Archives for category: Bill de Blasio
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NYC: A Rally to Support Students With Disabilities and Mayor de Blasio

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2014 //
31

One of the charter schools turned down by Mayor de Blasio was an effort by Eva Moskowitz to expand her Succes Academy elementary school into a middle school in Harlem. This would have displaced students with disabilities, on the theory that students with high scores should get preference over students with disabilities.

Here is a press release about a rally on Monday at 4 pm.

Which kids are really getting hurt in the charter wars?

Monday March 10, 4PM: Rally at Harlem School for Victims of Moskowitz Attempt to Push Out Special Ed Kids

Rally To Support de Blasio and Public Schools in Harlem Tomorrow

Where: Outside PS/ MS 149
When : 4: 00- 5:00 March 10
41 W. 117th St between Lennox Ave and Fifth
Subway: 2 or 3 to 116th

Even as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handling of the issue of charter school co-locations has disappointed many, it has signaled the end of the era when the likes of entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz is granted whatever entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz wants, regardless of how many public school children are displaced, short changed and treated as if they are second rate citizens.

Over the past week and more, Moskowitz has received absurdly favorable press in New York City papers, even as she once again removed children from schools during school hours, this time to bus them to Albany as if they were adult lobbyists. After years of incredibly favorable treatment by the Bloomberg administration, de Blasio has had the political courage to stand up to Moskowitz and her billionaire backers.

As a result, Moskowitz and her friends in the media are doing all they can to paint her and Success Academies as victims and create the false appearance of overwhelming public support for Moskowitz and the horrific and destructive policies of Mike Bloomberg.

They have flooded the air-waves with slick, heart-tugging commercials, engaging in a multi-million dollar public relations campaign designed to do nothing less than trick the public into forgetting that de Blasio won by a margin of 75% over Joe Lhota, in large part because of de Blasio’s rejection of Bloomberg’s education policies, of which Moskowitz is such a perfect example.

Today we have an opportunity to once again reaffirm the public will, let Moskowitiz’s billionaires know that they do not own our schools and our city, and let de Blasio know he is not alone.

Please, if you can, come and let your voices be heard loud and clear. Come and remind Moskowitz’s billionaire backers that we live in a democracy. Above all, come and help insure that all of our children are shown the dignity that all children deserve.

Patrick Walsh
Chapter Leader
PS/ MS 149
Harlem

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Special Education

Murdoch Salutes Cuomo for Defending the 3% in Charters, Slams de Blasio

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2014 //
27

As reported earlier, Rupert Murdoch is pulling out all the stops to tear down New York City’s new Mayor Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio okayed 36 of the 45 co-locations he inherited from Bloomberg; he approved 14 of the 17 charter proposals. But Murdoch insists de Blasio is closing charters and throwing minority kids out on the street. In fact, Murdoch’s favorite charter operator Eva Moskowitz won five new charters, not the eight she wanted. But you would never know that by reading the editorial rant in the Wall Street Journal. The writer really, really despises de Blasio, even throwing in an irrelevant reference to Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe. Which means? I don’t know.

The WSJ can barely contain its admiration for Governor Cuomo, who boldly stood up for the 3% of children in charter schools as he continues to disregard the basic needs of the 97% in the state’s public schools, whose education is crippled by the budget cuts caused by the governor’s 2% tax cap. Even as taxes are capped, the public schools are compelled to spend more money on Common Core and testing, which Cuomo supports. Cuomo never tires of bashing New York state’s public schools. He thinks they cost too much. Someone should tell him that Eva Moskowitz’s charters spend $2,000 per pupil more than neighborhood public schools.

This puffed-up controversy over Eva Moskowitz’s charters demonstrates the inherent divisiveness of charters. They are not public schools. As the charters say in every court proceeding, whether in federal or state courts, they are private corporations with a government contract. As they said to the NLRB, they are not public schools and not subject to NLRB regulations. As the California Charter School Association said in an amicus brief last fall, charter operators should not be convicted for misappropriating $200,000, because charter schools are not public schools and are not subject to the same laws as public schools.

So the billionaires have a chance to smear a popular new mayor, because he gave Eva Moskowitz only five charter schools instead of eight.

Murdoch is outraged that the mayor asked charter operators to pay rent. They can’t cry poverty. Eva Moskowitz is paid nearly half a million each year. She pays the powerful D.C. political lobbying firm Knickerbocker more than $500,000 each year to tend her chain’s image; it must have cost much more this year. In addition, Eva’s Success Academy spends hundreds of thousands each year on marketing to parents, to create demand. In the current battle with the mayor, someone came up with millions of dollars for television and full-page ads. Yet they claim they can’t pay the city for the space they take away from the other 94% of students in New York City. Don’t buy it.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Farina, Carmen, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Rupert Murdoch’s War on Mayor de Blasio

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2014 //
25

After eight years of Rudy Guiliani and twelve years of Michael Bloomberg, the 1% is accustomed to getting whatever it wants in Néw York City. They like to cover their “wants” in deceptive rhetoric suggesting they are doing it “for the kids” or for “civil rights.”

Media Matters here reports on billionaire Murdoch’s vendetta against Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our newly elected progressive mayor is now the target if a full-bore attack by all of Murdoch’s media: the Néw York Post, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal.

The 1% is already furious that de Blasio wants them to pay about $1,000 a year so that pre-K is available to all. Now de Blasio had the audacity to give Eva Moskowitz only three of the charters she expected. At the same time, he approved 39 of 49 charter applications.

How dare he deny any charter application! Eva’s friends on Wall Street have launched a very elaborate barrage of attack ads against the mayor, accusing him of indifference to the needs of black children.

Why trust de Blasio when you could trust Rupert Murdoch, Fox News, and hedge fund managers to protect the rights of children?

The hedge fund crowd has already forgotten that de Blasio won in a landslide. They forgot that Eva last closed her schools to lead a protest march across the Brooklyn Bridge, accompanied by de Blasio’s Republican opponent, Joe Lhota. They forgot that de Blasio crushed Lhota by 50 points. In other words, he has a mandate.

But that won’t stop the smear machine.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers

Bruce Baker: De Blasio Is Right; Charters Can Afford to Pay Rent

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
16

During his mayoral campaign in 2013, candidate Bill de Blasio said that he would charge rent to charter schools using public school space, in relation to their ability to pay.

Bear in mind that charters in New York City enroll 6% of children, while the public schools enroll about 1.1 million children.

The charter schools cried foul, and the rightwing Manhattan Institute issued a study with dire warnings about the burdens that de Blasio would inflict on the charter sector.

Bruce Baker of Rutgers University dissected those claims and found them unwarranted.

He writes:

“The report’s central conclusion that charging charter schools rent will reduce the number of high-quality schools in the city is particularly misguided and hardly supported by the crude, poorly connected and poorly documented analyses presented. As noted above, there exists no clear explanation of how deficits were calculated, including whether available assets of individual schools were considered or whether parent organizations’ ending balances or assets were considered. Clearly these are of relevance for determining the fiscal impact of paying rent.

“Second, the assertion that existing charter schools are of “quality generally above that of district public schools” (p. 4) cannot be supported by comparisons of average proficiency rates without regard for students served or existing resource advantages.

“Third, the report cherry-picks “high-performing” charters to draw broad conclusions regarding the negative impact of charging rent on the future distribution of “good schools.” Considering that the city remains responsible for approximately 1 million school children spread across approximately 1,700 schools, the assertion that charging rent to these two cherry-picked charters, or all 84 co-located charters in the author’s sample, will lead to “fewer good schools overall” (p. 4) is an enormously unwarranted stretch.

“Finally, the report fails to acknowledge that the fiscal constraints facing both the city district schools and by extension the charter schools that rely on the city budget, are in large part caused by persistent underfunding of the state school finance formula (shown in Table 4). The state continues to underfund New York City schools by $2.6 to $2.8 billion,”

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City

Dueling Rallies in Albany on Tuesday

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2014 //
106

Albany, Néw York, will be the scene of two competing rallies on Tuesday.

Eva Moskowitz is closing her charter schools on NYC and will bus thousands of children and parents to lobby for her charter chain.

On the same day, allies of Mayor de Blasio will assemble to urge the legislature to permit NYC to tax the richest–those who earn more than $500,000 annually–to pay for universal pre-K.

Place your bets, folks. Will it come down to a contest between which groups made the biggest campaign contributions? Or will the greater public good prevail?

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Harlem Success Academy

“Democrats for Education Reform” Oppose de Blasio Plan to Fund Universal Pre-K

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
53

This morning, Joe Williams, the executive director of the hedge-fund managers’ “education reform” front group (“Democrats for Education Reform”) published an opinion piece in the New York Daily News opposing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to fund universal pre-kindergarten by taxing incomes over $500,000. As Mayor de Blasio has pointed out, the incremental tax to pay for U-PK would be the equivalent of a soy latte at Starbucks every day, about $1,000 a year for the city’s wealthiest residents. But the hedge fund managers say no. This may explain why the California Democratic party called out DFER last year and urged them to stop calling themselves “Democrats” when they are fronts for Republicans and corporate interests. Imagine someone who has a take home pay of half a million a year unwilling to pay another $1,000 to ensure that every child in the city has pre-kindergarten class. How embarrassing for DFER. Why not just call themselves Hedge Funders for Education Reform and drop the pretense. They are making war on the signature proposal of the city’s wildly popular new progressive mayor.

 

The Alliance for Quality Education, which advocates on behalf of the city’s children, fired off a press release:

 

 

“On Pre-K, Parents Blast Corporate Education Front-Groups for ‘Putting the Rich First’ Over Students 

 

NY, NY— Following the Daily News op-ed by DFER’s Joe Williams, a national leader in the education corporate reform agenda, which revealed they are advocating against Mayor de Blasio’s tax plan to fund pre-K, Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education, & Celia Green from New York Communities for Change released the following statement:

 

“Shame on the corporate front-groups for trying to get in the way of pre-K for New York City. They are simply ‘putting the rich first’ and shortchanging four year olds. The best plan would be to combine both the mayor’s and the governor’s plans—that would serve more kids in New York City and throughout the state. Mr. Williams is misrepresenting the facts when he says the Governor’s plan is more equitable; there is nothing equitable about leaving tens of thousands of four year olds out in the cold on pre-K. Every single child deserves to have access to high-quality pre-K, not just the rich who can afford to pay for it,” said Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education. 

 

“The corporate reform agenda was rejected in New York City, and now their front-group spokesman is cozying up to the Governor and millionaires. Opposing the Mayor’s plan because it will slightly raise taxes is out-of-touch with not only families across the city, but with the countless wealthy individuals in the city who support the Mayor’s plan. The bottom line is that I’m tired of protesting cuts to programs or living in fear as to whether they will still be there next year– that’s why we need a reliable funding stream through a small tax increase on the wealthy,” said Celia Green, parent leader with New York Communities for Change.

 

Categories Bill de Blasio, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Democrats for Education Reform, New York City

Another Step Forward by Chancellor Farina in New York City

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2014 //
27

New York City’s Chancellor Carmen Farina is step-by-step reassembling the essentials of a functional public school system after a dozen years of Mayor Bloomberg’s “creative disruption.” The Bloomberg regime quickly established its preference for inexperience over experience and its distaste for veteran educators. It created a “Leadership Academy” to turn teachers with one or two years of classroom experience into principals. The graduates of the Leadership Academy were held in low regard by the experienced teachers whom they commanded. Many got into major trouble. Yet the media loved to tell the stories of whiz kids who became principal at the age of 26 or 28, bypassing the time that others spent learning to teach, winning the respect of their colleagues, then learning the ropes as an assistant principal.

Now Chancellor Farina has issued new regulations: experience is a pre-condition for a school principal and assistant principal. What a novel idea! Another setback for corporate reform.

AMENDMENTS TO CHANCELLOR’S REGULATION C-30—REGULATION GOVERNING THE SELECTION, ASSIGNMENT AND APPOINTMENT OF PRINCIPALS AND ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS

I. Description of the subject and purpose of the proposed item under consideration.

Chancellor’s Regulation C-30 governs the selection, assignment and appointment of principals and assistant principals. The following amendments are proposed:

· Principals must have at least seven years of prior full-time pedagogic experience to be eligible for selection and appointment. Qualifying prior pedagogic positions for principals are: classroom teacher, dean, instructional coach, guidance counselor, school social worker, assistant principal, teacher assigned, education administrator, and all pedagogic supervisory titles contained in the collective bargaining agreement between the CSA and the DOE.
· Effective for the 2014-2015 school year, assistant principals must have at least five years of prior full-time pedagogic experience to be eligible for selection and appointment. Qualifying prior pedagogic positions for assistant principals are: classroom teacher, dean, instructional coach, guidance counselor, school social worker, teacher assigned, education administrator, and all pedagogic supervisory titles contained in the collective bargaining agreement between the CSA and the DOE.
· Applicants with fewer than seven years of prior pedagogic experience are eligible to be evaluated for admission to the Principal Candidate Pool, but are not eligible to apply for principal positions unless they have at least seven years of prior pedagogic experience.
· Interim acting principals must have at least seven years of prior full-time pedagogic experience to be eligible for assignment.
· Effective for the 2014-2015 school year, interim acting assistant principals must have at least five years of prior full-time pedagogic experience to be eligible for assignment.
· The Office of Leadership will promulgate guidance regarding the prior pedagogic experience requirements for principals and assistant principals.
· Assistant principal, principal and executive principal appointments in community school district schools are subject to rejection for cause by the Senior Deputy Chancellor or his/her designee on behalf of the Chancellor.
· Interim-acting principals must be in the Principal Candidate Pool, except in exigent circumstances, when the Senior Deputy Chancellor or his/her designee may authorize assignment of an interim-acting principal prior to completion of an evaluation for the Principal Candidate Pool.
· Requests for waivers from the Chancellor regarding the new pedagogic experience requirements shall be directed to the Senior Deputy Chancellor or his/her designee, 52 Chambers St., Room 320, New York, NY 10007.
· Attachment No. 1 (members of Level I Committee) has been revised for clarity.

II. Information regarding where the full text of the proposed item may be obtained.

The full text of the amendments to the regulation, and the regulation in its entirety, can be found on the main page of the website of the Panel for Educational Policy: http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/leadership/PEP/publicnotice/2013-2014/April9PEPRegulations

III. Name, office, address, email and telephone number of the city district representative, knowledgeable about the item under consideration, from whom information may be obtained concerning the item.

Name: Marina Cofield
Office: Office of Leadership
Address: 52 Chambers Street, Room 315, New York, NY 10007
Email: RegulationC-30@schools.nyc.gov
Phone: 212-346-5211

IV. Date, time and place of the Panel for Educational Policy meeting at which the Panel will vote on the proposed item.

April 9, 2014 at 6:00 p.m.
Prospect Heights Campus
883 Classon Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11225

Categories Bill de Blasio, Farina, Carmen, New York City

Mark Naison on the Bloomberg Policy of Putting Charters First

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2014 //
38

In this post, Mark Naison explains why so many parents seek to place their children in charters in New York City. Fr 12 years, the Bloomberg administration showered preferential treatment on the charters and ignored the needs of the public schools tat enroll 94% of the city’s children.

He predicts that the policies of Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina will reverse some or most of the damage done to public schools by the policies of the past dozen years:

He writes:

Charter School Growth, Bloomberg Style, Creates Dilemma for the de Blasio Administration- A Special Report to BK Nation
January 31, 2014

By Dr. Mark Naison

In today’s New York Post, an article appeared claiming that Charter School Applications in New York City were 56 percent ahead of what they were at this time last year, putting pressure on the de Blasio administration to re-evaluate its efforts to slow charter expansion.

Those numbers are REAL. They reflect the desperation of inner city and working class parents who hope to find high performing, safe schools for their children and see charters as the best hope for that.

However, they are making that judgment, based on what they observe in their own neighborhoods, not because of the inherent superiority of charter schools, but because the Bloomberg Administration rigged the game by giving huge preference to charter schools, both substantively and symbolically, and using charters not as a strategy to improve public education in the city, but as a wedge to privatize it and smash the influence of the city’s teachers union.

The challenge of the de Blasio administration is see what happens when the competition is even, and when public schools are given the resources, encouragement and support charters were given in the Bloomberg years. When and if that happens, the demand for charters is likely to decrease as parents see public schools in their neighborhood improve dramatically and innovative new public schools open in their neighborhoods.

Under the Bloomberg administration, aided and abetted by police systems of the U.S. and NY State Departments of Education, charter schools were consciously selected over public schools as the preferred alternative when low performing public schools were closed. This preference was manifested in several important ways:

• Charters were given facilities in public schools rent free.

• In schools where they were co-located with public schools, the charters were given preferential access to auditoriums, gymnasiums, laboratories, and often put in the most desirable locations in the buildings.

• Although charters selected their students by lottery, they were allowed to weed out students who had disciplinary problems, or who performed poorly on standardized tests. As a result, according to Ben Chapman of the Daily News, only 6 percent of charter students are ELL students and 9 percent special needs students, far lower than the city average for public schools.

• When you count space, charters received more city funding than public schools, and when you add to that private contributions that they solicited, charters spent significantly more per student than public schools.

• Community organizations and universities willing to start new schools were encouraged by the NYC Department of Education to start charter schools rather than public schools.

These preferences had an absolutely devastating effect on inner city public schools, which were in the same neighborhood as the charters. In the case of schools who had charter co-location, it led to humiliating exclusion from school facilities which they once had access to, leaving their students starved of essential resources. But in the case of all inner city public schools, it led to a drain of high performing students, whose parents put them in charters, and an influx of ELL students, special needs students and students pushed out of charters for disciplinary problems, taxing those schools resources and making it much more difficult for them to perform well on standardized tests. The school closing policies of the Bloomberg administration added to the stress on those already hard pressed schools, forcing their staffs to work under the threat of closure and exile to the infamous “rubber room” for teachers who were in excess when schools were closed.

What occurred was a “tale of two school systems” within inner city neighborhoods- one favored, given preferential access to scare resources, hailed as the “savior” of inner city youth; the others demonized, stigmatized, deprived of resources, threatened with closure and deluged with students charter schools did not want.

If you were a parent, which school would you want to send your child to?

But what happens when the game is no longer rigged? When charter schools have to pay rent? When they can’t push out ELL and Special needs students? When facilities in co-located schools are fairly distributed? When schools are no longer given letter grades and threatened with closing, but are given added resources when they serve students with greater needs? When universities and community organizations are encouraged to start innovative public schools, not just create charters?

If all those things happen, and I expect some of them will during the next few years of a de Blasio/Farina Department of Education, then public schools in the inner city will gradually improve, charters in those neighborhoods will become less selective, and students, on the whole, will have enhanced choice and opportunity because there will be more good schools in the city.

The current hunger to enroll students in charter schools is understandable, given the policies pursued by the Bloomberg Administration, but those policies, which undermined public education, did not enhance opportunity for all students, and pitted parent against parent and school against school in a competition for scarce resources.

The de Blasio policy of restoring public schools to public favor is a sound one, and should be pursued carefully, humanely, and with respect for the hunger of parents and students of New York City for good educational options

Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
Co-Founder, Badass Teachers Association

Categories Bill de Blasio, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Farina, Carmen, New York City

NY Republicans, with Cuomo’s Silence, Block Tax for Pre-K

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
13

The leading education reform of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign was universal pre-kindergarten, funded by a small tax increase on city residents with income over $500,000.

Governor Cuomo opposes any new taxes.

So do State Senate Republicans, who announced that the tax idea was dead.

Shame on them.

If residents of NYC want to tax themselves, why should they block it?

The real cost of the tax increase is a few dollars a day for the richest.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Cuomo, Andrew, New York

Jon Stewart Interviews Bill de Blasio: Hilarious!

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2014 //
2

This is a fabulous interview of Bill de Blasio by Jon Stewart.

Bill is funny, smart, terrific!

What a change!

And watch to see how great it is to live in Brooklyn.

Laughter, not hectoring.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Humor, New York City
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