Let The Games Begin: Is Transparency and Unbiased Evaluation/Assessment Essential to an Amended Mayoral Control Statute?

 

Ed Koch was fond of asking, “How am I doin’?” Our current Chancellor asks and answers. From the five boroughs to Washington DC, to Australia, the chancellor has pumped up his “model” of urban schools.

 

However, he has skipped over a little point: Does it work?

 

The system is opaque rather than transparent and we lack any no arms length assessments and/or evaluations.

 

For example, are the Leadership Academy and New Leaders for New Schools  cost effective, and do the graduates produce better results than principals following the customary path?

 

ARIS is a powerful tool, but, is the $85 million cost of the ARIS   “reasonable”? and, has it delivered all that the contract proposed? Why isn’t it fully operational? Are their any penalties in the contract?

 

The legislature is the custodian of public monies and has the responsibility to track and audit the use of these funds. The Department argues that it is not a State agency and the State has no audit responsibility. The amended mayoral governance law should correct this oversight.

 

Recommendation: The New York State Comptroller should have the express responsibility of auditing the Department of Education, both public and private funds, and, report regularly on the use, effectiveness and efficacy of  spending.

 

The accountability issue is even more troubling.

 

The Department spins out press release after press release, the Chancellor hops around the country, actually, the world, conference after conference, pieces in newspapers and magazines from coast to coast. From conservative columnists and radical activists, from Al Sharpton to Geoffrey Canada, from the Wall Street Journal to the Education Equality Project. The Children’s First initiative is the torch, leading the path to urban reform.

 

School level accountability (School Progress Reports + Quality Reviews), school closings/school creation, Fair Student Funding (FSF), Open Market Transfers, ATR Pool, Bonus Pay, Individual Teacher Data Reports, “thin” management, sophisticated technology, data-driven decision-making (ARIS), school inquiry teams … a package of innovations that have significantly raised student achievement … or have they?

 

The Research Alliance for Public Schools, housed at NYU jumped off with a major press conference, but, with Klein and Weingarten on the Board, will it produce any meaningful research?

 

The Center for NYC Affairs, at the Milano School/New School University produced a fascinating look at student attendance patterns  …

 

Is anyone looking at the impact of “credit recovery” programs on graduation rates and School Progress Report grades?

 

Do small high schools have better achievement data than large high schools? and, if so, why? How do the entering classes of small high schools compare with the entering classes in large high schools?

 

70% of all NYC schools receive School Progress Report Grades of “A” or “B,” yet many hundreds of NYC schools are either SINI, Corrective Action or SURR? Why the disparity?

 

Recommendation: The State Education Department, in conjunction with the NYS Comptroller, should audit education progress within New York City, i.e., “credit recovery,” impact of Fair Student Funding, teacher mobility, Regents/ELA/Math test administration, etc. The State should conduct regular “curriculum audits” and investigate accusations of rule/regulation/statute non-compliance.

 

Sol Stern has been a lonely voice, crying for transparency within the Department.

 

On Thursday, January 29th the first public hearing of the NYS Assembly Education Committee will listen to the range of comments.

 

Rumors on the web of the long awaited UFT position paper coming before the union Delegate Assembly on February 3rd, and, you can follow the hearings from the Bloomberg/Klein perspective at the Albany Project.

 

Lets the games begin …

Phoenix Rising: Will School Governance, Once Again, Seize the Central Stage? If Not Bloomberg/Klein, What Should Replace It?

 

 There is a certain bird which is called a phoenix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years.

 The Phoenix

 

School governance plunged from the “hot” topic of the moment to obscurity; overwhelmed by the presidential election, a faltering economy, wars, Hillary’s replacement, the miraculous Hudson River plane crash and the inauguration.

 

Suddenly, the quiescent NYS Assembly Education Committee announces hearings in each of the boroughs beginning next week and continuing until March 20th.

 

From Betsy Gotbaum to Comptroller Thompson to Assembly Speaker Silver, they all support mayoral control, sort of a mayoral control lite … rather vague comments about finding a more inclusive role for parents.

 

This has not been a good week for Mike and Joel: after flaking for their pal Carolyn Kennedy, with endless “it’s in the bag” rumors, she withdraws.

 

The Internet is buzzing as parents and advocates and community and citywide organizations signup to testify before the committee.

 

If you’re an inquisitive type you can plunge into the State Ed Law and actually read the law …since the mayoral control law sunsets on 6/30/09 the law contains the current and the law that it would default to if it is allowed to expire. For most folk the biggest surprise is the law only sets a thin framework. Almost everything that Joel Klein has done is not in the law … Chancellors have, and always have had, sweeping powers as far as the organization of their school district.

 

School governance in New York City, as Diane Ravitch tells us, has always been dominated by the politics of the day. The post 1970 decentralization law, with a few exceptions, was characterized by local school boards that ranged from dismal at best to corrupt at  worst. The functioning school districts were the more middle class districts, the poorer the district, the greater the corruption.

 

Central boards, while not corrupt, were totally political: after all, the board members were appointed by borough presidents and the mayor.

 

The current iteration has simply substituted the politics of the Mayor and the Chancellor for the politics of the locality, and, they did it with disdain.

 

Do we continue with mayoral control, or return to the prior system that was dominated by politics and guaranteed weak chancellors?

 

What do we mean by increasing the role of parents and giving them a voice? If parents are appointed by elected officials will they represent the elected official or parents? In the poorest communities school parent organizations barely function, how can they be encouraged? and, what is their role? should parents be consulted or should they have a decision-making role in school policies?

 

The teacher union (UFT) has yet to announce a plan … a union Task Force has been meeting more than a year.

 

Is the Bloomberg/Klein mayoral governance plan adequate to “close the achievement gap” and establish a model for continuing improvement? Should accountability, whether merit/bonus or school closing based, be the core of any plan?

 

Why are we all so hostile toward Bloomberg/Klein governance? Is it the plan or the messengers?

 

Is there an arms length evaluation of the seven years of Bloomberg/Klein?

 

Is there any evidence that the “other ideas” will be more effective?

 

I have read, listened to angry, loud voices sharply critical of Bloomberg/Klein … I have heard relatively little about how to change it, except rather vague generalities.

I’m listening.

Obama and the Shadows of Lincoln, FDR and JFK: Children, Families and Teachers Eagerly Look to the New President

 

 

I can’t think of a more anticipated moment than President-elect Obama’s inauguration speech … I reread Lincoln’s Second Inaugural,

 

… fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

3

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

 

 

and the First FDR Inaugural on March 4, 1933

 

 This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

 

 

and, of course, the JFK Inaugural on a bitterly cold January 20, 1961.

 

Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself…

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.   Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza; the continent of Africa in turmoil and the world confronting a financial meltdown …   some may see these issues as opportunities, others as insurmountable obstacles … we will be glued to our TV screens at midday of January 20th.   A year ago the Broad and Gates Foundations were talking of spending many millions to raise education to the top of the political agenda, now, a year later education is well down the list.   Governor Patterson barely mentioned educational initiatives in his January 7th State of the State speech and Mayor Bloomberg in his State of the City talk  addressed jobs and the economy with a sparse education agenda.   In her January 17th New York Times column AFT/UFT President Randy Weingarten held out her hand to Obama and his Ed Secretary Arne Duncan and pleaded for local governments to protect public schools from pending devastating cuts.   Of all the words spoken and printed in last few days perhaps Frank Rich in his January 18th New York Times op-ed is the most prescient, nothing will change on January 20th … we, all of us, will have to be the change agents.   States and cities are facing obscene cuts, with a range of “impossible” choices; pension liabilities, deteriorating infrastructures, foreclosures, job losses, tumbling revenues and enduring inner city poverty.   Dropout rates in communities of poverty are staggering, and, faced with the current economic crisis we fear that education will stumble still further down the list of priorities.   Is the Duncan/Klein model the proper approach for inner city communities? or, does Richard Rothstein define the path for education?   I wonder whether Arne Duncan and Randi Weingarten can come together and support a common agenda? I wonder whether Duncan/Klein/Rhee will simply push ahead with their Educational Equality Project? and, I wonder where the new president will place education on his list of priorities? We remember the rhetoric of Lincoln, FDR and JFK, and we eagerly await the words of our new president.   On Tuesday we will all be listening carefully.

Cardinal Richelieu in Albany: Can Shelly Silver “Save” New York City Schools?

If you give me six lines written
by the most honest man, I will find
something in them to hang him.

                                 —Cardinal Richelieu

The NYS legislature is made up of 150 Assemblyman and 62 Senators from the nooks and crannies of the State. They gather in Albany from January until June, (full time at crunch time) from Monday to Wednesday and legislate for the people of the State.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU Law School has been a consistent critic of the legislature, calling it “dysfunctional” and proffers a range of reform recommendations.When Speaker of the Assembly Shelly Silver responded, and criticized the 2008 Report, the Brennan Center shot right back.

State legislatures are rarely paradigms of  transparency. They frequently meet for short periods of time and they are almost always leadership driven.

The first three months, January through March are the budget months … the State budget by statute is due by April 1. While the legislature has frequently missed the April 1 date in the last few years they have brought in the budget shortly thereafter. The budget negotiations are arduous – twelve years of a Republican Governor, a Republican Senate majority leader and a Democratic Assemby speaker: urban versus suburban versus rural, inner city versus farming; conflicting priorities from the length and breathe of this very diverse State. The inner city issues in Brownsville and Buffalo, the deep seated unemployment upstate, from the wealthy suburbs surrounding urban centers to the struggling farmers around the State; the “three men in a room” must satisfy the many interests of their constituents.

While the public face of the legislature appears to be driven by leaders with an iron fist, in reality, the conferences, the party caucuses, are arenas for wide ranging and conflicting debates. Congestion pricing is a prime example, it did not come to a vote because the members of the Democratic conference vigorously opposed it. It simply was Speaker Silver carrying out the wishes of his members, and, absorbing the vitriolic barbs of the Mayor.

In spite of being in a room with two Republicans, Pataki and Bruno, the Speaker was a brilliant negotiator, tough and patient, wise in the ways of the arcane passageways of budgets and legislative rules, and sensitive to the needs of his conference members.

Governor Spitzer was determined to be the “big dog” in the room, to force his will on both Silver and Bruno, and only succeeded in antagonizing those very legislators he needed to pass his programs.

The current iteration of “three men in a room” is a new unelected Governor, a Senate leader with a one vote majority, and, yes, Shelly.

Silver is the modern day Cardinal Richelieu, his powerful, analytical intellect was characterized by a reliance on reason, strong will, the ability to govern others and use political power effectively.

Joel Klein has spent his tenure dissing State legislators , example after example of treating the electeds with disdain. Whether it be closing of schools in their districts, or transparency of funding or programs, announcements are spun out by the communication cadre at Tweed, totally ignored the needs, desires or questions of elected officials.

Sonny Cianci was the Mayor of Providence, in a wonderful biography Cianci supposedly opined, “… always remember that the hand you bite today might be attached to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow.”

Maybe the $6B in the stimulus package earmarked for NYS, if it arrives, will ease the impending tsunami … the competition for the dollars will be fierce.

In the ideal world that academia worships clones of Jefferson and Madison would discuss the issues of the day before an understanding and admiring populace … in reality the founding fathers engaged in ”down and dirty” politics, personal attacks were commonplace; Jefferson supported James Callender’s newspaper whose sole purpose was to attack Hamilton … and his affair with Mrs. Reynolds .

  If you’re really into American history and how the politics of the early Republic shook out, Jefferson vs. Hamilton is a great study.  It’s also a little, I guess comforting, to know that as bad as we think today’s politicians are,  politics was always a very dirty game.  Like Bismarck said, “Laws are like sausages.  Better to not see them being made.”  And as Ecclesiastes says, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Intelligence, patience, guile, sensitivity and toughness: qualities of a leader will all be required to create a budget that addresses the yawning deficit and protects the weakest and the most vulnerable. Shelly Silver will be the key player … we wish him well.

The Burden of Mayoral Control: A Defining Moment for Randi and Mike, Can They Save the Lives of a Generation of Kids?

 

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut, in the shadow of the Pole, with a little coffin six by three
And a grief you can’t control? Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: “You may try all day, But you’ll never jam me in”?

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn’t seem no good,

He’s froze too hard to thaw;
He’s obstinate, and he won’t lie straight, So I guess I got to — saw.”

So I sawed off poor Bill’s arms and legs, And I laid him snug and straight

I often think of poor old Bill — And how hard he was to saw.

Robert W. Service, The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

 

Let’s make believe it’s next September, there are massive teacher layoffs, schools open in chaos … the legislature has renewed mayoral control with a few tweaks … who is responsible for the cuts and the chaos? who takes the “political” hit?

 

The union attacks the Mayor, the City Council attacks the Mayor, the press and the electronic media post video of schools in chaos … the democratic candidates savage the Mayor …

 

Maybe mayoral control is not the legacy of the Mayor, maybe it will be the demise of the Mayor?

 

In 1975 fiscal crisis the Mayor, Abe Beame was diminutive in size, physically (he was barely five feet tall) and intellectually. A nice man, but a political light weight … he was overwhelmed by the crisis and allowed the education system to be ravaged.

 

A few months ago David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College professor and parent activist was calling for the allowing the mayoral control law to expire. Betsy Gotbaum, the Public Advocate carefully researched the issue  released a range of recommendations, and, the UFT, the teacher union, was conducting a lengthy review, scores of speakers testified at boro-wide meetings, hundreds attended the meetings and the task force met monthly throughout the spring and into the fall. The UFT Report has yet to be released.

 

What seemed so relevant, so important a few months ago is overwhelmed by the possibility of $600 million in DOE budget cuts and their devastating impact on classrooms and kids.

 

Sometime in February or March Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Patterson, Shelly Silver, Malcolm Smith and Randi Weingarten, the heir to Al Shanker will sit down and seek a solution …

 

The discussion will range over:

 

* a drastic “thinning” of the DOE superstructure: Tweed, ISC, Support Organizations

* maybe some manipulation, postponement of payments into the pension system

* maybe some part of the Federal bailout dollars can find themselves into the City coffers.

* a retirement incentive.

 

On the management side, demands for a Tier 5 for new employees with reduced benefits, a revisiting of the 1995 retention incentive (some portion of new teacher salary withheld and forfeited if the teacher does not remain in the system for “x” years), reduction in employee health/welfare benefits, etc.

 

Randi and Mike will have to seek a creative approach to protect schools … it will be an excruciating negotiation, and the lives of untold kids and families will depend upon their abilities.

 

As with Blasphemous Bill, jamming that frozen body into a coffin.

 

In the fall of 1975 Al Shanker agreed to “loan” the city money  from the Teacher’s Retirement Fund … it was very unpopular among the membership, it saved the city from default, and, the funds were fully paid back, with substantial interest. As Kallenberg recounts in his recent biography  Shanker was able to look beyond the narrow views of his members, to be at the table at the crucial moment, and emerged from 1975 as one of the major spokespersons for children as well as for his members.

 

For Randi and Mike this can be a legacy defining moment.

1 Billion Dollars = 12,000 Jobs, The Calculus of Layoffs, Who Are the Saviors? Is There Another Al Shanker Out There?

 

Governor Patterson’s State of the State address was long on rhetoric and short on details. Starting in the middle of December Patterson began bemoaning the billion dollar plus deficit in the current fiscal year (that ends 3/31/09) and the yawning abyss for the next fiscal year. The Mayor has thrown around a $600 million figure as a possible cut for the DOE in the next fiscal year, FY10 – beginning 7/1/09.

 

The “rule of thumb” is that each billion dollars in city revenue pays for 12,000 employees (salary + fringes). How do you cut the DOE budget without layoffs? How do you reduce the impact on classrooms?

Musings ….

 

A Retirement Incentive

 

In 1991, 1995 and 1996 the BOE offered retirement incentives, additional months of service dependent upon total years of service. Each teacher who retires saves the city about $50,000 (trading in a teacher on max for an entry level teacher). The arithmetic: $50 million for each 1,000 teachers that avail themselves of an incentive. However; don’t start buying that condo in South Beach quite yet! Retirement incentives require the approval of the Mayor, the City Comptroller, both houses of the State legislature, the Governor, the State Comptroller and an outside actuary. Will a retirement incentive place too much stress on the pension system in a time of sharply deflated stock prices and the beginning of a possibly long recession/depression?

 

Full Implementation of Fair Student Funding

 

The “big gorilla” in the room is Fair Student Funding (FSF). Two years ago the DOE implemented a total overhaul of the school funding formula – all kids would carry their budget “weight,” determining  school allocations. Teachers would be “charged” at their actual salary. The result: some schools, especially schools with large numbers of “economically disadvantaged ” kids, and a range of more complex factors, gained dollars while others lost significant dollars. When the union screamed, threatened lawsuits, and the city realized that many of the schools that would lose money were in more middle class neighborhoods, backed off and agreed to a two year “save harmless.” The “save harmless” agreement ends in June … if the DOE/City implements the original plan the city would “save” significant dollars … hundreds of millions … at the expense of the “save harmless” schools.

 

Restructuring, Reshuffling, Reorganizing at the Top

 

The announcement today placing Eric Nadelstern in charge of the Support Organizations may be the beginning of a wave of leadership/management changes that will lead to a much “thinner” organization at the top. Empowerment is a “thin” organization, over five hundred schools in Empowerment are lead by Network Leaders, each working with 20-25 schools with two or three staff members each. At the top Empowerment only has a handful of staff. Maybe, this model will emerge across the system.

 

Rumors abound! Currently all school must select a Support Organization, will the DOE make “support” voluntary for schools with  “As” and Bs” on Progress Reports? Will Empowerment gobble up all schools? Will the new State Ed Growth model replace the current DOE Progress Reports?

 

An Overhaul of School Bus Contracts

 

I am told by those “in the know” that the city has not rebid the school bus contracts since 1978, that the same very well connected folk run the bus companies. The DOE hired a consultant to rejigger the routes … as we remember, a disaster! The contracts are another story:  under Bloomberg the city did absorb the private bus companies into the MTA … is anyone taking a look?

 

A weak Governor, a State Senate one vote away from anarchy, a Mayor who, depending on the courts, may or may not be running for his third term; can this menagerie come up with a budget that cuts $15.8 billions from the operations section of the budget … a twenty-five percent cut???

 

The great irony: the wiliest guy in the room, with the most “clout,” and, by far the most “smarts,” Shelly Silver …

 

Can an avid Ranger fan from the Lower East Side save the State?

Arne’s Dilemma: Wither Education Policy – Flailing Teachers and Unions or Challenging the Bigotry of Low Expectations?

 

For each complex problem there is a simple solution … and it is wrong.”

H. L. Mencken.

 

 For his seven year tenure as Chicago school chief Arne Duncan looked incredibly like Joel Klein, albeit an affable Joel Klein, with very strong basketball creds, that clearly go a long way in the home of Michael Jordan.(see here  for description of his college basketball career)

 

Duncan closed schools and forced teachers to reapply for their jobs, opened charter schools, turned schools over to private operators, antagonized parents,  both hugged and dueled with the teacher union and was applauded on the national scene.

 

Similar to Klein he only had to satisfy one person, his employer, the Mayor of Chicago, and, his school data did not “close the achievement gap.”

 

In DC Arne will have a group of new “friends:” the fifty Governors and fifty State Commissioners of Education, George Miller and Ted Kennedy, the chairs of the Congressional Ed Committees, both the newly elected teacher union presidents, Dennis Van Roekel at the NEA and Randi Weingarten at the AFT and the horde of foundations, think tanks, editorial and op ed writers and those pesky bloggers.

 

One difference between Joel and Arne is that while Joel lauds his own “successes” Chicago has a highly regarded independent research arm  that has tracked the Chicago schools through twenty years of research reports. While Klein jumps from guru to guru Duncan took a year off at Harvard and wrote his much quoted senior thesis on inner city adolescence. (“The Values, Aspirations, and Opportunities of the Urban Underclass” (BA honors thesis. Harvard University, 1987, pp. 18 ff.)).

 

Arne is faced with a dilemma: how will he balance the accountability, education equity project, Education Trust crew with the sociology of poverty crowd?

 

The originally highly touted No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, a bipartisan bill supported by both Bush and Miller/Kennedy has been flailed by all, especially governors and state commissioners and unions. In Chicago Duncan has supported the core of the bill and vigorously closed schools and established “options” to public school, charters and educational management organizations (EMOs). Accountability, in the classroom, in the principal’s office, at the school level has driven his administration.

 

While scores in Chicago have risen, he has made no dent in the “achievement gap,” by the way, neither has any other urban center.

 

On the other side the “broader, bolder coalition” crowd point to the deep impact of poverty,  and look for a comprehensive national program to diminish/end poverty; perhaps,  a continuation of the Johnson era “War on Poverty.” Duncun is clearly aware of the host of depressing research that shows the impact of poverty on school performance, for example that of Clancy Blair here  and at an NYU panel here.

 

The easy way out is to continue the emphasis on accountability at the school level, a continuation of the NCLB approach, even if there is no data to support it. Or, should Arne re-read his senior thesis, and take on the faux black establishment that supports a culture that disdains success as measured by school performance, that supports the Tyler Perry Uncle Tom Stepin Fetchet characters (see blog discussion here), that idolizes gansta rap, and will he take on the basketball and football college powers with infinitesimal Afro-American athlete graduation rates?

 

Maybe, just maybe, Arne will fight the fights Obama can’t … and pursue the intricate solutions to the complex problems.