The Chancellor says no final decision has yet been made on the issue of providing student information to charters for marketing purposes

More on this fast-developing if infuriating story in the Daily News here.

This morning at Tweed, Chancellor Carranza spoke about his opposition to the long-standing DOE practice of allowing charter schools to use the DOE mailing lists.  He said no final decision has yet been made to change this practice– contrary to what reporters had already been told about this as late as last night and parents this morning.  He asked for parents to make their voices heard about whether they wanted this practice to continue or not.

For more on this issue, see our press release here, with quotes from parent leaders, which among other things points out that DOE is the ONLY school district in the country that provides this info to charters voluntarily, helping them recruit their students, take their space and their funding, which is now costing our schools more than $2.1 billion per year.  See also Diane Ravitch's blog, which hypothesizes that the Mayor chickened out when the news leaked out prematurely and he got blowback from the wealthy and powerful charter lobby.

Grace Lovaglio streamed Carranza's remarks to CPAC on Facebook live.  He addressed the student privacy and charter school recruitment issue for about ten minutes at 36.25 minutes in.  A rough transcript of his remarks follows:

Carranza says that he has not gone to any parent meetings where he has not heard about the “predatory nature” of charters and all the mailings.   He tells the story of one parent who told him that only one of her children not to get the mailings is the one who tested gifted and not the ones w/ IEPs.  The Mayor has spoken that this is not okay. …now somehow this has become that the district is going to cut this off. I cannot speak to whether or not this is going to happen.

The charter organizations are going to the media saying that this is unfair….I want parents to have all the info they need to make an informed decision. I do not believe that it is  the responsibility of the DOE to provide this info to charters and help in some cases to  destroy our public schools.

Then he talks about co-located charters with millions in private funding to ramp up their programs…. So they should use some of those millions to do your own recruitment.

It’s a fundamental fairness issue, I cannot tell you what’s going to happen.  If parents feel strongly about that it is not ok and that your child’s personal info  should not be subject to corporate charter organizations out to recruit your kids, this  should not be painted as big bad mayor or big bad chancellor wants to take away parent choice. [clapping]

Important that parent voices I’ve heard all across the city are speaking up about how you feel about this issue. It’s going to be critically important now is the time as conversations are already happening.  What we’re going to release about supervision we are going to do and about access. . We are not announcing anything today…But the conversation should absolutely start today.

A parent says something…

Then Carranza talks about asking for possibly requiring affirmative parent consent –I’ve heard from parents, the mayor has heard from parents.  I have to get on a call about this very issue….

Parent asks a question about schools and funding –

A lot of issues.  I want to speak transparently, unvarnished.  I personally as an educator I’m not  anti-charter b/c I can’t tell you that every one of 1800 schools I’d be comfortable sending my child to, but that drives me every day to make sure they are.  But how can I support any system structure or practice that denigrates the very work we’re trying to -  how can I help someone load up a moving van and give him the gas for the van and steal my furniture.

I have responsibility as chancellor of DOE to call this out.  But what you’re going to hear, they’re going to characterize this that I’m fighting with charter schools and its going to get  personal that I’m trying to destroy charters.  That doesn’t bother me but what bothers me is this… is that it gets confused.

When I’m in Harlem and D3 and they show me how they’re doing the hard work to improve their schools and recruiting families and yet about the saturation of charters in that district, we fight it in Albany but Suny approves it.  At some point you have to take care of your own..

[parent, says that’s right, finally, finally]

Parent Grace Lovaglio ends the session by saying to her phone: Thank you so much! You heard it heard first that the charter school issue is going to be addressed finally after years of abuse and getting funds…getting student info because Bloomberg sold out. I’m just so happy that Chancellor going to address this issue.

Public school parents and advocates relieved that their family’s information will no longer be used to help charters market their schools

Though DOE told parents they had decided to stop this practice of giving charter schools access to student information to help them market and recruit students, the DOE spokesperson said this morning that this decision was "tabled".   For more on what the Chancellor said today about this issue at a CPAC meeting,  see our blog here.

For immediate release: April 11, 2019

For more information contact: Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329; leoniehaimson@gmail.com

Public school parents and advocates relieved that their family’s information will no longer be used to help charters market their schools

This morning, parents and advocates thanked the Mayor and Chancellor for finally reversing the long-standing practice of allowing charter schools to access their family’s information for mailings sent to their homes for marketing and recruiting purposes.

Said Johanna Garcia, public school parent and President of Community Education Council in District 6 in Upper Manhattan:  “It is unconscionable that this practice has gone on as long as it has.  For more than a decade, parents and advocates have complained about the privacy violations incurred by DOE allowing charters to access our children’s personal information without our consent; I filed a  FERPA complaint to the US Department of Education about this practice in November 2017.  Moreover, I am not aware of another school district in the country that voluntarily makes this information available to charter schools to help them boost their enrollment, diverting students and funding from our public schools.  “

Nequan McLean, co- chair of the Education Council Consortium and the President of Community Education Council in District 16 Brooklyn said: “The DOE never had our permission in the first place to allow charter schools to access this personal information. As a result,  I along with other parents. have been routinely inundated with two or three charter mailings a week, and our district has been overrun by charter schools.  These charter schools are allowed to flood black and brown communities with their promotional materials, often full of exaggerations and lies, that the public schools cannot afford.” 

Shino Tanikawa, the co-chair of the ECC and a member of NYC Kids PAC, said, “For years, DOE has ignored parents’ complaints about this practice, which started in 2006, when Joel Klein agreed to help Success Academy charter schools expand their “market share” as Eva Moskowitz put it in an email.  The result is that this year, more than two billion dollars has been diverted from our public schools, leaving our schools with less space and less funding for our neediest students.” 

Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, pointed out: “In Chicago, after student information was disclosed to Noble charter schools without parent consent, resulting in parents receiving postcards urging them to enroll their children in their schools, this sparked a huge controversy and led to an investigation by the city’s Inspector General.  As a result, the Chicago staffer who released the information to Noble was fired and the district apologized to parents in mailings paid for by Noble.  And this occurred in a city where the Mayor controls the schools and is charter-friendly. Right now, Nashville school district is defying a state law requiring districts to make parent contact information available to charter schools, and last week appealed a court order to do so.  NY State has no such law, and in fact, the New York state student privacy law Education 2D bars the use of student data for marketing purposes.”

Naomi Pena, parent of four public school children and President of Community Education Council in District 1 in the Lower East Side, said: “For years, I along with other public school parents have been subjected to glossy flyers from charter schools, which have received millions of dollars from hedge fund billionaires to help them advertise in this way – though we never consented to our information being used for this purpose.  Charter schools are also able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on social media buys, TV and radio ads, and to plaster their posters all over our subway, to boost their enrollment and waiting lists.  Meanwhile, our public schools don’t have the funding to promote themselves in this way.  This is an unfair advantage, and though I’m glad the Mayor and the Chancellor have finally decided to stop helping them market their schools to the detriment of our public schools, I only wish they had stopped this prior and not after this year’s deluge of charter mailings that I and so many other parents received.”   

###

Will the Mayor and the Chancellor allow the School Siting Task Force to comply with Open meetings law, or insist on keeping their deliberations private?

Update 5/619: After the City Comptroller Scott Stringer sent a letter urging the DOE to comply with Open meetings law and allow members of the public to attend these meetings, Chancellor Carranza and SCA President Grillo responded in a letter today, saying the public be would be allowed to do so, though they didn't agree that they were obligated to do so.  Thanks to Comptroller Stringer and Robert Freeman of the NYS Committee on Open Government who wrote the advisory guidance saying these meetings are indeed subject to Open Meetings Law because the task force was a public body created by city law. 

In City Limits, Jarrett Murphy reports on the continuing lack of transparency of Mayor de Blasio and this administration.  Freedom of Information requests take months, sometimes years to be responded to.  Meetings of public bodies are closed when they should be open.

In January 2015, we were forced to sue Chancellor Farina and the NYC Department of Education to keep School Leadership Team meetings open to the public.  When Farina decided to close these meetings, we intervened in a lawsuit to keep them open, along with Public Advocate Letitia James, and our pro bono attorneys Advocates for Justice and NY Lawyers for Public Interest.  When we won in the Supreme Court in April 2015, Chancellor Farina still insisted on keeping these meetings closed, and appealed the decision to the Appellate Court.

We eventually eventually succeeded in our lawsuit in October 2016, in a unanimous decision of the Appellate court, but only after Farina had effectively kept these meetings private for nearly two years.

Now there is a new example of the Mayor and his administration to keep private what should be public.  This fall, the City Council passed Local Law 168, to create a School Siting Task Force that would include representatives from several city agencies and government bodies, including the DOE, the City Council, City Planning and the School Construction Authority.  This Task Force is supposed to meet and come up with a report by July 31 about how the city can more quickly acquire sites for new schools to alleviate school overcrowding.

This is a crucial issue, because in many cases, twenty years or more have lapsed because of the apparent inability of the SCA and the DOE to find sites, even when the neighborhood schools are at 120% or more.  This happened in Sunset Park Brooklyn before parents, members of the community and CM Carlos Menchaca became involved in pushing for new schools and identifying appropriate sites.

The SCA itself has very few people on staff and only four real estate companies citywide on retainer tasked with this assignment, and we've been told that they never "cold call" or reach out to owners to see if they might consider selling their properties before they are put up for sale, even though this is the best way to acquire sites for development in the hot NYC real estate market.

As I said last week to a Queens Courier reporter writing about Councilmember Holden's plan to get a new high school built in Maspeth, nearly the only way public schools get built in NYC is for parents and local elected officials to find available sites and then advocate like mad for them to be acquired. 

After I heard that the School Siting task force had already met once in secret, I solicited an advisory opinion from Robert Freeman, the Executive Director of the NY State Committee on Open Government.  He confirmed my view that because the task force was created by law, it is a public body subject to Open Meetings Law.  See his letter below.  NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer has also written to Chancellor Carranza and other city officials in support of opening these meetings to the public. His letter is below Freeman's

Yet even after I had shared the opinion from the Committee on Open Government with members of the School Siting Task Force, I heard second-hand that the NYC Corporation Council was holding firm that these meetings should remain private.

Now, in response to City Limit's query, the DOE apparently is reconsidering this position:

A spokesman for the DOE told City Limits, “We are committed to continue partnering with parents and community on this issue, and are exploring how to best solicit input moving forward.”
The agency says it is reviewing whether or not the law requires opening the meetings to the public. If so, those deliberations puzzle Haimson. “This is really a no-brainer,” she says. After all, there’s not a lot of time left to meet: “The report of the task force is due in July.”

Given the acute nature of school overcrowding, with more than half a million students crammed into schools that are at or over capacity, one would think that the officials would welcome public attention, input and support to help solve this ongoing crisis.  Chancellor Carranza himself speaks frequently about wanting to "listen" to parents and "empower" them, but this is impossible if they don't even know what is being discussed behind closed doors.

NY Chancellor & NYSED Commissioner tell districts & schools to honor parental right to opt out

On social media, public school teachers have shared horror stories about children taking many hours to complete the excessively long, arduous untimed NY ELA exams this week. Stories of children frustrated with glitches in the computer-based tests, and losing their work because of the inability of Questar for the second year in a row to deal with the internet traffic are also widespread.

Parents at schools throughout the state have revealed how their children have been offered bribes and threatened  with punishment to try to compel them to take these exams. Nevertheless, 46% of eligible students opted out on Long Island, according to a preliminary figures published by Newsday.

Now this morning, Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa and Commissioner MaryEllen Elia released a statement instructing schools and districts to honor parents' rights to opt out of these exams.

Here it is:

Spread the word, and please share this information with other parents as well as your principals and district superintendents. 

Widespread problems with state exams once again; should Questar be ditched?

Spongebob Panic GIF from Spongebob GIFs

gif h/t Chris Cerrone

Widespread problems with the computer-based state testing are being reported throughout the state today. This affected fifth graders in about nine NYC schools according to Pat Willens of WNYC.

In the morning, the NYS Education Department advised schools not to start students on computer-based testing today if they hadn't already begun to do so:

Good Afternoon,

    Here is a statement on the Computer Based Grades 3-8 ELA Assessments that can be attributed to Emily DeSantis, Spokesperson for the Department: “Questar's computer-based testing system experienced delays at some schools this morning. We are in contact with schools across the state and are keeping them informed. Despite these intermittent delays this morning, more than 60,000 test sessions have already been submitted today. All student data is automatically saved on the local device. We are advising schools that have not yet started testing today to have students begin tomorrow. We have a nine-day testing window to allow flexibility for all CBT users to have the best testing experience.”

Later in the day, they put out this statement:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 2, 2019

STATEMENT FROM EMILY DESANTIS, EDUCATION DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON

In light of reports of Computer Based Testing (CBT) technical difficulties from the field, NYSED has designated tomorrow as a CBT non-testing day. Therefore, there will be no CBT testing tomorrow. 

NYSED expects seamless administration of its CBT program and we will use this time to work with Questar to ensure the system will operate smoothly when CBT resumes. In addition, NYSED will work with schools to provide guidance on how to resolve outstanding issues with today’s CBT administration.

We thank our districts and schools for their incredible support and patience as we work through these issues.

Questar reports more than 84,000 testing sessions were submitted today. Questar has dispatched additional staff around the state to provide technical assistance to schools.

To provide additional flexibility to schools, NYSED has extended the testing window for CBT ELA.

According to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, "In an emergency conference call with state assessment directors, department officials described the problem as "essentially an overload of students across the state seeking to submit their e-assessments at or near the same time, causing significant upload and submission issues."

Meanwhile, NYSUT, the state teachers union, released the following statement:

CONTACT:
NYSUT Media Relations
518- 213-6000 ext. 6313
Email: mediarel@nysutmail.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NYSUT demands state action amid more computer-based test issues
ALBANY, N.Y. April 2, 2019 - New York State United Teachers today released
the following statement on reported issues with this year's computer-based
tests for students in grades 3-8:
"Students across the state are barely 24 hours into this year's
computer-based testing period for grades 3-8, and we already are receiving
reports of widespread computer failures similar to the issues that created
havoc in 2018. Despite claims to the contrary, clearly the state has not
taken the actions needed to ensure that technological issues will not unduly
burden students taking these already flawed state exams on computers. The
state must immediately halt computer-based testing to ensure that our
children will not be penalized because of the mistakes adults have made in
rolling out this faulty system."
 

The NY state PTA also spoke out and recommended that the contract with Questar be reconsidered, as well as the move to expand computerized-testing, which the Commissioner has a goal to fully adopt by 2020:

I say enough is enough! Questar bandwidth problems also occurred last year, which the Commissioner Elia called "inexcusable." Not to mention, a breach of student data.  All that added to the fact that, according to most teachers, the tests themselves continue to be of very low quality.

In Tennessee, Questar was fired because of continued technical problems, and soon after, their State Commissioner left.  The NY Board of Regents should consider following Tennessee's example, in both cases.

Please leave a comment below about what you as a parent were told by your child about the state exams this week.  Also teachers let us know what you experienced yesterday and today, either with computerized testing or paper-and-pencil tests, and whether you think these exams should be ditched and given over to another vendor.  thanks!