Charter school hearings: a study in evasion and ambiguity

Maybe they’re called for in law, but the one I went to last Wednesday in District 4 was a flimsy affair.

Here is what I found on the charter school hearing law (underline mine), and someone can correct me if I'm mistaken:


And this is why it is a sham:

We were not told when the applications for the new charter schools (Hyde Leadership and Mott Hall) were submitted, so we don’t know this happened within the 30 days or not. The only thing we were told was that they weren’t signed off on yet. It is not possible to submit any “records or comments generated from the hearing” to the State Ed Dept because (a) no minutes were being taken (see below), and (b) the people running it were not taping it. The law asks that "any and all written records" must be submitted, but it doesn't say these are actuallky required. I see this as a nice loophole these people either willfully or ignorantly slipped themselves through, in their continued abuse of process.


Here’s some things that did happen at the meeting, because I did take notes. Maybe I will submit them to the State Ed department. Please note that where I use quotes, I got the words down pretty verbatim. The rest is reconstruction from snippets.


The agenda showed two schools were going to make presentations: Hyde Leadership and Mott Hall, even though our advance notice on this hearing said a number of Harlem Success Academies would also be there. When we asked what happened to them, the district superintendent (a nice woman running the meeting) said HSA was "put on hold.”

Sandra Dupree (right) of Hyde spoke of how the school “creates a culture,” specifically a “character culture.” Catherine Molloy of Mott Hall also spoke of a “school culture,” excellence and rigor, and a couple of programs the school buys into: Avid, what they call “The Sanctuary” (sounds religious, doesn’t it? It’s about “emotional safety” of all the adults and students in the “culture”), and Technology. She also said the school must have a longer school day and year: there’s “no way it works without this."

(So far, nothing in here any public school couldn’t do without a vision and lots more money.)

Parent and ACORN member Annette Jimenez (pictured below at the WFP mayoral debate) asked: “Why do they expand at the expense of our own kids? Charters only service 2% of our kids. They don’t service special ed and pre-schoolers." She was worried about disparate treatment. Michael Duffy, head of the whole charter schools department for the DoE, responded “You are not being displaced,” which to anyone is a boldface lie. Look at every floor in every public school that's absorbed a charter and tell me there’s no displacement. And you may as well look at Michael Duffy's picture (left) in case you run into him at another meeting.

A public school principal in the district who said there is a charter in her building and she was never informed it was coming, said: “We’re learning to dance this dance. I’m concerned about them pushing us out of the way.” She asked of the charter reps: “What is the difference in emphasis [with charters]?” One of the Mott Hall people said, and I quote this verbatim: “Private education with government funding” — which is the way we all feel about the disparate treatment our kids are getting. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Community activist and parent Bill Hargraves announced to Duffy and everyone else in the room that he never returned any of his numerous calls. Duffy had no answer for this, though I understand they were able to arrange a meeting in the next days. One of the Mott Hall people said they “have no idea of the space” for these schools yet. Annette Jimenez (above right) claimed that the Harlem Success Academy schools have already been approved. Duffy shook his head No.

GEM member Angel Gonzalez (right) asked for a show of hands on how many in the room oppose the charterization of District 4. To say the majority put their hands up would be an understatement. Gonzalez spoke of the racist pattern going on, blaming teachers for the demise of schools, the charters being private schools without the voice of the Community School Boards or unions, that many democratic structures are being bypassed. “These are separate, disparate institutions.”

Bill Hargraves asked if minutes should be taken. Duffy didn’t care to answer that and remained silent. When Hargraves pushed, Duffy came out with something like he's not willing to interpret the laws. Then he said: “Nobody has the responsibility” of taking notes. (Thank goodness I was there to help out.) Bill asked Duffy to appoint someone, and he refused.

One person asked what the projected breakdown of the schools would be once the kids were assigned there, which opened up a whole issue of the lottery selection process. One of the charter people was adamant that it was strict, with equal chance, but then added “they have to give preference to the districts they’re serving.” No longer sounds like equal chance to me.

Mott Hall’s projections were: 59% latino, 39% African American, 14% special ed, and 12% ELLs. I had to ask how they could claim lottery when they knew what percentages would be in effect when the process was over. They said these percentages were based on the community profile, not what would end up in the school. I responded that the figures would then be meaningless, because if it were true lottery, the school could perhaps end up with 100% latino and no special ed.

That’s when another of the charter reps tried to “re-explain” the lottery process. He said they pick a kid, and put the name in a category, then they pick another kid and put that name in that one’s category, and so on, til the percentages are reached. I was aghast and said that wasn’t lottery. Michael Duffy said there’s a “list maintained by a mailhouse.” It is not sent out selectively, it’s "not possible that they’re sent out selectively." He added: “Maybe only the parents of levels 3 and 4 responded” to the mailing. Folks, take your pick — straight lottery, or lottery fiction — either way, we don’t know what’s going on, we won’t know, and you can't trust any of these people to either know or say.

I think it was a principal who asked if the charters were going to have a 12:1:1 class and whether they would openly ask for these kids and then send them back to the public school when they couldn’t accommodate them. She said that there were more than 10 kids she had to take back into her public school because the charter school could not/would not service them even though they accepted them. (Considerations of elevators, vision, etc.)

Before the meeting had started, I asked a 20-something DoE person if the staff of the charters are UFT members or not. He said the charter schools don’t "interest" themselves in matters like that. (Wow.) When I asked whether the contracts with these staff members are available online, he didn’t know. Later in the meeting, though, when the subject of union came up again, Duffy said that with regard to collective bargaining, 10 charters have UFT members teaching in them. It’s up to the charter school how they want to do this.

A union rep told me the union is working on the contractual situation, but I couldn’t get any further information from Duffy or anyone else. They told me if I want to find these contracts, go to the UFT website, which I did. The only current document I see there is the Green Dot contract (Aug. 2008 – Aug 2011), which I'll put up in another post. (You can get it as a pdf from Edwize here.) If anyone knows where we can find the other contracts, please let us know, because I’m sure they’ll be interesting. Duffy couldn’t care less.

I forgot what time the meeting ended, but we kept talking to the reps from the Hyde and Mott Hall out on the pavement. Nice people. Good values, except a few: laws are being broken, schools are getting disparate treatment, and we are somehow re-configuring segregationist structures on a grand scale.

— jw

Tell Albany "No" to mayoral control

Enraged and discouraged parents, teachers and constituents are making it very clear they don't want mayoral control to be renewed. They've been on the streets, they've been blogging and writing letters to the papers, they've made phonecalls, and now they're writing to Senator Perkins.

You can always write him something in your own words, but if you want a copy of their letter, contact us at gemnyc@gmail.com and we'll send you an electronic version that you can print out and mail in.



Here's his address:

Senator Bill Perkins
163 West 125th Street, Rm 932
New York, NY 10027

Or come to a meeting at his offices (close to Lenox Ave.) on Wednesday, Aug. 5th, 5:30 p.m., to tell him what you think and hear more about what's going on in Albany.

— jw

Senator Bill Perkins on WBAI

Four audio clips of State Sen. Bill Perkins with Basir Mchawi

Part I — Albany, 32/30 Dems in the majority; mayoral control positions explained

Part II — mayoral control as negotiated so far is effectively not yet changed; school boards elsewhere, not in NYC; no-bid contracts, consultants, and mayoral control

Part III — decreases in the numbers of black and latino educators; the increasing opposition to mayoral control

Part IV — the gathering of real data, promoting the idea of an independent Inspector General

"Education's dying, Arne Duncan's lying!"

A video on how Arne Duncan's neo-liberal, pro-corporation plan for Chicago schools now being pushed nationwide in the form of federal grants and law is available online here. It's produced by Labor Beat.

Jackson Potter, teacher:
What's happening is these edu-preneurs like Arne Duncan is setting down with the business community, and the business community is telling 'm we want to cut pensions, we want to cut salaries, we want to do our own thing with the schools.
We have no educational experience.
We don't talk to parents.
We don't talk to students.
We don't talk to teachers.
But that's not important: We know how to make money.
And these are the folks who are running our policies right now, and are running our schools into the ground simultaneously.

The video has good segments of parents and teachers homing in on all the key points we need to bring home. Here are some excerpts:

If we're supposed to compete, then give us the resources and support we need. Kids get moved around as schools are reorganized and closed: local officials, parents, teachers and students all not informed, the black and brown communities are targeted. It's not a question of under-utilization. They're trying to push people of color out of neighborhoods so they can build. One teacher cites a report published by the University of Illinois on the relationship of school reorg and gentrification; I couldn't quite make out the title on the video but she might be referring to the two reports on the patterns of gentrification and school closings at the Teachers for Social Justice website.

George Schmidt (Substance) on Obama's record in the Illinois senate: He never opposed Duncan or corporate Chicago on matters pertaining to public schools. This agenda is a more dangerous version of the Bush agenda because it has billions of dollars behind it.

They're steering kids into the military charters, which offer a "career choice" — this when the country needs troops for aggressive wars.




Chicago promised not to lay off teachers last June, and then did. Hundreds of them.

The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CoRE) is the most active group shouting back. At the December 2008 meeting of the Chicago Board of Ed, teachers spoke up against Duncan's doings in the Chicago schools. They demanded no more schools should be turned around, no more outsourcing of public education. Duncan walked out of that meeting. Reminds you of Liebman slipping out the back door to get away from parents and Klein on his blackberry here and here during PEP meetings showing studied indifference.

The 2nd round of stimulus money — the 5 billion "Race to the Top" program — is contingent on states accepting the Chicago model, that Duncan, Sharpton and Gingrich are going to sell to every state. But the money myth, the current neo-liberal model, isn't working. We need a teacher-centered model.

Last words by one teacher, and we should keep this in mind when we speak up:

If the Board of Ed can't do the job of educating, it's THEM that's gotta leave, not the teachers.

More great commentary over at Ednotes.

There's also this paper on the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies: :

Abstract: This paper analyzes the relationship between neoliberalism and school restructuring in Chicago. I provide an account of the ideological foundation of neoliberal education policies as well as an account of their development and implementation in the city. Additionally, I analyze Chicago's newest education agenda, Renaissance 2010. Passed into law in 2004, the policy is a continuation of previous Chicago school reforms and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), but, as I will argue, it is also representative of an emerging urbanism defined by uneven economic development and public abandonment. The policy has been implicated in clearing the ground for corporate development through privatization and school closures, while undermining educational quality, just distributions of resources, and the democratic participation of communities. As such, I contend that Renaissance 2010 represents a policy commensurate with what Henry Giroux has referred to as a “politics of disposability”. It is a politics where the imperatives of the market come at the expense of public life, democracy, and responsibility toward the future (Giroux, 2006).

Way too late, and not in the NY Times —

But, a start.

Bill Thompson's just come out on the failed record of Bloomberg and Klein, but parents and communities are asking where he's been all along.

And, by the way, where was the union prez?

These no-bid contracts, data manipulation, credit recovery and skewed grad rates have been going on for years, and then some.

I remember when they put the Snapple machines in every school across the city. No-bid and 2003. That's so they could make sure every kid across the city would grow up thinking and dreaming Snapple. "A bidding process was not required," said the Dept of Education. Thompson was sworn in January 2002.

It doesn't ring true when people like Thompson smell blood and start homing in on their prey. We needed him way before now. And for the record, we needed her, too.

Read the whole article in the Huffington Post. Here are some excerpts:

WHY JOEL KLEIN SHOULD BE FIRED
Posted: July 28, 2009 01:38 PM

It's time to fire New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. In eight years as chief executive of the city's school system, he has consistently embraced measures designed more to sell the idea of a system helping our students to attain critical achievement goals than to target those goals directly.

My office has a charter-mandated responsibility to audit allegations of mismanagement that are brought to our attention. In the exercise of that responsibility, we have discovered and reported on a pattern of brazen actions taken by the Department of Education that fly in the face of basic management standards.

We have uncovered repeated instances of awarding no-bid contracts to firms without a proven track record, which in one case led to a disastrous bus routing fiasco. We have reported on gross cost over-runs by outside contractors hired by the Department that have cost New York City taxpayers over $720 million and denied students funds for basic supplies.

In audit reports last week exposing shoddy oversight regarding high school graduation rates and standardized test administration, we found that the DOE has engaged in sloppy and unprofessional practices that encourage data manipulation and cheating.

With respect to graduation data, some ten percent of graduating student transcripts we looked at did not show that the requirements for graduation had been met. With respect to testing, we found that basic measures to ensure that exams are administered fairly and so as to minimize cheating are not being followed or have been eliminated. . . .

But if the Department doesn't have appropriate measures in place to prevent the manipulation of test scores and graduation data, then how do we know that the improvements are grounded in reality? The integrity of the entire process is called into question, especially at a time when school officials feel ever greater pressure to post constant gains for fear that their schools may be closed.

. . . it's time to get back to the basic priorities like curriculum, instruction and learning.

. . . we must have an educator at the helm our school system again, someone who inspires confidence across the system, from parents to teachers to administrators and, yes, to auditors.

Joel Klein must go.

— JW

At City Hall, legislators speak against mayoral control — very loudly

Click on the pictures below to see David Bellel's video clips of the Barron/Barron/Jackson press conference at City Hall today condemning Mayoral Control.

With outspoken legislators like these spearheading the campaign, the issue of mayoral control is far from settled.

For the whole story, read what Ednotes posted Tuesday morning here: Praise to Politicians (a few at least) on Wanting to Put a Stake in the Heart of Mayoral Control

I.

Assemblywoman Inez Barron:
The relationship that exists between the City of NY's Education Department and the State is codified in law is a Board of Education, not a Panel. So this body that the mayor has constructed has no codified legal status with the State.
The chancellor is not qualified.
We have a system where the chancellor and the mayor defy the Campaign for Fiscal Equity . . . They now want to take that decision and rearrange the money that should be coming to reduce class size and use it in other manners other than what has been codified for them to do.
A person who disregards the law, who circumvents the law, and who juggles the figures for his own benefit.
This is a mayor who flaunts the law, and tells you to take him to court, and when you do that and get a decision in your favor, he still continues to flaunt the law.
Data: This is a mayor who has fudged the data, manipulated the data.
The number of black students in gifted and talented programs has dropped dramatically. The number of African-American teachers has gone from 20% overall to 14%. And we also know that the number of black superintendents has gone from 3 to zero.
The mayor has failed to reduce class size, he's ignoring and defying those legal edicts.

II.

Council Member Charles Barron:
To Espada and to Monserrate, you can sit with the Republicans and sit with the mayor all you want. You can try to fool parents into thinking you achieved something for them with this last deal that you cut with the mayor . . .
This movement is not going away.
It's not about parents having a voice. It's about parent power.
It's about the parents having power on the PEP. It's about the council having power on the PEP. It's about the borough presidents having power on the PEP, and it's about the mayor not being an educator but a dictator and reducing his power on the PEP so it is not there at all.
A change will have to come.
We shall win.

III.

Chair of the Education Committee on the City Council Robert Jackson:
Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein have a dictatorship on the Dept of Education.
In my opinion the PEP and the Board of Education are just another rubber stamp. And we don't need rubber stamps.
Don't believe the hype.
I didn't hear anything on giving parents full partnership.
We as parents want to have on the Board of Education or the Panel of Educational Policy a majority of parents in order to decide our children's education.
Parents are not going to be silent.
Parents should speak up and say the system is not working for our children.
If you had billions of dollars, you could put out the media hype too.

— JW

PS 15 petition to keep PAVE Academy to the 2-yr agreement

GEM met with a large group of teachers from PS 15 last week and they are a wonderful group of passionate and commited educators.

We find that many charters worm their way in by claiming they are looking for space, when in reality their goal is to steal the top kids and push out the public school and take over the building. Hey! Free is better than paying rent. The DOE cooperates fully in this process.

From our friends at PS 15 where PAVE Academy wants to break their agreement to leave after 2 years.

Please take a look at this petition.

All we are asking is the charter school to stick to their agreement...that is all.
Please keep forwarding this ... we need a lot of help.


There is a request for a donation not by PS 15 but by the petition web site. You do not have to donate if you don't want to.

Unionbusting at charters?

There are points being made in a listserv that need to be said out in the open.

"The city as far as I am aware is bound to pay union scale for the trades. Guiliani tried to get around this and there were large angry demos about this. Remember the Daily News pix of the carpenter punching a police horse in the jaw when the cops tried to halt their march through mid town?

Anyway, all these renovations that the Charters do to their halls and classrooms, are they performed by unionized labor? Are the contracts for such projects no bid? . . .

Phase II of mayoral control is charters and school closings big time. We need all the help we can get. The building trades unions (including the operating engineers which the school custodian belongs to I believe) might see their interests at stake here and take an interest even though Unity caucus thinks charters are just dandy." (Sean Ahern)

Angel Gonzalez posted a report of the court ruling on wages for maintenance/custodial/repair workers and thinks that charters "will use this ruling to their favor even in a Public School Building housing their charter school." (Italics his.)

Court: NY charter schools not subject to prevailing wage laws
April 02, 2009 3:50 PM

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A New York appeals court says charter schools' contracts for construction, renovation, repair and maintenance are not subject to a state labor law requiring payment of prevailing wage rates.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court is reversing trial courts and the state Labor Department's 2007 opinion that followed an amendment to the law.

According to the appeals court ruling Thursday, the prevailing wage provisions apply to contracts by public agencies or third parties either acting on their behalf or as beneficiaries.

The five justices ruled the law limits application of the wage rule and does not specifically apply to private educational corporations such as charter schools, which hope to save money by negotiating less costly contracts.

Someone else jumped in about the extra cost of bussing to all the charters, saying this is not publicized enough:

"This must be very costly to bus students from all over to the charter schools. The teachers at PS 15 talked about this. The enrollment from the charter in their building is less than 50% (if I remember correctly) from the community. The rest are ALL bussed in free of charge. At a time of budget cuts to all our public schools, the DOE is paying for this bussing."

Talking about bussing, NYC Educator put up this article in the NY Post — a different kind of bussing sure, but another ramification of unchecked non-transparent, non-accountable corporatization of the schools.

I'm sure this discussion will have updates . . .

— JW

"Chartering"

That's a term all New Yorkers are going to have to get used to unless they have the energy to fight.

Fortunately, they won't have to fight it all over town (yet), just in some areas. (More on the burgeoning just up on Ednotes.)

I came across "chartering" for the first time on the website called the New York City Charter School Center. The Core Functions of the Center is one chilly little list and as disconnected from the education of a child than anything I've ever come across.

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Core Functions:

The Center will provide leadership, oversee quality assurance and serve as a facilitator and resource for:

• New charter school leadership development
• Student performance evaluation, assessment and data management modeling
• Information, support services, solutions and systems to ensure continued charter school development through successful operations
• Real estate/facility support
• Startup, technical assistance, information sharing and fundraising grants resource development
• Networking between charter schools and allied organizations to increase support
• Communications to promote and advocate for effective charter school models and systemic education reform

---

The "Mission" is "to increase the number of high-quality charter schools and thereby improve public education in New York City" — as if one had to do anything with the other.

And the "Founding Principles" is just robo-speak:

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Founding Principles:

Charter schools provide the greatest promise for the improvement of public education, in their own right, and as a model for school district reform.

Chartering makes high student achievement possible because it requires schools to be accountable for results while providing them with the autonomy and flexibility to achieve results.

Autonomy and accountability are preconditions for high student achievement but alone are not enough to achieve it. Structural reforms must be married to skilled and dedicated leaders, teachers and governing boards, who can use the autonomy granted them wisely and well.

Charter schools and chartering are a spur and a model for education reform at the district level; chartering can provide districts with a road map to institutional change and such change will be more long lasting and profound where charters are part of the larger reform efforts.

Charter schools fulfill their promise to the fullest when they not only succeed academically but when they involve parents and the community in which they are rooted as partners in that success.

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I'd rather my kids be "schooled" than "chartered." The first implies learning something, the other throws them into a business model.

— JW

Avella as "leading" man

After Tony Avella's statements at the Working Families Party forum a couple of weeks ago, progressive educators seem to be backing his run for mayor.

"I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT A FAN OF CHARTER SCHOOLS."

You can't get much clearer than that.

Avella will first have to topple Bill Thompson in the Democratic primary, and that will take some doing. In the meantime, Thompson's been putting on some new coats. He certainly wasn't asking to fire Joel Klein before Avella said it at the WFP forum.

The Avella campaign is letting people know that their man was on NY1 bashing the rubber rooms, no-bid contracts, and the atmosphere of intimidation at the DoE. Video will be available online tomorrow.

They've also put a new page on Facebook: Educators for Avella.

Tony Avella is forging the correct agenda on education.

Bill Thompson is real "Old School" when it comes to teaching kids, and he's now just playing catch up.

— JW

July 29th — Multiple charter schools try District 4

Harlem Success Academies 5, 6 and 7 plus two other charter schools have withdrawn their request to move into District 5 and are looking to set up in District 4.

Why are we not surprised. They're trying to get as many charters established before they reach quota.

If this appalls you, get everyone you know, and be there!

From the organizers:

THERE IS A CHARTER HEARING ON THE 29TH. AT 1:00 PM.
AT THE DISTRICT OFFICE IN THE AUDITORIUM 117th STREET BETWEEN 1ST AND 2ND AVE.
6 TRAIN TO 116 ST.
PLEASE TELL EVERYONE ELSE AND BE THERE ON TIME.
IT IS TO OPPOSE HSA 5, 6, & 7 AND 2 OTHER CHARTER SCHOOLS FROM COMING IN TO HARLEM.

PLEASE CALL ME
(917) 406-1091 ANNETTE JIMENEZ

PS 197 - Parents & teachers speak out

See Angel Gonzalez's powerful NEW VIDEO of parents, teachers, and government staff protesting last Wednesday at PS 197 in Harlem.

Chapter Leader Antoine Bogard reads a powerful indictment against the DoE and the union for violations of education law and refusal to work with parents.

BloomKlein's recipe for inflation

Loretta Prisco's brilliant thrust into the BloomKlein jugular needs to be posted everywhere.

(We grabbed it from Ednotes at: Prisco: Extending mayoral control is a recipe for failure).


Proponents of Mayoral Control state “improvements” in scores as justification. Scores have jumped in cities without mayoral control proving this a fallacy. Teachers know the secret recipes.

The Not-So-Secret Recipe for Increased Scores:
1. Negotiate a $118 million testing company contract that dumbs down the tests.
2. Eliminate social studies and science, throw out the arts and turn schools into test prep factories.

The Mayor’s Sure-Fire Recipe for Increasing Graduation Rates:
1. Transfer failing students to special programs (Goodwill, drug programs) that are not required to report dropouts.
2. Offer failing/ truant students the opportunity to do a simple project for credit in lieu of attending/ passing classes all term. (Credit Recovery).

The Miraculous Recipe to Close the Achievement Gap between Students of Color and White Students:
In scaling scores, make it easier for students to move from a Level 1 to Level 2 and from 2 to 3 (requiring fewer correct answers for Level 2). Voila –– the gap is closed.

The Mayor’s Secret Recipe for Improving Scores of English Language Learners (ELL):
Give extra test time to these students even though have mastered English and passed the NYSSLAT test that moved them out of ELL programs.

Bake and watch the cake rise.

Loretta Prisco
Staten Island, New York

Thurs., July 23rd — City Hall

From the organizers:

The Press Conference will be held at 12:30 on the Steps of City Hall with the Senators who objected to the Bill for Mayoral Control.

At 1:30 P.M. there will be a rally with Elected Officials, the Senators and Teachers and Staff members from PS 123/PS 197/PS 375

Come Out and Support Us and Send a Message to City Hall.

Coalition for Public Education — 3R Coalition — ICE — ICOPE —
Parent Commission — GEM — BNYEE — NYCNSC — DC37 —
Bloomberg Watch Group — UFT

"Today's not about THAT fight."

---

UPDATED info on this situation (with even more video) here at Ednotes.

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Ednotes just put up a new video of the PS 123 demonstration and walk-through July 10th with Manhattan Borough Pres. Scott Stringer.

GEM people asked all the right questions and made all the right points.

Stringer: "We're on the case."

Stringer: "We're going to work."

But, they haven't been on the case, and they're only going to get on it if it becomes politically expedient.

You could tell there's a long way to go after Norm Scott asked:

"If Bloomberg and Klein run the schools for 7 years, they're in charge of every school, how do they manage to push the idea of a charter school, which basically absolves them of the responsibility.

In other words, isn't that an admission of their failure if they say that public schools are failing and they need charter schools. Isn't there a contradiction in that very concept?

Stringer dodged it, claiming his purpose that morning was to see what's going on at 123 and try to figure out a solution.

Stringer: "Today's not about THAT fight."

Of course it isn't — to him. Because he and his colleagues on the City Council have watched privatization for seven years, first with the Gates money and now with the charters. The flood of no-bid contracts, non-educator corporate ideology, and inflated PR teams are not new, and it's obvious these people have bought into the process. In fact, it's in their interest to let their constituents, not to mention the entire nation, believe that the NYC school system is a model of "accountability" and "transparency," with scores going "up" and graduation rates "on the rise."

The fight that Stringer sidelined at Scott's question is the fight, no two ways about it. And it's going to have to get much louder before elected officials like Stringer get down with making quality facilities equal for all public school kids.

— JW