Public funding for most NYC charter schools exceeds district public schools

Today, a new report from New York City’s Independent Budget Office was released, showing that during the 2009–2010 school year, per pupil public spending for general education students enrolled in NYC co-located charter schools significantly exceeded public spending for students at district public schools.

The difference was about $650 per student. About two thirds of charter schools in NYC fall under this category and are given free space in city school buildings.

This analysis, which corrected the estimates made in an IBO report last year, did not take into account the large private subsidies that many charter schools receive.

Nor did it account for the fact that charter schools tend to enroll fewer high needs students than the communities in which they are located, including fewer students from families living below the poverty line and fewer English language learners. (The funding of DOE public schools is supposedly pegged to the number of high needs students enrolled, but charters escape this formula.)

As a recent report from the National Education Policy Center revealed, the difference in public subsidies between NYC charter schools and traditional public schools would be even larger, if the difference in the type of students they enrolled was taken into account.

This year, charter school students received yet another big boost in per pupil funding from the state, while district schools had their budgets cut.

As the IBO concludes: “When complete data from 2010–2011 become available, they are almost certain to show an even greater advantage for those charters housed within public school buildings compared with traditional public schools.”

According to GothamSchools, the DOE asked the IBO to take down their analysis. To their credit they refused. Transparency, anyone?

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Bloomberg's Blizzard! UFT ad vs. layoffs

Check out the UFT's latest ad against layoffs. I think it's their best ever. Others, leave comments.

Sam Pirozzolo: We need an Education Tea Party of parents against mayoral control

From the Bronx to Brooklyn, from Harlem to Tribeca, from Queens to Staten Island, public school parents are furious about Mayor Bloomberg's arrogant disregard for our views and his malignant educational policies. Check out the remarks of Sam Pirozzolo, President of the Community Education Council 31, at the Staten Island legislative breakfast last week, and what he said to state legislators about their extension of mayoral control:

I would like to thank the Staten Island Federation of PTA’s for holding this forum. I would like to thank all of the people in the audience and especially our elected officials for being here today.

As many of you know Staten Island school children have been under attack. We are under attack from a DoE that is unconcerned, uncaring, unyielding and unreliable. We are dealing with a mayor who rules our school system with outright disdain for parents, teachers and the very laws which govern our society. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean:

• Mayoral Control: Mayor Bloomberg made a case that school boards were corrupt and wasteful. He convinced the Legislature that he, as a wealthy and wise man, could fix our public school problem if we would just let him control the show. Nine years later, I now interpret his statement to mean, I want a piece of that action. We have seen the mayor spend millions upon millions of dollars in “no bid contracts”. We have seen dozens of if not hundreds of runaway contracts explode beyond their estimated spending limit.

• One contract with the Xerox Corporation was supposed to cost at most $1 million – but the Department spent close to $68 million – a 6,759 percent jump in costs. Another contract with Ideal Restaurant Supply, jumped from $15,000 to more than $852,000 – a 5,530 percent jump.

• During two fiscal years combined, the Department issued 372 requirement contracts, originally estimated to cost $325,236,416 but which exceeded those estimates by 25% or more. The final tab wound up more than $1 billion.

• Many recipients of the contracts - 127 of them – got the lucrative work without any competition because the Department didn’t put the work out to bid. Those 127 contracts were supposed to cost $195 million at most. But the Department spent $525 million on them.

That equals well over $1 billion dollars. Well, Mr. Mayor how many teachers, how many schools, how many children would $1 billion support?

If you think schools are the only place we’re getting screwed you are wrong. How about the $80 million boondoggle with the City Time project?

When mayoral control was up for renewal two years ago, I testified, hundreds of parents throughout the city testified before the Assembly education committee. Mr. Cusak, Mr. Titone, you sat on that committee. You heard from hundreds of parents telling you that checks and balances were needed to protect our school system.

CEC 31 sent our testimony to every elected state official on Staten Island. We did not receive one return phone call to ask what we thought may help. Our pleas, and the pleas of hundreds of other New York parents fell upon deaf ears.

What did this mean to Staten Island? We have lost a 40 year variance to bus our 7th and 8th graders to school. We had to keep 650 students from PS 36 home for three days, before the mayor agreed to replace leaking toxic PCB emitting light ballasts that were threatening our children.

We are seeing the proliferation of charter schools, co-locations and school closings around the city. Schools on Staten Island are constantly being short changed.

Now our mayor is asking the State Senate and Assembly for permission to fire “unproductive senior teachers”. Well I have to tell you that I agree with that 100 percent; however there are already systems in place to do just that. Just to be clear, I am not advocating for teachers or the UFT with my next statement, I am advocating for our children.

I say to our legislators, don’t you DARE give the mayor the power to fire anyone. He has proven with his past actions that he cannot be trusted. Most politicians elected for their last term are considered lame ducks, but not Mayor Mike, he acts as though he will be around for a fourth term and I am sure he can buy that too.

Before I go let me remind you that we need educational reform. We need checks and balances on Mayoral Control. We need an EDUCATIONAL TEA PARTY. We need is a bill introduced in the Assembly and Senate that seeks to curb Mayoral Control. Parents: these are the people who are supposed to fight for you.... sitting right there. Tell them what you want.

Teachable Moments?

Anyone who has spent more than a year or two in the classroom has probably heard the phrase "teachable moment." Loosely speaking, that's when something unexpected, often even negative, is turned by a teacher into a spontaneous mini-lesson. Teachable moments can be so small that they're hardly noticed, they can be built around bad behaviors or local tragedies, or they can be the product of extemporaneous discussions about national or global events. Their efficacy lies in the teacher's recognition of the opportunity as well as his/her willingness to deviate, at least for the moment, from a structured lesson plan in favor of a broader notion of what teachers do to educate their students (nearly always in areas that are not testable by standardized exam).

A wonderful story in the NY Times City Room blog on Tuesday (2/8) and appearing in the Times print edition today (2/11) presents the case that PEP student representative Lizabeth Cooper made for her fellow students' welfare at the soon-to-be-closed Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. One of two non-voting student members on the Panel for Educational Policy, Ms. Cooper spoke eloquently about the impact that Robeson's closing will have on the school's remaining students. Clearly she is not speaking for herself, since according to the Times she has been taking AP classes since her freshman year and will be graduating next year before the worst impacts are felt at Robeson.

Ms. Cooper was sanguine about the strength of her voice when she addresses her concerns to PEP members. "'They come here [to the PEP meetings] already knowing how they're going to vote,' she said." As for the ruination that Robeson's closing will visit upon her fellow students, particularly the younger ones, she commented that "No one thinks about that, so I have to....We're kids. We're not just numbers."

Reading this story, I couldn't stop thinking about teachable moments. For as long as she has been a student representative on the PEP, Lizabeth Cooper has been a recipient of teachable moments. She has learned in those moments how money and power coldly levy their control, how a dictatorial mayor instills such fear and lockstep behavior as to take all meaning out of public meetings, how opposing voices are simply ignored when they are not flat-out crushed, how powerful public service positions are awarded based on cronyism with utter disregard for public input or even legitimate credentials, how unrestrained, free-market capitalism yields insider deals and the give-away of public assets, and how the public voice in NYC has been diminished, despised, and disrespected, treated as irrelevant even where it concerns parents and their children's futures.

As we watch what has taken place in Egypt, just as we watched a couple decades ago what happened in South Africa and Tiananmen Square, it is hard not to imagine what Ms. Cooper must be taking away from the teachable moments she has received at PEP. An intelligent young woman, obviously socially conscious and a natural leader, she is the type of young person her generation will look to for solutions in the coming years.

There's a part of me that sincerely hopes Ms. Cooper sees the connection between Cairo and what has been happening here -- not just in NYC but across the country. Perhaps in the end, Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, and Cathie Black will have inadvertently provided far different teachable moments than they have imagined, ones that Ms. Cooper and her generation will use to put things right.

Tens of thousands of young Egyptians, many of them hardly older than Ms. Cooper, just proved how the public's voice can once again be made relevant. If it takes a Tahrir Square here in New York City, so be it.

Bloomberg LP to Acquire Egypt

February 8, 2011 (GBN News): In the second blockbuster corporate takeover of the week, Egypt has agreed to be acquired by NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s company, Bloomberg LP. As part of the deal, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will replace Cathie Black as NY City Schools Chancellor, while Ms. Black will relocate to Egypt to replace the Sphinx.

The deal is being seen as a win-win for everyone involved. The Mayor, who already owns NY City, gets to add an entire country to his portfolio, while ridding himself of a major embarrassment in Ms. Black. As Sphynx, Ms. Black will presumably find it more difficult to put her foot in her mouth. And the Egyptian leader manages to honorably extricate himself from a situation that he would otherwise not likely survive.

Reaction in NY City was initially muted, given that Mr. Mubarak’s dictatorial style is seen as somewhat less draconian than that of the previous Chancellor, Joel Klein, or even the Mayor himself. But rioting in Cairo only intensified when Mr. Bloomberg, in an apparent attempt to suppress the democracy movement, announced a ban on cell phones in Tahrir Square.

“They don’t need cell phones,” the Mayor insisted. “They just want them so that they can call home and find out if they’re having shish-kebab or baba ganoush for dinner.” However, demonstrators are predicting a very different fate for this prohibition than for the notorious ban in the NY City schools – an outcome which might yet inspire the pro democracy movement in NY City.

Lynne Winderbaum on Michael Bloomberg’s version of democracy

“This is not democracy—letting people yell and scream," the mayor declared on his weekly radio show. "That's not freedom of expression—that's just trying to take away somebody else's rights."

How positively Orwellian hearing Mayor Bloomberg lecture us on what is or is not democracy.

• This is the man who fired every member but one of the Panel for Educational Policy who didn’t agree with him on grade retention and replaced them with members who did—and always will.

• This is the man who said he strongly supported term limits until he came to the end of his second term, and then forced the city council to overturn the will of the public so he could run again.

• This is the man who dipped into his inexhaustible personal fortune to fund the most expensive campaign per voter in history, thereby creating such an uneven playing field that any challenge to him was impossible.

• This is the man who chose a school chancellor from his circle of country club friends and denied the public any input in the selection process. In fact, there was no selection process.

• This is the man who tolerates a “democracy” where 400 people spoke against school closings last year, only one spoke in favor, and the PEP voted with the one.

In In a nutshell, the mayor’s version of democracy and freedom of expression comes down to telling the opposition to just let him do what he wants.

-Lynne Winderbaum, retired teacher and former UFT representative for Bronx high schools

Thursday's protests of school closings and the mayor's response

See video below of Thursday's night rally and Panel for Educational Policy meeting at Brooklyn Tech before the mass walkout. More information about the protests and the way the Panel rubber stamped the school closings and charter takeovers at NY1.

The Mayor responded on Friday with comments about how the vocal opposition of parents, teachers, students, and elected officials was "embarassing" and "undemocratic." See my response at the Brooklyn Eagle, Gabe Pressman's column, and the Wall Street Journal.

It is the height of arrogance for Bloomberg to criticize us for being undemocratic when he has treated our schools as his personal fiefdom, to do as he likes without any attention to our priorities, or the damage he is doing to our children.

And what is really embarrassing is the usual spectacle of the Panel for Educational Policy, in which he insists that all of his appointees vote lockstep according to his will, month after month, no matter how destructive and wasteful the proposals are. Their unthinking and unbending behavior is shameful; and rivals the worst excesses of the old Party Congress meetings under the Soviet Union.

In the video below, see students from the closing Metropolitan Corporate Academy singing "the DOE don't care about us"; remarks from Michael Mulgrew of the UFT, State Sen. Tony Avella of Queens, who called for a revolution to take back our schools, and City Council Member Jumaane Williams.

Last night's Panel for Educational Policy meeting

As predicted, the PEP (Panel of Eight Mayoral Puppets plus borough appointees) voted to approve ten school closings and several co-locations and expansions of Success Academy Charters into public school space.

See video of the Caped Real Reformers (parents and teachers ) singing "What a Wonderful World it would be" and students at Metropolitan Corporate Academy, one of the schools being closed, perform, ""DOE don't care about us" at last night's PEP meeting. More video of the evening's events at NY1, including Chancellor Cathie Black's annoyed response to the vociferous crowd.

Some lyrics:

They don’t know how to teach history,
they don’t know how to teach biology,
They don’t know much about science books,
they don’t know much about the cuts we took,
but they do know how to close down schools,
we’re fighting back you know that we’re not fools,
What wonderful schools they could be.

They know a lot about charter schools,
and that they think that merit pay is cool,
..Parents, teachers, students know there’s more
They know there’s more than just test scores
What wonderful schools these could be.

My comments last night:

Choice is not real choice if someone else’s child is being squeezed out into hallways, closets or basement rooms. Choice is not real choice if someone else’s child is being forced into larger classes or you are closing their school, against their will. Every time you close or co-locate a school you are creating more overcrowding and more disruption of someone else’s education. Every time you close or co-locate a school, you are undermining choices for all parents and their children, and imposing your own will on a community. Clearly the people whose lives are most affected oppose these proposed closing and co-locations. I urge you to listen to their choices, and to vote against these proposals.

Another New Low in Bloomberg's Education Record: NYC Shut Out of Intel STS Finals!

Non-stop community discord. Administrative cheating scandals. Knowingly inflated claims of educational improvement. Falsified and artificially inflated graduation rates. Wasteful spending and financial fraud. School children being used as guinea pigs in ungrounded educational experimentation. Closed-door selection of a blatantly unqualified cocktail-party friend as schools chancellor. The virtual sale of public education to wealthy private interests.

Seems like those reasons would be more than enough for a citizenry to rise up and reclaim control of its public school system from a haughty, emotionally disconnected mayor. In any suburban community in the NYC metropolitan area, most certainly so, but not apparently in the city itself, where citizens are powerless, media editorial boards serve at the mayor's pleasure, and most politicians cower before the imperious billionaire.

Last week’s announcement (on January 26) by the Intel Science Talent Search (STS) of its forty 2011 Finalists brought yet another round of bad news for NYC’s school system. For the first time in memory, NYC was entirely shut out of the final round, achieving not even one Finalist spot. This is the second time in history that the city’s public high schools were shut out (the first occurring in 2006, also under mayoral control), but 2011 marked the first time that the city’s combined public and private high schools earned no Finalist candidates among them.

Two weeks earlier, STS announced its annual list of 300 Semifinalists, and city public schools hit a new, all-time low of just 14 awardees. As I wrote on this site at that time, this result continued a pattern of “de-Klein” in Intel STS performance that coincided almost exactly with the advent of mayoral control and Joel Klein’s chancellorship. A similar pattern has occurred among Finalists, the highest level performers among an already highly select group of student achievers.

For many years, from the 1940s and 1950s, when the competition began under the Westinghouse name, through the 1980s and 1990s, NYC schools virtually owned the STS competition, finishing some years with well over 100 Semifinalists, some years accounting for nearly half of that group. Since 2002/2003, however, NYC schools’ participation in STS has dropped by nearly half, and the level of Semifinalist winners by nearly three-fourths. Results that were formerly trumpeted with immense pride by the local newspapers are now barely mentioned; the New York Times this year was reduced to writing not about NYC students’ achievement but about Ossining HS in Westchester and their eight Semifinalists. And that not until fourteen days after the STS Semifinalists announcement! Only Yoav Gonen in the NY Post addressed this issue head on, as the catastrophic failure it is.

The following list of STS Finalists, drawn from what I could find available in local newspaper online archives for the years before 2002, illustrates the city’s steady science achievement decline, one that has accelerated with devastating consequences under Mayor Bloomberg’s education stewardship. Note not just the number of Finalists but the steadily declining number and variety of schools those students attended:

1986 -- 13 Finalists (Bronx Science 3, Cardozo 3, Stuyvesant 2, Hillcrest HS, Forest Hills, Brooklyn Tech, Midwood, Beach Channel)

1987 -- 13 Finalists (Bronx Science 5, Stuyvesant 5, Cardozo, Long Island City HS, Martin Van Buren)

1990 -- 14 Finalists (Stuyvesant 5, Bronx Science 5, Brooklyn Tech 2, Midwood, one unknown)

1992 -- 11 Finalists (Stuyvesant 4, St. Ann's, Townsend Harris, Hunter College HS, St. Francis Prep, Murrow, Midwood, Sinai Academic Center)

1993 -- 4 Finalists (Stuyvesant 2, Bronx Science, Midwood)

1994 -- 11 Finalists (Bronx Science 3, Stuyvesant, Murrow, James Madison, Midwood, Townsend Harris, Hunter College HS, LaGuardia HS, Martin Luther King)

1996 -- 9 Finalists (Stuyvesant 4, Bronx Science, Townsend Harris, Hunter, Brooklyn Tech, LaGuardia HS)

1998 -- 2 Finalists (Stuyvesant, Collegiate)

2000 -- 3 Finalists (Midwood 2, Stuyvesant)

2001 -- 4 Finalists (Stuyvesant 3, Brooklyn Tech)

2002 -- 6 Finalists (Stuyvesant 2, Bronx Science 2, Midwood, Horace Mann)

2003 -- 5 Finalists (Stuyvesant 3, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech)

2004 -- 3 Finalists (Stuyvesant, Midwood, Susan Wagner)

2005 -- 4 Finalists (Hunter College HS, Midwood, RFK, Brearley)

2006 -- 1 Finalist (Horace Mann)

2007 -- 3 Finalists (Staten Island Tech, Chapin, Abraham Heschel)

2008 -- 4 Finalists (Stuyvesant 3, Bronx Science 1)

2009 -- 4 Finalists (Stuyvesant 2, Bronx Science 2)

2010 -- 1 Finalist (Stuyvesant)

2011 -- NONE

If nothing else, the collapse of NYC schools’ science competitiveness offers just one more area of proof that mayoral control has been an utter catastrophe, one from which the city likely will never fully recover.