DOE to Teachers: We’re Watching You

January 21, 2007 (GBN News): A report in the NY Times reveals that the NY City Department of Education is quietly gathering data to rate individual teachers based on their students’ performance on standardized tests. This is sure to generate controversy in the educational community, and concerns are already being raised that such data will be used to make decisions on teacher pay and tenure. However, GBN News has learned that the DOE initiative to evaluate teachers is going far beyond just test scores.

According to sources at the DOE, the Department is using a technique called “microtargeting” to amass detailed information on NYC teachers. The technique is one that Mayor Bloomberg is using nationwide to accumulate data on potential voters in advance of a possible run for President. Such information ranges from individual demographics, to people’s political preferences, to whether they purchase foods containing trans fats. The DOE sources suggest that the Department is developing a profiling system that would rate teachers, not just on their effectiveness, but on their potential to accommodate to the school reforms that the Mayor and Chancellor Joel Klein have instituted.

One high level DOE official, who spoke to GBN News on condition of anonymity, said that this initiative is just a logical extension of the Mayor’s reliance on - some would say obsession with - data. “He’s made billions using methods like this,” the source said. “Of course he’d want to apply it to education, which he considers just as ‘cutthroat’ as the business world or politics. The Mayor and Chancellor see teachers as the biggest impediment to their reforms. Naturally, they’d want to weed out the biggest potential critics as well as those who are merely ineffective.”

The source said that the DOE will be using the data to look into a number of variables which will assist them in evaluating teachers. “Do they complain in public on education blogs? Are they active in the UFT? Are they of good moral fiber? Do they eat enough fiber? No piece of data is too trivial for the Mayor and Chancellor. And by the way, wait till you see what they’re coming up with about the kids and the parents. Talk about defenders of the status quo.”

Just how teachers, politicians and parents will respond to this new initiative has yet to be seen. Still, this DOE official contends that the plan should go a long way towards discrediting the charge that the DOE is only interested in test scores.


Ed. Note: Being GBN News, the above story is parody. But ask yourself, as you read it: Can't you envision the DOE actually doing something like this? After all, the Times article is astonishingly and chillingly real.

Intel Science Talent Search Since Mayoral Control – A Study in De-Klein

Yesterday’s announcement of the 2007/2008 crop of the 300 annual semifinalists for the Intel Science Talent Search contained the happy news that Stuyvesant HS garnered eleven of those coveted awards and Bronx Science another five. Congratulations to all students who participated and all who reached the semifinals for their hard work. However, even the NY Times was reduced in the headline of its article to saluting Ward Melville HS in East Setauket for its best-in-the-nation thirteen semifinalists while Newsday ran the more unintentionally damning headline, “Intel Science Competition Names 69 LI Semifinalists” (NYC had 28).

While Chancellor Klein routinely (and not altogether unfairly) lectures parent gatherings over the NYC public school system’s past failures to address the academic needs of its weakest students, the Intel science fair news offers an opportunity to look at one aspect of how the highest end students are faring since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the City’s public education system. The results are so discouraging that it’s hardly surprising the DOE’s “all happy news all the time” PR machine has hardly mentioned the change in NYC public school Intel semifinalists during its tenure.

Intel provides information dating back to 1997/1998 about semifinalists in the Science Talent Search contest. For the sake of comparison, I combined and averaged the data for the six years from 1997 to 2002 into one group and that for the five Bloomberg/Klein years from 2003 to 2007/2008 into a second group. Here are just a few of the findings:

-- The number of NYC public school Intel semifinalists declined from an average of 45.8 per year before Bloomberg/Klein to just 24.4 per year in the last five years, a decline of 46.8%. The average number of semifinalists from the City’s specialized science high schools dropped from 26.7 to 17.4 (down 37.1%) while semifinalists from the rest of NYC’s public high schools fell from 18.2 per year before Mayoral control to just 7.0 per year since, down 61.5%.

-- By comparison, NYC private school semifinalists averaged 6.5 annually from 1997 to 2002 and 6.8 annually from 2003 to 2007. Similarly, NY State semifinalists from schools outside the five boroughs increased 2.7%, from a 103.5 average in the 1997-2002 period to a 106.2 average since 2003.

-- NY State’s share of each year’s national pool of 300 semifinalists dropped from an average of 10.05% (1997-2002) to 8.46% (2003-2007). The entire drop, equivalent to over 18 fewer NYS semifinalists each year, is entirely attributable to the NYC public school decline.

-- Perhaps the most disturbing finding, the number of public high schools other than Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and Staten Island Tech) having at least one Intel semifinalist in a given year dropped from an average of 5.7 before Bloomberg/Klein to just 3.4 since. This year, only two schools outside the realm of the science high schools – Francis Lewis and NEST+M – managed to collar an Intel semifinalist spot.

-- The percentage decline in NYS and NYC Intel semifinalists is NOT a function of greater participation nationwide. Intel reports just a 4.7% growth in average yearly number of participants, from 1,550 (1997 – 2002) to 1,623 (2003 – 2007). Over the same two periods, NYC public high school's share of the national semifinalist pool fell by half from 2.96% to 1.50%, reaching only 1.06% in 2006 and 1.25% this year (see the graph above -- click on the graph to enlarge it). The City's share of the NY State semifinalist pool shrank from 29.4% to just 17.8% (just 15.4% last year and 16.1% this year).

These are devastating decreases in success rates for NYC’s best students in this nation’s most prestigious high school science competition, a contest that NYC students routinely dominated in the years before and immediately preceding Mayoral control. At this point, one can only speculate on the possible reasons: overemphasis on standardized math and ELA test scores with less time spent on middle school science classes, overburdened teachers in overcrowded schools teaching outsized classes in the traditionally large schools that produce Intel semifinalists, siphoning off talented students into small schools not staffed or equipped to support and mentor Intel participants, or simply an overshift in emphasis on failing students to the detriment of the City’s highest performers. More investigation and research is needed to determine the root causes.

Regardless, this embarrassing decline in Intel semifinalist results in the last four years – seemingly unnoticed in the local media – represents just one more indictment of this Chancellor’s failed educational policies. These figures suggest that even our best students are being routinely underserved.

To see the full Excel file, click here.

All You Need is Data

January 16, 2008 (GBN News): Middle School 422 in Brooklyn received an “A” on its recent Progress Report, outperforming every other school in its cohort and earning the Principal a large bonus. However, in what could prove to be a major embarrassment for the Department of Education, it seems that outside of its test scores in the DOE’s ARIS computer system, there is no evidence of the school’s existence.

This unusual situation came to light only when Schools Chancellor Joel Klein traveled to Brooklyn for a media event recognizing the school’s high level of achievement. With journalists in tow, the Chancellor and his entourage arrived at the school’s purported address, only to find an empty lot. Certain that this was simply a case of mistaken address, the Chancellor used his Blackberry to contact his office. Staff at the Department’s Tweed headquarters confirmed the address in the computer, but inquiries in the neighborhood turned up nobody who had ever seen or heard of MS 422.

A DOE spokesperson later told GBN News that upon further investigation, it appears that the school never actually existed. “The data all looked great on paper,” the spokesperson said. “The test scores were through the roof, the surveys were very positive. There’s just no school there. Who knew?”

In a press conference at Tweed, Chancellor Klein assured reporters that the Principal “is absolutely accountable” for the situation. “The naysayers and defenders of the status quo keep telling us that there are children who are uneducable,” he said. “But this Principal started with literally nothing, and look at the test scores that were achieved. It proves that we can educate anybody – even nobody. That bonus was well earned.”

In other news, Mayor Michael Bloomberg denied that his aides could have said that he is considering whether to buy the US Presidency. “Since when does anyone else know what I’m thinking?’ the Mayor asked. “Everyone knows I only consult with people after I’ve made a decision.”

GBN News Editorial: Scanning and the Cell Phone Ban

January 14, 2008: There has been a great deal of controversy over Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on cell phones in schools, and his enforcement of the ban through the use of metal detector scanning. Besides the obvious need for cell phones to insure students’ safety while traveling to and from school, many parents and educators have objected to what they feel are disruptions to the school day brought about by metal scanning in the schools. However, in the interests of balance, we feel it is only fair to present the many benefits that NY City school children derive from the DOE cell phone ban and metal scanning policy. It is clear to us that the policy:

*Promotes physical health: Students are cooped up all day in stuffy classrooms. With scanning, students spend quality time outdoors, often in healthful, brisk, below freezing temperatures while waiting to go through the scanners.

*Promotes individual resourcefulness and experience in negotiating financial agreements: Many students make arrangements to store cell phones in bodegas for the day, making their own deals with local business people.

*Promotes physical exercise: Those who are unable to negotiate storage arrangements must dig holes to bury cell phones outside the schools, since the phones are legal to bring to school but not into the building.

*Stimulates students’ interest in politics: Students can follow along with the local legislative process, and see first hand how elected officials are able to defy the laws passed by their representatives (ie the City Council bill overturning the ban by a 46-2 margin). Students and their parents can even participate in a real live lawsuit against the ban.

*Deters crime by giving students the chance to experience an authentic “prison atmosphere”.

*Promotes intergenerational understanding and cooperation: Most parents and their children, whatever their conflicts and differences, agree whole heartedly on their opposition to the ban, and work together to find ways to keep the phones from being confiscated, ie staying home from school or sneaking them in past the scanners.

*Provides students with “hands on” experience in civil disobedience, and promotes understanding of the concept that there are unjust laws that can be ethically disobeyed.

*Lowers class size: DOE figures show that attendance is down from 10 – 20% on scanning days.

It is surprising that with all of the PR acumen possessed by the DOE and the Mayor, they have failed to adequately bring out the above points to the public. Perhaps they feel that it is enough to simply realize that the Mayor is always right, even when he is opposed on an issue by an overwhelming majority of the public. But this just points up an important educational benefit of Mayoral control of the schools. Students usually learn only from textbooks about forms of government different from our own democracy. But here in New York, they can see for themselves a real life, “textbook example” of how a dictatorship works. It is a lesson that they, and all of us, should learn from.

The lack of charter school accountability -- and does competition actually improve public education?

Today, the Daily News runs both an editorial and an oped, excoriating the State Comptroller for auditing charter schools, and supporting the charter schools' lawsuit in trying to block further audits. Here’s an excerpt from the editorial:

“Charter schools are more accountable than most parts of government. They answer to two layers of state regulation, and they must shut down if they don't meet educational goals within five years - a standard we'd love to see applied to the rest of the educational establishment.”

I would bet fewer charter schools have been closed down in NYC in recent years than regular public schools – and not because they’ve all been successful. In reality, they operate with very little supervision.

I recommend that if people took a look at the Comptroller’s Sept. audit, they’d realize how unaccountable many charter schools have been – and how lax both SED and DOE have been in terms of oversight. Amazing to me that any major media outlet would oppose strict accountability in the use of taxpayer funds in this way.

Despite the fact that all charter schools are required to report annually on their progress towards meeting the educational goals established when they were founded, and DOE is supposed to closely monitor their progress in achieving these goals, according to the audit, none of this has occurred.

The original goals and any information about progress made towards meeting these goals are supposed to be included on in the schools’ annual reports. Yet the DOE could provide only 10 of the 23 annual reports of the charter schools under its purview, and the Comptroller’s office obtained one more report from SED.

Of these 11, not one of them contained all the information required by state law, and more than half either omitted certain goals, misstated them, or did not discuss the progress made towards them. The audit found that the DOE had no formal process for reviewing these reports, no written records of the same, and no records of their decision-making process in approving the original applications of charter schools or calling for their renewals.

Nor were there any procedures or plans in place to call for improvements in their performance, or a corrective plan if there was failure. DOE also kept no records of the visits made to charter schools before approving the renewal of their charters. Not surprisingly, DOE recommended the renewal of all the charters in every case, for the maximum period of five years.

It sure doesn’t sound that there was real accountability here – as the Daily News editorial insists – or any evidence that any of these charter schools were “shut down if they don't meet educational goals within five years" – especially as DOE appeared to be ignorant of what their goals were.

Instead of criticizing the audit, if the editors of the Daily News really cared about accountability, they would be applauding the state Comptroller and criticizing the charter schools for suing to block them.

But there has long been a double-standard when it comes to charter schools; see the response of Chester Finn, for example, to the other recent audit which found KIPP using funds to send teachers on junkets to the Caribbean:

"I think they should be able to fly around the world in first class if administrators think that will keep up the good results."

Meanwhile, according to today's NY Sun, Sol Stern and some other conservatives are moving away from the idea that market incentives and competition (like more charter schools) will solve all the problems of public education– perhaps in part influenced by the failures here in NYC, where this administration has adopted this sort of market-driven ideology with a vengeance.

“There's a growing consensus that a market approach alone is not enough," the president of the Albany-based Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, Tom Carroll, said. He added: "There's a need for a moment of reflection."

It was never clear to me why competition would be expected to work to improve the public school system. Here in NYC, there has always been a healthy system of competition from parochial and private schools, and rather than improving the public schools, it has been a way for the business and opinion elite and many members of the middle class to escape sending their kids to public schools, which has considerably diminished political pressure towards improving them.

If Bloomberg, Klein et al and their cronies on Wall St, as well as the editors of the NY Times and the Daily News, had children who actually attended NYC public schools, I’m convinced there would have been smaller classes years ago.

No Children Left Behind … in John Bowne HS Classrooms After Random Scanning

On Thursday, January 10, a parent from John Bowne High School in Queens posted the following at the Yahoo Groups site nyceducationnews:

At John Bowne's PTA meeting last nite, the issue of scanning was brought up by the principal. We had scanning on Dec. 17. I asked what the attendance was for that day and the principal said the drop was between 18 and 23%…. He estimated that the overtime alone cost the school about $10,000.00….He had deans, APs, secretaries, teachers, etc. bagging and tagging electronic devices? Another mom asked what was confiscated, other than eds - 2 pockets knives, a box cutter and a couple bags of pot…. this AM, the outside of the school was crawling with (what I assumed) police officers (another waste of our tax dollars) and school security officers.

John Bowne's register shows 3,075 students, so using the midrange of the Principal’s estimate, a 20% drop in attendance means that the DOE created about 615 truants the day of their first scanning on December 17. Data posted by the DOE on John Bowne’s web page this weekend shows the following attendance data for last week, including last Thursday when the school was scanned for a second time.

Monday (1/7) – 78.2%
Tuesday (1/8) – 79.1%
Wednesday (1/9) – 78.5%
Thursday (1/10) – 63.7%
Friday (1/11) – 64.2%
Year-To-Date Attendance Rate – 79.7%

On Thursday, the date of John Bowne’s second recent random scanning, the school’s daily attendance dropped 16.0% from its year-to-date average. This drop translates into 492 extra absences, above and beyond the school’s normal daily experience. The next day (Friday), a decline of 15.5% from the normal daily attendance rate meant yet another 476 extra absences. Many John Bowne students were apparently scared off from coming back to school on Friday, or perhaps they simply decided to accept the DOE’s invitation to make it a four-day weekend.

Leaving aside this program’s emotional impact on students (see the NYCLU’s Criminalizing the Classroom report), the disruptions for school administrators and teachers, and the repeated intrusions on parents’ lives to retrieve their children’s cell phone or other electronics property, the DOE’s mobile random scanning program single-handedly created 1,583 extra absences/truancies in just one school in just three days. That's 9,498 lost academic periods, not even counting the lost first and second periods for most of the students who were in attendance those days. Add those 5,535 periods in (assuming 60% of students in attendance losing on average 1.5 periods on two scanning dates), and John Bowne students collectively lost over 15,000 academic class periods in order to find two pocket knives, a box cutter, and a couple bags of pot.

How can anyone possibly justify this continuing intrusion on children’s education? Can the DOE not at least offer the option of voluntary participation in this program, based on each Principal’s assessment of his or her school safety needs? Is this not what empowerment means?

Make your voice heard on the future of Mayoral control

Two opportunities to make your opinions known about the effects of Mayoral control on our schools, as the State Legislature has to decide whether or not it should be renewed next year:

• A series of public hearings hosted by the UFT in all boroughs starting next week; for more information, click here.

• A new website hosted by the Public Advocate's Commission on School Governance, where you can send your comments to the members of the Commission online. There are also some interesting papers posted on the history of Mayoral control here in NYC and elsewhere, including one by our own Diane Ravitch.

No one can say you weren't asked!

Council Hangs Up On Klein

January 10, 2008 (GBN News): The NY City Council yesterday overrode, by a 46-2 margin, Mayor Bloomberg’s veto of a bill effectively banning Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s Blackberry from DOE headquarters at Tweed courthouse. The bill bans from the building “… any electronic device that could be misused so as to cause disruption of the educational process, whether through gratuitous reorganizations, precipitous closing of schools, excessive standardized testing, overcrowded classrooms, confiscation of cell phones, or demoralization of teachers and parents.”

The law, which went into effect immediately, was put to the test early this morning when the Chancellor’s Blackberry was confiscated by School Security as he arrived at Tweed. An eyewitness told GBN News that Mr. Klein’s reaction “wasn’t pretty”. He reportedly demanded that security officers immediately contact the Mayor, but Mr. Bloomberg was busy denying his candidacy for the Presidency and could not be reached. Aides tried to avoid contact with the Chancellor as he angrily stormed towards his office, fingers twitching uncontrollably in the absence of the Blackberry. And matters went from bad to worse for Mr. Klein when his chef at home resigned in frustration after vainly trying to reach him to find out if he wanted beef or fish for dinner.

In a related story, Dr. Phil responded angrily to charges that today’s visit to Chancellor Klein in his office at Tweed was inappropriate. “It’s not a whole lot different than seeing Britney Spears”, he told GBN News. “Just another petulant individual with a sense of entitlement who thinks he can do no wrong”, he added. “I’ll have him straightened out in prime time - I mean in no time.”

Judge Scornful of Bloomberg Administration Arguments in Randall's Island Lawsuit

State Supreme Court Judge Shirley Kornreich heard arguments Thursday morning in the lawsuit brought by East Harlem public school parents and community activists. The parents are seeking to void a no-bid contract granted by the Bloomberg Administration that grants exclusive access to most playing fields to twenty elite private schools in the peak after-school hours.

While today's arguments were to determine whether attorneys for the parents could extend the complaint to address the city's failure to file the proper environmental impact statement, Judge Korneich asked both sides about the core issue of whether the city ignored the land use approval process required by the City Charter.

The judge's comments suggest the city could be in for some rough sledding. Changes in use of large tracts of land are required to go through the land use review process know as ULURP which includes review by the community board and approval by the borough president and City Council. But when the mayor's attorneys claimed that the number of fields can be roughly doubled without any change in the use of the parkland on Randall's Island, the judge sarcastically said "that's magical". At one point after listening to the city's circular arguments, the judge stated "you can't have your cake and eat it too".

See NY Times coverage here which concludes with "Justice Kornreich told the lawyers that she would be inclined to annul the city's plan unless she were presented with documents showing that the city was not taking land used for other purposes".

The public school parents and community activists are represented by civil liberties attorney Norman Siegel and Alan Klinger of the firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan.

The contract granted by the administration would reserve 66% of the total fields for 20 private schools in exchange for funding to partially offset maintenance costs. Public schools and athletic programs associated with the Department of Education would have the remaining 33%. Everyone else including catholic schools and yeshivas would get nothing. The city provided no information on how the twenty schools were selected or how the rental fees were set.

Statements from plaintiffs:

“I felt very good about our day in court,” said Marina Ortiz, an East Harlem community advocate and co-plaintiff in the suit. “It’s important to challenge the City’s failure to undergo community and environmental review to ensure that the law is followed in matters regarding public parkland,” said Ortiz.

Plaintiff Eugenia Simmons-Taylor, a parent leader in East Harlem and former president of the District 4 Presidents Council, said: “Public school parents in East Harlem joined this fight because our children are being excluded from having equal access to the Randall’s Island sports fields for the next 20 years. This is a sweetheart deal with the private schools that is unjust and we’ve got to stop it before it’s too late.”

“All children deserve an equal opportunity to play on old, new and future sports fields,” said Matthew Washington, a plaintiff and member of Community Board 11 in East Harlem. “Privatization of public land is completely unacceptable; public parks need to remain accessible to all members of the public at all operational times.”

For more information see earlier posts here and here.

UPDATE: more news on the lawsuit from the NY Sun, the NY Post and metro.

Public Advocate’s Office to Seek Data on DOE’s Random Scanning Program

Last Thursday, January 3, the DOE’s random scanning team appeared on the doorstep of Benjamin Cardozo High School to execute their standard cell phone and iPod seizure program. Regardless whether weapons or dangerous instruments were found, one thing is certain: Cardozo’s attendance rate dropped from 83.9% on January 2 to 73.9% on scanning day. Given Cardozo’s register of 3,907 students, the DOE’s mobile search and seizure program created about 390 extra truants that day, and about 2,350 extra missed academic periods. [This 10% drop matches the 9.7 percentage point drop in attendance at Forest Hills High School when that school was subjected to random scanning on September 11 of this school year, resulting in 326 extra absences beyond the school’s normal rate.]

Amid discussions and questions raised by various parents about Cardozo and the DOE’s random scanning program on the NYC Education News listserv on January 3, the following response was posted:

I am writing you on behalf of the Public Advocate. As you may know, Betsy Gotbaum has long opposed the DOE's policy of turning schools into armed camps. She has also spoken out against the cell phone ban, citing parents' rightful concern for their children's safety. Furthermore, she has serious problems with and has raised objection to the lack of fiscal accountability at the DOE. Parents and taxpayers alike deserve answers to the questions you ask. Our office will be writing to the DOE as you have suggested. When we get a response we will post it here. Tomas Hunt, Office of the Public Advocate

I have since sent a letter to Mr. Hunt that includes the following ten questions, in the hope that the Public Advocate’s Office can secure data and answers from the DOE:

1. What are the dates, school names, and results (number of weapons, other dangerous items, and cellphones, iPods, and other electronics confiscated) from the inception of this program through year-end 2007?
2. For items categorized as weapons or dangerous items, what were those items (that is, were they guns, knives, chains, and brass knuckles or were they scissors, math compasses, laser pointers, and pocket knives)?
3. What was the daily attendance rate at each of these schools for the three school days immediately preceding the random scanning date(s) and/or the school’s Year-to-Date daily attendance rate immediately preceding the scanning?
4. What was the daily attendance rate for the date(s) that random scanning took place?
5. Has the DOE through its responsible school safety office conduct any controlled study of the deterrent effect of random scanning on students carrying weapons or other dangerous items? If so, when, where, how, and what were the results?
6. How many persons in the DOE and/or School Safety are assigned to the random scanning program?
7. How many portable scanners has the DOE purchased for this program, and what was their total cost? What is their annual maintenance cost?
8. What is the annualized cost to operate this program in terms of personnel and equipment expenses for transport, set-up, operation of the equipment, search and confiscation of students’ property, logging and bagging of confiscated items, and disassembling this scanners for removal?
9. What are the costs of additional personnel attached to this program for outside the building security (to keep students from leaving the area or otherwise hiding their property when they see that scanning is taking place)?
10. What are the costs of additional personnel assigned to this program for recordkeeping, reporting, and program administration?

In a final but hardly amusing irony, Mr. Hunt’s email acknowledging receipt of my letter included the following anecdote:

Just last week Betsy [Gotbaum] and I entered a high school where we both were sent through the magnetron and on the other side four school safety agents surrounded Betsy told her to put her hands on a desk and to spread her legs as she was wanded-down. We were there with a principal from the building who was pleading with guards not to do this, but they did it anyway. It can seem like sense and purpose has given way to force and order.

Bloomberg to Press for Electoral Reform

January 4, 2007 (GBN News): Mayor Michael Bloomberg may or may not be running for President, but he nevertheless intends to have a major influence on the process. GBN News has learned that at a University of Oklahoma conference next week, the Mayor plans to unveil his own blueprint for electoral reform. The plan would be modeled on his NY City school reforms and would radically change the way the country elects its Chief Executive.

The central aspect of the plan, according to GBN News sources, would replace the current system of public voting with one in which candidates would be evaluated largely through high stakes testing. This would have the benefit, Mr. Bloomberg will argue, of dispensing with the traditional partisan campaigning, and would instead involve candidates taking a series of test prep courses. Primary elections would no longer be necessary. Instead, preliminary rounds of testing would eliminate “failing” candidates, setting the stage for a November showdown between the two highest performing contenders that remain.

Election Day would also change drastically. Voters would stay home, saving on energy and travel costs, while the candidates spend the day taking a final, winner-takes-all test. Their scores will be evaluated by computer, and the contenders will receive a letter grade, A through F. 30% of the grade will be based on the actual test score, and 55% will involve the candidates’ progress since the previous test (known in political circles as “momentum”). The final 15% will be based on voter surveys, but these will be distributed only after the winner is announced.

The Mayor is said to have bristled at the suggestion that voters should receive their surveys before the election. “We value input from our citizens,” Mr. Bloomberg was said to have told associates. “We need to have them think they have a say in what happens. But the proof of the pudding is in the data, and we will have all the data we need to choose a leader who will be beyond partisanship, and who will be test prepped to address the fundamental challenges facing the nation.”

The Mayor’s proposed changes would not take effect until after the 2008 election, so just like his educational reforms, they will not affect him personally. Thus, should Mr. Bloomberg choose to run this year, he can still gain the Presidency the “old fashioned way”: by buying it.

Weprin Crashes Press Conference and Again Blasts DOE

In a stunning reminder that the State ultimately controls our public schools, State Assemblymember Mark Weprin invited himself to DOE press conference at PS 46 in his district and denounced DOE's mania for standardized testing. The press event was arranged by DOE to celebrate schools that received "A" grades on their standardized test-based Progress Reports. But to the assembled audience that included the grim-faced Chancellor Klein and Chief Accountability Officer Jim Liebman, Weprin bluntly asserted there was "too much focus on trying to get the right answers on a test and not enough on learning". Weprin again complained the DOE is turning our schools into Stanley Kaplan test prep centers, a charge he first leveled during recent City Council hearings.

See Mike Meenan's excellent NY1 footage here and great coverage by Elizabeth Green in the NY Sun here. The Sun offered these revealing remarks:

Visiting a fourth-grade classroom before the announcement, Mr. Klein asked children why their school received an A. "Because," one child answered, "when the New York State ELA test is coming up, they teach us what methods to use, how to write."

Another boy said, "They do everything to help us with our ELA and all our tests."

Oh boy! Tweed's battalion of PR spinners have been busy trying to convince us that the Progress Reports are about more than test prep but they may have a hard time explaining those truthful children away.

Restore parent power: send a message to Commissioner Mills today!

On Dec. 31, Marie Pollicino, a parent and Community Education Council member from Queens, filed a class action complaint with the State Education Department on behalf of all NYC public school parents. Her petition says that the new regulations adopted by DOE that strip away the rights and responsibilities of School Leadership Teams to decide on school-based budgets and Comprehensive Education plans are unlawful and unwarranted, and should be reversed.

She also points out that the process of amending these regs was contrary to state law by not involving CECs or any other official parent group, and she asked for a stay, so that the previous regulations that provided real decision-making authority to SLTs should be retained until the Commissioner determines the propriety of the amendments.

Her petition is posted here; it makes a very compelling case. It follows an earlier letter to the Commissioner from the NY State Assembly Education Chair Cathy Nolan, who made several of the same points.

Given more resources and authority delegated to the school level, and the huge pressure put on principals by this administration to raise test scores and spend nearly all their discretionary funds on data analysis and test prep, to the exclusion of nearly everything else, it is more crucial than ever before that parents be able to provide a countervailing force to see that resources are invested properly – on reducing class size and improving learning conditions in our classrooms.

This regulation is yet another insidious way in which the administration is systematically trying to strip any ability for parents to have a voice in the way their children are educated.

Please contact the Commissioner Richard Mills, with a copy of your email to the Regents, Assembly Member Nolan, City Council Member Robert Jackson, Chancellor Klein and the Mayor, as well as your own elected reps in the Legislature and City Council – whose emails you can easily gather by plugging in your address here. A sample message along with email addresses is below; feel free to add anything relevant to your situation or that of your child.

To: richard.mills@mail.nysed.gov; djohnson@mail.nysed.gov;
CC: jackson@council.nyc.ny.us; JKlein@schools.nyc.gov; mbloomberg@cityhall.nyc.gov; nolanc@ assembly.state.ny.us (and your state and city council reps)

Dear Commissioner Mills and the Board of Regents:

I urge you to support the class action petition by Marie Pollicino of the District 26 Community Education Council, on behalf of all NYC parents, and reverse the unauthorized and illegal action of the NYC Department of Education to eliminate the authority of School Leadership Teams to collectively determine each school’s budget and Comprehensive Education Plan. This amendment to the regulations governing the rights and responsibilities of SLTs would remove the ability of parents to help determine the spending priorities of their children’s schools, and was done without consulting Community Education Councils and/or any official parent group, contrary to state law and regulation.

I urge you to restore the regulation to its previous version, which properly recognized the rights of parents to be full partners along with the principal and staff in decision-making at the school level.

Yours, [Name, home address, school, and leadership position if any.]

Class size debate on Eduwonkette

I was asked by Eduwonkette to respond to postings on class size over the holiday break, written by Skoolboy, an academic who chooses to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by this administration.

Check out my discussion of the what the research shows, as well some not-so-random speculations why the evidence-based reform of class size reduction continues to be questioned, while far less proven methods of improving schools - including most of those adopted by this administration -- tend to get a pass.

Why not try to improve Canarsie HS before shutting it down?

See this article in the NY Times about DOE’s plans to close Canarsie high school.

It goes without question that a 30% graduation rate is not acceptable. However, how is closing down the school a solution?

The students who are failing will only move on to other schools where the cycle will repeat itself. Canarsie itself started to fail, according to this article, when other large schools closed nearby and it became a “dumping ground” for the students that were excluded from the new schools started in their place.

Would not it be more reasonable to leave Canarsie intact, and improve conditions, as it seems the new Principal was attempting to do? Shuffling around students may make a difference on paper, but not in the likelihood of these students’ success, especially if it creates worse conditions in neighboring schools.

How about bringing in extra staff to work on the truancy problem? Extra staff to lower the classes so that students can receive the individual attention they need?

Creating five or six new small schools in the same space, which requires paying for five new principals instead of one, and support staff for each school is misusing money that would be better spent on more attention and direct services to kids. How is it that no one points out the numbers game that is being played?

-- Dorothy Giglio



Note: According to the recently released official DOE data (in excel), most general education classes at Canarsie ranged from 28-30 students this fall– hardly a formula for success – or evidence that anyone at Tweed really cared whether this school improved.

My 10 New Year's Wishes

In Asian cultures with their twelve continuously cycling animal years, the coming year will be the Year of the Rat. According to the Chinese zodiac, Rat Years are considered years of renewal, where hard work yields the best opportunities for new ventures and fresh starts. This coming year 2008 is also an "8" year, an equally positive sign capitalizing on that culture's luckiest number (it is not simply a coincidence that the Beijing Olympics will conduct its opening ceremonies on 8/8/08). With these doubly auspicious portents in mind, herewith are my ten New Year's wishes for the NYC public school system: its principals, teachers, support staff, and most of all, its students and their families.

1. That folks at the DOE will remember that the true purposes of education – to learn the lessons of history, to inspire a sense of curiosity and wonder, to teach respect for and tolerance of others, to develop sound minds in sound bodies, to create lifelong learners and readers, to develop good citizens and intelligent consumers – have little or nothing to do with standardized test scores.

2. That parents will be treated with the respect they deserve, that their concerns will be not just listened to but acted upon, that they are consulted with before decisions are made and actions taken, not after.

3. That DOE higher-ups learn that the phrase ”consulted with” does not mean “lectured at,” “remained in a room with,” or “put up with listening to for form’s sake.”

4. That schools and their principals are given the resources they need for effective education – proper educational facilities and technology, adequate space and staff to place students in classrooms of 20-25 rather than 30-35, and adequately paid teaching staff given time for collaborative lesson planning, appropriate mentoring, and professional development support.

5. That good teachers are recognized (and yes, rewarded) for being educators in the broadest sense, not simply for being the most effective proxies for Kaplan and Princeton Review.

6. That the DOE throttles back its persistent campaign to politicize education through massive public relations efforts, selective reporting, misinformation, and misleading or inappropriate comparisons.

7. That the DOE ceases its corporatist, condescending, and philosophically degrading view of learning as something that only occurs through such financial incentives as bonuses, direct payments to students, and free cell phones. This worldview embeds the worst aspects of American commercialism and materialism into what should be our most idealistic national enterprise – the education of our children – and promotes the distinctly uncharitable lesson of “What’s in it for me?”

8. That the DOE finally submits itself to the same notions of accountability it espouses for its schools through open access to and independent review of school-related data. Self-congratulatory press releases and PowerPoint presentations generated from selectively chosen data of its own creation and control do not constitute public accountability.

9. That some people who matter – the Governor, U.S. Senators, State legislators, Congressional representatives, City Council members, Borough Presidents – will display the political will to declare the DOE’s present course and its safe harbor under “Mayoral control” as currently constituted no longer acceptable for New York City’s public school children.

10. That all our children have a wonderful 2008 in which, despite the DOE’s best efforts to the contrary, they not just perform well in standardized math and reading exams but revel in the rich multiculturalism of their surroundings, take as much pride in their City’s role as immigrant sanctuary and the one genuine example of the American melting pot as they take in their own heritages, and progress toward becoming open-minded and other-centered world citizens.

Bloomberg Testing Mania Decried by Public Advocate

New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum issued an analysis and statement today in support of parents complaints about excessive testing. The analysis confirmed what parents are seeing -- that eight year old third graders are now faced with twelve standardized tests, made up of two state tests and ten Bloomberg-mandated city tests.

For the full statement click here. See press coverage here in the Sun and here in Newsday. In the press coverage, DOE spokesman Andrew Jacob adopted the condescending tone that has become standard when the Bloomberg adminstration addresses parent concerns.

The new standardized tests are part of the DOE's "accountability" initiative, the primary thrust of the administration's education reforms.

While state governments, Congress and presidential candidates are questioning the wisdom of excessive standardized tests, the Bloomberg administration continues to hew to its extremist positions. DOE Chief Accountability Officer Jim Liebman has overseen both the sharp ramp-up in standardized testing and the system to assign letter grades to schools based on the test results. The letter grading system has been widely criticized by parents, teachers, academics and our political representatives. Gotbaum's report is welcome scrutiny of the similarly misguided testing regime.

DOE Announces New Administrative Positions

December 26, 2007 (GBN News): The NY City Department of Education announced today the creation of five new high-level administrative positions. In a statement to reporters at Tweed Courthouse, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said that the creation of these positions will continue the process of bringing what he called “sound business practices” to the Department. “These new job titles should be recognizable to anyone familiar with the business world,” the Chancellor said, “and the positions are designed to maximize output and to further enhance the efficient delivery of educational services to our consumers.”

The new positions, their functions, and their salaries are:


Chief Pupil Compaction Officer: Responsible for determining class sizes, and maximizing efficient use of classroom space. $187,366.

Chief Pedagogical Incrimination Officer: Directs the legal unit which assists principals in terminating tenured, experienced teachers. $178,500.

Chief Communication Interception Officer: Responsible for confiscation of cell phones from students. $181,000 (on a two year plan).

Chief Largesse Disbursement Officer: Determines DOE administrative salaries. Also responsible for negotiating no-bid contracts with consultants and standardized test companies. $1,364,879.

Chief Obfuscation Officer: Heads the PR Department division responsible for explaining all DOE restructuring issues to the public. $191,000.


Mr. Klein was asked what sort of qualifications he is looking for to fill these new positions. “We are seeking qualified people who can do the best job educating our children,” the Chancellor said. “This means we are looking for substantial experience in the business or legal professions. But a year or so of previous teaching experience would not necessarily be a disqualification, so long as it was just a stepping stone to their real career.”

Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer On Problems with Gifted and Talented Policy

The following letter was issued to Manhattan public school parents following the approval of the G&T policy at the November meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy. Information on the policy can be found at the Department of Ed G&T here.

THE CITY OF NEW YORK
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN

SCOTT M. STRINGER
BOROUGH PRESIDENT

December 10, 2007

Dear Manhattan Public School Parents:

On November 26, 2007, the Panel for Educational Policy voted on proposed changes to the New York City Department of Education's (DOE) Gifted and Talented (G&T) Program. As some of you may already know, my appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy, Patrick Sullivan, voted against the proposed changes. While I am strongly supportive of increasing equity and access in G&T, I believe this proposal is marred by the same lack of concern for parental input and problems of poor implementation that often plague DOE efforts. The proposal was passed by the Panel and is therefore now policy. I nonetheless want to share with you the reasons that Patrick and I felt it necessary to vote against these changes.

• The DOE appears to be poorly prepared for the changes in G&T enrollment, despite widely reported failures in the admissions process last year and an expected doubling of applications this year to over 25,000. For example, the department has not analyzed last year's applicant Otis Lennon School Abilities Test (OLSAT) scores to plan where new seats will be required. Given that certified G&T teachers will be hard to find on short notice and facilities are not yet identified, I am concerned there will not be the required programs in place.

• The proposal by DOE changes the cutoff score for admissions to G&T programs from the top 10 percent of applicants (90th percentile) to the top 5 percent (95th percentile). This higher cutoff score for admissions raises the very real possibility that a number of current programs will not be filled to capacity and will therefore be closed, leaving parents with fewer programming options.

• Under the new timeline for the admissions process, parents will not be notified of admissions decisions until May 31st. This late notification severely restricts parents' ability to choose between DOE G&T programs and independent, Catholic, and charter schools--many of which require parents to accept offers of admission prior to May 31st. The new G&T policy, therefore, actually undermines parental choice, purportedly a key component of DOE reforms.

• The Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) and the OLSAT will be the two assessments that will be used to evaluate students for admission to G&T programs. The OLSAT, which DOE has stated will comprise 75 percent of each student's score, is a test for which students can be prepped, and materials are marketed to parents for this very purpose. There is a real risk, then, that children whose families can afford to purchase prep materials will have an unfair advantage over students whose families cannot afford to do so.

• The plan offers assessments to all Kindergarten children which will help increase access by allowing an entry point to G&T programs for those families that may be unaware of the opportunity. But I am concerned about the requirement that all children must be tested. Parents who prefer that their child not be subjected to standardized testing at this young age must be allowed to opt out of G&T testing.

Finally, I am well aware that public school parents, as represented by their Community Education Councils (CECs), had little input into these important policy decisions. This lack of community and parent involvement continues to be a key issue under the current system of school governance and needs to be addressed as mayoral control is considered for renewal in 2009. Please be assured that my office will continue to monitor DOE's implementation of the new policy and the effects it has on Gifted and Talented programming. To that end, please keep my office apprised of G&T related issues specific to each of your districts.

Very truly yours,
Scott M. Stringer

Manhattan Borough President

MUNICIPAL BUILDING v 1 CENTRE STREET v NEW YORK, NY 10007
PHONE (212) 669-8300 FAX (212) 669-4305
www.mbpo.org bp@manhattanbp.org

A (Newly Updated) Holiday Fantasy

Twas the day after Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/…,
When all around Tweed,
Not a creature was stirring, no one to take heed,
Empty stockings were hung by the chimney without care,
For surely BloomKlein and Jim Liebman were there,
The city schoolchildren were nestled all snug in their beds,
Hoping to go back to school without dread,
Of their schools being closed, their teachers sent home,
And parents and children feeling sad and alone,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
That even BloomKlein and Liebman would know something's the matter,
Away to the window they flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash,
A host of pale figures, in ghostly gloom,
Looked menacingly down on Liebman, Klein and Bloom,
There were ATRs and teachers from rubber rooms,
Also children fed up with crowded classrooms,
Angry parents who knew it was not for the best,
For their children to be facing more high stakes tests,
Oh, BloomKlein and Liebman, the fates for you,
Will be in the hands of this ghostly crew,
If you don't care to heed the results of their poll,
You'll find it's the end of Mayoral control,
BloomKlein and Liebman just sprinted away,
Too scared to face this another day,
Twas clear they were frightened to the core,
We won't have them to kick around any more.


Happy Holidays from GBN News!

Daily News Editorial Demonstrates Equine Osculation Skills

An editorial entitled “Heads of the class” in today’s NY Daily News is as much jaw-droppingly astonishing for its unabashed toadying to Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein as for its blatant belittling of teachers at 33 NYC public schools. Better perhaps that it be titled, “Kisses of the ass.”

Better suited to The Onion, the NY Post, or Fox News, this editorial once again demonstrates the stubborn media tendency to conflate student learning and good teaching with performance on standardized exams. The piece begins by congratulating teachers at 205 schools for their determination “to raise achievement among their students” by voting to accept the Chancellor’s privately funded pay-for-performance plan. The editors then demonstrate their weak vocabulary and overly colloquial style by adding that, “Teachers will get extra dough if their students improve by specified amounts on standardized tests.” "Dough?" Is this how a major metropolitan newspaper models English to its younger readers?

Having declared their position without the slightest sense of concern over turning public schools into mini-Kaplan and Princeton Review test preparation machines, the editors turn their sights at the close of this shameless piece on the 33 schools who rejected the Chancellor’s pay-for-performance plan. No attempt is made to explain those teachers’ decisions, no mention is made of their position that bonuses linked almost exclusively to standardized test results will weaken children’s education by encouraging excessive teaching to the test. The Daily News not only refuses to laud these teachers for their principled positions and their obvious belief in education as something more than two standardized tests per year, they refuse even to acknowledge the possibility of an alternative view, one not driven by simple human greed.

Worse, the Daily News editors take the opposite tack, the one followed by the Limbaugh’s and O’Reilly’s of the red meat, Red State world. It’s called ad hominem, literally “against the man,” and it means attack the opponent’s person, not his/her argument. They first observe that, “…the staffs of 33 schools declined to compete for bonuses.” Note the choice of words – not “chose not to accept” or simply “voted against,” but “declined to compete.” Oh, the cowardice of those weak-kneed, so-called educators! The horror! The horror! [Memo to Daily News: the last is a reference to Conrad's Heart of Darkness -- probably not found in a standardized exam question.]

Apparently feeling their critique still lacked adequate punch, the editors directed their final ad hominem flourish at those weak-kneed, sissy educators. With all the intellectual power they could muster, they administered their most devastating coup de grace. "How dumb can you get?” they asked. My ad hominem answer to those editors' question? Look in the mirror.

Charter School Report Cards: Apples, Oranges, and DNA

Yesterday’s glowing announcement of the “pilot test” release of School Progress Reports for 20 charter schools should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the DOE’s steady, five-year march toward privatization. “Charter Schools Outshine Others as They Receive Their First Report Cards,” hails Jennifer Medina’s report in the New York Times. Medina quotes the DOE’s Michael Duffy that, “As a group, they skew higher,” as he simultaneously took a backhanded slap at public schools by stating that accountability in charter schools is “baked into their DNA.”

The DOE’s pilot test Progress Reports rated 20 schools – eleven elementary or K-8 schools and nine middle schools. One school, Opportunity Charter, originally received an F, but the DOE has since retracted their Progress Report grade. They assigned letter grades to thirteen of the remaining schools: five A’s (middle schools all), five B’s (elementary or K-8 all), two C’s, and one F. Of the remaining six, their total scores as computed from the reported components (School Environment, Student Performance, Student Progress, and Closing the Achievement Gap (Additional Credit) suggest approximate letter grades of two more A’s, one B, one C, and two D’s. Overall, roughly 68% A’s and B’s, 16% C’s, and 16% D’s or F’s.

Leaving aside bias factors in the DOE’s demonstrated predisposition toward charter schools and the lack of class size data that might well correlate with and explain some of the skewing, a slightly deeper look at the DOE’s Progress Report data reveals several interesting facts.

-- School Environment comprises 15% of each school’s score, but for the charter schools, this measure consists entirely of Attendance. As a result, in seven of the 20 piloted schools, attendance accounted for over 20% of their cumulative scores, and in three of those schools, it accounted for well over 30%.

-- In seven of the nine middle schools, their peer indexes (the average of their students’ Grade 4 NYS ELA and Math exam scores) exceeded 3.0, and an eighth school came in at 2.97 (the lowest, Opportunity Charter, had a peer index of 2.54 and also happened to rate an F grade before it was retracted). Overall, these nine charter middle schools had an average peer index of over 3.13 (3.21 if we also drop Opportunity Charter out as the DOE did), suggesting that these schools succeed in part by siphoning away stronger students from other schools.

-- The four middle schools that rated letter grades of A had the following peer indexes: 3.45, 3.39, 3.36, and 3.34 (the fifth was 2.97). By comparison, the Clinton, Wagner, and Sun Yat-Sen middle schools in Manhattan had peer indexes of 3.53, 3.58, and 3.30, respectively, and the five middle school only (Grades 6 – 8) schools in District 4 had peer indexes of 2.82, 2.86, 2.87, 3.20 (Isaac Newton), and 3.65 (Manhattan East, on East 100th Street).

-- In what seems a near statistical miracle, the three KIPP schools each reported Attendance rates of 98.0%.

Given the obvious selectivity of the charter middle schools, the lack of intake information about charter elementary and K-8 schools, the absence of reporting on many charter schools, and the inaccessibility of charter school class size data, it seems disingenuous at best for the DOE to claim that charters “skew higher” from a sample of just 13 schools that the DOE itself chose for letter grade assignment.

All this is not to say that charter schools do not do good work in motivating and educating their students. Just once, however, it would be nice if the DOE would release enough data in format and content for independent voices to evaluate its public relations claims and provide a real basis for comparing apples to apples. Sadly, nothing in the past several years suggests that all those well-paid DOE executives recognize the differences between apples and oranges. Apparently, it’s all just fruit salad to them.

Update: here is an excel file with the charter school progress reports and their components.

Principal Gets Bonus, Pink Slip

December 19, 2007 (GBN News): Principal Marcia Burns of PS 399 in Staten Island thought the performance bonus she received this week was probably too good to be true. Unfortunately for her, she was right. The envelope she received from the DOE did indeed contain a notice informing her that she had earned a $25,000 bonus based on her school’s superior test scores in the past year. However, in the very same envelope was another notice – this one telling her that, due to the “F” grade her school earned on the recent Performance Review, she will be terminated effective at the end of the semester.

GBN News was able to catch up with DOE Accountability Czar Jim Liebman (no small feat considering his fleetness afoot) to ask him how two such contradictory notices could have come at the same time. “There’s actually nothing unusual about this,” Mr. Liebman said. “We do this all the time. By putting two notices in the same envelope, we save a great deal of money on postage; money that can now be returned to the classroom.”

Ms. Burns was philosophical about the whole situation. “The DOE giveth, and the DOE taketh away,” she told GBN News. “I just didn’t expect that both would occur simultaneously.”

Document: DOE Did Consult Parents

December 18, 2007 (GBN News): There has been a great deal of skepticism over the claim by NY City Department of Education Accountability Czar James Liebman that the DOE has “directly reached over 20,000 parents in conversation about explanation of the Progress report and associated accountability tools”. Even with the release of a list of the numerous venues where parents have been engaged, such as laundromats and subways, doubts continue to persist. However, GBN News has obtained a DOE document detailing significant instances of parent consultations, which went beyond just the Progress Reports to encompass other DOE policies. The document appears to lend credibility to DOE claims that these consultations actually influenced Department decisions.

The document details three particular examples of decisions and policies that were shaped through parent consultation. One involved the DOE ban on possession of cell phones in schools, and arose from a consultation in a laundromat in Glen Oaks, Queens. The document states that a DOE official spoke there to a Mr. James Bryce, who gave his address as Creedmore Psychiatric Center and who claimed to be a parent of “at least dozens of children”. Mr. Bryce, according to the document, stated that he had to drop out of school because “cell phones ringing all day in class were out to get me and were trying to ruin my test scores”. It was apparently the concern that other students could be similarly afflicted that convinced Chancellor Klein to step up the confiscation of cell phones in random scanning.

Another important consultation involved Mayor Bloomberg himself, and resulted in the major school bus cuts of last winter, and more recently the reduction of special education busing. The Mayor consulted with Mr. Jeeves Bond, a parent of two who also happens, coincidentally, to be Mr. Bloomberg’s SUV limo driver. After hearing Mr. Bond frequently lose his temper at the large number of school buses blocking the city’s roads, the Mayor realized that this “road rage” problem could be solved simply be reducing the number of buses on the city streets. When the consultant firm of Alzarez and Marsal told the DOE that such reductions could even save money, it only confirmed the desirability of the cuts.

Finally, the document shows that the firing of a popular principal, Isaiah Wallace of MS 422 in Brooklyn, was actually the result of a consultation with a large number of people who overwhelmingly felt that he should be canned. At a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, Chancellor Joel Klein consulted with a capacity crowd of nearly 19,000 people, many of them parents. He heard the clear consensus of this group as they chanted in unison, “Fire Isaiah”. The Chancellor realized that the group could only have been referring to Mr. Wallace, because his school had received an F on the recent school Progress Report.

A source at the DOE confirmed to GBN News the authenticity of this document, and maintained that it proves Mr. Liebman had been telling the truth when he asserted that thousands of parents were consulted by the DOE. However, the source refused to confirm or deny that the DOE plans to soon replace the district CDEC’s with local movie theater audiences.

Jedi vs. the Sith at the December PEP meeting

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

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

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

Here are some of the highlights:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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