Arne Duncan still arguing for mayoral control -- when the trend is in the opposite direction

Arne Duncan - a fan of mayoral control

In the Sunday Daily News , former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argued for the extension of Mayoral control.  The official legislative session is supposed to end Wednesday and Mayoral control expires at the end of the month.  Yet considering Arne's unpopular and controversial policies this probably is not the most effective endorsement.  He wrote:

"Mayors who are in control of their schools are directly accountable for the success of those schools. Education becomes a key to the Mayors' success. To put it another way, parents are hard to fool and parents vote."

Really? This certainly is a change of tone from Duncan’s earlier condescending remarks that parents only opposed the Common Core standards after finding out that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

If NYC parents are so hard to fool, one wonders why can't they have the right to elect a school board as voters do in most of the country? 

Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina have offered their own unconvincing arguments.  The Mayor has said an era of “corruption and chaos” would return if mayoral control is not renewed: 

“Unfortunately a lot of chaos went with that. A lot of corruption went with that. A lot of patronage ... a lot of people went to jail, we’ve got to make sure we never go back to those days.”

Chancellor Farina’s hand-wringing is  even more extreme:

Managers, appointed by the local school boards, inflated the price of contracts to generate lucrative kickbacks that took money directly away from students and siphoned money from taxpayers. One district alone stole $6 million from students, paying 81 employees for jobs they never showed up to. In another, school safety was entrusted to a high-level gang member.

Yet as Patrick Sullivan points out in this blog, mayoral control in NYC has not ensured a lack of corruption.  In fact, several  multi-million dollar fraudulent DOE contracts were paid out while Mayor Bloomberg was in charge, far more costly than anything was stolen during the days of the local school boards.  A huge, potential billion dollar contract was awarded by the DOE in 2015 to a vendor that had engaged in a massive kickback scheme, only to be rejected by City Hall after the media had called attention to it.    Moreover, local school boards lost all power to hire or to award contracts in 1996, years before mayoral control was established, as well as the power to appoint district superintendents. All that authority was given to the Chancellor.  More on that here.  

Arne Duncan famously said in March 2009, “At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed.”"  In fact, no school district in the country adopted this governance system since Duncan made this statement – with Washington DC the last to do so in 2007, according to Wikipedia.

Just this spring, the Illinois Legislature voted to revoke mayoral control in Chicago, Arne’s home town and the first city to adopt the system.  As Chicago residents also found out, mayoral control is no defense against wrong-headed policies, mismanagement or corruption.  In fact, one could argue that autocratic rule makes it even more likely.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first hand-picked CEO of the Chicago public schools, Jean-Claude Brizard, lasted only a 17 months in the job; and the second, Barbara Byrd Bennett, who closed 50 Chicago schools in one year, is now serving an 4 ½  year sentence for kickbacks and self-dealing.

In 2015, Chicago voters overwhelmingly approved an advisory referendum to return to an elected school board, and a bill to do so was introduced in the Legislature.  As one of the co-sponsors, Illinois State Representative Greg Harris explained:

There is only one school district in the State of Illinois that does NOT have an elected school board, and that is the Chicago Public Schools.  Currently all members of the Chicago Board of Education are appointed by Mayor and are not accountable to the parents, students or communities they serve. It is time for a change. That is why I am proud to cosponsor HB 4268 which would change Chicago’s school board from appointees to an elected school board.

We know about the recent pay-to-play scandals rocking CPS. But for our neighborhoods there are so many other reasons that we need to take back control of our schools. We have seen our neighborhood schools losing resources for enrichment programs such as music, art, sports, foreign languages, advanced placement and special education. This year, CPS is proposing over $8.7 million in cuts to schools in our area.

It is also worth noting that at the same time the Board is cutting our schools and asking for a property tax increase, we will be paying $238 million in termination fees to banks and investors to get us out of interest rate swaps and other financial deals that the CPS Board itself instigated.

Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark

Chicago is not alone in its intention to go back to elected school boards.  Detroit just reinstated an elected school board  with the support of its mayor, after many years of "emergency managers" under state and mayoral control.  At least two major cities have successfully resisted adopting mayoral control despite attempts by their Mayors to exert more power: Los Angeles in 2006 and Seattle more recently in 2016. The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, has convinced the New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, to allow their elected school board to resume authority after 21 years of state control.

So why do Duncan and others of his political persuasion keep promoting this inherently undemocratic system?  Bill Gates poured $4 million into the campaign to allow Mayor Bloomberg to keep control in 2009, as the NY Post then reported for the following reasons:

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates — a pal of fellow billionaire Mayor Bloomberg — has secretly bankrolled Learn-NY, the group that joined the campaign led by The Post to extend mayoral control. “You want to allow for experimentation.” The cities where our foundation has put the most money is where there is a single person responsible.

Another big supporter of mayoral control, Bill Gates

Surely, it is always easier to only convince one person in charge to allow for untested policies to be imposed on our public schools and students, in the name of “experimentation,” without having to deal with school boards whose members may have different views.  Indeed, the top-down methods preferred by Gates and corporate reformers are far easier to implement without any of the limitations that messy democracy might require.

So what is the alternative?  As much as I’d like a citywide elected school board to replace the rubber-stamp Panel for Educational Policy, elected school boards are no panacea.  In Denver and more recently in Los Angeles and Oakland wealthy financiers, corporate executives and the charter lobby have combined to spend millions to elect school board members who complacently fall in line with their plans for privatization.  (Watch this terrific video if you haven’t yet of Kate Burnite, a recent Denver high school graduate, excoriating the school board for being in the pocket of Democrats for Education Reform and other privateers.)

Perhaps the simplest alternative would be for the NYC Council to be given the authority to provide some measure of checks and balance in an amended system of mayoral control known as municipal control.  Unacknowledged in all the heated rhetoric about the need to retain mayoral control in its current form is that the Department of Education is the only city agency where the City Council has no real power to affect change – or to exert any counterbalance against damaging policies.  

Right now, the City Council can only influence education by passing bills to try to influence policy through more reporting and/or through the overall budget.  The members have no ability to pass legislation when it comes to school closings, charter schools, testing or any of the myriad issues that deeply affect NYC students. The provision of municipal, local control would be a good first step—and because of strong campaign finance laws in NYC it would be difficult for privateer billionaires to hijack Council elections as they have done in school board elections elsewhere, and in the case of the GOP- and IDC- controlled NY Senate. 

Yet the members of the City Council would have to speak up more strongly to gain this counter-balancing authority over the DOE and our schools.  And the State Legislature tends to be very proprietary about retaining their prerogatives over NYC schools, and all too willing to use it as a bargaining chip, as occurs each time mayoral control comes up for a vote.   

The worst outcome of all would be for the Mayor and the Democratic leadership in the Assembly to trade mayoral control for more charter schools or tuition tax credits, as the Governor and the Senate GOP and IDC leaders seem intent on trying to extort.  Let’s hope this doesn’t happen – make your calls now to your Legislators, if you haven’t yet done this already; more on how to do this here.

Mayoral Control Expiration -- What it Really Means

The state law dictating the governance of NYC schools expires on June 30th.  In the State Senate, Republicans and a rogue gang of Democrats calling themselves the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) are refusing to consider renewal until the Assembly agrees to create more charter schools in NYC.  In the political battle over privatization of our public schools, some have claimed the expiration of mayoral control will be catastrophic and put our kids at risk.

Ignore the fear mongering coming from many quarters, especially the mayor, on what the expiration of mayoral control means.

Here's what it really means:

Fewer mayoral appointees on central board

The central school board will go from thirteen members to seven.  This board was labeled "The Panel for Educational Policy" by Mike Bloomberg instead of "the Board of Education" but it's the same entity in the law, "the city board".  Each borough president will continue to appoint one member.  What changes is the mayor now gets only two appointees instead of eight.

In the current system the mayor selects the chancellor.  When the law reverts, the board has this power.  We already have a chancellor so the new board will likely just reaffirm her position.  There are few decisions made in the summer.  The big stuff happen later -- budgets are considered in the spring. The board will have to meet to approve contracts.

True, the new board composition allows less influence for the mayor and more for the borough presidents but keep in mind our current borough presidents -- Gale Brewer, Ruben Diaz Jr, James Oddo, Eric Adams and Melinda Katz -- are probably the most serious and level-headed set the city has ever seen.   In other words, there will be no chaos.

Less corruption

Proponents of mayoral control are warning of a dramatic increase in corruption.  What they ignore is the large scale corruption that has transpired under mayoral control.  The concentration of power in the mayor's appointees and corresponding decline in scrutiny of contracting has permitted corruption scandals far exceeding anything seen in "the bad old days".   For example, here's a trio of multi-million dollar scandals:  Future Technology Associates, Custom Computer Specialists and Champion Learning.  The balanced board will promote tighter scrutiny of spending and likely produce a reduction in this type of large-scale fraud.

Local school board elections

At some point the local school boards in each of the city's 32 districts will need to be elected.  Greater representation and agency for the members of the communities that rely on public education can only make it better, not worse.

The mayor should stop trying to sow fear amongst public school parents and students.   He should back the Assembly leadership that's willing to let the law expire rather than knuckle under to demands to hand over the people's schools to the privately controlled boards of the charter world.

- Patrick Sullivan
Manhattan Member NYC Board of Education (Panel for Educational Policy) 2007-2013

Take 5 minutes to help stop the expansion of privatization of education in NY State!

June 16, 2017

Only a few days are left in the NY legislative term, and the NY State Senate leadership and now Gov. Cuomo are pushing a deal to exchange the extension of Mayoral control in NYC for more charter schools and/or a tuition tax credit for religious and private schools.

One of the bills introduced in the Senate would extend mayoral control for five years while expanding charters & tax credits for private and religious schools. The other bills would offer one- or two-year extensions for more charters both statewide and in NYC.

Please take five minutes to call your Assemblymember and your State Senator TODAY, and tell them do not make any trade that would allow the further privatization of our schools and the diversion of precious education funds to private schools and charters.

Message to your Assemblymember: As your constituent, I want to thank you for holding tough against a deal to trade mayoral control in NYC with more charters or tuition tax credits – and please continue to do so. Can I count on your support? You can find his or her phone no. by filling in your info here.

Message to your State Senator: As a constituent, I want to strongly urge you to vote against any deal that would allow for the expansion of charters or a tuition tax credit for private and religious schools in exchange for extending mayoral control in NYC. Can I count on your support? You can find his or her phone no. here.

You can call either their Albany or district offices if the other phone is busy or not answering. Please also let me know how they or their staff responds by replying to this email.

Thanks so much, Leonie

PS A few seats are still available for our Skinny dinner Tuesday – but the room is almost full. If you want to come, please be sure to reserve your seat now!

Another Squandered Opportunity: Parents, Students and Educators Slam NYSED's Flawed ESSA Proposal

Lisa Rudley of NYSAPE interviewed by News12

See the article in The 74 about the Brooklyn hearings and the problems with the NYSED proposed accountability system.  News12 also carried our press conference before the hearings. See this oped by Nick Tampio about  how the proposed accountability system fails students.   

You can send your own comments on the proposed plan through June 16 by emailing ESSAComments@nysed.gov 
A few remaining hearings remain, including in Queens on June 10.  For more information visit the NYSED ESSA page here. 

The auditorium was nearly full at the New York State Education Department's ESSA hearings in Brooklyn last night; especially with students and teachers from the transfer schools, who spoke passionately about how their schools would be unfairly targeted for intervention given the current ESSA proposal to rate schools largely on their test scores, graduation rates, and attendance. 

Students from the S. Brooklyn Community HS, E. Brooklyn Community HS, James Baldwin, and Brooklyn Frontier, all transfer schools, plus Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning school, which like Baldwin is also a performance-based assessment school -- all testified about how these schools had literally saved their lives, but would be at risk of closure or radical disruption given all the challenges the students at  these "second chance" schools face.

Students from S. Brooklyn Community HS

The ESSA law specifically identifies for intervention any high school where fewer than two-thirds of students graduate. The regulations put out by former US Education Secretary King specified that this must be measured by the school's four-year graduation rate, and though those regs were luckily ditched by the Trump administration,  even if measured by their six-year rates plus attendance could doom NYC transfer schools and make them potential targets for intervention or closure.

This is because many students at transfer schools enter these schools undercredited after two or three years of high school or more.  Many also enroll students who must have part-time jobs to support themselves and their families, may have children themselves,  have recently come out of the criminal justice system, or suffer other life challenges that make a rigid assessments of school quality based on graduation rates or attendance unfair. 

One after another, students at spoke of how they had dropped out of large overcrowded NYC high schools where no one knew their name, and had finally found their way to transfer schools which had given them a second home, provided counseling and small classes with the attention they needed to learn,  and had put them on the road towards success.   

One student spoke to how she had come out of a psychiatric ward and had luckily found her way to the Brooklyn Community High school, which welcomed her, gave her the support she needed and now she's in college to become a counselor.  Another student said, "Wouldn't it be ironic if the Every Student Succeeds Act worked against allowing every student to succeed" by unfairly labeling his school as "failing" even as it had provided him the opportunities he needed to thrive.  Another student said, "I don't need to cite evidence for the value of transfer schools; I am the evidence right here.  My school works."

I spoke about how their testimony further revealed the need to measure schools by Opportunity to Learn factors -- including small classes, number of counselors, and a well-rounded education -- which all too few NYC schools now provide, with more than 350,000 students crammed into classes of 30 or more.  Not only would these factors more fairly judge the quality of these particular schools, but if the high schools in which these students were originally enrolled exhibited these qualities in the first place, perhaps these students wouldn't have dropped out.  My full testimony is here.

We would also save thousands more students who fail to graduate to this day or those who receive a second-class education which does not give them the instructional feedback and emotional support they need to succeed in college or career. Moreover, by including a range of factors rather than merely one or two high-stakes indicators, the state would lessen the risk that relying on any single factor would unfairly judge schools or cause them to "game" the system, by excluding or pushing out the neediest students.  As one of the transfer school principals said, if you judge our schools by these rigid metrics, you will be discouraging us from admitting the most at-risk students.

Many Brooklyn parents, including those from D15 Parents for Middle School Equity, also spoke about how rating schools in such a reductionist way may lead to even more inequities and segregation, as the indicators proposed by NYSED are intimately correlated with students' socio-economic status. Below is a video of Tracey Scronic, a Brooklyn parent and educator, making the point that the current ESSA proposal will discriminate against her ESL students. As she said, New York stands at a cross-roads and has the opportunity to lead and promote equity-- rather than further undermine schools and the disadvantaged students that they serve.

Under the video of Tracey is the NYSAPE/CSM press release we put out at the end of the evening, with quotes from parent leaders throughout the state, as well as Kelley Wolcott, a teacher at South Brooklyn Community High school.   It was an inspiring evening; let's hope the Commissioner and the Regents were listening! 



Tracey Scronic at ESSA hearings 6.6.17 from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

For immediate release: June 6,2017
Contact: Kemala Karmen 917-807-9969 | kemala@nycpublic.org

Brooklyn, NY—Frustrated public school parents, activists, and educators gathered in front of the Prospect Heights Education Complex this evening to protest the New York State Education Department’s new schools accountability proposal and the sham process that supposedly generated it. Inside the building, department officials were setting up for one of several hearings scheduled across the state in order to gain feedback on the proposal, which was created to comply with recent federal legislation.  

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is the successor legislation to the Bush-era No Child Left Behind (NCLB) bill. While ESSA preserves much of NCLB, including an onerous and misguided annual testing requirement for all children in grades 3-8, it also gives states more latitude in defining their school accountability systems than did NCLB, primarily through the inclusion of an additional “school quality indicator.”

For this reason, New York’s families and educators were looking forward to the state creating an accountability system that incentivized schools to provide children with a high quality, well-rounded education. ESSA also includes a statement that explicitly recognizes a parent’s right to opt their child out of testing without consequences for the school or district, a point that is crucial in a state where hundreds of thousands of parents have boycotted the tests as developmentally inappropriate and deleterious to their children’s educations.

Instead of benefiting from the flexibility of  the legislation, New York State Education Department, under Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, let down New York’s children, parents, educators, and schools, by submitting an accountability proposal for Board of Regents approval that squanders the  opportunities that ESSA confers. Its proposed accountability system doubles down on testing, counts opt out students as having failed the exams for the purpose of school accountability, and guarantees the continuation of narrowed test-prep curriculum that has spurred the nation’s largest test refusal movement.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and a member of the NYSED ESSA Think Tank’s Accountability work group, said, “Even though the largest number of people who responded to the NYSED survey wanted an Accountability system that would include elements of a well-rounded, holistic education providing the Opportunity to Learn, including small classes, and sufficient instruction in art, music, science and physical education, their input was ignored. Many schools in New York City and elsewhere have already narrowed the curriculum because of the over-emphasis on state exams.  Instead, NYSED proposes to add only a very few high-stakes indicators, such as student attendance and, in high school, access to advanced coursework.  This may have the unwanted effect of making schools offer even less art and music in favor of more AP courses. It is time that the State took account of what matters in providing children with a quality education.  This is their chance to do so by incorporating an Opportunity to Learning index in their formula.”

Johanna Garcia, NYC parent of public school students, contended that the proposal’s use of chronic absenteeism as the sole additional indicator for elementary and middle schools, along with test scores and ESL proficiency, meant that the accountability system would disproportionately punish high-poverty and high-immigrant school populations, while doing little to level the playing field among schools. “It is disheartening to see NYSED once again fail to take the opportunity to finally do right by students who have been ignored, penalized, and re-victimized by the very institution entrusted to lift them out of poverty. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that schools with high chronic absenteeism are suffering from concentrated numbers of homelessness, children in foster care, undocumented immigrant status, economic instability and special health and developmental needs. The proposed policies will further the inequities in our children’s education, while giving credence to the misconception that students from low income neighborhoods are less competent. This disconnect continues to be inexcusable and can no longer be accepted as the status quo.” 

Kelley Wolcott, a teacher at South Brooklyn Community High School, a transfer school that serves over-aged, under-credited students--at least a dozen of whom spoke movingly during the hearing about the lifesaving role the school played--agreed. "The proposed accountability measures would devastate our ability to serve the needs of diverse learners. For true accountability, the state needs to focus on and incentivize supplying the resources necessary for students to thrive, including small class sizes, less emphasis on high-stakes testing, fair funding, and a vastly reduced student-to-counselor ratio for students with a history of trauma. Very few schools in NYC still have nurses, let alone a real school-based support team. Without these things--and with the change in graduation requirements mandated by ESSA--we’ll see the destruction of the safety net provided by transfer schools for students who are pushed out of charter schools or drop out of large underfunded public schools where they are no more than an OSIS number." 

 Kemala Karmen, the parent of children who attend a 6-12 school in New York City, served on the Standards and Assessments work group of the Think Tank. “NYSED seemed intent on perpetuating the narrow strictures of NCLB. The nonpunitive plan (i.e., ask districts to analyze participation to ensure that students had not been systematically excluded, as per the intent of the law) that the majority of my work group proposed to address ESSA’s 95% testing participation mandate was rejected by the NYSED group leader who said it wouldn’t align with the Commissioner’s  expectations. This decision to reject the plan was not reflected in the official notes sent later. Leadership insisted that parents just needed to be ‘educated’ about the assessments, rather than acknowledging that the test refusal movement grew out of legitimate concerns with how testing is reshaping classrooms. Moreover, I couldn’t believe that research-based evidence was never shared or apparently considered during our deliberations.”

Jeanette Deutermann, Nassau county parent and founder of Long Island Opt Out, expressed particular consternation for the way that opt-out students will be figured into the accountability system. “It is clear that the option exists to leave opt out students out of the test score accountability formula. To choose instead, and arbitrarily, to count these students as having received low scores, solely for the purpose of rating schools, would make the entire  accountability system invalid. While we understand SED's temptation to discourage test refusals, accountability regulations will not change a parent's decision to protect their child from an unfair and unreliable testing regime.”

Eileen Graham, Rochester City School District parent advocate and founder of Black Student Leadership, sent a statement to be read: “Accountability needs to flow not only from the school to the state, but from the state to the schools. In order to succeed, the students of Rochester need the state to deliver well-resourced school facilities, prepared professional educators, and opportunities for teacher-created relevant curriculum. They should be ensuring that parents' voices are heeded and that capable leadership is at the helm. Regrettably, Commissioner Elia’s current ESSA proposal is just a continuation of the test-based accountability that we've had for decades and that has done little to lift Rochester City School District out of a state of educational emergency.”

Lisa Rudley, Ossining public school parent and founding member of NYSAPE, said, “As long as Commissioner Elia is steering the ship, the winds of discredited former Chancellor Tisch and NY Education Commissioner John King will remain. If real significant and meaningful change is going to occur, the Board of Regents needs to replace Elia with someone who represents what's in the best interest of the children. Otherwise, New York’s education policies will remain punitive and harmful to children and schools.”

New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) is a grassroots coalition with over 50 parent and educator groups across the state. Class Size Matters is a non-profit organization that advocates for smaller classes in NYC’s public schools and the nation as a whole.

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What the Trump budget cuts would do to class size and "priceless moments" in the classroom

Trump would cut $9 billion from education -- while transferring millions of dollars into private hands through the expansion of charter schools and vouchers.  His cuts could imperil NYC class sizes, already far too large.  The biggest proposed cut in education is the total elimination of nearly $2.3 billion of Title IIA funds.  Of those funds, $101 million come to NYC and are exclusively spent on reducing class size in the public schools, paying for the salaries of approximately 1000 classroom teachers. (The DOE spreadsheet is here.)

See below, a video interview with Katie Kurjakovic, a Queens teacher from PS 11,  who explains that the addition of one classroom teacher is able to reduce class size from about 32 to 25 across a grade at her school -- which makes all the difference in the world in being able to provide her ESL kids the attention they need.  She describes the "priceless moment" when she helped one of her 6 year old students learn how to read:

Why do educators make smaller class sizes their top wish?

It’s because of “the moments.” For every child who is added, I lose the ability to give all my students the moments they need with me. These are moments when the important work happens.

These are the moments when I sit next to John, one of my students. We tap out words together every day. Then the day finally arrives when he looks at me with his face shining and says, “I read that by myself!” It clicks, and he never stops reading.

More of the interview is here; and also see Diane Ravitch on the appalling impact of these cuts in an article called "The Demolition of American Education" in this month's NY Review of Books, explaining how, among other things, "The cuts to funds for reducing class sizes will have an immediate negative effect."  

As Ms.Kurjakovic says, "Based on its budget plan, this administration apparently just doesn’t care. But I do care, and so do my fellow teachers, so do their parents — and so does every child who has lost those moments they deserve to huge class sizes."