Andrea Dupre taught at Murray Bergtraum High School in Manhattan. It was one of the best high schools in the nation in 1999. By 2011, it was a “failing” school.
She explains here what happened.
Another version:
Archives for category: New York City
The Legislature is preparing to renew and extend mayoral control of the New York City public schools. Before it does so, it should consider some important and necessary changes.
I have studied the governance of the New York City Public Schools for many years. My first book, published in 1974, was a history of the city’s schools. (The Great School Wars.)
I support mayoral appointment of board members with checks and balances. At present, there are no checks or balances, and no meaningful role whatever for parents and communities.
For most of the 20th century, the mayor appointed the board members. The board selected the Superintendent of Schools, who reported to the board. To prevent the Mayor from filling the board with cronies, the candidates for the central board were vetted by a screening committee comprised of leaders from recognized civic groups. The Mayor made sure to have a balance of appointees from different boroughs who reflected the people of the city.
Every district had a functioning local board to respond to parent concerns. The local boards were representative of their districts and were usually appointed by the Central Board after consultation with local leaders.
Today, the New York City Board of Education lacks any checks or balances. It has been reduced to a city agency, completely subservient to the will of the Mayor. The Mayor, not the central board, selects the “chancellor.” The chancellor serves at the pleasure of the Mayor, not the central board. The central board does whatever the Mayor tells them to do. He can fire them if they don’t follow his orders. Local school councils are powerless and ignored.
As the Legislature reviews the renewal of mayoral control, I hope it will restore checks and balances.
The so-called “panel on educational policy,” which doesn’t even exist as such in the law, should be restored as the Board of Education of the City of New York. Its members should be selected by the Mayor from a list of people reviewed by an independent panel of civic leaders.
The Board, not the Mayor, should appoint the Superintendent of Schools, who should be an educator, not a business person. The Superintendent should serve at the pleasure of the Board, not the Mayor.
Public policy over the schools should be reviewed and vetted in public, not behind closed doors in City Hall.
The Mayor should retain his control of the overall budget, which is vast power, but the details should be left to the Board and the Superintendent.
Local boards in every district should be appointed by local leaders, with the approval of the Central Board. Elections of local boards have been tried but failed to garner a decent turnout and are easily captured by politicians and special interests
There is no perfect way to organize a system that enrolls over one million children. Every organization has faults. But the least perfect way is to turn the school system over to the Mayor, with zero checks or balances, and no input whatever from parents or communities. The Mayor should not be a dictator of education policy, free to do whatever pleases him.
Autocracy is wrong. The Mayor is not an educational expert. It is his or her responsibility to make sure that the members of the board are people of great integrity and that the budget is adequate to the needs of the children.
But the Board should not be his solely owned property, to do with as he wishes. The Board should choose its executive and that executive should answer to the Board, not the Mayor.
Yes, renew Mayoral Control, but renew Democracy too.
Diane Ravitch
This letter was sent by the secretary and chair of the charter committee of the Community Education Council of District 15 in Brooklyn.
Dear Community Leaders,
My name is Antonia Ferraro. I am the Secretary and Charter Committee Chair for CEC15 in Brooklyn. I am writing to share some news with you. Community Education Council District 15 in Brooklyn (CEC15) has written a draft of a resolution: Resolution to Oppose an Increase in the State Charter School Cap and City Charter School Subcap. The draft is attached below. CEC15 will have its final public vote on Jan. 29, 2019 at 6:30 pm at PS 131, located at 4305 Fort Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn. The resolution has been released for a period of public comment.
We hope that you will share this draft with your community and consider writing in support of our resolution.
Attached also is a hearing notice for Success Academy. They are not asking for space at this time, rather the authorization to serve more students. The hearing is this Wednesday, January 16, 2019, at 5:30 pm. Consider voicing your opposition by attending the hearing or writing to the address listed in the hearing notice.
Charter expansion is why our resolution is so crucial. New York City has 39% of the state’s students and houses 71% of the state’s Charter schools. Given this imbalance, the prospect of a Charter School Subcap increase, requires us to ask—What is the vision for New York City public schools? Any amendment to the law that enables further Charter growth without an evaluation of impact, is an unmistakable signal that Charter schools are not merely a vehicle for educational alternatives and threaten to put New York City public schools out of business. Therefore, we ask Albany to impose a Five-Year New York City Charter Moratorium and perform an evaluation of our existing dual education system because education policy should create systems that work together to make progress for all New York children—not systems designed wherein one undermines the other.
I want to emphasize that this is not an anti-Charter school resolution. We realize there are different opinions on the Charter school issue across the 5 boroughs. However, given the numbers, a Charter Cap and/or Subcap increase should be something our city’s parents and educators oppose with a unified voice. The legislative session is upon us and parent leaders can’t miss this opportunity to press pause on Charter expansion at the source—Albany.
Thank you and don’t hesitate to reach to me with questions. Also, please consider supporting CEC15 by attending our Jan. 29th meeting.
Sincerely,
Antonia Ferraro
CEC15 Secretary and Charter Committee Chair
antoniacec15@gmail.com
After hearing from a parent in Brooklyn that decisions at the New York City Department of Education were being made by Broadies and TFA, Leonie Haimson did some digging. The parent was right. The same people appointed by Joel Klein more than a decade ago are still closing schools, imposing the portfolio model, and opening charters. De Blasio appointed Carmen Farina to run the DOE. Farina was Deputy Chancellor to Klein and left in a a dispute. But apparently she saw no reason to clean house.
Leonie shows that it is not only Broadies and TFA, but the nefarious Education Pioneers, another billionaire-funded outfit the is running the show in New York City.
Wake up, Bill de Blasio! You inherited the status quo! When if ever will you clean house?
Tommy Chang was a top assistant to John Deasy in Los Angeles. After Deasy was pushed out in Los Angeles following a billion-dollar iPad bungle, Chang landed a job as superintendent of schools in Boston.
Things did not go well there, and Chang was abruptly pushed out by Mayor Walsh with two years left on his contract.
Now Chang has a job consulting for the New York City Department of Education, where he will be paid $10,000 “to produce a report on the ongoing reorganization of instructional divisions in the agency.”
Apparently there is no one in the vast New York City Department of Education who knows how to organize the instructional divisions.
Being a Broadie means having lifetime protection. When this gig runs out, Eli will find something else for him, maybe another district in need of transformation and closing the gap.
Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters has released a report on the unintended consequences of Mayor De Blasio’s rapid expansion of Pre-K, his proudest achievement in education. The plan was rushed ahead with little forethought.
Her report begins:
School overcrowding in NYC has been worsened by the expansion of pre-K and 3-K classes, as detailed in a new report, “The Impact of PreK on School Overcrowding: Lack of Planning, Lack of Space.”
About 575,000 students, more than half of all students, attended schools that were at or above 100 percent capacity in 2016-2017, according to data from the NYC Department of Education. In recent years, overcrowding has worsened significantly, especially at the elementary school level. Nearly 60 percent of elementary schools are at 100 percent or more and 67 percent of elementary grade students attend these schools. This is due in part to the fact that enrollment in these grades has increased faster than new school construction.
The report’s analysis finds that 14,220, or more than half of the pre-K students enrolled in public elementary schools in 2016-2017, were placed in 352 schools that were at 100% utilization or more, thus contributing to worse overcrowding at these schools for about 236,000 students.
In about one quarter (22 percent) of these schools, the expansion of pre-K actually pushed the school to 100 percent or more. As of 2016-2017, 76 elementary schools, with a total of 45,124 students, became overutilized, according to the DOE’s data, because of the additional number of pre-K students at their schools.
In addition, thirty schools with pre-K classes had waitlists for Kindergarten, necessitating that these children to be sent to schools outside their zone and sometimes far from home.
District 20 in southwestern Brooklyn is the most overcrowded district in New York City with a critical shortage of elementary school seats.
The average utilization of elementary schools is 130 percent. Yet the DOE continued to place pre-K classes in already overcrowded District 20 schools, despite the presence of an under-enrolled pre-K center nearby.
Laurie Windsor, the former President of the Community Education Council in District 20 said: “It is appalling how the DOE insists on keeping pre-K classes in elementary schools when there is such severe overcrowding and families are forced to travel for Kindergarten, sometimes quite far away, without available public transportation. Especially egregious is that there are pre-K centers nearby which could absorb these classes easily. This practice has put unnecessary hardships on families and is insensitive to the needs of the community.”
Despite opposition from the politically powerful bloc of Orthodox Jews in New York state, the state and the city of New York will begin investigations of yeshivas. Graduates of the yeshivas have complained that they did not get an education that prepared them to live in the modern world. Defenders of the yeshivas claim that these investigations violate the separation of church and state. It is an interesting paradox, because the same schools would be delighted to get tax credits for tuition, and Governor Cuomo has tried in the past to court their votes by offering tax credits. Until the last election, one representative of the Orthodox Jewish community held the decisive vote in the State Senate, blocking all efforts to monitor the quality of education offered there. It is likely that states with vouchers and voucher-like programs will face the same scrutiny if their critics ever regain political office.
In parts of New York City, there are students who can barely read and write in English and have not been taught that dinosaurs once roamed Earth or that the Civil War occurred.
Some of them are in their last year of high school.
That is the claim made by a group of graduates from ultra-Orthodox Jewish private schools called yeshivas, and they say that startling situation has been commonplace for decades.
Over three years ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration opened an investigation into a lack of secular education at yeshivas that serve about 57,000 students in the city, but the probe essentially stalled almost as soon as it began. The reason, advocates say, is the city’s politicians, including the mayor, are fearful of angering the Orthodox Jewish community that represents a crucial voting bloc in major elections.
Then the state stepped in with the most significant action yet in the probe. MaryEllen Elia, the state education commissioner, released updated rules on Nov. 20 dictating how nonpublic schools like yeshivas are regulated and what students in those schools should learn, with consequences for schools that do not comply.
The guidance could force yeshivas to change how they operate and what they teach. It will also hold Mr. de Blasio’s feet to the fire, as his administration is forced to ramp up its investigation into the schools.
“There’s no time to waste,” said Naftuli Moster, the founder of Young Advocates for Fair Education, which pushes for more secular instruction in yeshivas. “New York City has already been dragging its feet for three years.”
The city’s yeshiva probe began in 2015, after Mr. Moster’s group filed a complaint claiming that scores of students — boys, in particular — graduate from ultra-Orthodox yeshivas unprepared for work or higher education, with little exposure to nonreligious classes like science and history. Instead, some yeshiva graduates say, students spend most school days studying Jewish texts. Younger boys sometimes attend about 90 minutes of nonreligious classes at the end of the day, a city report found.
A coalition of prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis and community members have accused critics of yeshivas of attacking religious freedoms.
“This is a smear campaign against our community and what it stands for,” said David Niederman, a rabbi and the president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. “If some people are not happy with what they are taught, it is up to them to take action.”
Avi Schick, a lawyer for Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools, a group formed after the 2015 investigation was opened, said, “The intrusive set of requirements imposed by the state demolishes the wall between church and state that politicians have hid behind for decades.”
This past summer, the organization, known as Pearls, handed out 10,000 posters and bumper stickers emblazoned with the hashtag #ProtectYeshivas to parents of children in Orthodox Jewish schools.
The state’s guidance places the burden of investigating the schools on Mr. de Blasio’s administration.
City officials are now required to visit all nonpublic schools by the end of 2021 — which will coincide with the end of Mr. de Blasio’s second term — and visit each school every five years after that. If officials find that the schools are not providing an education that is “substantially equivalent” to what public schools offer, the city can give schools more time and resources to add secular teaching. If that does not work, the city can withhold some funding it provides private schools…
Still, enormous obstacles remain for those who want the city to shine a spotlight on yeshivas.
Few if any politicians in Albany or downstate are willing to anger the Orthodox political establishment. Urgent problems in the city’s 1,800 public schools — including ballooning student homelessness and entrenched racial segregation — will take precedence over issues in religious schools that the city does not run.
Addendum: Yeshivas receive extensive public funding from the state and federal governments.
This from Leonie Haimson:
“These schools receive hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding, through federal programs like Title I and Head Start and state programs like Academic Intervention Services and universal pre-K. For New York City’s yeshivas, $120 million comes from the state-funded, city-run Child Care and Development Block Grant subsidy program: nearly a quarter of the allocation to the entire city.”
Success Academy is under fire again for its treatment of students with disabilities. Of course, Success Academy denies the charges.
This is what Chalkbeat reports:
Success Academy officials violated civil rights laws when changing students’ special education services according to a complaint filed Thursday, resulting in some students suddenly changing classrooms and losing months of required instruction.
The complaint, filed with the state’s education department, alleges a pattern of school officials unilaterally changing special education placements without holding meetings with parents, moving students to lower grade levels, and even ignoring hearing officers’ rulings. In some cases, students were removed from classrooms that integrate special and general education students and sent to classrooms that only serve students with disabilities.
Filed by the advocacy group Advocates for Children and a private law firm, the complaint says that Success Academy officials often force parents to fight the charter network in federal court to maintain the services that are listed on a student’s individual learning plan, also known as an IEP.
“Students with disabilities do not give up their civil rights when they enter a charter school,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, wrote in a statement.
The city’s education department, also named in the complaint, is responsible for making sure students in charter schools receive the services laid out on their learning plans, and setting up meetings with parents to discuss any changes. But, according to the complaint, the education department “has no system to ensure that these schools comply” with those rules.
With 17,000 students, Success Academy is New York City’s largest charter operator and has previously been accused of denying services to students with disabilities, and even pushing them out of their schools. In 2015, at least one school was found to have a “got to go” list of students that school leaders wanted to see leave. More recently, the network filed a lawsuit claiming the opposite is true: Success officials said they often fight for services for students with disabilities, only for the requests to be denied or delayed by the city.
This is Leonie Haimson’s report on the same charges. You will want to open her comment to see the picture of Eva Moskowitz and her family making fun of their critics, holding a banner that says “Success Academy Threatened to Call 911 on 1st Graders”
This article in Chalkbeat, sad to say, illustrates the inherent bias of a publication funded by the charter industry’s magnates.
Here are the facts: Charter Schools in New York State derived their political power from their alliance with hedge fund managers, Wall Street, the Republican Party, and Governor Cuomo (who relies on hedge fund managers and Wall Street for campaign contributions). In the midterms, the Republican Party and a group of Democrats who voted with the Republicans in the State Senate, were ousted.
Consequently, the Assembly and the State Senate will be controlled by progressive Democrats who are opposed to charter schools. In other words, the charter sector benefitted financially by their partnership with reactionary Republicans (and a half dozen Democrats who voted as if they were Republicans).
So Chalkbeat gives its readers an article posing the dilemma of “progressive charter leaders,” who don’t want to suffer because of their longstanding success at working with the Republicans who lost.
The article doesn’t explain in what ways these charters are “progressive.” Are they non-union, like most charters? Are they integrated? Do they take the kids with the greatest needs? Or are they just lobbying to keep a modicum of power in Albany?
The article uncritically states that there is a “waiting list” of 80,000. Where did that number come from? Was it audited? By whom? Or was it simply manufactured to claim a need that may or may not exist?
The new class of state senators ran against Democrats and Republicans who were funded by the charter lobby. The new Democratic leader of the State Senate is Andrea Stewart-Cousins. She was the target of a vile, racist attack last year by billionaire Daniel S. Loeb, who at the time was chair of the board of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain. He said Senator Stewart-Cousins, who is African-American, had done “more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.”
Charter schools aligned themselves with the Trump-DeVos-Walton-Koch view of school choice. Elections have consequences.
Journalists should strive to avoid advocacy. That’s the realm of the editorial and opinion pages. Not journalists.
Arthur Goldstein is pretty damned angry at Mayor DeBlasio. The city just loaded billions of dollars of tax breaks onto Amazon and multibillionaire Jeff Bezos, even giving Amazon one of the Department of Education’s buildings in Queens. But Goldstein’s students are crammed into crowded classrooms.
Where are the city’s priorities?
I’m shocked that the city has space to turn over to Amazon but can barely find any for schools. I suppose it’s an extraordinary privilege to be able to provide Jeff Bezos a new helipad, while rolling out the red carpet for thousands of high-paid workers, who may or may not even live here. From my perspective, teaching 34 students in half a classroom, I’m not particularly concerned about where the world’s richest man parks his business, let alone his helicopter.
I’ve been working at Francis Lewis High School in central Queens since 1993, and I can’t recall a time when we’ve been so pressed for space. While I bemoan my half room, some of my colleagues are teaching in windowless converted book storage rooms. After years of complaints, admin found a way to air-condition them. Despite this, the air quality is still sub-standard, according to recent tests conducted by UFT….
It’s all about priorities, and the city that so long claimed to place children first is failing spectacularly to do so. In three or four years our school will have an annex, but who’s to say the DOE won’t just dump another thousand kids on us so we’re as overcrowded as ever?
There might be a time to lavish billions in subsidies on Jeff Bezos, but that time is most certainly not now. Our schools and our kids are more important, by far, than bragging rights for Amazon.
Is this fair?
Diane Ravitch's blog 