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New York: State Will Investigate Whether Yeshivas Provide an Adequate Secular Education

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2018 //
48

Despite opposition from the politically powerful bloc of Orthodox Jews in New York state, the state and the city of New York will begin investigations of yeshivas. Graduates of the yeshivas have complained that they did not get an education that prepared them to live in the modern world. Defenders of the yeshivas claim that these investigations violate the separation of church and state. It is an interesting paradox, because the same schools would be delighted to get tax credits for tuition, and Governor Cuomo has tried in the past to court their votes by offering tax credits. Until the last election, one representative of the Orthodox Jewish community held the decisive vote in the State Senate, blocking all efforts to monitor the quality of education offered there. It is likely that states with vouchers and voucher-like programs will face the same scrutiny if their critics ever regain political office.

In parts of New York City, there are students who can barely read and write in English and have not been taught that dinosaurs once roamed Earth or that the Civil War occurred.

Some of them are in their last year of high school.

That is the claim made by a group of graduates from ultra-Orthodox Jewish private schools called yeshivas, and they say that startling situation has been commonplace for decades.

Over three years ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration opened an investigation into a lack of secular education at yeshivas that serve about 57,000 students in the city, but the probe essentially stalled almost as soon as it began. The reason, advocates say, is the city’s politicians, including the mayor, are fearful of angering the Orthodox Jewish community that represents a crucial voting bloc in major elections.

Then the state stepped in with the most significant action yet in the probe. MaryEllen Elia, the state education commissioner, released updated rules on Nov. 20 dictating how nonpublic schools like yeshivas are regulated and what students in those schools should learn, with consequences for schools that do not comply.

The guidance could force yeshivas to change how they operate and what they teach. It will also hold Mr. de Blasio’s feet to the fire, as his administration is forced to ramp up its investigation into the schools.

“There’s no time to waste,” said Naftuli Moster, the founder of Young Advocates for Fair Education, which pushes for more secular instruction in yeshivas. “New York City has already been dragging its feet for three years.”

The city’s yeshiva probe began in 2015, after Mr. Moster’s group filed a complaint claiming that scores of students — boys, in particular — graduate from ultra-Orthodox yeshivas unprepared for work or higher education, with little exposure to nonreligious classes like science and history. Instead, some yeshiva graduates say, students spend most school days studying Jewish texts. Younger boys sometimes attend about 90 minutes of nonreligious classes at the end of the day, a city report found.

A coalition of prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis and community members have accused critics of yeshivas of attacking religious freedoms.

“This is a smear campaign against our community and what it stands for,” said David Niederman, a rabbi and the president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. “If some people are not happy with what they are taught, it is up to them to take action.”

Avi Schick, a lawyer for Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools, a group formed after the 2015 investigation was opened, said, “The intrusive set of requirements imposed by the state demolishes the wall between church and state that politicians have hid behind for decades.”

This past summer, the organization, known as Pearls, handed out 10,000 posters and bumper stickers emblazoned with the hashtag #ProtectYeshivas to parents of children in Orthodox Jewish schools.
The state’s guidance places the burden of investigating the schools on Mr. de Blasio’s administration.

City officials are now required to visit all nonpublic schools by the end of 2021 — which will coincide with the end of Mr. de Blasio’s second term — and visit each school every five years after that. If officials find that the schools are not providing an education that is “substantially equivalent” to what public schools offer, the city can give schools more time and resources to add secular teaching. If that does not work, the city can withhold some funding it provides private schools…

Still, enormous obstacles remain for those who want the city to shine a spotlight on yeshivas.

Few if any politicians in Albany or downstate are willing to anger the Orthodox political establishment. Urgent problems in the city’s 1,800 public schools — including ballooning student homelessness and entrenched racial segregation — will take precedence over issues in religious schools that the city does not run.

Addendum: Yeshivas receive extensive public funding from the state and federal governments.

This from Leonie Haimson:

“These schools receive hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding, through federal programs like Title I and Head Start and state programs like Academic Intervention Services and universal pre-K. For New York City’s yeshivas, $120 million comes from the state-funded, city-run Child Care and Development Block Grant subsidy program: nearly a quarter of the allocation to the entire city.”

Categories New York, New York City, Religion, Separation of church and state

Chalkbeat NY: What Are “Progressive Charter Leaders” to Do Now That Their Republican Allies Are Out of Power?

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2018 //
13

This article in Chalkbeat, sad to say, illustrates the inherent bias of a publication funded by the charter industry’s magnates.

Here are the facts: Charter Schools in New York State derived their political power from their alliance with hedge fund managers, Wall Street, the Republican Party, and Governor Cuomo (who relies on hedge fund managers and Wall Street for campaign contributions). In the midterms, the Republican Party and a group of Democrats who voted with the Republicans in the State Senate, were ousted.

Consequently, the Assembly and the State Senate will be controlled by progressive Democrats who are opposed to charter schools. In other words, the charter sector benefitted financially by their partnership with reactionary Republicans (and a half dozen Democrats who voted as if they were Republicans).

So Chalkbeat gives its readers an article posing the dilemma of “progressive charter leaders,” who don’t want to suffer because of their longstanding success at working with the Republicans who lost.

The article doesn’t explain in what ways these charters are “progressive.” Are they non-union, like most charters? Are they integrated? Do they take the kids with the greatest needs? Or are they just lobbying to keep a modicum of power in Albany?

The article uncritically states that there is a “waiting list” of 80,000. Where did that number come from? Was it audited? By whom? Or was it simply manufactured to claim a need that may or may not exist?

The new class of state senators ran against Democrats and Republicans who were funded by the charter lobby. The new Democratic leader of the State Senate is Andrea Stewart-Cousins. She was the target of a vile, racist attack last year by billionaire Daniel S. Loeb, who at the time was chair of the board of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain. He said Senator Stewart-Cousins, who is African-American, had done “more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.”

Charter schools aligned themselves with the Trump-DeVos-Walton-Koch view of school choice. Elections have consequences.

Journalists should strive to avoid advocacy. That’s the realm of the editorial and opinion pages. Not journalists.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York, New York City, Privatization

Jeff Bryant: Voters Reject the Rightwing Push for School Privatization

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2018 //
13

Jeff Bryant reviews the victories for public education in the last elections.

The big victories were the overwhelming defeat of voucher legislation in Arizona and the Tony Thurmond’s election over the charter lobby’s candidate Marshall Tuck in the Califotnia race for state school superintendent, despite Tuck’s more than 2-1 funding advantage.

And there were many more victories, especially in governors’ races.

In gubernatorial races across the Midwest, Democrats ran and won with strong oppositional messages against school privatization.

In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer won a governor’s seat formerly occupied by Rick Snyder after campaigning to “end the [Betsy] DeVos agenda in Michigan,” close for-profit charter schools in the state, and propose additional oversights for charters.

In Minnesota, Democratic challenger for an open governor’s seat Tim Walz, a former public high school geography teacher and football coach, pledged to block any proposed voucher programs. He won decisively.

In Illinois, Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker defeated incumbent Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, while pledging to end the state’s education tax credit voucher program, which already diverts public tax dollars to pay for private school tuition for 5,600 students….

In what is perhaps the most startling of charter school turnarounds, midterm elections in New York took down a longstanding coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the state Senate who colluded with charter advocate Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo to expand these schools and keep them relatively regulation-free.

As New York City public school art teacher and citizen journalist Jake Jacobs reports for the Progressive, a faction of eight Democratic state senators calling themselves the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) had for years shared power and donors with Senate Republicans to work with Governor Cuomo in maintaining a “favored status” for charter schools in the state.

In September primaries, six grassroots-backed Democratic candidates ousted IDC members, and then, in turn, handily beat their Republican opponents in November. Despite being vastly outspent by the Republicans, the insurgent Democrats pressed their cases to stop charter schools from taking over space in public school buildings and to block attempts to lift the cap on the numbers of charters that can operate in the state. Most supported a moratorium on new charter schools proposed by the NAACP.

Because of victories by these insurgent Democrats, who will insist on more scrutiny of charter schools, Jacobs foresees “a new landscape” in the state legislature “where evidence and research matter more than Albany’s rampant ‘pay-for-play’ arrangements” that have given charters the upper hand.

Similarly, in red states where teacher rebellions have begun to turn the tables on the school privatization industry, public school advocates are seeing a transformed political landscape where resistance is not only possible but winnable.

After midterm elections in Arizona, “we will have the most balanced state legislature since the 1980s,” says Beth Lewis, “with roughly half of the legislators having declared full support for fully funded public schools.”

Categories Arizona, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, New York, Privatization, Resistance

Jake Jacobs: Voters in New York Oust Charter Supporters from State Senate

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2018 //
8

Jake Jacobs describes the dramatic ouster of fake Democrats from the State Senate and a changed landscape in New York.

Until the last election, Governor Andrew Cuomo worked closely with an odd coalition of Tepublicans and fake Democrats in the State Senate to give charter schools whatever they wanted. Cuomo collected millions of dollars from hedge fund managers and Wall Street who love charter schools.

The so-called Independent Democratic Conference caucused with Republicans to assure Republican Control of the State Senate.

The new State Senators are anti-charter and anti-standardized testing.

Perhaps just as significant as the Ocasio-Cortez “earthquake” was the September 13th aftershock, where six other insurgent, grassroots-backed New York candidates won primaries in State Senate races against members of the former Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a controversial group of eight breakaway lawmakers who shared power, perks—and donors—with senate Republicans for over seven years.

All six “No IDC” challengers handily beat their Republican opponents in the general election November 6, including Alessandra Biaggi, a former legal counsel in the Governor Andrew Cuomo administration who ran on the promise to “stop siphoning money to privately run charter schools” and a call to prevent charters from expanding in New York.

Despite being outspent, Biaggi defeated Jeff Klein, the ringleader of the IDC, who funneled upwards of $700,000 in charter industry PAC money to IDC members. Working with Republicans, Klein repeatedly blocked funding for needy public schools while dramatically increasing per-pupil spending for charters. A thirteen year incumbent, Klein lost 54-46 percent, out-hustled by Biaggi who attended public schools in Pelham before hitting the Ivy league, and at thirty-two years old still owes over $180,000 in student debt.

Defeating another IDC member awash in charter PAC money was progressive Robert Jackson, a longtime New York City Councilman who was an original lead plaintiff in the original 1993 Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit seeking increased funding for impoverished schools.

A fierce critic of school privatization, Jackson is eager to take on “groups such as StudentsFirst who push a non-transparent, corporate agenda that makes money off of children’s backs, strips schools and districts of resources, and undermines public education,” his chief of staff Johanna Garcia tells me in an email. In 2011, Jackson sued the city to stop charter school co-locations, or the takeover of space in public school buildings. He has also been a staunch supporter of the opt-out movement, championing legislation in the New York City Council to reduce standardized testing.

Likely to have a profound impact in Albany, Senator-elect Jackson’s position on standardized testing is resolute: “The sooner and farther away we move from standardized testing, the quicker we can focus on supporting learning environments that are responsive and include teaching critical thinking skills, small class sizes, arts and science programs, recess, and funding for resources, social services and enrichment opportunities.”

In Queens, another progressive Democrat to unseat a pro-charter IDC member is Jessica Ramos, a former aide to Mayor Bill de Blasio with a background as a labor organizer and immigration activist. Also a public school product, Ramos is a mom of two who “cannot wait to opt-out” when her oldest son enters third grade next year. Seeing the stress and waste of the testing regime, she “absolutely” backs legislation to eliminate state testing mandates.

Ramos opposes diverting funding from public schools to charters who she sees pushing out high need students in order to preserve their “brand.” Like Robert Jackson, Ramos supports the NAACP moratorium on new charter schools as well as the longtime fight for equitable public school funding.

Also in Queens, former New York City Comptroller John Liu defeated former IDC state senator Tony Avella, who in 2009, claimed to be adamantly anti-charter. But in 2014, Avella joined the IDC and voted for budgets that increased funding for charter co-locations and school choice. Senator-elect Liu wants to prevent the growth of charters and make them pay rent to the city, while also reducing the emphasis on standardized testing.

Cuomo won’t be able to squash progressive legislation anymore. There’s a new posse in Albany.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York, Privatization, Standardized Testing

Please Vote for John Mannion, the AP Biology Teacher Who Could Flip Control of the New York State Senate

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2018 //
1

John Mannion, an AP biology teacher in Syracuse, is running for an open State Senate seat that has been held by Republicans for half a century.

The district voted for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, so Mannion has a good chance to win.

His victory could provide the single vote needed to flip control of the State Senate, which Republicans now Control. Republicans favor charter schools and using test scores to evaluate teachers. Cuomo has preferred divided control, so he won’t have to veto progressive legislation. He lets the Republican legislators do it for him.

Mannion pledges to focus on honesty, ethics, and a fair economy. The legislature could sure use more ethics. The last leader of the Republican State Senate, Dean Skelos, was sentenced to four years in jail for pressuring state contractors to create no-show jobs for his son. The leader of the Democratic Assembly, Sheldon Silver, was convicted of accepting bribes and was sentenced to seven years in prison, which he has appealed.

Mannion, a 50-year-old father of three, is one of about 1,500 educators—current and retired—running for office in this election. They are running as Democrats and Republicans. State legislatures and Congress need Educator voices, because they are making decisions that affect teachers. They need experienced teachers at the table.

This article in Huffington Post tells you more about John Mannion. He has been teaching for 25 years. He knows science.

Please vote for John Mannion! Send a teacher to Albany!

Categories New York, Politics, Teachers

New York: Charter Backers Drop $130,000 into Cuomo Campaign

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2018 //
3

The New York Daily News reported that friends of the charter school industry dropped $130,000 into Cuomo’s well-funded campaign as it comes to a close. Cuomo is comfortably ahead in the polls, but he always like to raise more money than he needs. Charter supporters are worried that Democrats might win control of the State Senate, which has supported charter schools. So they need to cement their ties with Cuomo–with lots of dollars.

Cuomo, a charter school backer who took heat on the issue during his Democratic primary against actress Cynthia Nixon, received three of his biggest donations the past three weeks from individuals with strong ties to the industry, including $25,000 each from Jim Walton and Carrie Walton Penner, the son and granddaughter, respectively of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
The governor also received $40,000 from Sonia Jones, a yoga booster for youth and wife of billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, a big backer of charter schools.

He also received $15,000 from the Great Public Schools PAC created by Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, and $15,100 from New Yorkers for Putting Students First, a pro-charter political action committee.

Billy Easton, executive director of the teacher union-backed Alliance for Quality Education, knocked the donations to Cuomo.
“Here we go again with Andrew Cuomo and his pay-to-play relationship with charter schools,” Easton said. “The Wall Street charter donors lost big when the Independent Democrats got wiped out in the primary, they are investing in Andrew Cuomo now in hopes that he will be the one person still carrying their water in Albany.”

Cuomo, according to his latest disclosure filing made public Monday morning, has $6.75 million left in his campaign account after spending $3.1 million, largely on TV ads, the past three weeks and raising $638,687 during the same period.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Ethics, New York

Ross Barkan: Cuomo Is Back to His Divide-and-Conquer Strategy

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2018 //
5

This article by Ross Barkan reminds us of why Andrew Cuomo never won the hearts of progressives and never will. He really is not a progressive, and he has many tricks up his sleeve to prevent unified Democratic control of the Legislature. He is now playing urban Democrats against suburban Democrats. He will pull any trick to foil his arch-enemy Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City. He persuaded suburban Democrats to pledge unity, based on the phony claim that the Big City doesn’t pay its “fair share” of the costs of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. As the article shows, NYC does pay a fair share, and Cuomo likes to pretend he is not in charge of the agency, which is currently struggling with an aging infrastructure and poor service. Fixing it is Cuomo’s job, but he is a shirker.

Correction: New York State teachers’ union did not endorse Cuomo or anyone else on the Democratic primary. However, it remains a fact that Cuomo has repeatedly insulted teachers and imposed a draconian (and failed) teacher evaluation plan. Cuomo still loves charter schools because they are the hobby of Wall Street, and their billionaire backers support Cuomo.

He periodically reminds us who he is and what he cares about.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, DFER, Education Industry, New York, New York City, Privatization

New York: Common Core Produces Massive Failure in Writing

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2018 //
146

Remember all the bold promises about Common Core? Remember the claims that it would increase achievement for all students and close the achievement gap? That’s what David Coleman (architect of the Common Core and now president of the College Board, maker of the SAT) claimed, along with a plethora of Gates-funded advocates for Common Core.

Never happened. National NAEP scores flatlined, and scores for the poorest kids dropped.

Here is the latest from New York, which embraced the Common Core wholeheartedly.

Since the introduction of the Common Core, the proportion of students in New York who scored zero on the state writing tests has doubled. In addition, the achievement gap has grown.


An alarming number of NYC students have scored three or more “zeroes” for their writing answers on the statewide English exams, a new study reveals.

On the English Language Arts exams between 2013 and 2016, in addition to multiple-choice questions, students had to read nine or 10 short stories or texts, then write responses aimed at showing their ability to think critically and cite evidence to support their answers.

A score of zero (out of 2 to 4 possible points per question) means a student wrote something “totally inaccurate,” “unintelligible,” or “indecipherable.”

“Kids were stupified by these questions,” Fred Smith, a former test analyst for the city Department of Education, told The Post.

Smith and Robin Jacobowitz, the director of educational projects at the Benjamin Center, a research unit of SUNY New Paltz, were forced to use the Freedom of Information Law to obtain the data for their report titled, “Tests are Turning our Children into Zeroes: A Focus on Failing.”

Of about 78,000 NYC third-graders, they found the number who scored zeroes on three or more written answers doubled from 10,696 (14 percent) in 2012 to 21,464 (28 percent) in 2013, when the state tests were redesigned to fit the tougher Common Core standards.

But in the next three years, city third-graders — who were taught nothing but Common Core curriculum since kindergarten — still racked up zeroes at the same high rate, the study found.

The percentage with three or more zeroes on the ELA exam was still 28 percent in 2014, 29 percent in 2015, and 27 percent in 2016, the last year data was available.
That year, the state eliminated time limits, but the effect on zeroes was slight.

“We can’t say this is just kids getting used to the Common Core curriculum. This is all they’ve ever known,” Jacobowitz said. “It did not get better over time.”

What’s worse, the racial achievement gap widened. In 2013, the number of black kids scoring three or more zeroes was 10 percent higher than white kids. In 2016, the gap grew to 18 percent. The white/Hispanic gap grew from 11 percent to 20….

State officials denied the exams — which cost taxpayers $32 million in a five-year contract with testing vendor Pearson — were poorly designed.

“In general, zeroes would not imply a flaw in the test; rather, it would demonstrate students struggled to master the content being assessed,” a spokesperson said.

Another vendor, Questar, produced the exams for 2017 and 2018, given last spring, under a new, five-year $44.7 million contract.

The state has so far withheld data showing how many kids got zeroes on those test

Time for New York State to release the data for 2017 and 2018.

Be sure to read the study by Fred Smith and Robin Jacobowitz.

Categories Common Core, Failure, New York

Long Island Is the Opt-Out from Testing Epicenter of New York

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2018 //
14

The test results are in from last March-April in New York. 85% of all 718 school districts in the state did not meet the federally mandated 95% participation rate in the state tests.

18% of the 950,000 eligible students did not take the tests at all. That’s 210,000 students who said no.

Newsday, the main newspaper on Long Island, reports:

Long Island is opt-out central for New York, laying claim to 19 of the 20 school systems statewide with the highest numbers of students boycotting standardized tests, a Newsday analysis shows.

Upstate, the movement has gained a foothold, too, but still isn’t as popular as it is in Nassau and Suffolk counties, the review found.

The biggest boycotts draw students mostly from middle class communities in Suffolk. Comsewogue and Rocky Point, for example, had opt-out rates higher than 80 percent. Commack, Eastport-South Manor and Middle Country had rates of more than 65 percent.

Of 100 districts statewide with the highest numbers of test refusals, 70 are on the Island. All have opt-out rates of 45 percent or higher, according to the analysis. Statewide, opt-out rates averaged 18 percent. The average for the Nassau-Suffolk region stood about 50 percent.

Newsday reviewed the test results in English Language Arts and mathematics, released in late September by the state Education Department. More than 950,000 students in grades three though eight took the exams, while more than 210,000 opted out. Of those who boycotted the tests, more than 90,000 live on the Island.

The opt-out movement, now in its sixth year, appears most successful in middle class communities, which political experts attribute largely to close contacts there between parents and teachers. Many live in the communities; they have children in school and they carry weight with parents when they express doubt about the benefit of state exams. And educators belong to strong unions, which have pushed hard to keep student scores from being tied to mandatory teacher evaluations, the experts said.

The state offered threats and bribes, but to no avail.

Opt out is alive and well on Long Island and parts of upstate New York, driven by parents, not teachers.

Every year the eighth grade ages out. Every year, a new group of third graders is eligible. The fact that the movement has persisted and drawn roughly one-Fifth is a testament to parent power.

Why do parents opt out? They understand that the tests are not diagnostic and serve no purpose other than to compare their children to other children, a function of no value to the children.

Hats off to NYSAPE, New York State Allies for Public Education, which has led the opt out movement.

Categories Education Reform, New York, Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing, Testing

Leonie Haimson: False Boasting About Test Score Gains in New York City and New York State

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2018 //
17

Leonie Haimson demonstrates the disconnect between the Boasting of officials in New York City and State about test scores and the NAEP flatlines of the city and state.

To make matters worse, the state says that it is impossible to compare the scores between 2017 and 2018, because the test timing changed. But then the state and the city proceeded to boast about the “gains” between those years.

She adds:

“Here are some additional questions that I would have asked the Commissioner and/or the Mayor if I’d had the chance:

“How can NYSED or DOE or mayor claim progress has been made, if as clearly stated that as a result in the change in the tests, this year’s scores aren’t comparable to previous years?

“Why did they so radically change the scoring range, from a maximum of about 428 to about 651 this year?

“Why does the state no longer report scale scores in its summaries, rather than proficiency levels which are notoriously easy to manipulate?

“Where are the NYSED technical reports for 2016, 2017, and 2018 that could back up the reliability of the scoring and the scaling?

“Why was the public release of the scores delayed though schools have had student level scores t for a month?

“How were the state vs the city comparisons affected by the fact that opt out rates in the rest of the state averaged more than 18% while they were only about 4% here?

“Finally, how can either the state or the city claim that these tests are reliable or valid, when neither the scoring nor the trends have been matched on the NAEPs, in which NYC scores have NEVER equaled the state in any category and results for the state & city have fallen in 4th grade math and reading since 2013?

“Though the Mayor apparently tempered his tone at this afternoon’s press conference, according to Twitter he apparently claimed that he expects next year’s scores to show significant gains because those 3rd graders will have had the benefit of Universal preK.

“Sorry to say I won’t trust the state test results next year either. We will have take those scores with several handfuls of salt too — and wait for the 2019 NAEP scores to judge their reliability.“

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, New York, New York City, Testing
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