Charter School Entrepreneurs Roll Out De Basio Attack Ad For Their "Not Political" Rally

Eliza Shapiro at Politico NY:

A new television ad produced for the pro-charter group Families for Excellent Schools accuses Mayor Bill de Blasio of forcing minority students into failing schools, according to a copy of the yet-unreleased ad obtained by POLITICO New York.

The ad will likely be made public later on Friday, ahead of the group's pro-charter rally on Sept. 30. The rally, which will take the form of a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, is officially intended to help "restore school equality."

...

The ad features two young boys, one white, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a blue shirt, the other black, with a buzzcut and a red shirt.

The clip puts into stark terms the racial and class politics that FES and its allies have embraced in their fight against de Blasio over the last 18 months.

"Because he lives in a wealthy neighborhood, this 6-year-old will attend a good school," the ad's narrator says as the young white boy is walked to school by a white parent.

But when the black boy appears on the screen, the narrator says, "Because he lives in a poor neighborhood, this 6-year-old will be forced in a failing school."

The two boys briefly pass each other on the street as the narrator claims that the white child will likely go to college, while the black boy has little chance of ever attaining a college degree.

A split screen shows the two boys in school; the white boy is happily reading, while the black child is frowning, apparently bored, at his desk.

"Mayor de Blasio, stop forcing kids into failing schools," the narrator says. "Half a million children need new schools, now."

I know a child who attended one of Eva Moskowitz's test prep factories who frowned all the time at school because he was a) bored by the constant test prep and b) sick of being beaten into submission by the abuse and "discipline" from the Success staff.

He doesn't frown much anymore because he's out of the Success prison system and into a school where it's not "All Test Prep All The Time" and "Eyes Up Here!"

I'm sure this ad has been tested by FES and therefore will be effective at further driving down de Blasio's poll numbers, hitting him most where it hurts - with black voters - in order to help Eva Moskowitz or some other pro-charter shill to run for mayor against de Blasio in 2017.

But it's pure lies and propaganda for a whole host of reasons - from the exclusionary attack (charters are, by definition, exclusionary - just ask any child who's been tossed from Success) to the black children are bored in bad schools attack  (which certainly wasn't true in the case of the child I wrote about above.)

That they're rolling out a political attack ad on de Blasio before a rally that they insist is "not political" is even evidence of just how political and full of jive the charter entrepreneurs are.

Cuomo Sticks It To De Basio

That's the Post's takeaway this morning:

Charter schools will be big winners in the new state budget under a tentative deal hammered out by Gov. Cuomo and legislative leaders Thursday night, sources close to the talks said.

For the first time the privately operated schools will be eligible for government funds to cover the costs of leasing classroom space in private buildings, Albany sources said.

The city would be required to first look for space in regular public schools where new charters — or those wishing to expand — could be co-located.

And if such space couldn’t be found, the city would have to reimburse any charters that rent in private buildings, which could cost the city as much as $40 million a year.

And in a slap at Mayor de Blasio, he’ll be barred from charging rent to any charter school co-located in public school buildings.

During the mayoral campaign last year, de Blasio vowed to charge rent to the better funded charter.
“There is a complete ban on rent,” a source familiar with the deal said.

The agreement also calls for de Blasio to find alternate space for all three of Eva Moskowitz Success Academy charters booted from city facilities for the fall.

Cuomo — as well as state Senate leaders Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein — pushed hard for the measures after de Blasio took actions to limit charters.

“The governor stuck it to de Blasio,” said another source.

Michael Fiorillo reacts:

The growing edifice of hypocrisy, deception, greed, corruption and sadistic will-to-power is just sickening to behold.

What a bleak, bleak time: cravenness on the part of those who should be representing us; fear, apathy and ignorance on the part of most of our colleagues; aggressive predation by the privateers and their political courtesans.

We're screwed, folks, we're screwed...

Agreed - the message has been sent.

The corporate whores own the state.

Daily News: How Dare State Comptroller Hold Charter Schools Accountable?

The accountability mavens at the Daily News are very sad that state comptroller Tom Di Napoli wants to audit Eva Muoskowitz's charter school conglomerate and hold her accountable for the public funds she receives to run her schools.

They say Di Napoli is on a witch hunt against charter schools because he is anti-charter and pro-union.

They say it's unfair and unjust that charter schools be subject to audit by the state, that the results charters get with test scores and graduation rates speak for themselves and no other accountability measures are needed.

The accountability mavens at the DN say only public schools and public school teachers need accountability measures.

This is why only public school teachers are required by law to be evaluated using the APPR system while charter school teachers do not have to be evaluated with it.

This is why public school teachers can no longer grade their Regents exams in house while charter school teachers can.

And this is why only public schools should be subject to scrutiny from the state while charter schools should not.

This is all jive, of course, and a political rigging by both the charter pom pom crowd at the DN and Moskowitz herself to avoid scrutiny and accountability.

I wrote earlier this week that her lawsuit to stop the comptroller auditing raises questions like, what is she hiding from the state?

Is she funking with the money?

Is she stealing money?

Is she funking with the student demographics data?

Is she lying about attrition rates or graduate rates?

Is she doing all of these things?

She has to be hiding something.

The question is, what?

Why is she afraid to submit to an audit of public funds by an independent auditor from the state?

We know why the DN accountability mavens are shilling for her.

They're afraid she will be caught funking with the numbers or the student data or the attrition rates or the money and that will be used as a weapon against the charter sector as a whole and Moskowitz in particular.

There's a name for it when you push accountability for one group of people while doing everything you can to help another group - a more favored group - avoid it.

It's called hypocrisy.

And that, in the end, is what the Daily News is engaging in with this piece of propaganda.

What's Eva Moskowitz Hiding From The Public?

Someone in the comments of the Daily News story on the exponential increase of charter school funding under Bloomberg notes how Eva Moskowitz is suing the state to keep them from auditing what she's doing with the public money she receives.

She claims the state comptroller does not have the Constitutional authority to audit charters.

She's arguing that the Regents already have all the information that the state comptroller wants for the audit and the comptroller's audit duplicates what the Regents already do.

According to Courthouse News:

    Success Academy seeks declaratory judgment that the comptroller has no authority to audit charter schools, and a permanent injunction to bar such audits.

     In the alternative, it wants the Harlem 1 audit declared unconstitutional and stopped.

     It also seeks costs and attorneys' fees.

But the Regents are not an auditing body, the state comptroller's office is.

What Moskowitz really is saying with this lawsuit is that she thinks charter schools are above the law.

Can you imagine a public school suing to keep the state from auditing what it's doing with public money?

But Eva Moskowitz thinks nothing of it.

And that's because she knows she's a special citizen as a premier owner and operator of a charter school conglomerate.

Because over the last ten years, the charter industry has been treated as the special scions of the Bloomberg administration and have been granted special status, free rent, and exclusive access to Tweed.

Remember the Juan Gonzalez article that exposed the Moskowitz/Klein email chain?

Just another example of the special status the charter industry has in this city.

But despite what Moskowitz thinks about her special status, she is not above the law.

And frankly, her fighting of the audit may cause her more problems in the long run than actually submitting to it.

Because her lawsuit to stop the comptroller auditing raises questions like, what is she hiding from the state?

Is she funking with the money?

Is she stealing money?

Is she funking with the student demographics data?

Is she lying about attrition rates or graduate rates?

Is she doing all of these things?

She has to be hiding something.

The question is, what?

Why is she afraid to submit to an audit of public funds by an independent auditor from the state?

Moskowitz Mistakenly Thinks De Blasio Praised Success Academy

Eva wrong again:

Charter school operator Eva Moskowitz is firing another salvo in her ongoing war with Democratic mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio.

Moskowitz has long been engaged in bitter battle with the public advocate over her school network -- particularly on the issue of co-locating charters within traditional public school buildings. She questioned why, if de Blasio is so intent on reining in charters, he sent a letter praising the schools' work.

"We're glad Bill de Blasio recognizes the great work of our schools, teachers and students, so it begs the question why he repeatedly vows to stop us from serving these very children if he becomes mayor," Moskowitz told the Daily News Tuesday. "New York's schoolchildren need a leader, not a panderer."

Turns out de Blasio's government office sends the letter of praise, along with two honorary certificates to be awarded to students, to every high school in the city: "Bill believes in supporting all kids in all schools," said spokesman Wiley Norvell. "He's proud to recognize these stand-out students."

Nice try, Eva.

But as usual, you're completely wrong about stuff.

NYCDOE's Marge Feinberg: We Can't Afford To Remove PCB's From Schools Because We Spent The Money On Smartboards

Oh, yes - that's what she said:

A South Bronx charter school founded by a former city councilwoman replaced its city-issued toxic lighting fixtures by itself — rather than waiting for a Department of Education retrofit for the public schools in the same building this summer, the Daily News has learned.

The Bronx Success Academy, founded by Eva Moskowitz, spent its own money to replace the lights — which are leaking with cancer-causing chemicals — while two other schools in the same Morris Ave. building have to wait.

“I think it’s terrible,” Dean Gross, a science teacher at M.S. 203, which shares space with the charter school, Bronx Academy of Letters and P.S. 168.

Gross said he’s forced to teach students in a windowless classroom with a poor ventilation system and no air conditioner — and lighting fixtures that leak polychlorinated biphenyls, which are linked to cancer, reproductive and neurological problems, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Our kids in the building have so many issues to begin with,” Gross added. “We’re the number one asthma district in the country. This does not help. The teachers are dragging. They’ve got headaches and stomach pains.”

Union health and safety officials are to meet with the city Tuesday to discuss how Success Charter Network removed the tainted lighting fixtures.

The Bronx Academy of Letters, one of four schools in the building, had its lights replaced last summer as part of a classroom redesign, according to the city.

Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the building’s remaining tainted lights would be switched out this summer. Feinberg added the city spent more than $1.7 million upgrading the three public schools.

“The funding was spent on Smartboards, bathroom upgrades, laptop carts, drinking fountains, reconfiguring classroom space for Bronx Academy of Letters, and new classroom doors,” Feinberg said.

I'm going to leave aside the issue of unequal treatment between the Eva charter and the public schools in the same building for now.

Let's just focus on what NYCDOE spokesperson Marge Feinberg said about this PCB mess.

Let me repeat what she said here:

"We couldn't get the cancer-causing PCB's out of these schools, the ones dripping on people's heads and making them sick, because we spent all the money on Smartboards and laptop carts.  But don't worry - we'll get those PCB's removed this summer as soon as the new budget money kicks in!"

Marge Feinberg - quite literally one of the worst people in the world.

Can you imagine the lack of morality, empathy and humanity it takes to say the stupid crap she says?

NY Post: Celebrate Mother's Day With School Choice And Eva Moskowitz!

You can't make this stuff up.

Here's a Post editorial today:

Today is Mother’s Day, when across the nation we honor the women who gave birth to us, fed us and took us to school.

And if a new survey by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice is right, two-thirds of American mothers with school-age children want more options about where they can send their kids to school — including vouchers.

No doubt, New York moms want the same for their kids. Although the state’s teachers unions make vouchers politically impossible at the moment, the rise of charter schools has introduced a hopeful element of excellence, choice and accountability into our public-school system.

Just ask Carmen Melendez, whose two daughters — Camilla, 9, and Catalina, 7 — attend Success Academy 2 in Harlem. Melendez says that even though her daughter Camilla qualified for a gifted-and-talented program in the traditional public schools, she decided to stay with the charter because “Success has a clear vision of what they want to do with the children.”

Khadijah Pickel is the mother of twins Idris and Ruqayah, 10, who are also Success Academy students. “I went to District 5 public schools, but you want better for your kids,” says Pickel. “I wasn’t willing to gamble with my children’s future.”

Pickel notes that friends with kids in district schools are amazed that her children have science five days a week, with projects beginning in kindergarten. She’s especially gratified that Success mainstreams kids with special needs, like Ruqayah, who has autism.

To give a hint of the demand, last month Success held its annual lottery for admission, attracting 12,500 applicants for a mere 1,400 slots. That means disappointment for thousands of moms who were not as lucky as Melendez and Pickel and their kids.

Sadly, as Success CEO Eva Moskowitz points out, if some mayoral candidates get their way, mothers will have less choice and more disappointment in the future. These are the politicians working to make life more difficult for charters. Their current tactic is to oppose co-locating charters in existing public-school buildings. Charters need co-location because, unlike public schools, they get no money to finance buildings.

The way Pickel sees it, “Nothing’s worse than telling a parent that they can’t send their kids where they want to.”

The way we see it? Mother knows best.

The charter school/privatization community must be feeling a lot of anxiety these days to feel the need to trot out the "School Choice Is What Mothers Want!' meme for Mother's Day.

Notice that the survey firm that the Post uses for this meme is the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.

That firm would be named for Milton Friedman, the neo-liberal economist who promoted the privatization of every part of the public sphere, not Thomas Friedman, the NY Times columnist who promotes the privatization of every part of the public sphere.

But either way, it's no wonder that the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice found two-thirds of mom's wanted "choice" for their kids.

You see, that's what the foundation was founded for - to promote and propagate choice all over this land.

The Posties quickly pivot from the self-serving survey from the Friedman Foundation to glowing statements from a couple of moms with kids in Success Academy charter schools.

They even manage to find one mom with a daughter who is autistic and has been mainstreamed by Success!

Wow - wouldn't every mom want this kind of education for their kids?

You bet, say the Posties, which is why we should all celebrate Mother's Day by making sure all those bad Democratic candidates for mayor don't get their way and cease the cancering of the public school system with charter school co-locations.

That Success Academy has a strong reputation for filtering out children with special needs and counseling those children out of their schools when they do slip through the filter is never mentioned in the Post editorial.

Nor is it mentioned that when they are "stuck" with children with special needs in their schools, they treat them like second class citizens.  

It's a shame the Posties couldn't speak to these parents of children with special needs who attend Success charters.

Brooklyn parents with kids at two charter schools in Cobble Hill and the Upper West Side are furious over the shoddy services they say their special needs children are getting.

Instead of making sure a teaching assistant is shadowing the students as mandated by law, the kids have been repeatedly suspended from the Success Academy Charter Schools for rowdy behavior, the parents charge .

“I don’t want my child to be ostracized. He has needs that need to be met,” said Crown Heights mom La-Tarsha Williams of her son Amani Smith, 6, a student at the Success Academy Cobble Hill.

The schools are part of the chain founded and run by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

Williams said her son had been suspended 20 times since the start of the school year for hitting other children, calling out in class, and throwing objects. He’s missed 50 days of class, according to Williams who attributes the behavior problems to a change in the child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) in October when his school aide was taken away.

“When they have zero tolerance, I totally understand that. But this is definitely extreme for him to miss that many days of school,” said Williams.

Success officials deny the claims and say no child had been suspended for that length of time.

"While federal privacy law prohibits us from talking about these individual cases, parents must consent to any change to a child's IEP, and every child at Success Academy Cobble Hill whose IEP requires (an aide) has one," said SCA Spokeswoman Jenny Sedlis.

City Councilwoman Letitia James (D - Clinton Hill) blasted SCA for the suspensions and asked state officials to investigate. “A zero tolerance policy for special needs children is a bad one,” said James.

“Suspending 5,6 and 7-year old’s with IEP’s is setting them up for failure.”

Other parents also blasted the practice.

“He’s a 5-year-old who gets impatient in a classroom setting. That’s what ADHD is,” said Carroll Gardens dad George Mazzella about his son Vincent.

Mazzella’s child had been suspended multiple times totalling 31 days for throwing a piece of cinderblock near students and hitting a teacher in the arm with a plastic band.

Mazzella said his son has had five different paras who have all left the school. Now, the dad is sitting with the boy in class.

“This is outrageous, idiotic and it shouldn’t be done,” said Mazzella, who is missing work to be with his son.

Fatima Geidi, of East New York, said son Jamir, 7, who attends the Success school on the Upper West Side is afraid the boy will get more suspensions for acting out.

“No parent wants to see their child lose out on things they’re entitled to,’ said Geidi, who was promised but never got daily reports on Jamir’s behavior. She also had to hire a lawyer to get the school to give Jamir mandated occupational therapy. “The school dropped the ball.”

Maybe the Success Academy charters aren't the wonderland depicted in the Postie editorial.

Maybe if your child has special needs, you don't want to send him/her to Success or other charter schools where they have "zero tolerance" policies.

Too bad the Posties couldn't give us the more complex and accurate view of the Eva Moskowitz/Success Academy juggernaut.

Too bad they had to use Mother's Day to try and sell their public school privatization movement.

Nice thing is, they're doing buyouts and layoffs at the NY Post, which bleeds over $110 million dollars every year and is reported to be on its last legs.

Maybe once the Posties lose their jobs writing privatization propaganda for the Post they can join the Success Academy juggernaut and write it directly for Eva Moskowitz.

Here's The Strategy Going Forward

In case you haven't seen the news:

The Department of Education has reversed a decision to place a charter school in the same building as Brownsville Academy High School, the transfer school which fought the co-location with a student-led lawsuit.

D.O.E. officials said on Wednesday that they found an alternate site for the Success Academy elementary school. They would not say whether the lawsuit played a role in the change.

“While we believed co-locating the two schools was the best option at the time, another better option became available,” said Devon Puglia, a D.O.E. spokesman. “As a result, we decided to propose a new location.”

The D.O.E. is now proposing to locate the new charter school at P.S. 167 The Parkway in Crown Heights. 

Oh, sure - the lawsuit didn't play a role in the DOE backing down and putting the Success charter somewhere else.

The lawsuit - which was student-led - had everything to do with the DOE backing down and choosing another site.

The last thing Eva wanted to do was embroil the Success Charter brand in a fight against a student-led lawsuit at an A-rated transfer school with a population of special needs students.

I wouldn't be surprised if Eva herself asked for another site to replace this one.

And this shows us what the strategy against the deform movement going forward should be - student- and parent-led lawsuits against co-locations, closures, etc.

The DOE and Eva are happy to fight the UFT on this stuff.

They're not so happy to fight students on it.

Doesn't make for such nice headlines.

There's a lesson here.

Corporate Education Reformers Looking To Churn Out Obedient Workers And Compliant Consumers

This Alternet article on the connection between behavioralism and consumerism resonates in the day and age of corporate education reform:

Those who rise to power in the corporatocracy are control freaks, addicted to the buzz of power over other human beings, and so it is natural for such authorities to have become excited by behavior modification.

Alfie Kohn, in Punished by Rewards (1993), documents with copious research how behavior modification works best on dependent, powerless, infantilized, bored, and institutionalized people. And so for authorities who get a buzz from controlling others, this creates a terrifying incentive to construct a society that creates dependent, powerless, infantilized, bored, and institutionalized people.
Many of the most successful applications of behavior modification have involved laboratory animals, children, or institutionalized adults. According to management theorists Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham in Work Redesign (1980), “Individuals in each of these groups are necessarily dependent on powerful others for many of the things they most want and need, and their behavior usually can be shaped with relative ease.”

...

Behavior modification is fundamentally a means of controlling people and thus for Kohn, “by its nature inimical to democracy, critical questioning, and the free exchange of ideas among equal participants.”

For Skinner, all behavior is externally controlled, and we don’t truly have freedom and choice. Behaviorists see freedom, choice, and intrinsic motivations as illusory, or what Skinner called “phantoms.” Back in the 1970s, Noam Chomsky exposed Skinner’s unscientific view of science, specifically Skinner’s view that science should be prohibited from examining internal states and intrinsic forces.

In democracy, citizens are free to think for themselves and explore, and are motivated by very real—not phantom—intrinsic forces, including curiosity and a desire for justice, community, and solidarity.

What is also scary about behaviorists is that their external controls can destroy intrinsic forces of our humanity that are necessary for a democratic society. Researcher Mark Lepper was able to diminish young children’s intrinsic joy of drawing with Magic Markers by awarding them personalized certificates for coloring with a Magic Marker. Even a single, one-time reward for doing something enjoyable can kill interest in it for weeks.

Behavior modification can also destroy our intrinsic desire for compassion, which is necessary for a democratic society. Kohn offers several studies showing “children whose parents believe in using rewards to motivate them are less cooperative and generous [children] than their peers.” Children of mothers who relied on tangible rewards were less likely than other children to care and share at home. 

And that, of course, is the ultimate objective of the corporate education reform movement - to develop obedient, compliant, easily manipulated children who will acquiesce as adults to the capitalist punishment/rewards system they have been taught as children in public schools run by authoritarian control freaks like Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Eva Moskowitz, Geoffrey Canada, et al.

Evil - truly evil.

How Will Chancellor Walcott Give The Finger To Teachers This Fall?

Oh, no - Chancellor Walcott dislocated his middle finger this week while walking to the gym.

As a result, he has to wear a cast over his hand that puts his middle finger out of commission for at least a couple of weeks until it heals.

With school beginning for teachers in less than three weeks, will Chancellor Walcott be healed in time to give the traditional "Middle Finger" to educators on the first day back to school?

Will he be able to give the "Middle Finger" to all those schools he tried to close a couple of months ago that a judge said he couldn't close?

Throughout the Bloomberg administration, the first day back to school is traditionally a time to recommence teacher-bashing season, to warn teachers about impending layoffs during the January budget fight, to smear teachers in the press as perverts and sex offenders, and to suggest that anybody off the street could do a better job teaching than the 75,000+ current people working as NYCDOE teachers.

An indispensable tool for the administration to get these ideas across, a shorthand for it, if you will , is the ceremonial "First Day Back To School Chancellor's Middle Finger."

Joel Klein was a master at it, often employing Eva Moskowitz to join him in his reverse salute to teachers, when he wasn't ignoring people and playing Angry Birds on his Blackberry, that is.



Bloomberg is pretty good at giving people the finger too, although like most oligarchs, he often prefers to hire somebody else to do the dirty work for him.




And of course his hiring of Cathie Black - a woman with no education experience, no common sense, no empathy, no class and no clue - was a "Middle Finger" to all the students, parents teachers, and administrators in New York City.



When you look up the phrase "Middle Finger" in the Urban Dictionary, you see "Bloomberg's hiring of Cathie Black as NYC schools chancellor" as one of the definitions.

In any case, here's hoping Chancellor Walcott's middle finger will be healed in time to tell teachers just what he thinks about them on September 4, 2012.

Sure Walcott can express his disdain, scorn and contempt for teachers without it, but nothing gets those feelings across like a good middle finger.

See what I mean?

Get well soon, Dennis - and stop drinking with Cathie Black, okay!

Or you'll end up like her.

Bloomberg Uses Charter Schools Like A Cancer To Privatize The School System

A nice opinion piece in the Times by a parent of a student at PS 261 about the harm charters do to public schools:

MY daughter is a kindergarten pupil at P.S. 261 in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. She started there in September, and she loves everything about it: her friends, her teachers and her school-related activities, like Girl Scouts. Intense excitement accompanied both the post office project earlier this year and the Halloween Day Characters Parade, in which her class dressed up as the Three Little Pigs.

A few weeks ago, for three days in a row starting at 3 p.m., a representative from the Success Academy charter school that is scheduled to open this fall in adjacent Cobble Hill stood outside the doors of P.S. 261, handing out fliers and attempting to recruit its students. On day two, outraged teachers asked the man to leave. He refused. On day three, a loose group of teachers, parents and students occupied the sidewalk next to him. Heated words were exchanged. It wasn’t until the next day, when a schoolwide rally unfolded in the front yard — and cameras from NY1 arrived — that the representative vanished. I can’t help wondering if this is the educational future that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had in mind when, in his State of the City address earlier this year, he called for 50 new charter schools to open in the next two years.

Here in the Brownstone Belt, most elementary schools are overwhelmingly populated either by poor minorities or middle- to upper-middle-class whites. P.S. 261 is one of a minority of Brooklyn primary schools that manages to be truly diverse — racially, ethnically and economically. While 35 percent of its student body qualifies for free lunch, it also attracts and retains children from professional families of all races and creeds, who work in law, media and the arts.

If Success Academy succeeds in luring away even a fraction of 261’s students, however, it could well create a snowball effect in which its middle-class population ends up fleeing. In New York City, school budgets are determined in part by the number of students who attend. So fewer kids at P.S. 261 would mean less money for the principal to spend on everything from teachers to class trips.

...

The apparent reason for opening a charter school in a gentrified neighborhood like Cobble Hill (or the Upper West Side, where a Success Academy opened last year) is to bring more middle-class and upper-middle-class families into the publicly funded charter system. But if the Success Academy succeeds in its mission, it could well end up destroying schools like P.S. 261 that already succeed in attracting these families. My daughter’s new friends include the children of both marketing executives and maintenance workers. At drop-off recently, I watched as she and a friend who lives in a nearby housing project walked hand in hand down the hall. In its promise of a more just world, the sight made me almost teary-eyed. I wonder how much longer those kinds of scenes will prevail.

The communities of Boerum Hill and Cobble Hill overwhelmingly do not support a charter in the neighborhood. (The same is true in Williamsburg, where, despite a huge outcry, another Success Academy was recently rubber-stamped.) This has been made abundantly clear at both community meetings and those for the Panel for Educational Policy. Perhaps the mayor believes he knows better than the thousands of families who have come out to voice their opposition. But then, wasn’t the whole point of the “school choice” movement to give power back to the parents?

...

The existing schools in which they set up shop suffer both in terms of resources (only so many kids can fit in the lunchroom at one time) and morale. If the Cobble Hill Success Academy opens as planned in the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, which also houses a second high school and a special-needs program, in five years the building will be at 108 percent capacity — unless, of course, the other schools shrivel up and die.

Call us paranoid, but parents like me are starting to wonder whether Mayor Bloomberg’s larger goal isn’t to privatize the entire New York City public school system. Why else would he be foisting charters on communities that don’t want them? And how else can he justify diverting tax dollars to organizations that employ people to blanket neighborhoods with advertisements and try to poach students from public schools that are already thriving?

It's not paranoia - that is EXACTLY the mayor's larger goal.

It's also the goal of the Obama administration, the Gates Foundation, the Cuomo/Pearson Education administration, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, every hedge fund manager/education reformer you can name, Rupert Murdoch/News Corp., Mort Zuckerman, the Washington Post/Kaplan Company, NBC/Comcast/University of Phoenix and so many of the other people involved in education reform.

Bloomberg Attacks Teachers In State Of The City Speech While NYPD Arrests Protesters Outside

The Mayor of the 1% continued his attacks on teachers in his State of the City speech today and his NYPD army continued their attacks on the First Amendment and the Constitution outside the venue where he gave that speech:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg put a strong focus on education Thursday in his 11th State of the City address.

Speaking at Gouverneur Morris High School in the Bronx, the mayor touted his administration's accomplishments in improving graduation rates and reducing crime in city schools.

But he says much more needs to be done, especially when it comes to attracting, rewarding and retaining top-notch educators.

"The education reforms we’ve pioneered over the past decade – no matter what the naysayers say – have been widely adopted by school systems across the nation, but this year we’ll be putting our foot on the gas and picking up the pace," said the mayor.

Bloomberg said he wants to retain the best educators by giving a $20,000 raise to those who are rated highly effective for two consecutive years.

As for teachers who don't make the grade at 33 struggling schools, the mayor wants to create "school-based committees'' to evaluate teachers.

It's a measure that would sidestep a dispute with the teachers union that is preventing the city from receiving $60 million in federal grants.

The mayor said he also wants to give parents more top-quality choices by opening 100 new schools over the next two years, including 50 charters.

...

While Bloomberg was largely met with applause Thursday, a group of protesters outside the auditorium were less thrilled.

The New York City Police Department says a total of 32 people were arrested.

All were charged with disorderly conduct.

There you have it.

Oppose Mayor 1% and his oligarchy and you'll end up in jail for disorderly conduct.

And there's a lot to oppose in this speech.

Bloomberg and his education reform backers know that there are only two more years left to finish the job of destroying the public education system in New York completely, so they've got to work overtime.

Close 25 schools.

Open 100 new ones.

Make 50 of those charter schools.

Give Eva Moskowitz and KIPP a bunch of new charters.

Place those charters in existing schools where they can act like a cancer and kill off the traditional public schools in those buildings.

Close more schools.

Open more charters.

Repeat.

Keep repeating.

And of course the one thing that stands in the way of this Education Reform Endgame is the teachers union contract.

So he's going to no longer abide by either that or state law.

He's just going to "turnaround" the SIG schools, fire half the staff and and bring in newbies to replace them.

Everybody gets evaluated by test scores and if you're found to be highly effective on that measure, you get $20,000 (no word on where that money comes from exactly - from the school itself where the teacher works? From the city? From Bloomberg himself?)

But if you're found ineffective, you're fired.

How like a Mamet play.

Only this is real life, these are real people and this evaluation system Bloomberg vows to use has real flaws.

Like a large margin of error.

Like huge swings in findings from year to year.

Nonetheless, Bloomberg is going to go through with this stuff and it is up to the UFT leadership and teachers and parents groups and community groups to push back on this charterizing and privatizing of the school system.

That's where the NYPD comes into the equation.

It's not a mistake that Bloomberg and Walcott are using riot police to quell protest of the mayor's school policies.

You can bet that as Bloomberg and Walcott put these policies in place and protest grows, they will use more and more police to quell dissent.

They want us to get the message - OBEY.

They've got lots of orange netting, pepper spray, police batons, horses and riot gear ready for the Shock and Awe Endgame coming in the next two years.

And they're going to use it.

All of it.

Get ready.

UWS Parents Sue City And Chancellor Walcott Over Mistress Eva School

The Wicked Witch of Upper Manhattan wants more territory, but Upper West Side parents and pols are not ceding ground:

Upper West Side parents and elected officials are suing the city and incoming Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott to stop an elementary charter school from moving into a neighborhood high school building.

The Brandeis Educational Complex already houses four high schools, but parents want to block a plan by the Department of Education to move the Charter Success Academy into the building that currently houses four small high schools on West 84th Street.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday, alleges that the DOE violated its own procedures and used inaccurate high school enrollment figures in its proposal.

Supporters of the suit say the plan will lead to overcrowding and a loss of space for science labs, classrooms and arts programs.

Others said it made little sense to put younger students together with high schoolers.

"It doesn't make sense to put five- and six-year-olds in a high school with teenagers, some as old as 20. It doesn't make sense to spend $500,000 to make a new cafeteria, a separate cafeteria, for these students," said Lisa Speglich, a parent of a high school student. "And it doesn't make sense to take away high school seats and put an elementary school in this building, when there's great demand for high school seats in District 3."

No, it doesn't make sense, unless you're trying to put a cancer into the building that eventually kills off the other four high schools and gives the whole building over to Eva's charter network, which is of course the actual strategy.

Mistress Eva, for her part, replied with some jive buzzwords:

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Success Charter Network says in part, "This is a frivolous lawsuit that seeks to deny the 700 Upper West Side families who applied to Upper West Success Academy access to another great public school in their neighborhood."

Clearly Eva has tested phrases like frivolous lawsuit and great public school and discovered that they work in swaying people over to her side.

But this is not a frivolous lawsuit in the least.

Rather, it is a necessity given Mistress Eva's continued grabbing of more and more public school space for her hedge fundie-favored charter network.

And of course, the larger the network gets, the more Mistress Eva pays herself.

Mistress Eva Criticizes DOE

Exactly why is Eva Moskowitz criticizing the NYCDOE?

More than a third of New York City students who entered first grade in 2003 identified as English language learners couldn't pass an English-language proficiency test last year when they were in the seventh grade, according to Department of Education data.

The numbers were culled by Eva Moskowitz, a former Manhattan city councilwoman known for her aggressive scrutiny of the Department of Education and clashes with the teachers union. She is now the head of a charter-school network.

Ms. Moskowitz said she requested the information from the DOE and compiled a report—which she plans to release Tuesday—because she is concerned that large numbers of English language learners are not getting appropriate instruction. While the city has made some progress, "we need bolder, faster change," she said.

Oh, yes - that "bolder, faster" thing is her brand, isn't it?

So now she's creating news to promote her brand - "Bolder, Faster Change!" - and the Murdoch paper is willingly and enthusiastically helping her.

Funny how she never did much criticism when her pal Joel was chancellor.

But I guess that shows you just how low Cathie Black is held in esteem.

Even Mistress Eva has decided it's open season on her.

As for Eva, if she gave a shit about ESL students, maybe she should, you know, take some into her schools and hold onto them until the 8th grade.

But as usual this all about Eva promoting Eva.

Mistress Eva Runs Charter Schools Like "North Korea"

The Voice has a front page piece about Eva Moskowitz's Bronx Success Academy.

Overall, the article carries Eva's water and works as propaganda piece, but there some choice cuts from it that really should serve warning to those of us who are still, you know, human:

In New York City's public schools, the most common problem for teachers is that they cannot get their kids to shut up. From kindergarten through high school, it is the bane of almost every teacher's existence. Even experienced teachers talk about the frustration of having a handful of disruptive kids—or even just one—that keeps everyone else from learning. Bronx Success Academy 1 isn't having any of it, and not just because it can fire teachers and students. The newly opened charter school is part of a network run by Eva Moskowitz, a woman who inspires a remarkable loathing from New York's teachers' union and other advocates of traditional public education. Employing non-union instructors, Bronx Success exists not only to educate kids but to show that it can do so better than traditional public schools, like the one it shares a building with, P.S.30 (Wilton).

...

The sheer efficiency with which the students, teachers, and parents present themselves and govern nearly every gesture and utterance is so striking that the thought "North Korean–like" kept coming to mind during multiple Voice visits over a four-month period to Bronx Success.

From day one, students are indoctrinated with drills: how to clear their trays and deposit trash at the cafeteria; how to stand in line and walk up stairs; how to track adults with their eyes when they walk and when they talk.

And to really make it sink in, movements are matched with rhymes.

"Hands on top," adults ring out, and children instinctively know to respond, "That means stop!" as they put their hands on their heads. Sitting with their hands in their laps is "magic five." Spend just a few hours there, and soon you'll be responding like a trained poodle: Months later, there hasn't been any let-up from the day of the school's opening, and the rhyming and gesturing is as hard-wired in the children as a soldier's salute.

...

Policies that defy common sense infuriate Eva Moskowitz, the well-paid CEO of the Success Charter Network. A former chairwoman of the City Council's Education Committee, she has been the scourge of the United Federation of Teachers, the department of education, and civil rights activists at one time or another. She is praised by some education advocates and reviled by others. An article about her on GothamSchools.org is named "What is it about Eva Moskowitz that attracts so many enemies?" A longtime source for the Voice says, "She is the devil, and I cannot think of anything good to say about her."

Shortly before he left office, Chancellor Joel Klein described Moskowitz as "a lightning rod" of criticism, but had nothing but praise for her.

On this day in the Bronx, Moskowitz is opening a charter school that has 185 black and Hispanic children and one white child. And though she could afford to send her children anywhere on her salary ($300,000), two of her own children go to Harlem Success Academy 3, where they are among the only white children. (Her older son goes to NEST+m, a traditional public school for the gifted on the Lower East Side.)

So why is a woman who spends all her time educating poor children of color so hated, especially when she puts her own kids where her mouth is?

For one reason, her Success Academies are blamed for cannibalizing. The more Bronx Success grows, the more its "co-location" neighbor Wilton will have to shrink—putting Wilton's staff and parents on the defensive as their school is pushed toward irrelevance and possible extinction. For a charter to grow, the other school in its building must die (or, reformers hope, rise to the challenge). The battle for space alone can make enemies out of entire school communities. That movie is playing out right now on the Upper West Side, where Moskowitz is attempting to open her first charter in an affluent white community, against great opposition.

Why, contend charter school critics, pit kindergartners against each other? Why should Wilton kids see that Bronx Success has better bathrooms, a longer school day, and more resources in the same building?

...

This may be the most remarkable thing about a Moskowitz school like Bronx Success: Walk down the hallways, and you are immediately struck by it.

The quiet.

"Our time was 16 seconds yesterday, scholars. We need to get that down!"

It's four months later on a cold January morning, and Jennifer Haynes, the 2027 University of Michigan kindergarten teacher, is timing her students as they move from their assigned places on the classroom's carpet to their desks. She has a timer in her hand. Like every teacher in the school, she times everything.

Not wasting time is an obsession at Bronx Success. Teachers time how long it takes for children to take off their boots and put on their regulation black shoes. They time how long it takes for everyone to stop talking and sit quietly in "magic five." They're always trying to improve the time from one day to the next.

Just how time-obsessed are they?

"At B.S.A.1, we resolve to make the most of every precious minute of learning." This enthusiastic mantra is printed on a schedule posted on the faculty bathroom stall door. (Yes, even the moments spent sitting on the toilet are valuable minutes to remind teachers not to waste time.)

Speaking of the bathrooms, they are a point of pride and competition, as well. "The Golden Paper Towel Competition" is posted in the hallway, pitting the school's boys and girls against each other to see who can get points for having "nothing on the floor," making "zero noise," and being "quick scholars."

The sense of timing here is rigid, and it started before the school year began. (Parents were required to attend certain meetings the summer before.) If a child is chronically late, the school initiates wake-up calls to make sure the family does something about it. But even being late one time results in Saturday school for child and parent.

It's not for every family. One child, a kindergarten boy, showed up almost late the first day of school, back in August. While the Voice was observing, he was almost always the slowest child to respond to discipline routines, dawdling when other kids were in "magic five" or had already gotten their "hands on top."

During our visit in January, he was pulled out of the school by his family, who enrolled him in P.S.30 in the same building. It's precisely this type of thing—families who can't cut the routine and leave—that gives charters a huge advantage over traditional public schools, which have to serve everyone.

The time obsession, the young teachers who must work 10 hours days and multi-task every minute of the day, the military discipline instilled in children - some parents want this for their children, but I know that I wouldn't want that for mine and I guarantee that the overwhelming majority of the ruling class wouldn't want it for theirs.

Eva sends her kids to her own boot camps because she wants to make money and what better way to sell the schools than say she sends her own kids to them.

But I guarantee you this as well - if Eva weren't running these schools and making a pretty good penny off of them, she wouldn't be sending her children to them (or to any others like them.)

As for whether this is the kind of education system that we should want in America (as opposed to say, North Korea), well, I defer to Bloomberg, Klein, Obama, et al. who do NOT send their kids to these kinds of schools but instead send them to progressive schools with progressive policies.

Those are the kinds of schools we ought to be designing for the future.

What Eva runs and what Obama, Bloomberg, Klein, et al. promote are schools that teach the kids of the working classes (and especially minority kids) the Holy Trinity of modern American society:

WORK

OBEY

SHOP

I think it's time to stop that.

Fraud

From last night's PEP meeting:

After more than five-and-a-half hours of testimony from hundreds of speakers, a city panel voted early Wednesday morning to close 10 schools.

...

As the panel deliberated beginning at midnight, Chancellor Cathie Black got booed by the crowd of by-then just 150 stalwart audience members when Sullivan asked about one of the locations for a charter school. "Oooh," she mimicked the crowd before responding.

The panel, which has a majority of mayoral appointees, has never voted down a closing and rarely rejects a proposal from the agency.

When the votes were in shortly after 1:15, the crowd - joined by United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew - rebuked the panel members, chanting, "fraud."

Earlier, Public Advocate Bill De Blasio asked the city to delay Tuesday's vote on two of Success Charter schools in Manhattan because he believes the city hasn't addressed parents' concerns.

Some students at Wadleigh Secondary School will have to eat lunch at 9:45 a.m. if the agency moves forward with plans to bring Harlem Success Academy 1 to the building already shared by Frederick Douglass Academy II, he noted in a letter to officials.

At the Brandeis campus, where Upper West Success is slated to move into a building already shared by five high schools, De Blasio raised several issues: overcrowding in the district, the building's recent $22 million renovation, and the "safety concerns" raised by 5-year-olds sharing space with teenagers.

"Almost invariably, when the Department of Education implements major changes to schools without listening to the concerns of parents we get an unacceptable result - a worse educational environment for our students," said De Blasio, who was among 10 elected officials and their representatives who criticized the proposals at the hearing.

Given that we have proof from the DOE itself that they KNEW they were setting up schools to fail and chose not to send additional help or resources, this vote was definitely fraudulent.

So is the woman who mimicked the crowd at the PEP.

Sounds like she was in her cups by the end of the meeting.

Perhaps it IS time to shower her with condoms and martini olives at the next PEP.

Same goes for the policies.

Two Negative Articles About Mistress Eva In One Day

Mistress Eva Moskowitz gets it from the Times AND the Daily News today.

First, the Times:

Ms. Moskowitz is trying to expand her chain into a whole new precinct of the city, the relatively well-off Upper West Side. And outside the parties she has organized to drum up interest, the reaction has been anything but warm from the stridently anticharter political establishment of the neighborhood.

Opposition to the charter school, named Upper West Success Academy, has been as structured and relentless as the school’s own marketing campaign, and it has already chased the school out of two proposed locations, on 105th and 109th Streets. The local community education council, which represents District 3 public school parents, has mobilized council members and state senators in fighting the charter school, which it contends will siphon middle- and upper-middle-class families from schools that desperately need them for stability.

Members of the teachers’ union and New York Communities for Change, which replaced the state’s chapter of the embattled organization Acorn, are often present at rallies and copied on e-mails debating the next steps in the battle. Even the local community board, which has no official say in the process, has chimed in. On Jan. 4, it voted 40 to 0 against the city’s most recent plan, to house the charter school at the former Louis D. Brandeis High School on West 84th Street.

“In Harlem, there was some need and desire and interest in charter schools,” Noah E. Gotbaum, president of the community education council, said in an interview. “We don’t need more options here. We have options. We have great schools.”

Ms. Moskowitz is known for an aggressive style, and perhaps no neighborhood spoils for a fight more than the Upper West Side. But the dispute also has its roots in population shifts that have crowded out parents from the most popular public schools there, and in a decision last year by lawmakers in Albany to more than double the number of charter schools allowed in the state, as a way to compete for federal Race to the Top money.

...

The Upper West Side is home to some of the best public elementary schools in the city, some of which are now so crowded they can no longer absorb all of the children who live in the zones that they serve.

But beyond those few highly regarded schools, most of the district’s schools do not score well on tests and have been largely shunned by the middle- and upper-middle-class families in their zones, the demographic Ms. Moskowitz was playing to in the gathering on West 99th.

Charter schools, which are publicly financed but privately operated, have been praised as a bureaucracy-free alternative to low-performing regular schools, or derided as draining resources and good students from the schools that need them most.

Indeed, one of the arguments against Upper West Success Academy is that it could lure high-performing students away from struggling schools, making it harder to diversify and improve them. In September, the district received an $11 million federal grant to try to attract more white children to schools where minorities are the overwhelming majority.

There are also concerns over housing an elementary school in a building outfitted for and shared by much older students — four new small high schools already are operating there — and whether there is even space for them in a crowded district.

“Everyone wants their kids to get a good education, and everybody wants other people’s kids to get a good education, but it’s hard to have a conversation of where to fit a charter school in the Upper West Side because we have no room for it,” said Michelle Ciulla-Lipkin, who is the president of a District 3 parents group. She has two children at Public School 199, one of the neighborhood’s best elementary schools, and which had a waiting list for kindergarten this past year.

Now the Daily News:

The latest salvo in Harlem's space wars between charter schools and public schools is a stencilled poster comparing a charter school to the Nazis.

A misspelled sign on the wall of Public School/Middle School 149 in Harlem reads, "Charter schools are like Hitler, tyrents trying to take what's not thiers!"

Photos of that poster and others critical of Harlem Success Academy, provided to the Daily News by charter school officials, were hung up in advance of a hearing on the schools' space-sharing arrangement this week.

"It's shameful that 631 children who have done nothing wrong...have to be subjugated to bigoted language from those so committed to the status quo, that they will lie, intimidate and slander to try to get their way," said the charter school founder Eva Moskowitz.

Moskowitz noted her school is one of the city's best elementary schools, scoring in the top 10 on state English exams last year after the state raised the standards for passing the test.

PS/MS 149 PTA president Sonia Hampton said the stencilling was the work of a student and was removed from the walls when a Harlem Success official notified the principal.

"I don't want the children to see this," she said. "When Harlem Success brought it to our attention, we took it down."

Hampton acknowledged, however, that there are hard feelings in the building about the charter school's expansion into space previously dedicated to the public school.

"[Moskowitz] is pitting parents against each another," she said.

Moskowitz has been a lightning rod for criticism of the charter school movement, particularly in Harlem. She has a network of seven schools, all located in public school buildings across Harlem and in the Bronx.

Most recently, the city Education Department was panned for its attempts to find a place for Moskowitz's newest school, Upper West Success Academy.

The agency named at least three possible locations before settling on a formal proposal to locate the school in the Brandeis High School building. The proposal has not yet been formally approved by the Panel for Educational Policy.

Clearly Moskowitz thought leaking this "Eva Is Hitler" story to the News would engender some sympathy for her and her charter network.

But it actually just reinforces the theme from the Times story and from other articles about her - that she takes what is not hers, that she imposes her will onto people with thought or regard for their wishes, that she is a selfish, self-centered egotistical spoiled brat and people are fed up with her.

Especially the children forced to share a school building with her schools.

Here you have these kids in a broken-down school building lacking space and resources while Mistress Eva and her kids live it up with the newest technology, all the resources they need and hedge fundie and bankster largesse.

So keep leaking stories like this, Mistress.

They don't make you look sympathetic, no matter what you think.

Will Mistress Eva Give A Day Off For A Hurricane?

Or will the Harlem Success Academy students be trekking through 8o mph winds in order to get their Saturday morning test prep?

Charter Schools: The Most Accountable Entities In The Western Hemisphere

The NY Post has been running a series the past few weeks called "War on Charters."

The gist of the series is that the valiant folks running charter schools are up against big, powerful, wealthy forces trying to destroy them.

Today's article is typical - charters are wonderful, they have smaller class sizes, the buildings and facilities are nicer than regular public schools, the kids are engaged in learning, parents are involved - why would anybody want to be opposed to the charter school movement?

Here's my favorite quotation:

"Anyiha goes to a school where classrooms are small, her parents are involved in her homework, she studies violin and piano -- she's engaged, and she wants to learn. This is what we all should have, and it's needed, especially in black communities," Mcbean said.

Indeed, it is what we should have in every school, especially in the black community, and yet we don't.

Of course charter advocates say it is the big bad teachers unions that are the problem - just bust the unions and destroy their stranglehold on public education and every school will be just like the one little Anyiha attends.

But on the face of it, that's laughable. If the powers that be wanted every public school to look like the one little Anyiha attends, they would actually FUND them.

But they don't. Because they're not looking to actually improve the quality of education, they're looking to bust the union and privatize public education (as they have privatized and deregulated every other major part of American life since the Reagan 80's - from the way we fight our wars with Halliburton running things to the way quarterly results on Wall Street seem to be the only gauge of success these days.)

So let's bust some of those myths the Post has been running with the past few weeks and in the process explain just why Rupert Murdoch and other charter advocates are so scared by any outside accountability of the charter school movement (and they must be terrified, actually, because Murdoch ran 8 pro-charter, anti-union stories on the same day State Senator Bill Perkins held hearings on charters.)

First off, charter schools are not tiny powerless entities up against big powerful wealthy forces. Quite the opposite - they are the big powerful wealthy forces, backed by the hedge fund industry and Wall Street, with access to hundreds of millions of investment dollars across the country.

Next, they have some very powerful political advocates looking out for their needs (unlike the regular public schools.) Here in NYC, charter school managers like Eva Moskowitz have direct access to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and can get him to do things like close other public schools to give the charters more room or invite him to poker tournament fund raisers with all the hedge fund managers and Wall Street execs taking some time off from shorting the mortgage market to help raise some cash for charter schools.

Let us also not forget that the mayor, the governor, the president and the secretary of education are all huge fans of charter schools and have been doing all they can to spread the movement far and wide while also doing all they can to hurt unionized teachers (think Central Falls, Rhode Island.)

Finally, let us remember that the reason charters have so many motivated children with motivated parents or guardians is because the movement ONLY accepts motivated children with motivated parents. Show yourself to NOT be motivated and you get counseled out of your charter school really, really quickly (and you disappear from the state stas on schools too.)The same goes for scoring well on tests - score low consistently and the charter school will counsel you out (or have enough non-motivated students with low test scores - like one year at the Harlem Children's Zone - and they may just close down an entire grade. Helps with the overall statistics, you know.)

So the Post can say war has been declared on charter schools and the big bad teachers unions are out to destroy the tiny powerless intrepids just trying to give small classes, good teachers and state of the art facilities to underprivileged kids of color all they want.

But of course it is all jive. What they really want to do is bust the unions and open up public education to private enterprise and for-profit school management companies like Imagine Schools.

The Times ran a four page article on Imagine Schools and found that the charter management company

has elbowed the charter holders out of virtually all school decision making — hiring and firing principals and staff members, controlling and profiting from school real estate, and retaining fees under contracts that often guarantee Imagine’s management in perpetuity.

The arrangements, they say, allow Imagine to use public money with little oversight. “Under either charter law or traditional nonprofit law, there really is no way an entity should end up on both sides of business transactions,” said Marc Dean Millot, publisher of the report K-12 Leads and a former president of the National Charter Schools Alliance, a trade association, now defunct, for the charter school movement.

“Imagine works to dominate the board of the charter holder, and then it does a deal with the board it dominates — and that cannot be an arm’s length transaction,” he said.

Imagine is a private for-profit company that calls itself non-profit and runs schools with public money - making millions in the process.

Imagine charges exorbitant rates to its schools for "rent" - according to the Times article, a charter school in Nevada called 100 Academy pays 40% of the $3.6 million it receives from the state to Imagine Schools for rent.

That's an awful lot of rent money, isn't it?

In addition, they charge a fee to "manage" the school, leaving very little left over to actual run the school and educate the children.

How's that for leaving no for-profit charter school management company behind?

In Philadelphia, a city controller's report found after a year-long investigation

repeated examples of complex real estate arrangements in which charters leased or rented facilities from related nonprofit organizations, excessive salaries for chief executive officers, compliant boards whose members are handpicked by school chiefs, and rampant conflicts of interest.

The controller also concluded that the Philadelphia School District had failed to monitor charter schools, leaving it and taxpayers "extremely vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse."

Here is New York City, politicians found charter schools and move them to land owned by political donors, even if that means sticking the kids in trailers on barren, undeveloped land near the ocean.

Or charter operators pay themselves close to $400,000 dollars to "manage" three charter schools with fewer than 1000 students - a much higher salary than principals in regular public schools make. In fact, it is a higher salary than the schools chancellor makes or the secretary of education makes.

Or charter operators dole out the nepotism and conflicts of interest to family and friends as the Daily News reported on this week:

At some New York City charter schools, it's a family affair.

A Daily News investigation has found some charters hiring wives, husbands and children of school officials and board trustees as vendors, teachers aides and consultants.

Employees of public schools face penalties and suspension for even minor conflicts of interest, such as the teacher fined $1,250 last week for lending her parking permit to her husband.

But at some charters - which are publicly funded but privately run - there's little worry about bringing family members on board.

At the hearing on charter school financing held by Bill Perkins this week, charter advocate and New York Charter Schools Association Policy Director Peter Murphy said that charter schools are the "most accountable entities in the Western hemisphere."

Given the financial improprieties found in charters all across the nation, the test score manipulation schools like the Harlem Children's Zone engage in by getting rid of an entire class of students when the test scores aren't high enough, the financial predation of the charter school management companies, and the nepotism and conflicts of interest so many charter operators engage in, charter schools are actually the LEAST accountable entities in the Western Hemisphere.

Only the derivatives markets and hedge fund industry seem to be less accountable than charter schools these days.

And look at the mess they've created.

Parents Association: School Closures Are Political

I see the need for another investigation:

None of the 19 public schools targeted for shutdown should close until questions about cozy e-mails between the chancellor and a charter school honcho are answered, parents said Sunday.

"We're just furious about this," said Reina Foster, president of the parent association at Public School 332 in Brooklyn, which is scheduled to close.

"It looks like because we didn't know the right people, we got shut down."

A letter signed by 13 parent associations from schools that will start closing next year ripped the process as "tainted with favoritism and driven by political agendas."

As evidence, parents pointed to 125 e-mails, first disclosed by the Daily News' Juan Gonzalez, between Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and charter school operator Eva Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman.

"It seems that a lot of decisions were based on who knows the chancellor," said Sharren Carrington, president of the parent association at W.H. Maxwell High School in Brooklyn.

In the e-mails, Moskowitz asks for space for her charter schools in PS 194 and PS 241 in Harlem, which the Education Department then tried to shut down.

The teachers union sued, and the city never closed the schools. PS 241, which earned a D rating last year, got an A this year. Ed Department spokesman Matthew Mittenthal dismissed the idea that grades are influenced by politics. "The information and methodology used to calculate grades are all publicly available," he said.

Klein and Moskowitz and anybody at else involved in the school closures process (or the school sharing process) need to be dragged to public hearings and grilled over how the decisions are made, what "data" is being used to drive the decisions, and just how it is that schools declaring "failing" one year because a charter operator wants their buildings suddenly become "A" schools next year.

We also need to hear from Klein just how it is that the schools chancellor bestest email buddy is charter operator Eva Moskowitz.

How'd the First Annual Poker Tournament Fundraiser go, Joel?

Win much?