Geoffrey Canada and the For-Profit Colleges

Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone, is the darling of the education "reform" movement.

I will leave the skepticism about Canada's "Harlem miracle" to others for now (see here and here for that) and focus on something else about Harlem Children's Zone that concerns me.

I teach in NYC and my seniors who belong to an after school program run by the HCZ all talk about wanting to go to Berkeley College (not the the California university, the for-profit one.)

Many of these are students in need of remediation, many of whom will be the first in their families to attend a post-secondary school. So they are desperately in need of good guidance and counseling.

I suggest either CUNY or SUNY schools, which are much cheaper than Berkeley College (Berkeley costs nearly $30,000, CUNY $4,000, tuition at SUNY is just over $5,000) and where the quality of education is so much better.

In fact, Berkeley College is barely a college. It's really more of a diploma mill - the kind where they brag about job placement rates rather than graduation rates because so many of their students drop out of school and never complete their degrees.

And while those students may not complete their degrees at Berkeley College, they do have to complete paying for the loans Berkeley loads them up with per year. Proponents of for-profit schools argue that drop-out rates at for-profit schools are no worse than at public 2-year and 4-year schools, and while that may be true in some cases, most public universities are not charging the kind of money Berkeley College is charging per quarter.

For example, a student who attends York College, a CUNY school, who drops out has paid a little less than $4,400 a year for the school. Even if that student was not eligible for a Pell grant, a TAP grant or any other free aid, the amount of loan debt the student would have from the CUNY school would be pretty minimal compared to the almost $30,000 he/she might incur at Berkeley College per year.

Now I suppose there are worse post-graduation choices a student could make than attending Berkeley College and paying $60,000 for an Associate's Degree in criminal justice or $120,000 for a Bachelor's Degree in the same field, but there are certainly many better choices he or she could make - like attending John Jay and receiving an Associate's Degree in criminal justice for $8,800 or a Bachelor's Degree in the same field for just under $17,000

So why is the Harlem Children's Zone, a program that purports to pride itself on academic excellence and high standards, pushing low-income kids to an expensive diploma mill like Berkeley College where an education will cost between $60,000 and $120,000 when more reasonable and more reputable colleges in the SUNY or CUNY system are available?

When I called HCZ, I was told that they have a "business arrangement" with Berkeley College, which is why they suggest students attend there.

I have tried to get more information from HCZ about this "business arrangement" but have been rebuffed since.

So, let's get this out there on the blogosphere. Does anyone know what kind of "business arrangement" Harlem Children's Zone has with Berkeley College that has them pushing kids toward this for-profit school when cheaper and better public universities are available?

Rubber Room For Corrupt Politicians: Bloomberg, Malcolm Smith Edition

It's good to be connected.

The NY Daily News reports this morning that three charter schools with connections to Mayor Bloomberg or State Senate President Malcolm Smith are receiving a nice financial hug and kiss this post-Valentine's day:

Three politically connected charter schools are expected to receive millions in city money for new buildings, an Education Department plan shows.

In the city's capital plan, two charter schools with ties to Mayor Bloomberg - Brooklyn's PAVE Academy and Harlem Promise Academy - are slated to receive a total of $72 million for new buildings, about a third of the city money available for charter construction.

Peninsula Preparatory Academy in Queens, which state Senate President Malcolm Smith helped found, will also receive funds, though an exact amount has not been settled on.

Critics say with limited resources for school construction, the city should build public schools where they're most needed - not where elected officials have pet schools.

"It pays to have friends," said Community Education Council 15 Co-President Jim Devor, criticizing the choice to spend public dollars on a new school for Red Hook, Brooklyn, which doesn't have an overcrowding problem.

"You have a neighborhood whose school facilities are underutilized. You gratuitously add a school building where none is needed."

The Promise Academy school is run by education reform "hero" Geoffrey Canada and may constitute a quid pro quo bribe between Bloomberg and Canada.

Canada loudly supported Bloomberg's efforts to maintain mayoral control of the New York City public school system last summer when the law was up for renewal.

Now he's receiving a new school building courtesy of Mayor Bloomberg and city taxpayers at the expense of school children and parents in other areas of the city that suffer from school overcrowding.

City Controller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill De Blasio need to look into just how it is that Geoffrey Canada's school, along with the other politically connected charters, got NYCDOE largesse at a time when funds for school construction are so limited.

As for Malcolm Smith, the Daily News reported last month that he steered $100,000 dollars of state aid to the charter school he helped found, Peninsula Preparatory Academy.

While steering the money toward the charter school he founded is not illegal, it does raise questions of a conflict of interest for Smith. What may be illegal are the political donations Smith received from the for-profit company, Victory Schools Inc., that runs the charter.

The owner of Victory Schools Inc., Steven Klinsky, denied there was any quid pro quo arrangement between his company and Smith and said the donations were simply to reward Smith for supporting raising the charter school cap, but the deal certainly smells bad on the face of it.

Adding to Smith's woes, the NY Times reports this morning that Smith and some of his aides are being investigated by federal prosecutors in both Manhattan and Brooklyn for money transfers between Smith and non-profits he has ties to:

Four current or former officials of a Queens nonprofit group or a related charity founded by State Senator Malcolm A. Smith and Congressman Gregory W. Meeks — a group to which Mr. Smith has directed some $56,000 in state funds — have spent some time on the Senate payroll working for Mr. Smith, and two were among his highest paid staff members, public records show.

Federal prosecutors are investigating the nonprofit group, the New Direction Local Development Corporation, and a related charity set up to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina, and they issued a subpoena at the beginning of February for records from Mr. Smith’s Senate office that show all the money he had directed to community groups over the past decade, a person with knowledge of the subpoena said last week.

But while the prosecutors who issued the subpoena, from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, wrote it broadly, the person said that investigators made clear that they were focused on New Direction, which was incorporated in 2000 and says in its tax filings that it was created to encourage local development in Southeast Queens.

...

It is unclear whether the investigation by Manhattan prosecutors, which is in its earliest stages, or another apparently associated inquiry by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, are related in any way to the activities of the four people who spent time over the years on Mr. Smith’s legislative payroll. No charges have been filed, and the United States attorneys’ offices in both Manhattan and Brooklyn declined to comment on Sunday.

But three of the four people who either are or were on Mr. Smith’s payroll appear to have played major roles in the nonprofit group over several years, according to its tax filings and Web site, and two hold posts that suggest they are or were close to Senator Smith or are deeply involved in his political affairs.

Connections between the lawmakers who make grants and the nonprofit groups that get them have come under growing scrutiny from prosecutors in recent years, especially in connection with the State Legislature and New York City Council, which together give out tens of millions of dollars in local awards each year.

There is no law prohibiting a state legislator from directing a grant to a charity that employs or has on its board a friend, family member or staff member of the legislator’s. But under an agreement with Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo in 2007, the recipient of any grant, often known as an earmark, must disclose such connections in a signed statement, under penalty of perjury.

Smith's mentor, Reverend Floyd Flake, is also embroiled in a quid pro quo scandal involving the awarding of a gambling contract to a company connected to him by the state. After Flake's company won the bid, Flake pulled back from his public support of Andrew Cuomo in this year's Democratic primary for governor and says he may now support David Paterson, the man who helped his company win the gambling contract.

Finally the Daily News reports that Mayor Bloomberg bought a political crony a house in Forest Hills Garden for helping Bloomberg win his third term as mayor.

The scandals involving New York City and New York State political figures - from Bloomberg to Smith to Flake to Paterson - are coming fast and furious.

It is clear these people think state and city coffers are their own and any taxpayer funds they steer toward their own non-profits or the non-profits run by their supporters or to companies run by supporters are just the spoils of office.

It is also clear that quid pro quo deals are daily occurrences at City Hall, at Tweed, and in Albany.

Maybe there needs to be a rubber room for corrupt politicians where Bloomberg, Paterson, and Smith can languish for months on end while prosecutors investigate their cases.

And maybe there needs to be a rubber room for non-profit operators and charter school management company operators like Geoffrey Canada and Steven Klinsky of Victory Schools, Inc. involved on the other end of quid pro quo dealings

NYC Condom Contest

Down to just five entries for what the official "Condom of New York City" will be.

Entries are here.

You can provide your own Bloomberg and/or Klein jokes in the comments section.

That Didn't Take Long

With the revelation that MSNBC talking head and empty suit Harold Ford Jr. files his state taxes in his home state of Tennessee to avoid paying New York State and New York City taxes, the paid shills have come out of the woodwork to defend Ford.

I even got one on this blog.

You can see his jive here in the comments section.

You know Ford and the corporate whores backing him must feel threatened by the tax cheat story when they send out paid minions onto the Internets to leave comments on blogs as obscure as this one to defend Ford.

I wonder who is paying the comment shills - Ford himself (doubtful), Merrill Lynch (perhaps) or Ford's biggest backer, Mayor Moneybags (most likely - he's got lots of money to burn and longs to burn it on his political ambitions...witness the $108 million he dropped on his third mayoral bid and the reported $500 million he plans to drop on his 2012 presidential bid...)

Dunno who it is for sure behind the Ford defense, but let me assure whoever it is that Ford's political career in NY is done before it started.

You know how I know?

Because just a couple of hours after the Ford tax cheat story came out, Mort Zuckerman - real estate magnate and owner of the NY Daily News - floated a "SHOULD I RUN FOR GILLIBRAND'S SEAT" trial balloon in the NY Times.

That sure didn't take long for the sharks to circle.

It will be interesting to see if Bloomberg's allies and Moneybags himself walk away from Ford.

Judging by the troll who showed up here, they're still on board, but you can smell the desperation.

And why wouldn't they be desperate?

When they're candidate is quoted as saying "I pay taxes there, and once you pay taxes there, you feel like a New Yorker," when he actually pays (or doesn't pay, since they do not have an income tax) taxes in his home state of Tennessee, you can see why his backers would feel such desperation.

Maybe now that Ford's been revealed as a Tennessean for tax purposes, Moneybags can jump off his friend and fellow tax cheat Harold Ford Jr.'s bandwagon and jump onto his friend and real estate crook Mort Zuckerman's?

Harold Ford - Tax Cheat

Harold Ford Jr., MSNBC commentator, Merrill Lynch employee, and former Congressman from Tennessee wants to run for Senate in NY.

He moved here after he lost his Senate race in Tennessee to Bob Corker in 2006.

He doesn't know much about the state, says he's only seen most of the city's boroughs from the air in a helicopter, and once explained how he loves to take the 6 train to work at the G.E. building even though the 6 train runs nowhere near the G.E. building, but Ford and his pals in the media (particularly on MSNBC's Morning Joe) and with the money (i.e., Mayor Moneybags) think he can knock Kristin Gillibrand off and take her Senate seat.

No one quite knows what Harold Ford stands for - he used to be against gay marriage, but now he's for it...he used to be against abortion rights, now he says he's for them. Interestingly enough, he was against those things when it was good to be against them (e.g., in Tennessee where most people do not hold those beliefs) and now is for those things when it is good to be for them (e.g., in a New York Democratic primary race where most people support gay marriage and abortion rights.)

And no one knows what Ford is good at either - he won his House seat because his father used to hold it, he's a lawyer by trade but couldn't pass the Tennessee bar, and about the only thing he seems to have done at Merrill Lynch is collect an annual bonus that was paid for with TARP money.

Nonetheless, Ford and his friends think he deserves to be a senator from New York.

After all, he's got some very corporate-friendly politics that they like and frankly, he's happy to vote any old way they want him to since he holds no core beliefs about anything,

But today, that dream might just have ended...

When it comes to his shadow run for Senate, Harold Ford is a New Yorker through and through. When it comes to paying taxes, though, he's still a Tennessean — he's never filed a New York return.

Ford claims to have moved to New York three years ago, and says paying "New York taxes" makes him a New Yorker. But his spokeswoman confirms to Gawker that he's never filed a New York tax return — meaning that he's never paid New York's income tax, despite keeping an office and a residence in New York City as a vice chairman of Merrill Lynch since 2007: "He pays New York taxes and will file a New York tax return in April for the first time," Ford's spokeswoman Tammy Sun told Gawker. "He will file all necessary personal disclosure and tax forms that candidates are required to file if he chooses to run." (According to Sun, Ford admitted to the tax dodge yesterday at a press availability in Albany, but we can't find any news accounts mentioning the remarks.)

Ford presumably decided that his real home was Tennessee, which conveniently has no income tax. Which means that, despite the fact that New York law requires part-time and nonresidents to pay income tax on money they earn in the state, Ford has shielded his entire Merrill Lynch salary from New York's tax collectors for the past three years. In fact, it seems like Tennessee's lack of an income tax may be the best explanation for Ford's rather complicated two-state life since 2007 — he clearly wanted to live in New York, and married a woman in 2008 who did live in New York. But he made sure to keep a foot in a state whose tax code is friendly to rich guys like himself.

When Merrill Lynch announced Ford's hiring in 2007, it said he would be keeping offices in Nashville and New York City. Ford has said that he's basically lived in New York since then, though he never technically lived here until last year since he didn't "spend the requisite number of days" staying at his wife Emily Ford's breathtakingly yellow apartment in the Flatiron district. ("Moved is such a legal term," he told the New York Times). Ford was clearly thinking of New York's 184-day rule, which requires that part-time residents who spend 184 or more days living in the state pay New York taxes on all their income.

What he seems to have forgotten is that New York has gone to great pains to prevent wealthy people like him from spending time and earning money in the state and then jetting off to a tax haven come April 15: It also requires nonresidents and people who live there fewer than 184 days to pay New York income taxes on whatever portion of their income they earned in the state.

If Ford did enough business in New York to keep an office there, its reasonable to presume that he earned a good deal of money in New York. Now, we're sure that there are all sorts of accountants' arguments and narrow dodges at Ford's disposal to claim that he didn't owe New York income tax until he moved here last year: He could have been paid out of Merrill Lynch's Nashville office, for instance, and he could have received the majority of his income in a bonus that he could claim he earned in Tennessee, not New York. But while those sorts of arguments may be useful to someone trying to get as close as possible to living in New York without suffering the tax consequences of doing so, they're not as effective when you're loudly thinking about running for Senate in New York by claiming you've lived there for three years and pay taxes there.

So what taxes is Ford talking about, if he's never paid income tax in New York? We've asked Sun, and haven't heard back. The most pathetic (and, by our lights, likely) answer is New York City's 8.875% sales tax, though Ford could also be talking about sharing in property taxes on Ford's apartment, or paying quarterly estimated tax payments on his freelance income as an MSNBC talking head, which he might have started paying last year once he decided to break that 184-day barrier and commit to New York. Or perhaps he instructed Merrill Lynch to start withholding New York taxes from his salary when he established residency in 2009.

And when precisely, did that happen, by the way? According to this Federal Election Committee filing recording a donation Ford made to Colorado Sen. Mike Bennet, he was still using his Memphis address as recently as September 29 of last year—98 days before he announced his interest in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's seat.

If this doesn't kill Harold Ford Jr.'s flirtation with running for Senate here in New York, I dunno what else could.

Frankly I think Ford is shameless enough to continue running despite using his home state of Tennessee as a dodge from New York state tax, but I'm kinda thinking the shills he works with on Morning Joe and the people he has who are backing him with money (i.e., Bloomberg) will run from him after this tax cheat revelation.

But who knows? Maybe they'll argue paying taxes in the state your purporting to represent in the U.S. Senate isn't a prerequisite for that job.

Hell, we've seen Bloomberg argue day is night before, so he could certainly argue Ford's not paying New York state tax is not a big deal.

And the shills at Morning Joe already twist themselves into pretzels to defend Ford when they'd be bashing any other politician as slick and vacuous as Ford who had the chutzpah to run for Senate in NY, so you never know what they'll do either.

But this looks very bad for Ford.

At Least Somebody's Starting To Look Into Bloomberg's No'Bid Contract Boondoggles

Juan Gonzalez reports that city controller John Liu plans has nixed a no-bid contract Bloomberg handed to Republican party cronies of his for a city payroll system:

City Controller John Liu is refusing to approve a new $8 million contract the Bloomberg administration has awarded for the city's controversial payroll and timekeeping system.

Liu wants to know now why the computerized system known as CityTime has ballooned to more than 10 times its original price tag.

When development of CityTime began in 1998, officials promised it would use new-age hand scanners and other technology to eliminate abuse of employee timecards by thousands of workers.

The system has instead turned into an uncontrolled gravy train for high-paid consultants and a boondoggle for taxpayers.

CityTime "has a long history of extraordinary increases, rising from $68 million to $722 million over 10 years," Liu's director of contract administration, John Goddard, wrote on Feb. 9 in notifying Bloomberg aides of his rejection of the new contract for Spherion Inc.

Goddard noted that since 2001, Spherion has been in charge of monitoring all contractor performance on CityTime and was supposed to be controlling costs.

For that work, the city has shelled out $51 million to Spherion. Meanwhile, the project's main contractor, defense giant SAIC, has received $670 million.

The News reported in December that several top Spherion consultants, among them an ex-business partner of the city's payroll office chief, Joel Bondy, have each earned more than $400,000 a year to oversee CityTime. More than a dozen Spherion consultants averaged $300,000 each in 2009.

Another CityTime consultant from SAIC, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's technology chief Sal Salamone, made millions of dollars as a full-time computer industry lobbyist before city agencies while at the same time collecting $250,000 annually for his work on the time-keeping project.

Gonzelez says until now, there has been no outside audit of the project.

Just the way Bloomberg likes it.

He brings the data, you trust him with it.

And the public gets screwed.

Liu needs to keep looking into Bloomberg's no-bid contracts and follow who is on the receiving end of his largesse.

Third terms are notoriously scandal-plagued here in NYC.

If Liu and others dig into the no-bid contracts Bloomberg has handed out the last 8 years and continues to try and hand out now, they're going to have plenty of scandal material.

Clueless in D.C.

Wow - President Obama is even dumber than I thought.

First, a story from Bloomberg News:

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Now Paul Krugman's reaction to Obama's comments:

Oh. My. God.

First of all, to my knowledge, irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn’t brought the world economy to the brink of collapse and cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and/or houses.

And more specifically, not only has the financial industry has been bailed out with taxpayer commitments; it continues to rely on a taxpayer backstop for its stability. Don’t take it from me, take it from the rating agencies:

The planned overhaul of US financial rules prompted Standard & Poor’s to warn on Tuesday it might downgrade the credit ratings of Citigroup and Bank of America on concerns that the shake-up would make it less likely that the banks would be bailed out by US taxpayers if they ran into trouble again.

The point is that these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private. And at the very least, you would think that Obama would understand the importance of acknowledging public anger over what’s happening.

But no. If the Bloomberg story is to be believed, Obama thinks his key to electoral success is to trumpet “the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.”

We’re doomed.

We are doomed.

Not only does Obama seem to believe the "free market capitalism" jive that allows these crony capitalists on Wall Street to rig the system, steal from the taxpayer and run the economy like a Reno casino while privatizing profits and shunting losses onto the public, but he wants to take these same values and ideas and apply them to public education.

Meaning crony capitalists will have a new punch bowl to slurp from and more new yummy profits to gobble up while shunting the losses onto the public.

But education, like the economy, will fail to get any better under Obama's stewardship.

Bloomberg's Data

For years I have been saying that all the data Bloomberg claims as evidence that New York has the lowest crime rates and fire fatalities in two generations and rising test scores and graduation rates that are a direct result of his "reform" efforts in education are bullshit.

With stories abounding that the vaunted COMPSTAT crime stats are indeed phony (many crimes go unreported or are ratcheted down from felonies to misdemeanors so that precicnt commanders can show Bloomberg that crime rates are decreasing every year), the Times takes a look at Bloomgerg's claims about education and education data:

Of all Mr. Bloomberg’s policies, though, education has been more of a flashpoint than crime when it comes to statistics. The mayor and Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor, have generally succeeded in getting their way on major policies, including the reauthorization of mayoral control last year. The administration has also been praised by President Obama and Arne Duncan, the education secretary, for its approach.

But during the mayoral campaign, Mr. Bloomberg’s Democratic opponent, William C. Thompson Jr., echoed the concerns of vocal parents and some teachers, accusing the mayor of manipulating and even falsifying statistics.

Norman Siegel, a civil liberties lawyer, resurrected some of those concerns in the wake of the crime survey. After returning from a vacation, he said he had received numerous messages from parents who were apoplectic about the administration’s recent decision to close 19 schools because of poor performance.

“A lot of the parents and teachers were calling me and telling me that the data are not accurate,” Mr. Siegel said. “So the question immediately becomes, is the data that’s now being used by the Bloomberg administration being manipulated to produce a result-oriented policy decision? It’s early to tell how much it could affect Bloomberg’s reputation and his legacy, but it does create some concern, and there’s potentially a cloud of uncertainty.”

Well, I say dig in, boys.

The more the press looks closely at Bloomberg's education reform movement and the stats he touts to show it's a success, the more they will find dumbed down tests, manipulated test scores, phonied graduation rates, and data created to back up school privatization policies that have already been decided upon.

They will also find lots of waste and mismanagement at Tweed, where no-bid contracts to school privatization cronies are the order of the day and destruction of the records of those contracts a regular occurrence. Corruption is rife at Tweed and if an independent auditor ever got in there, lots of people would be frog-marched out in handcuffs.

Now we just need the press to do this digging.

Mistress Eva

It's snowing.

School districts from D.C. to New York City are closed, parochial schools are closed and 10-16 inches of additional snow are expected.

Conditions are expected to worsen this afternoon and make the evening commute difficult. Winds may gust up to 40 MPH, blowing snow and creating white out conditions. The storm is not supposed to stop until late tonight or early Thursday.

So this is going to be a very long, very difficult storm and it's probably a good day to keep kids away from buses, roads and the evening commute.

But according to the New York Times, Mistress Eva was sad the city forced her to close her charter schools:

Last year, students at Harlem Success Academy I, run by Eva Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman, came to school amid the icy gusts, even as the public schools closed.

“We are usually pretty hardy about these things and don’t like to lose even a single day of instruction,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “Had it been up to us, we would have stayed open.”

Mistress Eva herself takes a cab to work, of course.

When you pay yourself $371,000 a year to run your four charter schools, you can afford that kind of thing.

The students at her charter schools?

They would just have to get to school and back home as best they could.

And if they got hurt in the process, oh well.

Fred Dicker of the Day Award

So, far the only winner of the "Fred Dicker of the Day" award has been Fred Dicker.

But tonight we have a new winner - Queens Parent, a commenter and a self-proclaimed "parent" of a public school child over at Gotham Schools.

Queens Parents wins the Dicker of the Day award for suggesting that because he doesn't get paid for a snow day, no one - including NYC public school teachers - should be paid for it:

Well if teachers aren’t working, why should they get paid unless they use one of their vacation days? If I don’t work tomorrow, I won’t get paid unless I take a vacation day. Why are teachers different?

Oh, yeah -that kind of rationale for why nobody should be paid for snow days really does deserve a Dicker of the Day award.

Blizzard Watch

So Accuweather is forecasting a blizzard for Tuesday night/Wednesday.

The headline for the story is "New, Dangerous Blizzard for D.C., Philly, NYC and Boston."

There is the potential for a foot of snow or more from Washington, D.C. to Boston, Mass.

People should be prepared for slow or no travel as the storm intensifies upon nearing the Northeast coast Tuesday night into Wednesday. Schools will close, commerce will be impacted and accidents will occur.

Lower temperatures, strong winds and deep, powdery snow could make this the worst of the two storms even in areas that were hit hard with the last.

From a meteorological standpoint the prospect of two blizzards in less than a week for the same area is absolutely amazing! Three storms delivering over a foot of snow in one season is unheard of in some areas.

In terms of a human factors, this one may bring life-threatening conditions to the homeless in the region. Shoveling snow in the extreme cold could pose serious health risks.

Let's assume the prediction is right and a dangerous blizzard dumps a foot or more of snow along the East Coast from D.C. to Boston.

How much do you want to bet that all of the I 95 corridor cities call school Tuesday night but Klein sits all snug and warm in his Park Avenue duplex and waits until 6:30 AM to call NYC schools?

And that's assuming that he even calls it all.

New York public school chancellors and mayors hate closing the largest day care center in the country for any reason.

Even for dangerous blizzard conditions.

Guess we'll all just have to meet at NYC Educator's blog and trade snow stories!

Paterson Scandal Rumors

The NY Times hasn't published it's rumored "Paterson scandal" story yet.

Paterson says there is nothing to the rumors, that they're part of "a coordinated effort to stop him" from running for re-election.

Dunno why anyone would coordinate an effort to stop a guy with an approval rating in the 20's from running for re-election.

But you know, maybe in Paterson's little world, that makes sense...

NY Times: Cops Manipulate Crime Stats

The NY Times reports that the vaunted COMPSTAT statistics that supposedly show crime rates in NYC getting lower every year are bullshit:

More than a hundred retired New York Police Department captains and higher-ranking officers said in a survey that the intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics, according to two criminologists studying the department.

The retired members of the force reported that they were aware over the years of instances of “ethically inappropriate” changes to complaints of crimes in the seven categories measured by the department’s signature CompStat program, according to a summary of the results of the survey and interviews with the researchers who conducted it.

The totals for those seven so-called major index crimes are provided to the F.B.I., whose reports on crime trends have been used by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to favorably compare New York to other cities and to portray it as a profoundly safer place, an assessment that the summary does not contradict.

In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies — felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat — to misdemeanors, which are not, the researchers said.

Others also said that precinct commanders or aides they dispatched sometimes went to crime scenes to persuade victims not to file complaints or to urge them to change their accounts in ways that could result in the downgrading of offenses to lesser crimes, the researchers said.

“Those people in the CompStat era felt enormous pressure to downgrade index crime, which determines the crime rate, and at the same time they felt less pressure to maintain the integrity of the crime statistics,” said John A. Eterno, one of the researchers and a retired New York City police captain.

His colleague, Eli B. Silverman, added, “As one person said, the system provides an incentive for pushing the envelope.”

As I have written before on this blog and elsewhere, if independent reporters and analysts keep digging into the statistics and data during Bloomberg's tenure that shows crime falling to the lowest levels since the 60's, fire fatalities at really low rates, and test scores and graduation rates increasing yearly, they will see massaged statistics, manipulated data and in some cases wholesale fraudulent activity by city personnel running police precincts, firehouses and schools.

This is what happens when people have to show quarterly and/or or yearly improvement all the time or be fired.

UPDATE: The NY Post adds to the manipulated crime data furor:

A city police captain was forced to retire last year after he fudged crime statistics to make his precinct look safer -- adding to widening concern over the accuracy of NYPD stats and the belief that top bosses pressure supervisors into cooking the books.

Capt. James Arniotes, a 23-year veteran, told The Post that he was busted for reclassifying 23 grand-larceny felonies as petit-larceny misdemeanors in early 2008.

The misconduct occurred while Arniotes, 48, was second in command at the Ninth Precinct in the East Village.

Grand larceny is one of seven major crimes, along with murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary and grand larceny auto, that the NYPD and FBI track and publicize.

Through CompStat -- which was started in 1995 and is credited with helping to take crime levels to an all-time low -- data are broken down by precinct and used as a tool to focus cops on crime trends.

But a growing chorus of complaints -- including those from Post interviews with dozens of officers and a new survey of retired captains -- allege that the pressure of CompStat leads precinct bosses to downgrade major crimes to minor offenses.

The evidence includes:

* A new survey of 491 retired captains that found that respondents who worked in the CompStat era felt greater pressure from management to doctor major crimes.

* The NYPD Staten Island Evidence Collection Team's fingerprinting of burglary scenes but not entering its findings if cops did not issue the victims a police report. The burglaries would then not appear on CompStat.

* Sergeants' different attitude during roll call once CompStat began. Before, they would instruct officers to report all crimes. When CompStat came aboard, that speech disappeared.

* Officers who purposely made it difficult for victims to file complaints. Cops responding to burglaries would ask for serial numbers and receipts for lost items and not file their reports until those had been produced.

* Cops who turned felony assaults into misdemeanor assaults if suspects couldn't be identified.

* A sergeant who recorded an iPod stolen during an assault as lost property. The same cop recategorized burglaries down to the level of criminal trespass.

Arniotes admitted to reclassifying criminal charges and was forced to resign -- with his $70,000 annual pension intact.

While leading a Manhattan grand-larceny suppression team, he buckled under the pressure of presenting the data to management every two weeks, he claimed.

"You're under pressure because you have to stand in front of the lectern and talk about grand-larceny suppression," he said.

His lawyer, Hugo Ortega, said, "These captains are called on the carpet one time a month at CompStat meetings and told to bring the numbers down -- and if they don't, their careers are on the line."

In the new survey of retired commanders, by Dr. John Eterno of Molloy College and Dr. Eli Silverman of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, more than half of the respondents said they were aware of reports changed with an eye toward CompStat.

Supervisors "with questionable disciplinary records who were proactive in crime-reducing strategy 'downgrading complaint reports' were promoted on a regular basis," one respondent wrote.

While the researchers acknowledged that major crimes were at a historic low, they said they hoped the survey results would serve as a "wake-up call" to the department.

"This is the perception of the people we spoke with," Eterno said. "They felt far more pressure to downgrade index crimes than the previous generation of the NYPD. The department demanded less integrity compared to the previous."

The department demanded less integrity compared to the previous generation.

That sentence is emblematic of the entire Bloomberg tenure.

Just show "progress" in the stats.

Doesn't matter if it's accurate or not.

It's all about perception.

Joanna Molloy Replies - Says Editor Added Anti-Teacher Content

After I sent an email complaining about Joanna Molloy calling all teachers "dumb" in today's NY Daily News, she wrote back the following:

I was practically raised by my teachers; my aunt was a nyc ps teacher for decades and was dragged down the stairs once; I never mentioned teachers; unfortunately an editor did in the headline. I suppose a bad editor's call is like that of a principal? In any case, your letter is incredible, and I would encourage you to forward it to our editorial page for publication, even though it insults me! They require your phone number so they can verify that you are you.
Thank you for your thoughts,
Joanna Molloy

I replied with this:

With all due respect, I must take exception to your assertion that you "never mentioned teachers" in your column. Allow me to quote from it:

"Test scores show our kids are getting smarter.
That's a good thing, because our educators seem to be getting dumber."


And



"I don't know what the qualifications are for landing a job as a teacher or principal, but one thing's for sure, it's not common sense."

You are doing what many newspaper writers and media folks tend to do - taking the idiotic actions of one or two teachers and extrapolating that to teachers as a whole group.

I find this to be unfair.

It is as if I took the actions of Dominic Carter, convicted spousal abuser and former NY1 reporter, and said "I don't know what the qualifications for being a reporter these days are, but it seems being able to beat your spouse for 13 years without being caught is one of them..."

Or for me to point to Jayson Blair, the NY Times reporter who made stuff up and/or plagiarized whole pieces of writing in the NY Times, and said that because Blair got away with his deception for as long as he did that all reporters must be suspected as plagiarists.

Do you see what I mean about the unfairness of these kinds of blanket assertions?

In the past I have let these kinds of things go by without comment, but I have been seeing more and more of them in both the News and the Post lately. And honestly, I think it needs to stop. A few idiots in the group are NOT emblematic of the group as a whole - not for teachers, not for news people.

Thanks for replying.

She replied with this:

God, you're right, and believe me or not, that was inserted by an editor, which angers me. I guess he was referring to original Spanish teacher who brought Alexa to principal, but he should have run this by me and I would have nixed it. I'll make it up to teachers, in your honor, I swear.
Joanna Molloy

I haven't replied back yet. I believe her that an editor added the offensive content, but it's troubling nonetheless if an editor wrote the "Test scores show our kids are getting smarter. That's a good thing, because our educators seem to be getting dumber" and "I don't know what the qualifications are for landing a job as a teacher or principal, but one thing's for sure, it's not common sense" lines.

It surely shows that the editors at the News never let an opportunity to tar all teachers as idiots to go unpassed.

It seems editorial agenda trumps any veneer of journalistic integrity or objectivity these days.

Joanna Molly Call Teachers Stupid

You can read her snark here.

I responded with this email:

Ms. Molloy,

Your column about educators lacking common sense is simplistic.

There are 85,000 teachers in New York City. There are 6,100 principals and assistant principals.

Some of those people lack common sense and do stupid things like having a girl who drew on a desk handcuffed or a boy who brought in a little toy gun arrested.

That leaves lots of other educators who do NOT engage in stupid behavior and do NOT lack common sense.

I would put myself, a teacher for 9 years at a large public high school, in that group.

Three weeks ago I had a fight in my class and had to call security for the first time in my nine years as a teacher. It was an ugly fight in which one girl pulled chunks of flesh from another girl's face with her fingernails. I followed protocol, ran to the phone to call security, and tried to keep the class from breaking into complete chaos while security ran up nine flights to my classroom. After it was all over, I had to clean up a spilled thermos of iced tea, blood and hair extensions, then teach my next class. My folders of student work were covered with coffee and blood. Shaken, I changed my lesson from what I had planned to "WHAT ARE HEALTHY WAYS TO EXPRESS OUR ANGER?" for my next class. It was one of the best classes I have ever taught. Students gave honest responses as they talked about respect, anger, unresolved emotions and other things that can lead to fights.

Two weeks ago, a girl collapsed in my class. I ran to help her and yelled for a student to call security and have them call the EMT's. I thought she was okay because I could feel a pulse and hear her breathing (albeit shallowly), but you never know with these things. Fortunately she was okay and after the EMT's came and took her, I went back to teaching.

Those are two of the most extreme examples of my having to deal with the unexpected on the fly. But nearly every day, there is some point where I have to make a split second decision about something. I usually make good decisions, but occasionally I do not and then I learn from those mistakes.

That's called being an adult. I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of teachers in my building are the same way (and we have over 100 teachers.)

So I am insulted by your column. Frankly, it's a piece of snark written by somebody who doesn't know much about teaching or the current conditions in NYC public schools. It's funny if you're in the BASH TEACHERS camp (as some who work at your paper are), but if you have any idea of the number of scary, dangerous or simply worrisome incidents most teachers deal with every day, you would know what you wrote is as ridiculous as the principal who had the kid with the little toy gun arrested or the teacher who had the kids who wrote on the desk cuffed.

I will say that you are right about one thing, however, Ms. Molloy. "Grown-ups can be idiots" - you ought to look in the mirror to see one. Given the kinds of things your colleagues at the paper write about education and teaching, you can look around the Daily News to see quite a few more.

I am so sick of newspaper writers and stenographers pointing to one or two teachers who do stupid things and extrapolating that behavior to all educators.

It's like pointing to wifebeater Dominic Carter, former NY1 reporter, to say all reporters are criminals and spousebeaters.

Unfortunately that's pretty much all the media stenographers and politicians do these days.

The most extreme rubber room example is used to tar all teachers in the rubber room as bad teachers.

One teacher gets investigated for sexual abuse and all the other teachers laid off at the same time are tarred as abusers (see here for that story.)

One teacher does something stupid in the classroom, all teachers are stupid.

It's time to push back and let the people writing and saying these things know just how ridiculous they are.

Paterson Rumors

Apparently all Albany is abuzz with rumors that the NY Times is about to reveal Governor Paterson is involved in some sex scandal that makes the "Spitzer Schtups Prostitutes" scandal look like the weather report.

Dunno the details. Don't want to wager a guess what they are either.

But if true, boy oh boy, that would be two governors in less than four years down to scandal.

It's like NY wants to be Illinois or something...

Ruh, Roh

The corporate whores running the Obama administration would like you to think the economy is stabilizing and all will be well in no time at all.

You just have to close your eyes and trust.

Except they're full of shit.

Check out the headlines from the business pages today:

U.S. stocks reel as global economic worries return
Dow average sinks below 10,000 as session winds down; oil, gold dive

...

Investors sold off stocks in Portugal, Spain and Greece and the euro plunged on Thursday as market fears over the fiscal problems of debt-laden southern members of the euro zone widened.

...

The median forecast for nonfarm payrolls is for an increase of 5,000 after an unexpected 85,000 drop in December. The unemployment rate is seen rising to 10.1 percent from 10 percent in December. January's report will include the annual benchmark revision to payrolls data back to March 2008. The Department of Labor has estimated that the level of employment for the 12 months to March 2009 will be revised down by about 824,000, meaning the economy shed far more jobs than previously thought. Monthly payrolls from March 2008 to March 2009 will likely be revised.

...

In the week ending Jan. 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 480,000, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 472,000. The 4-week moving average was 468,750, an increase of 11,750 from the previous week's revised average of 457,000.

And of course the option ARM resets about to occur in the housing market ought to keep foreclosures coming fast and furious and the commercial real estate market is pretty dismal too.

Fun stuff!

Heckuva job, free marketers!!!

Too bad President Obushma thinks these are the guys who ought to be running education policy into the ground just the way they've run the economy there...

UPDATE: On the plus, Attorney General Cuomo wants to hold Ken Lewis and the other Masters of the Universe at Bank of America accountable for fraud.

At least somebody is trying to hold these crooks accountable.

In Washington, the only people they seem to want to hold accountable is public school teachers.

Union-Busting Toyota Gets A Pass

When American car makers GM and Ford needed government money back in 2009, all we heard from the stenographers in the media was how the companies needed to bust their unions to become profitable again.

You see, according to the media stenographers, unionized employees are lazy and stupid and completely incapable of making good products. You can see and even more egregious example of the same here.

According to this theory of UNIONS SUCK, Toyota and other foreign car makers who employ mostly non-unionized employees make better cars simply because they do not have unionized employees.

Never mind that management at Ford and GM made terrible decisions with what cars to produce or failed to develop more environmentally-friendly vehicles that people want to buy when gas prices rise - the fault of all the woes of the American car makers was the union.

Except of course this was bullshit.

Let's note that Toyota has few union employees and often closes unionized plants only to reopen them as non-unionized plants all the time but can't seem to make a care worth a damn:

TOKYO — Toyota said Thursday that its hybrid Prius had problems with its anti-lock braking system and left open the possibility of a recall, the latest blow to the beleaguered company and one that affects the symbol of the automaker’s engineering prowess.

The Prius has been drawn into the mounting crisis for Toyota as Japanese officials have ordered the company to investigate complaints that the brakes on its 2010 Prius model sometimes failed to work immediately on bumpy or slippery roads. U.S. safety officials also said they had received dozens of similar reports.

...

Earlier versions of the Prius were involved in the recalls, in which buyers were advised to remove floor mats so they would not block accelerator pedals.

Meanwhile, questions have been raised recently about other Toyota models as well.

Wednesday, Representative Edolphus Towns, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked the president of Toyota’s North American operations, Yoshimi Inaba, for more information about the Toyota Tacoma pickup truck.

Mr. Inaba is scheduled to testify next week before the committee, which will hold the first of two congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls.

The Tacoma, built in the United States, was involved in a recall for problems with floor mats but was not included in the second recall, over the sticking pedals. Even so, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received about 170 complaints about unintended acceleration on 2006-10 Tacoma trucks. Mr. Towns, in a letter, asked why the Tacoma had not been included in the second recall.

In none of the coverage of Toyota's woes - from the newspapers to the cable networks - have I heard anybody say "You know, I bet these problems are caused because the cars are made by non-unionized employees."

But you can bet if Ford or GM were experiencing the same problems with recalls, much of the blame would be leveled at the union.

Where are you today, Mr. Sowell?

Bloomberg's NY: Cops Manipulate Crime Stats

From the Daily News:

A Brooklyn precinct is under investigation for manipulating statistics to make its cops look like better crimefighters, the Daily News has learned.

Two probes are centered around whether Bedford-Stuyvesant's 81st Precinct recorded felonies as misdemeanors and refused to take complaints from victims - all in an effort to drive down the crime rate, sources said.

And the allegations came from one of the precinct's officers.

Officer Adrian Schoolcraft shared his suspicions with the Internal Affairs Bureau and the Quality Assurance Division, the NYPD unit responsible for maintaining the integrity of crime stats.

Schoolcraft told The News the top brass are so concerned with numbers that one precinct lieutenant is known as "The Shredder" because he's often spotted destroying documents.

Just how did cops at the precinct manipulate the stats? Here are some of the ways:

- A man who said he was beaten bloody and robbed - and then told by cops he was the victim of a "lost property" case because he didn't get a good look at the suspects.

- Another man who said he was berated by the precinct's commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello, for trying to report a stolen car.

- Another stolen car victim who said it took her a month to get a complaint taken - and that happened only when a supervisor realized she was a retired traffic agent.

- An elderly man who said cops would not take a report when he was burglarized, saying there was "no evidence."

- A 65-year-old woman who said she was crying with anger and frustration when she could not get precinct cops to take a report about her stolen car.

I have a couple of things to say about this.

First, when we live in a society controlled by the data fetishists where stats must show progress every quarter or people get fired, you're going to have this kind of manipulation.

We see it on Wall Street where corporations manipulate their debt, hold things "off the books" and otherwise make their balance sheets look healthier than they really are.

We saw the Bush administration do it with the war funding, always using supplemental bills to fund the Iraq and Afghan wars so that the federal deficit and budget would look smaller.

We it in education, from the state level where the tests are dumbed down to ensure test scores go up the city level where the "credit recovery" program is put into place to make the graduation rates go up.

And now we see it with the police having to manipulate the stats too, rather than honestly report crimes in a precinct and deal accordingly with reality.

Can't say I'm surprised. I wrote a few weeks back after Bloomberg bragged about having the lowest crime rates since Peter Stuyvesant and the lowest fire fatalities since fire was invented that these stats were most likely manipulated and horseshit.

The allegations against the 81st precinct have not been proven yet, but knowing how the data fetish has pressured everybody in education to massage the stats, I believe these allegations are true.

And I also believe the 81st is not the only precinct engaged in this kind of dishonesty.

When Mayor Bloomberg finally leaves town for good and independent analysis of his time in office can be done, I am certain many examples of manipulated stats, fake data and overall dishonest reporting will come to light.

Call Tom Harkin and Let Him Know What You Think About the NCLB Reauthorization

From what I can tell from the Times story, the only way school districts will get money from the feds in the coming years is if they subscribe to the Obama reforms of longer school days/years, additional standardized testing, teacher pay and evaluation tied to test scores, lots of school closures, no caps on charters and the addition of thousands of charter schools.

Tom Harkin is Chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in the Senate. Let him know what you think about the Obama "reform" initiatives. Let him know how things are playing out here in NYC. Let him know what will happen to traditional public schools if Obama and the other public school system privatizers get their way.

Here is where you can contact him:

150 First Avenue, NE
Suite 370
Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
(319) 365-4504 Phone
(319) 365-4683 Fax

210 Walnut Street
Room 733, Federal Building
Des Moines, IA 50309
(515) 284-4574 Phone
(515) 284-4937 Fax

731 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-3254 Phone
(202) 224-9369 Fax
(202) 224-4633 TDD