From Leonie Haimson
I find this a confusing, badly edited, and some respects inaccurate article.
The best part is the chart, which shows an astonishing increase of many thousands in support staff and out of classroom positions, including over 2,000 more school secretaries, while the regular teaching staff has shrunk by 1650.
In the ninth paragraph, it says: “Education Department officials say that the size of the teaching corps is in line with the student population, which dropped to 1,029,459 in 2008 from 1,091,717 six years earlier, and that having more support staff frees teachers to concentrate on the classroom. “
But why do we need over 2,000 more secretaries, if the student population has shrunk?
Later it says the DOE claims that these secretaries just moved to schools from district offices, which is hard to believe. 32 districts had 2,000 secretaries?
It doesn’t actually get to the size of the teaching corps until the 27th paragraph – when it should have been the lead:
“The number of regular-classroom teachers has dropped by more than 1,600 to 61,549 since the Bloomberg administration took over, according to the Times analysis, which used seven years of payroll data, budget documents, audits and statistics produced by the department at the request of The Times. “
It also claims: “The department’s stated goal is 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade, but it does not have a target class size for grades above third.” This is false – the state has mandated that the city adopt class size reduction goals for all grades through 12th grade. Why this is ignored is beyond me – esp. as the state has repeatedly cited the city for not making these goals.
The article also repeats the Bloomberg frequent claim of cutting the bureaucracy: “Mr. Bloomberg has spoken proudly of trimming the central administration. “You can’t say, ‘Let’s cut the bureaucracy,’ ” he said in January, amid budget negotiations in Albany. “We have taken $250 million out of the bureaucracy and moved it into the classroom. We have streamlined everything we possibly can.”
But I don’t see any attempt to confirm or deny this claim – which the City Comptroller found no evidence to support.
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
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Today was probably not a good day for this article to be published, as it was eclipsed by other news, although it's nice to see some of the information we all know about detailed in the Times.
"Significantly, the Bloomberg administration has also shifted more responsibility and control over school budgets to principals.
Lily Woo, the principal of Public School 130 in Chinatown, said she has been able to take money that in other years would have been spent on hall supervisors and reallocate it to buy supplies like computers and smart boards, which combine technology with traditional chalk boards. Funds that would have been used for a single reading teacher have instead paid for extra hours for a teacher already on staff to work with small groups of children during their lunch time or a free period.
“If you asked schools to effect change without letting them control their money,” she said, “it would be like giving a cook a Bunsen burner and telling them to make a four-course meal.”
Is this so different from what happened under school-based budgeting? It also doesn't talk about the services that need to be paid out of school budgets that used to be paid for by district budgets.
Controlling Interests
New York Schools Added Jobs, Many at Top Dollar
Ángel Franco/The New York Times
A second-grade student at Public School 130 in Chinatown working on an interactive chalk board. As annual school spending has risen to $22 billion, the Bloomberg administration has given principals more responsibility and control over their school budgets, as well as higher pay.
By JENNIFER MEDINA and ROBERT GEBELOFF
Published: June 30, 2009
In the seven years since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took the reins of the city’s schools, he has rolled out numerous statistics as proof of his accomplishments, including rising graduation rates and test scores.
Controlling Interests
Where Billions Went
This is the fourth article in a series examining the Bloomberg administration’s record on education as state lawmakers debate whether to renew the 2002 law giving the mayor control of city schools, which expires June 30.
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But one of the clearest ways to see what he and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, have done with public education is to track what they have done with its money.
They have overseen a large expansion in annual school spending, to $22 billion from $13 billion, with the additional money pumped in from Mr. Bloomberg’s budget and from the state. And that has allowed them to reshape the system to reflect the central elements of the mayor’s philosophy: smaller schools, relentless assessments of progress, and higher salaries for administrators to attract top talent.
A New York Times analysis of seven years of education spending has found a number of changes in how dollars are allocated. There are now 1,075 more principals and assistant principals, even as overall student enrollment has fallen, largely because the city has broken up a number of underperforming schools into smaller schools. There are more administrators, like academic coaches who track test scores, and more support staff, with tasks like patrolling hallways and monitoring attendance.
And more administrators are earning top dollar. The number of employees making more than $150,000 has risen to 240, up from 175 in 2002, when those salaries are adjusted for inflation. The number earning at least $125,000 has more than tripled, to 1,935.
Some shifts were driven by necessity. While the number of teachers in regular classrooms has dropped, hundreds more special education teachers were added to keep pace with a 26 percent jump in students needing those services. There are also thousands more special education assistants and therapists.
Much of the increase in the overall budget has been used to pay for rising teacher salaries, pensions and benefits, as well as the growing debt for new school construction.
But in many ways the spending patterns reflect the Bloomberg administration’s mindset that money attracts people who can bring business-world success to the public arena. Mr. Klein has supported salaries reaching nearly $200,000 for several of his deputies, saying that the pay reflects their qualifications and responsibilities, and that they could be earning far more in the private sector.
Education Department officials say that the size of the teaching corps is in line with the student population, which dropped to 1,029,459 in 2008 from 1,091,717 six years earlier, and that having more support staff frees teachers to concentrate on the classroom.
Mr. Klein has also pushed principals to take on greater responsibility, and his ideal, he has often stated, is to allow principals to spend their money as they see fit. They can decide, for example, whether to hire another math teacher or to use the money for after-school programs instead. In concert with this philosophy, many of the highest-salaried employees today are principals, not administrators: 53 principals made $150,000 or more last year, whereas none were earning that much as recently as 2006, when those salaries are adjusted for inflation. That does not include performance bonuses of up to $50,000 for principals of schools that perform well on standardized tests.
“There is absolutely a priority to attract and keep the best talent, and there is no doubt better pay helps us with that,” Mr. Klein said, adding, “When I tell people that they can earn $200,000 for being a principal in New York City, that really gets them paying attention.”
In line with the mayor’s affinity for using numbers to judge success, one of the largest areas of growth in the central administration has been in the department’s accountability office, which measures performance on state tests and issues school report cards.
But as legislators decide whether to keep city schools under the mayor’s control, one of the major criticisms is that the school system itself could be more accountable, particularly in the way it spends money.
Since 2002, the department has remained in a gray area of being technically neither a state nor city agency. It has come under repeated criticism from the city comptroller, who is Mr. Bloomberg’s likely opponent in the November mayoral election, and other officials for awarding contracts without bidding, a practice generally prohibited in other city agencies.
“Right now, we don’t have all the information we need,” said Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city’s Independent Budget Office. “People come to us and say, what does this mean, how much are we really spending, what are other ways of looking at this?”
Legislation passed by the State Assembly would hand oversight of the department’s budget to the Independent Budget Office, which could have the ability to independently assess other numbers, like graduation rates and school-level spending. The change has not been opposed by the mayor, and Mr. Klein has said that he would welcome an outside agency looking more closely over the department’s numbers.
“I think much of this is politics,” Mr. Klein said in an interview last week. “We have always been open to oversight and we have been audited repeatedly.”
It is still unclear whether the State Senate, stuck in a leadership battle, will pass the Assembly’s bill or press for more changes to the law. Mr. Bloomberg’s control of the schools was set to expire at midnight Tuesday, meaning that the schools could revert to supervision by an independent Board of Education, although most officials believe the mayor would be able to maintain stewardship until an agreement in Albany is reached.
Shifting Responsibility
The new billions result partly from Mr. Bloomberg’s spending decisions, and partly from a lawsuit filed by a group called Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which successfully argued that Albany was shortchanging the city’s schools. But the group is not necessarily pleased with the results.
“You would think that the school of today compared to the school of yesterday compared to the school of seven years ago would be a richer environment, that there would be a rich art curriculum or more intimate experiences,” said Helaine Doran, the deputy director of the group. “There is just no tactical feeling that things are any better.”
The sheer size of the department’s budget makes it unlike any other city agency. The city’s next largest agency, the Human Resources Administration, which administers welfare, has about $9.2 billion, less than half of the education budget, according to the Independent Budget Office. The Police Department spends $7.3 billion.
Mr. Bloomberg has spoken proudly of trimming the central administration. “You can’t say, ‘Let’s cut the bureaucracy,’ ” he said in January, amid budget negotiations in Albany. “We have taken $250 million out of the bureaucracy and moved it into the classroom. We have streamlined everything we possibly can.”
The overall increase in school spending is partly attributable to increased teaching salaries and pensions as well as paying off debt for school construction, which has more than doubled in the last six years. The mayor has raised teacher salaries 43 percent through contract negotiations, with the average salary now at $70,104.
Generous pensions have been won over many years by the teachers’ union, a consistently powerful force in Albany, where pension laws are passed. The mayor and the teachers’ union recently reached an agreement, which still needs legislative approval, to trim the cost of pensions for future hires.
Significantly, the Bloomberg administration has also shifted more responsibility and control over school budgets to principals.
Lily Woo, the principal of Public School 130 in Chinatown, said she has been able to take money that in other years would have been spent on hall supervisors and reallocate it to buy supplies like computers and smart boards, which combine technology with traditional chalk boards. Funds that would have been used for a single reading teacher have instead paid for extra hours for a teacher already on staff to work with small groups of children during their lunch time or a free period.
“If you asked schools to effect change without letting them control their money,” she said, “it would be like giving a cook a Bunsen burner and telling them to make a four-course meal.” The number of regular-classroom teachers has dropped by more than 1,600 to 61,549 since the Bloomberg administration took over, according to the Times analysis, which used seven years of payroll data, budget documents, audits and statistics produced by the department at the request of The Times.
Meanwhile, the costs of special education teachers, as well as their assistants and supplemental therapists, has soared along with the number of special education students: 103,228 last year, up from 81,268 in 2002.
There are 4,500 new school aides, who typically supervise lunchrooms and school yards. More than 2,000 secretaries who previously worked in district offices, which lost much of their role, now work in the schools, according to Education Department data.
Over all, enrollment has declined, and the average class size has shrunk about 5 percent from kindergarten through eighth grade, to 23.3 from 24.5. The department’s stated goal is 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade, but it does not have a target class size for grades above third.
The teacher-to-student ratio, which includes teachers in areas like physical education or lab who are not assigned to particular classrooms, has decreased slightly: to 1 to 15 in 2008 from 1 to 16 in 2002.
The centralization of the school system has allowed the city to do away with administrators who once worked in regional or district offices. In their place, for example, the Education Department has more than doubled the number of education analysts and education officers, to 724 from 415 in 2002. Lawrence E. Becker, the head of human resources for the Education Department, said that those titles could include everything from a central administrator looking at financial data to a school-based worker monitoring student test performance.
The number of lawyers has also nearly doubled, to 118. Education officials say the additional lawyers are needed to more aggressively pursue teacher discipline cases and to handle a growing number of lawsuits asking the city to pay private school tuition for special education students.
Efforts at Accountability
Chancellor Klein has attracted dozens of administrators who had little experience in public schools. Many came from careers in law or business, with hefty salary requirements. James Liebman, the department’s chief accountability officer, who also teaches part time at Columbia Law School, made just more than $196,000 in 2007, when Chancellor Klein earned $250,000, the same salary he has received since he began in 2002.
“Many of these people could be earning far, far more in the private sector,” Mr. Klein said. Referring to the deputy chancellor who oversees political and labor relations, he added: “Somebody like Chris Cerf could be earning well over $1 million if he were out practicing law.” Mr. Cerf earned $196,575 in 2008.
Photeine Anagnostopoulos, the department’s chief operating officer, said her $177,000 salary was less than what she earned in her first job after graduating from business school 25 years ago.
Of all the changes Chancellor Klein has made during his tenure, perhaps none has attracted more attention than the power he has given to the Office of Accountability, which has created several systems to track and measure student performance and improvement in the schools. According to Education Department numbers, the office grew to about 110 people in 2008 from about two dozen in June 2001.
Officials say the growth reflects the fact that the office’s role has undergone big changes in the last several years. The office now issues annual letter grades for each individual school in addition to developing ways for principals and teachers to monitor student improvement. According to The Times’s analysis, the accountability office payroll totaled $9.4 million in 2008.
Critics have accused Mr. Klein of putting too much faith and money into the accountability office. Last fall, the Independent Budget Office released a report estimating that the department would spend more than $350 million on accountability-
“This is the backbone of the system,” Mr. Klein said. “Without accountability, you spend all the time arguing over what you spent the money on, not what results you got for that money.”
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