Haimson on Eva's saturation charter school mailings

Subject: [nyceducationnews] Eva's saturation charter school mailings

See this message from a friend who lives on the Upper West side with a child entering Kindergarten next year, who has received multiple mailings from the Harlem Success Academy in the week:

Today we received the 3d or 4^th mailing in the last week from the Harlem Success Academy, looking to enroll [his son’s name].

This really surprises me:

A. How do they get the $ to do direct mail & find out what kids are going to start kindergarten?

B. Why are they direct mailing to White couples on 102^nd?

Really curious if you have any thoughts or insight - -

The infamous Eva Moskowitz/Joel Klein emails, FOILed by Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News and posted here, revealed how Klein overturned long-standing policy to provide her with names and addresses of prospective parents through mailing houses; and allowed her to make repeated mailings to promote her chain of charter schools.

Juan’s column in which he showed how she picked out the space she wanted for her schools in existing zoned public schools, which Klein then tried to illegally close for her benefit, is here ;Juan’s earlier column about the preferential treatment she received from Klein, including his help in getting her a $1 million grant from the Broad foundation to build an army of parents to promote their political agenda, is here.

In her emails to Klein, Eva confides her desire to engage in saturation mailings, supposedly to promote “choice”, but really to build up her waiting list; which then she uses as a political weapon in their battle to lift the charter cap.

This may be one reason DOE is making parents register for Kindergartens earlier at public schools, so they can capture their addresses and make them available to charter schools in time for their lotteries.

Though Eva told the NY Times she spends $325,000 on recruitment, a cursory examination of the school’s financial statements shows that her spending on recruitment is actually much more. She has run ads in buses and is now also advertising on NY1. The actual expense must be near a million dollars or more.

Harlem Children’s Zone was featured on American Express ads during the Oscars.

Of course, no district public school could afford this sort of marketing campaign; and if they did, they would be accused of wasteful spending.

Here is Eva’s message to Klein, dated Dec. 21, 2007, in which she says though DOE only allows “one mailing to elementary and pre-K families” she wants to be able to mail promotional materials 10-12 times to each family.

As in all things between Klein and Eva, she gets her way. Her choices are clearly maximized!

Soon thereafter, she is provided with unlimited mailings through a third party mailing house to prospective public school parents.

Here is Michael Duffy’s reply, the head of the DOE charter school office, written the day after Xmas, in which he pledges cooperation and tells her she can always call him, day or night, on his cell:

No one could argue that this is an equal contest, when all the advantages are being given charter schools; not to mention Klein’s relentless promotion of charters, which is priceless.

Eva has now extended the reach of her mailings into large swathes of Manhattan and the Bronx. As one astute observer pointed out, this not only allows her to build up her charter school waiting list, but also to gather names for future battles over the charter school cap, funding, or her own future candidacy.

Her repeated mailings and advertising, financed through contributions from her hedge-fund supporters and billionaires like Broad, resemble the saturation mailings and domination of the air waves that New Yorkers have been subjected to by our billionaire mayor, each time he runs for re-election, sparing no expense.

Just as he has bought his way into a third term, the hostile takeover of public education by charter schools has nearly unlimited financing to back it up. Is this the future we really want for our public schools?

Is Obama Getting Bad Advice on His Appointments?

By Greg Palast, Huffington Post. Posted December 11, 2008.

Joel Klein is being considered for secretary of education, which would make as much sense for our schools as Michael Brown did for disaster relief.

Has Barack Obama forgotten, Michael "Way to go, Brownie" Brown? Brown was that guy from the Arabian Horse Association appointed by President George W. Bush to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brownie, not knowing the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain from the south end of a horse, let New Orleans drown. Bush's response was to give his buddy Brownie a thumbs up.

We thought Obama would go a very different way. You'd think the studious senator from Illinois would avoid repeating the Bush regime's horror show of unqualified appointments, of picking politicos over professionals. But here we go again. Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as secretary of education. If not Klein, then draft choice No. 2 is Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago.

Say it ain't so, President O.

Let's begin with Joel Klein. Klein is a top-notch antitrust lawyer. What he isn't is an educator. Klein is as qualified to run the Department of Education as Vice President Dick Cheney is to dance in "Swan Lake." While I've never seen Cheney in a tutu, I have seen Klein fumble about the stage as chancellor of the New York City school system.

Klein, who lacks even six minutes experience in the field, was handed management of New York's schools by that political Jack-in-the-Box, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire mayor is one of those businessmen-turned-politicians who think lawyers and speculators can make school districts operate like businesses. Klein has indeed run city schools like a business -- if the business is General Motors. Klein has flopped. Half the city's kids don't graduate.

Klein is out of control. Not knowing a damn thing about education, rather than rely on those who actually work in the field (only two of his two dozen deputies have degrees in education), Klein pays high-priced consultants to tell him what to do. He has blown a third-of-a-billion dollars on consultant "accountability" projects, plus $80 million for an IBM computer data-storage system that doesn't work.

What the heck was the $80 million junk computer software for? Testing. Klein is test crazy. He has swallowed hook, line and sinker Bush's idea that testing students can replace teaching them. The madly expensive testing program and consultant-fee spree are paid for by yanking teachers from the classroom.

Ironically, though not surprisingly, test scores under Klein have flat-lined. Scores would have fallen lower, notes author Jane Hirschmann, but Klein "moved the cut line." That is, he lowered the level required to pass. In other words, Klein cheats on the tests.

Nevertheless, media poobahs have fallen in love with Klein, especially Republican pundits. The New York Times' David Brooks is championing Klein, hoping that media hype for Klein will push Obama to keep Bush schools policies in place, trumping the electorate's choice for change.

Brooks and other Republicans (hey, didn't those guys lose?) are pushing Klein as a way for Obama to prove he can reach across the aisle to Republicans like Bloomberg. (Oh yes, Bloomberg's no longer in the GOP, having jumped from the party this year when the brand name went sour.)

Choosing Klein, says Brooks, would display Obama's independence from the teacher's union. But after years of Bush kicking teachers in the teeth, appointing a Bush acolyte like Klein would not indicate independence from teachers but their betrayal.

Hoops versus Hope

The anti-union establishment has a second-stringer on the bench waiting in case Klein is nixed: Arne Duncan. Duncan, another lawyer playing at education, was appointed by Chicago's Richard M. Daley to head that city's train-wreck of a school system. Think of Duncan as "Klein Lite."

What is Duncan's connection to the president-elect? Duncan was once captain of Harvard's basketball team and still plays backyard roundball with his Hyde Park neighbor Obama.

But Michelle Obama put a limit on their friendship: Barack Obama was one of the only state senators from Chicago to refuse to send his children into Duncan's public schools. My information is the Obamas sent their daughters to the elite Laboratory School where Klein-Duncan teach-to-the-test pedagogy is dismissed as damaging and nutty.

Mr. Obama, if you can't trust your kids to Arne Duncan, why hand him ours?

Duncan is proud to have raised test scores by firing every teacher in low-scoring schools. Which schools? There's Collins High in the Lawndale ghetto, with children from homeless shelters and drug-poisoned 'hoods. They don't do well on tests. So Chicago fired all the teachers. They brought in new ones -- then fired all of them, too: The teachers' reward for volunteering to work in a poor neighborhood.

It's no coincidence that the nation's worst school systems are run by non-experts like Klein and Duncan.

Obama certainly knows this. I know he knows, because he has chosen, as head of his education department transition team, one of the most highly respected educators in the United States: Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University.

So here we have the ludicrous scene of the president-elect asking this recognized authority, Darling-Hammond, to vet the qualifications of amateurs Klein and Duncan. It's as if Obama were to ask Michael Jordan, "Say, you wouldn't happen to know anyone who can play basketball, would you?"

Classroom Class War

It's not just Klein's and Duncan's empty credentials that scare me: It's the ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories they promote. "Teach-to-the-test" (which goes under such prepackaged teaching brands as "Success for All") forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in rote, low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests. The transparent purpose is to create the future class of worker-drones. Add in some computer training and -- voila! -- millions trained on the cheap to function, not think. Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills will be left to the privileged at the Laboratory School and Phillips Andover Academy.

We hope for better from the daddy of Sasha and Malia.

Educationally, the world is swamping us. The economic and social levees are bursting. We cannot afford another Way-To-Go Brownie in charge of rescuing our children.


Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

http://www.alternet.org/story/111806/is_obama_getting_bad_advice_on_his_appointments/?page=entire

Save Our Schools: Klein Lied to the National Press Club

Klein Lied to the National Press Club (Australia)

New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, was exposed as a dissembler at his National Press Club address in Canberra last week. Under forensic questioning from the Canberra Times’ education reporter, Emma Macdonald, Klein resorted to lies and deceptions to justify his claims of increases in student achievement in New York City schools.

Macdonald challenged Klein on his claims by citing national reading and mathematics assessments which show that there has been no improvement in student achievement in NYC since 2003, except for 4th grade mathematics. She questioned him on whether the grades given to schools in this year’s school progress reports had been manipulated by reducing the cut-off scores to achieve an A or B.

Klein denied both charges. He said that Macdonald was wrong on both facts. His response was to falsely assert that the cut-off scores for school grades had not been reduced, falsely claim that New York State tests were a better measure of student achievement than the independent national assessments, and to selectively cite evidence about the success of African-American students.
Cut-off Scores for School Grades
Klein’s answer that the cut-off scores for school grades were not reduced in 2008 is an outright lie. The Educator Guides for school progress reports published by the New York City Department of Education [2007a, 2007b, 2008a, 2008b] provide the actual cut-off scores for each grade level and show that they were reduced for the 2007-08 reports. For example, the cut-off score for an elementary school to achieve an A was reduced from 64 for the 2006-07 progress reports to 59.6 for 2007-08 and the score for a B was reduced from 49.9 to 45.8. The cut-off score for a high school to achieve an A was reduced from 67.6 to 64.2 and that for a B reduced from 48.8 to 43.5.

Not surprisingly, there was a large increase in schools achieving an A or B in 2007-08 compared to the previous year. This year, 79% of elementary schools received an A or B compared to 71% last year and 83% of high schools received an A or B compared to 65% in 2006-07.

Virtually all of the increase in elementary schools achieving an A or B and about two-thirds of the increase for high schools appears due to the reduction in grade cut-off scores. If last year’s cut-off points had been used, only 72% of elementary schools would be rated as A or B, almost no change from last year, and only 71% of high schools.

The reduction in cut-off scores is not even mentioned in the list of changes to the school progress reports appended to the new technical guides to the reports published by the Department of Education. The guides for the 2006-07 reports stated the cut-off scores ‘will be used for the next several years’. They lasted only one year before being revised down.

It appears that the cut-off scores are to be increased for 2008-09. For example, the Department has announced that the new cut-off score for a high school to achieve an A is 70 and for a B it is 54. These cut-off scores are even higher than they were for the 2006-07 school progress reports.
In answering Macdonald’s question, Klein attempted to use this increase as a smokescreen to avoid admitting that the cut-off scores had been reduced for this year’s progress reports. Not only did it expose him as a dissembler, but it also demonstrated the unreliability of his school reporting system for comparing school performance from one year to the next.

The changes in cut-off scores are one of many made to the methodology for calculating school scores and grades for the school progress reports. Several other changes were made for the 2007-08 reports. They invalidate comparisons of school performance over time and show that the reporting system lauded by Julia Gillard lacks integrity and credibility.
National vs. State Tests
Klein claims that the New York State tests are a better accountability measure because they are mandatory whereas the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) conducted by the US Department of Education is based on only a sample of students. This claim is false on several grounds.

First, NAEP is a properly constructed valid statistical sample of the student population. It is widely seen by experts as the best measure of student achievement in the United States. It is very carefully designed to measure trends in student achievement, it reflects a consensus about what students should know and its coverage of the tested curriculum areas is broad [Koretz 2008: 92]. As such, the NAEP is no less valid than the State tests, despite Klein’s claim. Any statistical textbook will say that a well-constructed random sample can estimate the true result just as well as an exhaustive count of all potential participants. This is the whole point of statistical sampling.

Second, the NAEP has the advantage of providing consistent comparisons over time. The New York State tests do not provide such comparisons as there have been significant changes to these tests in recent years.

The State test data is not strictly comparable between 2003 and 2007/8. In 2006, the New York State Department of Education expanded its English and mathematics testing program to grades 3- 8. Previously, the State tests were administered in grades 4 and 8 and tests for grades 3, 5, 6 and 7 were administered by the New York City Department of Education. The State tests for grades 3 – 8 include both multiple choice and extended response questions while the City tests comprised multiple choice questions only. As a result of these changes, the results from 1999 to 2005 cannot be compared to those from 2006 to 2008 because the State Department changed the scale scores with the expansion of the State tests for English and mathematics.

Other changes have been also made since then. For example, there are now more stringent requirements for participation of English Language Learners in the State tests.

These changes make consistent comparisons over time impossible and therefore to determine whether student achievement increased or declined over the period. This lack of comparability in the state test data over time is not acknowledged in Klein’s claims about improvement in student achievement on the basis of the state results.



Third, Klein demonstrates no understanding of the protocols for reporting statistics accurately. Because all tests are samples of student achievement there are random errors involved in interpreting the results as estimates of true student achievement. For this reason, a fundamental aspect of reporting test results is to report estimates of the margins of error in order to aid accurate interpretation of the results. Margins of error are reported for the NAEP tests but not for the New York State tests. As a result, it is impossible to accurately interpret changes in the New York State test results.

The National Center on Education Statistics which administers the NAEP has criticised the failure of the New York City Department of Education to report margins of error on test results. It has said that Klein’s conclusions about progress on student achievement are “incomplete” and “do not take into account whether the changes or differences are statistically significant” [Green 2008]. Klein’s response was that confidence limits do not matter and that statistical significance is “playing something of a game”. This demonstrates a cavalier and irresponsible disregard for the importance of reporting test results accurately to ensure that those using the results are not misinformed or mislead.

Fourth, New York State tests are not independently administered and are open to manipulation in various ways. The tests are administered by teachers and schools and the “high stakes” associated with publishing school results creates incentives to cheat and rort the system. For example, schools and teachers are able to score parts of their own students’ tests. US research shows that teachers who administer the tests of their own students were approximately 50 percent more likely to cheat [Jacob & Levitt 2003]. Several allegations of cheating and other rorting of the state tests have been published in the New York press in recent years, including in 2008.

In contrast, the NAEP is designed and administered in a way that makes it more robust against manipulation [Thiessen et.al. 2008]. It is not used to make “high stakes” decisions about schools, principals or individual teachers so there is less incentive to try and manipulate the results. Teachers do not have access to the test items before the tests are administered. The US Department of Education hires staff to administer the tests and classroom teachers can monitor the administration.

Thus, contrary to the claims of the New York City Schools Chancellor that the State tests are a better accountability measure than the national tests, it is the State test results which are the less reliable measure.
Student Achievement
In his response to Emma Macdonald, Klein said she was wrong on the facts she presented about no overall improvement in student achievement in New York City since 2003, except for grade 4 mathematics. It is Klein who is wrong.

The NAEP tests show no statistically significant change in average student scores for reading in Grades 4 and 8 between 2003 and 2007 in New York City [Lutkus, Grigg & Donahue 2007; Lutkus, Grigg & Dion 2007]. They show a small improvement in Grade 4 mathematics but no improvement in Grade 8.

Nor was there any general improvement for disadvantaged students. There was no improvement in average reading scores for low income, Black and Hispanic students in either Grade 4 or 8. There were small improvements in average mathematics scores in Grade 4 for low income, Black and Hispanic students. In Grade 8 mathematics there was no improvement for Black and Hispanic students, but a slight improvement for low income students.

In his attempt to demonstrate improvement in student achievement, Klein focused on the achievement of African-American students. He stated that New York City is at the top of the list nationally for African-American 4th grade students in reading and mathematics. This was a case of using selective evidence.

While it is largely true that 4th grade African-Americans performed above their counterparts nationally in 2007, this was not the case in 8th grade reading and mathematics where the New York City results were similar to those nationwide (see table below). In terms of changes in the relative position of New York City since 2003, there was an improvement in 4th grade mathematics, but a deterioration in 8th grade reading and mathematics. Moreover, the advantage held by New York City over other large cities for the 4th grade cohort in 2003 had disappeared by the time it reached 8th grade in 2007. This is hardly the record of success claimed by Klein.

The details of this rebuttal of Klein’s claims are as follows.

Average scale scores in mathematics for New York City African-American students in 2007 were higher than the averages for large US cities and the nation [Lutkus, Grigg & Donahue 2007; Lutkus, Grigg & Dion 2007]. However, contrary to Mr. Klein’s claim, the average scale scores in reading for 4th grade African-American students in 2007 were statistically similar to the average for the nation, although they were higher than the average for large US cities.

In addition, there was no statistical difference between the average scale scores for NYC African-American students in 8th grade reading and mathematics and the average for large US cities and the nation.

The position of NYC African-Americans in reading was largely unchanged since 2003, when Klein’s changes began to be implemented. In that year, the average scale score in 4th grade reading was higher than the average for the large cities but similar to that of the nation, as was the case in 2007 [Lutkus & Weiner 2003a]. The average scale score in 4th grade mathematics was higher than the average for the large cities in 2003 [Lutkus & Weiner 2003b] as it was in 2007, but it improved from being similar to the national average in 2003 to above the national average in 2007.

In 8th grade, the position of NYC African-American students slightly deteriorated between 2003 and 2007. In 2003, the average scale score in reading and mathematics was higher than the average for large US cities and statistically similar to the national average but by 2007 the NYC scores were similar to both those of the large cities and the nation.

Moreover, the position of the 4th grade cohort of African-Americans deteriorated by the time it got to 8th grade. As noted above, the average scale score in 4th grade reading and mathematics in 2003 was higher than the average for the large cities but similar to that of the nation. However, by 2007, the average scale score of the same cohort in 8th grade was similar to both other averages.


Test Scores of New York City African-American Students Compared to African-American Students in Large US Cities and the Nation
Subject/Grade Large Cities Nation
2003 2007 2003 2007
4th Grade Reading Higher Higher Similar Similar
4th Grade Mathematics Higher Higher Similar Higher
8th Grade Reading Higher Similar Similar Similar
8th Grade Mathematics Higher Similar Similar Similar
Note: The relative positions take account of statistical margins of error.
Sources: Lutkus & Weiner 2003a, 2003b; Lutkus, Grigg & Dion 2007; Lutkus, Grigg & Donahue 2007.

References
Green, Elizabeth 2008. Achievement Gap’ in City Schools is Scrutinized. New York Sun, 5 August. Available at: http://www.nysun.com/new-york/achievement-gap-in-city-schools-is-scrutinized/83215/

Jacob, B. and Levitt, S. 2003. Rotten apples: an investigation of the prevalence and predictors of teacher cheating. Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (3): 843– 878.

Koretz, Daniel 2008. Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. Harvard University Press, Harvard.

Lutkus, A.; Grigg, W. and Dion, G. 2007. The Nation’s Report Card: Trial Urban District Assessment Mathematics 2007 (NCES 2008-452). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/dst2007/2008452.asp

Lutkus, A.; Grigg, W. and Donahue, P. 2007. The Nation’s Report Card: Trial Urban District Assessment Reading 2007 (NCES 2008-455). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/dst2007/2008455.asp

Lutkus, A.D. and Weiner, A.W. 2003a. The Nation's Report Card: Trial Urban District Assessment, Reading Highlights 2003 (NCES 2004-459). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/dst2003/2004459.asp

Lutkus, A.D. and Weiner, A.W. 2003b. The Nation's Report Card: Trial Urban District Assessment, Mathematics Highlights 2003 (NCES 2004-458). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/dst2003/2004458.asp

New York City Department of Education 2007a. Educator Guide: The New York City Progress Report, Elementary/Middle School. October. Available at:
http://www.ps150.net/Assessment,%20Evaluation,%20and%20Statistics/EducatorGuide_EMS%20(3).pdf

New York City Department of Education 2007b. Educator Guide: The New York City Progress Report, High School. [Copy available from author]

New York City Department of Education 2008a. Educator Guide: The New York City Progress Report, Elementary/Middle School. September. Available at: http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/SchoolReports/ProgressReports/default.htm

New York City Department of Education 2008b. Educator Guide: The New York City Progress Report, High School. November. Available at: http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/SchoolReports/ProgressReports/default.htm

Thiessen, Brad; Magda, Tracey and Ho, Andrew 2008. Nonparametric Comparisons of High-Stakes and Low-Stakes Trends: 2003 – 2007. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York City, March 24-28. Available at: http://homepage.mac.com/bradthiessen/presentpaper.pdf

Telling the Story of School Reform

Unnoticed! You’ve got to be kidding. There were articles in the Daily News and the NY Post, as well as elsewhere. This piece in Ed Week was execrable. See letters by Jane Hirschmann and David Bloomfield in response to an execrable column in EdWeek last month, in which Gina Burkhardt and Richard Lee Colvin of the Hechinger Center (which is supposed to support balanced journalism on education issues) wrote the following tripe, in sympathy with Joel Klein’s supposed difficulty to tell his side of the story in the media about his incredible successes in our schools: - Leonie Haimson

See Ednotes commentary on this article and on Richard Lee Colvin (search for articles on Colvin.) Also the Hirschmann and Bloomfield letters.

Edweek
Commentary, Oct. 29, 2008:

Telling the Story of School Reform

By Gina Burkhardt & Richard Lee Colvin

The daily, unglamorous work of improving public education rarely captures headlines or generates chatter unless it fails. If the failure can be blamed on a well-paid superintendent, especially an outsider with a strong personality, so much the better. This definition of news leaves communities in the dark about the hard decisions that must be made every day on the most important contributors to learning: curriculum, teacher quality, instructional practices, and assessments. …

“Mayor Bloomberg, having secured direct oversight for the city’s schools from the New York state legislature, appointed Klein, a former federal prosecutor, as his point man. During their tenure together, they have focused on improving school leadership, increasing accountability, and giving principals more power over hiring and spending. More than 300 new schools have been created, 60 of them charter schools. Test scores are up, dropout rates down, teachers and principals are paid more, and parents’ satisfaction with their children’s schools has grown.

Yet Klein, in an interview on the Web site BigThink.com , found fault with at least one aspect of his performance. He believes he has not worked hard enough to personally tell the story of the changes in philosophy and practice that both produced results and generated controversy. It’s a lesson, he says, “I wish I had learned sooner.”

….Ambitious changes that disrupt the status quo—such as, in the case of New York, issuing letter grades for schools and negotiating a contract that reduces the role of seniority in teaching assignments—require the district leadership to step out and tell the story so that the community understands the rationale behind the decisions and the outcomes that can be expected.

“We let other people characterize the changes in ways that were both inaccurate and harmful,” the New York City chancellor said ruefully. “These things are controversial, and you’re running up against people who have very sophisticated media machines … who can be counted upon to mount an effective defense.”

The school system Klein heads is unlike any other, in size, politics, and the intensity of media scrutiny. Still, his insight that the leader of a school district has to render district change as a compelling story for parents and the community is one that other school leaders should heed….

In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein are strong backers of charter schools, and so Klein cited the performance of those schools’ students on this year’s required math and language arts tests: Eighty-five percent of charter school students met or exceeded grade-level math standards this year, compared with 74 percent citywide and 80 percent statewide, and they also outpaced their peers citywide in language arts. “I would have thought this would be a huge story,” the chancellor said. But it passed by virtually unnoticed.”

Joel Klein's reign of destruction by Leonie Haimson

The Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators, and no thought of how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to our children and their futures.

He has consistently ignored the crisis of overcrowding in our schools, that in many neighborhoods has gotten worse because of rampant residential development, as well his insistence to insert hundreds of new charter schools and small schools into existing, overcrowded school buildings. In a recent survey, half of all principals say that the overcrowding creates unsafe conditions for students or staff, 29% said that lunch starts at 10:30 AM or earlier, 25% said that they have lost their art or music rooms in recent years, and 18% said they had classrooms with no windows. Thousands of children are being given special services in hallways or in closets.

They have put almost no effort in building new schools, and under this administration, twice as many new seats have been created in new stadiums than schools. The city’s investment in school construction as a percent its total capital spending is at a historic low, and will drop even more precipitously in the future, if the DOE’s proposed school capital plan goes through.

Joel Klein has refused to reduce class size, despite repeated audits and reports from the State Comptroller’s office and the State Education Department showing how under his administration, hundreds of millions of state dollars meant to provide smaller classes to NYC students have been misused. As a result, 86% of NYC principals in a recent survey have said they are unable to provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes.

Similarly, he has argued that even under Mayoral control, the Department of Education is not subject to city law, and thus he continues to defy laws passed by the City Council over the Mayor’s veto, requiring him to take measures against bias crimes and bullying in schools, to allow students to bring cell phones to school, and to obey the recycling laws required of every household and business in NYC.

The Chancellor has moved to eliminate the authority of school leadership teams –made up of half parents, half staff – to have decision-making authority over school budgets, contrary to the state law that created these teams. He has continued to shut out parents from having any input whatsoever, at the school, district, or citywide level.

He has spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars on no-bid contracts, and rather than decreasing the bureaucracy, the number of highly paid bureaucrats at Tweed continues to grow --- most of whom have no background in education. To counter a recent article by a Daily News reporter pointing out the personal wealth of many of the top education officials, who are former business executives and corporate consultants, the DOE press office responded in defense that two out of twenty of Klein’s top advisers were long-term educators. (This article was killed in the middle of the night, and removed from the Daily News website after complaints from the DOE; but we posted a copy of it on our blog at http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/)

The only educational philosophy of those running the system is based on trying to improve standardized test results, no matter how much cheating and test prep that involves. Whatever the rise in state test scores that has resulted is not matched by improvements in the more reliable national assessments called the NAEPs. In fact, NYC was 11th out of 12 urban school districts in terms of its gains in the NAEPs over the course of this administration, and there has been no closing of the achievement gap in any subject tested.

Indeed, Joel Klein’s insistence on basing all decisions on high-stakes tests has led to racial disparities growing in many areas – with far fewer children of color admitted to gifted programs and to our selective high schools, and a declining number of Black and Hispanic teachers in our teaching force.

In short, he has been a disaster for our schools, and Barack Obama should be forewarned not to name him to any position of authority in his administration – as much as we would like to get rid of him!

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

Please make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!

Joel Klein's Report Card

Click to enlarge:


From the Village Voice

Some in Australia Prepare "Big Welcome" for Joel Klein Visit

According to the Australian paper the Age, looks like the Australian teachers union and education advocates are not buying the unreliable NYC school grading system that Joel Klein is pitching to them down under. To be forewarned is to be forearmed!

The federal president of the Australian Education Union, Angelo Gavrielatos, said the Australian Government should not be importing "flawed" approaches from the US, a nation that was consistently outperformed by countries such as Finland which did not publicly rank schools.

Canberra-based public education advocacy group Save Our Schools last week called on Ms Gillard to release the details of her performance reporting plan to ensure it did not reproduce the problems of the New York system, which it said had led to league tables and dissimilar schools being compared with each other.

A New York state of mind

October 13, 2008

http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/a-new-york-state-of-mind-20081012-4yyk.html?page=-1

Julia Gillard tells Dan Harrison of her plan to introduce report cards on schools.

EDUCATION Minister Julia Gillard has sought to allay fears of a wholesale adoption of the controversial "New York model" of schooling as its creator prepares to visit Australia next month.

The chancellor of the New York City department of education, Joel Klein, is due to discuss his radical methods, which include grading schools from A to F, closing schools that consistently fail to meet performance criteria and rating individual teachers based on the performance of their students in standardised tests.

Ms Gillard met Mr Klein in New York in July and was impressed by his transformation of the city's school system, which is credited with lifting graduation rates and levels of student achievement in maths and reading.

But the effectiveness of his changes is contested. A survey commissioned by Newsweek magazine in May found that no New York high school was in the nation's top 200.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd angered teachers' unions in August when he flagged the adoption of many of Mr Klein's ideas in a speech to the National Press Club. He also said the information to be collected and published on schools would go beyond "simplistic league tables".

The federal president of the Australian Education Union, Angelo Gavrielatos, said the Australian Government should not be importing "flawed" approaches from the US, a nation that was consistently outperformed by countries such as Finland which did not publicly rank schools.

"Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd have said repeatedly that they don't want to reduce school accountability to simplistic league tables," Mr Gavrielatos said. "The question for the Deputy Prime Minister is, how will she stop it?"

In an interview with The Age, Ms Gillard said her system would compare like-with-like schools.

"What they do in New York goes beyond that," she said. "We've made it clear that we're not talking about importing any one model, whether it be the New York model or any other. We are interested in designing the model that would work best for this country but I think, at its core, it does need to have that comparison of similar schools." She would not provide details of her system, citing negotiations. She said Mr Klein's visit was intended to enrich the public discussion on the issue.

"I heard from him directly and came to a range of conclusions about things we would want to do here and things we wouldn't want to do here.

"But I think it's great to have him so that people can access him directly and I think that will help people sharpen their thinking and sharpen the community discussion around this whole question of school transparency and what can be achieved from it."

Canberra-based public education advocacy group Save Our Schools last week called on Ms Gillard to release the details of her performance reporting plan to ensure it did not reproduce the problems of the New York system, which it said had led to league tables and dissimilar schools being compared with each other.

"Let us have an informed debate while Klein is here and not just a one-sided presentation to bolster Gillard's secret negotiations with state and territory governments," SOS spokesman Trevor Cobbold said. "It seems it is all being decided behind closed doors with the axe of Commonwealth funding held over the heads of state and territory governments to ensure compliance."

Randi Weingarten and Joel Klein exchange letters on ATR's, Budget

September 24, 2008
Hon. Joel I. Klein
Chancellor
New York City Public Schools
Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007

Dear Chancellor Klein:

The latest effects of the Wall Street lending crisis has left us all with a deep sense of
uncertainty and unease, but it also presents us with an opportunity to stand together for
the children of this city. With families across the five boroughs already struggling, it is all
the more imperative that we do all we can to insulate our students and their classrooms
from this economic crisis and ensure that every student has a strong, safe and stable
learning environment.

As we navigate through this crisis, tough decisions obviously need to be made. As is our
practice, we have some ideas and proposals on how we mitigate some of the challenges
ahead without adversely affecting the classroom. Creative thinking and smart choices
protected schools from cuts earlier this year, and I strongly believe that we can duplicate
that success now.

In the spirit of partnership and collaboration, we urge you to adopt and implement the
following three measures:

1. An immediate hiring freeze at the central Department of Education, and at the school
and district level for any license areas where there are people in excess and available for
placement.

2. A redeployment of teachers and other excessed personnel in the Absent Teacher
Reserve (ATR) into vacancies as they arise.

3. Develop a program to recertify excessed personnel in additional license areas, so they
are available to fill vacancies as they arise.

The first two measures should help the Department of Education recognize immediate
cost savings, and the third recommendation would be a valuable investment in personnel
management.

We look forward to discussing these ideas and others in the days ahead.
Yours sincerely,

Randi Weingarten
Cc: Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler
Commissioner of Labor James F. Hanley
Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf



Klein responds
Dear Randi:

Thank you for your letter yesterday regarding the fiscal challenges facing the City and their impact on our schools.

I wholeheartedly agree that our priority should be to limit the impact of the budget reductions on classrooms and I welcome the opportunity to work with you and your team toward this end.

However, I want to reiterate that we will not alter our policy on forced placement of teachers. It makes sense to try to limit the significant and growing cost of unselected excessed teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve, but doing so by forcing these teachers into schools is not the answer. A return to this discredited practice, which harmed our schools for decades, would, once more, require schools to accept teachers regardless of whether principals and faculty believe they are the best candidates or good fits for positions.

At our announcement of the School-wide Performance Bonus awards last week, you and I both emphasized the critical need for teacher quality and effective collaboration among teachers and supervisors. You said, “We know, and I think there has become a real consensus in this City, that teacher quality and collaboration are real keys – pivotal keys – to turning around student achievement in schools.” Forced placement contradicts both of those goals. It would be far better to give excessed teachers a reasonable period of time to find a position before they are placed on unpaid leave. Such a policy would mitigate the cost while maintaining fairness and obviating the need for forced placement and all the negative repercussions a return to that system would bring.

I look forward to continuing our conversation on this critical issue and to receiving your input as we work to address our current budget situation.


Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein


FACT SHEET ON EXCESSED TEACHERS (from DOE)


Background




· Fact: Most Excessed Teachers Are Finding Jobs

o Only about 9% of the 2,742 teachers excessed in 2006 are still in excess. Well over 1,000 excesses – across all seniority levels –found regular teaching positions by applying for vacancies, interviewing with principals, and demonstrating that they were the best candidates for the positions. More than 14,000 positions across the city were filled since 2006.

o Of the 1418 teacher excessed in 2007, only 351 are still in excess after one year.

o Of the 2,039 teachers excessed in 2008, 758 are still in excess today.



· Fact: Excessed Teachers are Provided with Extensive Hiring Support

o The New Teacher Project provides excessed teachers with newsletters, workshops on resume writing and interviewing, one-on-one job-search assistance, bulletins with vacancy lists, job fairs across the City, and an on-line application system exclusively for excessed teachers.

o In the summer of 2008, TNTP sent bi-weekly newsletters to excessed staff with job fair information and job search tips, maintained a web site for excessed staff with job search tips, offered 15 skill-building workshops, answered 1,000 calls to a hotline set up for excessed teachers, and reached out by phone to excessed teachers who appeared to be inactive in their job searches.



· Fact: The Excessed Teacher Pool includes Junior and Senior Teachers, and Senior Excessed Teachers Have Been Hired at the Same Rate as Junior Teachers

o Excessed teachers who haven’t been hired are just as likely to be newer teachers as they are to be more experienced teachers.



Seniority of Excessed Teachers as of 9/5/2008

0 to 3 years 343 24.6%

4 to 6 years 245 17.6%

7 to 12 years 305 21.9%

13 to 19 years 262 18.8%

20+ years 240 17.2%

Total 1395 100.0%


o Excessed teachers across experience levels are equally likely to be hired to a position at another school:

· 35% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 0-3 years experience were hired by April 2008.

· 41% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 4-6 years experience were hired by April 2008.

· 47% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 7-12 years experience were hired by April 2008.

· 45% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 13-19 years experience were hired by April 2008.

· 38% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 20+ years experience were hired by April 2008.



o Another approximately 40% of excessed teachers are reabsorbed into the school from which they were excessed when positions opened up.


· Fact: The DOE Offers Schools a Subsidy for Hiring Senior Excessed Teachers

o The DOE pays the difference between a hired excessed teacher’s salary and a starting teacher’s salary (which could be as much as $55,000) for the first year, and half that difference for the second year, when a school hires a teacher who has been in excess for at least 6 months.



· Fact: Unselected Excessed Teachers Applied to Fewer Jobs

o Of the 235 unselected teachers excessed in 2006, about half did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system, and they attended fewer hiring fairs.

o Of the 351 unselected teachers excessed in 2007, 62% did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system in 2007 and 75% of these same teachers did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system in 2008.

o Of the 758 unselected teachers excessed in 2008, half did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system.

o During 2007 and 2008, more than 4,500 teachers were hired by schools through the open market system.



· Fact: Unselected Excessed Teachers Are More Likely to Have a History of Unsatisfactory Performance

o As of December 2007, nearly 15% of unselected excessed teachers had been rated unsatisfactory by their principal in the past 10 years, compared to only 5% of selected excessed teachers.

o As of December 2006, 20% of unselected excessed teachers with 13 or more years’ experience had prior unsatisfactory ratings compared with 7% of more junior teachers

o Excessed teachers who have been rated unsatisfactory by a principal at least once were hired at less than half the rate as excessed teachers who had never been rated unsatisfactory between December 2006 and September 2007.

o 7% of teachers excessed in 2008 who have not yet been hired by a school had previously been rated unsatisfactory, compared to 2% of teachers excessed in 2008 who have been hired.

o Approximately 1.8% of all teachers overall were rated unsatisfactory last school year.


· Fact: The Cost of Excessed Teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve for a Year or More is Substantial and Growing

o The cost in salaries and benefits for the 635 unselected teachers excessed in 2006 and 2007—who have been in the excess pool for a year or longer—could be as much as $60 million in this fiscal year.

Joel and Michelle Have Fun in the Sun (Valley)

Leonie Haimson Reports:

At the big media event held every year at Sun Valley, Joel Klein will be on a panel with Michelle Rhee, the super in DC, Deborah Kenny, the head of a network of Harlem charter schools, and Andre Cowling , identified as the principal of the John Harvard school of excellence, a “turnaround” public school in Chicago, started in the fall of 2007.

What all these people clearly excel in is getting great PR. Their schools also brag about all the homework and the longer day. Wonder what the attrition rates are.

Here is a news story about Kenny, which says she “developed a business plan devoid of bureaucracy and heavily influenced by Jack Welch's notions of leadership analysis and accountability.”

Here is a news story about Cowling, who is described as “a former captain in the Army, a Desert Storm veteran – [who] left the corporate world to become a principal. “ Here is another, which reports that he fired all the teachers at the school and then rehired only three.

Yet strangely, the school’s website finds that Cowling is already gone and they have a new interim principal, someone named David L. Hannsberry.

Sun Valley Diary: A Peek at the Agenda

July 9, 2008, 7:48 am

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/the-unofficial-sun-valley-schedule/

For devotees of Allen & Company’s annual confab who like to keep up with the official doings here in Sun Valley, we’ve procured an official schedule — against the wishes of the event’s organizers — for your information and
perhaps even your amusement.

The action starts early Wednesday with breakfast at 6:30 a.m. — much earlier than breakfast at Michael’s in New York.

At 7:30 a.m. is a presentation by Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com. He’s likely to trot out his Kindle e-book device and talk about the future of publishing and electronic commerce.

After than, Ken Auletta of The New Yorker leads a conversation called “Looking Around the Corner to the Future” with Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Ning, the hot new social networking site; Barry Diller, chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp; and Larry Page, a co-Founder of Google.

That’s all for the panels today. Then the fun, and closed-door meetings, begin. If you’re not hatching a project or calling your office, the whitewater rafting trip leaves at 10:30 a.m. Golf is at 11 a.m.; there’s biking, fly-fishing, hiking trail rides, yoga and bridge (paging Bill Gates and Warren Buffett!) in the afternoon.

On Thursday, Joel I. Klein, New York City’s schools chancellor, tries to open everyone’s mind with a conversation entitled “The Education Crisis” with Andre Cowling, principal of the John Harvard Elementary School of Excellence; Deborah Kenny, founder and chief executive of the Village Academies; and Michelle Rhee, the schools chancellor in Washington, D.C.

After that, Donald R. Keough of Allen & Company, the former No. 2 at Coca-Cola, leads a conversation called “Global Perspectives” with Muhtar Kent, chief executive of Coca-Cola; Niall FitzGerald, deputy chairman of Thomson Reuters; and Sir Howard Stringer, chairman of Sony. The last act for the day is Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of Dreamworks Animation. The afternoon is filled with a tennis tournament, a trap-shooting tournament and yes, even knitting.

Friday begins with a panel of conference newbies: Gary Marino, chief executive of Bill Me Later; Max Levchin, chief executive of Slide.com; and David Friedberg, chief executive of WeatherBill. (Expect lots of people to wake up early to check out their next potential acquisition targets.) Then things get serious with a panel Charlie Rose is moderating called “Where We Are – Where We Should Be” with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sam Nunn, a former senator from Georgia and co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

After that comes the surprise guest. It says “TBA” on the schedule, but we’ll announce it here: The mystery speaker is His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan. Then an afternoon of more activities — and for some of the crowd, a ride back to airport to catch a private jet home.

For those who stick it out until Saturday, Allen & Company, the event’s organizers, have left what may be the best for last. Bill Gates is on the hot-seat with Tom Friedman of The New York Times in a conversation entitled “Creative Capitalism.” And that’s just a warm-up act for Warren Buffett, who is being interviewed by Donald Graham of The Washington Post. (Mr. Buffett is a big shareholder and board member of the Washington Post Company.)

A blowout dinner ends the week before everyone packs up.

The Phony War by Andrew Wolf

The Phony War
By ANDREW WOLF
May 30, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-phoney-war/78937/

The specific issue in New York City's public schools that has caused the
most recent brouhaha is how much we spend on teaching our students. In this
dust-up, all parties manage to come out on the wrong side.
Expenditures for education already have risen to more than $20 billion a
year from $12.5 billion six years ago, without any objective indicator that
would suggest that we are on the path to success.
There was a time when the mayor himself would criticize the $12.5 billion
figure, asking not for more money, but questioning why such a huge
expenditure didn't yield satisfactory results. While campaigning to be given
control of the schools back in 2002, Mr. Bloomberg suggested that
business-like management combined with a "back-to-basics" curriculum would
tame the perceived chaos in our schools.
This is the kind of talk that drew many of us, myself included, to support
mayoral control. But once assuming control, Mr. Bloomberg's initial precepts
were abandoned, and the mayor joined in supporting the Campaign for Fiscal
Equity lawsuit, apparently convinced that with just a few billion more, all
would be right.
By that time, the lawsuit had morphed from one that questioned whether the
formula by which state money earmarked for schools was apportioned was fair
to the city to one that asked whether enough money was being spent to
provide a "sound, basic education," a phrase that means something different
to anyone you ask. Considering that the Empire State already boasted the
highest per capita spending in the nation, a new definition of just how much
is enough was sure to emerge.
The case concluded with agreements on future levels of spending, with the
mayor and chancellor willing participants in the process. That was before
the mortgage crisis, $4 gasoline, and the souring of the local economy. Now
the mayor is reaping what he sowed. He played the CFE money game, and is
still finding himself allegedly short of money.
The department of education has come up with a plan that proposes the
deepest cuts to the schools that do the best. These schools
disproportionately serve middle class and politically active segments of the
population, who, the mayor thought, would reliably line up behind him. It
didn't work out that way.
This came to a head on Tuesday when the chancellor appeared before the
Council's education committee, and was flayed for "breaking his word" on
school spending. With a well-orchestrated "Keep the Promises" press campaign
financed by the unions hitting the airwaves, and a membership eager to end
the headlines over their own spending scandals, the committee members
eagerly eviscerated the hapless chancellor.
Mr. Klein has a point in wanting to restore control over his own budget. But
he willingly participated in the process by which that control was
compromised. He is right in wanting to insulate successful schools serving
the middle class from disproportionate pain, but didn't seem so concerned
about these schools when he proposed his "fair school funding" plan that
calls for cuts in many of them far deeper than anything now on the table.
Fair school funding was deferred as part of an agreement with the United
Federation of Teachers last year, and the upcoming budget will be the last
one in which these besieged schools will be "held harmless" from the
Draconian cuts previously proposed. Is the chancellor now willing to back
off, permanently, from the ill-conceived fair school funding plan, or is the
newly found concern for the middle class schools nothing more than a short
term ploy to win political support for a larger agenda?
In Tuesday's hearing everyone offered different figures as to the extent of
the cuts and even the amount of the education budget itself. There is plenty
that can be cut in the city's education budget - too many high priced
administrators at the Tweed Courthouse, a bloated public relations operation
spending more than 10 times as much as the old Board of Education spent on
spin control, too many no-bid contracts, hiring pricey British evaluation
teams to "rate" schools (not to mention their hotel bills), and on and on.
What we need is full budgetary transparency, encourage competitive bidding
on contracts and public debate on the necessity of those contracts, and a
full understanding that merely throwing money at the education system does
not translate into results - the one thing that the experiment in mayoral
control has proven beyond any doubt.
awolf@nysun.awo

CHANCELLOR KLEIN AND UFT PRESIDENT WEINGARTEN LAUNCH THANK A TEACHER CAMPAIGN

NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

JOEL I. KLEIN, Chancellor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE N-26, 2007-2008

November 28, 2007

CHANCELLOR KLEIN AND UFT PRESIDENT WEINGARTEN LAUNCH THANK A TEACHER CAMPAIGN

Broad Foundation and Starbucks Coffee Help to Recognize Contribution of New York City Teachers

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten today announced the City’s first-ever Thank a Teacher Campaign to give public school students and alumni a chance to thank their teachers for the impact they have had on their lives. The Department of Education (DOE) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) are asking current students and graduates to write up to 200 words about a special teacher. Submissions should be sent to ThankATeacher@schools.nyc.gov. If possible, a photograph, drawing, or painting of the teacher can be submitted along with the short essay. Responses will be posted on the DOE’s Web site at schools.nyc.gov/students.

“Teachers can have enormous influence on the lives of their students, immediately and long after the children grow up,” Chancellor Klein said. “I’ve said many times that I owe a great deal to Sidney Harris, my physics teacher at Bryant High School in Queens, who encouraged me not to set any limits when I thought about my future. There are so many powerful stories like mine. We want to recognize and honor New York City’s outstanding teachers for their important role in our schools and in our City.”

“Most people remember at least one teacher who touched their lives at a crucial turning point, sparked their interest in learning and inspired them to strive for excellence,” Randi Weingarten said. “For me, there are so many that I don’t want to single out one—Mr. Swift, Mrs. Seltzer, Mr. Dillon, Ms. Wilker, to name a few. Not surprisingly, parents concur, as 90 percent of those who responded to a survey this year said they are satisfied or very satisfied with their children’s teachers. It’s only fitting that we take a moment to say thanks for caring and making a difference.”

The deadline for New York City public school students and graduates to submit essays and pictures is December 21, 2007.

On January 10, 2008, some of the teachers who are recognized in the Thank a Teacher campaign will be honored at a celebration at Tweed Courthouse. The DOE will randomly select 200 of the teachers to attend a party with a guest. The event, funded by the Broad Foundation, will recognize the contribution teachers made to New York City winning the 2007 Broad Prize for Urban Education and to helping New York City schools and students succeed. The national award honors the school district that has made the most improvement in student performance while closing achievement gaps among ethnic and income groups. Starbucks Coffee is also supporting this event by donating Starbucks Cards to be dispersed to teachers. For more information on the Thank a Teacher Campaign, please visit schools.nyc.gov/students.

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Contact: David Cantor / Debra Wexler (212) 374-5141