Archives for category: Bloomberg, Michael
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Billionaires vs. Unions: Who Is David? Who Is Goliath?

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2013 //
20

Leo Casey, a long-time union activist, here reviews a recent report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute decrying the immense power of teachers’ unions. Michael Petrilli of TBF described the unions as “Goliaths” battling the weak, underfunded “Davids” of the corporate reform movement.

Casey challenges the report and the characterization, pointing out that corporate reformers have deployed vast amounts of money–far greater than the teachers’ unions could ever muster–to destroy the last vestige of teacher unionism. This assures that teachers have no voice at the table when governors and legislatures decide to slash spending on education or to privatize it to the benefit of entrepreneurs and campaign contributors.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Rhee, Michelle, Unions, Walton Foundation

A Subtle Smear on a Public School Advocate

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
100

Gotham Schools ran a story that questioned why the city’s leading advocate for public schools had enrolled her son in a private high school after many years as a public school parent. The story subtly implied that she may have lost her right to advocate for public schools because she was no longer a parent of a public school student.

Leonie Haimson founded Class Size Matters and is a co-founder of Parents Across America. She is a fearless critic of high-stakes testing and of the Bloomberg administration. She has been the most articulate and persistent supporter of class size reduction. She currently is waging war against the titans who are invading student privacy. She works out of her home with no pay and a shoestring budget.

You can see why powerful people would want to discredit her. She is a force, she has a large following, and she threatens them.

Consider the premise of the article: only public school parents may advocate for public schools.

This is classic corporate reform ideology. Corporate reformers use this specious ideology to argue for the parent trigger, claiming that the school belongs to the parents and they should be “empowered” to seize control and give it to a charter corporation.

This is as wrong as the attack on Haimson.

The public schools belong to the public. They are a public responsibility. Everyone has the right to advocate for them as well as to criticize them.

You don’t have to be a public school parent to care about our public schools. You don’t even have to be a parent. You just need to care about children and the future of our society.

Full disclosure: I am on the board of Class Size Matters. I know Leonie as a woman of intellect, principle, and integrity. Her courage inspires me and many others in the struggle for better schools.

Also, FYI, I am a product of the Houston public schools, K-12. My two grown sons went to private schools in NYC. I have three grandsons. The older two attended religious schools. The youngest is a public school student in Brooklyn. I support public education. That is my right as a citizen, regardless of where my offspring went to school.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Class Size Matters Org, Corporate Reformers, Parent trigger, Parents, Support for public schools

The New York City Way of Monetizing School Buildings

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2013 //
14

Jonathan Pelto reflects on the latest educational reform: Tearing down schools and replacing them with luxury apartment buildings.

He writes:

Closing in on Rahm Emanuel’s title as “Emperor” when it comes to closing public schools…

True, few, if any can compete with Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel when it comes to the unprecedented effort to destroy public education by closing public schools, New York’s Michael Bloomberg covets the title and is making a dash to catch up with Emanuel’s unholy track record.

Call it the New York City School Closing Scheme 2.0 – The Bloomberg Way

The notion is built on the concept that why should we simply close neighborhood public schools when private developers can makes tens of millions in the process.

Earlier today, the education blogger extraordinaire, EduShyster, ripped away the veil to reveal the harsh light of truth on the school closing scheme being led by Bloomberg and his corporate education reformers.

As EduShyster wrote, “When we last checked in with our rich friends, they were flush with cash and aflurry with many excellent ideas for saving our failed and failing public schools. Now, with the stock market ascendant and corporate profits at an all time high, these generous benefactors are themselves rising to new heights of generosity and excellence. Today’s outstanding idea is brought to us (and to our failing schools) by the rich of New York City who have come up with an idea so bold, so transformative, so disruptive that we have no choice but to raise our glasses to them.”

The details of the scheme can be found in the prospectus produced by the Bloomberg Administration’s “Global Leader in Real Estate” agent who begins by announcing, “On behalf of the New York City Educational Construction Fund CBRE is pleased to offer for your consideration three prime development sites, two of which are located on the upper West Side, and one on the Upper East Side. The three sites are truly special opportunities as the present sizable developments within submarkets having limited available land for any substantial development…They are among the few chances remaining to build large projects in their respective neighborhoods.”

Using the concept of a whole lot of pictures printed on high quality paper is worth a lot more than a thousand words; the “request for expressions of interest” is definitely worth a look.

Beyond their prime Manhattan locations, what makes these sites “special opportunities?”

Property number #1 is the site of PS 191, also known as the Museum Magnet School. Although traditionally a “low-performing school” educating mostly poor Black and Hispanic children, many of whom live in the Amsterdam Housing project across the street, a three-year, multi-million federal grant has been transform the school into an innovate educational institution that is working in tandem with Lincoln Center and more than 90 of New York’s museums and cultural institutions.

Property #2 is the mostly-white, traditionally high performing PS 199, which is located just a few blocks from PS 191. As one of the most highly regarded elementary schools in New York, the biggest problem facing PS 199 is the lack of sufficient space for all of the students who wish to attend.

And Property #3 now houses the School for Cooperative Technical Education, a first-rate institution that has been successfully providing a diverse population of 17-20 year olds with the career & technical education courses they need to pursue careers in 17 technical and trade fields.

While millions have been spent to renovate these three schools in recent years, the Bloomberg Administration quietly asked New York City’s finest developers whether they would be interested in tearing down these schools and building multi-million dollar, high-rise luxury towers. The only requirement is that the developers provide some space in the basement and/or lower floors for a school to move into space below the upscale residential buildings.

In the meantime, the public school students would be moved to temporary swing space and, depending on the type of schools developed at the old site, future students from the area might be able to attend the new, more upscale schools.

In response to the request, the Bloomberg Administration received at least 24 proposals and the word is that potential developers for a site or sites will be chosen by June.

The innovative luxury housing program is being run by the Educational Construction Fund, an entity that was created back in 1967, but hadn’t been used until Mayor Bloomberg showed up and began making public land available to private developers as a way to raise revenue for the City and create more luxury housing for the wealthy, all the while making developers rich.

One key provision of the Bloomberg program is that it appears to allow these private developers to build without having to go through the city’s cumbersome review process. Another interesting note is that while the City will be able to lease the space for the “new” schools for a period of no greater than 40 years, the developers will have control of the site and housing towers for a full 99 year lease.

Playing their role as one of the primary apologists for the Bloomberg Administration, the Daily News recently proclaimed the benefit of turning over public property to private developers writing, “Take a walk on 91st St. and First Ave. A 34-story tower catches your eye. Costing $165 million, the Azure towers over the neighborhood offering some of the best views on the Upper East Side. From either of the two $5.7 million penthouses, you can see Central Park, the East River, and midtown skyline.

It’s what you don’t see that’s most important here. Next door at Middle School 114, more than 530 students were accepted into the public school for strong academic performance. Every day, the students walk into the newly-constructed school. They learn from smart boards in a fully air-conditioned facility equipped with computer labs.”

Imagine the honor of being able to tell your parents that you attend a school below a building that has not one, but two, $5.7 million penthouse apartments.”

It is a corporate education reformer’s dream come true. Public land, hundreds of millions for private develops, even more luxury housing for Manhattan and some kids even get future access to smart boards.

We can just imagine what innovative ideas will blossom from this type of thinking.

Perhaps they can make Central Park the largest in-door park in the world providing acres and acres of high end housing with their own variety of amenities. Of perhaps a new set of private, multi-million dollar apartments suspended below the George Washington Bridge and New York’s other river crossings.

You can almost hear it now, a win-win situation thanks to an iPod for every child and river view apartments for those who support the corporate education reform movement.

Media coverage on the issue can be found in a paper called the West Side Rag here, http://www.westsiderag.com/2013/02/20/pta-tries-to-reassure-parents-about-possible-public-school-demolitions, and here http://www.westsiderag.com/2013/02/17/exclusive-the-city-is-planning-to-demolish-ps-199-and-ps-191 and here http://www.westsiderag.com/2013/03/04/opposition-builds-to-demolishing-local-public-schools-but-some-see-benefits

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

Bad Timing for a Report Lauding Mayoral Control

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
32

The Center for American Progress is supposedly a liberal organization, but it is a cheerleader for corporate reform. It has published report after report endorsing the main ideas of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

It just released a new report that lauds mayoral control.

Those of us who live in cities under mayoral control know that the primary result is not to improve education or to help struggling children, but to stifle the voices of parents, students, teachers, and community members. Under mayoral control, governance is transferred to the mayor and the power elite, few of whom have children in public schools or even attended one. Mayoral control snuffs out democracy.

The timing of this report comes just as the mayor of Chicago unilaterally decided to close more than 50 public schools, decimating communities and stranding thousands of children. Is this “reform” of public schools? It also comes as the third term of Mayor Bloomberg winds down, and the authoritative Quinnipiac poll shows that only 18% want more of the same.

Mayoral control has a predictable result: it undermines democracy and allows the rich ad powerful to privatize public schools for fun and profit.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, New York City

NYC Parents and Students Mobilizing for Real Reform

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2013 //
9

As the mayoral election of 2013 approaches, New York City parents and students are speaking up about what is most important to them. They got hold of an old school bus, painted it blue, and are driving around the city to raise awareness among other parents and students.

The article linked here shows how parents and their children are trying to inform voters and the candidates about their opposition to high-stakes testing and their desire for a well-rounded education, including art and music.

The low point of the article–hilarious really–is when a spokesperson for StudentsFirst, which has no roots in New York City, pooh-poohed the parents’ and students’ concerns:

“Ms. Boyd of Students First New York dismissed the bus trip. “A lot of what they’re doing is political theater, rallying parents around issues that are nuanced and complicated with not a lot of explanation, and then going forward saying, ‘Look, these are parents’ issues,’ ” she said.”

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, New York City, Parents, Students, StudentsFirst

The Mysterious “Network Leaders” of Louisiana

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2013 //
8

Louisiana teacher Mercedes Schneider has uncovered a curious puzzle. When five veteran administrators are hired by the state superintendent as “network leaders,” at high salaries, then disappear from view, where did they go? What do they do?

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, Louisiana

Mayor Bloomberg’s Chaos Theory

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
20

This article in the New York Times describes how one large high school now houses nine small schools. Some succeed, some fail, some statistics are better, some are worse or no different. Some statistics are undoubtedly inflated by credit recovery and other tricks to game the system. One thing is clear: a building that once had one principal now has nine.

It is not clear that the nine schools are doing a better job than the one old school in meeting the needs of the students. This jumble should attract the attention of a scholar looking for a big project.

The new mayor will have some heavy lifting to do just to restore the citizens’ belief that they are getting accurate data from the Department of Education, not spin and embroidery.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, New York City

The Myth of Principal Empowerment in NYC

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2013 //
16

Marc Epstein is an experienced history teacher in NYC who holds a Ph.D. In Japanese history. When the Department of Education closed his historic high school (Jamaica High School), Marc joined the ranks of teachers who are assigned to different schools weekly. He has written many articles for Huffington Post and New York City dailies.

He writes:

The Myth Of The Empowered Principal

The “empowered” principal was supposed to be the agent of radical change for the New York public school system. With every passing day it appears that the empowerment model has resulted in the death of institutional memory, atomization, and the end of accountability for anyone above the level of principal.

You need look no further than the scheduling and staffing fiasco that enveloped the new multi-million dollar high school located in one of New York’s most stable middle-class neighborhoods. The school is only three years old and is already being administered by its second principal.

The trouble first began when the administration proved incapable of programming students into their required courses when it opened.

New York 1 (the local TV news station) reported that students complained that they had no science teacher, and were taught by rotating substitutes; “…they were handed new schedules, with different teachers and courses, almost once a week.”
http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/151185/doe-officials-try-to-address-queens-high-school-s-massive-scheduling-headaches

The deputy chancellor for instruction claimed that the problem was rare, but at the same time was kept busy fending off parent protests over the same problems at Long Island City High School just a few miles away. For those of you who are unfamiliar with New York, the schools are located in Queens, the borough considered to have the most functional schools in the massive school system in years past. But all that has changed.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/english-class-frederick-douglass-academy-queens-a-regular-teacher-months-article-1.980188

There’s more to the Metropolitan High School story. Fixing a programming glitch is easy enough. All you need do is bring an experienced programmer on board.

The news stories about the scheduling snafu made no mention of the former principal’s pedagogical decision to enroll the freshman class in Physics, before taking Living Environment (biology), or Chemistry. Physics is considered the most difficult of the Regents science courses and is usually reserved for the most capable students in their junior or senior year.

What’s more, we have no idea if this foolhardy decision was reviewed and approved before its implementation. I’m told that she actually presented this radical reorganization of curriculum as a selling point when she applied to the job!

If you want to make sense of this administrative breakdown you need look no further than the resume of Metropolitan High School’s former principal.
Her entire teaching experience consisted of seven years of teaching, with only three of them in a public school setting. Prior to that she worked variously as a marine biologist, and educational consultant observing teachers in various settings for her father who was a retired principal.
http://www.timesnewsweekly.com/news/2010-03-18/Local_News/NEW_HS_LEADER______VISITS_FH_CIVIC.html

After that, it was on to the vaunted Jack Welch Leadership Academy established by Joel Klein, where graduates are molded to incorporate the ways of the business world into the management of schools. Think of it as a Wharton School for principals with a dollop of West Point discipline thrown in to keep teachers productive and in line.

This business model stresses teacher accountability based on a bottom line calculated by student test results. The institute purposely recruits candidates with minimal classroom experience, believing that experience outside of public education is preferential. So in this regard the Metropolitan High School principal fit the 21st century principal profile Mike Bloomberg wants running his schools.

But the evidence indicates that the principal wasn’t versed in the nuts and bolts aspect of the job that it takes to put a school together and run it. After watching events at the school unfold, I’m reminded of Donald Sutherland’s line to Robert Ryan after inspecting a line of soldiers arrayed in their spit and polish dress uniforms in the Dirty Dozen; “very pretty, colonel, but can they fight?”

That’s because the pre-Bloomberg route to the principalship of a new high school would involve years of seasoning in the classroom before a series of administrative jobs in the program office, the dean’s office, and as an assistant principal, before being given command of a school.

A school like the new Metropolitan High School would be handed to someone with twenty to twenty-five years experience in the system who had a proven record of successful supervision.

That principal would bring an experienced staff on board in order to ensure a successful shakedown cruise and hand off a functioning institution to the next principal some years down the line. Instead what we are witnessing is a new managerial class running schools aground on a regular basis.

Perhaps the most dramatic proof that principal “empowerment” is little more than managerial “newspeak,” is evident in the staffing crisis throughout the school system. That’s because the new business model actually constrains the principal’s ability to hire the best possible staff.

The so-called Bloomberg-Klein business model demands that teacher salaries come directly out of the school-operating budget. Under the old system a school was charged the same amount for a teacher line regardless of the teacher’s salary or seniority. This was a rational approach to staffing in a system of eighty thousand teachers and constant turnover.

But budget cuts to a system that has more than doubled its operating costs to over $22 billion dollars over the past ten years, have forced principals throughout the city to skimp on hiring qualified teachers while administrative costs have ballooned. The result has been the hiring of the cheapest day-to-day substitutes, many of whom aren’t certified to teach the courses they are covering, in lieu of using experienced teachers who are held in a reserve pool because their schools are either being closed or their student populations have dropped.

None of this makes any business or pedagogical sense to anyone but a willful mayor who seems only capable of demolishing what was once a functional system. Education has taken a back seat as the new school leaders ply the only trade they know by following Abraham Maslow’s maxim; “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Bloomberg, Michael, Education Industry, Education Reform, Klein, Joel, New York City

NAISON: Why I Am Speaking at Occupy the DOE

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2013 //
12

There will be a demonstration at the U.S. Department of Education from April 4-7.

One of the speakers will be Mark Naison, who teaches African-American studies at Fordham University.

Here he explains why he will be there:

I am coming to Washington because our public education system is being systematically dismantled by people whose power derives solely from the unprecedented concentration of wealth in a small number of hands. Without the Gates, the Broads, the Waltons, the Bloombergs and the hedge fund executives, the three bulwarks of current Education Reform policy- privatization, universal testing and school closings- would have never gained traction because they are unsupported by research and are abhorred by most educators.. What we are facing is not onlythe degradation of the teaching profession and the transformation of the nation’s classrooms into zones of child abuse, but an attack on what little democracy we have left in this country. Therefore, I am not only coming to Washington defend the integrity of the profession I have dedicated my life to, but to join a movement which is one of the most important fronts of resistance to Plutocratic Rule

I also come to Washington, as a scholar of African American History, and a long time community activist, to strip the false facade of “Civil Rights” legitimacy from policies which promote increased segregation, push teachers of color out of the profession, open our schools to profiteering by test companies,and promote narrow workforce preparation as a substitute for the creation of active citizens who can change the world. So I will not only be calling out the billionaires and those who are directly on their payroll, but those who call themselves “progressive- who give aid and comfort to those policies, either because of the hope of political gain or a deficit of courage.. ,

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Race to the Top, Support for public schools

What Is the End-Game for “Reformers”?

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2013 //
17

Marc Epstein is an experienced history teacher in New York City whose school–Jamaica High School–was closed as part of the Bloomberg reform plans. Marc holds a Ph.D. In Japanese history, but he is now part of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool, a large number of teachers whoever schools were closed. The teachers now roam the system, assigned for a week at one school, then another, their skills, knowledge, and experience completely discarded.

In this article, Marc asks the unavoidable question, what happens when the reformers have won? What changes after they have abolished unions, tenure, and the public control of public education? There are many ways to write this scenario. This is Marc’s.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Klein, Joel, New York City
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