Haimson reports: 1st mayoral ed debate / Stringer leaves 2013 mayoral race / Quinn leads / Spitzer wonders if Liu is finished

Leonie Haimson on the the forum of prospective 2013 mayoral candidates to succeed New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg: "The First Mayoral Debate on Education!," NYC Public School Parents, November 19, 2012.

Azi Paybarah, "Eliot Spitzer wonders if Liu really counts as a contender anymore," Capital New York, November 21, 2012.

Dana Rubinstein's November 18 article after the forum of prospective mayoral candidates: "On education, the mayoral candidates vie to be the un-Bloomberg, Capital New York, November 19, 2012.

Azi Paybarah, "Quinn runs up-front, with qualifications," Capital New York, November 21, 2012. Paybarah offered the main qualification the fact that the poll was taken prior to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's leaving the field. Paybarah ventured that the poll actually represented name recognition.

Azi Paybarah in Capital New York reports that Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has left the tentative field for 2013 New York City mayoral competition. Stringer will contend for the comptroller position, now held by John Liu.

Paybarah Saturday surmised reasons why Stringer left the race:

Why Scott Stringer's 2013 Mayoral Campaign Ended Before 2013

There's an unobstructed view of City Hall from the Manhattan borough president's office at 1 Centre Street. But for Scott Stringer, the mayor's office was out of reach.

On Sunday, Stringer is expected to announce formally that he is abandoning his all-but-announced campaign for mayor and running instead for New York City comptroller.

Stringer is bright and well-qualified, with impeccable liberal credentials, a solid donor base and even, improbably, a stable of celebrity supporters.

But this year, as became clear to him, that wasn't enough.

The political demise of former congressman Anthony Weiner, a progressive outer-borough Jew, and the fund-raising scandal surrounding New York City Comptroller John Liu, seemingly knocked out two well-funded formidable rivals.

But Stringer, overshadowed as the Manhattan candidate by Bloomberg ally and relative establishment favorite Christine Quinn, wasn't able to capitalize.

In part, it's a function of his office, which provides a public platform but few actual powers to its occupants. (Just ask Marty Markowitz.)

But it's also just the way the field was set up.

Stringer was the only Jewish candidate, once Weiner disappeared. But that didn't guarantee him much.

Two other mayoral candidates have clearly defined prospective bases: Former city comptroller Bill Thompson drew a large amount of support from African-American and Hispanic voters four years ago and is expected to do so again. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn is the outer-borough white candidate who has strong union ties but he's also hoping to attract some black support, on the strength of his African-American wife and family and his ties to the Clintons.

And then, right in Stringer's backyard, there's Quinn.

Since 2006, Quinn has been the speaker of the New York City Council, the second highest ranking Democrat in the city. She's well-known and tacitly backed, if only as the best of the plausible mayoral options, by the mayor and the Bloomberg-adoring business establishment. Quinn will likely get more slack from many progressives for her Bloomberg ties than she otherwise would, on the basis of her background as a gay-rights activist, and her status as the potential first female or openly gay mayor of New York.

Stringer had criticized her from time to time for not providing a strong enough check against the mayor,. and from the perspective of the Democratic primary electorate, he may have had a good point. But it wasn't an argument that was going to get him where he needed to go.

Important Issues That NYC Mayoral Aspirants are Lukewarm to

Chalk one up to Bill DeBlasio to being tone deaf on issue of teacher evaluations:
"Public Advocate blasts mayor over teacher evaluation impasse." But DeBlasio just does not get it that evaluations are open to bias and involve far too many factors beyond teachers' control. So, strike one against Public Advocate DeBlasio for his advocating teacher evaluations.

On progressive issues, generally, Stringer says some of the right things, such as paid sick leave. But watch how Quinn stands out as wrong on a crucial labor quality of life issue; and wrong on education:
"Stringer delivers a big progressive speech; rivals and fellow Dems enjoy it, mostly."
"When Scott Stringer said the city needs to pass the paid-sick-leave legislation 'now,' Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and City Comptroller John Liu applauded, but City Council Speaker Christine Quinn didn't." --Capital New York

The four likely mayoral candidates were at the New-York Historical Society on Central Park West last night for Stringer's State of the Borough speech. The speech hinted at the economic theme of Stringer's mayoral campaign: reducing income inequality and making things easier for the middle class.

Stringer called for a readjustment to the tax code that would lower rates for families making less than $300,000 a year and raise them for earners of more than $1 million a year. He talked about facilitating loans to small businesses, and called for a $250 million fund to pay for the conversion 110,000 foreclosed housing units into low-cost housing. and called for a new loan program to help small businesses secure financing.

Interesting, the pols' different responses; Quinn seemed most uncomfortable:

Reporters kept duck-walking over to them to take pictures and watch their reactions. De Blasio sat with his giant legs crossed. Liu slouched. Quinn sat holding a folded piece of paper.

When Stringer complained about overcrowding in city schools, they applauded. When Stringer critiqued the mayor directly, de Blasio and Liu applauded and Quinn did too, but very lightly. Right after Stringer said "nothing is more important than educating our children," Quinn left.

NYC Pols gathered on January 31 on City Hall steps to protest city education policies, Quinn was absent, Capital New York reported: "Almost all of the 2013 candidates protest Bloomberg's education policy":

For a few moments this afternoon, four of the five leading 2013 mayoral candidates were gathered together on the steps of City Hall.

They were there to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg's practice of shutting down failing schools and, according to critics, opening up smaller charter schools in those facilities which cater to more selective student bodies that are, collectively, easier to teach. The result, according to charter-school critics, is a false impression of progress.

At the event were former city comptroller Bill Thompson, who was the 2009 Democratic nominee, current comptroller John Liu, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Council Speaker Christine Quinn was invited, but did not attend, though she released a supportive statement that was distributed at the event.

How Education Scandal is Handled in Atlanta -Contrasts for Teachable Moment

In Atlanta a major scandal brews in Atlanta: state, then federal investigators enter the scene. How this arises: concern appears over test score improvement patterns seem too good to be true. Sound familiar so far?
Read "Feds cast a wide net in Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal," Dec. 26, 2010 in "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" for the story.
Choose your particular issue on which to hang a scandal charge in New York City: there are the easy cases: the no-textbooks at home policy; the million dollar no-bid contracts --that persist in a fiscal crisis; there are the cases that a little harder to pursue, but that can be labeled scandalous: the minority neighborhood focused drive to shut down larger schools, eliminating the benefits of economies of scale (larger schools having more deans, more social workers, more guidance counselors, more psychologists, more speech therapists, more choices of foreign language, more Advanced Placement opportunities, more choices in after-school extra-curricular programs); the aggressive reducing the ranks of minority teachers, while increasing the ranks of white teachers; the aggressive reduction of the older teachers, while increasing the ranks of younger teachers (racism/ ageism charge anyone?); the city under former schools chancellor Joel Klein aggressively introduced disproven constructivist math programs Everyday Math and Impact Math, and in a corresponding period, real proficiency in math has remained poor (see the numbers of students entering CUNY needing remediation courses) --See this New York Sun article printed in the Queens Teacher blog. There are issues aplenty by which activists or progressive politicians can pursue the charge of scandal.
CONTRASTS BETWEEN ATLANTA AND NEW YORK CITY
In Atlanta, the issue has been pursued aggressively by that city's only major daily, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In New York, the daily newspapers have been either organs of the city (see New York Post and city-industry revolving door with latter paper's hiring of Klein) or have been in the back pocket of the mayor (see New York Times or Daily News)
In Atlanta, state-level politicians have opposed city-level politicians or holders of appointed office (see Georgia governor Sonny Perdue's opposing Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall)
In New York, there is no opposition from any state-level politician to mayor Michael Bloomberg or his school chancellor. The lone cry is by New York City councilman Charles Barron; there is no coordination between Barron and other concerned city politicians.
Where is the flexing of muscle of audit power, investigation power or just plain bully-pulpit power that city Comptroller John Liu or Public Advocate Bill de Blasio could easily exert? (Early in 2010 Comptroller Liu told New Yorkers that he was auditing the city Department of Education: see "With an Eye on Education, Liu Takes a New Approach," Mar. 3, 2010 in "The New York Times." By the end of the year there was little public connecting of the dots of the scandals or near-scandals listed earlier in this blog post.)

Come on John and Bill! You want to make a big splash in education, in the lead-up to the contest to become the next mayor? Grab these scandals by the horns!

De Blasio & Liu victorious -resoundingly!

W E H A V E W O N ! ! !

The opponents of the autocracy of King Michael Bloomberg have won the Democratic primary run-off:
Bill de Blasio, for public advocate, and John Liu, for comptroller.
The next four years, should Bloomberg win re-election will be marked by checks against and increased conflict against the mayor, over issues such as school governance and over-development.

De Blasio read a victory speech that struck an economic populist chord.

Liu's victory party was an expression of a Democratic lovefest. A span of names was present: primary opponent David Weprin and mayoral nominee William Thompson.

Let there be no mistake, the imprimatur of the Working Families Party was the sponsoring force behind these two victories.

{{A NOTE OF APPRECIATION ... A SWAN SONG?}}
I had endorsed de Blasio over Mark Green. But, truth be told, Green is a positive figure. He did perform great service in his first time as public advocate. The difference between de Blasio and Green can be cast as a difference between an "A" and a B. In the end, de Blasio pledged a more ambitious office, one that committed to more changes and greater challenge vs. mayor Bloomberg. Green's low showing probably will mark the end of his electoral-political career.
Click here for the latest results from 7 online, with 99 percent reporting.
The results, 99 percent reporting:
Public Advocate, Democratic nomination:
Bill de Blasio, 62%
Mark Green, 37%
Comptroller, Democratic nomination:
John Liu, 55%
David Yassky, 44%

De Blasio, sensible choice for parents and teachers disappointed in Bloomberg and Klein's disreputable record in education

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Education Chancellor Joel Klein have done a disservice to New York City Education.

The mayoral control plan has not been good for education.
There is too much hype on the question of mayoral control. In other cities, mayoral control has not produced an improvement in performance. Boston, Massachusetts has had a decade and a half of mayoral control. Yet, this has not corrected the negative patterns of performance in the city schools.

The question of mayoral control in New York City has had too much hype. The high schools graduation rates have not improved under Klein. Under his administration, guidance staff have encouraged the worst performing students to go elsewhere for concluding their education. Honest administrators will concede that, once the drop-outs and the transferees to GED programs, commercial / technical "colleges" and other "private schools" are excluded from the pool of students, the graduation rates look more like 80% for traditionally failing high schools in the city. Yet, these administrators concede, the schools have fifty percent failing rates, as before the Klein administration and the trend of breaking up traditional high schools.

Alas, you have to google for Columbia graduate student studies or for Comptroller William Thompson's posting, to learn of the mishegas of the deception of graduation rates under Klein.

Klein has refashioned the school system to something more than a free market system, whereby schools must all compete against each other; the active threat is that if they do not perform under the kooky formula of the subjective report cards, the new Department of Education will close down the school. The children must apply to schools, not just to high schools, as they did, pre-Klein, but to elementary schools.

This free market free-for-all has worsened an already ill-founded system of shuttling children all over the city. In the past you might see high school-aged children going to selective high schools or private high schools. Now we see elementary school-aged children commuting on trains and buses to schools. This is not a green policy. We have elementary schools in every neighborhood. Children should walk to their neighborhood school. They should not be adding to an already strained public transit system. Furthermore, it is not the best judgment to send young children alone onto subways to neighborhoods alien to them.
And now, the competition game has been imposed onto tender-aged pre-kindergarteners. The city is now making admission to kindergarten a competitive system. Those students not "smart enough" or not applying for admission early enough, are closed out of a guaranteed kindergarten spot. Bloomberg and Klein's accountability test mania has been imposed onto kindergarteners and first graders. This is ridiculous! Children at that age are just beginning to learn how to hold a pencil; this age is too young to impose on them the routines of bubbling scantron circles. The 2009 to 2010 New York City school-year began with an unresolved crisis: huge numbers of kindergarteners are without school assignments.

Teachers have had to transition from instruction time to test prep time. Many students are astute to the questionable value of the displacing teaching for test-prep. When students protest, teachers quell them by telling that this is not their choice, but "this is something we have to do."

Community schools are being closed down or are being forced to share space and other resources for private ventures under the ruse of charter schools. This pattern is negatively impacting minority and low-income neighborhoods disproportionately. Witness how wide-spread this is in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and how this trend has not touched Staten Island or northeastern Queens.

The breaking apart of schools in lower socio-economic neighborhoods has particularly hit older teachers and teachers of color. The ranks of the Absent Teacher Reserve ("ATR") teachers are full of such teachers. There is a large potential class action lawsuit if the city dismisses these teachers and if the union, the United Federation of Teachers (the UFT), does not unilaterally defend these teachers.

Consultants have been hired to impose experimental, unfounded education techniques upon teachers; and consultants have been hired to run the myriad of number-crunching computer programs of the myriad tests imposed on teachers and students. Many of these consultants are pulling salaries in excess of $100,000. These consultants as a rule, are hired in a no-bid, secretive fashion. Such bids are supposed to be done in a competive, open-bid fashion.

Thus, concerned parents and educators are looking for a quality public advocate to hold the Napoleonic dictatorship of Bloomberg and Klein.

William de Blasio, while not perfect, is the best choice for public advocate, particularly on the issue of questioning the actions of Bloomberg and Klein.

Now, onto a voice of criticism against some of this madness
On May 6, 2009, as a city councillor, Bill de Blasio demanded that Klein meet with parents of kindergarteners that were wait-listed out of their zoned (NYC jargon for neighborhood) schools. Wait-listing is something that is supposed to happen with private programs, not with public schools.
He asked that parents call, write and email joint letters with the quest for a meeting with schools chancellol Klein on this crisis.
The press release for his demand, "Bill de Blasio Launches Campaign to Demand Answers for Public School Parents with Wait Listed Kindergartner," posted on his website, read:

“Public school parents are being held in a state of limbo by the Department of Education. As a parent with two children in New York City public schools I can personally speak to the frustration parents feel when we are completely shut out of our children’s education."
. . . .
Hundreds of parents in New York City were recently informed that there were “not enough seats available in the zoned schools at this time to accommodate all the zoned applicants" and, as a result, their children have been wait listed at those schools. While the DOE has assured parents that it will "work with families and schools to place every child seeking a Kindergarten seat in the New York City public schools," the fact remains that parents across the City have been left with no information regarding where their children might end up in the fall.

He has issued a multi-point plan to have more transparency into the New York City Department of Education. As part of his proposal, "Strengthening Our Public Schools, August 2009," he has proposed establishing a parents' bill of rights, cornerstones of which would be respectful two-way communication between the Department of Education and the parents of the city's schoolchildren, and full transparency into budget and academic data.
See Gotham Schools' August 25, 2009 report on de Blasio's proposal for a link to the full proposal.
From GothamSchools::

If elected, de Blasio will hold monthly education hearings in each borough, make even more school data available online, and convene a “Commission on the Future of Education.”

He will post data on the numbers of students that relied on "credit recovery" programs to "earn" their high school diplomas; this punctures Klein's smoke and mirrors about supposed increases in graduation rates. (Bloomberg and Klein have cheated their task, they have cheated the public. When you rely on "pushing out" over-age, repeater, or low-performing students, with too-few-credits; when you create so much test pressure on schools and administrators, cheating and fudging on Regents and other New York State tests ensues; when you do these things you show a lack of self-confidence in an honest performance. Like the reality shows, you show that appearances and show takes precedence over the hard, unglamorous tasks of real, honest work. You are showing a bad example for your city employee underlings and the children of New York City.)

De Blasio has diverged from Bloomberg's head-in-the-sand approach to the swine flu crisis, which was marked by opposing school closings amidst a snowballing spread in New York City, before it spread to elsewhere in the U.S. Highlights of his four point Swine Flu Community Outreach Plan, issued early in the crisis, on May 29, 2009 included:

All school closures related to swine flu must be announced before children leave at 3:00PM. If late closure is unavoidable, the Department of Education (DOE) must immediately set up a multilingual phone tree and hotline in order to communicate with all parents by phone within 24 hours.


The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) should host town hall information sessions in all five boroughs and at community board meetings of neighborhoods where schools have been shut down

It is curious that openness and democracy are presumed valorized principles in our government. Yet, the professional media, too many academics and too many liberal activists have turned a blind eye to the whole-scale trampling upon the public's wish for open, honest discussion about the dramatic and often questionable practices of the Department of Education under Chancellor Joel Klein. Councillor de Blasio is to be lauded for his diverging from the blind adulation of Klein and the new direction of public education in the city. He is to be rewarded with a victory in Tuesday's primary election for Public Advocate of New York City.

The media have been blind to Bloomberg's Napoleonic approach to school governance. Bill de Blasio has not been a new-comer to recognizing that Bloomberg's style runs against our idealized national traditions.
As GothamSchools noted on February 3 of this year,

He said that he saw a “chilling effect” on public discussion after Bloomberg passed a social promotion ban in 2004 by firing two school board members who intended to vote against him. Did the panelists think that an empowered school board would prevent bad decisions have happening? he asked.

“I just have a feeling that if I locked Bloomberg in a room and asked him, ‘What’s the best system of rule?’ he’d say autocracy,” De Blasio told me afterward. “I thought we moved past that a long time ago.”

Bill de Blasio has integrity. Now wonder his endorsements for public advocate come from organizations ranging from "The New York Times" to Ed Koch, Fernando Ferrer, Mario Cuomo, Steve Buscemi, the Working Families Party, SEIU, the Uniformed Firefighters Association and the United Federation of Teachers.