Bloomberg School Choice Policies Created Bus Budget Crisis; Environmental Issues Lurk

Among the major issues progressive school workers, parents and community members should face is the reality that eliminating the neighborhood school is behind this school bus budget crisis.

The fraud of failed schools and the "need" for school choice is behind this dilemma. Each day, thousands of children are needlessly sent out of their neighborhood in a con game that carries the premise that schools are notably better a few miles away.

Socially, this carries a cost. Students are pulled from schools; the New York City Department of Education cries underutilization or school failure because some plumb students are gone, and schools close. The community-school identification wears down.

Add a few hundred charter schools and you've magnified the problem.

Meanwhile, students are bused, and the unnecessary busing worsens the pollution situation, adds students to the already burdened bus and subway lines.

Just take a look at this "New York Times" graph, in "At Root of Strike, Runaway Costs in City’s School Busing System," scheduled to run on the front page of Thursday's edition. Today, there are about 7,000 bus routes. When Bloomberg entered office in 2002 the city had 5,000 school bus routes. Twenty years ago, the bus routes stood at around 3,400. Note that costs move roughly commensurate with the growth in school bus routes.

If Bloomberg had not pursued this ideological, unproductive shell game policy, we would not have been in this situation.

Another factor is Bloomberg's particular bus route choices. As Juan Gonzalez reported in the New York Daily News, the bus routes themselves are expensive, and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has not been forthcoming about the full story as to why the routes are expensive, according to bu union president Mike Cordiello.

Even more amazing is the mayor’s silence at the causes of skyrocketing bus costs that have nothing to do with the workers.

The biggest is special education. While only about a third of the 150,000 students bused daily are in special education, their transportation represents three-quarters of the total cost of the program — more than $770 million. That's an average of $12,000 annually per child, according the city's Independent Budget Office.

Many of those children ride long distances to private schools outside the city.

Bus union president Mike Cordiello says many routes are so ineptly configured by Tweed bureaucrats that his members run 186 routes daily to Westchester County, most of them with 6 children or less per bus. There are 25 buses per day to New Jersey, 16 to Rockland County, several to Connecticut.

Read more at the full January 17 Daily News story.

The New York Times' Schoolbook claims that mob ties are a major factor in keeping school bus costs high. If this is so, why doesn't New York City tackle that issue instead of harangue school bus drivers and their union? Where is the 1980s era Rudy Giuliani, the prosecutor of mobsters?

U.S. DOE tells PA officials: use same standards to grade charter schools

From Kathy Mattheson at the Associated Press, reposted at the Lehigh Valley Express-Times, Pennsylvania:

Pa. told to re-evaluate charter school test scores
Nov. 22, 2012, 2:03 p.m. EST
AP

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Federal education officials have denied Pennsylvania's request to evaluate charter school achievement using more lenient criteria, saying they must be assessed by the same standard as traditional schools.

The rejection means Pennsylvania cannot substitute a less stringent method for measuring "adequate yearly progress," the federal benchmark known as AYP. Critics said the formula artificially inflated charter schools' performance for political reasons.

"I cannot approve this ... because it's not aligned with the statute and regulations," U.S. Assistant Education Secretary Deborah Delisle wrote in a letter released by the state Wednesday.

The issue surfaced in September when Pennsylvania's latest standardized test scores were reported. For the first time — and without approval from federal officials — state Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis treated charter schools as districts, not individual schools.

Schools must hit certain targets at every tested grade level to make AYP. But for a district to meet the benchmark, it needs only to hit targets in one of three grade spans: grades 3-5, 4-6 or 9-12.

Under Pennsylvania law, every charter school is considered its own district. So by using the grade span methodology, about 59 percent of charters made AYP — a figure that supporters touted, comparing it with the 50 percent of traditional schools that hit the target.

Yet only 37 percent of charters would have made AYP under the individual school method. Delisle ordered Pennsylvania to re-evaluate charter schools' AYP status using that standard by the end of the fall semester.

She noted that Pennsylvania can assess charters under the district method but only in addition to the school method.

The state will now assess charters under both standards, according to a Wednesday statement from Pennsylvania Education Department spokesman Tim Eller.

Previously, Eller had argued that the grade span calculation leveled the playing field for charters, which are publicly funded but operate independently of school districts.

And while acknowledging that standard can mask academic problems, Eller has said school districts have taken advantage of the methodology for years. The grade span calculation enabled 61 percent of districts to make AYP in 2011-12, while only 22 percent would have made AYP without it, Eller said.

Opponents say parents are much more interested in the performance of individual schools than districts as a whole.

AYP is a key component of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Schools that fail to make AYP receive additional oversight and, eventually, could end up with new staffs or be shut down.

Follow Kathy Matheson at www.twitter.com/kmatheson.

Other reports have these added comments (Sara Satullo at the Lehigh Valley "Express-Times"):

The U.S. Department of Education refuses to sign off on Pennsylvania's unauthorized change to the way it calculates whether charter schools made state testing benchmarks.

and:

Critics of the switch Pennsylvania attempted say that it makes it easier for charter schools to make adequate yearly progress but proponents say as charter schools have grown it makes more sense to treat them like school districts.

For an individual school to make adequate yearly progress , the overall student body must score proficient or above on math and reading tests. And in schools with certain demographics of 40 or more students if one group misses one target the entire school doesn’t make adequate yearly progress. And until this year charter schools were measured the same way.

The federal Department of Education cannot approve Pennsylvania's request to treat brick-and-mortar and cyber charter schools only as "local education agencies" for adequate yearly progress purposes because "Adequate yearly progress determinations would be made for each charter school as an LEA but not as a school," according to a letter provided by the state.

"Moving forward, the department will calculate adequate yearly progress for each school building in every school district and charter school, as well as for each local education agency – traditional public school district and charter school," Eller said.

The federal government is requiring Pennsylvania go back and calculate school-level adequate yearly progress results for charter schools for 2011-12 PSSA data by the end of the first semester of the 2012-13 school year. Any schools identified with problems must implement improvement plans by the start of the second semester of the 2012-13 school year.

Follow @sarasatullo

Ravitch: Expose of Charter School Corruption in Arizona

From Diane Ravitch's blog, November 20, 2012, "Expose of Charter Corruption in The New Republic":

Timothy Noah, a senior editor of The New Republic, has written a stunning expose of charter school corruption. He begins with Arizona, where the laws are so lax that self-dealing by charter executives is the rule, not the exception. Noah points out that 90 percent of charter operators are exempt from state laws requiring competitive bidding. The state has never withdrawn an exemption.

Noah bases his observations about Arizona’s Wild West of charters on investigative reporting by Anne Ryman of the Arizona Republic.

He quotes from Ryman’s article:

“The schools’ purchases from their own officials,” Ryman writes, “range from curriculum and business consulting to land leases and transportation services. A handful of non-profit schools outsource most of their operations to a board member’s for-profit company.” A nonprofit called Great Hearts Academies runs 15 Arizona charter schools. Since 2009, according to Ryman, the schools have purchased $987,995 in books from Educational Sales Co., whose chairman, Daniel Sauer, is a Great Hearts officer. And that doesn’t count additional book purchases made directly by parents. Six of the Great Hearts schools have links on their Web sites for parents who wish to make such purchases. The links are, of course, to Educational Sales Co. Since 2007 Sauer has donated $50,400 to Great Hearts. You can call that philanthropy, or you can call that an investment on which Sauer’s company received a return of more than 1800 percent. I’m not sure even Russian oligarchs typically get that much on the back end.

Oh, yes, Great Hearts Academy. This is the same Arizona-based outfit that has been turned down four times by the Metro Nashville school board because it did not have a diversity plan. Because of its rejection of Great Hearts, the Nashville schools were fined $3.4 million by Tennessee’s TFA state commissioner of education Kevin Huffman. Huffman and the governor really, really want Great Hearts in Nashville and apparently they “won’t back down” until Great Hearts has at least three or four campuses in Nashville, regardless of what the school board says. The governor and legislature are set to pass an ALEC-model law to create a commission to overrule local school boards that have the nerve to turn down a charter school.

By the way, Great Hearts Academy just got permission to open charters in San Antonio.

Noah notes corruption in Ohio and California charters, including the Adelanto Charter School, which was shut down. It will now be replaced the the nation’s very first parent trigger charter, also in Adelanto, California, which was selected by only 50 parents in a school that enrolls more than 600 children.

Keep writing, Timothy Noah.

Charter School Group Linked to Genocide Denialists

Too much to blog about. Too little time. School Matters alerted readers in the last week to the following about the Gülen Charter Schools:

The individual most responsible for the proliferation of Gülen Charter Schools in LAUSD is the Board President herself, Mónica García. García's ties to the Gülenists are long-standing, and she is a tenacious advocate on their behalf. She is speaking at the Gülenist Pacifica Institute in September 2012 regarding her prominent role in corporate education reform and the unprecedented privatization of LAUSD under her neoliberal reign. The Pacifica Institute ran into controversy last year, when Armenian groups protested the organization's ties to Turkish groups denying the 1915-1918 Armenian genocide. That García chooses to be so insensitive to the considerable Armenian population in her school district is most likely attributable to the fact that there are no Armenian organizations managing large chains of lucrative charter schools in LAUSD.

Click here for link to full blog post, "Mónica García champions the Gülenist Charter Movement in LAUSD." (First published in the Daily Censored.)

NYC Charter School Teachers Fired for Pregnancy; Why We Need Tenure and Unions

Voices New York, a media project of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, reports that "Charter School Teachers Say They Were Fired for Getting Pregnant."
Voices New York translated a story from El Diario/La Prensa.

Time was, before tenure, schools and principals would routine impress upon female teachers to not become pregnant. Tenure was a safeguard that protected education workers from such harassment. Workers formed unions to protect their democratic rights on the job. In the world of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and other politicians the vision of the future is a union-free environment known as the charter school.
Shame on the Department of Education, and politicians of all parties, for pushing these charter schools on us! Pregnant and child-bearing teachers have rights too!
The story of two teachers, fired for their pregnancies on company time, is a classic case for tenure protection and for unionization. Take note of one teacher's comment about how she would have been better protected with a union.
Here's the latest United Federation of Teachers (UFT) contract which would have protected the teachers, had their school been a public school, not a charter school.

Advocates for charter schools have argued that the right to hire and fire teachers should be in the hands of principals, while unions argue that teachers need job protections. This argument may play out in the upcoming mayoral race, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an advocate for charter schools, stepping down.
Against this backdrop, El Diario La Prensa reported on two Spanish teachers in the Bronx who say they were dismissed from a charter school because they became pregnant — and that they were then subjected to the indignity of having lesson plans stolen and being coerced into writing a positive evaluation of the school. The article, which did not include a response to the charges from the school’s principal or the Department of Education, is translated from Spanish below.
Two teachers at a charter school denounced the way that they were fired. They called the school administration autocratic and discriminatory, and said that favoritism rules.
Loyda Suero, of Dominican heritage, and Leslie Cruz, of Puerto Rican descent, taught Spanish to 5-year-old children this past spring semester in the bilingual Jardín de Infancia classroom, at South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures and the Arts, located at 577 East 139th Street in the Bronx.
However, although both teachers said they had a good relationship with the children, the parents, and the school administration, Suero said that in her case, everything changed when she announced she was pregnant.
“The principal, Evelyn Hey, told me that she wanted a teacher who was going to be with the children for the entire year,” said Suero, age 24, who will give birth in February and promised to only take one month of maternity leave.
Hey told Suero, “I would love for you to come back, but I had a daughter and she got sick with a heart condition, and it took me seven years to return,” indicating to her that teachers have to plan to give birth in the summertime.
[Because the teachers worked at a charter school] “They don’t have the same type of protection that union members have. They can be dismissed without a reason,” said Richard Riley, head of public relations for the United Federation of Teachers.
This newspaper got in touch with the school and made an appointment with Hey to interview her, but she cancelled it barely one hour before it started at the recommendation of the school’s legal counsel. “I don’t want to create problems for the school,” said Hey.
South Bronx Charter School (Photo via EDLP)
On June 27, when the teachers went to pick up their belongings, they were asked for a list of lesson plans and activities they did in the classroom to provide a guide for the new teachers.
Both teachers did so, but when they returned from lunch, they found that their files had been opened. The folders containing their lesson plans and activities that they had developed throughout the year were missing.
“I got scared. The folders with my lesson plans – that’s my work!” said Suero. “Nobody gave it to me. I need to present it at interviews to get another job, and it was taken away.”
“I approached the principal’s assistant, and she told us that it’s school property,” said Cruz, age 34.
Suero and Cruz went to the office, where they found another assistant photocopying the contents of their files. “We’ll give them back to you once we’ve made copies,” they were told. Both teachers waited, but Suero still hasn’t received her lesson plans that she made, including one “about the snail and the apple.”
“I got so upset because it was an abuse of power,” said Cruz. “I became enraged because we felt like they walked all over us. If they needed our work, why couldn’t they have asked for it? What nerve!”
Cruz and Suero condemned the school administration for putting pressure on some teachers and favoring others, including when it comes to scheduling doctor’s appointments. “They told me to go to the doctor during my vacation,” said Suero.
They also criticized the lack of instruction and leadership for new teachers.
“You didn’t have a mentor,” said Cruz. “They gave authority to other colleagues who had been there for four years, but it’s not their mission to help teachers. There wasn’t any support; we had to come up with out own lesson plans. The only thing they’re concerned with is reading, because it raises the grade of the school.”
Cruz and Suero said they weren’t the only teachers who got fired; one other teacher was also dismissed. Two teachers resigned, and another pregnant teacher was demoted to a substitute for the following school year.
“Teachers live in fear of what will happen at the end of the year,” said Cruz. “Will I stay or will I go? We don’t have a union, but with a union, a teacher has rights. It wouldn’t be like this if we had one.”
“It’s all a show. They exploit you and then they give you the ax,” declared Suero.
Both teachers also condemned the way in which the school handled the questionnaire that teachers fill out for the Department of Education.
“They set up computers in the principal’s office,” said Cruz. “She told us that she expected us to only say good things about our experience, and that if something was wrong, we should tell her before answering. She told us this while walking around among us. She would stand behind you…I consider her warning to be a threat.”
The DOE said that the questionnaire is for all schools. The goal is to gather information to improve the learning environment and the questionnaire is completely confidential.
The Code of Ethics that governs the questionnaire states, “Any practice that has the appearance of violating this code of behavior will be investigated. Depending on the outcome, the questionnaire can be invalidated and other disciplinary measures may be taken.”
Suero graduated from Lehman College and Cruz studied in Puerto Rico.

Here is Candida Portugues' article in the original Spanish in "El Diario/La Prensa," July 6, 2012,
"Maestras alegan que fueron despedidas por embarazo: Una profesora dominicana y otra puertorriqueña denunciaron a la gerencia de la escuela como dictatorial y discriminatoria":

EL BRONX – Dos maestras despedidas de una escuela charter denunciaron la forma en que lo hicieron y califican a la gerencia de la escuela como dictatorial y discriminatoria, en la que rige el favoritismo.
Loyda Suero, dominicana, y Leslie Cruz, puertorriqueña, trabajaron este semestre como profesoras de español para la clase de Jardín de Infancia bilingüe, niños de 5 años, en la South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures and the Arts, en el 577 Este de la calle 139 de El Bronx.
Sin embargo, aunque aseguraron tener buena relación con los niños, los padres y gerencia de la escuela, Suero señaló que todo cambió -en su caso- cuando dijo que estaba embarazada.
"La directora, Evelyn Hey, me dijo que quería una profesora que estuviera todo el año con los niños", indicó Suero, quien dará a luz en febrero y se comprometió a tomar sólo un mes de maternidad. "A mí me encantaría que tú volvieras, pero yo tuve una niña y nació enferma del corazón y tardé siete años en volver...", dijo Suero, de 24 años, refiriéndose a lo que le respondió Hey, indicándole que las profesoras tienen que planificar ser madres en verano.
"Ellas no tienen el tipo de protección que nosotros tenemos [los sindicalizados], pueden ser despedidas sin razón", dijo Richard Riley, encargado de prensa del Sindicato de Profesores (UFT).
Puestos en contacto con la escuela, Hey fijó una fecha para ser entrevistada, pero la canceló apenas una hora después por recomendación de su departamento legal. "No quiero meter a la escuela en problemas", nos dijo Hey.
El 27 de junio -cuando las maestras fueron a recoger sus pertenencias- les pidieron una lista con las lecciones y trabajos realizados para orientación de la próxima maestra.
Así lo hicieron, pero cuando regresaron del almuerzo encontraron que sus carteras estaban abiertas y faltaban sus carpetas de lecciones y trabajos que habían ido construyendo por sí mismas a lo largo del año.
"Me espanté, las carpetas con mis lecciones, que es mi trabajo ¡que nadie me dio! y que necesito mostrar para conseguir otro empleo, se las habían llevado", dijo Suero.
"Me acerqué a la asistente de la directora… y nos dijo que eso es propiedad de la escuela", indicó Cruz, de 34 años. Fueron a la oficina y encontraron a otra asistente haciendo fotocopias de sus carpetas: "Te las vamos a dar de vuelta cuando hagamos copias", les informó. Ambas esperaron a que las hicieran, pero Suero aún no recuperó los estudios y trabajos que hizo "sobre el caracol y la manzana", según denunció.
"Me molesté ¡tanto! porque era un abuso de poder…. Me dio coraje porque sentimos que nos pisotearon… 'Si usted necesita eso ¿por qué no nos lo pidieron, cómo tuvieron ese atrevimiento?'", afirma Cruz que les increpó.
Ambas denuncian una gerencia que presiona a unas maestras y privilegia a otras, incluso a la hora de hacer una cita médica. "Me dijeron que hiciera mis citas en las vacaciones", afirma Suero. Asimismo, denunciaron la falta de dirección y liderazgo con las maestras nuevas. "No tenías un mentor, delegaban en otros compañeros que llevaban cuatro años, pero ésa no es su misión. No había apoyo, teníamos que inventarnos nuestras lecciones. Lo único de lo que se preocupan es de la lectura, porque es lo que sube el grado de la escuela", dijo Cruz.
Ambas indicaron no ser las únicas despedidas. Hubo otra más, dos maestras que renunciaron y otra embarazada que la bajaron de puesto y la pusieron como sustituta para el próximo año. "Las maestras viven con temor sobre qué pasará al final de año ¿me quedo o me voy?. Como no tenemos unión (sindicato), pero con todo eso, una como maestra tiene sus derechos y no debería ser así", afirmó Cruz.
"Es puro show. Te explotan para quedar bien y luego te dan la patada... ", declaró Suero.
Asimismo, ambas denunciaron la forma en que la escuela manejó el cuestionario que los maestros responden para el Departamento de Educación (DOE). "Instalaron computadoras en la oficina de la directora y ésta nos dijo que esperaba que pusiéramos todo bien y que si había algo mal que se le dijera a ella antes de ponerlo, mientras se paseaba entre nosotras, se paraba detrás de ti … esa advertencia yo la considero una amenaza… ", afirmó Cruz.
Pero el DOE indicó que este cuestionario es para todas las escuelas. Su objetivo es recopilar información para mejorar el ambiente de aprendizaje y es totalmente confidencial.
"Cualquier práctica que tenga la apariencia de violar este código de conducta será investigada y, dependiendo de los resultados, el cuestionario puede ser invalidado y otras medidas disciplinarias pueden tomarse", indica el Código de Ética que rige el cuestionario.
Suero se graduó del Lehman College y Cruz estudió en Puerto Rico.

Bloomberg Contempt for Special Education; State Legislators Oppose Mayoral Control, Without UFT Push

Anyone seriously noticing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's policies toward special education students gets the idea that he views them as a problem that won't go away. Just read United Federation of Teachers Vice President for Special Education Carmen Alvarez's letter on the mayor's practices.

The Department of Education is rolling out its special education reform to all 1,700 city schools next year. The expectation is that nearly all incoming elementary, middle school and high school students with disabilities will attend the same school they would attend if they didn’t have Individualized Education Programs.
The stated goals of the reform for students with disabilities are to: 1. close the achievement gap; 2. increase access to and participation in the general education curriculum; and 3. build school-based support through greater curricular, instructional and scheduling flexibility. This week the DOE began to put meat on the bones of these lofty statements. It wasn’t pretty.
The real agenda is laid bare in the 50-page “Flexible Programming Guide” [UFT link to DOE document] developed for principals. We’ve been hearing about flexible programming for a couple of years now. The way that it has been explained by the DOE actually made some sense: It called on schools to mix and match special education services based on student needs in various content areas. But my antennae always go up when I hear the word “flexible” as it almost never means anything good. I am sorry to say that my instincts were right.
Reading between the lines, this is the message that the DOE is sending to principals through the examples in the guide:
· Unless the recommendation is for service provided in the general education class, assume the IEP team did not understand the child’s true needs in recommending services.
· Less service is better than more service and push-in service is better than pull-out.
· Schools shouldn’t open self-contained classes even if they have enough students with IEP recommendations to fill them.
· Students with significant behavioral challenges recommended for full-time self-contained classes can be adequately supported in general education classes with counseling during lunch or in class a couple of days a week.
· It is never appropriate to recommend that a student attend another school that can actually provide the services on the student’s IEP.
· Paraprofessional services should be used infrequently and when used, they should be part-time, provided in a group and time-limited.
Let me tell you what is wrong with this picture. Placement decisions, including decisions regarding location of services and intensity of services, are made by the child’s IEP team.
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it is impermissible to recommend services based on the availability of the program or personnel, space, budget or administrative convenience.
Yes, IEP teams must consider the least restrictive environment in which the child’s needs can be met and, where possible, students should be served in the schools and classrooms they would attend if they did not have a disability. But if the child’s needs require that the child attend a school other than the school he would attend if not disabled, or that the child receive related services in a therapy room, that is the least restrictive environment for that child.
We have combed the research study that the DOE cites in all of its public presentations and we cannot find support for the DOE’s sweeping conclusions about the academic benefit of serving students with disabilities in general education settings. The research tells us that students who perform several years below grade level require intensive and explicit instruction with ongoing progress monitoring, not a few periods of team teaching or Special Education Teacher Support Services.
Where did this come from? Deputy Chancellor Laura Rodriguez and Special Education Director Lauren Katzman have publicly stated that the purpose of this reform is to increase options for students with disabilities, not to dismantle programs and services recommended by IEP teams or to eliminate special education classes.
Where is the data from Phase I of this reform that shows that the IEP changes outlined in the guide improve student achievement and reduce challenging behavior?
The DOE previewed its plans at the Citywide Council on Special Education meeting in March. Nothing in that presentation suggested that the DOE would be asking schools to make changes in student IEPs of this magnitude.
Is this why they are hiding the guide in a link only available to principals? Why are they saying one thing and doing another? Where is the transparency and accountability?
We can hear their excuses now: “It wasn’t us, we just make policy. It was poorly implemented by the networks.”
Read the UFT's online guide, Special Education Reform. Let us know how this is playing out at your school. File a special education complaint immediately if your principal says self-contained classes have been eliminated, directs you to change IEPs to recommend a particular service, or tells you that you can recommend only services that are available in your building.
If you receive written directives, email them to me at calvarez@uft.org or fax them to my office at 1-212-254-5579. In the meantime, I will work with our partners in the parent and advocacy community as well as our elected officials to stop the doublespeak from the DOE and bring true research-based reform to special education in New York City.

To boot, one should also notice that special education students get last priority in charter school seats.

Is it any wonder that parents are pushing to end mayoral control?
Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (Brooklyn) when speaking yesterday on WWRL AM radio cited parents, not the union (UFT), as the factor that has pushed her to introduce a bill in the New York State legislature to eliminate mayoral control.
Carl Campanile's story in the New York Post, excerpted:

Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem) claim that the 10-year experiment giving City Hall sole power over educational matters has been a failure.
And Montgomery has won the support of the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Westchester), who has signed on as co-sponsor to the measure.

'There’s a lot of support for reversing mayoral control. This bill does that.’ — State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, whose push to repeal mayoral oversight of city schools has the approval of prominent Democratic state Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer (above), a co-sponsor of the measure

The mayoral control law is not up renewal until June 30, 2015. But under their bills, the two legislators call for overhauling the law this year.
“There’s a lot of support for reversing mayoral control and creating a more independent board in terms of setting educational policy and hiring the chancellor. This bill does that,” Montgomery said.
. . .
But it’s precisely these changes that the lawmakers cite in fueling their bid to roll back mayoral control. Both Montgomery and Wright have opposed school closings and co-locating charter schools in facilities with traditional public schools.
“It’s been a very unpopular process having this top-down decision-making with no one able to weigh in. Having a singular authority with total power on all the decisions has not worked out for all of the children,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery’s bill would strip the mayor’s control over school policy by cutting his appointments to the 13-member citywide school board in half, from eight to four members. The City Council would appoint four members and the borough presidents one apiece.
And the board, rather than the mayor, would select the chancellor.

Read more at the Post.

It's Christmastime in Apr. with Money Showers on Charter School Administrations

Budget tightening? On equipment, supplies, staff in the regular public schools?

No fear. That cannot hold back the spending spree on charter schools and their administrative costs. And guess what?: they spend more on administration and less per pupil than do regular district schools. How's that "working free of bureaucratic strings" workin' for ya?

Mary Ann Giordano, writing "Study Finds Higher Charter School Spending on Administration" in the New York Times, April 11, 2012 reported:

Critics of charter schools have been raising more questions lately about the financial aspects of the schools and the networks that run them. An analysis of the mayor’s proposed budget for the next school year seems to indicate that the city will spend $51 million to open more than two dozen new charter schools, even as the city Department of Education faces a deficit that will result in cuts to other services and, at the very least, flat spending for city schools.

Now comes a study of charter school spending in Michigan, as Sean Cavanaugh reports in his Charters & Choice blog in Education Week, that indicates elevated spending on administrative costs in charter schools.

The study, released by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, at Teachers College, Columbia University, examines school spending in Michigan and concludes that charter schools spend more per-pupil on administration and less on instruction than traditional public schools, even when controlling for enrollment, student populations served, and other factors.

Specifically, “they found that charters spend $774 more per pupil on administration, and $1,140 less on instruction, than do traditional publics.”

Why? The authors of the study speculate that charters spend less on teacher salaries than do public schools, which are usually unionized. Their teaching staff is often less experienced and therefore has lower salaries.

“Charters’ outsized administrative spending … is simultaneously matched by exceptionally low instructional spending,” the study says. “If one were searching for a contemporary reform to shift resources from classroom instruction to adminiitration, it is hard to imagine one that could accomplish this as decisively as charter schools have done in Michigan.”

The study is likely to energize the critics of charters in the city, especially as the budget process moves forward and the actual costs of opening more charters becomes more clear.

Gotham Schools picked up on a city news release on Tuesday, reporting that:

One of the Department of Education’s longest-serving top deputies is leaving — but he won’t be going far.

The city announced late Monday that Michael Best, the department’s chief lawyer since 2004, would return to City Hall, where he was a top deputy to Mayor Bloomberg at the beginning of the mayor’s tenure. Now, he will be counselor to the mayor, a position that is being vacated by the new pick for president of New York Law School.

Best’s replacement at the DOE, Courtenaye Jackson-Chase, has been at the department for more than half a decade. Chancellor Dennis Walcott promoted her to become Best’s second in command last May during a slew of leadership appointments a month into his tenure.

See last Wednesday's April 11, 2012 New York Times Schoolbook page to get the full article with all of its links.

NYC Charter School Spending Straining City Education Budget

This in, Thursday, March 29, 2012 from the New York Times Schoolbook, all the ed news fit to go on line, but not on the newsstands' hard copy:

Budget Analysis: Charter Spending Squeezing Education Budget

[Remember, it needs bearing in mind: charter schools have a dubious achievement record. And everything that they represent flies in the face of social commonwealth traditions. Where is the rush to privatize/charterize the police, fire, military, traffic departments??????????? And don't forget the 800 school aides dismissed at the beginning of the 2011-2012 year. There's money for DOE Tweed Office and charter largesse, but austerity and cuts for the classroom. The dismissed aides' work? -child labor in the school replaced it. Teachers, honestly, you know how it works. An administrator says, "Johnny, can you help us for a few minutes?" Parents, don't put up with it! It is exploitation, unpaid [slave] labor.]

By Anna M. Phillips

New York City’s Education Department will spend $51 million to open more than two dozen new charter schools next year, according to a report released on Thursday by the Independent Budget Office.

The analysis of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s preliminary budget also found that the city had slightly overestimated how much the Department of Education’s budget would increase next year, while minimizing the amount by which general education spending may have to be cut to cover rising costs in other areas.

Earlier this week, Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott assured schools that regardless of the Office of Management and Budget’s early estimates, he would find a way to protect schools from cuts and essentially keep their budgets flat.

According to the city’s preliminary budget, the Education Department would have to impose a $64 million cut to general education spending next year, but the Independent Budget Office report estimates there will need to be $203 million in cuts.

Education Department officials continued to say schools would not be hurt.

“As the Chancellor testified on Tuesday, we do not foresee reductions to school budgets or system-wide layoffs at this time,” Barbara Morgan, a Department of Education spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail message.

At a City Council hearing on Tuesday, city officials said they did not know how much 28 new charter schools with roughly 3,800 students would cost next year — they typically do not supply such figures until later in the year — and so no figure was factored into the education budget.

The Independent Budget Office, however, estimated $51 million in costs for the new schools — a figure that city officials did not dispute — which partly accounts for the disparity in estimates of anticipated school cuts.

Charter schools are public in that they receive public financing for students’ education, but operate their schools independent of the Education Department bureaucracy.

According to the Independent Budget Office report, the city could spend approximately $830 million on charter schools next year, including the expansion of schools that are already operating. If a similar number of charter schools were to open in 2013 — the mayor has pledged to open 50 before he leaves office — costs would continue to increase beyond the city’s projections, the report states.

Charter schools, along with special education programs, pension contributions and transportation, represent an increasing cost for the city’s Education Department, which outpaces any additional money that the city has added to the overall department’s overall budget, the report says. That means while the budget will climb again, to $19.6 billion next year, individual schools’ allocations are expected, at best, to stay the same.

The city is also opening 30 new public schools next year, which it has estimated will cost $12 million.

NYC Charter Schools: Young Kindergarteners Need Not Apply

Yesterday from the New York Times:

Some Charters Impose Earlier Kindergarten Cutoff Dates
Feb. 14, 2012, 8:09 a.m.
By Mary Ann Giordano

The New York Post reports this Tuesday morning that some charter schools have moved up their cutoff entry dates for kindergarten to as early as Aug. 31, meaning parents of children who have birthdays after that date must wait out a year before applying or send them to kindergarten elsewhere.

The Post cites the examples of Amber Charter School of East Harlem and Voice Charter School of New York in Long Island City, Queens. Both set their cutoff date as Sept. 1. The Post writes:

The move leaves the youngest batch of 5-year-olds — who education experts say often struggle the most academically — to either sit out a year or attend traditional district schools, even though charter schools are fully taxpayer-funded.

The new policy at Voice Charter was tabled after parents complained, The Post writes. One parent, Valerie Lamour, a member of the District 30 Community Education Council in Queens, whose son’s birthday is in December, told The Post: “If the D.O.E. is going to offer kindergarten to all 5-year-olds who are residents, then charter schools that operate within our district also need to adhere to the same rule.”

DOE officials said they believe charter schools are allowed to determine their own admissions deadlines because they’re technically considered to be independent districts.

The Post also reports that the state on Monday approved its application to seek a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law.

N.J. "is Roiling Over Charter Schools": Wave of Student, Parent Teacher Fight-Backs

No, it is not just New York City parents, students and teachers protesting at Panel for Educational Policy that oppose charter schools.

A wave of push-back against the imposition of charter schools is taking place across New Jersey. This time the fight-back is in middle class or upper-middle class suburbs.

Rutgers Prof speaks and organizes against charters
(From Princeton.Patch.com:)

Julia Sass Rubin, a founding member of Save Our Schools NJ, says public schools are being undermined.

“This is happening across the country,” said Rubin, during a visit to the Lawrence branch of the Mercer County Library on Wednesday. “It’s a national phenomenon.”

Rubin is an associate professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. Her talk was hosted by the Lawrence chapter of the League of Women Voters.

Rubin's talk, "Keeping Public Schools Public," covered the state of education in the Garden State and how Save Our Schools NJ is working to strengthen public school systems.

Save our Schools NJ is grassroots campaign that advocates for equal access to high-quality public education and for reform of state charter school law, including a local vote to allow charter schools to open in a community.

“Local communities should have a say if they want a charter school,” Rubin said.

Schools districts throughout the state – including Princeton, South Brunswick, East Brunswick, New Brunswick and Highland Park – have taken steps to oppose charter schools they oppose.

“Busloads of suburbanites are supposed to have an Occupy DOE [Department of Education] on Dec. 16,” Rubin said. “The state is roiling over charter schools.”

The organization also has an issue with the the lottery system for charter school enrollment. Rubin said most disadvantaged families don’t have the resources to get the necessary information about charter enrollment, so charter schools end with mostly affluent children.

No community clamour for charters; no community say in imposition of charters; activist group pushes "opt-out" bill.
also from Princeton.Patch.com, December 9, 2011:

Save Our Schools NJ has proposed the Opt-Out Lottery Bill, which would require charter schools to automatically include everyone in their communities that qualify and give families the option to opt-out if they do not want to be considered for enrollment. The bill is designed to level the field for parents who don’t have easy access to information or are restricted by language barriers.

Rubin expects action on the opt-out legislation and other proposed bills will come soon. “This has become a headache for the administration,” she said. “There will be something done with the bills.”

Save Our Schools NJ wants to maintain the current school funding formula and opposes to school vouchers. She compared the current voucher bill, the Opportunity Scholarship Act, to money laundering.

“If you give me a dollar and I give that dollar back, have you actually given me a dollar?” Rubin asked. Although vouchers prevent money being taken away from public school funds it negatively creates new subsidy streams for private schools, Rubin said.

Rubin also wants to stop additional segregation in schools. According to Rubin, there are 500 heavily segregated school systems in the state and the ones that are mixed are being targeted by charter schools.

“We want to see suburban children going to urban schools and vice versa,” Rubin said. “It’s good to mix it up.”

Several members of the audience agreed there is a need for more school integration.

Retired teacher Lloyd Fredericks, who taught at a high school in Newark, said the state has forgotten the benefits of being a melting pot. He added that without public schools there is no nation.

Teaneck protest parallels NYC struggle against closing schools for charter schools
From the Record, December 7, 2011:
"Crowd rallies against proposed virtual charter school in Teaneck"

TEANECK —
School officials and police estimated about 200 people turned out at 3:30 p.m. for an event scheduled to last several hours. Students waved signs declaring “Don’t bleed our good public schools” and “Local $$ for Teaneck Scholars.”

Speakers took the microphone to call for a local vote on charter approvals throughout the state and to criticize the proposal for a full-time cyber charter — all while student drummers pounded to bolster the applause.

“This virtual charter will do much more harm than good,” declared Lev Herskovitz, 18. “In our society today we rely on technology far too often and this is not a case where it should be dominantly present. Classrooms are where the real learning takes place.”

Organizers of the Garden State Virtual Charter say it will draw only a few students, and therefore a small amount of funding, from Teaneck; most of its initial group of 1,000 in grades K-12 will come from across New Jersey, they say.

District officials balked, however, when they received a letter from the state Department of Education suggesting they set aside $15.4 million for the charter. State officials have said that figure was meant only as a budgeting tool, but Teaneck filed a legal petition Tuesday asking the state to rescind the letter and delay approving any virtual charters until New Jersey legislates a fair, manageable way to fund them. The Office of Administrative Law has not yet scheduled a hearing.

Home districts pay 90 percent of their per-pupil costs for students who attend charters from their towns.

Jason Flynn, a founder of the proposed charter, said in a release Tuesday that his group would push ahead. The charter “will bring state of the art digital technology to deliver a high quality, highly personalized education to our students who … are not succeeding in a traditional classroom setting,” he said in release. He could not be reached Wednesday.

The Teaneck Board of Education has stated it does not oppose charters, virtual charters or virtual learning; it’s against a process that requires officials to set school budgets before they can estimate how many students will head to charters.

Speak Up Highland Park handed out flyers in Teaneck inviting people to “Occupy” the Education Department in Trenton on Dec. 16 at 11 a.m. to call for a local voice in charter approvals.

In Highland Park, the District refused a charter three times, the charter is shoved at the district a fourth time
From the Daily Record, November 28, 2011:
"Highland Park charter school meeting forum for parents, legislators to discuss issues"

"VIRTUAL LEARNING", PHILANTHROPIST, CORPORATE TIE-INS CITED
The Teaneck charter is a "virtual learning" proposal. Lee Fang at The Nation has written a piece on "How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools."

From the Nation piece: commercial learning is a revolving door destination for former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein and former District of Columbia mayor Adrian Fenty.

Moe’s [investment banker Michael Moe] conference marked a watershed moment in school privatization. His first “Education Innovation Summit,” held last year, attracted about 370 people and fifty-five presenting companies. This year, his conference hosted more than 560 people and 100 companies, and featured luminaries like former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, now an education executive at News Corporation, a recent high-powered entrant into the for-profit education field. Klein is just one of many former school officials to cash out. Fenty now consults for Rosetta Stone, a language company seeking to expand into the growing K-12 market.

As Moe ticked through the various reasons education is the next big “undercapitalized” sector of the economy, like healthcare in the 1990s, he also read through a list of notable venture investment firms that recently completed deals relating to the education-technology sector, including Sequoia and Benchmark Capital. Kleiner Perkins, a major venture capital firm and one of the first to back Amazon.com and Google, is now investing in education technology, Moe noted.

See what can happen with representative democracy, instead of total mayoral control: Newark advisory board rejects a charter school proposal:
NJN News, April 7, 2011:

It’s been a tumultuous time in Newark since the controversial school overhaul plan was leaked to the press in February. It calls for consolidating some schools and co-locating others – both of which would free up space for charter schools, and creating new traditional public schools. In a surprising move, Newark’s School Advisory Board rejected the latter proposal.

In New Jersey we thus see a parallel to the New York City push-back. Yet, the people have more power, in contrast to the voice-less parents in New York City under mayoral control.

ATR Plight & Tribunal of Bloomberg's DOE Hits Huffington Post & GothamSchools Big Leagues: Educating for Democracy: The People's Trial ...

Joel Shatzky in Huffington Post, "Educating for Democracy: The People's Trial of Mayor Bloomberg" in Huffington Post, October 16, 2011 addressed the absent teacher reserve (ATR) fiasco and the demise in general of public education under the leadership of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (the Coalition for Public Education (CPE)).

Shortly after Mayor Michael Bloomberg assumed control of the New York City school system, he presented his programs as a national leader in "educational reform." But there has been evidence in the New York public schools in the recent past of cheating on standardized tests by teachers and supervisors.

Moreover, the much publicized "success" of the mayor's program has been in part based on inflated test scores and the "dumbing down" of the tests themselves. Yet under the mayor's "leadership" Bloomberg continues to close down "failing" schools and replace them with charter schools causing wide-spread disruption to students, parents and veteran teachers. As a result of these closings, some of the most valuable and experienced teachers lose their positions and end up in "ATR" (Absent Teacher Reserve) where they are misused as substitute teachers with no permanent position since the principals are reluctant to hire high-salary veterans and prefer to employ cheaper, inexperienced teachers to meet their "bottom line." This is the business model of education that the Bloomberg Administration has imposed.

At a "trial" held at DC 37 of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees sponsored by the Coalition for Public Education forpubliced.org and hosted by Sam Anderson, a noted educational leader dedicated to wresting the school system out of mayoral control, testimony was given by dozens of parents, teachers and concerned educators describing the negative effect the mayor's "educational reform" has produced in what seems to be a part of a nationwide attempt to privatize the public schools, deskill teachers, strip them of their union rights, and firmly establish a two-tier educational system: one for the privileged and one for everyone else.

The all-day trial was adjudicated by such well-known legal authorities as Thomas Mariadson, of the Asian-American Legal Defense Fund, Esmeralda Simmons, of the Center for Law and Social Justice, Damon Hewitt of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and attended by City Councilman Charles Barron. Angel Gonzalez, a member of GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) described in detail the destructive effect of school closings in which a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students are pushed out of their neighborhood schools to accommodate charter schools. This process not only results in damage to the students but a disproportionate number of Black and Latino teachers end up as ATR's further diminishing the ethnic diversity of the system. Among other results of the co-location of charter schools in district schools is that they-the charters- cut back on needed programs in bi-lingual and special needs education.

Another aspect of the damage the Bloomberg administration has done to the NYC public schools was revealed by a teacher-parent whose daughter goes to Bronx Regional High School, the school attended by Nicole Suriel, the girl who was tragically drowned on a class beach visit last summer. The parent testified that he had repeatedly warned the school administration and Department of Education of neglect and indifference to student well-being at the school and blames the Administration for fostering this negligent attitude that resulted in the girl's death.

The teacher also reported the conditions at the GED Plus school where he teaches which is located at Bronx Regional High School. The school is intended to offer a chance for high school dropouts ages 17-21, to get their General Education diplomas. However, according to the teacher's testimony, the school has no library, no arts programs, no gym, no special literacy program, no ELL for students whose first language is not English, and 35 in a class.

There were many other charges of mismanagement of the public schools by the Bloomberg administration. These included the dismissal of a twelve-year special ed veteran when the DOE discovered she hadn't taken a foreign language course in college; the excessive number of summonses and arrests of students of color where not only security personnel but also regular police with firearms patrol the former Brandeis High School. It had once been one of the best high schools in the City but was closed down so that a charter school can be "co-located" at the facility on the Upper West Side where the workers and teachers will be non-unionized. The testimony throughout the time I attended presented a consistent pattern of inadequate attention to and neglect of schools that desperately need more support.

And while these schools are "failing," Councilman Barron reported that during the period of the Bloomberg administration's control of the schools the DOE budget has increased from $11 billion to $24 billion while only 23% of the students graduating from the public schools are prepared for college. With a great many of the services for the city schools now "contracted out," Barron wonders where so much of this money is going with so little effect on improving public education.

At the same time, as pointed out by Leonie Haimson, a nationally known parent-advocate and Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a clearinghouse for information on class size, the actual number of students in classrooms K-12 has increased under the Bloomberg administration, despite the fact that $650 million each year for the past three were specifically appropriated by the State legislature under the Contracts for Excellence law to reduce class size. Moreover, Haimson pointed out that several programs that have no research to support them are being vigorously expanded under the Mayor's watch: paying students for improving test scores and increasing the use of on-line (computer-based) instruction.

An alternative to such destructive practices was offered at the hearing in an ICOPE (Independent Commission on Public Education) video created by a group of high school students who actually asked other students what they felt would improve their schools. The video, based on a study called YRNES (Youth Researchers for a New Education System) www.ICOPE.org found that in addition to wanting to be treated with greater respect by teachers and other staff, about 80% of those students questioned expressed an interest in participating in leadership roles in their school. Perhaps if other school administrators, besides the Mayor, heeded the students' request, there might be some marked improvement in their performance in learning.

If the "Trial of Mayor Bloomberg" showed anything, it was that his programs were more expensive, more destructive, and more demoralizing with no significant improvement in learning outcome than prior to his administration. The sentence for what he's done is that he should be dismissed from his position as head school administrator so that more positive outcomes can be produced for our City's young learners: student, parent and teacher-based, not business-based education.

* * * *

Hollywood respected older teachers; DOE would put Miss Bishop into ATR status; UFT would dismiss her plea for an elected representative

Among points raised in a Gotham Schools article by Rachel Cromidas,
"At union meeting, jobless teachers decry ATR deal 'shell game'" there was attention to a raucous ATR meeting, SEE THE FULLER ARTICLE BEYOND THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS [SUBTITLES mine, Ed.]:

AMY ARUNDELL AND LEROY BARR DISMISSING UFT MEMBERS' CONCERNS

Amy Arundell, a UFT special representative, told the roughly 100 teachers at the meeting that the point of moving teachers weekly is to position them for jobs that could open up at the schools where they are temporarily assigned. The previous arrangement, in which members of the ATR pool often stayed at one school for an entire year, allowed principals to use them as free labor, she said, without necessarily incentivizing them to offer the ATR teachers permanent jobs.

CRAZY WEEK TO WEEK ROUTINE

Above frequent interruptions from the standing-room-only crowd, Arundell told teachers they must report to their new assignments next week, even if the principals at the schools they were assigned to for September tell them to stay put. She and several teachers in the room said some principals are asking ATRs to ignore their DOE placements and stay on, in violation of the agreement.

She encouraged the teachers to “be proactive” with the principals and press them to find money in their limited budgets to create permanent positions.
“Otherwise, you can’t stay,” she said. “Unless a principal tells you, ‘I hire you,’ Central DOE won’t know that a principal wants to keep you. You know that saying, ‘Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?’ That’s true here.”

That logic sounded hollow for a Manhattan-based teacher who said after the meeting that the normally “pro-teacher” union had agreed to a deal that does not put ATRs’ best interests first.

“This weekly assignment nonsense is meant to aggravate people so they get disgusted and leave,” she said.

UNION VS. DEMOCRACY OR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

During the meeting, attendees called on the UFT to create a chapter just for ATRs and to file a discrimination lawsuit against the city on their behalf. But the union officials present, which included LeRoy Barr, the UFT staff director, rejected those requests, arguing that discrimination is difficult to prove and that chapter leaders at the schools where ATRs are temporarily assigned are equipped to advocate for them.

Arundell urged teachers to contact their temporary chapter leaders with complaints about hostile principals or requests to teach subjects out of their license.

But several teachers complained during the meeting that they had reached out to the UFT and the DOE with complaints, and received no response.

“It may be news for some of you, but there is not union representation in every school,” one teacher called out from the audience. “I was at one school that had no chapter leader.”

Several teachers complained about being assigned by their new principals to lunch duty or clerical work, which Arundell said was not part of their contract. Others spoke of being asked to take on subjects they are not licensed to teach.

One Manhattan-based librarian, who came to the Brooklyn meeting because the Manhattan meeting is not until next week, said her current principal is using her as an assistant to two kindergarten teachers at an elementary school because the school’s library is closed.

“I take the kids to the bathroom every period. That’s about all I do. My principal said to me, ‘I don’t want you here. You’re not going to work anyway.’” She paused for emphasis and whispered, “I think it’s because of my gray hair.”

UNION AGAINST CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT, DOUBTING DISCRIMINATION

Teachers throughout the room clapped when one attendee called on the union to file a class-action lawsuit against the city. Union officials shot down the idea, saying that courts require a high burden of proof for discrimination suits that the union would be unlikely to meet.

“But it’s happening everywhere,” another teacher called out. “Stop the shell game that’s taking place.”

Several teachers in attendance said they would like the union to create an ATR teacher chapter to represent them — something the union officials said was not likely to happen.

As the 2.5-hour-long meeting wrapped up, Vincente DeSiano, an elementary school teacher in the ATR pool, collected names and contact information from the roughly 40 people still present, after union officials said they would not provide information about who had attended.

“We have power that we don’t realize,” DeSiano said. “I want us all to be able to share information with each other and see how we can help the situation.”

See the original large article at Gotham Schools.

NY Times: Charter School Driving Droves of Teachers Away

Anna Phillips, "High Teacher Turnover at a Success Network School," October 19, 2011.


More than a third of the staff members at a Harlem charter school run by the Success Charter Network have left the school within the last several months, challenging an organization that prides itself on the training and support it offers its teachers.

The unusually high turnover at Harlem Success Academy 3 and the network-wide issue of teachers quitting mid-year led the founder and chief executive of the Success Charter Network, Eva S. Moskowitz, to express concern in an October newsletter.

“This is not a ‘gig’ ” she wrote, informing staff members that by breaking their commitment to the schools and families midyear, they were acting unethically.

At Harlem Success Academy 3, 22 of the school’s 59 administrators, teachers and classroom aides left between the end of the last school year and the beginning of this one, according to the school’s records. Some took jobs at other schools, some moved to new cities and some said they quit out of frustration with the school’s tightly regulated environment.
. . . .
Few of the teachers who left Harlem Success Academy 3 would speak about why they quit, and those who did refused to be named, citing fear of retribution or concern that they could lose their new teaching positions.
. . . .
One former Harlem Success Academy 3 teacher who quit at the end of last school year said she had left because she felt “micromanaged.”

“You couldn’t teach in the way you wanted to teach,” she said. “If your kids weren’t sitting perfectly, looking straight at the teacher, not saying a single word, then you weren’t doing your job.”
. . . .
Read more of the article as originally posted at the New York Times website.

Stacking in favor of Charter Schools -Chicago Mayor Daley's "last middle finger"...

This is a tip-off from democraticunderground's "Madfloridian":
"Mayor Daley's "last middle finger" to public schools. How the odds are stacked in favor of charters."
Madfloridian wrote:

This story illustrates how easily public schools are painted as the problem, while it is never mentioned how often they get students returned from charter schools....because they are unable to meet the standards.

That Mayor Daley said such a thing shows how clueless some of the political leaders are about what is really going on....how these schools "counsel out" non-performers and send them back to public schools so they won't affect their scores.

From the Chicago Reader.

Charters unload problem students onto neighboring public schools - then reap the benefits.

An earlier post with this contribution at Chicago Teachers Union site:
"Stacking the Odds in Favor of Charter Schools"
BY BEN JORAVSKY FOR CHICAGO READER | 04/14/2011

A key excerpt:

On February 16, the Union League Club gave out its Democracy in Action award to deserving local high school students, and Mayor Daley was on hand to give a rousing speech—calling on regular public schools to make like the charters and transform ordinary neighborhood students into high-scoring, high-achieving, college-bound stars. Specifically, the mayor was hailing Urban Prep High School, a south-side charter school. But his unspoken message to all teachers was "work harder and stop whining."Consider it one last middle finger from Daley to the teachers and their unions because—well, why not?

Watching it all with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief was Eric Wagner, a social studies teacher at Kelvyn Park High School on the predominantly Hispanic northwest side. "I was there because one of my students—Jennifer Velazquez—had won the award," says Wagner. "I'm thinking, this is really inappropriate. There aren't even any charter school kids who won the award. Why is he ripping us?"


A public school student won. The charter students did not. Mayor Daley was either spinning or he actually did not know. Either way is a slap in the face to the public schools and to the winning student.

Charter School horror story: Mismanaged school bungles budget, fires staff

This in from the New York Post:

A mismanaged charter school in Kingsbridge, Bronx has been shuttered by the New York State Board of Regents. It could not manage its budget, it has been without a principal for nearly half a year, and its board of trustees fired five of eleven teachers.
(Need we more proof of the failure of privitization of schools?)

See the report by Yoav Gonen, "The New York Post," May 18, 2011

In an unprecedented move, the State Board of Regents yesterday revoked the charter of a Bronx school that hasn't even completed a full year of service.

The action was sparked by significant concerns about the financial and educational operations at the Kingsbridge Innovative Design Charter School, which has been operating without a principal since January, according to state officials.

Budget shortfalls prompted the board of trustees to fire five of 11 teachers midyear.

"The school is not fiscally sound, and is in danger of not having sufficient cash to meet its payroll and other expenses at any time," read the revocation notice, which was unanimously approved.

Kingsbridge officials and many parents fought the potential revocation since they were notified that the school was being placed on probation in March.

Read more at the original site.

No Support for WNYC, Basher of Public School Teachers

We are in a period of right-wing bashing of funding for public broadcasters, National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is outrageous; the right controls the agenda on corporate airways. Public broadcasting provides an alternative with mature content as opposed to the infantile attachment to cute news or celebrity news. I support the preservation for public broadcasting. It is essential for the preservation of the non-corporate news in isolated perts of the country that have a lopsided presence of FoxNews-like news-talk radio outlets and a paucity of mature, professional news.

However, when we hear pleas for support from New York City's National Public Radio affiliate, WNYC, we should withhold giving any individual contributions to the station. For when we hear WNYC's Brian Lehrer introduce segments on education we wince. He have to brace ourselves. Lehrer features charter school entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz with great frequency. When he chats with her there is an atmosphere of Moskowitz as the sole voice, with no recognition that she has an intense (personal, entrepreneurial) bias in the discussion of charter versus public school.

Last August Lehrer had then-New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein on the air. He let Klein speak soliloquy style on his views of the schools.
When we hear Klein or Moskowitz it is a solo presentation. On plenty of issues Lehrer has balance, opposing voices. Why no diversity of opinions on education? He has not had Sam Anderson, Betsy Combier or Norm Scott, or representatives of the burgeoning parent-teacher alliances, Campaign for Public Education or Grassroots Education Movement.

It has been suggested that money from the Broad Foundation's donations to WNYC influences this bias. We should have an open discussion: who funds WNYC? Why is there an apparent bias for the case for charter schools?

NY Times discloses latest plans for school closures, co-locations

Here is the New York Times website link for the January 13 or 14 article on the latest round of New York City school closing proposals by the city Department of Education.

"In Document, Peek at City Plans to Replace Schools"


Here is the link for the pdf file with all of the details.

Ohio charter school is essentially renamed Christian school

Blogger Madfloridian reported that Columbus, Ohio area religious area charter school, Patriot Preparatory Academy, appears to be a private, religious school, Liberty Christian Academy, refashioned to accommodate laws preventing public funding of private institutions. The PPA has largely the same teachers and students. It has the same founder as Liberty Christian Academy

From Madfloridian at democraticunderground.com:

"Charter's ties to Christian school draw state scrutiny"
Out went the private Liberty Christian Academy. In came the public Patriot Preparatory Academy, a charter school in the same location with many of the same students and teachers. The state says the new school has changed enough to receive tax money.

Sounds like edupreneurs looking for secure public dollars to me.

Article in "Columbus Dispatch," MONDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Charter's ties to Christian school draw state scrutiny:
Out went the private Liberty Christian Academy. In came the public Patriot Preparatory Academy, a charter school in the same location with many of the same students and teachers. The state says the new school has changed enough to receive tax money. A new charter school has the same founder, is staffed by many of the same teachers and attended by many of the same students as a private Christian school that previously used its East Side building.

As Madfloridian cited from Smart Money, "10 Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You", December 6, 2010:
The separation between church and state has been narrowing in the charter schools:

5. Separation of church and state? We found a loophole.
Charter schools are public schools, supported by public tax dollars. But among the thousands of charters nationwide are schools run by Christian organizations as well as Hebrew and Arabic language academies that blur the line between church and state. “What would not be tolerated in a regular public school seems to be tolerated when it’s a charter school,” says Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University and the author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” Even if these schools aren’t explicitly teaching religion, “it’s potentially segregation by religious preference,” Bulkley says.

This is from "10 Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You."

COLLAPSE OF CHURCH-STATE WALL IS RAMPANT IN TEXAS
Again, from Dallas Morning News, November 22, 2010, via Madfloridian:

"Charter schools with ties to religious groups raise fears about state funds' use"

The second problem is also from Texas. Some charter schools there are venturing into the religion business. The Dallas Morning News reports that 20 percent of the state’s charters have religious ties.

.."Finally, it looks like we’re going to need to keep a close eye on Georgia, where the new chief of staff of the state Education Department is a former staffer of TV Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice.


More about another charter school in Dallas.

Students at Duncanville's Advantage Academy follow biblical principles, talk openly about faith and receive guidance from a gregarious former pastor who still preaches when he speaks.

Advantage's state-funded campuses showcase the latest breed of charter schools, born from faith-based principles and taxpayer funds. More than 20 percent of Texas' charter schools have some kind of religious ties. That's the case for six of the seven approved this year, including ones in Frisco and Arlington.

..."Advantage markets its teaching of creationism and intelligent design. It offers a Bible class as an elective and encourages personal growth through hard work and "faith in God and country." On a recent morning, a dozen uniformed seventh-graders hunched over worksheets, turning fractions into decimals.

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

Harlem charter school spent $1.3 million to advertise itself to the community

Great expose by Juan Gonzalez!

See the New York Daily News link for the full article.

Local charter schools like Harlem Success are big business as millions are poured into marketing

The image of hundreds of black and Latino parents packed in an auditorium desperately hoping their child would "win" the lottery and get into a local charter school has assumed mythic status in media reports on education reform.

Two new two documentaries, "The Lottery" and "Waiting for Superman," made such events the emotional climax of their narratives. The former centered on Harlem Success, the charter network Schools Chancellor Joel Klein hails when he points to the demand for more charter schools.

But a Daily News review of Harlem Success financial reports suggests the network's huge backlog of applicants is the result of a carefully crafted Madison Ave.-style promotional campaign. In the two-year period between July 2007 and June 2009, Harlem Success spent $1.3 million to market itself to the Harlem community, the group's most recent financial filings show.

Click here to see the full article at the New York Daily News.

PBS addresses Chicago killing wave --Will it address claim of link to Duncan's school closings?

PBS' new, in-depth Friday evening news show, "Need to Know" with Alison Stewart and Jon Meacham will focus on Chicago's wave of youth violence, "Block By Block: Violence in Chicago." (Friday, Aug. 13, 8:30, local time, in NYC and Indianapolis, 9:00 in Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, 10:30 in Baltimore and Annapolis [for the Washington, DC market --pre-empted on Aug. 13].)



Will the news program address activists' contention that Arne Duncan's (Chicago schools CEO [sic], 2001-2009) wave of schools closings has contributed to the spike in youth violence in Chicago's poor neighborhoods? Shootings spiked after the 2004 schools closings program (euphemistically called "phase-outs") began.

Links on this theme:
MSNBC: "School closings root of Chicago teen violence?: Activists blame education reform plan for spike in youth attacks"

Catalyst Notebook: "Chicago schools plan to combat violence: kinder, gentler security guards, disciplinarians"

WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio: "Parents, Activists Say Renaissance 2010 Exacerbates Youth Violence"

And alas, just like this endless ego-trip of "school reform" in New York City, that has produced lackluster school performance (no improvement), research shows that Chicago's school transformation produced little improvement:
Education Week: "Chicago School Closings Found to Yield Few Gains"

UPDATE:
See this great resource on the devastation that Duncan and his successors have wrought on Chicago public schools:
Paul Street, "Arne Duncan and Neoliberal Racism," at ZNet
At Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow, A Look at Arne Duncan’s VIP List of Requests at Chicago Schools and the Effects of his Expansion of Charter Schools in Chicago," the source of this quote:

The larger scandal is that Chicago has basically a two-tiered education system, with a handful of these selective enrollment magnet schools, or boutique schools, that have been set up under Renaissance 2010 in gentrifying and affluent neighborhoods, and then many disinvested neighborhood schools.

Looks familiar, eh? Just what mayor Michael Bloomberg and chancellor Joel Klein are doing in New York City.