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Our Education Spring: The Parent-Led Opt Out Movement Grows in New York City

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2014 //
27

This just arrived in my email from parents in Williamsburg, Brooklyn:

 

This was sent to all D14 Principals and Parent Coordinators. Feel free to share in your districts.

———–
Dear Principals, Parent Coordinators, PTA presidents and school communities,

At the recent Town Hall sponsored by the CEC14, it was requested that we distribute information on opting out of the upcoming NYState high stakes tests to D14 parents in grades 3-5 and grades 6-7.

Speakers at the Town Hall included:

Brooke Parker, former CEC14 member, parent activist, WAGPOPS rep
David Dobosz, long-time NYC public school teacher and respected education activist
Janine Sopp, parent activist, Change the Stakes rep
Brian DeVale, Principal PS 257 and D14 CSA Rep
Esteban Duran, community organizer – El Puente, CB1

It is because we have the utmost respect for our Superintendent, our district, our schools, our principals, and our teachers, that we are building a movement to get our classrooms and schools wrested back into your deserving hands. The only way to do this is to get as many students to opt out of the high stakes state tests as possible. We believe in the promise of public education. We believe in our teachers, our principals, and our schools. NOW is the time to show the courage of our convictions.

Based on parent interest, Superintendent Winnicki is preparing for larger numbers than ever of our students opting this year.

We understand that schools are concerned about the impact of going beyond the 5% threshold. We have been in conversation with our city, state, and federal elected officials to protect our schools from punishments. The movement to opt out of high stakes testing has grown considerably.

No school (not even a Title 1 school) will stand alone in opting out.

This is a 100% parent led effort taking place district wide, city wide, and state wide.

It is our parents’ Supreme Court guaranteed civil right to opt their children out of these tests. It is also every person’s Supreme Court guaranteed right to Freedom of Speech (including school staff’s). You have the right to disseminate information regarding parents’ civil right to opt out of state tests.

Council Member Steven Levin’s office is working on proposing legislation to get the NYC Department of Education to provide an FAQ for parents on how to opt out of state tests, reaffirming our rights.

We want to make it clear that we are not telling you to tell your parents to opt out, but asking you to disseminate this information and allowing parents to make this decision on their own. We do not encourage 4th and 7th grade parents who are interested in their children applying to screened middle schools or screened high schools to opt out of the state tests because it could impact those students’ admissions to middle and high schools.

City Council Member Steven Levin is also developing a proposed resolution that would affirm the following:

1) It is the Supreme Court guaranteed civil right of every parent to opt out of the high stakes tests. Parents can choose to refuse their children taking these tests for any reason.

2) No teacher, school, principal, or district should be punished as a result of parents exercising their civil right to opt out of state tests. Any punishments related to opting out should be considered unconstitutional as those punishments hinge upon the violation of parents’ civil rights.

3) Every teacher, school, principal, and district has the Freedom of Speech to inform parents of their civil right to opt out of state tests.

4) Children whose parents have opted them out of state tests will be given appropriate educational activities and not be required to “sit and stare” at a desk during the test-taking time.

We anticipate our state and federal elected officials following suit in protecting our students, our teachers, our principals, and our schools.

Please distribute the enclosed information to your 3rd to 5th graders or 6th through 8th graders (in English and Spanish) about opting out as well as the letter template that parents can fill out and return to you. We ask that you keep track of the number of parents opting out. We need to keep track of this information.

Additionally, we will give parents who choose to opt-out of the high stakes tests a templated letter for them to send to elected officials at all levels and the media on the first day of testing. The letter will state that they support their school and teachers, but are opting out in opposition to loss of control at the local level, as well as the punitive measures that high stakes tests impose on children and teachers. The letter will also clearly state that this is a 100% parent-led effort.

Please share this letter far and wide, including to your colleagues, coworkers and friends outside of D14.

We thank you for all your hard work!

WAGPOPS!
Williamsburg and Greenpoint Parents: Our Public Schools!
representing public school parents across D14

Categories New York City, Resistance, Testing

Jeff Bryant: The New Extremist Attack on Democracy

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2014 //
23

Jeff Bryant here
describes the rise of an anti-democratic worldview that
threatens not only public education but democracy itself.

 

Under the fraudulent guise of “education reform,” extremists seek to
destroy public education and turn it over to private entrepreneurs.
They trust the marketplace, not the public. They are true believers
in the doctrines of free-market economist Milton Friedman, not
those of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Horace Mann.

 

He quotes an Ohio legislator who says that public schools–which are a
cornerstone of our democracy–are “socialist.” If so, then we have
been a “socialist” nation for over 150 years. At least 90% of our
population was educated in those “socialist” schools and created
the greatest, most powerful nation in the world.

 

Then he quotes the founder of Netflix, Reed Hastings, who longs to see an end to
locally elected school boards, to be replaced by privately managed
charters. Democracy, Hastings seems to think, is too inefficient,
too messy. Are there enough billionaires like Hastings to run the
nation’s schools? Why do these people have such contempt for
democracy? Why do they like to replace democratic control with
mayoral control, governor control, anything but elected school
boards? Several districts in New Jersey have been under state
control for 20 years, with no results. Mayoral control has done
nothing for Cleveland or Chicago other than to increase
undemocratic decision making.

 

Bryant concludes: “The idea of democratic governance of schools as a principal means for ensuring
the quality of schools has never worked perfectly for sure. “It’s
true that too few people bother to vote in school board elections.
The electoral system is often prone to manipulation from powerful
individuals and self-interested groups. Elected boards are often
overly contentious to the point of dysfunction. And the country’s
history is replete with examples of local boards that perpetuated
widespread mistreatment of minorities to the point where outside
intervention was necessary. “But where else has democratic
governance achieved perfection? There are democratic solutions to
these problems: Do more to increase voter education and turnout,
limit the influence of money and factional interests, and ensure
checks and balances from outside authorities that are also
democratically elected. “If we want to give ordinary people more of
a voice in determining the education destinies of their children
and their communities, the solution is more democracy, not
less.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New Orleans, New York City, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Eagle Academies: Not Miracle Schools

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2014 //
32

We live in a very strange age, where pundits and policymakers are in search of miracle schools, not willing to accept how incremental progress is and how difficult it is to measure progress..

Last Sunday, the “New York Times” held up the Eagle Academy schools in New York City as very successful hybrid schools that provide the equivalent of a private school education.. After all, 82% are bound for college and one even applied to an Ivy League college.

Super-detective Gary Rubinstein checked the stats. This s what he found:

“Eagle Academy For Young Men II in Brooklyn only has 6th through 10th graders so it is tough to call it any kind of success yet. Their Regents grades are very low for the students who have taken them so far.

“I looked at Eagle Academy in the Bronx report card for 2011-2012. Test scores, even on the old non-Common Core tests were 30% passing. Regents scores were terrible. Average grade on math regents were Alg I: 64, Geometry: 61, Alg II: 51. They got a lower pass rate than ‘expected’ by the NYC growth metric. SAT scores were in the high 300s per section, 399 Math, 391 Verbal. This puts them in around the 18% percentile.

“82% of graduates may be accepted to college, but it is tough to say that they will succeed there. Also note that they boast they have their first student as an applicant to an Ivy League school, but not that he got in. Anyone can apply to an Ivy League school, of course.

“111 juniors in 2010-2011 became just 91 seniors in 2011-2012, which is a loss of 18% of those students.”

No, they are not miracle schools, nor are they a model for the school system.

Categories New York City

Michael Powell on the “Gilded Crusade” for Charters

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2014 //
48

Thank goodness, there is one journalist at the New York Times who sees the big money behind the charter “movement.” It is Michael Powell, who writes a political column.

Michael Winerip used to write a clear-eyed weekly column on education for the Times, but for no reason, his column was dropped, and there is no more regular education columnist. Winerip used to be a scourge of those who love high-stakes testing and privatization. Maybe he disagreed with the predictable editorial board once too often. Now he covers “boomers” or something equally vital.

This is a snippet from Michael Powell’s insightful column:

Speaking of Eva Moskowitz, he writes:

“It’s worth noting this is a nicely gilded crusade. She oversees 20 schools, and is paid $485,000. She is no outlier.

“Deborah Kenney, chief executive of Harlem Village Academies, which runs two schools, has Charles Bronfman and John Legend, not to mention Hugh Jackman, on her organization’s board. Ms. Kenney is paid $499,000.

“Then there is Ian Rowe, leader of the well-regarded Bronx Preparatory School, who receives $338,000. And Our World Charter, a charter school in Astoria, Queens, where the C.E.O. makes a smidgen under $200,000.”

He adds:

“The problem is that the hedge fund chaps who adore charters tend toward the triumphalist. Keep offering more, they suggest, and any parent with a wit will divine the obvious choice.

“They rarely note the downside to these hothouse flowers. At Harlem Village Academy Leadership School, where Ms. Kenney makes her half-million, 50 percent of teachers with less than five years’ experience left last year. Her other school had a 60 percent teacher turnover rate, and suspended 38 percent of its students in 2010.”

And more:

“Ms. Moskowitz’s schools paid $519,000 or so last year to SKD Knickerbocker, a prominent political consulting firm. She gave $254,000 to Education Reform Now, which in its federal tax forms notes that it educated the public on the “harm caused” by the 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike.”

But she can’t pay rent.

Now that a judge has ruled that the State Comptroller may not audit Success Academy because it is “not a unit of the state,” the obvious question is: if it can’t be audited, if it is not a public school, why should it get free public space?

Categories Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

NYC Protest Today at Noon Against “Protect Eva Act” and Gubernatorial Control

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
5

Parents and other supporters of public schools will rally today against Governor Cuomo’s attempt to wrest control of the New York City public schools for the benefit of his campaign contributors.

Dan Morris. 917.952.8920.

Julian Vinocur. 212.328.9268.

Media Advisory for Fri. March 14, Noon, Cuomo’s Midtown Office

Rally Against Quid Pro Cuomo State Budget Deal and Gubernatorial Control of NYC Schools

*Parents condemn Cuomo’s pay-to-play budget deal with charter school lobbyists who are bankrolling his re-election campaign and want to undermine New York City’s power over its schools.*

WHAT: Public school parents, community leaders, and elected officials will rally against the budget deal Cuomo clearly orchestrated with the Senate Majority to advance the extremist, anti-de Blasio agenda of charter school lobbyists who are heavily funding the Governor’s re-election campaign. This disturbing Quid pro Cuomo opens the door to gubernatorial control of New York City schools.

WHO: Outraged public school parents, community leaders, and elected officials who won’t stand for Cuomo and the Senate Majority cutting a pay-to-play budget deal with charter school lobbyists.

WHERE: Governor Cuomo’s Midtown office: 633 Third Avenue, between E40th and E41st Streets.

WHEN: Friday, March 14, Noon.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Parents, Privatization, Students, Supporting public schools

NYC Judge Rules That State May Not Audit Eva’s Charters

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
52

In a stunning decision, a judge in Manhattan ruled that the State Comptroller may not audit Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools or any other charter schools because they are “not units of the state.” In other words, they are not public schools. If they were public schools, they would be “units of the state” and could be audited by the State Comptroller. As private contractors, they audit themselves.

Charter schools have claimed in federal courts that they are not public schools and may not be held to the same laws governing public schools. In every case, the courts and the National Labor Relations Board have agreed with the charter operators that charter schools are private corporations with a contract receiving public funds from the government. When charter founders in Los Angeles were convicted of misappropriating public funds, the California Charter Schools Association defended them by arguing that charter schools are not public schools but private corporations. In other words, in their words, they are private schools, not public schools, so they are not subject to public audit.

Categories Charter Schools, New York, New York City

Will Sheldon Silver Stop the “Protect Eva” Act?

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
11

In New York state, the Assembly is led by Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the Assembly. In this interview, he expressed opposition to the State Senate’s bill to protect Eva Moskowitz and to assure that all of New York City’s nearly 200 charters get rent-free space in public school buildings. Eva has a chain of 22 charters. Mayor de Blasio just agreed to give her five more, but turned down three proposed charters for her chain. Two of those schools do not exist and have no pupils. The third will have to relocate 194 students.

Silver said about the State Senate’s proposal:

“This whole right of having a building around you — yet there’s thousands of children sitting in trailers in city public schools. Does anybody speak for their right?” Silver asked reporters during a rare visit to the Capitol’s press room. “They don’t have Wall Street billionaires who can put ads on, or contribute to campaigns, and therefore, nobody represents them and they’re doomed to sitting in trailers for the rest of their school career? That’s unfortunate. Some of that money, maybe, from all the advertising, would do well to build some buildings for a lot of students if they actually support them.”

If Silver acts on his views, the legislation won’t pass.

194 children were displaced from one of Eva Moskowitz’s 22 charters. Her chain, which spends millions on marketing, public relations, and advertising can easily afford to rent space for a school for them. The legislation proposed by the State Senate would guarantee
Eva the right to expand in a public school without regard to the children they displace and to stay there rent-free.

On the other side are 1.1 million children in the public schools, who have no billionaires to fight for them. They now depend on Speaker Silver to defend them from those who would bully their way into their schools, take away their art room, their dance room, their resource room for special education kids, their computer room, and any other space they choose.

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

NYC: A Rally to Support Students With Disabilities and Mayor de Blasio

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2014 //
31

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

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

Which kids are really getting hurt in the charter wars?

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

Rally To Support de Blasio and Public Schools in Harlem Tomorrow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrick Walsh
Chapter Leader
PS/ MS 149
Harlem

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

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

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2014 //
27

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
16

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

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

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

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

He writes:

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

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

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

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

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