Last night was truly one for the history books, at least in the history of NYC public schools: the Panel for Educational Policy, composed of a majority of mayoral appointees, voted down a DOE contract.
After more than six hours of testimony by CEC members, elected officials, students and parents, most of whom opposed its renewal, eight panelists voted to reject the highly controversial Pearson contract to provide the "gifted" test, administered to kids as young as four years old; with only seven members voting yes. This is despite the fact that the Mayor appointed two new representatives in the last two weeks and personally lobbied his appointees to approve it. Stories here: NY1, Chalkbeat, NY Daily News and Gothamist.
It was the first time the PEP ever voted to reject a contract, since they were given this authority in 2009 -- which was meant to provide stronger oversight and a check on corruption. [As I testified in 2011, it didn't work and the panel has rubber-stamped many corrupt and wasteful contracts ever since.]
I wrote about this unsupportable Pearson contract for the Gotham Gazette last week, though I really didn't expect it would be rejected. I also discussed it on my "Talk out of School" podcast with Akil Bello of FairTest, who explained how the test had no validity or reliability, had clearly racially biased results, and to continue giving it especially during a pandemic was absurd.
Even the Chancellor last night admitted that "There is no research, there is no pedagogical reason why one test to four-year-olds should be a sole determinant" to entry to a gifted program, while tepidly urging the panel members to renew it for just one more year.
Of all the unprecedented events of last night, perhaps the most bizarre was that Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan was brought into the meeting to justify it. Fuleihan couldn't log on at first, so there were about seven minutes of empty time, but when he finally managed, he haplessly tried to explain that now, city officials were serious about changing the program and the screening method and would start planning this after this year. They would go on "listening tours", and ask PEP members for their input, yada yada yada.
This is after the DOE already had a full year to work on changing this process, which they promised they would do the last time they asked the PEP to renew the contract, sometime last year. Also see the leaked DOE memo from July - showing DOE had already been discussing how to proceed for many months.
Chalk this down to more indecision and inefficiency of Mayoral control -- depending on one, very fallible person to make all decisions for nearly a million public school students. The total ineptitude of the process recalls de Blasio's CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Last night's historic vote of the Panel for Educational Policy to reject the Pearson contract for assessing "giftedness"