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Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Harvey Elentuck Appeals The Denial of His Freedom of Information Request For Dennis Walcott's Performance Evaluation

    to:  Courtenaye Y. Jackson-Chase, Esq.
from:  Harvey M. Elentuck
date:  7/10/13
   re:  FOIL Appeal 8434
        
    Pursuant to the terms and conditions of the New York Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) and the Regulations of the NYS Committee on Open Government, I hereby appeal the denial of access to FOIL Request 8434.

     The request (below) was E-mailed on 3/6/12.

     Joseph A. Baranello, Esq.'s 6/11/13 denial of access is attached.

     I would like to express my concern that Mr. Baranello has been making a general practice of not determining my FOIL requests in a timely manner.  I do not concur with the NYC Department of Education's notion that the issuance of a series of "extension letters" (i.e., the practice of serial extension letters) is a permissible manner of delay, despite the fact that Chancellor's Regulation D-110 VIII(A) has a provision concerning such letters.

     I am calling on you to investigate this delay, and determine what, exactly, Mr. Baranello was working on during the time period between his receipt of my request and his issuance of the decision letter.  I am speculating that other people who filed FOIL requests after I did, received final responses before I did, in situations where Mr. Baranello and other employees of the FOIL Unit found them less distasteful to work on.  In my opinion, Mr. Baranello is an intentional procrastinator, particularly in situations where he and his colleagues have decided that certain FOIL requests are seeking sensitive records or burdensome records.

     In terms of a basis for this appeal, I would venture to guess that all employees and officers of the NYC Department of Education are evaluated on a periodic basis.  Certainly, the Commissioner's Regulations call for yearly evaluation of a school superintendent.  The Chancellor obviously holds a job that, in the 1960s and prior, was entitled, "Superintendent of Schools."  It's obviously vitally important that the Chancellor be evaluated yearly.  Even the former Board of Education recognized the importance of this.  So, why wouldn't the Panel for Educational Policy be preparing written annual evaluations of the Chancellor and have written procedures on the books as to how such evaluations are to be conducted?

     Concerning the other members of the Chancellor's Leadership Team, I have no personal knowledge of whether there are any rules, regulations, or policies in place calling for periodic written performance evaluations to be issued.

     I can only generally comment that if teachers, guidance counselors, and school supervisors receive yearly written evaluations, then I can't think of any good reason(s) why the members of the Chancellor's Leadership Team wouldn't, also.

 I will look forward to hearing from you within ten business days of receipt.

 cc:

 Hon. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg -- MBloomberg@cityhall.nyc.gov
Hon. Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo –- MCardozo@law.nyc.gov
Hon. Queens PEP Member Dmytro Fedkowskyj –- pepofqueens@yahoo.com

Hon. PEP Chair Tino Hernandez -- THernandez5@schools.nyc.gov
Hon. City Council Member Robert Jackson -- RJackson@council.nyc.gov
Hon. DOE Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott -- DMWalcott@schools.nyc.gov
Joseph A. Baranello, Esq. -- JBaranello3@schools.nyc.gov
Robin S. Greenfield, Esq. -- RGreenf@schools.nyc.gov
Executive Director NYSCOOG Robert J. Freeman –- RFreeman@dos.state.ny.us
Assistant Director NYSCOOG Camille S. Jobin-Davis –- CJobinDavis@dos.state.ny.us
Panel for Educational Policy -- panel@schools.nyc.gov
Betsy Combier -- Betsy.Combier@gmail.com


    to:  Joseph A. Baranello, Esq. -- JBaranello3@schools.nyc.gov,  FOIL@schools.nyc.gov
from:  Harvey M. Elentuck -- Harvey400@aol.com,  Harvey_M_Elentuck@alum.mit.edu
 date:  3/6/12
Re:  New FOIL Request F____        
I have attached a copy of the judicial decision in Blecher v. NYC Board of Education (NYLJ, 10/25/79).
Also relevant is Gould v. NYC Police Department (89 NY2d 267):
           
        www.law.cornell.edu/nyctap/I96_0232.htm 

Here is a current listing of the members of the Chancellor's Leadership Team:
           
        http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/leadership/team.htm
Pursuant to the terms and conditions of the New York Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) and the Regulations of the NYS Committee on Open Government, I would like to receive E-mail copies of the following records:
a)  "the final performance evaluations of all of the members of the Chancellor’s leadership team for 2009, 2010 and 2011, in the NYC Department of Education, including but not limited to every Deputy Chancellor, as well as the performance evaluation of the Chancellor himself"
 
b)  analogous records for the years 2006, 2007, and 2008          
c)  records containing the policies and procedures for conducting the performance evaluations of each member of the Chancellor's Leadership Team (including the Chancellor) for each of the years from 2006 to 2012
(Note:  If the policies and procedures were never revised during any of the above years, simply provide the most current version of the record, but so clearly indicate in your determination letter.)
           
 Please be advised that the CEO of a school district, whether entitled "Chancellor" or "Superintendent of Schools," must be evaluated annually.
Here is the full statement of §100.2(o)(1)(vi.) of the current Regulations of the Commissioner of Education:
      


Performance review of superintendent.  
The governing body of each school district shall annually review the performance of the superintendent of schools according to procedures developed by such body in consultation with the superintendent.  Such procedures shall be filed in the district office and available for review

by any individual no later than September 10th of each year.  

   
        http://www.p12.nysed.gov/part100/pages/1002.html#o
 I am attaching two final performance evaluations of (former) Chancellor Rudolph Crew so that you may see what types of records one of your predecessors saw fit to release.
If you have any questions about this new FOIL request, or would like to meet with me to discuss it, please feel free to E-mail me at eitherHarvey400@aol.com or Harvey_M_Elentuck@alum.mit.edu.
           
I’ll look forward to hearing from you within five business days of your receipt of this request. 

Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
cc:
Hon. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg  -- MBloomberg@cityhall.nyc.gov       
Hon. Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo –- MCardozo@law.nyc.gov
Hon. Queens PEP Member Dmytro Fedkowskyj –- pepofqueens@yahoo.com
Hon. Senator John J. Flanagan -- Flanagan@nysenate.gov 
Hon. City Council Member James F. Gennaro -- JGennaro@council.nyc.gov
Hon. PEP Chair Tino Hernandez -- THernandez5@schools.nyc.gov
Hon. City Council Member Robert Jackson -- RJackson@council.nyc.gov
Hon. Senator Carl L. Marcellino -- Marcelli@senate.state.ny.us
Hon. Queens BP Helen M. Marshall -- info@queensbp.org
Hon. Assemblywoman Catherine T. Nolan -- NolanC@assembly.state.ny.us
Hon. City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn -- SpeakerQuinn@council.nyc.gov
Hon. Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz -- SimanowitzM@assembly.state.ny.us
Hon. Senator Malcolm A. Smith -- MASmith@senate.state.ny.us
Hon. Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch -- RegentTisch@mail.nysed.gov
Hon. DOE Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott -- DMWalcott@schools.nyc.gov
Michael Best, Esq. -- MBest@schools.nyc.gov
David M. Brodsky, Esq. –- DBrodsky@schools.nyc.gov
Betsy Combier -- Betsy.Combier@gmail.com
RoseAnn Darche -- RDarche@queensbp.org
Robin S. Greenfield, Esq. –- RGreenf@schools.nyc.gov
Leonie Haimson -- Leonie@att.net
Courtenaye Jackson-Chase, Esq. -- CJackson-Chase@schools.nyc.gov
Ernest Logan -- Ernest@csa-nyc.org
Michael Mulgrew -- MMulgrew@uft.org
Judy Nathan, Esq. -- JNathan@schools.nyc.gov
Norm Scott -- NormSco@gmail.com
Robin F. Singer, Esq. –- RSinger4@schools.nyc.gov
Lenny Speiller –- LSpeiller@schools.nyc.gov
Randi Weingarten, Esq. -- RWeingar@aft.org
Panel for Educational Policy -- panel@schools.nyc.gov
Executive Director NYSCOOG Robert J. Freeman –- RFreeman@dos.state.ny.us
Assistant Director NYSCOOG Camille S. Jobin-Davis –- CJobinDavis@dos.state.ny.us
Media
Lindsey Christ -- Lindsey.Christ@ny1news.com
Philissa Cramer -- PCramer@gothamschools.org 
Anthony M. DeStefano -- Anthony.DeStefano@newsday.com 
Susan Edelman – Susan.Edelman@nypost.com
Yoav Gonen -- Yoav.Gonen@nypost.com 
Elizabeth Green -- EGreen@gothamschools.org
Karen Matthews -- KMatthews@ap.org 
Rachel Monahan -- RMonahan@nydailynews.com 
Anna Phillips -- Anna.Phillips@nytimes.com
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Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Arthur Goldstein on The Missing Regents Exams

Many Regents exams are still missing

Posted: Wednesday, July 3, 2013 10:30 am
Chronicle Contributor
The city Department of Education has lost some students’ Regents exams due to a new and complicated grading system that sent the exams to Connecticut to be graded.
The system, called “distributive grading,” was initiated by Mayor Bloomberg this year in light of last year’s cheating scandal at Stuyvesant High School, and bans teachers from grading their students’ exams.
As part of the complicated procedure, Regents in Global History, US History, English and Living Environment were sent out of state to be scanned into a computer and sent back to New York via the internet so teachers could grade the anonymous exams.
The scanning machines in Connecticut could not accomodate the size of large print exams that had been shipped out of New York.
“These exams got lost on the way back to New York — we have an entire batch of missing tests because of the DOE’s incompetence,” Adam Bergstein, United Federation of Teachers Chapter President of Forest Hills High School said.
The notice that advertised available positions to grade the Regents did not say having a teaching license was required. One teacher in the ESL department of Francis Lewis High School who graded the English regents reported that when the group of graders was asked how many had never graded a Regents before, half of those in the room raised their hands.
Arthur Goldstein, an ESL teacher and the UFT Chapter President at Francis Lewis High School, was told that those people with no grading experience were let go. The DOE claimed to void the exams they had graded, but Goldstein suggested that those graders may be one reason why some students received grades that were much lower than expected.
Goldstein also explained how insulted he was by the DOE’s opposition to teachers grading their students exam because of their fear of cheating.
“This line of thinking that because I spend a year with a kid — because I read his papers every day — I should not be entitled to evaluate this kid, it’s like saying I shouldn’t be taking care of my daughter because I care about her,” Goldstein said.
“In fact I know my students better than strangers do. It’s just such a ridiculous thing and not only do they not let us grade, but they took the papers and stuck them on trucks and shipped them to Connecticut to be scanned. They added all these extra steps and paid millions to do it for no reason whatsoever. It’s mind-boggling how stupid this is,” he said.
Goldstein explained that as an ESL teacher, he is familiar with common mistakes made by individuals learning English, but that another grader may not be.
“A stranger won’t know the limitations of the student, but I do. All ESL teachers are sympathetic to English language learners. We find the meaning behind the writing, rather than penalize for small errors,” he said.
“You had hundreds if not thousands of English teachers just sitting around for a week and a half because they were forbidden from grading their exams,” Bergstein said. Some teachers were sent to district school sites such as Cardozo High School, but the scanner that was used to grade the exams was behind schedule.
“Not only did you have this productivity loss, but you had teachers sitting around waiting because they were unable to accurately grade essays because the process was being halted or slowed down or not even working entirely,” he added.
Many students who are usually academically high-achieving students, including those in honors and Advanced Placement classes, did not even pass the Regents exam.
Bergstein said, “With no explanation, no evaluation, no appeal, there wasn’t anybody looking into how all of these unbelievably strong academic students did so poorly on exams that normally they would have walked away from with high 80s, low 90s. They have to take this test again so that’s a whole other issue that has deeply upset and concerned teachers. How do you take really strong academic candidates and put them in a situation where they did so poorly?”
In some instances, essays were partially cut off when they were scanned into the computer system in Connecticut, leaving out sentences and paragraphs of the students’ writing. The computer also often omitted the question that was being graded, making it impossible to evaluate the work. And though the grading system was designed to create anonymity, the students’ names and schools were visible.
“The one thing I took from all my fellow colleagues is just the sheer dehumanizing aspect of sitting in front of some terminal hour after hour grading essays,” Bergstein said. “And in some instances it’s entirely unfair to students because although they’re trying to eliminate cheating, if you have somebody who’s not all too comfortable working on a computer to grade essays, these students aren’t being given the opportunity to be judged accurately.”
When the Chronicle contacted the DOE, the DOE alluded to their statement released two weeks ago from the executive director of assessment, Niket Mull, to school principals that said “We understand the importance of having Regents scores back as soon as possible, especially for graduating seniors, and apologize for this delay. We are continuing to work closely with the vendor to accelerate scanning and address the situation. At this time, we expect schools to have access to final results by the end of the day Monday, June 24, as scheduled.”
High school seniors signed waivers and graduation ceremonies were reworded to show that graduation was contingent upon the results of the Regents.
“There’s a likelihood that you have hundreds of students who are going to have to wait until July or August before they even know if they passed a class or passed a Regents or will graduate at all because the DOE decided to basically look outside the city workforce to try to find a cheap source to scan grades into computers,” Bergstein said.
Parents of one student whose Regents is lost emailed Mull to voice their outrage and ask what is being done to find the exam.
The Queens Chronicle obtained Mull’s response which said, “Unfortunately, the exam scoring process was delayed beyond the expected schedule, and a small number of exams are continuing to be scored. We hope to be able to share an update soon, and final results will continue to be loaded for the remaining exams into early next week.”
Mull and the testing coordinator, Marc Bush, did not respond to requests for comment.
“The DOE doesn’t seem to be taking it with a seriousness or importance that it warrants and they really haven’t explained a clear explanation for how they are going to find missing exams,” Bergstein said. “They made a mistake and they broke what wasn’t broken and now they don’t seem to want to take responsibility for fixing it. They’re going to try to find it, but nobody seems to know the procedure and process which will be implemented.”
“They lost boxes of Regents — can you imagine if city teachers did things like that?” Goldstein said. “Bloomberg makes these outrageous gaffes and nobody says anything. It would be funny if it wasn’t so absurd, but this is emblematic of every reform Bloomberg has brought to New York City schools.”
The grading system created by McGraw-Hill Education cost the city $9.6 million. “Money that could have been used to fix up deteriorating buildings or provide supplies for classrooms was wasted on contracting computer-scanned tests,” Bergstein said. “These poor kids are going to have to wait around to see if this incompetence can resolve itself and find what they lost.”
“They don’t make anything better — they make things needlessly complicated and funnel money into corporations,” Goldstein said. “They help nobody except Bloomberg’s friends. I have not seen substantive improvement in education under Bloomberg and his band of people — none of whom are educators or teachers. I’m a teacher — I really know what goes on,” Goldstein said.
He continued, “They never say they’re sorry. They never take responsibility. They cry for accountability but there’s none for them because being a reformer means never having to say you’re sorry. Their fanatic ideologies accomplish nothing — you watch this stuff happen before you and it’s like a catch 22.”

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Saturday, July 6, 2013

More Kids Drop Out of Transfer Schools Than Graduate

Dropouts top grads at transfer schools

  • By YOAV GONEN City Hall Bureau Chief
  • Last Updated: 2:56 AM, July 6, 2013
  • Posted: 1:55 AM, July 6, 2013
The city’s second-chance high schools saw more students drop out than graduate in 2011-12 — a major drop in performance compared to a year earlier, a Post analysis found.
A review of 44 so-called “transfer” high schools showed that the schools collectively had 78 more students drop out than graduate during the 2011-12 academic year.
A year earlier, the same schools — which together serve about 12,000 students — graduated 619 more students than dropped out.
Overall, six-year graduation rates at transfer schools fell by about 4 percentage points — to 52 percent — from 2011 to 2012, according to the Department of Education.
The four-year citywide graduation rate dropped by almost 1 percentage point over the same span.
Principals at the second-chance schools, which serve overage or under-credited teens who struggled at their original high schools, attributed part of the decline to midyear policy changes by the Department of Education.
Rules for which courses count toward graduation were tightened to match state requirements in February 2012, after a DOE audit of 60 high schools found irregularities in student transcripts.
While school leaders said the clarification of requirements for earning a diploma was needed, they said the midyear timing created an 11th-hour obstacle for seniors who were already struggling to graduate.
“I don’t think they understand what it’s like to tell a kid who was expecting to graduate in June, ‘I’m sorry, you have to come back next semester — not because you flunked your classes, but because these classes that you thought, that we all thought, could count toward graduation, can’t,’ ” said one principal at a transfer school. “That was hugely frustrating for all of us, and there were a lot of tears.”
DOE officials, who have opened up dozens of transfer schools in recent years to offer smaller, more intimate environments for struggling students, said the February 2012 policy tweaks were minor.
Instead they attributed the drop in performance at second-chance schools to the increased standards needed to graduate.
The class of 2012 was the first that needed to pass all five Regents subject exams with a score of at least 65 out of 100.
Education officials noted that for students who entered ninth grade in 2005-06 but fell behind in credits, 47 percent of those who ended up at transfer schools graduated within six years, compared to 27 percent of those who stayed at regular high schools.
Still, about 26 percent of students enrolled in transfer schools in 2011-12 dropped out at some point during the school year, according to State Education Department data.
The school with the biggest gap between numbers of graduates and dropouts was Bushwick Community HS in Brooklyn, which had 67 students graduate in 2012, but saw 149 others drop out that same year.
Forsyth Satellite Academy in Manhattan and Bronx Regional HS were the schools with the next-largest gaps.
A handful of schools with insufficient data for 2011 or 2012 were excluded from The Post’s analysis.
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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

NYC Comptroller John Liu Investigates $5.6 Million Paid By NYC DOE To Navigant

EXCLUSIVE: Controller John Liu investigates Education Department’s $5.6 million payment to consulting firm accused of double billing

The Chicago-based Navigant was excoriated last month by Gov. Cuomo’s Moreland Commission, which blasted its work for the Long Island Power Authority. During that time, consultants stayed in pricier hotels, had taken a seaplane trip to a Puerto Rican resort island and had an employee who billed for 3,500 hours in a single year, which is nearly 70 hours every week.

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City Controller John Liu is investigating $5.6 million paid by the Education Department to Navigant, a Chicago consulting firm.


The City Controller has opened an investigation into an outside consultant’s work for the schools after the firm was cited for possible double-billing by Gov. Cuomo’s Moreland Commission.
Controller John Liu is scrutinizing $5.6 million the Department of Education has paid Navigant, a Chicago firm Cuomo’s investigators excoriated last month.
The Moreland Commission blasted Navigant’s work for the Long Island Power Authority, finding consultants put in for $585-a-night Manhattan hotels, a seaplane trip to a remote Puerto Rican resort island and an $85 dinner and $45 lunch for a single employee in Manhattan. One consultant billed for 3,500 hours in a single year — nearly 70 hours every week.
On Tuesday, Liu revealed he was looking at Navigant’s work for the schools because of its unusual method of payments.
The schools hired Navigant in February 2011 as a special contractor without seeking bids. The contract started at $907,000.
The Department of Education suggested its hands are tied because it’s working with Navigant under court order.
“Navigant was appointed by the court to review the implementation of special-education hearing orders as part of a settlement agreement,” said spokeswoman Connie Pankratz.
With Corinne Lestch
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