Anybody Buying Hillary Clinton's Charter School Comments?

Finally! @HillaryClinton: Most charter schools don’t take hardest-to-teach kids or if they do they don’t keep them https://t.co/bdig2DJgeZ

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) November 8, 2015

Don't see too many people on social media buying Clinton's comments about charter schools as anything other than expediency.

My take:

@Jeff_Bernstein Shows just how much has changed about charter narrative that she felt the need to say this.

— rbe (@perdidostschool) November 8, 2015

Make no mistake, the charter scandals from around the country, the "Got To Go" list pushout stories from NYC, the stories of abuse at charter chains like Success and Achievement First - these are doing serious damage to the charter narrative.

That Clinton's saying what she's saying doesn't mean she'll change the pro-charter policies from the Obama and Clinton administrations, of course.

Just that it's no longer a slam dunk talking point to declare charters the swellest thing ever.

Help Wanted: Lead Designer Of Culture For Charter School

I know somebody looking for a job in non-profit work.

She is using Idealist as part of her search.

She says nearly every listing these days is for charter schools and that many of the listings have these great Orwellian names.

For example:

Associate Director, Knowledge Management

Or:

 Lead Designer, Culture and Personal Development

Both those gigs are for Achievement First, which like many of these large charter outfits, appears to be awash in cash and hiring all the time - and not just for teachers.

Now what exactly does the "Leader Designer- Culture" do at Achievement First?

Sounds like the kind of thing Goebbels did, doesn't it?

And it turns out it kinda is:

1. Accelerated Academics: Our students need to be among the best in the world
2. Habits of Success: Our students will truly thrive when they also develop the habits, mindsets and life skills that promote productive and joyful lives
3. Excellence in Enrichment: Our students need a taste of the joy that comes from passionate excellence outside of traditional academics
4. Student, Family and Staff Motivation: Our students, staff and families will exhibit an unstoppable level of shared commitment and drive 

Uniforms and armbands are included, which is nice, because you don't want the kids thinking about anything else other than their "unstoppable level of commitment and drive" as they "need be among the best in the world" in their productivity and excellence.

If you're in the market for a new job and you feel like a good fit for a Lead Designer of Culture, why not take a stab at it over on Idealist.

But you need a very specific skillset:

• You are an entrepreneurial and ambitious educator
• with a passion for innovation and an eagerness to strategically redesign schools because kids could be learning much faster and deeper than traditional school models allow
• who is deeply committed to living the habits of success: personal growth, drive, curiosity, empathy, gratitude and teamwork.
• who embraces an all hands-on deck start up environment and lives for change
• who can't wait to work at the vision level and in the weeds 

Oh - and you have to love data.

On the plus side, it turns out you can do this job anywhere:

This job can be performed from a remote location.

Isn't technology in the neo-liberal world a great thing?

Charter schools have so much to teach the regular public schools, don't they?

Charter School Teachers Received "Guidance" For Families For Excellent Schools Rally

Eliza Shapiro at Politico NY reports that the charter school teachers who attended (were forced to attend?) yesterday's Families for Excellent Schools charter school teacher rally received some "guidance" from FES for how to conduct themselves at the rally:

Teachers did not take questions from reporters after the City Hall press conference, and FES executive director, Jeremiah Kittredge, did not take questions from reporters. NY1's Lindsey Christ reported that some teachers were given guidance on how to speak with reporters, including, "reporters often take sound bites, often out of context, and you could easily be quoted saying something in print you didn't actually mean in the way it was portrayed."

The rally itself still looked similar to the numerous other events FES has held.

Teachers were given the same free T-shirts (blue, emblazoned with the words "teacher activist") that their students typically wear at such events, along with sturdy-looking white tote bags. Rally marshals in neon green shirts handed out water bottles and hibiscus doughnuts from Dough, a popular Brooklyn bakery.

Teachers were also given matching blue selfie sticks and encouraged to tweet their pictures with the FES hashtag #DontStealPossible, and asked to pose in front of a banner reading "Teachers for Equality." Teachers formed a long line in front of the banner to collect their printed pictures.

FES has released a series of anti-de Blasio ads in the last several weeks, one of which critics have called racist.

Highly controlled, highly coordinated, expensive and no questions from the press - that's how these Families for Excellent Schools events go.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew, in a statement in response to the rally, noted that given the teacher turnover rate at charter schools, one-third of yesterday's rally attendees won't be teaching at their charter school next year.

That's a pretty apt response.

No school system that controls its teachers and puts them through the burn and churn the way many charters do is sustainable or workable for the school system at large.

One final point - it's a shame FES executive director Kittredge stopped taking questions from the press.

He did such a great job of it last March at that Albany rally with Ashanti.

Eva Moskowitz Not Running For Mayor

This is not a surprise:

Eva S. Moskowitz, the outspoken charter school leader who galvanized critics of the de Blasio administration, has signaled to close allies that she is leaning against a bid for mayor of New York in 2017, according to several people told of her discussions.

The prospect of a run by Ms. Moskowitz has been seen as a significant threat to Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow Democrat and longtime antagonist, particularly if her candidacy was backed by wealthy donors who support her prominent charter network, Success Academy.

Ms. Moskowitz scheduled a City Hall news conference for Thursday morning to reveal “her political plans.”

According to a person told of her thinking, Ms. Moskowitz has viewed the speculation about her candidacy as a distraction for her charter school network, which is reliant on the city for school space, and for donors who might confuse the schools’ educational mission with the political ambitions of a potential candidate.

According to two people told of Ms. Moskowitz’s thinking, she is unlikely to say on Thursday that she is pursuing a campaign.

She was never a "significant threat" to de Blasio.

She's too polarizing, has a reputation for nastiness and runs a charter school network famed for children who are so afraid to take a break from test prep that they soil themselves - there is no way she could win a race for City Hall.

Rather, a more friendly pro-charter figure without baggage - especially someone of color who could cut into de Blasio's support with black voters - is a significant threat to de Blasio.

These reporters need to stop feeding Eva's ego here - wouldn't matter how much money Eva's Wall Street sugar daddies gave her for the race, she has serious flaws as a citywide candidate and I bet she knows that.

It was said, I think in Eliza Shapiro's Politico NY piece on Eva a while back, that Eva was going to poll before making a decision on whether to run or not.

I bet she's been polling and has discovered that her appeal is low, her favorability rating in the toilet and a clamoring for her to run for mayor non-existent.

But because this is Eva and everything is always about her, she needs to make a grand announcement with all the attendant drama we've gotten here.

What a piece of work she is - self-centered, arrogant, hubristic, and vindictive.

Quite frankly, a perfect fit for a charter school leader.

New Jersey Charter Schools Hoard Money, Sit On Large Fund Balances

Proving once again that charter schools are not public schools:

Charter schools across New Jersey have built up savings so large that one school has more money saved than it needs for an entire year of operation, according to an analysis by the Newark-based Education Law Center.

...

The Education Law Center analyzed the most recently available audited school budgets of more than 80 charter schools. Nearly all of the schools had fund balances — the difference between revenues and expenses — larger than 2 percent, according to the analysis.

Public school districts are not allowed to have fund balances that are more than 2 percent of their budget, and The Education Law Center this week called on the state to impose the same cap on charter schools.

The money charter schools have beyond a 2 percent fund balance should be returned to the districts from which students came, said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center.

"The excess charter fund balance is available to provide desperately needed teachers, staff and programs for students in district schools," Sciarra said. "Since charters are public schools, they cannot be allowed to carry unlimited, excess surplus they don't need while the education of students who choose to attend district schools suffers from deep budget cuts."

Will The Families For Excellent Schools Race Baiting Ad Hurt The Charter Movement?

Michael Fiorillo on the Families for Excellent Schools race-baiting ad:

Regarding FES's charges of racism against De Blasio, see Projection, Psychological, defined as the psychological phenomenon where humans (or, in Moskowitz's case, a rather toxic facsimile thereof) denies some aspect of their behavior or attitudes, and assumes instead that others are doing or thinking the same thing.

Everything about this episode, from the planning and marketing of the demonstration itself, to this ad, shows how so-called education reform is an ethical Black Hole, where the gravitational pull of greed, power hunger, hypocrisy and manipulation seek to suck in all public resources within reach, while emitting no light whatsoever.

These are bad people, brazenly performing shameful acts. It's fortunate that, after so many years of their vicious lies being given a free pass in media and political circles, they're starting to meet with more exposure and pushback.

I also get the feeling that the other big charter chains are probably not too happy with this. It's long been rumored/reported that they too loathe Eva (though for their own venal reasons) and they clearly like to operate in a less confrontational, faux-friendlier and behind-the-scenes manner. They worry that she'll fuck up their sweet deal with her compulsive belligerence. That's the difference among these characters: KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Democracy Prep are aggressive, but smooth enough to not be compulsively belligerent (as opposed to strategically aggressive, which is what they do try to be), which they know in the long run to be unprofessional and dangerous.

Eva is kind of the Raging Id of the local charter school movement, and that makes for volatile situations, including possibility of the narrative turning against her.

Last year, Families for Excellent Schools spent more money on lobbying than any other entity - $9.7 million dollars - with record expenditures in September and October of 2014.

Here we are again in the September/October period and their lobbying expenditures are ratcheting up once more.

Only this time, they have gone with some overt race-baiting in their ads for extra-added outrage.

But as Michael notes in his comment, this act isn't helping the charter movement any.

Witness how the press treated FES head Jeremiah Kittredge at FES's March rally in Albany.




A few years ago, members of the press would have been dutifully writing down Kittredge's lies without pushback.

But not any longer.

This is the unintended consequence from the FES outrageousness.

Their credibility gets tinier and tinier.

Same goes for charter operators/chains associated with FES.

Maybe Jeremiah Kittredge and Eva Moskowitz think this belligerence will help them, but I think there's already some evidence this strategy is backfiring on them and will, in the end, hurt their beloved privatization, er, charter school movement more than help it.

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.

Eva Moskowitz Offers "Messaging Assistance" From The Success "Advocacy Team" For A "Not Political" Rally

Eliza Shapiro at Politico NY with a great scoop, reports how Eva Moskowitz and Success Academies are prepping for a Families for Excellent Schools political rally against Mayor Bill de Blasio:

Employees of Success Academy, New York City's largest charter school network, have been instructed to tell parents an upcoming rally organized by a well-funded charter advocacy group is "not political," according to a document obtained by POLITICO New York.

The five-page document was sent by Success' "advocacy team" and is billed as "messaging assistance" intended to help staff convince families of Success students to attend the Sept. 30 pro-charter rally and march across the Brooklyn Bridge organized by Families for Excellent Schools.

Success administrators are also strongly encouraging parents to attend the rally and march even if it presents hardships for them in terms of arranging for child care or taking time off from their jobs.

"This is not a political event," employees are being asked to tell parents who may be hesitant about participating in a rally with political implications. "This is an event in support of your scholar, our school, and the right for families to have access to equal schools."

But when parents ask the purpose of the rally, staffers should respond, "we are rallying to call on Mayor de Blasio and the rest of our city's leaders to end this system of inequality," according to the document.

The flyer begins with a plea to staffers, in bright red font: "Please do not pass this FAQ out to parents."

Love it - "messaging assistance" put together by the Success "advocacy team" for a "not political" rally.

You just can't make this stuff up.

It's interesting to note that the coverage of Moskowitz and Success has turned the last year or so, with press reporting more skeptically on both (the NY Times article being the most infamous of the coverage.)

This Politico NY piece exposes the machinations behind the scenes that the charter operators pull to get a big crowd:

The document obtained by POLITICO New York lists a series of responses to potential problems from families, including difficulty arranging child care.

"We encourage you to do everything you can to line up child care," employees should tell parents, according to the document. "We know it can be tough, but that is what families did to make sure you would have access to your school."

The majority of Success Academy students — 77 percent — are eligible for free or reduced price lunch, meaning their families live at or below the poverty level.

For parents who feel they cannot take time off from work, employees are asked to respond, "parents took off work to stand up and make sure that you have this great school option for your family. What if they hadn't shown up and taken the day off work?"

The document directly links rally participation with the continued existence of the Success network, and with charter schools in general.

"Families need to keep showing up and standing up — even when it's inconvenient — to ensure our schools can continue to exist and grow, and that other families get access to great public schools for their kids," the document reads.

Staffers are also encouraged to suggest that parents with children in Success' elementary school may not have middle or high school options if they do not help further the cause of school equality by attending the rally.

In a message specifically intended for "those that still need middle school or high school space," the document reads, "You don't want to be in a situation where we can't get middle school or high school space for your scholar's school, and you are wondering if you could have done more."

In addition, the Politico NY piece notes that Families for Excellent Schools lies about the numbers of attendees at their rallies:

FES is known to inflate the size of its protests. Organizers said 21,000 people attended a New York City event last October, while police estimated the crowd was about 8,000 to 10,000. 

And the Politico NY article demonstrates how this rally will, indeed, be political, with FES already setting up the optics with pre-rally criticism of de Blasio:

The group has accelerated its attacks on de Blasio this week, ahead of the rally.

On Monday, FES sent an "open letter" from the leaders of the city's large charter networks, criticizing de Blasio for "denying space" to charters.

...

Later Monday, F.E.S. released a memo critiquing de Blasio's recently announced K-12 education agenda.

So we have Eva Moskowitz and Success putting the screw to parents to get the numbers up for a political rally that they deem "not political" that they'll inflate the attendance numbers for anyway and threaten parents who don't show with the possibility that their kids won't get into a Success middle school or high school.

Nice to see this exposed in the media.

Cuomo's School Receivership Program Is "Stack Ranking" For Schools, Designed To Break Up The System

Fred LeBrun in the Times-Union dissects Cuomo's vaunted school receivership program:

In the Capital Region, only Albany's William S. Hackett Middle School is on the persistent list, but if a handful of schools in Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Amsterdam, including Albany High School, don't show appropriate progress, they will join Hackett next year.

What happens now for schools like Hackett is as complicated as directions to Atlantis, and about as reliable.

Albany school Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard becomes the acting school receiver, with broad powers, for the next year. A required community engagement team composed of the principal, staff, teachers, parents and even students from Hackett will forward recommendations for improvements to the superintendent, who will use them to help create her intervention plan to turn the school around. The plan is due at State Ed for approval by the end of this month. Over the next year, the community team will look over her shoulder as the intervention plan unfolds.

In the meantime, the school receiver can do pretty much what she wants (with approval from State Ed): change the curriculum, replace teachers and administrators, increase salaries, reallocate the budget, expand the school day or year, turn Hackett into a community school, even convert to a charter school. Although there's enormous rigmarole attached to much of it, including going charter. Remember, the receiver in this case remains the superintendent for the rest of the district, so she is answerable for any wild and crazy ideas to the voters through the school board.

Anyway, to help start the process, Vanden Wyngaard can apply for a grant from a $75 million pot set up by the state, although she'll have plenty of competition from other "persistently struggling" school receivers in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Yonkers, New York City and elsewhere. She has a year to do her turnaround. Or the hammer falls and we are off to Neverland.

Then the state would appoint an independent receiver who is answerable only to State Ed. At which time the process of community involvement, an intervention plan, and the rest are repeated, only now change is apt to be far more radical, with wholesale staff firings. An independent receiver can be a person from an approved list that doesn't yet exist, or an institution or charter school. Although charter schools upstate have been mostly a bust, as Albany well knows. Middle school charters in Albany could not save themselves, let alone others.

So. If you're getting the idea that this receivership idea seems like a plan designed to fail and thus prepare the way for school privatizers to make a bundle, move over.

For one thing, the state has yet to give school receivers a clear idea of what would constitute appropriate progress to avoid an independent receiver. Presumably, we'll know by the end of the month when intervention plans have to be approved. What is expected and how reasonable it is will answer a great deal.

Because just a year to show any marked improvement on any front for a school like Hackett, no matter how thoughtfully considered, broadly accepted by the community, or earnestly pursued, is absurd. Real change needs time for all stakeholders to become invested. Teachers at Hackett today are still complaining that attendance and discipline as major problems, just as it was when I substituted there, oh, a half century ago. These are, after all, manifestations of the poverty and despair underlying most of Hackett's problems; they don't go away. They are the community's problems, not just Hackett's.

The school can be taken over in a year if it doesn't "improve," but the state still hasn't explained what that "improvement" will look like.

Yeah, that's a plan designed to "fail" schools and hand them over to the privatizers, profiteers and/or charter operators.

LeBrun's writing about a school in Albany, but Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina have a lot riding on this too, since the city has 62 schools in the receivership program, with six deemed "persistently struggling" and having only one year to improve (the seventh is already closing.)

As with Hackett, these schools don't know yet what will constitute "improvement," which is a problem since the deadline for that "improvement" is fast approaching.

The cynic in me wonders if a side benefit to declaring all these schools "failing" and handing them over to the privatizers, profiteers and/or charter operators isn't another opportunity for Governor Cuomo to declare his "friend" bill de Blasio a loser too.

Governor Cuomo promised the Daily News and a Forbes forum he would "break" the public school "monopoly" before his re-election in 2014 and it certainly looks like the receivership program is part of that plan.

After the state gets through privatizing these 144 schools, the next slate of so-called "struggling" schools will be added to the receivership list - this will be an ongoing program:

The program was one of several education reforms hammered out during budget negotiations this spring. Under the deal, schools are placed into two categories, “struggling schools,” those in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state for three years, based on measures like test scores and graduation rates, and “persistently struggling schools,” which have been in that bracket since 2006.

What we have here is "stacking ranking" for schools, with the state playing rank and yank every year, adding schools to the privatization, er, receivership list, setting them up to "fail" and then handing them over to the privatizers, profiteers and/or charter operators.

Just as with stack ranking for employees, the program will disempower, demoralize and ultimately destroy the system (this is also the same rationale behind Cuomo's APPR teacher evaluation system, btw - ranking teachers every year and declaring 7% "ineffective" no matter what.)

Just ask Microsoft, which used stack ranking as its evaluation system for employees, how well that worked for them as Apple was kicking them to the wayside in competition.

But of course if you're Andrew Cuomo, you want to destroy the system - that's exactly what he promised to do in 2014 and that's the plan he's been carrying out since.

Cuomo Gives Charter School Employees 15% Of Charter School Slots

Capitol Confidential has some of the surprises in the big end-of-session omnibus bill that was announced today and here's one that says everything you need to know about Cuomo's love of charter schools:

• Charter schools can give admission preferences to the children of employees of either the school or a charter management organization as long as those students don’t form more than 15 percent of the student body.

This is an interesting new move for the charter people, because what it suggests is that they will move even more in the future to make the city-housed and state-funded charters into their own fiefdoms run for and by themselves - but all on the public dime, of course.

Expect the 15% requirement to go up in the future and for charters to further use this regulation to keep out students they don't want (i.e., students who will hurt their test score numbers.)

Success Academy Board Member Daniel Loeb Hosts $5,000 A Head Fundraiser For Andrew Cuomo

Governor Cuomo came through for charter schools once again this legislative session, raising the charter cap by 180 and imposing a ton of new mandates on public schools that do not count for charters (i.e., the teacher evaluation system.)

And so the charter school supporters will pay Cuomo back for his political largesse:

Hedge fund manager and charter school advocate Daniel Loeb is standing by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

On the evening of Saturday July 11, he and his wife Margaret Munzer Loeb will host a fund-raiser for Cuomo at their residence in East Hampton, according to an invitation sent out to multiple donors and acquired by Capital.

Individual tickets for what is billed as an "intimate reception" will cost $5,000 each, though host committee sponsorships "are available."

Loeb had no comment as to why he was fund-raising for the governor.

He and his wife have donated to the governor in the past.

The Third Point C.E.O. serves on the board of StudentsFirstNY, a pro-charter advocacy group whose board members also include former schools chancellor Joel Klein and Success Academy Charter Schools founder Eva Moskowitz.

Loeb also chairs Success Academy's board and is one of Moskowitz's most stalwart supporters and defenders.

The hedge fund managers/charter school supporters started paying Cuomo off with cash before he ran for governor and it continues all the way until today.

He's gotten more than $4.8 million dollars in contributions from 570 hedge fund managers since 2000.

In addition, some of those same hedge fund managers contributed millions to a charter school shell group called Families For Excellent Schools that ran ads and lobbied for charter causes on Cuomo's behalf. FES was the winner in "Who Spent The Most Money Lobbying?" competition, dropping $9.7 million in 2014 on lobbying expenditures.

Then there was the shadowy group called the Committee To Save New York that spent millions on pro-Cuomo ads touting the governor's agenda. The group raised $12 million dollars from just 20 donors to help Cuomo out politically.

CSNY closed up shop when the law was changed and donors and contributors had to be revealed, but you can bet that there were some of the same names on the CSNY list that are on the Families For Excellent Schools, Students FirstNY and Success Academies list.

And let's not forget that StudentsFirstNY helped create New Yorkers For A Balanced Albany, an independent expenditure committee that dropped $4.2 million in support of a Republican takeover of the New York State Senate - having Republicans in charge in the state Senate has helped Cuomo push through his pro-charter, anti-public school agenda.

Judging from how much they've paid him over the years and how they continue to pay him now, shilling for charter schools and education has been a very profitable enterprise for Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo Looking To Make It Easier For Charters To Reject Or Kick Out Students?

From Zack Fink, writing at State of Politics, over the end-of-session logjam between Governor Cuomo, the Assembly and the state Senate:

The Governor and Flanagan also want to make it even easier for charter schools to reject, and even kick out, students who don’t do well academically and might tarnish the pretty statistics charter schools often paint to suggest they present a much better alternative to traditional public schools.

But I thought the miracle workers at the charter schools had so much to teach the "failing" public schools about student "success."

If the governor and the senate majority leader want to make it easier for charters to reject or kick out students who don't do well academically, then it seems all the "success-meisters" at the charters have to teach us in public schools is that the key to success is attrition and a gatekeeping admissions policy.

Anybody else out there hearing that Cuomo and Flanagan want to give charters more freedom to dump or keep out students they don't want?

Note To Cuomo: Charter Schools Are Destroying Catholic Schools In

Cuomo to the NY Times, trying to push his education tax credit/voucher giveaway:

In the interview, Mr. Cuomo cited Catholic schools closing “all over the place,” and said the opposition to the legislation was being driven by teachers’ unions.

“They don’t want the competition of these schools where they don’t represent the members,” Mr. Cuomo said, adding: “There’s no principle here. There’s no argument.”

He said that Assembly members opposed to the proposal were upstate members being pressured by the statewide teachers’ union, New York State United Teachers, as well as “the predictable sort of Manhattan liberals” concerned about the separation of church and state.

The biggest competition to Catholic schools these days is not the public schools - it's charter schools.

You want to help Catholic schools, governor?

Stop shilling for the charters.

The Charter Cap

The NY Post reports charter entrepreneurs and advocates want the extension of NYC mayoral control (something Mayor de Blasio wants) tied to the elimination of the charter school cap (something de Blasio doesn't want.)

The Post also reports that charter advocates have an up-hill battle this year to get the cap raised:

The Democratic-controlled Assembly has already drafted a bill to give the mayor three more years of oversight over the city’s school system.

But there’s no sentiment there to add 100 more charter schools, as Gov. Cuomo has proposed and the mayor has opposed.

One insider declared bluntly that there was “no chance” of that happening.

“There is still plenty of room under the cap,” said Michael Whyland, a spokesman for ­Assembly Democrats.

Normally I'd say charter entrepreneurs get what they want whenever they want, so the cap hike is a done deal.

But this is a strange year.

First off, both the Assembly speaker and the Senate majority leader have been hauled out on criminal charges and replaced with newbies who have less control of their conferences.

Second, Governor Cuomo, a huge advocate of charter schools in the past, is weakened, enjoying the lowest job approval numbers of his governorship (just 37% approval), and is taking some time away from his duties next week to help his consort Sandra Lee through cancer surgery.

Cuomo has put some of his diminished political capital to a backdoor tax voucher plan for private schools and charter schools, leaving less political capital to fight for a cap hike.

Third, much of the legislative session was hijacked by US Attorney Preet Bharara, with Bharara arresting former Assembly Speaker Silver right after Cuomo's state of the state/budget speech, then arresting former Senate Majority Leader Skelos about a month after the budget deadline.

There is very little time left before the end of the session and much of the air in the legislative session has been taken out by the arrests, wiretaps, leaks and other corruption-related matters.

This is not to say that there won't be a late inning deal to raise the charter cap or at least shift how the cap works so that some of the upstate slots can be moved down to NYC and make Eva Moskowitz very, very happy.

But whereas in past years I'd say the likelihood of that was 100%, this time around, given all the damage from the corruption cases and given the rumors that swirl that Governor Cuomo is next on the fed list for arrest, the legislature getting anything done on the cap is far from certain.

Rumor has it that many items that were left outstanding during the budget negotiations (like rent control, 421-a tax abatements, mayoral control) will simply get a one-year extender and be addressed more fully next year.

If that's the case, then it's hard to see how the cap gets addressed in any substantive way this year, especially since there's still 25 slots left in NYC and hundreds more left in the rest of the state.

We'll see - the charter entrepreneurs want what they want and they have plenty of money to throw around to get it.

And we should never expect the heavy hearts in the Assembly to stand fast when there's always an opportunity to cave on an issue and blame it on somebody else.

Another "Successful" Charter School With A High Attrition Rate

From the Buffalo News:

Western New York Maritime Charter School is either one of the most successful charters in Buffalo or one of the most controversial, depending on who you ask and how you view their data.

Many who attend the military-themed school clearly love it, having found a safe haven, clear expectations, academic support and a caring community of teachers and friends. The high school, founded in 2004, boasts a graduation rate of 85 percent – far above that of the Buffalo Public Schools and better than the state average.

But Maritime also has the highest attrition rate by far of any of Buffalo’s 15 charters. Roughly one out of every four students enrolled in Maritime last year were either expelled, suspended or withdrew, according to data tracked by the Buffalo district. Maritime administrators also acknowledge that the current senior class is only half the size of its freshman class.

That makes Maritime most susceptible to the criticism often lobbed by traditional public school advocates against charter schools: these independent schools excel because they have the freedom to throw out troublemakers and underachievers or persuade them to leave.

“Kids with discipline issues either are not accepted or are immediately told to leave,” said Larry Scott, a school psychologist in the Kenmore-Tonawanda school district and co-chairman of the Buffalo Parent-Teacher Organization. “Here you’re taking money from a traditional school district and sending those kids back to a traditional public school or not accepting them at all.”

Can a school really have an 85% graduation rate when it has such a high attrition rate?

There should be a rule change on how graduation rates are calculated - students who leave schools for no matter the reason should be counted in the graduation rate as "not graduating."

Imagine what such a rule change would do to the stats for Success Academy, the KIPPsters, Achievement First and Wester New York Maritime Charter School.

Jeff Klein Wants To Put A Charter School Parent On The City Panel For Educational Policy

This isn't a surprise - IDC head/traitor Jeff Klein is carrying water for his charter school donors:

ALBANY — The head of a breakaway group of five Senate Democrats wants to extend by five years the law authorizing mayoral control over the New York City school system, with some key changes, the Daily News has learned.

"I believe in mayoral control," Senate Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) told The News. "Something as important as education, the mayor should be the deciding factor. But I think this plan is a way to make some changes that ensures mayoral control continues."

Perhaps the most controversial proposal would require the mayor for the first time to appoint a parent of a charter school student to the advisory Panel for Educational Policy.

Under the current law, which expires next month, the mayor has eight appointees to the 13-member panel — at least two of which are required to be parents with children in a New York City public school.

Klein says requiring another appointee to be a charter school parent — a move sure to be opposed by Mayor de Blasio and some of his fellow legislative Democrats — would be an acknowledgment of the movement's place in the city's education fabric.

"This will ensure that the concerns of this growing population of school children will be heard at the PEP," a memo outlining Klein's proposed legislation says.

I suspect any extension of mayoral control will be tied to an increase in the charter cap as well.

This is assuming anything gets done in Albany in the next six weeks.

With Senate Majority Leader Skelos yet to step down, with the fight still on to see who replaces him and with the feds still wiretapping a whole swath of Albany, nothing's a done deal these days.

Not to mention that mobbed-up Jeff Klein himself could get carted away by the feds.

Juan Gonzalez: No Accountability For How Charter Schools Spend Public Dollars

From the Daily News:

The federal government shelled out $3.3 billion over the past 20 years to launch new charter schools nationwide, yet failed to monitor how that money was used, a new report has found.

Federal spending to launch charter schools zoomed from a mere $4.5 million in 1995 to more than $253 million today, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog group — with President Obama now asking Congress for a whopping increase to $375 million for next year.

And that’s on top of billions of dollars state governments spend for charter school operations.

Yet the new report concludes there is “no systematic public accounting for how the federal budget allocated to charters is actually being spent,” and “major gaps in the law allowing waste and fraud.”

The U.S. Department of Education doesn’t even bother to keep a public record of which charter schools get money from more than a half-dozen federal programs, said Lisa Graves, director of the Center for Media and Democracy. Her organization had to review thousands of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Law requests before it could coming up with an initial tally of federal charter school spending.

Hundreds of millions handed out to charter operators and entrepreneurs with no way to know how they're spending the money.

Again and again, we see that accountability is only for public schools.

Will The Charter Cap Get An Increase In The Waning Days Of The Legislative Session?

Senate Majorty Leader Dean Skelos has been arrested on six criminal counts and support for his remaining in the majority leader position is cratering but that hasn't stopped Skelos from listing his priorities for the rest of the legislative session:

Skelos reiterated his support for a permanent cap on property taxes and noted the chamber will debate an extension of mayoral control of New York City schools, saying it should “not be renewed as it is.”
 
Skelos also pushed for the education investment tax credit as well as to finish the remaining agreed-upon measures in the Women’s Equality Agenda.

He expressed concern with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s creation of a wage board to increase the state minimum wage for fast-food workers.

My guess is, charter proponents will look to link extension of mayoral control (something Mayor de Blasio wants) to a charter cap increase (something Mayor de Blasio doesn't want.)

So even though Skelos didn't directly mention a charter cap increase, it's implicit in the part of the statement about NYC mayoral control only getting an extension with revisions.

I can't imagine, even during a legislative session that has seen heads of both legislative houses arrested on criminal charges, that the charter school operators won't put the squeeze on legislators to make sure that they're taken care of before the end of the session.

A Conversation With Governor Cuomo - Tuesday 4/7 At 320 Park Av (50th-51st Streets)

From Norm Scott:

Hey - looking for a fun evening with some fellow merry makers? Cuomo is the most hated man in NY State.

Let’s have a Conversation with Cuomo! 

Come to a Rally this Tuesday to greet Cuomo and his friends-

Dinner and Conversation Fundraiser for Andrew Cuomo
When: Tuesday, April 7 at 6:00pm
Where: 320 Park Ave. NYC (Between 50 & 51st Sts.)
Why: To get more money from his friends - $15,000 a ticket so he can do more harm to our schools!

We’ll be giving out free tickets. They may not get you into Cuomo’s event, but you can attend ours! Arrive by 6:00pm, bring your favorite signs and dress up as your favorite hedgefund celebrity!

We need to keep the fight against the corporate assault on public education strong. We must let our elected officials who “voted YES with a heavy heart” for Cuomo’s budget know that they did the wrong thing! 

Come on out on Tuesday!

A question I have for Governor Cuomo:

Why does he support a sadistic charter school network where the children are subjected to humiliation, shaming and physical/verbal abuse?

Why is he going to help these child abusers raise money in two weeks?

GOP Looks To Tap Eva Moskowitz To Run In 2017

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York City Republicans have quietly begun laying the groundwork to recruit a candidate to challenge Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017, with some promoting charter-school executive Eva Moskowitz.

A lifelong Democrat and former City Council member, Ms. Moskowitz said she was contemplating a mayoral bid—but expected to compete in the Democratic primary if she did run.

“I have concerns about the direction of the city,” said Ms. Moskowitz, who added that she thought Mr. de Blasio could be vulnerable. “The power of incumbency is always great, but it was a pretty rocky start.”

One problem for Moskowitz and the GOP - some on their team have been complimentary of de Blasio:

While GOP officials have railed publicly about Mr. de Blasio’s performance, Messrs. Catsimatidis and Lhota have been largely laudatory. That complicates the work of the party.

“He hasn’t done a bad job,” Mr. Catsimatidis said. “I’m hoping Bill de Blasio does a great job so nobody has to run against him.”

The takeaway - unless there's a major crisis or things turn very, very bad in the city, a GOP candidate will have a lot of difficulty taking out de Blasio:

George Arzt, a longtime Democratic consultant, said, “The only person who would be viable is a Bloomberg-type businessman with high ID, high recognition and a lot of money.”

“They’re not many people around who are willing to do that and who are willing to leave the shadows of corporate life to become a piñata for the press,” said Mr. Arzt, adding that history shows a challenger would need a crisis to oust an incumbent Democrat from City Hall.

“When times are bad in the city, Republicans have been able to win against the registration odds,” said Jake Menges, a GOP consultant. “An articulate, charismatic, well-known entity in philanthropy, in the financial services industry and is a well financed, self-funded candidate has a real shot.”

I dunno about you, but Moskowitz (who says she has no plans to switch parties to the GOP anyway) doesn't fit the bill of  "an articulate, charismatic, well-known entity in philanthropy, in the financial services industry who is a well financed, self-funded candidate."

I think Eva will preen in the press about running, but ultimately will not run.

She's making too much money and gets to avoid a whole lot of scrutiny where she is now.

If she decides to run for mayor, there will be a lot of attention on Success Academies, the financial record, the academic record, the attrition record that she won't be able to make go away with a lawsuit or some PR.

I don't think Moskowitz wants that.

Instead I think the charter industry will continue to bypass City Hall and push their preferred policies up in Albany where de Blasio can do nothing about them and look for someone more charter-friendly than Moskowitz who can challenge BdB in 2017.

But my bet is, Eva Moskowitz stays in the private sector pulling in $500,000+ a year and expanding her charter empire.