The Achievement Gap Nobody's Talking About - Part 2: Where's the Proficiency?

Roughly 75,000 NYC general education public high school students, most of them ninth graders, took the NYS Regents Integrated Algebra exam, the lowest level Regents math exam and the only one required for high school graduation, during the 2008/09 school year.

Ninth graders that year had been third graders in 2003, making most of them the end product of SIX elementary and middle school classroom years under mayoral control and the stewardship of Chancellor Klein. They also represented the cohort of students who, as eighth graders the previous year, had been celebrated (and repeatedly used politically) by the same mayor and schools chancellor for their markedly improved mathematical proficiency over their predecessor eighth graders. In fact, Chancellor Klein had just the previous year claimed that, under his academic ministrations, 59.6% of those eighth graders were "proficient" in math, as compared to just 34.4% of the eighth graders in 2003. For 2008/09, those Grade 8 math proficiency numbers made an astonishing leap to 71.3% (downloadable slide presentations here).

Following their initial year of high school math, these students tackled a first-level math Regents exam, one that arguably measures baseline knowledge of rudimentary algebra, coordinate geometry, and statistics, along with a tiny nibbling of introductory trigonometry. Thanks to the constant easing of standards by the State Board of Regents, they needed earn just 30 of the exam's 87 possible points to be given a scaled passing grade of 65. By that NYS standard, a 34.5% (an F) qualified as a 65 (a D), and 67 out of 87, or 77% (a C or C+) was scaled up to an 85, a solid, ostensibly "college ready" B.

Based on data for general education students drawn from the NYS school-level report cards (the Comprehensive Information Reports, or CIRs) for all 418 non-charter public high schools I could find in the five boroughs, the results were hardly proficient. Collectively, those 418 schools reported 74,699 Integrated Algebra test-takers for 2008/09, and they achieved a combined pass rate of 58.2%. In other words, only 58% of our public high school students, products of six previous years of mayorally controlled education, were at least able to earn the subterranean, abysmal 34% needed to pass; 42% of the test-takers couldn't even manage that level.

Even more disturbing, however, was the fact that only 4.2% of those 75,000 students were able to receive an 85%, which only required that they earn at least 77% of the possible raw score exam points. Stated another way -- only 4.2% of the 75,000 general education public high school students who took that Regents math exam in 2008/09 were able to reach the level of a C+. Take away twenty schools -- Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Staten Island Tech, Murrow, Bayside, Cardozo, Midwood, Fort Hamilton, Francis Lewis, Townsend Harris, LaGuardia, Tottenville, NEST+M, Forest Hills, New Utrecht, W.C. Bryant, John Bowne, Scholar's Academy, Fashion Industries, and the HS for Math, Science & Engineering (Stuyvesant had still not yet converted over from Math A to the newer Integrated Algebra exam) -- and there remained 64,600 students at 398 public high schools with a combined passing rate of 54.4%, of whom a mere 2.5% (about 1,600 students) were able to reach that C+ mark.

Viewed yet another, even more alarming way, there were 187 public high schools that reported 0% of their students at or above 85% for 2008/09. That's 187 schools with 22,982 test-takers, from among whom there were effectively zero students who could earn at least 77% of the available points. Another 87 public high schools reported only one percent of their students reaching the Regents 85% level, and still another 39 public high schools reported just two percent of their students reaching that level. Those three groups combined for a total of 297 schools (71.1% of all public high schools) and 49,595 students (66.4% of the general education NYC public high school Integrated Algebra I test-takers) from among whom roughly only 360 (0.7%) managed to reach that C+ level in order to receive a scaled score of 85.

If Commissioner Steiner raises the Regents passing bar to anywhere near the level of the Grade 3 - 8 exams, the high school math exam pass rates will only get far, far worse. As I discussed in my last posting (The Achievement Gap Nobody's Talking About - Part 1), a drop of twenty or more percentage points in the overall pass rate is likely if the bar is only moved from the current 34.5% (30 out of 87 points) to just 50% (44 out of 87 points); by comparison, the weighted average Grade 3 - 8 proficiency bar for Math was just revised upward to 72.4% of available points for the 2010 exam results.

Sad to say, those results will be much closer to the unhappy truth that for so many -- after so much wasted money, institutionalized pressure, misrepresented progress, PR-spun statistics, organizational chaos, community disruption, and willful condescension toward parents and the public -- there is still no real mathematical proficiency in the NYC public schools other than that by which these results have been manipulated, spun, disguised, or (in this case) simply ignored.

Would Superman really stand in the way of improving the system as a whole?

See the NY magazine article by John Heilemann about “Waiting for Superman,” the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim and the latest example of charter school porn.

The article retreads the well-worn points made by countless other articles in the mainstream media, predictably focusing on the teacher unions as the scapegoats, adds in the tired nostrum of how "adults" are being favored over the kids, ignores all the factors that go into low-performance in our urban schools, and drools all over Geoffrey Canada.

But it also contains a startling quotation from Joel Klein, about the students who remain in the regular public schools:

“It’s gonna grab people much deeper than An Inconvenient Truth, because watching ice caps melt doesn’t have the human quality of watching these kids being denied something you know will change their lives,” Klein says. “It grabs at you. It should grab at you. Those kids are dying."

It's amazing to me that Joel Klein says the kids in the schools that he is responsible for running are "dying." If he feels that way he should resign immediately and let someone else be in charge -- preferably an educator who knows something about how to improve schools.

Geoffrey Canada's charter schools have class sizes of twenty or fewer in all grades, and yet the administration refuses to reduce class size to similar levels.

The Bloomberg/Klein administration has consistently refused to provide class sizes comparable to those in Canada's charters, despite hundreds of millions in state funds supposed to be used for that purpose. Essentially, by Klein's own malfeasance, he is creating a system in which many charters will outperform the schools he is responsible for improving.

Canada also claims that teacher unions have not added anything to the quality of education, yet without unions, class sizes in NYC would be essentially uncontrollable -- rising to 30 or more in all grades. The only thing that is keeping them from exploding are the union contractual limits.

Charter schools enroll far fewer special education, immigrant, poor and homeless kids than the districts in which they are located -- another reason for their relative success. Teacher attrition rates at charter schools tend to be sky high, because of lousy working conditions. This is not a model we want to replicate, as experience matters hugely in terms of teacher effectiveness. Student attrition also tends to be very high. I doubt that the Guggenheim film explores any of these factors.

Altogether this article, like the movie it profiles, is a simplistic and one-sided look at a complicated problem. For a far more informative and balanced perspective, check out Prof. Bruce Baker's analysis of charter schools at "Searching for Superguy in Gotham". As he concludes:

"...we might be better off spending this time, effort and our resources investing in the improvement of the quality of the system as a whole. Yeah, we can still give Superguy a chance to show himself (or herself), but let’s not hold our breath, and let’s do our part on behalf of the masses (not just the few) in the meantime."

Parents Across America Demand to be heard!

Check out my latest on Huffington, how the discontent with this administration's education policies is growing, Parents Across America Demand to be Heard!

More hypocrisy from Bloomberg and Klein on class size

Check out this account, from the Queens Chronicle about a recent Town Hall meeting in Forest Hills:

The mayor said the school system in the city “is getting better,” but when Jenny Fisher, an Iraq War veteran who just earned a degree in elementary education asked Klein when the Department of Education would lift a hiring freeze on teachers, Bloomberg stepped in.

“We don’t have the money to hire new teachers,” he said. “I don’t want to lay off teachers and Joel just has to work with that restriction. Don’t blame him, blame me, I guess.”

Klein, speaking directly to Fisher, added, “I wish I could hire you. Our kids need it — lower class sizes and young, enthusiastic teachers.”

What utter hypocrisy! The city received $200 million in federal funds this summer specifically meant to hire more teachers for the 2010-2011 school year; (see the federal guidance here.) And yet the administration wants to hold onto these funds until the following year, despite the fact that they are anticipating a loss of 2,000 teaching positions and an increase in at least 18,000 students this fall.

Over the last four years, the DOE has misused hundreds of millions of dollars in state funds meant for class size reduction. They are canceling the Early Grade class size reduction program that had existed since 1999, which was dedicated to reducing class size in grades K-3^rd.

There are currently 1700 teachers on Absent Teacher Reserve, getting paid full salaries, and yet the administration refuses to assign any of them to classes to lower class size; and would rather leave them in limbo, no matter what the damage to our children, to bolster their case for laying them off.

Bloomberg and Klein have done everything they can to resist providing our children with smaller classes that the New York's highest court said was their constitutional right. The result is that this fall we will likely see the sharpest increases in class size in twelve years, particularly in the early grades.

Kindergarten classes will probably be substantially larger than they were when Bloomberg first came into office, just as new research is revealing huge academic and economic benefits to keeping Kindergarten class sizes below twenty.

Already last year there were districts in the Bronx and Queens where nearly half of all Kindergarten students were in classes of 25 or more.

What a waste. We have new tests, new teacher evaluation systems based on unreliable test scores, a new organizational structure, and new experimental online learning systems, and yet our class sizes will be more overcrowded than ever.

Despite all their claims, this administration could care less about providing proven educational reforms such as smaller classes, in their zeal to waste money devising more damaging experiments on our children.

Yong Zhao on how our global competitiveness will be damaged by the US government's imposition of high stakes testing

Just as the federal government has announced the awarding of $330 million to two consortiums so that they can develop new national exams, it is more important than ever that people check out this video of one of our best critics of high stakes testing, Yong Zhao.

Zhao is University Distinguished Professor of Education at Michigan State University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. More on Prof. Zhao here and here.

He points out that China and other Asian countries are trying to move away from standardized testing, because it kills creativity and innovation, just as the US government is trying to impose it on schools throughout the country.

He also talks movingly about the importance of arts education and nurturing individual talents and resiliency, all of which are damaged by the monolithic emphasis on high stakes testing.

The "top" NYC high schools, with SAT scores, class sizes, and caveats

Check out the NY Post listing on the "top" 50 NYC high schools here: The top 10, 11 - 20, 21 - 40, 41 - 50. The data for all 400 plus high schools, including graduation rates, average SAT scores, etc. is available here.

The Post used the DOE progress reports, plus other relevant outcome data, to calculate this list. Like all such rankings, they have to be taken with a heavy grain of salt. In this case, the salt pile is immense, since so much of the DOE data are either unreliable or incomplete. For example, high school NYC graduation rates are often inflated, because they don't taken into account the numbers of discharged students, a huge loophole that many high schools use to boost their grad rates.

The Post says that the graduation rate in their listings reflects the percent of 9^th graders who end up graduating after four years plus a summer; but that is not true. Many high schools discharge significant numbers of students before they even reach the 12th grade, and many if most of these students end up dropouts, but are never counted as such.

Even in the case of one of top schools on the list (Bard), the reporter notes that “about 20 students in each class transfer out.” In the case of Bard, a highly selective school, they probably enroll in other regular high schools, but for other schools, discharged students often end up in alternative high schools, GED programs or sometimes nowhere at all. The DOE used to make the discharge data by each individual school available in their graduation reports, but no longer does, ever since Jennifer Jennings and I produced a report on the rising discharge figures under Bloomberg and Klein.

[Correction! Updated reports for the classes of 2008 and 2009 do contain discharge data by school, at least for general ed students; see Appendix B at the links above, which reveal egregiously high discharge rates at many schools, with twice the number of official "dropouts" in many cases. What the city no longer seems to report on are discharge rates for D 75 and self-contained students.]

The NY Post's listing does not include any data on the growing practice of credit recovery, which is another manner in which many schools are artificially inflating their grad rates, (see this article by the same Post reporter on the phenomenon.) The DOE refuses to release any data on credit recovery, so it is impossible to know just how widespread this practice is. The class size data are also are not fully reliable; and tend to underestimate the actual size of classes in many high schools, since inclusion (CTT) classes are commonly reported as two separate classes.

I also don't trust the college-going rates in the listings; and the SAT scores don't include information as to what percent of the class actually took the SATs. Finally, the ratings may reflect more than anything else the socio-economic background of the students rather than what the schools actually bring to the table.

Nevertheless, as parents have a right to see this information, I have now posted a spreadsheet with SAT average scores for every school, for 2008 and 2009, as well the schoolwide class size averages for 2009-10 school year, as calculated by the DOE (as opposed to class size averages in each school by grade and subject, that are available here.). Neither of these files are on the DOE website, as far as I know.

The Achievement Gap Nobody Talks About - Part 1: The Chasm

Following the June 2008 Integrated Algebra Regents exam -- the only math exam required to receive a NYS high school diploma -- NYSED commissioned a technical report to analyze the results. That report, the only such one I have found so far, was posted on the NYSED website, seemingly to no public or media notice despite its startling revelations about a racial achievement gap in mathematics that education officials in NYC and throughout NYS had by 2008 already been claiming for years was well on its way to being eliminated.

While recent revisions to the cut score levels on the NYS Grade 3 - 8 exams have exploded that myth, the June 2008 Integrated Algebra technical report (available for download here) provides striking indications that the gap may be much worse at the high school level. Analyzing the results for 175,000 mostly ninth-grade students statewide who sat for the June 2008 test, where a scaled passing score of 65 was (and continues to be) derived from a raw score of just 30 out of 87 points maximum (34.5%), the report reveals:

** Overall pass rate, all students: 75.06%
** White student pass rate: 88.08%
** Black student pass rate: 53.17%
** Hispanic student pass rate: 58.71%
** Black/White gap: 35.91 pct. pts.
** Hispanic/White gap: 29.37 pct. pts.

These achievement gaps at the ninth grade level already substantially exceeded those reported in the June 23, 2008 Commissioner's Press Conference presentation slides (available here) for Grade 3 - 8 Mathematics (Black/White -- 22.4 percentage points, Hispanic/White -- 17.2 percentage points), despite the fact that these same ninth grade students had for the previous five years been the very ones whose increased proficiency had been so widely and unquestioningly touted.

Even more disturbing, however, is that any raising of the bar on the Grade 9 Integrated Algebra exam along the lines of those just implemented by Commissioner Steiner for the Grade 3 - 8 exams (where the weighted average raw score percentage across grades for achieving Level 3 in 2010 was increased from 47.1% of the available exam points to 72.4%) would likely transform an alarming racial achievement gap into a veritable chasm, a Grand Canyon of racial disparity in high school math achievement.

For example, based on the detailed 2008 exam data, if the Regents Integrated Algebra passing bar had been raised from its current 34.5% of the available raw score points (30 out of 87) to just over 50% (44 out of 87), the Black student pass rate would have been reduced by more than half and the Hispanic student pass rate by a little less than half, as detailed in the table below:

** Revised overall pass rate, all students: 52.28% (-22.78 pct. pts.)
** Revised White student pass rate: 67.74% (-20.34 pct. pts.)
** Revised Black student pass rate: 24.85% (-27.32 pct. pts.)
** Revised Hispanic student pass rate: 31.11% (-27.60 pct. pts.)
** Revised Black/White gap: 42.89 pct. pts. (+6.98 pct. pts.)
** Revised Hispanic/White gap: 36.63 pct. pts. (+7.26 pct. pts.)

In other words, raising the expectations bar enough to require students to earn at least 50% of the raw score points (where Grade 3 - 8 children now must earn over 70% of their available points under Steiner's new standard) would have resulted in less than one-third of the Hispanic students and less than one-fourth of the Black students passing. Furthermore, the Black/White achievement gap would have climbed to just under a staggering 43 percentage points, and the Hispanic/White gap to almost 37 percentage points. By comparison, the combined 2010 Grade 3 - 8 achievement gaps for Black and Hispanic students following the recent Steiner cut score upward revisions were 30.2 and 23.8 points, respectively (Commissioner's slide presentation available here). Note that these achievement gaps, even after revision to a higher standard, are still markedly less than the June 2008 Regents math achievement gaps even under their (continuing) low-expectations pass levels (shown in the first table above).

Regent exam breakdowns (score distributions in total and by ethnic and other breakdowns such as ELL, students with disabilities, low SES, etc.) are not routinely publicized, to the best of my knowledge. The one I found for Integrated Algebra appears to have been a special situation for a new exam. And while the data is presented on a statewide basis only, we know for a fact that well over 40,000 of the 175,000 students tested, perhaps as many as 50,000, were NYC public high school students.

Isn't it time that this type of data, so aggressively presented and touted for the Grade 3 - 8 exams, also be presented to the public, at least for the Regents core subject exams if not for all of them? Shouldn't this type of data also be made available for NYC schools, just as the DOE now does for its Grade 3 - 8 exam results? Isn't it curious that for all the talk about Grades 3 - 8, no one -- not the State Commission, not the Regents board, and certainly not Chancellor Klein and his irrepressible P.R. machine, EVER break down and/or talk about the results of the high school Regents exams from 2003 to 2010. Why is that?

After all, don't these exams provide some measure of the success (or lack thereof) of all the Grade 3 - 8 testing? If those earlier-year educational benefits cannot be carried over into high school, then something is wrong, and we have a right to know. A Grade 4 student still has time for remediation and support, a luxury not so readily available or achievable at the high school level, where there are relatively few second chances.

In any event, for Commissioner Steiner to be consistent in his insistence on college readiness expectations of NYS public school students (and even a 50% standard still falls well short of "college ready" in my judgment), an increase in the Integrated Algebra cut score level seems inescapable. If and when that happens, the impact for many will be a rude awakening, to say the least. Like Wile E. Coyote running right past the edge of the unseen cliff, the drop to the canyon floor below will be a long, long, long way down.

NOTE: My next posting, "Part 2: Where's the Proficiency?," will reveal some shocking information about the 2008/09 Integrated Algebra exam in NYC's public high schools.

Wishful Testing in this week's New York magazine

Check out the just-published piece in NY Magazine called Wishful Testing, featuring the comments of Steve Koss, blogger here, and which analyzes the state test score bubble, Campbell’s law, the over-hyped Harlem Village Academy, and connects the dots.

Between this, the recent Robert Kolker piece on the national craze of scapegoating teachers, and features by Jeff Coplon on Eva Moskowitz’ chain of charters and school overcrowding, the magazine has shown itself to be most valuable in dissecting the Bloomberg/Klein mirage.

Especially as compared to the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, whose reporting on the subject has been execrable.

Read it and leave a comment on the website!!

Listen up, mayor and the NY Times

The Times ran an editorial last week, "Parents need to know", which claimed that NYC parents didn't understand how the weak state exams had been "shortchanging students" and that they did their "children no favor" when they disrupted a Panel for Education Policy meeting on Monday. This was after the PEP chair, David Chang, refused to let them speak in response to a long, deceptive power point that claimed, despite the collapse of the state test score bubble collapse, that the schools had made great progress.

The editorial also excused the state test score inflation by stating, "Weak state tests are a chronic problem throughout the country — one that education departments are only beginning to come to grips with." Oh please. The NY test score inflation has been obvious to nearly all objective observers since at least 2007, despite the fact that it conveniently allowed the mayor to claim great improvements during his campaigns for the renewal of mayoral control and re-election, illusions that were bought hook line and sinker by the mayor's allies on the Times and the other editorial boards.

The editorial ended by claiming that the schools have nevertheless been "narrowing the performance gap between white and minority students." Yet the gold standard, the national exams called the NAEPs, show no narrowing of the achievement gap in any grade or subject since the Klein regime began. Truly, the Times editors "need to know" and start living in the real world, for they, along with the chancellor and mayor, have lost all credibility, and should stop criticizing parents while displaying their ignorance of what's really going on in our schools.Our mayor, who famously said people could "boo him at parades" if people didn't like his educational policies, will likely see more booing of his Panel of Eight Puppets in the months to come, unless he wakes up and starts to listen.

Video of Patrick Sullivan and parent protest at the PEP meeting on Aug. 16

Check out the video from yesterday's Panel for Educational Policy meeting, where Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member, observes that what he heard from the DOE's earlier test score presentation was "an attempt at spin to protect the reputations of the people who are responsible for the school system."

He makes a motion so that the Panel can hear "from parents and the public about what their concerns are about what I think is probably one of the worst debacles in the history of the public school system."

Yet PEP Chair David Chang refuses to bring the motion to a vote. Check out Patrick's explanation of how Chang's refusal was a violation of the PEP bylaws.

This refusal to let them speak led to an outcry from parents, chanting "Let us speak", and a subsequent walk-out of the PEP members, all except for Patrick.




For more on these events, see GothamSchools, Times, Post, Daily News, WNYC , Ed Notes and Patrick's own post. (video thanks to Norm Scott.)

PEP Chairman Chang Blocks Vote on Public Comment, Violates Bylaws

Last night's Panel for Educational Policy meeting was another unfortunate example of how the mayoral appointees on the Panel repeatedly show disregard for both the law and the public school community they are supposed to serve.

The public agenda issued prior to the meeting contained no indication that the Panel would consider the enormous controversy surrounding the state testing debacle, yet a fifteen minute session was added for a DOE staffer to present a defense of the administration's record in student achievement.

At the conclusion of the session, I made a motion to add a public comment session to the agenda to allow the audience to comment on the presentation. It is common for public comment sessions to be placed on the agenda following important presentations. It was clear the purpose of the presentation was to deflect the intense criticism of the DOE's educational record and would not address the concerns of the many parents who, after years of being told their children were doing better, are now being told their children are not proficient. I felt it essential that the parents in the audience have an opportunity to comment and share their perspective with the Panel. My motion was seconded by Bronx Representative Anna Santos.

Rather than hold the vote on the motion, Chairman David Chang said he would disregard the motion based on his authority over "procedural matters". Chang's action was a clear violation of Article 2 of the Panel's bylaws that require a vote of the Panel when a member seeks to add an item:

If a member of the Panel for Educational Policy requests that an item be placed on the calendar at a calendar meeting, the Chairperson shall take a vote of the Panel members regarding whether such item shall be added to the calendar. An item may be added to the calendar at the meeting by majority vote of those present. (Article 2, Section 2.4)

The audience was outraged and began to demand a voice. After several admonishments and instructions to "behave", Chairman Chang adjourned the meeting.

UPDATE:

A few comments to further explain how Chairman Chang violated PEP bylaws in order to suppress any parent response to the DOE viewpoint:

As the meeting agenda did not include a session for the Accountability Office to make its presentation, Chang's decision to allow the presentation violated the bylaws which restrict the meeting to items in the agenda unless a vote is taken to add an item:

At calendar meetings, business shall be the consideration of the resolutions, communications and other appropriate matters as described in the agenda accompanying the meeting notice. No other matters shall be considered except by consent of a majority of the members present. (Section 2.1.1)

Chang should have asked for a vote to add the item along with a public comment session to hear responses. Instead, he allowed the DOE communication to proceed but demanded that parents wait until the end of the meeting to be heard. There were already five more items on the agenda, each with its own dedicated public comment session. Adding another session following the testing presentation would not have been out of the ordinary or an inconvenience to anyone, especially given the obvious interest in the issue. Given that PEP meetings have averaged four hours, Chang knew well that few parents would be left at the end of the evening. Why did he not allow even a vote on my motion? It would be interesting to know what exactly DOE General Counsel whispered in his ear before Chang ruled my motion "out of order".

News coverage in the Times here and News here. Videos here.

For the front-page story that likely led to the preparation of the DOE's defensive presentation on testing results, see the Times: Triumph Fades on Racial Gap in City Schools.

New revelations and timeline of Sharpton, Klein and Bloomberg's political machinations

UPDATE:  thanks to Ken Libby, we now know that both the Broad Foundation ($500K) and the Gates Foundation ($100K) gave substantial funds to EEP in 2009.  As of 2011, however, the organization no longer appears to exists.

  
Today, in the Daily News, Adam Lisberg reports that Mayor Bloomberg gave $110,000 to Al Sharpton in 2008, apparently to gain his assent for overturning term limits, money that was laundered through the Education Equity Project, Joel Klein’s vanity non-profit that supposedly works for education reform.

This revelation comes on top of the earlier finding that Sharpton received a secret contribution of $500,000 from a hedge fund to join EEP in the first place, funds that were washed through Education Reform Now, a pro-charter lobbying group, to help him avoid federal indictment for tax fraud. Below is a timeline of events:

December 2007: As many as ten of Sharpton’s associates receive grand jury subpoenas as the IRS is probing whether Sharpton or his organization, National Action Network (NAN), committed tax crimes and/or violations related to his 2004 presidential campaign.

March 25, 2008: Eva Moskowitz writes an email to Klein:“As you know I met with Sharpton. Had a great meeting. Am sure you know Charlie King is working with who I have known for years. He was enthusiastic. Just was worried that Mayor and you were not on board. Was kind of surprised by this concern. Wonder if you can call him.”

Joel Klein responds, “I’m going to Memphis for him and have put together a panel for MLK day – I will speak to him. I think by on board he’s not talking policy….” [What then? finances?]

April 4, 2008: Klein appears at the Sharpton NAN event in Memphis. According to account written by Joe Williams on Democrats for Education Reform blog, entitled MLK, Ed Reform Sharpton, Shifting Winds?: “….It will be particularly interesting to see whether Rev. Sharpton can match his rhetoric with action… Sharpton...talked about how the education problem is so dire that we can no longer honor past alliances which existed to protect the status quo in education. (He didn't elaborate, but I assume he was talking about partnerships and $$$ between old civil rights groups and big labor, specifically teachers unions. Why did I assume that? He made the dots pretty easy to connect.)"

April 10, 2008: Joel Klein sends an email to Eva Moskowitz, asking, “Did I send you article re Memphis w Sharptons comment about new alliances.” She replies, “Yes thanks. Thought it was amazing.”

May 9, 2008: The AP reports that Sharpton is a subject of federal investigation and that his organization owes nearly $1.5 million in overdue taxes and penalties. It is also revealed that over the course of the past year, Sharpton's lawyers have been negotiating with the feds over the size of his debt, which include $365,558 in NYC income tax and $931,397 in unpaid federal income tax. His for-profit company, Rev. Al Communications, owes the state another $175,962 in delinquent taxes.

early June 2008: Al Sharpton and Joel Klein announce they will form the Education Equality Project.

June 4, 2008: According to an article in the NY Times, Bloomberg and his advisers are exploring overturning term limits so he can run for a third term.

June 11, 2008: Education Equality Project, co-chaired by Joel Klein and Al Sharpton, is launched at a DC press conference.

Sharpton says: "There have been a lot of old alliances being protected, and the children are not being protected," he said. "And if we're going to move forward, we're going to have to be able to have new alliances here — that might mean some old relationships with teachers unions, principals unions and all are going to be a little troubled.”

June 12, 2008: There is much speculation on our list serv and elsewhere about who is funding this effort. On our blog at “Unholy alliance: Al Sharpton and Joel Klein” we speculate that it is being supported by Gates and/or Broad Foundations. The next day, David Cantor, then-head of the DOE press office, emails our NYC education list serv that “No Gates or Broad money is going to this initiative. Zero.”

June 13, 2008: We speculate that perhaps Bloomberg money is backing EEP and add another posting, Who is funding the Education Equity project? Later that day, David Cantor emails me: “Leonie: The project is being funded anonymously. No public money will be spent. The mayor is not funding the project.”

June 15, 2008: I post Cantor’s email on our blog at The mystery continues: who is funding the Klein/Sharpton operation? and add: “One would think that given the kind of public campaign that these men say they are embarking upon, including staging "events at both political conventions” and attempting to influence the position of the next President, they should be obligated to reveal their source of financing" Silly me.

June 15, 2008: I finally pick up on the news about how Sharpton owes the IRS more than $1 million in taxes, and write on the blog: “Which further begs the question – is someone contributing to Sharpton's operations to persuade him to ally himself with Joel Klein, and if so, who is it? Apparently, the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn is conducting a grand-jury investigation of his organization's finances, as is Attorney General Cuomo. Hopefully we'll find out someday. More good timing on the part of Joel Klein, who certainly knows how to pick his friends. But I guess beggars can't be choosers.”

June 19, 2008: According to the Post, the feds broaden their investigation, and issue "a flurry of subpoenas" to Sharpton’s corporate donors.

June 20, 2008: Sharpton hires former Brooklyn US Attorney Zachary Carter to represent him.

June 2008: Sometime this month, Sharpton's organization receives a $500,000 donation from former Chancellor Harold Levy’s hedge fund, Plainfield Asset Management, passed through Joe Williams’ pro-charter group Education Reform Now. None of this is revealed, however, until almost a year later, in Juan Gonzalez’ column.

July 20, 2008: Al Sharpton pays a down payment of more than $1 million in tax debt to the IRS.

July 22, 2008: The Feds agree to drop criminal charges against Sharpton, as he has agreed to pay millions of dollars in back taxes and penalties. About a dozen of his aides who had been served with federal subpoenas will no longer be required to testify. The unpaid taxes which he has agreed to repay are believed to total anywhere between $2 million and $9 million.

August 2008: Bloomberg considers running for a third term, which will necessitate overturning term limits.

On or about Sept 20, 2008: While "testing the waters" on term limits, Bloomberg "meets personally with Sharpton.

Sometime during Sept. 2008 (?): Bloomberg gives $250,000 grant to EEP. According to the News, this is one of only two contributions that EEP received in 2008, totaling $500,000.

Sept. 30, 2008: It is reported that Bloomberg has definitely decided to overturn term limits, ignoring the results of two referenda, so he can run for a third time. The NY Times runs an editorial supporting his decision, saying “If the voters don’t like the result, they can register their views at the polls,” meaning they can choose not to vote for Bloomberg.

October 2, 2008: Bloomberg formally announces he will run for third term. The same day, National Action Network gets $50,000 from EEP.

October 8, 2008: Sharpton tells the New York Times, "I'm leaning toward those who advocate in favor of making changes in the law through a referendum. But I haven’t come to any final determination yet."

October 12, 2008: Charlie King, Sharpton’s chief of staff tells the New York Post re term limits "There are meritorious arguments on both sides of this issue, and we are taking great pains to weigh each argument."

October 17, 2008: The National Action Network receives another $60,000 payment from EEP. The same day, the NY Times reveals that the mayor and his top aides have asked leaders of community and arts organizations which have received contributions from Bloomberg and/or city funding to testify on behalf of overturning term limits during the City Council hearings.

At least 11 Doe Fund employees, testified in favor of the mayor’s plan, without identifying their employer, describing themselves only as neighborhood residents. The DOE Fund also shipped homeless men to the hearings in support. It is later revealed that just weeks after the hearings, Bloomberg gave at least $5 million to the DOE Fund, and a year later, less than 48 hours before he was sworn in for a third term, another $5 million.

October 22, 2008: the NY Times runs an editorial supporting the city Council overturning term limits, despite the fact that voters voted twice to uphold the limits: “... We agree with the mayor that the Council is best positioned to quickly settle the matter. It would be technically difficult and perhaps legally problematic to organize a meaningful citywide referendum before the 2009 elections." (Just a few months later, the Times excoriates Hugo Chavez of Venezuela for proposing that voters be allowed to decide term limits through a referendum, an opportunity that NYC voters never received.)

October 23, 2008: The City Council votes to overturn term limits 29-22.

December 8, 2008: Bloomberg hires Bradley Tusk, formerly top operative and Deputy Gov. to Rod. Blagojevich, as his campaign manager. Over the course of the year Bloomberg gives $1.3 million to the Independence Party. Of that, $750,000 was allegedly pocketed by Queens GOP operative John Haggerty.

March 31, 2009: Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News breaks the story of the $500,000 contribution to Sharpton from Harold Levy's hedge fund, which was first laundered through Joe Williams’ pro-charter organization Education Reform Now. David Cantor tells Juan that up to that point, Klein has raised more than $1.6 million for EEP. [more than $1 million in Jan-March? From whom?]

April 1, 2009: Bloomberg appears at Sharpton’s annual NAN conference, saying he is a “Sharpton fan.” Gov. Paterson, Sec. Duncan and Joel Klein also participate in the event.

May 7, 2009: Bloomberg, Sharpton and Gingrich meet with Duncan and Obama and announce that education reforms are the “civil rights issue of the 21st century.” The same day, the White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says the president “does not intend to make any political endorsement in the New York City mayor’s race.” (Obama does later make very low-key endorsement of Bill Thompson, but never campaigns on his behalf.)

November 4, 2009: Bloomberg wins a third term by an unexpectedly narrow margin of 5 percent; after spending a record $110 million of his personal fortune on his campaign, more than all other donations for all NY state elected officials combined.

And that's only the campaign spending that is officially reported!