Update on FOILed backup for DOE claims as regards teacher data reports

Yesterday in court, the United Federation of Teachers argued that the DOE should not release the teacher data reports to the public, despite FOIL requests from media outlets, because the value-added methodology on which they are based are statistically unreliable, among other reasons, a point also made by many researchers, including Sean Corcoran of NYU. (See articles about the court case in today's Gotham Schools, NY1, Daily News, NY Times, and Post)

In February 2009, almost two years ago, I submitted a FOIL request to DOE for a number of items related to these reports, including the supposed "panel of technical experts" who had approved the DOE's methodology, according to the statement in the 2008 document, “Teacher Data Initiative: Support for Schools; Frequently Asked Questions":

“A panel of technical experts has approved the DOE’s value-added methodology. The DOE’s model has met recognized standards for demonstrating validity and reliability.”

When the FOIL was partially responded to fifteen months later, DOE admitted that this expert panel had not actually approved its methodology, and sent me a report in which the panel expressed grave doubts about its reliability.

Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News wrote about this here; I wrote about it and provided back up documentation here.

In its 2008 FAQ, DOE had also claimed that there was a research study that confirmed their approach:

“Teachers’ Value-Added scores from the model are positively correlated with both School Progress Report scores and principals’ perceptions of teachers’ effectiveness, as measured by a research study conducted during the pilot of this initiative.”

In February 2009, I also asked for a copy this "research study." Coincidentally,I just received yet another email from DOE today, informing me that this study is still not complete, more than two years after the above claim was made, and nearly two years since I filed my original FOIL. (see letter above).

Cathie Black's deadly Coca Cola connection

More questions arise as to the suitability of Cathie Black as the next schools Chancellor of NYC. As a member of Coca Cola's board, she had direct knowledge of the aggressive role of Coke company in contributing to childhood obesity in the US and abroad, and to death squads who targeted labor organizers in central and South America.

See today's articles from the NY Times and the indefatigable Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News.

Diane Ravitch’s remarks at the Class Size Matters “Skinny” awards dinner

The Skinny Awards were given to Juan Gonzalez, investigative reporter for the Daily News, for holding the city accountable; Norman Siegel, famed attorney, for protecting parent rights; and Council member Robert Jackson, a tireless fighter for our schools.

Photographs of the honorees are below; more are posted on the CSM facebook page.

Diane was ill and had lost her voice, so her remarks were given in absentia by Monica Major, Bronx parent leader and CSM board member.

Dear Friends: I am heartsick that I cannot be with you for tonight’s Skinny Awards.

I was in DC all day yesterday, talking to elected officials and trying to persuade them that No Child Left Behind was a disaster and that Duncan's Race to the Top is making matters worse. By the time I got on a train to come home, I started losing my voice. Today, I have none at all, I can't even whisper.

Class Size Matters is a special organization, on the front lines of fighting for our public schools and a quality education, every day. That’s why I joined its board.

The Skinny Awards are equally special. It is harder to get a Skinny Award than it is to get the Broad award. Only the most valiant and courageous friends of public education are considered as recipients. Only those who are willing to speak Truth to Power are eligible.

These awards recognize valor in the face of overwhelming power. The awards go this year to three people of amazing courage and integrity, each of whom has fearlessly fought against powerful vested interests in this city and state.

Juan Gonzalez, Robert Jackson, and Norman Siegel deserve the thanks of every parent, teacher, and friend of public education in New York City.

If I were with you, and if I had a voice, I would urge you never to give up.

Continue to fight the good fight, because the stakes are so very high. Support Class Size Matters and do what you can to speak out in defense of public education. The lives of a million children in this city are at stake, and what happens in New York City resonates throughout the nation and around the world.

Like Leonie, I have been getting emails from teachers and parents in Australia and New Zealand, seeking information about how to resist the New York City model of testing and choice. Other cities are thinking about adopting the New York City model of non-democratic governance.

Whatever the odds, and they are daunting, we can't give up. So much is at stake. Everyone who speaks up, everyone who writes letters to the editor, everyone who supports Class Size Matters and joins our relentless struggle for better schools, everyone who appreciates Patrick Sullivan's independent voice on the PEP, has a part to play. It's not over till it's over.

Some day it will be over, and when it happens we will remember the hard work and tenacity of Juan, Robert, and Norman.

Congratulations to the honorees. May you lead us for many more years, until better times come for our city's schools and students.

­­­­----- Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch: No Child Left Behind Has Left US Schools with Legacy of “Institutionalized Fraud”

Check out this segment from "Democracy Now" for a great, extended interview of Diane Ravitch, education scholar and former Asst. Secretary of Education, by Juan Gonzalez, two of our favorite people here in NYC; here is a transcript.

Diane provides the most incisive critique of No Children Left Behind, and its even more destructive incarnation in the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" program, in her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. In this interview, she explains why the administration's emphasis on charter school expansion and test-based accountability threatens to undermine public education and is an invitation to institutionalized fraud.

Political pull by charter school operator exposed

Some parents have asked me why I am involving myself in such a controversial issue as charter schools, seemingly unrelated to class size. But I don’t think it is.

District public schools that have a higher concentration of high-needs students are losing classrooms, libraries and intervention spaces to charter schools, which is neither equitable or good policy.

This is especially damaging, given the fact that only three out of 13 district schools slated to lose space next year to charters have reached their mandated class size reduction targets. For more on this see here, my comments on the charter co-locations that were voted on by the PEP last night.

Yesterday, on Good Day NY, when asked why the Chancellor seems biased towards charters, I said I didn’t really know, but that I suspected that many of the charter school operators are receiving preferential treatment because of their political connections.

A perfect example is revealed in today’s column in the Daily News by Juan Gonzalez, and in the emails he FOILed between Eva Moskowitz and Chancellor Klein.

Not only did the Chancellor intercede repeatedly with his own staff to get her chain of charter schools more space, when she had already received more than the formula would allow, helped her recruit parents for her schools by giving her access to their names and addresses, and also appeared at numerous fundraisers and helped her raise a million dollars from the Broad foundation, explaining how politically useful she was in organizing thousands of charter school parents to support Bloomberg, the continuation of mayoral control and raising of the charter school cap.

As Klein wrote to Dan Katzir of the Broad Foundation, “she’s done more to organize parents and get them aligned with what our reforms than anyone else on the outside.”

In her emails, Moskowitz repeatedly refers to her “army of parents” and many of them were indeed at attendance last night in the PEP meeting, along with their kids, cheering and chanting in support of their expansion into district buildings – all of which were approved, except for one.

Click on the email above, and check out the others on the Daily news website here. You'll be amazed.

You can also check out my appearance on Democracy Now .

City's claims re school construction are as inflated as the school grades

See today’s column by Juan Gonzalez in which he shows how the administration’s claims as regards school construction are as inflated as the school grades.

Many buildings claimed as “new school construction” are instead space leased in office buildings or parochial schools. What’s the problem with counting leased seats the same as new school construction? For one thing, the city never includes in their calculation how many seats are lost each year, when leased spaces lapse.

See this list of leases for Manhattan schools alone -- with thousands of seats subtracted due to lost leases in recent years. And the list is not even complete. For example, Baruch College HS, which lost its space last year, will spend one year in the former School for the Physical City, until that lease is finished, with no permanent home yet for the future.

The city’s press release also blatantly claims that this year’s total of 13,000 seats plus last year’s total, “represents the most-ever new classroom seats to come on line in a two-year period since the School Construction Authority was created in 1988.”

This is false. As Juan writes, “During three of those years, Giuliani created an average of 19,000 new seats. Under Bloomberg, the city has created more than 14,000 seats only once, in 2005, and school overcrowding continues to grow.”

No matter how you slice it, nearly any two years during the Giuliani administration produced bigger totals. Click on the chart above, with data taken directly from Mayor’s Management Reports.

Also, while the press release claims that “the 2005-2009 Capital Plan [was] the largest school construction effort in the City’s history,” this is not true either. Many previous administrations have built many more seats. Even Kathleen Grimm, Deputy Chancellor, was forced to admit this at a recent City Council hearing, when Robert Jackson presented her with the facts. See this account at Gotham Schools.

And the overcrowding has worsened, contrary to what City Hall claims. According to the DOE’s “Blue Book” 48 percent of students attended overcrowded schools as of the 2007-8 school year. This compares to 43 percent of students the year before. (We have no data as of 2008-9 as of yet.) Hundreds of children were put on waiting lists for Kindergarten this fall.

The new five year capital plan further cuts the number of new seats by 60 percent -- which will provide only approximately one third of the space necessary to eliminate current overcrowding and reduce class size to state-mandated levels -- and will do nothing to address the increased enrollment expected in neighborhoods throughout the city.

Three recent reports, from the NYC Comptroller, from the Manhattan Borough President, and from the Campaign for a Better Capital Plan, have each pointed out how school construction has lagged considerably behind the needs of our growing school-age population.

Just yesterday, the Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer put out yet another report, School Daze, showing how the DOE’s enrollment projections have consistently fallen short, and do not take into count the growth of new residential development, making it likely that thousands of Manhattan children will be left without schools in the near future.

Our classrooms are already overcrowded, and our children are facing a worsening crisis unless the city faces the truth – and builds more schools. In a recent survey, 86 percent of principals said that their class sizes were already too large to provide a quality education.

Indeed, the city is supposed to grow by a million residents by 2030 – without any plan to deal with the increased number of schoolchildren this will entail. Yet the only mention of schools in the PlaNYC report that detailed the need for improvements in every other aspect of the city’s infrastructure was a recommendation that excess school buildings should be renovated into more housing.

Already, the city’s share of capital spending going to schools has fallen sharply – click on the chart to the right. This disturbing trend is likely to continue, given the hugely inadequate new five year capital plan.

More waste and mismanagement at Tweed; when will it end?

In NYC, 2400 teachers remain on Absent Teacher Reserve, with no assignments, getting paid full salaries; while class sizes are expected to swell in the fall. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News, NY Times)

What a fiasco! Can you imagine the headlines if our schools had still been run by the old Board of Education? These teachers ought to be offered for free of charge by DOE to any principal who wants to put them to work.

Meanwhile, the financial scandals at Tweed continue. Juan Gonzalez reveals that DOE is paying the company Future Technology Associates an average of $250,000 each, for 63 consultants, through a no-bid contract– though the company has no offices, only a mail drop in Brooklyn.

The contract with FTA began in 2005 at $2.5 million -- about when the company was founded -- and has now mushroomed to over $15.7 million per year. Their contract, to align DOE’s finances with the city’s financial reporting system, which is years behind schedule, is expected to be extended for five more years at $95 million. Meanwhile, the cuts to schools next year amount to $400 million.

FTA director Tamer Sevintuna is getting $348,000 for the project, more than any city official including Deputy Mayors, while his second-in-command is getting paid $345,000 – with a portion of their salaries up to now hidden -- drawn from the schools’ capital budget.

But that’s not all. Turns out that FTA’s contract workers, many of them on temporary work visas from India, are only getting paid about $70,000 a year , while the directors are raking off the rest as huge profits:

"None of us made anywhere near $100,000," said a former FTA consultant who claims he quit the company in disgust because of all the money the DOE was "wasting on an archaic system that was always crashing."

"They had all 60 of us working in one room that was hot, dirty and absolutely not what you would expect from such a well-funded business," the former consultant said. …."Most of the 60 people I worked with at FTA were from India," he said.

"Every few months, someone was heading back home temporarily because their visa had expired. A few even got paid while they worked on the project back in India."

Meanwhile, Photeine Anagnostopoulos, the DOE's chief operating officer, told Juan that their sweetheart deal with FTA is “better than competitive".

The growth of private contracting has hugely grown under this administration – a practice ripe with abuse.

See this April testimony from the City Comptroller, showing that one out of every five DOE contracts in 2007 and 2008 went over its maximum allotted amount by 25 percent or more, sometimes by millions of dollars.

An audit from the State Comptroller released in May reported that the DOE awarded 291 no-bid contracts between FY 2005 and FY 2008, for more than $340 million, and in most instances "failed to properly document" the reason why.

And this analysis from the NY Times, showing that despite hundreds of millions of dollars awarded the city from the state and the federal government to reduce class size over the last seven years, the number of classroom teachers has shrunk by more than 1600, while high-paid administrators and out-of-classroom positions have grown by over 10,000. The number of employees making over $100,000 has quadrupled – even after adjusting for inflation.

When are the Mayor and Chancellor going to be held accountable for their huge waste of taxpayer funds; while each year, our children suffer from worsening overcrowding and rising class sizes?