Profesor Martin "El Quijote del GED" attended the Salvadoran Festival in Hempstead on August 8, 2010.  He networked with Telemundo, Grupo Taca, the Workforce Project, and various individuals including Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Salvadorans.  Martin thanks Saul Linares for the invitation.

August 21  Martin will be attending the First Brentwood Soccer Health Carnival in Brentwood State Park.

August 2010. Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood up for religious freedom.  Whether it is Ground Zero or the Holy Ground of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, we should all be allowed to pray together in peace .  I do not agree with things related to the GED that his administration has caused.

There has been a recent increase in gun violence in Huntington and New York City (Harlem and the Bronx).  Where are the GED programs for our at-risk youth?  What has Brentwood done to address this important issue?   I hope the people who have organized have done something about this.

Charter schools in NYC went down from 77 percent proficiency in to 43 percent in reading.  Tradional schools dropped from 69 percent to 42 percent in reading.  In math, the drop went from 93 percent to 63 percent for charter schools and from 82 percent to 54 percent for tradional schools. 

According to the New York Post, 240,000 students are truant in New York City and there is a plan of action that will cut down on truancy by using "volunteer" mentors that those youth will trust.

According to a woman who participated in the Suffolk County Soccer Mental Health Carnival yesterday (August 21), my GED testimony to the New York State Assembly's Education Committee was on C-SPAN.  I am pleased that this testimony was on television and look forward to helping the United States and I would love to appear on Oprah and other national shows.

A young man fighting for the "Dream Act" told the audience that 65,000 students are fighting for residency and a path to citizenship, most of them will not have an opportunity to go to college.  He lives in Huntington and his family is from El Salvador.  He mentioned in his speech that a lot of students drop out of school and I thank him for thinking of the others who are not yet eligible to go to college, those who need a GED.

September 2010

AOL Haitian Diaspora Videos has my video of the OAS Haitian Diaspora Forum, making world news.

North Carolina had a passing rate of 85.2 (GED Hotline percent is 50 percent and not good at all) percent and New York had a passing rate of 53.8 (GED Hotline percent is 52 percent beating North Carolina by two points) percent.  How is that?  North Carolina has a completion rate of 59 percent and New York has a completion rate of 97.5 percent.  All incompleted papers should be counted as failing papers. 

Martin is about to start a trip to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico which will last 12 days.  Meetings are planned in Higuey and Santo Domingo.  A conference could be announced in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but there will be plenty of meetings throughout Puerto Rico.

In late September I had meetings in the office of the governor of Punta Cana and in the Capitolio in Puerto Rico.  I announced the beginning of the formation of the Generation of Sports and Education in San Pedro de Macorís and I hope to bring forth a Sports and Education Conference in Punta Cana in November of 2011, a conference for legends. professionals, minor leaguers, and little leaguers in which Dominican youth will be told not to drop out of school to play baseball.  New resources will be provided for the youth.  Puerto Rico will be affected by this as well and the Consul General of El Salvador on Long Island has told me we can do the same thing for the youth of El Salvador (with soccer as the target audience).

In  October in Puerto Rico I met with staff of various representatives, including Albita Rivera Ramirez and Betito Márquez García.  I met Representative Márquez outside and we talked about education.  This was amazing!

I held an educational conference with the Lighthouse Resource Center in Central Islip.  The panelists were Queen Makkada, Alphonso Bonilla, and Brett Scudder.  A great assist was given by Angel Martinez.  The topics included English language acquistion, GED and dropout prevention, Title 1 Parent Involvement in the schools, Cyber bullying, and the Rikers' Correctional Facility Christian Ministry of Alphonso Bonilla and Mothers Against Peer Pressure.

Spanish GED classes have been eliminated from Central Islip High School.  Tax payers are being denied their right to services in an arbitrary and capricious decision (the school could have eliminated a class in English if that were possible).  The English language class in the Central Islip Library was suspended, apparently to lack of students.  This again seems amazing to me when I know that the school has the ability to mobilize people who are not attending class to their library program.  An investigation is needed in this matter.

I was told about a private charter school in New York City where the counselor messed up going over students' credits and the students were told they had to take one more year of high school.  At least a few of them dropped out and one of them called me.  She learned on the internet that she can take the GED because she was discharged a year ago from school.  The others, maybe, were not so lucky, because none of them were informed by the charter school about their GED rights.  Now I do not feel that I have to publicize the counselor's name and the school, too.  Chancellor Klein and the New York Post feel that all teachers should have their ratings posted so that parents and community people can know who are the poor teachers and the ones "beyond" help, quoting the New York Post editorial.  It brings to mind many things, but let me address my removal from one of the "rubber rooms" of New York City.  The Deputy Superintendent told me "We could have fired you, but you have a clean record."  What a great way to treat someone who was going back to the classroom!  The truth is they could not fire me and they lost the entire battle in a grievance procedure.   Why couldn't the man just say to me that I was going back to the classroom and leave it at that?  The story doesn't even end there because the word was given to people at my next site and everyone was watching every move that I made including teachers.  We cannot take the teachers back to a time when there was a "master-slave" relationship that was taught at the college level and enforced in the schools.  We cannot take schools back to the temperamental days of decentralization under the guise of mayoral control.  Let us be fair and accurate and that clearly is missing because the whole system is flawed.

How can student scores indicate who is "beyond" help?  This is what the New York Post wrote to be provocative.   Just keep in mind that education is not the profession of the editor and I think the New York Post should declare a moratorium on the matter.  Teachers worked hard in my last GED program,  but I knew they could not help the students much.  I predicted to one student that she would only go up in GED social studies  (the subject I taught her),  and I was right.  Her best mark stayed the same in four subjects.  She felt she was not learning anything, but that should not happen.  Since the next test may be slightly harder than the last one, nobody can guarantee that the student will go up during that time frame.  Why should the teacher be held responsible?  All conditions were satisfied by the staff and the student could not perform well enough.   Many years before,  a student who was supposed to get  50 in math on her GED test, failed math badly  It was not my fault as you will see.  I asked her what happened and she told me she had had an argument with her mother the night before and could not concentrate.  People who know GED know that it was almost impossible to bring a student up 16 points on the old test (before 2002),  but that is what happened and the girl earned her GED.  I guess you can say that checking test scores and holding teachers accountable has only limited value (much less than people think).  The parents can hurt or help their children by their lack of help, their negative conduct, and all of the positive conduct and great educational resources that they provide, including private tutoring.  Advocates like the chancellor and the New York Post are misleading lots of people.

Mayor Bloomberg, Hispanics Across America, and the bodegas have known about my efforts to help communities through education (through the GED)  for years.  This important program has not been taken advantage of in almost all communities and now there is a call to arm 14,000 delis or bodegas.  I feel more like Noah than ever before.  The City Council of New York needs an educational conference now to address this critical issue.

November 2010

I attended the GED and ESL Educational Conference in the Bronx Supreme Court Building on November 15, 2011.  This event was coordinated by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. (hosted by) and New York City Councilman Speaker Christine Quinn, but other members of the city council participated in this effort.  This event will be going out to the other boroughs soon.

I have told two people who are involved in parental involvement in the schools or Title 1 No child Left Behind Act that I want to know as soon as possible how many of the 47 schools that are slated to be closed were set up legally under federal law.  I also want to know from each city council member how many schools in the district they serve the very same thing.  Now before things get out of hand, there have to be schools that succeeded without being set up legally, of course.  The fact remains that the city may lose billions of future dollars for not being in compliance.   I would also love to see how many principals who were not in compliance were disciplined or fired for not setting up legally.  It seems to me that once one or two complaints went out about not being set up legally under federal law, all of the schools should have been informed and a list should be available of schools that are not in compliance right now.  It would be nice to know what percentage of those principals who are not in compliance were hired by the chancellor.

DECEMBER 2010

 The DREAM Act failed to pass, but we need millions of immigrants to take the GED.  We've needed it for years, even before the DREAM Act was proposed.

A very important development in Suffolk County will be the use of police dogs to search for drugs in schools.  This effort combined with greater parental involvement at home and around the home can lead to great dividends.  If the combined efforts can cut down on drug use in and around schools, teen success will rise without any new programs by schools and teachers.  If the schools improve by cutting down on drugs and gangs and the hostile, often violent environment that they create, we won't have any need for charter schools.

 It was reported to me in mid-December that a lawyer or lawyers were finding out which schools in NYC were in compliance with Title 1 No Child Left Behind.

The State Education Department needs great help in understanding GED.  Let me see what I can do to help it,

December 31, 2010.  Happy New Year to all including Joel Klein.  In today's news he states that there were 20,000 more graduates from 2002-2010.  Just a few years ago there were complaints by City Councilman Robert Jackson that the numbers provided by the city were higher than the numbers he obtained from the state.  Just a few years ago, there were Dropout Prevention Conferences in New York highlighting that there were 140,000 disconnected youth in New York City.  My study of school admission showed that there were thousands more students admitted into the high schools and most were expected to graduate regardless of the efforts of the Klein administration.  We have to look at the numbers that increased because of the efforts of District 79.  We have to know when those efforts got stronger, before or after the Dropout Prevention Conferences that took place.  The statistics are there.  I still want to know iif GED diplomas are being used in the figures, because they were not used years ago.  I would say the picture of 20,000 more graduates remains cloudy to me at this time, but it could all be cleared up by doing a statistical report that is honest, accurate, and badly needed.  Happy New Year one again and thanks for reading the GED Hotline News.

2011 News

January 2011

 It was told to me by a young woman in NYC that one of the city college programs will not take her back until September because she had her last unexcused absence.  She is so close to passing the OPT and I mean so close.  She found me and I recommended the GED Compass to her.  It is totally unfair to kick a student out because of absences.  City money is taxpayer money and she does pay her taxes.

I thank the Education Voters Institute of New York for the following suggestion which was in their report.  Please read the report and forward any suggestions, too.

Elected officials should:

Steer Title 1, state aid, and discretionary funding to programs that facilitate,

directly and indirectly, parent and community involvement (e.g., Englishlanguage

programs and GED-prep programs).

Education Voters Institute of New York

64 Beaver Street

New York, NY 10004

Email: nyinfo@edvoters.org

I heard today that eight small schools that were opened after the larger schools were closed are failing.  An investigation and report report were made in New York City detailing this information.

In addition, it was in a newspaper article today, there was a report that bonuses ($25,000) were being held for principals in two schools who were accused of wrong doing, including awarding course credit for students who did not deserve it.

The newspapers across our nation are telling the story of recent segregation of Black students in Pennsylvania.  Take out the segregation from what is happening and you may have one of the most important educational developments of the 21st Century.  This could be more important than the impact Bill Gates, Joel Klein, and Michelle Rhee have had on schools all over the country.  For Arne Duncan's information, it may be more important than merit pay and charter school openings.  I hope to provide more information later on.  It was great to see Pedro Noguera in the CNN video.  Watch the video!

 February 2011.

Amid talk of school closing and reports of lack of transparency by the Department of Education and other problems, now comes the report that the number of minorities may be falling in the elite high schools in New York City since last year.  The latest percentage is down to 11 percent total for the Hispanics (6%) and African-Americans (5%).  The percentage had been 13% in 2009 and 14% in the two years prior to 2009.  This may be a strong indicator that the Department of Education was not providing a world class education to those youth or whatever the former chancellor called it.  I surely understand what is going on.  In Kracow, Poland a couple of years ago, I learned about just how successful Jews were  as a minority in that country and the growth of the well educated Asian students has been well documented in my eyes since my late uncle told me about the Chinese that were in his high school class.  We are proud of the success of the Asian community, but isn't there something that can be done for others?

I spoke with a staff member about the segregation of students at the McCaskey East High School  in Lancaster, PA and I was told that the segregation had ended.  I was also told that the mentoring homeroom has been in effect for about a year and that is what I am really interested in knowing more about.  I expected the segregation to end quickly and it did.

Michelle Rhee darling of reformers and conservatives.  Michelle Rhee,  according to recent reports,  was not as good as her resume indicated.  Nobody attained the great improvement in the entire system that she claimed she achieved.  According to what I read, it was her principal who told her about that great leap in improvement of her students.  Perhaps this was just a mutual admiration society, a principal that wanted her to succeed badly.  I called a school involved in  controversy in Compton, California and talked to its principal because Michelle Rhee got involved in the controversy, a possible school closing and a new beginning of a school in a community with a large Latino population (possibly with lots of undocumented immigrants).  I really want to know why a great teacher has to fire 1,000 teachers in Washington, D.C. and not retrain them,  using the great methods that were used in the classroom.  Periodically, I tutor someone or people in my community and they are amazed about how quickly they learn.  I do it because I can do it.  I have done it over and over.  Michelle Rhee must prove she can do it.  The school year is not over yet.  Will someone in New York City invite her to do it?

 March 2011.  Michelle Rhee wrote an article that appeared in the New York Post where she touts the great success of Mayor Bloomberg in producing great test result scores, scorest hat were thrown out by the Commissioner of Education David Steiner because the test was way too easy.  I guess that Michelle Rhee either does not know what happened or she chooses to reject the findings of the regents and the commissioner or she has some other reason for doing what she does.  I just feel that we need a much more transparent debate.

The number of charter school students making it into elite schools has fallen sharply.  In 2009, 9.2 % of 459 applicants passed entrance exams and in 2011 5 % of 677 students passed.  I would suggest that the charter schools hold a public conference to explain all of the figures along ethnic lines and provide other explanations.  There was almost a 50% increase in the number of applicants taking the test, but a drop anyway in the raw number who were accepted and that is bad for minority communities.  The number dropped from 42 to 35.  In other words with 218 more applicants there was a decline in acceptance.  It seems to me, at this time, that people registering their children in those charter schools that are sending students to take the tests should think back at all of the "sales pitches" that were made to them about how successful their children will be at the end of their schooling.  It is possible they were sold on the idea based on something that was not true.  Even a 1% increase among the additional 218 would have given an increase from 42 to 44.  Something is wrong.  In addition, one would hope to see an increase among from 9.2 % to let us say 9.5% which would add an additional 14 students to the list of acceptances.  Again something has gone wrong!

I really did not know that Last In First Out or laying off teachers based on seniority goes back to 1940.  It apparently made sense for its time to a majority of the city council. Hard times were brought on by the Great Depression and families needed economic protection and they partnered with others to get that protection.  What would have been the impact of laying off thousands of teachers with the highest salaries?  Family disaster.  It is the same today, with a different twist.  The recession is not as bad as the Great Depression, but millions of families are on the brink of disaster.  Black and Latino teachers may are hit very hard today by the current policy.  This is surely a factor among elected officials who are from those minorities or supportive of minorities.  I am reasonably sure that I know a few in the Bronx.  Race politics is surely part of the current political atmosphere and people do not  seem to have a way out of it.  Elected officials are there to represent their constituents, even based on race.  If I am right in assessing the mood in 1940 and taking into account that 14,000 teachers were laid off in 1976 (4,600 expected today even though New York City has a surplus of billions of dollars), the same economic hardship will be hitting families if we repeal LIFO.  Nothing seems to be fair in the Big Apple.  Why?  Nothing is fair.  That is why it is mostly about the budget and if we keep doing things because of the budget,  America will fall apart at the seams, especially if the wealthy are paying much less tax than it did decades ago.  Democracy is falling apart, even because of democratically made decisions.  Productivity has shot up since 1970 and people are paid less.  So the rich keep getting richer.  It was not much different in America when we did not have democracy or at least the democracy that evolved from the Founding Fathers.

In those days there was "White Flight" from New York City and New York City has been restored in recent decades.  I really do not know what the tax percentage of the wealthy was before 1976, but we know it is down and that impacts on the entire system.  So whether it is "White Flight" or redistributing wealth to the rich and falling short in city revenues, we all have to pay.   If the poor cannot pay, someone has to pay for all services and the demand is for excellence.  If the middle class cannot pay what it is needed, someone has to pay.  Michael Bloomberg is one of those who have to pay.

 Camden, New Jersey  is about to rehire 50 police officers of 167 (surge in crime)  who were let go.  Did they use LIFO there?   Do we use LIFO in  New York City and Long Island?  What happened to protecting the children or playing the "children card" in laying off police officers?  Suddenly the children are less important?   We should have the best police and teachers and that is where training counts, training that is ongoing. 

Today we find out that the administration did not program students expected to graduate for enough gym.  Enough GYM!   Several years ago in Florida, thousands of students did not pay the state exams, but 1,000 of them were Black students who were not programmed for courses and it resulted in their failure on the state exams.  Jeb Bush gave them justice called graduation.  The administration is doing an injustice in Queens by making the students who want to pass gym go to a local gym (at their own expense).  They are encouraged or advised to take exercise games on Nintendo's Wii.  In addition they letter is telling the students, parents, and community that this will be "invigorating and fun."  Just give those youth their diplomas if they pass everything else.  It was not the students' fault.  Even the Regents can learn something from what took place in Florida and adjust to it.  If there is a law that prevents it, act  quickly to make amends so those youth can attend graduation.  And the mayor is telling us that LIFO is not fair and his administrators do not even know about a precedent established in Florida that gave justice to its people.

Here you can compare what is in New York Newsday with things being circulated in the New York Post.  The former on March 27, 2111 on page 3 wrote about teacher ratings based on student improvement on state tests and it says "Judging teachers by that criteria can be dificult, education experts say.  Some statistical measurements meant to help accomplish this have turned out to be flawed."  The State has been working on changing "No Child Left Behind" for years and that systems rating of schools, which I feel has been flawed as well.  A big mess has been created with no good fix in sight and the Republicans and some Democrats who have been misled (but I respect their right to disagree) just want teachers to be fired.  The same article reveals that some school districts have no appeal beyond the office of the superintendent.  I had a letter in the file case that went to arbitration and the arbitrator quickly knew that the letter was full of flaws.  Yes it cost money to arbitrate and eliminating this or allowing a system to exist where the superintendent has the final word is dangerous to men and women because school districts know how to stack the deck against teachers and other personnel.  An injustice is an injustice is an injustice.  Even the opinions of officials in the top districts have to be looked at more deeply. 

April 2011

I got the opportunity to talk to Mayor Michael Bloomberg today on the John Gambling Radio Show.  I asked the mayor Why can't we get the gang members into GED testing seats faster than anyone in the state?  The mayor said we cannot get the gang members into the GED prepartion programs.  I did not have an opportunity to transform the mayor's thinking.  There are, by the way, over 900 gang members studying GED in a city in Texas, studying with the Boys and Girls Club.  Did I make a strong critical point here?

With New York State Regents support only about a month away, the teacher evaluation system is fast on its way for change.  Student testing is at the heart of the matter, but the system really will need a critical test itself, because the students, parents, and the administration are causes as well.  Here is one of my classic GED stories from the Astoria Housing Project and please remember that GED testing is education and not some strange UFO.  My student took the GED and failed by a lot, at that time it was 16 points.  I emphasize the student did not fail be one, two, or three points.  This was a terrible moment.  I asked the student what went wrong because the predictor score was much higher.  A fight with the parent the night before was the reply, resulting in poor concentration.  So sigh of relief was in the air or contemplated.  I had confidence in myself and in my student.  My student passed the next time and went up 16 points in the math, the area that lacked those 16 points.  The other scores remained the same and the diploma landed safely.   The student attended graduation for earning the diploma.   Now this was a New York City GED program that permitted students to attend graduation who had not even taken the real test.  So you can quickly learn how all three parties can be problematic. 

THE SOLUTION is to allow students to retest within weeks.  So the teacher will need to be part of an appeal process or the entire body of students who fail should be retested or all those who want to be retested should be retested.  GED candidates are delayed retesting for months in New York State and that is one reason why New York State is a bad state for education, impacting on minorities the most as it does in public school testing.  Other GED testing jurisdictions do test people the next day and this is accomplished by marking the initial test the same day and providing the results to the test taker.

This is from August 2001.  This is information provided at that time for Michael Bloomberg.  And this is before the new, harder test that hit the GED nationally like an earthquake in 2002.

The NYC GED programs have around 20,000 students.  Attendance is poor.  The number of students who get the GED is inadequate.  Offsite and ASHS provide people with percentages that go up, but the number or total has fallen.  I believe that the State mistakenly negotiated the percentage with those programs.  It is my goal to dramatically increase the total number of GED diplomas.

When students leave programs, the ones who barely pass the GED are still poorly prepared for college placement exams.  There must be continuing education classes for students in this category.  Students must get out of school quickly so that they can get jobs and the GED helps them get better paying jobs. 

A New York Post editorial called the appointment of Cathie Black the worst decision of the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg.  The appointment was a continuation of the policies of Chancellor Joel Klein.  That has to be factored in as part of the  worst decision.  Things may continue with the appointment of Dennis Walcott.  Bloomberg's leadership was greatly diminished by decisions made long before Chancellor Klein took office.  Ask me about it.  We take note of the fact that Cathie Black was appointed for her success in private industry running a big corporation and that Dennis Walcott does not have that experience.  I guess Dennis Walcott deserves the opportunity after serving the mayor all these years.

I told Queen Makkada that Cathie Black would not last long.   From the outset, I wanted to work with Cathie Black and I attended a small meeting where  a staff member of her office was present.   The reports of what was going on behind the scenes are bad for Cathie Black and Mayor Bloomberg.  I know that people in power do not understand the key educational issues of our time and their staff members have to help them understand.  The same staff members are part of the problem.  In other words the staff members applauding Chancellor Dennis Walcott are part of the problem.  I am not going to say anything bad here about Dennis Walcott, but obviously no one is perfect and  the Bloomberg administration has not done what I want.  My recent question to Mayor Bloomberg on the John Gambling Show and his answer are a part of that.  In other words, I do not think he has learned anything from all of my articles and especially the articles about him.  The big question is will Chancellor Walcott change and will he change the mayor?  We can help more people without using the current GED programs, the wonderfully structured or reconstructed GED programs of the Department of Education.  Just ask the mayor and he will surely tell you just how great they are.  Nationally GED diploma numbers are flat and I assume that things are worse in New York City.

I have spent some of my retirement time straightening out the educational mess created by leaders and their staff.  This can only happen when someone takes control and makes things happen.  We want Chancellor Dennis Walcott to take control and make things happen.  Now  the mayoral control we know today may be the result of Dennis Walcott and the mistakes he has made in guiding Michael Bloomberg.  It would be good to know things behind the scenes that have occurred between them as  well as the things we have learned about Michael Bloomberg, Cathie Black, and her staff. 

Here is a point to absorb about GED.  There are two cities.  They are both equal.  We could say the same thing about two large families that are equal.  They have the same number of adults who have no GED.  One city sends a small number of people to take the GED and has a high success rate, approaching 90 percent.  Let me make up the numbers to show you something concrete.  There are 1 million adults in each city who need the GED.  The first city mentioned sends 10,000 people and 9,100 pass.  The second city has a 45 percent pass rate.  This city sends 50,000 adults to take the test and 22,500 earn their diplomas.  If a family had 19 high school dropouts and three out of three passed the GED and the other family sent all 19 to take the test and 9 passed.  If education is a civil right and the key to the future, which family would be stronger?  You see my friends, the latter would really help a city more.  There would be more people moving up to higher education.  More minorities would be able to get jobs with the GED.  The military would be able to take in better young men and women into the military because of the growth in eligibility?  The police departments would be able to do the same thing in jurisdictions such as Suffolk County where only a higher school diploma or GED is the minimum requirement.  In other jurisdictions such as New York where two years of college is required, it would only take another two years to make those GED graduates eligible for the police force.  We could help many more gang members turn away from drugs, crime, and violence and help more men and women in reentry programs to stay out of prison.  We can help more people without the current GED programs and accomplish the goals outlined in this paragraph.  Mobilizing  only 21,000 people would surpass the 9,100 diplomas earned through classroom participation.  There are over 1.5 million adults in New York City who are not being serviced by GED classes.

I am not paid to criticize Mayor Bloomberg, but it pays to criticize him and anyone else connected with the Department of Education.  Things have been done wrong and things have not been improved that much.  Things have not been improved that much and overall the city is weaker than before.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott wants the parents to be fully involved in the schools.  According to today's news this is his mission to help the students.    I wrote last year that schools have to be in compliance with Title 1 No Child Left Behind and a  DOE staff member was assigned to make sure the schools are in compliance.  I joined up with Queen Makkada to make sure that parents were more educated so they could educate their children.  On the average, this is what helps children as much or more than most things (reading to children, encouraging good attendance, home study habits, and much, much more).  It seems that Cathie Black did not focus well on this task or was not properly advised by the mayor's staff, including Dennis Walcott.  If the success of the schools under the Department of Education is due to parent involvement, what has the Department of Education really been doing about these matters since control of the schools was handed over to the mayor?  Every school could have had the plan and resources to step up to the plate and hit a home run for its children.  Things were neglected by the Department of Education as that department  kept busy closing schools instead of building up the capacity for parent leadership.

It should be noted here by all that a study of parent involvement should be published by the DOE.  Are school closings that result in the success of students because those parents are involved in the schools or are they due to the closings themselves?  Were those successful children on their way to success anyway because of their parents being involved all along.  Has this all been a trick by charter school operators and others to stack the deck in their favor? 

We cannot take kindly  to letters of support for the new chancellorship if there is living proof that he was part of the problem.  It would be much better to have a chancellor right now who has a proven record in improving parent involvement and that is where a local or national search could have  been critically important.  Just as the mayor and others are looking to keep good teachers or hire excellent teachers, at this moment with the budget crisis, the mayor  should have used the same litmus test for selecting the chancellor.  There have to be thousands of common citizens connected with education who are as competent of more competent than either of the last two choices.  People on the city council may be more qualified and others who are making history in the state may be also.  This is another report from Danenberg News and not Bloomberg News.  What do you think?  I say budget considerations dictate hiring someone with a proven track record.  Actually that applies all the time, regardless of whether there is a surplus or deficit in the budget.

 Chicago has a new school boss.  Is Jean-Claude Brizard more qualified.  Sure he is!  Do I see any difference in Brizard, Cathie Black, or Dennis Walcott.  No I do not.  It is the same game plan, largely a losing one.  Barack Obama and Rahm Emmanuel are both off the mark and Michael Bloomberg is up there with them.  There was no miracle in New York City, no miracle in the Harlem Children's Zone, and no miracle in Rochester.  Chicago may have a miracle, but we have to wait and see the results.

May 2011

Kansas and South Dakota have recently raised the passing mark on parts of the GED test, apparently not knowing or not caring that those marks are valid in other states.  This is the wrong direction for a state to take.  Florida did it and hurt thousands of test takers over  a three year period.  It is a little known fact that Joan Auchter,  the head of GED Testing in 2002, wrote to Governor Jeb Bush and asked him to keep the same scores are the rest of the states when the new test came out.  He agreed and thousands more people have passed the GED in Florida since.  I suggest that Kansas and South Dakota reverse course and grant diplomas to people that it unnecessarily failed since their marks are valid in other states (like New York).  Kansas and South Dakota are similar in some ways, but South Dakota does mobilize more people to the GED than Kansas.  Kansas had a higher passing percentage than South Dakota.  Kansas has an almost perfect record on GED test completion and that is good.  South Dakota has a much lower rate of completion on the GED test.  The total number of diplomas that they gave out in 2009 was 4,248.  So the process of giving out a few hundred  diplomas to people who  really earned them won't take that long.  Thank goodness!

 June



Michal Goodwin and Yoav Gonen in the New York Post on June 29 published information that I have been providing to the Regents and even the White House.  He posts the email address of Chancellor Walcott which is dmwalcott@schools.nyc.gov and tells how teachers are reporting principals for falsifying marks.  I think there should be much more scrutiny of the alternative programs and their graduates.  The education debate has been crooked in New York and elsewhere.  Crooked involves the reporting by news media also.  Gonen reports that the new teacher rating system is being challenged in court, the use of student scores as forty percent of a teacher's rating.  I told the Regents that there would be lawsuits that will bring high costs.  In looking back at my reading of the book about Geoffrey Canada and it seems to me that the firing of the principal because the exam marks were not good thing was unjustified.  She was focusing on giving the students a rounded education and since the marks were thrown out by the New York State Commissioner David Steiner, I feel that there is no concrete proof that the school did not do great.  Given the current climate created by the media, the mayor, and others, don't you think that justice should be done?  If the old principal wants her job back, should she not be rehired to run that school?

The Educational Conference was held in the Assembly of God Church in Farmingdale, New York.  "The Crops Are Barren" conference in the New Life Church.  Sgt. Eric Heysinger a U.S. Army recruiter , Queen Makkdad, the District Parent Advisory Council President of District 27 in Queens, New York, and I spoke about our areas of interest in education.  Pastor Anthony Pelella and Angel Martinez spoke about restoring family values through education.  Questions were taken from the audience.

 July 2011.

There will be a Save Our Schools Rally in Washington, D.C. on July 30.

August 2011.

The New York Newsday editorial correctly points out the importance of the philanthropy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and billionaire George Soros.  This is an idea that needs to be revised immediately.    The editorial could have revealed that those youth who number around 315,000 have little chance over the next three years to attain a GED in New York City and that GED is required for jobs, military service, and college admission.  Mr. Soros got trapped into something that he should rethink and Mayor Bloomberg should know better because I have sent my articles over the years to Dennis Walcott and the mayor.  As far as I know, the maximum number of GED diplomas in New York City recently in one year was 13,000 and it has been far less than that.  The Housing project initiative needs adequate GED test funding through multimillion dollar contributions by philanthropists and Spanish GED testing that has to be restored to the pre-Bloomberg era.  There is a shortage of huge Spanish GED diplomas in a city that needs more Spanish GED programs and diplomas by those youth.  That Spanish diploma can qualify people for jobs and the military. 

 Mayor Bloomberg must go back to the drawing board now.  There is much more that I need to discuss with Mayor Bloomberg and George Soros.  Hispanics must and can learn English faster.  Mayor Bloomberg knows about a possible "terrific" way to learn a language that I presented to him two years ago.  He has to use such information because it is important to those youth and their parents.  It is vital to the future of the city.  The Newsday editorial must be used as a launching pad to promote something better for New York right now.

In addition, the youth of Long Island need the same aggressive help, including the GED Compass of New York City, promotion of the GED by elected officials, and GED practice testing to help people who cannot attend GED classes.  From Hempstead to Riverhead things are not that good among our troubled youth.

A  New York State  Supreme Court judge ruled that student performance cannot be used in the dismissal of a teacher who has a U rating for two consecutive years.  Judge Michael C. Tyler gave his decision this week, pointing out that other measurements have to be used. 

In New York City, there was a ruling that teacher ratings can be published for parents and others to see.  UFT President Michael Mulgrew announced that the union would appeal the decision. 

 October 2011

We must thank Yoav Gonen once again with contributions made by Ikimulisa Livingston and Liz Sadler as they revealed that New York's schools are not as safe as the Department of Education has portrayed.  The article in the New York Post reveals that there were over 20,000 more incidents than reported by the state.  The DOE says it disputed the statistics in June and that was appropriate.  John Bowne High School went from 509 incidents to 3, JHS 162 went from 369 incidents to 1, Martin Van Buren High School went from 349 to 2, IS 27 went from 347 to 11, and IS 73 went from 345 incidents to 14.  Even I could make a mistake in reporting statistics.  We all can make mistakes.  Yoav Gonen reports that the statistics were "quietly" uploaded last month on the DOE website.  At the very least, the people working on the information that was uploaded could have been told by the people in charge that we have to wait and put a footnote there for the public to see telling people who are interested in the progress and safety of schools that the DOE was questioning the veracity of the statistics.  On the other hand, if people at the DOE believe that those schools were dramatically made safer in a year, this information should have led to another investigation to find out about the key contributing factors that made the schools safer so that other schools could improve.  Given the way things are done by the DOE, I can see where they would not want to share that vital information with other schools that may be failing.  I bet you have read my mind and said "Because they want to close the schools down instead of sharing information that will improve them."  And judges who rule in favor of the DOE may not take this important fact into consideration at all.   And then the NAACP and UFT get blamed for asking or demanding that the Chancellor improve schools instead of shut them down.  It would really be wise to have a seasoned educator look at all of the statistics and not just upload them.