Patrick Sullivan on the core principle of the Bloomberg administration

"I represent the borough of Manhattan on what the mayor calls the Panel for Educational Policy but what is in the law the Board of Education of the City of New York. I see here today parents and their elected leaders and I see teachers from every borough. I see them from every race and I see them from every income level and from every political party. Why is that?

Because I've learned from talking to people is that every parent wants to the same thing for their kids: they want a rich curriculum, they want an experienced teacher, they want small classes, and they want room for their kids in their schools.

But what have I learned from sitting on the Board of Educaiton for three years? I've learned that instead of schools, we're going to build a billion dollar police academy. Instead of a rich curriculum, we get test prep and drilling in math and ELA. Instead of small classes, we get our kids packed 28, 30, 35, 40 in a class and that's wrong.

"But the worst of all this is the people who control our schools, the people who run our schools, the Mayor, the Chancellor, the Regents, they don't send their own kids to these schools. They have one idea of education for our kids and and an entirely different one for their own.

Beyond autonomy, beyond accountability, beyond privatization, the core principle of the Bloomberg administration when it comes to education is condescension: the idea that there's one idea of education for their children and a totally different idea of education for everybody else's, and that's what has to stop."

NY1 on the Deny the Waiver coalition rally

Check out the great statement by Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member from the Panel for Educational Policy. Other newsclips at Gotham Schools, DNA Info, and Gotham Gazette. See photos here.

Video of Patrick Sullivan and tonight's PEP meeting

Video of Patrick Sullivan and parent protest at the PEP meeting on Aug. 16

Check out the video from yesterday's Panel for Educational Policy meeting, where Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member, observes that what he heard from the DOE's earlier test score presentation was "an attempt at spin to protect the reputations of the people who are responsible for the school system."

He makes a motion so that the Panel can hear "from parents and the public about what their concerns are about what I think is probably one of the worst debacles in the history of the public school system."

Yet PEP Chair David Chang refuses to bring the motion to a vote. Check out Patrick's explanation of how Chang's refusal was a violation of the PEP bylaws.

This refusal to let them speak led to an outcry from parents, chanting "Let us speak", and a subsequent walk-out of the PEP members, all except for Patrick.




For more on these events, see GothamSchools, Times, Post, Daily News, WNYC , Ed Notes and Patrick's own post. (video thanks to Norm Scott.)

The ugly naked face of mayoral control

Tuesday night's marathon session of the Panel for Educational Policy at Brooklyn Tech that lasted till nearly 4 AM was one of the most inspiring and awful events I have ever witnessed.

Inspiring because there were thousands of people there to protest the closing of 19 schools, and hundreds spoke out, for more than eight hours: eloquently, angrily, passionately and intelligently, about why their schools should not be closed and why the administration's blind and reckless policies would hurt our most vulnerable children. These English language learners, special education students, poor and homeless, will likely be excluded from the new small schools and charter schools that will replace their schools, and will undoubtedly be discharged in huge numbers as these schools phase out, never to receive a fair chance at a high school diploma.

Parents, students and teachers cited facts and numbers, personal experience, trenchant analysis and damning evidence of the DOE's malignant neglect and botched statistics.

Though the testimony started at 6 PM and continued until 2:45 AM, it was never boring. Early on, there was even humor from Lisa Donlan and Jane Hirschmann, who put on an inspired puppet show -- excerpts of which are below.

It was inspiring because at long last, Joel Klein got the reception he deserved: booed, jeered, criticized, compared to the Bernie Madoff of educational policy, with his destructive Ponzi scheme of closing schools and shifting around high-needs students; a scheme that will soon collapse, when there is nowhere left for these children to go.

It was awful because nothing that anyone said made any difference in the final vote.

The PEP, which the legislature in their wisdom allowed to continue with its a supermajority of mayoral appointees, was intent on rubberstamping whatever flawed or ridiculous policies put forward by the administration.

Shamefully, there was not a word from the chair, David Chang, or any other mayoral appointee to any of the thousands of people who urged them to think twice. Only the independent members from Manhattan, Bronx, Queens and the Bronx voted no.

When Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member, asked the mayoral "yes men" if they had anything to say to justify these closings, not one of them felt obligated to explain his or her vote.

This event should never have been allowed to occur in a city and a nation that calls itself a democracy; with all the power in the hands of one man to make the decisions for thousands of other people's children, but this is the ugly naked face of mayoral control.

See also City Panel Backs Closing of 19 Schools (NY Times), Public sentiment has turned against Mayor Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms (Daily News); The School Closing Marathon (Gotham Gazette); School Vote Scene Report: Joel Klein Called "Racist," (Village Voice); City's reasoning for wanting to close Jamaica HS based on faulty statistics (YourNabe.com); Parents Battle for a Say in Educational Policy (Gabe Pressman, NBC); Panel Decides to Shutter 19 NYC Public Schools (NBC New York) NYC school officials vote to close 19 underperforming schools (7Online.com); Rage as 19 schools get the axe (New York Post); “Attack” on Brooklyn high schools (YourNabe.com.)

Patrick Sullivan commands the stage at the PEP

Check out this video of Manhattan member of the Panel for Educational Policy Patrick Sullivan, fearless and brilliant, at the PEP December 20 meeting in the Bronx.

My favorite clip: when Patrick berates DOE officials for their "lack of fiscal discipline" -- their insistence on spending yet even more millions for yet another wasteful piece of software, a teacher training module that is supposed to be integrated into the $80 million super-computer super-mugging that is ARIS; meanwhile, school budgets are being slashed to the bone.

Hurray for Patrick! We are truly lucky to have him.

The Mayor commits educational malpractice, once again

Today, the mayor announced he would extend his grade retention policies to 4th and 6th grades -- meaning that all NYC students through 8th grade would now face being held back on the basis of a single test score. According to Gotham Schools,

Asked about researchers’ claims that retention policies can raise the dropout rate, Bloomberg said he was “speechless,” adding, “It’s pretty hard to argue that it does not work.” Klein said that since 2004, when the DOE ended social promotion for third graders, support for its end has been “unanimous.”

In fact, the consensus among experts is overwhelmingly negative -- that grade retention hurts rather than helps students and leads to higher dropout rates. When the City Council held hearings the first time the Mayor proposed this policy, they could not find a single education researcher who supported it.

Yet the mayor and Klein manage to inhabit their own universe of spin; reminiscent to the manner in which Karl Rove described the Bush administration:

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

See the 2004 letter, signed by over 100 academics, heads of organizations, and experts on testing from throughout the nation, in opposition to the mayor's policy, when he first proposed 3rd grade retention, explaining:

"All of the major educational research and testing organizations oppose using test results as the sole criterion for advancement or retention, since judging a particular student on the basis of a single exam is an inherently unreliable and an unfair measure of his or her actual level of achievement. ...Harcourt and CTB McGraw Hill, the two largest companies that produce standardized tests...are on record opposing the use of their tests as the exclusive criterion for decisions about retention, because they can never be a reliable and/or complete measure of what students may or may not know."

Among the letter’s signers were Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, renowned pediatrician and author of numerous works on child care and development, Robert Tobias, former head of Division of Assessment and Accountability for the Board of Education and now Director of the Center for Research on Teaching and Learning at NYU, and Dr. Ernest House, who did the independent evaluation of New York City’s failed “Gates” retention program in the 1980’s.

Other signers included four past presidents of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s premier organization of educational researchers, as well as three members and the study director of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Appropriate Use of Educational Testing, and two members of the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council.

According to Dr. Shane Jimerson, professor of Child and Adolescent Development at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of over twenty publications on the subject of retention,

“The continued use of grade retention constitutes educational malpractice. It is the responsibility of educators to provide interventions that are effective in promoting academic success, yet research examining the effectiveness of retention reveals lower achievement, more behavior problems, and higher dropout rates among retained students. It is particularly disconcerting that a disproportionate number of students of ethnic minority and low income backgrounds are retained. Moreover, children’s experience of being held back is highly stressful; surveys indicate that by sixth grade, students report that only the loss of a parent and going blind is more stressful. “

The second time the DOE pushed through this policy, for 5th grade retention, Klein agreed to commission an independent research study of the results. RAND has been analyzing the data since 2005 and has produced several interim reports which the public has not been allowed to see, as reported in a chapter in our book, NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know, by Patrick Sullivan, member of the Panel for Educational Policy:

"....the reports contained the results of extensive surveys with elementary school principals, summer school administrators, and Academic Intervention Services (AIS) specialists. Summer school leaders were coping with the latest DOE reorganization and complained they could not get any specific information on the students assigned to their programs. AIS leaders found that small class sizes were the most effective tool to help struggling students but less than a third of at-risk children had access to smaller classes. Principals felt the retention policy relied too much on standardized tests and was damaging to student self-esteem. Most troubling of all: none of these findings had been made public."

Now, as Patrick points out in Gotham Schools,

"When we voted on the 8th grade retention policy last year they said the release date for the RAND study was August 2009. Now it is “sometime this fall”. Would that happen to be “sometime after the election this fall?” What are they hiding?"

According to the DOE spokesperson, " Preliminary results of the RAND study, which looks at the performance of third and fifth graders affected by the Mayor’s promotion policy over time and will include data from the 2008-2009 school year, were delivered to the Department of Education last year...."

If Bloomberg and Klein were really so convinced that their retention policies have been successful, they should be obligated to release the RAND findings before the vote of the Panel to approve their extension to even more children.