Mike: Don’t Blame BP, Blame Teachers

June 14, 2010 (GBN News): NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg today reiterated his assertion that BP executives should not be blamed for the ongoing Gulf oil spill. But this time he went even further, telling reporters at a City Hall news conference that accountability should be laid squarely on the shoulders of those who are truly responsible– the teachers unions.

Asked by a reporter how teachers could be held responsible for the disaster when they have nothing whatsoever to do with oil drilling, the Mayor snapped, “I’ve had enough of their whining about accountability.” As the reporter was hustled out of the room by the Mayor’s security detail, Mr. Bloomberg continued, “Good teachers can make up for problems in children’s environment, like poverty, poor nutrition, lack of parental involvement, absenteeism and drug use. If their unions weren’t blocking reform, c’mon, teachers would certainly be able to deal with a little environmental problem like oil in the Gulf.”

Reaction to the Mayor’s statement was swift. A NY Post editorial praised the Mayor’s stance towards the teachers unions as “courageous”, and went on to say that, “If the teachers had spent as much energy capping the well as they did on capping the charter schools, this whole thing never would have happened.”

Meanwhile, Education Secretary Arne Duncan suggested that Mr. Bloomberg’s statements point up a bright side to the oil spill. “This situation might be even better for our school system than Katrina,” Mr. Duncan told GBN News. “Because now the teachers unions will finally have to stop making excuses and realize they can’t avoid true accountability.”

In a related story, newly released e-mails suggest that at the urging of charter school magnate Eva Moskowitz, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has reportedly promised to relocate some New York City public schools to offshore oil rigs to make room for Ms. Moskowitz’ Harlem Success Academy schools.

Merriman's appeal: political payback time for the charter school lobby

James Merriman of the Charter School Center sent out an alert to charter school leaders over the weekend, urging them to attend an important meeting tomorrow with Deputy Mayor Walcott to which the Mayor is invited as well.

At the meeting, the charter school lobby will ask the city to voluntarily increase funding for charters out of the city’s discretionary funds, if the state maintains the freeze on per pupil charter funding that occurred last year.

Merriman’s appeal is nakedly political, and he writes that the mayor needs to pay them back for their support for his re-election and extension of unlimited mayoral control (as well as the charter cap lift, though why that benefited him more than them is unclear.):

The Mayor has been a strong supporter, but it is your unprecedented record of success that has allowed him to hold up New York City as a model of educational achievement. It was your results that helped make such a strong case in Albany for the recent cap lift. It was your parents who rooted him on during the mayoral control battle and his re-election campaign. We've been there for him and now he needs to be there for us.

Meanwhile, even if charter schools have suffered a one year freeze, our district schools have had their budgets slashed to the bone. If the 4% cut now being proposed goes through, their budgets will have been cut by 12% since 2007.

As it is, the overall charter school budget is still growing fast -- because of increased enrollment, which is estimated to grow another 31% next year. Even if the per student freeze is maintained, charter school funding will cost the city an estimated $545 million next year.

If the mayor accedes to the charter lobby’s demands, it will be yet another sign how politics rules at City Hall; and how charters continue to get favorable treatment compared to district schools.

Much larger cuts to school -based positions compared to central administration

In recent years, Chancellor Klein has repeatedly made the claim that he has cut a disproportionate amount from central administration compared to schools.

See for example, his May 24^th testimony to the City council here:

Each time, we’ve worked to minimize the impact on schools and students. Between 2008 and this school year, we have cut the central administrative budget by nearly 20-percent—more than double the reduction to school budgets. This has included a headcount reduction of 550 positions in central and field offices….

Meanwhile I did some calculations based on the DOE’s financial status reports. I looked at full-time positions on payroll, by category, in each year's May report (except for 2008, when I drew from the April report, since there was no report in May.)

Since 2008, the number of full time positions at central administration has been cut by 2.2%. (click on the charts to enlarge them.)

But the number of full time school-based positions, including total general education, special ed instruction and school leadership, as well as categorically- funded positions, have been cut nearly three times as much. This is the period over which school budgets have been slashed to the bone.

If one doesn’t count the categorical positions that were funded primarily through the federal stimulus program, the headcount reductions at schools would be five times as large as those from central administration.

The disparities are even greater if you look further back in time.

Between 2006 and 2010, the number of full time positions at central administration has grown by 7.4%, while the number of full-time school personnel has shrunk by nearly the same percent -- 7.5%.

See also today's NY Post on how the number of DOE employees being paid $150,000 or more has mushroomed by 25% this year.

Dan Wasserman on Readin,' Writin' and the Rich guys

Click on the cartoon to see what he has to say about Bill Gates and the Wall St. privateers.

For more cartoons from Wasserman on the charter schools and Race to the Top, check out his website here.

Tsunami of pro-charter opinion in the dailies

Before the state raised its cap on charter schools last month, New Yorkers were inundated with a flood of TV, radio and internet ads from the hedge-fund privateers: Democrats for Education Reform and Education Reform Now, both groups trying to disguise themselves as parents, educators and community members.

We were also overwhelmed by a tsunami of editorials and opeds from the newspapers, all in unison purveying the same flawed statistics and arguments, trying to bully the Legislature into submission.

I had my intern, Ann Fudjinski, count all the editorials and opeds in the NY Post, the Daily News, the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal between March 1 and May 29, when the final vote on the cap occurred.

The resulting tally (in excel) is quite astonishing.

In the NY Post, there were 21 separate editorials and 21 opeds for raising the cap in less than three months; sometimes several on one day. Nine were written by charter school authorizers, operators or paid lobbyists. (And this doesn't count the obviously slanted coverage of some of the reporters.)

In the Daily News, there were 25 editorials and opeds, for raising the cap; with only one leaning against (by Andrew Wolf). Eleven were opeds; three by a regular columnist (Errol Louis) and five by charter authorizers, operators, or paid representatives of the charter industry.

The volume was decidedly smaller in the NY Times and Wall St. Journal, but similarly one-sided. One pro-charter editorial and one pro-charter oped appeared in the Times; and one pro-charter editorial and two pro-charter opeds in the WSJ. In all, 99 percent of the editorials, opinion columns and opeds were in favor of charter schools.

Traditionally, opeds are supposed to provide balance to offset the views expressed by the editors and/or the regular columnists.

I emailed the oped editor of the NY Post, Adam Brodsky, to ask him why their coverage was so overwhelmingly lop-sided, but got no reply.

I did get a response from Josh Greenman, the oped editor of the Daily News, who wrote me that balance was less important than the "strength of argument, timeliness, vibrancy, newsworthiness and value added to an important debate."

Which begs the question why the only pieces he thought were sufficiently vibrant, newsworthy and valuable to the debate were those that agreed with the frequently reiterated positions of the Daily News editors.

23 states change their policies because of Race to the Top

Amazing what a discretionary grant program can accomplish in terms of changing state educational policies, with no research backing, as the National Academy of Sciences warned, to be doled out from a $4 billion slush fund, without Congressional authorization and possibly illegal .

According Alexander Russo, a US Dept. of Education memo shows NY as one of 13 states changing laws on charters; and one of 16 states changing their laws on teacher evaluations, linking them to test scores or removing the firewall on doing so.

There are only seven states on both lists: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Tennessee, and of, course New York.

Delaware and Tennessee won in the first round of RTTT for their efforts; let’s see if Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana and NY are properly rewarded for adopting laws that were opposed by most public school parents, teachers, and independent experts.

Whether or not we get these funds, our public schools will be feeling the after-effects of these policies for years to come.


I'd like to see a political analysis of why these particular states succumbed while others did not; and an accounting of how much the Billionaire’s Boys Club and the hedge fund operators spent, lobbying legislators to change these laws, through their foundations, the “non-profits” and think tanks they control through their funding, direct contributions, and their allied political action committees.

Public Education: There Is No Silver Bullet

Once upon a time, there was a dubious pharmaceutical company named WonderDrugs whose researchers developed a seemingly extraordinary memory enhancer they decided to call Menssana. Preliminary study suggested that Menssana conveyed remarkable and apparently long-lasting benefits to memorization capacity and recall facility, as evidenced in part by increased reading speeds, improved word/phrase recall, better retention and faster repetition of multiplication tables and "math facts," and higher speeds and more accuracy in mathematical computation. However, the great majority of the drug's benefits only accrued to those who had taken it for a period of at least several years prior to puberty, while the youthful brain and its synapses were still developing and multiplying.

News of the drug "leaked" to the press, and soon the Internet and the media were all abuzz with excitement over the prospect of technology-enabled "smart kids." This being the case, WonderDrugs moved forward with field testing on children. Their call for volunteers received so many applications from interested parents, a lottery system was established for admission to the drug trials. Of course, WonderDrugs had no way to deal with non-English speaking children or those with learning disabilities, so they were excluded from the study as soon as their presence was discovered.

Testing moved forward, but researchers soon discovered a negative relationship between the brain-enhancing effects of Menssana and processed sugar. Children participating in the study were quietly counseled to reduce their consumption of sugary foods, and parents were (equally quietly) asked to help police their children's behavior. Children whose sugar intake did not decrease were reprimanded, then the parents were called in for "discussions," and, if the desired behaviors were not seen, the high-sugar kids were dropped from the study, although always for other reasons like "failed to observe required study protocols." In many cases, the children dropped from the study were from the lowest income group, including several who came from homeless families. During the course of the study, WonderDrugs executives hired nutritional consultants to reinforce the desired behaviors, and the Gates and Broad Foundations each contributed multimillion dollar grants toward healthy living programs for the study subjects, including direct payments to the families for "appropriately supportive" behaviors.

WonderDrugs' research study concluded that Menssana did indeed increase children's measurable "brain power" significantly, as measured by memorization, recall, and reading/computational speed. They declared the advent of a new age, that of pharmaceutically-enhanced "smart kids." Education administrators and government officials in Washington and the states were ecstatic over the early research findings and the prospects they raised for major improvements in NCLB-related standardized test scores. The Secretary of Education even went so far as to suggest that the DOE might consider grants to states to help provide Menssana to as many students as possible. The expected increases in exam-measured "proficiency levels" would clearly more than justify the investment.

While this "fable" sounds preposterous, it is a mirror image of the current rage for charter schools, particularly in New York City. Self-selected participants, elimination of participants who do not meet or satisfy certain educational or behavioral criteria, huge disparities between the subject group and the population at large, substantial outside funding to improve and/or control inconvenient "external environmental factors," measurement of results based on false and easily manipulated criteria (that also fail to reflect the true goals of education), turnover of a public trust to private, profit-seeking individuals and organizations with inadequate public oversight and auditing, aggressive support from and eager adoption by government officials, at least in part for the perceived political benefits of superficial improvement -- all are phenonema seen in the rush to charterize, privatize, and de-unionize America's urban public school systems.

Self-selection of participants disregarded, population differences routinely ignored or glossed over, "non-conforming" students simply dropped from charter schools and "dumped" back onto the local public schools, standardized test performance taken as the sole measure of "quality of education," misleading and inappropriate comparisons of the children in the study to the population at large left unclarified, private interests allowed to profit (both legally and illegally, increasingly often the latter as news reports are showing) on the backs of children.

Has such a radical, transformative movement in an American institution ever taken place, involving the welfare and prospects of millions of current and future schoolchildren as well as billions of dollars in public funds and assets, based on such flimsy (and arguably, highly questionable) supporting evidence? Why is the American public, and the current Presidential administration, permitting such a large-scale, unsubstantiated, and probably irreversible experiment to take place? This is national policy born of hope and ideology rather than fact and analysis, measured by and focused on attributes (standardized exam scores) that measure not "education" (ability to think critically, reason both linearly and laterally, compare and contrast, problem-solve with creativity and persistency, etc.) but instead little more than ability to take those standardized exams.

While almost every country in Asia is busy trying to replicate at least parts of what used to be the American education system before NCLB, the U.S. is running headlong toward the very attributes and measures those countries most want to abandon, or at least mitigate. Twenty or thirty years from now, while the "Asian Union" of Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Singapore is eating our metaphorical lunch, we will likely all look back and wonder how it happened. And puzzle over how to fix it.

Parents and teachers protest budget cuts

More on Steve Brill's imperviousness to the facts

Steve Brill wrote a pro-charter article in the NY Times Magazine , comparing the results at PS 149 and Harlem Success Academy, the charter school that shares its building. Brill implied that they served the same sort of students. These were his exact words: "Same building. Same community. Sometimes even the same parents."

Last week, Brill responded to online questions at EdWeek; one concerned the claims he made in his NY Times article:

Mr Brill, given the importance of these issues and the crisis in funding for public education today, I was troubled by the unbalanced nature of your recent NYT Magazine cover story. Specifically, Where was balanced discussion of conflicting research on the diversity of the charter school movement, showing that many charter schools - even in new york - underperform district schools; that charter schools enroll significantly smaller proportions of ELL and SPED students than district schools; and that some charter schools do counsel out students, in which cases declining cohorts of students correlate powerfully with increasing test scores? Where was serious discussion from experts on both sides of the education reform divide of the inadequacy of standardized testing as a metric for evaluating student and teacher performance? ....

This is how Brill responded:

The way i stepped through that debate was 1) to acknowledge clearly that not all charters schools are good for kids (didn't you see that statement?); and 2) to use a building that had two schools in it -- one a charter, one a traditional public school -- and compare expenses and results side by side. I labored over this, and think the comparison is valid FOR THOSE TWO schools. And taxpayers pay nothing extra for the school choice that these two schools provide, so i don't understand you statement that the government is using "valuable funding as a stick to spur undemocratic reforms." Choice is usually thought of as being pretty democratic. As for empirical evidence, one thing is clear, we keep spending more money than all other countries with worse results. And the charter i spent time examining spends less with better results.

First of all, nowhere in his article or the above is it mentioned that Eva Moskowitz raises millions of dollars for her schools. According to this spreadsheet, she raised $2.4 million for her four charters in 2009, and pays herself a very hefty salary.

Secondly, it is clear that Steve Brill still hasn't learned a thing.

Numerous blogs have shown since the publication of his article that these two schools have widely different student populations.

Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post, The Answer Sheet - Charters vs. public schools: Behind the numbers; Kim Gittleson in Gotham Schools, Brill-ing Down: Adding to Steven Brill’s NYT Magazine Report, and I at the NYC public school parent blog, Journalistic malpractice at the NY Times, have all pointed out in detail the disparity in the sort of students enrolled in Harlem Success Academy compared to PS 149; and how the charter school enrolls far lower numbers of free lunch, English language learners, sped students with serious learning disabilities, and homeless kids.

Here are the figures side by side (taken from each school's NY State report cards from 2008-9, Kim's analysis of sped reports and homeless figures from here and here):

STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS
2008-9	PS 149	Harlem Success Academy
% free lunch	68%	49%
% Limited English Proficient	10%	2%
% IEPs	21%	14%
% of IEPs; more than 20% of day	67%	35%
% homeless students	10%	1%

Apparently, Brill is impervious to correction, with PS 149 serving many more poor students, five times the percent of LEP students, twice as many seriously disabled students, and ten times the number of homeless.

Taking a closer look at the state report cards, I also examined the data relating to teachers and staff:

TEACHER CHARACTERISTICS
2008-9	PS 149	Harlem Success Academy
teacher turnover (2007-8)	22%	50%
total no. of teachers	41	27
% no valid certificate	10%	15%
% teaching out of certification	29%	15%
% <3yrs.exp.	20%	30%
% classes by teachers w/out appr. certificate	27%	18%
total no. of other professional staff	7	26

What’s so interesting about this? HSA had twice the teacher attrition than PS 149 in 2007-8 (the latest available data); with fully half of all teachers turning over that year.

This is not the sign of a good working (or learning) environment. Apparently as a result of this high level of attrition, 30% of HSA teachers had less than 3 years experience in 2008-9– compared to 20% at PS 149.

I’m not all that interested in the comparative figures as regards teacher certification; as there is little convincing research to show that this matters. But the comparative data on “other professional staff” is quite striking: HSA had 27 teachers and 26 other “professional staff” in 2008-9.

Compare that with 41 teachers at PS 149, with only 7 other professional staff. I don't know who all these other “professionals” are, whether they are administrators, fundraisers, PR flacks, or people who actually provide instruction or services to kids; but so little proportional investment in classroom teachers seems to me an indication of poor educational priorities.

Over $640,000 stolen from DOE accounts: why the delay in reporting?

See news stories here and here about the electronic theft of $644,313.69 from a DOE account that went on for four years, before someone unconnected with the case complained to the bank, who alerted the special investigator. The full report from special investigator Condon is here. Excerpt from the report:

Excerpt: It is difficult to understand how the DOE accumulated years of account statements, reflecting hundreds of thousands of public dollars spent to pay bills, but did not review them. A cursory examination would have shown that the charges were not normal school expenses.

This is not the first time that SCI has found serious lapses in fiscal oversight within the DOE. Just last year, SCI reported substantiated findings about a clerk assigned to the unit then known as the Division of Assessment and Accountability who was able to steal more than $60,000 because no one looked at statements which reflected that he made thousands of dollars worth of personal purchases, including flying his family around the world.

Last month, SCI issued another report which pointed out the lack of financial oversight in a number of DOE schools.8 [ I can’t find it]

It is once again the recommendation of this office that the DOE take whatever steps necessary to address these serious and continuing problems.

This is the just the kind of story, revealing lax oversight of pervasive corruption, that in an earlier era and under another administration would have triggered the resignation of high level DOE officials. Especially in the days when Special Investigator Eddie Stancik would hold press conferences.

Here in NYC, it is just one more piece of evidence of Klein’s pervasive incompetence.

The question why this report is being released almost two years after the person in question was arrested for the theft. Why the delay?

To ensure that the findings would not hamper the mayor’s re-election, and/or the renewal of mayoral control?

Or is Condon finally fed up with the lack of proper oversight at the DOE?

Was DOE really responsive to school communities in the Clinton case?

Check out: "City to rent parochial school building for Chelsea middle school"

Excerpt: Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said that the deal was “a good example of how the public input process can work when DOE is responsive to school communities.”

I think the world of Stringer, but come on now!

Parents at Clinton Middle School had to scream, yell, and hold numerous protests. They pointed out at countless hearings for several months that the proposed move of their school to PS 33 would displace kids in wheelchairs into a building with insufficient elevators.

Then when the DOE said they would have to move into the American Sign Language school instead, they and the parents and alumni at the ASL school explained how this would deprive deaf students and their own children of their mandated services, eliminate the ASL high school's science lab, art room, and music room, violate the building code, and cause serious safety hazards.

Parents had to threaten lawsuits, and all the while DOE officials insisted that there no other option. Then parents at Clinton found out on their own by contacting the Diocese that DOE was negotiating to lease nearby St. Michael's for a high school .

Let’s hope that next time, the DOE really is "responsive." But don't hold your breath.

Why they had to put us all through this long, drawn out, agonizing process, and especially the parents, teachers and kids at the ASL school, when there was an easy, obvious alternative staring them in the face, is hard to understand, and even harder to forgive.

Diane Ravitch on the new common standards

Since states are being forced to jump aboard, I'm interested in what people think of the new common standards. Please take a look and leave a comment. Here's Diane Ravitch's take on them:

The US Department of Education should encourage several states to try them out and see how they work. "Standards" are only words on paper until they are implemented. When they have been in use for three-five years, then other states will have a clear idea about whether these are good standards.

If there are great results (not just test scores) but evidence that students are motivated to learn the subject and are taking more courses, then every states will rush to adopt them.

The FDA does not mandate drugs without clinical trials. Our states are supposed to be "laboratories of democracy." Here is a chance to try the standards and see how they work.

NYC is not a fiefdom? Could have fooled me.

From Judge Garaufis of the US District Court:

“This court is confronted with the odious specter of a city government taking every possible step to perpetuate a fundamental, decades-old injustice against its own citizens ...The city’s obstinacy, its unflagging defense of an overrun position reflects a misguided set of priorities and loyalties. New York City is not a fiefdom. It is a representative democracy.”

Though the Judge wrote this about the mayor's refusal to implement non-discriminatory policies in the hiring of firefighters, it could be said about Bloomberg's refusal to reduce class size, even though the law requires it, or about many of his other policies which so flagrantly deny parents a real voice and our children their right to a quality education.

Enough is enough! How can we bear three more years of this imperial rule?

Teacher performance pay: what a waste!

According to a new study from Mathematica, there’s no evidence for improved student achievement or teacher retention as a result of the highly touted teacher performance pay program in Chicago; despite protestations by Education Secretary Duncan, just as there has been no evidence so far of any benefits for the teacher bonus pay program in NYC that has cost at least $38 million this year.

The Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) was developed by the Milken Family Foundation in the late 1990s; yes, Michael Milken, former junk-bond salesman, indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud. The TAP program is now being funded by a $27 million Teacher Incentive Fund grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Nevertheless, Chicago and NYC will no doubt continue to waste more millions on these misconceived programs and the feds will continue to push states to adopt them; because our decision-makers seem happy inhabiting their evidence-free zones.

There are currently 34 districts and states across the country receiving federal money to implement teacher performance pay; according to EdWeek, and seven of them use a form of the same model now been proven to be ineffective in Chicago.

This push by the feds is counter to a huge amount of accumulated evidence in social science research that extrinsic motivators like performance pay don’t work and often do harm; for example, as explained in this lecture by Daniel Pink; or this study by researchers at the London School of Economics, or this literature review, published in Science magazine.

As the director of research at LSE, Luis Garicano has written, the evidence of the harmful effects of these programs indicate that instead, managers should “ reduce the power of incentives, so promotions would be again more based on seniority and less on measured performance. “ !!!!

Which of course flies in the face of the propaganda now being propounded by this administration, in their attempt to abrogate seniority-based protections in the teacher contract.

Teachers themselves consistently respond in surveys that monetary incentives like bonuses are unlikely to work to improve teacher effectiveness, in contrast to reducing class size, which more than 90% of teachers believe would be the best way to improve their effectiveness.

Yet even the Mathematica researcher who found no positive results in the Chicago program seems to advocate wasting even more money on this program, according to his quote in Edweek:

“You have to wonder whether the result would have been different if the payouts had been larger or more meaningfully differentiated,” Mr. Glazerman said.

Sure. When thousands of teachers are being laid off across the country, and class sizes are rising at unprecedented rates, why not waste even more millions on programs with no research backing?

Charter cap raised: more overcrowding ahead!

Legislation to raise the statewide charter school cap from 200 to 460 was approved on Friday; with 114 more charters planned for NYC.

The bill passed 93 to 42 in the Assembly; the only NYC votes opposed were AMs Inez Barron and Jeffrey Dinowitz of the Bronx; Deborah Glick of Manhattan; and Alan Maisel, Felix Ortiz, and Annette Robinson of Brooklyn. In the Senate, it passed 45 to 15; the only NYC Senators who voted no were Marty Golden of Brooklyn and Frank Padavan of Queens.

There are some good things in the bill; including barring profit-making operations from running charters; allowing audits by the state comptroller; mandating that that all schools, including charters, have parent associations; and requiring that charters demonstrate efforts to recruit and retain special needs children and English Language Learners.

But, and this is a big but, the Chancellor will continue to be able to unilaterally decide where to locate charter schools, including in district school buildings, with parents being denied any voice on these critical decisions.

Expect even more overcrowding; the continued loss of student access to libraries, gyms, art rooms, and intervention spaces; and the continuation of bitter battles that have already divided too many communities.

(More on this at GothamSchools, Times, WSJ, and Daily News)

Charter CAP Law Drives Mob to Go Non-Profit

May 29, 2010 (GBN News): In an unprecedented step, five major Mafia crime families in New York have joined forces to register with the Federal Government as a 501(c) non-profit corporation, GBN News has learned. The surprise move was reportedly precipitated by yesterday’s NY State Legislature vote raising the charter school cap. The new law doubles the number of charter schools allowed in the state, but precludes any for-profit organizations from running them. Without pursuing non-profit status, the Mafia would have had to abandon plans to move into the lucrative charter school market.

While on the surface the Mafia appears to be abandoning its customary pursuit of huge, illicit profits, its leaders may have actually chosen a wise course of action in a bad economy. “Even the Mafia’s bottom line is down,” said the Dean of the Manhattan School of Criminal Justice, J. Fredrick Runson. “As the great philosopher Al Capone once said, ‘I go where the money is’. Seeing how folks like Eva Moskowitz are making big bucks off ostensibly non-profit charters, the mob chieftains obviously saw a deal they ‘couldn’t refuse’.”

Even with the State Comptroller now being empowered to audit charter schools, the Mafia should still feel comfortable doing business with the NY City DOE, Dr. Runson indicated. “From his flaunting of the Committee for Fiscal Equity lawsuit on class size, to his habitually ignoring City Comptroller audits, Chancellor Joel Klein’s actions should make those mob capos feel right at home.”

Mafia to Run NYC Charter School

May 27, 2010 (GBN News): The Mafia, which has recently taken an interest in funding innovations in education (GBN News report, April 30), will reportedly be opening a new themed charter high school in New York City this fall. The school will specialize in the study of criminology, from a non-traditional perspective.

A Mafia source described the program to GBN News as, “More vocational than academic.” The source went on to say that, “The kids will do a lot of hands-on learning, more ‘how to’ than theoretical. We guarantee that they’ll come out well-prepared for exciting jobs in the field, or else.”

J. Fredrick Runson, Dean of the Manhattan University School of Criminal Justice, is not surprised that the Mafia would want to run a charter school. “All those hedge fund guys are figuratively making a killing on charter schools,” he told GBN News. “The Mafia will do the same thing, only they can do it literally.”

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told GBN News that he could not comment on the reported plans for the school, since “We’re in a delicate phase of plea bargaining – I mean, negotiations.” However, he did say that he is happy to work with any group that can run an effective charter school. “If they get good test scores,” he said, “Like any other charter school, we don’t care how they do it.”

Andrew Cuomo: stop listening to the privateers, and start listening to parentse!

Andrew Cuomo announced for governor this weekend; according to news reports, he decided to support raising the cap on charter schools after he met with the hedge fund operators, and got their promise of contributions to his campaign.

He seems to have completely swallowed the line of the charter school lobby, according to his new campaign document, and implies giving parents a say in co-locations ‘a poison pill”:

I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools.

New York must be the leader when it comes to education reform. This starts with the increasing the charter school cap from 200 to 460. But increasing the cap won’t result in more charter schools if we too tightly restrict where they can be located or how they can be approved. We believe that public review and consultation are important—especially when charter schools will be co-located with traditional public schools—but this cannot become a poison pill that prevents opening new charter schools.

It’s unbelievable how bad it’s gotten and how much public education has been undermined by the hedge fund privateers, that its considered a positive sign that Robert Duffy, Mayor of Rochester, pro-charter and pro-mayoral control, who is Cuomo’s pick as lieutenant governor, feels as though he must assure parents that their neighborhood schools will not entirely disappear, according to the Gotham Schools:

We will guarantee a place for elementary school children at their nearest neighborhood school, if that is what the family wants. There will be choices of other schools with special programs and services, but every young child will be able to attend a neighborhood school if their parents choose. That will reduce transportation costs.

Some vision of public education!

If you are on Facebook, please friend Cuomo, and then post a comment on his Facebook page, as I have. Urge him to start listening to parents, for a change; not the hedge fund operators.

Ask him to oppose raising the cap on charters without rigorous protections for parent and student rights. And ask him to start paying attention to improvements for our public schools, where the vast majority of our NY students attend. Public school parents may not have millions to contribute to his campaign, unlike the hedge fund operators, but we vote!