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Note to the National NAACP: Ignore Michael Bloomberg

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2019 //
25

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg spoke to the national convention of the NAACP about why they should believe in the saving power of privately managed charter schools. He tried to persuade them to rescind their brave 2016 resolution calling for a moratorium on new charters.

This thoughtful report explains why the NAACP called for a moratorium. 

The NAACP deserves our thanks for its resolution and should not back down from its principles, which represent the views of its members, based on hearings in seven cities and long, careful deliberations.

The major conclusions of its resolution:

We are calling for a moratorium on the expansion of the charter schools at least until such time as:

(1) Charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools
(2) Public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system
(3) Charter schools cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate and
(4) Charter schools cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious.

Historically the NAACP has been in strong support of public education and has denounced movements toward privatization that divert public funds to support non-public school choices.

“We are moving forward to require that charter schools receive the same level of oversight, civil rights protections and provide the same level of transparency, and we require the same of traditional public schools,” Chairman Brock said. “Our decision today is driven by a long held principle and policy of the NAACP that high quality, free, public education should be afforded to all children.”

Unlike the NAACP, Bloomberg believes in charter schools, along with other billionaires, including the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and the DeVos family. He has funded rightwing candidates across the nation to promote charters; he has also funded candidates who favor vouchers, such as a hard-right school board in Douglas County, Colorado, and in Louisiana, where one of his protégés, State Superintendent John White, is a strong voucher supporter.

Speaking recently to the NAACP, Bloomberg boasted about dramatic gains for black and Hispanic students during his 12 years in office. While he was in office, he boasted that he had cut the achievement gap between black and whites students in half. At his recent speech to the NAACP, he said he reduced it by 20 percent. Neither claim is true. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gap between blacks and whites on eighth grade mathematics was 36 points in 2003 (when he began his education policies) and 38 points in 2013 (the end of his mayoralty). On the NAEP test of eighth grade reading, the gap was 25 points in 2003, 22 points in 2013, but jumped to 29 points in 2015. If he succeeded in reducing the gap, it should have been on a steady downward trajectory. It was not, and it was certainly not cut by 50 percent or 20 percent.

Bloomberg did not mention to the NAACP the many selective high schools he opened whose admission requirements narrowed opportunities for black and brown students (an article in Chalkbeat in 2016 referred to “staggering academic segregation” in the city’s high schools, noting that “over half the students who took and passed the eighth-grade state math exam in 2015 wound up clustered in less than 8 percent of city high schools. The same was true for those who passed the English exam.”

Nor did he did mention the ongoing decline in the number of black and Hispanic students who qualified for the city’s most selective high schools on his watch. The city’s most selective high school, Stuyvesant, has 3,300 students; only 29 are black. Of the 895 offered admission to Stuyvesant this fall, only 7 are black. The decline did not start with Bloomberg, but his policies accelerated the trend of declining enrollment of black and Hispanic students in the elite high schools. He even added more elite high schools. Worse, he raised the entry standards for the gifted programs in the elementary schools that prepare students to apply for the selective high schools, a move that was devastating to black and Hispanic students.

In 2007, Bloomberg’s Department of Education decided to raise the score needed to get into a gifted program, a decision that dramatically reduced the number of black and Hispanic students qualified to enter these programs. Chancellor Joel Klein announced that the city intended to standardize admissions to gifted and talented programs across the city. In the future, Klein said, only those who scored in the top 5% on a standardized test would be admitted. Up until that time, local districts made their own decisions about admissions to gifted programs. Local districts objected to Klein’s new policy, and educators and parents warned that the high cut score would disadvantage black and Hispanic children.

Klein and Bloomberg didn’t listen.

They were wrong.

By 2008, before the program launched, Klein eased the 95% cutoff, lowering it to 90%. Nonetheless, the proportion of minority students who enrolled in gifted and talented programs plummeted.

When New York City set a uniform threshold for admission to public school gifted programs last fall, it was a crucial step in a prolonged effort to equalize access to programs that critics complained were dominated by white middle-class children whose parents knew how to navigate the system.

The move was controversial, with experts warning that standardized tests given to young children were heavily influenced by their upbringing and preschool education, and therefore biased toward the affluent.

Now, an analysis by The New York Times shows that under the new policy, children from the city’s poorest districts were offered a smaller percentage than last year of the entry-grade gifted slots in elementary schools. Children in the city’s wealthiest districts captured a greater share of the slots.

The disparity is so stark that some gifted programs opened by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in an effort to increase opportunities in poor and predominantly minority districts will not fill new classes next year. In three districts, there were too few qualifiers to fill a single class.

The new policy relied on a blunt cutoff score on two standardized tests. According to the analysis, 39.2 percent of the students who made the cutoff live in the four wealthiest districts, covering the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Staten Island and northeast Queens. That is up from 24.9 percent last year, even though those districts make up 14.2 percent of citywide enrollment in the entry-level grades: kindergarten or first grade, depending on the district.

The total enrollment in gifted classes was not only whiter and more Asian, but the total enrollment was cut in half.

The number of children entering New York City public school gifted programs dropped by half this year from last under a new policy intended to equalize access, with 28 schools lacking enough students to open planned gifted classes, and 13 others proceeding with fewer than a dozen children.

The policy, which based admission on a citywide cutoff score on two standardized tests, also failed to diversify the historically coveted classes, according to a New York Times analysis of new Education Department data.

In a school system in which 17 percent of kindergartners and first graders are white, 48 percent of this year’s new gifted students are white, compared with 33 percent of elementary students admitted to the programs under previous entrance policies. The percentage of Asians is also higher, while those of blacks and Hispanics are lower.

Faced with the fact that the standardized test with a high cut score was excluding black and brown children and shuttering G&T programs in poor communities, the Bloomberg administration did not change the policy.

The policies that Bloomberg put in place continue to determine entrance to gifted and talented programs. For savvy white parents, a place in a G&T program is highly coveted because it promises small classes, smart peers, and special treatment. Getting into one of those programs is very difficult, even for savvy white and Asian parents. Many parents invest in tutoring and test prep to get their four-year-olds and five-year-olds ready for the crucial entry test.

At present, the citywide gifted programs are accepting only students who score at the 99th percentile or higher! The more demand, the fewer places and the higher the cutoff score.

Black and brown students are nearly 70 percent of the public school enrollment, but win only 27 percent of the seats in gifted programs. So much for Bloomberg’s plan to expand opportunities!

To understand the nightmare that Bloomberg and Klein foisted on the city’s children, read Josh Greenman’s recent account of his family’s experience. Josh is on the editorial board of The New York Daily News, which is very pro-charter and pro-testing.

He writes:

How does the process work? Four-year-olds take a nationally normed standardized test (actually, two tests, the NNAT and the OLSAT, which are supposed to measure reasoning ability and general intellectual aptitude). No bubble sheets: It’s administered in person by an adult. Those above 90th percentile qualify for district programs. Those above 97th percentile qualify for citywide programs.

Those are the technical qualification thresholds. In practice, you need a 99 to qualify for a citywide school and usually something like a 95 to qualify for a districtwide program, though it depends on the district.

Once you get in the door as a kindergartener, you stay in the school or program through fifth grade (in the case of district programs) or eighth or 12th (in the case of citywide schools).

If this strikes you as kind of nuts, well, that’s because it is: A test taken on one day as a 4-year-old, a test for which your parents can prepare you, can put you on one track, separate and apart from your peers, for your whole K-12 education.

The citywide schools are coveted. They have excellent reputations and are by most objective measures very good schools. Of course they’d be, as the kids only get in through an intense filter, essentially ensuring engaged parents and high test scores.

They also, surprise surprise, have few black and Latino students and fewer low-income kids than the citywide average…

Why the hell should kindergarteners, first graders, second graders and so on have separate programs in district schools, much less separate citywide schools? Isn’t this part of a big underlying problem, letting (mostly) whites opt out of the common public system?

It’s a very fair question…

Would we consider it a victory if eliminating those programs resulted in a public school system that’s now 70% black and Latino 80% or 90% black and Latino?

Of course, that outcome depends upon what individual parents do, including how they respond to having their kids, who they often consider advanced, taught in general education classrooms.

But my head hurts when I start to think through how unfair the process is, at least in New York City, for plucking young kids out of general-ed classrooms. I’m also cognizant of how doing that intensifies racial and ethnic and income segregation, and related resentments. And of the negative effect of draining a small number of “chosen” kids, who tend to have intensely engaged parents with extra time and money on their hands from those classrooms.

Josh’s daughter made it into a local G&T program. He recognizes the trade offs. He understands that the G&T programs keep white and Asian families in the city and the public schools.

But that was not the rationale in 2007. The rationale was that having a standardized test with a citywide cut score, the same in every district, would expand opportunities for black and Hispanic students. Bloomberg and Klein said that tightening the admissions requirements would increase diversity! Anyone familiar with education policy and practice could have told Bloomberg and Klein that a single high standard on standardized tests would have a dramatically negative effect on children of color. At the time, they tried to tell them. But they were arrogant and they never listened to anyone outside their corporate MBA (masters of business administration) circle.

Here is a parent who warned them in 2007 that basing admissions to the gifted programs would be a disaster and would increase segregation and decrease opportunity for the children who need it most.

Bloomberg was a great mayor on matters involving public health and the environment.

But on education, he surrounded himself with businessmen and corporate types, and he took their bad advice about the virtues of high-stakes testing, standardization, privatization, letter grades for schools, and “creative disruption.” Bloomberg should not be boasting to the NAACP now about his non-existent accomplishments. And the NAACP should not listen to Bloomberg, no matter how much money he offers them.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Klein, Joel, New York City, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: Success Academy’s Curious Test Scores

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2019 //
9

 

Gary Rubinstein tries to decipher the paradoxical test scores At Eva Moskowitz’s controversial Success Academy.

For years, the No-Excuses charter chain has posted sky-high test scores, which skeptical observers attribute to the chain’s practices of exclusion and attrition.

However, Gary has noted this strange contradiction: SA students get high scores on state tests but low scores on high school Regents exams and on the exams for selective high schools in New York City.

Could it be that they do test prep for the 3-8 grade tests but have not cracked the code for the high school tests?

He writes:

Last year I wrote about how the top charter chain in New York City, Success Academy, only managed to have three students get between 52% and 72% of the questions correct on the Algebra II Regents…

Success Academy had 130 9th graders in the 2017-2018 school year.  Presumably most, if not all, would be taking the Geometry Regents, yet according to the records they had zero students even attempting that test.  For Algebra II I wrote about how in 2016-2017 they only had 13 students out of 16 pass and only 3 of them with grades above 72%.  Well, after seeing this recent story about their 8th graders and Algebra I, I looked that their Algebra II scores for last year (this year’s scores are not out yet on the data site).  Despite having 161 10th graders last year, 31 11th graders, and 17 12th graders, Success Academy had only 22 students even take the Algebra II Regents.  And their scores were the same as they were the previous year with 68% of the students getting between 30% and 52% of the possible points and 14% of the students getting between 52% and 72% of the possible points.

The meat of the story is between the ellipses. Read it.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Testing

New York Times: Charters in NYC Trying to Reform Themselves as Backlash Grows

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2019 //
30

 

Eliza Shapiro of the New York Times reports on the efforts of some charter schools in New York City to  reform their practices and repair their tarnished image in response to a backlash against them. 

If you can open the comments, you will see that most readers who comment understand the charter hoax. They know that charters are a rightwing ploy created by billionaires like DeVos and Broad to bust unions and divert funding from public schools.

The story has a factually inaccurate headline: “Why Some of the Country’s Best Urban Schools Are Facing a Reckoning.” The story itself does not call these schools “the best urban schools in the country.” Yet the story buys into charter marketing myths. Some, like Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain, achieve high test scores by exclusion, attrition, and test prep. Does that make them among “the best urban schools”? The story falsely claims that these schools have “long waiting lists,” but that is charter propaganda. If they have these long lines hoping to gain admission, why do they demand that the NYC Department of Education turn over their mailing lists for recruitment purposes? Even Success Academy puts advertising on buses and hangs posters in supermarkets; why advertise if there is a waiting list?

The story says that some charter leaders are responding to the backlash against them by taking the critics seriously and trying to reduce their harsh discipline, to accept students with disabilities, and to hire more teachers of color.

When the charter school movement first burst on to the scene, its founders pledged to transform big urban school districts by offering low-income and minority families something they believed was missing: safe, orderly schools with rigorous academics.

But now, several decades later, as the movement has expanded, questions about whether its leaders were fulfilling their original promise to educate vulnerable children better than neighborhood public schools have mounted.

The story perpetuates another myth: that the backlash against charters was created by teachers’ unions. But teachers’ unions are eager to organize charter teachers.

In New York State, the real backlash against charters occurred at the polls last fall, when voters ousted the “Independent Democratic Caucus” which caucused with Republicans in the State Senate, and replaced them with progressive Democrats, who opposed charter invasions of their neighborhoods.

The legislative victories of charters depended on control of the State Senate by Republicans, who collaborated with Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo was the recipient of millions in campaign contributions from the charter lobby, especially hedge funders and Wall Street.

The story focuses on KIPP, the national corporate charter chain, and its national policy director Richard Buery, who previously was Deputy Mayor in the DeBlasio administration.

Mr. Buery, who is black and grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, noticed that black and Hispanic students in KIPP schools were sometimes being disciplined too harshly by their white teachers. The network’s high schools had impressive academic results and graduation rates, but their students then struggled in college. And KIPP executives’ relationships with elected officials were fraying.

In response, Mr. Buery adopted an unusual strategy: He publicly declared that some of the criticism of KIPP — and the charter movement in general — was merited, and announced that KIPP needed to change for it to continue to thrive.

Mr. Buery is part of a growing number of charter school executives to acknowledge shortcomings in their schools — partly in an effort to recast their tarnished image and to counteract a growing backlash that threatens the schools’ ability to influence American public education…

KIPP’s internal reckoning has coincided with a moment in which New York’s elected officials and Democratic presidential candidates have turned decisively away from the charter movement. Both groups are eager to please their allies in teachers unions, which have consolidated power over the last year.

The threat to charters is severe in New York City, which is home to more than 100,000 charter school students and was once seen as an incubator within the movement.

Exactly why the charter sector faces a “severe” threat, when it enrolls 100,000 students, is not clear. Unless the reporter means that the sector’s growth is stymied by the loss of power in Albany. The charter industry wants the Legislature to raise the cap on charters in NYC, and the newly energized Democratic-controlled Legislature won’t do it.

Why do corporate charter chains have to grow? Why can’t they be content to own 10% market share?

Nowhere in this article does it explain why the public should underwrite the costs of two competing school systems, one of which is privately controlled.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization

NYC: Educator and Progressive Jamaal Bowman Running for Congress

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2019 //
4

Middle School Principal Jamaal Bowman has announced that he will challenge incumbent Congressman Elliot Engel.

The New York Times reported:

WASHINGTON — Jamaal Bowman, a middle school principal from the Bronx, announced on Tuesday his plans to challenge Representative Eliot L. Engel, the New York Democrat who leads the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, in the 2020 race.

The contest could serve as a key test of whether liberal insurgent groups can convert a surge of energy on the left into successful challenges of members of the Democratic Party establishment.

Mr. Bowman becomes the second liberal challenger to Mr. Engel this year, but the first New York primary candidate to be endorsed by Justice Democrats, the grass-roots group that helped fuel Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning defeat last year of Joseph Crowley of New York, the No. 4 Democrat in the House at the time.

“I’m inspired by all of the new lifestyles injected into Congress and the new ideas,” said Mr. Bowman, who will run against Mr. Engel, a 16-term incumbent who serves New York’s 16th Congressional District, and Andom Ghebreghiorgis, a teacher who, like Mr. Bowman, has vowed to pursue progressive policies, including “Medicare for all,” the Green New Deal and changes to public education.

The campaign announced:

BRONX MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL JAMAAL BOWMAN ANNOUNCES CAMPAIGN FOR CONGRESS

The Founder of the innovative Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, Bowman has been a leader in the opt-out movement
NEW YORK, NY — Middle school principal, education advocate, and former teacher ​Jamaal Bowman​ launched his campaign for Congress in New York’s 16th district today with a spirited launch video discussing his family, professional background, and his case for taking on his opponent: 30-year incumbent Eliot Engel. Bowman is running to better represent the communities of The Bronx and Westchester with a focus on taking on racial and economic injustice.

VIEW BOWMAN’S ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO: ​https://youtu.be/VnGn4sc_QVQ

“It’s time for a Democrat who will fight for schools and education, not bombs and incarceration,”
reads Bowman’s website.

Bowman was born and raised in New York City by a single mother and spent time in public housing and rent-controlled apartments. He and his wife live in Yonkers with their three kids and are both educators. Bowman founded a public middle school, ​the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action (CASA)​ in the Baychester neighborhood of The Bronx in 2009 and serves as its first principal.

Bowman has been an educator and advocate for public schools for over 20 years, including participating in community organizing and activism to support fully funding New York’s public schools, the movement to opt-out of standardized testing, and ​racial justice​. Bowman was a school teacher at PS 90 in The Bronx and Martin Luther King High School in Manhattan.
Despite the fact that Bowman’s middle school ranked first in New York City for improved test score average in 2015, Bowman has consistently been ​one of the most vocal critics​ in New York City and New York state to support the opt-out movement and speak out against the weaponization of standardized tests in public schools.

Bowman also implemented ​a restorative justice model at his middle school in order to combat the school-to-prison pipeline​. Within six years, the school had cut suspensions by two-thirds. Bowman’s school does not use suspensions for insubordination, which is particularly important because nationally, “willful defiance” is ​often found as a racially disproportionate cause​ for suspension.

June 17, 2019
Contact: ​waleedshahid@justicedemocrats.com
Bowman’s work as an educator was featured in ​Amsterdam News​, one of the oldest African American newspapers in the country in 2016. He was also featured in ​The Huffington Post​, ​The Washington Post,​ ​New York Daily News​, ​NY1​, and ​TedTalks​.

MORE ABOUT JAMAAL BOWMAN

Driven by a desire to bring people together and create a better future for the young people in his community, Bowman has fought on behalf of the working families of the Bronx to ensure their children have the best education. He envisions a future where all students have an equal shot at a fulfilling life, career, and future, regardless of where they grow up.

Bowman was born and raised in New York City. He spent his early years with his grandmother in public housing at the East River Houses until he was 8 and later moved into rent-controlled apartments

Bowman didn’t have much growing up but his mother provided him all that he needed: love, a stable family, and a sense of community. Her guidance led him toward becoming a teacher, school principal, and community leader.

After finishing high school in New Jersey, Bowman earned a BA in Sports Management from the University of New Haven in 1999 — and immediately became a public school teacher back home in The Bronx. Bowman went on to earn a Masters Degree in Guidance Counseling from Mercy College and an Ed.D. with a specialization in Community Leadership from Manhattanville College.

Bowman’s crowning achievement was in founding a public middle school, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action (CASA) and serving as its first principal. Located in the Baychester neighborhood of The Bronx, CASA is an innovative public school with a strong emphasis on student voice, holistic education, cultural awareness and love. He has also led efforts to educate elected officials on the impact of toxic stress on health and education outcomes.

Categories New York City, Politics

NYC: Chancellor Carranza Criticized for Hiring Cronies

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2019 //
10

 

Susan Edelman reports in the New York Post that nine members of the NYC City Council complained that Chancellor Richard Carranza was hiring inexperienced cronies for top jobs. 

One of his hires was a former Disney executive who will serve as “chief experience officer,” which is ironic since he apparently has no education experience. Maybe he will be there to make sure that students and teachers have good experiences, like the kind you get at Disney World.

Another will be paid $205,000 a year, although there are unanswered questions about his employment history. His title is: “senior executive director for continuous school improvement” with the Department of Education and a staff of 40.

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, New York City

NYC: Rally and Protest to Reduce Class Sizes!

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
5

 

This Tuesday on June 11 at noon at City Hall, Network for Public Education is co-sponsoring a rally with Class Size Matters and many other organizations to urge NYC to allocate specific funding in next year’s budget towards reducing class size; please come if you can and bring your kids; they have the day off from school. 

 

Smaller classes have been linked with more learning and better student outcomes in every way that can be measured – students in smaller classes get better grades and better test scores, have fewer disciplinary problems, and graduate from high school and college at higher rates.  

 

Meanwhile,  NYC public schools have the largest class sizes in the state – and suffer from class sizes 15-30% bigger than students in the rest of the state on average.  More than 330,000 NYC students were in crammed into classes of 30 or more this fall. 

 

Here is a flyer with more information; please post it in your school and share it with others.  And please attend the rally on Tuesday if you can! 

 

Categories Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, New York City

Peter Goodman: Charter Lobby Headed for Setback in New York Legislature

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2019 //
3

 

The charter lobby in New York State had a clever strategy: Invest campaign cash in Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and in the Republican-controlled State Senate. For years, it worked. Cuomo gave the charter industry whatever it wanted. The Republican Senate showered favors on charters, even requiring the City of New York to give them free space in public school buildings, and if they didn’t like the space, to pay their rent in private buildings. NYC is the only city in the nation that is compelled to pay the charters’ rent in private space.

However, the charter industry’s cushy arrangement fell apart last fall when progressive Democratic candidates beat Republican incumbents and took control of the State Senate, thus assuring Democratic control of both houses. The new leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, was insulted in 2017 by the billionaire hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, who was then chair of the board of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain.

The charter industry wants more charters in New York City, because they have reached the cap. There are still unused charter slots in the state but not in the city. So the lobbyists want either to lift the cap or to let the city have the unused charter slots from the rest of the state.

Peter Goodman, long-time analyst of education politics in New York, predicts that the industry will get neither because the politicians they backed are no longer in office:

Not only will the charter school cap not be lifted it is possible legislation hostile to charter schools may be folded into the “big ugly.”

A few bills dealing with the reauthorization of charter schools and the auditing of charter schools have just been introduced.

Factions will advocate, seek allies, lobby electeds and as the adjournment date, June 19th approaches totally disparate bills will be linked, factions will find “friends,” at least for the moment.

Elections have consequences, charter PAC dollars “elected” Republicans who used their leverage to pass charter friendly legislation; an election cycle later Democrats defeated the charter PAC endorsed candidates, elections have consequences, the leverage switched, and, we can expect that legislation more friendly to teacher unions and public school advocates may become law.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York, New York City, Privatization

NYC: Class Size Champion Strikes Again, in Court

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2019 //
6

 

Leonie Haimson is a force of nature. She and her! Student Privacy allies beat Bill Gates’ $100 Million inBloom data-collection project. She and her parent allies forced the NYC Department of Education to back down and keep open high-performing low-enrollment PS 25 in Brooklyn. Now she and her allies are going back to court to fight State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia over the matter of class size in NYC. 

Give up, MaryEllen!

Haimson sends out the alert: Game on!

On Thursday May 23, 2019 the Education Law Center filed an appeal on behalf of nine NYC parents, Class Size Matters and the Alliance for Quality Education, urging the Appellate court to order the Department of Education to reduce class size in all grades as the Contracts for Excellence law requires. Our original lawsuit, Agostini vs. Elia, was filed in April 2018 when the State Education Commissioner refused to take action and enforce the law.   

In December 2018, Acting Supreme Court Judge Henry Zwack ruled against us in a brief decision that engaged with neither the law nor the facts of the case, and merely claimed that this was a matter for the Commissioner to decide.  She in turn had argued that any class size obligations on the part of the DOE had expired years ago. Our appeal demonstrates how that view is false — and if the Legislature wanted to eliminate DOE’s legal obligation to lower class size, they would have changed the law.  Oral arguments in the case will likely occur late this summer.

The press release from ELC is here and below. — Leonie Haimson 

LAWSUIT TO ENFORCE MANDATE TO REDUCE CLASS SIZE IN NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS MOVES FORWARD
The plaintiffs in a legal action to enforce a mandate to reduce class size in New York City public schools filed their brief on May 23 in an Albany appellate court. The lawsuit began in June 2017 as an administrative petition demanding that the State Commissioner of Education, MaryEllen Elia, order the NYC Schools Chancellor, the New York City Department of Education, and the New York City Board of Education to comply with the law. When the Commissioner dismissed the petition, the plaintiffs brought the case to court.
The plaintiffs in the case are nine New York City public school parents, as well as Class Size Matters and the Alliance for Quality Education, two prominent New York public school advocacy organizations. Education Law Center Senior Attorney Wendy Lecker is representing the plaintiffs.
Under a state law known as the Contract for Excellence, or “C4E,” the NYC Chancellor and the Department and Board of Education are required to develop a five-year plan to reduce class size to target averages in three grade spans: K-3, 4-8, and 9-12. After the law was enacted in 2007, New York City developed a plan which was approved by the Commissioner in 2007.
The City never fulfilled the 2007 plan within five years, or by 2012. Nor has the City implemented the 2007 plan or any other plan that complies with the C4E law. As a result, class sizes now are as large or even larger than they were in 2007. Between 2007-2016, for example, the number of students in classes of 30 or more in grades 1-3 increased by 4,000% to over 40,000.
In dismissing the Petition in 2017, the Commissioner ruled that since the 2007 plan “concluded” in 2012, or five years after it was approved, the petition was moot even though the City never implemented the plan. The plaintiffs challenged the Commissioner’s decision in State Supreme Court, which “deferred” to the Commissioner’s interpretation of the term “within five years” in the C4E law.
The plaintiffs have now appealed to the Appellate Division. They argue that the Commissioner misinterpreted the C4E law. The five-year endpoint in the law was the deadline the Legislature imposed to accomplish class size reduction. It was not the date at which the City’s legal obligation would magically disappear. Moreover, the lower court wrongly deferred to the Commissioner’s interpretation of the C4E law.
“The NYC Department of Education has violated the Contract for Excellence Law for over a decade because of its refusal to reduce class size,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “As a result, more than 336,000 students were crammed into classes of thirty or more this fall. Our thanks to the Education Law Center for representing Class Size Matters and nine NYC parent plaintiffs in this important appeal. If the Appellate Court decides on the basis of the law and the facts, it will require that NYC students finally receive their right to a sound basic education with the smaller classes they need and deserve.”
“Class size is an important factor in determining whether students have the opportunity to succeed in school. Ensuring that every student has a chance to succeed is our moral duty. Following the law shouldn’t be a choice. We hope the court ensures that the students of New York receive their constitutionally granted right to ‘a sound basic education,'” said Marina Marcou-O’Malley, Operations and Policy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education.
Oral argument in the appeal will likely take place in the late summer.
Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24
Categories Accountability, Class size, Education Reform, New York City

NYC: Parents and Activists Win Battle to Keep PS 25 Open: A Victory for Resistance!

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2019 //
5

 

The NYC Department of Education wanted to close PS 25 in Brooklyn to make room for a Success Academy charter middle school, but parents and activists fought them in court. Yesterday the Resistance won.

PS 25 will stay open!

PS 25 is a high-poverty, high-performing school.

It has small classes, and Leonie Haimson says it demonstrates the importance of class size. 

Leonie and her small-but-mighty organization Class Size Matters was in the thick of the fight, supporting the. parents of PS 25 against the Powers of the city, the DOE, and Eva.

Leonie writes here on the NYC Parents blog:

Today we won our fight to keep PS 25 open!  DOE had tried to close the school last year, despite the fact that it is an excellent zoned neighborhood school in Bed Stuy that gets stellar results despite a highly disadvantaged student body: 27% kids with special needs, 18 % English language learners, 92% Black and Hispanic, and a 96% economic need index- which combines measures of poverty, public assistance and homelessness. And yet the school performs as well as the citywide average in ELA (46% proficient vs. 46% citywide) and far above the city average in math (71% proficient compared to 47% citywide), according to the DOE’s performance dashboard.

Last year, as I pointed out in my open letter to Chancellor Carranza, published in the Washington Post, the school had the fourth highest rating of any elementary school in the city according to it’s “impact score”, which measures achievement and attendance compared to schools with students of a similar demographic background.  And yet under Carmen Farina, the DOE tried to close the school anyway because of its low enrollment.

At the same time, it was as a result of its low enrollment that PS 25 students had the benefit of very small classes, ranging from 10 to 18 per class – which was one of the main reasons for its success, along with excellent, experienced teachers and a collaborative principal. This year, class sizes at PS 25 are even smaller: 8 to 16 students per class. In essence, the school has served as a natural experiment in class size, showing the heights at which disadvantaged students can achieve if given the right conditions and a real opportunity to learn.

Yet despite the great track record of the school, in February 2018, at the recommendation of then-Chancellor Farina, the Panel for Educational Policy voted 8-5 to close it, with the eight mayoral appointees all rubber-stamping the proposal.  The following month, I helped PS 25 parents file a lawsuit to prevent its closing, with the assistance of Laura Barbieri, our pro bono attorney from Advocates for Justice.

Our primary legal hook was that the Community Education Council in District 16 had never voted to approve closing the school,  which would be required according to NY Ed Law section 2590-E and Chancellor’s regulations A-185, since PS 25 is a zoned school and the district CEC has to pre-approve any changes in zoning.  On May 24, Judge Katherine Levine of the Kings County Supreme Court granted the parents a temporary restraining order, and said the school should stay open for at least year, while she examined the legal issues more closely.

The Judge scheduled another court hearing today, May 16 at 11 AM, nearly a year later.  Right before hand, yesterday afternoon, the city’s attorney called our attorney Laura Barbieri.  She asked Laura to agree to a postponement of the hearing.

Then unexpectedly, the city backed down and agreed to keep the school open for at least another year.

The charter vultures will have to settle somewhere else.

Categories Closing schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Peter McPherson: The District of Columbia Needs an Elected School Board

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
2

 

Peter McPherson, a former parent of students in the District of Columbia public schools, describes the failure of Mayor Bowser’s leadership of the city’s schools. He lists her many poor decisions, her authoritarian style, and her refusal to take responsibility for scandals on her watch. She seems determined to keep the Rhee agenda intact. About half the children are enrolled in charter schools, with more on the way. This is an admission of failure on the part of the mayor and her chancellor. For the record, D.C. has the largest achievement gaps of any urban district in the nation.

In Chicago, as he notes, the new mayor Lori Lightfoot, is committed to restoring a locally elected board. In New York City, Mayor Bill DeBlasio is determined to hold onto autocratic rule of the schools.

I was reminded as I read his article about having been invited to meet with the D.C. City Council education committee before it endorsed local control on 2007. I warned them not to do it and told them that the story about the “New York City Miracle” was fantasy. Obviously I was not persuasive.

I think the Mayor should appoint a significant number of board members but the board should choose the leader, not the Mayor.

There is no ideal way to govern schools but the worst way is to vest control solely in the hands of one person.

Categories District of Columbia, New York City
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