The latest internal Department of Education emails to come to light are mostly dark: The 228 pages released today contain large swaths of blacked-out text.
But between redactions, a few messages stand out — including one in which charter operator Eva Moskowitz speedily outlines an agenda that became the driving focus of former Chancellor Joel Klein’s last year in office.
Urging Klein to be “SUPERAGGRESSIVE in [the] standard of excellence” for schools’ academic performance, Moskowitz wrote, “If folks criticize you for having the bar way too high, you know you are inching closer to success.”
The emails were part of the yield from a massive Freedom of Information Law request filed by the United Federation of Teachers. The union wanted to see the communication exchanged between the city Department of Education and charter school supporters during a period when legislators were under pressure to lift the cap on the number of charter schools in the state. That cap was raised in May 2010.
Hundreds of emails between Klein and charter advocates were released last month, showing that Klein kept careful tabs on the legislative action and was quick to connect advocates with support.
The latest batch of emails — all from December 2009 — are mostly among department officials. The emails that are not redacted — a minority of those included in the release — show that Klein was in the loop on everything from suspicious odors at elementary schools to pitches about new partnerships.
Many of the emails have nothing to do with charter schools but instead reflect the department’s broader policy initiatives, such as the use of data and technology-infused teaching. In one, then-Deputy Chancellor John White pushed another official to secure philanthropic funds for a new data management program called ARIS Local, saying, “If we reduce private ask, I don’t like public procurement we would need to do given exposure on ARIS.”
In another message, after education entrepreneur Tom Vander Ark pitched White on a fully online school, Klein said, “Keep me in the loop on this.” (That school folded before opening.) And when Roland Fryer, the Harvard sociologist who conducted experiments about student behavior in city schools, offered his assistance upon his move to New York City, Klein suggested that Fryer look at an individualized learning program called Time To Know that would be rolling out in city schools.
Charter school advocates do make appearances in the emails — usually to discuss fraught space-sharing arrangements. Backers of Girls Prep, a Lower East Side school, and PAVE Academy in Red Hook, Brooklyn, both kept Klein up to date on their schools’ space crises. And Michael Duffy, then the head of the department’s charter schools office who now runs a charter network of his own, urged Klein to let two schools in the Icahn network remain in public space until the network had constructed a new building.
But no other charter operator or advocate had as many suggestions for Klein as Moskowitz, a former City Council education committee chair who runs the Success Academies Network. Their relationship is no surprise: In 2010, the New York Daily News obtained emails between Moskowitz and Klein that showed frequent communication in 2008 about space-sharing, the teachers union, and charter school politics.
The single email from Moskowitz to Klein included in today’s release — sent Sunday, Dec. 20, 2010 — is barely redacted at all. The subject is “Greetings,” but Moskowitz wastes little time on niceties before launching into a pair of suggestions for the chancellor.
The first suggestion was to raise the bar on what the city considers success — and to close more schools that don’t meet it. “Academic bar and school closures. Want to urge you to be even more aggressive,” she wrote. “Whatever number pick as reasonable double.”
The next spring, the United Federation of Teachers won a lawsuit to halt 19 school closures. But the following fall, Klein’s last as chancellor, he placed 26 schools on the chopping block, far more than in any previous year.
The second suggestion was to take on the teachers union over the issue of the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers who are paid but do not have permanent positions. The pool was created under the terms of the city’s 2005 contract with the UFT.
“Would go hard on reserve rooms and unions, showing victiims [sic] kids and talented teachers,” Moskowitz wrote. “Blame em. Every hour of the day.”
In February 2010, a leaked list of the city’s contract demands showed that being able to fire teachers in the ATR pool was a top ask. Klein made the issue the topic of his last message to principals before leaving the department in December 2010.
The city has not won that right in the year and a half since. Last month, Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced that the city would instead offer retirement and resignation incentives to teachers in the ATR pool — something the union had long requested. City and union officials met to negotiate that change for the first time this week.
Moskowitz’s email also presages a personal policy shift. Before 2009, she had focused her network’s school-creation efforts on low-income neighborhoods. But in 2010, she sought space on the Upper West Side, which has more middle-class families.
In her email to Klein, Moskowitz offers one reason why she might want to bring her brand of school reform to the Upper West Side — and, this fall, to middle-class areas in Brooklyn. “Recently visited a high performing traditional public school to see teaching and was utterly appalled,” she wrote to Klein. “The scores are decent bc kids come in well-educated. The teaching was incredibly mediocre and noone minded.”
“If going to leave nyc a fundamentally better place given schools not only in poor neighborhoods but even in more affluent neighborhoods, the bar will have to be SO much higher,” she advised.
Moskowitz’s complete email to Klein is below:
XXXXXXXXXXX Before I do wanted to broach two topics 1)Academic bar and school closures. Want to urge you to be even more aggressive. Whatever number pick as reasonable double. Whatever bar pick make it higher by at least a factor of 2. Bottom 10-15 percent is NOWHERE near enough. It will take another century if we do not name the standard. Have 4 years — really 3 in politics. If going to leave nyc a fundamentally better place given schools not only in poor neighborhoods but even in more affluent neighborhoods, the bar will have to be SO much higher. Recently visited a high performing traditional public school to see teaching and was utterly appalled. The scores are decent bc kids come in well-educated. The teaching was incredibly mediocre and noone minded. The way I look at it this is the last chance to be SUPERAGGRESSIVE in standard of excellence. Use all of talk surrounding reform and global economy (being known as chancellor w high academic standards–in addition to taking on system) to pump up that ante. If folks criticize you for having the bar way too high, you know you are inching closer to success. 2) Teaching fellows. Get massive cuts etc. And political heat. But cannot afford (for children’s sake) to crank up talent machine and let that go to waste. Would go hard on reserve room and unions, showing victiims kids and talented teachers. Blame em. Every hour of every day. Pr offensive. Never seen your team do and this is a great issue. Everyone is on your side except union bosses, assuming you make argument. This wld be win win. Set doe up to address reserve issue and help charters w critical talent need. Make it campaign to not let talented people go just bc of intransigence of unions. Obviously I say this bc believe right thing to do but also it will be hard to open up so fast high performing schools wo a system wh really doesn’t care where talent goes if it helps kids get an excellent, free public ed Have been meaning to reach out on these but got swamped.