NYSED Employee Indicted For Stealing $2.5 Million

Been saying for a while now that the NYSED is rife for investigation:

"Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced the indictment of Keisha Relf Davis, an employee of the New York State Department of Education, and an accomplice for stealing over $2.5 million from the state by diverting funds to NYC-area driving schools for services that were never rendered. As alleged, Davis received bribes in the form of regular cash payments for her role in the scheme. Together, Davis and Steven Washington, the schools’ program director, have been charged today with 19 felony counts including Grand Larceny and Bribery and face up to 25 years in state prison."

“Today’s indictment sends a clear message: no one is above the law and there must be one set of rules for everyone,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “Taking advantage of a government job to steal millions of dollars from New York taxpayers is a shameful violation of the public’s trust. My office must and will remain vigilant for such blatant acts of fraud.”

“These criminal actions are reprehensible and demand severe penalties,” said Kevin Smith, New York State Education Department Deputy Commissioner. “The employees of the Office of Adult Career and Continuing Education Services (ACCES) work toward the education and employment needs of New York State’s disabled adults. The actions of this one counselor exploited New York’s most vulnerable citizens for personal gain. When Education Department internal controls uncovered this criminal activity an immediate referral was made to the Attorney General for prosecution. Agency protocols will be tightened further to ensure that such criminality cannot again stand in the way of our mission to provide individuals with disabilities every opportunity for employment, economic self-sufficiency and independence.”

Davis was a vocational counselor for DOE’s Office of Adult Career and Continuation Education Services’ (ACCES) Vocational Rehabilitation program, which offers state-funded access to services like driver education to New Yorkers with qualifying disabilities and functional limitations. The investigation, which was conducted by the Attorney General’s Public Integrity Bureau, revealed that Davis allegedly worked in concert with Washington, the program director of Americana Commercial Driving School, in Manhattan, and Roadway Driving School, in the Bronx. (The owners of those two schools, Juani Ortiz and Juan Cabrera, respectively, pleaded guilty last month in connection with this scheme.)

According to the indictment unsealed today in Bronx County Court, Washington charged non-disabled customers $300 to $500 cash and required a copy of their Social Security card in order to receive driving lessons. He then provided the students’ information and cash payments – which constituted an ongoing bribery scheme – directly to Davis, who created, submitted and approved falsified documents indicating that the students received their training through the ACCES program. (The students were not aware that ACCES services were being applied for and approved in their names.)

As a result, the driving schools received almost $5,000 in reimbursement from the state for each of the roughly 540 students for whom Davis submitted ACCES paperwork. As part of the alleged scheme, Davis would keep the cash payments, Washington was paid 12% of each reimbursement and the schools’ owners pocketed the rest.

The indictment charges Keisha Relf Davis and Washington with one count of Grand Larceny in the First Degree (a Class B felony); one count of Grand Larceny in the Second Degree (a Class C felony); four counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree (Class E felonies); and four counts of Offering a False Instrument for Filing in the First Degree (Class E felonies). The indictment charges Davis individually with two counts of Bribe Receiving in the Second Degree (a Class C felony), four counts of Forgery in the Second Degree (Class D felonies) and one count of Defrauding the Government (a Class E felony); it charges Washington individually with two counts of Bribery in the Second Degree (a Class C felony). The top count of the indictment carries a mandatory prison term, with a maximum sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years. 

Somehow the former NYSED Commissioner, David Steiner, avoided indictment for taking bribes from Pearson in the form of overseas trips.

Still wondering how that happened.

Guess whether you get indicted or not depends upon whether you're stealing for yourself or taking bribes to help a well-connected multinational steal millions from taxpayers via no-bid contracts.

Things That Keep Joel Klein Up At Night

David Steiner, former NYSED Commissioner and unindicted co-conspirator in the Pearson bribery mess (for which Pearson was fined $7.7 million yesterday) interviewed former NYCDOE Chancellor Klein and got this out of him:

Klein admits there are a few things that keep him up at night.

“The charter schools do worry me and worry me profoundly,” Klein said. “Second thing that worries me if the signal goes out to the schools that we won't close schools, no matter what, everyone is going to take a deep breath, sigh of relief and say we’re back to the good old normal days and that worries me. And the third thing that worries me is, and I don't want to get locked into letter grades and the imperfections of the letter grades, but I sure as hell hope that accountability is a part of the going forward.”

Never known to hold his tongue, Klein had lots to say about a wide range of topics: the failure of universities training teachers, the failure of the union model when it comes to education, the failure of classrooms to adapt to the 21st Century. That last one relates directly to his current job, leading an education tech venture with Rupert Murdoch.

Somehow the Amplify chargers that set themselves on fire at night didn't make his list of worries.

Pearson Fined $7.7 Million For Breaking Law - Why Isn't Former NYSED Commissioner Steiner Under Investigation For The Same Thing?

From the NY Times:

The Pearson Foundation, the charitable arm of one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, will pay $7.7 million to settle accusations that it repeatedly broke New York State law by assisting in for-profit ventures. 

An inquiry by Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, found that the foundation had helped develop products for its corporate parent, including course materials and software. The investigation also showed that the foundation had helped woo clients to Pearson’s business side by paying their way to education conferences that were attended by its employees. 

...

The attorney general’s office also examined a series of education conferences sponsored by the Pearson Foundation, which paid for school officials to meet their foreign counterparts in places like Helsinki and Singapore. 

The trips were made public after a series of columns in The New York Times, which detailed the expensive hotels and meetings with corporate executives that were staples of the experience. 

Several school officials who went on the trips represented education departments that had contracts with Pearson. The investigation did not determine whether those officials had awarded any new contracts based on any improper influence. But the report found that executives from other companies were not invited to attend, giving Pearson’s corporate side a clear advantage. 

The attorney general portrayed a culture at Pearson in which the lines between business and charity were often blurred. Pearson remains the largest donor to the Pearson Foundation, and the staff of the foundation included several Pearson employees. The board was made up entirely of Pearson executives until 2012.

Former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner was one of the state officials on the other end of the Pearson largesse.

Why is it illegal for Pearson to improperly influence officials through the use of its non-profit but not illegal for those state officials to be improperly influenced?

Merryl Tisch Get A Subpoena From The Moreland Commission Yet?

Of course she hasn't - but she should.

We learned on Sunday that Regents Chancellor Tisch paid out of her own pocket for private employees to run NYSED offices - at least the first million came from the Tisch family fortune.

Millions more came from the Gates Foundation, General Electric and a bunch of other corporate entities - $19 million in total from more than two dozen private employees.

These private employees, called "Regents Fellows," many with connections to the Gates Foundation and other education reform groups, developed state education policy, implemented that policy and helped enforce it.

In short, the Gates Foundation took over the running of the NYSED.

Former NYSED Commissioner King, current Commissioner King and Regents Chancellor Tisch were all behind this scheme to turn over government functions to private personnel paid for by private companies and "non-profits."

Those actions warrant subpoenas from the Moreland Commission, which has been entrusted to look into influence peddling and corruption in Albany.

Tisch should be first on the list for a subpoena, followed by King and Steiner, all of the Regents Fellows and every company and non-profit that provided the cash to hire these people.

Here's a list of the contributors to the Regents Fellows fund:

Regents Research Fund contributors
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $3.3 million
James S. and Merryl H. Tisch Fund $400,000 (draw-down on $1 million commitment)
Leona and Harry Helmsley Charity $3.83 million
Amy and Larry Robbins Foundation $500,000
Tortora Silicox Family Foundation $975,000
GE Foundation $3.5 million
Ford Foundation $788,000
Carnegie Corp. $1.2 million
Tiger Foundation $560,000
Robin Hood Foundation $600,000
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation $900,000

Doubtful Sheriff Andy or his merry Morelanders will want subpoenas sent to investigate this blatant corruption at the Board of Regents and NYSED.

But if we lived in a real democracy instead of a corrupt corporatocracy, you can bet it would be investigated.

Governor Cuomo Must Be Called To Account For The Corruption At SED, Board Of Regents

The bombshell report in the Times-Union that private employees, paid for by the Gates Foundation and other corporate funds, are running NYSED, implementing policy and ordering around the state employees to do their bidding, has already led me to call for Regents Chancellor Tisch and NYSED Commissioner King to be forced from power.

Tisch supplied the first $1 million in grant money to hire the private employees and set SED on the road to permanent privatization.

King helped devise the privatization scheme as then-SED Commissioner Steiner's deputy commissioner, and thus he must be brought to account and stripped of power too.

Former NYSED Commissioner Steiner, accused in the past of taking bribes from Pearson in the form of overseas junkets, should be brought to account for these actions as well.

But Governor Andrew Cuomo has a lot of explaining to do over this scheme - and he had better start doing that explaining soon.

Cuomo has been trying to distance himself from the state reform agenda recently as a result of widespread and growing criticism, but he cannot distance himself from the handing over of the state's education department and education policy to Gates Foundation employees paid for on the private dime from the coffers of corporate entities and hedge funds.

This Regents Fellows scandal stinks to high heaven of the worst corruption possible.

Cuomo must answer how the State Education Department and its education policy making has been handed over to the Gates Foundation.

One thing we know now for why King and Tisch refuse to drop out out inBloom or slow down the Common Core reforms.

Because the Gates Foundation doesn't want the state to drop out of inBloom or slow down the Common Core reforms and the Gates Foundation is literally running policy in the state.

Pearson Owns Public Education In NY State

Here's a quote of the day:

“If Pearson is writing the tests for the children and writing the tests for the teachers and writing the textbooks, isn’t it Pearson that owns our public education, and not our Regents and not our commissioner of education and not the people that we have entrusted to make these serious decisions?” -- Willa Powell, a Rochester school board member 

Will the attorney general's investigation of former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner for accepting largesse from Pearson before handing them a multi-year testing contract ever be completed?

It seems Pearson really does own public education in NY State - as well as many state officials...

Arne Duncan, One Of The Biggest Common Core Proponents, Insists Feds Have Nothing To Do With Common Core

Rick Hess wrote the following last week as attacks from the the Tea Party right threatened to take down Common Core implementation in some states:

Sec. Duncan needs to give a speech in which he pleads "mea culpa" and acknowledges that federal involvement and money played a nontrivial (and perhaps, in hindsight, an unfortunate) role in the early stages of the Common Core. Doing so will allow the conversation to move off that sticking point, and reassure the skeptics that the proponents are finally speaking to their fears of slippery slopes. Duncan can then pivot to what comes next. He should signal support for proposals by Congressional Republicans that would prohibit further federal involvement with the Common Core and issue bright-line guidance to make clear that ED will not be sticking its 800-lb. thumb on the scale in the future when dealing with waivers or anything else.

Did Arne Duncan take Hess's advice?

Of course not.

Duncan instead went on the attack against Common Core opponents and skeptics, calling them liars and/or ignoramuses, and exhorting the press to to expose all Common Core criticism as ill-informed or plain wrong.

Here is what Hess thought about Duncan's speech:

Yesterday, our earnest Secretary of Education delivered a big speech on the Common Core to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In a move that will surprise pretty much no one, he disregarded my advice from last week on how to tamp down some of the push-back to the Common Core. Instead, he basically opted to double down on the administration's rhetorical approach, offering skeptics the back of his hand, and not much else. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but here are seven things that struck me:

1. From the Catch-22 file: When U.S. Secretary of Education is one of the most prominent and vocal champions of Common Core, it makes it harder to argue that this is a state-driven exercise.

2. Duncan was, of course, entirely correct in reminding the editors of the difference between standards and curriculum, and in telling them that agreeing to standards does not mean a state has selected any particular curriculum. Moreover, Duncan sounded a reasonable note when he pointed out the misinformation out there, and blasted critics for "say[ing] that the Common Core calls for federal collection of student data. For the record, it doesn't, we're not allowed to, and we won't. And let's not even get into the really wacky stuff: mind control, robots, and biometric brain mapping."

3. If Duncan was going to go after "misinformation," though, it would have been gracious and constructive if Duncan had conceded that some of this might be due to advocates not doing a very good job of engaging the public or anticipating reasonable concerns, or had acknowledged that such worries are understandable in light of the current IRS and NSA scandals. Indeed, since he was talking to the nation's editors, he might have posed this as a reporting challenge. Instead, I read the "misinformation" point entirely as an indictment of those goofy yokels who mindlessly fear federal overreach.

4. Duncan offered a slight nod to the role that federal funds, Race to the Top, and ESEA waivers have played in pushing the Common Core forward. He acknowledged that the Obama administration "supported[ed]" and "encouraged" the enterprise. He could have used this as an opportunity to sketch a bright line regarding federal involvement and to convince reasonable skeptics that the feds aren't on a slippery slope. Once again, he passed, saying of the standards: "The federal government didn't write them, didn't approve them and doesn't mandate them, and we never will. Anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed or willfully misleading." Uhh, hold on now, Sparky. This depends on what the meaning of "approve" and "mandate" is. Duncan certainly made adoption of approved standards a key in Race to the Top and mandatory for obtaining ESEA waivers (and there weren't a lot of options besides Common Core). He's free to argue the semantics of "approve" or "mandate," but he's over the line in asserting that those who disagree are "misinformed or willfully misleading."

5. On a related note, Duncan again passed on the opportunity to say it might not have been the greatest idea for the 2012 Democratic National Platform to credit Obama for the Common Core, or for the President to take credit for Common Core adoption in this year in this year's State of the Union.

6. In telling the editors what questions their reporters should be asking, it was interesting to see the questions that Duncan didn't encourage. He told the editors to challenge skeptics to show federally created curricula or textbooks (knowing they can't find such examples), but said nothing about looking into federal funding for the testing consortia (which will devise the tests that will drive instruction and curriculum) or whether all the experts agree that the Common Core is as rigorous and generally awesome as he asserted.

7. Duncan said nothing about his "waiver waiver" decision from the other week (which dealt with the challenge of adopting new teacher evaluation systems while changing tests). This pointed to a larger omission, which was the utter absence of any discussion of the implementation challenges posed by the Common Core or how solid reporting might help state and local officials and educators anticipate, understand, and address those.

This all matters because Common Core adoption is not self executing. It depends on the breadth of support and on the intensity of the opposition. The Duncan line of attack doesn't do anything to help on that front and may very well agitate opponents even more. 

I'm glad Duncan doubled down on his defense of Common Core, ratcheted up the attacks against Common Core opponents and skeptics by saying they're either misinformed or lying about the Core, and failed to address any of the legitimate concerns people might have about the NCLB waivers he gave out that almost certainly forced states to agree to Common Core implementation and the data tracking that comes with it, the government's role in funding the Common Core testing consortia, or any of the other worries people have about the CCFS.

It means Duncan will, as Hess suggests, agitate Common Core opponents and skeptics even more and make the implementation of the Core more difficult and the eventual demise of the Core more likely.

This is a pattern with education reform zealots and Common Core proponents - rather than address the very real and legitimate concerns of Common Core or education reform skeptics or opponents, they go on the attack and dismiss anybody who hasn't consumed the Core/Reformy KOOL AID as a moron or a unionized hack desperate to hold on to the status quo.

Most recently we saw this when ELA Common Core standards developer David Coleman went on the attack against skeptics and critics of the APPR teacher evaluation system in NY State at David Steiner's CUNY education reform forum.  NYSED Commissioner/rookie teacher John King also went on the attack at that forum, whining that the press was not fully explaining the complexities of the APPR teacher evaluation system or the Common Core tests to the public and therefore was helping opponents to bring the reform movement down.

It took reformer Paul Vallas to speak truth to the reformy KOOL AIDers:

“We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate,” he said. In separate comments, Vallas criticized evaluations as a “testing industrial complex” and “a system where you literally have binders on individual teachers with rubrics that are so complicated … that they’ll just make you suicidal.”

...

The Bridgeport, Conn. superintendent — who has served stints in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans and earned a reputation as a turnaround consultant for struggling districts with big budget gaps — said reforms he backed were at risk of collapsing “under the weight of how complicated we’re making it.”

“We’re working on the evaluation system right now,” Vallas said of Bridgeport. “And I’ll tell you, it is a nightmare.”

You can tell who is winning the Common Core publicity wars by which side is whining the most about the unfairness of the press.

Arne Duncan telling reporters to carry the water of the Common Core, coming one month after David Coleman and John King whined to their fellow ed deformers about the lack of media support for the Common Core (an absurd charge, btw - all the editorial boards in NYC support the Core unequivocally), shows us that Common Core proponents and their political functionaries know the public is turning against them.

As Hess noted in his post, had Duncan been smart, he would have distanced himself from the Common Core and let other figures take the lead in defending it (Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or Cory Booker, for example.)

But Duncan was not smart and instead he went to the mattresses with Core opponents and got headlines like SECRETARY DUNCAN DEFENDS COMMON CORE - the kind that will just make the people fighting the movement to fight even harder against it.

Heckuva job, Arne.

Heckuva job.

Ed Deform House Of Cards Falling - Ed Deformers Whining About It

There have been two instances of major whining by education deform proponents in the past couple of weeks.

The first was at Pearson booster David Steiner's CUNY Institute for Education Policy panel, when Common Core Federal Standards architect David "No One Gives A Shit What You Think Or Feel!" Coleman whined about the following:

“These are hard times for New York City and New York State,” Coleman said. “The vultures are out. There is a culture in our city and state right now of trying to take people down, including the commissioner to my left.”

Coleman then implored the mostly friendly audience, which included former superintendents Harold Levy and Jean-Claude Brizard, “to stand up for this man for his courage in not backing down.”

That man to his left, NYSED Commissioner John King, then offered a vintage whine of his own on why the public isn't buying the reform agenda he's selling:

“One of the challenges is that the media conversation about education always boils down to black hats and white hats,” King said, referring to the polarized sides of the education debate. As an example, he pointed to a recent New York Post story about a reading passage in the state’s curriculum that contained criticism of the passage’s content but little recognition of its value as a challenging text that reflects real-world issues.

“That may be all that space allows, but I think ultimately our challenge is to have a deeper conversation of what it would really take to change student outcomes,” King added.

Fellow ed deformer Paul Vallas responded to the King whine like this:

“We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate,” he said. In separate comments, Vallas criticized evaluations as a “testing industrial complex” and “a system where you literally have binders on individual teachers with rubrics that are so complicated … that they’ll just make you suicidal.”

...

The Bridgeport, Conn. superintendent — who has served stints in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans and earned a reputation as a turnaround consultant for struggling districts with big budget gaps — said reforms he backed were at risk of collapsing “under the weight of how complicated we’re making it.”

“We’re working on the evaluation system right now,” Vallas said of Bridgeport. “And I’ll tell you, it is a nightmare.”

Has it not occurred to the ed deform proponents that by making these new teacher evaluation and school accountability systems so complex, convoluted and unworkable, they have sowed the seeds of destruction of the systems right into the DNA?

I can only think that these so-called "Best and Brightest" like Coleman and King are so blinded by their own genius that they have failed to see that by arrogantly shoving these reforms down people's throats, untested and unpiloted, and by refusing to assuage concerns over the changes and instead attacking critics with straw man arguments about the status quo, they will be bring about the destruction of their own reforms.

Or perhaps they thought a propaganda campaign beating up on teachers and schools and promoting the new changes would dazzle the public into blindly following along with them on the ed deform trail.

In any case, they were wrong about that, and you can see just how wrong in all the revolts that are spreading all across the country against Common Core, against high stakes testing, against data-driven education.

The second Great Whine Moment came yesterday when Chancellor Walcott used a meeting with principals at Brooklyn Tech to defend the Bloomberg education reform agenda and attack prospective mayoral candidates for not sticking with it 100%.

The NY Times reported that the principals were wholly uninterested in Walcott's whining speech and some were outright hostile to it.

But Norm Scott wrote that the Times article didn't quite accurately get the frustration and hostility some principals felt at being Walcott's captive audience for his ed deform defense:

The political agenda was primary as Walcott hosted what some say was an anti-UFT union bashing-Fest disguised as principal conference. There's some irony in that while most principals, especially Leadership Academy types, agree with the anti-union agenda, many principals also despise the Tweedies with a passion and are not unhappy to see them go. Do you think principals of NYC public schools are actually happy to see their space given away to charters which get favored treatment?

One attendee said:

The chancellor made a big political speech about why the next mayor can not be allowed to do anything against the reform agenda and how the UFT can not rule education and teachers should not be protected. Some of the newbie knuckleheads laughed, not realizing the very same system will be used to fire them.

Apparently Walcott brought in Mike Johnston, Colorado State Senator,  "another dirtbag to bring up Memphis spirituality and quotes the bible in rationalizing education reform," said one attendee. "He wrapped these policies around Martin Luther King and the bible story of the good Samaritan," outraging one principal who challenged Johnston by saying King was in Memphis to support union workers for a contract not education reform and Jesus was a carpenter so would be a union man.

Johnston also talked about firing the weakest teachers using basketball as an analogy.  One questioner reminded him that we can accurately assess how many baskets players score while tests are always full of errors so we don't this need junk science..

A veteran principal said he has "fired teachers and doesn't need 10000 rubrics and data to get rid of bad teachers."

Norm goes on to write that this Great Whinery Movement from New York State officials, educrats and functionaries isn't just about New York:

While Walcott tries to stave off total irrelevancy, what is going on is the fast and furious fall of ed deform. Think of the Mad Men opening of the guy falling out of a building. Ed deform is being dashed on the rocks below and they are getting very nervous.

Let me use another TV moment, one that is now cliche but quite accurately captures where we are in the ed deform movement.

It has jumped the shark.

It's best days are behind it, as cheating scandals reveal data-driven miracles in Atlanta and Washington D.C. to be mirages, as Common Core implementation meets obstacles in Indiana and other states, as many conservatives across the country turn on the movement as federal overreach (Obamacore), as the two national testing consortia have problems rolling out their so-called state of the art assessments, as Bloomberg rides off into the Bermudan sunset and his successors vow to undo many of his most odious reforms.

You can tell which side is winning this battle by which side is doing the most whining.

The oh so arrogant education reformers, blinded by their own hubris, still haven't awakened to the fact that the public has not turned against reform because they are not adequately communicating the complexity of it to them.

They have turned against reform because education reform proponents do not, as Paul Vallas told his education reform audience at David Steiner's ed deform panel, "have a good message to communicate."

In other words, the public doesn't want what Coleman, King, Walcott and the other deformers are selling.

Whine all you want, fellas.

That won't change anything.

Ask About Pearson

If you're going to interview former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner, you might ask a question about the overseas junket he received from Pearson and the subsequent contracts Pearson received from the NYSED.

Pearson's Standardized Tests Are Flawed And Useless

Bombshell report in the NY Times on standardized testing:

In 2006, a math pilot program for middle school students in a Dallas-area district returned surprising results.

The students’ improved grasp of mathematical concepts stunned Walter Stroup, the University of Texas at Austin professor behind the program. But at the end of the year, students’ scores had increased only marginally on state standardized TAKS tests, unlike what Mr. Stroup had seen in the classroom.

A similar dynamic showed up in a comparison of the students’ scores on midyear benchmark tests and what they received on their end-of-year exams. Standardized test scores the previous year were better predictors of their scores the next year than the benchmark test they had taken a few months earlier.

Now, in studies that threaten to shake the foundation of high-stakes test-based accountability, Mr. Stroup and two other researchers said they believe they have found the reason: a glitch embedded in the DNA of the state exams that, as a result of a statistical method used to assemble them, suggests they are virtually useless at measuring the effects of classroom instruction.

Pearson, which has a five-year, $468 million contract to create the state’s tests through 2015, uses “item response theory” to devise standardized exams, as other testing companies do. Using I.R.T., developers select questions based on a model that correlates students’ ability with the probability that they will get a question right.

That produces a test that Mr. Stroup said is more sensitive to how it ranks students than to measuring what they have learned. That design flaw also explains why Richardson students’ scores on the previous year’s TAKS test were a better predictor of performance on the next year’s TAKS test than the benchmark exams were, he said. The benchmark exams were developed by the district, the TAKS by the testing company.

Mr. Stroup, who is preparing to submit the findings to multiple research journals, presented them in June at a meeting of the Texas House Public Education Committee. He said he was aware of their implications for a widely used and accepted method of developing tests, and for how the state evaluates public schools.

“I’ve thought about being wrong,” Mr. Stroup said. “I’d love if everyone could say, ‘You are wrong, everything’s fine,’ ” he said. “But these are hundreds and hundreds of numbers that we’ve run now.”

...

Mr. Stroup’s research comes as opposition to high-stakes standardized testing in Texas is creating an alliance between parents, educators and school leaders who wonder how the tests affect classroom instruction and small-government conservatives who question the expense and bureaucracy they impose.

...

State Representative Scott Hochberg, Democrat of Houston, led the charge against the measure and has since proposed legislation aimed at reforming the role of standardized testing because of data showing that a student’s test score on the first year highly predicted it for the next.

“I have for a long time said that the accountability system doesn’t give us all the information that the numbers are used to generate,” Mr. Hochberg said, adding that basing accountability “more on the kid’s history than the specifics of what happened in the classroom that year may make us feel good but it doesn’t give us any true information.”

Great - the tests are flawed, but they're using them to make high stakes decisions on students, teachers and schools in states all over the nation, thanks to the Obama administration and the corporate education reform movement, led by the Gates Foundation.

Fantastic!

And how much money will Pearson and all the vendors who provide testing materials and test prep make off these flawed measurements and tests?

Somewhere between $20 billion and $50 billion.

This isn't just a travesty - it's criminal.

And yet, here in NY State Governor Cuomo and his education brain trust have decided that standardized tests are the only measure of teacher performance in the classroom and plan to add dozens of standardized tests a year not to measure student performance but rather to measure teacher performance.

Again, fantastic!

One wonders just how much money Pearson is throwing around to get these deals with the states for all this testing.

We know they bribed the former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner.

We know too that Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch has family in the test prep business, so she stands to benefit from all this testing too (We also know the parent company of her brother-in-law's test prep company is being investigated for securities fraud.)

As for current NYSED Commissioner John King, hard to know if he's taken any bribes from Pearson, but we do know that he has navigated quite a career from teacher to charter school leader to NYSED bureaucrat to youngest NYSED commissioner ever.

It doesn't hurt John King's career trajectory that he is such a promoter of standardized testing. In fact, one might think that's exactly how he's risen so fast in education leadership circles - he's happy to shill a corporate education reform agenda, including a heavy emphasis on test-based accountability systems.

I suspect that this study won't change anything here in NY State because the standardized testing train has already left the station and is barreling down the track at too fast a speed to be stopped.

We will spend a few years closing more schools, firing more teachers and leaving more kids back based on these flawed tests and measurements, all the while feeding Pearson scarce resources to do the crappy job they do with these things.

Too bad the AFT didn't jump off the standardized testing train years before, when we could have stopped these plans from being implemented (though it's nice to have them on record now acknowledging the harms that high stakes testing does.)

Unfortunately, I think it is now too late.

We will just have to pick up the pieces after it becomes apparent to the public the harm that is being done by the high stakes accountability system.

If it becomes apparent.

There is a lot of money to be made by the testing companies, the tech companies, the politicians, the education "consultants," and the rest of the education infrastructure with the Common Core Federal Standards, the new federal tests that will be rolled out as part of the CCFS, and the state and district tests that have been mandated as part of new teacher evaluation systems in many states.

You can bet these stakeholders will try and keep the high stakes standardized testing gravy train going for as long as they can - and they'll get lots of help from the corporate media, many of whom are stakeholders themselves.

Remember, the Washington Post owns Kaplan and News Corporation is in the for profit education game as well.

As I like to write all the time when talking about the financial markets, it's all rigged.

It's all rigged.

And there's so much money involved in this game that the boys and girls making it aren't going to want to unrig it any time soon.

More Pearson Corruption Allegations - Is It Time To Cancel NY's Testing Contract With Pearson?

Michael Winerip reports that Pearson Foundation, a nonprofit wing of Pearson, the nation's largest textbook and curriculum publisher, paid for "education conferences" to Singapore, London, Helsinki, Finland, China and Rio de Janeiro for education officials from two dozen states.

Most of these states have multimillion dollar contracts with Pearson.

Pearson Foundation did not disclose any of the money they paid for these trips for public officials on its tax forms as it is supposed to do by law.

Here is how one of those trips went and what the outcome was for Pearson:

In the summer of 2010, Lu Young, the superintendent of schools in Jessamine County, a Lexington, Ky., suburb, took a trip to Australia paid for by the Pearson Foundation, a nonprofit arm of Pearson, the nation’s largest educational publisher.

Ten school superintendents went on the trip, which cost Pearson $60,000. While the foundation described the visit as a way “to exchange ideas on creating schools for the 21st century,” there was ample time for play. “Everybody’s highlight of Canberra was to get to see the kangaroos,” Ms. Young said on a video produced by the foundation.

Six months later, in Frankfort, Ky., Ms. Young sat on a committee interviewing executives from three companies bidding to run the state’s testing program. While CTB/McGraw-Hill submitted the lowest bid, by $2.5 million, Ms. Young and the other committee members recommended Pearson.

In April, Kentucky’s Education Department approved a $57 million contract with Pearson. And then, over the next six months, the commissioner who oversees that department, Terry Holliday, traveled to both China and Brazil on trips underwritten by — that’s right — the Pearson Foundation.

Were the trips an effort by the foundation to influence government officials so the company would obtain a lucrative state contract?

A spokeswoman for Dr. Holliday said that the selection “was based on best value and not simply a low bid,” and Ms. Young said that the trips and the contract selection were “completely unrelated.”

“I never had any conversation or discussion with anyone from Pearson about the awarding of the testing contract during this trip or later,” Ms. Young wrote in an e-mail.

Of course she never had any overt discussions with anyone from Pearson about the awarding of the testing contract during the trip or even after - she didn't have to.

The message had already gotten across - you take care of Pearson, Pearson will take care of you.

Here's an example of Pearson taking care of one education official in Maryland AFTER a contract had been awarded to Pearson:

In Montgomery County, Md., the now-retired superintendent, Jerry Weast, approved an unusual contract in June 2010, in which Pearson paid the district $2.5 million to produce curriculum materials that the company would then sell worldwide.

Two months later he was on the plane to Australia.

And here's the tale of an education official from Illinois who really got his money's worth out of Pearson:

Christopher Koch, state superintendent of education in Illinois — which has $138 million in contracts with Pearson — went to China, Brazil and Finland with the foundation. The only Pearson compensation he listed on state ethics forms was the cost of the flight to China, $4,271 for business class. Asked why hotels, meals and the other flights were not documented, a spokesman for Dr. Koch, Matt Vanover, said, “What we’re looking at is a litmus test; they just want to make sure he’s not traveling first class.”

To be fair to Pearson, they got their money's worth out of Illinois too.

Here in New York, former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner took a trip on Pearson's dime to London and disclosed the value of the entire trip as $2000.

A trip to London, airfare, hotel, and food - all for $2,000 dollars.

Wow - that sure was a good deal!

Or Steiner is full of it.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is looking into all of this to see if Pearson Foundation has engaged in undisclosed lobbying to benefit its corporate parent, Pearson.

Winerip writes that there are parallels between the Pearson story and a case involving an official from the non-profit organization that runs the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona who was indicted for undisclosed lobbying of public officials and undisclosed donations to political campaigns.

The case also has similarities to the “the influence-buying junkets that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff arranged for members of Congress.”

Both Abramoff and some of the public officials he bribed, including members of Congress, members of the Bush administration, went to jail in the case.

So I would hope that the public officials who were on the other end of Pearson's largesse are also being investigated.

David Steiner and other officials in New York need particular scrutiny since the state JUST signed a 5 year, $32 million dollar contract with Pearson to revamp its standardized tests.

If Steiner lied on his disclosure form about the value of the London trip, he needs to be indicted for fraud.

In addition, we are at the point where the Pearson contract in New York needs to be scrutinized very closely.

If Pearson garnered this contract through bribery of state officials, including former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner, the Pearson contract with New York State needs to be negated.

Pearson should NOT benefit from the bribing of state officials anymore than state officials should benefit from Pearson's undisclosed lobbying.

Pearson In Corruption Probe - Why Are The Regents And The NYSED Not Being Scrutinized Too?

The attorney general wants to know if the testing company gave free stuff to NYSED officials in return for contracts:

New York State’s attorney general is investigating whether the Pearson Foundation, the nonprofit arm of one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, acted improperly to influence state education officials by paying for overseas trips and other perks.

The office of the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, issued subpoenas this week to the foundation and to Pearson Education seeking documents and information related to their activities with state education officials, including at least four education conferences — in London, Helsinki, Singapore and Rio de Janeiro — since 2008, according to people familiar with the investigation.

At issue is whether the activities of the tax-exempt Pearson Foundation, which is prohibited by state law from engaging in undisclosed lobbying, were used to benefit Pearson Education, a for-profit company, according to these people. Pearson sells standardized tests, packaged curriculums and Prentice Hall textbooks.

Specifically, the attorney general’s investigation is looking at whether foundation employees improperly sought to influence state officials or procurement processes to obtain lucrative state contracts, and whether the employees failed to disclose lobbying activities in annual filings with the attorney general’s office. The inquiry follows two columns about the conferences by Michael Winerip in The New York Times this fall.

If there is evidence that the foundation engaged in substantial lobbying and failed to disclose it, it could face fines and lose its tax-exempt status under state and federal laws. No subpoenas were issued to state education officials, the people with knowledge of the matter said.

My question here is, why isn't the attorney general looking into the NYSED too?

Or how about the Regents?

Isn't bribery a two-way street?

If Pearson handed out largesse in return for lucrative state contracts, didn't somebody on the state end take that largesse and in return hand out lucrative contracts?

The Times article suggests that's so:

In New York, Pearson Education most recently won a five-year, $32 million contract to administer state tests, and it maintains a $1 million contract for testing services with the State Education Department, according to state records. The last contract was awarded after David M. Steiner, then the state education commissioner, attended a conference in London in June 2010 that was organized by the Council of Chief State School Officers and underwritten by the Pearson Foundation.

This looks again like another instance of the Merry Pranksters at the Regents and the NYSED skating off without any accountability whatsoever.

We need a list of ALL state officials, including those at the Regents, who might have been on the receiving end of Pearson's largesse.

And then those officials need to explain how it is they signed off on Pearson's state contracts.

Because something smells here.

As Bob Schaeffer, a spokesman for FairTest, said:

“Despite a history of scoring errors, contract manipulation and corporate misbehavior, there’s been almost no public oversight of companies such as Pearson. It’s great that New York’s attorney general has now decided to examine the examiners and begin holding them accountable.”

Yes, it's great somebody's looking into Pearson.

They ought to look into the contracts of Wireless Generation and other politically-connected companies as well.

But the Regents and the NYSED need some scrutiny too.

Steiner needs to answer for his Pearson paid vacations

And how about Merry Merryl Tisch?

Did she go to Helsinki or some other exotic locale for an "education conference" at any point in time on somebody else's dime?

Expand the probe, Scheniderman.

Expand it to the NYSED and the Regents too.

John King Replaces Steiner As NYSED Commissioner

Corporate education reformer John King replaces Steiner at NYSED.

Meet the new corporate ed deform boss, same as the old corporate ed deform boss.

Get ready for all standardized testing all the time, more value-added evaluation jive (you know, the kind of "metrics" with a 12%-36% margin of error), more merit pay schemes, more charter school stuff.

In other words, nothing changes.

UPDATE: Here's how you know King will pursue a corporate-friendly, pro-privatization, pro-testing, pro-corporate reform agenda - Arne Duncan likes him.

Steiner Resigns Too

Off to the Bloomberg/Gates Foundation ed deform payroll?

Or did they catch him in some kind of Chris Lee thing on Craigslist?

Dunno, but NYSED Commissioner Steiner is resigning.

Steiner is scum, so it's great to see him go.

But he has done an awful lot of damage during his tenure.

I wish he's take Merryl Tisch with him.

But no luck there.

Anyway, all the ed deformers are jumping ship like rats at a West Fourth Street Taco Bell.

Amazing.

Bloomberg To Lay Off 4,666 Teachers

That's the number he has in his doomsday budget to be released today:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, escalating his battle with Albany over cuts to city programs, will announce plans to lay off nearly 4,700 teachers as part of a bleak budget to be released on Thursday.

Mr. Bloomberg will portray the reductions as necessary to make up for a loss of $2.1 billion in state aid. But his austere forecast will also serve a political purpose, given the mayor’s desire to wring more money out of the Legislature and to abolish a law that protects veteran teachers.

The mayor, according to a preview of his budget released on Wednesday, will threaten to eliminate 6,166 teaching positions in total: 4,666 through layoffs and 1,500 through attrition. That would reduce the 75,000-person teaching force by 8 percent, and it would be the first time the city has laid off significant numbers of teachers since the 1970s.

State law requires the city to lay off teachers in the reverse order that they were hired, but Mr. Bloomberg has said that merit should factor into the process. He has called on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to incorporate changes to the law in his budget.

“We face very difficult decisions on how to balance the budget without harming the progress we have made,” Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor, said in a statement. “The only thing worse than laying off teachers would be laying off the wrong teachers.”

Mr. Bloomberg is also expected to announce cuts to senior centers, child care programs for poor families and rental subsidies. But he is expected to affirm his pledge to leave the city’s police force intact.

Mr. Bloomberg will point to some bright spots in the city’s finances, despite a $2.4 billion deficit. He will report that because of the strengthening economy, the city has raised its forecasts for tax revenue by $2 billion for the current fiscal year and the one that begins on July 1.

His budget is far from final: it must still be negotiated with the City Council, and it is subject to the whims of Albany, which is notorious for back-room deals and missed deadlines.

...

Union officials have dismissed the mayor’s warnings as political jockeying meant to help him further his political agenda. Mr. Bloomberg has in previous years warned of mass layoffs that never transpired.

Mr. Bloomberg will also pledge to add $2 billion in city money to make up for the state cuts.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers’ union, said the mayor should devote more money to education and increase taxes on the wealthy.

“I don’t understand why the mayor continues to be talking about teacher layoffs,” Mr. Mulgrew said. “This is all a politically bogus game on their behalf.”

Indeed it is politically jockeying on the mayor's part.

He doesn't REALLY care about the money.

Not in the short term.

This is about changing seniority and tenure rules in the long term.

In fact, the Daily News points out, the city has soaring tax revenues so layoffs may not be needed anyway.

But Bloomberg wants this fundamental structural change to layoff rules to weaken the union long term and give him (and his successors) the ability that private companies have to downsize expensive veteran employees any time they want.

But as Education Commissioner/Bloomberg Shill David Steiner told Cathie Black earlier this week, if they just wait a year, the new state rules on teacher evaluations will allow them to lay anybody off in two years so long as they are declared "ineffective."

So whether Bloomberg gets these changes now or whether they come next year when Steiner and Merryl Tisch issue their Gates Foundation-written document on teacher evals, one way or the other state districts will be able to get rid of teachers at will soon enough.

Cathie Black Waiver Lawsuits

NYSED commissioner David "Loves The Classics" Steiner granted a waiver to Cathie Black to be NYC schools chancellor with the stipulation that her deputy, the chief academic officer, would have some independent power.

Yesterday, Bloomberg said the chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, will not have any power independent of Black.

Today Bloomberg and Black went a-visiting to a school without any sign of the chief academic officer, Polakow-Suransky.

So here's a question:

Does Bloomberg open himself and Black up to a lawsuit that alleges he has reneged on the deal to grant the cheif academic officer some independent power and therefore the waiver for Black should be retracted?

No Experience Necessary

As expected, Bloomberg ed deform shill David "Loves The Classics" Steiner granted a waiver for Cathie Black to become the next schools chancellor in NYC despite zero experience in and knowledge of education.

Here's a comment at the Daily News that sums up the whole mess:

Tomorrow, I'm going to start applying to jobs that I have no experience or previous interest in and see how far that gets me.

Probably won't get that commenter too far, unless Bloomberg is backing him, of course.

Then the sky's the limit.

Arne Duncan And The Cathie Black Waiver Deal

What role did Arne Duncan play in getting NYSED commissioner Steiner to grant the waiver to Cathie Black?

The deal reached Friday capped a week of frantic talks between the city and the state. Mr. Bloomberg, who was given control of city schools in 2002, has said that transforming the school system will define his legacy as mayor.

Mr. Bloomberg viewed Dr. Steiner’s challenge as a critical test of his authority over the school system. The mayor told people involved in the negotiations that a rejection of Ms. Black would undermine the model of mayoral control and set a dangerous precedent.

At one point while the negotiations were under way, Mr. Bloomberg said publicly that the law requiring the schools chancellor to hold education credentials was obsolete and should be abolished.

Mr. Bloomberg had initially believed he could build enough public pressure to force Dr. Steiner to approve Ms. Black, according to the person with knowledge of the negotiations. Business executives, former mayors and celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg flooded Dr. Steiner’s offices with messages in support of Ms. Black.

But Dr. Steiner remained skeptical, and he said on Tuesday he would consider her appointment only if Mr. Bloomberg installed an educator at her side.

The talks with the mayor about that possibility grew more serious after an eight-member panel advising Dr. Steiner on Ms. Black’s qualifications on Tuesday mustered only two votes unconditionally in support of her, unexpectedly throwing the selection process into disarray.

Mr. Bloomberg typically loathes intrusions into his management of the city. But throughout the negotiations for the waiver, he showed an unusual willingness to compromise to preserve Ms. Black’s candidacy. To the surprise of his own associates, he held his tongue in public, refusing to challenge Dr. Steiner and the panel that rebuked his choice for chancellor.

...

Underscoring the high-stakes nature of Ms. Black’s fate, even the federal secretary of education, Arne Duncan, spoke to both Dr. Steiner and Mr. Bloomberg during the negotiations.

On Friday, Mr. Duncan praised the outcome. “Can anyone do this alone? Of course not,” he said. “This is a monumentally tough, complex organization.”

I'm not sure I believe the jive about Steiner holding out because he didn't think Black is qualified.

To be frank, I don't think Steiner cared about any of that.

Rather, I think he wanted political cover to grant the waiver.

He doesn't mind being a corporate Bloomberg LP shill, he just doesn't want to look like a corporate Bloomberg LP shill in public.

Bloomberg, however, didn't want to give him that cover.

Bloomberg likes negotiations to go 100% his way and any "compromise" makes him feel like a loser.

So in comes corporate whore Arne Duncan to convince Bloomberg that giving in to a "Chief Academic Officer" was a slight compromise that wouldn't mean much in reality.

I bet Duncan also reminded him how his mayoral control was under attack from the way he had handled this mess and if he didn't give in just a little, it would make maintaining autocratic mayoral control in the future much harder.

Remember, Arne Duncan is a big fan of mayoral control.

He knows, just as every other ed deform corporate whore knows, that democracy and education deform do not go well together.

This stuff can only be done in the dark of night and in the smoke-filled backrooms.

So Bloomberg compromised ever so slightly.

But not really.

And once again, the educrat put in place by the Change We Can Believe guy has done the business of the corporate interests over the people.

Daily News: Bloomberg Won

The news that Bloomberg had agreed to appoint a "Chief Academic Officer" was reported by the NY Times last night as a "major concession" by the mayor.

I didn't see how changing one word in the title of the "Chief Accountability Officer" at the NYCDOE and making him the "Chief Academic Officer" was a major concession and said so at the time.

Sure, there are a whole host of duties the new academic officer is supposed to have - but who really knows if he'll really have them?

Let's be honest, Bloomberg is very big on winning even when he has supposedly "lost."

Take congestion pricing.

Did you notice how all those pedestrian plazas showed up around the city in the year after Bloomberg lost that battle?

Did you notice how traffic got slower around the city now that cars cannot drive through Times Square, Herald Square and other places around the city?

The mayor may not have won the congestion pricing battle, but he sure made his point about traffic in the city - and then he made sure he put an exclamation point on it by making it even slower.

And who knows - perhaps congestion pricing comes around again and gets passed.

Certainly the mayor set the conditions for just that to happen.

I suspect we are seeing the same thing with this Black matter.

It looks like Bloomberg lost on the face of it, but really, who knows what power the #2 guy has?

Joshua Greenman in the Daily News says pretty much the same thing:

Few men who made their names as political moderates are as uncomfortable with compromise as Mayor Bloomberg, who's just not used to having to bend in a city where he's basically the only political game in town.

But that's exactly what he appeared to do Friday, in naming a chief academic officer to be at Cathie Black's right hand so state Education Commissioner David Steiner agrees to grant Black the waiver to serve as chancellor.

The question now, which will be answered in the coming months: Was it a real concession or a cosmetic one?

...

in the end, the crow may just taste like chicken. Because what kind of power Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief accountability officer promoted to be the new No. 2, will actually have remains to be seen.

For the school system to run efficiently, one person ultimately has to be in charge of making all major decisions. One person has to take marching orders from the mayor and take the heat from the public.

That will still be Black ... won't it?

Sure, Polakow-Suransky will presumably be in the room when big calls are made. He'll be able to give Black advice and insight on the often vexing issues. He'll be able to hold the map and be the navigator while she drives.

But Presidents use their vice presidents as they see fit. Same with governors and lieutenant governors. Mayors have first deputy mayors. Sometimes they listen; often they don't. There is no question, zero, where the buck stops.

Bloomberg laid out the new No. 2's responsibilities, and they are substantial. But he is still clearly under Black, and everyone knows that a job description on paper means nothing if a boss wants to use you differently.

So unless Polakow-Suransky has formal authority, Steiner might have just taken a stand to earn the illusion of a concession.

Then we'll come to learn that Bloomberg won this particular power struggle. And those dashed expectations may make some Bloomberg critics even angrier a few months from now than they are today.

So the Times can frame this as a major Bloomberg concession all it wants.

The fact is, Bloomberg got Black as chancellor.

Steiner gave her the waiver.

The #2 guy is just some Broad Foundation-trained eduwanker who specializes in testing, data and "accountability."

Black herself specializes in cost-cutting and layoffs.

Between the two of them, the New York City school system is going to get more of what it got from Klein.

And at the end of the day, Bloomberg got what he wanted.

Is Anybody Surprised By The Black Waiver Deal?

I hope not.

Wasn't it obvious Steiner would cave and give Bloomberg his Cathie with an "i" Black as chancellor?

Steiner is a toady and a stooge. You don't get to be in his position without being a toady and a stooge. The politicians in charge and the corporate money behind them want that, and in Steiner, that's what they got.

That's why this piece of puffery the Times published about him yesterday was laugh out loud funny.

It said Steiner was taking this waiver matter very seriously.

Of COURSE he was taking it seriously - if Steiner screwed it up and didn't give Bloomberg what he wanted, he knew he would never work in ed deform circles in NY State ever again.

We're talking about taking a considerable loss of income here.

But now that Steiner has caved, he and his family can breathe a sigh of relief - the ed deform largesse will continue to roll in for him via Bloomberg/Broad/Gates charities once he leaves the NYSED for good.

The toady will get his green toadstool.

As for Bloomberg, he got what he wanted too.

Sure he had to rename this deputy chancellor's title from "Chief Accountability Officer" to "Chief Academic Officer" - but so what?

You can bet it's all smoke and mirrors jive to give Steiner cover to grant the waiver.

And of course, it worked.

As of Monday, November 29, 2010, Cathie Black is the new NYC schools chancellor.

Let the cost-cutting and layoffs with a smile begin.