Accountability Is For The Other Guy Redux

The NY Daily News reports that Chancellor Klein plans to meet with nearly 200 principals over the next couple of weeks about the mayor's current and proposed future budget cuts for the New York City school system.

You see, these New York City principals were given extra money earlier this year for the school budgets "in exchange for higher consequences if they fail to raise test scores" as part of the mayor's and chancellor's vaunted Children First education reform movement.

The extra money could be used for a variety of programs including after-school and Saturday tutoring to help students on the battery of standardized tests the mayor and the chancellor have instituted per year.

Unfortunately for all involved, the U.S. economy has begun to tank (see here) and the mayor has ordered a bunch of city-wide budget cuts including ones in the public school system. Principals were ordered to cut 1.75% from their school budgets this year while much of the central administrative NYCDOE budget was saved. In addition, the mayor has ordered additional cuts to city agency budgets between 5% and 8% for the next fiscal year, although it is unclear just how much schools will have to cut.

Nonetheless you can bet individual schools will be forced to shoulder the fiscal burden while the central administrative budget (and all those yummy, yummy central administrative consultants and even yummier no-bid contracts handed out to Klein and Bloomberg cronies) will see few if any cuts.

And that makes sense. I mean, why cut the $80 million dollar ARIS computer system that doesn't work the way it's supposed to or the no-bid standardized testing contract Bloomberg handed to McGraw-Hill, the company that STILL hasn't delivered on the standardized ELA tests kids are supposed to be taking nearly nine months after the company first got the contract, when you can cut after-school Regents tutoring, arts and enrichment programs, and field trips and force principals to try and raise their test scores and graduation rates with much less money than they were promised.

Oh, and you can bet the mayor's and chancellor's vaunted school report cards and quality review program won't be cut, even if the programs that might help schools improve in some of the categories measured will be.

Remember, it's Children First and children always, as long as Bloomberg's and Klein's corporate cronies are not hurt in the pocketbook or the balance sheet.

No wonder principals are mad as hell over the budget cuts. Unlike the CEO's from Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial who got dragged in front of Congress yesterday after receiving millions in executive "performance" compensation even as they made terrible business mistakes that cost their companies and shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars, you can bet Klein and Bloomberg will hold principals, assistant principals and teachers accountable for "improvement" even as he cuts the school budget by as much as 10% (and perhaps even more if the economy continues to worsen.)

You see, accountability is for everybody except the big-time businessmen, the corporate CEO's, the short-selling hedge fund managers, or billionaire media moguls.

Feds Look To Get Rid Of Bloomberg Manipulation Of NAEP Exam

The NY Sun reports that federal officials are looking to create a single standard for how to decide which students are excluded from testing for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam and which receive special accommodations, such as extra time or permission to take the test in a small group.

The revisions to the testing standards come as a result of Department of Education officials in New York City giving extra time and other modifications to 20%-25% of students who took the NAEP exam while just 5% of students received extra time and additional modifications nation-wide.

The NAEP exams are considered the "gold standard" of standardized tests for elementary and middle school students, but officials who oversee the examine say discrepancies undermine the test's purpose and the standards for the exam must be uniform across the nation:

One board member, James Lanich, said not having a reliable standard prevents states and researchers from drawing lessons from the NAEP results. Without knowing for sure which states are performing the best, lessons on which policies to pursue are harder to grasp, he said.

Studies have shown that excluding students can unfairly inflate test scores, though the effects of accommodations are unclear.

NAEP officials admit that trying to enforce one national standard for the NAEP exam may be impossible to do and probably could be overturned if states or municipalities challenged the standards in court.

Nonetheless the Sun article says a voluntary compact among states and municipalities to follow the same standards for the exam could be a workable solution. Such a voluntary compact agreeing to measure high school graduation rates by a single standard was signed by 45 state governors in 2005.

The article concludes with an NAEP expert, Richard Innes, noting that some states or cities might not want to sign up for such a voluntary compact for fear of having to abandon generous accommodation policies that help inflate scores.

Mayor Michael Bloomerg's New York City is one such area.

Ironically, New York City's NAEP scores have actually stayed stagnant during the Bloomberg years despite huge gains in state test scores and despite Bloomberg's Education Department quadrupling the number of students receiving testing modifications compared to what other areas give.

Here's a chart from the NY Times showing the divergence between state scores and scores on the NAEP:



Notice how much better city students do on the state tests than the national tests?

Notice how little students have improved on the national tests during the Bloomberg years?

Anybody wonder what those national test scores would have looked like if Bloomberg didn't have the option to dole out extra time and other testing accommodations to 20%-25% of the students taking the test?

Anybody wonder how likely Bloomberg and the state pols are to agree to national standards that take away their testing accommodations options?

Anybody really believe Bloomberg and the state pols are going to allow accurate test scores to be reported when they can manipulate the testing standards and artificially inflate the scores?

Conga, Conga, Conga

While UFT President Randi Weingarten was laughing it up with Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of the political elite at her 50th Birthday Party/Charter School Fund Raiser, the city was announcing that 8 "failing" city schools will be closed by the end of the year.

The schools slated to be closed are:

EBC East New York High School for Public Safety and Law; the Business School for Entrepreneurial Studies; the Tito Puente Education Complex; P.S. 101 in Manhattan, and the middle school at the Academy of Environmental Science Secondary High School in East Harlem; P.S. 220, a Bronx elementary school; and Far Rockaway High School in Queens.

The city says a total of 14-20 schools will be closed by the end of the year.

Before Randi got on line to conga with Mayor Mike at her party, she and Leo Casey issued the following statement about the closures:

“These closings represent a major upheaval for all involved, and it is important that every effort is made to ensure that everyone affected is treated with care, dignity and respect. That means students in the affected schools should be assured of a full education as the schools are phased out, and they should have every opportunity to successfully complete their education. It also means that staff members who choose to stay on during the phase-out years should have opportunities to work in other schools.”

Then Randi got hugs and kisses from Mayor Mike at her party and went back to her conga line.

Conga, conga, conga!

Makes you wonder just how she plans to force the city to make sure that everyone affected by these closures is treated with care, dignity and respect when she and the mayor are so buddy-buddy on the party circuit.

It also makes you wonder if, to paraphrase a comment that Schoolgal made in this thread, the relationship between Randi and Bloomie runs so deep that we're just pawns the whole time.

Indeed.

While Bloomberg and Klein were announcing the closure of the 8 failing schools and threatening to close another 12 before the end of the year, the NY Sun reports that parents want the principal of one failing school to be fired but the city so far refuses to do it.

The principal of the ACORN High School for Justice, Joseph Parker, a graduate of the city's Jack Welch Principal's Leadership Academy, is a terrible administrator who runs the school with a prison mentality and refers to administrators as "wardens."

The school has a high teacher turnover rate (as you can imagine) and makes do with a constant stream of inexperienced rookie teachers from the city's Teaching Fellows Program.

The graduation rate at the school is 37%, the school received an "F" on its report card and last year's valedictorian, Sharifa Noble, stood up at graduation and said "ACORN has let me down."

Nonetheless, the city has so far resisted pulling the plug on Principal/Warden Parker, though the DOE did say through a spokesperson it retains the right to close ACORN later in the year, just as it retains the right to close any school that received a "D" or an "F" on its report card.

Call me cynical, but I find it odd that the principal from Bloomberg's vaunted Principal's Leadership Academy who runs his school like a prison hasn't been fired while the city has no problem announcing the closure of the other 8 schools and announcing that as many as 12 more will be closed.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the connections Principal/Warden Parker made through his time in the Principal's Leadership Academy? Or the mayor's reluctance to push out the principals/CEOs he trains at his vaunted academy?

In any case, at the end of the day I'm dubious that the United Federation of Teachers leadership will really force the city to prove all of the schools they're going to close this year are really "failing" (remember, schools with high standardized test scores received "D's" and "F's" on their report cards) or force the city to treat those affected by closures "with care, dignity and respect."

When Randi and Mayor Mike are as close as they are, it's difficult to believe she'd really do anything in a showdown between the union and the city but talk tough.

You see, it's all about the "connections" - whether they're forged on the party circuit conga line or at the mayor's Principal's Leadership Academy.

A Sell Out Turns 50

The right-wing, pro-voucher, anti-union NY Sun editorial board wrote a love letter to Rod Paige's favorite teachers' union leader today to help her celebrate her 50th birthday.

The Sun lauds UFT President Randi Weingarten for her "idealism" and her "leadership." They note how Ms. Weingarten won her fourth presidential term with 87% of the vote (no mention of the fact that only 30% of the membership actually voted) and teacher's salaries have gone up 43% since Weingarten started negotiating with Bloomberg in 2002.

Finally the Sun says they're sending Rod Paige's favorite teacher labor leader a copy of Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" in the hopes that she'll add vouchers to the list of concessions she has already handed the education reformers/Walmart proponents like added days, added time, gutted work protections (seniority, grievance rights, the return to bathroom duty), authoritarian mayoral control, union-sponsored charter schools, merit pay and reformatted school financing that favors getting rid of costly veteran teachers and hiring lots of Teach For America missionaries.

Just to show you how much Weingarten despises the role of being a traditional union leader (i.e., actually looking out for the rights and needs of her union membership) and loves sucking up to the education reformer/Walmart proponent lobby, the NY Daily News says that she held a fund-raiser for her charter schools at UFT Headquarters last night to mark her 50th birthday.

That's right - a fund-raiser for her charter schools at UFT Headquarters paid for by you and me and the rest of the UFT rank-and-file.

What's that tell you about Ms. Weingarten's priorities?

The Sun also reports that Representative George Miller (D-California), an architect of the No Child Left Behind law who would like to expand the law to science and social studies next year, has praised New York City for two "groundbreaking" programs: the merit pay program Weingarten agreed to earlier this year and the school report cards that have caused such controversy here in the city.

Leaving aside the idiocy of Miller for now (and make no mistake, what he says is idiocy - a few minutes of research on Bloomberg's school report card program would have told him how stupid and reductionist it is to base a school's grade almost wholly on test score progress rather than overall performance), let us note that both the school report cards and the merit pay program were enabled by concessions Weingarten made to the mayor.

Miller says he'd like to take some of these "groundbreaking" programs national and while the current leadership of both the NEA and the AFT disagrees with much of Ms. Weingarten's education "reform" agenda, she is expected to go to Washington and take control of the AFT pretty soon.

Which means nationally teachers can expect to see some of the same "groundbreaking" concessions like merit pay, additional time and days, charter schools and gutted work protections that Ms. Weingarten has brought UFT members here in New York City.

Before she goes, it is expected that she will also concede teacher tenure to Mayor Bloomberg and replace it with something called "due process" which she and her minions currently praise at the Green Dot charter schools they have helped bring in to the city (Due process, btw, means the administration can "do" whatever the hell they want to teachers and there's not much you can "do" about it.)

Perhaps the Ayn Randians at the NY Sun editorial board will even get a Merry Christmas present in the form of vouchers from Ms. Weingarten before she heads off into the sunset to destroy teacher work protections nationally the way she has destroyed them here in New York (though even I think Ms. Weingarten knows that would be going too far.)

But who know? When Rod Paige - the man who compared the NEA to terrorists - says you're the only teacher labor union leader he can stand and when the right-wing, pro-voucher, anti-union editorial board at the NY Sun sends you love letters to mark your 50th birthday and when you hold a fund-raiser for charter schools at the new UFT headquarters building constructed with the dollars of actual working rank-and-file UFT members/teachers, it's hard to say just how you will sell out next.

But one thing is for certain - she will sell out.

New Visions /Garbage Diplomas

The New York Post reports that D.C.-based Policy Studies Associates compared 10 traditional public schools with 10 New Century high schools that are operated by the education reform group New Visions for Public Schools.

The comparison found that while the New Century high schools had a higher graduation rate than the traditional public schools (78.2% to 60.6%), more than half of the students who graduated from New Century schools received "local diplomas," which require a score of 55 on state Regents exams rather than 65.

In contrast, only about 30% of the students who graduated from the traditional public schools received local diplomas.

New York State is scrapping local diplomas next year. At the school where I teach, nearly every student we graduate receives a Regents diploma, even if that means we have to test students 2, 3 or 4 times on a Regents exam after extensive tutoring to help them get a score of 65 or higher.

I know this because I often teach the remedial ELA Regents class for students who have sat for the Regents and received a score between 55 and 64.

You see, the administration where I teach believes the "local diploma" (which most 4 year colleges outside of the proprietary variety will not accept) is essentially worthless.

Apparently the education reformers at New Century schools and New Visions for Public Schools don't quite see it that way, however.

The Post reports that New Century supporters acknowledge that their schools need to prepare more students to graduate with Regents diplomas but they say they are helping more kids to graduate than traditional public schools.

And that is true - the Policy Studies Associates' report found that 17% of students left the traditional public schools without graduating in 2006 while only 3% left New Century schools without a diploma.

But what good is graduating students with a worthless diploma that the state is scrapping next year and reputable colleges won't accept for admission?

I don't think it's any good at all, but what do I know?

Unlike the people in the education reform business at New Visions for Public Schools, I actually spend my day in the classroom trying to help students who haven't been able to score a 65 on a Regents exam achieve that benchmark.

Later today, I will be tutoring a student who has sat for the ELA Regents twice and failed to reach 65. I also will be teaching at least four Support Services students who could easily graduate with IEP diplomas, but my administration believes they can and should try for Regents diplomas.

It's not easy trying to help some students pass all 5 Regents exams with scores of 65, but if a school administration and staff really tries, it can be done.

Apparently, the education reform people at New Visions for Public Schools (who have opened 83 schools in New York City since 2002) don't think it can.

Otherwise, they'd be doing it instead of touting the percentage of students they graduate with garbage diplomas.

H/T: DR

Holding Charter Schools Accountable

As I noted yesterday, the NY Post reports that Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have decided that New York City's charter schools do not have to operate under the same accountability rules as New York City's public schools.

While all of the city's 1,224 public schools either received a report card or will receive one in the very near future based upon a complex combination of test score progress, student/parent satisfaction with the school and graduation rate, the city's 60 charter schools will not.

According to the Department of Education, charter schools cannot be judged by the same accountability rules as public schools because "they don't measure student, teacher and parent satisfaction using the same Department of Education surveys."

Even some charter school advocates say the DOE's failure to issue report cards for charters makes it look like the charter's have something to hide.

Other charter school advocates dismiss the criticism, noting that the high level of accountability built into charter school contracts serves as enough of a public record.

But if that's so, then why not hand out the DOE surveys to parents, teachers, and students at charter schools the way they were handed out at public schools and grade charters under the exact same accountability standards as the public schools?

If charter schools operators and advocates want to be taken seriously in this debate, then they need to force the DOE to issue report cards using the same ridiculous accountability measurements for charters as they used for public schools (see here for just how ridiculous the standards used are.)

Eva Moskowitz, former mayoral candidate and current charter school operator, said as much to the Post:

"There's no reason we couldn't fill [the survey] out. We'd be happy to do that," said Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network, which operates a school in Harlem. "If you were a charter-school operator and the chancellor asked you to fill out a survey, would you do it? I would.

And Merryl Tisch, vice chancellor of the state Board of Regents, noted that not issuing report cards for charters makes the whole movement look suspicious:

"I think it's a mistake not to assess them the same way public schools are assessed. "There have been charter schools that have really struggled along the way," she said. "What's wrong with letting people know that?"

Indeed.

While charter schools in New York City are being given a pass by city officials, Ohio officials, led by Democratic Attorney General Marc Dann and Democratic governor Ted Strickland (pictured above), are cracking down on poor quality/failing charter schools.

You see, in Ohio, any idiot who wants to operate a charter school can get one.

Republicans, friendly to charter schools, ran all the statewide offices in Ohio for a very long time and helped license tons of charters since 1998.

According to the NY Times, Ohio has over 70 groups, including universities, nonprofits and many unconventional agencies, who can authorize charter schools.

Major Republicans donors, former Ohio football stars and lots of other people with no experience or knowledge of education have been allowed to open charter schools in Ohio.

As you can imagine, many of these schools are not so good.

William Peterson, a former University of Dayton football star with no experience in school administration, opened four charter schools.

All are now in "academic emergency" and the state's attorney general is suing to close at least one of them.

Commercial companies run plenty of charter schools in Ohio as well.

The Times reports that David Brennan, an Akron industrialist and a major donor to Republican candidates, has been authorized by the state to run 30 charter schools.

Most of his 30 charters are on academic watch or academic emergency.

In 2007, the state’s school report card gave more than half of Ohio’s 328 charter schools a D or an F.

Before 2007, little oversight was done to assure that failing charters either improved or closed.

It's probable that failing charters would have continued to be given free passes by Republican officials in Ohio, but last year's election swept most of them out of office.

Corruption scandals involving stolen pension funds regulated by the former state attorney general Ken Blackwell and pay-for-play episodes involving the former governor Robert Taft helped end the GOP's decades-long reign of Ohio.

At the federal level, Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney was sentenced to 30 months in jail in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Democrats took five out of the top six offices in the state and began exerting oversight powers upon the state's charter schools.

The NY Times reports that Attorney General Dann is suing to close down three failing charter schools and is investigating dozens of others.

According to the Times, it is the first effort by any state attorney general to close down failing charter schools.

Governor Strickland has backed Dann up in his efforts:

“Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality,” he said. “But the way they’ve been implemented in Ohio has been shameful. I think charter schools have been harmful, very harmful, to Ohio students.”

Charter school advocates are not sitting still as their beloved charter school movement comes under assault. They are alleging that the attorney general's attempts to close failing charter schools are a political attack:

“These suits are the latest in a long line of Democratic assaults on the charter school program in Ohio,” said Terry Ryan, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which sponsors several Ohio charter schools. Mr. Ryan said it was hypocritical to sue failing charters without moving against Ohio’s scores of failing neighborhood schools.

The Times says that a pro-charter group is helping to pay the legal fees for the three failing charter schools that Attorney General Dann is trying to close down.

Attorney General Dann dismisses charter school proponents' criticism that he is launching a political attack against charters, saying that he simply is using oversight powers to regulate charters more vigorously than did his Republican predecessors:

“We’re already changing behavior,” he said. “If you think all the other failing charter schools aren’t trying to figure out how to improve their academic performance, you’re mistaken.”

He added, “There are some great charter schools in Ohio that fill a gap in our education system.”

Perhaps there are some great charter schools in Ohio.

But with at least half of them given D or F grades and with charter school advocates supporting all charter schools whether they are successful or not and helping to provide legal fees to keep failing charter schools opened and operating, it looks like the great ones are being swamped by the tons of bad ones.

I'm all for closing truly bad public schools.

I do not believe the 50 public schools Mayor Bloomberg is threatening to close here in New York City all deserved to be closed.

For example, PS 35 in Staten Island has 98% of students passing the math test and 86% passing the reading test, yet the school received an F from the DOE in the latest assessment.

Clearly, PS 35 should not be considered a failing school, nor should it be a candidate for closure.

I am sure, however, that there are a few schools in that list of 50 F's that have chronically bad records and ought to be closed down.

You can be sure that the charter school advocates like the folks at the Fordham Foundation will be screaming bloody murder if they are not closed down.

And yet those same charter school advocates aren't screaming bloody murder that charter schools aren't being held to the same accountability standards as public schools by the NYCDOE and they certainly aren't screaming bloody murder to have failing charter schools in Ohio shut down.

Instead charter school advocates are defending those failing charter schools and providing money for legal fees and lawyers to help keep those failing charter schools opened and operating.

As I said yesterday, all schools are created equal, but charter school seems to be just a little more equal than others.

No Bathroom For You

The NY Daily News reports that students at Bronx Little School have to share one bathroom for both boys and girls.

Over the summer, the Department of Education began remodeling work on the girls' bathroom.

The boys' bathroom has become a unisex bathroom for both boys and girls

As a result, teachers have to take boys and girls to the bathroom in separate shifts.

Some students in the pre-K to fifth grade school, unable to wait for teachers to take them to the bathroom, suffer accidents in the classroom.

Parents have begun sending kids off to school with book bags, lunch boxes and extra pants to change into after they soil themselves.

Parents want to know why the bathroom is being remodeled during the school year instead of the summer.

Principal Janice Gordon said through a DOE spokesman that parents were overstating the number of bathroom accidents and the school keeps extra clothes around anyway just in case young students have accidents.

Plus two regular bathroom breaks are scheduled throughout the 6 hour school day and kids ought to be able to hold it until those regularly scheduled breaks.

After reading yesterday's cover story about Mayor Bloomberg's life in Newsweek, I suspect the mayor is less than sympathetic to kids who don't have the willpower to keep from going to the bathroom.

In the Newsweek article, Jon Meacham writes about how Mayor Bloomberg learned valuable lessons growing up as a little Jewish boy among a bunch of Boston hooligans and anti-Semites who used to be mean to him.

From this tough upbringing, the mayor learned self-reliance, determination, ambition, and direction.

He also learned how to hold it when the Boston toughs wouldn't let him use the school bathroom without paying for it.

The kids at Boston Little School really should feel special.

Like Mayor Bloomberg got when he was a kid, they're getting very valuable lessons in self-reliance, determination, ambition, direction, and of course how to hold for hours at a time when you gotta go.

So take that, parents of Boston Little School students.

This has been a teachable moment for your kids.

And who knows better about teachable moments than Mayor Bloomberg and his newly reorganized Department of Education.

Mayor Bloomberg Wants To Give Students Cell Phones

Remember Mayor Bloomberg's war against cell phones in the public schools?

Remember how Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein refused to listen to parents implore him to overturn the ban on students carrying cell phones in public schools?

Remember how he vetoed a city council bill that gave students permission to carry, though not use, cell phones in schools (just in case they need to talk to mom or dad in an emergency)?

Remember how the city council overrode his veto 46-2 back in September, but Mayor Bloomberg said "Nahh, nahh, I don't have to enforce your stupid bill!!!"?

Well, I remember, and I have to tell you that I was quite surprised today to read in the NY Times that Mayor Bloomberg plans to give cell phones away to students as rewards for good grades.

The giveaway will part of the mayor's "merit" program that pays students for achievement and doles out "school-wide bonuses" to teachers based on standardized test scores.

The mayor, not often given to noticing irony in his proposals and policies, sees no contradiction in his proposing to give students free cell phones if they get good grades but guaranteeing confiscation of them if they carry them into their schools.

Luckily other people get the irony:

Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, who sponsored a bill to try to loosen the cellphone ban by requiring schools to allow students to carry phones to and from school, said the proposal was “almost funny.”

“The fact that they even would think that this might be a powerful incentive for students is delicious,” Mr. Fidler said. “It’s a clear indication that people at a level below the mayor and the chancellor realize that this is a vital piece of technology.”

Yes, a cell phone IS a vital piece of technology these days, especially after 9/11 when we learned that it is important parents be able to contact their children wherever they may be.

I can understand why Bloomberg doesn't want students to use cell phones in schools, but I have to tell you, I have never had a problem with kids and their cell phones.

Whenever I see a kid using his cell phone in class, I simply ask the student to please put the cell phone away.

He or she has always complied with my request.

I know occasionally kids give teachers a hard time over cell phone use, but by and large most kids know they're not supposed to be using the phones in school and put them away when asked.

So come on Mr. Mayor, why not comply with the overwhelming wishes of parents, students and city council members and allow students to carry cell phones in school?

I mean, you can't offer a cell phone to a student as reward for achievement and then not actually let him or her carry it.

Just The Facts

City Comptroller Bill Thompson says he's not so sure Mayor Moneybags' education reforms have helped the New York City public school system.

Thompson, a potential mayoral candidate in 2009 and a former Board of Education member, said "It's kind of undecided as to whether there's been major improvement," when asked if schools are better now that Moneybags and Klein have instituted their education reforms.

Mayor Moneybags hasn't wasted any time firing back at Thompson:

"It's pretty hard to argue with the graduation rates up 20%, math scores up 20%, English scores up," Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday. "I know Bill Thompson. I can't believe he would want to insult 80,000 teachers."

...

"You have a right to your own opinions, but you don't have a right to your own facts," he said. "To not acknowledge progress when you're making it is what keeps you from ever making progress."

Moneybags is correct to say that you have the right to your own opinion but not to your own facts.

The facts are that the math and English score increases he touted yesterday to the press are suspect.

The Daily News has reported that the math tests are much easier now than they used to be.

The NY Sun has reported that the reading tests are also much easier now than they used to be.

The fact is that the graduation rates he touted yesterday are also suspect.

The NY Times has reported that the city does not count special education students or discharged students in their graduation rates.

What better way to increase graduation rates than by not counting pools of students who traditionally pull down graduation rates?

So when Moneybags touts progress in the public school system, it's a special kind of progress with special kinds of facts and numbers.

If you look closely at these special facts and special numbers, they don't actually indicate progress.

No matter what Moneybags says, funky test scores and manipulated graduation rates are NOT progress.

The Business Model

Uncle Joel Klein, the man who couldn't do to Microsoft what European antitrust regulators could do (i.e., beat them completely in an antitrust case), writes in today's NY Sun that "pay for performance" is the way teachers should be compensated.

Uncle Joel uses "business" as his model for how to make public education better and schools more successful. He says in business, the following are everyday ideas:

1. Successful firms pay more for what's worth more

2. They create incentives that motivate employees to work harder and more effectively

3. When they're failing to produce results, they shut down.

He says in public education, these ideas are "foreign," and life-tenure, lock-step pay, and seniority rules "stifle motivation and provide no incentive for teachers to work harder and better."

Uncle Joel's solution is simple - bring business-like "pay for performance" to schools and measure it by "our sophisticated new accountability system" (i.e., batteries of standardized tests, including the Regents, the PSAT, and the additional 8 standardized math and reading tests added this year as part of his "no-stakes" testing program.)

Because the pay for performance will be school-based and not individual-based, he says this revolutionary change in teacher pay will not only encourage better individual performance but more collaboration between teachers at schools.

Married to his business metaphor, Klein compares merit pay to stock options:

This school-based incentive structure, in effect, borrows an important concept from business — stock options. When companies give stock options to their employees, they attempt to align their employees' interests with those of the business' shareholders. If a company's stock rises, both the people who work at the company and the people who hold stock in the company experience a direct financial benefit. This gives employees an incentive to behave in ways that will enhance performance and thereby boost the company's stock price.

If only one employee is successful, the stock price is unlikely to rise significantly, just as in our plan, if only one teacher is successful, a school's students are unlikely to perform substantially better.

Only if many are successful and only if the best teachers help their colleagues identify challenges and improve will entire schools succeed and will teachers then become eligible for more pay. This will encourage individual teachers to do their personal best. It also will encourage collaboration and teamwork, as teachers share both responsibilities and rewards.

Klein finishes his piece by noting that the pay for performance program goes into effect in 200 schools this year (there is no mention of the program being contingent upon the passage of the 25/55 pension change.)

All right - let's look at Uncle Joel's business metaphor a little closer.

First, Klein's assertions that "successful firms pay more for what's worth more" and "they create incentives that motivate employees to work harder and more effectively" are belied constantly in the business press where you read about the kinds of compensation company CEO's like Citigroup's Chuck Prince or Home Depot's former CEO Robert Nardelli pay themselves.

Currently Citigroup is in danger of going belly-up as a result of business decisions Prince made related to sub-prime mortgages and structured investment vehicles (SIVs). Citigroup may have to take a complete loss on as much as $100 billion dollars in SIVs. Conditions are so bad at Citigroup that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson helped sponsor an $80-$100 billion dollar bank bail-out with Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wachovia coming to Citigroup's and Prince's rescue. In addition, Citigroup's stock has plunged since Prince took over (losing at least $15 a share.)

Has Prince lost his job at Citigroup? Nope. Will he fail to pay himself a bonus this Christmas? Doubtful. You see, pay for performance is only for the people under Prince at Citigroup.

Certainly Home Depot's former CEO Robert Nardelli never failed to pay himself a bonus (he took home about $200 million in base salary, bonuses, and perks) even though his company's stock was down 13% during his tenure. Nardelli had $3 million of his bonus "guaranteed" annually no matter what happened to his company or his company's stock. He's gone from Home Depot now, but not until he took the company to the cleaners for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Prince and Nardelli are not the only examples of business people at the top receiving gobs of money no matter how they perform. As for the actual workers in business, they're simply cogs in the machine to be laid off at will when companies need to squeeze costs and/or raise their stock prices (in the business model metaphor Klein is Prince/Nardelli and teachers are the workers, of course.)

Klein also asserts in his Sun piece that "when businesses fail to produce results, they close down." But this isn't necessarily true either. As I related above, Citigroup has made huge business mistakes, yet the federal government felt the need to arrange a bail-out for the company.

In addition, last month, the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points in order to help save the financial industry and Wall Street from a self-created global credit crunch that threatened to cause some businesses to go under and thousands of financial workers to lose their jobs. The Fed is expected to lower rates again later this month. Again, if Klein's assertions were true, the Federal Reserve would have taken no action and allowed the free market to work its magic.

Business fetishists like Uncle Joel have a habit of saying publicly that in business only performance matters and compensation is ALWAYS based on performance. But even a perfunctory reading of the recent news in the business newspapers shows these assertions to be simplified at best, completely dishonest at worst.

There are other parts to the school-as-business metaphor I'd like to examine in future posts (like how business these days is mostly short-sighted and stock-driven, privileging quarterly performance over investment and long-term performance.) But for today, let's just note that in business, compensation is often based on cronyism, connections, and position within the company, not merit or performance.

The way the new merit pay program is set up by Klein and the UFT (with a panel of 4 deciding who receives the compensation in a school), I have a strong feeling that pay for performance will also be based on cronyism, connections, and position within the school and not actual merit.

Please, Sir, May I Have Some More?

Because Mayor Bloomberg cares so deeply about public education, he's leasing the ball fields on Randall's Island to 20 elite private schools. This will buy them 80% of the use of these fields after school.

To ensure the city doesn't profit in any way whatsoever, Mayor Mike is paying 70 mil up front and letting them pay back 85 million over thirty years. Crazy Mike is practically giving those facilities away!

The city is improving 31 fields and creating 34 new ones for the ever-needy private school kids. On the bright side, since only 80% of the space is being leased, NYC's 1.1 million public school students will get to divide the remaining 20% amongst themselves.

No, you can't have more. Now be good little boys and girls and move to the back of the bus.

Thanks to Patrick

Damn Right She Works for Me

There are two kinds of people--those who do what it takes to please Mayor Mike, and those who need to be fired.

Congratulations to Rashid Davis, who's willing to go the extra mile for the kids of New York City. Assistant Chancellor Alonso contends that if kids don't pass, it's the fault of the teachers. Davis has taken that philosophy to heart. When he worked at John F. Kennedy High School as an assistant principal, he couldn't bear to see kids fail the crucial English Regents exam. That's why he went back and changed their grades.

Clearly, if teachers were willing to make such sacrifices, all kids could pass. Naturally, if that were to happen, it would prove once and for all that mayoral control is an unqualified success. Whether or not the kids are qualified is of no importance whatsoever.

So while a thousand teachers wander around as full-time subs through no fault of their own, Davis got a promotion, even as the chancellor's office still investigates whether or not his changes were justified.

But Davis' heart was in precisely the right place--Mayor Mike's pocket.

Meanwhile, JFK's UFT Chapter Chairperson, Maria Colon, sits in the rubber room for an unforgivable offense--reporting Davis on a Department of Education fax machine.

A Time Out for Mikey

This week's Time Out Kids issues Mayor Bloomberg a report card. If my child every brought home such a report card, she'd be re-examining her options, as she'd find them substantially diminished. However, Bloomberg, enabled by Unity's astounding lack of vision, continues unabated, with papers happily reporting the upside and ignoring everything else.

Mayor Mike gets some credit for the better charters, but loses out for his overall neglect of the public school system. Overtesting and his miserable rapport with parents earn him yet more mediocrity. They give him slightly better grades on access to honors classes, and an actual A minus for special ed.

Mayor Mike gets an incomplete on class size, which is very charitable considering my own building, at 250% capacity. It's particularly generous considering that the mayor has his lawyers using the "It's not my job" defense.

The mayor gets around a C average from Time Out Kids. Given that he's still trying to weasel out of paying any part of the CFE suit, I'd have to deduct points, and I'm afraid I couldn't grant him credit.

Nonetheless, I'd make certain he wouldn't repeat the class. Let him find some other city to play with.

Thanks to Patrick