NYSED Commissioner Elia Threatens "Ramifications" For Opt Outs

The Buffalo News reports the state will report the 2014-2015 test score data, including the number of opt outs around the state, next week, and explores how new NYSED Commissioner Elia will respond to the Opt Out Movement:

“Opt-out is potentially a political movement that needs to be reckoned with,” said Donald A. Ogilvie, a former superintendent in Buffalo and Erie 1 BOCES. “As the numbers grow, it adds to the movement.”

Added to the mix is a new state education commissioner, who already has made it clear she sees the opt-out movement as a problem and intends to work with districts to put an end to it.

Whether that will come with mere persuasion, or a hammer, is yet to be seen.

“We have an issue we have to address,” Commissioner MaryEllen Elia told educators in Sweet Home last month. “The opt-out issue is very problematic.”

...

In meetings with parents and educators in Sweet Home, she suggested that she will first take a more persuasive approach, communicating the purpose and value of the tests to teachers, and recruiting them to get the message out to parents.

She took a similar approach when she was superintendent of the Hillsborough County schools in Florida, hosting a series of community forums prior to the implementation of the Common Core.

“We have to get to the point that people are accepting,” she said.

She also mentioned the possibility of repercussions.

“The law exists so that there could be ramifications,” Elia said.

Ah, yes - the fabled "communication" of the importance of testing, followed by "ramifications" if the communication attempts don't win parents over.

That's where this is heading - Elia has already shown that her idea of compromise is that other groups come to her side of the issues.

Frankly, I think whatever "ramifications" Elia and her merry men and women in reform in Albany cook up will come back to bite them, but we'll have to see.

Proposed Recommendations On Teacher Evaluations Make Clear Collective Bargaining Agreements Can Be Broken

This shows up a couple of times in the proposed teacher evaluation plan the Board of Regents released last night:

The alignment of these subcomponents among each other and with Student Performance category will be subject to audit and corrective action that may require changes in a collective bargaining agreement .

And:

If a district’s system does not result in meaningful feedback for teachers and principals, the Department may impose a corrective action plan that may require changes to a collective bargaining agreement.

They want to make sure everybody knows that NYSED has the power to take "corrective action" on the parts of the APPR system that are locally negotiated.

In short, you have the freedom to locally negotiate an evaluation system that meets exactly what they want or they will take "corrective action" and change it.

So much for local control or collective bargaining.

Complicity And Cover-Up: MaryEllen Elia's Failure Of Leadership In The Deaths Of Hillsborough Students

The tragic stories of Isabella Herrera, a 7 year old who died in 2012 while on a Hillsborough school bus, and Keith Logan Coty, a 6 year old who died of a brain hemorrhage in 2014 after getting sick at his school, suggest the kind of leadership we'll get from new NYSED commissioner MaryEllen Elia.

Then Hillsborough superintendent, Elia never took responsibility for the failure of district personnel to call 911 in a timely manner when Isabellea Herrera was found unresponsive on a Hillsborough school bus.

In fact, Elia did all she could to deflect responsibility from herself and the district and cover-up district complicity in the child's death because of an outdated policy that had school bus drivers call dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency.

As Joe Henderson of the Tampa Tribune wrote, if not for a lawsuit from the Herrera family, the circumstances of the girl's death - a direct consequence of school district policy continued under Elia - would not have come to light:

For all the community outrage over circumstances that contributed to the death of 7-year-old special-needs student Isabella Herrera, consider this: If her parents hadn't filed a federal lawsuit over the way her case was handled, the public still wouldn't know there was ever a problem.

There wouldn't be a task force to study ongoing problems with how issues with special-needs students are addressed.

School bus drivers would continue to follow the 21-year-old policy of calling dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency such as the one that led to Isabella's death.

Six of seven members of the Hillsborough County School Board would still be in the dark about what happened that January day on the bus taking Isabella home from classes.

Life would go on just always. Except, of course, for Isabella and her family.

She had a neuromuscular disease that made her neck muscles weak. She was supposed to have her head back as she sat in her wheelchair, but she tilted forward and it blocked her airway. When it was discovered, the driver called dispatch and the aide on board called Isabella's mother.

By the time Lisa Herrera arrived and dialed 911 herself, her daughter was blue and unresponsive. She was pronounced dead the next day.

But Superintendent MaryEllen Elia didn't make the news public. She relied on a sheriff's office investigation that she said found no criminal wrongdoing, and appeared to let it go at that. During an interview last week, I asked why she didn't release the news. She fell back on the sheriff's report.

If you're the parent of a special-needs student, though, you would have liked to know there was a problem. I should say, is a problem. There have been three other issues with special-needs kids just this year, including the recent death of a student with Down syndrome who wandered away unnoticed and drowned.

The Herrera family filed its lawsuit a few days after that — about nine months after Isabella died. Now we have a task force, and a policy change allowing bus drivers to call 911 if the situation warrants. As school board Vice Chairwoman April Griffin told The Tampa Tribune though, "It goes way, way deeper than that. But I think it's a start."

This would be a better start: Expand the task force to probe the circumstances of why it took a lawsuit to bring this to a head. This isn't a witch hunt, but there has to be accountability.

What happened in the aftermath of this tragedy was at best a case of bureaucratic bungling.

When a child dies, a leader doesn't fall back on official reports and policy excuses. A leader gets to the bottom of things and then lets everyone know what went wrong so it doesn't happen again. A leader asks uncomfortable questions about the culture in a school system that values policy and procedure over good judgment and common sense.

That didn't happen here. And if not for a lawsuit, no one would have known.

Two years later, another child died after Hillsborough school staff failed to call 911 in a timely manner:

TAMPA — Keith Logan Coty played baseball, soccer and football. He was a principal's honor roll student in the first grade at Seminole Heights Elementary School, his mother said.

He'd had a heart murmur, but the doctor had cleared him, his mother said.

He died a year ago at age 6 of a brain hemorrhage, and a lawsuit filed Friday blames staff at his school for failing to call for help quickly enough. The lapse is especially unfathomable, lawyers say, as the issue of timely 911 calls was cited in another high-profile student death in a Hillsborough public school.

"How many kids under the care of this school district must die before the district gets it right?" lawyer Steven Maher asked, announcing the federal suit in a news conference Friday.

Exactly a year ago — Jan. 17, 2014 — Keith began feeling sick after lunch, the suit says. He went back to his classroom about 12:24 p.m., complaining to his teacher about a severe headache. She told him to lie down. He did. Then he started vomiting.

About 12:51, the teacher called Keith's mother, Kaycee Teets. There was no sense of urgency in the voice mail message she left, which Maher played at the news conference. It simply asked Teets to pick up her son because he was throwing up.

Before Teets could arrive, another school employee entered the room and found Keith lying on his side, making a gurgling sound with foam streaming from his nose. "His lips were blue," the suit said. The school nurse was summoned. Although Keith was unresponsive, the suit alleges the nurse did not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation; nor did she use the defibrillator at the school.

About 12:58 p.m., a worker in the front office called 911. The information given to the 911 operator was confusing, the suit alleges. At one point the caller said Keith was breathing. His mother insists he was not.

When an emergency vehicle arrived at 1:03 p.m., Keith was "in the corner, visibly blue, not breathing, and unresponsive." Paramedics were able to resuscitate the child, and they took him to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa.

A scan revealed he had a brain hemorrhage. But, according to the suit, no one told the doctors about his headache, information Teets learned hours later when she spoke with Keith's teacher. Not suspecting a neurological problem, doctors focused on possible cardiac issues instead.

Keith "went without oxygen for at least 10 minutes as a result of the delay in commencing CPR," the suit alleges. He stayed on life support long enough for his organs to be taken for donation, and he was pronounced dead later in the day.

The suit, filed days before Superintendent MaryEllen Elia could face a School Board vote on terminating her contract, is reminiscent of a suit the same firm filed in 2012, also involving a child alleged to have died after emergency treatment was delayed.

Isabella Herrera suffered a neuromuscular disability and was on a school bus when she stopped breathing. No one called 911 until Isabella's mother arrived. The school district ultimately settled that lawsuit for $800,000.

The Herrera suit was filed in federal court, alleging a civil rights violation; rather than a negligence suit in state court, where the award would have been limited under sovereign immunity. Maher was trying to prove a districtwide lack of training and care so severe, it amounted to a level of indifference toward disabled students that qualified as discrimination.

This time, Maher said, the 911 policy and procedures amount to discrimination toward all of Hillsborough's 200,000 students.

The district argued in the 2012 suit that there was no pattern of indifference. And, after the drowning death of a second special-needs child that same year, Hillsborough revamped its training of staff, particularly those who care for disabled children.

But 911 calls have remained a source of confusion. While Elia quickly stated there is no prohibition against calling 911, administrators sometimes advise staff to let the front office make the calls. Phone service is not always reliable in the classrooms, they say, and it's easier for emergency workers to find the office than a particular classroom.

Maher and Teets said that makes no sense to them.

"I would call 911. There would be no question," Teets said. "Any person would do that. I walked into a classroom and found my child, blue on the ground."

Stephen Hegarty, the district's spokesman, said, "I cannot comment on pending litigation."

Maher said his firm is asking for monetary damages, but did not specify the amount.

Where are the great leadership qualities Elia supposedly has in the aftermath of these tragedies involving Hillsborough students?

If one student dies as a result of the failure of staff to call 911 in a timely manner, wouldn't you think a "great leader" would put together an effective protocol so that such a tragedy wouldn't happen a second time?

Elia instead did her best to cover up the circumstances surrounding Isabella Herrera's death - something that was noted when Elia was feted with a commendation by the Tampa Bay City Council after she was fired as Hillsborough superintendent.

Mary Mulhern, a council member who voted against the commendation for Elia, told the Tampa Tribune:

"MaryEllen Elia was fired by her employers — by her boss, the School Board," she said. "I can't think of another case where someone gets lauded and celebrated after they've been fired from a job that is a public responsibility. … When you are responsible for the lives of children, I think one strike is too many."

Elaborating, Mulhern cited the deaths of three students:

• 7-year-old disabled student Isabella Herrera, who died in January 2012 after suffering respiratory failure aboard a school bus. A bus video show that the driver and an aide did not call 911, but used a radio to try to reach their supervisor, as was protocol, then called Herrera's mother, who arrived and called 911. The School Board, most of whose members were unaware of the death until the girl's parents sued, agreed to pay $800,000 last year to settle a federal lawsuit.

• 11-year-old Jennifer Caballero, who had Down syndrome and drowned in a pond behind Rodgers Middle School after wandering away from a crowded gym class in October 2012. The school district agreed to pay a negotiated settlement estimated at more than $500,000. Investigations led to three firings and several resignations at the school. The district also took steps after the deaths to improve safety for special-needs students on buses and in school.

• 6-year-old Keith Logan Coty, who died a day after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in January 2014 at Seminole Heights Elementary School. In a lawsuit, his parents accuse the school district of being indifferent to student safety and of discouraging staffers from calling 911 in emergencies. The district denies the allegations.

"If somebody dies, it goes to the top," Mulhern said. In the Herrera case, she said, "her employers didn't know this happened for nine months. … For me, that's enough. That's three strikes."

Mulhern said she didn't "disagree that (Elia has) done very good work over 10 years," but the concerns about student safety were overriding for her.

"The powers that be in Tampa and Hillsborough County just circled the wagons around this powerful person," who, Mulhern noted, had the authority to give out contract. 

Say what you will about former NYSED commissioner John King's flaws as a leader - covering up district complicity in the death of a student and a failure to fix emergency protocol for 911 calls involving students weren't on the list.

The more you learn about MaryEllen Elia and her "leadership," the more you see the big mistake the Board of Regents made by hiring her as NYSED commissioner.

Also, the more you learn about Elia as a person, the more you see how appropriate her nickname - MaryEllen EVILia - is.

NY Board Of Regents To Parents And Teachers: Screw You!

In naming MaryEllen Elia, a former superintendent of Hillsborough, Florida schools to be NYSED commissioner today, the New York State Board of Regents sent parents and teachers in a strong message:

Full speed ahead on reforminess.

Oh, and screw you if you don't like it.

Elia, who was nicknamed EVILia by some parents for her attitude toward special needs children, was divisive in her former gig in Hillsborough and was ultimately shown the door by the school board  in a 4-3 vote.

Besides earning the ire of some parents, Elia has the reputation of creating a fear-based workplace, and retaliating against employees she considered enemies.

She also won $100K for her school district from the Gates Foundation by promising to fire the "bottom" 5% of teachers every year.

In short, she's John King on steroids.

Even today, she doubled down on reforminess, using the dog whistle language reformers so love to hear:

“Everything that happens for students happens in a classroom because of great teachers,” Elia said after her selection. “And I think the biggest thing we can all do is work to improve and support teachers to get better every day.”

Everything that happens for students in a classroom is because of great teachers?

Really?

What about great resources, a great curriculum, small class sizes, great district and school leadership?

Nope - only teachers matter.

That's reformy speak for "I'll be firing as many teachers as I can" - which is why StudentsFirstNY praised her today.

Elia also doubled down in support of the Common Core and testing:

At a press conference following her appointment Elia said she supports CommonCore and believes that with better communication, people will support testing and what it offers.

The Board of Regents voted unanimously to appoint Elia as NYSED commissioner.

That the regents chose so divisive a personage, somebody with the reputation of bullying subordinates and dismissing criticism from parents and employees in her time at Hillsborough, sends a very clear message to parents and teachers in New York State.

Your input on education policy is not wanted - it's full speed ahead on reforminess whether you like it or not.

The only response is here is a barrage of emails, calls and visits to legislators to let them know you ultimately hold them responsible for this appointment and you will make sure they pay a political price next election for supporting the Board of Regents in this decision.

Board Of Regents Working On Evaluation Reform Will Be Rigged Too

The Cuomo Evaluation Commission idea is dead, replaced now with the idea that the Board of Regents will be tasked with changing the state teacher evaluation system:

ALBANY—The state Assembly majority is now debating whether to entrust the Board of Regents, a powerful 17-member education policymaking panel, with overhauling the state’s teacher-evaluation system.

Earlier this week, lawmakers indicated they might use the budget to establish a six-member expert commission to develop a new performance rating system, but both the Assembly Democratic and the Senate G.O.P. conferences rejected a plan to withhold an increase in school aid until the panel reached an agreement in June.

But now that panel’s out, Assembly members said on Thursday, and instead Governor Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers want to task the existing board with the job it was constitutionally created to do: crafting education policy. The board’s work would not be linked to appropriations, members said.

The new evaluations would still be required to incorporate student scores on standardized tests as a measure of teacher performance, and the board would have to develop the new system by July 1, according to a state official familiar with the plan.

If the Regents get the task of re-doing evaluations, we have a pretty good idea what that work will look like - Regents Chancellor Tisch has stated publicly that she thinks 40% test scores, 60% observations is what the system should look like.

You can bet that is the system she will push for if given the power to overhaul the system.

There are four new members on the Board of Regents and a few of the stalwart reformers were ousted a few weeks back.

But I suspect there are still enough reformers left over to back Tisch for a reformy outcome and enough pressure will be applied from the outside on anybody not on board with reforminess to ensure that something like 40% tests and 60% observations is what we get in the end.

The politicians will get exactly what they want with this move - a more reformy teacher evaluation system and political cover because it will be coming from another entity and not the legislature itself.

Board Of Regents Members Pay Political Price For Their Common Core/Education Reform Support

I have been saying for a while now that until there is a political price to paid for pursuing education reform policies, those policies will continue apace.

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY reports a political price was just paid by two (now former) long-time members of the Board of Regents:

ALBANY—The two long-serving members of the state Board of Regents ousted by lawmakers on Tuesday were brave soldiers for the Common Core standards and other recent education reform efforts, board chancellor Merryl Tisch said.

And ultimately, she said, Robert Bennett and James Dawson, each of whom have served more than two decades, were casualties of recent battles over the controversial policies.

“Do I see these replacements as a reaction to what people are hearing in their home districts? Absolutely,” Tisch told reporters after members of the Assembly and Senate deliberated in a joint session for five hours on seven of the board’s 17 seats. “A lot is frustration. A lot is misinformation. But … these are remarkably courageous public servants who really stood on a front line and took a lot of incoming, a lot of incoming. [They] put themselves in public space a lot. [They] put themselves in harm’s way a lot.

...

Ultimately, the Assembly Democrats, who control the process, booted Bennett and Dawson while re-electing three others, two of whom are among the loudest critics of the board’s policies. Lawmakers also chose four new members, all women with experience in public education. Three are minorities.

...
Even though lawmakers were more vocally critical of the board last year, they made a much stronger statement on Tuesday, replacing two members who had served for more than two decades and electing four new members.

Bennett, former chancellor of the board who has served since 1995, and Dawson, a geology professor at SUNY Plattsburgh who has served since 1993, got word in the days before Tuesday's election that they would not be reappointed.

Make no mistake, the members of the Board of Regents have seen themselves as untouchable previous to last year, though with one Regent replaced last year and two more whacked this year, they should no longer view themselves that way.

A political price has been paid for shilling for deform and the potential exists for more functionaries to pay that price.

With Sheldon Silver under indictment for corruption and stripped of his speaker role, Regents Chancellor Tisch no longer has a protector in power to help her maintain her position.

She's next on the list to go. 

Regents Blink On Mandatory Field Testing - For Now

From LoHud:

In response to a barrage of criticism from parents and educators about excessive testing, the Board of Regents is tabling a vote on a resolution that would have made standalone field tests in grades 3-8 mandatory.

The resolution would have prevented school districts from refusing to administer the controversial tests, which try out questions that may be included on future exams. The measure was scheduled to be voted on Feb. 25.

Instead, the board is requesting $8.4 million in the state budget to enable the Education Department to print more versions of the regular tests with the field test questions embedded in them.

"Pending action on that request, the board will not act on the proposed regulation at this time," said Education Department spokeswoman Jeanne Beattie.

And what caused the blink?

This:

The proposed regulation, making the standalone filed tests mandatory, caused a public outcry, and thousands of letters were sent to the Education Department in opposition to the plan during the 45-day public comment period, which ended Jan. 20.

It seems even the unaccountable members of the NY Board of Regents are starting to feel some pressure on their education reform agenda.

Still, as NYSAPE notes, this may not be the end of the mandatory field testing push from the Regents:

Anna Shah of the NYS Allies for Public Education, an advocacy group that includes about 50 parent and educator groups, said she found the tabling of the resolution problematic.

...

Shah said the Education Department had made no effort to post the public comments or respond to inquiries from the public on any of the their concerns.

Asking for a large amount in funding from the state is just a way for the Education Department to avoid answering questions, she said.

"The $8.4 million is a pipe dream," said Shah. "They are just making a show of a good-faith effort."

And when that good-faith effort gets shot down by the pols in charge, we may see mandatory field testing shoved through anyway.

With Sheldon Silver Out As Speaker, Isn't It Time To Show Merryl Tisch The Door Too?

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch was re-elected to the Board of Regents in April 2011 to a five year term.

Her patron, then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, announced her re-election in a release here.

Silver is facing charges on corruption and fraud and may soon be in prison.

He's also facing a coup from his Assembly Dems.

It was reported tonight that he will be forced from the speakership by Monday if he hasn't formally resigned by then.

Now Tisch is Shelly's pal, they know each other from the old days on the Lower East Side.

She's faced a lot of criticism for her handling of the Common Core roll-out, her oversight (or lack thereof) of the charter school approval process, and the reform agenda she has pushed on the state.

But she serves as Regents Chancellor because Silver wants her there and has used his enormous influence and power to keep her there.

Carol Burris wrote a blog piece back in December that concluded Tisch would remain in power despite her failures as chancellor because of this:

Given the current system of appointment, Merryl Tisch, who has wealth and deep political connections, will likely remain in power. She is married to billionaire James S. Tisch, the CEO of the Loews Corporation, and has been a friend since childhood of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who controls the appointments through the votes of the Assembly. The people of New York have no direct mechanism to have her removed.

Tisch still remains wealthy and married to that source of wealth - that part of the power dynamic hasn't changed.

But with her ally Silver disgraced and soon to be gone from power, there looks like there will be a real shot to show Merryl Tisch the door next year.

She was re-elected in April 2011 to a five year term - she'll face another election in April 2016.

We should start mobilizing opposition to her as Regents Chancellor now, parents and teachers, so that her Reign of Error at the Board of Regents can be ended.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch: Search For New NYSED Commissioner Will Be Secretive, Public Will Have No Input

From the morning political email by Azi Paybarah and Jimmy Vielkind:

SEARCHING FOR KING’S SUCCESSOR—Capital’s Jessica Bakeman: Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch said Thursday she will lead a “good, honest, honorable”—and confidential—national search for the next state education commissioner. “I do not plan to comment about the search, ever,” Tisch said during a phone interview with Capital. “The search is going to take place within our board. Every member of our board will be given an opportunity to have input, and we are going to set up a process that I think will be a good, honest, honorable process to make such an important decision.” http://bit.ly/12TmAPT

In short, they will pick who they want to pick, the public will have no input or insight into the process whatsoever, and if New Yorkers don't like it, too bad.

You'll just have to take Tisch's word for it that the process will be “good, honest, honorable."

Since there was nothing "good, honest, honorable" about process for the last appointee to the Board of Regents (see here and here for that debacle), it's difficult to imagine the process choosing the new NYSED commissioner will be "good, honest, honorable" either.

Cuomo Wants APPR To Play Role In Hiring, Firing, Tenure Decisions

Behind a paywall at Capital NY, but State of Politics has this summery:

At a private Forbes magazine-sponsored discussion forum in June, Gov. Andrew Cuomo told an audience of wealthy philanthropists that state-mandated performance evaluations should be the basis for hiring, firing and tenure decisions.

No surprise that's what he told his hedge fundie and Wall Street criminal friends back in June.

With one lawsuit against APPR already working its way through the system and with more and more of the NYSED data under attack for large margins of error, it will be interesting to see how he argues APPR is sacrosanct.

But you can bet he will.

It's up to us to point out again and again that the data APPR is based on is suspect at best, phonied up or worse at worst.

The nonsense with "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. last week doesn't help the case of Cuomo or the state when they try and push themselves as the "adults" in the room simply looking to add much-needed accountability to the school system.

As we saw when the Regents and SED dodged blame for "Dr" Ted and Cuomo's outgoing lieutenant governor made excuses for "Dr" Ted's fraud, the system that really needs accountability is the one supposedly holding the rest of us accountable.

Audit Analysis Finds New York Charter School Sector Rife With Fraud

Ben Chapman in today's Daily News:

New York State charter schools have made more than $28 million in questionable expenditures since 2002, according to a new review of previous audits of the publicly funded, privately run schools.

The Center for Popular Democracy’s analysis charter school audits found investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.

Kyle Serrette, executive director of the progressive, Washington-based group, said the review of previously published audits showed the schools need greater oversight.

“We can’t afford to have a system that fails to cull the fraudulent charter operators from the honest ones,” said Serrette. “Establishing a charter school oversight system that prevents fraud, waste and mismanagement will attack the root cause of the problem.”

An oversight system for charter schools in New York State?

Ha, that's a laugh.

You can literally lie about everything other than your birth date on your application as head of a charter school and the New York State oversight entities (the Board of Regents and NYSED) won't catch you.

Even after your caught, no one at the oversight entities will take responsibility for giving charter approval to a fraudulent lead applicant - they'll instead try and pass the buck to one of the other entities.

The political establishment will make excuses for the fraudulent behavior, minimizing it is a "mistake" instead of the criminal behavior it is.

And the school will STILL open, despite it's birthing by a fraudster, so long as said fraudster "resigns" from the board of trustees.

Chapman's Daily News article comes at a sensitive time for charters because they are looking to increase or eliminate the charter cap in the spring but are having to live down the "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. fraud fiasco I referenced above as Exhibit A for why charters are a problem.

And now comes this:

The state controller’s office and state Education Department have audited 62 of New York’s 248 charter schools, according to Serrette’s report. All told, Serrette’s group estimates wasteful spending at charters could cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year.

Eighteen audits targeted charters in New York City, representing about 9% of the 197 charters in the five boroughs. Each audit found issues.

• A 2012 audit found Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School was paying $800,000 in excess annual fees to the management company that holds its building’s lease.
• A 2012 audit of Williamsburg Charter High School revealed school officials overbilled the city for operations and paid contractors for $200,800 in services that should have been provided by the school’s network.
• A 2007 audit of the Carl C. Icahn Charter School determined the Bronx school spent more than $1,288 on alcohol for staff parties and failed to account for another $102,857 in expenses.

And that's just what's been found with financial audits.

Imagine top to bottom investigation of charter practices, including state test scores (which are self-graded at high school charters), attrition rates and special education services.

There's a reason Eva Moskowitz sued to keep audits from happening at her charter chain (and won that suit, though that victory came before changes to the auditing procedures in last spring's state budget agreement.)

There's a reason why the charter school sector is in the game to sue the city and state comptrollers to limit the audits that were decreed legal and necessary by last year's budget agreement.

They don't want anybody looking into them because they understand the charter sector is a Wild, Wild West industry where pretty much anything goes.

If that isn't obvious after the "Dr" Ted J Morris Jr fraud fiasco, I don't know what it is.

But it's even more true after these the Center For Popular Democracy's audit analysis.

The key takeaway from Ben Chapman's DN story is:

Eighteen audits targeted charters in New York City, representing about 9% of the 197 charters in the five boroughs. Each audit found issue...investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.

Not every charter was audited but every charter that was audited had issues.

What that says to me is, it's time to target every charter school for auditing.

And since neither oversight body at the state level (the Regents or the NYSED) managed to catch the fraud of "Dr" Ted J Morris Jr, the con man who claimed to have a BA, an MA, a Ph.D, and an MSW (he may not even have a high school diploma), the state and city comptrollers need to be the leads on these audits.

When the oversight bodies that are supposed to hold charters accountable don't care to do their jobs and make excuses for a lack of oversight when fraud is exposed via the news or blogosphere, it means those oversight entities should no longer have oversight responsibilities.

The aggressively pro-charter Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the former charter school founder NYSED Commissioner John King are part of the problem with charters, not part of the solution.

Daily News Praises Merryl Tisch For School Closure Threats Even As She Fails To Take Responsibility For Ted Morris Fiasco

Daily News today:

New York’s top education official has sent a timely shot across the city’s bow — warning that school renewal plans unveiled by Mayor de Blasio may well fall short of the genuine accountability the state has every right to demand.

Cheers to Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch for clarifying that kids will never be rescued from failing schools if the worst teachers remain in their classrooms.

...

 In stepped Tisch, saying bluntly that “if we do not see movement with these lowest-performing schools in terms of their ability to retool their workforces by the spring” — that’s this spring — “we will move to close them.”

These schools, Tisch said correctly, “have failed for generations now.”

“It’s not just saying, ‘We’re gonna fix these schools,’ ” she said. “You’ve got to give the new principals and assistant principals the ability to hire the teachers that they want and fire the teachers that they don’t want.”

Ah, yes - Tisch is happy to tell Mayor de Blasio to close public schools and fire the teachers in those schools or she'll step in as a state entity and do it for him.

Meanwhile, she shirks blame for the "Dr." Ted Morris Jr. mess, passing the buck onto the local Regents and NYSED for the state's approval of a charter school with a lead applicant who lied about having a BA, an MA, a Ph.D, an MSW and starting three non-profits since he was ten years old.

Mercedes Schneider wrote a scathing post last night that exposes the lack of due diligence that the state did on this charter application and notes that both the Regents Chancellor and the current lieutenant governor, Robert Duffy, are making excuses for why Morris, the con man, got a charter.

She finishes her post with this:

For at least three years– 2012, 2013, and 2014– Morris has been misrepresenting himself to NYSED and, by extension, to Regents and the citizens of Rochester.

He clearly meant to do so.

Others found him out; otherwise, it is almost certain Morris would have continued in his lies.
Morris has been exposed– and with him both NYSED’s and Regents’ failure to properly investigate the charters they have approved.

Time to step up, Tisch:

At least ask to see evidence of NYSED’s having verified lead applicant credentials before stamping your “aggressive” approval.

The Daily News of course ignores the whole Morris fiasco because it doesn't play into their "Tisch is the adult in the room" frame for the closure threat story.

Tisch's refusal to take responsibility for the Morris fiasco, her passing the buck onto the local Regents and NYSED for handing a fraudster a charter school, shows she is NOT the adult in the room, that she only pushes her authority as chancellor when it suits her agenda.

As a pro-charter, anti-public school reformer, Tisch isn't interested in holding Ted Morris, Greater Works Charter School, NYSED, the local Regents, herself or the charter approval process accountable for the Morris mess.

She is, however, happy to hold Mayor de Blasio, Chancellor Farina and the teachers in NYC schools accountable for "improvement" of performance by spring or she's going to step in and force closure of some schools.

Apparently only unionized teachers and their schools are to be held accountable in Merryl Tisch's New York.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch Refuses To Be Held Accountable For Giving Con Artist Dr. Ted Morris Jr. A Charter School

As my friend on Twitter, Fake Merryl Tisch, likes to say in between swigs of Grey Goose, "Accountability is for the little people":

A day after 22-year-old charter school founder Ted Morris Jr. resigned precipitously after lies were discovered on his résumé, state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch deflected blame for the charter's approval and said the school, without its founder, should still open next fall.

Morris was the lead applicant for Greater Works Charter School, which got approval from the Board of Regents to open in 2015 as a high school with a particular reliance on technology.

He claimed to have accumulated a wall full of degrees, mostly from online schools, and served in leadership roles for various local organizations. One of those schools, Western Governors University, said he did not in fact get the bachelor's degree he claimed to have.

Another lie became apparent Wednesday: Morris also claimed to have master's and doctoral degrees from Concordia University Chicago, but a representative from that school said it had no record of him ever attending.

Those revelations led to an obvious question: why didn't the state Education Department and the Board of Regents catch the deception?

Tisch said the board only sees applications after they've been recommended by the state Education Department, suggesting it wasn't the members' normal responsibility to vet them for errors.

"When it comes to the board, it comes with an endorsement from (NYSED) and the local regents," she said. "What we hear is whether ... they've put together a sound application. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, and I think people in (NYSED) need to address that with you."

Bill Clarke, the director of the NYSED charter school office, was not available for comment. A NYSED spokesman said no one else would be available either because of the snow descending on Albany.

Two of the state Regents are based in Rochester, Andrew Brown and Wade Norwood. In a statement released Tuesday before Morris' resignation, Brown said: "We rely on a considerable amount of data and information provided by applicants, along with conducting many in-person interviews before reaching a decision. If it were to turn out that we were deliberately provided misleading information by an applicant, that would of course call for further review of the issuance of the charter."

You're not surprised, right?

Tisch "deflects" blame onto the local Regents and NYSED, NYSED can't be reached for comment because of a couple of inches of snow and the local Regents who gave the okay say "It's not our fault because Dr. Ted lied to us."

In short, no one's at fault except Dr. Ted.

Let's imagine what these clowns would say if a public school hired a con man like Dr Ted to run the show.

The Dr. Ted Morris Greater Works Charter School Edifice Comes Crashing Down

If you've been following the story of 22 year old Dr. Ted Morris, the proud owner of a Regents-approved charter school in Rochester, you know that Diane Ravitch, Peter Greene and Merecedes Schneider all raised questions about Dr. Morris' background and qualifications in the last 24 hours.

The Democrat and Chronicle published a puff piece about Morris yesterday, but the same writer came back with a piece tonight that confirms Dr. Ted isn't all he was cracked up to be in the D&C piece yesterday.

It is now confirmed that Morris didn't graduate from School Without Walls in Rochester as he first told the Democrat and Chronicle he did:

He said Sunday that he graduated from School Without Walls in Rochester, but clarified Monday that he withdrew from that school in 2008 and graduated later that year from Penn Foster High School, a private online high school based in Pennsylvania.

Former School Without Walls principal Dan Drmacich and the Rochester School District both verified that Morris left the district in 2008.

"From what I remember, he was very articulate, a great conversationalist, but ... he didn't go to many of his classes," Drmacich said. "We constantly worked with him through his teacher adviser and the school counselor, to no avail — to the point he realized and we realized he was just coming to school and hanging out versus attending classes on a regular basis."

Morris denied not attending class regularly but said he did not feel challenged at School Without Walls, part of the reason he left for an online school.

It had been reported that Dr. Morris had a BA from an online college, but it turns out that he may not actually have a BA at all.  In addition, his MA and Ph.D claims are also in dispute (which makes sense since it doesn't seem like he actually has a BA):

Morris said in interviews and in paperwork submitted to the state that he got a bachelor's degree from Western Governors University, an online college based in Salt Lake City. But a school spokesman said he attended classes there but did not graduate and is not currently enrolled.

From 2008 on, Morris' education included little time in a traditional classroom. He also took classes at the online Grand Canyon University and eventually got a master's and doctoral degrees from Concordia University Chicago through a program that required him to be on campus for one weekend a month, he said Tuesday.

Representatives from Penn Foster, Grand Canyon and Concordia could not be reached to verify those claims.

The D & C reported that Dr. Morris didn't give a resume with the 2014 application for his Greater Works Charter School, but the resume Morris handed in with a 2013 application for the charter had several "misrepresentations" (i.e., "lies") on it (UPDATE - Mercedes Scheider writes that he did give in a resume with the 2014 application and that it contains many of the same items from the 2013 version.)

Morris wrote he was the assistant chief executive officer for the Hickok Center for Brain Injury, with duties including "developed and implemented all program policies and procedures" and "served as acting CEO in the absence of the CEO."

Elaine Comarella, the center's CEO, said his title was actually administrative assistant, and that the responsibilities he listed in the resume were "a little overshot."

"He worked on all those things, but he didn't actually do all that stuff himself," she said.

...

 Another of the jobs listed on his resume was director of Church Women United's Task Force on Courts. That was accurate, but in the resume he submitted to get that position, obtained by the Democrat and Chronicle, he claimed he had bachelor's and master's degrees from Almeda University, an unaccredited online school in Idaho.

That apparently isn't true. He said Tuesday he'd never heard of that school and didn't know why it was on his resume.

...

A third job listing was senior administrator for Victory Living Christian Faith Centers from 2003 — when he was a few months shy of his 11th birthday — to 2010. The resume said he "hired, trained and supervised a staff of seven administrators ... (for) a national Christian organization)."

Morris reiterated Tuesday that he did in fact start serving as an administrator at age 10, "as little as I was," and "did all the official paperwork" in those seven years. His hiring and supervisory responsibilities started when he was around 15 or 16 years old and were done together with other leaders, he said.

Victory Living didn't return a call seeking comment Tuesday.

And so Dr. Ted Morris' Greater Works Charter School dream comes crashing down in a clatter of lies, half-truths, misrepresentations and delusions.

That the New York Board of Regents approved this dude for a charter school gives you a glimpse of what the future is going to bring after they raise the charter cap or eliminate it completely.

Regents Chancellor Tisch said the following to the Daily News post-election:

“As we look to this legislative season, people are going to say we need to raise the charter cap. I personally am a great believer in charter schools ... I believe in opening them aggressively” Chancellor Merryl Tisch said on the John Catsimatidis radio show. “I’d like to push more charter schools.”

If Dr. Ted Morris, the 22 year old with the unconfirmed online high school diploma (who lied about graduating from School Without Walls), the disputed online BA, a disputed MA and Ph.D and a phonied up resume could get a charter school in New York State before they eliminate the charter cap, just imagine what's going to happen after the cap is eliminated.

This is an embarrassment for the Board of Regents and I don't think it's going too far to say that the individuals who approved Dr. Ted and his Greater Works Charter School need to be forced out immediately.

In addition, the Regents Chancellor herself needs to be called to account for this mess.

I am under no illusion either of those things will happen.

But if there were any justice in this world, they certainly would.

Democrat And Chronicle Takes Down Story About Dr. Ted Morris And His Greater Works Charter School (SECOND UPDATE - 10:40 AM)

The Democrat and Chronicle article about Dr. Ted Morris and his Greater Works Charter School is now offline.

Yesterday Diane Ravitch posted the D and C story about the miraculous Dr. Ted Morris, the 22-year old with the online BA and (perhaps) online MA and Ph.D as well who was granted approval for a charter school in Rochester by the New York Board of Regents.

Ravitch received an email from the principal of the school Morris claimed to have graduated from, School Without Walls, saying that Morris had only attended the school one year and not graduated from SWW.

Peter Greene and Mercedes Schneider further looked into Morris and found strange details about Morris that make him look less like a child prodigy and more like a con man.

And now, without ceremony, the Democrat and Chronicle has taken the Morris story down.

It will be interesting to see if they make an announcement for why the story is now offline.

The article read like a PR puff piece for Morris.

Perhaps they're embarrassed now that a couple of bloggers like Greene and Schenider, along with education historian Diane Ravitch, were able to expose him in less than 24 hours for being something he isn't.

It will be interesting to see how Regents Chancellor Tisch defends the Regents approving Morris for a charter school.

Tisch has said she wants an "aggressive" expansion of the charter sector in New York in the next few years.

Apparently that means giving just about anybody - including a con man like Morris - a charter school.

UPDATE - 8:18 AM. The D and C story on Morris is back online, though it says it was updated at 8:02 a.m. EST November 25, 2014.

No immediate changes to the story call out to me.

Looks like the Democrat and Chronicle does indeed stand by its puff piece on Morris.

We'll see if it - and Dr Ted - stand up to further scrutiny.

SECOND UPDATE - 10:40 AM: Leonie Haimson left the following comment:

The story now says he graduated from on online HS instead of School w/o Walls: "It was only six years ago that he graduated from an online high school at age 16. He had previously attended School Without Walls." so this 22 yr old has online degrees from HS, College and grad school, w/out any teaching experience or even evidence he can interact with human beings in a classroom.

Indeed, I went back to the story and it looks like the update to it seems to be changing the details around School Without Walls, to note that Morris attended the school but didn't graduate from it and graduated instead from an online high school.

Still seems like just about anybody can get a charter school these days.

Why Not Make The 22 Year Old Charter School Guy Who Lied About His Diploma A Member Of The Board Of Regents?

Earlier today Diane Ravitch posted that the Board of Regents in New York gave a charter school slot to a 22 year old with an online BA and (perhaps) an online MA and Ph.D as well.

The fellow, who has never taught school, will be opening his charter in Rochester and "preparing the next generation to do better, and be better, than we've done..." even though he hasn't actually lived much himself yet.

Funny that.

But it gets better.

Ravitch updated that she received an email from the former principal of School Without Walls, the high school the 22 year old charter school fellow claimed to have graduated from, informing her that said fellow actually did not graduate from SWW:

I was the principal of Rochester, New York’s School Without Walls from 1987 to 2010. Ted Morris, the young man awarded permission to open a charter school in Rochester, NY, and claiming to be a graduate of School Without Walls in 2008, attended SWW for less than a year and then voluntarily left to be home schooled. He never graduated nor received a diploma from School Without Walls.
Dan Drmacich

Now before you get all upset and say, "How can the Board of Regents in New York give a fellow who has lied about his high school diploma and received at least one online degree a charter school, especially when he is only 22 years old and has never taught a day in his life?", let's remember who actually sits on the Board of Regents.

Here, for example, is the last appointee to the Board of Regents:

With 20-20 hindsight, lawmakers are asking themselves what happened during their vote to elect members to the state Board of Regents, which sets education policy.

During a rare joint session of the Legislature, Assembly members and senators on Tuesday re-elected three incumbent Regents. For the fourth seat, which had just been vacated, they chose a seeming long-shot: Sullivan County lawyer, activist, former community college instructor and website entrepreneur Josephine Victoria Finn.

Appearing before lawmakers just 24 hours earlier, Finn said she hadn't really been following the raging controversy surrounding the implementation of the new Common Core learning standards that has built unusual interest in the Regents vote.

In the hours after the vote, reports circulated that Finn operated several web ventures devoted to spirituality and weight loss, including a program in which clients could be coached by her at a cost of up to $3,600 per year.

The sites, which were marred by numerous spelling errors, were soon taken down and are now listed as being "under constructions."

Finn, whose nomination was formally introduced late last week, had prevailed over another candidate, veteran Albany school principal Maxine Fantroy Ford. And her election came as her predecessor unexpectedly resigned at the last minute.

You can see Ms. Finn's spiritual weight loss sites here and here.

I dunno, we're getting all up in arms over the 22 year old kid with the online BA and what appears to be at least one lie on his resume getting a charter school from the Regents.

But given the quality of some of the people on the Board of Regents, this kid might be selling himself short by just looking to run a charter school.

Why not aim higher and get on the Board of Regents?

He'd fit right in with the last personage elevated to the Board of Regents - they both seem to know something about trying to make a quick buck.

It Seems Merryl Tisch Will Give Just About Anybody A Charter School In New York State

Via Diane Ravitch comes this news:

Unlike most school leaders, Ted Morris' days in a high school classroom are still very fresh in his memory. 

It was only six years ago that he graduated from School Without Walls at age 16. Now, at 22, he's armed with a freshly minted doctorate degree in education and permission from the state Board of Regents to open a charter high school in Rochester in 2015.
...
It will be called Greater Works Charter School, accepting about 100 ninth-graders in its first year and eventually expanding to about 400 students in grades 9-12.
...
After graduating from School Without Walls in 2008, Morris got a bachelor's degree at age 18 from Western Governors University, an online college based in Salt Lake City. He then received master's and doctoral degrees from Concordia University near Chicago.

Morris has an educational consulting firm and said he has worked with the Rochester Prep schools, among others. He also helped start three non-profit organizations, he said: Sparq Rochester, a youth arts outfit; Greater Works Education Network, a fledgling statewide charter advocacy group; and Victory Living Christian Faith Center.

Wow - so a guy who got his BA, MA and Ph.D from online schools is going to run his own charter school at the age of 22.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch told us she wants to see an "aggressive" expansion of the charter sector across the state in the near term.

Giving a 22 year old with a BA, an MA and a Ph.D from online schools who has no teaching experience but a little consulting experience sure does count as "aggressive expansion" to me.

I'm sure this couldn't go wrong at all, right?

And of course most of the learning at this charter will take place online.

Sure it will

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch Wants Massive Expansion Of Charter Schools In New York State

Bloomberg is gone, but his pro-charter, pro-school closing policies live on at the state level:

The state should raise its cap to allow more charter schools, the Board of Regents chief said Sunday, running counter to the city administration’s position.

“As we look to this legislative season, people are going to say we need to raise the charter cap. I personally am a great believer in charter schools ... I believe in opening them aggressively” Chancellor Merryl Tisch said on the John Catsimatidis radio show. “I’d like to push more charter schools.”

Charter backers plan an effort to raise or eliminate the cap, which has 28 slots left in the city.

Tisch said the jury is out on Mayor de Blasio’s recently announced plan to turn around the city’s most troubled schools — but if they don’t show progress, the state will step in to attempt to shut them down.

“If we do not see movement on these schools, these lowest-performing schools, in terms of their ability to retool their workforce, by the spring, we will move to close them,” she said. “Because these are the schools that have failed for generations now.”

Isn't it time parents and teachers take aim at Regents Chancellor Tisch, the doyenne of testing as Diane Ravitch once called her, and force her out?

This is a Regents Chancellor who carries out the destruction of the public education system in this state by pushing the abysmal Common Core, the badly designed state tests (which are kept mostly secret by the state BECAUSE they are so badly designed), the badly written EngageNY curriculum and a teacher evaluation system that a study by superintendents in the Lower Hudson Valley shows is harmful to children and teachers.

Now she goes on the attack against public schools, calling for "aggressive" efforts to expand charters in the state and says the state will move to close "failing" schools in NYC if Mayor de Blasio doesn't.

Tisch continues to carry out the corporate education agenda, harming children all across the state with her CCSS agenda, the garbage in the EngageNY curriculum and the badly-designed state tests, and now she is looking to help her criminal friends on Wall Street cash in by pushing for a massive influx of charters around the state.

This woman doesn't belong as Regents Chancellor.

It is time to begin a parent- and teacher-led campaign against her to force her out.

You can start by calling Shelly Silver, her pal who put her in power in the first place.

Here's his number:

District Office

250 Broadway Suite 2307
New York, NY 10007
212-312-1420

Albany Office

LOB 932
Albany, NY 12248
518-455-3791

Email:  http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/Sheldon-Silver/contact/

I'm under no illusion that it will be easy to push back against the Doyenne of Tests or force her out.

But it is time to try.

The harm this woman has done in carrying out her corporate education reform agenda needs to be stopped.

Rob Astorino Says Its Time To Make The Board Of Regents Accountable To Voters

The Times-Union reports that GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino released a 15 point education plan yesterday, with Astorino's call for replacing the Common Core in New York coming at the top of the plan list.

But I found this part most interesting:

Astorino's plan also includes changing the process for selecting the leaders of the the state's educational system. He'd like to see the 13-member Board of Regents elected by voters in each region; the current board is elected by a majority vote of the Legislature, a system that hands power to the numerically dominant Assembly Democratic conference — a body that would be unlikely to approve the change.

Astorino would hand selection of the state education commissioner to the governor, with the final approval of the Board of Regents. The board currently selects the commissioner.

Currently NYSED Commissioner John King and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch believe they are unaccountable to the public, which is why they continue to pursue an education reform agenda that is becoming more and more unpopular with both parents of school-age children and the public at large.

I think it is time to make the members of the Board of Regents accountable to the voters.

It's not as if the appointment process for Regents members is working.

The last member appointed knew little about the Common Core and other education issues but was fast-tracked through the legislature when Assembly leaders decided one member of the Board of Regents had to be sacrificed to assuage anger over the state's education reform agenda.

After news outlets reported the new Regents member was a "spiritual weight loss entrepreneur" with a website full of spelling errors touting her abilities, several Assembly members were heard to exclaim "What did we do? What did we do?"

Indeed, what did they do?

They followed the Assembly leadership who told them to vote "yes" on a candidate for the Board of Regents they knew nothing about.

It's time to change this corrupt Regents appointment process.

I would leave the appointment of the commissioner to the Board of Regents rather than hand that power to the governor.

But I agree with Astorino that it is time to make the members of the Board of Regents accountable to the voters of this state.

You'd see a vastly different reform process if Merryl Tisch knew she had a re-election to run and John King knew his low approval ratings meant he was going to be out of a job soon.

Meet The New Member Of The Board Of Regents

From the Times-Union:

With 20-20 hindsight, lawmakers are asking themselves what happened during their vote to elect members to the state Board of Regents, which sets education policy.

During a rare joint session of the Legislature, Assembly members and senators on Tuesday re-elected three incumbent Regents. For the fourth seat, which had just been vacated, they chose a seeming long-shot: Sullivan County lawyer, activist, former community college instructor and website entrepreneur Josephine Victoria Finn.

Appearing before lawmakers just 24 hours earlier, Finn said she hadn't really been following the raging controversy surrounding the implementation of the new Common Core learning standards that has built unusual interest in the Regents vote.

In the hours after the vote, reports circulated that Finn operated several web ventures devoted to spirituality and weight loss, including a program in which clients could be coached by her at a cost of up to $3,600 per year.

The sites, which were marred by numerous spelling errors, were soon taken down and are now listed as being "under constructions."

Finn, whose nomination was formally introduced late last week, had prevailed over another candidate, veteran Albany school principal Maxine Fantroy Ford. And her election came as her predecessor unexpectedly resigned at the last minute.

In interviews, Finn stressed that she would educate herself about the Common Core and would be a diligent listener on education topics. She also pointed to her experience as a village judge as an asset in making decisions after hearing arguments on a given topic.

A spiritual entrepreneur with a host of websites marred by numerous spelling errors who hasn't been following the controversies over the Common Core but now will have a vote over those very controversies.

I'd say it's an amazing thing we witnessed here, with Ms. Finn being elevated to the Board of Regents here, but given how Albany works, it's really just business as usual.