When Joel Klein was chancellor of the NYC schools in 2006, he agreed to give the charter industry access to the names and addresses of public school students at the urging of his good friend Eva Moskowitz, who wanted to give the appearance of high demand for her schools. To this day, NYC is the only city that voluntarily turns over the names and addresses of its students to charters, which are the competition. In what other realm does one competitor give his “customer” list to his competitor, who will try to poach them and their funding too? Thanks to Arthur Camins, who made this point earlier in the comments.
After years of complaints by public school parents whose mailboxes were stuffed with charter propaganda and who objected to the breach of their children’s privacy, DeBlasio told several parent leaders that he would stop this practice.
The charter association got word of what was about to happen, and it held a press conference this morning, claiming it was “unfair” to stop the practice of turning over this information to them. Apparently, DeBlasio wimped out to placate the charter industry. Shameful.
Activist Leonie Haimson wrote about this confrontation before the news broke that the mayor had been intimidated by the charter industry.
It is unacceptable that this practice has gone on as long as it has. It is also unfortunate that neither the Mayor nor the Chancellor have made an announcement and instead the charter schools were informed first before any parents. See the information about a call from charter school supporters below reprinted in Diane’s blog.
As Shino wrote, parents and advocates have long complained about the privacy violations from DOE allowing charters to access this information for recruiting purposes; see Johanna Garcia’s FERPA complaint that she filed in Nov. 2017.
Moreover, there is not another district in the country that makes this information available to charter schools to help them divert students and funds from their public schools.
In Chicago, after student information was disclosed to Noble charter schools without parent consent, resulting in parents receiving postcards urging them to enroll their children in their schools, this sparked a huge controversy and led to an investigation by the Inspector General. As a result, the Chicago staffer who released the information to Noble was fired and the district apologized to parents in mailings paid for by Noble. And this occurred in a city where the Mayor controls the schools and is charter-friendly..
Right now, Nashville school district is defying a state lawrequiring districts to make this information available to charter schools and is in court, appealing a court order. NY State has no such law of course, and in fact its student privacy law Education 2D bars the use of student data for marketing purposes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“When families enroll students in the public school system they are often unaware of the various options available to them. For this reason, charter schools work hard to recruit students to enter their lotteries.”
“Prior to 2010 traditional public schools could make it difficult for charters to recruit any students, let alone those in need of additional supports, because they were not required to share student information. With the passage of new legislation in 2010, the Commonwealth required traditional public school districts to share student data, including home addresses of enrolled students, with charter schools. Since that time, charters have been able to recruit families more directly and using more accurate information. The result has been a sizeable increase in the number of ELL and SPED students enrolling in charter schools.”
http://pioneerinstitute.org/download/massachusetts-charter-public-schools-best-practices-serving-english-language-learners/
Charters are private businesses. Giving them access to information collected by government mandate should become a cause for ACLU action. The affront is an attack on civil liberties.
Does Medicare provide information, age, resident’s address, etc. to private insurance companies?
I think the public and public school teachers should SUE for malfeasance, wrongdoing, especially by a public official.
ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center need to be contacted. Maybe they will help.
Would it be appropriate in any way if DeBlasio said anything about the ACLU and their right to file action? I do not know.
https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/malfeasance
Malfeasance
The commission of an act that is unequivocally illegal or completely wrongful.
Malfeasance is a comprehensive term used in both civil and Criminal Law to describe any act that is wrongful. It is not a distinct crime or tort, but may be used generally to describe any act that is criminal or that is wrongful and gives rise to, or somehow contributes to, the injury of another person.
Malfeasance is an affirmative act that is illegal or wrongful. In tort law it is distinct from misfeasance, which is an act that is not illegal but is improperly performed. It is also distinct from Nonfeasance, which is a failure to act that results in injury.
The distinctions between malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance have little effect on tort law. Whether a claim of injury is for one or the other, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant owed a duty of care, that the duty was breached in some way, and that the breach caused injury to the plaintiff. One exception is that under the law of Strict Liability, the plaintiff need not show the absence of due care. The law of strict liability usually is applied to Product Liability cases, where a manufacturer can be held liable for harm done by a product that was harmful when it was placed on the market. In such cases the plaintiff need not show any actual malfeasance on the part of the manufacturer. A mistake is enough to create liability because the law implies that for the sake of public safety, a manufacturer warrants a product’s safety when it offers the product for sale.
“Progressive” Mayor Deblasio can’t alienate the Wall Street donors he needs to run for Pres., same people who love Eva and her charter empire.
the muck and mire they cannot escape
Unbelievable that he fell for their marketing line. The charter liars and thieves said parents need access to information about choices. Nonsense. No one wants access to advertisements from companies selling products. I ask you, dear reader, is that what you’re looking for when you open your mail, advertisements? He let down all those children and their families who just wanted their private information kept private. How shameful.
Just guessing. DeBlasio thinks he is running for president, although no one has noticed. One needs pots of money to run for President. Guess where you find it?
Does DeBlasio know where? I know where. A million donations at an average of twenty dollars a piece. — Go Bernie. Billionaires are going down.
Here’s a thought: BE SUBVERSIVE.
Bet our young would love subverting those tests rather than being told to be “gritty” and to do their best.
This country is at risk and those tests put us even more at risk as a country and also individually. Those test are a national security threat.
Resist.
DeBlasio is yet another delusional NY politician who blieves he is going to be President.
Another one sits in Albany.
These people are legends in their own minds, mostly nobodies outside NY State
“NY State has no such law of course, and in fact its student privacy law Education 2D bars the use of student data for marketing purposes.”
Will someone please bring a lawsuit? It should be pretty quick & cheap– attorneys help me here– don’t you get a directed verdict when you can show the defendant is breaking the law?
“voluntarily turns over the names and addresses of its students to charters, ”
This is how the NYC Department of Education describes the arrangement:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QncV6Ws_qWmPI92uP5bQG_Cnwo_kjSCG/view
Sorry, but politicians are not wimpy people. De Blasio didn’t “back down” or “wimp out”. Despite his pretty rhetoric, he’s never actually done anything contrary to charter interests. It’s all theater. He’s only ever pretended to stand up to charters and they’ve only pretended to be outraged by him. Both sides know in advance how it’s going to come out.
Everyone once in a while, they go off script, but it’s very rare.
Far more likely that it’s just theater, as you say.
SomeDAMPoet,
This is where I would have posted if the comment was directed at you.
I don’t know how to retract something that I did not say, but if I wrote something that made you think I was referring to you, then I abjectly apologize.
“People” refers to more than one poster who have been making spurious over the top attacks mischaracterizing Democrats — not criticism like Diane Ravitch made, but blatant mischaracterizations — who also accuse Diane and other people here of making spurious attacks on Trump (with regard to Russia).
^^^But I would have thought that the fact I quoted the remark I was responding to might have given it away.
“Despite his pretty rhetoric, he’s never actually done anything contrary to charter interests. It’s all theater. He’s only ever pretended to stand up to charters and they’ve only pretended to be outraged by him.”
This is just patently false. And stated by someone who has no clue about what has happened in NYC before and after de Blasio took office. Diane Ravitch correctly reported something wimpy that de Blasio did and as usual, the very same people who exaggerated the evil of HRC (“she’s no better than Trump”) jump on the bandwagon to state out and out lies about a relatively progressive politician.
The difference between the entirely dishonest language in the above post and Diane Ravitch’s legitimate criticism is truly stunning.
(FYI – this is going to happen any time anyone criticizes a Democrat running in the primary. If Bernie doesn’t come out strongly anti-charter after Diane’s conversation with his staff, will people say he was bought out by billionaires? How about Elizabeth Warren, is she bought out too?)
Under Bloomberg, the DOE gave away huge public school resources to charters and hurt (intentionally?) public schools.
de Blasio started out by keeping his promise and trying to end the giveaway of public school resources to charters. Not only did that backfire, but Albany and Cuomo “punished” every single student in the NYC public school system for de Blasio standing up to charters. They passed a law forcing de Blasio to take even MORE resources from public schools and give it to charters. Where were the progressives then? Oh they were attacking de Blasio and saying that he shouldn’t have tried to stand up to charters because he ended up hurting public schools even more. Can you imagine that? Instead of rising and supporting him, they disappeared and let him be attacked for the “mistake” of standing up to charters.
So now de Blasio was faced with the knowledge that any standing up to charters would mean that public school students would be punished by Albany forcing NYC to give even more resources to charters. So he had to keep quiet. But there is one thing he could do. Fight to make Albany more progressive. He started actively raising money for a fund to elect PROGRESSIVE Democrats in the primary and general election and get rid of the fake Democrats who voted for charters.
And what happened? The pro-charter media jumped on every bandwagon to demonstrate that the fundraising done for the sole reason of trying to turn Albany more progressive was somehow criminal. Lots of investigations into practices that every politician in history has done — including Bernie — and turning it into something that was supposedly criminal. But it turned out that try as they might, although there was admittedly very aggressive fundraising to try to make sure Albany would be more progressive, there really wasn’t any criminal intent by de Blasio. But the pro-reform de Blasio haters won the optics and de Blasio had to shut down the effort to fundraise to elect progressive Albany Democrats.
de Blasio has spent the last 6 years balancing two competing interests: he needed to try to slow the expansion of charters knowing that if he took one wrong step that Albany would severely punish public school students and force him to give even more money to charters. But his administration quietly made charter expansion much more difficult. Eva Moskowitz threw about 5 temper tantrums and forced her parents to protest quite a few times that the Mayor was being too slow to give her the free space she was demanding. Moskowitz invented her own “deadlines’ for space and when the DOE didn’t meet them she would have another protest. But since the DOE was publicly “working on it”, she couldn’t get Albany to play along. And the DOE would keep offering space that Moskowitz didn’t want, which made her just look bad for refusing. More recently, de Blasio did think they could throw Moskowitz a bone by giving her a school that seemed to have very few students. When that was rightly met with protests, the DOE didn’t go out of their way to just close the school and give it to her the way Bloomberg would have. I absolutely agree that de Blasio made a mistake there — but I think it was an honest mistake in which he wanted to do the least harm and he did not double down on that mistake when there was opposition in the way that Bloomberg’s DOE did.
Just look at universal pre-k, which charters were demanding to participate in after they worked very hard to undermine de Blasio’s efforts to enact it. When de Blasio wouldn’t let Moskowitz invent her own “if I want to suspend the terrible violent 4 year olds in my pre-k no one is going to stop me” rules, the charters started the protests. And more lawsuits. Eventually de Blasio’s hand was forced, but not without making it clear that charters would no longer have the run of the DOE.
Finally, de Blasio’s attempt to turn Albany blue was before its time, but finally, at the end of 2018, the REAL Democrats took over the Senate. And despite Cuomo’s rabid pro-charter love, that has made a difference. If Albany had expanded the number of charters in NYC and forced de Blasio to give away even more public school resources to charters, that would be a terrible thing. But the new Albany – where real progressive Democrats have some power — makes a difference.
The pro-charter folks HATE de Blasio. This utter nonsense about how the pro-charter billionaires and CEOs only “pretend” to be outraged by de Blasio is exactly as honest as the claim that Trump was absolutely no worse than the democrat.
So remember, the folks telling you that de Blasio is a secret supporter of charters and secretly beloved of the pro-charter movement are the very same ones who said that Trump was no worse than a Democrat.
The hypocrisy of those who insist that there is not enough evidence to say anything critical about Trump’s dealings with Russia, but don’t care about any evidence when they smear Democrats is truly astonishing to me.
It is a GOOD thing for Diane Ravitch to criticize a Democrat if he or she seems to be wimping out. It is a BAD thing when the same people who insisted Trump was no worse than HRC jump on that criticism so they can continue to promote their lies about how evil and corrupt Democrats are and try to smear a flawed but relatively decent politician who has done some very good things for NYC even though he is far from perfect.
And as a NYC public school parent, I know that almost every Democrat who is looking to replace de Blasio when his term is up is far more pro-charter and far wimpier about standing up for what is right. I’m waiting for one I can support who isn’t mouthing the same platitudes about those “good” charters that Elizabeth Warren uses.
By the way, I didn’t even mention de Blasio’s various programs to diversity NYC public schools and his trying to change SHSAT-only admissions to specialized high schools. Those are NOT popular and have gotten a lot of pushback. But as a District 15 parent I am very excited to see how the pilot new middle school admissions works, because middle schools won’t be using test scores and grades.
NYC PSP,
The good news is that charter control of the legislature ended last November, when Democrats won control of the State Senate.
Remember that billionaire Dan Loeb, chair of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy board, insulted Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and said that her opposition to charters was worse than anything done by KKK to black children. She is black. She is now majority leader of the State Senate.
the very same people who exaggerated the evil of HRC (“she’s no better than Trump”) jump on the bandwagon to state out and out lies about a relatively progressive politician.”
It’s pretty clear who the liar is here.
I never once “exaggerated the evil of HRC (“she’s no better than Trump”)
NYCSP
Either link to even a single instance where I ” exaggerated the evil of HRC (“she’s no better than Trump”) ” or retract your blatant LIE.
You won’t be able to do so because I never did/said anything of the sort.
SomeDAM Poet,
See my reply above. I can’t “retract” something I didn’t say but I can abjectly apologize that some fault in the way that I wrote it led you believe that comment was a reply to you. It was not.
I am actually interested in what you think of the points I made about de Blasio — any possibility of you responding to that?
And don’t try to claim that it was not directed at me because that would just be another lie.
You said “people”
I absolutely apologize for saying “people”. I will try to leave that word out of further posts and work to improve my writing skills. Seriously, I’m not being flip here — I obviously am failing to communicate my points and if my comment were a paper, I would deserve an “F”.
Yay.