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Arthur Goldstein: An Open Letter to Michael Mulgrew, President of NYC’s Union

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2024 //
1

The United Federation of Teachers worked closely with NYC Mayor Eric Adams to persuade municipal union workers to give up Medicare and accept enrollment in a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan.

Many municipal retirees opposed the changeover. Unhappy retired municipal workers formed an organization which they called the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees. They concluded that the quality of their healthcare would decline if they accepted enrollment in a Medicare Advantage plan. MA might not accept their preferred doctors, and they would run the risk of being denied permission for treatment that their own doctor recommended. The retirees fought the city and their unions to block the switch to MA. They won in the state courts, and they won control of the retirees’ sector of the UFT.

Following the retirees’ victory in the courts and in the union elections, Michael Mulgrew announced that he would no longer support MA. Now the retirees are asking for the active help of the UFT.

Arthur Goldstein, retired high school teacher, wrote the following open letter to Michael Mulgrew, president of the UFT.

He wrote:

Dear President Mulgrew:

As you know, we’ve been fighting for years to preserve our health care. The recent Retired Teacher Chapter election showed a healthy majority of our members want to continue with our current premium and co-pay free Medicare/Medigap plan. We were all encouraged that you dropped your support of the Medicare Advantage plan into which the city wishes to place us.

That said, we are still in trouble. As you know, Mayor Adams is fighting for the MA program, and appealing our recent victories to the NY State Court of Appeals. As you are no doubt aware, they are the highest court in the state and have the power to overturn our thus-far unbroken string of victories. 

There are two ways we can prevail. One would be to win in court. Since UFT now opposes this plan, we need an Amicus brief from UFT. That’s quite important. If you oppose this plan, you need to demonstrate this to the court, and show that UFT is a force to be reckoned with. Mayor Eric Adams is, in fact, our contractual adversary, and we need to treat him as such.

This, of course, is not our only court battle. Mayor Adams also wants us to pay co-pays with our Medigap plan. That is unprecedented, and co-pays have a way of increasing endlessly. We need to halt this now. 

I heard you say at a meeting that co-pays were intended only as a temporary stopgap measure. Given your statements about how the city is interested only in saving money at our expense, I think it’s fair to assume we can no longer trust the city to make any such measures temporary. Therefore, UFT needs to file an Amicus brief in our battle against additional expenses for retirees on fixed incomes. As you know, many of our retired brothers and sisters in DC37 are just getting by as is.

In 2016, MLC effectively suppressed the HIP rate, via so-called HIP/HMO Preferred. This resulted in additional costs for 40% of enrolled city employees. Obviously, it’s an error to tie this to the base rate, because I’m sure you want our members, and all city workers, compensated at the highest rate possible. This needs to be corrected, and we need your support to do so. I’m sure you don’t want retired UFT paraprofessionals paying co-pays, higher deductibles, and/or premiums. We will need UFT support in the upcoming Campion case so as to preclude this.

Our other avenue of protection is via the legislature. As you know, there are bills, set to be reintroduced, both in the city and state protecting Medicare and Medigap for retirees. Union support could make the key difference, particularly in the state. I’m told the state bill would have passed but for “union opposition.” I don’t know who in the union opposes this, but the recent RTC election shows our retirees overwhelmingly support it. In fact, I’d argue the overwhelming majority of city retirees do as well.

This brings me to my final point. Since unions, for whatever reason, have not been in the habit of protecting our current health care, the group NYC Retirees was formed. This group, entirely on donations, has been protecting us in court for years. The recent election demonstrates that UFT retirees support the goals of this group.

Therefore, it’s high time the UFT, perhaps through COPE, made a sizable donation. This is clearly the will of our chapter, and it’s time we honored that will with something more than words. 

Sincerely, 

Arthur Goldstein, Vice Chair RTC

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Health, New York City, Teachers, Unions

NYC: Why Retirees Turned Against Their Own Union Leadership

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2024 //
61

The United Federation of Teachers in New York City is the largest chapter in the American Federation of Teachers. The UFT was created in 1960. It represents nearly 200,000 city employees, including about 60,000 retirees.

Since 1960, the UFT has been run by the Unity Caucus, which controls the officers, the executive committee and the delegate assembly. The president of the UFT is a powerful figure in New York City, New York State, and national politics. Its best known leaders were and are Albert Shanker and Randi Weingarten (Sandra Feldman served between their tenures, first as UFT president, then AFT president; she died of cancer at age 65). Shanker was president of the UFT from 1964 to 1985, then president of the AFT from 1974 until his death in 1997. Randi Weingarten was president of the UFT from 1998-2008 and became president of the AFT in 2008. The NEA has term limits, the AFT does not.

Weingarten was succeeded as president of the UFT by Michael Mulgrew. Since the union’s founding, the Unity Caucus has won every internal union election by large margins. Splinter groups came and went. Some persisted, but none ever won an election.

Until last week. Until June 15.

The UFT retirees rebelled. At the union’s annual internal elections, a dissident faction called Retiree Advocate upset the Unity slate. The retirees are angry because Michael Mulgrew made a deal with former Mayor DeBlasio to switch the city’s 250,000 retirees from Medicare to the for-profit Medicare Advantage. This switch was supposed to save the city $600 million a year.

The city government and the UFT told the retirees that the MA plan was better than Medicare.

The retirees were skeptical. How does a for-profit deliver make a profit while delivering better care than Medicare, many wondered. The answer, they soon discovered, were these two tactics: One, the person cannot use a doctor who is out of network; but even more important, the healthcare company may deny services. MA is very profitable for its executives.

Medicare accepts all licensed doctors and does not require the patient to get prior approval before they can get the treatment or surgery recommended by their doctor.

The retirees found a leader in a retired Emergency Medical Technician in the Fire Department named Marianne Pizzitola. She began posting videos on YouTube against the switch and collected a large number of retirees who agreed with her. She founded the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, Inc. She posted more videos, explaining that the city had broken its promise to retirees. Their contract promised Medicare, not MA. She argued that the city and some (but not all) unions were collaborating to deceive retirees. The city’s two largest unions—UFT and DC 37, which represents the city’s lowest paid workers—agreed with the city.

Marianne and her allies met with elected officials, organized rallies, and most consequentially, filed lawsuits to block the switch from Medicare to MA. All this activity was funded by retirees’ donations. Despite the huge disparity in resources, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees won every lawsuit. Judges agreed with them that the city had broken its promises to provide Medicare and a low-cost secondary plan.

The Retiree Advocate slate won 63% of the vote at the June 15 meeting. A majority of the retirees voted against the Unity Caucus slate because of the Medicare/MA issue. They poked a hole in the ironclad dominance of the Unity Caucus (which still has all the officers, 94 of the 100 members of the executive committee, and the vast majority of the delegates. But the retirees now control the retiree caucus.

I have a personal connection to this battle. I wrote an affidavit for the court case. In 2021, I was told by my cardiologist that I had to have open heart surgery to repair a damaged valve. People with this condition are walking time-bombs. I arranged to have my surgery done at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell by an excellent surgeon. I got a second and third opinion. I did not need prior approval because I was covered by Medicare and my wife’s secondary (she is a retired NYC teacher, principal, and administrator). If I had been on Medicare Advantage, I would have been denied coverage because I was asymptomatic. I had no pain, no shortness of breath, none of the symptoms associated with a serious heart problem. But without surgery, I would have died. (P.S.: Al Shanker was a close personal friend. Randi Weingarten is a close personal friend.)

I wrote about the retirees’ most important victory in court here. Just a month ago, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees won a unanimous decision in the New York Appellate Division. The city will likely appeal to the State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. I wrote “The NYC retirees’ group sued the City, on the grounds that the City was withdrawing benefits that were promised to its members when they were hired. Many had accepted lower pay because of the excellent benefits, especially the healthcare.”

The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees summarized their victory:

NEW YORK, May 21, 2024 — Today, the New York Appellate Division issued a unanimous decision holding that the City of New York cannot force its roughly 250,000 elderly and disabled retired municipal workers off of their
longstanding Medicare insurance and onto an inferior type of insurance called
“Medicare Advantage.” Unlike Medicare—a public program that has protected City retirees for the past 57 years—the City’s proposed new Medicare Advantage plan was a private, for-profit endeavor that would have limited
retirees’ access to medical providers, prevented retirees from receiving care prescribed by their doctors, and exposed retirees to increased healthcarecosts.


The Court confirmed what retirees have been arguing for months: that they are entitled to the healthcare they were promised for over 50 years. The Court wrote: “The City has made clear, consistent, unambiguous representations – oral and written – over the course of more than 50 years, that New York City municipal worker-retirees would have the option of receiving health care in the form of traditional Medicare with a City-paid supplemental plan. Consequently, the City cannot now mandate the proposed change eliminating that choice.”

The Court permanently enjoined the city from forcing the retirees to leave traditional Medicare and to transfer to a MA plan.

Here is a brief explanation of why the retirees fought against privatization of their healthcare.

Arthur Goldstein, who worked as a high school teacher for 39 years, celebrated the victory in a post called A New Dawn. He followed up with a description of the meeting where Randi spoke and the Retiree Advocate group won control of their caucus. He is a long-time critic of Unity; he’s now vice-president of the UFT Retiree Caucus.

The members and leaders of the Retiree Advocate group are passionately pro-union. They wanted their voices to be heard. The UFT’s acquiescence in the Medicare-to-MA was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. They could not believe that the Union would join with the city government to save money by puttting them into a for-profit plan.

Here is Marianne Pizzitola rejoicing on the day of the Retiree Advocate in the UFT meeting.

Here is Marianne Pizzitola talking about the ramifications of this victory on “Medicare for All.” About half of the nation’s retirees are in Medicare Advantage plans. MA represents the privatization of Medicare and will block Medicare for All.

It’s a shame that the retirees had to fight their own union to preserve their health care. It’s rumored that the city (and the unions?) might go to Albany to try to change the law. The unions should pay attention to their retirees. They may be old, but they are smart and relentless. They will not give up. And I will be with them every step of the way.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, For-Profit, Health, New York City, Teachers, Unions

David Beats Goliath! NYC Retirees Win Legal Battle to Stop City from Forcing Them into a Medicare Advantage Plan!

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2024 //
41

For more than 50 years, New York City recruited new employees with an offer that included strong healthcare benefits in retirement. Recently, the City government decided that it could save money by forcing some 250,000 retirees to abandon Medicare and enroll in a for-profit Medicare Advantage Plan administered by Aetna. Retirees had no choice, and most of their unions sided with the City, not their own members.

One incredibly persistent, bold, fearless retiree refused to accept the deal that took away her Medicare and supplementary plan. Marianne Pizzitola, a retired Emergency Medical Technician with the Fire Department, created a group called the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees. The City had promised her those benefits, like other city employees, and she was not going to let the City take them away without her consent.

Pizzitola began to organize. She gathered research, allies, and funds to fight the City and some of its biggest unions, including the United Federation of Teachers. She set up a Facebook account and used social media to recruit other retirees and to explain why the deal was a sell-out. She frequently gave ZOOM briefings to members of her group, whose numbers continued to grow. MA plans, unlike Medicare, require patients to get prior authorizations before allowing major procedures; members of MA plans must use in-network doctors. MA plans have overbilled the federal government by billions of dollars.

The Chief-Leader, a publication for city employees, wrote about her battle with the City in April:

Pizzitola’s enterprise began on Aug. 13, 2021, a Friday, the city still under a Covid cloud, when 17 of the 40 people she had invited to hone opposition to the city’s proposed plan joined a Zoom call. Five would volunteer to mount a challenge to the city’s proposal. At the conclusion of the two-hour call, the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees was launched, and Pizzitola was chosen to lead it as president. 

“In a few hours, we had a name, a mission, an attorney, a bank. And then that weekend, I started a PayPal, a YouTube, a Facebook, and I drafted our first website,” she said. 

The organization, funded by donations, most of $25, has since grown to include a board of directors and an administrative board along with advisors and volunteers, some of them former city and union officials.  

Since that August day, over hundreds of emails, at rallies, on YouTube, Threads, Twitter and TikTok, in strategy sessions with attorneys, at gatherings with retirees, and during court hearings, Pizzitola has parlayed her passion, belief and deep knowledge of sometimes opaque policy points and obscure legislation to, so far, preserve what she adamantly believes the retirees, herself among them, are due.

The NYC retirees’ group sued the City, on the grounds that the City was withdrawing benefits that were promised to its members when they were hired. Many had accepted lower pay because of the excellent benefits, especially the healthcare. The group won in the first court that heard the case. The City appealed, and yesterday the State Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in favor of the retirees and “permanently” barred the City from reneging on its promises to retirees.

Marianne Pizzitola proved that one person can win in the face of overwhelming power and money by recruiting allies, gathering sound research, and communicating effectively. Google her name and you will find numerous videos on YouTube where she explains why Medicare is better than Medicare Advantage and why other retirees should support the fight.

Yesterday, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees issued the following press release. The full decision is attached.

Retiree Update

WE WON!!!

On March 21, 2024 we had oral arguments and today, May 21, we were given a unanimous decision.  We thank all of you for believing in us and our legal team.  Without all of you, we would never have got this far.  The Court said, the City cannot take away our Medicare Supplement.

This is the exact decision, “Accordingly, the judgment (denominated an order) of the Supreme Court, New York County (Lyle E. Frank, J.), entered September 19, 2023, which, in this hybrid proceeding-class action brought pursuant to CPLR article 78, granted the petition complaint to the extent of permanently enjoining the City respondents/defendants from eliminating petitioner/plaintiff retirees’ existing health insurance, automatically enrolling them in a new Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan, enforcing a June 30, 2023 deadline for retirees to opt out of the new plan, and implementing any other aspect of the City’s new retiree healthcare policy, should be affirmed, without costs.”

You can read it here

CELEBRATE.   YOU EARNED THIS! 

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Health, New York City, Union

Join Me at the Skinny Awards on June 12 in NYC!!

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2024 //
6

Class Size Matters is one of the most effective—if not the MOST effective—advocacy organizations for public schools in New York City. Its leader, Leonie Haimson, fights for reduced class sizes, more funding, and the privacy of student data. I am a member of the board of Class Size Matters.

On June 12, CSM will hold its annual awards dinner. The awards are called the Skinny, in contrast to the Broad Award, which was given to districts that raised test scores, closed schools, and used metrics inappropriately.

I will be there to celebrate the award winners, who are parent-members of the Board of Education who stood strong for students, teachers, and well-funded public schools.

Please join us!

Class Size Matters Skinny Award Dinner

START:Wednesday, June 12, 2024•6:00 PM

END:Wednesday, June 12, 2024•9:00 PM

LOCATION: 1st floor•124 Waverly Pl. , New York, NY 10011 US

HOST CONTACT INFO: info@classsizematters.org

Buy tickets:

https://actionnetwork.org/ticketed_events/class-size-matters-skinny-award-dinner?source=direct_link
[2024_Skinny_Awards_Announcement_final.png]
Class Size Matters Skinny Award Dinnerhttps://actionnetwork.org/ticketed_events/class-size-matters-skinny-award-dinner?source=direct_link
actionnetwork.orghttps://actionnetwork.org/ticketed_events/class-size-matters-skinny-award-dinner?source=direct_link

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
http://www.classizematters.org
Leonie@classsizematters.org

Categories Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Courage, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, New York City, Parents, Students, Teachers

Gary Rubinstein: Time to Investigate Success Academy’s SPRINT Program

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2024 //
28

Gary Rubinstein has been following the evolution of Success Academy in New York City for years. it’s the largest charter chain in the state, with the highest test scores. But Gary has documented its high attrition rates and teacher turnover. Others have written about its penchant for pushing out students it doesn’t want. Success Academy is often held up as a model for the accomplishments of charter schools. But other charter chains are dropping the harsh “no excuses” discipline of SA.

In this post, Gary writes about another SA practice that is problematic.

He writes:

About four months ago I received an unusual DM in my Twitter account. Though over the years several different Success Academy parents have reached out to me, this was from someone who claimed to be either a current employee or a former employee. They used an anonymous name and to this day, I have no idea who this person is. But they reached out to me because they had a story to tell and felt, I guess, that I was the best person to tell it to.

Over the months they have provided various internal Success Academy documents, screen shots from internal Success Academy message boards, and so much information about what is truly going on at Success Academy, that I have no reason to doubt their authenticity.

Much of the information was about chaos that is going on behind the scenes at Success Academy. Like how they are struggling to convince elementary students to remain at Success Academy for middle school and to convince middle school students to remain at Success Academy for high school. I even got to see an internal document with talking points to tell families in order to convince they to stay.

The document had the title “Grade 4 Teacher Selling & Persuading Talking Points” and began with the words: “Framing: Unfortunately, over the years we see that after all the hard work of our elementary school teachers and schools, some of our 4th graders leave us and end up attending failing middle schools. We cannot let this happen. And so for the first time really we want to invest our scholars in the “why” behind SA’s magical middle schools. We want our scholars and parents to make truly informed choices about the next leg of their educational journey.”

I had already known based on enrollment numbers that Success Academy was having trouble getting families to continue to trust them after all the years of shady practices, but my source says that things are very dire, especially in the Brooklyn high school, which nearly had to be shut down for low enrollment.

I got a lot of other good insider information from my source. Their description of the morale of the staffs at several of the schools and the extreme turnover definitely made me feel bad for the teachers there but even worse for the students who have to endure such instability. The picture was worse than I had expected. But still I didn’t get what I considered to be a ‘smoking gun’ — something that the school was doing that was illegal.

A topic that this insider kept returning to was something that, at first, I didn’t have much interest in. It is well known that Success Academy used to not have a very high percent of students requiring special education services. My sense was that Success Academy did not want many students requiring special education services because those students would require attention which could take away resources from their test prep gaming system. But my insider often returned to something that really seemed to bother them, and it is about the way that Success Academy identifies students for special education services. The program is called SPRINT.

The way most schools work, a special education referral is initiated by a parent or sometimes a teacher in consultation with a parent and the school administration which might include guidance counselors and social workers will start the process. As a parent of a student who was diagnosed with various learning issues, I know that this is a very difficult time for a parent when they learn that their child qualifies for special education services.

But the way it works at Success Academy is unlike anything I’ve ever heard of at any school before. And according to the insider, many people who work for SPRINT or who used to work for SPRINT feel that they are working for a corrupt division of a corrupt organization. Whether what the SPRINT team is doing is illegal or just immoral or neither will be up to state investigators to decide if they ever have the desire to check into this, but this is the little that I understand about it.

According to my insider, the SPRINT staff are given quotas of special education referrals that they have to meet each week. It is something like five referrals per week. I don’t have all the details, but this is a big numbers game where referrals are driven by these quotas. If this is true and this team is pressured to find students to refer, this would mean that some students and their families go through the arduous referral process unnecessarily.

I asked the insider why would Success Academy want to inflate their special education numbers. The insider wasn’t sure about the motive. They felt it might have had to do with finances as having more special education students enables them to hire more teachers for ICT classes. But they weren’t certain about the motive, just the fact that special education referrals are done to fulfill quotas and not driven by what parents or teachers are noticing.

I asked the insider what the harm is from over referring for evaluations. Isn’t it better to have too many referrals and some students are denied services than to have too few and have students who would qualify but who never get evaluated? The source admitted that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what the malicious intent is but made it seem like this whole SPRINT quota system was very shady. Like they were gaming the system to get some students to qualify for services even if they really didn’t need them. But even if getting supports for student who might not need, the issue is that Success Academy seems to be doing this from a business point of view and not to truly help struggling students.

I know all this is kind of vague and my insider is going to wonder why I didn’t include more of the specific details of the color coding for the different levels of referrals. But they made it clear that to meet these quotas the staffers on the SPRINT team have to be very aggressive. In order for a team to make five referrals a week, they have to hound the families and if the families are resistant they have to step up the pressure. The insider even says they were encouraged once to call ACS on a family that would not agree to go through the referral process.

For sure there is a lot more detail to be filled in on this story. If you are working for SPRINT right now and are having trouble sleeping at night because of it, feel free to reach out to me, I can help you out.

Here is a post on an internal Success Academy message board from an actual employee:

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

New York City: Appeals Court Orders Desegregation Plan

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2024 //
29

The Center for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, reported on a major court decision affecting New York City’s public schools. The battles over segregation began in the nation’s largest city in the 1960s. Until the mid-1960s, the city’s public schools had a white majority. From that point forward, the white enrollment steadily declined and is now slightly less than 15% of one million students. While racial balance in every school would be impractical, given the great distances that students would have to travel, demands for desegregation have been replaced by demands for equitable access to the city’s elite high schools. Admission to these schools is based on one test given on one day. Despite perennial protests against the selection process, it can only be changed by the state legislature. There, alumni of the selective high schools oppose any changes. The greatest beneficiaries of the test-based admissions system are Asian students; they are 16.5% of the enrollment, but win 54% of the offers to the elite high schools.

These are the latest demographic data from the NYC Departnent of Education:

In 2022-23, there were 1,047,895 students in the NYC school system, the largest school district in the United States. Of those students:

  • 14.1 percent of students were English Language Learners
  • 20.9 percent were students with disabilities
  • 72.8 percent were economically disadvantaged
  • Race or ethnicity:
    • 41.1 percent Hispanic
    • 23.7 percent black
    • 16.5 percent Asian
    • 14.7 percent white
  • 140,918 were in charter schools

The Center for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, issued the following press release:

Last week, the Appellate Division, First Department, issued a striking school desegregation decision. The Appellate Division unanimously reversed the lower court’s dismissal of the case IntegrateNYC v. State of New York , ruling that plaintiffs could proceed to trial to prove their claim. The plaintiffs allege that New York City’s examination system for selecting students for its elite high schools and its systems for choosing students for gifted and talented programs (beginning as early as age four), deny Black and Latinx students their right to the opportunity for a sound basic education.

IntegrateNYC, Inc., is a youth-led organization “for racial integration and equity in New York City schools.” They are joined as plaintiffs in this case by two parent organizations and current and former public-school students. The defendants are the state and city government entities that oversee New York City’s public education system: the State of New York, the governor, the New York State Board of Regents, the New York State Education Department, the New York State Commissioner of Education, the mayor of the City of New York, the New York City Department of Education, and its chancellor.

The defendants are expected to appeal this decision to the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court. If the Appellate Division decision is upheld by the Court of Appeals, this case will be the first legal challenge to the selective high schools examination system established by state statute in 1971. In 2021, Black and Latinx students comprised nearly 70% of the New York City school system, yet they received, respectively, only 3.6% and 5.4% of the specialized high school offers, while white and Asian students received, respectively, 28% and 54% of the offers.

The Appellate Division decision, written by Justice Peter Moulton, also established an important new precedent in holding that claims of racial segregation, if proven, would constitute a denial of students’ rights under Article XI of the New York State Constitution to the opportunity for a sound basic education. That right was established by the Court of Appeals in Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. State of New York in 2003. That case held that a denial of adequate funding for students in the New York City Public Schools constituted a constitutional violation. Subsequent court rulings that have relied on CFE seemed to indicate that claims of a denial of the opportunity for a sound basic education would be limited to allegations of inadequate school funding. Justice Moulton’s decision in IntegrateNYCnow shows that such claims can also be based on allegations of intentional segregation.

New York is now the second state in which a state court has held that school segregation may constitute a denial of an adequate education under the state constitution. Earlier this year, the Minnesota Supreme Court held in Cruz-Guzman v. State of Minnesota that the racial imbalance in the Minneapolis and St. Paul school systems would constitute a violation of the state constitution’s “thorough and efficient” education clause if plaintiffs can show at trial there is a causal link between such racial imbalance and inadequate education.

These state court developments in New York and Minnesota may constitute significant precedents for school desegregation reforms. They could open opportunities for advocates throughout the country to promote school desegregation claims that have been stymied in recent years by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that have substantially restricted the scope of desegregation claims under federal law.

Categories Education Reform, New York City, Segregation

NYC: Charter School of Dr. Steve Perry and Rapper “Diddy” Mired in Controversy

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2024 //
6

The Capital Prep Charter chain was created by Dr. Steve Perry. Dr. Perry hates teachers’ unions. He boasts that all the students in his charters graduate and go to college. His chain won the Yass Prize as a semi-finalist for its accomplishments. Jeff Yass is a billionaire in Pennsylvania who supports Trump, opposes abortion, and funds charter schools and vouchers. You may recall that Yass gave Texas Governor Greg Abbott $6 million to pass voucher legislation.

Capital Prep in Harlem is a Perry school that had the partnership and financial support of rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs. Things are not going so well for the students.

Students and families affiliated with Capital Prep, co-founded by Diddy, claim the entertainment mogul’s charter school did a disservice to children who attended.

Diddy co-launched the East Harlem school with Dr. Steve Perry in 2016, and in 2018 pledged $1 million for its expansion into the Bronx. However, last November Capital Prep cut ties with him amid his ongoing sexual assault lawsuits. 

Now adding to the mounting controversy around the Bad Boy Records founder, a new report from The Cut reveals many issues with Capital Prep, including the accusation that Diddy had no involvement with the school beyond photo ops, guest appearances, and the school’s grand opening in 2016.

Fourteen sources told The Cut about alleged frequent violence at Capital Prep, along with “unstable” leadership, and frequent teacher resignation. These issues were most apparent at the height of the pandemic during both virtual learning and when students, including those who were unhoused, returned for in-person classes in 2021. According to The Cut, teachers began to not show up for virtual classes, and by the end of 2020, 80 percent of teachers had left Capital Prep altogether.

When students did return to school after quarantine, some were enrolled in courses they had previously taken, or were “sitting in the cafeteria receiving no instruction for hours.” Dysfunction among teachers reflected on the student body, especially upperclassmen who were unable to transfer their credits or enroll in college due to ineligible transcripts.

“Darnell’s transcripts had classes he’d never taken, passing classes that he never took, failing classes that he was never in,” one parent, Shirley Payne, said about inaccuracies found on her son’s transcripts.

“I thought if Diddy is funding and attaching his name to something, it would be run very tightly, that he was going to give our kids what he didn’t have at that age,” parent Shakemia Harris said. Harris’ daughter Madison was enrolled at Capital Prep as an 11-year-old in 2017.

In addition to the many academic issues, violence during the school day was reportedly ongoing. Fights were rampant when the school nearly doubled in size, expanding to include a tenth grade, and again when Capital Prep relocated to 129th and Madison. Not only was the area more violent than its previous East 104th Street address, but Capital Prep began locking out students who were late, ultimately causing families to protest the disorderly conditions. In addition it violence between students, cops were called on students for things like uniform violations.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Hoax, New York City

A New York City Vacation: What to See on Broadway

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2024 //
5

If you plan to visit NYC (or live in it or near it), I have some recommendations for you.

You are not allowed to visit NYC without taking in a Broadway show. Did you know that?

I saw three outstanding shows recently, which I unequivocally recommend.

The great and timeless Ibsen play “An Enemy of the People” is spectacular. It has been updated. It stars Jeremy Strong (“Succession”) and Michael Imperioli (“The Sopranos” and “White Lotus”). What a great show!

If you want to laugh a lot, see “Spamalot,” a hilarious comedy-musical that was written by Eric Idle of the Monty Python troupe. It incorporates some of their funniest skits. The final performance is April 7.

If you want to see a spectacular musical, see “Moulin Rouge.” Boy George is one of the stars. Prepare to be dazzled. Don’t bring the children! It’s very bawdy, and there is quite a lot of female flesh.

You can often get cheap seats at a website called TodayTix. It also sells advance seats. In the center of Times Square, there is a large booth called TKTS where you can buy same-day tickets at a steep discount. Some theaters have standing-room tickets. It never hurts to ask at the box office before the performance. Sold-out shows sometimes get last-minute returns from ticket brokers.

Enjoy!

Categories Art, Creativity, Joy, New York City

Gary Rubinstein: Success Academy and the Mysterious Disappearance of One of Its Schools

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2024 //
4

Gary Rubinstein is a teacher of mathematics and a strong proponent of evidence. Whenever a journalist or education evangelist claims to have found a “miracle school,” he goes for the data, and he digs deeper than test scores. The Success Academy Charter network, led by its founder Eva Moskowitz, has achieved national renown for its test scores. Gary has observed a winnowing of the students as they advance through the grades. He recently noticed that one of its schools had disappeared.

He wrote:

Success Academy is the largest charter school network in New York State. Starting in 2006 with one school, there are now around 40 Success Academy schools with around 20,000 students.  And with a recent $100 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, it might seem that Success Academy will continue to grow at an exponential rate. But there is some evidence that growth at Success Academy is slowing down. In one case it seems that one of their schools, Fort Greene Middle School has shut down completely.

According to the New York State public data site, in 2022-2023, Success Academy Fort Greene was a middle school on Park Avenue in Brooklyn with 180 students from 5th to 8th grade. In classic Success Academy fashion, the 27 eighth graders is significantly fewer than the 55 fifth graders.

But when you look at the December 2023 enrollment data, suddenly Success Academy Fort Greene is no longer a middle school, but an elementary school located at 3000 Avenue X in Brooklyn. The enrollment of this school is 75 kindergarteners and 41 1st graders. I know that Success Academy is supposed to be capable of miracles, but turning 180 middle schoolers into 116 elementary schoolers is not one of them.

On the Success Academy website, however, there is no mention of a Fort Greene school of any type anymore, but instead there is a brand new elementary school called Success Academy Sheepshead Bay at the 3000 Avenue X address.

What happened is that Success Academy had to close down their Fort Greene middle school because of low enrollment. Why in the New York database, they let the new elementary take the name of the old middle school, maybe this is something they have to do for the charter cap, but I wouldn’t know. Still, any Success Academy school closing down is something that seems pretty newsworthy considering that they thrive on a reputation that they have cultivated that they must continually expand because of the demand for their schools…

Open the link to finish the post.

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

New York City: End Mayoral Control of the Schools!

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2024 //
21

Politico reported recently that Mayor Eric Adams is pulling out all the stops in his campaign to persuade the legislature to extend mayoral control of New York Ciry’s public schools.

That’s understandable. Every mayor wants as much power as he can gather. Guiliani wanted mayoral control. The legislature turned him down. Michael Bloomberg got it after he won the mayoralty in 2001, pledging to make the schools run efficiently and successfully after years of political squabbling and disappointing academic results.

A historical note: the last time that the independent Board of Education was abolished was in 1871, when Boss Tweed pushed through state legislation to create a Department of Education, in charge of the schools. The new Department immediately banned purchase of any textbooks published by Harper Bros., to retaliate for the publication of Thomas Nast cartoons ridiculing the Tweed Ring in Harper’s magazine. The new Department steered lucrative contracts to Tweed cronies, for furniture and all supplies for the schools.

Two years later, the corruption of the Tweed Ring was exposed, and criminal prosecutions ensued. In short order, the Department of Education was dissolved and the independent Board of Education was revived.

In the 2001 race for Mayor, billionaire Mike Bloomberg campaigned on promises to rebuild the city’s economy after the devastating attacks of 9/11/2001. He also promised to take over the school system, make it more efficient, improve student performance, and able to live within its budget of $12 billion plus. He won, and many people were excited by the prospect of a successful businessman taking over the city and the schools.

In 2002, the State Legislature gave Mayor Bloomberg control of the schools in New York City. It replaced the independent Board of Education, whose seven members were appointed by the five borough presidents and the mayor. Bloomberg had complete control of the school system, with its more than 1,000 schools and more than one million students. The new law allowed him to appoint the majority of “the Panel on Education Policy,” a sham substitute for the old Board of Education.

The new law still referred to “the Board of Education,” but the new PEP was a shell of its former self. It was toothless, as Bloomberg wanted. He picked the Chancellor, and he had the policymaking powers. Early on, in 2004, he decided that third graders should be held back based on their reading scores. Some of his appointees on the PEP opposed the idea and he fired them before the vote was taken. He wanted all his appointees to know that he appointed them to carry out his decisions, not to question them. The retention policy was later expanded through eighth grade but quietly abandoned in 2014 because it failed.

I won’t go into all the missteps of the Bloomberg regime, which lasted 12 years, but will offer a few generalizations:

1. The mayor should not control the schools because they will never be his first priority. The mayor juggles a large portfolio: public safety, the economy, transportation, infrastructure, public health, sanitation, and much more. On any given day, he/she might have 30 minutes to think about the schools; more some days, none at all on others.

2. Mayoral control concentrates too much power in the hands of one person. One person, especially a non-educator, gets an idea into his head and imposes it, no need to talk to experienced educators or review research.

3. Mayoral control marginalizes parents and community members, whose concerns deserve to be heard. At public hearings of the PEP, parents testified but rightly thought that no one listened to them. In the “bad old days,” they could speak to someone in their borough president’s office; now the borough presidents have no power. No one does, Except the mayor.

4. The Mayor picked three non-educators as Chancellor. Joel Klein disdained educators and public schools, even though he was a graduate of the NYC public schools. He created a “Leadership Academy” to train non-educators and teachers to bypass the usual path to becoming a principal by serving for years as an assistant principal. Klein surrounded himself with B-school graduates and looked to Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and Jack Welch for advice. Large numbers of experienced teachers and principals retired.

5. Bloomberg loved churn and disruption. He closed scores of schools and replaced them with many more small schools. Some high schools that had programs for ELLs, special education, career paths for different fields, were closed and replaced by schools for 300/400 students, too small to offer specialized programs or advanced classes.

6. New initiatives were announced with great fanfare (like merit pay), thanks to a vastly enlarged public relations staff, then quietly collapsed and disappeared.

7. Bloomberg and Klein imposed a new choice system. But all high schools and middle schools became schools of choice. A dozen students of the age living in the same building might attend a dozen different schools, some distant from their homes. One retired executive told me that this dispersal was intended to obstruct the creation of grassroots uprisings against the new dictates.

8. Bloomberg and Klein favored charter schools. In short order, more than 100 opened. The charters were supported financially and politically by some of the wealthiest Wall Street titans. When there was any threat to charters, their wealthy patrons quickly assembled multi-millions dollar TV campaigns to defend them. Because of the deep pockets of the charter patrons, the charter lobby gave generous contributions to legislators in Albany. The legislature passed laws favoring the charters, including one that required the public schools to provide free space for them or, if no suitable space was available, to pay their rent in private facilities.

9. Bloomberg and Klein made testing, accountability and choice the central themes of their reforms. Their approach mirrored President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which began at the same time. Raising test scores became the goal of the school system. Schools were graded A-F, depending primarily on their ability to raise test scores. Eventually, teachers were graded by the rise or fall of their students’ scores. NYC faithfully mirrored the tenets of the national corporate reform movement.

10. NYC test scores improved on NAEP during the Bloomberg years, but not as much as in other cities that did not have mayoral control.

11. To get a great overview of “The Failure of Mayoral Control in New York City,” read this great summary by Leonie Haimson, which includes links to other sources. See, especially, the recent article in Education Week on the decline of mayoral control. Chicago had mayoral control similar to that in New York City, which allowed Mayor Rahm Emanuel to close 50 schools in black and brown communities in one day, completely ignoring the views of parents. It was an ignominious example of the danger of one-man control.

12. There is no perfect mechanism to govern schools, but any kind of oversight should allow parent voices to count. 95% of the nation’s school districts have elected school boards. Sometimes a small faction gains control and does damage. That’s the risk of democracy. Whatever the mechanism, there must be an opportunity for the public, especially parents, to make their voices heard and to have a role. The mayor controls the budget: that’s as much power as he should have.

History is an excellent overview of New York City school governance—history and myths. Again, by Leonie Haimson. (Note: her history leaves out the two years of mayoral control from 1871-1873.)

Categories Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Failure, New York, New York City
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