Gary Rubinstein explores the familiar claim that charter schools in New York City are far superior to public schools, when measured by test scores. The media, especially the newspapers, have said this repeatedly, as if it were a proven fact.
Not so fast, Gary says. he checked out the scores of the city’s charter schools, in relation to their “economic need index,” and compared them to public schools with their economic need index.
Only one charter chain stand out as an outlier: Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charters.
Otherwise, the test scores of the charter sector were similar to those of public schools.
Gary concludes:
“It seems pretty clear to me that, on average, the charter schools are not outperforming the public schools, based on how about half of of the charters are above the trend line and half below. Also it is relevant that most of the charters have an economic need index between .7 and .9 while there are a significant number of public schools that have an economic need index above .9. This runs contrary to the charter school supporters who continue to insist that charters serve the ‘same kids’ as the nearby ‘failing’ public school.
“Success Academy are such outliers that I can’t understand why charter supporters who are so focused on test scores are not out there insisting that all charter school resources be sent to expand Success Academy and the ‘yesterday’s news’ charters like KIPP, Democracy Prep, Harlem Children’s Zone, The Equity Project, etc. get shut down for poor performance.”
What if charters did “outperform” public schools based solely on test scores even adjusting for socio-economics? Would that mean anything?
RagingHorse blog wrote an excellent piece that ties in Eva & her SUCCESS ACADEMY schools, Friedrichs lawsuit to destroy unions, and Eva’s use of loaded language:
https://raginghorse.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/thoughts-on-friedrich-vs-california-eva-moskowitz-and-human-dignity/
——————————————-
Thoughts on Friedrichs Vs. California,
Eva Moskowitz, and Human Dignity
October 4, 2015
Some time within the next few months the U.S. Supreme Court will make a decision on Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. If the justices decide in favor of Friedrichs, all public employee unions across America will be decimated and all public employees would immediately become “at will” employees laboring under the Right to Work model.
For anyone wondering what a Right-to-Work model would mean for a teacher in New York City, one could do worse than take a long hard look at what lays within the recently leaked, five-page internal document addressed to the staff of Eva Moskowitz’s non-union Success Academy.
From what one can gather from the leaked SA doc, outside of having zero job security, no say whatsoever in working conditions and working endless hours, the “at will” teachers at Success Academy are apparently obliged to do whatever it is their leader orders them to do or else. According to the document, this would include (but not be limited to) debasing their language, creating a false sense of crisis, and conning the parents of their students into attending whatever it is master Moskowitz desires them to attend, regardless of whether those parents could afford it or not.
The document was written by something called Success Academy’s “advocacy team,” whose job apparently is to supply “messaging assistance” to staff. In this case, the “messaging assistance” consists of not only helping teachers convince SA families to attend a rally, but to help teachers convince these families that the transparently political event is somehow not political by supplying the language they are to use with the parents.
(The rally, organized by the sleazy and cynical Families For Excellent schools, yet another billionaire created front for school privatization, was meant to take place on Sept 30, but was postponed because of rain.)
“This is not a political event,” employees are being asked to tell parents who may be hesitant about participating in a rally with political implications, reported Politico. “This is an event in support of your scholar, our school, and the right for families to have access to equal schools.”
Of course, for anyone who has been unfortunate enough to “co-locate“ with a Success Academy, the fact that Moskowitz forces her teachers to debase the English language is evident on a daily basis.
Take, for instance, the word “scholar.’’ Here is a word you will hear SA teachers saying in passing 10, 20, 30 times a day. You will here it drop incessantly from the lips of administrators in meetings between your school and Success Academy. Once I heard it while waiting to see the nurse, when a teacher from SA called a mother on his cell phone to inform her that “your scholar fell down in the playground and hurt her elbow. “
In every other part of the English-speaking world, the word scholar is commonly understood to mean a distinguished academic, a specialist in a particular discipline, or, at the very least, a person who is highly educated.
Not in Moskowitz land. There the word “scholar” means every student in Success Academy, excepting of course those kids with lousy test scores who are booted out and into the land of non-scholars as quickly as possible. In Success Academy, “scholars“ are children as young as five.
Now I understand the rationale behind this misuse of language – somehow addressing them as “scholars” inspires them to great heights and all that — but as I do not support forcing teachers to debase their language, never mind to practice magical thinking on other people’s children. I wholeheartedly reject it.
And I do not find it harmless. It is to use language in the same manner and for the same reason as an ad company: to sell a product. Misuse of language is never harmless. As even one of Moskowitz’s five-year old “scholars” knows, calling an acorn an oak tree does not magically make it into one, even if Eva Moskowitz demands you say it does.
Then there is Moskowitz’s singular use of the word “civics,” as if taking 9,000 school kids up to Albany, or marching them across the Brooklyn Bridge during school time is actually engaging them in a “civics lesson.” This too, one assumes, must also be echoed ad infinitum by the teachers in her employ.
Of course, if this outrageous behavior is indeed presented to SA students as a civics lesson, you can rest assured that there would be no mention of the fact that the exact same actions are strictly forbidden for a public school, that any public school teacher involved in such a stunt would be cited for theft of services, and any principal who allowed it would have his or her job on the line.
One can also safely assume that SA teachers would be careful not to mention the extremely un-civic demand given by their “advocacy team” that their memorandum be carefully kept away from parents, less those same parents see how completely they are held in contempt.
To my way of thinking, to oblige teachers to debase their language, act against their conscience, and betray their intelligence while insulting the intelligence of their students’ parents or risk losing their livelihood is morally, intellectually, and spiritually grotesque. Simply put, a person who has been stripped of their language by being forced to speak another’s language has been stripped of their personhood. And yet, as “at will” employees, even if such a teacher wishes to grieve such degradation, they have nowhere to grieve it.
That said, I have no doubt whatsoever that, even if Moskowitz is extreme, these kinds of demands and worse will begin to be made in schools across the board, and across the United States, should the Friedrichs decision be made against public unions.
Should that nightmare scenario come to pass, all of those who remain public school teachers will find themselves working — to one degree or another — for someone like Eva Moskowitz. Those who have been trying to recreate American schools in their image will have removed the last barrier to complete and utter domination. They will flood American schools with their corporate apparatchiks who, like Moskowitz, will delight in making humiliating demands, and in destroying the careers of seasoned teachers — all for the good of the children, of course.
Should that nightmare scenario come to pass, the war against public school teachers which has been raging for over a decade — fueled by the richest individuals on earth in cahoots with the most powerful politicians in the United States — may at last end with the both American children and their parents on the losing side.
At the very least, it will be an enormous step backward and, if the Moskowitz model is any guide, a massive and insidious assault not only on the dignity of teachers, but on all Americans from coast to coast.
I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the number of Success Academy 8th graders accepted into elite NYC high schools zero?
None of the 8th grade graduates of Success Academy schools passed the exam to enter NYC elite high schools. Many public school graduates did.
LOL.
NYC DOE schools are doing such a poor job of getting black and Hispanic children (who make up 92% of NYC charter school enrollment vs 70% of traditional public schools) into selective SHSAT schools that Mayor de Blasio has decided the best solution isn’t to actually improve the K-8 education of black and Hispanic children, but to eliminate the test or make it easier to pass.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/debate-about-specialized-high-schools-test-flares-during-application-season/
Tim, there are African-American and Latino children in every specialized high school but they weren’t educated at Success — most went to regular public schools. Since your definition of “improve K-8 education” is more Success Academy schools, and yet not one student there in 2 years has done well enough on the SHSAT, either the teaching at Success Academy is atrocious (and those “highest test scores in the state” are questionable) or there is something wrong with the SHSAT when two entire years of children — that’s well over 160 kids — not a single one can score high enough on the SHSAT.
Which is it? Public school students who are African-American and Latino from all over NYC who haven’t had a Success Academy education for 9 years are doing better on the SHSAT. Why?
Is it because the SHSAT is taken OUTSIDE of the local Success Academy school and not graded by specially selected charter school graders but via the same standards as public school students’ exams?
Is it because the SHSAT needs to be revamped as de Blasio said so that those worthy SA kids who obviously know their stuff can get in?
And, by the way, I know it isn’t really 160 Success Academy 8th graders over 2 years taking the test. Those 160 kids have been weeded down to half that long before 8th grade comes along. And the ones allowed to remain because they are the top students still can’t pas the SHSAT? Either something is wrong with the SA education, or something is wrong with the SHSAT. Sounds like you agree with de Blasio here.
Typical charter-touting deflection and misdirection by Tim, who can always be counted on for that: rather than deal with the issue at hand, for which he has no valid rejoinder or refutation, he tries to distract readers by attacking the public schools.
That the specialized high schools enroll shamefully low numbers of Black and Latino children, far fewer than a generation ago, is a real issue, but a separate one from the topic of this post. Yet, desperate to have people look away from the waste and corruption taking place under their noses, he takes the tried and untrue so-called reformer path of attacking public education.
I guess once a troll, always a troll.
Suzanne: from this blog, thread, comment by BillHonig:
[start first paragraph]
Aside from the widespread revulsion at the prison-like atmosphere and hyper-pressurized education in Success Academies there is a legitimate question on whether such policies actually work. Chalkbeat and the NYTimes accept claims of phenomenal test scores without any scrutiny. But as Diane R.and many of the comments in the NY times to the article have pointed out, not one 8th grader passed the entrance test and was accepted to any of NYC’s elite high-schools although many applied. If true, that fact raises the question of how educated these students really are. Public schools in NYC had a much better record. How well these students who received such a narrow educational program fare when they get to high school and especially college (if they qualify) will shed some light on this issue.
[end first paragraph]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/04/09/eva-says-times-article-about-success-academy-was-slanted-and-unfair/
Click on links provided in the above for the NYTIMES 4-6-2015 article by Kate Taylor.
To add just one other: Diane Ravitch, THE NATION, 9-24-2014—
[start excerpt]
Of the thirty-two eighth-graders to finish at Success Academy, twenty-seven took the competitive exam to enter one of New York City’s prestigious specialized high schools. Despite their excellent scores on the state test, not one of these students gained admission to a specialized school like Stuyvesant or Bronx Science.
[end excerpt]
So remembering a certain Austrian pioneer in the field of psychotherapy and thinking in a creatively disruptive way, perhaps I have discovered the source of the Wrath of Eva Moskowitz when it comes to public schools:
Test Score Envy. “Yours is bigger than mine. Whah whah whah!!!!”
Solution? Eliminate the competition. Then you’re bigger by default.
😎
P.S. I’m not bragging (or maybe I am) but who else could work Sigmund Freud, Eva Moskowitz, test scores and a test score proxy for something not directly related to education into the same comment on a thread here?
😏
P.P.S. It is an impossible dream, I know, but perhaps Eva would do us all a favor if she would just heed Dr. Freud:
“Time spent with cats is never wasted.”
¿?
If she just spent more time with cats and less with destroying a “better education for all” we would all be a lot better off…
Or so it seems to me.
Thanks for having my back as well as Dr Ravitch herself.
PERFECTION. I love how Kane and MET failed to include the fact that teachers under study in MET were not being held accountable for student test scores at the time of study.
That’s a little variable to a bunch of little people that has a very big meaning.
Whoops…this comment was meant for your last post on Rubeinstein’s take on the Gates speech. I will move it there….sorry.
That was Colette about cats.
Simply matching by economic need index doesn’t tell us how a charter school did vs the zoned neighborhood school its students would have attended.
So Tim, your point is that if you take the less at-risk kids (those with parents committed to doing “all that is asked of them) out of their zoned school and put them into a very well-funded charter school with all the bells and whistles, and then allow the charter school to get rid of the ones who can’t keep up, THEN they will do better?
And credo.stanford.edu spend MONEY to do a study to confirm that? Guess what? No one is arguing that fact! Of course a charter that can cull only the parents who are committed to all that is asked AND gets millions in donations AND can get rid of any child they want will do better! Did you ever think they wouldn’t?
And by the way, if you think a public school that did that wouldn’t get better results than you are less intelligent than I thought.
Speaking of ecomonic need… Doesn’t Success Academy obtain a lot of high-profile donors – the kind of billionaire buddies who drop $$$ millions at one event? Before I’d assume SA teachers are working wonders, I’d like to see how many more tools and resources they have to play with.
Do any of you know of a true (peer reviewed study that compares the effect of donors $$ and grants on charter to public in same area?
Out here in LA, the charters get everything pubic gets per-student from the state, plus more in form of loans from district and co-location imperatives. Sadly, they have way more more $$$ flowing to them them investors, donors and all flavors of privatizers.
It’s worse than you think. In New York, when they give charter schools a “per pupil” allocation, they factor in the pension cost that public schools pay for all the retired teachers for the last 40 or 50 years! If a former teacher is still alive and getting a pension, that cost gets charged ONLY to public school students as part of their “per pupil” allocation. And the same money goes to charter schools despite never having to pay a penny for the teachers who retired decades ago. It makes no sense to charge that cost only to public school students — it should be left out of the equation completely — but if it were, charter schools would have to “make do” with the same money that public schools actually receive to pay for CURRENT teachers (not the long retired ones). And charter schools couldn’t use it to rent fancy office space and pay high administrator salaries. So even the public money alone is unfairly allocated, with only public school kids being charged both their share AND charter school kids’ share for many things that charter schools freeload on.
NYC public school parent:
If what you wrote is true, this is very disturbing. Not just in the sense of bad fiscal management or improper use of public monies, but as a deeply immoral practice as well.
If you are incorrect, I look forward to the pro-rheephorm folks that comment on this blog to correct.
If they don’t, their silence is agreement.
😎
I guess I’ll play the “pro-rheephorm” role here. It’s not true. Charter per-pupil allocations are calculated based on the district’s operating expenses, minus certain categories (such as transportation). Pension costs are not operating expenses.
No one hates to say this more than me, but I’m not 100% sure that my last comment is accurate. Contrary to what I have believed, pension fund contributions may get counted as operating expenses for purposes of calculating the Approved Operating Expenses (AOE) that establish charter school per-pupil funding. Pension fund contributions are not expressly identified as one of the items that are not included in the AOE calculation. And the AOE output forms that the state publishes refer to “General Fund Expenditures,” which could include pension fund contributions (as I think those are paid out of the city’s general fund). This stuff is very opaque, unfortunately. But I’ll eat whatever portion of crow is necessary.
KrazyTA, that’s the only thing I can figure. The Galaxy Budget that public schools use is a fraction of their “per student” allocation and a fraction of what charter schools get per pupil. It’s not just current teachers salaries and pensions that make up the difference — it seems to be all the pension costs for retired teachers, too. I heard someone suggest that since both charter schools and unions benefit, no one talks about it, but as a parent, I believe it NEEDS to be talked about. Charter schools benefit because they can claim they should get equal funding, and that’s the “funding” public schools get. And the union benefit because the full cost of pensions is hidden.
I don’t begrudge retired teachers their pensions that were promised decades ago, just like I don’t begrudge those pensions for police and firefighters and retired US Congressmen if that’s what was agreed to. But please do not charge MY child for the cost while giving the children in charter school a free ride (which my child pays for also!)
Krazy TA,
In New York State, the basic unit for charter school per-pupil funding is the per-pupil AOE (Approved Operating Expenditures) of its home district, which is the funding required for day-to-day operation of its schools. Federal aid, state aid for certain programs (ELLs/SWDs), capital expenses, transportation, and pension costs are excluded from this calculation.
New York City has a separate teachers’ pension plan from the rest of the state, and it specifically and clearly excludes pension costs from its operating budget: http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/funding/overview/default.htm
The base per-student reimbursement for charter schools located in New York City is $13,877 for the 2015-2016 school year. Charter schools can apply for extra funding based on student need (ELL, SWDs, etc.) and may supplement with private donations. But just to reiterate, that base figure does not include pension costs carried by the DOE.
Hope this helps.
Tim’s numbers don’t add up – sorry to say. I wish they did.
PS 261 in Brooklyn has 811 students. According to Tim, their budget should be 11,000,000!!! Not hardly – 6 million is more like it. Check out their galaxy budget or ANY budget. And remember, charters get free space and maintenance and everything else from their money!
PS 87 in Manhattan has 878 kids. According to Tim, that would give them a budget of $12 million each year! And yet, the galaxy budget is only 7.2 million. Can you imagine if they were a CHARTER school and got $12 million each year to spend! Hallelujah! Just think what their principal could pay herself.
No wonder charter schools have so much money to use on marketing and busing their kids to rallies.
FYI — those Galaxy costs don’t include pension costs as far as I can tell, but pensions for CURRENT teachers aren’t that high (new system). So again, Tim, where is that money going? Because it certainly is not spent by the school.
By the way, Tim, maybe THAT is the only way to get Gov. Cuomo’s support. Can PS 87 declare itself a charter school, but one open to ALL students in their zone? How much better is that than Success Academy, which limits enrollment and gets rid of whomever it wants to get rid of with no oversight?
Then, PS 87 gets $11 million a year to spend on their school — demanding free rent, of course. I bet the parents would vote to make it a “charter”. Is that your solution, Tim?
Correction on this post: It is possible all the money that the public schools do NOT ever see (despite Tim’s claims that it is in the budget) is not because of pension costs. It is WORSE! It is paying for the costs of all the buildings and buses and everything else that charter school students ALSO benefit from but never have to pay for. Public school students get to pay their own share of building and maintenance costs, plus the charter school kids’ share.
The bottom line is that if you look at a galaxy budget for a typical public school, you will see that instead of getting the 11 or 12 million dollars that Tim claims they do, they get $6 or 7 million. The rest covers all the things that charters freeload on, since they get their full $11 or 12 million to spend, apparently. No wonder fancy offices in downtown Manhattan are so easy to afford if you are a charter school.
NYC public school parent: I am sure that Tim feels obliged to answer your doubts and will ASAP.
😎
FLERP! Thank you for acknowledging that you made a mistake. I agree the numbers are opaque, but what is not opaque is the fact that schools like PS 87 manage on a fraction of what Success Academy gets to spend each year. And that is before federal grants and before millions in donations! Success Academy (and every other charter school) gets nearly $14,000 to spend per pupil while your local public school gets perhaps $7 or $8,0000. That may have made some sense when charter schools rented their own space — that was the intent of all that money — but Mayor Bloomberg decided to “help” his favored charters with specially selected space at no charge. Although of course, the unconnected charters didn’t get the same privileges.
The more kids go to Success Academy (hey, they want to expand to 100 schools ) the more that the public schools where our children go will cover the true costs of their students’ education. Less children in the public school system so more to charge to each of them to pay the overhead cost of the growing number of kids in charters. What a nefarious way to drive parents out of underfunded public schools — and of course the charters will welcome the ones with compliant and easy to educate kids and throw back the rest – the expensive ones.
Watching my tax dollars go to people who use it to stage rallies and lie about what it is their charter is doing (educating every at-risk kid who wins the lottery) turns my stomach. That money could be spent to REALLY educate kids in poverty. I don’t care if my kids school is suffering — at least the parents can make it up — but it is truly outrageous that the schools that serve those at-risk kids that people organizing the rally PRETEND to care about it are the ones suffering most. What a sham and anyone who doesn’t understand how harmful what Eva Moskowitz does is to our free society is just not paying attention. If she truly cared about education, she would have no need to be dishonest and hide the truth of who disappears from her schools. I don’t know if power corrupted her, or if she was corrupt in the first place, but she turned what could have been a good thing — charter schools for kids stuck in failing public schools — into a prop for her political aims where the children in her schools come second or third. So they become expendable — suspend those 5 and 6 year olds and make the rest feel misery so that any expensive child leaves. I truly hope you realize it now, FLERP!
Krazy,
I have a policy (not as strictly self-enforced as I’d like) of not engaging with NYC public school parent / parent01023. The prolixity and monomania I can deal with — hell, I can even respect them. But when someone ignores the facts over and over again–and this Galaxy issue is a perfect example of it!–it’s time to leave the merry-go-round.
For you, Krazy TA, I’ll clarify.
The Galaxy budget numbers are useful only if you intend to run a school system without any central district support or administration of any kind; without lights, heat/AC, or water; without security officers; without custodians; without buses (many charters in NYC do not provide busing, btw); without food; and, this is the really big one!, without any fringe benefits at all for teachers–no health insurance, no dental or optical coverage, no prescription drug benefit. Galaxy numbers tell you (roughly) how much is spent on instructional salaries and wages at a school, plus a nominal amount for books, supplies, and software. That’s it.
And those support and benefit expenses are considerable in New York City! In 2013, the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group, calculated that the NYC DOE was spending $5,342 per student in employee fringe benefits (NOT including pension costs, which are accounted for outside the DOE’s operating budget) and $4,428 per student in support services (the central and district offices, energy and food, transportation, and so on). Needless to say, these expenditures obliterate national averages, even adjusted for cost of living.
I am pretty sure, Krazy TA, that you don’t believe teachers should have to work without health insurance or heat, or that children should have to go without food and buses!
Someone else may have the last word (or ten billion).
Tim often posts and he dislikes me because I don’t let him get away with contradictory facts, misleading statements, etc. He claims I go on to long because I try to answer questions with facts as I find them. I am always open to being corrected, unlike Tim, because I don’t have the same agenda he has. I want an honest debate — Tim wants to promote charter schools and is offended when I question their dishonesty.
Tim may indeed be correct, but I certainly would never take his word for it since he is claiming that PS 87’s benefits cost is nearly 60% of salary (not including pension!) That’s what it would have to be if you pretend an additional $5,300 charged to each student pays fringe costs on the school’s employees. Now, with a fringe cost of 60%, you’d think the school employees had cadillac health care plans, but anyone who has ever looked at the lowest cost HMOs the teachers get for free knows that isn’t the case. (Better plans come out of teachers’ pockets). So Tim’s pretense that the benefits are that high is pretty questionable. I doubt it’s true, but if he wants to offer a citation, he should. I’m sure the 90 employees at PS 87 would be thrilled to know that each of them are receiving over $51,000 each year in health insurance and dental benefits! And that doesn’t even include their pensions — no way that is correct, Tim, unless something funny is going on. The plans school workers get for free or low-cost are probably far less fancy then the one Tim gets that doesn’t cost his family $50,000/year. Care to explain, Tim?
Furthermore, Tim ignores the “$4,428 per student in support services (the central and district offices, energy and food, transportation, and so on)” but THAT is extra high because public school kids now pay for charter school childrens’ costs! Do Success Academy children go without heat in their building? No problem, because the public school children in that building pay for Success Academy’s heat so that they have plenty of money to pay for the fancy offices downtown. The charter school kids are freeloaders (I hate to say it because it’s not the kids’ fault, it’s the fault of greedy charter CEOs like Eva Moskowitz who believe every dollar taken from a public school student is a dollar to pursue her agenda). And that “central bureaucracy” that is paid for ONLY by our public school students — well that’s there so that when 50% of the starting cohort disappears from Success Academy, there is somewhere for them to go.
I’ll make you a deal, Tim. You tell your friend Eva Moskowitz to spend every dollars she has to figure out a way to educate ALL the at-risk kids who enter her lottery instead of finding ways to discourage the most expensive ones to leave, and I will acknowledge that her charter schools aren’t benefitting from the free ride they are getting because public school students are the ONLY students charged for all the things that allow her to discourage any student she wants from enrolling or staying. Don’t tell me parents are “choosing” their failing public schools over Success Academy when they pull their kid who is made to feel miserable. And don’t pretend that Eva Moskowitz’ choice to spend millions marketing to upper middle class families while going out of her way to drop lottery priority for at-risk kids is anything but a statement that she has no interest in spending her money KEEPING those kids. That DOE “bureaucracy” is the only thing that allows her school to exist without doing what happened in New Orleans and just letting her “unwanted” students rot on the street.
And your ONLY justification is for us to believe that every DOE employee at PS 87 gets more than $50,000 in fringe benefits. And that the DOE bureacracy that allows Success Academy to rid itself of so many at-risk kids (while desperately marketing to the affluent ones) isn’t 100% necessary for SA to even exist.
When Success keeps ALL its students, we will know that they don’t need the bureaucracy. But losing 50% of the poor ones shows you that they are the biggest freeloaders in this city. And every public school child underwrites Eva Moskowitz’ riches. Shame on you.
Flerp, I am pretty positive that the AOE doesn’t include payments for retirement funds.
If you go to this link: https://eservices.nysed.gov/publicsams/reports.do
Select “2014-2015” claim year, and enter “300000” (which is the code for our fair district), it will generate a list of state aid reports. Scroll down to the AOE report link and click it, and you should get a plain HTML report with the following numbers:
49 Total General Fund Expense: 20,585,420,185
53 APPROVED OPERATING EXPENSE: AOE: 18,022,698,944
These line up closely enough with the “Total DOE Budget” and “Services to Schools” numbers from the IBO, 20,881,551,000 and 17,613,187,000, respectively, that I don’t see where or how the $3,021,000,000 IBO number for pension costs could possibly be included in the AOE. If you look line by line, the deductions from the AOE align neatly with the categories laid out in state education law: transportation, tuition payments, etc.
Put away the condiments and neatly re-fold your napkin, please.
Yep, you’re right. I’ve seen this before and made the same observation about how closely the Gen Fund number line up with the operating budget number. Looking at it again now, I see the paper trail.
The source of entry 49, the “Total General Fund Expense,” is “(ST-3 SCH A4C [AT9999.0] ENT 436).”
The “ST-3” is the annual financial report form that school districts file with the State Education Department. “SCH A4C” means Schedule A4 of the annual financial report, which lists all of the “General Fund Expenditures by Function and Object of Expense.” Finally, “ENT 436” means Entry # 436 on schedule A4. Entry # 436 is the line in Schedule A4 that totals up all of the general fund expenditure subtotals.
Here’s a filled-out ST-3 form for the Unadilla Valley school district.
You can see all the sub-components that feed into entry # 436. The sub-components are Total General Support (AT1999.0), Total Instruction (AT2999.0), Total Pupil Transportation (AT5599.0), Total Community Services (AT8099.0), and Total Undistributed Expenditures (AT9959.0). None of these include pension contributions.
I’ve never seen a completed ST-3 form for NYC, unfortunately, but it’s clear how the categories work. Pension costs are not included in the calculation of the Total General Fund Expense. We therefore know that
pension costs are not included in the AOE, either, because the AOE is based on the Total General Fund Expense calculation. Thus, we can say with certainty that pension costs are not factored into the calculation of charter school per-pupil funding.
I think we’ve done some outstanding work today!
Good lord — hold the phone again! Entries 347 and 348 include amounts for “State Retirement” (account code A9010.8) and “Teacher Retirement” (account code A9020.8). These go into the category of “Total Undistributed Expenditures,” which in turn goes into the “Total General Fund Expense.”
Do those two categories encompass the entire amount of a district’s pension costs? They may indeed. Not sure.
So I’ll issue my second mea culpa. I cannot say with certainty that pension costs are not included in the AOE calculations. Based on what I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe they are, at least partially. I’ll leave the rebuttal to your capable hands, Tim.
I’ll leave links to primary sources for the benefit of those who would like to do conduct their own further research. Enjoy, everyone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
http://schools.nyc.gov/Employees/default.htm
http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/funding/overview/default.htm
http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/03/M087/AboutUs/Statistics/expenditures.htm
http://www.cbcny.org/sites/default/files/InstructionalAndSupportMap2012.html
Amazing how much you know about the NY State Education bureaucracy, Tim. I am impressed. And I was interested to see how much was transportation, tuition payments, maintenance on buildings, and all the things that charter schools get for free, and how much was the cost of health insurance.
However, that link you posted doesn’t work. Maybe you have to have a special insider password to access it? Is that something you possess, and if so, why?
It’s certainly possible that flerp and I are wrong about the pension costs being included — I acknowledged that long before you ever answered me. But what you have yet to contradict is that a typical public school has a fraction of the money that a charter school has to pay for the same things — staff at the school and teaching supplies. The fact that there has to be a bureaucracy to oversee the education of over one million school children, including a majority who live in poverty, many of whom are new immigrants with dozens of different languages, many of whom has special needs and disabilities, should be a cost borne by ALL students — not something that public school kids pay their share plus the share of kids in charter schools. Unless and until Eva Moskowitz starts covering ALL the costs of running what is now a charter network the size of many small cities — but without any of those pesky high needs children or ANY expensive children to educate — it is outrageous that public school children — and ONLY public school children — pay the cost of teaching the most vulnerable children. I am happy to pay my child’s share of that cost, but how is it you think my child should be paying for Success Academy’s share of that cost, too?
Flerp, please continue to use the classified secret link provided earlier.
Everyone else can use this, then click on the “eservices.nysed” link in the middle of the page: https://stateaid.nysed.gov/output_reports.htm
Tim, I’m telling you this in the interest of fairness — the links you provide don’t explain anything. I am not afraid of numbers but the state budget doesn’t break anything down into categories.
And there is nothing here to support your claim that every employee at PS 87 cost more than $50,000 in “fringe”. We both know it isn’t true.
Finally, the only thing your links confirm is the fact that all the costs of educating the most expensive children — the ones who might have special needs, have to go to private schools for which the DOE pays tuition, the ones who need full time aides — are all borne by the students in public school. The cost of managing those kids — that bureaucratic overhead that prevents the many charter school “missing” students from falling through the cracks like they did in New Orleans — that is borne by public school students, too. I get that if charter schools get free rides for those expenses there is lots more money to pay certain employees and PR firms (does that help you, Tim?). But at the cost of what? Letting the most vulnerable at-risk kids rot in underfunded public schools?
You know, if Eva Moskowitz made any attempt to keep those at-risk kids who she makes feel “misery” if they don’t shape up, I’d understand your praise for her. But the people who she wants to make happy are the upper middle class parents who ONLY attend Success Academy Upper West and seem to avoid the other District 3 SA schools like the plague. She’d never treat their kids (whom she loves to acknowledge are so “gifted”) the way she’d treat the often suspended 5 and 6 year olds at Harlem Success Academy 4.
FLERP! I know I frequently get on your nerves, but I want to thank you for your sincere attempt to try to figure out the confusing budgets of public schools. It’s a daunting task and anyone who tries gets admiration from me. And I appreciate your honesty as you find things that don’t make sense.
I am NOT looking to twist facts. I am just trying to figure out why schools have so little money to spend when it comes down to it. If Tim can break down the budget at PS 87 in a way that accounts for the supposed $15,700 per student he says they spend, I sure wish he would do it. Because what the school spends on salaries and supplies doesn’t even come close to what he claims it should be.
Your last post seemed to agree with me that the numbers don’t add up. Furthermore, whether or not they include pension, what is more important is how much of the cost of the safety net for charter schools are public schools covering? It seems to be 100%, with public school kids paying for the bureaucracy that allows those charter schools to exist. It’s not right for them not to pay their share of it. If you compare apples to apples, and the in school expenditures of charter schools are nearly twice as much as public schools, then something is really wrong.
Flerp, it’s important to rule it out definitively, so I am trying to track down that document–fortunately, insiders like you and me have “dark web” access to the DOE’s records while their servers are offline to the public until 6 am tomorrow! But literally every piece of available evidence suggests that NYC’s pensions expenditures aren’t counted toward the AOE. The math simply doesn’t work.
My guess is that there is something buried deep in the statute, one of those “in a city of one million residents or more / in a school district of 125,000 students or more” qualifiers, that allows for or even requires different accounting standards for the DOE. Pension expenditures are separated everywhere, including the DOE’s audited annual financial statements.
FLERP perhaps once Tim finds that information he seeks, you might explain to him that it is not enough to claim that pensions are NOT included but to explain what IS included since the galaxy budget for PS 87 is maybe 60% of what Tim claims is money that school has to spend. What is rest being spent on? I feel pretty certain it is lots of thing that charter school students benefit from, including providing their safety net for all the disappearing kids they prefer to make miserable instead of teach.
Eva Moskowitz has an annual fundraiser where she usually raises about $8 million. She also receives multimillion dollar gifts from hedge fund managers on her boards.
Anyone have the article/link regarding NY dept. of Ed playing around with scores so schools do not have to provide AIS…It described how NY has two sets of cut off scores
Since we know there is no special sauce, and Success cannot be doing anything except test prep, there is an obvious explanation for their scores. It seems easier to cheat on a computer than with paper and pencil. Who is watching?
You don’t have to “cheat” if you can just get rid of low-scoring students. You don’t have to “cheat” if you can afford to buy test prep that very closely aligns with the test AND you can get rid of low-scoring students. That’s the beauty of being a charter school that cares about test score results much more than they care about all the students who “disappear” — especially when those students are far more likely to be from low-income families who won’t fight.