John Flanagan Admits State Intervention In School Districts Doesn't Go So Well

State Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan over the East Ramapo monitor:

As the state Education Department moves to oversee the East Ramapo school district, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan on Tuesday urged caution in taking away local control of the district.

“When we move in any way shape or form to usurp local control, we have to be extraordinarily judicious,” Flanagan said. “I’m not suggesting for a moment there aren’t extraordinarily acute issues on that district, because there are.”

He added: “It’s important to recognize that in the state of New York where we’ve directly intervened in school districts, our track record isn’t very good.”

That's an interesting admission since the state is set to take over 144 schools in the next year or two if they don't "improve."

Flanagan's sending a message to Dennis Walcott and his East Ramapo monitoring team to not upset the Hasidic men who sit on the school board for the school district that serves a largely black and Latino population of students.

And I get the politics of that - the Hasidic community knows how to use political donations to make sure that politicians take care of them.

Witness the Kiryas Joel/Cuomo relationship.

Nonetheless, Fanagan has unwittingly also admitted that state ought to be careful in how it administers the school receivership program pushed by the governor and approved by the state Senate and Assembly in the last budget.

There it is, in plain language from John Flanagan, former head of the education committee in the state Senate, current state Senate Majority Leader (at least until he's indicted like the last five):

“It’s important to recognize that in the state of New York where we’ve directly intervened in school districts, our track record isn’t very good.”

NYSUT, UFT Bring Us Another Disaster

So much for all those rallies, ad and rhetoric from union leaders that they're not going to let Governor Cuomo destroy public schools.

The budget agreement was announced last night and in it we got details of the new teacher evaluation system and other education reforms agreed to by Cuomo, the Assembly and the Senate.

Three parts should be particularly galling to you if you're a teacher:

1. NYSED gets the power to re-do the evaluation system to make it a "state-wide" system. Yes, that's right - the same people who gave "Dr" Ted J Morris Jr. a charter school get the power to impose a statewide evaluation system.

2. Teachers who are rated "ineffective" two years running are subject to being declared "incompetent" and fired within 90 days unless they can demonstrate "clear and convincing evidence" to the contrary. Teachers who are rated "ineffective" three years running are subject to disciplinary charges and expedited firing in 30 days unless they can prove the ratings were based on "fraud."

3. The state gets to takeover chronically "failing" schools (10 years or more) and if they cannot show improvement in one year. The state gets to take over moderately "failing schools (3 years of "failing") if they cannot show improvement in two years

In the past, NYSED rigged the Common Core tests so that 70% of students would fall below the proficiency rate.

There is no reason to think they won't rig the APPR re-do they've been tasked with so that large swaths of teachers are declared "ineffective" as well.

As is the case now, if a teacher is "ineffective" on the test component of the system, that teacher must be declared "ineffective" overall.

Two consecutive "ineffective" ratings and you're out of a job in 90 days - good luck finding "clear and convincing evidence" to the contrary that you're not "incompetent."

As for the state takeover plan, so-called "failing" schools have to submit a plan to NYSED to show how they'll improve in a year - NYSED gets final approval of the plan.

You can bet that plan will be as rigged by the sociopaths at NYSED as the Common Core test results.

If so-called "failing" schools do not hit their benchmarks in a year, they're handed over to the state for receivership.

Some schools that were "failing for three years or less get two years to show improvement.

In short, the state's going to be taking over lots of schools and handing them to charter operators.

On Saturday, NYSUT President Karen Magee said the following:

"The policies proposed by Gov. Cuomo are harmful to our children and our students and that is unacceptable," she said, "and we are not going to let him do that!"

Dunno how you read the above agreement details that we have, but it sure sounds like Cuomo got a lot of the policies he wanted in the budget.

I am especially concerned by the evaluation re-do.

Giving the sociopaths at NYSED the power to re-do teacher evaluations and impose a statewide system onto New York may provide politicians in Albany with some cover for the damage, but it surely doesn't bode well for schools, students or teachers.

I would expect that something like the New York City system that former NYSED Commissioner John King imposed on teachers in the NYCDOE will make it around the state.

Mark Naison summed the education policies agreed to in the budget framework this way:

NY State Education Department given dictatorial powers in Budget Agreement. Incompetent bureaucrats given power over teachers and principals
— Mark Naison (@McFiredogg) March 30, 2015

Another disaster from our union leaders brought to us in a year where Cuomo had his budget agenda hijacked by Preet Bharara and Shelly Silver's arrest and his poll numbers plummet even before NYSUT began running ads against him (Cuomo's been under water in the Siena poll since late 2014.)

Cuomo Plans To Attack "Failing" Schools And School Districts in 2013-2014

He's ratcheting up the "death penalty" rhetoric for schools:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Thursday that he intends to put an end to the status quo when it comes to New York’s failing schools. Far from backing away from his recent comments calling for a “death penalty” for these schools, the governor said he intends to set benchmarks and consequences for schools – and school districts – when they don’t give students the education the students deserve.

“What I’m saying on education is, failing schools are not acceptable. Period. It has to end, and it has to end now,” he said in a meeting with The Buffalo News Editorial Board. “Our society’s willingness to perpetuate this situation is no longer acceptable. We need dramatic action, and it’s going to come to a head.”

Improvement models for failing schools might include a range of options, including restructuring poor schools as holistic “community schools” or having charter schools take over, he said. If an entire district is failing, the possibility of mayoral takeovers or state takeovers might exist, he said.

Interestingly enough, he seems to actually know that what schools in poor communities do is more than just, you know, function as schools:

Of the many options for changing failing New York schools, Cuomo spent the most time describing a “community school” concept, which would apply to schools serving children in poor neighborhoods.

“A school in a poor community is really not a school,” he said, “and to compare a school in a poor community to a school in a rich community – that analysis is bogus, because the school in a poor community is trying to do many more things than a school in a rich community.”

Society needs to acknowledge that schools filled with poor students serve different functions, Cuomo said, and are more of a cross between an educational institution and a community center that serves both social service and educational needs.

“In a rich community, you have the parents, you have the after-school care, you have a healthy home,” he said. “The school in a poor community is a school, a mentor, a nutritionist, a counselor. ... You have students where it’s not just an education problem. Then don’t call it an education problem, and don’t expect the teacher in a school to be able to wear seven hats with no money and no training and no resources.

“I call that community schools. That’s an alternative.”

Of course, as he adds more and more mandates to districts, as school are forced to spend more and more money on evaluations and testing and the like, they have less money to spend on social services and the wrap around support needed to help students succeed.

Is Cuomo aware of this?

He's many things, but he is not a stupid man.

I am sure he is aware of this.

In fact, I would bet it's part of his privatization plan - overburden districts with mandates, starve them of funding, force them to "fail," declare them "failing," take away democratic control of the district from an elected school board and put all the power into the hands of a mayor (or the state via takeover), shut down the schools, fire the teachers, reopen the schools as charters with a burn and churn teacher employment philosophy, hire non-unionized teachers, and enrich his charter school/hedge fundie buddies.

That's the plan Cuomo's got going.

Will he get away with it?

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

There is Cuomo fatigue in Albany that has begun to set in.

His "reform agenda" is not a foregone conclusion.

One final thing from this article - Cuomo seems blissfully unaware of the insanity that is APPR.

He thinks it's a good, data-driven teacher evaluation system.

NYSED Commissioner John King Looks To Take Total Control

It's John King's way or the highway - there's no other way to read this story:

BUFFALO, NY - New York's Education Commissioner wants the state legislature to pass a bill, giving the Board of Regents the authority to take over school boards in districts failing academically and/or financially.

Under the proposal, there would be benchmarks for state intervention, involving a three-step approach, with a takeover the last step if a district continues to fail to implement mandated changes.

"The Board of Regents has put forward a legislative proposal that would allow the board to remove a school board in a district that is chronically under-performing, and require the appointment of an education oversight board that would be similar to a fiscal control board," Commissioner John King told WGRZ-TV.

"That control board would then have responsibility for managing the district," King said.
Giving the Board of Regents that type of authority isn't a new idea. A bill to do so was first proposed in 2011; however, it never made it out of committee that year, or the next ..., and was not even submitted in the last legislative session of 2013.

"It has not yet been acted upon, but that's certainly one of the options we believe should be on the table for the Board of Regents when you have a district that is chronically under-performing and, from a governance perspective unable to move forward," said King. 

And just which district would John King be wanting to get his hands on?

Why Buffalo, of course!

To hear King describe the Buffalo Public Schools, its top administrators, and its Board of Education, Buffalo might be ripe as a takeover target.

King notes Buffalo has, in recent times, missed deadlines to enact acceptable plans to turn around troubled schools, implement school choice plans, and agreements for teacher evaluations

"The district leadership has a set of obligations. Those obligations haven't been fulfilled," King said.

Where does the governor stand on King's proposed changes?

"I don't think it's a good idea for the state to become a foster parent here,"" said Lt. Governor Robert Duffy, during a visit to the Buffalo are in June. "I think the Governor would prefer results to come locally, to come from the ground up...I would hope there would be a number of things that would be done before it ever gets to that."

King is still angry at the Buffalo school district for showing him up over the teacher evaluation law and making a side agreement with the union that nobody would be fired the first year under the new APPR system.

King and Cuomo got that side agreement quashed by threatening to hold back funding from the district.

This came after Cuomo accused the district of legal and ethical fraud by making the side agreement.

Now the teachers union in Buffalo is suing to get that agreement reinstated.

There are districts in NY State that perform similarly to Buffalo on so-called accountability measures like state test scores and graduation rates - Rochester comes to mind.

And yet, King only has his sights on Buffalo, both with his bludgeon (he is trying to force the district to allow students to transfer out to BOCES in the area) and now with his state takeover proposal.

He clearly has a vendetta against the district.

I wondered a while ago if King was aiming to have the state take over the Buffalo school district.

With King strongly urging the legislature to pass this proposal into law, you can bet he is.

The message coming out of the NYSED is, do what we want or we will take you over.

Quite literally John King thinks he is "the king."