Why too many Renewal schools have failed to show results - a response to NEPC on community schools

Today Kevin Welner and Julia Daniel of NEPC wrote a piece for the Washington Post Answer Sheet defending NYC's Renewal program.  They made two points:  that schools alone cannot improve student outcomes, and that making any judgement about the success or failure of Renewal school program is premature.  

Though I usually agree with Kevin and the support the work of NEPC, I disagree with both of these points. The DOE's Renewal school program has wasted millions of dollars on high-priced consultants and "leadership coaches" making up to $1400 dollars a day.  Many of these consultants already earn six-figure pensions, and some had a history of scandal or mismanagement as administrators.  Much of this program has involved taking teachers out of the classroom for useless PD, making students take endless iReady tests, and spending lots of time and money on data dashboards etc. 

Moreover, the whole concept of community schools offering wraparound services, though of potential benefit to students, cannot be expected to improve results without seriously addressing classroom conditions at the same time.
As I pointed out in my testimony last year before the City Council, many of the Renewal schools still have extremely high class sizes despite repeated and explicit promises since 2014 from the NYC DOE to reduce them, as part of their Contracts for Excellence (C4E) plan  - a state law passed in 2007 that required NYC to be reducing class size in all grades. 

This is despite the fact that in our analysis, we found a strongly significant and negative correlation between Renewal school class sizes   and their positive impact on learning, as measured by DOE’s impact ratings on their school performance dashboard.  In other words, the smaller the class size, the more likely the Renewal school would have a positive impact, as measured by student achievement, attendance, and in high school, graduation rates, after controlling for their background and need level.

We have now updated our findings based on class sizes of the Renewal schools this fall, and sent them to DOE, as part of legally mandated C4E comment process last month.  More than one third, or 36 percent, of the remaining fifty Renewal schools have not reduced average class size by even a fraction of a student since 2014. Over that same period, fewer than half (48  percent) decreased average class size by one student or more. None of the Renewal schools capped class sizes this fall at the original C4E goals of 20 students per class in K-3, 23 in 4^th-8^th, and 25 in High school.  Nearly three quarters (74 percent) of these schools continue to have maximum class sizes of 30 or more.  Our comments are below.

In short, learning takes place in the classroom, and with class sizes of 30 or more, and teaching loads of 150 or more, it is extremely unrealistic to see how educators,  no matter how skilled, can reach struggling students -- regardless how many wrap-around services are provided. Until NYC and the nation as a whole makes focused efforts to lower class sizes all the way through high school, especially in our high-needs schools, it is simply wrong to assume that schools alone cannot improve results substantially for their students.  It is also wrong to assume that wrap-around services can magically substitute for equitable and optimal learning conditions.

____
December 31, 2018

To: ContractsForExcellence@schools.nyc.gov

The Contracts for Excellence (C4E) law passed in 2007 required NYC to lower class size in all grades, and yet class sizes are now substantially higher in all grades than when the law was first approved. The trend continues; DOE estimated that average class size citywide increased on average by 0.3 to 26.4 students per class this fall.

These increases in class size indicate that NYC is not in compliance with either the intent or the language of the C4E law, nor the decision of the state’s highest courts which in the CFE decision, concluded that NYC students were denied their constitutional right to a sound basic education because of excessive class sizes.

Indeed, according to NYSED data, class sizes in NYC public schools remain larger than in the rest of the state by 13% to 47% in all grade levels and subjects aside from pre-K, where class sizes are capped by state law.

As the research on the benefits of smaller classes is clear, especially for disadvantaged children and students of color, NYC’s excessive class sizes impose a huge inequity on its public school students. This is especially true because many studies show that smaller classes offer a host of academic and social- emotional benefits, leading to higher achievement, more student engagement and persistence, less teacher attrition, and improved graduation rates.[1]

Since 2014, the DOE officials have claimed in their Contract for Excellence (C4E) presentations and plans submitted to the State Education Department that they are “focusing” their efforts on reducing class size on the Renewal schools. For example, here is an excerpt from this fall’s C4E proposed plan:[2]

For the 2018-2019 school year, the DOE will continue its efforts to reduce class size, which is one of the allowable activities for which Contracts for Excellence funds may be spent, pursuant to the C4E legislation, in the following ways:

• Last year, NYCDOE focused on class size reduction in the Renewal School Program. These schools align well with the goals of Contracts for Excellence, as they serve students with the greatest educational needs, including students in poverty, students with disabilities, and students with limited English proficiency, and many of these schools are historically underperforming and have high class sizes.
• For the 2018-2019 school year, NYCDOE will continue to focus on the Renewal Schools in its class size reduction efforts.
  
  

Yet as we presented in our testimony last year to the City Council, in nearly half (or 42 percent) of Renewal Schools, there was no reduction in average class size from November014 to November 2017. [3] Of the Renewal Schools that did not reduce class size, the average increase in class size was more than two students per class, with some schools increasing class sizes significantly more than that. Even among those schools that did lower class sizes, 18 percent did so by less than one student per class on average. Not one of the Renewal schools capped class size at the levels in the DOE’s original C4E plan to be achieved citywide, that is, no more than 20 students per class in grades K-3, 23 students in 4^th-8^th grades and 25 students per class in high school. Worse yet, in 73 percent of the Renewal schools, maximum class sizes were 30 students or more.

We have now analyzed this fall’s class size data, which show that more than one third, or 36 percent, of the remaining fifty Renewal schools have not reduced average class size by even a fraction of a student since 2014. Over that same period, fewer than half (48 percent) decreased average class size by one student or more. None of the Renewal schools capped class sizes this fall at the original C4E goals, and again, nearly three quarters (74 percent) continue to have maximum class sizes of 30 or more.

The evident failure of the DOE to focus on reducing class size in these schools is also indicated by the form letter sent to parents with children at these schools. [4] Though the letter claims that “Every effort is being made to provide the highest quality instructional program to best meet the needs of your child,” no mention is made of smaller classes, which are key to providing a high-quality learning environment. Instead, the letter lists several different “interventions” including “partnerships between families, community-based organizations”, expanded learning time, vision testing, “enhanced curriculum,” teacher training, and new “data systems.”According to news reports, the DOE is now deciding whether to discontinue, phase out or revise the Renewal program for struggling schools, which is now in its fourth year and has shown “mixed” results in the eyes of most observers, after costing an estimated $750 million .[5]

It is profoundly disappointing that no real attempt has been made to improve the learning conditions at the Renewal schools through class size reduction. Indeed, our analysis last year showed that there was a significant negative correlation between average class sizes at Renewal schools, and the quality of these schools, as measured by their impact scores on the DOE performance dashboard. [6]

Impact scores as calculated by DOE measure achievement, attendance, and in high schools, graduation rates, while attempting to control for student background and need level.[7] This significant correlation provides evidence that the smaller the class sizes, the more likely Renewal schools have improved student outcomes .

NYC and NYS should address this fundamental injustice, by ensuring that class sizes are lowered in all NYC public schools, but particularly for struggling students at the Renewal schools to provide them with the best chance of success.

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director

---

[1] https://www.classsizematters.org/research-and-links/

[2] Though the presentation is dated August 2018, but has been revised since then and the latest version is dated Nov. 20, 2018 according to the properties tab.  https://infohub.nyced.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/fy19_c4e_cec_ppt_08-15-18_final.pptx?Status=Temp&sfvrsn=99a6d67b_4

[3] https://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Renewal-Schools-Testimony-Final-2.27.18.pdf

[4] https://infohub.nyced.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/sy18_19pnletter_titleifocusschools_renewal_final08-09-18

[5] https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/12/06/nyc-will-keep-key-aspects-of-renewal-schools-indefinitely-even-as-the-turnaround-program-nears-end/

[6] https://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Renewal-Schools-Testimony-Final-2.27.18.pdf

[7] https://tools.nycenet.edu/dashboard/ 

Why parents should apply to run for their Community or Citywide Council -- despite the limitations of that role

Elections for District Community Education Councils and Citywide Councils will be held this spring, with the application process starting next month on Feb. 14.  Serving on these Councils is often frustrating as they have very little power other than advisory - and even the advice they give is often ignored. 

As Deb Alexander, the co-President of CEC 30, pointed out a recent Queens town hall meeting, when CECs pass resolutions on important policy questions, they are completely ignored by the Mayor and Chancellor and don't even get a response.  At the meeting, De Blasio then said someone at DOE would now be charged with responding to CEC resolutions - this after almost six years of failing to do so.  

Deb also pointed out that no CEC member was appointed by him to the advisory committee on the Amazon headquarters in Long Island City - despite extreme school overcrowding in the neighborhood, and the fact that two potential school sites were given to Amazon for their new headquarters, without any consultation with neighborhood residents. The Mayor then said he would add a CEC member -- but the fact that this never occurred to him in the first place is emblematic of the lowly position that CECs and parents in general appear to have in his overall scheme of things.

When he initially ran for Mayor, De Blasio also made specific promises that if elected, his appointees on the Panel for Educational Policy would have to refer specifically to the positions of CECs on school closings or co-locations in their districts before voting on whether to approve them.  He wrote this in 2013 on the NYC Kids PAC survey: "The Panel for Educational Policy must address the PEP's vote on major school utilization changes in their PEP meetings. They must state why they disagree with the local CEC and work with the local CEC for alternative solutions." 

Nothing of the sort has happened, and again, despite all the claims of this administration, little attention has been given to parent or community input in these decisions, or other controversial policies. The one power that CECs assuredly have by state law is to approve changes in school zoning lines -- and even then, that authority is often ignored by the DOE when they want to close a zoned school, which in the case of PS 25 in District 16, has prompted a lawsuit.  

All in all, it is not surprising to discover  that 31 out of 36 Councils do not have their full compliment of members currently, according to the DOE website, given the lack of respect they have been given by the last two administrations.  Perhaps this is one reason why the Education Council Consortium, the organization consisting of CEC and Citywide Council leaders, wants to put limits on the unilateral system of mayoral control. 

Nevertheless, serving on your CEC or a Citywide Council is important, and I urge parents to apply.  Often, members are given briefings by DOE and thus informed of policies before others hear about them.  In some cases, as in the diversity initiatives undertaken by CEC 1 and CEC 15, they can help shape the plans of the administration, especially when they are in general agreement with the Mayor's goals.  They also have a potential impact in organizing parents in the district to lobby local elected officials to site and build new schools in the district, to help ease overcrowding.  Many CEC members have been important in advocating for better policies.  We have been pressing for CECs to have a formal advisory role in the city planning process, similar to Community Boards currently.  And if Mayoral control is amended in the next legislative session, their role in school governance may indeed be enhanced.  

More reasons to join these Councils are articulated by Camille Casaretti, President of CEC 15, in the message below.   You can apply here starting Feb. 14; deadline March 19.

-------

District 15 Families,

A VERY Happy New Year to you all! 

As you consider your goals for this New Year, I would like to offer this exciting opportunity.

The 2019 CEC Elections are upon us and will be officially announced in January. The application period will open on February 14.

As an involved and engaged community member, you should consider running for a seat on the D15 Community Education Council. You come to the meetings, you read the emails, you want to learn about how the system works and how you can help. You volunteer in your child's school, you led a team. You got this too!

If you have the time and passion to fight for public education, and you are prepared to take on a leadership role in our District to advocate for our 35 school communities, fill out that application when it arrives at your inbox. You're going to get the information from us and you'll get it from the DOE as well if you are signed up on their mailing list. Sign up now and check off Updates for Parents and Families.

The impact and value CECs bring to the communities they represent is immeasurable. But there's more to it. You get something for your family, too! When your own child sees you in action you are teaching them a lesson in civic engagement, a lesson on giving back to the community, and a lesson in caring about others. 

Come to one of our January Meetings and talk to your CEC15 school liaison about why they ran. You may find you have similar reasons. Ask them what they love about being a CEC member and what drives them crazy. It isn't always perfect.

Flyers will be coming soon with more information. You have time to think about it. If you have questions, please contact the DOE’s Office of Family and Community Empowerment (FACE) about the CEC Elections at Elections2019@schools.nyc.gov or at 212-374-1936.

Wishing you all the best in 2019!

Camille

***************************************************************************

Estimadas Familias del Distrito 15,

Estamos muy contentos de compartir con ustedes que las Elecciones de CEC 2019 ya están a punto de comenzar y será anunciado oficialmente en enero.  El plazo pare solicitar una aplicación comenzará el 14 de febrero.  

Como miembro involucrado y comprometido de la comunidad, usted debe considerar postularse para un asiento en el Consejo de Educación Comunal Distrito 15.  Viene a las reuniones, lee los correos electrónicos, quiere aprender sobre como el sistema trabaja y como usted puede ayudar.  Es voluntario en la escuela de su hijo(a), usted dirigió un equipo.  ¡Usted puede con esto también!

Si tiene el tiempo y la pasión para luchar por la educación pública, y está preparado(a) para asumir un papel de liderazgo en nuestro Distrito para abogar por nuestras 35 comunidades escolares, complete esa solicitud cuando llegue a su buzón electrónico.  Obtendrá la información de nosotros y también la recibirá del Departamento de Educación si está registrado(a) en su lista de correo electrónico.   ¡Regístrese ahora y marque Updates for Parents and Families (Últimas Noticias para Padres y Familias)!

El impacto y el valor que los Consejos de Educación Comunal (CEC) de la ciudad traen a las comunidades que ellos representan es inmenso.  Pero hay más que eso.  ¡También obtiene algo para su familia!  Cuando su propio(a) hijo(a) lo ve a usted en acción, le está enseñando una lección sobre participación cívica, una lección sobre cómo devolver a la comunidad y una lección sobre cómo preocuparse por los demás.

Asista a una de nuestras reuniones de enero y hable con su enlace escolar de CEC15 sobre por qué se postularon para un puesto en el CEC.  Podrá darse cuenta que tienen razones similares.  Pregúntele qué le gusta de ser un miembro del CEC y qué los vuelve locos.  No es siempre perfecto.

Los folletos llegarán prontos con más información.  Tiene tiempo para pensarlo.  Si tiene alguna pregunta, comuníquese con la Oficina de Empoderamiento Familiar y Comunitario (the Office of Family and Community Empowerment), o mejor conocido como FACE, del Departamento de Educación a  Elections2019@schools.nyc.gov o al 212-374-1936. 

¡Deseandoles lo mejor!

Camille Casaretti

Presidente del CEC15

Educators - please join us for a free webinar on Jan. 20 - how to protect your students' data and your own!

A few weeks ago, it was reported that the personal information of 500,000 San Diego students, former students and school staff was exposed in a massive breach. At about the same time, education institutions and organizations were rated as the worst sector for cybersecurity in a 2018 report.
We invite you to join us for a short webinar on Jan. 20, with important tips on how teachers and district/school staff members can better protect their students’ privacy of and their own.

We will be offering guidance along with Marla Kilfoyle of the Badass Teachers Association from our  Educator Toolkit for Teacher and Student Privacy, released this fall. Educators will receive a certificate of participation. Don’t miss out! Space is limited!

When? Sunday, January 20 from 6-7 PM EST (3-4 PST). We’re saving lots of time for questions!
How? Sign up here – it’s free!


We hope to see you on the 20th.

Leonie Haimson  and Rachael Stickland
Co-Chairs, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
www.studentprivacymatters.org

New Yorkers Demand the Board of Regents & NYSED return the Gates Foundation grant

We earlier wrote about  this controversial Gates Foundation grant here.  As parents & educators, we demand that the Board of Regents and NYS Education Department give back the misguided “grant” from the Gates Foundation and instead listen to the voices of parents and other stakeholders. To send a letter to the Regents click here.

Last month, NY Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia asked the Board of Regents to approve a new $225,000 grant from the Gates Foundation for enhanced communication efforts around the standards, testing and data collection --  to convince parents that State Ed is on the right track in all these areas. The Board voted 14 - 2 to approve this grant, with only Regents Cashin and Ouderkirk voting no and Regent Johnson was absent.

The Gates Foundation has  been behind some of the most controversial -- and unsuccessful -- education policies in history, including persuading states to adopt the Common Core standards, evaluate teachers based on test scores, and expand the collection and disclosure of highly personal student information as part of its $100 million dollar inBloom project.  

Luckily, New York parents and educators across the state defeated inBloom, but the state is still planning to expand its collection of student data from early childhood through college.  The new standards that NYSED has developed are still developmentally inappropriate and little different from the Common Core and there is still too much emphasis on flawed high-stakes testing.

Moreover, NYSED has failed to enforce the state student privacy law, passed in 2014 in the wake of the controversy over inBloom -- though the legal deadline for implementation was more than four years ago.  Meanwhile, NYSED’s own data system has been audited twice by the NYS Comptroller, and found to be highly insecure and vulnerable to breaches.

Please take action and DEMAND that the Board of Regents return the Gates funds and instead of trying to hoodwink us into accepting State Ed’s flawed policies, include parents in authentic decision-making on all issues affecting our children, including standards, teacher evaluation, and privacy. The State Education Department should also be barred from any effort to expand student data collection until the 2014 student privacy law has been fully enforced and the State's own data system made secure.  To send a message, click here.

How corporate reformers have become embedded in the Office of District Planning

Recently Stacie Johnson, a sharp-eyed NYC parent, pointed out to me in an email how the DOE Office of District Planning (originally the Office of Portfolio Planning) is populated by many administrators who were formerly associated with charter schools.  She wrote:

I was planning to reach out to someone about enrollment at my daughter's school and came across the name of a few people in DOE's strategic planning department and noticed a trend. It seems like the people who are in charge of planning, at least in my area, are all coming from a Teach for America and/or Charter School background. I've read about how the TFA and their affiliate Leaders for Educational Equity (LEE) are working to infiltrate their members into elected and policy positions, but I didn't realize this was so pervasive in Brooklyn. Is this news to you?

I hadn’t noticed this but decided to look into it.

District Planning was originally called the Office of Portfolio Planning under Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein, and was headed at various times by officials who, after a short stint of teaching,  jumped onto the fast track towards power and influence.  Two former heads of Portfolio Planning were John White (now State Superintendent of Louisiana) and Marc Sternberg (now head of Education for the Walton Family Foundation.)  Their main qualifications for this job seemed to be able to portray no emotion during contentious and emotional public hearings, when teachers, students and parents begged them not to close their schools or force them into smaller spaces because of co-locations.

The office was created to pursue the portfolio model  of school improvement, first developed by Paul Hill of the Gates-funded Center for Reinventing Public Education.  It is based on the notion that parents should be given a wide “choice” of different types of schools, including charters and district public schools.  The district will then decide which schools should be closed depending on their test scores, parent demand,  or enrollment, with other schools created to take their place, many of them privately-run charter schools, in a process of continual change  and disruption, like the buying and selling stocks in an investment portfolio.   

There is much controversy as to this strategy’s effectiveness and rationale, as can be seen in a recent debate between Linda Darling-Hammond  of the Learning Policy Institute and Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education.

After Bill de Blasio was elected Mayor, and Carmen Farina appointed Chancellor, they changed the name of the office to District Planning, presumably because de Blasio had promised to focus his efforts on improving the public schools under his control, rather than closing them and encouraging charters to take their place. Yet school closings and charter co-locations continue under his watch, if at a somewhat slower pace than under the previous administration.

The Office of District Planning, according to its homepage, is supposed to create “annual strategic plans for all 32 Community School Districts through ongoing conversations with input from school communities and stakeholders.” In general, they analyze and help decide which schools should be closed and which buildings can be used to co-locate additional schools. 

To help determine sites for co-locations, they create an annual list of schools that have “underutilized space” and an annual report on “overutilized space” that the office began to produce after the DOE was revealed by a 2014 audit by the NYC Comptroller not to have any actual plan to alleviate school overcrowding.   (The latest version of this report still shows that there has been little or no progress in this area since then, as there were 720 overcrowded schools out of 1,749 schools in In the 2016-2017 school year, and 54 overcrowded high schools were still forced to have split sessions.) 

Another key responsibility of District Planning is to respond to the requests of charter schools looking for space in DOE buildings.  On its homepage it includes a request form:.

“State Education Law provides certain new and expanding charter schools with access to facilities.  Charter schools requesting space in a DOE facility, must fill out the Charter School Space Request Form.” 

Given how these officials oversee the response to charter school requests for space in public school buildings, it would be concerning if many of them came from the charter school sector.

After I received the email from Stacie, I discovered fairly quickly that many of the current DOE administrators in District Planning are alumni of a training program run by an organization called Education Pioneers.  On its website, Education Pioneers lists NYC Department of Education as a “partner” since 2006. 

One of the “fellows” they prominently list from the class of 2010 is Yael Kalban, Executive Director of  the NYC DOE Office of District Planning, whose bio shows that she has steadily risen through the ranks at DOE since working as a TFA recruit in the Bronx.  Here she is quoted in a story about Teach For America in the NY Times from 2005:

… Yael Kalban, who helped organize campus recruiting as a senior at Yale last year and now teaches second grade in the Bronx, said that even a two-year commitment was daunting to many of her classmates.

"We'd tell people we thought they'd be great, and they'd say they didn't know if they were ready to commit two years," she said. "So we would get alums to come in and say they'd done Teach for America, and now they were in medical school, law school or architecture school, and that those two years weren't that much, and had actually helped them get into those schools."

Yael went from teaching for two years to working in the Leadership Learning Support Organization  (remember those?) to becoming Director of Portfolio Planning under Marc Sternberg.  She then headed Portfolio Planning briefly until it was renamed District Planning in June 2014, and still runs the division as its as its Executive Director.

Here is an article from EdWeek about Education Pioneers, which was founded by Scott Morgan, formerly legal counsel of Aspire, a chain of charter schools based in California.  The organization selects and trains bright young professionals over the course of a few days, before placing them in internships and educational management positions:

Applications to Education Pioneers, a nonprofit group that brings high-performing leaders—particularly those from outside education—into K-12 administrative internships, are rising steadily, putting the 10-year-old organization in line to follow in the footsteps of other nontraditional talent recruiters such as Teach For America. …

Education Pioneers places early-career professionals in paid noninstructional leadership and management internships—such as administrative, analytic, and operational positions—in a variety of education-related organizations, such as charter schools, educational technology companies, school districts, and support organizations. The average fellow comes with about five years of professional experience….

The fellows complete a two-day training session introducing them to some of the big-picture challenges in education, plus five full-day workshops with their cohort to focus on such topics as education technology or human capital in education. They also receive one-on-one coaching throughout the program to evaluate their progress.

Seventy percent of fellows continue to work in education-related jobs after finishing the program, a recent survey indicates….Some of the major funders include the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. …

In 2011, the organization received $7.6 Million from the Gates Foundation to “Increase the Leadership Pipeline in K-12” and  “help attract top-notch professionals for careers in public education leadership positions.  The grant announcement described the sort of work that these individuals would focus upon:

This award showcases the emerging trend of attracting and placing more talented professionals into education leadership positions-a priority that was until recently overlooked.  The selected individuals will use their unique skills and prior work experience on projects such as using student-level data to pinpoint areas for teacher intervention, analyzing data and researching best practices to improve curriculum and instruction, developing a strategic plan for a teacher evaluation pilot, and rigorous classroom observation protocols to provide meaningful feedback to teachers. Other projects include expansion plans for quality charter schools that have proven academic success.

A 2014 report, co-authored by the Harvard Business School, the Boston Consulting Group and the Gates Foundation, entitled Lasting Impact: A Business Leader's Playbook for Supporting America's Schools, praised the organization, claiming that Education Pioneers has “funneled hundreds of highly skilled data analysts into districts and state agencies to enable a culture of data-driven decision making.”

(On the same page, the authors described the Gates-funded teacher evaluation initiative in Hillsborough County in Florida as having “improved their teacher development processes by relying much more on data to recruit, train, and retain effective teachers.”  Yet a multi-year RAND evaluation showed how that effort led to near-bankruptcy for the district, resulted in lower achievement rates and less access to effective teachers for low-income and minority students.)

After a bit of searching on LinkedIn, I found the following staffers at District Planning who came through the Education Pioneers pipeline:

Max Familian, Director of District Planning for Brooklyn North and Staten Island, who before that, worked at Community Roots Charter School for several years.

Theodore (T.R.) Pearson, Associate Director of District Planning for Queens.

Will Candell, Associate Director of District Planning (formerly TFA and Leadership for Education Equity – theTFA-linked organization)

Sarah Turchin, who now works in preK expansion and previously was a Director of District Planning.

Yet the staff at District Planning doesn’t seem to be entirely limited to alumni of Education Pioneers, at least according to their Linkedin profiles.  Here are other current District Planning officials who came out of TFA and the charter school sector:

Jamie Dollinger, Senior Director of District Planning (formerly TFA and Achievement First charters)
Michael O'Gorman, Associate Director of Planning (formerly TFA and KIPP charters)

Jess Meller, Director of District Planning (formerly of Uncommon Charter schools and a member of “National Charter Schools Professional Networking” )

Kelly Krag-Arnold, Associate Director of Planning (Formerly TFA and Leadership for Education Equity)

There are other DOE offices which also pull from the Education Pioneers program, such as the Office of School Enrollment, whose First Deputy is Gabrielle Ramos-Solomon.  She was a Broad Foundation resident as well, a more publicized training program for incipient corporate reformers. Before coming to DOE, she headed the Newark Office of Student Enrollment, where she instituted a controversial common enrollment system. According to Chalkbeat, Ms. Ramos-Solomon left Newark schools  last November, when a new Superintendent took over, selected by their newly empowered elected school board.

 She oversaw the universal enrollment system, called “Newark Enrolls,” which lets families apply to most of the city’s traditional, magnet, and charter schools using a single application. After a chaotic launch that outraged many parents, the system today gets high marks on user surveys. Yet it remains controversial among critics of charter schools who view it little more than a ploy to funnel students into the privately managed schools.

 The common enrollment system has been pushed hard by the Gates Foundation through their Gates district-charter compacts and CRPE, and was considered for adoption by the de Blasio administration in 2015, according to FOILed emails.  .

In all, the Education Pioneers website reports that the NYC Department of Education has hired 202 Fellows over the years, and currently has 65 alumni on staff, including but not limited to staffers at DOE’s Division of Early Childhood Education, Division of Human Capital, Research and Evaluation, and many others. Among the various projects that they are described of having worked on are promoting the use of technology in schools – another Gates Foundation priority – and a communications strategy to improve the charter schools’ “engagement” with parents and communities:

Assessed business practices of technologically advanced schools, wrote case studies, and developed a communications plan for principals around technology practices to create 21st century-ready schools. 

Developed an external relations strategy for the Charter School Accountability & Support team to help families navigate their options while improving charter school engagement within NYC communities. 

All this suggests that the corporate reform/charter school adherents have successfully embedded the higher echelons of several divisions of DOE, even under an administration that ran for office as being less charter-friendly than Bloomberg administration.  Indeed, many of these individuals appear to dominate the primary office that’s supposed to deal with critical issues that will determine the future of the entire school system: overcrowding, space utilization and charter school co-locations.