Is Shael Polakow-Suransky Staying On At Tweed?

Buried in Eliza Shapiro's Capital NY article about Carmen Farina's first workday as NYCDOE schools chancellor is this:

Asked about whether the D.O.E's chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, will stay on, Fariña said "no personnel decisions have been made yet."

This wasn't the only polite answer she gave. 

When asked about charters, Shapiro reported that Farina said that "the department will have a 'protocol' for charter schools' role in the system soon."

Political responses on the first day at work, which totally makes sense - no reason to upset any apple carts on Day One.

And with Farina appointed so late to the chancellor position, I can see where she wouldn't want to clean house at Tweed right away.

Nonetheless, if Polakow-Suransky isn't gone from Tweed by the end of the school year, we have a problem.

Chancellor Pick Announcement May Come By End Of Next Week

From Politicker:

Mr. de Blasio said Wednesday that he’ll soon announce some hires for his new administration. “You can safely assume that there will be be announcements by the end of next week,” he offered, denying a report he’s already selected Bill Bratton as his police commissioner. “I’ve said this many, many times. When I pick someone, you’ll know.”

Daily News Claims Bloomberg Education Reforms A Success

A DN editorial today:

Schools: Under Bloomberg, children made gains on standardized reading and math tests, even as pass rates gyrated. A good gauge is how the kids compared with peers around the state.

In 2006, 62% of fourth graders read at or above grade level in New York State, versus only 51% in New York City. By 2013, the schools here had closed that 11-point gap to just five points. De Blasio’s goal must be to get the children in the five boroughs on par with those across the state.

Bloomberg also presided over a graduation rate that climbed from 51% in 2001 to 71% in 2011. De Blasio will have to keep that going, while boosting the 22% share of graduates who are prepared for college or careers.

The graduation rates were phonied up with credit recovery, where students got full semester credit for classes by watching movies or reading comic books and writing a couple of summaries.

 

The test scores fell in the city when the state finally admitted to grade inflation at the end of Klein's reign.

 

The so-called achievement gap between white and Asian students and black and Latino students is as large now as before Bloomberg took office.

 

But the zombie lies about Bloomberg's education reform "success" continue unabated.

 

If we ever get an independent investigation into the DOE, one done by somebody without ties to Bloomberg or his cronies, the manipulation of data Tweed has engaged in throughout the Bloomberg Years will become known.

 

Diane Ravitch posted some revelations from an insider at Tweed that points to just how much manipulation they have engaged in.

The DN editors don't really care about any of that - all they care is that the Bloomberg reforms are anti-union, pro-charter and pro-business, and so they push them regardless of the true efficacy of the agenda.

No Accountability Measures In Place For NYCDOE Educrats

Accountability, it seems, is only for the little people:

Top administrators at the city's Department of Education haven't been subject to formal evaluations during the Bloomberg administration, a break from past practice and an unusual occurrence among school districts across the U.S.

The disclosure follows the culmination of a yearslong battle by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to implement tougher teacher and principal evaluations in the district.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who has been on the job since April 2011, said formal job reviews weren't necessary because he informally evaluated his staff daily, and he was evaluated daily by the mayor. Teachers, he said, were in a different position.

"They're in front of the classroom and teaching our children, and we need to have a sense of how well they're doing," he said. "With us, we're not teaching children directly, we're setting policy. And I don't think it's hypocritical at all."

Oh, yeah - that's not hypocritical at all.

Teachers are in front of a classroom teaching "our" children while the NYCDOE educrats/hypocrites are in Tweed courthouse setting policies that affect those teachers who are in front of a classroom teaching "our" children - but that doesn't affect "our" children at all.

Who's Walcott kidding?

The Wall Street Journal goes on to show that none of the top officials at Tweed get formally evaluated ever:

The Wall Street Journal filed a public records request in February 2012 seeking the senior-staff evaluations after the department successfully fought to release scores for individual teachers' performances based on students' test scores.

In a response dated June 11, the department's public-records officer said no evaluations had been created since at least 2001 for the following positions: chancellor, chief of staff, chief academic officer, senior deputy chancellor, chief schools officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, deputy chancellor and general counsel. Mr. Bloomberg has appointed three permanent chancellors.

...


Superintendents across the U.S. are usually evaluated under a formal process, generally by elected boards of education, said Bruce Hunter, associate executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. The reviews are intended to help superintendents improve, he said. An increasing number of superintendents are also judged by their staff and community members, he said. "The jargon for it is a 360 evaluation," he said. "Almost nobody goes without evaluation now."

Superintendents in several other districts controlled by the mayor, such as Boston and Washington, D.C., also receive formal evaluations every year.

Before Mr. Bloomberg won control of the school system in 2002, evaluations of chancellors were comprehensive and touched on many areas under a superintendent's purview.

Former schools Chancellor Rudy Crew's last evaluation praised him for progress on issues such as reading scores and the expansion of prekindergarten but criticized him on several points, including the school-construction plan, according to media reports at the time. Mr. Crew, who was fired in 1999, couldn't be reached for comment.

Klein and Bloomberg (through his spokesperson) defended the lack of formal evaluations for the top Tweedies by saying that Tweed educrats were informally evaluated daily and anybody who wasn't up to snuff was "terminated."

That claim may not stand up to scrutiny, as it has previously been demonstrated that Tweed rarely fires a principal for misconduct, incompetence or anything else that might lead to termination in Bloomberg's beloved private sector.

What's worse, in negotiations with the DOE, UFT President Michael Mulgrew says the Tweedies were always promoting the need for formal accountability for teachers because everybody needs to be evaluated:

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the DOE would argue during teacher-evaluation negotiations that "all workers get evaluated."

"It's a monument to hypocrisy," he said. "They're setting policy and making decisions that affect over 1 million children, and they don't feel they need to be evaluated in any formal way whatsoever?"

Indeed it is.

But not a surprise in the Bloomberg administration, where a lack of accountability for the people in power has been a hallmark of his governance.

Michael Fiorillo Explains Why The Regents Grading Fiasco Was A Success From The DOE Perspective

From a comment Michael Fiorillo left at Ed Notes Online on the Regents grading mess:

The purported lack of trust is really an attempt at greater control and oversight over teachers. The system is called the McGraw CTB Evaluation (for the kids) and Monitoring (for the teachers) System.

It's there to time us, to rate us as "easy" or "hard" graders, and to see if our grades are within the range given by other teachers, or if a disproportionate number of the exams we grade require a third reader.

As always with the DOE, where does the incompetence end and the malice begin?

From the perspective of the DOE, they got what they wanted out of the Regents grading.

First, they took the test grading out of the hands of teachers, quite literally, by putting them online.

Second, they got to take teachers out of their schools and put into detention center cubicles, isolated from their colleagus and chained to their computers.

Third, they got to rate the graders, both for range but also for productivity, and call out those not working fast enough or grading the way they wanted.

Fourth, they got to hand close to $10 million dollars to an outside company, always a plus for the Tweedies when they can hand money out to the testing industrial complex.

I'm sure the Tweedies wish that the scanning issues and computer glitches hadn't happened, but I bet they're willing to give both themselves and McGraw-Hill a pass for those.

As Michael noted in his comment, this was all about greater control and oversight of teachers.

Since that was the goal of the system, they can consider this a "heckuva job, mission accomplished!"

NYCDOE Purposely Underfunds And Under-Schedules Summer School Session To Promote Online Credit Recovery

From the NY Post:

Sloppy math by city education officials has left this year’s summer-school calendar four days shorter than needed — making each high-school course six hours short of a full credit, leaders say.

The abbreviated summer-school calendar has just 26 days for high-school students — down from the normal 30 — because of a later-than-usual starting date of July 8.

Even with scheduling overhauls, students could earn only credits in two courses over the summer rather than the typical three — despite the fact that many students need three to graduate in August, according to principals.

“It’s just completely being mishandled,” said one Bronx administrator. “Obviously somebody at Tweed [the old courthouse building behind City Hall in lower Manhattan, where the Department of Education is housed] — whoever did the calendar — made an error and nobody caught it,” the administrator added. “Now it’s their job to fix this.”

School leaders said extending the summer-school day beyond its normal 8 a.m.-to- 1 p.m. schedule is not an option because it would be prohibitively expensive.

Schools would have to serve lunch to all students and teachers — something they don’t currently do — as well as pay teachers for dozens of hours of added overtime.

Yet summer-school funding has dropped from $81 million in fiscal year 2007 to just $44 million this year, according to DOE documents.

“We don’t have money,” said a Queens high-school principal. “Summer school is so underfunded, it’s pathetic.”

DOE officials insisted the scheduling was purposeful. They pointed to online or credit-recovery courses as options for students who need the maximum number of credits.

I'm going to take DOE officials at their word - they purposely underfunded and under-scheduled summer school sessions in order to promote online credit recovery programs that make money for their cronies in the for-profit education world.

In addition, this sets up a wonderful model for coming years when they want to extend the school year.

One of the pushbacks on the extended school year is what wil lthey do about students who need to make up credits in summer school.

Now the DOE can say "Summer school?  What's that?  There's all-year round school and anybody who needs to make up credits can take the Rupert Murdoch/Joel Klein credit recovery program.

It's either that or, as Yoav wrote in the Post, somebody at Tweed screwed up.

Walcott Undercuts His Own Message

Nothing symbolizes how sick and tired people are of the Bloomberg education reform battles better than Chancellor Dennis Walcott receiving a muted response from what was supposed to be a friendly audience of 1,100 school administrators at Brooklyn Tech while he gave a speech defending the Bloomberg education legacy.

The Bloomberg administration went out of its way to sell this speech before it happened by having Walcott call up the NY Times and tell them about it on Friday.

This was supposed to be a strong defense of the Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott education reform legacy before an adoring crowd.

Instead Walcott got laughed at when he said he wasn't a political guy, then mostly got silence and cricket sounds for the rest of the speech.

Nothing undercuts a message like overselling a speech that is supposed to be a rousing defense of your policy before an adoring crowd and then getting mostly silence and cricket sounds.

Heckuva job, Dennis.

Thanks for crystallizing in one neat afternoon block just how people are ready to move on from the Bloomberg Era and get on with the business of educating children rather than using the school system as political weapon to promote free market ideology.

Bloomberg Increases Tweed Budget Even As He Lays Off Teachers

Another outrage from the fiscally responsible Mayor of Outside Consultant Corruption:

The Bloomberg administration plans to dole out $20 million extra for the Department of Education's Tweed headquarters - even as it prepares pink slips for 4,100 classroom teachers, documents show.

That's a 7% increase over this year's $293 million budget for Tweed.

The agency's field offices also are slated to get a 1% budget boost - another $3 million - in the coming fiscal year.

Some parents and watchdogs are calling for the agency to redirect the cash from the administration to classrooms.

"I wish they would prioritize in a manner that would save teachers," said Ric Cherwin, PTA president of Manhattan's Global Learning Collaborative. He said parents and students are "very worried" about the city's threat to lay off beloved instructors.

The largest budget jump at Tweed would go to the agency's legal team, which would get a 300% increase - $7.4 million - over this year. Its labor relations division budget would jump to $2.3 million, up $1.3 million. And spending for its technology division would climb to $20 million, up $6.4 million.

"There's nobody who's a parent who feels there should be an increase at Tweed and cuts to the schools," said Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan).

"We need teachers."

The message from Bloomberg - we don't need teachers, we need more outside consultants, we need more lawyers, we need more technology spending and we need more central office bureaucrats.

Stringer: Reform Tweed

The education reformers are in need of a little reform work themselves:

In wake of three high-profile contracting scandals, Manhattan Borough President (and potential 2013 mayoral hopeful) Scott Stringer is calling on the city Department of Education to institute reforms.

First up, the agency needs to halt all new non-essential contracts until further changes are made, he said at a press conference today. To prevent a repeat of the problems, he’s also calling for greater oversight from the city controller and the Panel for Educational Policy.

“This gravy train has got to stop,” he said. “New Yorkers are fed up with these abuses....Boss Tweed may have built the Tweed Courthouse as a monument to his corrupt ways, but that doesn’t mean the Department of Education should continue the tradition.”

There have been a string of scandals out of the city Department of Education this month:

-The special schools investigator announced Tuesday that consultants, along with former chief financial officer, George Raab, used DOE time to work on a new business venture.

-Earlier this month, DOE official Judith Hederman resigned after admitting to a personal relationship with a contractor now being investigated for corruption.

-Federal officials indicted another DOE consultant for bilking the department out of $3.6 million while buying expensive cars and Long Island properties.

The joke about all this corruption at the DOE (and remember, this is just what has been found SO FAR) is that the latest example comes in the same week that Chancellor Walcott went to Albany to try and get lawmakers to give him the ability to fire "bad teachers."

Hey, you want to fire some "bad" employees, Dennis?

Take a look at all the consultants on your payroll and the Tweedies doing oversight on them.

Judging by the number of scandals involving private consultants hired by the DOE and the Tweedies who are supposed to be overseeing them, looks like you'll find plenty of targets there.

As for Stringer's call for reform at Tweed, that sounds right to me.

But I'd add reform to mayoral control too.

When one little autocrat gets to make all the rules, you get the kind of system we have now - full of corruption, cronyism and insularity.