The Times' enduring obsession with Gifted and talented programs, and what is left out

This morning, the NY Times has yet another article about the city's Gifted and Talented programs, and the high-stakes exams that control admissions to these programs. See today's front page story, Tips for the Admissions Test ... to Kindergarten . It all seems so familiar....and indeed it is.

By my quick count, this is at least the ninth article about G and T that the Times has run in the last seven months.

To add insult to injury, this is the second Times article about the admissions process that omits any mention of its inherently discriminatory nature - which has significantly worsened under this administration. This is due to the Chancellor's insistence that all G and T admissions should be based solely on the results of high stakes exams, which Klein claims ato be more "equitable" but which are highly inequitable in terms of results.

His policies have also directly led to the proliferation of expensive prep programs that few typical NYC families can afford. If you are going to run articles about G and T admissions, failing to cite their contribution to worsening racial and economic segregation in our schools is regrettable. In fact, many people said that these policies would have a racially discriminatory impact, including Patrick Sullivan and Debbie Meier , who both predicted this on our blog when Klein first announced the new admissions policy in the fall of 2007.

For other recent Times articles about G and T, see this one, from October 19, about a new expensive private school in Manhattan: School for the Gifted, and Only the Gifted.

Here is another, a Susan Dominus column from August 17, Connecting Anxious Parents and Educators, at $450 an Hour , about a consultant who helps get kids into private schools: "It would be her mission to democratize information for New York’s most competitive elite."

"Democratize" at $450 an hour? This is like Michael Bloomberg claiming the recent election was fair, when he outspent his opponent sixteen to one.

This was followed by yet another Dominus column on August 25: Early Testing In City Schools Called Faulty. Although she discusses the unreliability of G and T exams, in that children tested at a young age often score quite differently in later years, she fails to mention how the results are also discriminatory, given the influence of socio-economic factors. And she uncritically repeats the administration's claims that their policies are somehow equitable:

" Chancellor Joel I. Klein has tried to rejigger the testing system to be more fair, with uniform cut-offs citywide and better outreach to less-advantaged areas. But what ''Nurture Shock'' suggests, and Ms. Commitante [head of DOE's gifted and talented progrm] somewhat acknowledges, is that just means the randomness of gifted and talented placement is now more equitable."

To the contrary, see this far more informative oped in the Daily News, by James Borland, a professor of education, who points out how inherently inequitable the admissions process has become:

A one-size-fits-all approach to identifying students for the city's gifted and talented programs - which is just what the Department of Education has implemented - is neither equitable nor educationally sound. In fact, testing very young children, before the educational system exerts its admittedly limited equalizing effect, only magnifies the effects of differences in socioeconomic status. It favors children who have had the advantages of expensive preschools; of parents with time, ability and inclination to read to them; and of exposure to cultural events.

On September 7, Dominus yet wrote yet another column, about a new G and T public school in Brooklyn, Going the Distance to Get a Child to a Magnet School , in which she omits any analysis of the economic or racial composition of the school, and instead, approvingly focuses on one "highly motivated" mom, who sends her son, Benjamin, to the school, although it is miles away:

...a bus hired by a dozen families, at about $400 a month each, will pick up Benjamin and another 5-year-old before stopping at homes in Crown Heights, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope and Prospect Heights. Finally, at least an hour and a half after Benjamin has left home, he and the others will arrive at Brooklyn School of Inquiry, a brand-new citywide school for gifted and talented children at the corner of Stillwell Avenue and Avenue P, in Gravesend. Such are the lengths to which some parents — highly motivated parents — will go to take advantage of the city’s coveted magnet programs for gifted children.

Is it really only a matter of motivation? Last spring, the Times ran numerous pieces dealing with G and T programs on the Upper West Side, the epicenter of the phenomenon, including this one on the City Room blog, Are Parents Thinking Differently About Education? (June 29):

The phone keeps ringing at the Upper West Side office of Robin Aronow, an educational consultant and schools guru: anxious families suddenly rethinking whether they can afford private school, distressed parents wondering what to do if their children don’t make it into vaunted gifted and talented programs.

See also these articles from the paper: Students Must Retake Lost Gifted Tests (May 15); Gifted Tests Missing on Upper West Side (May 13), and More Children Take the Tests for Gifted Programs, and More Qualify (May 5).

In this last article, the reporter discloses that the number of students who qualified for G and T seats rose by 45 percent over the year before, but not until the sixth paragraph does the reader discover that the racial disparity in admissions remained largely unchanged.

On the upper West side, the number of children taking the tests rose by 15 percent, while the number of students making the cut off score increased by 48 percent. Though the reporter does not speculate on the cause of this phenomenon, the DOE spokesperson attributed this increase to "families’ increasing familiarity with the new admissions process." Instead, these higher scores are most likely the results of the increased amount of test prep taking place.

By continually reporting on the expensive consultants that are profiting off parents' anxieties to get their children into G and T programs, the Times is encouraging their proliferation. Indeed, the paper deserves to get a cut from these consultants, by regurgitating these articles, over and over again.

If charter schools are the obsession of the editors of the NY Post, gifted and talented programs remain the singular obsession of the Times.

Both serve a tiny proportion of NYC public school students and are far less important than other issues that affect the huge majority of our kids: the systemic and worsening crisis in overcrowding and its impact on class sizes, the lack of transparency and flawed priorities of DOE spending, including the mushrooming school bonus program and the continued growth in Tweed's accountability office, the loss of arts and enrichment programs, the obsession with closing schools rather than improving them, the increased amount of test prep that dominates classroom time and the like -- all of which have contributed to the decline of educational quality in our schools, and all of which our paper of record fails to cover adequately, or not at all.

More on the bogus school bonuses

All three dailies are onto the absurdity of the DOE granting huge bonuses to staff at low-performing schools that received "C" and "D" on their progress reports – including, according to the Daily News, at least one school that is closing.

The bonus program will eat up almost $40 million in precious education funds this year. Despite all the budget cuts already enacted at the school level, and more to come, leading to layoffs, larger classes, the loss of after school and enrichment programs , the DOE insists that these indefensible bonuses will be continued (NY1).

"It's always cited as one of the most novel, exciting programs. And I think New Yorkers want results. We are paying for results," said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Yes, results based on inflated test scores, credit recovery, and widespread tampering with student test scores.

From the Post: “Somebody has to be complicit in this robbery -- it cannot be that DOE can simply appropriate public money as it sees fit," said Paola de Kock, whose son graduated in June from Stuyvesant HS in Manhattan.

Unfortunately, they can and they will continue to waste our taxpayer money -- as far into the future as the eye can see. Unless the City Council stands up for our children and stops them. Don't hold your breath.

See also the article in the Times.

The charter school wars erupt on the Lower East Side

The charter school wars have spread with a fury to the Lower East Side. Over the last few years, several charter schools have been inserted into their buildings, and now it appears that the parents of District 1 have had enough.

Last night, there was standing room only at the Community Education Council, where three different proposals to make room for the expansion of Girls Prep Charter School by taking away from rooms from other schools in D1 were debated.

Check out the video of CM Rosie Mendez below, and other videos of CM Alan Gerson, Suzie Kong, parent leader from Shuang Wen School and James Lee, Principal of PS 20 , Thomas Staebell, Principal of PS 15 and Isabel Reyna-Torres, teacher at PS 20.



Too bad Joel Klein, Michael Bloomberg, Arne Duncan and Bill Gates were not there to see this. You can check out news reports from NY1, Gotham Schools and Dna.info and Dewey 21C. When will the madness end?

PCB-CONTAMINATED CAULK FOUND in DOZENS of NYC SCHOOLS

Here is a chart that identifies NYC schools where the DOE found window caulk containing more than 50 parts per million (ppm) PCBs. PCBs are highly toxic compounds that were banned years ago but not yet removed from all sources.

PCBs spontaneously enter the air and can be ingested through breathing. They pose particular health and developmental risks to children. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PCBs at levels greater than 50 ppm “present an unreasonable risk of injury to health” and “must be removed.” The windows at many public schools around NYC nevertheless continue to contain caulk that is contaminated with PCBs, sometimes very severely.

What the chart shows are results of some PCB tests that the DOE conducted before doing routine window renovation work in the period from April 2008 to September 2009. The caulk that was tested was slated to be removed and was in fact removed. However, the DOE only tested windows subject to renovation in each school, and it is highly likely that other windows and doors at these schools contain the same contaminated caulk.

PLEASE JOIN THE NYC COALITION FOR PCB-FREE SCHOOLS! We are parents, school employees, and community members concerned about the risks posed by PCBs in schools. We have formed a coalition to urge the DOE to have all NYC schools tested and cleaned up; we also want to ensure that parents have a meaningful voice in the DOE’s decision-making on this issue. All children deserve a PCB-free learning environment. If you know parents at any of the schools, please let them know, and please forward this information widely.

To join us, or if you have questions, please contact New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), the non-profit civil rights organization we are working with. You can reach Staff Attorney Miranda Massie at mmassie@nylpi.org or Community Organizer Gigi Gazón at ggazon@nylpi.org. They can also both be reached at 212/244-4664.

THANK YOU!

Is an Ill Wind Blowing Through NYC Public High Schools?

Even as the recent round of DOE Progress Reports has generated another wave of criticisms over Lake Wobegon-style grade inflation (with only one school in the city getting an F and over three-quarters grabbing A's), the just-released high school report cards contain some serious, and considerably more negative, news.

As Jennifer Medina and Robert Gebeloff reported in their Monday (11/16) New York Times article, "More New York High Schools Get A's:"

The school environment grades, which are based on attendance and results of student, parent and teacher surveys, and make up 15 percent of the grade, showed the steepest decline. This year, 55 high schools received a D or an F in school environment, compared with 12 last year.

Thus, in the one area where students vote with their feet (attendance) and the public -- parents, teachers, and students -- have some direct input via surveys tailored to each of those constituencies, the feedback from high schools is not happy news for Chancellor Klein. And the picture is actually far worse than the Times reported. As is too often the case, their "analysis" picked a piece of easy, low-hanging fruit while eschewing a more substantive and informative presentation.

Here's a more thorough recap of the School Environment Survey component of the high school Progress Reports, based on the 268 high schools across all five boroughs for which Progress Reports were completed and published for both 2008 and 2009. (Excel spreadsheets for all 2007, 2008, and 2009 Progress Reports can be found on the DOE website here.)

School Environment --------- Number of Schools Receiving Grade
------- Grade ------------------------ 2008 --------------- 2009

--------- A ---------------------------- 100 ------------------ 78
--------- B ---------------------------- 124 ------------------ 88
--------- C ----------------------------- 34 ------------------ 56
--------- D ------------------------------ 4 ------------------ 33
--------- F ------------------------------ 6 ------------------ 13

The number of high schools scoring an A or B for School Environment dropped from 224 in 2008 to just 166 this year, a decline of 25.9%, while the number of schools scoring a C, D, or F in that category rose from 44 to 102, an increase of 131.8%.

Another way of looking at this shift comes from studying the increases and decreases in letter grades. From 2008 to 2009, three of 268 schools increased their School Environment performance by two letter grades, and just nine more managed a one-letter-grade improvement. A total of 139 schools retained their same letter grade from 2008 to 2009, while 94 schools dropped one letter grade level, 19 more dropped two letter grades, and four dropped three letter grades. In other words, 4.5% of high schools saw their School Environment grades go up, 51.9% stayed the same, and 43.6% saw a drop of at least one letter grade. Across the full range of those 268 schools, their average School Environment grade (using a scale of A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, and F=0) went from 3.15 in 2008 to just 2.69 in 2009, a drop of 14.6%.

While everything about these Progress Reports and surveys remains suspecct, the data from these latest ones suggest that some ill winds may be blowing in NYC public high schools. Parents, teachers, and/or students are clearly responding to these environment surveys more negatively now than a year ago, a trend that should warrant great concern with the constant shuffling, reconfiguring, and shuttering of schools and the persistently (and worsening) overcrowded classrooms.

Grade inflation and lower standards at the DOE: what else is new?

Today, there were lots of articles about the inflated high school grades (the so-called “progress reports”) which turned out to be almost as inflated as those for elementary and middle schools. 75 percent of NYC high schools got As or Bs, and only one school got an F.

Yet as I pointed out to WNYC radio, more than half of our high schools are extremely overcrowded, with the largest class sizes in the state, and among the lowest graduation rates anywhere. According to the Daily News, at more than half of the schools that received the highest scores, less than half of the kids graduate with a Regents diploma.

Moreover, there seems to be a double standard and favoritism at Tweed. DOE says they will close down large high schools that did not do well, but the one high school that got an “F”, Peace and Diversity, will be provided with more help and resources. Is that because it happens to be a small school, founded in 2004? And the DOE has a vested interest in promoting the new small schools they helped start over our large high schools, those schools that in fact, their own policies have helped destabilize?

See the response in the Post by the Michael Mulgrew, UFT head: “Mulgrew also bristled at a chart produced by the city showing that the smaller high schools opened under Bloomberg since 2002 were faring better than others, even as several of the newer schools rated D's and the lone F.

"I don't like when you try to draw distinctions when you're responsible for all of the schools but you have a vested interest in trying to tell people that the schools you created are doing well," he said.”

Unfortunately, none of the articles make the connections between these grades, the threat of school closure, and all the cheating and grade tampering scandals that have erupted in high schools in recent years. And none make the point that the cut scores are arbitrarily decided upon by the administration – so in essence, the Chancellor and his minions decide ahead of time exactly how many grades there will be in each category, easily providing the DOE with yet another way to congratulate themselves while closing down certain schools to grab their real estate.

Most interesting is the following finding, from the NY Times: “The school environment grades, which are based on attendance and results of student, parent and teacher surveys, and make up 15 percent of the grade, showed the steepest decline. This year, 55 high schools received a D or an F in school environment, compared with 12 last year.”

What’s going on here? Are the pressures of the high stakes accountability system tearing our high schools apart? If so, it wouldn’t be altogether surprising.

Million dollar ravioli

Amazing piece by Arthur Goldstein, teacher at Francis Lewis HS at Gotham Schools about the last week's Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

Excerpt: So city kids can't have regular teachers. They can't have reasonable class sizes, or even legal ones. They can't have decent classrooms, or adequate gymnasium space. They can't have lunch at a reasonable hour. Still, as a result of this meeting, whenever they do get lunch, city kids will finally get the million-dollar ravioli they deserve.

See also James Eterno's comments at the PEP about what's happened due to budget cuts at Jamaica HS.

Joel Hits Klein's Policy

November 16, 2009 (GBN News): NY City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein sharply criticized his own policies today, pointedly referring to the recently released high school progress reports as “more stable and accurate than reports for elementary and middle schools” due to their use of “multiple measures” rather than just standardized test scores. Mr. Klein, who has insisted that multiple measures “dilute the power of accountability”, and that test scores should almost exclusively determine everything from principals’ bonuses to whether to close a school, announced that he will join the ranks of his critics by starting a new blog attacking those practices. According to GBN News sources, the Chancellor had tried to voice his criticisms through the traditional DOE channels, but became frustrated when he found that “nobody seemed to be listening”. The Chancellor’s blog can be found at http://www.kleinvsklein.blogspot.com/.

DOE Demands Consultants Get Additional $ At November Panel for Educational Policy Meeting

November's Panel for Educational Policy meeting was the longest yet in my tenure, over three and a half hours. Most of the time was devoted to consideration of the procurement and consulting contracts submitted for approval.

The vote to provide management consultants KPMG with a $3 million extension to continue the Learning Environment Survey was the most contentious. I sharply questioned the wisdom of continuing this survey with looming state and city budget cuts. There is no evidence DOE actually acts on any of the findings. Every year parents ask for smaller class sizes and every year the DOE does nothing to address this concern. Last year class sizes rose in all grades but one. Chancellor Klein was absolutely indignant that I was attacking his survey. He defended it by pointing to all the school district heads across the country who had told him how much they admired it. Impressing your friends is a poor justification for diverting $3 million from the classroom.

See Daily News coverage here.

A contract with Hanover Foods to provide canned ravioli to schools passed 9-3. I voted against the contract because new DOE specifications resulted in only one bidder and a price increase of 41% amounting to $1.1 million in additional cost over three years. While nutritional standard are important, the upgrade was not significant enough to warrant the additional expense. For example, we were told the new specifications called for lower sodium but the reduction was minimal: from 880 mg per serving to 770.

NY1 ran a segment dedicated to this debate here.

There was a lengthy discussion of whether the Panel should approve funding of scholarships to Touro College for teachers seeking qualifications in special ed and other hard to fill areas.
There are three open investigations into Touro including transcript fraud and $53 million in improperly awarded Federal tuition funds. Queens Panel member Dmytro Fedkowskyj and I asked for another month to consider the evidence but our motion to postpone was defeated and the funding was approved.

Through the examination of these contracts I am getting a clear message that DOE is not focused on reducing procurement and consulting costs. Moreover, there is a clear sense of entitlement from the senior DOE staff. They somehow have come to see the irresponsible spending as their prerogative or even right. That's a problem we will be working to address over the next few months. Across the city, school leadership teams are working hard to close growing budget gaps while the Chancellor and his team are squandering millions of dollars.

City Scores to Rise on Cash for Grades

November 13, 2009 (GBN News): The sudden retirement of a North Carolina school principal after a “cash for grades” fund raiser has drawn the attention of NY City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Upon hearing that students in Rosewood Middle School were able to buy 20 test points for $20, the Mayor’s immediate response was, “You can do that?” Mr. Bloomberg then directed Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to offer an administrative position to Principal Susie Shepherd, who will implement a similar policy in the NY City schools.

The Mayor and Chancellor are said to be hoping that enough students will participate in the program to lift the city’s overall scores. Furthermore, to narrow the gap between higher and lower income families, the Mayor will be personally donating money to those students of limited means who can show that they are “motivated enough” to want to purchase the higher test scores.

Sources told GBN News that Mr. Bloomberg regrets only that had this idea come up before the election, he could have deducted the money he is paying for higher scores as a campaign expense.

More blatant charter school propaganda

The hype around the charter school, Harlem Village Academies, has been extraordinary.

The school has been featured on NBC Nightly News and many other media venues. The CEO, Deborah Kenny, spouts all the usual cliches: the school's success is based on running it “like a business”, the school supports “great teaching” and has a “culture of accountability.” She also calls Bloomberg a “godsend” for education. One thing is for sure, Kenny is paid like a corporate executive, according to the the blog Schools Matters.

Be sure to check out the hugely deceptive video below from an Oct. 15 segment of the MSNBC show, Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough begins by showing headlines from that morning's NY Times about NY State's lack of progress on the math NAEP exams, also called the Nation's report card, which called into question the validity of the sharp increases of NY students on the state math exams.

But then Joe goes on to say “However, but its not all bad news: for example 100% of the eighth graders at NYC’s Harlem Village Academies are proficient in their math skills."

At the same time, a graphic is displayed with the name of the charter school, stating that 100% of its students scored proficient in math, compared to 34% in the nation. At the top of the blackboard the words “the Nation’s Report Card” are featured, implying that both sets of results are from NAEP.

Yet the 100% figure for this charter school were from the NY state exams – which the NAEP results had just revealed to be hugely inflated! And the 34% is the national average for proficiency on the NAEPs – whose results are far more reliable and whose standards are much higher.

Whether this deception was promulgated by Kenny or was just sloppy reporting on the part of MSNBC, who knows. But at no time did Deborah Kenny try to correct the misimpression created by Joe Scarborough’s remarks or the visual displayed on the screen. I guess she earned her 420K salary that day.

Hypno Guru Puts Spell on Politicos

November 7, 2009 (GBN News): A hypnotherapist hired as a consultant to the NY City Department of Education may be doing more than originally reported, GBN News has learned. The consultant, William Howatt, was hired for $375,000, ostensibly "to save money" and to improve employees' "ability to adapt to change". However, photo archives unearthed by GBN News seem to show Mr. Howatt appearing, Zelig-like, with political figures such as President Obama and the late Ted Kennedy, as well as media commentators like Nicholas Kristof, David Brooks, and Jonathan Alter.

J. Fredrick Runson, professor of psychiatry at Manhattan University Medical School and an expert on hypnosis and mind control techniques, told GBN News it is no coincidence that every influential figure seen with Mr. Howatt has furthered, in one way or another, the Joel Klein/Arne Duncan/Michele Rhee concept of school reform.

“I’ve often wondered how such seemingly well-informed people can be so clueless about education,” said Dr. Runson. “They are all smart individuals who generally base their opinions or policy on solid empirical evidence. But around education issues, it’s like they’re zombies. Each one has promulgated an agenda without even bothering to look at the facts. Charter schools, pay for performance, bogus testing – there’s no evidence that any of this helps children learn, but they're pushing it anyway. I’d bet my bright, shiny pendant that this so-called ‘new age guru’ is hypnotizing these guys without them even knowing.”

Dr. Runson said he couldn’t be certain who is behind the scheme, but he is sure that Mr. Howatt is not acting alone. “$375,000 is rather steep for your regular, garden variety consultant,” he said. “Somebody backing this has got to be very, very rich.”

You won't believe this one!

Every time you think that things couldn’t possibly get worse in terms of the wacky and wasteful use of funds at the NYC Department of Education -- it does.

If the DOE were a Wall St. firm it would have crashed years ago. See what high-priced consultant George Rabb, late of the bankrupt Bear Stearns brought to Tweed last year, ostensibly "to save money" and to improve employees' "ability to adapt to change."

Though Rabb has since left DOE, this is further confirmation that lunatics have been running the asylum at Tweed.

Thompson takes the parent vote!

NYC Kids PAC congratulates Bill Thompson on his strong performance this Tuesday in the mayoral elections. As the New York Times exit poll shows, parents of public school children voted overwhelmingly for change—favoring Thompson 55% to 43%.

Mayor Bloomberg assumed complete control of the schools in 2002 and declared that New Yorkers should hold him accountable with their vote. The election reveals that public school parents have done just that. Despite $80 million dollars in flyers and saturation advertising hawking the mayor’s false statistics and bogus claims of improvements in our schools, public school parents called for change.

NYC Kids PAC also congratulates John Liu, the comptroller-elect, an NYC Kids PAC endorsee. Liu was the city’s largest vote-getter with 693,330 votes—roughly 150,000 more than Bloomberg.

We celebrate the six victorious City Councilmember who also received our endorsement: Charles Barron, Robert Jackson, Ken Mitchell, Diane Reyna, Al Vann, and Councilmember-elect Mark Weprin. We supported these candidates on the basis of their education records, specifically their votes to expand the school capital plan and revise mayoral control.
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NYC Kids PAC looks forward to working with the Mayor, Speaker Quinn, the City Council, Comptroller-elect Liu, and Public Advocate-elect de Blasio to enact the policies we need for real improvements in our schools. The election results demonstrate that New Yorkers are not happy with the one-man rule that has come to dominate our schools and our city.

We call on all of New York City’s officials to recognize the mandate for change expressed by Tuesday’s vote by

—immediately replacing Joel Klein with an educator as chancellor;
—reducing class size and eliminating overcrowding;
—limiting high-stakes testing and its distorting consequences for curriculum and instruction;
—curtailing the privatization of public education;
—strengthening neighborhood schools;
—institutionalizing the parent voice in decision-making; and
—insuring transparency and accountability in finances and data analysis.

NYC Kids PAC only formed in September, and yet it helped raise over $8,000 for Bill Thompson, marshaled parents as volunteers from throughout the five boroughs, and distributed thousands of flyers educating the electorate on the issues of concern to parents. NYC Kids PAC will continue to support leaders who stand up for what we know our kids really need. For more information about our mission and our goals see www.nyckidspac.org.

CAMPAIGN TO STOP K-2 TESTING IN OUR SCHOOLS

Parents - Did you know that the DOE plans to bring standardized testing to our youngest children? If this happens, curriculum will be drastically altered because teachers will be pressured to teach to the test. There will be precious little time for art, music, science, drama, and creative play. Experts agree that testing young children is highly unreliable due to the uneven development in early childhood. Additionally, standardized tests have a long and notorious history of misrepresenting the intellectual capabilities of young children based on race, class and immigrant status. And during this period of severe budget cuts, it would be a waste of money to spend millions of dollars on such an irresponsible testing policy.

Time Out From Testing is organizing a citywide referendum to stop K-2 testing. Please go to our website at www.timeoutfromtesting.org to sign the online petition. In addition, next week are elementary school parent-teacher conferences during which you can set up a table to gather signatures of opposition. Please download the "Letter for Parents" from our website, make copies, ask parents to sign, collect all the letters and return them to us. (You will find the address at the bottom of the letter.)

Want to get more involved in this campaign? Email us at info@timeoutfromtesting.org

Many thanks! Jane Hirschmann

Business as Usual for Bloomberg

November 4, 2009 (GBN News): While publicly maintaining that “a win is a win”, Mayor Bloomberg is said to be privately furious over the poor return on his $100 million re-election campaign investment. “I didn’t become a billionaire by throwing away money,” he reportedly told associates after his unexpectedly narrow victory on Tuesday. “I paid for a 20% margin, and I expected to get a 20% margin.”

However, Mr. Bloomberg will apparently be able to recoup much of the money he spent. The Mayor is said to be billing the Thompson campaign for $50 million worth of Bloomberg ads highlighting Mr. Thompson’s picture. Though the ads had actually attacked the Democratic candidate, a spokesperson for the Mayor maintained that, “We gave him all that exposure. It’s only fair that Thompson should pay for it.”

In a related story, last minute rumors of potential trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission may have contributed to Mr. Bloomberg’s relatively poor showing in the election. The SEC is reportedly investigating the Mayor for insider trading in test score futures. Sources told GBN News that Mr. Bloomberg is suspected of using his knowledge of inflated NY State test scores to invest heavily in them. Unfortunately for the Mayor, the recent release of NAEP scores tipped off the investigators and exposed the scheme.

Public School Parents Voted Against Bloomberg

The NY Times has some interesting exit poll results. About 25% of voters told the Times they had children in public school. These parents went for Thompson 55% to 43% for Bloomberg.

Full results here.

Our children are more than test scores

Check out the new video about how high stakes testing in our schools has forced teachers to teach to the test, schools to close, and children to miss out on the joy and excitement of a real, well-rounded education.

NYC's Grim Future Portrayed in "Bloombergtown":

Bloombergtown from Elizabeth Benjamin on Vimeo.

Cheating scandal at Lehman: DOE's response and echoes of the past

Everyone needs to check out this terrific investigative report by GothamSchools about the growing scandal at Lehman high school, in which the principal allegedly invented credits and increased student grades by changing their transcripts after the fact.

Janet Saraceno was appointed to Lehman in the fall of 2008, and given a $25,000 bonus as the city's second "super principal," a program supposed to be reserved for principals who agreed to take on the challenge of a low-performing school -- despite the fact that, as noted at the time, Lehman was already one of the city's higher performing high schools. She was due to receive another $25,000 bonus if she managed to raise graduation rates at the school.

The sort of manipulation that appears to have occurred at Lehman is predicted by Campbell's Law, and is just the tip of the iceberg, considering how widespread these practices have become in recent years among NYC public schools. (See for example, numerous comments from teachers on the NY Times blog about the scandal, and our book, NYC Schools under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know.)

Increased teaching to the test, cheating, and grade tampering are all expected results of the DOE accountability system , in which test scores and graduation rates determine a school's grade, whether the staff will receive hefty bonuses, and if the school will be closed-- which in turn determines whether its staff will keep their jobs or be placed on absent teacher reserve.

Regents scores, credit accumulation and graduation rates largely determine a high school's grade in the DOE accountability system. These figures are even easier to manipulate than the state test scores that determine the grades of elementary and middle schools. Why?

Because, incredibly, Regents exams are graded by teachers at their own schools, and principals are allowed to raise both Regents scores and student grades, as long as they inform teachers in writing about these changes.

In this case, the principal of Lehman apparently stepped over this very flexible line, by failing to inform the teachers about the changes made in student transcripts, and not merely raising test scores but also adding credits for courses never taken .

(Graduation rates are also easy to manipulate also by "discharging" or "pushing out" students -- transferring them to GED programs or the like. This raises the graduation rate because all discharged students are excluded from the cohort and never counted as dropouts. A recent report found that the number of NYC students who have been discharged in their first year of high school has doubled in recent years.)

None of this is particularly surprising, but what is is especially disconcerting is the ham-handed response of the administration to these revelations, both initially and since the scandal broke.

According to a message sent by chief press officer David Cantor to our NYC education list serv, Joel Klein learned about these allegations as far back as March of 2009. Yet instead of immediately suspending the principal pending the outcome of investigations, Cantor reports that Klein met with the teachers, referred the case to chief counsel Michael Best, and then:

"Within a few days, I believe--I can get you the dates--Best met with teachers from the school, after which he referred their allegations to the Special Commissioner of Investigation (who in turn referred them to the Office of Special Investigation). "

How aggressively the DOE's Office of Special Investigations pursued this case since that time cannot be known, of course, but the principal cannot have been seriously concerned as she was still changing student transcripts throughout the summer of 2009, according to the records obtained by GothamSchools.

When the story broke this week, Chris Cerf, formerly Deputy Chancellor of DOE and now working for the Bloomberg campaign, responded:

"We cannot comment on any aspects of this, but we certainly do not condone the kinds of things that are alleged. But at the same time, we believe that accountability for student outcomes is a central driver of positive reform and we believe it is critical to hold everybody in the system accountable for student results.”

In other words, accountability has nothing to do with either honesty or transparency, but simply raising test scores. Message to principals: lie, cheat or steal, it hardly matters as long as test scores and graduation rates go up.

Then, DOE announced they would launch an investigation of the teachers who provided GothamSchools with the evidence of grade-tampering. Why? Because, as Cantor wrote, “The privacy of student records is protected by federal law. School staff are not permitted to provide their students’ transcripts to reporters."

As GothamSchools reporter Anna Phillips points out, FERPA, the federal law Cantor was referring to, says that providing transcripts is only forbidden if "personally identifiable information” is transmitted. In this case, student names were all crossed out.

“All I can say is we are going to investigate the release of the student records publicly to the press,” Cantor said.

This scandal is eerily similar to the allegations made by nine veteran teachers in 2004, in which they accused a principal of another large high school in the Bronx, Anthony Rotunno of Kennedy High school, of hiking the Regents scores of 16 students. Two years later, after an extended investigation by DOE's Office of Special Investigations, no report was ever written, not because the allegations were found to be incorrect, but because DOE concluded that Rotunno had the right to change these Regents scores.

Despite articles and columns in the NY Times as elsewhere about the allegations, the only person who ended up punished was Maria Colon, the school's UFT chapter leader, who was charged with faxing student transcripts to a reporter to show that tampering had occurred. Colon was consigned to the rubber room for a year and half for this supposed transgression, before a state hearing officer exonerated her of all charges.

Colon was later "excessed" from the school. According to Randi Weingarten's testimony on before the City Council in 2007, "... the principal excessed every single bilingual social studies teacher in the school in order to get at her."

Meanwhile, Rotunno is still principal at the school.

Public Schools Better than Charters Says DOE Progress Report Data

A DOE study shows traditional public schools outperform charter schools when compared using Progress Report data. Public schools had larger improvements in state test scores, the measure DOE views as paramount. The Bloomberg administration seems to have been caught in a bind: either they admit charters don't measure up or that the Progress Reports are garbage. So the report was buried on the DOE web site.

The study also shows large gaps in the enrollment of English language learners and students receiving special education services with charters taking far fewer of these students.

State Board of Regents Chancellor Meryl Tisch has been making her list of public high schools to close and replace with charters. She ought to pause and figure out what's really going on with charter schools first.

Daily News has the story here.

Actual report (pdf) here.

UPDATE: The charter school community responds.

In a lengthy defensive statement posted to the web site of the New York Charter Schools Association, NYCSA Policy and Communications Director Peter Murphy attacks the DOE Progress Report study. In the DOE study, charters were compared to traditional public schools using the same controversial approach public school parents have criticized for two years. Year to year changes on state test scores constitute 60% of the A through F letter grade, an approach Murphy dismisses as "woefully lopsided".

Murphy then goes on to criticize the Daily News and me:

...we are presented with a hodgepodge compilation of numbers cherry-picked for an article resulting in a false and misleading comparison between the academic performance of charter and district schools with zero context added. And, all of this comes less than a week before a Mayoral election, no less, enabling one Patrick Sullivan of the City's education policy board his embellished anti-charter talking-point. What a coincidence.

Let's get the facts straight. The report was prepared solely by DOE staff headed by Michael Duffy, the Executive Director of the charter school office. No one "cherry picked" any measures: the measures are exactly those incorporated in the city-wide Progress Reports. And my point was not anti-charter. I was simply pointing out the administration can't say charters are better while the DOE accountability framework says they're worse.

NYC parents: the best and the wisest, but utterly ignored

See Diane Ravitch’s latest and superb column in EdWeek:

John Dewey wrote that what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child is what the community should want for all its children. That's a good starting point. What does the best and wisest parent want for his or her own child? Certainly, that parent would want a school with small classes, which guarantees that her child would get personal attention.

Class size is a pretty good indicator of what most people mean by quality. If you visit the most elite private schools, you can bet that they don't have 32 students in a class. On the Web sites of such schools, one learns that classes are typically 12 to 15 students to a teacher. Such luxury is unheard of in most public schools, with the possible exception of schools in tony suburbs. Many of those who pronounce that class size doesn't matter send their own children to schools with small classes.Another indicator of quality is the presence of the arts. The best and wisest parent would not want his child to go to a school with no teachers of music, art, dance, or other arts. Yet we know that in most of our public schools today, the arts have been sacrificed to make more time for test-prepping.

In this case, the majority of NYC parents are “the best and the wisest.” Over and over again, in the DOE own annual surveys, public school parents say their top priority for their children’s schools is smaller classes, followed by more enrichment. And yet they are completely ignored by an administration whose own children attend schools with just these attributes.

One might add, what private school has merit pay tied to standardized test scores? Or spends millions to create teams of teachers and bureaucrats to engage in “data analysis” supposedly to help “differentiate” instruction, while doing nothing to reduce class size?

What private school has adopted what is likely to be the next priority of the administration, according to Chris Cerf, which is to further “individualize” learning through online computer instruction, rather than give students an opportunity to receive more feedback from actual human beings? As Joel Klein has said, if he gets his way, he will cut the teaching force by another 30 percent.

Not a single private school that I know of would stand for such priorities, and certainly none of the elite schools where the officials determining educational policy for our public schools sent their own children to school.

Mayor Bloomberg: Spence (average class size: 16-18); Chancellor Klein: Miss Porter’s (average class size: 11); Photo Agnostopoulos (DOE’s Chief Operating Officer) Dalton (average class size: 15)

Obama: Sidwell Friends (average class size: 15).

Instead of taking heed of the DOE's own parent surveys, the mayor continually tells parents to butt out when it comes to issues like school overcrowding, and only involve themselves "in the micro issues of their child’s education, like the child’s attendance, behavior and grades."

While supposedly favoring parental "choice" he also has said that parents should have no say in "setting educational policy."

This paternalism also imbues the US Department of Education under Obama, as Diane points out:

Are these the priorities of President Obama's Race to the Top Fund? Absolutely not! The president's Department of Education will dispense nearly $5 billion, not to reduce class sizes, not to expand access to the arts, and not to improve the beauty and functionality of our public schools, but to incentivize the workforce with merit pay; to increase the privatization of struggling schools; and to compel teachers to teach to admittedly poor tests by tying teacher pay to students' test scores. Let's get back to the new federal education agenda. Seeing how little has changed from Bush to Obama in education policy, I want my share of that $5 billion back.

The Ed Deformer's Monster Mash

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The fantasy world of Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg’s campaign speech today at NYU, in full here, reveal how he must be living in a complete fantasy world – insulated from reality, even more than most politicians:

By 2013, we will have created – far and away – the best public school system of any big city in the country. Not only will more middle class families be staying in the City and sending their kids to school here, I believe we will start to see an entirely new phenomenon: Families from around the nation and the region will be moving into the City for the schools. That was unthinkable just a few years ago! Families will come because more and more neighborhoods will be offering top-quality schools that are as good as – or better than – some of the suburban schools. They'll come because our schools will be performing at higher levels than schools in Boston… or San Francisco… or Phoenix… or any other big city in the country. And they'll come because they want more quality school choices – and they'll have more choices here than just about anywhere else in the country.

I won't even mention the delusional aspect to his concept of how good our schools will be; indeed, there is no evidence of improved results if you look at the most reliable measures, the national assessments known as the NAEPs.

No, what is astonishing is how this speech ignores the obvious reality: that these families, if they could indeed afford to move to NYC, would soon find that there is no room for their children to attend school.

Already, nearly half of NYC kids attend overcrowded schools, class sizes increased last year by the largest amount in ten years, thousands of students are sitting in rotting trailers; and last spring, hundreds of kids were put on waiting lists for Kindergarten.

Special education students are being given services in hallways and in closets, many schools have lost their art and music rooms, and 86% of principals say they are unable to provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes. Today, school nurses complained to the Daily News that there's no room to isolate children who have come down with the swine flu because of the extreme overcrowding at their schools.

Bloomberg has cut school construction way back, and the new five year capital plan has only 25,000 seats, which will provide less than one third of the space necessary to eliminate existing overcrowding – not to mention a rapidly increasing school population expected in the near future, caused by overdevelopment and a rising birth rate.

Where will all these additional kids flocking to the city in the future attend classes? Bloomberg doesn’t say. He recently told Downtown Express that parents should stay out of siting new schools, since any such schools would not be finished until their children were in graduate school.

And NYC public schools will never be as good as schools in the suburbs or even in Boston or San Francisco until and unless class sizes are reduced.

In either case, it’s a lousy deal for our kids.

Is NYC for sale? CWA says no.

Here is one of the anti-Mayor Bloomberg TV ads financed by CWA Local 1180’s $500,000 campaign : "When parents wanted more participation in our kids' education, Michael Bloomberg said no!"

Meanwhile, the Times in its endorsement today wimpily admonishes, "But in a third term, the mayor and his team should still work harder to listen to those who hand over their children each morning to his educators."

Yeah, I'm sure Bloomberg will take this to heart.

And I'm sure principals and teachers will be happy to know that, according to the Times, they are "his educators." I guess the Times believes that he really does own this city after all.

Klein and Gutmann see competition as the answer to all our problems

Check out this "discussion" sponsored by the Wall Street Journal between Christopher Edley, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, Amy Gutmann, President of the University of Pennsylvania, and Joel Klein about education reform.

Gutmann and Klein express faith that competition and the proliferation of charter schools will lead to fundamental improvements in our public schools -- which seems awfully naive, given the recent worldwide economic crash caused by unmitigated competition in our financial sector.

Indeed, by siphoning off the most motivated students (and parents), and providing them with superior conditions, including smaller classes and more resources, the expansion of charter schools is leading to widening inequities and a two-tier educational system.

In NYC in particular, because of the privileged status of charter schools, and their ability to raise trunkloads of private money and to cap enrollment and class size at any level they prefer, while being given precious space within our overcrowded public schools, there is no real level playing field. Indeed, more and more it appears that there is zero-sum game here: tails they win, heads we lose.

Only Edley expresses mild disagreement with this notion that the proliferation of charter schools will lift all boats. Gutmann agrees with Klein, arguing that the high quality of our institutions of higher education are due to competitive forces. (She doesn't mention teacher tenure, a particular bugaboo of Klein's and the other free marketeers.) Perhaps her faith in the business model has been reinforced by her annual salary, recently reported at $1,225,103, nearly twice as high as the salaries of the presidents of Harvard and Princeton.

Bloomberg's original campaign promises: how'd he do?

Bloomberg recently claimed to have fulfilled nearly all of his original campaign promises when it comes to education.

But guess what? There are some promises he left out. Here are some he made when he first ran for mayor in 2001:

Better Teachers, Smaller Class Sizes and More Accountable Schools

Studies confirm that one of the greatest detriments to learning is an overcrowded classroom. ... For students, a loud, packed classroom means a greater chance of falling behind. For teachers, class overcrowding means a tougher time teaching and giving students the attention they need. Here are a few new ideas to improve schools and standards, and to reduce class sizes:

Hire more certified teachers to reduce class sizes — especially in the K-3rd grades.

This clearly hasn't happened. Numerous audits from the state and city comptroller have shown the administration’s misuse of hundreds of millions of dollars meant to reduce class size. According to the Times, there are 1600 fewer classroom teachers and more than 10,000 additional administrators, secretaries, and out of classroom personnel since Bloomberg took office. Last year, class sizes increased by the greatest amount in ten years.

Take full advantage of federally-funded class size reduction programs.

This hasn’t happened either; only God and perhaps Brian Fleischer, the DOE auditor, knows how the city has spent millions in federal class size reduction funds. I take that back; probably Fleischer has no idea either.

Free up more space for students in overcrowded schools by moving bureaucrats out.

Actually, the Department of Education did move some district offices out of school buildings the first year of Bloomberg's administration, but with the creation of all the new small schools and charters in recent years, more and more administrative offices have eaten up classroom space and contributed to the worsening overcrowding crisis in our schools. Now it is common to see special education and intervention services given in hallways, closets and stairwells.

Here are even more unfulfilled campaign promises from Bloomberg’s first campaign:

“Promise: Integrate and coordinate early child care and education system to foster the healthy development of all children, especially those children who are low-income and disadvantaged.”

Actually, this year the city eliminated 3,000 daycare slots, throwing thousands of new students into already overcrowded Kindergarten classes.

““We should build a major high school and university complex on Governors Island in partnership with one or more of our great private universities. The room is there for athletic facilities, laboratories, workshops, classrooms, etc. This would also free up many existing buildings in all boroughs for junior high school, elementary school and special education uses.”

One small high school is due to open next fall on Governors island, eight years later, and far smaller than the major high school complex originally promised.

“Have the Transitional Finance Authority sell bonds backed by the sales tax revenues currently committed to paying of the Municipal Assistance Corporation debt that ends in 2007 and use that money to build new schools.”

Never happened. Instead, the share of city's capital spending going to school construction is at a ten year low.

“Assemble city-owned land for private development to build large-scale housing developments, schools and hospitals.

Never happened.

And how about this statement made by Bloomberg , regarding the use of city funds to build stadiums instead of schools, as quoted in the Times shortly after he was elected?

“I think everybody understands we have to modernize our facilities,” [Bloomberg] said at a news conference, separate from one held by Mr. Giuliani. “We have to have the best facilities for sports, for entertainment. We have to have housing, we have to have schools, and there are conflicting needs.”

Mr. Bloomberg added: “I don’t yet know the numbers, whether you could justify stadiums at this time. Clearly we’re going into very difficult economic times, and we’re going to have to make some choices.”

About 50,000 seats have been created in schools over the last seven years, with more than twice that number in the heavily subsidized Yankees and Mets stadiums. I guess he made his choices after all.

French Foreign Legion Recruits NYC School Kids

October 21, 2009 (GBN News): The knighting of four NY City school principals yesterday by the French ambassador to the US may have more to it than meets the eye. Purportedly a recognition of the dual French-English language programs at the principals’ schools, the titles are actually being conferred to reward the principals for their role in recruiting students for the French Foreign Legion, sources told GBN News.

The dual language programs were reportedly designed to give students the communication skills needed to function in the Foreign Legion environment, and would facilitate the ability of the Legion to recruit them once they reach the required age. Legion service will be considered “seat time” for credit recovery purposes, and will enable any student who joins to automatically graduate.

J. Fredrick Runson, Professor of Military Linguistics at Manhattan University, is not surprised that the Foreign Legion is behind the awards. “The Order of Academic Palms”, Dr. Runson told GBN News, “was founded by Napoleon, so it already has a military tradition to it. And I’m sure it’s no coincidence that one of the principals had worked in military intelligence. But it’s a ‘win-win’ for both the DOE and the Legion. The Legion gets fresh young recruits, while the DOE can report a higher graduation rate.”

At the same ceremony, the ambassador also conferred the Order of Academic Palms on comedian Jerry Lewis, who is greatly revered in France for his wacky, madcap characters. “It is a tribute to the enduring legacy of Monsieur Lewis,” the Ambassador stated, “that the characters he portrayed could so inspire the school reforms of Monsieur Joel Klein and your Mayor, Monsieur Bloomberg.”

NYC Kids PAC Endorses Bill Thompson

Over 200 public school parents and educators from all over the city braved icy rain on Sunday to cheer as NYC Kids PAC endorsed Bill Thompson for mayor. Kids PAC president Ann Kjellberg, Assemblymember Deborah Glick, and parent leaders Monica Major from the Bronx and Rich Wisniewski from Staten Island spoke about the real record of this administration—flat national test scores, overcrowded classrooms, and dictatorial policies that don't work—and our support for Thompson's policies and values. Alev Dervich, a teacher from PS 15 in Red Hook spoke about the administration's divisive policy of forcing privileged charter schools into neighborhood schools, and Luis Reyes spoke of their failure to improve outcomes for ELL and Special Ed students.

NYC Kids PAC was proud to have this opportunity to join hands with parents from the across the city and demand real improvements for our schools. Eight years of destructive, dictatorial educational policies are enough!

Visit www.nyckidspac.org to read our endorsement and Thompson's proposals for education, to join NYC Kids PAC, and to request materials to distribute in your neighborhood. There are only two weeks remaining in this election and parents must be heard!

NYC Kids PAC is a grassroots organization of parents working together to support elected officials who support our schools, with particular attention to their actual legislative and policy record in office. We are proud to endorse Bill Thompson for mayor and to call on NYC parents to vote Bloomberg out on the basis of his dismal record while reigning over our schools: his disdain for public school parents and his indifference to the issues that concern us the most.

See our press release about yesterday's event and this Daily News article.

NY Times contradicts itself; but after all, why not when Bloomberg owns this town?

I hope everyone remembers that NY Times was a great cheerleader for continued mayoral control – including his authority to appoint a supermajority of members to the Board of Education (which Bloomberg likes to call the Panel for Educational Policy, to make clear it has no real power to overrule him.) The paper also supported his overturning of term limits, without a peep of dissent.

Well, yesterday the Times came out with an editorial lambasting Albany, with a bunch of proposals , including that no one man should decide over state pension investments, as the State Comptroller currently does. Along with the State Attorney General, the editors agreed that there should be a thirteen member oversight board, with appointments made by various different state leaders and state employees:

New York’s comptroller is the sole trustee watching over $116.5 billion in pension investments. This should not be happening anywhere, but especially not in Albany.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has proposed a 13-member commission to manage pensions. The idea is a good one, requiring appointments to the board by state leaders and employees with pensions. But this new board should not become another parking place for political hacks. While we need a better system than one person controlling so much money, it must be done right — with a board picked for its financial expertise with fiduciary duties to protect the pension.

What about accountability for the spending of billions of dollars in tax funds for our public schools, and the policies that will doom our children either to success or failure? Funny, instead in the mind of the NY Times, this meant that one man alone, namely Bloomberg, should have total control.

In their endorsement of the Silver bill that continued mayoral control, the editors wrote in praise: “It would preserve the mayor’s right to appoint a majority of the members of the board that advises him on school matters.”

In the editorial, they also implicitly supported the mayor’s right to fire any of his appointees at will, at any time, for any reason – which ensured that the board would continue to act as a rubberstamp , no matter how destructive and/or irrational the mayor's decisions might be.

Yet somehow, on something really important, like state pensions, the Times editors realize that for the sake of true accountability, we should have an independent oversight board with members appointed by a variety of different elected leaders and state employees.

Why the apparent contradiction? Could it have anything to do with the fact that, according to this week’s New York magazine, Bloomberg has used his political power and personal fortune to buy the support of opinionmakers, and effectively owns this town, lock, stock, and barrel, including the publishers of the three major dailies?

The article starts off with a description of a dinner party Bloomberg recently gave for the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson:

Johnson is in New York to promote U.K.-U.S. tourism. Bloomberg is a longtime Anglophile, and his company’s second-largest office is in London. The clearest sign that this Sunday evening holds special resonance for Bloomberg is the presence of Rupert Murdoch, Mort Zuckerman, and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publishers of New York’s three daily newspapers. They’re here because Bloomberg asked them to be. Those three are at anything that really matters to Mike, a dinner-party veteran says.

Indeed, in contrast with the past, when the business and media establishment were allowed to have different views from the mayor, this no longer occurs. Instead they all seem willing to serve as his lackeys.

The article describes how when Randi Weingarten tried to woo certain establishment figures to her side in her battle with Joel Klein, the mayor made it clear that “for business leaders, stepping forward and trying to become a civic leader would be at some risk to your relationship with the mayor, a corporate insider says. Only a crazy person would step out without Bloomberg’s say-so.”

So instead of a circle of wealthy and influential people who make policy in this town, there is one man alone, a billionaire who holds a monopoly on power. As the reporter writes:

…. there is a one-man Establishment: Michael Bloomberg. Certainly there are other figures with real power. But in a way that wasn’t true two decades ago, their influence is circumscribed, confined to their narrow categories: real estate, culture, health care, banking. And, in terms of civic life, little of their power exists independent of their relationships with Bloomberg. The mogul-class push for the mayor’s term-limits extension felt like the last gasp of what’s left of the city’s old-line ruling class….Bloomberg gets what he wants more than any mayor in modern memory. The foundation of Bloomberg’s imperial mayoralty is, obviously, money.

So much for checks and balances and the public having any say when it comes to our schools. Democracy in NYC: RIP.

What's the key to success of the Icahn charter schools?

The Icahn charter schools are among the best in the nation; with over 90% of their students in grades K-8 at grade level on standardized tests. What is the key to their success, according to principal Daniel Garcia in today’s NY Post?

Class sizes that are capped at 18 students and an enriched curriculum known as Core Knowledge.

Another very successful group of NYC charter schools run by the Harlem Children’s Zone has similarly small classes.

How simple, and yet so apparently elusive to the non-educators running our school system.

Because of Joel Klein’s obstinate (and illegal) resistance to reducing class size, the NYC students who attend our regular public schools are denied their chance to benefit from similarly favorable learning conditions.

Hearings on the city's failure to abide by its moral and legal obligations as regards class size

See NY1 on the City Council's hearings about the failure of the Department of Education to spend the state's Contracts for Excellence (C4E) funds according to law. Instead of reducing class size, as mandated, with hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds, class sizes rose last year by the greatest amount in ten years.

DOE has provided lots of excuses for this malfeasance, but no real explanations. This program was created as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, and was supposed to ensure our children would finally be provided with their constitutional right to an adequate education, including smaller classes and more accountability and transparency in spending, but none of this has been achieved. The DOE's chief auditor admitted at the hearings that the audit required by law for the spending of these funds has still not been completed for the 2007-8 school year, no less last year.

Check out my testimony, along with a letter signed by nearly two hundred parent leaders, elected officials and the UFT, urging the State Commissioner to hold off granting the city any more C4E funds until the Department of Education demonstrates that the state funds have been properly used this year -- and that class sizes have actually been reduced.

The DOE's Chief Operating Officer, Photeine Anagnostopoulos, said that given flat funding they intend to renegotiate their class size reduction targets with the state -- of no more than twenty in K-3, 23 in 4-8 and 25 in core academic subjects in high school by the 2011-2012 school year.

See also the Gotham Schools article here. See also this letter that the Community Education Council from District 2 sent to the DOE and Commissioner Steiner about the problems with the DOE's Contracts for Excellence, and the flawed public process this year.