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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

A Note about Success Academy’s Data

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2014 //
31

An earlier post this morning offered advice about how to read reports about charter school data. A commenter complained that the data in the post specifically referring to Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy was incomplete and therefore misleading.I asked the author of the post, who works at the headquarters of the Néw York City Department of Education, to respond. The author worked at Tweed during the Bloomberg era.

Here is the response:

“Success Academy’s Numbers

******
“Let’s start by saying that all analysis of Success Academy is difficult because they refuse to be transparent with their data. When the New York State Comptroller attempted to audit Success Academy’s use of public money, Success Academy sued to prevent the audit. And Success Academy is, believe it or not, even less transparent with the data that would answer the questions in How to Analyze False Claims about Charter Schools. Every citizen should encourage Success Academy to openly share their data with the New York City Independent Budget Office or the New York City Comptroller’s Office so that a full evaluation of their numbers can be done.

“What do we know? We know that other analyses have found a similar result as the one shared in the essay. Very few of the Success Academy schools have been around long enough to establish a record. The ones that have show very, very, very high attrition rates.

“One such analysis found “at Success, the pattern is similar, if not more stark. Not only do its classes contain disproportionately few students with disabilities and English language learners (ELLs), but their numbers almost invariably decrease with each passing year. This should have no uncertain effect on test scores. Clearly, the ranks of students with disabilities consistently dwindle. The pattern for students learning English is less consistent but equally egregious. In the first two years of available data, there were hardly any ELLs. In 2010 Success suddenly came up with a nearly representative portion of these students, but their numbers more than halved by the next year. (2012-13 data isn’t yet disaggregated by student demographic.)”

“Insideschools reported that “according to figures on the school’s New York State Report Card, 83 students entered kindergarten in 2006-07, the school’s first year of operation. When that class reached 4th grade in 2010-11, it had only 53 students — a drop of 36 percent. Harlem Success also took in a 1st grade class with 73 students in 2006. When that group reached 5th grade, it too had shrunk appreciably — by 36 percent. The attrition accelerated as the classes advanced. The 2006-07 1st grade class, for example, did not shrink at all as it entered 2nd grade, but saw one sharp falloff between 2nd and 3rd and another between 4th and 5th.”

Yet another analysis found something similar “So the next thing I looked at was their student attrition. If they ‘lost’ many students, these scores are tainted. Now there is only one Success school that has been around since 2007. That school started with 83 kindergarteners and 73 first graders. Those cohorts just tested in 6th and 7th grade, respectively. The school has ‘lost’ a big chunk of those original 156 kids. Of those 73 first graders in 2007, only 35 took the seventh grade test. Of the 83 kindergarteners, only 47 took the sixth grade test last spring. Overall, they have ‘lost’ 47% of the original two cohorts. If this is one of the costs of having such high test scores, I’m not sure if it is worth it.”

“Success Academy rather uniquely tends to open elementary schools that only serve grades K-3 or K-4. This suggests that their attrition rate is high enough that it becomes necessary to combine multiple feeder elementary schools into a single middle school by 5th (or even 4th grade). It has been noted “it may be significant that the bulk of the attrition at Harlem Success Academy 1 seems to have come in the tested grades.”

“The essay analyzed the attrition rate at Success Academy using a different data set, namely the –testing cohort data. This may do a better job of accounting for Success Academy’s approach of holding many students back a grade level which creates a 3rd grade bulge as those students don’t move on to 4th grade. As clearly stated in the essay this method assumes that the size of each entering class is relatively stable from year to year, as they tend to be in the established Success Academy schools. The results are similar to those of other approaches which find attrition rates approaching or exceeding 50% by the end of middle school.

“Success Academy, more specifically Eva Moscowitz, is at a crossroads—they can choose to cancel school, to protest, to walk over bridges, to travel to Albany, to buy TV ads. Or they can choose to be transparent and open and conduct an honest conversation about education, equity and access for all children.”

Categories Charter Schools, Data and Data Mining, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

How to Analyze False Claims about Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2014 //
164

An experienced researcher saw a story in the Economist about charter schools. It was, as is typical among news stories, incredibly naive. The writer didn’t ask the right questions. Maybe he already believed in the charter “miracle” story and didn’t ask any questions.

So my correspondent–who requires anonymity– decided that it would be helpful to reporters and members of the public to explain how to read stories about charter schools. Mainly it involves the ability to decipher false claims.

They do not have a “secret sauce,” the phrase once used by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to describe the Noble Network of Charter Schools, each of which is named to honor a very rich patron.

They do have a secret recipe, however, for manufacturing the illusion of success.

Be wise. Think critically. Read carefully.

Here is expert advice:

How to Read News Stories about Charter Schools

Reports and stories about charter schools are in the media every day. The majority of these stories praise charters, while often demeaning public schools. We propose that every reader of such stories ask the following questions before taking the claims of such articles seriously.

Does the story compare the demographics of the student population served by charter schools to the demographics of local public schools? Does it include data on the charter school attrition rate? Does it include data on how the students who leave the charters compare to students who leave public schools? Does it include numbers of students expelled? Does it include numbers of students suspended? Does the story focus exclusively on test scores? If so, has someone, with educational expertise, visited the school to determine if the school focuses on test prep at the expense of a rich curriculum? Are the test scores reported outside of school assessments such as the SAT/ACT or does the story only report test scores of exams that are proctored in-house? Does the story account for the fact that, due to the need to apply to the charter school, parents of the students at charters are, on average, likely to be more engaged in education than the parents of students at public schools? Does it exclusively or primarily cite reports funded by pro-charter or conservative think tanks? Does it include quotes from academic scholars or does it just cite charter school advocates? Does it identify advocates or simply call them “experts” or “researchers”? Does it compare the resources available to charter schools to those available to public schools? Let’s call this approach “identifying charters’ bogus statistics” or the ICBS strategy.

It grows tiresome to dispute every tendentious article written on charter schools.  But let’s see how the ICBS strategy would help us evaluate a sample story. The Economist recently ran an article praising charter schools and attacking Bill de Blasio for proposing to charge rent to charter schools that use public space in New York City.

The Economist presents the Noble Network of charter schools in Chicago as a paragon of charter school excellence. “Around 36% of the…children enrolled with Noble can expect to graduate from college, compared with 11%…city-wide.” What does the data actually tell us about the Noble Network?  As is, unfortunately, standard practice across many charter schools, the Noble Network does not serve equal proportions of the neediest students. In fact they serve 35% fewer English Language Learners and 22% fewer special education students than Chicago Public Schools. This lack of inclusivity extends to other areas too, such as their ban on a Gay Straight Alliance student group.

An op-ed by Congressman Danny Davis noted that the Noble Network suspends 51% of its students at least once during a school year. This includes suspending 88% of the African American students who attend its schools. It might be hard to understand why a school would want to suspend so many of its students…until you realize that this encourages students to leave. And it specifically encourages the more challenging students, the ones most likely to bring down test scores and college graduation rates, to depart. This is not the only such strategy they employ. One exposé revealed that the Noble Network’s “discipline system charges students $5 for minor behavior such as chewing gum, missing a button on their school uniform, or not making eye contact with their teacher, and up to $280 for required behavior classes. 90% of Noble students are low-income, yet if they can’t pay all fines, they are made to repeat the entire school year or prevented from graduating. No waivers are offered, giving many families no option but to leave the school.” The data show that this strategy works. The Noble Network loses over 30% of the students in each class that enters its schools.

As has become all too common, the public school district officials refuse to acknowledge these facts. The former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools told a reporter that he’d turn over data showing that charters don’t “have policies that systematically weed out weaker students.” But as the story notes “the district didn’t keep that promise. WBEZ did obtain an internal CPS memo. It’s titled “Memorandum on Charter School Myths.” The four-page report actually finds that traditional schools held onto more kids than charters did for the year CPS examined.”

The other set of Chicago charter schools praised by the Economist had their contract shortened from 3 years to 5 due to poor performance. Despite the Economist’s claim that “charters have worked well in Chicago,” the actual data show that charters are not working well. As reported by the Chicago Sun Times, “The overall passing rate at two city charter franchises — Aspira and North Lawndale — was below the city average at every campus those two groups operate. Four other chains — Betty Shabazz, Perspectives, North Lawndale and Chicago International — saw the majority of their campuses with over-all pass rates that were below the citywide average.” Even the Walton Foundation-funded CREDO report cited by the Economist, which did not account for the numbers-gaming we noted above, showed mixed outcomes by Chicago’s charters. “In reading, 21 percent of charters performed worse than traditional schools, while 20 percent did better and 59 percent showed no difference. In math, 21 percent of charters did worse, 37 percent performed better and 42 percent showed no difference. Black and Hispanic students continued to lag behind white students in reading, and received “no significant benefit or loss from charter school attendance” compared to students in traditional schools.”

And let us not even mention Chicago’s largest charter chain, called UNO, which received a state grant of $98 million to build new campuses. Its politically powerful CEO–who was co-chair of Mayor Emanuel’s election committee–resigned after revelations in the media of multiple conflicts of interest in the award of contracts and jobs.

But enough about Chicago. The Economist also claimed that “New York City’s charter schools generally outperform their neighbouring district schools.” The data do not support this. According to the data set on the New York City Department of Education’s website, when compared to similar elementary and middle schools, charter schools rank at the 46th percentile in English growth, the 41st percentile in English growth for students who start with scores in the bottom third, the 53rd percentile in Math growth and the 45th percentile in Math growth for students who start with scores in the bottom third. Not only do they not outperform they don’t even match. This past year charter schools saw bigger drops in performance on the Common Core exams than public schools. Additionally charter schools performed worse on average than public schools in English and the same as public schools in math. As do Chicago charter schools, New York City charter schools have extremely high suspension and alarming attrition rates. In fact a recent analysis by the NYC Independent Budget Office found that charter schools selectively attrite students with lower test scores. “The results are revealing. Among students in charter schools, those who remained in their kindergarten schools through third grade had higher average scale scores in both reading (English Language Arts) and mathematics in third grade compared with those who had left for another New York City public school.”

A school from the Success Academy network was singled out for praise by the Economist. What does Success Academy do? They seem to employ the same strategies as the Noble Network in Chicago. In one neighborhood, Success Academy serves 18% fewer impoverished students, 9% fewer English Language Learners, and 13% fewer team taught and self-contained special education students (at a negligible .01% of their student population) than the local public schools. What’s worse Success Academy seems to push out the few special education students that they do admit. Success Academy suspends students at rates well in excess of other public schools in the same district. According to one newspaper report “at Harlem Success 1… 22% of pupils got suspended at least once… That’s far above the 3% average for regular elementary schools in its school district.”

Success Academy has very, very high attrition rates. The data show that over half of each entering class disappears over time. The 2012 data reveal that there were 482 third grade students tested in 2012 but only 244 students were tested at the highest tested grade. The 2013 data reveal that 487 third grade students were tested in 2013, but only 220 students were tested at the schools’ highest testing grade. Assuming similarly sized entering classes at each school and only looking at schools for which we have data across years (i.e. excluding schools that have had only one testing grade which would not permit comparative analysis) over 55% of Success Academy’s students are lost from each grade. Success Academy’s strategy for “success” seems to be to get rid of students who are identified as not succeeding.

The Economist cites a report by “the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank” on the rent question. Bruce Baker, of Rutgers University, has debunked that report. His conclusion, “it makes little sense for the district to heavily subsidize schools [i.e. charters] serving less needy children that already have access to more adequate resources. It makes even less sense to make these transfers of facilities space (or the value associated with that space) as city class sizes mushroom and as the state indicates the likelihood that its contributions will continue falling well short of past promises.”

Using the ICBS strategy it appears that the claims made by the Economist are unsupported by evidence. Stories like this will continue to be published but, armed with the ICBS strategy, readers should not fall prey to such propaganda.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Eva Moskowitz Plans to Fight Mayor de Blasio in Albany

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
136

Eva Moskowitz, the combative CEO of the Success Academy charter school chain (previously called Harlem Success Academy), anticipates that new Mayor Bill de Blasio may charge rent for her use of public space or may deny some of the co-locations offered in the waning days of the Bloomberg administration. Moskowitz enjoyed preferential treatment when Michael Bloomberg was mayor and had immediate access to Chancellor Joel Klein. Those days are over, as de Blasio has pledged to review all future co-locations and to consult with local communities.

Moskowitz issued a statement promising to take her battle for more schools and more funding to Albany, where she has friends in the Legislature and in Governor Cuomo. According to a report by Geoffrey Decker in Chalkbeat, charter advocates–some of whom are on the board of Eva’s chain–have contributed more than $800,000 to Cuomo. Eva will bring busloads of students to Albany with her to impress the Legislature, something that no public school would be permitted to do. In addition, a charter advocacy group called Families for Excellent Schools will mount a multi-million dollar TV campaign to block de Blasio’s efforts to rein in the charter movement.

Charters in New York City enroll 6% of the pupil population. Many have smaller proportions of students with disabilities and English language learners than public schools, and some charters are known for suspending or expelling students they don’t want, then not accepting new students to take their places.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization

“Democrats for Education Reform” Oppose de Blasio Plan to Fund Universal Pre-K

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2014 //
53

This morning, Joe Williams, the executive director of the hedge-fund managers’ “education reform” front group (“Democrats for Education Reform”) published an opinion piece in the New York Daily News opposing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to fund universal pre-kindergarten by taxing incomes over $500,000. As Mayor de Blasio has pointed out, the incremental tax to pay for U-PK would be the equivalent of a soy latte at Starbucks every day, about $1,000 a year for the city’s wealthiest residents. But the hedge fund managers say no. This may explain why the California Democratic party called out DFER last year and urged them to stop calling themselves “Democrats” when they are fronts for Republicans and corporate interests. Imagine someone who has a take home pay of half a million a year unwilling to pay another $1,000 to ensure that every child in the city has pre-kindergarten class. How embarrassing for DFER. Why not just call themselves Hedge Funders for Education Reform and drop the pretense. They are making war on the signature proposal of the city’s wildly popular new progressive mayor.

 

The Alliance for Quality Education, which advocates on behalf of the city’s children, fired off a press release:

 

 

“On Pre-K, Parents Blast Corporate Education Front-Groups for ‘Putting the Rich First’ Over Students 

 

NY, NY— Following the Daily News op-ed by DFER’s Joe Williams, a national leader in the education corporate reform agenda, which revealed they are advocating against Mayor de Blasio’s tax plan to fund pre-K, Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education, & Celia Green from New York Communities for Change released the following statement:

 

“Shame on the corporate front-groups for trying to get in the way of pre-K for New York City. They are simply ‘putting the rich first’ and shortchanging four year olds. The best plan would be to combine both the mayor’s and the governor’s plans—that would serve more kids in New York City and throughout the state. Mr. Williams is misrepresenting the facts when he says the Governor’s plan is more equitable; there is nothing equitable about leaving tens of thousands of four year olds out in the cold on pre-K. Every single child deserves to have access to high-quality pre-K, not just the rich who can afford to pay for it,” said Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education. 

 

“The corporate reform agenda was rejected in New York City, and now their front-group spokesman is cozying up to the Governor and millionaires. Opposing the Mayor’s plan because it will slightly raise taxes is out-of-touch with not only families across the city, but with the countless wealthy individuals in the city who support the Mayor’s plan. The bottom line is that I’m tired of protesting cuts to programs or living in fear as to whether they will still be there next year– that’s why we need a reliable funding stream through a small tax increase on the wealthy,” said Celia Green, parent leader with New York Communities for Change.

 

Categories Bill de Blasio, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Democrats for Education Reform, New York City

Another Step Forward by Chancellor Farina in New York City

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2014 //
27

New York City’s Chancellor Carmen Farina is step-by-step reassembling the essentials of a functional public school system after a dozen years of Mayor Bloomberg’s “creative disruption.” The Bloomberg regime quickly established its preference for inexperience over experience and its distaste for veteran educators. It created a “Leadership Academy” to turn teachers with one or two years of classroom experience into principals. The graduates of the Leadership Academy were held in low regard by the experienced teachers whom they commanded. Many got into major trouble. Yet the media loved to tell the stories of whiz kids who became principal at the age of 26 or 28, bypassing the time that others spent learning to teach, winning the respect of their colleagues, then learning the ropes as an assistant principal.

Now Chancellor Farina has issued new regulations: experience is a pre-condition for a school principal and assistant principal. What a novel idea! Another setback for corporate reform.

AMENDMENTS TO CHANCELLOR’S REGULATION C-30—REGULATION GOVERNING THE SELECTION, ASSIGNMENT AND APPOINTMENT OF PRINCIPALS AND ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS

I. Description of the subject and purpose of the proposed item under consideration.

Chancellor’s Regulation C-30 governs the selection, assignment and appointment of principals and assistant principals. The following amendments are proposed:

· Principals must have at least seven years of prior full-time pedagogic experience to be eligible for selection and appointment. Qualifying prior pedagogic positions for principals are: classroom teacher, dean, instructional coach, guidance counselor, school social worker, assistant principal, teacher assigned, education administrator, and all pedagogic supervisory titles contained in the collective bargaining agreement between the CSA and the DOE.
· Effective for the 2014-2015 school year, assistant principals must have at least five years of prior full-time pedagogic experience to be eligible for selection and appointment. Qualifying prior pedagogic positions for assistant principals are: classroom teacher, dean, instructional coach, guidance counselor, school social worker, teacher assigned, education administrator, and all pedagogic supervisory titles contained in the collective bargaining agreement between the CSA and the DOE.
· Applicants with fewer than seven years of prior pedagogic experience are eligible to be evaluated for admission to the Principal Candidate Pool, but are not eligible to apply for principal positions unless they have at least seven years of prior pedagogic experience.
· Interim acting principals must have at least seven years of prior full-time pedagogic experience to be eligible for assignment.
· Effective for the 2014-2015 school year, interim acting assistant principals must have at least five years of prior full-time pedagogic experience to be eligible for assignment.
· The Office of Leadership will promulgate guidance regarding the prior pedagogic experience requirements for principals and assistant principals.
· Assistant principal, principal and executive principal appointments in community school district schools are subject to rejection for cause by the Senior Deputy Chancellor or his/her designee on behalf of the Chancellor.
· Interim-acting principals must be in the Principal Candidate Pool, except in exigent circumstances, when the Senior Deputy Chancellor or his/her designee may authorize assignment of an interim-acting principal prior to completion of an evaluation for the Principal Candidate Pool.
· Requests for waivers from the Chancellor regarding the new pedagogic experience requirements shall be directed to the Senior Deputy Chancellor or his/her designee, 52 Chambers St., Room 320, New York, NY 10007.
· Attachment No. 1 (members of Level I Committee) has been revised for clarity.

II. Information regarding where the full text of the proposed item may be obtained.

The full text of the amendments to the regulation, and the regulation in its entirety, can be found on the main page of the website of the Panel for Educational Policy: http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/leadership/PEP/publicnotice/2013-2014/April9PEPRegulations

III. Name, office, address, email and telephone number of the city district representative, knowledgeable about the item under consideration, from whom information may be obtained concerning the item.

Name: Marina Cofield
Office: Office of Leadership
Address: 52 Chambers Street, Room 315, New York, NY 10007
Email: RegulationC-30@schools.nyc.gov
Phone: 212-346-5211

IV. Date, time and place of the Panel for Educational Policy meeting at which the Panel will vote on the proposed item.

April 9, 2014 at 6:00 p.m.
Prospect Heights Campus
883 Classon Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11225

Categories Bill de Blasio, Farina, Carmen, New York City

Chalkbeat: NYC Charter Principal Has a Long History of Faking His Résumé

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2014 //
19

Chalkbeat reports that the principal of a NYC charter school has gone from one position to the next, touting fake credentials.

Despite the fact that he had been forced out of other schools, despite the fact that he made numerous other unsubstantiated claims about jobs he had held, he was hired to run a charter for transfer students, a school for students at risk of not graduating.

His résumé is impressive:

“He claimed to have been a senior adviser to Barack Obama as a senator and a consultant to Hillary Rodham Clinton. He said he had served as a deputy chief of staff for Carrie Meek, then a U.S. Representative. He claimed to have a doctoral degree. And he said he was the principal of a school in Washington, D.C. where he was actually a teacher….”

“From Feb. 2009 to June 2010, Thomas worked as a program director for Phase 4 Learning Center, a nonprofit that operates alternative education centers in Pennsylvania. The company’s CEO, Terrie Suica-Reed, said that Thomas’s deception while working for her company “was enough that he had to be released from all duties and all association with Phase 4.”
“I would listen to the warning signs,” Suica-Reed said.

In New York City, Thomas served as a “principal-in-residence” for New Visions for Public Schools from March to June 2011. The nonprofit then tapped Thomas to be the principal of its first high school, the New Visions Charter High School for the Humanities.
New Visions spokesman Tim Farrell said that Thomas was a part of the school’s “start-up team” but left before it opened that fall, and would not comment further on his departure.

The article suggests that charters may have to e more careful about hiring principals.

Of course, when public funds flow to unregulated schools that are not required to comply with state law governing credentials and qualifications, problems will arise.

Categories Charter Schools, New York City, Principals

Mark Naison on the Bloomberg Policy of Putting Charters First

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2014 //
38

In this post, Mark Naison explains why so many parents seek to place their children in charters in New York City. Fr 12 years, the Bloomberg administration showered preferential treatment on the charters and ignored the needs of the public schools tat enroll 94% of the city’s children.

He predicts that the policies of Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina will reverse some or most of the damage done to public schools by the policies of the past dozen years:

He writes:

Charter School Growth, Bloomberg Style, Creates Dilemma for the de Blasio Administration- A Special Report to BK Nation
January 31, 2014

By Dr. Mark Naison

In today’s New York Post, an article appeared claiming that Charter School Applications in New York City were 56 percent ahead of what they were at this time last year, putting pressure on the de Blasio administration to re-evaluate its efforts to slow charter expansion.

Those numbers are REAL. They reflect the desperation of inner city and working class parents who hope to find high performing, safe schools for their children and see charters as the best hope for that.

However, they are making that judgment, based on what they observe in their own neighborhoods, not because of the inherent superiority of charter schools, but because the Bloomberg Administration rigged the game by giving huge preference to charter schools, both substantively and symbolically, and using charters not as a strategy to improve public education in the city, but as a wedge to privatize it and smash the influence of the city’s teachers union.

The challenge of the de Blasio administration is see what happens when the competition is even, and when public schools are given the resources, encouragement and support charters were given in the Bloomberg years. When and if that happens, the demand for charters is likely to decrease as parents see public schools in their neighborhood improve dramatically and innovative new public schools open in their neighborhoods.

Under the Bloomberg administration, aided and abetted by police systems of the U.S. and NY State Departments of Education, charter schools were consciously selected over public schools as the preferred alternative when low performing public schools were closed. This preference was manifested in several important ways:

• Charters were given facilities in public schools rent free.

• In schools where they were co-located with public schools, the charters were given preferential access to auditoriums, gymnasiums, laboratories, and often put in the most desirable locations in the buildings.

• Although charters selected their students by lottery, they were allowed to weed out students who had disciplinary problems, or who performed poorly on standardized tests. As a result, according to Ben Chapman of the Daily News, only 6 percent of charter students are ELL students and 9 percent special needs students, far lower than the city average for public schools.

• When you count space, charters received more city funding than public schools, and when you add to that private contributions that they solicited, charters spent significantly more per student than public schools.

• Community organizations and universities willing to start new schools were encouraged by the NYC Department of Education to start charter schools rather than public schools.

These preferences had an absolutely devastating effect on inner city public schools, which were in the same neighborhood as the charters. In the case of schools who had charter co-location, it led to humiliating exclusion from school facilities which they once had access to, leaving their students starved of essential resources. But in the case of all inner city public schools, it led to a drain of high performing students, whose parents put them in charters, and an influx of ELL students, special needs students and students pushed out of charters for disciplinary problems, taxing those schools resources and making it much more difficult for them to perform well on standardized tests. The school closing policies of the Bloomberg administration added to the stress on those already hard pressed schools, forcing their staffs to work under the threat of closure and exile to the infamous “rubber room” for teachers who were in excess when schools were closed.

What occurred was a “tale of two school systems” within inner city neighborhoods- one favored, given preferential access to scare resources, hailed as the “savior” of inner city youth; the others demonized, stigmatized, deprived of resources, threatened with closure and deluged with students charter schools did not want.

If you were a parent, which school would you want to send your child to?

But what happens when the game is no longer rigged? When charter schools have to pay rent? When they can’t push out ELL and Special needs students? When facilities in co-located schools are fairly distributed? When schools are no longer given letter grades and threatened with closing, but are given added resources when they serve students with greater needs? When universities and community organizations are encouraged to start innovative public schools, not just create charters?

If all those things happen, and I expect some of them will during the next few years of a de Blasio/Farina Department of Education, then public schools in the inner city will gradually improve, charters in those neighborhoods will become less selective, and students, on the whole, will have enhanced choice and opportunity because there will be more good schools in the city.

The current hunger to enroll students in charter schools is understandable, given the policies pursued by the Bloomberg Administration, but those policies, which undermined public education, did not enhance opportunity for all students, and pitted parent against parent and school against school in a competition for scarce resources.

The de Blasio policy of restoring public schools to public favor is a sound one, and should be pursued carefully, humanely, and with respect for the hunger of parents and students of New York City for good educational options

Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
Co-Founder, Badass Teachers Association

Categories Bill de Blasio, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Farina, Carmen, New York City

Jon Stewart Interviews Bill de Blasio: Hilarious!

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2014 //
2

This is a fabulous interview of Bill de Blasio by Jon Stewart.

Bill is funny, smart, terrific!

What a change!

And watch to see how great it is to live in Brooklyn.

Laughter, not hectoring.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Humor, New York City
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