GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Fascinating.

The RTTT application claims that the charter cap in New York is currently set at 4,740 or 104 percent of all schools. How do they arrive at that claim: by saying that all public schools in the state can convert to charter, so the cap is equal to 4540 existing district schools that could convert plus 200 newly formed charter schools. Talk about magical thinking. In the last 10 years all of 6 district schools have converted.

The application also promotes “New York as a leader in providing charter autonomy” and quotes a federal report’s finding that “SUNY has been a particularly effective authorizer. It has taken its authorizing duties seriously—both in approving and in overseeing charters—and has not been afraid to close charters that haven’t lived up to their promises.” Ironically, the recent Sampson/Silver bill would have done the opposite: reduce autonomy by letting State Ed Department decide where charter schools can go, and eliminating SUNY and NYC as independent authorizers.

It’s also interesting that the application makes frequent reference to the innovations of Charter Management Organizations, like KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools, and holds up Steiner and King, both charter school supporters, as leaders in the race to the top.

The appendix contains a list of all signatures on MOUs in support of the RTTT application. A huge number of local teachers unions refused to sign, including big cities like Buffalo and Rochester. According to a summary table, 100% of superintendents signed on, 92% of school boards, and only 61% of local unions. I can’t imagine how the state can promise transformation of schools without union support.

I’d like to piggy back on Dee Alpert’s point: There’s nothing in the application which indicates that NYSED did what it should be forced, kicking and screaming, to do, which is to analyze why it has failed so abysmally, and expensively, in the past, much less set out precisely what it is going to do differently in the future.

No. There must be an accounting of the misguided and misleading ELA and Math Test scores–the entire testing program from 2002 to 2009–in which NYSED and CTB were partners in perpetrating a massive fraud.

Before Merryl Tisch and David Steiner go skipping along with promises to reform testing (having dispatched Richard Mills, who could no longer sustain the lies) there must be an independent analysis of the defective testing instruments that have been used, the hocus-pocus setting of the cut scores and the exaggerated reporting of the results.

Eight years and counting of educational negligence, directed by NYSED under the guise of NCLB must not be allowed to go unexamined or unpunished. There is real culpability on the part of CTB and Albany.

Someone was kind enough to send me the list of outfits and people NYSED met with when concocting its RttT application. I was right. There are no legitimate parents’ groups. There are no legitimate disability groups. And, of course, given NYS’ horrific outcomes for kids with disabilities, there are no groups representing the parents of kids with disabilities in NY schools.

What the list is composed of, for the most part, are adults who are paid members of the NYS education industry, directly or indirectly. None of whom would have the sheer nerve to tell NYSED the truth: it is incompetent, its infrastructure is incompetent, and it can’t even get all the schools in the one district it does operate – Roosevelt – up to snuff despite dogs’ years of trying and despite $ millions in extra taxpayer dollars … which its hand-picked superintendents have wasted, bigtime. I’m not even going to mention that there are no representatives of taxpayers.

When it comes both to parents of kids in NY schools, and taxpayers, NYSED’s operant line seems to be “Shut up, pay up, lie back, and enjoy it. Or else.”

In this economy, no matter how much NYSED can impose its spin on the multifarious beneficiaries of its largesse, the fact remains that our school system is incredibly expensive and largely incompetent to do what really needs to be done, which is educate all children to reasonably high levels. This is impliedly admitted in the pitifully low goals NYSED has inserted in its RttT application for improvements on test scores it can’t manipulate, i.e., NAEP scores. Dismal! Appalling! Race to the Bottom.

I expected nothing more from NYSED and the Board of Regents, none of whom can be held legitimately accountable for their abject failures on account of the way NYSED is governed. Shelly Silver rules. Children, their parents, and taxpayers are the ruled.

Time for a change. A drastic one. Now.