UPDATE: Comptroller Nixes No-Bid NYS Contract w/ Murdoch Firm; Will Steiner Get Penalty?

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli cancelled the no-bid $27 million contract that the New York State Department of Education made with Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Communications. The contract came just weeks after New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein left the New York City Department of Education to work on Murdoch's News Corporation. The contract was to have enabled schools to track student and teacher data. The Daily News' article on the story. Former New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner, who inspired some of us a year or two back with his recognition that European teachers pride themselves in their knowledge of their subject, has had his slip-ups. Last year he signed off on the wacky idea of Cathy Black as New York City Schools Chancellor.

Latest on Steiner: He is caught in a conflict of interest scandal in benefiting from a corporate-paid junket to London, England, United Kingdom. Soon after Steiner's London trip, Pearson found itself in a $32 million dollar deal with New York State. From the New York Daily News:

A State Education Department commissioner took a roughly $2,000 junket financed by the charity of a learning firm that later won a $32 million state contract. Then-Commissioner David Steiner traveled to London in June 2010 for a conference held by the Council of Chief State School Officers - which reimbursed him for his expenses. Ultimately, the foundation connected to education firm Pearson gave money to the council to foot the conference's bill. Six months later, the state contracted with Pearson to develop new math and reading tests. "It doesn't take long for people to connect the dots," said Jack Jennings of the Washington think tank Center on Education Policy.

Read Rachel Monahan's story in the New York Daily News.

Times front page article questions how Joel Klein can objectively and effectively conduct internal investigation of scandal at News Corp.

The New York Times has this story on the front page of its Sunday, July 24, 2011 edition:
"Former City Schools Chief Emerges as Murdoch Ally,"
This article is by Jeremy W. Peters, Michael Barbaro and Javier C. Hernandez.

(The final paragraph has the crucial point.)

Joel I. Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor, was in a tricky position. Three weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch asked Mr. Klein, now his trusted deputy, to oversee an investigation into the phone hacking scandal that has deeply wounded the News Corporation and its chairman, something Mr. Klein was eager to avoid.

“I am trying to get as far away from this as I can,” he lamented to a friend.

He has not succeeded. Mr. Klein, who joined the News Corporation as a senior vice president in January, is not only responsible for the investigation that could uncover what company managers knew about the hacking, but he also has become one of Mr. Murdoch’s closest and most visible advisers throughout the crisis.

His seemingly contradictory roles — de facto chief of internal affairs officer and ascendant executive with Mr. Murdoch’s ear — are raising questions about how robust and objective the internal inquiry can be. When Mr. Murdoch summoned a team of top deputies and outside consultants to London to help him manage the fallout from the hacking, Mr. Klein was one of the first to arrive, moving into a temporary office 20 feet from the chairman’s.

NOT STANDARD CORPORATE PRACTICE

Top lawyers and experts in corporate governance said the News Corporation should have hired outside legal counsel to oversee the inquiry, as dozens of companies like the American International Group and Fannie Mae have done in the past, rather than rely on an insider.

“That is not standard practice,” said Charles M. Elson, an expert on corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “You cannot be seen as objective if you are inside.”

Vocational Schools Work Better, Report Says

BETTER FUNCTIONING VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS; TREND OF POOR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR INTEGRITY; MOTHERS CALLING FOR END TO EMPTY CREDITS (NO MORE LETTING THEM EAT EMPTY CREDITS)

"The New York Sun," that Gilded Age newspaper, reincarnated briefly in the 2000s, ran this story: Vocational Schools Work Better, Report Says

Ridiculously, policy makers in the New York City Department of Education have pursued an idea that all students are ready and interested in going to college. Yet this is an inappropriate policy, if one is familiar with many of the city's students. Nonetheless, the city has been closing, or attempting to close vocational education schools, witness the city's attempts to close Maxwell Vocational High School in East New York.
***
The scandal of empty credits, given in credit recovery programs, came most glaringly to light in the Bronx high school publicized this week in "the New York Times:"
"City Opens Inquiry on Grading Practices at a Top Rated Public School."

Phony credits for phony work: this is the Bloomberg/Klein legacy.
***

Thankfully, some Brooklyn mothers are protesting the empty credits plague in the city:

"The Empty Credit Problem"

Brooklyn Young Mothers’ Collective has spent the past year researching empty credits and advocating for policies that will back the accumulation of credits with adequate knowledge. We have found that while doling out empty credits may expedite a students’ high school graduation, it is likely to exacerbate his or her lack of college readiness. This issue is not isolated to the Theater Arts Production Company School, but pervades many schools in New York City, especially alternative schools that cater to over-aged, under-credited students. As many pregnant and parenting students attend these schools, this problem especially impacts the students with whom we work.

Read their post for more of their article.

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!

Naked revolving door in News Corp.'s buying firm Klein promoted

The scent of the revolving door between corporate media companies and New York City education just got nastier:
Ed Notes alerts us that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has bought a 90 percent share in a company, Wireless Generation, that Joel Klein enthusiastically promoted while serving as the chancellor of the New York City Department of Education:
"News Corp., After Hiring Klein, Buys Technology Partner in a City Schools Project," as reported by Fernanda Santos in the New York Times, November 23, 2010.

So far, Fortune Magazine does not have good words for this project.

Copyright infringement by media mogul mayor: Shame of the City Dept of Ed - no textbooks in the home

New York City students are behind the state norm, behind national ideals, in terms of performance or ability, with concern to literacy, graduation rates and so on.

One would think that there would be an interest to have textbooks in the students' homes. However, we are in an era in which the city and national media ignore egregious policies under mayor Michael Bloomberg and the out-going chancellor Joel Klein.

How would the public react to the issue of no texts in many students; homes, if this issue made it to the top of news stories, if it got the attention that it deserves?

It has become apparent that since the beginning of mayoral control of New York City schools there has been a general policy to rarely issue textbooks to students for home use. Just speak to teachers about how the situation in 2010, compared to 2002, to confirm this allegation.

Under mayoral control many critical issues are not addressed publicly in the media, let alone discussed in the messy world of public democratic debate. Perhaps owing to the failure of some students to return books at the end of a school year, nearly all high schools, according to my wide-ranging contacts, textbooks are not being issued to schools. This situation extends to the elementary and middle schools.

Yes, there are problems with textbooks. They can be biased. They can be simplistic or they can ignore aspects of issues that instructors think are critical. But teachers cannot compose everything. And textbooks can provide a level of topic authority, which can be of great use to students at home.

And so under the BloomKlein regime, progressive education's zeal for social unorthodoxy (criticism of textbooks -the no-textbooks principal Andrew Buck is the epitome of such thinking), combined with bottomline businesspeople's zeal for being cheap, have merged to create a force against textbooks.

So we ask "Is there books in our children's homes?" I googled the pertinent keywords and I only found an April 2002 study, by then New York State Assemblyman Scott Stringer's office, "READING IS FUNDAMENTAL:
A REPORT BY ASSEMBLYMEMBER SCOTT STRINGER ON THE TEXTBOOK CRISIS FACING OUR SCHOOLS" that looked into the problem of inadequate purchases of textbooks. It is sad that New York State came behind other states in textbook purchases, and New York City fell far behind other cities in the state. But tragically, this study shows the situation in 2002, before BloomKlein created this general policy against textbook issuance. A study today would show a far worse situation.

What do administrators council as an alternative? What do teachers do to compensate for the situation? PHOTOCOPY. Numerous schools have on-site staff assigned exclusively to photocopying for teachers.
But this is blatant violation of federal copyright laws.
From Stringer's report:

IV. VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW

Textbook shortages force teachers to make tough choices. Sometimes, when faced with the prospect of not assigning homework or not distributing an in-class reading assignment because there are not enough books for each student, a teacher will photocopy the material and hand it out. To reproduce copyrighted material for the purpose of distribution in an attempt to evade purchase of that material is a violation of the United States copyright law. The legislative history of the Copyright Act of 1976 endorsed the following guidelines:25

Notwithstanding any of the above, the following shall be prohibited:
1. Copying shall not be used to create or to replace or substitute for anthologies, compellations or collective works. Such replacement or substitution may occur whether copies of various works or excerpts there from are accumulated or reproduced and used separately.
2. There shall be no copying of or from works intended to be "consumable" in the course of study or of teaching. These include workbooks, exercises, standardized tests and test booklets and answer sheets and like consumable material.
3. Copying shall not:
1. substitute for the purchase of books, publishers' reprints or periodicals;
2. be directed by higher authority;
3. be repeated with respect to the same item by the same teacher from term to term.
4. No charge shall be made to the student beyond the actual cost of the photocopying.

Sections 107 and 108 of title 17 of the United States Code, outline fair use exemptions to copyright protections. There are situations where a teacher may photocopy entire articles, passages, or segments of textbooks provided the copying meets the tests of brevity, spontaneity and cumulative effect.26

The test of brevity requires the copied material to be either:
1. a poem of under 250 words and if printed on not more than two pages or essay from a longer poem, an excerpt of not more than 250 words;
2. a complete article, story or essay of less than 2,500 words or an excerpt from any prose work of not more than 1,000 words or 10% of the work, whichever is less, but in any event a minimum of 500 words.

The test of spontaneity demands that:
1. the copying is at the instance and inspiration of the individual teacher, and
2. the inspiration and decision to use the work and the moment of its use for maximum teaching effectiveness are so close in time that it would be unreasonable to expect a timely reply to a request for permission.

The cumulative effect test requires that:
1. The copying of the material is for only one course in the school in which the copies are made.
2. Not more than one short poem, article, story, essay or two excerpts may be copied from the same author, nor more than three from the same collective work or periodical volume during one class term.
3. There shall be no more than 9 instances of such multiple copying for one course during one class term.

What an outrageous act of hypocrisy!!! The textbook publishers are being cheated, with official sanction (in apparent contravention against obligation from "higher authority"). Yet, we have a mayor, Michael Bloomberg, whose entire fortune rests on being a media titan over Bloomberg News and Bloomberg media. We have an outgoing chancellor, Joel Klein, that has gone through a revolving door, from Bertelsmann Media (BMG) (before the NYC Dept. of Education), to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, publisher of The New York Post, which has its raison d'etre practically existing in attacking public education in the city. We have an incoming chancellor, Cathie Black (which the media and the former mayors all tout as most deserving of a waiver from State Education Commissioner David Steiner), a figure that has been an executive at the Hearst Corporation, one of the country's most powerful magazine publisher.
But then, we're in a time in which the media and public generally see the emperor's new clothes, but some of us really see a naked fraud who relies on cheating and deception to put forward a myth of educational advancement. Will CFE, New Action or GEM come to the fore and call the mayor and the DOE on this shame of the city? Is the mayor above federal copyright law?
Where are the kids' textbooks?

Education book of the year

This is the education book of the year, after Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

Sally A. Friedman's “The Education and Deconstruction of Mr. Bloomberg, How the Mayor’s Education and Real Estate Development Policies Affected New Yorkers 2002-2009 Inclusive”, at http://educationanddeconstruction.com/?p=143.

Check out the usual online stores for her book. It is pertinent reading, in the aftermath of the Joel Klein resignation, for getting a more realistic perspective on the tenure of Klein as chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.

Black, the NYC Dept of Education CEO-designate faces multiple conflict of interest challenges

Employees of a potential Cathie Black-headed New York City Department of Education are wondering whether she will be a Miranda Priestley, continuing Joel Klein's authoritarian rule.

Good government-minded New Yorkers have another area of concern: financial self-interest. I am making the Miranda Priestley/ The Devil Wears Prada reference because she has headed the Hearst Corporation for over a dozen years. Black faces conflicts of interest, as a recent head of Hearst and potential DoE chancellor. For her company's magazines included teen and young women-market magazines, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire --Magazines which encourage young women to be Kendall Jenners, valued for their looks rather than their intellectualism.

A chancellor is supposed to influence some good values for her teen charges. But do we not see some conflicting concerns here: witness Cosmo's photos and article topics, and contrast those with the reality of New York City high school student sexual behavior, i.e., see Study finds risky behavior among teens, reporting on an article in the journal Pediatrics. (Actually, I have linked this Associated Press story to a Boston Globe site, instead of USA Today, another previous employer of Black.)
Take a peek at Black's home.

As the Department of Education purchases thousands of computers, there is also Black's computer conflict of interest. She sits on the board of directors of IBM.

Then, there is her Coca Cola interest. She sits on that corporation's board of directors as well. The schools have drink and snack vending machines. Is Coke's Dasani bottled water in those vending machines?

And lastly, we should be vigilant about the charter school conflict of interest, of which bloggers have made greater note. Her charter school connection is her only professional or philanthropic connection with education. She recently ("a few months ago") was appointed to the National Leadership Board of Harlem Village Academy's charter school network. (As Steve Koss notes at the "NYC Public School Parents" blog, she has not yet attended any meetings of this board. You can see where her heart --wallet-- lies.) Co-chair of the Academy board is none other than Rupert Murdoch, boss-titan of the News Corporation, outgoing chancellor Joel Klein's new employer. Albeit, this information has not yet made it to Black's wikipedia biography article.
* * *
RESISTANCE
I commented with some cynicism at another's blogpost to the idea of opposing Bloomberg. But Bloomberg's chumming with catered society party benefits style of government does not mesh as easily as controlling the New York State Assembly, which appoints the Board of Regents, which appoints the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Education, David Steiner.
So far, Senators Bill Perkins and Carl Kruger and incoming Senator Tony Avella, along with State Assemblyman Marcos A. Crespo have publicly opposed granting Black a waiver from state requirements that school superintendents have education backgrounds. GothamSchools reports that Crespo is considering offering legislation preventing such waivers in the future. (At least some of these elected officials have issued public letters to Commissioner Steiner. See Senator-elect Avella's letter to the commisioner.)

Halliburton Dick Cheney and Mike Bloomberg got away with interlocking government. Will Commissioner Steiner or the New York State representatives put a stop to this by blocking such waivers?

UPDATE:
Assemblyman Crespo's letter to Commissioner Steiner on chancellor/ superintendent waivers from NYSED prerequisites for having an education background:

Dear Commissioner Steiner,

Yesterday’s announcement of the resignation of NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein and the decision by Mayor Bloomberg to appoint Ms. Cathleen P. Black as his successor has raised some troubling issues for which I write to request your clarification.

It is my understanding that Mayor Bloomberg has requested a “waiver” from the State Education Department for approval of Ms. Black’s appointment. What then is the current policy or requirements for state approval of a candidate for the position of Chancellor?

Furthermore, if a candidate lacks a particular academic or experience requirement, what criteria and process is used to approve a “waiver’ of said requirement?

While I agree that Ms. Black’s management experience in the private sector is truly commendable, I am gravely concerned that with so many changes underway and more proposed for our City’s education system, we must be careful to set aside long standing state policy in ways that would not be afforded to other high level positions. In this regard, I am currently exploring legislative remedies that would address these circumstances in the future.

Your assistance in clarifying these questions will help me understand and explain to my constituents, why someone with no education background is selected to run one of the nation’s largest school systems during such a critical time.

Respectfully,

Marcos A. Crespo
Member of Assembly

Will Chancellor Black reverse Klein's scourge on NYC education?

Joel Klein is getting replaced at the helm of the Dept of Ed.?
We could hope that the new chancellor will make great departures from the tenure of Mr. Klein, a tenure which wrecked terrible havoc upon NYC education.
Will she end the current emergency of multiple oversized classes, over the legal limit of registered students?
Will she end the destruction of the comprehensive high schools with diverse course offerings and clubs?
Will she end the closing of the large, traditional schools, and the overcrowding of weaker students from outside a district into selected schools, driving down their performance, all in the effort to close them down and reopen charter schools?
(For similar games that the Dept. of Education plays with pitting schools against each other, see this post at the Grassroots Education Movement, "Jane Addams Teacher Chronicles How NYCDOE Destroyed School With Poison Pill.")
Will she continue to trumpet her school system's accomplishments as utter genius, even while students score lower in the NAEP tests and among graduates from one-third of the New York City's high schools' graduates 70 percent of students entering CUNY programs needed courses in remedial English and Math?
Will she end the bias in resources and staffing levels of charter schools over public schools?
Will she end the overall scapegoating of teachers?
Will she end the scapegoating of teachers in episodes of misbehaving students?
Will she end the unprecedented (at least since the mid 1960s) aggressive posture of administrators toward teachers?
Will she end the seemingly deliberate replacement of teachers of color with students from elite schools?
Will she end the seemingly deliberate replacement of middle-aged teachers with “energetic, open minded,” read younger, less experienced (and easier to intimidate) teachers?
Will she end the mania of testing over teaching? ( --or Testing ueber alles?)
Will she end the mania of endless streams of consultants whose suggestions of “best practices” are outrageously naïve about conditions in NYC public schools?
Will she end the Orwellian/Kafkaesque labyrinth of the administrator allegations/student allegations/3020a hearings under Klein?
Will she end the closing out of parents from any policy voice on education matters?

I'm not holding my breath. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's absurdist selection of Cynthia Black, a media CEO (at Hearst magazines) suggests that we're in for more of the same. Truth cannot get ludicrous than fiction. Klein took an offer to become an Executive Vice President at the News Corporation. The News Corporation, in case you have not noticed, owns the loudest, most aggressively anti-teacher (and civil servants in general) newspaper in New York City, "The New York Post." (We can always be out happy that Bloomberg didn't choose the Washington Terror in the form of Michelle Rhee.)
ADDENDUM
As some posters to news articles are writing, but the "Times" seems to be forgetting,
this appointment will need a waiver authorization from State Education Commissioner David Steiner. People are going to have to wake up and stop believing the fudged data and the blind eye over Regents test scrubbing that Bloomberg relied upon in order to tout his false claim of advances in the last eight years; people that care about quality education for the city's students should insist upon some with an educator's background.
Will the "Times," WNYC and other media outlets fall in line with Bloomberg's emperor's new clothes nonsense and wax about the "savvy" with this "imaginative" choice of a chancellor?

Inept Principal Buck is quintessence of Leadership Academy fake educator

Excellent comments at the New York Daily News' comments page, on how the ascent of inept Brooklyn Middle School for Art and Philosophy Principal Andrew Buck represents the terribly hasty fast-tracking of inept teachers under Michael Bloomberg / Joel Klein's Leadership Academy.

Click this link for original Daily News article from October 22, 2010.

And click this link for the latest word on him, how he publicly stands by his idiotic missive on textbooks and education. Speaking to an eighth grade English class, he stood by his no-textbooks policy.

Excellent, sympathetic comments at Daily News about the Rubber Room situation

The "Daily News" allowed some excellent comments by sympathetic readers, on the issue of Rubber Room accusations, on the occasion of the closing of the rubber rooms.
We should remind readers of the context of the Rubber Room closures:
The closures decision occurred simultaneous with the public premiere of an independent film no the rubber rooms. UFT president was letting New York City schools chancellor off the hook when he agreed to the closure of the rubber rooms. The movie was apparently embarrassing to the city.

Here, some of the best comments on the issue of rubber rooms, and accusations against teachers, by someone named "EllenB."

EllenB
6:28:20 PM
Apr 15, 2010
Having many friends who are DOE educators, I have an inside look at what's really what in the NYC education scene that many people don't have. First of all, It is absolutely APPALLING that the DN has continuously bashed teachers within its pages, particularly those assigned to the "Rubber Room". Most of those teachers have, in truth, done NOTHING wrong. They are in effect political prisoners. China or the old USSR have nothing on the Bloomberg version of the camps. Some of the teachers assigned to "Rubber Rooms", unfortunately, have in fact been incompetent or actually committed a crime. And they should, of course, be removed from the classroom. But they are a very small minority of the hundreds of teachers in "Rubber Rooms". A very small minority indeed. The teachers may have been whistleblowers on unscrupulous administrators, and their reward was to be falsely accused of hastily drawn-up charges and sent to the "Rubber Room". Students who justly received failing grades
Report Offensive Post
EllenB
6:30:01 PM
Apr 15, 2010
Cont'd for poor quality work are actively encouraged to write statements against their teachers, which are then used to "justify" charges against that teacher. And they end up in the "Rubber Room" for no authentic reason at all. Oh, and if the charges are found to be false, the teacher's name is still blackened but there are NO consequences to the students, none at all. It's such fun to get some get-back at your competent teacher who justly gave you a failing grade for low quality work or who told you to be quiet so that a lesson could proceed and people could actually learn, or who had your cell phone confiscated. Every single day since the dawn of time, teachers have had to raise their voices in class when polite requests for quiet are ignored. By rewriting definitions, this has now become a criminal offense, corporeal punishment, under Bloomberg and it's been given the title "verbal abuse". "Corporeal" refers to "bodily" and this sort of punishment originally meant tha
Report Offensive Post
EllenB
6:31:41 PM
Apr 15, 2010
CONT'D - that teachers could not physically strike students. Many teachers reassigned to "Rubber Rooms" did nothing more than speak a little too loudly. Principals with a lot of older and hence expensive teachers have been very busy inventing all sorts of ludicrous charges to then clear their school budgets of these high-priced veterans, whose salaries are then eventually taken over by the central DOE---off the budgets of the individual school. This decentralization of salary payments was instituted by Bloomberg, and presents an obvious incentive to get rid of expensive teachers--by any means. The point is, the vast majority of the teachers sitting in the "Rubber Rooms" are falsely accused by their school administration based on questionable evidence, and would much rather be TEACHING kids than sitting around. And if you, a highly educated and intelligent person, were forced to sit basically immobile in an overcrowded room, only allowed to walk around during the lunch hour, w
Report Offensive Post
EllenB
6:34:34 PM
Apr 15, 2010
CONT'D - hour, what exactly WOULD you do to pass the hours? These people are not criminals, but they are being treated so. These people are not lazy bums, but they are being characterized as such. Bloomberg created the "gotcha" parameters, then pays off the media to defame those so accused (and usually innocent), inflaming public opinion against these unjustly maligned educators and thus gaining a favorable position with which to negotiate a less favorable contract for teachers. What is so hard to see about this? Yet judging from the vicious and ignorant comments posted by many here, Bloomberg's counting on an easily roused mob mentality ("Lynch them teachers! Hang 'em high!") worked admirably.
Report Offensive Post
oneofthemany
7:37:54 PM
Apr 15, 2010
@EllenB- This is EXACTLY the truth. I dare anyone who does not work for the DOE to see what goes on these days in a school. Principals have been given carte blanche and g-d help the teacher who speaks out against him/her. They'll quickly find themselves in the rubber room on charges of corporal punishment based upon NONSENSE. Take on the thankless job of being union rep, file a grievance for a fellow colleague and you'll find yourself written up for insubordination or professional misconduct. The DOE and the Mayor cry that the Union is the reason that things move so slow but when you have 15 arbitrators for the entire city that work 5 DAYS A MONTH, whose fault is that? The 60 day rule has been in effect for years but those cases are few and far between.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/04/15/2010-04-15_city_to_close_rubber_rooms_reassignment_centers_for_teachers_accused_of_major_vi.html#ixzz0lEUy4v3w

After the rubber room closings: essential procedure rights issues ignored by UFT, media

So, the city has agreed to close the teacher reassignment centers, also known as the rubber rooms.

They were a travesty upon the city, but not for the reason that "The New York Post" alleges.
They represented Soviet gulags right here in the United States.
Yet, in the talk about UFT president Michael Mulgrew and the press reports there is no talk of reform of the investigation procedures. The UFT last year passed a resolution saying that the New York City Department of Education investigations are frequently biased.

One wonders, what kinds of thoughts of regret of professional mission do partially conscientious DOE investigators have? Do they ever think to themselves: Am I serving justice by being a cog in such a biased, rigged system? Who could I speak with about this abusive system? Is this what I went to law school for?
The investigations are frequently biased. Investigators can interview a range of opinions, yet their default determination is that accusations are "substantiated." The DOE investigations, by the nature of the fact that DOE proceedings are fait accompli affairs, are really a test of the summoned teacher: how naive is the teacher? Since the teacher is not merely presumed, but determined to be guilty, the affair is of questionable benefit for the accused.
The proceedings are in sum a monkey court, a Stalin-style show trial, with the Department of Education and the various investigative offices constituting prosecutor, judge and jury.
CORE ISSUES OF LEGAL PROCEDURE INJUSTICE UNADDRESSED
These issues of procedure are of great significance. As Philip Nobile pointed out this week in a contribution at Education Notes, the accused in the murky DOE experience a pre-Magna Carta deficit of rights. Basic features of the Bill of Rights are withheld from accused teachers. The accused are not informed of the reason that they are reassigned. They are not allowed to know of their accuser. They cannot even see statements by opposing witnesses, even with the names redacted. They cannot pursue their own investigation. It is obviously a one-sided procedure. In the United States under standard rules of legal procedure each side in a legal proceeding is allowed to pursue their own investigation. In the real world each side is provided documentation of investigations. The investigation procedures are in a zone in which the accused teachers are denied their due process rights.
Our weak Mulgrew-lead UFT has done nothing in the past or in the new agreement to correct the general denial of due process in the entire procedure. And the UFT does not serve the accused well. As Nobile has pointed out, the UFT has a standing policy of denying the accused the right of getting a copy of the notes that the representative has taken in the proceedings with the investigators.
The media have uniformly done a incompetent job of reporting the rubber room procedure. In the absence of the UFT's addressing the systemic denial of due process, the abuse of teacher's due process rights will continue. The public, in the absence of a complete representation of the denial of basic legal procedures, will remain under the impression that the whole procedure is legally kosher, "Well, the Department of Education is headed by lawyers, surely they must follow correct legal procedure. This is America. Everyone always gets due process. The UFT was headed by a lawyer. Surely, they must be on top of the situation. So, all of those people in those rooms must get a fair and just judgment."
Closing agreement's curious timing
Let's hope that Justin Cegnar and Jeremy Garrett's "The Rubber Room" movie gets broader distribution. The film received a review at Education Notes.
It seems all-too-coincidental for the city to come to this agreement on the rubber rooms, just the day before the premiere of this film.

As to the deadlines of how long the city has to act before charging teachers, the question is will the city live up to the commitment? The city already has such deadlines, but the city has not kept to those commitments. The UFT knows of this and has not corrected the problem.
The closing of the rubber rooms a set-back?
In the closure of the rubber rooms, the mistreatment of the accused could get worse. Concentrating all of the accused in one place surely lead to some sharing of information of the limited rights that the accused have. The venue for information sharing among the accused is lost.
Remaining work for the UFT to do
The UFT needs to address the myriad of essential real world procedural rights-denied. The UFT needs to address the larger context of the rubber rooms. They have ballooned under the Bloom/Klein administration, as part of a pattern of principal intimidation of teachers. The UFT needs to have better education efforts, including brochures, for the accused. In sum, the UFT must have a more aggressive effort at correcting a general miscarriage of justice.

NAACP officials challenge NYC school closings

Benjamin Todd Jealous and Hazel Dukes, two National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) officials wrote a critique of the New York City Department of Education's closure of 19 schools, published February 10, 2010 in New York "Daily News."
Unfortunately, they did not call attention to the very keen racial pattern to the school closures, a pattern which I have addressed in a number of blog posts on this site since last year.

Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have decided it is a good idea to shut 19 troubled schools in New York City's low-income neighborhoods. The NAACP is suing to stop the closings.

The reason for the lawsuit is simple: Education is a civil rights imperative of our century. It is a ladder out of poverty for many working-class families. It was the civil rights struggle of the day when the NAACP brought Brown vs. Board of Education to end school segregation, and it has been one of the organization's cornerstone battles for 100 years.

We are suing because, in the New York City case, democracy was overlooked and citizens' voices - the concerns of those most affected - were left out.

In our view, the city blatantly disregarded the state-mandated analysis of how the closings would affect the more than 13,000 students who attend the schools, particularly special education and other special needs students, and how the closings would impact the often overcrowded schools they are sent to.

The Education Department disrespects the students and their parents with poorly planned and executed school closures. The department didn't even announce where the students would end up. Instead, they kept parents in the dark, worsening a situation in which trust was already a scarce commodity. If the students were from affluent communities, it's doubtful the administration would run roughshod over that democratic process - and doubtful the schools would even be closed.

The city needs to be more responsive to neighborhoods like Parkchester in the Bronx, where parents and teachers had to fight City Hall for more than six years to get children moved out of mold-infested trailers that were causing many students to become ill. Or the Queens neighborhood where the high school slated for closure is struggling to serve the needs of children who don't yet know English, have disabilities or are homeless. Or for schools in low-income communities citywide, where despite recently winning a 16-year-old lawsuit for fiscal equity and smaller class sizes, the necessary resources have still not been invested and students - often with intensive educational needs - are still being educated in class sizes of 35 or more.

Some New York schools may indeed need to close, but several of the schools slated for closure have foundations on which we can build better learning opportunities. If we invested in reducing class sizes, developed supports for improving teaching quality, implemented the court-mandated fiscal equity and emphasized college readiness, many of these schools could be turned around.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/02/10/2010-02-10_closing_new_york_city_schools_is_an_education_plan_that_fails_our_kids.html#ixzz0fRCNXlCk

Instead, many of the schools are bursting with students who have intensive needs - students who are being relocated from schools that had been closed earlier and will be transferred yet again. Some of these schools had an overconcentration of homeless children, who can find themselves moving from shelter to shelter and must frequently change schools.

No plan has been announced to indicate which schools, if any, have the capacity to serve the students being displaced. Instead, the city risks a vicious cycle of shuttling kids from one poor-performing school to another, disrupting their sense of stability and further threatening their success. The department's plan seems to be to keep rearranging these kids like deck chairs until the new schools sink, unprepared for their weight, or students grow frustrated and drop out altogether.

Some of the schools surpassed the list of criteria that the Education Department set for closing a school, so why do they face the chopping block? The majority of schools targeted for closure earned passing marks on their quality reviews, and one-third were in good standing with the state. These are legitimate concerns and should have been discussed in a thoughtful, meaningful way with the goal of seeking solutions.

Our lawsuit is about upholding democracy and inclusion, the ethos that drives all of our work. It's the underlying principle that led to Brown vs. Board of Education. The parents and students of New York City deserve no less. They should be given the right to raise their voices about decisions affecting one of the most fundamental and cherished aspects for any family - a quality education in a good school.

Jealous is president and CEO of the NAACP. Dukes is president of the New York State Conference of the NAACP.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/02/10/2010-02-10_closing_new_york_city_schools_is_an_education_plan_that_fails_our_kids.html?page=1#ixzz0fRCW5S4x

NYT blogger points out curious coincidence of teacher "Rubber Room" stories

Sharon Otterman at the New York Times City Room blog drew attention,
in "A Teacher Terror Alert Phenomenon?"
to United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew's contention
that there is a curious timing of the recent spate of teacher reassignment center / "rubber room" stories when there is negative news about the New York City Department of Education.
While Otterman dismisses the idea of a conspiratorial campaign, one must note the New York Post is the biggest peddler of salacious teacher news, and that the Post even more aggressively than Bloomberg or Klein pushes core concepts of the education de former agenda. They do not need to be prodded by Joel Klein and company at Tweed Courthouse.
Otterman's disclaimer aside, she did a great job of pointing out uncannily convenient timing of the salacious stories to deflect general indignation over the path of the NYC Department of Education.

Read thru lines of Daily News: Prince Bloomberg's puppet PEP ignored over 100 speeches by kids, teachers & the community

Daily News' January 27, 2010 report on the 6:00 PM to 3:30 AM Jan. 26 public meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy:
Note that eight of the panel's thirteen members are appointed by King --I mean, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The votes on whether to postpone the vote on the closings or the vote on the closings fell on "party-line" votes: the first vote, at 11 PM, was eight to five; the 3:30 AM vote on the closings was nine to four. The mayor-appointed panel members know that if they part from the mayor's wishes they might lose their posts, as happened on the only instance in which mayor-appointed panel members voted against the mayor's prerogatives. This makes it plainly obvious that the mayor does not respect democratic plurality of opinion.

Rachel Monahan, "Education Department panel votes to close 19 failing New York City
schools," "New York Daily News" January 27, 2010

Over the objections of thousands of protesters, the city Education Department's panel voted early Wednesday morning to close 19 failing city schools.

After more than eight hours of testimony, the Panel for Educational Policy gave the go-ahead shortly after 3:00 a.m.

The four panel members representing the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan voted against most of the closings.

Mayor Bloomberg’s eight appointees along with the representative from Staten Island supported the decision.

At the beginning of the hearing, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein defended the proposals.

"The sad reality is that the schools we must close tonight are not meeting the standards," he said, barely audible over boos from the crowd.

At one point he left the stage for several minutes, and the crowd interrupted testimony, repeatedly chanting, "Where is Klein?"

Only after he returned did the crowd allow testimony to continue.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, among those who called for a delay, accused the Education Department of procedural violations, including failing to provide information to his panel appointee in time.

The public hearing and the vote were required for the first time this year because of changes made to the mayoral control law last summer.

Teachers union President Michael Mulgrew said the union is weighing a lawsuit but had not yet determined whether the city adhered to the law in moving to close schools.

“If that has not been followed, we will take them to court,” said Mulgrew.

Public sentiment has turned against Mayor Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms

Juan Gonzalez's column on the mammoth 3,000 strong meeting of the New York City Department of Education rubber stamp, Panel for Educational Policy:
"New York Daily News," January 27, 2010
"Public Sentiment has Turned Against Mayor Bloomberg's Dictatorial School Reforms"

Mayor Bloomberg has ignited a firestorm among parents and teachers with his latest move to shut down 19 more low-performing schools - including many of the city's biggest high schools.

The hundreds who filled Brooklyn Technical High School Tuesday night to protest a vote on the closings by the mayor's Panel for Educational Policy sent a clear signal: The tide of public sentiment has turned against Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, those parents say, stacked their schools in recent years with huge numbers of special needs kids - especially English language learners and special education students.

Among the big schools to be shuttered are Christopher Columbus in the Bronx, Norman Thomas in Manhattan, Paul Robeson and W.H. Maxwell in Brooklyn and Jamaica High in Queens.

Klein never provided those schools with smaller class sizes and more resources, the parents say.

At a Jan. 7 hearing on Jamaica High, for instance, more than 800 people turned out. Klein aides admitted Tuesday that of 107 people who submitted official comments, not a single person backed the closing.

The chancellor simply ignores local sentiment. He prefers to spend much of his time promoting new charter schools or small public high schools, both of which enroll far fewer percentages of special needs children.

"I could easily get you a 75% graduation rate if you removed allthe students with nontraditional needs," said James Eterno, a social studies teacher at Jamaica High for the past 24 years and head of the local teachers union chapter.

At Jamaica High, for example, 17% of the students are English language learners and 11% are in special education. Nearly half of that special ed population - 4.8% - is classified as needing the "most restricted environment." That means they have emotional or behavioral problems that require highly specialized attention and resources.

At Queens Collegiate, a new small school Klein recently created in the same Jamaica High building, less than 4% are English language learners and none are in the "most restricted" special ed classification.

At Christopher Columbus in the Bronx, another school targeted for closing, an astounding 42% of the students are English language learners or special education - with 14% classified as needing the "most restricted environment."

These new closings will once again end up cherry-picking the best students for the small schools and charters. Special needs students will end up dropping out or being shuttled to another comprehensive school, which will then also be declared a failure.

Each of these comprehensive high schools has roots and traditions in its community. Closing them in this frenzied rush for small schools damages the fabric of our city's neighborhoods.

That's why furious parents are fighting back. And that's why the tide is turning on the Bloomberg school reforms.

NY 1, the 24-hour municipal news cable station will broadcast January 27 PEP vote on school closings

The ominous vote on NYC closures is coming, in mere days.

NY 1, on the Web at NY1.com, is broadcasting New York City's Panel for Education Policy (PEP, widely recognized to be a rubber stamp for Chancellor Joel Klein's objectives) vote (on school closings) on Tuesday, Jan. 27. (I'm wondering: by scheduling the vote for Tuesday, not Monday, are they inherently indicating that they are feeling some pressure from the community? Is the panel moving the vote to a later time, to digest the impact of the public PEP meeting at Brooklyn Technical High School?) Please make it a priority to attend the meeting. Education activists fought hard to bring the meeting to this site after the New York City Department of Education originally scheduled the meeting for the more remote Staten Island.
Brooklyn Technical High School is relatively centrally located at 29 Fort Greene Place at DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene, downtown Brooklyn. (Enter the school's auditorium at South Elliott Place.) The school is paces away from Fulton Street, from the south. It is a short walk north from the Flatbush terminal of the Long Island Rail Road (renamed Atlantic Terminal, for The Atlantic Yards project?); from the B, M, Q, R BMT lines at DeKalb Avenue walk east on DeKalb Avenue to the school; from 2, 3, 4, 5 IRT lines at Nevins Street, walk east on Fulton Street to South Elliott Place; A, E, F, L riders can transfer to the C or G train; C: Fulton Street station, G: Lafayette Avenue from either street, connect with South Elliott Place. Click here to access the MTA Brooklyn Bus map, to see bus routes and a "zoomable" map.
Rally on South Elliott Place at 5 PM, attend the meeting at 6 PM!

As I've written earlier this month, the NYC DOE scheduling plan does not heed actual performance. It closes down large schools and aims to reopen them as small schools, by its preference, as charter schools, even though the small schools do not perform any better than the large traditional, comprehensive high schools.

Unfortunately, no word on exact time of the vote, --day or evening?
See NY1.com's site at: http://www.ny1.com/1-all-boroughs-news-content/news_beats/education/112494/without-paul-robeson--many-students-will-have-their-needs-unmet/

WCBS TV to interview rubber room plaintiff attorney, Mon 1/26

Major Breaking Education News

History will be made by CBS Channel 2 Television News
When: Monday 11 PM
Where: Channel 2, CBS, NYC

Who: Legendary News Reporter
Pablo Guzman
Interviews:

Attorney Dr. Joy Hochstadt, Esq.
Representing and with:
David Pakter
[some others]

See FIRST PERSON INTERVIEW : THE FINANCIAL TIMES OF LONDON
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4f8c4a1c-ef66-11de-86c4-00144feab49a.html
What: Lead Plaintiffs in major Federal Class Action Lawsuit
seeking to permanently close
New York City's infamous "Rubber Rooms"

Why: Because the Public has the right to know that such abominations
should NOT exist in a Free Democratic Society

This Monday (January 26, 2010) 11 PM WCBS-TV Special News Report
will be followed by a full extended News Special
that will be posted on the CBS News Website on the Internet at the end of the week.

The so-called NYC Dept of Education "Rubber Rooms"
are places spread around New York City
where NYC Teachers are "disappeared",
sometimes for years, on trumped up charges.

While a small number of these Teachers should be removed,
Most teachers in the "Rubber Rooms" ended up there
Because the NYC Dept of Education decided they were allegedly "too old",
Or were earning "too high" salaries,
Or because they were Whistle-blowers who reported,
Widespread corruption and waste of Tax Payer money,
As well as the breaking of Federal Civil Rights Laws.

Watch the Monday night CBS Special News Report at 11 PM

Watch the Extended Pablo Guzman Interviews on
CBS News Internet Website later in week.
WCBS-TV News in New York City deserves much credit
for being the first TV News Program in America
To expose the Truth about New York's "Rubber Rooms"

This is Education News History
No one can afford to miss this News Special Report

Please post, circulate and tell your friends.

Follow the money I: Gonzalez on Robert$on hand in PAVE vs public school

Behind the push for charter schools to replace public schools is private investment, in the following Brooklyn case, investor Julian Robertson, getting plum treatment from New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, as Juan Gonzalez reports in yesterday's "Daily News:"

Nothing Schools Chancellor Joel Klein can say will calm the furor and sense of betrayal parents and teachers at Public School 15 in Brooklyn have felt for the past few weeks.

"There is a deliberate attempt [by Klein] to undermine and dismantle a successful public school, and we're going to fight it," Lydia Bellahcene, a leader of the Parents Association and mother of three students at the Red Hook school, vowed Tuesday.

The target here is not a failed school. Even the bureaucrats at Tweed have given PS 15 an A rating for three straight years.

Yet, parents at the school find themselves locked in a neighborhood civil war instigated by the Department of Education. Their nemesis is PAVE Academy, a charter school that shares their building but keeps demanding more space.

The same conflict is being fought out in scores of New York City neighborhoods.

It is one of the main reasons Democratic lawmakers in Albany Tuesday rebuffed intense pressure from Klein, Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Paterson - even from the Obama White House - to lift the cap on the number of charter schools in the state.

The lawmakers did so even though they risked the state's losing hundreds of million of dollars in "Race to the Top" federal school aid.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) showed the most courage. He was prepared to lift the cap, but only if Klein and other school superintendents agreed to some checks and balances. Among those were new regulations requiring approval from public school parents before space in their school could be turned over to a charter.

Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson of Brooklyn tried to act with Silver but couldn't muster a majority in his closely divided and dysfunctional Senate.

So Silver and Sampson decided no bill is better than a bad one. So the cap on charters stays at 200 statewide.

The parents at PS 15 know the importance of having a real voice. A few years ago, Klein's aides announced they were temporarily installing the new PAVE Academy in their school. It was only for two years, Tweed told PS 15, until the charter could find its own building.

PAVE happens to be run by Spencer Robertson, the son of billionaire Julian Robertson. The father's foundation donated $10 million to various educational reform efforts Klein started.

"We were shocked at the arrogance we were met with when they [PAVE] arrived, as if this building was theirs," Bellahcene said. "They insisted on separate entrances, stairwells and even bathrooms for their students. They even discourage their children from talking to ours."

"I'm sorry they feel that way," PAVE director Robertson said Tuesday. "We believe firmly there is room for our two schools to be successful with co-location. We're working on that."

And he's banking on a lot more time.

A few months ago, the Department of Education suddenly reversed itself and announced plans for PAVE to stay at PS 15 for up to five more years - until Robertson erects a brand new building for his school.

Since PAVE only has kindergarten to second grade, that will mean adding new grades each year, which means more classrooms.

"They are forcing PS 15's enrollment to shrink," one teacher said. "There aren't enough rooms in the building for basic programming."

All the things that made Public School 15 a true jewel for the children of Red Hook are being torn apart, the parents say.

If this is what Klein calls a race to the top, someone save them from it, quick.

Rubber Room Teachers Sue Klein and NYC DoE

Saturday, December 05, 2009
Rubber Room Teachers Sue Klein and NYCDOE
Breaking Education News - For Immediate Release

Manhattan Attorney, Dr. Joy Hochstadt, Esq.
Files Class Action Lawsuit in Federal Court to
Close the NYC Dept of Education "Rubber Rooms"

from: "Village Voice," New York News Blog
Teachers Bring Suit Against Klein Over Rubber Rooms
By Roy Edroso, Tuesday, Dec. 1 2009
Click to above link for full "Village Voice" article link

And here, from Betsy Combier's NYC Rubber Room Reporter blog:
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Whistleblower PE Teacher Daniel Smith Sues the NYC BOE in Federal Court For Putting Him in the "Rubber Room" For More Than Two Years

Contact: Alan J. Wax (631) 873-8044
(631) 574-4433
or Todd Shapiro (516) 312-6573
alanjwax@waxwordsinc.com

COACH IN DEPARTMENT OF ED’S RUBBER ROOM SUES TO GET OUT;
CLAIMS HE IS VICTIM OF RETALIATION FOR BEING OUTSPOKEN

NEW YORK (Nov. 12, 2009) -- Daniel Smith, the outspoken former Dewitt Clinton High School girls softball coach and Bronx high school gym teacher, is suing the New York City Department of Education to get out of one of the city’s infamous “rubber rooms.” Smith claims he’s been assigned to the rubber room for speaking out against school officials.
Click to link for full article