And be sure to check in tomorrow for a special weekend post — GothamSchools’ first ever!

Members of the Campaign for Better Schools at today's press conference. Photo courtesy of the Campaign for Better Schools.

One final installment in today’s all-mayoral-control-all-the-time report: Before the Assembly hearing began this morning, a coalition of community groups that promised to evaluate mayoral control by its results issued its its school governance recommendations.

Citing “reckless budget cuts” and a continued gap between black and white students in obtaining Regents diplomas, The Campaign for Better Schools recommended reconfiguring the city school board so that the mayor no longer appoints a majority of members.

The campaign’s platform, posted in full after the jump, addresses several of the chief critiques leveled against the Department of Education in recent years. One is that communities don’t have adequate input in making decisions about opening, closing and locating schools; the campaign recommends requiring community consultation. And the platform responds to a recent decision by the state education commissioner that principals have the right to determine school budgets by requiring that budgets be developed in consultation with parent leaders.

The coalition’s member organizations include Advocates for Children and the Alliance for Quality Education, among others. It is funded by a grant from the Donor’s Education Collaborative, a consortium that supports projects to enhance public engagement in education.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE ON GOVERNANCE OF THE NEW YORK CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT

The Campaign for Better Schools is a diverse coalition of more than two dozen parent, youth, community based and education advocacy organizations from all five boroughs of New York City.  The Campaign for Better Schools supports the concept of Mayoral Control, but disagrees with the way it has been implemented.  At the same time, the reforms and policies that have been put in place as a result of mayoral control have not led to the turn-around of schools in some of New York City’s highest-need communities.  For instance, the achievement gap between African American and Latino students and white students in obtaining Regents diplomas has not budged, and graduation rates for immigrant students learning English has actually dipped in the last four years.  In addition, mayoral control has resulted in reckless budget cuts, and reforms have led to parents, students and communities being shut out of important decisions that affect the quality of education students receive.

The reforms outlined in this proposal will make mayoral control of schools workable by strengthening the decision making process by which education policies and reforms are developed, and by restoring the trust that families and communities put in the school system.  These recommendations were developed through a rigorous year long process that involved numerous discussions with national and local education experts, parent, student and community organizations in neighborhoods throughout New York City.  It is a community-driven proposal, developed by parents, youth and community groups.

CHECKS & BALANCES

Panel for Education Policy (PEP)

The PEP should have a narrow majority of members appointed by the City Council or other elected officials, and a minority of members appointed by the mayor.

PEP members should serve for set terms of a relatively short duration (3 years or less) and have full voting rights.
The PEP should select a Chair who sets meeting agendas

Chancellor

The mayor should appoint the Schools Chancellor

The Chancellor should not be a voting member of the PEP, but may serve as an ex-officio member.

Criteria and Selection of Board Members

The PEP should be diverse geographically (representatives from all boroughs).

The members of the PEP should reflect the school system’s diversity.

The PEP must include multiple community representatives.  Community representatives should be defined as parents, students and representatives of community based organizations.

Powers of the PEP

The Chancellor should have the power to propose the DOE operating budget and the five-year capital plan.  The PEP shall have approval power over the annual DOE operating budget and five-year capital plan.

The Chancellor should propose changes in education policies. The PEP shall have the power to approve major Chancellor-proposed education policy decisions.

The PEP should approve large DOE procurement contracts.

PEP Operations

The PEP should operate with an open public process.  As such all PEP meetings should be held publicly, on a regular monthly basis.  All decisions should be made publicly, by roll call vote.  Notices and agendas of PEP meetings should be widely disseminated publicly, in multiple languages, at least two weeks in advance.  PEP meetings should be held in venues large enough to accommodate large public attendance and appropriate interpretation services shall be provided at all meetings.  The PEP should solicit public comment on all voting issues.

TRANSPARENCY

The Independent Budget Office should be given legal authority to report on all aspects of the City school district including DOE’s finances, school performance, student achievement, student safety and shared decision making at the school level.

Sufficient funding should be provided to the IBO to support their new monitoring and reporting functions.

The IBO should:

• Be guaranteed full and timely access to all NYC DOE data;
• Annually compile, produce, and widely disseminate school system student demographics and achievement outcomes, as well as annual analyses of school system resource allocation and fiscal expenditure;
• Use methodologies, benchmarks and indicators recommended by national agencies and expert researchers to produce the annual set of required data reports, and make their methodologies, benchmarks and indicators public;
• Carry out annual analyses of critical school system education policy issues and issue their findings in widely disseminated public reports.

The law should be clarified to make the DOE’s finances completely open and available to the City Comptroller for financial oversight and auditing purposes.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

School Level

The role of parents and high school students, on the school leadership teams should be strengthened. Student representatives should be selected through vote of student body.

Principals should be required to develop school based budgets in consultation with School Leadership Teams and ensure that budgets are aligned with schools’ Comprehensive Education Plans (CEP).

Principals should be required to hold public meetings to report on school finances and student performance, and to discuss plans for meeting CEP benchmarks and budget targets.

Parents and high school students who are involved in shared decision making should receive adequate training and support to responsibly carry out their duties and obligations.

District Level

Superintendent

District superintendents should be responsible for supervising principals and providing administrative oversight of schools in their district.   They should have access to all schools in their district as well as access to all school records to carry out their evaluations effectively.

Superintendents should be empowered to address issues regarding school choice, discipline (suspensions, expulsions, etc), language access (parents, ELL students), special needs, and shared decision-making.

Superintendents should hold public meetings to report on district performance and discuss plans for improvement of district schools.

The Chancellor should appoint district superintendents in consultation with the CDEC, Presidents’ Council and District Leadership Team.

District superintendents should be supported by sufficient staff to carry out their duties.

School Closings & New School Siting:

A process should be established that ensures community input before schools are closed, new schools are created, and new schools are placed inside existing schools.

The recommendations generated by the council’s Working Group on School Governance reflect the City Council’s repeated sparring with DOE officials over access to information and the complaints about inclusion that council members have said their constituents frequently make. The group recommends that the legislature give the council more legislative and oversight powers, designate the city’s Independent Budget Office to analyze DOE data, and strengthen the role of community superintendents and parent governance structures.

Like many others weighing in on mayoral control, the group also urges more independence for the city school board, currently known as the Panel for Educational Policy.

But it doesn’t appear to have been able to come to a consensus on a central question: Whether the mayor should control the board. Instead of answering the question, the council puts forth three options for reforming the PEP: Reducing the number of members, but preserving a mayoral majority; increasing the number of members by adding two City Council appointees, meaning that the mayor would no longer control a majority of seats; or replacing the PEP with a new advisory board altogether.

Robert Jackson, the council’s education committee head who was one of the working group’s three chairs, has said he holds the extreme position that mayoral control should be abolished completely.

Also of note: The working group’s proposal is the first one I’ve seen that includes a specific expiration date for the new law: six years, which would put the city in the middle of a mayor’s term.

Below the jump, a summary of the report’s summary, from the council’s press release. Get the entire six-page summary here.

Create a System of Municipal Control – The Working Group strongly believes that the Department of Education (DOE) must function like every other City agency from a budget, legislative and oversight perspective.

Create an Independent Data Analysis Body – The role of the Independent Budget Office (IBO) should be expanded to take on the vital task of providing independent analysis of DOE data and issue annual performance and budget reports.

Greater Independence for the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) – The Working Group agrees that the Chancellor should not be a PEP member, but should report to the board.  The Working Group will present a number of plans for achieving greater independence.

Selection of the Chancellor – The Mayor should continue to select the Chancellor, and the City Council should be required to hold a public hearing and vote on any request to waive requirements for the position, which are outlined by City and State Law.

Re-empower Community Superintendents – The role of community superintendent should be restored as the educational leader for schools in their community school district.  Superintendents should be a parent’s first point of contact if they are unable to solve a grievance on the school level.

Strengthen Community Level Parent Engagement Structures – Rather than having several disconnected entities to serve as vehicles for parent input at the district level, some of the parent engagement structures and functions should be incorporated into a single entity. Additionally, The Borough Presidents and City Council should be granted an appointee to District Leadership Teams. Third, School Leadership Teams should be empowered to develop their school’s Comprehensive Educational Plan, after holding public meetings to allow for parent comment and review as well as play a role in evaluating the principal.

Six Year Sunset Provision – The State Legislature should extend mayoral control with the amendments listed above and have the legislation sunset in 6 years.

Helaine Doran, deputy director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, just said that CFE would release a report next week saying that 501,632 students in the city attend school in an overcrowded building.

CFE’s numbers would mean that about 46 percent of the city’s approximately 1.1 million students attend overcrowded schools — far more than the 38 percent that the advocacy organization Class Size Matters calculated last year. Class Size Matters used the Department of Education’s school capacity and enrollment data to come up with its figure; Doran didn’t say today how CFE arrived at its calculation.

Doran said the overcrowding developed over a long period of time. “I’ve been in this school system a long time and the number even startled me,” Doran said. “We just didn’t get there.”

Indeed, that’s what Assembly members just heard. “Never before in the history of NYC have the mayor and the chancellor exercised total, unlimited, unrestricted power over the daily life of the schools,” Ravitch said in her testimony. “No other school district in the United States is operated in this authoritarian fashion.”

Ravitch recommended that legislators mandate an independent school board that would publicly review proposed policies and budgets. The board, and not the mayor, should appoint the chancellor, Ravitch said. “If the chancellor is appointed by the mayor, his first obligation is to the mayor, not the children,” she said.

Ravitch also joined a large contingent of people who are calling for an independent agency to monitor and evaluate Department of Education data. She offered evidence for why city students are doing no better than before the mayor took over the schools.

Assembly members said they appreciated Ravitch’s testimony, Elizabeth reports from the hearing. Said Assemblyman James Brennan to Ravitch: “I can see now see why you have a PhD.”

As always, you’ll find Ravitch’s complete testimony after the jump.

Testimony of Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education, New York University, Hearings of New York State Assembly Committee on Education, February 6, 2009

I am a historian of education on the faculty of New York University. My first book was a history of the New York City public schools, entitled The Great School Wars. It was published in 1974. It is generally acknowledged to be the definitive history of the school system. Since then, I have continued to study and write about the New York City school system.

When the Legislature changed the governance of the school system in 2002, I supported the change. I supported the idea of mayoral control. I looked forward to an era of accountability and transparency. From my historical studies, I knew that mayoral control was the customary form of governance in our city’s schools for many years. From 1873 to 1969, the mayor appointed every single member of the New York City Board of Education. The decentralization of control from 1969 to 2002 was an aberration.

Having observed the current system since it was created, however, I have become convinced that it needs major changes.

It needs change because it lacks accountability. It lacks transparency. It shuts the public out of public education. It has no checks or balances. It lacks the most fundamental element of a democratic system of government, which is public oversight.

Never before in the history of NYC have the mayor and the chancellor exercised total, unlimited, unrestricted power over the daily life of the schools. No other school district in the United States is operated in this authoritarian fashion.

We have often been told by city officials that the results justify continuation of this authoritarian control. They say that test scores have dramatically improved. But no independent source verifies these assertions.

The city’s claims are contradicted by the federal testing program, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The federal tests are the gold standard of educational testing.

New York City is one of 11 cities that participate in the federal testing program. On the NAEP tests, the city’s scores were flat from 2003-2007 in fourth-grade reading, in eighth-grade reading, and in eighth-grade math. Only in fourth-grade math did student performance improve, but those gains had washed out by eighth grade. The eighth-graders were the product of the Children First reforms, yet these students showed no achievement gains in either reading or math. The federal tests showed no significant gains for Hispanic students, African American students, white students, Asian students, or lower-income students. The federal data showed no narrowing of the achievement gap among children of different ethnic and racial groups.

The SAT is another independent measure. This past year, the city’s SAT scores fell, reaching their lowest point since 2003, at the same time that national SAT scores held steady. The students who take the SAT intend to go to college; they are presumably our better-performing students. Yet the SAT reading score for New York City was an appalling 438, which is the 28th percentile of all SAT test-takers. The state SAT reading score was 488, much closer to the national average than our city students.

Are graduation rates up? The city says they have climbed from 53% to 62% from 2003-2007. The state says they have climbed from 44% to 52% from 2004-2007. Either way, the city’s graduation rate is no better than the graduation rate for the state of Mississippi, which spends less than a third of what New York City spends per pupil.

We must wonder whether we can believe any numbers for the graduation rate, because the city has encouraged a dubious practice called “credit recovery,” which inflates the graduation rate. Under credit recovery, students who failed a course or never even showed up can still get credit for it by turning in an independent project or attending a few extra sessions. A principal told the New York Times that credit recovery is the “dirty little secret of high schools. There’s very little oversight and there are very few standards.” (NY Times, April 11, 2008).  Furthermore, the city doesn’t count students who have been discharged; these are students who have been removed from the rolls but are not counted as dropouts. Their number has increased every year. Leaving out these students also inflates the graduation rate.

We have all heard that social promotion was eliminated, that students can’t be promoted from grade 3 or 5 or 7 or 8 unless they have mastered the work of the grade. Nonetheless, a majority of eighth-graders do not meet state standards in reading or math. And two-thirds of the city’s graduates who enter CUNY’s community colleges must take remedial courses in reading, writing, or mathematics. These figures suggest that social promotion continues and that many students are graduating who are not prepared for postsecondary education.

The present leadership of the Department of Education has made testing in reading and mathematics the keynote of their program. Many schools have narrowed their curriculum in hopes of raising their test scores. The Department’s own survey of arts education showed that only 4% of children in elementary schools and less than a third of those in middle schools were receiving the arts education required by the state. When the federal government tested science in 2006, two-thirds of New York City’s eighth grade students were “below basic,” the lowest possible rating. These figures suggest that our students are not getting a good education, no matter what the state test scores in reading and math may be.

The Department of Education, lacking any public accountability, has heedlessly closed scores of schools without making any sustained effort to improve them. Had they dramatically reduced class sizes, mandated a research-based curriculum, provided intensive professional development, supplied prompt technical assistance, and taken other constructive steps, they might have been able to turn around schools that were the anchor of their community. When Rudy Crew was Chancellor, he rescued many low-performing schools by using these techniques in what was then called the Chancellor’s District. Unfortunately this district—whose sole purpose was to improve low-performing schools–was abandoned in 2003. There may be times when a school must be closed, but it should be a last resort, triggered only after all other measures have been exhausted, and only after extensive community consultation.

The Legislature owes it to the people of New York City to make significant changes in the governance of the New York City public schools.

First, the governance system needs checks and balances. Having the chance to vote for the mayor once in four years is no check or balance, nor does it provide adequate accountability. The school system needs an independent board, whose members serve for a fixed-term, to review and approve the policies and budget of the school system. This board would hold public hearings before decisions are made. It would review the budget in public and give the public full opportunity to express its concerns.

Second, the performance of the school system should be regularly monitored by an independent, professional auditing agency. This agency should report to the public on student performance and graduation rates. Those in charge of the school system should not be allowed to monitor the system’s performance and to give principals and teachers bonuses for higher performance. Such an approach does not produce accountability; instead, it only encourages principals and teachers to find creative ways to boost their test scores and graduation rates.

Third, the leader of the school system should be appointed by the independent board, not by the mayor.  The chancellor’s primary obligation is to protect the best interests of the students. If elected officials say that they must cut the schools’ budget, the chancellor should be the voice of the school system, fighting for the interests of the children and the schools. If the chancellor is appointed by the mayor, his first obligation is to the mayor, not the children.

There are many challenges facing the New York City school system. Many of the students that it serves are disadvantaged by poverty, are English language learners, or have special needs. Changing the governance of the school system will not solve all the problems of educating more than one million students.

Nonetheless, the Legislature must learn from experience. It should correct the flaws in the law passed in 2002. That law went too far in centralizing all authority in the Mayor’s office and in excluding the public from any voice in decisions affecting their communities and their children. It is time to change the law.

TESTIMONY OF CHANCELLOR JOEL I. KLEIN ON MAYORAL CONTROL OF NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY EDUCATION COMMITTEE

Good morning, Speaker Silver, Chairwoman Nolan, and members of the Education Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify today, and thank you for holding this series of hearings. I’m honored to be part of a process that is so important to our children and our City. I’m joined by my deputy, Kathleen Grimm, who will discuss our Capital Plan. The president of the School Construction Authority, Sharon Greenberger, is also here to help answer your questions.

Seven years ago, when Mayor Bloomberg took office, everybody agreed that the City’s public school system was in crisis. Its schools were failing many of its students—especially the neediest ones. Since then, we’ve come a long way—thanks in large measure to your bold decision to support mayoral control, and, I would add, the significant infusion of funds that you have delivered. What we’ve created is not perfect, our work has not been without mistake, and the transformation we have worked to engender is not complete. But the results show how far we’ve come. Today, more than 10,000 additional students are graduating than when we took over in 2002. Today, many more students are meeting and exceeding standards in math and reading. And today, the gap separating African-American and Latino students from their white and Asian peers is shrinking.

So, let me jump right in and start with what I think is most important. Whoever the mayor is, you should continue to provide him or her with the authority and accountability for public education in our City. Nothing is more important than education to our City and its families, and our City’s highest elected official should have the responsibility for this core function, just as he or she does for the safety, health, and the economic well being our City. Some have proposed that we should dilute the mayor’s authority over education policy and budget decisions, by changing the composition of the Panel for Educational Policy, for example. But if we do, we undermine the mayor’s accountability to the City, and that would be a mistake. If he cannot pursue his priorities, he cannot fairly be responsible for what happens in education.

We don’t need to speculate about this. That’s precisely the way it was before you authorized mayoral control in 2002. There was divided authority, a school system in distress, lots of finger pointing and blame passing, and a new chancellor every two or three years. Today, there are people who disagree strongly with our priorities and who focus exclusively on the mistakes we have made. But whether they agree or disagree, no one questions that the Mayor and I are accountable for the state of our City’s schools.

There is a second reason why the Mayor should be both responsible and accountable: when it comes to education, someone has to watch out for all 1.1 million students. Divided authority—and a local, rather than a citywide focus—often leads to interest group politics in education, and those with power, or access to power, typically prevail. There are, in short, as is often the case, winners and losers. But we cannot afford losers in education. For example, there are many parents in our City who know how to navigate the system to find a good school for their children, parents who can call someone who is well connected to find out how to play the game. But who looks out for the students who are not so well connected, the children of our poorest families, the children of color, and the children of parents who recently arrived here in America? In New York City, indeed throughout our Nation, those students have typically gotten the short end of the stick in public education. And that’s a significant reason why we have the shameful racial and ethnic achievement gaps that we do. The mayor and chancellor must advocate for those children—and set priorities in a way that will ensure they too get an equal educational opportunity—or their needs will continue to be neglected.

Our experience over the past seven years in New York City demonstrates that mayoral control provides the necessary ability to make real changes in the largest school system in the country. The sorts of reforms we have implemented would not and could not have happened in the absence of such authority. By definition, such reforms are often controversial. You certainly don’t have to agree with every program we’ve undertaken or policy we’ve implemented, but I think it’s clear that to get the job done—and get it done right—we need real reforms, not the feel-good stuff that so often characterizes education reform. Everyone wants more money for education—our children need and deserve it. But more money alone, as experience throughout the Nation sadly demonstrates, hasn’t solved the challenges we face.

I know Deputy Mayor Walcott outlined our results last week. I’d like to just highlight a few points:

We have made substantial progress in attacking the achievement gap. For our fourth graders, we have cut the achievement gap in half in math since 2002 and we’ve reduced it by about 20% in English. Progress in the eighth grade is less substantial, but it is still in the right direction. On the national tests, our African-American fourth graders are beating out African Americans throughout America and in virtually every other large city in both math and English.

Overall, our students have made sustained progress in math and reading since 2002. The percentage of students meeting or exceeding State standards is up almost 30 points in fourth and eighth grade math. In ELA, the percentage is up almost 15 points in fourth grade and 14 points in eighth grade.

In every area, New York City’s students’ gains have outpaced gains in the rest of the State, where students are taking the same tests and not making remotely the same progress.

And most importantly, as I said, many more students are graduating from high school. The City methodology, which was in effect long before mayoral control, shows that we have increased the four-year graduation rate by more than 2 points per year after a decade of stagnation that preceded us. And, under the State’s new methodology, in existence for the past three years, we’ve gone up almost 3 points per year from 2005 to 2007.

Because of our steady progress in improving student achievement and reducing achievement gaps plaguing poor and minority students, we won the country’s most prestigious education award, the Broad Prize for Urban Education in 2007.

Today, we are working together, as one City, to address the needs of our students. We have one system that sets clear expectations for our schools and our students. No longer do we think of ourselves as 32 separate fiefdoms, divided along income and zip code lines. We are the City of New York. WE know that success in some communities with sustained failure in others hurts all of us.

Today, we focus relentlessly on student achievement, something you heard far less about before mayoral control. Look at the first page in the folder we provided. Students’ advancement to and beyond proficiency is directly linked to the rate at which they graduate from high school on time with a Regents diploma. Small increments of growth in proficiency produce large increases in the probability of success in high school. As the chart illustrates, only 23% of students finishing eighth grade with a proficiency ratings of 2.50 in ELA and math graduate four years later with a Regents diploma. But students leaving middle school with a rating of 3.50 graduate at a rate of 81%—58 points higher. For every tenth of a point gain in proficiency within that range, the probability that a rising ninth grader will graduate in four years, college ready, increases by about 5 points.

These are big differences and that’s why mastering the materials on New York State’s standardized tests matters and why the gains that we have made on those tests that I’ve described will have significant life-time effects.

As is obvious, I strongly believe that mayoral control is the best governance system for urban public schools. I said that publicly and often long before Mayor Bloomberg decided to run again, and I have repeatedly urged lawmakers throughout this Nation—especially big-city mayors in cities like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.—to adopt a system of mayoral control. But that doesn’t mean, of course, that you shouldn’t seek to improve the statute. I recognize that it is not a sacred text. Like the work we do every day, now is the time to focus on what we can learn from our experiences and make modifications that will benefit our schools and students. But as we strive toward that goal, there is a real danger that the debate over the statute becomes a debate over specific policy decisions that were enabled by it. Even if you don’t like some of the decisions we have made, it would be a grave mistake to constrain, now and long into the future, the fundamental ability to make the kind of transformational change our kids need by dividing up decision-making in the law. No matter what how it is labeled, that is not changing or tweaking or improving mayoral control, it is ending it—and that is a line that, for our kids’ sake, we can’t afford to cross.

Before I close, I would like to address the issue many people who question mayoral control have raised as a problem, and that is the issue of parental involvement. First, let me provide some independent data. A survey by the Community Service Society—a well respected advocacy group known to all of you—found that the percentage of public school parents “grading” their children’s school with a B or higher has jumped significantly under our administration. Among our City’s poorest parents, this figure rose from 24% to 64%. Among the “near poor,” it rose from 47% to 64%, and among the “moderate-higher” families, it rose from 59% to 66%.

And just last week, a Quinnipiac Poll found that voters with children in public schools support the continuation of mayoral control by a margin of almost 20 points—57% to 39%.

Yet, although I believe that we’ve made strides with community and family engagement over the course of the administration, I also know that we can do a better job. This is a complex education system to navigate and we can, and must, do a better job helping our families navigate it. We also need to give families and communities more information in a more timely fashion so that we can do a better job of getting their input. Working together with you, and learning from our experience over the past several years, I’m confident we can build a better process.

In conclusion, let me again emphasize that the conversation we are having today is one of the most important conversations facing us as a City. There are things we’ve learned since 2002, things we could no doubt have done better with the benefit of hindsight. But we have a duty to make sure our City continues to have the tools it needs to further transform education for the benefit of our children, especially those children who, almost 55 years after Brown v. Board of Education, remain profoundly shortchanged. I look forward to working with you to learn from the experience of the past seven years to construct the best possible education law for our students and their families.

But on the all-important question of whether the mayor should control a majority of the seats on the school board, currently known as the Panel for Educational Policy, Thompson said nothing. According to Elizabeth, when reporters pressed him on the point after his testimony, Thompson declined to provide a straight answer. This separates Thompson from Rep. Anthony Weiner, currently his main rival in the mayoral race. Weiner believes that the city schools should remain firmly in the mayor’s control.

Thompson urged lawmakers to clarify whether the DOE is officially a city agency and to require independent analysis of DOE data and measures to help parents to get involved in school leadership.

Thompson also described how, as president of the city’s old Board of Education, he helped build a foundation for the constrained form of mayoral control he now supports. “In short, we laid the groundwork for a more centralized management of our public school system that helped clear a path towards mayoral control,” he said. “But in doing so we prioritized two things that are currently missing from the current administration’s approach — transparency and parental involvement.”

Below the jump, Thompson’s entire testimony as it was prepared.

TESTIMONY BEFORE THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE OF THE NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY REGARDING GOVERNANCE OF THE NEW YORK CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT

Good morning, Chairman Nolan and members of the Education Committee….Thank you for giving me this opportunity to testify today regarding governance of the New York City School District.I want to make clear at the outset that I have always supported mayoral control….But as the sunset of the law draws near, it is imperative that we review school governance as practiced under the Bloomberg administration.

This is a subject of great concern to me, not only as a New Yorker and a product of the New York City public schools…but because as Comptroller I am mandated to audit all city agencies.

Recent audits conducted by my office have found numerous failures in basic governance at the New York City Department of Education.

In the past two years alone our audits have found that the DOE:

• failed to monitor and track the provision of special education services effectively;
• failed to adopt effective controls to ensure that violent incidents at city high schools are reported to the State Department of Education;
• failed to provide both vision and hearing screenings in accordance with regulations due to lack of oversight;
• failed to exercise necessary controls over universal pre-K payments to non-public schools in Brooklyn and Staten Island; and,
• failed through its Office of Pupil Transportation to effectively record and follow up on school-bus-related complaints.

Among my duties as the City’s Chief Financial officer, I have also been particularly attentive to fiscal accountability at the Department of Education.

As many of you know, through my office’s responsibility for registering City contracts, I play an important role in ensuring that the laws and regulations designed to encourage fair and open competition are followed.

Under the tenure of this Department of Education, however, the use of non-competitively-bid contracts has soared all out of proportion, with a cumulative total of close to 300 million dollars since Mayor Bloomberg entered office.

How did they get to this point? The DOE refuses to adopt a set of formal procurement rules similar to those followed by every other City agency – a process that is open and subject to public comment and accountability.

Contracts at all other City agencies are subject to the rules of the Procurement Policy Board, which takes a deliberative approach to developing policies under which the City procures goods and services….There is discussion, debate, and an open forum through which the public can comment.

This is a process that, while not always perfect, is at least transparent.

By contrast, since the Board of Education became the Department of Education, it has exploited a gray area in the law … one that allows it to treat itself as a State agency whenever it is convenient to do so … and then as a City agency when it is likewise convenient.

The Department has even taken the position that it is not required to register its contracts with my office if it does not want to — a position I obviously disagree with.

That is neither good government nor good public policy, and has led to a number of questionable contracts in recent years.

In May 2004, I recommended State legislation to make the Department subject to the same procurement rules as every other City agency….Rather than pass a new law, elected officials in Albany encouraged the DOE to work in good faith with my office to resolve the problem voluntarily.

And yet despite the best efforts of my office, the DOE has continued to process millions of dollars in contracts outside of the competitive bidding process….As you consider extending mayoral control, I urge you to make the New York City DOE transparent and accountable once and for all.

When I was President of the Board of Education, I adamantly pursued accountability in our public education system. ….Indeed, such accountability was exactly what I was attempting to bring about when I pushed for a series of reforms in 1996.

As many of you will remember, at that time — some 25 years after the schools were decentralized in 1969 — the system was fragmented….Lines of authority were blurred, there was little accountability for educational failure, and local boards were mired in corruption.

We felt that if the Chancellor was to be held accountable for educational performance, then he or she must be given clearer authority. … We stripped individual school boards of the responsibility for day to day operations of schools and gave that power to superintendents.

The Chancellor in turn was given a more direct role in the selection of individual superintendents and gained the authority to intervene in schools that were failing as well as to transfer or remove principals.

We mandated School Leadership Teams in every school — made up equally of parents, teachers and administrators — that injected more accountability at the school level.

In short, we laid the groundwork for a more centralized management of our public school system that helped clear a path towards mayoral control. … But in doing so we prioritized two things that are currently missing from the current administration’s approach — transparency and parental involvement.

As we look ahead to the sunset of mayoral control we should reauthorize the law, but we must reform and strengthen it.

While Tweed has trumpeted gains in test scores and improvements in city graduation rates, concerns over data manipulation have arisen. … For the years 2003 to 2007, National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, tests have shown no gains in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading or 8th grade math for black, white, Hispanic and lower-income students. [1]

That is why I support using an independent body to audit test scores and graduation rates. … If the public is to trust the city’s claims of gains, we must remove both the incentive and the opportunity to manipulate results.

At the same time, parents, who have an enormous stake in their children’s educational success, MUST have a true voice in the decisions that impact their children’s schools. … Every study indicates that parental involvement equates with student achievement.

The DOE has failed to ensure that School Leadership Teams have an effective role in influencing school policy. … Last year, the department’s own Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy found that only 51 percent of the schools it surveyed have a functioning leadership team.

Indeed, most parents do not even know what School Leadership Teams and Community Education Councils are. … I recommend that State Education Law require that all parents receive a brochure, translated into relevant languages when necessary, at the start of each school year explaining what these bodies do.

I also recommend that State Law require that schools post their Comprehensive Education Plan — the school’s blueprint for setting its goals and identifying specifically how it will achieve them — online, maintain a copy of the plan in the school’s general office, and inform parents by letter where they can review the CEP.

We must also nurture the development of Parent Teacher Associations in our schools.

When the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council asked the Chancellor in 2005 to publish a monthly account of how many schools have functioning PTAs, it received press coverage in the New York Times, but no response from Chancellor Klein.

It is high time for the DOE to begin publishing monthly tallies.

This failure to involve parents in the education policy process has reinforced a widespread perception that the department is arrogant and out-of-touch.

With its top-down approach, the current administration has sought to avoid debate and public scrutiny, while fundamental decisions regarding education reform have been made by executives with no education background.

The Department of Education has gone through three reorganizations in six years. … As chief investment advisor to the New York City pension funds, I would identify a company that had gone through three fundamental reorganizations in six years as a high-risk investment.

Let me be clear: mayoral control of the schools, when exercised wisely, is a means of bringing efficiency, transparency and accountability to decision-making, but it was never intended to be a green light for unchecked executive power.

With greater authority and control also comes greater responsibility — responsibility to parents, responsibility to the taxpayers who help to fund our schools, and finally — and most importantly — responsibility to our kids, whose educational achievement and advancement are directly tied to the future economic growth and prosperity of our city.

That is an assignment we cannot, we must not, and — with the leadership and foresight of this committee and others — we will not fail.

Thank you very much.

[1] And 4th grade math results reflect twice the number of students with accommodations than the administration initially acknowledged.

The chair of the education committee, Cathy Nolan, is leading the interrogations with personal examples of her own difficulties as a parent. She said she has been hung up on by a school official she called trying to get information about her son. “Not everybody is having an ideal experience, chancellor,” she said.

Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal complained about a lack of transparency, saying that she had resorted to using a Freedom of Information Law request to find information on class size data that state law requires the city to provide — and then finally got a CD with the wrong data on it.

Nolan then piped up saying she had the same experience.

“That’s unacceptable,” said Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, shaking his head. He then asked Rosenthal to keep him posted on her access to data the next time she makes a request.

Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell challenged Klein’s claim that mayoral elections are a sufficient check on chancellors’ authority, pointing out that Mayor Bloomberg is favored to win a third term. “With a hundred million dollars, I could probably convince the city of New York that I was thin,” O’Donnell said.

Assemblyman James Brennan also challenged the chancellor on the extent of “democracy” in the system. “I just question whether or not there would be a cataclysm if you have to persuade two people,” Brennan said.

Mark Weprin criticized Klein’s effort to “empower” principals by giving them more authority. “I think you’ve created 1,500 orphans,” Weprin said. “These principals don’t know what to do with this power if they don’t have the support staff.”

Weprin also said he believes Klein is breaking the law by having school district superintendents spend only a small proportion of their time actually overseeing the schools in their geographic area. “These school districts were put into law for a purpose and I believe you’re violating the law,” Weprin said. “To paraphrase George W Bush, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice – well, we ain’t going to get fooled again.”

Assembly members also complained about school siting decisions and the state of parent councils that are often short members and not especially active.

Nolan, the chairwoman, repeatedly apologized for taking so mich time to ask questions and criticize. “I don’t think we’ve had an Assembly hearing where we’ve had you in at least four years, so people have to bear with us,” Nolan said. “We have a lot of anxious members.”

Klein defended himself passionately, arguing that mayoral control is a democratic governance structure, not an authoritarian one, as some members painted it.

“The state commissioner serves at the pleasure of the Regents. The education secretary serves at the pleasure of the United States President,” he said. “You want you people to take sometimes controversial positions.”

Klein also said he takes responsibility for mistakes and wants to work to improve parental involvement.

I just got a dispatch from Elizabeth, who is crammed into the hearing room where people are sitting in the aisles. She reports that James Brennan, an assembly member from Brooklyn, asked Klein if it would be a “cataclysm” if mayoral control were revised.

“I think it would be,” Klein said.

As an example of one possible revision, Brennan referred to changing the makeup of the city’s school board so that the mayor would no longer appoint a majority of members. The teachers union included this change in its school governance proposal, released earlier this week.*

Klein rejected the prospect of such an arrangement. “If we all try to do things by plebiscite and hearings, then we’re going to stymie the process,” he said. “It’s a little hard to say you’re accountable but your core initiatives can be overruled by an 8 to 7 vote.”

Moments later, Klein said about the prospect of shared decision-making:

It didn’t work in the past. It won’t work in the future. No matter how or what it is labeled, dividing decision-making is not going to be improving or tweaking mayoral control. It will end it. And that line is one we should not cross.

*Originally I wrote that Brennan referred specifically to the teachers union’s proposal. He did not.

From Bloomberg’s mayoral control jeremiad, according to a report posted on the Daily Politics blog:

“My assumption is there will be a bill called mayoral control passed by the Legislature,” the mayor continued. “I think that the, if they didn’t do that, I think that there’d be riots in the streets, given what’s the improvement. I mean, parents have choices. For the first time we’re funding all the schools equally.”

… “So I think they will pass a bill. The question is, does it have mayoral control? Mayoral control is control. Control is you decide. …”

Nearly 60 percent of New Yorkers support continuing mayoral control, according to a recent poll.