De Blasio's Vision For Public Schools - Fairness And Opportunity For All

Leonie Haimson has posted about the Riverside Church speech Mayor de Blasio gave today, articulating his vision for the public school system.

Here is an excerpt in which he addresses the charter co-location controversy:

“The answer is not to save a few of our children only.  The answer is not to find an escape route that some can follow and others can’t. The answer is to fix the entire system.  (sustained applause)… so we have to approach systemic change. …Poverty, hunger, the lack of affordable housing…  But even within the education system itself we aren’t approaching root causes and the systemic changes we need to.  We have to work from the assumption that we will save every child, that we will reach every child, that no system is working unless every child has opportunity. And we need to be able to say that despite the good efforts of many the school system is still broken in many ways…We need to work on solutions for the whole and the original notion of the charter movement was to innovate, to create laboratories …to bring to the entire school system. …The idea is not to create separation, the kind of competition that works for some and leaves some out…For 6% of our children in the charters, they are our children; we need them to succeed.  For 94% of the children in the traditional public schools they are our children, we need them to succeed. 

 

The notion that some children may be “lucky” enough to escape from the traditional public schools in their neighborhood speaks volumes, because so many parents feel that right now…I want that parent to know that we will not accept the neighborhood  school that fails them …Our mission is to create a city in which regardless of zip code, your neighborhood public school is a great option for your child.  (sustained applause.)

 

There has been failure, we should not sweep it under the rug….It’s all of us in public life that haven’t measured up… well I say to you today that in my mayoralty… It is my responsible to fix the problem, and I won’t choose between the children of this city any more that any parent would choose between the children in their family.  I will reach out to all the children in the city, in traditional public schools, in charters schools, in religious schools… they all deserve a solution.   

We made some decisions in the last weeks striving for fairness, but …I didn’t measure up in explaining this to the people of this city.  We want want children to have good options, but not displacing or harming other children in the schools to which they may go.  We will make sure that 194 children [in Success Academy] have a good home this year, but we will not do this at the expense of our special education children.  That is a false choice has been set up as part of a broken system and a broken dialogue; and it's time to ending that kind of dysfunction … So we’ll protect the children who need our help while not pitting one against another."

Extraordinary words in defense of a system that seeks to work for all.

I wish he and Chancellor Farina had been ready to go with this when they announced the charter co-location changes.

Alas, they weren't and the public relations damage to de Blasio, Farina and traditional public schools has been heavy. 

$4 million in pro-charter, anti-de Blasio ads does that sort of thing.

Still, better late than never to articulate this vision of a system that works for all.

It won't assuage the clowns on the Morning Joe Clown Show or the charter lobbyist in the governor's mansion, but it may touch some in this city who are unsettled by those ads on the TV and wonder just how it is a charter network that can't afford rent can somehow afford to spend over a $1 million a week on propaganda on every network plus cable.

And in the end, these are words that matter:

"We’ll protect the children who need our help while not pitting one against another...I won’t choose between the children of this city any more than any parent would choose between the children in their family."

That's a much different vision than the one articulated by the charter school lobbyist in Albany who says only charter school children matter.

De Blasio Puts Diane Ravitch On Inaugural Committee

This is a good sign:

.@deBlasioNYC puts @DianeRavitch on his inaugural committee
— Lisa Fleisher (@lisafleisher) November 30, 2013

Again, putting a few pro-traditional public school advocates on his transition team and inaugural committee does not guarantee a pro-traditional public school agenda for his administration, but it surely is a good sign.

He could have put a DFER like Resham Saujani (whom he hired as deputy public advocate) or a Students First figure on these teams.

He chose instead to put friends of traditional public schools there.

A very good sign.

Poor, Poor Eva

colleague jokes "Eva Moskowitz didn't get a spot on the de Blasio transition team. bummer.”
— Azi (@Azi) November 20, 2013

Maybe next time.

Gotham Charter Schools notes no teachers on the transition team, no UFT heads - but some good, solid friends of public schools, IMO:

The committee includes Zakiyah Ansari, the Alliance for Quality Education’s advocacy director and a leading critic of the Bloomberg’s education policies; Cynthia Nixon, an actress who herself has worked with AQE; and Kim Sweet, a special education advocate whose organization has repeatedly sued the city under Bloomberg. All are public school parents.

Commenters at GCS complaining there are no teachers on the team.

Well, teachers didn't join the de Blasio band wagon until late in the parade - especially the teachers unions.

Transition team members are usually awarded to friends and allies.

Alas, the UFT was neither of those to de Blasio until very late in the game.

So I'm not surprised there isn't a teacher on the team.

But don't sweat it.

Transition teams don't mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Hell, Obama had progressive educators on his transition team, but look how that turned out.

See who de Blasio picks for chancellor.

That will be the best indication of what kind of administration we get.

Bloomberg: Paterson Budget Will Cut 8,500 Teaching Jobs In NYC

The story is here.

Bloomberg's solution?

More charter schools, of course.

And giving him the right to fire the teachers in the ATR pool.

And tying teacher evaluations to test scores.

You have to give Moneybags one thing - he sure does stay on message.

Charter schools, charter schools, charter schools...

Test scores, test scores, test scores...

Fire the ATR's, fire the ATR's, fire the ATR's.

It's a broken record, but as many politicians who spew jive have discovered over the years, if you just keep repeating your jive over and over, the media stenographers will repeat it as truth in the papers and on the TV.

But I've got a solution, Mr. Moneybags.

Why not take the teachers in the ATR pool and get them working in schools?

Instead of spending millions to close schools, why not give the "failing" schools the resources they need to deal with the socio-economic problems they are being asked to deal with (i.e., homeless students, support service students, ELL's, etc.)?

Why not hire some actual educators to develop policy rather than the 20-something MBA's you have running it right now.

Oh, and why don't you stop handing out multi-million dollar no-bid contract to your cronies?

Those would be positive solutions to solve the problem.

But you're not looking for positive solutions to the problem.

You're looking to exacerbate the crisis in the schools to push forward your privatization agenda.

Which means you're just spewing jive.

It's a shame the media stenographers don't have the brains and/or guts to call you on your bullshit.

Pretty Please With TARP Funds On Top

Larry Summers, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council and President Obama's top economic adviser, appeared on ABC's This Week to explain how the administration plans to get banks lending money again.

They're going to beg them by saying "Please lend money, please, please, please!!!!"

Mr. Summers, Secretary of the Treasury at the end of the Clinton administration, said that “it doesn’t cost anything to encourage banks, as the president will be doing, to meet their responsibilities and expand the flow of credit to small business.” He said the president will remind the bankers of what the federal government did to bail out banks when they were in trouble, “that no major bank would be intact, would be in a position to pay bonuses, if that extraordinary support had not been provided.”

The president, he said, “will be talking with them about what they can do to support enhanced lending to customers across the country.”

”We were there for them and the banks need to do everything they can to be sure they’re there for customers across this country,” he said.

Seriously - that's the plan. We were there for you banksters, now you better be there for us by opening up the coffers and lending to consumers and small businesses again.

Gee, that should work.

Never mind that this administration has done everything in it's power to make sure that the banksters (those politically connected ones, at any rate) got 100 cents to the dollar "owed" to them by AIG, that they have bent over backwards to keep Ben Bernanke printing the money presses at the Federal Reserve night and day to provide liquidity for the big banks, that they have kept "Too Big To Fail" institutions like Citigroup and Bank of America and AIG on life support after they speculated on high risk investments, the best they can do to get banks lending again is to beg them.

No wonder the financial institution people treat Obama with contempt and scorn. If that's the best he can do to them after near financial collapse and trillion dollar bailouts last year, then he deserves to be treated with contempt and scorn.

Now compare how Obama and his merry men treat incompetent banksters and failed financial institutions with how they treat schools they declare "failing" and teachers they say are "bad."

What we hear from President Accountability and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is that failing schools need to be closed, never mind that the causes behind these supposed "failures" may have nothing to do with how good the teachers and administrators in those schools are but stem from larger socio-economic problems like entrenched generational poverty and family dysfunctions like alcoholism and addiction or more mundane problems like large class sizes and few resources.

We also hear from Obama and Duncan how bad teachers need to be fired, never mind that these teachers may have been doing just fine a few years ago before their schools were handed hundreds of "at risk" students with low test scores and troubling graduation rates from other schools that have been closed.

I guess Obama and company suffer from the same fetish so many in America suffer from - that is, the businessman fetish. No matter what happens, the businessman must always be listened to, the businessman always knows best, because he's a, you know, businessman.

Years ago, I used to listen to WFAN, the all-talk radio station, and at least a dozen times a day some know-nothing loud mouth from Jersey or Queens would call to say this is what the Yankees or Mets need to do with the line-up or the pitching staff or whatever. And when the host would say, "What you're saying is stupid and idiotic and makes no practical sense," the callers would say "Hey, I know what I'm talking about. I'm a businessman who runs a __________ business and what works in my place will work for the Yankees. What do you know, you're just a radio DJ!!! I'm a businessman!!!!"

So now some of these same idiots who call sports radio to offer their "business expertise" to their favorite teams are now telling professional educators with actual experience with actual students (usually about 340 a year) in an actual classroom how to educate children. And the rest of us, rather than pointing out the dismal record of business and businessmen in general the past 15 years (think Tech Bubble, think Enron, think Housing Bubble, think 2008 financial collapse, think Bernie Madoff) and noting how they ought to clean up their own messes before creating more of them in other areas of the public sphere, allow these know-nothing loud mouths and their allies in government and the press to call public education "failed."

And of course so much of it starts at the top, where President Accountability lectures teachers about what a bad job they're doing while he rewards the failed financial institutions and the incompetent and/or corrupt banksters who run them by handing them trillions and then begging them to lend some of it out.

A Call To Arms

Last Sunday the NY Times ran an article in the fashion and style section, of all places, about the sexy new charter schools hedge fund managers are running courtesy of the education deform movement.

In the article we got to meet all kinds of hedge funders like John Petry, Joel Greenblatt and John Sabat and hear about how they have gotten "religion" and decided to embrace the charter school movement and help NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg privatize as many New York public schools as they can.

The Times says these self-described business mavericks and financial innovators, the same fellows who helped bring us wonderful and innovative financial products like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that caused near financial systemic collapse last year, love the idea of bringing their MBA business ethics and management ideas to education.

By starting schools with non-unionized employees and adding long hours, extended school years and six day school weeks, these hedge fund managers are bringing a little bit of the 19th century to the 21st century, acting out their robber baron fantasies and getting acclaim in the corporate media for acting charitably to help educate kids. And the kicker is they get to do it with taxpayer-provided money and contributions they deduct off their own taxes come April 15th.

Gee, no wonder these guys like associating themselves with the charter school/privatization movement so much.

John Petry, a partner in Gotham Capital and a backer of the Harlem Success Academy, says he loves crunching numbers and reading spreadsheets of education statistics containing things like test scores, graduation rates, and teacher performance ratios. What he wants to see in his schools is what he want to see in his stock portfolios - increases every quarter in every area of data he looks at.

But Petry isn't interested in helping individuals (“helping the world one person at a time just isn’t for me," he told the Times), so if the charter school/privatization movement that he is helping build in New York City cannot be replicated in other cities, then "it’s not as meaningful to us."

Luckily for Petry and other education "reformers" like him, he's got plenty of people in the Obama administration who agree, so much so that in order to receive federal education funds as part of the Race to the Top portion of last year's stimulus package, states have to agree to lift caps on charter schools.

And also lucky for Petry he's got plenty of people in the press to carry water for charters. You might say that between the financial power the public school privatization movement has backing it, the allies it has in government to change laws to favor it and the jive talkers in the press it has to spread its propaganda, there is nothing we who are in favor of traditional public schools can do to stop it.

But one thing I did take from the article is this - unlike the actual educators in actual schools who do the actual teaching of actual students, these guys from the hedge funds aren't particularly interesting in individuals. As Petry told the Times, he doesn't give a shit about helping one person; it's got to be a movement or he's moving on.

So, as we do battle with the hedge fund managers and public school privatizers, let us keep in mind that while the charter school movement is sexy and "in" for them now, they will abandon it if and when they meet some strong and persistent resistance to replicating it nationwide or it becomes clear it's not as successful as they want it to be. These are not people with long attention spans and they've already told us they're mostly involved for the notoriety and attention, not for actually helping people. It's true that the privatization movement does advance their anti-union/pro-management agenda, but there are other ways for them to accomplish that agenda besides sitting on the boards of charter schools.

So if you're committed to the preservation of directly democratically controlled schools responsible for the future of every child within their jurisdiction, as Deborah Meier put it at Bridging Differences, we've got to stick together, fight them at every turn, expose their hypocrisies, and continue to reveal their phonied data that supposedly proves the pre-eminence of charters (like Little Gloria Vanderbilt's kid's 60 Minutes piece that "proved" the Harlem Children's Zone had bridged the test score gap between black and Latino students and white and Asian students when Aaron Pallas of Teacher's College showed that it proved no such thing.)

This won't be easy. Not when you're doing battle with Mayor Moneybags, President Obama, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and scores of wealthy Bernie Madoff-types (I love the the "Voldemort" big industry star in the Times article who no one will name because he is, like so many others in the shady hedge fund business, obsessed with "secrecy') and the charter movement is grabbing the most motivated students, the best buildings, and the most resources it can from traditional public schools.

But we've got to do it. And maybe, just maybe, we can send the Voldemorts from the hedge fund industry on to other predatory opportunities and get back to the business of educating future voting citizens of this country and not the compliant corporate employees willing to work long hours for low wages the privatizers want us to create.