STATE AUDIT BLAMES TEACHERS IGNORES LEGISLATURES RESPONSIBILITY FOR SAC CITY BUDGET CRISIS

Report 2019-108

Sacramento City Unified School District Because It Has Failed to Proactively Address Its Financial Challenges, It May Soon Face Insolvency

The Governor of California

President pro Tempore of the Senate

Speaker of the Assembly

State Capitol

Sacramento, California 95814

Dear Governor and Legislative Leaders:

As directed by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, my office conducted an audit of the Sacramento City Unified School District (Sacramento Unified). Our assessment focused on Sacramento Unified’s financial condition, and the following report details the audit’s findings and conclusions. We determined that Sacramento Unified has not proactively addressed its financial problems.

Sacramento Unified failed to take sufficient action to control its costs in three main areas—teacher salaries, employee benefits, and special education. Sacramento Unified increased its spending by $31 million annually when it approved a new labor contract with its teachers union in 2017. Despite warnings from the Sacramento County Office of Education that it could not afford the agreement, the Sacramento City Unified School District Board of Education approved the agreement without a plan for how it would pay for it. Sacramento Unified also failed to control the costs of the generous employee benefits it provides, which increased by 52 percent from fiscal years 2013–14 through 2017–18. We also found that Sacramento Unified lacked clear policies to guide staff on what are appropriate expenditures for special education, limiting its ability to control these costs. Consequently, Sacramento Unified projects it will largely deplete its general fund in October 2021 and will likely need to accept a loan from the State to continue operating. If it accepts such a loan, the required loan payments would result in less funding for students and a loss of local control to an appointed administrator.

Although both Sacramento Unified and its teachers union have proposed changes to stabilize the district’s finances, we found that the proposals are unlikely to solve the district’s ongoing financial problems. In fact, several proposals from the teachers union would increase costs dramatically. Given that accepting state assistance would result in less funds for students, we would have expected Sacramento Unified to develop a detailed plan for resolving its financial concerns, but it has not done so. It states that it needs to make $27 million in reductions by fiscal year 2021–22, but even that amount may not be sufficient to end its deficit spending. We have identified a number of options the district could take, including making changes to salaries and benefits for different groups of employees; however, if it is to avoid the negative effects of insolvency, Sacramento Unified must act quickly to develop and implement a plan.

Respectfully submitted,



ELAINE M. HOWLE, CPA

California State Auditor

Summary

Audit Highlights . . .

Our audit of Sacramento Unified’s financial condition revealed the following:

• » Sacramento Unified has not proactively addressed its financial problems and is close to insolvency—it projects facing a $19.1 million shortfall in fiscal year 2021–22.
• » At the same time that its fund balance and financial condition declined, Sacramento Unified increased spending for teacher salaries, benefits, and special education.
• In 2017 its district board approved a new labor contract that increased teacher salaries by 15 percent, costing an additional $31 million per year.
• Despite warnings from the Sacramento County Office of Education that it could not afford the labor agreement, the district board approved the agreement without a plan to pay for it.
• Sacramento Unified has failed to control the costs of generous employee benefits it provides, which increased by 52 percent over a five-year period.
• Special education costs have doubled and account for 21 percent of the district’s total spending in fiscal year 2017–18.
• » Despite the impending risk of insolvency, Sacramento Unified and its teachers union have yet to agree on a solution to the district’s financial problems.
• » If it is to avoid the negative effects of insolvency, Sacramento Unified should act quickly to develop and implement a plan to address its increasingly precarious financial situation.

Results in Brief

The Sacramento City Unified School District (Sacramento Unified) is an urban public school district in Sacramento County that serves about 41,000 students and employs 2,200 teachers. Since fiscal year 2016–17, its expenditures have exceeded its ongoing revenue by $9 million to $25.9 million each year. During this same time period, it has increased spending in three main areas—teacher salaries, employee benefits, and special education—without taking sufficient action to control these costs. Because its spending has consistently exceeded its ongoing revenue, it has instead had to rely on reserves from its general fund—the primary fund that the district uses—and on one-time funds to cover its expenditures. As a result, its general fund balance has declined by nearly $30 million over the past three years. Sacramento Unified now projects that by October 2021 it will have largely depleted its general fund and will likely need state assistance in the form of a loan to continue operating. If it must accept such a loan, the resulting loan and interest payments would result in less funding available for students. Further, the terms of the loan would require it to relinquish local control to an appointed administrator who would assume the responsibilities of the Sacramento City Unified School District Board of Education (board) and the district superintendent.

In December 2017, Sacramento Unified significantly increased its ongoing spending when its board approved a new labor contract with its teachers union that increased the amount the district paid for teacher salaries by 15 percent. This labor agreement could ultimately cost Sacramento Unified about $31 million per year in additional costs, an increase of 5 percent in the district’s total spending in fiscal year 2019–20. At the time of the labor negotiations, the teachers union believed that the district’s fund balance was steadily increasing and that teacher salaries were relatively low. However, neither of these beliefs was entirely accurate. Although Sacramento Unified did have lower average teacher salaries than comparable school districts before the 2017 agreement, it consistently maintained the highest average total compensation for teachers because it offered more generous and expensive health care benefits. Further, at the time of the labor negotiations, Sacramento Unified had received one-time funds from the Legislature that likely gave the impression that the district was in better financial condition than it actually was. However, the Legislature allocates one-time funds for a specific purpose, such as satisfying potential outstanding state mandate claims, and for a limited term. Consequently, school districts should not rely on them for ongoing expenses, like teacher salaries.

When its current superintendent joined the district in July 2017, Sacramento Unified and its teachers union had been unable to reach an agreement for nearly a year. According to the district superintendent, he reached an agreement with the teachers union in part because he wanted to avert the negative impact a strike would have on students and their families. However, at the board meeting to approve the labor contract in December 2017, the Sacramento County superintendent of schools (county office superintendent) informed the board that Sacramento Unified could not afford the agreement unless it reduced its budget by $15.6 million. The county office superintendent asked the district to provide a budget reduction plan if it decided to approve the labor contract. Instead of submitting such a plan, the district board chose to rely on one-time funds it anticipated receiving from the proposed January 2018 Governor’s Budget to pay for part of the ongoing salary increases in that year. It did not identify a plan to pay for the increases in future years—an omission that has contributed significantly to its current precarious financial situation. However, because Sacramento Unified projected that it could meet its current and future financial obligations at that time, the county office superintendent could not compel the district to make cuts instead of using the one-time funds.

Sacramento Unified also failed to control the costs of generous employee benefits it provides, which represented almost a third of its budget in fiscal year 2017–18. In particular, it offers costly health care benefits, including fully paid health care for its teachers and their families. In contrast, other nearby districts typically pay for the lowest cost health plan for the employee and their family or pay the full cost for only the employee’s health care. Despite receiving warnings regarding its health benefit costs from entities that have reviewed its budgets since 2003, Sacramento Unified has not taken sufficient action to control those costs when negotiating any of the six agreements that it has entered into with its teachers union since then. Further, despite the county office superintendent’s persistent concerns, Sacramento Unified has not taken sufficient action to control its increasing liability for its retiree health benefits. In part because Sacramento Unified requires teachers to contribute only $20 per month to their retiree health benefits, its liability increased to $726 million in fiscal year 2017–18, or 140 percent of the district’s total spending that year. Further, its contributions toward its teachers’ pension system increased by $15.2 million from fiscal years 2013–14 through 2017–18, in part because of the higher salaries the district agreed to pay as a result of the 2017 labor contract.

Finally, Sacramento Unified has done little to control its special education costs, which grew by 31 percent from fiscal years 2013–14 through 2017–18, reaching 21 percent of its total expenditures. The district lacks clear policies to guide staff on identifying appropriate expenditures for special education, which limits its ability to control these costs. In addition, it has not applied for all available funding. Specifically, the State provides reimbursement for extraordinary special education costs, such as the costs of residential treatment for students who receive special education services. However, according to Sacramento Unified’s special education director, the district did not apply for this funding because the State caps the total reimbursement amount it will pay statewide. We estimate that Sacramento Unified could have been eligible for up to $1.4 million over five years if it had applied for these funds.

Despite the impending risk of insolvency, Sacramento Unified and its teachers union have yet to agree to a solution to the district’s financial problems. They each recently made proposals regarding the budget, but it is unlikely that either proposal can solve the district’s ongoing financial challenges. In fact, several of the teachers union’s suggestions would increase the district’s costs dramatically. In contrast, Sacramento Unified’s proposal could result in significant savings; however, implementing it would require substantial concessions from the teachers union. Given that accepting state assistance would result in the appointment of an administrator for the district and would have significant implications for the district’s students and community, we expected Sacramento Unified to have developed a detailed plan for resolving its financial concerns. However, it has not done so. We identified a number of options it could take, including making changes to salaries and benefits for different groups of employees. If it is to avoid the negative effects of insolvency, Sacramento Unified should act quickly to develop and implement a plan to address its increasingly precarious financial situation.

Key Recommendations

Legislature

To help ensure that county office superintendents can prevent school districts under their oversight from becoming insolvent, the Legislature should consider amending state law to require school district boards to obtain approval from their county office superintendents before considering significant spending actions.

Sacramento Unified

By March 2020, Sacramento Unified should adopt a detailed plan to resolve its fiscal crisis. The plan should estimate savings under multiple scenarios and include an analysis that quantifies the impact of potential or proposed reductions the district can make to ongoing expenditures. Specifically, Sacramento Unified should consider the impact of possible salary adjustments for employees in different bargaining units and include the impact those salary adjustments would have on retiree benefits, such as pensions. It should also use the most recently available data to estimate net savings from modifying the health care benefits it provides to employees, as well as the effect those modifications would have on the total compensation of the employees. Finally, it should calculate the impact of possible changes to district and employee contributions to fund future retiree health benefits. The district should use the plan it develops as the basis for its discussions of potential solutions with its teachers union.

Agency Comments

Both the county office superintendent and Sacramento Unified generally agreed with our recommendations. The county office superintendent questioned its ability to ensure that Sacramento Unified implemented our recommendations. Sacramento Unified noted that implementing some of the recommendations would require negotiated solutions with its teachers union.

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Ed Johnson: Will the Citizens of Atlanta Allow Their Public Schools to be Transformed into a Business? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ed Johnson: Will the Citizens of Atlanta Allow Their Public Schools to be Transformed into a Business? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ed Johnson: Will the Citizens of Atlanta Allow Their Public Schools to be Transformed into a Business?

Ed Johnson, a close observer and frequent critic of the Atlanta public schools, writes here about the superintendent’s plans to adopt models developed by Eli Broad and the Waltons to transform the public schools into a business.

Johnson is a believer in the collaborative philosophy of W. Edwards Deming.

December 2019

Journey of Transformation: Atlanta schools to “buy” teachers by “price tag”

• “Thinking about human beings as interchangeable commodities for sale, or abstract units of labor power, would lead merchants and planters to see human capital in much the same way that they saw animals.  And, by the time a young apprentice became a partner, he would feel ‘no more remorse in fitting out a ship for the purpose of trading in human flesh, than he would have done in sending her to catch whales or seals.’”
• —Caitlin Rosenthal. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. Kindle Edition, location 1153.

Last month, Atlanta superintendent Meria Carstarphen, Ed.D., gave a presentation to the Atlanta Board of Education Budget Commission on FY 2021 budgeting for what she calls “Student Success Funding,” or SSF.  The Budget Commission is a standing committee of the Board that meets monthly.

At one point during the presentation, Dr. Carstarphen invited the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Atlanta Public Schools system (APS) to more adequately explain a matter that see, Dr. Carstarphen, suggested to enquiring commission members she had already explained well enough (my insertions):

• (50:30-51:00) “… the way the schools purchase back their positions … we allocate the dollars and they buy their teachers back.  The price tag we put on those teachers is an average salary … and all schools buy back [teachers] at that rate.  What we know, what we’ve seen is that the schools that have the highest needs … have teachers that have either less experience or they don’t have the high degrees and, for whatever reason, they are ‘cheaper.’  … So what we would like to propose is … allowing those schools to buy their positions back at the actual average [value of the price tags we put on teachers] for their school.”

Despite the Board’s decision to non-renew her employment contract beyond the current school year, Carstarphen, by CONTINUE READING: Ed Johnson: Will the Citizens of Atlanta Allow Their Public Schools to be Transformed into a Business? | Diane Ravitch's blog

"Have To" History: A Wall of Separation | Blue Cereal Education

"Have To" History: A Wall of Separation | Blue Cereal Education

"Have To" History: A Wall of Separation

NOTE: I've finally completed "Have To" History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases (or at least the initial draft). At the moment, it's available on Teachers Pay Teachers and intended to be an easily affordable resource for pretty much any American History or Government teacher of whatever level – from 8th Grade Civics to APUSH. I'm not looking to make serious money or anything, but it took a long time to write and edit, so until I have time to pursue other avenues, there it is.

In the meantime, it's on to the resource book I've wanted to put together for a much longer time – Supreme Court cases related to religion in the public square, particularly in relation to public schools. I find the topic fascinating and the cases and their written opinions far more engaging than pretty much anything else in the annals of jurisprudence. I realize this makes me both weird and slightly pathetic, but so be it. This post is the first chapter of this new undertaking. If you'd like to read more, go buy the first one so I can afford to order pizza and keep working on it.

“Have To” History: Stuff You Don’t Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About The "Wall of Separation"

Three Big Things:

1. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution contains six specific protections, two of which are related to religion. The “Establishment” Clause says government cannot support one religion over another or promote the idea of religion over non-religion; the “Free Exercise Clause” says government cannot target or hinder a specific religion or religion in general.  

2. The phrase “a wall of separation between Church CONTINUE READING: "Have To" History: A Wall of Separation | Blue Cereal Education

How the little-known WEP provision hacks educators’ retirement benefits - Education Votes

How the little-known WEP provision hacks educators’ retirement benefits - Education Votes

How the little-known WEP provision hacks educators’ retirement benefits

When educators retire, they rely on benefits they earned over their years of service in public schools to support the next chapter of their lives. However, nearly 2 million retired educators across the country are subject to the heartbreaking impacts of a program that for almost 35 years has threatened or destroyed public employees’ retirement security. 

The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) reduces the Social Security benefits of people whose work history includes both jobs covered and not covered by Social Security. That would include  educators in states where public employees don’t pay into Social Security who take on part-time or summer jobs to make ends meet. 

WEP has done financial harm to generations of retirees. Fortunately, there are members of Congress who understand that educators should keep the retirement security they earned in jobs they held outside of education. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) introduced the Public Servants Protection and Fairness Act to lessen the impacts of WEP and protect educators. If that bill becomes law, current retirees would receive an extra $150 a month and future retirees would gain an extra $75 a month, on average.

Here are three things you need to know about H.R. 4540 and what you can do to support it:

1. How WEP might affect you

Educators are among the people most profoundly affected by WEP. Fifteen states do not pay into Social Security for public employees, who must rely solely on their pensions. But many states do not meet their pension obligations and routinely shortchange retirees (by eliminating cost of living increases, for example).

WEP harms not only retirees, but the profession at large. For example, the provision dissuades CONTINUE READING: How the little-known WEP provision hacks educators’ retirement benefits - Education Votes

CURMUDGUCATION: Congress To DeVos: "Nope"

CURMUDGUCATION: Congress To DeVos: "Nope"

Congress To DeVos: "Nope"

The House has passed a budget, and Betsy DeVos's Education Freedom Tax Dodge is not in it.

This is not a big surprise, though both Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump stepped up in recent weeks to try to help sell it.

EdWeek reports that the deal struck by federal lawmakers has nary a cent for the Education Freedom Scholarships program. The program was "ignored" and there is neither money for administering that "fund a private school and get out of paying your taxes all at the same time" program, nor does it address the $5 billion budgetary hole that the DeVos plan would create. The program, despite all the DeVosian love lavished upon it, has been ghosted.

EdWeek notes a few other education items.

Trump asked for a 10% cut to the department and the elimination of twenty-nine programs. That didn't happen (though it's worth noting that many Trump appointees like DeVos have figured out that you can cut spending in your department by simply letting positions stand empty).

There is more money for Title I. It's about a 3% increase, while Democratic candidates are calling for increases of 200% to 300%.

The Charter Schools Program-- the fund that has wasted a billion dollars on charter school waste and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Congress To DeVos: "Nope"

Owen Davis: How Pearson and Other Test Makers Made a Killing on the U.S. Testing Mania | Diane Ravitch's blog

Owen Davis: How Pearson and Other Test Makers Made a Killing on the U.S. Testing Mania | Diane Ravitch's blog

Owen Davis: How Pearson and Other Test Makers Made a Killing on the U.S. Testing Mania

Owen Davis writes here about the enrichment of the testing industry by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

The testing and accountability craze started before No Child Left Behind, but that federal law turned it into a bonanza for Pearson and other companies and led to a consolidation of the testing industry.

We now know, almost 20 years after NCLB was signed into law on January 8, 2002, that it has had very little effect on student test scores, on closing achievement gaps, or on any of the other wild promises made first by George W. Bush, echoed by Rod Paige and Margaret Spellings, and reiterated again by Arne Duncan and John King.

Who in Congress or the federal government will have the courage to call a halt to this insane investment of billions of dollars into the testing industry?

Davis writes:

Three days after taking office, George W. Bush unveiled his signature domestic policy, No Child Left Behind. The bill would triple the number of exams the federal government required of students, while dangling stiff CONTINUE READING: Owen Davis: How Pearson and Other Test Makers Made a Killing on the U.S. Testing Mania | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Word Pedometers: Another Really Dumb Tech Idea

CURMUDGUCATION: Word Pedometers: Another Really Dumb Tech Idea

Word Pedometers: Another Really Dumb Tech Idea

You only have to get one "story at a glance" point into this article to know that this is going to be a freakin' disaster panda, and I have so many wuestions.

New devices can be worn by babies and toddlers to count the number of words they are exposed to each day.

It's a word pedometer, a sensor that you strap onto your child's chest that, well, records all the words tat show up in the area.

They are situated inside a small vest that keeps the tracker positioned on the baby’s chest, not to measure steps or stairs, of course, but to log words, sentences and entire conversations spoken to or overheard by the child.

This is not a new batch of baloney; here are 75 Providence Headstart families being used as a pilot program back in 2014. Because, of course, this is aimed at non-wealthy non-white families, and was mostly about "training parents." The reasoning back then is familiar. According to the program director, "Previous research has shown that the number of words that is heard between ages 0 and 3 is a good predictor for school success." It was backed by the LENA foundation, an outfit that's all about using tech to build early language skills and adult-child talk and pushing the word pedometer. LENA's president came from the aerospace industry, the senior director of research is degreed in CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Word Pedometers: Another Really Dumb Tech Idea

Mike Klonsky's Blog: CTU leaders take the wrong side in sexual harassment scandal

Mike Klonsky's Blog: CTU leaders take the wrong side in sexual harassment scandal

CTU leaders take the wrong side in sexual harassment scandal

Chicago unions have no choice to work with House Speaker Michael Madigan if they want to get anything done in Springfield. But working with Madigan is one thing. Embedding within what's left of Madigan's political machine and colluding with him to blackball his victims of sexual harassment is something else. And that appears to be exactly what CTU leaders have done.

Machine boss Mike Madigan & whistle-blower Alaina Hampton

Case in point -- CTU's collusion with Madigan's gaggle of sexual harassers in the Alaina Hampton case. First, after offering to hire Alaina as a political consultant, CTU withdrew its offer, apparently under pressure from Madigan. Then they foolishly held back documents implicating themselves, from investigators until they were forced to make them available.

After Alaina sued and won a settlement in the case, which cost Madigan's political committee about $900,000 (Alaina received $75K with the rest going to the lawyers), the teachers union picked up a large chunk of the tab.

As for Madigan, the powerful Southwest Side Democrat likely won’t be holding CONTINUE READING: 

At U.S. House Education Committee Hearing, DeVos Defends Cheating Some Defrauded Students by Only Partially Forgiving Loans | janresseger

At U.S. House Education Committee Hearing, DeVos Defends Cheating Some Defrauded Students by Only Partially Forgiving Loans | janresseger

At U.S. House Education Committee Hearing, DeVos Defends Cheating Some Defrauded Students by Only Partially Forgiving Loans

There was a lot going on last week—Judiciary Committee hearings on articles of impeachment, for example. Did you miss learning about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s miserable performance before the U.S. House Education Committee?  As she defended her new “borrower defense to repayment” plan, DeVos didn’t seem to worry very much about the hundreds of thousands of students who have been defrauded by for-profit colleges, but she did seem to want to protect the reputation of the for-profit college sector.

DeVos was called before the committee to explain her department’s inexplicable failure to provide loan forgiveness for what DeVos herself said are “nearly 300,000 claims” by students who said they had been defrauded by their for-profit colleges. Many of the claims demanding loan forgiveness under what is called the “borrower defense to repayment” rule were filed by students at the now shut-down Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute.  Both were shut down because they had lured students to enroll (and take on enormous debt) with fraudulent promises about what would turn out to be shoddy career prep programs.

The Associated Press‘s Colin Binkley explains: “The program, known as borrower defense to repayment, is meant to forgive federal loans for students whose colleges misrepresent the quality of their education or otherwise commit fraud. It was expanded under the Obama administration to help clear loans for thousands of students who attended Corinthian CONTINUE READING: At U.S. House Education Committee Hearing, DeVos Defends Cheating Some Defrauded Students by Only Partially Forgiving Loans | janresseger

NYC Educator: Boost Panorama Survey Results, or Teach Children?

NYC Educator: Boost Panorama Survey Results, or Teach Children?

Boost Panorama Survey Results, or Teach Children?

That's a choice we're facing, and I'll tell you why.

Yesterday I parodied the Panorama Survey, as I've been doing every time they put out a new one. I understand that it's important we treat students with respect, but I'm not at all sure that's what this survey measures. There are a whole lot of questions about whether the teacher is doing an adequate job, and there are a whole lot of reasons why the responses may not be accurate.

Here's one. I taught summers and evenings at the English Language Institute at Queens College for about 20 years. I came to college teaching from high school teaching, and thus my methods were a little different than those of colleagues with different experiences. I'd often hear laments from them about poor behavior in classes.

I never had any such complaints. Once, we had a very young student who was immature and problematic. I called his parents and had no more issues. My colleagues were shocked. The general behavior of my college students was such that I could accomplish much more. I could go over material in half the time I was used to. If there were behavioral problems, I stopped them instantly. I was used to far worse.

We were rated by the students, and that was quite a big deal for the program. After all, they wanted to increase business, being a non-credit, optional program. One semester I got a bad rating. This was a big issue. I determined to never have that happen again, and the secret sauce for that was not at all difficult to uncover. I stopped bugging students to do the homework. I stopped bothering people over poor test scores. Sure, I got less homework, and lower test scores, and sure some students CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Boost Panorama Survey Results, or Teach Children?

Manufactured Education Crisis Engenders Violence | tultican

Manufactured Education Crisis Engenders Violence | tultican

Manufactured Education Crisis Engenders Violence

By Thomas Ultican 12/17/2019

On October 23, the regularly scheduled Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board meeting descended into chaos accompanied by violent reaction from school police. One parent received a broken rib; two elementary school teachers reported severe bruising and a small mother suffered two torn ligaments and a meniscus tear. They were protesting the closing of Kaiser elementary school which is the result of a manufactured crisis beyond the control of the local school board. Billionaire “philanthropists” and the state of California created and exacerbated Oakland’s chronic budget issues.

Today’s budget problems stem back to the state assuming control of OUSD in 2003. Ken Epstein of Oakland Crossings described the situation when the state installed an administrator. “At the time, State Schools’ Supt. O’Connell [Democrat] and influential State Senator Don Perata [Democrat] were instrumental in putting together a deal requiring the district to accept a $100 million loan, even though it was only $37 million in debt.”

The Alameda County Office of Education and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a state-funded nonprofit that advises districts on financial matters, both played a large role in pushing OUSD into receivership (2003-2009) and forcing the district to take a $100 million state loan. OUSD did not ask for the loan. They had enough money in construction funds to cover the shortfall if the state would approve borrowing from that fund. The state had given other districts this kind of permission but refused it to Oakland.

Kathy Murphy reported in the 2009 East Bay Times, “Six years after the largest CONTINUE READING: Manufactured Education Crisis Engenders Violence | tultican

NYC Public School Parents: What lessons should the Council learn from two of their failed Task forces?

NYC Public School Parents: What lessons should the Council learn from two of their failed Task forces?

What lessons should the Council learn from two of their failed Task forces?

The City Council likes to create task forces to investigate important policy issues and propose changes, but then leaves them unattended and under the entire control of the Mayor, whose office screws them up.  

One recent example is Automated Decision System Task force, created by Council  Local Law 49 ,  that was supposed to investigate city agencies’ use of automated decision-making and deliver a report with recommendations.

The law was widely celebrated and promoted by the Mayor’s office as the first attempt by any municipality to embark on a systematic analysis of the controversial trend of using non-transparent algorithms to make crucial governmental decisions in criminal justice, education and elsewhere. 

In NYC, algorithms have been used by many cities agencies, and are used by the DOE for school enrollment and admission decisions, as well as well as teacher evaluation  and even flagging certain students as potential risk for dropping out through "early warning systems". The use of such algorithms have been criticized as both "black boxes" that are difficult to understand and may further reify various kinds of bias and injustice in a way that is difficult to discern and counteract. According to a hearing transcript, Jimmy Vacca, the bill's prime sponsor, said:

"I strongly believe the public has a right to know when decisions are made using algorithms, and they have a right to know how these decisions are made.When the Department of Education uses an algorithm to assign children to different high schools, and a child is assigned to their sixth choice, they and their family have a right to know how that algorithm determined that their child would get their sixth choice. They should not merely be told that they were assigned to a school because an algorithm made the most efficient allocation of school seats. What is considered to be most efficient? Who decided this? A mathematician, a computer programmer? "

Later, in written response to questions from Education Week, Vacca said he hoped his legislation would also bring transparency and improvements to the district's "inaccurate or erratic teacher evaluations," which he said "can occasionally spit out pretty different scores for the same teachers from year to year, or low scores for good teachers."

The AI institute provided a list of algorithms used in NYC agencies and elsewhere, some of which had egregiously failed. See Gary Rubinstein and Cathy O'Neil, for example, of the travesty that resulted in NYC's  absurd teacher evaluation system – and yet the resulting teacher ratings were printed in all the daily papers at Joel Klein’s encouragement.

Although many of the members appointed to this  Task force were independent experts in the field, (though none with a special interest in education) , the Mayor's office kept a tight hold on the proceedings, which by and large were not open to the public, and no minutes were kept. The co-chair, Jeff Thamkittikasem, director of the Mayor’s Office of CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: What lessons should the Council learn from two of their failed Task forces?