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Comptroller Bill Thompson chose the first day of school to stoke long burning disputes over whether the Bloomberg administration has reduced class sizes as much as it promised to.

Thompson accused the Department of Education of redirecting or misspending millions of dollars that he says the department promised to use to reduce class sizes. The audit, which is based on data collected in 2008, states that $48 million of the nearly $180 million set aside for Early Grade Class Size Reduction funding was not used to create new classrooms.

Thompson, a mayoral hopeful, said the DOE has been living in a “childish neverland.”

“To use this money for other things [than class size reduction] is to defeat the purpose,” he said.

Class sizes have risen in the last year despite several programs — either foisted upon the administration or willingly adopted — that aimed to reduce them. The administration has repeatedly portrayed class size as too costly a reform to be realistic. In May, Chancellor Joel Klein warned that average class sizes would increase this year as the size of the teaching force declines.

The dispute centers around whether or not the city committed a set amount of money to be used to reduce class sizes for grades K-3. (more…)

For the second day in a row, the city’s comptroller has released an audit questioning the validity of the city’s education data. And for the second day in a row, political jockeying initially overshadowed the report’s content.

At a press conference this morning, Comptroller Bill Thompson, who is running for mayor, said the audit of testing oversight revealed that the Department of Education had allowed “an environment ripe for cheating.” ”We found that the Department of Education has engaged in sloppy and unprofessional practices that encourage cheating and data manipulation,” he said.

But the report did not find new instances of cheating.

The audit focuses on the role played by testing monitors in overseeing the math and English Language Arts, or ELA, tests given to elementary school students in 2008. These monitors, employed by the DOE, make unannounced visits to schools on testing days to ensure that protocols are being followed. Thompson’s audit deems the monitoring system “inadequate.”

The report suggests that the DOE is not thoroughly monitoring its monitors. (more…)

The accelerating 2009 mayoral campaign is distracting from real information inside an audit of city graduation rates released by the city comptroller’s office today. In fact, the audit is neither as damning as Bill Thompson Jr., the comptroller and mayoral hopeful, is claiming — nor as unequivocally rosy as the Bloomberg administration says.

Thompson said the audit suggests that principals and teachers responded to pressure to raise graduation rates by falsifying student records. “The New York City Department of Education has become the Enron of American education, showing the gains and hiding the losses,” he said at a press conference today.

But the audit found no evidence of tampering. Thompson’s declaration about fudging numbers came in remarks to reporters, not the official audit. “Is it just about sloppy bookkeeping or sloppy record-keeping? I don’t think so,” he said. He added, “This is a case where you can read between the lines.”

The audit also concludes that only 2 out of 206 randomly selected graduates, or 1%, did not deserve their diplomas. That’s quite different than the 10% figure being widely reported. Auditors initially challenged 19 graduates, or 10%, but threw out the concerns about 17 of them after school officials provided documents showing they earned their diplomas. And 11 of the 19 had overall grade averages of 80% or better, according to the audit. (more…)

The Department of Education failed to follow more than 200 orders to give disabled students extra services in a timely fashion, an independent audit released today concludes. The audit was the first-ever comprehensive look at how the city follows through with special education orders.

Parents of children with special needs can argue that their children are not receiving enough services at independent hearings where both the parent and the Department of Education testify. Hearing officers either determine that the current services are adequate — or order the city to do more.

The audit is a result of a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit group Advocates for Children, which often represents parents in these hearings, in 2003. The lawsuit accused the city of not following through with hearing officers’ orders, which range from demanding that children receive extra tutoring to mandating a special program for helping children with autism.

An agreement that settled the suit out of court required regular audits of the Department of Education’s efforts to improve responses. The audit released today, the first in a series required by the settlement, found that school officials failed to meet a pre-determined goal. If the failure is repeated in follow-up audits, it could send Advocates for Children and the city to court. (more…)