"Degraded" Schools in Regents-Test Fall

High schools that didn’t grade their own Regents exams last year fared worse than those that did

• By YOAV GONEN Education Reporter
• Last Updated: 9:42 PM, June 8, 2013
• Posted: 1:12 AM, June 8, 2013

LINK

 

EXCLUSIVE

They lost their home-field advantage.
Schools that were barred from grading their own students’ Regents exam last year fared significantly worse than schools that continued to self-score — suggesting that students have benefitted from inflated grading for years.
At about 150 schools that had their Regents exams scored by a central team of educators, scores sank deeper across all five subjects than they did at schools that graded their own exams.
At more than a dozen schools that participated in last year’s Department of Education pilot program, passing rates plummeted by incredible margins, a Post analysis found.

“I know for a fact that some schools tell the teachers to pass the kids,” one principal said of the results. “When there’s a vested interest in your school doing well — because they’re your students — you’re going to tend to look for every point you have to so that your school has a good grade.”
But a Brooklyn high school principal said the differences seen in the pilot program — which were spurred by a statewide crackdown on shady scoring practices — don’t mean schools had been actively inflating their results.
He said that what could have played a role was the fact that teachers who scored the exams centrally work in schools with varying standards.
“If we had 10 people grading a paper . . . where that teacher’s coming from may determine how that teacher sees that paper,” he said. “You always have disagreement when you have that subjectivity.”
In US History, schools whose exams were graded centrally saw their passing rates drop by an average of 3.9 percentage points from 2011 to 2012.
By contrast, schools that graded their own exams boosted their passing rates by an average of 2.4 percentage points.
In Living Environment, pilot schools saw their passing rates plummet by an average of 6.7 percentage points last year.
Self-grading schools only dropped by 2 percentage points.
Compared to nonpilot schools, pilot-school passing rates also dropped by an additional 2.1 percentage points in English and 1.7 percentage points in math.
Those differences signify thousands of additional failing kids, because the exams are taken by 90,000 to 122,000 kids annually in each subject.
Department of Education officials cautioned against drawing conclusions from the trial run because of mitigating factors.
They said pilot schools tended to be higher-poverty, which may explain their steeper declines.
Also, results can be skewed by students who take exams multiple times and by changes to student populations.
Still, all five public high schools with the biggest drops in Regents scores had their exams scored externally.
At Choir Academy of Harlem, 66 percent of test-takers passed the US History Regents in 2011. Last year, when the exams were graded elsewhere, 13 percent did.
At Brooklyn Theatre Arts HS in Canarsie, 77 percent of kids passed the US History exam in 2011. Last year, just 21 percent did.
This is the first year all high schools are barred from scoring their own Regents.

Senator John Sampson's Problems With Public Accountability

Campaign contributions go missing in state Sen. John Sampson’s records

• By ISABEL VINCENT and MICHAEL GARTLAND
• Last Updated: 6:38 AM, June 9, 2013
• Posted: 11:55 PM, June 8, 2013
• LINK

EXCLUSIVE

Where did the money go?

Embattled state Sen. John Sampson’s campaign filings are peppered with missing cash and phantom refunds, The Post has found.

In three cases, money paid by political action committees to Sampson’s re-election campaign from 2009 to 2012 does not show up on his records.

Lawpac, run by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, donated $3,000 on June 17, 2009, state campaign-finance records show. But two days later, Sampson reported receiving only $1,000 from the group.

The Lawpac check was cashed for its full $3,000 amount on June 22, 2009, a source with knowledge of the payment told The Post.

Shannon DeCelle

SHOW US THE MONEY! State Sen. John Sampson’s campaign cashed donors’ checks but did not record their full amounts on its books.

The Educational Leadership PAC gave a $1,000 contribution to the Brooklyn Democrat’s campaign on Jan. 22, 2010. But the campaign reported receiving just $500 from the group and not until April 21, 2010.

A spokeswoman for the education PAC said the $1,000 check was cashed.

“I don’t know if there was a recording discrepancy on their end, but that’s what went out of here,” said Michelle Hebert, of the School Administrators Association of New York State, which oversees the PAC.

The Committee for Action for a Responsible Electorate PAC reported a contribution of $1,000 to Sampson’s campaign on Jan. 21, 2010. A spokesman for the PAC says the check was cashed for its full $1,000 amount on Feb. 2 2010. The cash does not show up on Sampson’s records, state campaign-finance records show.

In addition to the missing money, The Post found Sampson mysteriously refunded $11,450 in donations to at least eight PACs in 2010. However, the refunds do not show up as receipts in the campaign filings of the PACs, which include the Real Estate Board PAC, Uniformed Firefighters Association/FIREPAC and the Pharmacy PAC.

“What we’re talking about are small amounts,” said Mitch Alter, treasurer for the Committee to Re-elect John Sampson. “If mistakes were made, we’ll correct them. There’s nothing nefarious here.”

Sampson, 47, last month was accused of embezzling nearly $500,000 of escrow money that he was supposed to safeguard in the sale of foreclosed homes in Brooklyn while acting as a court-appointed referee.

Prosecutors say he used the money to finance his failed bid for Brooklyn district attorney in 2005. Federal prosecutors say that when Sampson learned he was being probed, he used a mole in Brooklyn’s federal court to help him thwart the investigation.

Sampson has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

“Since New York state Senator John Sampson was indicted last month on multiple federal charges of embezzlement, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to the FBI, the media is justified in taking a very close look at Sampson’s finances,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a political watchdog group.

“If Sampson’s political bookkeeping is off by tens of thousands of dollars, the public deserves an explanation.”

Additional reporting by Melissa Klein

isabel.vincent@nypost.com

The New York City Comptroller Built a Fiscal Transparency Website, and Now It's Open Source

NYC Comptroller John Liu

BY MIRANDA NEUBAUER | Thursday, June 6 2013

LINK

The source code of New York City's Checkbook NYC platform is now available for other governments to download, modify and reuse, New York City Comptroller John Liu announced during Thursday's Personal Democracy Forum.

Checkbook NYC is a web application that presents data from the city's financial management systems online. Users can view or download information about city spending, broken down by agency or vendor, for example. In addition, information about contracts, payroll and disbursements is linked together, rather than existing in separate silos. It also offers API access that developers can use to build other applications on top of raw data about city spending, as well as bulk data downloads. The comptroller's office has also promised to make city income data available on the platform soon.

Liu also announced that the information technology companies Oracle and CGI had agreed to develop automated data feeds known as adapters between their financial management systems and the Checkbook NYC system. Oracle and CGI's support means cities that use their software to manage finances could also adapt Checkbook NYC for their use.

REI Systems, which has worked with the city on developing Checkbook NYC and making it available in open-source format, also volunteered to provide technological expertise and tools to Oracle and CGI to test the automated data feeds and host so-called sandbox development sites for a small number of the companies' state and city financial management system clients.

Altogether, Oracle, CGI and REI have invested over $1 million in resources to help make the platform available to other cities, according to a press release.

Plans are under way to organize a "Checkbook NYC" hackathon in the fall to bring together civic activists, software developers and entrepreneurs to develop applications based on the platform, according to the press release. In addition, discussions are under way to form a consortium of governments to collaboratively manage the source code and jointly share costs of future enhancements.

The code is available under the AGPL 3.0 license at Github.

At Thursday's PDF event, Deputy Comptroller Ari Hoffnung gave a demonstration of the platform, which first launched in 2010 and was revamped earlier this year.

Hoffnung said Liu was very much interested in setting up a system would be just as easy for the public to interact with as buying a book on Amazon or checking a banking statement online.

"How many New Yorkers know what an API is?" Hoffnung asked.

With Checkbook NYC, he said, at a cost of less than $3 million, information from the city's financial management system for 4,000 users within city agencies, a system supported by CGI, is now potentially accessible to all 8 million New Yorkers and beyond.

In his remarks, Liu, also a candidate for mayor, emphasized that Checkbook NYC not only puts pressure on city agencies to spend tax money more efficiently, but also shows city contractors how much their competitors are charging, putting pressure on them to bring down costs. He emphasized that the expansion of Checkbook to other cities would benefit New York City as well.

"If the city of L.A. decides to adopt Checkbook, and then builds a mapping app, NYC can benefit could from that," he said.

In theory, New Yorkers could enter their zip code and see investments in their neighborhood. The data feeds offered by the companies would lower the barrier for other governments to adopt the system because they allow the governments "with the flip of a switch to feed their financial data into checkbook. "

Noting the large amount money state and local governments spend on information technology, "in an era of scarce resources, we have to invest dollars more strategically," he said.

In a statement, Socrata said it would support Checkbook by offering it as a turnkey cloud service, and enhancing the platform with open APIs for developers and data analysis and visualization tools for the public.

Hoffnung said the Comptroller's Office has been in many conversations with other cities and states about adopting the platform, and noted that the availability of the data feeds meant other governments wouldn't have to spend resources on data extraction and data mapping, services that would instead be provided to governments "at no cost to jump start the process."

In the city's press release, several cities and civic groups praised the new open source nature of the platform and expressed interest in it.

"New York has provided a very easy-to-use transparency portal to gain access to budget, payroll and departmental expenditures, to the point that not only will the citizens of New York benefit, but internal departments will benefit by having easy access to their own information for better management and accountability,” Steve Reneker, general manager and CTO of the City of Los Angeles Information Technology Agency said in the statement. “The City of Los Angeles will be looking into leveraging this open source solution to provide similar benefits.”

“We applaud New York City and Oracle for the work they are doing to promote financial transparency,” Maryland's Montgomery County Controller Lenny Moore said in the statement. “Montgomery County is a leader in open data and is always working to make government spending more accessible and easier to understand for our taxpayers. We are intrigued by the possibility of deploying an open Checkbook.

“Checkbook NYC is by far the most sophisticated city-budget transparency app to date," Adam Stiles, co-creator of Open Budget Oakland added in the statement. “By making Checkbook available to cities nationwide, NYC is enabling a common framework to understand city spending that could one day allow, for example, apples-to-apples comparisons of spending across cities.”

“Checkbook NYC is a flagship example of the emerging ecosystem of interoperable, useful, and reusable civic tools," said Code for America Chief of Staff Abhi Nemani. "This is the kind of project Code for America hopes to support in city after city.”

The NYC DOE Desperation - Its A Long Shot

The Common Core: A Bizarre but Revealing Picture Tells a Thousand Words

June 5, 2013
LINK

A couple of days ago a bizarre if not surreal poster appeared on the entranceway wall of the school in which I work. Issued by the New York City Department of Education, touting both the challenges and wonders of the highly dubious educational cure all Common Core State Standards, the poster is aimed at New York City parents. In large print are the words: “ This Spring We’re Aiming Higher.” It makes a point of warning parents, among lots of fluff, that on account of the rising standards of the Common Core, their childrens’ all revealing test scores will go down this year.
But not to worry, parents, the poster goes on to say, in the end, because of the Common Core, your kids will be prepared “for college and a career.”
Nothing-new here. This kind of drivel about the wholly untested Common Core has been repeated with cast iron certainty ad nauseum from coast to coast.
But the words are accompanied by a photograph and it is here that things get interesting. The picture of what appears to be a 10 year old boy shooting a basketball at a basket that is not merely distant but ludicrously distant. The child appears to be almost beneath the opposite basket. To tell this child this is a challenge is to not understand the meaning of the word. The child has not a prayer of making the shot. Indeed, neither would many grown men. But then again, most grown men would know what the little boy in the picture would not: there is only one scenario where one would even consider taking such a shot — a moment of absolute desperation when your team is behind at the buzzer and you fling the ball and hope for the best. And they would know something else: they would know that only an absolute fool or an absolute sadist would have you practice such a shot.
It is, to say the least, a curiously cruel choice of a metaphor, particularly considering the audience it is aimed at. If some gym teacher had my kid taking such shots I’d question not merely his or her competence, but his or her sanity. Indeed, only someone with no knowledge whatsoever of basketball or the fragility of a child’s psyche would ever request such a moronic task. It virtually insures failure. Yet, for all its absurdity it is completely consistent with the towering arrogance and self-righteous certainty of the promoters ( and owners and profiteers ) of the Common Core and indeed, all of the “education reformers.” After all, this is the same crew that under the No Child Left Behind act insanely demand that every child in America be proficient in English and Math or they shut down their schools.
All of this, of course, could be dismissed as making too much of a silly poster but for the fact that while musing over the image I could not help but recall Diane Ravitch’s prescient comments on a purloined copy of this years Common Core aligned fifth grade English Language Arts test: “ I read the passages and the questions based on them. My reaction was that the difficulty level of the passages and the questions was not age-appropriate. Based on test questions I had reviewed for seven years when I was a member of the NAEP board, it seemed to me that the test was pitched at an eighth grade level. The passages were very long, about twice as long as a typical passage on NAEP for eighth grade. The questions involved interpretation, inference, and required re-reading of the passage for each question.”
Ravitch’s conclusions on the actual test – that fifth graders were tested with eighth grade level work — could easily be seen as the intellectual equivalent of demanding that little kids shoot a basket from the opposite side of the court: could easily be seen, that is, as exposing either an imbecile’s idea of raising standards or as an integral part an extraordinarily cynical long term plot to set American children up to fail by the millions to create a rationale for privatizing public education.
I see the later.

The Issue of Building Codes and Accountability

By the way, several years ago I looked up fire codes and building codes; I found that charter schools and public schools had different rules. How is that, in a co-location?

Betsy Combier

 

EXCLUSIVE: 90% of schools have at least one building code violation: city

There are nearly 1,200 public school buildings and those structures tallied up 9,693 open building and environmental violations. These can include loose wires, stuck doors and inadequate ventilation. I.S. 195 in Harlem had 124 open violations, the highest count of any school building, but 57 schools in total had more than two dozen each.

BY BEN CHAPMAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

LINK

PUBLISHED: SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013, 2:30 AM

UPDATED: SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013, 2:30 AM

CHRISTIE M FARRIELLA/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

I.S. 195 in Harlem had 124 open violations, the highest of any school building in the city. In March 2012, Principal Rashaunda Shaw said there was also a ‘problem with rodent and insect infestation.’

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• City’s new evaluation system makes firing underperforming teachers easier
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Education officials fail to make the grade when it comes to keeping public schools free of building code violations and environmental problems, according to city data.

More than 90% of city schools have at least one outstanding building code violation, an analysis of school inspection records by the school cleaners union shows.

Loose wires, stuck doors and inadequate ventilation are just some of the problems at 1,100 school buildings with at least one open violation as of May 23.

RELATED: EVALUATE TEACHERS, IMPROVE SCHOOLS

Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ President Hector Figueroa said conditions in many of the school buildings could be harmful to students and staffers.

“At the least, these violations are a distraction and a source of discomfort,” said Figueroa. “And in many cases, they could actually present a health hazard.”

The Intermediate School 195 building in Harlem had 124 open violations, the highest count of any school building in the city.

RELATED: CITY TO DISCUSS DEZONING PLAN IN HARLEM

The W. 133rd St. structure houses four schools. It has dozens of violations for problems with elevators, lighting and building maintenance.

SEIU32BJ.ORG

Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ President Hector Figueroa said conditions at some of the schools ‘are a distraction and a source of discomfort,’ also noting that ‘in many cases, they could actually present a health hazard.’

When city inspectors visited in March 2012, IS 195 Principal Rashaunda Shaw said there was also a “problem with rodent and insect infestation” in the building.

The city operates about 1,200 public school buildings and as of Wednesday, those structures had 9,693 open building and environmental violations. Fifty-seven schools had two dozen open violations or more.

RELATED: CITY SCHOOLS WHIP UP GOURMET LUNCHES

Many of the open violations were reported months or years ago. Union officials blamed the slow repairs on cuts to city funding of school maintenance and repair projects.

School capital budgets were reduced significantly in the past several years, union officials said, including a $700 million decrease adopted in fiscal year 2011.

Although some of those cuts were restored in later years, union officials said the 2010-14 school capital budget remains reduced by more than $500 million compared with the 2005-09 budget.

Education Department spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said the agency is spending more than $3 billion in building improvements under its capital plan.

Feinberg said the open violations in city schools are not emergencies and the agency is working to correct them.

“We maintain clean and safe schools,” said Feinberg. “Any serious maintenance-related complaints are addressed immediately, and noncritical complaints are prioritized with the repair work for the building.”

bchapman@nydailynews.com

First Look at New Teacher Evaluation Process

City education department awards itself a win on teacher evals

by Philissa Cramer, at 7:59 pmLINK

Before briefing reporters with their take on the teacher evaluation system that State Education Commissioner John King imposed on the city today, the Department of Education distributed a colorful chart making the case that King had sided with with its proposal.

According to the chart, King fell closer to the department’s position than the UFT’s on several issues, including the number of days allotted for arbitration, the use of student surveys, and the length of the agreement. The chart does not mention other issues where the UFT’s positions won out, such as the number of Danielson Framework components that will count or other details about the way observations will have to be documented.

“I consider this a major victory for our students and our staff,” Chancellor Dennis Walcott said.

Union chiefs offer first takes on state-imposed evaluation plans

by Philissa Cramer, at 7:07 pmLINK

UFT President Michael Mulgrew offered what appeared to be a tepid endorsement of the teacher evaluation system that State Education Commissioner John King imposed today,while Mulgrew’s counterpart at the principals union was more favorable about the new plan for rating his members.

Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Superintendents, said in a statement that his union had actually reached a deal on evaluations with the city Department of Education late Friday, “with the strong intervention of Commissioner King.” He said the deal resembled what had almost been finalized back in January, when the city’s negotiations with the teachers union fell apart just before a state deadline.

Logan praised the new evaluation system, saying that it “preserves many of the same tools our principals are accustomed to while at the same time substantially improving our due process protections and safeguards.” It also provides for helping principals improve, which the old system did not do, he said.

Mulgrew’s reaction was more circumspect. In a statement posted to the UFT’s website shortly after King released details of the plan, Mulgrew expressed satisfaction that teachers will be allowed to challenge the evaluations process before they receive their ratings and that teachers will have an equal say with their administrators in recommending which tools are used to measure student growth.

“New York City teachers will now have additional protections and opportunities to play a larger role in the development of the measures used to rate them,” he said. “Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s desire for a ‘gotcha’ system, as Commissioner King noted today, New York City ‘is not going to fire its way to academic success.’”

But he also signaled that the union has a speedy timeline for seeking revisions to the plan. King announced that the plan would be in effect through the 2016-2017 school year. But Mulgrew said the specifics would remain in effect “unless and until they are altered in collective bargaining with the new mayor who takes office in seven months.”

The evaluation system that King imposed includes some wins for the UFT and some clear losses. Principals will have to consider all 22 components of the Danielson Framework for assessing classroom instruction, which the union wanted. But starting in the 2014-2015 school year, student surveys will count for 5 percent of ratings for almost all teachers — something that the union had vehemently opposed.

The full statements are below. From UFT President Michael Mulgrew:

New York City teachers will now have additional protections and opportunities to play a larger role in the development of the measures used to rate them. Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s desire for a “gotcha” system, as Commissioner King noted today, New York City “is not going to fire its way to academic success.”

The precise measures of student learning established by this ruling will be in effect unless and until they are altered in collective bargaining with the new Mayor who takes office in seven months.

As the UFT requested, there will now be additional arbitration slots that will allow teachers to challenge any violations by supervisors of the new evaluation process before they reach the stage of actual ratings.

The state has also ruled that teachers will be evaluated on all aspects of the Danielson framework, as the UFT had proposed, in opposition to the DOE’s insistence that fewer measures be used.

In individual schools, teachers will have an equal say with administrators on the committee that will recommend the instruments that each school will use.

Despite the Mayor’s claims to the contrary, the major components of the new statewide system – such as the four categories of Highly Effective, Effective, Developing and Ineffective – are part of the statute or are regulations;  as such, have never been subject to “sunset;”  they can be changed by the Legislature or the Commissioner.

And from CSA President Ernest Logan:

After a full day of arbitration yesterday, CSA and DOE reached an agreement on an APPR Plan for Principals. This deal was reached late last night with the strong intervention of Commissioner King, and finalizes the agreement we were on the verge of signing in January. We are pleased to report that our agreement is consistent and reliable as it preserves many of the same tools our Principals are accustomed to while at the same time substantially improving our due process protections and safeguards. For the first time, we’ve negotiated a true yearlong improvement plan for any Principal rated “developing” or “ineffective” with regular cycles of feedback from superintendents. Additionally, we negotiated a strong appeals process, including the step of an independent hearing officer. Our rating scales will continue to yield the differentiated results that our Principal Performance Review has had in the past. We look forward to the implementation of this agreement and will have more details this week.