Credit recovery program – scam! YABC programs – scam! No Bid Contract – double scam! Co-location of charter schools – worst scam! Closing schools based on Progress Report – shameful scam! Now coming to all schools: izone and School for One – future scam!

Unlike some prior NYS Comptroller audits, this report doesn’t list the schools audited. For example, were any NYC DOE GED programs in District 79 included? D. 79, according to recent media reports, enrolls 30,000 students in its various GED programs. That is not chump change, not by a long stretch. NYC DOE data shows that virtually no students earn GEDs. Tweed holds close virtually all Distrit 79 numbers. Under NCLB rules, students who drop out of a district-operated GED program must be counted as dropouts – in the cohort of the original regular district high school in which they enrolled. Did the Comptroller look at District 79′s schools’ records at all? We just don’t know. It may well be that students are discharged from District 79′s GED schools at far higher rates than students in “regular” schools are. This would decrease the NYC DOE’s graduation rate and boost its dropout rate even higher.

The NYC DOE’s response to the audit is appalling. While Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein touted their increase in graduation rates as the hallmark of their accomplishments, the response to the audit basically complains that doing the hard work needed to arrive at accurate graduation, dropout and discharge rates is too much to ask NYC DOE staff to do. I have no problems with that … as long as inflated graduation rates are not then used as support for claims of improvement. City Hall and Tweed can’t have it both ways!

It’s of special note that a higher proportion of unsupported discharges were reported in the special ed. group analyzed separately than for the non-disabled and very mildly disabled kids in regular schools’ classes. NCLB, of course, does not permit this artificial bifurcation of kids’ outcomes. The NYC DOE’s special ed. programs and services have long been known to be sub-par, at best. With ginned-up numbers, people who are just not doing their jobs, or who doing them very poorly cannot be held accountable for their failures. It’s time to stop blaming these kids for this and get serious about making the NYC DOE’s special ed. programs something other than a very, very expensive black hole.

Heads should roll in schools Comptroller DiNapoli found to have massaged their numbers improperly. School report cards should be updated with accurate information so that kids and parents looking at high schools will not be misled. Will they? One doubts it since Tweed and City Hall benefitted from these principals’ misconduct. In other words, same old, same old.

If we’re lucky, Comptroller Liu will take a deeper look at these numbers and hopefully in more places, to boot.

It is all nothing new and no surprise to people on the educational front lines. This mayor is educationally corrupt and has been given cover for too long,

Get ready for no-bid crony contracts to come out next.