NYC second to last among cities in student progress on the NAEPs since 2003

Class Size Matters has done a detailed analysis of the trend in student achievement in NYC since 2003, when Mayor Bloomberg's educational policies were first implemented, as measured by the NAEPs - the national assessment carried out every two years by the federal government in 4th and 8th grade English and math.  

Despite the DOE's claims of great progress when the latest NAEP scores were released in December, our analysis shows that NYC came out next to last among the 10 large cities tested over this period, plus the large city category (all cities above 250,000 inhabitants) when the gains of our racial, ethnic and economic subgroups are averaged and compared to their peers elsewhere.  The only city to make less progress was Cleveland.

The gains in NYC have been particularly minimal among White, Hispanic, and non-free lunch students, all of whom dropped in their relative position compared to these same subgroups in other cities - falling especially sharply at the 8th grade level.  White students made the smallest gains compared to their peers in other cities in both 8th grade reading and math; Hispanics in 8th grade math.  In fact, Asians were the only NYC subgroup to increase their relative ranking at any level, compared to their peers in other cities. 

The performance of non-poor students has been particularly disastrous.  NYC is only city in which our non-poor students scored lower in 2011 than in 2003 in any category. The proficiency levels of NYC non-poor students also dropped sharply in both 8th grade reading and math.  (This is the one point extracted from our analysis in today's Daily News, though the article fails to attribute its source. The article also featured the DOE's claim to have improved results for non-poor students; though this group also made fewer gains than their peers in many other cities over this period.)

What else do our findings suggest? Clearly, mayoral control is no panacea, as the two cities that have made the least progress since 2003 on the NAEPs, NYC and Cleveland, both feature this governance system.  Moreover, the administration's free-market strategies of high-stakes accountability, school report cards, "fair student funding", principal empowerment, and the closing of more than one hundred schools & the opening of more than 400 new schools and charters, while allowing class sizes to increase, have not worked to increase student achievement compared to cities elsewhere.

Our power point, with lots of user-friendly graphs to illustrate our findings, is below; it is also posted on our website, if this version is too hard to see.  Our presentation also contains rebuttals of specific claims made by DOE about the city's NAEP results.  Please post your observations or questions in the comment section.  Thanks!


NAEP Power Point Version 2011

Would I Send My Child To This School? by Bari L. Katz

This article was written by a member of the team that founded the Achievement First charter high school in NYC, cross-posted with minor changes from the WE-CAN website, an organization opposed to the opening of a new Achievement First school in Providence RI.  See also the recent articles in the Providence Journal, Is this charter better? and A closer look ; as well as the video interviews of former AF middle school parents on our blog.

“Would I send my child to this school?” This is a question I asked myself every day while working at Achievement First and helping to build their first high school in Brooklyn from 2009-2010. I served as the Director of Student Life at Achievement First Crown Heights High School (now called AF Brooklyn High School), which entailed developing and managing all after-school and summer enrichment programs, building the advisory system for both college skills and character development, counseling students, and organizing and leading community events each week to contribute to school culture. As a member of the founding team, I was involved in almost every aspect of the school, from hiring, to behavior management, to building systems for school culture and discipline, to working with others in the Achievement First network to find and implement best practices for our new school.

There are many things to say about my time at Achievement First; some of them personal opinion, some experiences shared among many. Let’s start with some of the things AF does really well. AF hires incredible teachers. Walking through the halls of almost any AF school, you will find hard-working, dedicated and passionate educators in front of our children. The principles behind a longer school day are right on—to keep kids off the streets and out of trouble, and in classrooms getting extra academic time to support their achievement. Systems and data are both priorities, from my experience, in the AF network. For example, every behavior management system we tried at the high school in our first year was systematized in a way that ideally would have allowed every adult in the building to enforce these norms. (Unfortunately, none of these systems effectively motivated students to do the right thing and instead of deterring negative behavior, these systems instead discouraged students from being themselves and often resulted in a diminished interest in school, academic or otherwise.) Also, data-driven instruction is the driving force behind teacher development. Teachers and their coaches (usually a senior member of the school leadership team) work with both daily and long-term assessment data to improve lesson plans and increase student achievement.

While the strengths I mentioned above are real, the underlying approach to youth and community development are, in my opinion and experience, fundamentally flawed. This has a detrimental impact on the students and families in Achievement First schools, specifically in high schools.

The majority of my students at AF Crown Heights High School were fed in from AF Crown Heights Middle School, with approximately 10% being accepted off the wait list. Almost all of my students had relatively positive experiences at the AF middle school, due largely in part to their principal and teaching staff.  

When these students arrived at the AF high school, it became apparent to them and their families very quickly that this was a different kind of school than they had known before. As the Director of Student Life, I too became frustrated early on with the philosophy of youth development the school administrators were implementing (backed strongly by the AF network). I believe, especially at the high school level, that there must be a balance between structure and flexibility, between rules and independence, and between thinking inside a predetermined box and creative thought. Unfortunately, I witnessed time and time again students being pushed to “fall in line” with the rigid behavior system (sitting up perfectly straight in class; not wearing any jewelry or headbands for girls; having a closed bottle of anything other than water on their desk; making eye contact 100% of the time when being addressed by an adult; etc.).

Rules are important. However, these examples are a few of many that AF labeled as character development, with which I disagree. Character development for high school students is about having the opportunity to make one’s own choices and sometimes fail, but being able to meaningfully learn from those mistakes. However, because of the extreme emphasis on these small behavioral “infractions” to the system, there was a culture of conformity rather than critical thinking that was created. This resulted in students superficially following the rules but feeling like they had to hide their true selves while at school. We often saw students get in trouble for losing their temper because they felt so repressed by the culture of the building, which AF labeled as a character flaw on the part of the student.

In addition to being developmentally inappropriate for the age of our students, the school system was oppressive in other ways. I would receive phone calls from parents and families on a daily basis because they felt disrespected by AF leadership. Many parents felt the rules in the school were over the top and not beneficial to the “college preparatory mission” of the school. Many parents were called up to the school on a regular basis to have meetings with school administrators to address student discipline issues, often times even for minor infractions. Usually, students were not allowed to attend academic classes until these parent meetings happened (students in this situation would sit alone in a classroom or in the main office all day and independently do work assigned by their teachers even though they often couldn’t complete the work because they hadn’t received the lesson for the day. This would happen, for instance, if their shoes were 98% black instead of 100% black.). Parents reported feeling devalued, disrespected, and frustrated by AF’s condescending approach to family involvement.

This leads me to my second concern about Achievement First’s proposed expansion. AF works in low-income communities of color in urban areas in New Haven, CT and Brooklyn, NY. From my experience, the mentality by many at the head of the organization and by association many of the school leaders as well, is one of disregard for the indigenous community they are entering. Rather than becoming a part of the neighborhoods in which they operate, AF most often runs schools that end up isolating the community in the surrounding area. Instead of valuing the parent and family contributions of their student body, many AF schools underestimate the power and capability of the families they are supposed to be serving.

I always got the feeling that “we” were there to “fix a problem.” “We” were there to “save these kids.” The message to our students was often, “if you don’t do things ‘our’ way, you will never be successful in the ‘real world.’” As an organization working to serve urban populations, this kind of cultural insensitivity and sense of superiority are deeply harmful to the students, the families and the communities in which AF operates schools.

I left AF after my kids finished their ninth grade year for many reasons. I still speak to my kids and their families on a regular basis. When I left, half of the founding team left as well. By the start of the school’s second year, the 10th grade class (my kids) was down to a group of approximately 45-50. This year, the third year of the school, the founding class is down to around 35-40 students. This is the same trend that has occurred in the AF high school in New Haven, which has graduated less than 30 kids the last two years (where they still claim l a 100% graduation rate).

I wanted to make sure that the voices of the families I’ve worked with for the last several years from AF Brooklyn High School were fully represented in this description. They all asked me to keep their names confidential as they did not want their kids, some of whom still attend AF Brooklyn High School, to be penalized in any way for their speaking out. Here are their statements:

 From a parent who pulled her daughter out of AF: “It all depends on who’s running the school. Achievement First is great, and my daughter had a great experience there with her middle school principal but it depends on the leadership and the teachers they hire. As kids get older they need to be treated accordingly and that just didn’t happen at the high school. The kids weren’t given any room to grow or be independent.”

From a family member who still has a child in Achievement First: “The focus is always on discipline and consequences. It makes the kids not want to go to school. Even the really good students don’t want to go to school. My experience is probably way better than another parent’s because my daughter is academically and socially sound. But I’ve sat and chatted with so many parents and know the horror stories are more the norm than not. If we had to rely just on Achievement First to get my daughter what she needed for college, it would never happen. They’re setting the kids up for failure.” 

From a parent who pulled her daughter out of AF: “The AF teachers are dedicated to the success of the students and the school. Public schools are difficult because achievement is not always the focus. Charter schools are good for lower grades because it gives kids the discipline they need. But my daughter gained a sense of purpose from the great teachers and mentors at AF, and the fact that she knew everyone had one goal which was for her to succeed. But at the upper grades AF is training the kids to do what they want them to do and AF won’t relinquish control. They’re supposed to be allowed to use what they know, to let their budding minds grow. They aren’t allowed to think for themselves. AF is an experiment to see what ‘kids who wouldn’t have a chance otherwise’ can do if they follow the AF model. They push the discipline too much. But you can’t run an experiment on the backs of the children who are really trying. Our children are not getting what they’re supposed to get.”

From a parent whose daughter still attends Achievement First: “All of the good counselors and teachers are leaving or have already left because they feel trapped and confined. The children are caged—they treat the children like it’s a boot camp. The good kids are made to feel like they’re bad kids and in prison. The kids are just hanging on to get out and move on with their lives. As a parent who speaks her mind and stands up for my daughter’s education, they shut me down and now they don’t even talk to me anymore. They are disrespectful and mistrusting of the parents like we’re crazy. I think it’s a race thing. These people come from all over the place to hold back our kids. The people who really love our kids do not get the time of day to do things for our kids. There are teachers who would do anything for these kids but they get brainwashed or they leave. They don’t want the children to associate with the teachers who really love them because it undermines their control.”

Teacher from Achievement First: Achievement First essentially uses a 'carrot versus stick' method to school culture. They attempt to encourage desired behavior through largely superficial incentives, such as merits/scholar dollars etc. while at the same time enacting very real consequences to undesired behavior via detentions, parent/teacher conferences, and suspensions. These consequences often have kids miss class, which undermines the very principles on which the rules were founded, that is to promote student achievement. From the student's perspective this appears as a critical imbalance and typically leaves students jaded or otherwise divested in school culture. The result is students remember and resent the consequence and not the lessons that were supposed to be gained.

I’ll say the same thing to anyone reading this statement as I said to everyone I worked with at Achievement First: If you wouldn’t send your kid here, then it’s not good enough.---Bari L. Katz

A NYC teacher's observations on how the Danielson rubrics are being (mis)used

One thing that the DOE and the UFT seem to have agreed upon is that the instructional framework developed by consultant Charlotte Danielson is potentially useful and constructive, though they disagree about how these rubrics are being used to evaluate teachers currently in NYC schools. Below are the observations of one teacher about how the Danielson rubric is being applied in his school.

I'm an English teacher at a NYC high school.   There are several major problems with the way the Charlotte Danielson rubrics are being used and misused.  Here are some that I have observed at our school.

We have an AP who is unqualified to do these observations.  Hitherto, he has overseen budgeting and technology and has never been involved with instruction.  He is now being told to do observations because the principal is unable to do them all.  In his feedback to teachers, he has demonstrated a lack of understanding of basic instructional strategies and has not been able to provide suggested improvements to accompany his critiques.

Other problems we are seeing I imagine are more universal across the city.  For one, administrators are being pressured to do (and to document) far more observations this year.  Previously, informal observations weren't written up, now they are.  As a result, observations of only 5 or 10 minutes (out of an 80 minute class) are being used to characterize a teacher's ability.

Story one: We have a new teacher and three people walked into her class and observed her for five minutes (during the starter, aka "do now") and then left.  Her observation report cited her for insufficiently interacting with the students, yet made no consideration for the fact that this was a time for independent student work by design. This is a very hard-working and devoted teacher and afterwards she was visibly upset.  Again, they watched the first 5 minutes of an 80 minute lesson and made sweeping conclusions based upon that.

Story two:  An English teacher (me) was instructing students in how to write a critical lens essay.  Then students began their essay and the teacher helped them individually.  The feedback given said: "All discussion is between teacher and students; students are not encouraged to speak directly to one another."  There was no reason for students to be speaking to each other during this portion of the class, in fact that would have detracted from what they were accomplishing in that time frame.  This is how the rubrics can be misused.

 
Story three: An excellent tenured math teacher was given an "ineffective" for questioning because he used questions with "a single correct answer." This comment comes directly from the Danielson rubric, yet this was a math class where yes, there often is a single correct answer and students do need to get that.  You would hope that anyone would realize this was not how to use the rubric, but you'd be mistaken.

There are more stories along these lines, but when observers miss most of the lesson, teachers feel it's unfair for an all-encompassing rubric to be applied to specific instructional snippets.  They also aren't being given specific feedback.

All teachers are being told to watch ARIS Learn videos, which are overly general and most veteran teachers are already familiar with much of the material covered.  Other recommendations are very superficial or generic.  But then, how could it be otherwise, when the observer only saw 5 or 10 minutes of class?  No one is being given subject specific or lesson specific feedback, and the only real outcome of this new teacher effectiveness system has been teacher demoralization.

For the time being I would prefer to remain anonymous so please refrain from using my name or the the name of our school.  My main reason for this is that I don't want to embarrass our administrators whom we see as being unfairly caught up in the respective mess on their side of this broken system. 

Those glorious Snyder school buildings, too many lost, sold or sitting empty

Morris High School in the Br

Mayor Bloomberg’s invitation to his State of the City speech features a photo of the glorious Morris High School building in the Bronx where his address will be given.   Morris High School was designed by the NYC Superintendent of schools, Charles B.J. Snyder, at the turn of the century.  

According to the architectural historian Jean Arrington, Snyder designed and built an astonishing 344 school buildings and 64 additions over about thirty years; a record that puts Bloomberg’s repeated claims of having the most ambitious record of school construction to shame.  

The Wikipedia entry about Snyder says: “Snyder saw school buildings as civic monuments for a better society. He was concerned with health and safety issues in public schools and focused on fire protection, ventilation, lighting, and classroom size.”

Of the Snyder buildings, according to Arrington, about 280 (or two thirds) till stand, and 235 still function as schools. The other 45 are now apartments, condos, senior citizen housing, shelters, artist complexes, health facilities, one hotel, and one church.  Five have sat empty for 20 to 40 years, though one of those has just reopened - PS 90 in Harlem - as mostly high-end condos. The School Construction Authority (SCA) has just demolished one of Snyder's earliest schools in Brooklyn – as it evidently had structural problems, to make room for a larger building.

The former PS 64 in the East Village

Among the Snyder buildings that have been sitting empty for years, at least two have provoked intense controversies: the former PS 64, just east of Tompkins Square in the East Village, which was run by a community group named Charas and renamed  El Bohio Cultural and Community Center, serving as a home for housing activists, artists, theater groups, a bicycle repair shop and more.  It was sold during the Giuliani administration to a developer who, without permission, stripped it of many of its architectural features, despite the fact that the building had been landmarked. More recently, it has been the site of Occupy Wall St. type protests (article, video.)

The former PS 109 in East Harlem

Another Snyder building is the former PS 109, on E. 99 Street in East Harlem, which neighborhood residents and preservationists prevented from being torn down in the 1990’s, and has its own website, devoted to restoring it as a school. Community activist Gwen Goodwin is still leading a battle for the building to be returned to its original use as a school, though several years ago it was sold for one dollar by the Department of Education and is apparently in the process of being converted to artist housing. 

PS 109 was the topic of conversation at the last Panel for Educational Policy meeting , when Patrick Sullivan pointed out how it could be used to provide space for the  Esperanza Preparatory Academy on 109 St., a dual language school that has been given the green light to expand within the space of  the TAG school, the only gifted school in Manhattan that is truly diverse, and whose school is already so overcrowded that its kids eat lunch at 10 AM.  In response, Walcott claimed (falsely) that PS 109's building had been sold before Bloomberg was elected – but it was actually in the city’s capital plan for schools to be repaired and renovated as late as May 2003.

Why it was sold is still not clear. To have such beautiful and spacious school buildings sitting empty – or sold for a dollar – seems criminal, while just ten blocks away, children in one overcrowded school are being pushed aside for the expansion of another school, and at a time when one quarter of all elementary schools had waiting lists for Kindergarten last spring, and nearly half a million NYC children are sitting in buildings that are 100% utilized or more. -- Leonie Haimson


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I find a certain amount of irony in the invitation.  It's great to see the picture showing the Morris H.S. building seemingly restored to its former glory and the text making brief reference to its history and to the fact that it is a Snyder school. 

However, Charles B. J. Snyder designed and built more than 300 schools for the NYC public school system from approximately 1890 to 1923, and although Morris was one of his crowning achievements, most were magnificent structures, inside and out, and well worth preserving.  Other internal features of Snyder schools include art rooms, shops, gyms, etc., features he always insisted in putting in -- in a break with the previous school construction of the era. 

What has happened, however, under the watch of several administrations in City Hall and at the Board of Ed./DOE since the 1950's, is that a sickeningly large number of them have been demolished, sold off or allowed to deteriorate so that only a minority of them are still functioning as NYC public schools.   

Take Harlem for example.  (I have this from a Snyder walk I was on which went through Harlem and was led by the wonderful architectural historian/Snyder specialist Jean Arrington).  He built 16 schools in Harlem, including the currently-besieged (by DOE) Wadleigh, then known as Girls' H.S.  Of those 16, eight are still standing, and only three of those are currently serving as public schools.  One other is a senior residence (that's OK), one an adult education center (that's OK), one is now just a shell, one is being converted into private housing (luxury, no doubt) and another has already been converted into condos, with the architectural details lovingly restored and proudly highlighted in the marketing materials for the building. 

Now imagine if even half of the 13 lost Snyder school buildings in Harlem had not passed out of the public school system.  At the very least it's safe to say that with all that additional capacity, when the DOE wanted to shove a charter school into a public school these days it wouldn't result in children losing their libraries, art rooms or gym and cafeteria time. 

The blame, if it were being assessed, would have to go, as I wrote above, to several administrations for not choosing to preserve these gems within the system, and for deciding to defer maintenance.  (My aunt, who was born in 1914, went to Morris, which means she graduated in 1931-32, I'm guessing.  She once told me that she was jealous because my mother, 6 years younger, went to the newly-opened James Monroe H.S. instead.  That would have been about 1934-5.  So if Morris could seem less desirable to a school kid by thirty years after it opened, it indicates that upkeep needed to begin quickly and to be done regularly, and I guess it wasn't.)  As a result, many New Yorkers have been the losers over the decades. 

Somehow I don't imagine that anyone in City Hall was expecting this kind of reaction to the attractive invitation which they sent out for the State of the City.  -- Richard Barr

Our statement on Court decision denying preliminary injunction vs. free space for charters

Right before the New Year, Judge Feinman ruled against our request for a preliminary injunction against the DOE's provision of free space and services to charter schools, in the lawsuit that Class Size Matters, along with other parents and the NYC Parents Union, filed in July.  His decision, which was publicly disclosed today, is posted here.  Here is a fact sheet about the case.

One of the reasons he denied our request is that he determined that the payments of more than $100 million owed by the charter schools  would not necessarily be used by the DOE to benefit our kids in any way or restore the egregious budget cuts their schools have suffered, so it was difficult to prove irreparable harm.

Nevertheless in his decision, he fired a shot across the bow to DOE & the charter school industry, saying that they should not take this as any sort of signal that when the case comes to trial, he will necessarily rule in their favor. 

Below is the press statement we put out with the NYC Parents Union.  Happy New Year to all!
_____________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 3, 2012

Contacts:
Mona Davids, NYC Parents Union, (917) 340-8987
Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, (917) 435-9329 

Statement on Charter Rent Lawsuit Ruling

On December 28, State Supreme Court Judge Paul Feinman confirmed the need for a trial to determine whether or not charter schools co-located in public school buildings should be paying for space and services to the New York City Department of Education (“DOE”).

The case, New York City Parents Union, et al v. The Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York, et al, and Harlem Success Academy Charter School 1, et al, was a request for a preliminary injunction which would have required the agency to immediately collect back rent and payment for services from all charter schools co-located in public school buildings.

While denying the injunction request, Judge Feinman highlighted the fact that the practice of not paying rent existed since 2003 and, inexplicably, had not been challenged.  He warned the DOE and the charter schools with the following statement:

… the court’s finding that a preliminary injunction is not warranted at this stage of the proceeding should not be misinterpreted as a finding that the court has evaluated the merits of the parties’ contrasting reading of Education Law ∳2853(4)(3) and favors the BOE’s interpretation. Indeed, in planning its future budgets, neither the BOE nor Intervenor-Defendants should rely on this decision as standing for the proposition that the court accepts their reading of Education Law that if the BOE “gives” the charter school space there is no duty to pay “costs”.

Mona Davids, President of the New York City Parents Union, is pleased with Judge Feinman’s ruling and urges all co-located charter schools to heed this warning and include truthful facility costs in their budgets.  “Cases like this are why we exist.  We plan to take this issue to trial and win back the hundreds of millions of dollars due to all of the public school children in the City of New York as a result of preferential treatment of the co-located charter schools.  Charter schools that co-locate should pay rent since they are receiving the same dollars per child that charter schools with their own space receive, and, worse, co-located charter schools are limiting the space usage options of the public schools where they are co-located.”

Arthur Z. Schwartz, President of the public interest law firm, Advocates for Justice, representing the New York City Parents Union and parent plaintiffs, stated that:

“While we are disappointed that the Judge did not see the loss of $100 million to the school system as irreparable, his decision did no more, in that vein, than acknowledge the DOE’s statement that if it got $100 million it might not spend it on lowering class size.  Key to this decision is the Judge’s warning to the DOE and the charter schools that they should take the possibility of co-located charter schools having to pay rent into account when they set up next year’s budget. We look forward to a final decision on the merits before the next school year.”

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and a public school parent, said: “It is ironic that Judge Feinman did not order a preliminary injunction because he was not sure that the DOE would spend the additional funds on restoring budget cuts to schools, reducing class size, enhancing instruction or in any way that would benefit our children.  But I find the judge’s decision very hopeful; the paragraph quoted above in particular.

“When the case comes to trial, we are optimistic that the judge will look carefully at the law and the facts of the case, and determine that from now on, co-located charter schools must pay their fair share of the costs of taking up valuable space in public school buildings and utilizing the services of city employees, as the law requires.  The gears of justice may grind slowly, but they do grind.” 

More information about the NYC Parents Union is at http://www.nycparentsunion.org/
More information about Class Size Matters is at www.classsizematters.org
For a fact sheet about the case, see http://tinyurl.com/6vaednn
To download the decision, go to:  http://tinyurl.com/8xx8wrd


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News flash! The mayor appoints someone qualified to sit on the Panel for Educational Policy!

I am surprised that the DOE has not yet released any biographical information for Judy Bergtraum, the new member of the Panel for Educational Policy, whose appointment was announced several weeks ago.  She is from a well-known and educationally prominent Queens family, and until recently, was a Community Education Council member and president from District 25. 

Her mother was Edith Bergtraum, a teacher at Public School 143 in Corona for 25 years, who was also member of Community School Board District 25 in 1974 for 19 years. After her death, an elementary school in Queens (PS 165 in District 25) was renamed in Edith's memory.

Her father was Murry Bergtraum, who was a member of the NYC Board of Education from 1969-1973, first as its VP and then its president until his death in 1973.  He also has a school named after him: Murry Bergtraum HS for Business Careers in lower Manhattan, site of several loud and contentious PEP meetings.

Judy is a former teacher who became a lawyer, has worked in city government, was a school board member and then CEC member & president, and now is Deputy to the Vice Chancellor of the Office of Facilities Planning, Construction and Management at CUNY.

Unlike most of the mayoral appointees to the PEP, she has a long-standing interest and experience in public education. She appears to be the most qualified mayoral appointee to the PEP since it was established.  

A short interview with her in the Queens Tribune from several years ago is here; her professional resume is here.  Her email is Judy.bergtraum@mail.cuny.edu

Mayoral Appointee Joe Chan Resigns from Panel For Educational Policy

Joe Chan has resigned from the Panel for Educational Policy. Chan was a former Bloomberg administration official and recently head of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership where he was the subject of a NY State Attorney General's Investigation.

In her September Report Card column for the Brooklyn Rail, journalist Liza Featherstone noted Chan's questionable credentials for his school board role:

He has been investigated by the state attorney general for misuse of city funding for using city money to lobby city officials, which is, under state law, not allowed. As the New York Times reported in 2009, Chan spent $200,000 on lobbying for the Atlantic Yards construction. Neither the DBP nor the attorney general’s office will say whether this investigation is still ongoing, but “Report Card” assumes that if it had been cheerfully resolved, either body would be happy to tell us so. (Of course, since the DBP was created by Bloomberg to advance Bloomberg’s agenda, it matters only slightly whether or not the DBP “lobbied” anyone.) Given this historically casual relationship to public funds, it’s particularly rich that as head of the PEP committee that oversees DOE contracts, Chan decided it no longer needed to meet.

The original NY Times article concerning the investigation can be found here.

Chan has been replaced by Judy Bergtraum. No biographical information has been provided by the Bloomberg Administration.