My email from Klein: instead of reducing class size, he'd rather end seat time

Check out my email to Joel Klein below and his canned reply.

The message was sent through the NYC "take action" page" of the "Waiting for Superman" website, but I considerably tailored it to include the real issues involved in supporting great (or even good) teachers, involving reducing class size, rather than spending money on merit pay and the other bogus ways in which the corporate reformers want to waste our taxpayer funds. In national surveys, teachers overwhelmingly support lowering class size as the most effective way to improve the quality of education, over increasing their salary, merit pay or more professional development -- at rates over 95%. Of course, Klein doesn't respond to that suggestion at all.

Instead, he responds again pushing merit pay, and says that the mayor is eliminating "the current practice of awarding tenure to teachers based on seniority" which makes no sense, since tenure was never awarded based on seniority. Instead, he writes, tenure will be granted "only to teachers who have demonstrated two consecutive years of significant gains in student achievement" meaning value-added test scores -- which experts say is a highly unreliable way to evaluate their performance. See this recent study, for one.

Also, check out Klein's comments about how he's pushing to end "seat time" (meaning requiring that students actually attend school) and expanding online instruction -- as though either one of these proposals has anything to do with supporting "great teachers" Instead, both are likely to further degrade the quality of education in this city.

From: leonie@att.net [mailto:leonie@att.net]

Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 12:13 AM

Subject: What are you doing to support great teachers?

Dear The Honorable Klein:

As a member of our community, I am concerned about the future of our children and their education. I know that fixing our schools is a complex problem. But I also know that the most critical solution to this problem is making sure that we have effective teachers which will require reducing class size.

Every student deserves a great teacher. Likewise, teachers deserve the encouragement, support and training that they need to be more effective. And the best way to attract and retrain teachers in our schools is to reduce class size.

I urge you to make teacher effectiveness a top priority by taking the following actions:

1. Invest in the classroom, rather than spending even more money on testing, data analysis and out of classroom positions.

2. Support teachers by respecting their views about how to make them more effective -- reduce class size.

3. Evaluate teachers using several factors - such as classroom observations and parent input, but merit pay is a waste of money and does not benefit our kids.

I look forward to hearing what you are doing to support great teachers.

Sincerely,

Leonie Haimson, 212-674-7320

-----Original Message-----

From: Klein Joel I. [mailto:JKlein@schools.nyc.gov]
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:36 AM
To: leonie@att.net
Subject: RE: What are you doing to support great teachers?

Dear Ms. Haimson:

Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the recruitment, retention, support, and evaluation of great teachers.

We agree that every student deserves a great teacher, and really, teachers are the heroes every day in our school system. If we are going to meet our goal to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start college or their careers, we need to work together to step up to this challenge . We feel that by rewarding and supporting teachers who make a real difference and helping developing teachers get better, we will build upon the improvements we have made over the last eight years and give New York City students the future they deserve.

To that end, Mayor Bloomberg recently announced that he would eliminate the current practice of awarding tenure to teachers based on seniority, and instead, provide tenure only to teachers who have demonstrated two consecutive years of significant gains in student achievement. Teachers who do not earn tenure will be provided additional support and training, and those who are ineffective will be removed from the classroom.

Additionally, New York City recently received a $36 million grant from the United States Department of Education as part of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), which we will use to provide additional pay for "master teachers" and "turnaround teachers" who agree to be placed in low-performing schools.

In addition, we are working to incorporate technology into our classrooms in order to empower our teachers with the tools they need to teach our students in the 21st Century. Instead of lecturing at a class, teachers can use technology to work with small groups of students in their classes and tailor instruction to their individual needs. The Department of Education is also looking to end State-required "seat time," which mandates that all students spend a certain number of hours in their seats for every subject they take - if one student is progressing faster, why hold them back? If another one is not ready to move on, why force them? By ending seat time and incorporating individualized instruction, students will be able to advance academically while others are still mastering a particular subject.

We appreciate your input. Thank you again for writing to us, and for your advocacy on behalf of New York City's public school students.

Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein, Chancellor

Revelations concerning SED's secret backdoor deal with DOE on class size

See today's Juan Gonzalez column here, about the backdoor deal made nearly seven months ago between State Education Commissioner Steiner and Joel Klein, to allow the city to nullify its legal and moral commitments to reduce class size, and to let class sizes increase this fall to any levels they like, while continuing to call this a “class size reduction plan”.

I made the letter available to Juan Gonzalez, because it had been kept secret up to now, despite the transparency and public process required before the city can amend any aspect of its Contract for Excellence and/or class size reduction plan.

Even more importantly, this deal makes a mockery of the entire notion of class size reduction. It clearly contradicts the language of the C4E law, passed in 2007, mandating that NYC reduce class size in all grades, in exchange for receiving over $2 billion in state funds. Rather than the full public disclosure promised, and the tracking of every dollar to ensure that it would be spent according to its specified purpose, the Contract for Excellence program has become yet another slush fund for the DOE.

Despite receiving billions from the state, class sizes have risen sharply the last two years, and are expected to rise even more sharply this year. After Class Size Matters, the UFT and others filed a lawsuit last January in the State Supreme Court against the DOE for its failure to reduce class size, the DOE went behind our backs and negotiated this secret deal, which apparently even the Board of Regents have not been aware of until now.

In the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, the state’s highest court concluded that our children’s constitutional right to an adequate education had been violated, in large part because of excessive class sizes. The State Education Department, as a result of its negligence and active collaboration with DOE, has shown itself to be a willing partner to this continuing violation.

SED, by the way, has still not posted the city’s approved class size reduction plan for last year (2009-2010). When I asked the state last spring why the plan was not posted, contrary to the regulations, they put me off, and first claimed it due to technical difficulties with their website. When weeks went by and the city’s plan was still not posted, they admitted to me that someone high up in the State Education Department did not want to make it public. When I was forced to FOIL the plan, they ignored my FOIL and I finally had to threaten to sue.

They finally relented, and on Sept. 14 sent me a long document, originally submitted by DOE in October 2009, full of the usual obfuscation and gobbledygook. To add insult to injury, they followed up with another email three days later, saying that what they had just sent me was just a preliminary draft and not actually the city’s final approved plan for 2009-2010, which they have so far been either unable or unwilling to provide. So much for the accountability, transparency and oversight that is the state’s fiduciary duty under the law.

The secret letter signed by Steiner and Klein in February that Juan writes about today is posted here; the city’s apparently unapproved class size reduction plan for 2009-2010 is here; and here is a summary of all the billions of C4E dollars the state has thrown at the city since 2007, and apparently intends to continue to provide, despite the city’s long string of broken promises and now open defiance of the intent of the law. Finally, here is the DOE’s recently posted C4E presentation that first tipped me off to the existence of this secret deal.

There are CEC hearings on the city's C4E happening this week and next. I will provide a sample resolution soon concerning this moral and legal outrage that you can forward to your CEC or other organization to consider passing. Thanks for your support during these dark days, as always.

Here is an interview I did with WBAI on this today.

Hearings on the city's failure to abide by its moral and legal obligations as regards class size

See NY1 on the City Council's hearings about the failure of the Department of Education to spend the state's Contracts for Excellence (C4E) funds according to law. Instead of reducing class size, as mandated, with hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds, class sizes rose last year by the greatest amount in ten years.

DOE has provided lots of excuses for this malfeasance, but no real explanations. This program was created as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, and was supposed to ensure our children would finally be provided with their constitutional right to an adequate education, including smaller classes and more accountability and transparency in spending, but none of this has been achieved. The DOE's chief auditor admitted at the hearings that the audit required by law for the spending of these funds has still not been completed for the 2007-8 school year, no less last year.

Check out my testimony, along with a letter signed by nearly two hundred parent leaders, elected officials and the UFT, urging the State Commissioner to hold off granting the city any more C4E funds until the Department of Education demonstrates that the state funds have been properly used this year -- and that class sizes have actually been reduced.

The DOE's Chief Operating Officer, Photeine Anagnostopoulos, said that given flat funding they intend to renegotiate their class size reduction targets with the state -- of no more than twenty in K-3, 23 in 4-8 and 25 in core academic subjects in high school by the 2011-2012 school year.

See also the Gotham Schools article here. See also this letter that the Community Education Council from District 2 sent to the DOE and Commissioner Steiner about the problems with the DOE's Contracts for Excellence, and the flawed public process this year.

Sign a letter to Commissioner Steiner now!

The deadline for comments on the city's Contracts for Excellence is October 8; please lend your support by signing onto the below letter to the newState Commissioner of Education, David Steiner, urging him to make NYC comply with the law and start reducing class size now.

We are now at the mid-point of the city's mandated five year class size reduction plan, yet class sizes continue to rise, our schools are growing more overcrowded every day, and the city continues to ignore its moral and legal obligations to our children.

To sign this letter, composed by me and Robert Jackson, the chair of the NYC Council education committee, just email me and let me know your name school, district, office, or other affiliation, and whether you'd like an asterisk (affiliation for identification purpose only.)

If you're interested in more information on this issue, as well as chartsand citations to back up our statements in the letter, you can check out our C4E fact sheet. You can also send comments to DOE by emailing ContractsForExcellence@schools.nyc.gov

To Commissioner Steiner:

We urge you to require the city to start reducing class size now, according to the terms of its Contracts for Excellence (C4E). Smaller classes remain the top priority of NYC parents, according to the Department of Education's own surveys, and the state's highest court said that our children were deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education in large part because of excessive class sizes.

In return for receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state funds, the city promised that class sizes would be lowered each year until the citywide average would be no more than 20 students per class in grades K-3 and 23 in all other grades by the fall of 2011.

Class size reduction is now a state mandate, and yet last year class sizes increased last year bythe largest amount in ten years; and there are widespread reports of further increases this year.

In addition, the C4E process for public participation has been deeply flawed, as the city failed to hold any public hearings this past June, as recommended by the state, and has refused to hold any borough hearings, as required by law. Instead, a power point is being presented to CommunityEducation Councils which omits any mention of the city's five year class size reduction plan, as well as the DOE's failure to meet its class size targets for two years in a row.

In its official C4E submission, the city pledged to the state that the "the Department continues to be committed to reducing class size in early gradesvia the Early Grade Class Size Reduction program." Yet when an audit was released in September, revealing the misuse of millions of dollars of thesefunds, the DOE claimed that the program "no longer exists." Please see attached fact sheet for more information on these findings.

Clearly, the city has reneged on its promise to reduce class size. It is time that the state utilizes its full oversight authority, and requires the city comply with the law.

We recommend that a corrective action plan be imposed with the following provisions:

1-The city's plan should be revised to include specific class size reduction goals by school, district, and citywide -- sufficient to achieve its annual and five year goals.

2-The city should be obligated to assign whatever teachers remain on absent teacher reserve (ATR) to regular classrooms in their respective districts, so that class sizes can be reduced from current levels.

3-The city should be forbidden from further pursuing any policies thatconflict with its class size goals, including placing new schools in buildings before smaller classes have been achieved in the existing schools. DOE continues to insert new schools into buildings where the existing school is "underutilized" according to a formula which assumes near maximum classsizes.

4. The state should require that the city revise its capital plan so that it can provide enough space necessary for its class size goals to be achieved,as the C4E regulations require.

5. The state should hold back all C4E funds before the city has reported to the state in detail what reductions have been achieved by school, district and citywide, reporting that is now mandated by the state to occur by November 17.

This year will be the mid-point in the city's five year class size reduction plan, instituted by the Legislature so that our children could eventually be assured of an adequate education. There is no time to waste.

If the State Education Department does not require these basic steps to demand accountability and credibility on the part of the city, it will have failed in its responsibilities to our children, to the Legislature, and to New York taxpayers.

Yours,

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters
Council Member Robert Jackson, chair, City Council Education Committee and Campaign for Fiscal Equity plaintiff

(See here for more signers.)