What They’re Saying

It is time to for the Bloomberg administration and the police union to reach an agreement to raise starting pay for cops, writes El Diario/La Prensa. Criticizing both sides for playing hardball for too long, the paper says, “Every day of delay in reaching a fair settlement is another blow to cops’ pocketbooks and another blow to the city’s efforts to retain its officers.”

The Daily News applauds all the additional money pouring into the city’s public schools. While increased funding alone will not improve education, the editorial says, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is “smartly coupling cash with accountability,” something the News believes is “critical to ensuring all this new dough is put to good use.”

And the Daily News looks to Albany and sees a potential replacement for The Sopranos.

What They’re Saying

After praising outgoing Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chair Peter Kalikow as “a strong and increasingly independent voice for the transportation needs of the region,” Newsday says that Kalikow’s successor will have to find the money for ambitious projects such as the Second Avenue subway and extension of the Number 7 line. And so, the editorial says, the next chair –whoever that might be — should seriously consider Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing proposal.

Looking at the new school budgets announced yesterday, the Post faults Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for giving in to the teachers union by insuring that no school lose money under the new funding formula. Klein’s efforts to placate the union and its president Randi Weingarten are almost destined to fail, the Post says, as Weingarten continues her attacks on mayoral control of the school system – and incidentally on the Post too.

In a column in the Daily News, Jonathan Zimmerman of NYU says critics of a proposed school offering Arabic language classes are being shortsighted. “To win the war on terrorism, we’re going to need many more people who know Arabic, get the difference between Sunnis and Shiites and understand the complex culture of the Middle East,” he writes.

Lessons from Kahlil Gibran

There are many lesson to be drawn from last week’s decision by the Department of Education to abandon its plans to locate a new small school in PS 282 in Park Slope.

If you’re an optimist, you could be cheered that the Department of Education paid attention to the parents at 282 concerned that sharing their space with the new school would create overcrowding.

Or you could see the school system’s decision as a victory for bigotry. The small school was not just any school but the new Kahlil Gibran Academy, a school that, along with the regular city curriculum, would offer Arabic and culture. Arabic was the only word some people in the city needed to hear.

Creating such a school – and catering “to the strident demands from Muslim immigrants has allowed the latter to indulge some of their worst customs, including wife-beating, depriving women of full civil liberties, and genital mutilation of their daughters.” Lorna Salzman wrote in a letter to the Brooklyn Paper. (Salzman did not say whether bilingual Chinese or Spanish schools posed a similar threat to life as we know it.)

“A public school dedicated to Arabic language and culture in Brooklyn,” marveled Right Truth. “The state of public education in America has never been worse and the Department of Education thinks this is a proper use of taxpayer money?” (Unlike the school for sports management or fire safety – both of which already exist – thanks to taxpayer money.)

Simply learning Arabic can be dangerous, opined Daniel Pipes who knows Arabic. “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage,” he wrote in the Sun. “Learning Arabic in of itself promotes an Islamic outlook” (Pipes did not explain how he managed to avoid this taint.)

Keeping up the drumbeat in the Sun, Alicia Colon went even further: “How delighted Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda must have been to hear the news — that New York City, the site of the worst terrorist attack in our history, is bowing down in homage to accommodate and perhaps groom future radicals.

Some rushed to defend the school, which was being established under the auspices of New Visions, which has played a key role in the city’s small school movement. In his blog
Old First, Daniel Meeter, the reverend at Old First Reformed Church, said he had agreed to serve on the school’s board, as had a local rabbi. Meeter said the reaction to the school – and the invective heaped on principal Debbie Almontaser, caught him by surprise, “I didn’t expect the New York Sun to oppose it by means of slander. I won’t honor the articles by repeating them, but I will say that they were slanderous. And hurtful to my friend, Debbie Almontaser, and insulting to her faith” (Almontaser has written for Gotham Gazette, and we know many people in common – most of whom have high regard for her.)

Some allied with the PS 282 parents decried the fact that the crowding issue became caught up in an apparently acceptable (in some circles) post 9/11 bigotry. Writing in the Brooklyn Paper, Councilmember David Yassky said it was “entirely appropriate” for PS 282 parents to express their concerns. But, he continued, “suggestion that religion or ethnicity is at issue in the PS 282 disagreement gives credence to a reprehensible bigotry that, regrettably, does exist.”

So what is the Department of Education going to do next. It says it will try to find a new location but would not say where that might be and some questioned whether it would be in time for the new school year in September. Interestingly Schools Chancellor Joel Klein did not offer the school a home in Tweed Courthouse, as he did for a charter school caught up in a similar conflict over space (but not the Middle East) last year.

So what’s the lesson? The Quick and the Ed came up with one: “People who support choice and diversity in delivery of publicly-funded education need to come to terms with the reality that real choice includes some schools that not everyone will like.”

Questioning the School Questionnaire

As any pollster knows it’s all in what you ask and how you ask it – whether you ask, “Do you favor U.S. involvement in Iraq to bring freedom and peace to the Middle East?” Or “Do you favor U.S. involvement in Iraq to plunge a country into civil war and kill untold thousands of civilians?

Now the Bloomberg administration is getting a similar lesson. It announced yesterday it would ask 1.8 million parents, teachers and middle and high school students what they think of their “learning environment” (school those of us who don’t hang around Tweed Courthouse). The survey is part of the overall so-called accountability initiative.

But it ran head first into the thorny issue of what to ask and who’s is accountable for what. who exactly is accountable for what. The Public School Parents blog complains the survey neglects the big issues, such as test prep and class size. Instead, they wrote in a letter to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, the survey asks questions that ”appear to put the burden on us as parents if our children are not being adequately provided with individualized instruction.” The critics also complain that the quesitonnaire makes no effort to evaluate the people at Tweed Courthouse – who, of course, paid for the survey

As a result some parents who participated in focus group to draft the survey, “are calling on all parents to boycott the survey, cross out the questions listed, and before sending it back, write ‘We want real parent input – as well as smaller classes, less testing, and new priorities at Tweed to deal with the real problems in our schools.’”

(What struck this public school parent about the survey was how little of it relates to what kids actually learn in school.)

Daily Gotham ’ focuses on a line at the bottom of the survey: “Survey responses are being collected by an external vendor, assuring the confidentiality of answers.” It writes, “Don’t you think that anybody espousing platitudes about transparency and open government would at least have the clarity of mind to say who is the external vendor we are to hold accountable for such work? Don’t you want to know how much are these “external vendors” are being paid?.”

Apparently the mayor is not terribly interested in grading the survey itself, Asked about the complaints, he said the critics want to “subvert the system and sit around and complain and not make it any better.”

But the survey has fans, too. The Voz Iz Neias blog, which bills itself as the voice of the city’s Orthodox Jewish community, says, “It would be a good idea for Yeshivas, and Jewish private schools to follow this idea.”

What They’re Saying

The Daily News hails New York City students, teachers administrators for the increase in percent of students graduating from high school in four years – by the state’s reckoning, that number went from 44 percent in 2004 to 50 percent last June. The paper credits “the drive by Bloomberg and Klein to hold everyone in every school accountable for producing results, as opposed to moving students along on a conveyor belt of failure. It’s very basic, and it’s working.”

The city’s latest budget surplus is another victory for supply side economics, the Sun says, providing evidence that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth that, in turn, causes government revenues to climb. And so, the paper says, to keep the city’s economic engine purring, the mayor should cut income taxes, “unleashing new growth that will put the city, and its individual taxpayers, on a still sounder financial footing for years to come.”

The Post, not a big fan of City Council in general, now goes after the city’s legislative body for implementing a dress code for staff. Commenting on Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s edict again t-shirts flip-flops and the like even on dress down Fridays, the paper says, “No one should be surprised, of course, to see yet another category of items deemed contraband by the council. In just the past 18 months alone, it has sought citywide bans on: trans-fats, aluminum baseball bats, unregulated pedicabs, foie gras, fast-food eateries in poor areas, lobbyists at the council, mail-order medicine, cell-phones in upscale restaurants, pork products from Tar Heel, N.C., candy-flavored cigarettes, Wal-Mart and the circus. (To name a few.)”

Congestion Pricing Scorecard

For more on what politicians are for it (not many), who’s against it (lots) and who’s waffling (lots), see the Polticker’s latest listing.

More on Congestion Pricing

Anyone cynical about politics will enjoy watching politicians, including those interested in higher office (and isn’t that just about all of them?) react to the mayor’s PlaNYC2030. Many applaud the big vision – as long as it does not require any possible voter to change their ways.

Gotham Gazette’ City Council reporter found little rush to speak out on the proposals for a more environmentally friendly city among the very same council members who clamored to demonstrate their political courage by condemning Don Imus 10 days earlier.

Streetsblog surveys the political reaction. Take Christine Quinn, normally an ally of the mayor’s. The likely 2009 mayoral candidate goes way out on a limb on congestion pricing: “Whether you’re for it or against it, it’s a serious proposal and it deserves serious attention.” Outer borough politicians including mayoral contenders Anthony Weiner and Adolfo Carrion and Marty Markowitz (who’s reportedly running for something) were more outspoken. Carrion wonders about “another hidden tax on working people” (the same working people who pay $15 an hour to park), Marty Markowitz would support congestion pricing – provided it doesn’t apply to people driving to work – and Weiner, applauds long-term planning — but thinks congestion pricing is a sure that’s “worse than the disease.” Councilmembers David Weprin, who is reportedly mulling a bid for city comptroller, and Lew Fidler came out against the plan – before the mayor even proposed it.

A few politicians have endorsed the fee to drive into Manhattan. Although he does not like Mayor Bloomberg, State Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem told The Politicker he thinks congestion pricing can work: “”There is no question in my mind that you can do what he wants to do without it being a tax on the middle class and the poor,” Perkins said. And Nassau County Executive The Nassau County Executive, Thomas Suozzi, many of whose constituents drive to Manhattan, admitted, “People’s first reaction is they don’t want to pay.” But, he added, “getting them to switch to mass transit benefits us all.”

Maybe more politicians will join in. After all an unscientific-online poll by Crain’s found more than half of the respondents backed Bloomberg’s proposal for congestion pricing.

What They’re Saying This Morning

While conceding Albany needs to be fixed, the Post criticizes Governor Eliot Spitzer’s latest tactic for reforming it: curbing campaign contributions. “The answer isn’t to deprive individuals of the right to participate in the political process by backing political candidates,” the editorial says. Instead of going after donors, the paper wants politicians who take the money, accepting quid pro quos (read bribes) to “be tried, convicted and packed off to Attica.”

Expressing great confidence in the police, the Sun says it is time for the judge overseeing police surveillance of political activity to let the police videotape at will. “New Yorkers have not for a single second forgotten that they are the number one target of terrorists” and so should have Police Commissioner Ray Kelly – not a judge – deciding when to tape and when not to tape.

And the Sun uses the tentative contract agreement between City Hall and the principal’s union to reiterate its call for merit pay for teachers.

The Push for School Reorganization

“When somebody sits at the table with their daughter, about to send her off to their local public school,” Representative Anthony Weiner said recently, “they are not thinking about the nuances of the reorganization of the school system.”

Maybe so but a lot of the activity in education circles this week has concerned reorganization, as the Department of Education has revealed more about its plans for “grading” students, principals and teachers; changing the school funding formula; eliminating the new educational regions; and creating support organizations for principals.

The additional information has not mollified some City Council members who, unhappy thought they might be, cannot do much about reorganization beyond complaining about it. According to the NYC Public School Parents blog, a resolution, authored by Councilmembers Robert Jackson and John Liu, outlining objections to the plan “has been joined by a broad swath of the council.” Individual members have weighed in with their own reservations.

Since mayoral control was instituted, Bloomberg and his education department have resisted most attempts by council, parents or just about anyone else (business groups and high priced consultants excepted) to influence school policy. But today’s News thinks there might be a thaw. It reports the administration is trying to talk to the teachers union –yes the same group he recently likened to his arch nemesis the NRA – and parents to win support for the plan How much is the mayor willing to budge. Not much apparently. “There were crumbs for everybody,” a person who attended one meeting told the paper.

Wth Friends Like These…

In the annals of public relations, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s blistering attack earlier this week on opponents of his school changes may stand out as an example of what not to do. Faced with growing opposition to his latest scheme to reorganize the school system — again — Bloomberg likened the teachers union to the National Rifle Association, slammed the city’s newspapers for not being sufficiently gung ho and produced a letter signed by 100 supporters of the plan

But the move to drum up support quickly hit some snags. For one, while characterizing his opponents as special interests, Blomberg seemed to overlook what some might call a conflict of interest among his supporters. Among them, Andrew Wolf writes in the Sun, “nearly every individual or group… either has a contract with the Department of Education or has matters pending before some city agency, or is the recipient of largesse coming from Mr. Bloomberg ’s own pockets.

On the other hand, Wolf says, “when reporters asked whether any of the signatories to the letter themselves had children in the public schools….Only one person, I am told, raised his hand.”

“Given the fact that among the many critics of their proposals are parents legitimately concerned about what these funding cuts might mean for their children, in terms of the loss of experienced teachers, class size, or essential services, I don’t know how he can call us “special interests,” Leonie Haimson writes in NYC Public School Parents.

The fact of the matter, says Dorothy Giglio of the Region 6 High School Presidents Council is that there is widespread opposition to the latest reorganization scheme. “If I heard from one parent over the last five years that thought the first reorganization was good for their children or for them, I might rethink my position, but the opposite is exactly what I have heard, over and over again.” She says. “To the people who lined up behind the ayor, for what ever their ‘special’ reason: Shame. They are pandering in order to gain jobs, or contributions or just because they consider him a friend.”

What They’re Saying This Morning

What’s behind the reversal of fortune in Albany where the latest polls show Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is more popular than Governor Eliot Spitzer? In today’s News, Bill Hammond examines Cuomo’s first 100 days and finds the attorney general is surprising a lot of people, including Hammond.

Governor Eliot Spitzer and the Bush administration have found common ground in their opposition to the proposed sale of the Starrett City housing complex in Brooklyn – and they’re both wrong, says the the Sun. “Rather than being something to fear,” the editorial says, the proposed sale “is something to embrace as a sign of the city’s vitality and success.”

The Sun also gives space to someone it frequently criticizes – teachers union president Randi Weingarten. She urges the City Council to pass a measure that would protect teachers who become whistleblowers.

Meanwhile the Post goes after Weingarten, applauding Mayor Michael Bloomberg for slamming her and her union for, in the paper’s view, standing in the way of school reform. Only one problem in the Post’s eyes: Bloomberg condemned the union by likening it to the National Rifle Association. And that, the Post says, is unfair to the NRA.

And the Dog AteTheir Homework

The Department of Education, so fond of “accountability measures” for students and teachers, seem to prefer fuzzy math when it comes to evaluating its own performance.

Take the current controversy about physical and sexual abuse of youngsters on school buses. According to the Daily News, which has run a series on the bus problems, the department has not provided the paper with case files for 1,555 investigations – even though Tweed officials promised to give the paper the information. And, the News says, the files the city did turn over had not only the victims’ name blacked out but also concealed far less sensitive information. A department attorney blamed that on “a misunderstanding by staffers preparing the documents.”

At the same time, the News reports today, the department has repeatedly changed the number of substantiated abuse cases that occured on buses in 2006 – saying in December that there were 761 and last month saying, no, wait it was more like 220. “On Friday, the department confessed that it had been providing erroneous numbers all along …. Officials blamed a “flawed reporting system,” the News reported.

So kids next time you flunk a math test just blamed it on a “misunderstanding” or “a flawed studying system.”

A City Council hearing on the bus abuse problem is scheduled for Wednesday.

Charter Schools – Why the Beef?

The new state budget doubles the number of charter schools in the state – and will allow 50 more of them in the city – but that apparently is not good enough for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The man who has demanded public schools meet an array of requirements – from additional tests to a uniform curriculum to new “accountability requirements” – is irate over restrictions on the new charters. These would require larger charter schools to hire unionized staff and all charters to try to attract special education students or those with limited proficiency in English. And the state also insists that there be a public forum before the Department of Education can house a charter school inside a traditional public school. “It is a disgrace that when you have such demand, there’s anybody at any level of government who’s trying to limit parents’ options,” Bloomberg said.

An editorial in today’s Sun says Bloomberg has only himself to blame. “The mayor asked for half a loaf and got even less,” the paper says. According to the Sun, the mayor goofed when he asked simply for the state to lift the cap on the number of charter schools; instead, the paper says, he should have launched a full scale “ “campaign for vouchers, tuition tax credits and deductions, and parental choice.”

But most charter school advocates cheered the state move.

Eduwonk, a charter advocate, praises the lifting of the cap and questions some of the requirements. The blog says, “I’m not for a complete charter free-for-all but any restrictions should be reasonably related to broader policy goals like quality, not simply about protecting the traditional public schools from competition in the form of new public schools.”

The Chalkboard, the blog of the New York State Charter Schools Association, says that, while the deal is not perfect, “it is silly to ignore… the basic reality: 35,000 kids just got a shot at a better public education, in a state where there was zero support for creating new schools by chartering back in 1998.” The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools agrees: “The final deal adds some minor procedural hurdles but nothing worth storming the Bastille over.”

So why is Bloomberg so upset?

Saving NYC’s Middle Class

The think-tank Drum Major Institute held a conference on the state of New York City’s middle-class and surveyed 100 city “leaders” to test their ideas for making the city more livable and affordable. (Read the survey in .pdf format).

Today, Daily News columnist Michael Daly laments that it takes between $75,000 and $135,000 for a family of four to enjoy what it terms a middle-class standard of living in New York. “The home city of the Yankees is on its way to becoming a place where to live here you have to earn like a pro ballplayer,” Daly writes.

The New York Times saw the event as a preview of the 2009 mayoral race with three probable candidates - Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, City Comptroller William Thompson, and U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner -”outlining their priorities — and occasionally jousting - on how to attract and retain moderate-income New Yorkers.”

The Albany Project blog has a video of Mario Cuomo’s opening address, which it calls a “barnburner.” And the Daily Gotham declares Weiner “the only potential candidate who clearly articulated a progressive platform.”

Cutting Class Siize

In the continuing debate over whether the state should require its school districts, including New York City’s, to reduce class size, Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters weighs in in today’s Daily News with a resounding yes. “We will never improve our stagnant middle school scores or lower our huge dropout rates without reducing class size. And as research shows, poor and minority students benefit the most from class-size reduction, as they need the greatest instructional support,” she writes.

Haimson rejects arguments that, by requiring the city to hire additional teachers, reducing class size could actually decrease the quality of teaching in city public school classrooms. “The major problem we have is not a lack of applicants,’ Haimson says. “But we suffer from extremely high attrition rates as a result of our large classes, which rob teachers of any chance of success.” Smaller class size must be phased in slowly and carefully, Haimson, writes, but it is essential to improve education in a city that, over the next five years, “plans to create only half as many seats in new schools as new seats in sports stadiums.”

Save Our (Big) Schools

Maybe it’s part of the growing skepticism about some of the Bloomberg administration’s education policies, covered in this week’s Observer. But now the move to shut large high schools and replace them with small schools is meeting increased opposition.

The battleground is Samuel Tilden High School in East Flatbush. The education department plans to close Tilden and replace it with small schools, including one run by Outward Bound.

No one promotes Tilden as a model of academic excellence – Inside Schools said students characterized the school as “chaotic,” and it had a high dropout rate – but the according to one account, “advocates say that a new principal and a sense of enthusiasm among the staff and students have begun to turn the school around.” Supporters have launched a Web site in their effort to save Tilden

A key concern is the fate of students in Tilden’s bilingual Creole-language program, one of the few such programs in the city, and one unlikely to be replkcated n the small schools. Such small schools take few special education students or English language learners in their first two years.

“We take all kinds of students, some who don’t speak English, whether they are low-functioning academically or high-functioning,” said Tilden art teacher Nancy Miller. “What’s going to happen to all the kids in this neighborhood?”

And an English as a second language teacher at Tilden, John Lawhead, told City Council the move toward small schools has placed an unreasonable burden on schools such as Tilden. The larger schools, he said, “have been burdened with overcrowding, split scheduling, oversized classes, inadequate facilities and budget cuts. They are assigned students with long-term absences, learning disabilities, emotional impairment, borderline intelligence and low English proficiency. In exchange for their effort to educate a broader population these school face official disparagement of their progress.”

Small school have it easy by comparison, says Edwize, a blog put out by the teachers union. They may get higher performing students to begin with and at the same time receive extra support and money.

And the issue goes beyond Tilden. “My biggest concern,” City Councilmember Melinda Katz has said , “is that we are creating these new schools and leaving the rest of the kids out to triage.”

But there is an extra bit of irony at Tilden: Public School Parents says the decision to close “flies in the face of a positive quality review of the school made only a few months ago.” The review, the blog said “pointed out how the principal’s ‘efforts and leadership have received enthusiastic support from students, teachers, parents and her administrative staff’ and that English language learners achieved a passing rate on their Regents exams 25.3 percent above similar schools.”

What are these quality reviews? They are key to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein school accountability plan – an education change he advocates just about as fervidly as small schools.

It’s Getting Hot in Here

Rising global temperatures seem to be of little concern to Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff, writes Wayne Barrett in the Village Voice. And that Barrett says poses a problem – because Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put the Doctoroff in charge of PlaNYC2030, which is supposed to make this a sustainable, more environmentally friendly city. “In theory,” writes Barrett, “the plan is Bloomberg’s response to climate change’s mounting challenges — sea level and others — to an especially vulnerable New York, but with Doctoroff in charge, it is predictably more about growth than threat, more upbeat than upsetting….It has yet to suggest how we will adapt to extreme and deadly heat, or to the specter of storm surges and hurricanes, or to the siege on our compromised infrastructure that has alarmed climatologists for years.”

While Doctoroff offers few clues about what he might do to have the city reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that play a key role in global warming – everyone involved in the 2030 plan is apparently sworn to secrecy – the deputy mayor is gung ho on building along New York’s waterfront – real estate that might not exist if the climate continue to get warmer. And so, says Barrett, Doctoroff is “approaching the question of changing the way we do business, and safeguarding us from Katrina and less, as if he’s more concerned about rocking the boat than winding up in one.”

Maybe the administration will take heart from a recent study offering an upbeat solution to the problem. It says New York could significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and reduce traffic congestion if we got out of our cars and got on motor scooters instead. As an avid cyclist Doctoroff might find this appealing, whatever his stand on global warming.

Small Isn’t Always Beautiful

Contrary to popular wisdom simply, cutting class size will not necessarily improve education, Raymond Domanico writes in today’s Daily News. “While research shows that - all things being equal - smaller classes are good for student achievement,” Domanico says, reducing class size would require the Department of Education to hire more teachers, not necessarily an easy task in “a labor pool that is already stretched thin.” And so he says, “If New York City were to reduce class size across the board, many parents would see their children placed with less-qualified teachers.”

Instead Domanico, the senior education adviser to the Industrial Areas Foundation of Metro NY, advises advocates to try to get more resources for the city’s lowest performing schools and then let those schools “decide if class-size reduction is the best way to use the money.”

Graduation Games

In a more perfect world, no school system would think that having 42 percent of students drop out of high school is something to brag about. But no one ever said the New York City school system is perfect.

For a while, the city and state have been fighting over how many city public school students  receive a high school diploma. The state says only 43 percent do. The city Department of Education says 58 percent do and points to this an achievement of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s school changes.

Now Public School Parents says sources report that the city has won the battle – which is over numbers, not improving education – “and the state will soon report graduation rates for NYC that are above 50 percent.” But according to the Sun, the state is only willing to go so far: A spokesman for the state Education Department, “said the state would not ‘negotiate the definition for the graduation rate,” although it would make some changes, such as letting kids who graduate in August be included with June graduates.

The other issues could prove dicier. The city includes people who get a GED degree; the state, like the federal government, does not. “The benefit of earning a GED, according to national research, is just a slight improvement over dropping out,” Daniel J. Losen of Harvard Law School’s Civil Rights Project has written. “There is a tremendous difference between earning a GED and earning a bona fide high school diploma.”

But the biggest rift may be over special education. The city thinks kids in special ed should not be included in computing the dropout rate; the state says they should. Given that less than one in five special education students in the city graduates, this has a big effect on the number. Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott has defended the city’s exclusion of special education kids, telling the Politicker, “Those are students who have severe issues and so the ability to obtain a degree in a four-year period of time for them and qualify for regents tests is really extremely difficult.”

Sound reasonable? Not according to some experts. First the city does far worse on this than the state as a whole. Only 37 percent of all special education high school students in the state graduate, but less than 17 percent of those in the city do.

And while the term “special education” may summon images of students with severe mental retardation or autism, most special education students have “emotional and behavioral” problems, according to Thomas Hehir, a professor of education at Harvard who reviewed city special ed programs. “”If [students] receive what they need and the school accommodates their disabilities and gives them access to challenging curricula, these kids should be able to get diplomas,” he has said.

However one adds up the numbers, the rates remain particularly dismal for black and Latino students – less than half of whom graduate.  That’s the big issue, of course. And so Public School Parents writes, “Why graduation rates should be a matter of negotiation at all rather than a result of careful objective analysis is something of a scandal in itself.”

Controlling Issues

Will mayoral control of schools go the way of community control, a centralized Board of Education and other education schemes of the past? It is too soon to tell, but indications continue that support for the current system – pushed through by Michael Bloomberg shortly after he became mayor – is slipping and the state could try another structure when it has to renew, repeal or change the current system in 2009.

According to a Qunnipiac poll released today, Bloomberg gets mixed marks on education. While the New Yorkers polled approve – by a 50 to 39 percent margin – of Bloomberg’s handling of the public schools, 39 percent consider mayoral control a success, 34 percent see it as a failure and 27 percent are undecided. And 58 percent would rather see an independent board of education control the public schools - not the mayor.
One problem maybe the man Bloomberg has chosen to run the schools, Chancellor Joel Klein; by a 43 to 33 percent edge New Yorkers disapprove of the job Klein is doing.

The poll comes during a week when City Comptroller William Thompson, a likely mayoral candidate in 2009, stepped up his criticisms of the Department of Education. While Thompson told the News’ Michael Goodwin that he still favors mayoral control, Goodwin writes, “the more he talked about his concerns with how the Bloomberg team is managing schools, the more it seemed control is in play, and could become a key issue in the 2009 mayoral race. After all, Goodwin writes, “It’s no secret there is much unhappiness over
schools.”