16 July, 2007
We lost Henry
Henry fell to hypertopiccardiomyopathy on Monday morning. July 16, 2007. I will put pictures up of our beautiful angel later. For now we are shaken.
08 July, 2007
07 July, 2007
06 July, 2007
from The Nation magazine: the NYC public school crisis
School's Outby LYNNELL HANCOCK[from the July 9, 2007 issue]
A knot of parents and teachers--some clutching children, others clutchingprotest fliers--huddled outside Hostos Community College one frosty eveninglast February. The forty or so Bronx residents had crisscrossed the boroughfor the rare chance to mix it up with the New York City schools chancellorin a public forum. A guard met them at the door. No more room, he said, leaving the agitatedparents, quite literally, out in the cold. They had hoped to hear Joel Kleinexplain why he was scrambling the school system's signals for the secondtime in five years. Inside the Grand Concourse annex, Klein was winding downhis pitch to the hundred or so in the audience who had made the cut. "We areenacting these reforms so we can make sure whatever your skin color,wherever you live, your kid will get the education he needs and deserves,"Klein shouted into the microphone. Klein may have appeared an awkward headmaster in his Wall Street suit, buthe was on familiar terrain, wrapping his arguments for corporate-styleschool overhaul in the ethos of civil rights. He is driven by the noblepledge to "finish the job that Brown v. Board of Education began." His pathto racial equity, however, employs the efficient tools of business--top- downdecisions, marketplace incentives and a belief in private sector solutionsto public school problems. Instruction is "data driven." Academic resultsare "granular." It is a technocratic vision of education, in sync withbig-moneyed foundations, at odds with most classroom teachers and manyparents. In the calculus of the moment, each of the city's 1,450 schools isconsidered an independent franchise. Like a bank outlet or a RadioShackstore, any given school is a "key unit" in Klein's new Department ofEducation. Schools are headed by branch managers, or principals, whose jobshave been reconfigured as CEOs rather than as educators. Principals areexpected to contract out for nearly every core service, from testing toprofessional development to their own support team. Quarterly returns flowout in the form of tests four times a year. Schools must compete with oneanother, at their peril. The lowest performers on the bell curve may besanctioned or shut down. Thomas Sobol, the former New York State education commissioner, believes thebattle lines have been drawn between democracy and corporatization. "Thearrogance, my God, of saying because we know how to run Kmart, we know howto educate children," said Sobol, professor emeritus at ColumbiaUniversity's Teachers College. "It represents a giant defeat of democracy." In Klein's view, "corporatization" and "privatization" are meaninglessphrases used to detract from the real revolution underfoot. "There isnothing less public about public schools," he insisted during a recentinterview at Department of Education headquarters. His reforms are aboutstrengthening the top in order to bring equity to the bottom. A lone publicemployee, Klein has nearly unfettered control of 1.1 million schoolchildrenand a $15.4 billion budget. "In the end it is my responsibility to say, Ithink this is the right policy," Klein said. "I need to be prepared to makethe tough service delivery decision. The mayor holds me accountable, and thecity holds the mayor accountable. We should not have 'shareddecision-making. ' That's what marks all unsuccessful school reforms." A lot is riding on Klein's record--including the political future of MayorMichael Bloomberg, which may include an independent run for President. Hewas the first mayor in thirty-three years to be authorized by the StateLegislature to directly pick his own chancellor and who has wagered hismayoralty on the fortunes of the city's schools. Urban school systems acrossthe nation are watching the radical overhaul in New York City. If the plansucceeds, it will mean a triumph for advocates of mayoral school takeoversand a boon for the new breed of CEO superintendents committed to businesssolutions for public schools. Mayoral control has already taken hold inChicago, Boston, Cleveland and, most recently, Washington-- whose mayorreplaced the school superintendent, at Klein's recommendation, with37-year-old education entrepreneur Michelle Rhee. If Klein's plan falters in New York, many will argue that the demise wasmade inevitable by keeping teachers, parents and communities at ayardstick's distance. No matter how competent and committed the players atthe top, public-sector reforms on this imposing scale may be doomed if thepeople most affected are left outside. It certainly felt that way at the Hostos forum, where a faint chant filteredthrough the closed windows into the room: "Let the parents in!" As ironywould have it, Klein's Bronx appearance was part of a five-borough missionto persuade the masses that the mayor's latest structural overhaul was thebest thing for every child. The Bronx parents inside weren't buying it. "Noscience. No history. Only tests," one mother bellowed, shaking her finger atthe chancellor. Applause thundered across the linoleum. "Welcome to theboogie-down, " another mother said, followed by more hoots and hollers."We're real here." She then criticized a recent citywide busing fiasco thatleft one of the chancellor's corporate consultants $16 million richer andscores of children wondering how they would get to school. Finally, a statuesque woman from the South Bronx took the microphone,choking back nerves. "I saw a guidance counselor pulling a kindergartenchild across the floor like an animal," began Rosa Villafane tentatively."The principal won't do anything. She's an empowerment principal," Villafanesaid, referring to one of the chancellor's key reforms that offers thecity's principals greater authority to make decisions in exchange for moreaccountability. "If she won't listen, where do I go?" The chancellor had a standard reply for her, the one he employed afternearly every appeal that night: "E-mail me," he said. "I'm accountable. " Hedid not follow up the offer with his e-mail address. He then slumped intohis chair, chin in hand, looking as if he wanted very much to be somewhereelse. A Harvard-trained litigator and former deputy White House counsel toPresident Clinton, Klein is many things, but he is not a man to boogie-downin the Bronx. Raised in a working-class family in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn,Klein graduated from William Bryant High School in Queens, class of '63.That's where his connections to most children in New York's schools end.After graduating from law school in 1971 and launching his own DC law firm,he served as an assistant attorney general with the Justice Department,where he prosecuted the government's antitrust case against Microsoft. Hismost recent job was as CEO of the German-owned global media giantBertelsmann. It's an unlikely résumé for the head of the nation's largest public schoolsystem, but one with obvious appeal to the then- Republican mayor. Bloomberghad begun the systemwide makeover before Klein arrived by putting up a ForSale sign on the Soviet-style Board of Education headquarters at 110Livingston Street in Brooklyn, an address synonymous with bloatedbureaucracy. Redubbed the Department of Education, it moved its offices intothe elegantly appointed Tweed Courthouse in the shadow of City Hall. Oldfaces were replaced, while old ways of doing business were rapidly broughtunder tight, centralized control. As soon as Klein took over, he hired private consultants and installed acabinet of mostly noneducators making six-figure salaries. Fresh youngprincipals with minimal experience were brought in from outside New York toreplace the large number of those who left or were forced out. Thethirty-two old school districts were scrapped and refitted into ten regions.New Yorkers tend to love rat-a-tat changes. Few mourned the loss of abureaucracy everyone had derided. "I thought mayoral control was a good ideaat first," said Noreen Connell, head of Education Priorities Panel, aresearch and advocacy group. "It was good when they broke through thefacilities funding logjam." Klein and Bloomberg worked in tandem to cash in their corporate andcelebrity connections, hauling in piles of money and a star-studded cast.Caroline Kennedy was hired at a dollar a year to attract philanthropy moneyinto the administration. Former General Electric chair Jack Welch wasbrought onto the advisory board of the $70 million principal's academy totrain the new managers. Klein's former adversary Bill Gates ponied up $51million in 2003 to help create small schools. Gates's foundation would laterincrease its investment to more than $100 million. Next came "managedinstruction, " as Klein would call it, with standardized math and readingcurriculum, and the promise to create fifty charters and 150 small schools. But it became painfully clear early on that the public would have little tono role in the rapid changes in the classroom. Bloomberg entered there-election season in 2004 taking on the politically irresistible problem of"social promotion"-- the practice of moving kids up through the gradeswhether or not they had learned much. He tested third graders (later addingfourth and seventh graders) and held them back if they didn't make thegrade. The approach went before the new Panel for Educational Policy, athirteen-member appointed board that had replaced the old seven-member Boardof Education. Two Bloomberg appointees and a Staten Island borough presidentappointee were set to join the five parent members to vote against themeasure. The mayor swept in and replaced all three renegades on the eve ofthe vote, a move the tabloids dubbed the "Monday Night Massacre." Kleinstill counts "ending social promotion" as one of his administration' saccomplishments, citing increased numbers of score-based promotions asevidence. Contracting Out New Yorkers still seeking solutions to the woes of public schools weresorely tested on a bitter cold day in midwinter. On January 29 yellow schoolbuses barreled out of their garages onto new, reconfigured routes. No trialruns. Within hours, hollers could be heard from eastern Queens to the NorthBronx. Children as young as 5 were cut off from their usual bus routes andissued subway MetroCards. Others were left waiting on cold street cornersfor an hour or more, arriving late to school. Some children were sent acrosshectic Francis Lewis Boulevard in Queens to catch their bus. "No New York adult would cross Francis Lewis Boulevard," said Betsy Gotbaum,the city's public advocate. "They certainly wouldn't send their childrenacross it." The chaos was caused in large part by the financial consulting firm Alvarez& Marsal, an outfit the department hired without competitive bidding at $16million to find $200 million from the department's budget to divert directlyinto the schools. Its first order of business was to streamline the city'sschool bus routes. The net savings for all this grief: $5 million, far lessthan what was originally estimated. The head of an independent citywide parent group said the parents had warnedofficials about the impending debacle two months earlier. "They ignored us,as usual," said Tim Johnson, chair of the Chancellor's Parent AdvisoryCouncil. That debacle spotlighted a flurry of outside contracts signed by thisadministration, many of them without competitive bids. City comptrollerWilliam Thompson Jr. was alarmed to find that the Alvarez & Marsal contractallowed one consultant to charge the city as much as $450 an hour. Asubsequent investigation found that Klein's office had signed an estimated$270 million in outside no-bid contracts after Klein took the reins; severalcontracts had serious problems. Platform Learning, for example, was hiredfor $7.6 million to tutor city school kids over a five-year period. Afterthree years, Platform had earned more than $62 million, nine times itscontracted amount, with two years remaining. "There is no accountability, no oversight, no transparency in thisadministration, " Gotbaum said. "New Yorkers deserve better." The chancellorclaimed that $250 million had been redirected into the classroom. Thompson'soffice could find only $140 million in savings, and no evidence that any ofit had ended up in schools. "At a time when Tweed is demanding moreaccountability from our superintendents, our principals and our teachers,"Thompson said, "we are demanding accountability from them." The chancellor disputes his critics, saying his administration provides moreinformation and transparency than any in the past. Still, the busing crisiscrystallized into public disenchantment with many of the vaunted reforms. Size Matters One of the most promising reforms was the creation of new, small highschools. New York already was home to one of the first small-schoolmovements in the nation, promising democratic, grassroots antidotes tolarge, factory-size institutions. So it was fitting, even thrilling, whenthe new chancellor embraced small schools as a linchpin of hisrevitalization plans. Variety and innovation were encouraged. But in a short time, critics say, the Department of Education turned themission on its head. An astonishing 200 schools were launched in five years,with more than $100 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda GatesFoundation. Some of them are, without question, excellent environments.Overall, however, the movement has become a mass production of top-down,privately subsidized schools, said Michelle Fine, a City University of NewYork education professor, that have little to do with their socialjustice-minded ancestors. Quality has been sacrificed for speed. To counter these charges, the administration cites comparisons between thesmall schools and the large ones they replaced. For example, the large SouthBronx High School had a 48 percent graduation rate in 2001; five yearslater, three small schools that replaced it averaged an 83 percentgraduation rate. Evander Childs High School in the Bronx graduated just 31percent of its students in 2002, compared with 93 percent in 2006 for BronxAerospace, a small Junior ROTC replacement school. But these small schools were admitting students who were more likely tosucceed, according to a survey of the first fifteen small schools conductedby the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). Their entering ninth graders hadhigher state test scores than those at large schools. The schools also hadfar fewer special-education students and non-English speakers and in somecases more money per student. The union found that Bronx Aerospace had halfthe number of special-education kids, nearly four times fewerEnglish-language learners and spent about $5,000 more per pupil than itshost school, Evander Childs. Moreover, a recent study by the New York Immigration Coalition and Advocatesfor Children found that non-English speakers are not given "full andequitable access" to the small schools. Small schools were allowed to exemptspecial-education and English-language learners from their first twostart-up years. New incentives are in place to help the small schools servea fraction of these high-needs kids. But large concentrations of these twopopulations have been shuffled into the remaining large, ill-equipped highschools. The Citywide Council on High Schools has filed a discriminationcase with the US Education Department's Office of Civil Rights. In the end, the small-school initiative exhibited the contradictions of thisadministration. "They are mass-producing unique schools," said Leo Casey, atop UFT official, "and destroying them in the bargain." Totalitarian Testing Nothing has more impact on education than attempts to measure it. Generally,educators believe teacher-generated assessments work best as an organic partof classroom curriculum. CEOs believe company-produced tests administered ona centralized schedule create a more equitable education. "Data collectionis part of instruction, " Klein told the City Council education committeelast January, when questioned on the hours of instruction time lost to testpreparation and paperwork (up to two days a week, according to a 2005 UFTteacher survey). Klein's metaphors tell their own story. The chancellor sometimes refers tochildren as cars in a shop, a collection of malfunctions to be adjusted.Teachers need to "look under the hood," he says, to figure out the originsof the pings. The diagnostic information is then made available in piecharts and color bar graphs, child by child, as the year rolls along. "You get granular information this way about a child's strengths andweaknesses," said James Liebman, Klein's chief accountability officer and aColumbia University civil rights law professor. "And you get instant returnon the data. We are providing a lot more tools to give teachers the capacityto look at a child and see what they are doing." The 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act emphasizes state standardizedtests to measure each child's level of proficiency. The city's systemratchets up that process, measuring each child's growth from one year to thenext rather than his or her ability to hit or miss a single standardstarget. In may be fairer to use multiple instruments, but it requiresmillions of dollars and an army of additional tests. Liebman has designed "progress reports," issuing a grade of A through F foreach school in areas of environment, performance and progress--with 85percent of this information deriving from state standardized tests. "Qualityreviews" are conducted yearly by a team of evaluators hired by a Britishcompany, Cambridge Education, which charges $16 million a year. The teamvisits schools to see how well they are using all the data to improvelearning. A new "robust" IBM data-management system called ARIS will keeptrack of every grain of information collected on each child. Cost: $80million. The most controversial policy is something called periodic assessments,popular with business models. These are standardized tests, on top of theonce-a-year state tests, given to kids every few weeks for additionalfeedback. The administration had already signed up Princeton Review (ownedby Bertelsmann) as part of its $21 million contract to administer math andreading tests for grades three through eight, three times a year. Thatcommitment was scrapped. CTB/McGraw-Hill was hired as a replacement, for $80million over five years. Starting this fall, the tests will be ramped up tofive times a year. High school students will be added to the cycle fourtimes a year. In June Klein appointed Harvard economist Roland Fryer as thedepartment's "chief equality officer." Fryer's main proposal offers cashpayouts to students for perfect scores on the McGraw-Hill tests--$25 tofourth graders and $50 to seventh graders. Principals who agree to thisexperiment will receive $5,000 for their schools. Statistical disputes aside, the basic disagreement is over what constitutesan educated child. Is it someone who can demonstrate "grains" of isolatedskills or someone who has the capacity to think and explore with a sense ofwonder and depth? So far, the grains have the upper hand. "Thisadministration is preparing children to do these small tasks, strippingeducation down to its parched bones," said Tom Sobol. "The soul of educationis left at the door." The public is losing faith in the New York schools revolution. In March aQuinnipiac University opinion poll found that 58 percent of those surveyedlonged for an independent elected board at the helm rather than the mayor.Klein's surprise announcement of a new overhaul last winter--a sort ofdecentralization in drag, with tighter control at the top over moreempowered principals at the bottom--triggered even more outrage. "There isno evidence that your first reforms improved kids' learning," chided avisibly peeved City Council education chair Robert Jackson in January. The truth is, the evidence is mixed at best. Klein points to improvedacademic achievement, higher graduation rates and a greater number ofhigh-quality school choices since the mayor took over in 2002. He claimsthat 60 percent of ninth graders graduated four years later in 2006, an 18percent hike. During the same period, math scores rose 20 percentage points,meaning that 57 percent of students in third through eighth grades met orexceeded standards. Reading scores rose 10 percent, to 51 percent. Thisspring an eight-point hike in math scores across the grades, to 65 percent,meeting standards, and a 5 point rise in reading scores, to 42 percent foreighth graders, was cause for celebration- -even though reading scores forthird and fourth graders dropped an average of four points. But the numbers are hotly contested. Diane Ravitch, a former educationofficial in the George Bush Sr. White House, questions why the chancellorcounts 2002 as his starting point, when the initiatives did not kick inuntil January 2003. Test scores can be volatile instruments. The recenteighth-grade reading scores were up all across New York State this year byeight points, from 49 to 57 percent, an indication that the test itself waslikely easier. The graduation rate is another bugaboo: The state calculatesa 50 percent graduation rate for the city (not 60 percent), because itfigures GEDs, English-language learners and special-education diplomasdifferently from the city. Overall, the radical overhaul seems to haveproduced modest improvement rather than landmark progress. "Their gains arerespectable, not historic," Ravitch told a packed crowd at St. John'sUniversity last March. Perhaps the most notable development has been the mobilization of opponentsfrom among disparate city groups. An overflow crowd of 1,000 angry NewYorkers descended on Manhattan's St. Vartan's Cathedral in late February toprotest the latest round of changes. It was a rare coalition of forces,angry enough to set aside their individual agendas to unite against theDepartment of Education. Here were City Council members, elected officials,activist groups like ACORN, the Working Families Party, labor unions, animmigrant coalition and citywide parent groups. The most powerful group, and the one that gave this assembly itsinstitutional clout, was the UFT, which has more than 100,000 members. Itslegendary statewide political power was forged in the 1960s by black andLatino community groups battling for control of the schools. In recent yearsthe union had made peace with its past, creating real ties to parent groups.In many ways Klein and Bloomberg helped create this assembly by cutting offchannels once used routinely by the too-powerful union to influence policy.The effect was to alienate both teachers and parents, pushing them together."No administration has been as hostile to the union as this one," said theUFT's Casey. The mayor's response to this historic show of unity has been to dismiss itas a small collection of parents influenced by powerful self-interestedgroups. But he may be ignoring this group of pols and parents at his peril.Rumblings that February night at Hostos called for an end to mayoralcontrol. The measure is up for renewal by the New York State Legislature in2009. Few New Yorkers have any appetite for returning to the old school boarddays. But most would like to see some democratic checks and balances builtinto what has become a two-man show. An independent elected board couldoversee budget, contracts and policy decisions, and the selection of futurechancellors. The input of seasoned educators is needed again at the highestdecision-making levels. Regional boards could help return a sense ofcommunity to the city's schools. At the classroom level, school-based teamsof teachers and parents should be given some real clout. As for testing,department officials would do well to emulate the Republican state ofNebraska, which has invested in teacher-created assessments (now threatenedby new legislation) that do not choke curriculums. Americans tend to hold only a few big ideas sacred. One of them is thepromise that its unique public school system can offer every child a crackat the American dream. Ironically, the top-down corporate solutions popularwith CEO superintendents like Klein wrest control from the people they claimto serve. "Public schools are the cornerstone of our democracy," said IrvingHamer Jr., Manhattan representative on the last Board of Education. "If welet them quietly slip through the public's hands, we are breaking thecovenant of civic participation in this country."
A knot of parents and teachers--some clutching children, others clutchingprotest fliers--huddled outside Hostos Community College one frosty eveninglast February. The forty or so Bronx residents had crisscrossed the boroughfor the rare chance to mix it up with the New York City schools chancellorin a public forum. A guard met them at the door. No more room, he said, leaving the agitatedparents, quite literally, out in the cold. They had hoped to hear Joel Kleinexplain why he was scrambling the school system's signals for the secondtime in five years. Inside the Grand Concourse annex, Klein was winding downhis pitch to the hundred or so in the audience who had made the cut. "We areenacting these reforms so we can make sure whatever your skin color,wherever you live, your kid will get the education he needs and deserves,"Klein shouted into the microphone. Klein may have appeared an awkward headmaster in his Wall Street suit, buthe was on familiar terrain, wrapping his arguments for corporate-styleschool overhaul in the ethos of civil rights. He is driven by the noblepledge to "finish the job that Brown v. Board of Education began." His pathto racial equity, however, employs the efficient tools of business--top- downdecisions, marketplace incentives and a belief in private sector solutionsto public school problems. Instruction is "data driven." Academic resultsare "granular." It is a technocratic vision of education, in sync withbig-moneyed foundations, at odds with most classroom teachers and manyparents. In the calculus of the moment, each of the city's 1,450 schools isconsidered an independent franchise. Like a bank outlet or a RadioShackstore, any given school is a "key unit" in Klein's new Department ofEducation. Schools are headed by branch managers, or principals, whose jobshave been reconfigured as CEOs rather than as educators. Principals areexpected to contract out for nearly every core service, from testing toprofessional development to their own support team. Quarterly returns flowout in the form of tests four times a year. Schools must compete with oneanother, at their peril. The lowest performers on the bell curve may besanctioned or shut down. Thomas Sobol, the former New York State education commissioner, believes thebattle lines have been drawn between democracy and corporatization. "Thearrogance, my God, of saying because we know how to run Kmart, we know howto educate children," said Sobol, professor emeritus at ColumbiaUniversity's Teachers College. "It represents a giant defeat of democracy." In Klein's view, "corporatization" and "privatization" are meaninglessphrases used to detract from the real revolution underfoot. "There isnothing less public about public schools," he insisted during a recentinterview at Department of Education headquarters. His reforms are aboutstrengthening the top in order to bring equity to the bottom. A lone publicemployee, Klein has nearly unfettered control of 1.1 million schoolchildrenand a $15.4 billion budget. "In the end it is my responsibility to say, Ithink this is the right policy," Klein said. "I need to be prepared to makethe tough service delivery decision. The mayor holds me accountable, and thecity holds the mayor accountable. We should not have 'shareddecision-making. ' That's what marks all unsuccessful school reforms." A lot is riding on Klein's record--including the political future of MayorMichael Bloomberg, which may include an independent run for President. Hewas the first mayor in thirty-three years to be authorized by the StateLegislature to directly pick his own chancellor and who has wagered hismayoralty on the fortunes of the city's schools. Urban school systems acrossthe nation are watching the radical overhaul in New York City. If the plansucceeds, it will mean a triumph for advocates of mayoral school takeoversand a boon for the new breed of CEO superintendents committed to businesssolutions for public schools. Mayoral control has already taken hold inChicago, Boston, Cleveland and, most recently, Washington-- whose mayorreplaced the school superintendent, at Klein's recommendation, with37-year-old education entrepreneur Michelle Rhee. If Klein's plan falters in New York, many will argue that the demise wasmade inevitable by keeping teachers, parents and communities at ayardstick's distance. No matter how competent and committed the players atthe top, public-sector reforms on this imposing scale may be doomed if thepeople most affected are left outside. It certainly felt that way at the Hostos forum, where a faint chant filteredthrough the closed windows into the room: "Let the parents in!" As ironywould have it, Klein's Bronx appearance was part of a five-borough missionto persuade the masses that the mayor's latest structural overhaul was thebest thing for every child. The Bronx parents inside weren't buying it. "Noscience. No history. Only tests," one mother bellowed, shaking her finger atthe chancellor. Applause thundered across the linoleum. "Welcome to theboogie-down, " another mother said, followed by more hoots and hollers."We're real here." She then criticized a recent citywide busing fiasco thatleft one of the chancellor's corporate consultants $16 million richer andscores of children wondering how they would get to school. Finally, a statuesque woman from the South Bronx took the microphone,choking back nerves. "I saw a guidance counselor pulling a kindergartenchild across the floor like an animal," began Rosa Villafane tentatively."The principal won't do anything. She's an empowerment principal," Villafanesaid, referring to one of the chancellor's key reforms that offers thecity's principals greater authority to make decisions in exchange for moreaccountability. "If she won't listen, where do I go?" The chancellor had a standard reply for her, the one he employed afternearly every appeal that night: "E-mail me," he said. "I'm accountable. " Hedid not follow up the offer with his e-mail address. He then slumped intohis chair, chin in hand, looking as if he wanted very much to be somewhereelse. A Harvard-trained litigator and former deputy White House counsel toPresident Clinton, Klein is many things, but he is not a man to boogie-downin the Bronx. Raised in a working-class family in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn,Klein graduated from William Bryant High School in Queens, class of '63.That's where his connections to most children in New York's schools end.After graduating from law school in 1971 and launching his own DC law firm,he served as an assistant attorney general with the Justice Department,where he prosecuted the government's antitrust case against Microsoft. Hismost recent job was as CEO of the German-owned global media giantBertelsmann. It's an unlikely résumé for the head of the nation's largest public schoolsystem, but one with obvious appeal to the then- Republican mayor. Bloomberghad begun the systemwide makeover before Klein arrived by putting up a ForSale sign on the Soviet-style Board of Education headquarters at 110Livingston Street in Brooklyn, an address synonymous with bloatedbureaucracy. Redubbed the Department of Education, it moved its offices intothe elegantly appointed Tweed Courthouse in the shadow of City Hall. Oldfaces were replaced, while old ways of doing business were rapidly broughtunder tight, centralized control. As soon as Klein took over, he hired private consultants and installed acabinet of mostly noneducators making six-figure salaries. Fresh youngprincipals with minimal experience were brought in from outside New York toreplace the large number of those who left or were forced out. Thethirty-two old school districts were scrapped and refitted into ten regions.New Yorkers tend to love rat-a-tat changes. Few mourned the loss of abureaucracy everyone had derided. "I thought mayoral control was a good ideaat first," said Noreen Connell, head of Education Priorities Panel, aresearch and advocacy group. "It was good when they broke through thefacilities funding logjam." Klein and Bloomberg worked in tandem to cash in their corporate andcelebrity connections, hauling in piles of money and a star-studded cast.Caroline Kennedy was hired at a dollar a year to attract philanthropy moneyinto the administration. Former General Electric chair Jack Welch wasbrought onto the advisory board of the $70 million principal's academy totrain the new managers. Klein's former adversary Bill Gates ponied up $51million in 2003 to help create small schools. Gates's foundation would laterincrease its investment to more than $100 million. Next came "managedinstruction, " as Klein would call it, with standardized math and readingcurriculum, and the promise to create fifty charters and 150 small schools. But it became painfully clear early on that the public would have little tono role in the rapid changes in the classroom. Bloomberg entered there-election season in 2004 taking on the politically irresistible problem of"social promotion"-- the practice of moving kids up through the gradeswhether or not they had learned much. He tested third graders (later addingfourth and seventh graders) and held them back if they didn't make thegrade. The approach went before the new Panel for Educational Policy, athirteen-member appointed board that had replaced the old seven-member Boardof Education. Two Bloomberg appointees and a Staten Island borough presidentappointee were set to join the five parent members to vote against themeasure. The mayor swept in and replaced all three renegades on the eve ofthe vote, a move the tabloids dubbed the "Monday Night Massacre." Kleinstill counts "ending social promotion" as one of his administration' saccomplishments, citing increased numbers of score-based promotions asevidence. Contracting Out New Yorkers still seeking solutions to the woes of public schools weresorely tested on a bitter cold day in midwinter. On January 29 yellow schoolbuses barreled out of their garages onto new, reconfigured routes. No trialruns. Within hours, hollers could be heard from eastern Queens to the NorthBronx. Children as young as 5 were cut off from their usual bus routes andissued subway MetroCards. Others were left waiting on cold street cornersfor an hour or more, arriving late to school. Some children were sent acrosshectic Francis Lewis Boulevard in Queens to catch their bus. "No New York adult would cross Francis Lewis Boulevard," said Betsy Gotbaum,the city's public advocate. "They certainly wouldn't send their childrenacross it." The chaos was caused in large part by the financial consulting firm Alvarez& Marsal, an outfit the department hired without competitive bidding at $16million to find $200 million from the department's budget to divert directlyinto the schools. Its first order of business was to streamline the city'sschool bus routes. The net savings for all this grief: $5 million, far lessthan what was originally estimated. The head of an independent citywide parent group said the parents had warnedofficials about the impending debacle two months earlier. "They ignored us,as usual," said Tim Johnson, chair of the Chancellor's Parent AdvisoryCouncil. That debacle spotlighted a flurry of outside contracts signed by thisadministration, many of them without competitive bids. City comptrollerWilliam Thompson Jr. was alarmed to find that the Alvarez & Marsal contractallowed one consultant to charge the city as much as $450 an hour. Asubsequent investigation found that Klein's office had signed an estimated$270 million in outside no-bid contracts after Klein took the reins; severalcontracts had serious problems. Platform Learning, for example, was hiredfor $7.6 million to tutor city school kids over a five-year period. Afterthree years, Platform had earned more than $62 million, nine times itscontracted amount, with two years remaining. "There is no accountability, no oversight, no transparency in thisadministration, " Gotbaum said. "New Yorkers deserve better." The chancellorclaimed that $250 million had been redirected into the classroom. Thompson'soffice could find only $140 million in savings, and no evidence that any ofit had ended up in schools. "At a time when Tweed is demanding moreaccountability from our superintendents, our principals and our teachers,"Thompson said, "we are demanding accountability from them." The chancellor disputes his critics, saying his administration provides moreinformation and transparency than any in the past. Still, the busing crisiscrystallized into public disenchantment with many of the vaunted reforms. Size Matters One of the most promising reforms was the creation of new, small highschools. New York already was home to one of the first small-schoolmovements in the nation, promising democratic, grassroots antidotes tolarge, factory-size institutions. So it was fitting, even thrilling, whenthe new chancellor embraced small schools as a linchpin of hisrevitalization plans. Variety and innovation were encouraged. But in a short time, critics say, the Department of Education turned themission on its head. An astonishing 200 schools were launched in five years,with more than $100 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda GatesFoundation. Some of them are, without question, excellent environments.Overall, however, the movement has become a mass production of top-down,privately subsidized schools, said Michelle Fine, a City University of NewYork education professor, that have little to do with their socialjustice-minded ancestors. Quality has been sacrificed for speed. To counter these charges, the administration cites comparisons between thesmall schools and the large ones they replaced. For example, the large SouthBronx High School had a 48 percent graduation rate in 2001; five yearslater, three small schools that replaced it averaged an 83 percentgraduation rate. Evander Childs High School in the Bronx graduated just 31percent of its students in 2002, compared with 93 percent in 2006 for BronxAerospace, a small Junior ROTC replacement school. But these small schools were admitting students who were more likely tosucceed, according to a survey of the first fifteen small schools conductedby the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). Their entering ninth graders hadhigher state test scores than those at large schools. The schools also hadfar fewer special-education students and non-English speakers and in somecases more money per student. The union found that Bronx Aerospace had halfthe number of special-education kids, nearly four times fewerEnglish-language learners and spent about $5,000 more per pupil than itshost school, Evander Childs. Moreover, a recent study by the New York Immigration Coalition and Advocatesfor Children found that non-English speakers are not given "full andequitable access" to the small schools. Small schools were allowed to exemptspecial-education and English-language learners from their first twostart-up years. New incentives are in place to help the small schools servea fraction of these high-needs kids. But large concentrations of these twopopulations have been shuffled into the remaining large, ill-equipped highschools. The Citywide Council on High Schools has filed a discriminationcase with the US Education Department's Office of Civil Rights. In the end, the small-school initiative exhibited the contradictions of thisadministration. "They are mass-producing unique schools," said Leo Casey, atop UFT official, "and destroying them in the bargain." Totalitarian Testing Nothing has more impact on education than attempts to measure it. Generally,educators believe teacher-generated assessments work best as an organic partof classroom curriculum. CEOs believe company-produced tests administered ona centralized schedule create a more equitable education. "Data collectionis part of instruction, " Klein told the City Council education committeelast January, when questioned on the hours of instruction time lost to testpreparation and paperwork (up to two days a week, according to a 2005 UFTteacher survey). Klein's metaphors tell their own story. The chancellor sometimes refers tochildren as cars in a shop, a collection of malfunctions to be adjusted.Teachers need to "look under the hood," he says, to figure out the originsof the pings. The diagnostic information is then made available in piecharts and color bar graphs, child by child, as the year rolls along. "You get granular information this way about a child's strengths andweaknesses," said James Liebman, Klein's chief accountability officer and aColumbia University civil rights law professor. "And you get instant returnon the data. We are providing a lot more tools to give teachers the capacityto look at a child and see what they are doing." The 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act emphasizes state standardizedtests to measure each child's level of proficiency. The city's systemratchets up that process, measuring each child's growth from one year to thenext rather than his or her ability to hit or miss a single standardstarget. In may be fairer to use multiple instruments, but it requiresmillions of dollars and an army of additional tests. Liebman has designed "progress reports," issuing a grade of A through F foreach school in areas of environment, performance and progress--with 85percent of this information deriving from state standardized tests. "Qualityreviews" are conducted yearly by a team of evaluators hired by a Britishcompany, Cambridge Education, which charges $16 million a year. The teamvisits schools to see how well they are using all the data to improvelearning. A new "robust" IBM data-management system called ARIS will keeptrack of every grain of information collected on each child. Cost: $80million. The most controversial policy is something called periodic assessments,popular with business models. These are standardized tests, on top of theonce-a-year state tests, given to kids every few weeks for additionalfeedback. The administration had already signed up Princeton Review (ownedby Bertelsmann) as part of its $21 million contract to administer math andreading tests for grades three through eight, three times a year. Thatcommitment was scrapped. CTB/McGraw-Hill was hired as a replacement, for $80million over five years. Starting this fall, the tests will be ramped up tofive times a year. High school students will be added to the cycle fourtimes a year. In June Klein appointed Harvard economist Roland Fryer as thedepartment's "chief equality officer." Fryer's main proposal offers cashpayouts to students for perfect scores on the McGraw-Hill tests--$25 tofourth graders and $50 to seventh graders. Principals who agree to thisexperiment will receive $5,000 for their schools. Statistical disputes aside, the basic disagreement is over what constitutesan educated child. Is it someone who can demonstrate "grains" of isolatedskills or someone who has the capacity to think and explore with a sense ofwonder and depth? So far, the grains have the upper hand. "Thisadministration is preparing children to do these small tasks, strippingeducation down to its parched bones," said Tom Sobol. "The soul of educationis left at the door." The public is losing faith in the New York schools revolution. In March aQuinnipiac University opinion poll found that 58 percent of those surveyedlonged for an independent elected board at the helm rather than the mayor.Klein's surprise announcement of a new overhaul last winter--a sort ofdecentralization in drag, with tighter control at the top over moreempowered principals at the bottom--triggered even more outrage. "There isno evidence that your first reforms improved kids' learning," chided avisibly peeved City Council education chair Robert Jackson in January. The truth is, the evidence is mixed at best. Klein points to improvedacademic achievement, higher graduation rates and a greater number ofhigh-quality school choices since the mayor took over in 2002. He claimsthat 60 percent of ninth graders graduated four years later in 2006, an 18percent hike. During the same period, math scores rose 20 percentage points,meaning that 57 percent of students in third through eighth grades met orexceeded standards. Reading scores rose 10 percent, to 51 percent. Thisspring an eight-point hike in math scores across the grades, to 65 percent,meeting standards, and a 5 point rise in reading scores, to 42 percent foreighth graders, was cause for celebration- -even though reading scores forthird and fourth graders dropped an average of four points. But the numbers are hotly contested. Diane Ravitch, a former educationofficial in the George Bush Sr. White House, questions why the chancellorcounts 2002 as his starting point, when the initiatives did not kick inuntil January 2003. Test scores can be volatile instruments. The recenteighth-grade reading scores were up all across New York State this year byeight points, from 49 to 57 percent, an indication that the test itself waslikely easier. The graduation rate is another bugaboo: The state calculatesa 50 percent graduation rate for the city (not 60 percent), because itfigures GEDs, English-language learners and special-education diplomasdifferently from the city. Overall, the radical overhaul seems to haveproduced modest improvement rather than landmark progress. "Their gains arerespectable, not historic," Ravitch told a packed crowd at St. John'sUniversity last March. Perhaps the most notable development has been the mobilization of opponentsfrom among disparate city groups. An overflow crowd of 1,000 angry NewYorkers descended on Manhattan's St. Vartan's Cathedral in late February toprotest the latest round of changes. It was a rare coalition of forces,angry enough to set aside their individual agendas to unite against theDepartment of Education. Here were City Council members, elected officials,activist groups like ACORN, the Working Families Party, labor unions, animmigrant coalition and citywide parent groups. The most powerful group, and the one that gave this assembly itsinstitutional clout, was the UFT, which has more than 100,000 members. Itslegendary statewide political power was forged in the 1960s by black andLatino community groups battling for control of the schools. In recent yearsthe union had made peace with its past, creating real ties to parent groups.In many ways Klein and Bloomberg helped create this assembly by cutting offchannels once used routinely by the too-powerful union to influence policy.The effect was to alienate both teachers and parents, pushing them together."No administration has been as hostile to the union as this one," said theUFT's Casey. The mayor's response to this historic show of unity has been to dismiss itas a small collection of parents influenced by powerful self-interestedgroups. But he may be ignoring this group of pols and parents at his peril.Rumblings that February night at Hostos called for an end to mayoralcontrol. The measure is up for renewal by the New York State Legislature in2009. Few New Yorkers have any appetite for returning to the old school boarddays. But most would like to see some democratic checks and balances builtinto what has become a two-man show. An independent elected board couldoversee budget, contracts and policy decisions, and the selection of futurechancellors. The input of seasoned educators is needed again at the highestdecision-making levels. Regional boards could help return a sense ofcommunity to the city's schools. At the classroom level, school-based teamsof teachers and parents should be given some real clout. As for testing,department officials would do well to emulate the Republican state ofNebraska, which has invested in teacher-created assessments (now threatenedby new legislation) that do not choke curriculums. Americans tend to hold only a few big ideas sacred. One of them is thepromise that its unique public school system can offer every child a crackat the American dream. Ironically, the top-down corporate solutions popularwith CEO superintendents like Klein wrest control from the people they claimto serve. "Public schools are the cornerstone of our democracy," said IrvingHamer Jr., Manhattan representative on the last Board of Education. "If welet them quietly slip through the public's hands, we are breaking thecovenant of civic participation in this country."
Why not Bloomberg?
In times of frustration, novelty is tempting. That is no reason for our country to grasp at a third party candidate like an attractive, non-fat chocolate. In other words, I am begging my fellow Americans not to fall for the potential third party candidacy of Mike Bloomberg.
First, he is in the process of disposing of New York City's public schools. We are testing and failing more tests than ever. Our class sizes remain the same or bigger, our services are outsourced to various for-profit companies. We may not succeed at educating our students, but we will make some publishers of standardized tests richer than ever. Meanwhile, we have turned our curricula into test prep.
Ask any teacher or student at a private school how much they prepare for a test or if an exam dictates what they would learn and they will be horrified by the question. I know because I asked a friend who teaches as at a prestigious school and she reprimanded me. Of course, I know better than to teach to a test. But, I don't work in a system which does. I work for a system which is attempting to pretend it gets results, as if student success can be measured in the same way as profit. Even profit doesn't tell a whole story. It tells you what you have, but not necessarily what you need and how equipped you are for future changes in a market. So too, student success on simple exam tasks doesn't predict their ability to apply what they have learned in a complex world. Of course, our students are not succeeding on these tests, so this is a moot point.
Yes, Mike Bloomberg rides the subways. Fortunately for him, he doesn't ride one of the many lines which has had service reduced like mine has because he doesn't live out in the outer boroughs of New York. Just as with schools, he has a simplistic solution to a problem whose depth he doesn't begin to understand.
In New York City, Mike Bloomberg has proven that he may say the right things, but provides perfunctory, superficial solutions to problems. On a national scale, this behavior might be devastating.
First, he is in the process of disposing of New York City's public schools. We are testing and failing more tests than ever. Our class sizes remain the same or bigger, our services are outsourced to various for-profit companies. We may not succeed at educating our students, but we will make some publishers of standardized tests richer than ever. Meanwhile, we have turned our curricula into test prep.
Ask any teacher or student at a private school how much they prepare for a test or if an exam dictates what they would learn and they will be horrified by the question. I know because I asked a friend who teaches as at a prestigious school and she reprimanded me. Of course, I know better than to teach to a test. But, I don't work in a system which does. I work for a system which is attempting to pretend it gets results, as if student success can be measured in the same way as profit. Even profit doesn't tell a whole story. It tells you what you have, but not necessarily what you need and how equipped you are for future changes in a market. So too, student success on simple exam tasks doesn't predict their ability to apply what they have learned in a complex world. Of course, our students are not succeeding on these tests, so this is a moot point.
Yes, Mike Bloomberg rides the subways. Fortunately for him, he doesn't ride one of the many lines which has had service reduced like mine has because he doesn't live out in the outer boroughs of New York. Just as with schools, he has a simplistic solution to a problem whose depth he doesn't begin to understand.
In New York City, Mike Bloomberg has proven that he may say the right things, but provides perfunctory, superficial solutions to problems. On a national scale, this behavior might be devastating.
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