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It's official: Mayor retains control over schools until 2015 after Gov. Paterson signs bill into law
BY Adam Lisberg Tuesday, August 11th 2009 Gov. Paterson said he signed the bill giving control of city schools back to Mayor Bloomberg Tuesday, ending a months-long battle. "Within the last hour I have signed the mayoral control legislation," Paterson said at an event at P.S. 208 in Harlem, as Bloomberg looked on with a smile. "I signed the bill the first moment that I saw it." The governor later said the bill arrived at his Albany office Monday and was brought to his Midtown office Tuesday morning, where he signed it into law, along with 79 other bills. "I didn't think it needed any kind of public forum," Paterson said at an event to celebrate a $175 million program to give poor children back-to-school money. "I could have brought it here and signed it right here, but I didn't want to upstage this event. "I didn't think it needed any further amplification from me, since we had to go almost a month and half without mayoral control. The mayor didn't seem to feel that way anyway." The law giving Bloomberg authority to run city schools expired at the end of June, forcing New York to re-establish the old Board of Education. Bloomberg stacked the new board with allies, so it took no significant actions in its month and a half of existence, while the bill stalled during the state Senate stalemate. Bloomberg has said running the schools through the Department of Education has been key to improving test scores, safety and graduation rates, and is using their performance as a key to his re-election campaign. Opponents claim Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have distorted the statistics and run the schools as a dictatorship, leading to vocal opposition in the state Senate from lawmakers who wanted more checks and balances on his power.
Charter and private schools might not make the grade either
By Diane Ravitch August 11, 2009 The board of the Los Angeles Unified School District is opening 50 schools over the next few years and considering a proposal to allow some or all to be privately managed. Before taking this step, the board should take a hard look at the evidence about charter schools and privately managed schools. FOR THE RECORD: Because of a brilliant media campaign by charter school organizations, there is a widespread impression that any charter school is better than any public school. This is not true. Charter schools vary in quality from excellent to abysmal. On the authoritative federal tests called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, students in charter schools perform about the same as those in traditional public schools. A recent Stanford University study, which compared half the nation's charter schools with a neighboring public school, concluded that 46% were no better, 37% were significantly worse and only 17% were significantly better than the public school. Thus, if a struggling public school is replaced by a new charter school, the odds are that the charter school will be no better and possibly worse.
City skipped mandatory public hearings on spending plan
Posted By Anna Phillips On August 11, 2009 @ 7:23 pm In Newsroom | 1 Comment The last months’ governance craziness overshadowed what had become a summer ritual: The process by which the city proposes how it wants to spend state Contracts for Excellence dollars, and the public gets to respond with its thoughts at formal hearings. The hearings happen because Contracts for Excellence dollars are only doled out to districts that prove they will spend the money in certain kinds of programs pre-approved by state school officials. But this summer, the New York City Department of Education skipped over the mandated date for hearings, which are supposed to occur in all five boroughs, without holding them. A public comment period will be postponed until the fall, but New York state plans to send the city the funds anyway, before that happens. A state education spokesman, Jonathan Burman, said the state is letting New York City skip the process because it doesn’t plan to spend Contracts for Excellence dollars on any new programs. The state’s grim financial picture has meant that the city won’t receive any more Contracts dollars than it did last year. “Funds that are continuing last year’s Contract can be used,” Burman wrote in an email. The “commissioner’s approval is required before funds allocated to new purposes can be used.” An official at the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, whose lawsuit alleging that the city schools are historically under-funded by the state led to the creation of the Contracts for Excellence fund, said that the state’s logic makes little sense given the tough fiscal climate. “Because there’s no new money this year, the critical importance of this year’s hearings is to ensure that the money continues to be invested with the neediest schools and students,” Geri Palast, the executive director of the campaign, said. “And to ensure that the money continues to be spent in the 6 strategic areas so we can continue to demonstrate that the money does makes a difference in students’ performance.” Burman said the state had yet to settle on a schedule for the city’s public hearings. Asked why the hearings had been delayed, he responded, “Why don’t you ask NYC?” According to a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education, Ann Forte, the hearings were detained by “uncertainty” about what this year’s education budget would look like. “Last spring, there was much uncertainty about what school budgets would look like for the 2009-2010 school year,” Forte wrote in an email. “At that time, federal stimulus dollars were still being allocated to schools. We are now working with the State to finalize a new Contracts for Excellence timeline.” Burman said that several other cities, including Syracuse and Rochester had delayed their hearings as well. City officials in these cities did not return calls for comment. Amber Dixon, the director for evaluation, accountability, and project initiatves for the Buffalo school district, said Buffalo had held the hearings on schedule. “Buffalo was never asked to postpone anything about the Contract for Excellence. We submitted it on time, we held our hearings on time, and we approved it,” she said, adding, “Our budget is nothing compared to the New York City budget.” “This is just another of the DOE’s evident lack of interest in complying with state law,” Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters, a New York City nonprofit, said. “They just don’t care and it’s time that the state calls them on it,” she said.
Crisis Financial Manager Tries to Fix Detroit Schools' Budget
Detroit Robert C. Bobb, the state-appointed emergency financial manager of the Detroit public school system, may have the biggest “turnaround” job in the nation. The district, with an annual budget of $1.2 billion, has a deficit projected as of the end of last month to be $259 million and growing. Over the past 10 years, about half its students have left, leaving enrollment below 100,000 pupils for the first time since World War I. There is talk here in the Motor City that the school district, following the recent examples of Chrysler and General Motors, could go into bankruptcy, a call Mr. Bobb must make soon. “To turn around the Detroit public school system, you can’t just say you have a sense of urgency. It has to be operationalized at every level of the organization,” Mr. Bobb said in a recent interview. “[W]e don’t have time to tinker around the edges. We have to be bold in our approach.” “This is a school system which is in crisis,” he added. “Unfortunately, there are those who haven’t come to that reality. It’s difficult for them to wrap their minds around it because they’ve been in that bunker so long.” In a May visit to Detroit, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pronounced the school system “a national disgrace,’’ likening it to “New Orleans a few years ago, [but] without Hurricane Katrina.” He urged the city’s mayor, Dave Bing, to consider taking over the system. A Decade in Review
In the meantime, Mr. Bobb, whose appointment runs through February, is trying to address the result of seven years of deficit spending. The district had a $103.6 million budget surplus in 2002, but failed to aggressively reduce staffing or close largely vacant schools as its enrollment dropped. Observers here say corruption has also played a role. Cleaning up the financial situation is no easy task. The staff has uncovered more than 500 employees on the payroll whose positions were never budgeted, and contracts in desk drawers that were never accounted for, but were in effect and being paid. Mr. Bobb says there are “hidden land mines” waiting at every turn. “Every day,” he said, “you are just a little bit surprised as to what you would uncover.” How did the Detroit public schools come to this point? Keith Johnson, the president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, has a simple answer: “We accepted the abnormal as normal.” “It is not normal for students to come into a school that is dirty, that is not properly equipped for their instruction, for them to have to worry about other students with weapons—that’s not normal,” he said. “But we’ve come to accept it as just part of DPS. It’s not normal to have your priority away from the classroom.” Mr. Bobb, a veteran public administrator who served as the city administrator, deputy mayor, and president of the school board of the District of Columbia, was appointed after a state financial-review team found the district was not making strides to resolve its deficit. The intervention by the state of Michigan resulted in the school board’s firing of Superintendent Connie K. Calloway and her chief financial officer after less than two years on the job. (Ms. Calloway and the former chief financial officer have since filed whistleblower lawsuits against the board.) Robert C. Bobb is charged with one of the toughest jobs in education - pulling the Detroit school system out of a severe financial crisis. Since taking the helm, Mr. Bobb has moved swiftly to root out problems and to get the district into working order. He has scheduled 29 schools to close this fall, announced the restructuring of another 40 schools that have failed to make adequate academic progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and hired a former FBI special agent to serve as the district’s inspector general to recommend potential fraud cases for prosecution. More than half the district’s top executive positions have been eliminated, and more than 1,700 employees have received layoff notices as Mr. Bobb works to right-size the district. In an attempt to get a handle on concerns about “ghost” workers and employee theft, the district issued new identification cards and ordered its 13,600 employees show up in person to collect their paychecks or direct-deposit stubs. Michael P. Flanagan, Michigan’s superintendent of public instruction, has nothing but praise for Mr. Bobb’s take-charge approach, saying he has “grabbed the bull by the horns.” Mr. Flanagan set the process of appointing an emergency manager in motion last fall, when he declared the district had a “serious financial problem” as defined by state law. ("Detroit School District Again Facing Deficit, Threat of State Action," Oct. 1, 2008.) Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm appointed Mr. Bobb in March. “He’s figured out a way to expose the corruption, and it’s going to change the system,” Mr. Flanagan said of Mr. Bobb. “People are open to this now.” The state schools chief said he took a lot of flak for the state’s appointment of a financial manager to run the district, but said that Detroit residents came to favor the move after seeing the results of Mr. Bobb’s work. Mr. Johnson, the union president, agreed. “Time will tell if this actually becomes the reality,” he said, “but at least in terms of identifying the corruption, identifying the theft, identifying the wasteful spending, and then putting in some control mechanisms to preventing that from perpetuating itself, it’s a good start.” The loudest critics of Mr. Bobb’s work here are members of the 11-person school board. Board member Anthony Adams said the elected panel has been frustrated by a “total lack of communication” between Mr. Bobb’s office and the board on academic policy. In fact, the board voted last month to file a lawsuit against Mr. Bobb after he announced a plan to bring in four education management organizations to help redesign 17 of the district’s 22 high schools. The school board plans to contend that Mr. Bobb is overstepping his authority as the emergency financial manager. “Nothing is gained by not having cooperation,” said Mr. Adams, a former deputy mayor of Detroit and the district’s one-time general counsel. “We are happy to embrace reform, to look at different models of how services can be delivered. Every approval should be occasioned by community discussion.” Mr. Bobb has taken steps recently to work on his prickly relationship with the board, pledging to meet with members at work sessions to talk about the ongoing work and sharing budget forecasting. This summer, the district offered its largest-ever summer school program, in an effort to get more students on track. The program, paid for with federal money, was free to the more than 33,000 students who participated. More than 400 students graduated in late July as a result. Mr. Bobb has hired Barbara Byrd-Bennett, a former superintendent of the Cleveland school district and a former deputy chancellor of the New York City schools, as chief academic and accountability auditor. In this consulting role, Ms. Byrd-Bennett has analyzed reports on the Detroit schools—completed recently by the state review team and the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools—to craft a long-term academic plan. (The system is under a state decree to implement the council’s findings.) “When I’m gone, when Mr. Bobb is gone, there will be a rubric, a pathway, a culture of doing business in a very short time that will be sustainable,” Ms. Byrd-Bennett said in a recent interview. “Then, it will be about will. Do people have the will to do what is right? The road map and the tools will be there. And that’s a very different question.” In her meetings with principals and other staffers, Ms. Byrd-Bennett said, she’s found many people willing to work harder to produce academic gains, but she has concluded that the district has lacked the strong professional development and other supports staff members needed. “This is the first time we’ve had leadership at DPS where the primary focus of everyone has been about improving student achievement,” said Carol A. Goss, the president and chief executive officer of the Skillman Foundation, a local philanthropy that has worked extensively with Detroit schools. “[Mr. Bobb] really talks about it in the context of teaching and learning and preparing students for 21st-century jobs. It’s exactly what we have been hoping for DPS for so long. The thing I worry about most is how we sustain that.” Mr. Bobb has been able to attract outside support for his efforts. The Los Angeles-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has contributed $450,000 for an 18-month contract with Philadelphia-based Public Financial Management Inc., which is helping Mr. Bobb devise a deficit-elimination plan and create systems for budgeting and accounting. In addition, foundation staff members have gone to work on the ground. Mr. Bobb is a 2005 graduate of the Broad Foundation’s urban-superintendents academy. David Esselman, an associate director of the foundation who is helping Mr. Bobb create an operations plan to organize and communicate the initiatives under way, said he’s been encouraged by the willingness to change he’s seen among Detroit school employees. In many cases, he said, central-office managers hadn’t felt the freedom to do their jobs. “What I’ve found internally is that there are a lot of good midlevel managers in the system. It’s been great for us to build empowerment for them. It was a big surprise for us,” Mr. Esselman said. “It’s been really outrageous to see the level of corruption, malfeasance, and fraud by leaders in the system in the past.” Eli Broad, himself a graduate of Detroit’s public schools, echoed Secretary Duncan’s comparison of the devastation in Detroit to that of New Orleans’ school system following the hurricane. “If you look at what happened in New Orleans after Katrina, that’s been a dramatic turnaround,” Mr. Broad said. “I’m not saying it’s a perfect analogy. But you really have to almost start over in Detroit. [Mr. Bobb’s] got a big job, and we are trying to help him any way we can.” Mr. Bobb’s tenure as emergency financial manager ends Feb. 28 unless he and Gov. Granholm, a Democrat, agree to an one-year extension. The short time frame makes the work more challenging, Ms. Byrd-Bennett said. “Because it’s so intense and the time constraints are so definitive, we don’t have a moment to lose. The stakes are high on this one,” she said. What will come next is anyone’s guess. Michigan’s attorney general ruled recently that the Detroit school system, because its enrollment has dropped below 100,00 students, has lost its “first class” status under state law. That means two area community colleges and some suburban districts are now permitted to authorize more charter schools in Detroit. The dire financial situation may prompt Mr. Bobb to recommend filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy, which allows for the restructuring of governmental units. The Detroit Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, adamantly opposes bankruptcy because it would allow the district to break its contract with employees. Along with the U.S. secretary of education, Gov. Granholm, among others, has voiced support for a return of mayoral control to the Detroit school system. Many residents, however, are wary after such an effort from 1999 to 2005 left the district with a $200 million deficit and scant academic gains. Mayor Bing, a Democrat who succeeded to that office in May and faces a November election, has said he would support mayoral control of schools if it came from a local referendum. His office did not respond to requests for an interview. Mr. Broad, for his part, is optimistic about Detroit’s chances under Mr. Bobb. “Something good has to happen out of all of that. You cannot go back to what it was,” he said. “If you have mayoral control, and you have Robert Bobb there with the support of the governor, I think there’s a chance of creating a different system of schools, rather than just one school system.”
Bloomberg Plans to Stop Promoting Low-Performing Fourth and Sixth Graders
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Monday that he planned to make it harder this year for fourth and sixth graders who score poorly on standardized tests to move on to the next grade, extending a policy that his re-election team hopes will help him curry favor with voters. Under the requirements, which are already in place for grades three, five, seven and eight, students who perform at the lowest level on state tests in English and math will have to repeat the grade unless they can master the material in summer school. Previously, under a policy known as social promotion, school officials gave a pass to low-performing students under the belief that they would be more likely to drop out if they were held back and separated from children their own age. Mr. Bloomberg won approval for the stricter requirements in 2004, beginning with the third grade, after a bruising battle that involved the firing of three members of an education oversight board and criticism from elected officials, educators and good-government groups. Over all, fewer students are being held back in the city, even with the tougher promotion requirements — a trend that education officials attribute to rises in test scores across the city since the mayor took over in 2002. In the third grade, for instance, 864 students were held back in the 2007-8 school year, compared with 3,105 in 2002-3, the year before the policy went into effect. In addition, enrollment at summer school has decreased in recent years (it was 105,531 this year, down from 119,954 last year). Now, as Mr. Bloomberg seeks a third term, he is trying to play down divisions over the policy and portray the end of social promotion as a major reason for the city’s large gains in test scores and graduation rates, even though it is difficult to definitively prove that relationship. At an East Harlem elementary school on Monday, Mr. Bloomberg said social promotion was “as cruel and mean a thing as we could possibly do for any student.” “All we’re doing is setting those students up for failure,” he said. “We are not going to do that.” Asked what evidence he had to show that stricter requirements had bolstered student achievement, Mr. Bloomberg was defensive. “I’m speechless,” he said. “If you don’t believe ending social promotion is one of the real keys to doing this, I don’t know quite how to answer the question.” The city’s Department of Education said that 94 percent of low-performing students who were held back in the seventh grade earned a Level 2 (out of 4) or higher on their eighth-grade English tests. By contrast, 59 percent of those low-performing students who were promoted to the next grade reached that level. Aaron M. Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Teachers College at Columbia, said the city should have waited for more conclusive evidence on the effects of its stricter promotion policy before extending it. He noted that similar efforts in other cities had shown mixed results. “Politically, the public is comfortable with hearing, ‘We don’t want just to pass kids along,’ ” he said. “The challenge is figuring out what is a good alternative.” The city expects a longitudinal study of third- and fifth-grade policies conducted by the RAND Corporation to be released this fall. Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign team seized on the announcement to promote the mayor’s educational record. In response, the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., Mr. Bloomberg’s likely Democratic challenger in the mayoral race, released a statement noting the high numbers of public school graduates who require remediation upon entering city colleges. The teachers’ union said the move was a “step in the right direction,” but called for better support of struggling students. The new policy will require the approval of the 13-member oversight board, the Panel for Educational Policy, which is expected to vote on the matter after soliciting public comments.
City students are passing standardized tests just by guessing
by Meredith Kolodner Wednesday, August 12th 2009, 4:00 AM Despite Mayor Bloomberg's plan to end "social promotion," sixth-graders can score high enough on state English exams to move to the next grade - just by guessing. The number of correct answers needed to score a Level 2 to get promoted has sunk so low that a student can guess on the multiple choice section and leave the rest of the test blank. In seventh grade, students who guess need just one extra right answer to make the cut. "The issue of the reliability of the test scores as measures of student growth needs to be addressed," Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said. "We understand we need to raise the bar, and we're going to." The number of sixth-graders scoring the bottom Level 1 dropped from 10% in 2006, when twice as many points were required, to 0.2% this year. Education Department spokesman Andrew Jacob defended the mayor's policy. "We're always in favor of raising academic standards," Jacob said. "The mayor's policy would create a clear standard for promotion where there wasn't one before." A state Education Department spokesman defended the tests. "The Level 2 score can describe a broad range of student skills and achievement," spokesman Tom Dunn said. "Our [third- to eighth-grade] exams were not designed to determine whether students are ready for promotion." Education experts have called for greater transparency. "The tests in New York have a real credibility problem right now," said Michael Petrilli, vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. "The people in charge of the test have an incentive to raise scores," he said. "Just having the conflict of interest creates a problem even if all the officials are playing by the rules."
SCHOTT GRANTEE SPOTLIGHT Tasks for the New State Education Commissioner
Published: August 6, 2009 To the Editor: Re “A New School Leader in New York” (editorial, July 30): David Steiner’s appointment as state education commissioner provides New York with a fresh opportunity to fulfill its moral and constitutional obligation of providing all students with a quality education. Commissioner Steiner faces a number of challenges, including the threat of another round of state budget cuts. Since the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit was filed in 1993, parent and community organizations have demanded that the state provide full and fair financing plus enhanced accountability. In this fiscal crisis, the state has not met its financing commitments. The bully pulpit of the commissioner has been important in articulating the need for full and equitable financing. The new commissioner’s leadership is also needed to provide greater transparency and require school districts to treat parents as important partners. Fair financing combined with accountability is the formula for school improvement. Billy Easton
SCHOTT GRANTEE SPOTLIGHT Parents and Students Celebrate Creation of Parent & Student Training Center as Part of School Governance
(ALBANY) New York City parents and students celebrated the creation of a Parent & Student Outreach & Training Center as a key addition to school governance legislation approved today by the State Senate. Members of the Campaign for Better Schools, a coalition of over two dozen community, parent, and student groups, touted the center as a critical step toward equipping parents and students to be effective advocates for their children and for better schools in their communities. They lauded Senate Democrats for championing the center and other reforms that will increase transparency, accountability, and parent and student involvement. The center, to be established at CUNY, will provide training, resources, and other information to enable parents and students to be active participants in their schools and in the various governance structures, such as School Leadership Teams and Community Education Councils. Zakiyah Ansari, Parent Leader, NYC Coalition for Educational Justice and the Campaign for Better Schools
Adolfo Abreu, Youth Leader, Urban Youth Collaborative
Billy Easton, Executive Director, Alliance for Quality Education
Pat Boone, President ACORN NY
Francisca Mujica, Make the Road NY
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The Snap Schott is distributed by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. For more information, please visit www.schottfoundation.org. |
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