An Urgent Message from President of Philadelphia Fed of Teachers

    

	Philadelphia Federation of Teachers
	June 30, 2012
	Dear Legislator: On behalf of the 15,000  professional and paraprofessional members represented by our organization and employed by the Philadelphia Public Schools...dedicated, trained and experienced individuals into whose nurturing, development and care are entrusted daily throughout the academic year to nearly 205,00 children...I would like to clearly state our position on various legislative proposals and amendments coming up for a vote today. We oppose any charter schools and/or cyber charter school legislation or amendmendatory effort that fails, at a minimum, to require transparency, accountability and ethical standards in the organization, operation and administration of such taxpayer financed educational institutions.  Additionally, any statutory or regulatory requirements or evaluation protocols that apply to educators and/or administrators in school district operated, taxpayer funded, public schools must apply equally to educators and administrators in taxpayer funded charter and cyber charter schools.  Anything less is unfairly discriminatory to all involved...educators, students, administrators and taxpayers. We oppose any legislation that fails to fairly reform taxpayer funded charter and cyber charter schools funding formulas consistent with the recent report of Pennsylvania's Auditor General.  And, we are opposed to the direct payment of public school district allocated state funding to taxpayer funded charter and/or cyber charter schools, or any similar scheme that imposes a priority for such payments of allocated tax dollars to public school districts. We oppose any legislation that compromises the ability of already financially strapped school district operated schools to educate our children and/or compromises the right of taxpayers from controlling or even knowing how their tax dollars are being spent by private and quasi-private entities that receive taxpayer funding that is to be dedicated to educating our children. We further oppose any legislation that will permit and possibly even encourage the state to transfer students from one public school district to another, urban students to suburban and rural school districts or school district operated schools to taxpayer funded and privately operated schools. Finally, we are compelled to oppose any legislation that permits a statewide authorizer or renewal facility of charter and/or cyber charter schools, that strips citizens of their say, their local voice, vote and direct approval of how their local tax dollars will be spent and how their local school and community will operate. Thank you for your consideration of our organization's positions on these critical issues. Sincerely, Jerry Jordan, President

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers
1816 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
www.pft.org

Nashville Blues for Rejected Charter School

Segregation Fear Sinks Charter School

By STEPHANIE BANCHERO

Nashville school officials have rejected a proposal to open a charter school in a middle-class part of the city, highlighting a broader national battle over efforts by operators of such publicly financed, privately run schools to expand into more affluent areas.
The Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools board voted 7-2 Tuesday night to reject an application by Great Hearts Academies, a nonprofit that operates prep-school-like charter schools, for five new establishments.
The Arizona-based group planned to open its first Tennessee school in a middle- to upper-middle class area in west Nashville, after being invited by parents who either were unhappy with local public schools or said they favored choice in education.

Enlarge Image

Brian McCord for The Wall Street Journal

Nashville resident Jack Harrington, shown with his wife and two of his children, helped lead an effort to bring a charter school to the city.

The board denied the application because members worried that low-income parents wouldn't be able to easily transport their children across town to a school on the west side, meaning the plan could effectively cause "segregated schools," said Olivia Brown, spokeswoman for the district.
"Rather than enhance diversity in the district, this would send us in the opposite direction," said Edward Kindall, one of the board members who voted against the plan. "I went to segregated schools and this gets us dangerously close to separate but unequal."
The school board also approved, by votes of 9-0 and 8-1, two other charter schools Tuesday, both of which will cater mainly to low-income students. Mr. Kindall backed both schools.
Dan Scoggin, chief executive of Great Hearts Academies, said the school would have been open to all students, and that his organization planned to build other schools elsewhere in the city.
"It's really sad and depressing that the school board is not ready to accept broad reforms that offer parents—all parents—a great alternative," he said. "We have a great record of success and they have deprived parents of that option."
Great Hearts Academies might appeal the case to the state board of education, he said.
Charter schools have long been seen as an alternative for low-income and minority children stuck in underperforming traditional public schools. Of the approximately 5,000 charter schools nationwide, only about 20% are in the suburbs, while 51% are in urban areas, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
But as the charter movement expands, and more middle-class parents become disenchanted with local public schools, charter operators have pushed to open schools in middle-income and suburban communities, triggering battles in such places as New Jersey and New York similar to that seen in Nashville. The share of low-income students in charter schools dropped to 51% in the 2009-10 school year from 62% in 2004-05, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Nina Rees, incoming CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said expanding into suburban and middle-class communities is "important to broaden the base, so all parents—including middle- and upper-income—can see charters are a viable option for them... It helps build support for the idea of charters."
Nashville, a diverse district that is 72% poor and 68% minority, has struggled. Only about 45% of elementary students passed state reading exams last year, and 33% passed the math test. The city has had charter schools for years, but previously only low-income children or those in low-performing schools could enroll. A recent change in state law made the schools available to middle-income families.
Jack Harrington, an investment banker living in Nashville, was part of a group of mainly middle-class parents who gathered this year to research bringing charters to their communities. He said hundreds of parents attended meetings because they were "hungry" for alternatives to the local schools.
"We are on such a disastrous path with public education that we need to pursue every opportunity for real improvement," said Mr. Harrington, who sends his children to private school.
Members of the group visited 10 charters across the country and eventually opted for Great Hearts. It has 12 schools, roughly 10% of whose students are low income and 30% are minority.
"We missed a great opportunity to bring a great charter operator to Nashville when our public education system is one of the lowest-scoring in the nation," Mr. Harrington said.
Write to Stephanie Banchero at stephanie.banchero@wsj.com

HIGH-STAKES TESTING RESISTANCE SPREADS ACROSS NATION

FairTest                                 

National Center for Fair & Open Testing

                                                                                    for further information:

                                                                                    Dr. Monty Neill  (617) 477-9792

                                                                                    Bob Schaeffer     (239) 395-6773

for immediate release, Tuesday, June 26, 2012

HIGH-STAKES TESTING RESISTANCE SPREADS ACROSS NATION;

RESOLUTIONS, BOYCOTTS, OPT-OUTS SHOW INCREASED PUBLIC OPPOSITION

TO FAILED “TEST-AND-PUNISH” SCHOOL POLICIES

A rising tide of protest is sweeping the U.S. as growing numbers of parents, teachers, and administrators take action against high-stakes testing, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). Instead of “test-and-punish” policies, which have failed to improve academic performance or equity, the movement is pressing for broader forms of assessment they say will enhance teaching and learning. From Texas to New York and Florida to Washington State, reform activists seek to reduce the number of standardized exams. They also want to scale back the consequences attached to test scores and use multiple measures to evaluate students, educators, and schools.

More than 10,000 individuals, 350 organizations and hundreds of school boards have now endorsed the National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing.  Launched by education, civil rights and religious groups including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Educational Fund, United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, Parents Across America and the National Education Association as well as FairTest, the National Resolution urges state officials to “reexamine school accountability.” It calls for a system “which does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to support students and improve schools.” It also asks Congress and the Obama Administration to overhaul No Child Left Behind.

The national movement was catalyzed by Texas where 545 local school boards have adopted a “Resolution Concerning High Stakes, Standardized Testing of Texas Public School Students.” The endorsing districts are responsible for educating 3.3 million students, more than two-thirds of the state’s public school enrollment.

In Florida more than a dozen countywide school committees serving three-quarters of a million students endorsed the National Resolution. Early supporters included Broward County, the nation’s sixth biggest district, and Palm Beach County, the 11^th largest. Then, the state association of school boards annual convention voted to endorse a state-specific version. Dozens of newspaper editorials, opinion columns, and letters to the editor have called for a reduction in testing and an overhaul of the state’s assessment system. 

The National Resolution has also won support from several school boards in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area as well as Ohio and Virginia.

The resolutions are not the only form of protest. This spring New York parents organized a boycott of a “field test” designed to develop future questions. Parents at more than five dozen schools held their children out on days the exams were scheduled. Boycotts also emerged in other states. In Snohomish, Washington, 550 parents opted their children out.  Campaigns aimed at encouraging more “opt-outs” are underway in California and Colorado.

This summer, assessment reform leaders intend to use campaign season to continue their momentum. They plan to press elected officials and their challengers to take public positions against test misuse and overuse. In St. Petersburg, Florida, for example, voters already convinced seven of eight contenders for the local school board to oppose high-stakes standardized exams. By “bird-dogging” candidate forums, asking pointing questions, publishing opinion columns in local media, and commenting on political blogs, advocates expect to deliver a clear message to those who ultimately make assessment policy: “Enough is enough!”

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- The National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing is online at http://timeoutfromtesting.org/nationalresolution/

A Future for Teachers Unions, But Only with a Figh

Published on Sunday, June 10, 2012 by Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/10-10 

A Future for Teachers Unions, But Only with a Fight

Educators in Chicago, incited by union passivity amid continued assault from corporate reformers, organized to defend their communities, schools, and profession

by James Cersonsky

“Things are the way they are” in urban schools, Michelle Rhee professes in Waiting for Superman, because “it all becomes about the adults.”

While teachers unions generally scoff at this sort of sloganeering, most lack any effective strategy of resistance to the “student”-focused, union-busting, scorched-earth privatization pushed by Rhee and her billionaire colleagues. Chicago’s teachers union, the third largest in the country, is a light forward. On Friday, teachers surpassed the 75% quota necessary to authorize a strike, which would take place come the fall if the union decides to move forward with it. More impressive than this figure is the work that made it possible.CORE activists rally against the city's school closing and privatization plan last winter. At a January education summit drawing hundreds, they laid out plans for battling the next round of school closings--while they build support for their union election bid this spring. (Photo: Photobucket)
Under the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), the CTU boasts an organizing model that cracks into Chicago’s teaching workforce and neighborhoods as doggedly as the city’s Democratic machine. While the city shutters, charterizes, segregates, gentrifies, intimidates, and fires, the union has created a member organizing department where one didn’t exist before, trained over 200 shop stewards, held countless public meetings and protests against school closings, and organized in hand with parents, students, community groups, and other unions—altogether, a new vision for twenty-first century teacher unionism.

Adulthood according to Rahm Emanuel
The blitz on Chicago’s teachers is a coked-up rendition of national trends. In 1995, Republican state legislators gave Mayor Richard M. Daley control over the city’s school board. Under current mayor Rahm Emanuel, teachers face intensified threats to the existence of their schools, intimidation from mayor-appointed principals, and the rollback of institutional safeguards against the whims of the machine.
With Emanuel’s backing, the Illinois legislature recently passed SB 7, which undermines seniority as the basis of job security, extends teachers’ probation period for test-based evaluation from two years to four, removes bargaining disputes from the Illinois Labor Relations Board, and ups the union’s strike quota to 75% of all covered employees (this last provision only applies to Chicago; the quota remains at 50% elsewhere). Since his election, the mayor has phased in longer school days while simultaneously demanding wage cuts—2% raises spread over a five year period, a net loss accounting for inflation and increases in healthcare fees.
"In Chicago, school reform is as much about real estate as schools per se. Large swaths of black neighborhoods have no open-access public schools, and mayors have used tax-increment financing to draw money from poor districts and shuffle it elsewhere."
Emanuel is the poster child of Chicago’s Commercial Club, whose 2003 report on student performance in Chicago schools, Still Left Behind, became the blueprint for city policy. The report advocates “tough-minded” teacher evaluations, “broad outsourcing of the management of failing schools to independent organizations,” and the complete elimination of teacher tenure—which first came about in the 1920s to protect women from firing for pregnancy or marriage.
“Emanuel is really helping people understand how our government and schools are set up, because he’s just not being subtle,” says Jen Johnson, a ninth year high school social studies teacher. “The way that our mayor has shoved things down our throats, people are much more aware that we are at the center of a national struggle.”

Taking back the land
In Chicago, school reform is as much about real estate as schools per se. Large swaths of black neighborhoods have no open-access public schools, and mayors have used tax-increment financing to draw money from poor districts and shuffle it elsewhere or, even worse, let it sit. In a report from the Data and Democracy Project, Pauline Lipman and colleagues show a disturbing correlation between neighborhood school closings and areas undergoing gentrification.
Since the city announced “Renaissance 2010” in 2004—a plan for massive conversion of district schools into charter schools, contract schools, and “performance” schools—over 100 schools have been hit with turnaround, charter takeover, or some other extreme measure. On average, the district schools’ replacements turn over 66% of their teachers over four years, and 80% of displaced students land at schools performing no better than their previous ones.
Incited by the union’s inactivity around school closings, teachers assembled in early 2008 to create CORE. “We talked to teachers, we talked to parents, we went across the city for Board of Education meetings, and in the process we started learning that these policies were affecting a lot more people than just teachers,” says co-founder Al Ramirez. “We started noticing that this is a part of gentrification, about real estate. Where did the families have to go?”
"Alongside groups like Parents United for Responsible Education, Blocks Together, and the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, teachers continue to fight school closings while campaigning for humane student treatment..."
From its inception, CORE spoke at every Chicago Public Schools hearing on school “actions” alongside a spate of community allies. In 2008, CORE pushed the city to remove six schools from its annual closure list—the first time in four years that more than a single school was saved. In the middle of a blizzard in January 2009, it held a forum on Renaissance 2010 with over 500 people from some 80 schools.
To its name, the caucus reached out to fellow rank-and-filers—which, in a profession dominated by contract-oriented business unions, is all too uncommon. CORE held steering committee elections, school-by-school meetings, “fun-raisers,” and study sessions on the union’s contract and school budget. The organizing paid off; in 2010, CORE swept union executive board elections and became synonymous with the CTU.

Dominance and collaboration
While CORE protested outside the “Advance Illinois” breakfast in June 2009, Arne Duncan’s homecoming party after moving from CPS to Obama’s cabinet, then-CTU president Marilyn Stewart sat inside and applauded him. As current president Karen Lewis sees it, “The problem is that management thinks that collaboration means that I tell you what to do.”
The CTU’s unwillingness to submit to ill-advised collaboration is a promising departure from most other teachers unions. Unions in Providence, New Haven, Denver, Baltimore, and elsewhere have won serious hand-clapping from Duncan at his annual “Labor-Management Collaboration Conference,” public opinionators like Nicholas Kristof, and other wide-eyed champions of “Scandinavian-style” partnership.
New York’s United Federation of Teachers illustrates what this sort of partnership can mean in practice. While rank-and-file groups like Teachers for a Just Contract and the Independent Community of Educators have tried to shake up the union, the size of the UFT’s membership and the existing regime’s sophisticated patronage system have held such forces at bay. This same leadership, decidedly pro-charter to begin with, folded under threats to funding from Duncan’s Race to the Top program by allowing the city to double its cap on charters and fasten teacher evaluations to test scores. Before she left to lead the national AFT, UFT President Randi Weingarten endorsed Mayor Bloomberg’s control over city schools.
The CTU does have a certain luxury in standing up to Emanuel—it has its own collaborators. Alongside groups like Parents United for Responsible Education, Blocks Together, and the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, teachers continue to fight school closings while campaigning for humane student treatment, a CPS CEO with a background in education, an elected Board of Education, and greater community input into school curriculum design. The union also has a network of critical education researchers at its side—a partnership that is unique to Chicago. Foremost is Pauline Lipman, whose research on the geography of school reform is the backbone of the union’s thinking on closing and turnaround policy.

A future for teachers unions?
In 2010, the CTU’s incumbent United Progressive Caucus put out flyers declaring, “Stop Mob Action, Stop Radical CORE!” This was a desperate attempt in the heat of union elections to red-bait CORE for the leftist affiliations of some of its central figures. In practice, CORE’s “radicalism” boils down to a recognition that teachers unions have to take on the hard task of organizing—inside and out—to combat well-funded corporate revolution.
The Chicago Sun Times headline following a 4,000-strong CTU rally last month—“Angry teachers rally despite Mayor Emanuel saying they deserve raise”—reflects how not to understand the union’s current struggle. Indeed, Emanuel did make such a posture. “Chicago teachers deserve a pay raise,” the Sun Times quoted. “They work very hard.” But to suggest that a line item could appease this crowd confuses contract demands for the member-driven, coalitional movement driving them.
Building organizing capacity, particularly in prep for potential strike, has its birth pangs. “There’s the fact that we can’t get in a time machine and organize people ten years ago for this fight,” says English teacher Kenzo Shibata. “A lot of people who we’re talking to are being talked to by the union for the first time.”
It’s the four years that rank-and-filers have been talking that must be taken seriously. Teachers unions and public education advocates hoping to resist Emanuel-style “reform” ignore the history and vision of the CORE-led CTU at their peril.

James Cersonsky is a Philadelphia-based writer and organizer. His work has appeared at Dissent, AlterNet, Common Dreams, and elsewhere. Email him at jcersonsky [at] gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @cersonsky.

The Union Teacher vs. Non-Union Teacher Hoax

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/20/were-being-played-for-suckers/

We’re Being Played for Suckers

by DAVID MACARAY

Two damaging misconceptions about labor unions:  (1) Union members tend to be substandard workers (lazy, unreliable, surly, privileged), and (2) union members can’t be fired because their “masters” will always go to bat to protect them.
Where they got that first one, the notion that union members are bad workers, is a mystery.  After all, a quick look at the economics should make it clear that union jobs—those, typically, with the highest wages, superior benefits and best and safest working conditions—are going to attract the most talented workers in a community.  Why wouldn’t they?  Why wouldn’t the best jobs in a community attract the best people?  Yet, we allow ourselves to be swayed by the propaganda.
And as widespread as this anti-union propaganda is, it’s especially virulent when it comes to public service unions.  Apparently, everyone and his brother (including President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Bill Gates)  just naturally assume that it’s the teachers’ union that prevents conscientious, well-meaning school administrators from firing bad teachers.
People like to believe that if those incompetent teachers did not belong to a powerful labor union, if they did not have cadres of union lawyers standing by ready to defend them, the administrators would be free to do the right thing—to drain the swamp and rid our schools of those union-created monsters who are holding our students hostage and depriving them of a decent education.  That may be a compelling narrative, but it’s total fiction.
The following statistics were taken from the anti-union website “Teachers’ Union Exposed.”   The site’s most recent figures show that California school teachers are 87.5-percent unionized.  Accordingly, the percentage of “experienced” California teachers that were fired was 2.03-percent, and the percentage of “probationary” teachers that were fired was 0.98-percent.
By comparison, North Carolina, which is 97.7-percent non-union, fired 0.6-percent of its experienced teachers, and 0.3-percent of its probationary teachers.  In other words, California and its big, bad teachers’ union was “tougher” on its union teachers than North Carolina was on its non-union teachers.  It’s puzzling.  School administrators in non-unionized North Carolina are in the position to fire any teacher they choose, but they don’t do that.  They don’t fire their teachers.
And why don’t they?  Why don’t these non-union schools fire more teachers?  The answer is obvious.  Teachers—everywhere and anywhere, North, South, East and West, union and non-union—don’t deserve to be fired.  And why would they?  Why on earth would we expect our school teachers to be relieved of their jobs due to incompetence?  Are our colleges, universities, and credentialing programs turning out such lousy teachers, we have no recourse but to get rid of them?  That doesn’t even make sense.
We need to understand something.  This aggressive move against public schools and teachers’ unions we’re witnessing is being orchestrated not by educational reformers interested in improving our schools, but by greedy entrepreneurs looking to privatize the whole shebang.  Having millions of kids leave the public schools and enroll in privates or for-profit charters represents a potential bonanza.
So the next time someone tries to tell you that it’s the unions who are responsible for the problems our public schools are facing, take a moment to set them straight.  Make it clear that this whole “union teacher vs. non-union teacher” dichotomy is a hoax.  It’s a con game.  Put it to them in the simplest possible terms.  We’re being played for suckers.
DAVID MACARAY, an LA playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy:  Essays on Modern Labor”), was a former union rep.   He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net

GAO Probes Charters on Serving Students With Disabilities

By Sean Cavanagh on June 19, 2012 11:00 PM | 3 Comments

By Sean Cavanagh and Nirvi Shah
Charter schools across the country, and in most individual states, enroll a smaller percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, though the factors behind those disparities remain unclear, a new report from a federal investigative agency concludes.
The report from the Government Accountability Office, released late Tuesday, says some charter schools may be discouraging students with disabilities from enrolling or denying them admission, a charge that has been periodically levied at the independent public schools over the years.
But the GAO also explains that much of the information it could gather on that point is anecdotal, and that other factors are likely at work—such as individual families deciding that charter school with distinct missions or academic approaches are not the right fit for children with specific needs.
In other cases, the decision about whether to place special-needs students in a charter school may not belong to individual charters, but rather to school districts, the report said. State funding formulas can also influence whether students with disabilities end up in charters.
"[T]here are no comprehensive data to determine the extent to which charter schools may be discouraging students with disabilities from enrolling or the extent to which such practices actually contribute to differences in enrollment levels," the GAO states.
In a letter released with the report, U.S. Department of Education officials said they were planning to release new guidance to charter schools on their obligations to serve students with disabilities.
Growing Charter Enrollment
The number of charter schools has grown steadily in the sector's two-decade history, and the schools now serve an estimated 2 million students nationwide. Their supporters, including the Obama administration, see charters as laboratories for testing innovative ideas in schools. Some critics, however, say the publicly funded, relatively independent schools are not always held to the same standards for accountability as traditional public schools, and say their academic performance is uneven.
Charter schools, as the GAO report explains, must adhere to a number of federal requirements for serving students with disabilities, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Yet by most standards examined by the GAO, charter schools fall short of traditional publics in the extent to which they serve special needs populations.
Overall, the percentage of students with disabilities in charters was smaller, 8.2 percent, than in traditional public schools, at 11.2 percent, for the 2009-2010 year. Moreover, charter schools enrolled a lower percentage of students in each of 13 disability categories identified within the IDEA, which include learning disabilities, visual and hearing impairments, autism, intellectual disabilities, and emotional disturbances, the GAO said.
State Picture
In most states, charter schools enroll a smaller percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools do, the report found. In New Hampshire, for example, about 6 percent of students in charters have disabilities, compared with 13 percent in traditional publics. That pattern was not uniform, however: In eight states—Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wyoming—charters enroll the same, or a higher percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, the report found.
The GAO points out that the last such guidance on charter schools' disability was offered 12 years ago, and does not provide enough detailed information to charters. Department officials said they agreed with the recommendation and are "committed to providing meaningful updated guidance" to the schools.
The Department's office for civil rights is also conducting investigations in four states to determine whether charters are adequately serving students with disabilities, the letter said.
Greg Richmond, the president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, said the GAO was right to point out that some charters are discouraging families of students with disabilities from applying or enrolling.
"Absolutely that happens," said Richmond, though no one has quantified "how often it's happening."
But Richmond, whose Chicago-based organization seeks to improve charter quality, said other factors are also at work. Some states and districts, for instance, are far more adept than others in ensuring that special-education resources and services, as well as funding, are delivered equitably to both traditional public schools and charters, he said.
The GAO report notes that in states where charter schools essentially act as school districts, states make charters responsible for providing services to special-needs students. But in states where charters are a part of larger school districts, the report notes, the responsibility for providing federally required services belongs to the districts—not the individual charter. In those cases, school districts could "determine that traditional public schools, not charter schools, are in a better position" to serve the needs of a student, depending on the disability, the report says.
But partly as a result of those arrangements, many parents of students with disabilities have come to assume that charters aren't an option for their children, said Kim Hymes, the director of policy and advocacy for Council for Exceptional Children.
"Forgetting about capacity issues and who is technically responsible—it comes down to: Parents have a right to choose," Hymes said. "[Charters] are not allowing the parents of students with disabilities to have that choice if they abdicate any role they have in carrying out IDEA."
Chronic Concerns
Access to charter schools—or a lack thereof—has been a longstanding concern among advocates for students with disabilities, especially students with less common or more severe needs. Those worries have emerged in the Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago school systems, among other districts.
Like traditional public schools, "charter schools are required to provide children with disabilities a free appropriate public education provided in the least restrictive environment," Hymes said.
She said the report raises many questions about the barriers special education students encounter at charter school doors.
"Financial challenges to providing special education services cannot be a barrier to enrollment for students with disabilities. In order for parents to have a fair choice about what school their child can enroll in, charter schools have to be able to provide the infrastructure and specialized services for all students."
The GAO report found that some students with certain kinds of disabilities are less likely to be enrolled in charter schools than others—such as those with more significant needs, including students with intellectual disabilities.
"I am glad this report dug deep enough to see the discrepancy between disability types," said Ricki Sabia, associate director of education for the National Down Syndrome Society. "We have always known that when charters take students with [intellectual disabilities] it is usually in separate charters for students with disabilities."
Some of the anecdotal issues raised in the GAO report are the same as those that have come to the attention of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said Laura Kaloi, the group's public policy director. These include parents feeling they were "counseled out" of sending their students to a particular charter school, even after they had won admission through a lottery process, because the schools spelled out what would be demanded of students and said they simply couldn't offer all of the services a child was found to need.
The GAO cited a 2010 lawsuit filed in Louisiana over charter schools' denial of access to students with disabilities in New Orleans, which is home to more than 50 charters that act as independent school districts. The case is still open, said Eden Heilman, the lead attorney on the case, which is being fought on behalf of students by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In researching the New Orleans case, her organization knew the issue wasn't unique to New Orleans, but the GAO report gets at just how widespread it is. Some of her clients, whose disabilities range from ADHD to autism, missed months of school as they couldn't find one that would admit them. Eventually, Heilman said, every school in New Orleans may be a charter, leaving them with schools unable or unwilling to serve them and with nowhere to go.
"If they are going to investigate the issues in this report, that's highly encouraging," Heilman said.

Agreed, said Kaloi of the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
"We've never seen that kind of response. That's very positive."
In fact the Education Department noted that it has launched investigations in four states over a variety of issues concerning students with disabilities and charter schools, said Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant secretary for civil rights, in an interview. Those investigations are being conducted in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin, she said, and the office for civil rights is looking at access issues as well as whether students' needs are being met once they are enrolled in the schools. Her agency has received 263 complaints against charter schools alleging disability discrimination under federal law during the last five years.
Departmental Guidance
The GAO recommended that the Education Department provide more guidance to schools about charter schools' responsibilities to students with disabilities under federal laws that ban discrimination on the basis of a disability.
Much has changed in the charter landscape since the department last issued guidance in 2000, Ali said. Now, there are single charter schools that also function as entire school districts, such as many of those in New Orleans. And there are simply more charter schools than ever. In addition, there are charter schools that enroll students, who then get special education services from the school district where the charter is located, she said. And there are large-scale charter management operators that run dozens of schools in different states across the country.
Kaloi said she was shocked to see that in several states, there was no data on students with disabilities enrolled in charter schools, including the District of Columbia, Mississippi, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Utah.
"Where are those kids?" Kaloi said.
That's a good question, said Ali. "As a recipient of federal funds you are signing an assurance with the Education Department that you are complying with all civil rights laws. If you don't even know how many students with disabilities you're enrolling ... that seems like an important piece of information to ensure compliance."

Chicago: Ghosts of PATCO and the Coming Battle for Teachers

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/18

Published on Monday, June 18, 2012 by Common Dreams

Ghosts of PATCO and the Coming Battle for Teachers

by Alan Morse

I've been there.
Your ears ring so badly the sound of a spoon stirring coffee hurts. You can't sleep past dawn, but you can't prop your lids open through dusk. Your exhaustion runs so deep the next 75 days seem over before they start...filled as they'll be with summer jobs to pay bills, workshops to stay certified, planning for the fall---and dare I say it?---family.
You love your work, though it's the hardest thing you've ever done and never gets easier...and you won't get rich on what they pay you...yet those who've never done it are actually jealous of you in June.
Teachers use these bittersweet first days of summer both to get a life and find new energy to live it.
So it hardly seems time to add one more thing to teachers' plates...
After giving up teaching more by circumstance than choice, I served about a dozen of the past 18 years on my school board.  Since 1994, I've watched schools remodel themselves after corporations, de-professionalize teaching, gut local control by rendering boards nearly powerless and alienating parents, and squeeze budgets past the breaking point while funneling resources out of communities.
For the past quarter century we have been frogs slowly boiled by corporate interests, and we have yet to jump out of the water. Next fall may be our do-or-die moment.
This is the mess that gets slopped on your plate this summer: It's an approaching showdown for parents, teachers, and all who care about kids, not to mention policemen, firemen, and other union workers: ignore it at your own peril because you're next.
If it comes to a strike, the CTU will need help from teachers across the country, so the smart money says be ready. This will not be a time for a timid response. The CTU will need solid moral support, possibly including cash and sympathetic job actions to draw attention to their cause.
The first years of this decade saw the highest highs and the lowest lows for unions. Public sector unions were gutted in Wisconsin, inspiring union busters everywhere yet kindling the largest, loudest united backlash in the memory of all but our oldest. The attack was so outrageous it brought those slated by Walker for “divide and conquer” together and brought him nearly to his knees.
Nearly, but obscene piles of money plus one heartbreaking Tuesday all but crushed that rebellion, puffing up dozens more would-be Walkers across the country. Both sides know that was a watershed.
Union-busting currents flow deep in most of our communities, and I saw that clearly from the school board. As a board member in Maine, I received mailings from the state school boards/school management association barely containing its glee supporting ALEC-inspired initiatives from a tea-party governor. The superintendent himself, every time the door closed, bashed away: belittling union activities and openly plotting the union's demise, all with barely a peep of opposition.
I yelled myself silly, but unions have precious little support in our conservative towns, where even teachers' salaries look good and every benefit seems stolen from citizens' pockets. Any talk of parents and unions joining forces for better schools meets polite silence.
Yet that is exactly what the good folks in Chicago---parents and union activists---are trying to do right now, and if they fail we will face a moment this fall which will combine the worst of Walker's Wisconsin sleeze with Reagan's PATCO orgasm while shredding teachers' unions for our generation.
A short crib-note on Chicago school politics might be in order. Remember Arne Duncan? His twisted logic for “school reform” was first tested in Chicago. Now he's running the Department of Charter Education and Teacher Bashing in DC. Barack Obama? FOA (Friend of Arne). His national agenda for schools?---'nuf said. How about Rahm Emanuel? FOB, FOA...now strangling Chicago schools with closures, arrogance, and promises to sell kids to the highest corporate bidders.
The Chicago Teachers' Union (CTU)? Once a compliant bunch, but recently taken over by the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) in a stunning victory for grassroots organizing.
Those are the actors. The plot thickened last week when the CTU authorized a strike vote if contract negotiations break down. The vote was not close: nearly 90% in favor and less than 2% of membership opposed.
Chicago teachers threw down the gauntlet for nothing less than a good-faith, fairly negotiated contract, but Emanuel's minions were surely emboldened by Walker's victory. If it comes to a strike, the CTU will need help from teachers across the country, so the smart money says be ready. This will not be a time for a timid response. The CTU will need solid moral support, possibly including cash and sympathetic job actions to draw attention to their cause.
Chicago is a front-line skirmish in Washington's drive to dismantle public education across the country, and should be considered no less. If we can't draw a line there, don't bother to wait for the fight to come to your neighborhood.
Do your research this summer while you have breathing room. Sleep on what this means to you while you have time to sleep. Talk with your friends and colleagues around the country about what this means to you...while you have time and energy to talk.
Next fall, be refreshed and ready with your summer reading done, your homework completed, and your mind made up to fill the trenches in solidarity with your colleagues...and ultimately for your own students and schools. Big money will be throwing all they have at the CTU, and the negative effects of their PR smears will find you wherever you live, so better get a head start.
Nobody will lead you into battle in 75 days, but if you do your work in July and August, nobody will have to.

Alan Morse is a parent, once a teacher, and more recently a school board director living in western Maine. He can be joined or harangued at alanmorse@gmail.com

New Mexico agency compiled email list for governor's PAC Contact information of nonunion teachers sent from personal account

New Mexico agency compiled email list for governor's PAC

Contact information of nonunion teachers sent from personal account

Steve Terrell | The New Mexican
Posted: Monday, June 11, 2012 - 6/12/12

Comments 

 http://www.scribd.com/doc/96745881/New-Mexico-teacher-lists?secret_password=32lsbvve42dbn5phv4q

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An email obtained by a Democratic political action committee indicates state employees and computers at the Public Education Department were used to compile lists of nonunion teachers and their email addresses for Republican Gov. Susana Martinez's political director.

According to the email, sent May 2 by department spokesman Larry Behrens to political director Jay McCleskey and several government officials, the department's Information Technology Division compiled a list of all teachers and their emails. Behrens also said the department's budget staff compiled a list of which school districts have union contracts, and created a list of nonunion teachers' emails.

Behrens on Monday denied that he was doing work for McCleskey or Martinez's political operation. He said compiling the lists was in partial response to a public records request from McCleskey.

But the spokesman used a personal email account for the response, which was sent to nongovernment email accounts for all the state officials he forwarded it to. Behrens said that was an "oversight."

"I should have responded to the request on my state email address because responding to a request for public information is state business," Behrens told a reporter Monday.

The email was unearthed by Independent Source PAC, an organization headed by private detective Michael Corwin, who has worked as an "opposition research" man for former Gov. Bill Richardson and other Democrats. The group has been highly critical of both Martinez and Public Education Department Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera over the past year.

"Hey All," Behrens wrote in the email. "Attached are the teachers lists and here's how we got them just in case there's any holes I haven't thought of.

"We have no master list of all teacher e-mails so [information technology personnel] went through websites school-by-school and copied the publicly available staff emails. They formed the attached 'TeachersAll' spread sheet.

"We asked the budget division which districts have unions or agreements and they provided me with a list," Behrens continued. "Using the [department's] district codes, I filtered the addresses to pull out the non-union districts and the e-mails collected from each. So the 'FinalEmailList A' should be all the non-union teachers from the e-mails we've been able to gather."

The email with both lists attached was sent to McCleskey and the others, including Martinez's chief of staff, Keith Gardner, her spokesman, Scott Darnell, Skandera and her chief of staff. Skandera, using a personal email account, forwarded Behrens' email to the governor -- at her campaign email account -- with the message, "FYI" (meaning "for your information").

The email addresses for Gardner and Darnell were at "SusanaPAC.com." Susana PAC is the name of Martinez's political action committee.

Asked about his involvement in Susana PAC and whether the administration uses private emails to communicate about government business, Darnell said, "The Governor's Office and members of her administration have worked diligently to separate their official public business from any political activities they may be involved in or made aware. The susanapac.com email address was originally established during the transition [formerly susana2010.com] and is now utilized for nongovernment work, including daily political and news clippings."

Darnell said he and Gardner aren't officials with the political committee.

Behrens said that after sending the lists of teachers to McCleskey, a McCleskey assistant filed a subsequent request "seeking a complete list with physical addresses." On May 21, the department denied that request, "as the complete information requested was deemed not public information," Behrens said.

"When I responded to the follow-up portion of the request with a denial, we communicated that denial over state email," Behrens said.

It is not clear what the purpose of compiling lists of nonunion teachers might have been. McCleskey, who served as a consultant in Martinez's successful 2010 gubernatorial campaign, has been paid more than $100,225 in consulting fees by Susana PAC.

McCleskey on Monday backed up what Behrens said. “Like nearly every political organization, we request public information from all sorts of agencies throughout the state — Democrat and Republican,” he said. “In this case, the list we received pursuant to the original request was nothing more than public school addresses and therefore unusable. We followed up with an IPRA request for the detailed list and that request was denied.”

If Public Education Department employees did perform work for the governor's political committee, it could be seen as a possible violation of the state Government Conduct Act. That law prohibits state employees from "directly or indirectly coercing or attempting to coerce another public officer or employee to pay, lend or contribute anything of value to a party, committee, organization, agency or person for a political purpose."

The act also prohibits state employees from using "property belonging to a state agency ... or allow its use, for other than authorized purposes."

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog atroundhouseroundup.com.

NY Times Article Featuring PS 257K

A System Divided

Integrating a School, One Child at a Time

Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Prairie Jones, 5, raising her hand at Public School 257 in Brooklyn, is one of the few white children at the school. Kylie Cao, 5, third from left, is the only Asian pupil in the kindergarten class this year. More Photos »

By LIZ ROBBINS

Published: June 15, 2012

HER bow flopping on her head, Kylie Cao pirouetted alongside her fellow kindergartners in pink tutus and black leotards.

Read more articles in this week's Metropolitan section.

Multimedia

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Hopes for Diversity at a Brooklyn School

A System Divided

The Magnet Model

This is the third article in a series examining the changing racial distribution of students in New York City's public schools and its impact on their opportunities and achievements.

Related

• A System Divided: To Be Black at Stuyvesant High (February 26, 2012)

• A System Divided: ‘Why Don’t We Have Any White Kids?’ (May 13, 2012)

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The girls smiled with nervous concentration. They were, unwittingly, performing the delicate dance of desegregation.

One child was white, one was black, and seven girls were Hispanic. Kylie was the only Asian student onstage — and in the kindergarten class this year at Public School 257, a magnet school of the performing arts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

“She’s become very, very popular,” her father, Benson Yang, said at the school’s family night in early spring, when the children performed. “She gets a lot of attention.”

Kylie’s mother, Angie Cao, was so pleased with her daughter’s experience that she persuaded some friends to enroll their children at P.S. 257 next year. “Everybody will come here after seeing her,” she said.

If only change were as swift and simple as a child’s dance recital.

Instead, P.S. 257, where 73 percent of the students are Hispanic, has found integration to be far more intricate. One of four Williamsburg elementary schools to win a 2010 magnet grant from the United States Education Department to spur desegregation, it has struggled to follow a federal model created decades ago while focusing on more urgent battles: for resources, students and, above all, test scores.

Since the mid-1980s, New York’s public schools, which are among the nation’s most segregated, have received millions of dollars in magnet grants from the federal government. In this most recent round of grants, in 2010, the four Williamsburg elementary schools and one middle school, all in District 14, received a total of $10.2 million over three years; schools in Long Island City, Queens, and on the West Side in Manhattan also won grants, for a total of $33 million.

Magnet schools were once the federal government’s favored mechanism to increase diversity and prevent “white flight.” The idea was to create a themed curriculum that attracted children from outside a school’s immediate neighborhood to reduce the isolation of one minority group. Today, as the Williamsburg schools show, integration is an uneven process at best, hampered by geography, legal limits and, critics say, a lack of ideological commitment from the city.

Williamsburg, the epicenter of Brooklyn’s gentrification, where a growing white population is moving into neighborhoods dominated by Hispanics, would seem to have the most favorable conditions in the city for integration. About 58 percent of the students in District 14 public schools are Hispanic, 26 percent are black, 12 percent are white and 3 percent are Asian, according to the Education Department. At each of these four elementary magnet schools, Hispanic students represent more than 70 percent of the population.

Reducing that percentage, as the grant requires, has proved to be a challenge for the three magnet schools in the southeastern parts of District 14, where the socioeconomic and ethnic changes have yet to take hold with the same force as they have in the north.

Although decades of research studies show that children perform better in integrated schools, desegregating New York City’s system has not been a distinct priority for the mayor or his chancellors.

“I can’t remember the last time anyone in a leadership position said anything about desegregation,” said Diane Ravitch, an education historian at New York University.

“That sends a signal,” she added. “They talk about choice.”

The sweeping changes initiated under Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein focused on the creation of new schools, notably charters and high schools.

The current chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, said the administration’s priority was to “provide a richness in quality education” for all the city’s students; there are 1.1 million, three-quarters of whom are either Hispanic or black.

The magnet program, Mr. Walcott said, is one element of the system that promotes choice.

“If you have choice without civil rights policies, it stratifies the system,” said Gary Orfield, the co-director of the Civil Rights Project at U.C.L.A., a research organization that recently published a study hailing the benefits of integrated schools. “People who have the most power and information get the best choices,” he added.

Among the policies needed in New York, Dr. Orfield said, were citywide efforts to educate parents about magnet schools, transportation options to help children get to schools outside their often-segregated neighborhoods and accountability for diversity.

New York is not alone in operating its school system without a cohesive integration plan, Dr. Orfield said, adding that the same could be said of other major cities, like Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

“I am focused on having high-quality schools in all neighborhoods,” Mr. Walcott said. “That’s the ultimate civil rights policy.”

For the magnet schools’ principals, the administration’s priorities are unequivocal: “The bottom line is, if you don’t hit your academic targets, they will put you on the turnaround list,” Brian Leavy-DeVale, P.S. 257’s principal, said, referring to the process of reorganizing a failing school.

In late May, P.S. 257 was one of two high-performing elementary schools from District 14 to be investigated by the Education Department over accusations of cheating on the annual New York State exams, after some of the students’ scores plummeted when they reached middle school.

It is possible that the scope of the investigation could include other elementary magnet schools in District 14, according to one person with knowledge of the inquiry who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the process was still in its early stages. During the Bloomberg administration, about 1,250 claims of cheating have been received, most of which have gone unproven. But this investigation has clouded P.S. 257’s immediate future.

With the school year coming to a close, it is still too early to judge how much progress P.S. 257 and the other District 14 schools that received grants have made in desegregation. According to the Education Department, two elementary schools made incremental steps toward reducing the large percentage of Hispanic students, one stayed the same, and one actually increased its Hispanic population.

Those numbers do not tell the full story; the schools are rich in programming, and all have waiting lists for kindergarten next year, said Joseph Gallagher, District 14’s magnet project director. “It’s a good foundation to build on,” he said.

But magnet schools have a short window to create lasting diversity. After the 2010 grants end, schools may recruit from outside their attendance zones for only three more years, unless the Education Department approves an extension. There are currently 39 schools operating as magnets in New York City.

“Ultimately, the big issue comes down to how important this is to the people in charge,” Dr. Ravitch, the education historian, said. “Given the demography,” she added, “the question is, do you do something about it, or do you do nothing about it?”

Hurdles to Diversity

At P.S. 257, music jumps in the hallways. In the second-floor gym one afternoon, a drum line crashed out a beat, trumpets blared, and flute players bounced from side to side, as the marching band built a joyful crescendo. Already seasoned performers at Puerto Rican Day parades, the band members were practicing to play for the governor in Albany.

On Friday mornings this year, the chorus sang the national anthem over the public address system. In the piano room, the twins Antonio and Christian Mendoza, second graders, spent weeks practicing a Mozart piano sonata in Robert Siegel’s music class.

P.S. 257, also known as the John F. Hylan School, received an A on its last school progress report. It has used its magnet money to build an arts-based curriculum, enrich its after-school programs and “make school fun” for its 632 students. That is the refrain of the school’s tirelessly chirpy assistant principal, Melvin Martinez, a former club promoter who designed the school’s program while he was studying for his master’s degree in education.

Even before the Education Department and District 14 administrators chose his school for the grant, Mr. Martinez was looking for extra sources of money for the school. He had parents and students recycle cans and bottles, then used the refunds to buy the school’s first set of drums.

Now, thanks to about $520,000 a year in magnet money, the marching band performs in spiffy navy and gold uniforms made by the same company that outfits big college programs. A new sound system and an air-conditioner turned the cafeteria into a second performance space. Two performing-arts teachers were hired.

Part of the mission of the federal Magnet Schools Assistance Program is rallying teachers and students around a theme. Some themes seem to blend more fluidly than others with the citywide curriculum requirements.

But integration is still the magnet grant’s primary purpose, and this presents a geographic challenge in District 14. As it stretches from Greenpoint to Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick, the district becomes more segregated, ethnically and socioeconomically.

P.S. 257 is a Title I school, meaning that it has a high level of poverty and offers free lunches, as the other three elementary magnet schools in Brooklyn do.

Given that the elementary-school-age population in its area is 65 percent Hispanic, traditionally Puerto Rican, the key to desegregation is drawing white and Asian students from outside the attendance borders. According to recent federal guidelines, enrolling black students also counts toward progress in reducing Hispanic isolation. (There is no box to check for multiracial heritages on District 14’s magnet application.)

But P.S. 257’s location, some 20 blocks southeast of the condominium and artisan enclaves of Williamsburg, surrounded by sprawling public-housing projects and in the shadow of Woodhull hospital, makes it a tough sell.

Nora Barnes, the longtime principal at another of the magnets, Public School 250, the George H. Lindsay School, which is seven blocks north of P.S. 257 and 77 percent Hispanic, acknowledged that drawing white families was difficult.

“They don’t come to a school that’s basically a Hispanic school because it’s like everybody else — they’re looking for a school that looks like them,” she said.

After the first year of its grant, P.S. 250’s student population was 10.4 percent Asian, higher than most schools in Williamsburg, in part because a growing number of Asian families live in the nearby Lindsay Park Houses. But the Hispanic population at the school remained unchanged.

“Whatever people think about minority-populated schools,” Ms. Barnes said, “on a number of levels it’s hard to convince white families to come to a school like this. And then, a lot are looking for gifted and talented programs.”

Because magnet schools are prohibited from using academic screening, they are not allowed to offer gifted and talented programs.

Applying to an elementary magnet school is not a simple process for students who live outside the school’s zone. Parents must submit an application for a lottery, listing the district magnet schools they wish their child to attend.

The principals then determine how many lottery slots they will have available — the majority of the magnet students enter in kindergarten — making sure to reserve seats for all students who live in their zones. To draw diverse applicants, Mr. Martinez, at P.S. 257, recruited at community centers in Bedford-Stuyvesant and in neighborhoods in Greenpoint (where he lives with his Irish-American wife and two children). He pitched the school at Head Start nursery programs and bodegas in Hispanic areas, and even flagged down prospective parents jogging on the track at McCarren Park.

The percentage of Hispanic students at P.S. 257 decreased to 73 percent in the 2011-12 school year, from 75 percent the year before. And the progress seems likely to continue. Preliminary enrollment figures for P.S. 257’s incoming kindergarten class show that out of nearly 100 children, 4 are white, 3 are Asian, and 16 are black — all coming from outside the attendance zone.

“It is a major influx for us; we’ve never had that,” Mr. Martinez said.

Whether the appeal of the school, which has fervent parent support, will fade because of the investigation into cheating accusations is not yet clear. Mr. Leavy-DeVale, the principal, said he had not been notified that his school was under investigation and denied that there had been any cheating. “I stand by my teachers; I have great staff,” he said. “And we have never seen that.”

The investigation began after teachers at Intermediate School 318 received poor evaluations because their students had performed badly on the state tests. While seemingly focused on two schools that feed into I.S. 318 — P.S. 257 and Public School 31 — the inquiry could expand its scope.

Neither Ms. Barnes, at P.S. 250, nor Diane Vitolo, the principal at Public School 380, another of the magnets, said she had been notified that her school was being investigated.

P.S. 380, the John Wayne Elementary School, is a Brooklyn paradox: It is named for a rugged American film star, sits in the middle of a staunchly Hasidic neighborhood in Williamsburg and yet has a student body that is 73 percent Hispanic.

The geographic area the school serves is 5 percent Hispanic and 93 percent white, but the white children are mostly Orthodox Jews, who overwhelmingly attend yeshivas.

In 2009, P.S. 380 won a national academic award, but its enrollment was dwindling. When the magnet grant allowed the school to recruit outside its zone, enrollment grew to 580 from 470, but the Hispanic population went up by 3 percentage points. Ms. Vitolo said that many of her current students had parents or relatives who used to live in the neighborhood before its demographic shifted.

“Although we want to attract — and that’s the goal, to attract — lots of diversity, we just want children,” Ms. Vitolo said. “We don’t necessarily see the different diversity. Children are children to us.”

Mr. Leavy-DeVale, at P.S. 257, was even blunter. “I didn’t get into this just to have 12 European blond English-speaking kids,” he said. “If that’s the mission of it, as long as my kids are getting things, then so be it. Whoever can bring us money, I don’t care if they are liberal, conservative, communists,” he said, adding: “I’ll put a Coca-Cola sign on the door if it brings in dollars and direct services.”

Complicating desegregation even further: a 2007 United States Supreme Court ruling that restricted schools in selecting students. The court, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, ruled 5 to 4 that schools could not explicitly take race into account when selecting students.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who voted with the majority, nevertheless kept alive the importance of school integration: in a separate opinion, he wrote that school districts could be creative, perhaps reconfiguring attendance zones to spur socioeconomic diversity.

Referring to New York City, Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of education at Teachers College at Columbia University, asked, “Is there even a goal in terms of trying to create more diverse educational settings — not just by race?”

She added: “If so, how can policy makers look at the given makeup of a district and, if that’s a goal, make sure that more kids have more access?”

The Education Department said it was addressing the issue by appointing a deputy chancellor in charge of equity and access and offering tutoring for students from low-income families studying for the exam for specialized high schools.

Walking in Both Worlds

Historically for magnet schools, white middle-class students have been the prize. Despite the odds, one of the Williamsburg schools has been able to attract them in droves. It just has not opened yet.

Public School 414, the Brooklyn Arbor School, is to open in September in a building alongside what is left of Public School 19, a failing school whose scheduled closing nonetheless drew strong parental protest. Brooklyn Arbor’s kindergarten class will be mostly white, in a neighborhood that has been predominantly Dominican.

Education officials placed Brooklyn Arbor in a prime location to draw families from the Northside neighborhood: just south of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, near the trendier parts of Williamsburg. The new principal, Eva Irizarry, did the rest. Her aggressive recruiting and her commitment to progressive, hands-on learning helped persuade white middle-class families to try the new school.

“A lot of it is marketing,” Ms. Irizarry said. “It takes a certain person who can walk in both worlds.”

Ms. Irizarry, 34, is white, grew up in the Netherlands, married a man of Puerto Rican heritage and has a school-age son. She also spent the past 11 years teaching at P.S. 257; her assistant principal, Cristina Albarran, 33, did, too. (She was also a student there.)

P.S. 19, the Roberto Clemente School, had originally won the magnet grant, but the Education Department announced this year that it was closing the school. Now, Brooklyn Arbor (beginning with kindergarten, first and second grades) will split the magnet money with P.S. 19 (with third, fourth and fifth grades this year and phasing out one year at a time) and adopt the theme of global and ethical studies. Ms. Irizarry plans to build eco-friendly classrooms and a greenhouse on the roof; her school will be housed in separate wing in the building.

Becoming a magnet school was not part of her original plan, Ms. Irizarry said, but she eagerly adopted the idea when Mr. Gallagher, the magnet program director, told her the school would receive about $1 million over the next two years.

“This money is the perfect thing for us right now to put us in business,” Ms. Irizarry said.

P.S. 19 had no choice but to share the money. The first year of the grant, P.S. 19’s Hispanic population slightly decreased to 92 percent from 95 percent; because the school was to close, it was prohibited from recruiting in the 2011-12 school year.

P.S. 19 finished the year with a depleted roster of teachers and low morale.

When it came to recruiting, Ms. Irizarry said, she got no response when she went to Head Start nursery schools in the surrounding Dominican neighborhoods.

She had more success pitching a new concept to Northside parents. At Mommy and Me yoga classes, she left brochures that featured the school’s carefully designed green tree logo and 13 children of all ethnicities photographed in green T-shirts.

Ms. Irizarry was interviewed by Joyce Suzflita, who runs a well-known blog, nycschoolhelp. (Mr. Martinez had not heard of the blog.) As of now, the 75-student kindergarten class will have 55 children from outside the school’s zone, most of them white (including a number of new immigrants from Western Europe and Asia who are bilingual); of the 60 first graders, 25 are out of zone. The second grade, with 75 of its 80 students from the zone, is mostly Hispanic.

Celeste Stern, a white parent from Crown Heights, was impressed by Ms. Irizarry’s energy and won over by her approach. She soon told her friends to apply.

Ms. Stern said she was looking for diversity after her daughter Alice was shut out of her neighborhood kindergarten. And yet, at the same time, Ms. Stern wanted there to be a balance.

“I don’t want Alice to be the only white kid,” she said, while registering for Brooklyn Arbor in a classroom at P.S. 257. “I want her to have a chance to have friends from all ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic backgrounds. I think that’s what makes New York so great and so exciting.”

Yaskara Ramirez, 31, registering her son Alejandro the same day, did not care that as a Hispanic child he would be in the minority. “That’s perfectly fine,” she said. “I honestly don’t care about what makes up the kindergarten class. I am just more concerned about the academics.”

Ms. Irizarry, nonetheless, said she was concerned that Hispanic parents might feel they were being pushed out of the school. “I really need to think about ways to address any kind of issues that will come up,” she said.

Brooklyn Arbor is now an alternative to Public School 84, an increasingly popular school in the fastest-changing part of Williamsburg that has become a success in integration.

After P.S. 84 was named a magnet school for the visual arts in 2004, the school struggled to blend its white students with its predominantly Hispanic population. But when a new principal, Sereida Rodriguez, arrived in 2009, she united the parents and infused the school with programs and energy. She said she even discovered supplies left unused from during the magnet grant.

Now the school has an intensely active PTA, led by white parents from Northside. Its Hispanic population decreased to 73 percent from 85 percent this year; 17 percent of its students are white.

Still, Ms. Rodriguez encountered confusion with the Education Department over out-of-zone recruiting. A magnet school can apply for an extension past the six years guaranteed by the grant, though Ms. Rodriguez said she was not initially told that.

But this spring, the department automatically put all her out-of-zone kindergarten applicants on a waiting list for the fall.

“Finally,” Ms. Rodriguez said, “I get white families coming to my school, and I didn’t want to discourage them, but I told them, O.K., we’ll get back to them.” She said the city eventually allowed those applicants.

Increasingly, magnet schools are competing for students against new charter schools that are opening in the district. A vocal group of P.S. 84 parents led a vehement protest against the planned opening of a Citizens of the World Charter School in a portion of the building.

Brooke Parker, a founder of Williamsburg and Greenpoint Parents: Our Public Schools, said advocates for the charter had been looking to attract white families, recruiting in the same places that the more savvy magnet schools had gone. That is unusual for charter schools, which in New York have not often focused on integration as a goal.

Even with the number of charter schools increasing, and testing as the overarching measure of a school’s success becoming the norm, federally supported magnet schools still resonate with parents like Justin Jones who value diversity as much as test scores. He and his wife moved to Bushwick 12 years ago from Blacksburg, Va., and were one of the few white families in the neighborhood. They were at P.S. 257’s season-ending talent show to watch their daughter, Prairie, 5, one of the school’s nine white children, twirl alongside her classmates in rainbow-colored tutus.

“Ideally,” Mr. Jones said, “I like to think that everyone eventually is going to have to work together to find solutions to fix the world.”

Kindergarten, he said, seems as good a place as any to start.