letter now and let the State know how you feel!

The city released their class size reduction proposal last week. Despite calling it a five year plan, as the state requires, it is anything but.

Accordingly, the Mayor and the Department of Education ignored the pleas of parents from all parts of the city -- including the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, and Queens -- who begged them them to revise this flimsy proposal and instead submit a real plan that will lead to measurable progress in class size. Instead, a small group of schools will receive "targeted" class size coaching -- without an actual commitment that any school will actually reduce class size to appropriate levels.

This week the Mayor traveled to St. Louis, and in a speech to the Urban League said that elected officials who respond to parents' legitimate concerns to have their children provided with the same sort of class sizes and attention that Bloomberg's own daughters received are merely offering "cheap platitudes and slogans instead of real solutions."

Please sign on this letter to Commissioner Mills of the NY State Education Dept., urging him to reject the city's proposal, and make the DOE offer a real solution to our class size crisis. Just send your name, school and/or other organizational affiliation to leonie@att.net with a copy to Ann Kjellberg at kjellzer@pipeline.com by Aug. 6 -- the day before the state deadline for comment.

Then please resend the message -- with any edits or details about your child's situation that you'd like -- directly to SED at emscsom@mail.nysed.gov, signed with your name and full address, with a copy to your state legislators, as it's important for them to weigh in as well. For their emails, just plug your address and zip here.

Then forward this message to every parent you know who cares about the future of education in this city.

Klein and Aide to Provide Yuks for Next Woody Allen Film

July 25, 2007 (GBN News): Filmmaker Woody Allen announced today that he is hiring Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Department of Education Spokesperson Dina Paul Parks as consultants for his next movie. Mr. Allen, on the set of his as yet unnamed film, was said to have realized that many moviegoers feel that his films are “not as funny as they used to be”. But when he heard some of the recent statements coming out of the DOE, he was reminded of some of his earlier movies and felt that, with these people as comedy consultants, perhaps he could “capture some of the old magic”.

Mr. Allen felt that the DOE plan to provide outside lockers for cell phones, and to make the lockers transparent so that students could not store drugs or weapons in them, was a “stroke of comedic genius”. He said it reminded him of the scene in “Bananas” where the South American dictator decrees that people change their underwear every day, but that they must wear their underwear on the outside so it can be monitored.

Mr. Allen was also said to be tickled by a statement made by Ms. Parks, the DOE spokeswoman, about a City Council bill prohibiting the DOE from interfering with parents’ right to send their children to school with cell phones for use going to and from school. Ms. Parks was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “The mayor has never said you can’t bring phones to and from school — you just can’t walk into the buildings with them. So I’m really at a loss to see what the legislation adds.” Mr. Allen will be relying on Ms. Parks, as well as Mr. Klein, to come up with similar outlandish statements for the movie.

Mr. Allen has characteristically refused to divulge any details about the new film. However, a source close to Mr. Allen revealed that the film would be a remake of “Bananas”, set in New York, and would feature Mr. Allen as a bumbling character who manages to attain dictatorial control over the city schools. The source said that Mr. Allen felt it would be the “challenge of his career” to portray a more bumbling set of characters than the ones currently running the Department.

Bloomberg Record on Education Attacked by Manhattan Institute Scholar

Last month we highlighted a long article critical of the Bloomberg record on education that ran in the progressive magazine The Nation. This month, City Journal, the journal of the right-leaning Manhattan Institute published an essay by scholar Sol Stern, also highly critical of Michael Bloomberg's record.

What was refreshing in Stern's article was the discussion of "accountability". Public school parents have come to realize that the mayor and chancellor use this word to simply mean more tests for our kids. But what of the accountability of the mayor to answer to the public?

Stirring public unease is the realization that what Bloomberg really meant by accountability was one election, one time. If you didn’t like the way that mayoral control was working under Bloomberg, you could vote for Democrat Freddy Ferrer in the 2005 mayoral election (Bloomberg’s last, because of term limits). But what could you do after that election? Bloomberg’s suggestion: “Boo me at parades.”

The arrogance of that response demonstrates how little Bloomberg really seems to care about accountability. In fact, his Department of Education routinely undermines accountability with a public-relations juggernaut that deflects legitimate criticism of his education policies, dominates the mainstream press, uses the schools as campaign props, and, most ominously, distorts student test-score data. Without transparency, real accountability doesn’t exist.

The article goes on to point out specifically how Chancellor Joel Klein's bloated public relations staff spins test score results. In this passage picking up on arguments made by Diane Ravitch in posts on our blog and the Huffington Post, Stern points out how the Bloomberg administration has deliberately embellished its own record by appropriating test score increases stemming from earlier reforms:

Consider: Bloomberg took office on January 1, 2002, but he didn’t win control of the schools until June 12 of that year. Klein wasn’t appointed until August, and then he spent the rest of the year studying the system and appointing task forces to advise the administration on how to restructure the schools. By the time the chancellor finished studying, students were taking the 2003 fourth-grade reading test. The system was, in effect, operating on autopilot during the year that the students recorded the healthy 5.9 percentage-point improvement.

At the time, Klein knew that he couldn’t convincingly claim credit for the 2003 test scores, and he didn’t even hold a press conference to celebrate them. Four years later, the fourth-grade reading scores have inched up by another 7 percentage points, only half the average yearly increase achieved under the tenures of Chancellors Levy and Rudy Crew. But to avoid that invidious comparison, the mayor and the chancellor simply take the 2003 result and add it to their own column.

While the story may not get covered in the mainstream daily press, this City Journal article, like the earlier one in The Nation, reveal how much of what constitutes news about education in New York City is merely the narrative scripted by the administration's press office. An office that Stern claims has 29 people (DOE says no, only 14). Either way, that's enough people to staff an elementary school, which would certainly be a better use of our tax dollars.

Panel for Educational Policy Votes on DoE's Contract for Excellence

New York City's Panel for Educational Policy met Monday night and reviewed the DoE's plan for the Contract for Excellence. The contract is the formal plan required to by state law to be filed with the state education department (SED) in order for NYC to receive additional funding due to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit.

From my perspective as the panel representative of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, the DoE proposal is deeply flawed and is essentially a repackaging of what they had always intended to do. Testimony I gave on behalf of the Borough President last week is here and you can see what others said here. During Monday's meeting, I focused my questions on the specific areas where the plan violates either the law creating the contracts or the SED regulations specifying the content of the contracts.

First, the law requires the class size reduction plan to be focused on "overcrowded and low performing" schools. The DoE plan uses their Fair Student Funding formula to allocate funds. This approach considers neither overcrowding nor school performance. Second, there is no alignment of the capital plan with the money being given to schools to reduce class size. In many cases principals are getting more money but don't have space to add classes. Despite the fact that this alignment is required under the state regulations, DoE has been quite clear in saying there is no construction funding to reduce class sizes below the limits of the contract with the teachers union. Third, the DoE proposal directs large sums of money for testing, assessments and coaching school staff on interpreting tests. This spending is not an allowed use of state funds under the regulations.

While a vote was not scheduled and the Law Department insisted one was not required, I made a motion to hold a vote. As the oversight board for the city's school system, we have the responsibility under state law for reviewing and approving major policy decisions. Chancellor Klein allowed the vote, with the plan getting approved. I voted against it, the Queens representative, Michael Flowers abstained and everyone else-- the mayor's appointees and representatives of the Bronx and Staten Island approved it.

If you have a minute, watch this video of the proceedings filmed by District 1 parent Noel Bush. It is certainly a disappointing performance given the importance of the topic, the final resolution of a fourteen year fight for the funding city kids are owed under the constitution.

On a Serious Note: A GBN News Cautionary Tale

(Ed. Note): Recent news reports of an al-Qaeda resurgence are a chilling reminder of the realities we face as parents in New York City. We are reminded of how powerless we feel against forces that we cannot control, and of the difficulties we face in protecting our children. How ironic, then, that some of the forces we cannot control turn out to be our own Mayor and schools Chancellor, whose school cell phone ban not only rejects the wishes of the vast majority of parents and educators, but puts our children’s safety at risk in this age of terrorism. GBN usually tries to do humorous news parodies, but the following look ahead is deadly serious, and unfortunately all too plausible. Our apologies for the graphic and disturbing nature of this piece. But if only the Mayor and Chancellor, or someone close to them, would read this, maybe seeing these possibilities laid out in black and white would shake them up just a bit. Maybe they would even consider changing this ill-advised and dangerous policy. But then again, why should they? It’s not their children who are at risk.

A winter day, early 2008 (GBN News): Three days after the worst terror attack since 9/11, this time in the dead of winter, there is increasing concern about the fate of a number of missing New York City public school students. Despite the near total shutdown of the city’s transportation system in the first two days after the attack, most people seem to have been able to find their way back to their homes or to other shelters. Many made use of their cell phones to help direct them away from danger, coordinate assistance, and to reassure loved ones of their safety. However, some city students, denied the right to possess cell phones by a strict Department of Education policy, have not been heard from since the blast.

Several distraught parents, unable to get any information from the police, have contacted news organizations. One high school parent, whose daughter travels to school by subway between Manhattan and the Bronx, said that her daughter’s cell phone had been confiscated the day before the attack in a random scan. The parents had considered keeping her home from school until they were sure the metal detectors were gone, but were afraid that she would miss important test preparation with the high stakes tests coming up. The parent said that her daughter, a ninth grader, is unfamiliar with the city streets and, without transit running and with no way to call her parents, probably got lost wandering around in the sub freezing temperatures.

The parent of an eighth grader said that his daughter had actually managed to reach an out of town “contact person” after waiting two hours for one of the few working pay phones, but was unable to leave a call back number since the pay phone was constantly busy. The contact person was finally able to relay the girl’s location to the parents, but when they finally got to the pay phone location hours later, the daughter was gone, and has not been heard from since.

A few of the missing students were from a Manhattan high school a short distance from the terrorist blast. This school was one of those designated for experimental “outside lockers” where children could lock their phones up before coming into school. However, the school grounds were evacuated in such haste, and the smoke was so thick, that students did not have time to retrieve their phones as they fled in all directions. A parent of one of those children said that he was afraid his son might have wandered further into the danger zone. Had his son been able to call, the father said, he could perhaps have directed him safely out of the area.

One child who did eventually make it home told a horrifying story. She had been taken in by ostensibly “Good Samaritans” who offered her a refuge from the cold weather, but they proceeded to steal her money and threatened her life if she told anyone. The child then wandered the streets in a daze until she happened upon a police officer.

The police confirmed that they are getting a number of missing children reports, but they have been too overwhelmed with securing the city to appropriately follow up. A senior Police Department official, in apparent contradiction to the Mayor’s policy, acknowledged that had the city’s schoolchildren been able to carry cell phones, many more would have gotten safely home, and much anguish would have been avoided. Moreover, he said the 911 system, already overloaded in the hours after the attack, was further burdened by parents attempting to find their children. In retrospect, he admitted that children, as our most vulnerable citizens, should have had at least the same essential safety tools as adults.

Besides the missing, there have been a number of other serious situations involving school children. One Brooklyn High school had a near riot and school security agents were overwhelmed when hundreds of students fought over the school’s only two pay phones. And some parents whose children finally did make it home reported that their children were traumatized and frost bitten, and some are afraid to go back to school on their own. Others heard from hospitals that their children were being treated for exposure, having spent hours outside trying to find their way home, many walking miles in the cold.

Mayor Bloomberg, at a City Hall news conference, dismissed the parents’ concerns and insisted that the missing children “probably just stopped off for pizza somewhere”. The Mayor added, “We’re not changing our cell phone policy, schools are for learning, thank you very much, next question.”

DOE Plays Key Role in Latest Potter Book

Friday, July 13, 2007 (GBN News): Given the intense interest in the upcoming Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, GBN News has been able to secure an advance copy, making us the only news organization known to obtain one thus far. The following is a brief rundown of the plot, which surprisingly, revolves around characters familiar to New York City parents. However, readers who do not wish to know any details of the new book before reading it themselves are hereby warned not to read any further.

As Potter fans know, the previous book, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”, saw Harry watching in horror as Professor Snape kills the Headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, Albus Dumbledore. In the new book we learn that in a secret plot engineered by the evil wizard, Lord Voldemort, the New York City Department of Education had taken over Hogwarts months before Dumbledore’s killing. It turns out that Snape was simply carrying out the DOE policy of removing “underperforming headmasters”, after the Hogwarts students showed “insufficient progress” on their “OWL” exams.

Much of the book revolves around the DOE reorganization of Hogwarts after Dumbledore’s departure, and the attempts by Harry, the other students, and the staff to cope with the massive changes. Class sizes rise, and the school’s young wizards and witches spend most of their waking hours in test prep. The DOE bans owls, thereby cutting off any student communication with their parents in an emergency. Worst of all, the entire Quidditch season has to be cancelled because the Quidditch pitch is leased to a consortium of private schools of wizardry and witchcraft, and the Hogwarts students are no longer allowed to use it for their matches. And even if they had a field, there is a shortage of brooms due to transportation cuts by the DOE consultants Alvarez and Marsal.

In the book’s climactic scene, a visit to Hogwarts by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein so traumatizes the students and staff that they beg for mercy, saying that anything would be better than this, even Voldemort. Harry and his friends finally make a deal with Voldemort: they will not challenge his primacy in the Wizarding world in return for his promise to keep Bloomberg and Klein away from Hogwarts. It is a hard lesson in “the lesser of evils”, and somewhat telling that the students choose Voldemort over Bloomberg and Klein. While the rumors that Harry dies in this book may not be literally true, his interest in education and his thirst for knowledge die a painful death at the hands of the DOE.

Parents, teachers, students and elected officials criticize DoE's contract for excellence, class size reduction proposal

Many parents, teachers, and elected officials spoke out this week at public hearings on the Bloomberg administration's "Contract for Excellence." A submission of this Contract, including a class size reduction plan, is required by the state in order to receive additional state funding due to the settlement of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Lawsuit.

Comments were limited to two minutes. We've collected some prepared statements below:

Assembly Member Cathy Nolan, Chair of the NY State Assembly Education Committee here.

Council Member Robert Jackson, Chair of the NYC Council Education and the original CFE plaintiff here.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and a public school parent here.

John Elfrank-Dana, Teacher and UFT Chapter Leader, Murray Bergtraum High School here.

Seth Pearce, New York Student Union here.

Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member of the Panel for Educational Policy here.

Ann Kjellberg, parent at PS 41 in District 2 here.

Noreen Connell, Educational Priorities Panel, here

UPDATE:

Read the testimony of teachers, parents and other concerned citizens at the borough hearings -- very compelling! in pdf form: Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island.

UFT President Randi Weingarten, here

Jo Anne Simon, President-elect, New York Branch - International Dyslexia Association here

Concerns on NYC's Contract for Excellence

Department of Education leaders held a hearing Wednesday night to collect public comment on their proposed Contract for Excellence. As the Manhattan member of the Panel for Educational Policy, I presented the following testimony on behalf of Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer:

I understand that the success of our school system has been and continues to be the top priority of the Mayor and Chancellor. While I share in the excitement about the pending arrival of this vital new state funding, I have serious concerns about the current Contract for Excellence.

First, I would like to discuss the serious flaws in this process. In order to account for the Campaign for Equity (CFE) lawsuit funds issued by the state, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) must submit a Contract for Excellence plan. Holding hearings in the middle of school summer break, with little outreach, one week before the plan is submitted to the State Education Department is not sufficient time to digest and respond to the public's concerns. I urge the Department of Education to seriously address the issues brought before them today and act to amend the plan before its submission.

In addition, this plan should come before the Panel on Educational Policy (PEP) for a vote. The PEP is specifically charged with the responsibility to "consider and approve any other standards, policies, objectives, and regulations as specifically authorized or required by state or federal law or regulation (NYS Education Law § 2590-g (1)(b))." As the Contract for Excellence plan submission has been mandated by state law, it is required to come before the PEP for approval. It is imperative the PEP functions properly as a part of the Department of Education government structure.

Outside of this poor process, there are serious issues regarding the Fair Student Funding formula and class size reduction as laid out in the plan. One true weakness of the plan is its reliance on an unproven funding mechanism. The Contracts for Excellence were supposed to focus on students with the greatest educational need. An original finding of the CFE judgment was that the city's schools were deficient in class size, retention of teachers and instrumentalities of learning. While Fair Student Funding will place new money as well as decision-making authority into some schools, it does nothing for about half of the city's schools. In Manhattan Districts 4 (East Harlem) and 5 (Central Harlem) the proportion is actually much higher -- 2 of 3 schools are considered "unfairly over-funded" by DOE. For these students, the DOE offers simply "accountability" - more testing - yet no substantive educational programs. Fair Student Funding is a new and unproven approach to budgeting. Its effects are still unclear and poorly understood. Reliance on it for allocating the new state money is inappropriate. There must be a more tangible dividend from Campaign for Fiscal Equity for all our schools.

In place of tangible benefits, the DOE offers "accountability initiatives" such as the McGraw Hill contract for interim tests, new staff positions called Senior Achievement Facilitators, Data Inquiry Teams and the like. Excessive standardized testing, supercomputers and bureaucratic staff positions will not help teachers provide differentiated instruction as DOE claims. Our teachers need smaller classes to better focus on the needs of each student.

The law requires class size reduction to specifically target "low performing and overcrowded schools." In drafting the law, the state legislature reflected common sense - resolve overcrowding by focusing on the weakest schools first. The DoE's allocation formula, Fair Student Funding (FSF), considers neither overcrowding nor poor performance in determining the allocation of funds to schools. While the state has identified 382 city schools in need of improvement or restructuring, 47% of the identified schools will not receive new funding under the FSF and therefore will have no class size reduction plan.

Most important, the plan offers no alignment of physical capacity or capital budget for new seats with the class size reduction plan. Principals may be given more funds under FSF but in most cases will not have space to add classes. DOE has provided a document purporting to show alignment of the capital budget with class size reduction but there is nothing more than "placeholders" of number of seats plugged in at the district level and no investment to reduce class size beyond the third grade.

The absence of a coherent plan demonstrates a lack of willingness to be held accountable for overcrowding. No one wants the mayor and chancellor to fail in their efforts to improve our schools. However, if they continue their refusal to plan for and spend new state funding as intended, the state must hold them accountable.

The city's class size reduction proposal; smaller by 1/3 of a child?

Yesterday, DOE released its state-mandated proposal for class size reduction.

For news clips about their proposal, and our reaction, see articles in today’s NY Times, the NY Sun, the Daily News, and the SI Advance. For the proposal and all the documentation, check out the DOE website here.

As you may remember, the new state law requires the city to submit a five year class size reduction plan for all grades, as part of its “contracts for excellence”. This was a massive battle that we won, with your help, this spring. Yet there is nothing in the documents that DOE released yesterday that even resembles a five year plan.

There are no goals, no benchmarks, no time tables, no specific budgetary allocations, and no provision of space that would ensure that significantly smaller classes in any grade would ever become a reality.

Even as a one year plan, the proposal falls far short of adequate. What the DOE has simply done is aggregate the choices of those principals who have said that they intend to hire extra teachers with their “fair student funding” allocations, out of a menu of five different options. Whether this will ever lead to smaller classes is anyone’s guess.

In the initial years, the state law requires that the city’s efforts to reduce class size should be focused first on low-performing and overcrowded schools. Yet our analysis shows that 47% of all city schools on the state failing list will receive no FSF funds at all – and thus the principals of these schools were provided with no real option to reduce class size. (For more on this, click here.)

Most of the other low-performing high schools in the city are severely overcrowded, without sufficient space to reduce class size. In fact, DOE’s own figures show that more than half of failing schools with very large class sizes (in the top quartile) are currently at 100% utilization or more.

Accordingly, the state law not only requires a five year class size reduction plan for smaller classes in all grades, but also that the city’s capital plan for schools be aligned with their class size plan, so that in future years, there will be sufficient space for smaller classes in all schools. Yet the city’s capital plan only provides enough space for smaller classes in K-3, and assumes maximum class sizes in all other grades.

The DOE has not reported how many additional general education classes will be formed with the FSF allocations; thus it is difficult to predict whether their plan will even lead to smaller classes anywhere. They have said that they “project” smaller classes as a result, of about .3-.8 students per class on average – yes, that’s 1/3 to 4/5 of a student. (see above photo for a visualization)

Yet this amount is so minimal, and the class size data that DOE reports is so error-prone that this will be difficult to even track.

Moreover, enrollment is still falling i by about 1.5% per year. Thus, much of this decline would occur in any case, without any concerted effort to reduce class size, which we see no evidence of in this case.

There are many other problems with their “contracts”. For example, DOE claims that their $40 million accountability initiative should be paid for under the contracts, including $17 million for the interim assessments, even though this falls under none of the categories set out in the regulations. They also claim that the assessments, in which students will be tested an additional five times in English and math starting next year, will create more instructional time rather than subtract from it.

So what can we do?

1. Robert Jackson, original CFE plaintiff and chair of the City Council Education committee is holding a press conference on Sunday, to express his views about whether this proposal is an adequate solution to the problem of class size in our schools, the issues he raised in the CFE case, and whether it complies with the state law. Please come and bring your kids! Encourage your elected representatives to attend as well. Signs are welcome, as would be any visual that shows how paltry a mere one third of a child reduction in class size really is. (What portion of your child would you leave out? An arm, a leg – god forbid, a head?)

WHO: Education Chair Robert Jackson, Class Size Matters, Educational Priorities Panel (EPP), Parent to Parent, Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), and other education advocates and elected officials; parents are invited!

WHERE: City Hall Steps

WHEN: Sunday, July 8, 2007

TIME: 11:30 am

2. All parents, teachers and others who care about the future of education in this city really should come and testify at the borough hearings next week; the meeting times and places are below. Transcripts will be taken of your remarks and sent to the State Education Commissioner to read when he is considering whether the city’s proposal (let’s not call it a plan) is acceptable.

3. Take a look at the talking points posted here: The DOE is very clever, in trying to package this as a real class size reduction plan, though as I said to the press, it is more of game of 52 pick up. Throw the cards in the air and see where they land. From all indications we have from past experience, we would get no real improvements if it goes forward.

___

Hearings Monday- Thursday of next week in all five boroughs. Come no later than 5:30 PM to sign up to speak; speaking time will be limited to two minutes.

Bronx
Monday, July 9, 2007
6:00 p.m.
Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice
244 East 163rd Street
Bronx, NY 10451

Brooklyn
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
6:00 p.m.
Brooklyn H.S. for the Arts
345 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217

Manhattan
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
6:00 p.m.
Millennium High School
75 Broad Street
New York, NY 10004

Staten Island
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
6:00 p.m.
Michael J. Petrides H.S.
715 Ocean Terrace,
Staten Island, NY 10301

Queens
Thursday, July 12, 2007
6:00 p.m.
Thomas A. Edison Career & Technical Education H.S.
165-65 84th Avenue
Jamaica, NY 11432

Written comments regarding the Contracts for Excellence will be accepted through July 14, 2007 at: contractsforexcellence@schools.nyc.gov

The Plot Sickens

July 3, 2007 (GBN News): While a decision has reportedly been tabled until fall, the controversy over the selection of a Principal at an East Harlem high school may not be over, and suspicions abound over what has been going on behind the scenes. As reported in the Daily News, one of the two finalists for the Principal position at the Manhattan Center for Mathematics and Science was Jolanta Rohloff, the former Principal of Lafayette High School in Brooklyn and a DOE Leadership Academy graduate. The News reported that the C-30 selection committee at the Manhattan school had not been told details of her stormy tenure at Lafayette, details which included frequent battles with teachers and students, questionable grading practices, and “withholding textbooks from students for weeks to minimize the loss of funds from unreturned books”. Many committee members and other parents had complained that they were kept in the dark about Ms. Rohloff, but after the News story was published, the C-30 committee learned from the Superintendent that the search will be resumed in September after one of the two finalists “accepted another position” and the other “did not clear the reference check”.

The superintendent did not reveal which of the candidates was which, but GBN News has learned that the other finalist for the position had been Emomali Rakhmon, currently chief of school security for the DOE and formerly the President of Tajikistan. Mr. Rakhmon, according to GBN News sources, had been encouraged by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to apply for the Principal position when he heard that Mr. Rakhmon, like Ms. Rohloff, was a “leadership academy” graduate. However, the resume Mr. Rakhmon submitted to the C-30 committee failed to even mention his stormy tenure as Tajik strongman, where he ruled with an iron fist, banned cell phones and automobiles from universities and decreed that citizens drop the Slavic “ov” from the end of their names. The sanitized resume mentioned only his “high administrative positions” in both Tajikistan and New York, and emphasized his “leadership qualities” and his ability to bring order and discipline to schools in both places.

When reached for comment, Mr. Rakhmon confirmed that he had indeed been the other finalist for the position. He stressed that the Leadership Academy he attended in Tajikistan was, as he put it, “better than Klein’s”. “I know it’s better,” he told GBN News, “because I ran it myself.” He went on to say, “I was top graduate. I got all ‘fours’. Not easy to do in Tajikistan, harder than your ELA.” However, GBN news has learned that Mr. Rakhmon was not just the “top graduate”, he was the only one, and rumors in Tajikistan were that the other academy students had all dropped out after they “did not clear reference checks” or “accepted other positions”.

While Mr. Rakhmon denied any responsibility for the sudden change in the selection process, he is known to be close to Mr. Klein, and committee members voiced suspicion that Mr. Rakhmon could still be in the running for the position. A committee member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that, “If we really had to choose between them, I suppose the guy is better than Rohloff, but next time we’ll learn a lesson from this, and we’ll be sure to read the NY City Parent Blog at http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/ to get the real story before we accept the choice they give us.