What a week! The Education Equality Project convention did not feature an unblemished promotion of Mayoral control as some may have hoped. First came the report of the city's secretive ruling, allowing the Chancellor to raise money for the controversial organization on the taxpayer's dime...
....then came the explosive revelations of massive contributions from lobbyists funnelled through a 501C3 to Sharpton's organization right before the Project was launched.
Then came the convention itself....
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton, co-sponsored a conference of the Education Equality Project.... After Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke enthusiastically about giving mayors of large cities control over their schools, saying that "we need the collective weight of the entire city behind us," many in the audience responded with skeptical boos...
Mr. Sharpton said in an interview on Thursday that he would not support the extension of mayoral control in its current form, suggesting that he agreed with criticism from some corners that the Bloomberg administration has marginalized parents in the last several years. "We feel there needs to be more of a role for parental involvement," Mr. Sharpton said. "We have to find a way to address that. We would not support the legislation as it is now."--NY Times, April 2, 2009
Members of the Campaign for Better Schools, which is lobbying for significant changes to mayoral control,had deposited their organization's platform, printed on bright yellow paper, on each chair before the event began. Members of the Parent Commission on School Governance, also outspoken critics of Klein's, were also on hand to distribute fliers with their recommendations.-- Gotham Schools, April 2, 2009
As he's done in recent days,Duncan continued touting the benefits of mayoral control of urban school districts ... When he made the same pitch earlier in the day at the National Action Network's meeting in Midtown, it was met with an audible chorus of boos... --NY Post, April 2, 2009
..... at the [second day of the] Education Equality Project conference..... Mr. Sharpton turned the floor over to Councilman Charles Barron, a frequent critic of New York's education reform efforts. "The mayor is out of control," Mr. Barron bellowed to scattered cheers from the audience of about200. "No one should have that dictatorial, autocratic power." . .. . When the time came for questions, audience members directed their concerns at Mr. Klein and his leadership of the 1.1 million-student school system over the past seven years.They said he had eviscerated the power of local school boards and left parents without a voice in the decision-making process. Some booed the chancellor...-- NY Times, April 3. 2009
Barron also criticized Klein ... saying that the chancellor lacks any pedagogical expertise. ...Members of a group that pushes for revising the mayoral control law when it comes up for renewal this summer wore pins supporting their position and passed out fliers advertising their views. Several critics also challenged Klein's characterization of improvements made under his watch, saying that students are graduating without being prepared for college and that schools lack black history teaching.
A Harlem father, Vernon Ballard, said he lacks a voice in the school system — and leaders are not held accountable — when the mayor has total control. "There is accountability," Klein replied. "You have the chance to express your voice here." Many members of the audience broke into laughter.---Gotham Schools, April 3, 2009
April 3, 2009 (GBN News): In a surprise announcement, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters today that Joel Klein has resigned as NY City Schools Chancellor, and that Tawana Brawley has been tapped to replace him. Ms. Brawley, who has limited educational experience, is best known for a controversial 1988 incident in which she claimed to have been assaulted by six law enforcement officers.
The story was eventually exposed as a hoax, but in the meantime, three self styled advisors, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, made a series of bizarre accusations against everyone from the alleged perpetrators to the then State Attorney General Robert Abrams. Even after the story was proven false, the advisors continued to defend her, and none of them, including Mr. Sharpton, ever recanted their actions despite losing a defamation lawsuit by one of the men, an assistant District Attorney.
The Brawley appointment came as a shock to most political observers. While her lack of educational experience is clearly seen by Mr. Bloomberg as an essential prerequisite for the job, there are few other apparent reasons why the Mayor would pick Ms. Brawley as Chancellor.
However, sources close to the Mayor told GBN News that Mr. Bloomberg was impressed with Ms. Brawley’s ability to retain the complete confidence of Mr. Sharpton, despite overwhelming evidence that her story was phony. He reasoned that if she could fool someone as savvy as Mr. Sharpton for so long with such an elaborate hoax, she would be a worthy successor to a Chancellor who has done the same with politicians and pundits alike.
J. Fredrick Runson, Dean of the Manhattan University Law School and author of the best selling book, “Charlatans, Swindlers and Con Artists”, told GBN News that there is undoubtedly more to the Brawley appointment than meets the eye. “Sharpton’s a guy who can raise a million dollars from a hedge fund in a matter of days, right when he needs it to keep himself out of jail,” Dr. Runson said. “Given what’s been going on at the DOE the last few years, they’re going to need that kind of talent around. Appointing an old ally like Brawley is one sure way of keeping him on board.”
It is unclear just why Mr. Klein resigned, and a DOE spokesperson would say only that the Chancellor “wishes to spend more time testing his family”. But Dr. Runson, for one, was skeptical. “I know he loves to test people. He’s been testing the patience of parents and educators for years now. But this man has raised the educational con game to an art form. Whether he’ll be out raising money for the Educational Equality Project, or working with Harold Levy to turn Aqueduct Racetrack into a massive charter school, I guarantee we haven’t seen the last of him.”
In the last few weeks, the NY Post has become a total PR outlet for the Mayor, complete with several daily filings from former education reporter Carl Campanile that could have been dictated from Tweed.
Today’s Post features a story lauding the accomplishments of Queens Principal Anthony Lombardi under Mayoral control. Lombardi was earlier profiled lauding the DOE’s reforms back in 2003 in NY Magazine.
In 2006, Joe Williams (who is also coincidentally mentioned by Juan Gonzalez in his column today for providing the pass through for Sharpton’s big payoff) interviewed Lombardi for a favorable piece about the Klein agenda in Education Next. Lombard was also profiled in Slate magazine in 2008.
Even more recently in three separate articles in the NY Post, Lombardi offered up his support for DOE’s controversial proposal to test K-2 students with standardized exams, be stricter in granting tenure, and bar teachers from wearing political buttons.
With over 1400 NYC principals, you would think the DOE (and the NY Post) could find a fresher face to shill for their policies.
In today’s Daily News, Juan Gonzalez hits it out of the ballpark again – just in time for Al Sharpton’s big pow-wow this week with Klein, Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Margaret Spellings, and charter school advocates from throughout the country – all singing the praises of Mayoral control and the wonders of charter schools.
When Sharpton joined up with Klein to form the “Education Equality Project”last spring, it was only ten days after he had come up with $1 million, enough to settle with the feds who were about to indict him for tax fraud.
Now it looks like at least half of these funds were provided by Plainfield Asset Management, the hedge fund of former Chancellor Harold Levy. This hedge fund is heavily invested in gambling and is lobbying the city and the state to acquire Off Track betting and the Aqueduct race track.
The funds for Sharpton were officially donated to a 501C3 organization that promotes charter schools, a “charitable” organization that allows the donors to take a hefty tax deduction, but then apparently funneled to Sharpton’s operation, which is a 501C4 lobbying group, with no tax-deductibility allowed.
At the time EEP was announced, we wrote on the bloghow suspicious it was that Sharpton came up with $1 million – right after launching EPP with Klein.
….So where did he get the $1 million? As Sharpton explained to the Daily News, “"I make money, so I can pay."
Another mystery is who is funding the Education Equality Project. Until recently, David Cantor, the chief communications officer of the DOE, was listed as the main press contact on all its press releases; now they are being sent out without any names attached. Is this effort being subsidized by tax dollars that should be going towards improving our schools? Or as Cantor recently announced to our list serv, is the source of funding an “anonymous” donor, but someone other than Bloomberg? If so, who might that be?
Now, according to the Gonzalez column, Sharpton seems to be tempering his support for mayoral control, and expresses fervent opposition to “privatizing schools and corporate payoffs in education."
Speaking of payoffs, there is still the question of where the other half a million came from that allowed Sharpton to stay out of jail.
April 1, 2009 (GBN News): According to GBN News sources, Federal authorities have located close to half a billion dollars from convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff. The money, these sources say, was discovered in the budget of the NY City Department of Education, and had been transferred to the DOE just before Madoff was arrested last December. It is unclear just how Madoff was able to transfer the money to the DOE, but he allegedly planned to later recoup the money by having it returned to one of his relatives in the form of no-bid contracts.
J. Fredrick Runson, Dean of the Manhattan University Law School and an expert on educational Ponzi schemes, was impressed. “The diabolical beauty of all this is that Madoff managed to hide the money in plain sight," Dr. Runson told GBN News. "It’s right there in the budget, but since there is no real oversight over the DOE, it was extremely unlikely that anyone would find it.”
Dr. Runson was asked how Madoff could know that the money would remain intact, and not be spent by the DOE before he could ultimately get it back. “That’s the real genius in this plan,” he said. “He apparently stipulated that the money be specifically designated for class size reduction. That way, he could be certain that the DOE would never use it.”
In today’s NY Daily News, Kenneth Lovett's article, “State of Shame: No Laws Passed Without Party Leaders’ Approval in Albany,” offers a scathing (and likely appropriate) critique about the fecklessness and ineffectuality of the NY State Legislature. His commentary opens with the following harsh criticisms:
In a true democracy, legislation becomes law after vigorous debate by well-informed parties who reach agreement for the betterment of the public. In Albany, it’s different. Here, laws — and the state budget — are crafted behind closed doors by small groups of pols who’ve spent quality time with lobbyists and amassed large quantities of campaign checks from powerful interests. With a few rare exceptions, “debate” means nothing because the mere fact a bill makes it to the floor guarantees its passage. Real decisions on what major bills move are made in secret by the leadership of the political party that happens to be in power. The majority parties in both houses control the agenda, and the leaders don’t allow bills to come up for a vote they don’t want passed.
Now, close your mental eyes and read this again, but replace every reference to laws, Albany, and politicians or political parties with school policies, NYC DOE, and Chancellor Klein. Amazingly, the shoe fits perfectly!
So, the same newspaper that today publishes an article headlined "State of Shame" excoriating the NY State Legislature for its undemocratic and secretive behavior sees absolutely no irony (or error) in their non-stop, feverish fawning and slavish shilling for precisely the same sorts of actions and behaviors by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein under their current mayoral dictatorship (er-r-r, control) of the city's public schools. The Daily News either has the world's biggest blind spot or they've sold their souls for a Bloomberg billion or two. Whichever the case, the level of cynicism and hypocrisy here is absolutely stunning, simply breathtaking. Sad to see a major metropolitan newspaper fall to its own two-faced "State of Shame," where only one of those faces -- the wrong one -- is apparently able to see itself in the mirror.
“The president of the pro-business Partnership for New York City …. acknowledged that parents are frustrated and want more of a role in the school system…..A group called the Parent Commission …. said the law should be changed so the mayor can't have ultimate power over school policies.” ----WNYC radio, March 20, 2009
“[Comptroller] Thompson also echoed critics of mayoral control in calling for more channels for parental participation, an independent body to audit data and more power for local education councils. “The current administration has sought to avoid debate and public scrutiny,” Mr. Thompson said, “while fundamental decisions regarding education reform have been made by executives with very little education background.”
As the day progressed, city officials sparred with lawmakers over test scores, class size, test preparation and no-bid contracts. Parents booed, hissed and applauded, flashing signs and passing out pamphlets… Laura Acosta, an organizer for LearnNY ... said that every parent she had spoken with agreed that parents should have more of a voice in education decisions.” –NY Times, March 21, 2009
“Hundreds of parents and community leaders turned out for the last state Assembly hearing about mayoral control over city schools. …Patricia Connelly, of a group called the Parent Commission, told lawmakers the Department of Education routinely makes decisions about opening and closing schools without community involvement. CONNELLY: The parent commission rejects the condescending autocracy that currently masquerades as parent engagement. …: Connelly's group called for a partnership with the mayor, by diluting his power over an existing panel on education policy.”- WNYC radio, March 21, 2009
“The strong thrust of Friday’s hearing, the last of five that have taken Assembly members on a tour through the boroughs, was that lawmakers are not happy with the system they created. Some have become even less happy during the hearings in every borough over the last few months… Lawmakers repeatedly raised concerns that charter schools are causing a “two-tiered system” where some students get excellent educations while others languish in failing schools.” –Gotham Schools, March 23, 2009
About recent poll results
“Chancellor Klein’s approval rating continues to fall – 7 points in the last month alone. And even though he often claims to be a civil rights hero, his disapproval ratings are highest among blacks and Hispanics.” – NYC Public School parents, March 24, 2009
“One person who is not particularly popular, though, is Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who is Mr. Bloomberg’s point man on the issue of mayoral control of the schools. Voters approve his job performance by 37 percent to 35 percent, but that figure has slipped several percentage points over the last few months.” – NY Times City Room, March 24, 2009
“Approval for how Mayor Bloomberg is handling the public schools has also dropped, to 47 percent from 50 percent a month ago, giving him the lowest approval rating on his education efforts since May 2003. Just 46 percent of New Yorkers said they thought the mayor’s takeover of the public schools has been a success. Public school parents rated the mayor the worst: Just 41 percent of them said they approved of the job he’s doing, and 54 percent said they disapproved.” – Gotham Schools, March 24, 2009
“When voters were asked if the mayor should share power over the schools with the City Council… 53 percent support joint authority, and 37 percent don't...”-New York Post, March 25, 2009
About DOE spending practices
“A cost-cutting plan to close city day-care center classrooms will actually cost taxpayers almost $7 million, according to insiders and a Daily News analysis…. insiders say the average cost to the city for each kindergartner in public school is about $4,000. Tack on $2,800 apiece for after-school care, and the tab for 3,200 kids comes to $21.7 million. …
Evelyn Segura's 4-year-old daughter Ashley Nicole Triz will have to leave the Williamsbridge NAACP day care in the Bronx to attend Public School 21, a school that buses its kindergartners to other schools because it is overcrowded. "My daughter is very happy where she is now," said Segura, 40. "With the economy today, I don't understand why this is happening." -- Daily News, March 26, 2009
“City Councilman Bill DeBlasio released a report accusing the education department of wasteful spending, especially on testing....DEBLASIO: We're going far beyond the federal requirements and the basics and spending a lot more on additional testing and pre-testing that we don't need in the middle of a fiscal crisis….DeBlasio singled out an $80 million computer network for tracking data, and more than $20 million a year in benchmark testing. He also complained about the department's $1.3 million communications budget.” .- WNYC radio, March 26, 2009
About 2,000 teaching jobs could be cut if the state denies the city its fair share of federal stimulus funding, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein warned Thursday….Teachers union chief Randi Weingarten railed against the suggestion that cutting teachers and school staff is a necessary evil. "We need to cut things that ... aren't core," she said. – Daily News, March 27, 2009
On Charter schools and the lack of community input on their siting
The biggest uproar has been sparked by DOE's aggressive policy of putting new charters in existing public schools without seeking parent approval. "It's the same in every neighborhood," said Monica Major, president of the Community Education Council in District 11 in the Bronx. "The DOE just tells you they're putting a new charter in your building and you have to force them to even have a conversation about it." ….
Public school parent leaders say they don't oppose charters. They just want the DOE to abide by state law and consider the views of the local Community Education Councils, the successors to the old community school districts, before making those decisions. "They continually create this atmosphere of animosity toward parents," Major said. That's why she joined the Parent Commission on School Governance, a volunteer group that just released a proposal to sharply curb mayoral control of the schools. -- Daily News, March 24, 2009
The United Federation of Teachers and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Tuesday charging that the city’s Department of Education violated state law by moving to replace traditional public schools with charter schools without proper consultation of neighborhood school boards….The lawsuit accuses the department of “utilizing its powers over school creation to alter attendance zones unilaterally without the consent or involvement of the people the community school serves,” and adds that it “continues to act by fiat.”…
Since the mayoral takeover, the local school boards have declined in influence, with zoning among their few remaining powers. “This is our last shred of authority,” noted Jennifer Freeman, a member of the education council that represents much of Harlem, and a plaintiff in the suit. – NY Times, March 25, 2009
Part III of the downtown forum "Demystifying Mayoral control" featuring Paul Hovitz, member of Community Board 1 , former teacher and official in the Auditor's General. Paul describes the incompetence and mismanagement at Tweed, including the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicaid funds, because of DOE's failure to properly document the special services they said were being provided to special education students.
Diane Ravitch, Leonie Haimson, and Paul also answer questions from the audience, about who will make the final decision on Mayoral control, charter schools, and other issues.
Check out part II of the March 26 forum,"Demystifying Mayoral control," with Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters (me!) recounting some of the state and city laws that this administration chronically violates, and also summarizing some of the recommendations on how to reform the system, as proposed in the report released by the Parent Commission on School Governance.
Only two themes have been consistent through the constant reorganizations and permutations of the Bloomberg/Klein agenda: a persistent disregard for the law, and a continual refusal to allow parents to be involved in decisionmaking at the school, district or citywide levels.
Check out the first part of a March 26 forum on "Demystifying Mayoral control" sponsored by South of the Bridge Parent & Youth Association, starring Diane Ravitch.
Diane was in peak form, talking about how the Bloomberg version of Mayoral control is unlike any in NYC's history, how there's no accountability in the current system, and how the administration's claims of improved achievement results are dubious at best.
Remember when there was an anonymous person who left pro-mayoral control comments on our blog, and other blogs, without identifying himself? And we accurately guessed he was probably from LearnNY, a lobbying organization set up by Bloomberg to retain Mayoral control? His identity was subsequently confirmed by his own confession, as well as an article in Gotham Schools, which outed him as Brian Keeler, a consultant for LearnNY.
Well, there’s a new Mayoral control troll in town named “Abby,” who on March 24 wrote on theWNYC blog:
When the Mayor and the government were not involved in our education system, NYC schools failed our students. To ensure education is a top priority, we must continue to make our leaders responsible for its success. People who believe the Mayor has too much control, are not considering the growing number of schools and students who succeeding.
On the same day, "Abby" left her comments onGotham Schools– saying that the Mayor has allowed one hundred charter schools to open, and if only we maintained Mayoral control, “NYC will eventually reach a point where all students are receiving a quality education” (presumably through the further multiplication of charter schools).
And then on March 26, she was at it again on Gotham Schools, saying that it's “time to put petty bickering and politics aside and make students and education the focus” by continuing Mayoral control. (No matter that the Mayor and Klein are the ones who engage in non-stop political spin, and spend precious taxpayer money to try to keep their chokehold on our schools.)
I was feeling a little suspicious of this Abby, even though she identified herself as a “citizen” and didn’t link to any organizational website. Paid representatives of LearnNY and the Mayor tend to produce obviously canned talking points rather than arguments that engage realistically with the matter at hand. Their comments lack substance and conviction, and read like something written for the back of a cereal box.
Sure enough, a few days ago, someone from Learn NY named Abby Sugrue sent around an email to parents, including several on our NYC education news list serv who had never signed up with the organization, bragging that in a recent article about the Assembly hearings on school governance, “The New York Times called our supporters and coalition a "heavy weight parent group"!
Clearly, if Mayoral control trolls are trolling for emails among our subscribers, a known hotbed of parent activists, acutely aware of the damaging effects of mayoral autocracy on our schools, they must getting desperate.
March 26, 2009 (GBN News): Fresh on the heels of Governor Paterson’s proposed state employee layoffs and the adoption of the MTA “Doomsday Budget”, the NY City Department of Education has announced its own draconian cuts. In a statement at City Hall, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced that the DOE will immediately be instituting a policy of “furloughs” for public school students in order to reduce the budget.
Under the plan, each student in grades K through 12 will be required to stay at home for one school day a week. Spread over the entire school system, this will enable the DOE to save money by consolidating classes and excessing hundreds of teachers.
In announcing the plan, Chancellor Klein assured parents that children will not miss any important educational instruction. “While children may have to forego some of the non-essential subjects like art, social studies and science, we can guarantee that no child will do without reading and math test prep, and their standardized test scores will not suffer as a result of the furloughs.”
Critics immediately pounced on the plan, calling it a violation of state education law. However, the Chancellor said that the furloughs will technically be termed “suspensions”, and thus are totally legal. “We know all these kids carry cell phones in school every day,” Mr. Klein said. “That’s a clear violation of DOE policy, so now whenever we need to furlough students, we’ll just suspend them for posession of cell phones.”
The Chancellor also sought to reassure public school parents that they do have alternatives. Because of the federal stimulus package, Mr. Klein pointed out, massive infusions of money will be available for charter schools, and thus those schools will be exempt from the furloughs. “All they have to do is apply to charter schools,” he said, “and their kids won’t miss a day.”
After screwing up our schools, the Gates foundation now proceeds to spread its tentacles into the US Dept. of Education; where Arne Duncan, armed with a $5 billion slush fund to push the agenda of the Billionaire boy’s club agenda of more charter schools and merit pay; with KIPP, Kopp and Klein joining the advisory board of the Broad foundation to further their hostile takeover of public education, Diane asks the very timely question, Will Public Education Survive the Embrace of Big Money?
Despite his recent charm offensive, all the millions being spent on ads by the Fund for Public Schools and doled out to community groups and churches by Learn NY, and all the other efforts being made by DOE, Bloomberg, and his billionaire buddies to control the public debate about the results of their chokehold over the public schools, Chancellor Klein’s approval rating continues to fall – 7 points in the last month alone. And even though he often claims to be a civil rights hero, his disapproval ratings are highest among blacks and Hispanics.
Meanwhile, while most voters generally approve of Bloomberg's handling of the public schools, parents with children in the system disapprove, by a large margin --54-41%
Overall, voters say Albany should continue mayoral control (53-37), though that figure has dropped by 4 points in the last two months.
In a new question offered by Quinnipiac, voters also say they'd like the Mayor to share control with the City Council (53-37) or the borough presidents (50-41).
In last month’s poll, the pollsters eliminated the question they’d asked for several years about whether voters believed that the Mayor should share power with an Independent Board, even though most respondents had favored that response by a large margin.
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This blog is edited by Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters and who was a NYC public school parent for 15 years. If you'd like to write for the blog, please email us at info@classsizematters.org
