Oh No!! Shock And Amazement Fills NYC After Another Scoring Error In Testing G & T Kids Pops Up

Schools test-biz failures

Fury at gifted-kid flubs

• By YOAV GONEN Education Reporter
• Last Updated: 1:21 AM, May 11, 2013
• Posted: 1:21 AM, May 11, 2013
• LINK

Oops, they did it again!

The testing company responsible for identifying city students for gifted academic programs made its second sloppy screw-up in less than a month — leading top education officials to consider dumping the firm.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott revealed yesterday that Pearson Inc., which has a three-year, $5.5 million deal to operate the city’s testing for accelerated programs, uncovered a second scoring error that impacted the placement of more than 300 students. The gaffe was caused by a miscalculation of the kids’ ages.

Some students were told they hadn’t qualified for the programs when they had, and others were ranked lower than they deserved — reducing their chances of getting assigned to programs because of limited seats, education officials said.

Last month, the firm admitted to an even more egregious error that similarly affected the placement of more than 4,700 kids.

Both errors came to light only because parents repeatedly challenged the accuracy of the scoring.

“This failure to complete the basic quality-assurance checks Pearson confirmed that they had completed [after the first error] is deeply disturbing; for this reason, the Department of Education is reviewing a variety of options including terminating Pearson’s contract,” said Walcott.

Although city officials hoped replacing one of the two entrance exams for G&T programs this year would make the admissions more selective, the number of students scoring above the cutoff bar actually shot up by 2,000 students.

Qualifying rates were particularly high in wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods like Tribeca and the Upper West Side, although the city no longer guarantees placement.

City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn went a step further than Walcott — calling on the city to shred its G&T contract with Pearson.

The firm is also responsible for the state’s high-stakes English and math exams in grades 3 to 8, which came under significant scrutiny last month.

“I urge the New York State Department of Education to learn from DOE’s experience, vet every stage of Pearson’s scoring of the state exams and carefully reconsider whether Pearson should be trusted with future state testing,” she said.

Scott Smith, president of Pearson Learning Assessment, acknowledged there was “no excuse for the scoring errors.”

“Pearson is taking all necessary measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” he said.

DOE officials said they were extending the registration deadline — for a second time — to give affected families time to select a program.

The new deadline is next Friday.

yoav.gonen@nypost.com

Taping meetings

Taping your meetings -

The Panel For Educational Policy is our new "pretend" school board, and there are certain parts of the PEP Bylaws which are relevant to the issue of whether or not a disciplinary meeting with a Superintendent can be taped:

See Page 12, Section 4.3.3, Paragraph 5 of the PEP bylaws:

http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/B432D059-6BFE-4198-8453-466FDE2B22D5/69835/PEPBylawsFinal91409.pdf

Since PEP (and the former Board of Education) recognized the importance of recording hearings conducted at the Office of Appeals and Reviews, then, clearly, other types of disciplinary hearings (such as those before a superintendent) should be recorded as well.

Perhaps you should post the above bylaw and discuss it in some detail.

Here is a state-by-state recording guide:

http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-recording-guide/tape-recording-laws-glance

Here is the information about New York:

http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-recording-guide/state-state-guide/new-york

Here is the case that was cited in the above:

http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=1991828176AD2d652_1254.xml&docbase=CSLWAR2-1986-2006

By the way, when tenured teacher Teddy Smith went to his pretend "interview" with the Office of Special Investigations and met with Michael Humphries, he (Teddy) took his Attorney. Teddy was charged with threatening to kill his arbitrator Jack Tillem (no longer on the panel). Teddy's former Attorney wanted to be paid $54,000 for doing Teddy's 3020-a, and Teddy never had made any such deal,  so David Kearney called Theresa Europe up and told her that Teddy had said that he was going to kill Tillem. Theresa Europe contacted Mr. Tillem, Tillem recused himself, and then Bonnie Weinstock took the case and terminated Teddy.

I was in attendance at all of TEddy's hearings, and the most interesting part of the case is, when Teddy went to see Humphries, he had a secret tape recorder. Humphries NEVER asked Teddy if he had ever said that he was going to harm Tillem in any way!!!! Humphries wanted Teddy to give him some OTHER tapes, neglecting to ask Teddy if he was taping the "interview"!

So, when Teddy's Attorney cross-examined Humphries at Teddy's 3020-a, Humpries at first said that of course he had asked TEddy if he had said anything like that. Then Teddy's lawyer told the Hearing Officer that he had a tape of the interview, and a recorder, to play the tape. The tape was played, and no mention of the charge was ever made by Humphries. Teddy was, nonetheless terminated by Weinstock.

David Pakter taped his interviews, so did so many other people.

Francesco is just the person to bring this issue to light.

The Yucky New Lunch Food From the NYC DOE

 Here's my vote for Zachary Maxwell, kid filmmaker of the year!!!

Clips From "Yuck" - Going Undercover
http://vimeo.com/64601735

Battle of The Salads
 http://vimeo.com/64607150

Last Letter To Santa
http://vimeo.com/59818649

SCHOOLS May 9, 2013, 4:39 pm 44 Comments

The Michael Moore of the Grade-School Lunchroom

By INDRANI SEN

LINK

 

Guerrilla filmmakers often face crackdowns by the powers that be, and Zachary Maxwell is no exception.

His hidden-camera documentary was almost derailed last year when he was caught filming without permission by a fearsome enforcer – the lunchroom monitor in his school cafeteria.

“She sent me to my teacher, and my teacher told me to delete everything,” said Zachary, who is now 11.

Zachary pretended to delete the day’s shots. After that lapse in production security, he said, “I fired my lookouts.”

What his teacher didn’t know, though, was that Zachary hadsix months of footage shot surreptitiously in the cafeteria, forming the spine of his 20-minute movie “Yuck: A 4th Grader’s Short Documentary About School Lunch.”

Next month, the film (watch trailer), which has been playing the festival circuit, will be screened at the Manhattan Film Festival.

Like many things in the life of a fourth grader, Zachary’s movie started as a dispute with his parents. He told them that he wanted to start packing his own lunch, but they were skeptical. Lunch is free at his school, P.S. 130 Hernando De Soto in Little Italy, and his parents liked the look of the Department of Education’s online menus, which describe delicious meals, full of whole grains and fresh vegetables, some even designed by celebrity chefs.

“I told them that’s not what they were actually serving me,” Zachary said. “But I don’t think they believed me.”

So he smuggled in a camera in his sweatshirt pocket the next day and filmed lunch.

“When I came back home and showed them the footage, they were like, ugh!” he said.

Soon, Zachary and his father, a lawyer and video hobbyist, were cutting together the footage he brought home every day. (In the film, Zachary goes by the name Zachary Maxwell, though Maxwell is his middle name. His family asked that their last name be withheld because of Zachary’s age.)

In the film, Zachary, who is not above cheesy costumes and goofy special effects, makes a point that is under the radar of most conversations about the quality of school lunches: that despite the Education Department’s efforts to improve nutrition, there is a disconnect between the wholesome meals described on school menus and the soggy, deep-fried nuggets frequently dished up in the lunchrooms.

Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesZachary outside his school in Little Italy.

The film offers no shortage of examples. On a day advertising “cheesy lasagna rolls with tomato basil sauce, roasted spinach with garlic and herbs,” for instance, Zachary is handed a plastic-wrapped grilled cheese sandwich on an otherwise bare plastic foam tray.

A “Pasta Party” is described as “zesty Italian meatballs with tomato-basil sauce, whole grain pasta, Parmesan cheese and roasted capri vegetables.” Meatballs and pasta show up on the tray, if none too zesty-looking, but the vegetables are nowhere to be seen.

Salads devised by the Food Network chefs Rachael Ray andEllie Krieger are similarly plagued by missing ingredients. On the day Ms. Ray’s “Yum-O! Marinated Tomato Salad” is listed, Zachary is served a slice of pizza accompanied by a wisp of lettuce.

Ms. Krieger’s “Tri-color Salad” is a no-show on one day it is promised, and on another, it lacks its cauliflower, broccoli and red peppers. The shreds of lettuce and slice of cucumber could still be described as tri-color, Zachary points out, if you count “green, light green and brown.”

Indeed, among the 75 lunches that Zachary recorded – chosen randomly, he swears – he found the menus to be “substantially” accurate, with two or more of the advertised menu items served, only 51 percent of the time. The menus were “totally” accurate, with all of the advertised items served, only 16 percent of the time. And by Zachary’s count, 28 percent of the lunches he recorded were built around either pizza or cheese sticks.

A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Marge Feinberg, said in an e-mail that vegetables and fruit were served daily and she suggested that Zachary must have chosen not to take the vegetables served in his cafeteria.

“It would not be the first time a youngster would find a way to get out of eating vegetables,” she wrote. Zachary responded that he always took every item he was offered.

Until this past September, Ms. Feinberg said, schools did have some freedom to deviate from the systemwide lunch menus. New federal regulations for the current school yearset stricter guidelines for what elements need to be on each child’s plate.

On Monday, Zachary thought he was in trouble again when he was sent to the principal’s office and found two men in black suits waiting for him.

They turned out to be representatives from the Education Department’s Office of School Food, he said, who complimented him on his movie, asked for feedback on some new menu choices, and took him on a tour of the cafeteria kitchen.

There, Zachary met one of his school’s cooks, and got some insight into her thinking.

“She wants us to be happy,” he reported. “So she cooks what she thinks the kids will like.”

Then he sat down for lunch with the officials. The adults ate the cafeteria lunch of chicken nuggets, carrots and salad.

Zachary had pork and vegetable dumplings – brought from home.

 

 

 

Parent Groups Oppose High Stakes Testing At Tweed April 26th 2013

Diane Ravich: Zombie Federal Policies

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/05/05/zombie-federal-policies/

Bill Gates is wrong. American education is not “broken.”

Federal education policy is broken.

Testing children until they cry is a bad idea. It is educational malpractice.

Basing teachers’ evaluation, their salary, and their tenure on student test scores is a bad idea. It doesn’t work. It is professional malpractice. The Gates Foundation has invested hundreds of millions of dollars trying to make it work. It doesn’t work. Arne Duncan has made it a cardinal principle of federal education policy. It doesn’t work.

Giving bonuses to teachers based on test scores is a failed idea. It has never worked. The U.S. Department of Education under Duncan put $1 billion into such programs. They fail.

Closing schools doesn’t make them better. It shatters communities and sends children to search for a school that will accept them. That’s federal policy. It’s wrong. It is wrong in Chicago and it is wrong everywhere else.

There is no such thing as a “failing school.” Schools are buildings. Buildings don’t fail. If the students in a school have low test scores, it is the responsibility of the superintendent to find out why and to supply the needed staff and resources to improve the school.

When schools struggle, it is the responsibility of the people at the top to help them, not to close them.

Federal education policy, from No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top, is broken. It has failed. It must be changed

School Scope

Opt Out Movement Grows

By Norm Scott

LINK

Norm blogs at ednotesonline.org“My child vomited on your high stakes test,” is one of my favorite buttons. With two weeks of testing ending on April 26th, parent grassroots groups “Change the Stakes” and “Time Out from Testing” led a large after school protest of 500 on the steps of the Tweed headquarters of the Department of Education. Many of these parents are part of the growing opt-out movement where parents refuse to allow their children to take part in a testing process which has turned into child abuse. Note this headline from Albany: “4th Grader Asked to Take NYS Test from Hospital Bed.” The kid was hooked up to medical devices.

As a retired 35 year elementary school teacher, I am not opposed to tests, created by teachers or standardized, though I increasingly have doubts. I took tests that mattered since the 5th or 6th grade. We were told to bring a number two pencil the next day. That was the only warning that a test was coming. Tests were used to place kids in future classes but kids and parents were fairly oblivious to the process. My first serious high stakes test was in the 8th grade in 1958 when I failed the entry exam into Brooklyn Tech miserably. I left in a state of shock when they called “time” and had a third of the exam left. From then on I was a nervous wreck throughout high school. I can understand a high school student having to deal with high stakes exams, but 8-year olds? Now they want to move the exams down to early childhood not to help the child but to get a baseline on them so they can use that to hound their future teachers.

One objection to HST is that they do not provide teachers with diagnostic information that would improve their teaching. Standardized tests become just a num- ber, given that results don’t come back until school is almost over. Kids go through almost a year of test-prep torture and take a test that has nothing to do with improving their learning.

I question how a few days of testing are used to threaten and torture kids, shut down schools and judge teachers’ careers. There is an agenda. High stakes tests have been the lynchpin used in the corporate assault to privatize public schools, create a lower costing non-union teaching force and scam the money saved. Education is big business and a growing educational-industrial complex has gained enormous power and influence over educational policy.

It took some time but the new Common Core tests tripped the trigger of resistance by parents. Teachers are pretty helpless to protest, given that the NY State Ed Department has threatened them with the death penalty, though in Seattle, an entire school refused to give what they deemed a useless test despite threats from the principal and Superintendent. So expect the teacher resistance movement to grow as long as teachers stick together.

The pressure on students, teachers and parents is intense. We even hear stories of children who felt they failed the test crying, “I’m going to get my teacher fired,” or worried about being responsible for causing their schools to close. Parents seem to have had enough.

Last year, the same groups organizing the April 26th protest held a large rally in front of Pearson, the billion dollar corporate entity that creates the tests, after one of the passages based on a pineapple was ridiculed. The incident became known as “Pineapplegate.” Only a few parents opted their kids out last year. This year there was a storm – throughout Long Island and through certain areas of NYC, with the opt-out movement gaining traction in Park Slope and Washington Heights. Thus the protest at Tweed led by Change the Stakes (changethestakes.wordpress.com), which I helped found, initially as mostly a teacher group, but it has morphed into a parent led organization that has done amazing work in organizing and supporting parents who wish to opt-out their children. CTS provides advice on how to deal with recalcitrant supervisors who feel threatened when top-scoring students don’t take tests.

As more parents refuse to have their children tested, the powers that be are extremely threatened. Some principals have begun to revolt too by supporting the movement. NY State principal of the year, Carol Burris wrote in the Washington Post:

“Parents sense that the interests of their children are being swept aside in a frantic rush to prepare workers for global economic contests. Their gut instinct is telling them that the politicians and pundits are more worried about economic growth than what testing is doing to their children’s education. That is why increasing numbers of parents are speaking up and opting out.”

Cathie Black's Emails

E-Mails From 2010 Show Rush to Get Stars to Endorse a Schools Chancellor

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM, NYTIMES

LINK

Cathie Black

As a groundswell of criticism threatened to capsize her appointment as New York City’s schools chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, a publishing executive with no background in education policy, was increasingly focused on one question: What would Oprah say?

Eager for Oprah Winfrey to offer a testimonial on her behalf, Ms. Black dispatched a deputy mayor to broker an endorsement through Gayle King, a mutual friend. Later, Ms. Black went as far as to suggest talking points for the television star to keep in mind when describing the would-be chancellor.

“Tremendous leadership, excellent manager, innovator, mother of two and cares about the future of all children,” Ms. Black wrote in an e-mail to Ms. Winfrey on Nov. 17, 2010. “Grace under pressure.” She ended the message: “I owe you big time.”

The exchange was revealed on Thursday after the Bloomberg administration lost a legal battle to withhold a series of e-mail exchanges between Ms. Black and city officials, which the city had fought for two years to keep private.

The messages, written in the days before and after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed Ms. Black, capture the anxious efforts within the Bloomberg administration to quell the poor public reception to her selection, as education experts and lawmakers alike questioned her readiness for the job.

Even as City Hall aides arranged for Ms. Black to introduce herself to leading public officials, she appeared focused on securing endorsements from celebrities and socialites.

At one point, Ms. Black suggested that the daughter of Donald Trump could offer kind words: “Would we want Ivanka Trump? Think she would do,” she wrote.

The terse reply suggested that Mr. Bloomberg’s team was unimpressed. “I would skip,” wrote Micah Lasher, the mayor’s legislative director at the time.

Requests for comment sent to Ms. Black and Ms. Winfrey were not answered on Thursday evening.

The Bloomberg administration hoped the endorsements could help persuade the state education commissioner to grant Ms. Black a waiver to become chancellor, which she needed because of her lack of education credentials. Ms. Black eventually received the waiver, and the job. But she resigned just 95 days into her tenure, after Mr. Bloomberg concluded that the situation could not be salvaged.

Mr. Bloomberg overruled several of his top advisers in choosing Ms. Black, then the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, to replace Joel I. Klein as chancellor. An outcry almost immediately ensued, forcing City Hall into a frantic public relations campaign to shore up her reputation with the public.

Aides gathered a list of notable women for Ms. Black or others to call, including the writer Nora Ephron, the designer Diane von Furstenberg, and the television stars Suze Orman and Deborah Norville. Patricia E. Harris, the first deputy mayor, planned to phone the designer Donna Karan and the actress Whoopi Goldberg, according to a list included in one exchange.

“All our focus needs to be on getting allies to come out in support,” Mr. Lasher wrote in one message. “We will be fine.”

Ms. Black was particularly keen to secure the endorsement of Caroline Kennedy, who served on the board of an education group and had been forced to abandon a rocky bid for appointment to the Senate in 2009. “Obviously,” one aide wrote, “she has some sympathy for what you’re going through.”

In a note to Ms. Kennedy, Ms. Black conceded that the two had met only briefly and offered that she would “make it easy” for Ms. Kennedy to show support by simply adding her name to a letter.

But Ms. Black grew impatient: she complained to Ms. Harris after several hours had passed without a reply from Ms. Kennedy, writing, “I sent this at the crack of dawn but no response. Have you heard anything?” One minute later, Ms. Black sent another e-mail, asking Ms. Harris if she had heard from Representative Carolyn B. Maloney. “I have not and called 2x yesterday,” Ms. Black wrote.

Ms. Winfrey eventually agreed to the endorsement, describing Ms. Black as “tough as nails” and “a tremendous champion for the children of New York” in an interview featured on the front page of The Daily News.

The City Hall team could scarcely believe its luck. “I was surprised to learn that we succeeded in have Oprah knock a crime story off the cover,” Stu Loeser, the mayor’s press secretary at the time, wrote to colleagues.

The e-mails had been requested by a Village Voice reporter in 2010 under state freedom of information laws. City Hall denied the request, and the reporter sued; the New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, declined on Thursday to hear the city’s appeal.

The e-mails reveal that Ms. Black was concerned even at the time about her public perception. At one point, she asked City Hall aides whether to “take another course” or “hold steady.” She added, “I am O.K., honestly.”

But in another exchange, she wondered whether she should take added steps for a party she was hosting at her Park Avenue apartment.

“With all of the hullabaloo, should we have security at our apartment?” Ms. Black asked. “Have not in the past ... but someone asked.”

Al Baker, Michael Barbaro and Javier C. Hernández contributed reporting.

Cathie Black's EMAILS

May 3, 2013, 2:32 p.m.

By BETH FERTIG

As Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s choice for Schools Chancellor, Cathie Black, came under attack in late 2010, City Hall engaged in a breathless push to rally celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey, to support the embattled nominee.

The mayor’s former chief of staff, Stu Loeser, wrote a victorious email after Winfrey eventually did speak to the Daily News. “Walking past a newsstand this afternoon, I was surprised to learn that we succeeded in have [sic] Oprah knock a crime story off the cover of the News today … Surprise!”

The details surfaced after the Bloomberg administration was forced by the state’s highest court to release a series of email exchanges that have been requested by a Village Voice intern under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Black’s nomination was ultimately approved by the state education commissioner but she was forced out fewer than 100 days later, in April of 2011, as the negative publicity surrounding her appointment continued to swirl.

The emails between Black and various City Hall officials show how Black grew anxious when attempts to secure endorsements from Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Caroline Kennedy fell through.

“Is our strategy working?” Black asked then-deputy mayor Dennis Walcott and legislative aide Micah Lasher, after reading a New York Times story about her nomination on the morning of Nov. 16. “Do we have to take another course? Or hold steady?”

One email listed a spreadsheet of elected officials, plus an aide to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and former New York City teachers union president Randi Weingarten, with notes stating whether or not these individuals would be helpful.

“All our focus needs to be on getting allies to come out in support and on getting you prepared for a tip you as soon as possible,” Lasher said. “We will make a few more base-covering calls, but clearly the political community will do what they will do. We will be fine.”

At one point, Black suggested an endorsement from Ivanka Trump but City Hall declined to pursue it. She did win an endorsement from Gloria Steinem.

The emails were released on Thursday after City Hall lost its last attempt to keep them from going public. Two lower-level courts had ruled against the city, and the state’s highest court declined to hear an appeal.

The original request to release the emails came from Sergio Hernandez, who was an intern at the Village Voice in late 2010. When the city declined his request, he was represented by a legal clinic at Yale University and then by a Manhattan law firm working pro bono.

Hernandez, who is now a business editor at The Week, said he also filed Freedom of Information requests to figure out how much money the city spent fighting the case. He said the total was $25,000 as of the end of 2012 and he is seeking to find out how much the city has spent since then.

“I’m actually more surprised that they spent so much time and effort trying to prevent the release than by anything that’s actually in the emails,” he said.

“It’s interesting to me that not one of the people they reached out to have much to do with education or schools or anything that really would have lended credence to Cathie Black’s qualifications for the job,” he added. “It’s an interesting sort of window into the mayor and his offices thinking during this sort of fiasco.”

He also noted that there was not one direct exchange between Bloomberg and Black. See the emails below.

Michael Bloomberg Sued by Reporter Over Cathie Black Freedom of Information Requests

By Sergio Hernandez Thu., May 26 2011 at 12:34 PM

2 Comments

• LINK

Today, I am suing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Last year, Bloomberg baffled New Yorkerswhen he appointed publishing executive Cathie Black to be the city's next schools chancellor. Black was an unpopular choice, and for months, responses to her appointment ran the gamut of ridicule, confusion, and outrage.

Black's tenure came to an abrupt end in April, when the mayor asked her to step down from the post after just three months on the job. New Yorkers who opposed her appointment were vindicated, but the question remained: What led the mayor to make such a choice?

When he first appointed Black, Bloomberg insisted he'd cast a wide net to find the right fit. "I did have a public search, and I picked the best person," he said.

But critics responded with skepticism, and the New York Times' City Room blog added a healthy dose of snark when it begged anyone who was considered for the job, or even merely heard about it, to come forward.

No one did.

At the time, I was reporting for Runnin' Scared, and in November, I filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the mayor's office to ferret out more details about the "public search" that resulted in Black's appointment. I figured the modern conveniences of e-mail meant there was a decent chance I would find a digital trail leading to Black's nomination.

So on November 19, I asked City Hall for any e-mails between the mayor's office and Black (who, at the time, was still employed at Hearst Magazines). E-mails by city officials are, after all, presumptively public records under New York's FOIL.

The mayor's office dragged its feet (which is not particularly unusual in the case of public records requests, although a spokesman told me for a separate storythat Bloomberg's office received only 38 FOIL requests last year. I guess New York City doesn't have enough lawyers or something). On January 13, a city lawyer wrote that he was denying my request.

The e-mails, he argued, were privileged, internal documents and releasing them would violate someone's (although nobody said whose) privacy. Bullshit.

I appealed the decision, and was blocked again.

By then, I'd left the Village Voice for a reporting stint with the investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica and dropped the story until late February, when a friend of mine referred my case to the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School. In March, one of the clinic's students wrote me back, and we began working together to draft today's petition.

The case is being handled by Elizabeth Wolstein, a partner at Schlam Stone & Dolan and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who used to supervise appellate litigation for the United States in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The petition will be filed in Manhattan Supreme Court later this afternoon, after which the city will have 20 days to respond.

We'll keep you posted.

Sergio Hernandez is a freelance journalist in New York City. He is currently a reporter forProPublica, a Pulitzer-winning nonprofit, investigative newsroom. Previously, he was a reporting intern for the Village Voice's Runnin' Scared blog and a contributing reporter for Gawker.com.

[sergio@cerealcommas.com / @cerealcommas]

City Hall Pushed Noted Women to Sign Letter Supporting Candidate for Chancellor

By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ

The idea was simple: a letter signed by some of the country’s most prominent women endorsing Cathleen P. Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, to lead New York City’s schools.

But to gain the support of dozens of celebrities, authors and feminist leaders, aides to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg privately advanced an argument they had mostly shied away from in public: that some of the opposition to Ms. Black’s candidacy in 2010 was grounded in sexism.

A trove of e-mail messages released on Thursday revealed the deliberations of Mr. Bloomberg’s political maestros as they sought to salvage Ms. Black’s candidacy.

As they prepared to contact dozens of famous women, his aides planned to use several talking points, among them Ms. Black’s managerial and business accomplishments, according to the e-mails. The aides also planned to argue that there was “clearly a difference” between the ways the public treated Ms. Black, “a female publisher without educational experience,” and her predecessor, Joel I. Klein, “a male prosecutor without educational experience.”

In the end, 28 women signed the letter, including Gloria Steinem, Evelyn Lauder and Whoopi Goldberg.

“Ms. Black has played a critical role breaking through the glass ceiling — not once, not twice, but time and again,” said the letter, which was addressed to the state education commissioner at the time, David M. Steiner.

A few boldface names deemed worth calling in the e-mails were absent from the letter.

One such prospect was Caroline Kennedy, who aides to Mr. Bloomberg thought would be sympathetic because of her awkward experience trying to win appointment to a Senate seat.

Others who did not participate included Bette Midler, Diane von Furstenberg, Liz Holtzman, Anna Quindlen and Deborah Norville.

Ms. Norville said she had been approached by a friend of Ms. Black’s, and she admired Ms. Black and was a friend of hers. But she felt her participation would be inappropriate “as a member of the working press.”

Ms. Holtzman said that to the best of her memory, she was not approached. It was not clear if others refused or had not been reached; a spokesman for Ms. Midler said she had not been asked.

Some women who signed the letter said on Friday that they had no regrets, despite Ms. Black’s turbulent, 95-day tenure as chancellor.  

Ms. Steinem, who got to know Ms. Black when they both worked at Ms. magazine, described Ms. Black’s experience as chancellor as “bruising.” Ms. Steinem said she was concerned that the reaction to the e-mails, released after a protracted legal fight over whether they were part of the public record, would unfairly harm Ms. Black’s reputation.

“It seems as if Cathie got beaten up in public for answering a call to civic service after a long and hard-working career,” Ms. Steinem wrote in an e-mail. “Now she may get beaten up again by the rehashing of memos not her own.”

In an interview early in her tenure, Ms. Black dismissed suggestions that the reaction to her candidacy had been sexist. “Joel Klein had a lot of grief when he first started in this job,” she said. “I have not felt it’s been sexist at all.”

But after she resigned, she told Fortune magazine, “If I were a guy, would I have had the pounding that I did? And the worst pictures!”

The archive of messages also shined light on the political operation in City Hall; officials there declined to comment on them on Friday. There were notes on which people to call, and what City Hall thought of them.

One critic of the mayor’s educational policies, Patrick J. Sullivan, was labeled “not a team player.” John C. Liu, the city comptroller, was called an enemy of Mr. Klein. The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, was said to be focused “on bedbugs, among other things.”  

Alain Delaquérière and Vivian Yee contributed reporting.