Marist poll on Mayoral control

In the latest Marist poll, voters say that rather than mayoral control of our schools, 60 percent would prefer that the "responsibility be given to an appointed citywide Panel on Education Policy.”

Among parents, 27 percent supported mayoral control, while 67 percent favored the citywide panel.

In the Quinnipiac Poll in March, voters said they'd like the Mayor to share control with the City Council (53-37) or with the borough presidents (50-41). In several earlier polls, including the July Quinnipiac poll, most voters said that the Mayor should share power with an independent board. Then Quinnipiac dropped that choice because they said that “independent” was too positive a word.

In any case, there appears to be a consistent desire on the part of the public for checks and balances when it comes to determining education policy in this city, rather than one man rule – despite what Bloomberg and his billionaire buddies, Mort Zuckerman, Rupert Murdoch and Eli Broad, might like.

Manhattan Borough President Stringer Explains Vote Against School Capital Plan

May 6, 2009

Dear Manhattan Public School Parent:

As you all know, our City, and especially the borough of Manhattan, is facing a severe public school overcrowding crisis, with overcrowded classrooms affecting educational quality and parents being told that there may no longer be room for their child at their zoned public school or pre-K of choice.

Last Monday evening, the Panel for Educational Policy voted on the 2010-2014 School Capital Plan, which spells out the Department of Education’s plans for new school construction and repair over the next five years. As some of you may already be aware, my appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy, Patrick Sullivan, voted against approving the proposed Five-Year Capital Plan. Although the plan was passed by the Panel and will therefore now be voted on by the City Council, I thought it important to share with you the reasons that Patrick and I felt this was not the right plan to recommend to the Council.

We all understand the seriousness of the fiscal crisis facing our city. Getting through these tough times will require shared sacrifice, and our school system will have to shoulder its fair share of the costs. However, even with this understood, the proposed capital plan is unacceptably inadequate to meet our obligations to our children’s futures. Building schools is an investment in our future that we can’t afford not to make.

In 2008, I issued two reports, Crowded Out, and Still Crowded Out, which documented how, during the building boom, residential construction in many Manhattan neighborhoods far outpaced school capacity growth. This planning failure set the stage for the crisis we are in today. In early October, I joined with most of your elected representatives, as well as parents, educators, and advocates across the city, to launch the Campaign for A Better Capital Plan, an effort to persuade the Department of Education to provide the capital investment our public school children need. Our campaign appealed to the Mayor and Chancellor for three fundamental reforms, the ABC’s of A Better Capital Plan.

While our campaign raised critical awareness of school overcrowding issues, and accomplished some important reforms to the planning process, ultimately the plan brought to the Panel for Educational Policy for approval failed to fully encompass these important reforms:

A. Address existing overcrowding and reduce class size

When released in 2004, the current Five-Year Capital Plan promised to: 1) end the reliance on Transportable Classroom Units (TCUs) and mini-schools over twenty years old; 2) implement class-size reduction in 100% of Kindergarten – Grade 3 classes (to a target of twenty seats); and 3) alleviate high school overcrowding and split sessions.

None of these goals have been achieved in Manhattan. The new plan also does not align with class size reduction targets submitted to the State Education Department under the Contracts for Excellence regulations.

The need for new capacity is acute and obvious in many parts of Manhattan. No new seats are proposed for District 6 in Northern Manhattan, and the 600 in the pipeline from the previous plan are well short of the 940 needed to replace TCUs, the 866 needed to bring K-3 class size to 20, and the 540 needed to reduce class sizes to DOE targets. A district that needs thousands of seats will get none.

Waitlists for Kindergarten seats have spread to many Manhattan elementary schools in District 2 and 3 with hundreds of children still without a school. Upper East Side elementary schools are collectively 1,070 students over capacity with no new schools scheduled for construction. This disturbing reality is compounded by DOE’s own demographic projections which show an 18.5% increase in the number of children for District 2 from 2005 to 2015.

These are just a few specific examples – similar problems exist in Greenwich Village and Chelsea, the Upper West Side, Lower Manhattan, East Midtown and the Flatiron, and parts of Harlem, to name just a few areas.

The proposed capital plan proposes no new high schools anywhere in Manhattan, and many growing neighborhoods throughout the borough will apparently go without any new schools of any kind. Only one of the borough’s six school districts will see new school construction, and even that will occur at a level that is inadequate to meet existing overcrowding conditions, to say nothing of planning for future growth.

The 3,296 seats of new capacity proposed in the Capital Plan for Manhattan represent a nearly 40% reduction from the amount proposed in the previous capital plan. This falls far short of what is necessary to address the chronic overcrowding found across Manhattan. The DOE should propose an amount of school construction necessary to eliminate existing overcrowding, reduce class sizes to the numbers agreed to in Contracts for Excellence, and plan for ongoing growth.

B. Be ready for growth and plan at the neighborhood level

One of the central elements of my reform proposals is that we must start looking at school planning from the perspective of urban planners and development analysts. DOE and SCA should work with their colleagues at City Planning and HPD, as well as other planning experts and communities, to establish a clear, transparent procedure for projecting future growth from new development. The Capital Plan should include a projection of the number of new housing units expected next year, and disclose the estimated impact on local schools, at the neighborhood level, not just at the level of School Districts, because New Yorkers have a reasonable expectation that there will be a school in their neighborhood for their young children to attend.

On this, there is some good news. For the first time, DOE acknowledged our request to project demand at the neighborhood level rather than simply at the district level, as had been their practice in the past. This is an important reform that should yield far better planning in the future.

However, despite repeated requests from Patrick and other members of the PEP, the DOE has not provided a detailed needs analysis at any geographic level. While the new plan proposes amounts of seats for some specific District 2 neighborhoods, there is no demonstration of how the various drivers of demand – new housing, alleviation of overcrowding, class size reduction, recovery of cluster spaces or removal of TCUs – combine into a number of seats we need to provide. And the DOE could not quantify the growth of charter schools in DOE facilities.

The DOE should openly and transparently estimate demand, then spell out the amount of new construction required to meet its basic educational goals. Capital funding can then be allocated rationally and the City can prioritize appropriately.

C. Correct the faulty capacity estimates

The Capital Plan’s assumptions about the current state of school overcrowding are based on the City’s current capacity statistics as reported in the DOE’s “Blue Book”. But according to principals, teachers, parents – and even the State’s highest court, in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision – these official estimates overstate the true capacity of neighborhood schools.

Art and music rooms, science laboratories, special education services, and libraries are all central to the well-rounded education our children deserve. As Patrick pointed out on Monday, the DOE Office of Portfolio Development instructs administrators to use an outdated method of allocating cluster spaces which allows fewer art and science rooms for each school than what is correct under the current formula. As a result, schools rated at 100% of capacity are forced to close art and music rooms while those rooms closed years ago remain pressed into service as classroom space.

And, again, the Capital Plan is based on capacity numbers which assume higher class sizes than the City’s official target numbers at higher grades. To provide an appropriate frame of reference, the City should also measure school capacity based on the City’s official class size reduction targets. These were the promises that were made pursuant to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit and we must, at the very least, show how far we are from keeping them, and what progress is being made towards meeting the targets.

Conclusion

In the long run, as the Mayor has said, failing to invest in infrastructure like schools only makes tough times tougher. We can’t repeat the mistakes of the 1970s, when the City stopped investing in its future, families fled New York and took their tax base with them. In fact, new construction could be one of the best ways to encourage private sector growth and stimulate our economy.

In the “Crowded Out” reports, and in the work I have done with my Overcrowding Task Force, and as part of Campaign for A Better Capital Plan, I have made the case for reforms to the capital planning process. The Capital Plan should include a straightforward accounting of what it would take to reduce overcrowding and reduce class size. Then, we as a City need to make tough choices on how much we spend towards meeting that goal within the context of the City’s overall budget. We must have that debate as a City, and we must not shortchange the discussion by underestimating our needs from the start.

Patrick and I felt our public school children deserve better than the current capital plan. We hope you will continue working with us to keep fighting for the new school seats Manhattan children need to learn and grow.

I have no illusions about how difficult these challenges will be, but failing to rise to meet them is not an option.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Verena Arnabal, my education policy analyst, at varnabal@manhattanbp.org, or 212-669-4513.

Sincerely,

Scott M. Stringer

Manhattan Borough President

2009 ELA Results

NY State Education Department website with test scores is here.

News and commentary:

New York Times here.

Daily News, Juan Gonzalez here.

Kindergarten Overcrowding Debacle -- DOE Denies Accountability

Hundreds of public school parents, children and elected officials gathered at city hall on Wednesday to protest overcrowded schools and kindergarten wait lists.

See the full press release here. See the NY1 coverage here:

Links to other press coverage: Parents Protest School Waiting Lists (NY Times), Parents Protest Overcrowding in Kindergarten (WNYC); Mayor Bloomberg irked by dual City Hall rallies protesting kindergarten waiting lists (Daily News); Bloomberg Dismisses Kindergarten Protests (NY Magazine).

Despite their 14-person press office, the rally and ensuing media onslaught knocked the Department of Education into total disarray. DOE officials had a hard time keeping their story straight.

First, the party line from Chancellor Klein was that there isn't really a problem because most of the 300+ children will go to a gifted and talented program or private school. Never mind that private school admissions are done and the new found love of G&T is just a fig leaf for an aggressive busing program. Most parents don't want to bus their kid for an hour across the city to a G&T program.

Next, DOE announced they'd simply evict 65 pre-K children from PS 3 and 41 in the Village. That move drew a sharp rebuke from Council Speaker Chris Quinn for pitting 4 year olds against 5 year olds. (see NY1 clip).

Then, quite improbably, DOE official John White told WNYC that it was all the previous administration's fault -- those guys didn't plan properly to build schools. Sorry John, but Rudy Giuliani hasn’t been the mayor since December of 2001. You can't pass the buck when you claim to be the guys who introduced "accountability" to education.

Finally, handed a bowl of lemons by the bungling DOE, the mayor tried to make some lemonade:

"They complained about a couple a hundred kids not being able to get in to the schools they wanted to get into. I can tell you how to fix that. Just lower the quality of the schools. That's where we came from. Isn't it wonderful that kids want to get into schools?”

The mayor went on to say "These kids will find schools."

But who is accountable here? It's not the five year olds that are supposed to find schools, it is the responsibility of the mayor's handpicked team to manage planning, construction, zoning and enrollment for schools. Wasn't that what mayoral control was all about?

The current crisis is simply a result of bad management. The city issued the building permits and knew the kids were coming. Everyone knew. All you had to do was look up to see the residential towers growing.

Interviews with discharged students

Here are Art McFarland's interviews with young students at the Door, originally aired on Channel 7 news, recounting how they were encouraged to leave by their high schools, as well as his summary of our discharge report, which found rising rates and numbers of these students since 2000.

April 30 press conference on rising discharge rates

Here is video from our press conference at the Public Advocate's office, including an introduction by Betsy Gotbaum and a lucid power point given by Jennifer Jennings, the co-author of our report on the discharge rate.

Also check out Part 2, with the rest of Jennifer's presentation and some relevant comments from Kim Sweet, head of Advocates for Children, about how worrisome these figures are, particularly the extremely high discharge figures for full-time special education students at 24 percent, nowhere reported in the city's official graduation rate. Part 3 features Dianne Morales, Executive Director of the Door, who has seen increased numbers of students coming to her program after having been encouraged to leave their high schools over the past five years, and some recommendations that I offer about what should be done about this troubling phenomenon. Part 4 and Part 5 has us answering questions from reporters.

Here are some news stories about our findings: Number of Students Leaving School Early Continues to Increase (NY Times); Study looks at city discharge rates (Channel 7 news); Saying discharges are up, report demands grad rate audit (Gotham Schools.)

(Video thanks to David Bellel)

Discharge rates still rising; especially for students in their first year of high school!

There are literally thousands of NYC students who disappear off the rolls every year -- leaving high school without a diploma, but who never counted as dropouts in the DOE's official graduation rate or anywhere in its porous accountability system. There were over 20,000 students who entered our high schools in 2003, and should have graduated in 2007, but never did. These are the "desparacidos" -- the ones who disappear.

Check out the report released on Thursday -- written primarily by the brilliant Jennifer Jennings (a/k/a Eduwonkette) with minor contributions from myself -- showing that in NYC, the discharge rate has significantly increased between 2000-2007.

While the city reported an "official" graduation rate of 62% for the class of 2007, if all special education students were included this would drop to 58 percent. If GEDs were excluded, this would fall to 55 percent, and if discharged students were counted as dropouts, this would further fall even further -- to 44 percent. (click on the graph to the left to enlarge it.)

Most shocking is the fact that the rate and numbers of students discharged in their first year of high school literally doubled. This may be because these students moved out of the city or to parochial or private schools in larger numbers than ever before, yet analysis of census and enrollment data provide no evidence for a rising rate of migration or transfer to parochial schools.

More likely, these students are entering HS even more overage than before (due to multiple grade retentions), since no student can be legally discharged before the age of 17. Or perhaps many of these discharges are illegal.

What is especially tragic is little or nothing has been done to address the problem of discharged students since the problem of "pushouts" was first exposed by Advocates for Children in 2002. Perhaps this is because the higher the discharge rate, the higher the graduation rate by definition, since all these students are excluded from the denominator for the purposes of calculating the graduation rate.

In fact, in the report, we point out several features of the DOE's high-stakes accountability system which encourage schools to rid themselves of low-performing students as fast as possible through discharging them, instead of giving them the support, resources, and smaller classes they need to graduate.

This is a "black hole" of accounting which must be addressed. As a result of our report, and at the request of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, the State Comptroller has agreed to audit NYC's graduation and discharge data. Hurray!

There's loads more interesting information in our report, including tantalizing evidence about possible data manipulation for the Class of 2005. This class had originally caused headlines when its graduation rate was first released in the Mayor's management report in February 2006, revealing a drop from the year before -- 53.4 percent compared to 54.3 percent for the previous class. According to the NY Times at the time:

The political touchiness over yesterday's numbers was evident in how the mayor's office chose to report them this year. Administration officials created a new category in the preliminary management report that had the effect of masking the decline in the four-year graduation rate. Although that rate continued to be reported separately, the new category factored in students who stayed on for an extra year of school, allowing the mayor's office to state, "More students graduated from high school in four years or are still enrolled in school for a fifth year."

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg said it would take years before many of his changes, like grade retention policies that hold back elementary and middle school children largely on the basis of test scores, were reflected in improved graduation rates.

Then, in June, the DOE announced that the figure of 53.4 percent had been a mistake and that this class had really graduated at 58.2 percent. As the NY Times uncritically reported at the time, "because of a computer glitch, last year's citywide graduation rate was five points higher than previously reported — the highest on-time graduation rate in more than two decades.....Officials said the mayor was angry after learning of the mistake and intent on getting an accurate tally."

How did this more "accurate tally" happen? By looking at the data, and comparing DOE's original and "corrected" graduation reports , it appears that over 1000 students may have been recategorized as full-time special education and then discharged at the astonishing rate of 39%.

At the same time, the number of general education students who had entered four years before fell by over 2,000. All of these changes, unremarked at the time by any reporter, had the convenient effect of allowing the Chancellor to claim a sharp rise rather than a fall in the city's "official" graduation rate, (which includes only general education and part-time special education students), as well as proof of the efficacy of his reforms.
We also found that several of the categories that NYC calls "discharges" are more properly considered dropouts by the federal government -- including students who leave because they've turned 21, withdrawn because of pregnancy, were expelled, or had transferred to GED programs outside the DOE system. Check out our press release here.

The Case of the Missing Chancellor

May 2, 2009 (GBN News): An air of mystery pervaded the NY City Department of Education today, as Chancellor Joel Klein has been missing for the last two days. His disappearance coincides with the release of a report finding that increasing numbers of students have also disappeared (or, as the DOE puts it, “discharged”) from the city’s schools.

While the DOE has tried to explain the missing students by maintaining that they must have gone to suburban schools or parochial schools, the report found that demographic data do not support this theory. Nevertheless, Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf gave reporters the very same explanation for Mr. Klein’s disappearance.

“Nothing to be alarmed at,” said Mr. Cerf when questioned at Tweed Courthouse, the DOE headquarters. “I’m sure he’s just gone to New Jersey to try out some of his reforms there.”

GBN News investigative reporters have been on the scene in New Jersey, and turned up some evidence which may bear out Mr. Cerf’s contention. A man whose physical characteristics match those of Mr. Klein was seen running away from the Montclair, New Jersey School Board headquarters this afternoon, chased by what appeared to be an angry mob. However, the man’s identity could not be determined because he had apparently been tarred and feathered.

J. Fredrick Runson, head of the Education Department at Manhattan University and an expert on educational sorcery, told GBN News that he is sure the unidentified man is Mr. Klein. “I suspect he got caught up in the DOE’s discharge program and ended up in New Jersey, just as the Deputy Chancellor said”, Dr. Runson told GBN News. “He probably tried to reform the first school system he came upon. But unlike New York City, suburban schools have elected community representatives who are actually empowered to run the schools. They obviously refused to tolerate Joel Klein’s voodoo reforms, and ran him out of town.”

Dr. Runson did, however, point out one major benefit of Mr. Klein’s disappearance. “Just like the student discharges, losing such a ‘low performing’ Chancellor can’t help but raise the graduation rate in the NY City schools.”


With thanks to Eduwonkette

Overcrowding rally on May 6: please come!

There will be a rally/press conference next week to protest school overcrowding and the hundreds of Kindergarten students who have been placed on waiting lists for next fall.

This administration has been criminally negligent in failing to provide seats for these kids. Please come!

Where: Steps of City Hall (Take the 1,2,3 to Chambers Street or 4,5,6 or J,M,Z to City Hall)

When: Wed. May 6 at 4 PM. Bring your kids!

A flyer to post in your school or building is here.

A mother's letter to Mayor Bloomberg

This administration has been warned many times that school overcrowding in NYC was a huge problem and was getting worse, and has done nothing to prevent the crisis now upon us. In fact, the city’s share of capital spending invested in school construction and repair is at least a ten year low.

See the below letter to the Mayor, the Chancellor, and the US Secretary of Education, from a mother whose 5 year old, like hundreds more, has no place to attend school next year, because of the Mayor's utter refusal to attend to this issue. She puts it much better than I could.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Gentlemen:

I am a mother whose first child will be entering kindergarten this fall -- my second will enter the following year. I'm writing to you now because I am deeply disturbed by what is -- or more accurately, is not -- happening regarding Manhattan elementary schools, particularly those in my neighborhood.

You know (or should know) the current situation and its history. P.S. 151, located in District 2 on the Upper East Side, was closed in 2000 and later demolished. Rather than building a new school at another location, for nine years the DOE has placed children from P.S. 151-zoned families in other Upper East Side schools through a lottery process.

This year, of course, that is no longer feasible -- as former private-school parents are sending their children to public schools to help cut back on expenses, schools throughout Manhattan are filled beyond capacity. There are currently between four and five hundred children waiting for seats in the borough's public elementary schools; kindergarteners from the Upper East Side to Tribeca have been put on waiting lists. Obviously, without enough room for their own neighborhood children, UES schools could not be expected to take the P.S. 151 kindergarteners as well.

As a result, barely two months ago, P.S. 151 parents were abruptly informed that the lottery was being abolished (this was after many of us had spent months researching and visiting schools in our area, on the assumption that the lottery would be in force). Instead, we were told, there would be an actual P.S. 151 available in the fall. There was just one problem: the DOE had yet to find a site for the school.

Since then, parent organizations from the P.S. 151 zone have met regularly with the DOE to get the ball rolling on a school site in time for the fall. To put it bluntly, we have been appalled by the bureaucratic foot-dragging, lack of focus and high-handed attitude displayed by DOE officials. A few examples:

• Their initial idea was to put entering kindergarteners into Robert F. Wagner Middle School -- side by side with 12-14-year-olds, with no library, play space or other facilities of their own. Later, they came up with a list of 12 other potential sites... but did not visit any of them until a few weeks ago.
• Currently, the DOE is negotiating with the Archdiocese of New York to lease the building on East 91st Street formerly occupied by a parochial school, Our Lady of Good Counsel -- but they did not consider speaking with the Archdiocese until one of the parents paved the way for such discussions.
• The DOE has refused to re-open the possibility of using the elementary school building on East 88th Street which currently houses Richard Green High School (whose students come from outside the neighborhood). This would be a perfect solution because unlike the other alternatives, it would be permanent -- the children would not have to be moved again in a year or two. But the Department supposedly abandoned the idea in the face of pressure from the high school's parents and the teacher's union. We understand their concerns, but we feel that the DOE should be able to come up with a relocation plan that they can accept, rather than simply backing down.
  

In sum, given the DOE's past and present conduct, we are very worried that they will not have a viable space ready by the fall, or will wind up warehousing our children in whatever space requires the least effort to set up. And despite their assurance that they will be able to construct a permanent site for the school over the next 2-3 years, we are concerned that they will "forget" their pledge and permanently leave students wherever they are placed in the coming school year. They do not seem to grasp that there are four months until the start of the next school year, and that our children are not objects to be stored in "whatever space is available."

What is particularly galling is that this is all going on as Mayor Bloomberg runs for re-election with education reform as one of his signature issues. Mr. Mayor, you are spending a good chunk of money on TV ads where you tout New York as "a great place to raise a family" -- I assume you are including the public schools in this assessment. How can you make this claim with a straight face, given the current crisis? I cannot help but recall the grandiose promises you made when the school system was revamped and Mr. Klein was installed as Chancellor. The two of you were going to eliminate politics, patronage and corruption, and deliver a school system driven by transparency, accountability and responsiveness. No doubt the system is "cleaner" than it was during the community-board era. But transparent? Accountable? Responsive?

Secretary Duncan, I have also addressed this letter to you because of your experience leading a big-city school system and your long commitment to serious educational reform. Would you have tolerated this kind of performance in Chicago? And is there anything your department can do to help resolve this situation?

My fellow parents and I cannot and will not sit by quietly and allow our children to be victims of bureaucratic negligence, laziness and inertia. We will be rallying next week in front of City Hall, and we will continue to press our case with our elected officials and in the media. We will not rest until the kindergartners of P.S. 151 -- and everywhere in the city -- are assured of a safe, workable space in which to begin their public school education. The three of you have staked your reputations on this promise; it is time to back it up with concrete action.

Respectfully yours,

Jacalyn Filler

GBN Newsflash: DOE Implements Swine Flu Contingency Plan

April 29, 2009 (GBN News): Determined not to let the Swine Flu crisis “go to waste”, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is said to be implementing a new contingency plan for the city schools. According to GBN News sources, the Chancellor has decided that any school reporting children with “flu-like symptoms” will be immediately closed. The building will then, “out of an abundance of caution”, be scrubbed and sanitized, and will reopen the following week as a charter school.

GBN News will have further details if they become available.

Pirate Chooses Prison Over DOE

April 23, 2009 (GBN News): The Somali pirate who just yesterday agreed to perform community service for the NY City Department of Education as part of a plea bargain has now opted for a life prison sentence instead. Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, the sole surviving pirate from the hijacking of the merchant ship Maersk Alabama, was being counted on by the DOE to raise millions of dollars in ransom to be used for charter school conversions. However, Mr. Muse has apparently succumbed to pressure from his compatriots in Somalia to renounce the deal.

GBN News spoke through a translator to a top Somali pirate leader, who refused to be quoted by name out of fear of reprisals by the DOE. The pirate leader confirmed that he and a number of his colleagues had pleaded with Mr. Muse not to work for the Education Department. “We may be pirates, but we have our standards,” he said. “We run a good, clean operation. But to have one of our number work for Joel Klein at the DOE – no self-respecting pirate would be associated with an organization that sleazy.”

J. Fredrick Runson, Dean of the Manhattan University Law School, is a recognized expert on piracy and author of the definitive Joel Klein biography, “Hijacking the Ship of Schools”. Professor Runson is not surprised that the pirating community back home had flexed its muscles over this issue. “Pirates depend on the fear and respect of their victims,” he told GBN News. “What credibility would they have when they board a ship, and the crew realizes their captors are the ones whose colleague sold out to the DOE? They’ll be laughed out of the water!”

There was no official comment from the DOE as to who would be taking a plea bargain to replace Mr. Muse. However, one source with knowledge of the situation told GBN News that offers to both Bernie Madoff and Rod Blagojevich were rejected; apparently neither was any more willing to risk his reputation than Mr. Muse.

DOE to Mandate CEC Voting

April 22, 2009 (GBN News): NY City public school parents have gotten a reprieve of sorts from the Department of Education. The deadline for casting ballots in the “straw vote” for Community Education Council (CEC) elections has been extended to April 29. However, there is a catch: A high level DOE source told GBN News that voting will now be mandatory.

The Education Department has been trying in vain to get parents to participate in the non-binding vote for council members, but many parents and CEC members themselves have felt that it is pointless to vote in elections that have no meaning, for representatives who have no power. Consequently, the Department has apparently resorted to the only surefire solution to parental ambivalence, which is to compel them to participate.

It is unclear just how the DOE plans to enforce the mandatory voting rule. Parents are not under the direct jurisdiction of school safety officers, thus cannot be physically detained, suspended or otherwise mistreated. However, the DOE source told GBN News that the Department is looking into having the children of non-voting parents suffer some sort of consequence. Sanctions currently being considered include taking points off their grades, or losing lunchroom and bathroom privileges.

The DOE plans to publicize the mandatory voting initiative with new robocalls featuring the voice of Tony Soprano. The calls will reportedly tell parents, “If you don’t want your kid to get hurt, you’ll vote in the CEC elections.” Parents can vote on the website www.powertotheparentsorelse.org.

Plea Bargain for Somali Pirate

April 22, 2009 (GBN News): In an unexpected development, the Somali pirate who was brought to New York to stand trial for hijacking the merchant ship Maersk Alabama has agreed to a plea bargain. Rather than face a potential life sentence, the pirate, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, will instead perform community service for the NY City Department of Education. Federal prosecutors reportedly offered the plea bargain at the urging of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who was said to feel that Mr. Muse’s skills would be wasted in jail, and that he would be much more effective at the DOE.

While Mr. Muse’s role at the DOE has not been officially announced, officials close to the situation have indicated that he will likely be involved in the process of converting public schools into charter schools. Mr. Muse, in fact, is seen by Mr. Klein as a “transformative figure” who, by hijacking public schools and holding them for ransom, can raise millions of dollars and thus provide the resources to remake them into successful charter schools.

J. Fredrick Runson, Dean of the Manhattan University Law School and an expert on school piracy, told GBN News that, while this is an unusual arrangement, it is a logical extension of DOE policy. He also added, “I’m sure that Joel Klein sees a lot of himself in Mr. Muse. After all, the Chancellor hijacked an entire school system.”

Mr. Muse is also expected to earn a high school diploma through his community service. Under the DOE “credit recovery” policy, he will be credited with “seat time” towards his diploma for any days he spends actually inside a school that he is hijacking.

Diane Ravitch on Joel Klein's letter to the Times

Joel Klein's letter in the New York Times today fails to refute my oped.

The Brookings study to which he refers covers the period from 2000-2007--including the three years prior to implementation of mayoral control. That three-year period included one year (02-03) that showed big gains right before the Bloomberg reforms were introduced.

In other words, with the lawyerly word "largely," he takes credit for gains he had nothing to do with and attributes them to mayoral control.

The Brookings study is based solely on state test scores, which I explained, are exemplars of grade inflation rather than actual achievement because New York state scores on NAEP were as flat as the city’s from 2003-2007.

And then there is the strange idea that NYC kids do well on state tests because they study for them, but do poorly on national tests because they don't. Of what value is it to learn to read if one can read only for state tests? Does that mean that students can't read college textbooks or work manuals because they are prepared only to take state tests?

NAEP remains the federal audit and the best assessment in the nation. If a city or state does poorly on the audit test, then it is doing poorly. The fact that NAEP is an audit test for which students do not prepare makes it more valid, as it accurately reflects reading skill and comprehension, rather than test prep. If a city or state does poorly on the audit test, then it is doing poorly. Or, whom do you trust? Madoff's accountant or the federal auditors?

And last, Klein goes around the nation calling for national standards and tests, yet rejects the results of the national tests that we have. All in all, not a persuasive argument for New York City's alleged gains. ---- Diane Ravitch

Editor's note: For another excellent analysis of why NAEP results are more reliable than those of the NY State tests -- see this posting from Aaron Pallas on Gotham Schools.