Tag Archives: Andrew Cuomo

October 1, 2014 · 11:45 am

Success Academy’s Incredible Hypocrisy

Eva Moskowitz wants to continue to expand her Success Academy chain of “no excuses” charter schools, but is concerned that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio will not automatically and enthusiastically endorse her plans as was customary under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Following the model of her successful Albany rally last Spring that led to a state budget forcing New York City to pay rent for all charter schools, charter enthusiasts plan a rally for Thursday, October 2nd in Foley Square at 9am which they are dubbing “Don’t Steal Possible”.  I have seen organizers on social media promise as many as 10,000 attendees, many of whom I presume will be Success Academy teachers and students who, like the weekday rally in Albany, will be given time off from a scheduled school day to provide appropriate optics for the event.

“Don’t Steal Possible” refers to network supporters claiming that they are pleading with the de Blasio administration to not “steal” opportunities from NYC’s most struggling students who want to attend a charter school, especially a Success Academy charter school, where their success is “possible.”  Supporters have taken to Twitter with #DontStealPossible (as have detractors)  and both individuals and organizations, including Ms. Moskowitz herself, have repeated similar talking points about how their mission is driven for NYC kids “trapped” in failing schools:

https://twitter.com/CorbieNest/status/517188041426096128

The 143,000 kids that they repeatedly mention refers to a “report” from charter school advocacy group “Families for Excellent Schools” that cited 371 DOE schools where student performance on the 2013 state examinations did not pass 10% being labeled as proficient.  The purpose of the rally and of Ms. Moskowitz’s expansion plans is to offer “possible” to all of those students so that they can “escape” from their failed schools.

They really have some nerve.

There are many things galling about using the students at 371 New York City schools that serve mostly impoverished minority families as optics for a plan to expand the Success Academy chain, often into neighborhoods that are not struggling.  First, the article in the Daily News misrepresents the results of those state examinations, probably willfully.  These were the first examinations to align with the new Common Core standards, and they caused an extreme collapse of scores across the entire state.  Further, the examinations are not pegged to grade level skills in reading and mathematics. Period.  End of discussion.  “Proficient” in the new examinations is not a synonym for “grade level,” and anyone who mixes up those terms is misinformed or a liar.  Carol Burris, Principal at South Side High School, explains very clearly how the cut scores were set:

State Education Commissioner John King asked the College Board to “replicate research” to determine what PSAT and SAT scores predict first-year success in four-year colleges. The College Board was asked to correlate SAT scores with college grades to create probabilities of college success. You can read the report here.

Keep in mind that research shows that the SAT’s predictive power is only 22 percent. High school grades are a far better predictor of college success. The lack of validity of scores, without the context of grades, was not taken into consideration.

The New York study chose the following “probabilities” as the definition of college success:

* English Language Arts:  a 75 percent probability of obtaining a B- or better in a first-year college English course in a four-year college.

* Math: a 60 percent  probability of obtaining a C+ or better in a first-year math course in a four-year college….

….When the cut scores were set, the overall proficiency rate was 31 percent–close to the commissioner’s prediction.  The proportion of test takers who score 1630 on the SAT is 32 percent.  Coincidence?  Bet your sleeveless pineapple it’s not. Heck, the way I see it, the kids did not even need to show up for the test.

Argue, if you must, that the new proficiency standard is the appropriate way to set up how the exams are assessed.  But don’t call it “grade level” or “passing.”  They are neither of those things, nor were they designed to be those things.

Second, Ms. Moskowitz and her supporters are pleading, they say, on behalf of those “143,000 kids,” but there is no evidence from the work of her school network so far that Ms. Moskowitz would accommodate anywhere near all of those students even if her schools had enough seats.  First off, a lottery system, while in theory neutral, already skims from a student population by requiring parents and guardians who are informed enough about the system to actually apply in the first place.  Further, once students enroll in the Success Academy network, they are subject to attrition rates and rates of discipline that far outstrip the comparable DOE schools.  Success Academy 1 had an attrition rate greater than 50% since its opening school year in 2006-2007, and the network sends clear messages to parents that they do not want struggling kids in their schools.  The result, as demonstrated by Bruce Baker of Rutgers, is that Success Academies enroll far fewer students who are coming from high poverty homes, are English language learners, or have special education needs:

slide92

Success Academy wants you to believe that they are rallying so that nobody will “Steal Possible” from the students in New York City’s most struggling public schools, but all the data available about their past and current practices suggests that even if many of those students did win lottery seats in a Success Academy, many of them would be pushed out of the school.  Those children are being used to improve the appeal of Ms. Moskowitz’s expansion plans even though probably none of them will be present at tomorrow’s rally.  After all, they have school to attend, and no NYC principal is allowed to dismiss an entire school’s worth of children to a rally to pressure the mayor and Albany.

Third, if this was really a movement to tell the public and officials to “Don’t Steal Possible,” then one would assume that there would be causes involved that aided all of our city’s children, not just the ones that win charter lottery seats and are then allowed to stay at those charters.  Again from Professor Bruce Baker of Rutgers, Albany has manipulated its base state funding formula in ways that have shorted New York City somewhere between $3-4000 a YEAR per CHILD below previous calculations of state aid.  That amounts to $3-4 BILLION in state aid ANNUALLY that Albany has kept from reaching New York City.  Across the entire state of New York, the Gap Elimination Adjustment has deprived the average school district of $3.1 MILLION annually, and Governor Cuomo aggressively pursued and got a property tax cap so that districts cannot choose to make up the lost money locally.  Consider how much “possible” has absolutely been stolen from public schools in New York City and across the state by these policies, and then ask if Families for Excellent Schools and Success Academy’s wealthy backers in the financial industry will rally to change them.  The answer is, of course they won’t.  Those same donors and Ms. Moskowitz’s own PAC have donated generously to Andrew Cuomo’s campaign.

And this is the hypocrisy.  Ms. Moskowitz is going to excuse her teachers and students from a day of school to rally in alleged support of all of those kids she claims are “trapped” in “failing” DOE schools, and there is no doubt that an unacceptable number of our most vulnerable students are indeed in schools that struggle.  But there is NO evidence that Ms. Moskowitz wants all or even a bare majority of those students in HER schools.  There IS plenty of evidence that the most vulnerable children to reach a Success Academy find it very difficult to remain there, and there is incontrovertible evidence that Ms. Moskowitz and her financial backers support the reelection of a Governor who has choked schools of money for his entire first term in office.

“Don’t Steal Possible”?

Shameless.

UPDATE:  Courtesy of Mindy Rosier, a special education teacher in a co-located school, the Success Academy in her building has changed their normal Wednesday half-day to today, and the school is providing buses that met at 7:30am to take people to Foley Square.  The event is being billed as a “parent rally,” but with school at half day for the event, there is little doubt that many children will be accompanying them:

SA change of calendar SA bus

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September 10, 2014 · 2:08 pm

New York Times Ignored Teacher Input on Eva Moskowitz

The September 7th New York Times Magazine ran a story by Daniel Bergner called “The Battle for New York Schools: Eva Moskowitz vs. Mayor Bill de Blasio”.  Bergner’s piece reads as an astonishing piece of hagiography to appear in the paper of record, ignoring any substantive argument about Ms. Moskowitz’s schools and repeating without critique her organization’s point of view.  Mr. Bergner did make note that he had spoken to critics of Ms. Moskowitz’s approach, notably Dr. Diane Ravitch of New York University whose input he represents thusly:

When I talked with her, Ravitch indicted the hedge-fund titans and business moguls — including Kenneth Langone, a founder of Home Depot, and the Walton family of Walmart — who put their weight behind promising charter schools, leading their boards and lending political clout. “When they call themselves reformers,” she says, “it’s something I gag on.” What these philanthropists are all about, Ravitch says, is making themselves feel good while using charters as a halfway step in a covert effort to pull the country toward the privatization of education. For charter opponents, liberalism is in jeopardy. And from this perspective, Moskowitz, with her results and her readiness to trumpet them, poses the greatest risk.

Knowing something of Dr. Ravitch’s criticisms of charters schools generally and of Ms. Moskowitz specifically, this struck me as an odd and likely incomplete representation of her input.  Sure enough, several days after publication, Dr. Ravitch responded in her own blog at some length. According to Dr. Ravitch, her conversation with Mr. Bergner was not represented in the published article:

I spent a lot of time on the phone with the author, Daniel Bergner. When he asked why I was critical of Moskowitz, I said that what she does to get high test scores is not a model for public education or even for other charters. The high scores of her students is due to intensive test prep and attrition. She gets her initial group of students by holding a lottery, which in itself is a selection process because the least functional families don’t apply. She enrolls small proportions of students with disabilities and English language learners as compared to the neighborhood public school. And as time goes by, many students leave.

The only Success Academy school that has fully grown to grades 3-8 tested 116 3rd graders but only 32 8th graders. Three other Success Academy schools have grown to 6th grade. One tested 121 3rd graders but only 55 6th graders, another 106 3rd graders but only 68 6th graders, and the last 83 3rd graders but only 54 6th graders. Why the shrinking student body? When students left the school, they were not replaced by other incoming students. When the eighth grade students who scored well on the state test took the admissions test for the specialized high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, not one of them passed the test.

She goes on to note that in addition to the phenomenon of selective attrition, she also discussed high rates of teacher attrition at network schools, but that Mr. Bergner argued with her instead of interviewing her.  Dr. Ravitch also notes that Mr. Bergner used different language than she did when discussing the issues with him, and all of her points about selective attrition were either ignored or glossed over with talking points that reflect Success Academy’s standard public statements.

While Dr. Ravitch has a platform to illuminate the distressing puffery that made it to the New York Times magazine posing as a multi-sided examination of a contentious public issue, a reader would be hard pressed to know that Mr. Bergner actually spoke to public school teachers who work in fully public schools that are co-located with Success Academy schools.  The sole hint of input is presented here:

That attitude (Moskowitz’s)  infuriates many teachers at regular schools. When I spoke with a handful, they used words like “metastasize” and “venal” to describe Success Academy’s proliferation. That Moskowitz’s wealthy board members choose to highly reward her track record — her salary and bonus for the 2012-13 school year totaled $567,500 — only adds to the union’s fury.

What is astonishing about that brief mention focused entirely upon a few potential epithets and alleged jealousy of Ms. Moskowitz’s salray is that Mr. Bergner DID speak with teachers who work in co-locations with Success Academy schools.  In fact, he spoke at length and clearly decided to disregard their input almost entirely. I am fortunate to know one of those teachers through local teacher advocacy groups, and she agreed to inform me about her discussions with Mr. Bergner and to share what it is like to be a teacher at a school where Ms. Moskowitz has claimed classroom space for her students.  Her name is Ms. Mindy Rosier, and she is a teacher at P.S. 811, the Mickey Mantle School, a special needs school within P.S. 149 in District 75.  They have been co-located with Success Academy since 2006, and this Spring, she and her colleagues found themselves in the center of the storm when Mayor de Blasio decided to not allow three previously agreed upon co-locations for Success Academy expansions.  The resulting highly public battle resulted in a 6 million dollar ad campaign accusing the mayor of throwing Success Academy students out of their schools, all funded by Ms. Moskowitz’s Wall Street supporters, and it culminated in Governor Andrew Cuomo helping coordinate a pro-Moskowitz rally in Albany that resulted in the city of New York being bound by the state budget to provide co-locations or pay rent for all charter schools.

Ms. Rosier was kind enough to answer my questions about what she thinks people in NYC need to know about the consequences of charter school co-locations awarded to Success Academy.  Much of this was what she told Mr. Bergner in a 45 minute long conversation whose content never made it to the New York Times Magazine:

Can you explain the school where you work?  Who are your students and what is the mission of your school?  

My school is PS811 at PS149. We are an additional site to the Mickey Mantle School family and we are also a part of District 75. My school site serves over 100 children with autism, learning disabilities, emotional and psychiatric disorders in a low income area in Harlem. Harlem Gems also have some rooms in our building. We all get along really well, with the exception of Success Academy.

The following is our mission statement;

“The core values of P811M are articulated and expressed by a family of dedicated professionals committed to educating the whole child with integrity, compassion and respect. Our collective community effectively implements instructional practices geared to the individualized achievement of students’ social, emotional and academic goals. Each child’s individual assessment data informs this instruction. It is our goal to lead students towards maximum independence. With this independence, disabilities are turned into abilities.”

How did the co-location with Success Academy happen?  Were there discussions with parents and faculty/staff?  Do you know how it was decided to co-locate at your school?

Our site opened the same time as Success Academy began. It is my understanding that at that time, space for all was agreed upon. They had a certain amount of classes on one floor in one side of the building. I was hired at that school during the same time, so I am unaware of any other previous discussions with faculty/staff and parents. I don’t think anyone had a problem with that co-location then, but then again we had no idea what was to come.

How did the co-location process work?  Did you have any input into how the building would be divided between your school and Success Academy? 

At first, everything was fine. Then, over the next several years, they have requested more and more space from us. Up until last year, I did not know what the process was. I know our teachers did not have a say in this, and I really don’t know what the involvement of my admins were. I do know that just for one year, our former Chapter Leader (who now works for the UFT division for District 75 schools) was able to prevent more expansion on her part. Overall, we lost two floors that included classrooms, our library, our music room, our art room, our science room, and as a matter of making up one classroom, we lost our technology room as well. P.S.149 was so nice and offered us some available rooms at that time. Since, Success Academy has also expanded on their side and they lost an entire floor. So by last year, we had NO free space and P.S.149 was and is crunched for space as well.

Do the schools ever share any parts of the facilities?  If yes, how does that work out most of the time?  If not, do you know why?

We are NOT allowed on their floors. However, they always go through our hallways. Because of overcrowding and for safety reasons, they were told not to walk through a certain hallway during our dismissal times. My understanding was that they were not too happy about it and I have observed this still happening a couple of times over the years. All schools share the auditorium. In order to reserve time, coordination needs to be done. When Success Academy is using the auditorium, it is usually closed off to all others. Since our building is of a decent size, many of us cut through the back of the auditorium to the other exit to get to the P.S 149 side. (We have 3 classes on their second floor as well as a speech room and a resolution room.) So many times, when SA puts on a show or an event, it is very loud! There are two sets of doors that lead to the auditorium from our hallway. We have several rooms including classrooms close by. They have no problem keeping those doors open, disturbing our classrooms and other rooms. My office happens to be near there as well. So many times I have gotten up to close those two sets of doors. Sometimes I got looks doing so, but I didn’t care. We were all being disturbed. Noise levels do not have to be that loud. Even with the two doors shut, you still can here them. We just make do, like every other time. We do share the lunch room. In the mornings, SA has their breakfast first and then we do. There is another lunchroom on the P.S.149 side and also because of scheduling, their lunch begins around 10:40. On our side it is 11:30. Whether or not lunch staff starts on time, we have to be out of there just shy of 12. Our standardized students then have recess for a half hour, and then our alternative students have the next half hour. On Wednesdays, Success Academy has early dismissal. They are supposed to come out at 12:30. They exit through our playground. For the most part, they are already lined up to leave as we are heading back in from recess. There have been some occasions where at least one of their classes had come out really early. It was about 12:15 and my assigned class were in the middle of a kickball game. I yelled out several times to that teacher to please hold off, it is still our time. I know I was loud (that’s the Brooklyn in me) so I am pretty confident she heard me but chose to ignore me. My students LOVE recess and when they saw they had to end the game early they got upset very quickly and behaviors escalated. Me and one other para(professional) were trying our best to calm them down. There was another para who had gone inside earlier with another student because of a separate issue. When I saw that para come out, I yelled to him to get help which he did. This was a 4th grade class of about 12 who are all emotionally disturbed and learning disabled.  It was such a difficult situation. Some students had to be separated because their anger looked like it was going to lead to some fights. My lunch was next period, and I immediately informed my Assistant Principal. In front of me, she called their principal. I also had to write up several incident reports.

Now back to our lunchroom….our lunchroom is also our gym. Right after breakfast, it is cleaned up and the tables are folded and pushed to the sides. We have access to this space all mornings. Now the afternoon is a different story.  SA uses the the lunchroom in the afternoons. If P.S.149’s gym is available, they have been nice enough to let us share it. Otherwise adapted phys ed is done in the classrooms. Our gym teacher is wonderful and he has been great adapting to this situation. However, these are kids, kids with special needs, and they need to run a bit.

What changes have you seen in your work and your students’ educations since co-locating with Success Academy?  What do you think accounts for that?

We have done our best over the years to make sure that our students’ education has not been compromised in  any way. However, our students as well as those in P.S.149 have picked up on the fact that we are all treated differently from them by them.  Their teachers sometimes very obviously, have always looked down at our students even us teachers. I have tried to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are new teachers and they may just not understand what our students are going through. However, that is no excuse to give us looks or ignore us for simply saying “good morning.” There have also been some times where as I was passing, some of the kids have said “hi” to me. I love all children and without even realizing it I always acknowledge their presence even if it just a smile. I remember one time in particular those kids seemed so happy that I made their eye gaze, so I quickly said “hi” to them and slowly kept on walking by. A few of them said “hi” back and proudly told me how old they were. I would have loved to engage with them but they are not our students. Their teacher snapped at them to be quiet and to stand correctly on line. I felt so bad and I did look back. I didn’t want anyone in trouble for me simply saying “hi.”

Could you explain any changes to the environment/culture/feeling of the building during that time?  What do you think accounts for that?

There is definitely and us vs. them feeling in the air. I’ve been told that they have shiny clean floors, new doors, fancy bathrooms, etc. Meanwhile, we have teachers who have bought mops and even a vacuum cleaner to clean their rooms for they feel what is done is not efficient enough. Near our entrance, we have an adult bathroom. It is for staff and our parents. Success Academy parents as well have used it. For many months that bathroom went out of order. Honestly, I am not even sure it is fixed yet, but after all this time, I really hope so. So we would have to either use the closet of a bathroom in the staff lunch area or use one of the kids’ bathroom when it is not in use. You and I know that had that been an SA bathroom, it would have been fixed by the next day. SA also throws out tons of new or practically new materials often. At first, some of their teachers would sneak us some materials thinking we could benefit from it. They stopped out of fear. With all the great stuff that they have thrown out, they got angry when they found out that teachers from P.S.149 and I believe some of our teachers too would go through the piles and take what we could use. Well, now they only throw out their garbage shortly before pick up so that no one could get at it. Nice, right?

We have all seen them get Fresh Direct deliveries. Our kids too. Our students have a general feeling that SA students are special based on how they walk around and how they are personally treated either by looks or sometimes comments. Our students may be special needs, but they understand to a point that feeling of us vs. them. We do not at all refer to things that way at all.

It truly is sad. We are a school with teachers, other staff, and students. We are all supposed to be here for a reason. It is beyond me that this has been such a battle.

This past year teachers and other faculty were very angry. Once I heard about SA’s plan to take over last September, that’s when I started to get involved. Enough was enough. In October, I attended a hearing in my school building, I went to that Panel for Education Policy (PEP) in Brooklyn a week later, and subsequent to that, I have been a part of rallies and press conferences, etc. as I have detailed in my email. All of what happened at my school has led to my educational activism. I have read so much over the years. The more and more I read, the angrier I got. The Alliance For Quality Education has done so much for our school in order to save it and for that I am very thankfully to them and I still maintain a very good relationship with them. I was introduced to MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators) in late April, and I now sit on its Steering Committee, committed to do right by our teachers and students. Instead of just being angry as I have been for so long, I finally did something about it by being proactive. I do have to say, since my activism began, I have made tons of new like-minded friend and I am grateful of that too.

Why do you think Eva Moskowitz and Mayor Bloomberg agreed to further expansion of Success Academy in your building?  What would you say to them about that if you could?

Oh, boy! I believe they are friends and that they run in same circles. They did not care, never did. When we went to that PEP in October, about putting through those charter locations, it was like nothing I have ever seen before. It was my first one. The room was packed with teachers from so many different schools. There were parents, students, and various community leaders including Letitia James and Noah Gotbaum. People were ANGRY. So many plead their case for two minutes at the mic, some with heart wrenching stories, and all the while the panel was very busy playing on their phones, looking bored and disinterested. It was disgusting. You could hear so many people yelling, “Get off your phones!” I did not speak at this PEP ,but a dear coworker did.  I hadn’t found my voice just yet at that time. She tried to give an impassioned speech and when they did not even look at her, she called them out on it and was STILL ignored. It sure seemed to us that the fix was in. Money and power talks and all else suffers.

How could you be so heartless? How can you say you are for all children when you have thought nothing about our community’s most vulnerable children, just willing to toss them aside like trash? A population that you refuse to educate and have sent as cast-offs our way? Knowing our building did NOT have any free space, why did you purposely choose to expand here? Why were parents lied to? Why did you perpetuate lies in the media and to the general public?  These are just some of the questions I would ask her (Eva Moskowitz) based solely on what she tried to do to my school. Trust me, there are so many more that we all have been asking her for a long time.

On the Families 4 Excellent Schools’ page on Facebook, I have gone back and forth with many, and most of those were parents. They had no clue as to what the truth was. So instead of them doing their homework, it was easier to call me a liar, a racist, clueless myself, etc., etc. I didn’t go on there to bash Success Academy. I went on there to inform them of the truth that was completely hidden to them and the general public.  After a while, I just had to stop. It was like beating my head against the wall. Moskowitz seems to be this cult-like figure to parents and they adore her. I have even heard her be called a savior!

As for Bloomberg, I used to like him, but that obviously changed.  Apparently, he came to our building several times to visit SA but never us. We never said “boo.” However when Farina came to our school for a quick walk through to see our space situation during this whole debacle, it became front page news in the NY Daily News with Farina’s big picture and bold letters SNUBBED.  Something to that affect, I don’t remember exactly. SA was pissed that even though she had a specific purpose for her visit to us, she did not go to visit them. She “snubbed” them and that made the front page! Honestly, I think I would simply ask him, “Why did you put money, politics, and power over the welfare of our beautiful special needs children?”

What do you think about the presentation of your concerns in the New York Times article that ran in the September 7th magazine?  Is there anything you think the reporter ought to explain to you and your fellow teachers?

I was beyond angry. I have no problem taking time out to talk about concerns I have, and on those things that I am passionate. I spent a considerable amount giving very specific facts, and they were all ignored. Other teachers were ignored. Parents were ignored. We all gave verifiable facts, but that did not matter. I personally feel that a good reporter should report both sides of the story. Way too many reporters and various mass media outlets have failed us, our school. our students, their parents, and the general public. I want to know why he blatantly ignored all of us and deceived the general public? Important information that I feel everyone should know, instead of blindly praising a woman with obvious deceitful tendencies simply because they have higher scores. There is a reason for that and the public needs to know the actual truth. Isn’t writing about and printing the truth Reporting 101? We ALL deserve a public apology with answers to the questions I have mentioned.

We need more reporters like Juan Gonzalez who is not afraid to tell the truth. He has posted several articles on SA, even one that had a focus on our school. He is one out of how many? AND because of all the faulty and biased information out there, when he does write something, he does not get any respect and he has been bashed.  “How do you say such things about Moskowitz and her schools?”

I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!

###

Ms. Rosier has also written to the New York Times and Daniel Bergner to express her surprise that none of her conversation made it into the article, and to remind Mr. Bergner what she had said to him.  As of today, the letter has not appeared in the Times, but Ms. Rosier provides the text of it here.

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May 4, 2014 · 7:55 am

Education “Reformers” Go to Camp!

If you considered yourself well-informed but have not heard of “Camp Philos,” the education reform retreat in the Lake Placid which is opening today, don’t worry.  Its organizers really are not interested in you, but they have wrapped themselves in some very intellectual and romantic imagery.  Billing itself as a “philosopher’s retreat” modeled after the 19th century meetings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Russell Lowell, with Horatio Woodman, the website claims that the nation’s “thought leaders in education reform” will convene for “fun, fellowship and strategy.”  Governor Andrew Cuomo is the honorary chair of the event where he will be joined by Joe Williams of “Education Reform Now,” a “reform” group mostly dedicated to the spread of charter schools and test based teacher evaluations and with a board populated by hedge fund managers.

ERN has also donated $65,000 to Cuomo’s campaign fund and individual members of its board have donated on their own.  Quelle surprise.

For an entry price of $1000 to $2500 dollars, participants have the advertised opportunity to speak with Louisiana Senator Mary Ladrieu, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Assistant Education Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali.  Other reports mentioned that film director turned education “thought leader” M. Night Shyamalan would be present as well. A registered guest list is not available as far as I can determine.

However, the schedule of events is available.  A session such as “Living to Tell the Tale: Changing Third-Rail Teacher Policies,” given the known participants, is likely to focus on taking away tenure protections and subjecting teachers to test based evaluations.  Governor Cuomo can certainly address his take on “Adequacy, Fairness and Equity: School Finance in the Age of Austerity” given how his administration has systematically strangled school aid.

While my geeky side is offended by tomorrow morning’s session entitled “Rocketships, Klingons and Tribbles: Charters’ Course to Where No Schools Have Gone Before” (somehow I think Gene Roddenberry would disapprove of being associated with this), I wish I had the money or the connections to be present at “The Next Big Thing: Groundbreaking Approaches to Teacher Preparation”.  This is a subject directly connected to my own work and current livelihood.  So surely, if the “thought leaders” of the country are present to discuss teacher preparation, that must mean the list of invited panelists and discussants will include some lofty names, right?  They must have sought out Sharon Feiman-Nemser.  It would make little sense to host this session of “thought leaders” without the input of Linda Darling-Hammond, obviously.  It would be an appalling oversight for such an event to overlook inviting John I. Goodlad.  The nation’s “thought leaders” in education reform in a self-style philosopher’s retreat talking about teacher preparation without the input of our leading experts on what it takes to learn to teach?  That could never happen.

Even if I had the money to attend, there is a good question if I would even be allowed in.  Diane Ravitch of NYU reported on her blog that three public school teachers and parents from New York tried to sign up for the event and initially were told that there were some openings available.  That changed almost immediately.  One of them, Bianca Tanis of NYS Allies for Public Education, spoke to a retired teacher who reported that she had successfully registered for the event — only to have her registration refunded without explanation.  I am having great doubts that Ralph Waldo Emerson would appreciate having his status utilized for a gathering that has shaped up to be as unpromising as this one.

NYSUT will be present today — on the outside, of course, but at least there will be actual teachers with them.

 

 

 

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April 22, 2014 · 10:39 pm

How Andrew Cuomo Has Lost My Vote

Andrew Cuomo has lost my vote — and if you are a teacher, a parent of a public school child or a citizen who sees schools as a vital component of our civil society, he should lose your vote too.  He has been as abusive towards our public schools and the people who work in them as have Republican governors such as Scott Walker and Chris Christie, only without the national spotlight aimed at his policies.  My conservative friends will probably suggest this has to do with media bias, and I won’t deny some possibility of that.  However, a simpler explanation is that Governor Cuomo, unlike Governors Walker and Christie, has done little to highlight his conflicts with unionized teachers — it would do him little good with his core constituencies at home or nationally to do so.

Regardless, he has been a net negative for schools and teachers although you would not have guessed it reading his inaugural address in 2011.  That speech had no mention of education or teachers and the only mention of school was a personal anecdote.  The same speech mentioned taxes or taxpayers seven times, budget three times and the deficit eight times in one short paragraph, claiming there was a deficit of trust and competence as well as a budgetary one.

It has become clear since then that even if he did not mention education in his address, he had education in his sights and it wasn’t to make sure school districts had the funds they need to guarantee educational opportunity for all.  One of the governor’s early achievements was a cap on property taxes   that may have helped many home owners but has also left many school districts scrambling for funds.  At the same time, Albany continued the “gap elimination adjustment” which became permanent in the 2011-2012 budget year.  In the GEA, Albany allocates school aid and then uses a formula to take it away…or even increases the amount of money removed from school aid if the state projects a shortfall in revenue.  Essentially, this is a formula that allows the legislature and the governor to announce a school aid budget and then to trim it when nobody is looking.  According to the New York State School Boards association, the GEA has cost New York districts an average of $3.1 million dollars per year each year since 2010.  64% of districts have cut personnel, 53% have increased class sizes and 36% have reduced or eliminated extracurricular activities.

None of this is good for the children of New York, but it certainly helps Governor Cuomo keep from ever considering higher taxes.  By the way, when you search the New York Times for “gap elimination adjustment” this is what comes up.  Too obscure for even the Times’ New York reporting, you have to go to local and regional papers to find comprehensive coverage.

While finding ways to trim the money available locally and at the state level, the Governor has also aggressively pursued state pension reform.  This is hardly unique to New York, but the demands to reform how career teachers retire comes at a time when teachers are being asked to do more than ever before…with less in the present and promises of less in the future.  Governor Cuomo is solidly behind the current reform environment which means the state is not only implementing the Common Core State Standards, but also the state is implementing test score driven evaluation of teachers.  While recent statements from the governor indicate a willingness to delay or reweight the degree to which student test scores will impact both student promotion and teacher evaluation, Commissioner John King was unambiguous that Albany believes it is on the right path for schools and will plow ahead.  Plowing ahead means teachers with larger class sizes and fewer support personnel having to quickly implement a new and complicated set of curriculum standards in all grades simultaneously and simultaneously having to face their retention and tenure decisions being based upon the result of tests that have resulted in dramatic declines across the board.

All of this in a budget environment where NYC parents are being asked to fund raise so schools can hire elementary reading specialists.  Schools lucky enough to have parents who are wealthy and connected maintain essential services.  Other schools?  Well, at least Andrew Cuomo doesn’t have to raise anyone’s taxes.

Balancing the budget on the backs of school children and public employees is unpleasant enough on its own, but Governor Cuomo’s behavior during the recent public battle between charter school magnate Eva Moskowitz and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was beyond the pale.  The narrative should be familiar to New York residents.  In the waning days of his administration, Mayor Michael Bloomberg hastily granted a number of new colocations for charter schools in the city, including either new or newly expanded sites for Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain.  Mayor de Blasio granted most of these colocations, where a charter operator is allowed to take over space in an existing public school building without paying rent to the city.  Charter school advocates claim that paying for their space would put charters at a disadvantage compared to existing public schools, which they claim to be. But  Moskowitz herself sued the state of New York to prevent the Comptroller from auditing and succeeded in having a law struck down that granted the Comptroller that authority.  Her argument?  Her schools are not a “unit of the state”. Ponder that: her schools accept public funds and demand space in public school buildings without rent, but the state’s top financial officer has no authority to examine her books.  And she sued to make it that way.

Moskowitz stormed to Albany with her students claiming that the new mayor has declared war on her, but many of her claims fail to stand up to the slightest scrutiny.  Among the most damning highlights is that by halting one of the colocations, Mayor de Blasio was trying to prevent one third of the severely disabled students in one building from being displaced and sent all over the city.  Moskowitz likes to make lofty claims for her schools’ accomplishments drawing from a population that she alleges is among the city’s neediest.  Sadly, these claims are heavily embellished as well.  While Success Academy test scores are indeed high, there is no metric that makes Success Academy 4 the “highest performing school in the state,” and even though admission to charter schools is by lottery, remaining there is not guaranteed — and Moskowitz’s schools have exceptionally high attrition rates, especially among students who do not test well.  Diane Ravitch of NYU and Avi Blaustein note:

In just four years Harlem Success Academy 4 has lost over 21 percent of its students. The pattern of students leaving is not random. Students with low test scores, English Language Learners, and special education students are most likely to disappear from the school’s roster. Large numbers of students disappear beginning in 3rd grade, but not in the earlier grades. No natural pattern of student mobility can explain the sudden disappearance of students at the grade when state testing just happens to begin.

Given these issues, it was disturbing enough to watch Governor Cuomo rush to Moskowitz’s side during her “Save Eva” rally in Albany on the same day that Mayor de Blasio was rallying for support of a universal prekindergarten proposal for New York City.  But what has come out since then is simply inexcusable.  Not only did Cuomo show up to stand by Moskowitz, he actively participated in making the rally happen, and the result of that public pressure and multimillion dollar ad blitz got us a New York state budget that expressly forbids charging charter school rent in public schools and forces the city to pay charter schools’ rents if they cannot colocate.

The fact is that Eva Mokowitz has very wealthy friends.  The NY Times article makes clear that Governor Cuomo relies on campaign donations from Wall Street patrons of charter schools who helped fund the advertising backlash against Mayor de Blasio:

A lot was riding on the debate for Mr. Cuomo. A number of his largest financial backers, some of the biggest names on Wall Street, also happened to be staunch supporters of charter schools. According to campaign finance records, Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from charter school supporters, including William A. Ackman, Carl C. Icahn, Bruce Kovner and Daniel Nir.

Kenneth G. Langone, a founder of Home Depot who sits on a prominent charter school board, gave $50,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaign last year. He said that when the governor asked him to lead a group of Republicans supporting his re-election, he agreed because of Mr. Cuomo’s support for charter schools.

Campaign filings show that the governor’s re-election campaign has collected over $400,000 in donations from wealthy donors who are also supporters of the Success Academy chain, including $65,000 directly from Moskowitz’s own political action committee. Mercedes Schneider, a Louisiana teacher, Ph.D. in statistics and education blogger, has extensively examined Success Academy tax documents with illuminating results, including that the IRS contact reported for Harlem Success Academy is Luxor Capital Group.

I don’t pretend to know why Wall Street big money is so invested in charter schools.  Perhaps they sincerely believe that competition from privately run charter schools that their own children will never attend is a “secret sauce” to improving universal education in this country.  Maybe they see charters as an effective tool against one of the last largely unionized work forces in America.  Perhaps expanding charters is seen as a key factor in setting up education as a massive data collection enterprise where entrepreneurs can turn data into profitable technology products.  It could be any number of factors, but one thing is certain: those factors are not being debated in public as part of the exercise of democratic control of public education.  It is almost entirely privately debated for private purposes.

And that is why Andrew Cuomo cannot have my vote.  He has made it very clear that he is not for public schools, public school teachers or public school students.  Those people have been continuously squeezed by local revenue roadblocks and state revenue take backs at a time when they have had to do more and more for higher and higher stakes.

He is, however, very much for what hedge fund campaign donors are for.  Those people have not been asked for a cent more in taxes and have their pet projects enshrined in the state budget.

If you are a student in New York, a parent of a student in New York, or a teacher in New York, Andrew Cuomo is not your governor, and he does not deserve your vote.

ADDENDUM:  There are reasons why hedge funds promote charter schools.  They are, surprise, linked to profit.

 

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