Why the NYC Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) Must Go

The Occupy Wall Street movement has ignited our social imagination and helped form a coalition of the 99%. Some of the enemies of the 99% are easy to spot: housing foreclosures, bank bailouts, Citizens United. While not as well known, the New York City Department of Education’s Panel for Educational Policy (the PEP) is just as emblematic of the class warfare the 1% wages. The PEP is meeting tonight, December 14, 2011, to decide on school closings and charter school co-locations in New York City. A group of concerned parents, students, and public school teachers have gathered around the idea of #OccupyTheDOE. They will attend tonight’s meeting to demand that the PEP be disbanded. I want to explain why I agree with them and why I think you should too.

What is the PEP anyway?

The PEP is actually the New York City Board of Education. According to its bylaws, “it shall be known as the Panel for Educational Policy.” The bylaws don’t explain why, but it’s probably because “board of education” implies elected board members. Instead, the 13 voting members of the board are all appointed — 8 by the mayor and 5 by the borough presidents. Since the mayor appoints a majority of members, and proposals require a simple majority to pass, the mayor’s appointees can (and do) make policy by fiat.

Every month the PEP meets and votes on proposals regarding contracts, DOE budgets, grade truncations, and, especially, school closings and charter school co-locations. A co-location occurs when a public school is forced to house a charter school in its building and share resources such as playground, gym, cafeteria, library, classroom space, etc.

Reviewing the minutes for the six meetings for school year 2011-12 (to date), we find that there is not a single proposal where the Mayor’s appointee’s did not vote as a bloc, including in a meeting with 22 school utilization (co-location) proposals. The typical pattern is that the Mayor’s Bloc approves the proposal, the Manhattan and Bronx appointees oppose it, and the other BP appointees swing or abstain. This holds, except, for example, when Manhattan appointee Patrick Sullivan proposed at the August 2011 meeting that they add $29M dollars to the school budget: the Mayor’s Bloc used their 8 “nays” to promptly squash the idea.

In short the Mayor’s Bloc has never met a public school they wouldn’t close or a charter school they didn’t like.

Why it matters

Having such a mockery of democracy sitting at the head of the nation’s largest school district is an abomination. The PEP wields both material and symbolic power, and, as I mentioned at the start, are a clear enemy of the 99%.

Bad policy

They are the main instrument for implementing policy which affects the 1.1 million students in the NYC system. Their main purpose is to shroud policies conceived by the zeroeth percent (Bill Gates, richest man in America for many years) and pushed by our billionaire mayor (the 0.000001%) in the barest trappings of democracy. Without autonomy, diversity of ideas and opinions — and without engaging with the public they serve — the PEP is doomed to make poor decisions.

Hidden curriculum

When education theorists talk about the “hidden curriculum” in schools they mean the ways that schools instill ideas and values in students that are not found in the content of the official curriculum (i.e. textbooks, lessons, exams, etc). Researchers concerned with how poor and working class students are treated in schools, like Jean Anyon and Michael Apple, argue that the schools of the 1% expect their students to become creative leaders and teach accordingly. The main focus for the 99%, though, is to get the right answer and to not disrupt school. To look at it another way, compare the back-to-basic and zero tolerance discipline approach championed by our charters with the creative, loose style found in New York’s elite private schools like Dalton or Trinity. If the the 1% want Trinity for their own kids, why do they want KIPP for everyone else?

Sorry, I got side-tracked. That’s not the hidden curriculum that I wanted to talk about in regards to the PEP. The PEP encodes a different message: parents and communities have no role in the education of their children. The DOE makes its decisions behind closed doors. Parents, teachers, even principals are rarely consulted. This was clear last year, when staff from Uncommon Schools started coming to PS 9, my son’s elementary school, to check out the space before any public hearings on co-locations were announced. The same back room dealing is evident today, where Success Academy is announcing its new Brooklyn charter school before it’s been voted on. Like everyone else, Success Academy knows that there is no chance the PEP will not approve its co-location.

Alienating parents and children from their own learning is the surest way to deprive them of a powerful education. Schools do not have a monopoly on education and cannot succeed if they are not connected to society and communities.

Democracy and education

Almost 100 years ago New York’s own John Dewey reflected on the the role schools and education in a democracy. He eschewed the shallow link between schools and democracy which argues that electoral democracies need an educated population to make informed decisions at the polls. Dewey understood, rather that true democracy greatly transcends voting for elected officials. He writes:

A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder. Democracy and Education, ch 7, 1916

For Dewey, the measure of a democracy is found in the interdependencies linking different segments of society, the ability of members of society to participate as equals, and the possibility that society can change in the public interest. I agree with Dewey that such a robust democracy can only be supported if society’s members experience it in their own education.

We are failing that ideal in many ways in this country. Nowhere is the failure more acute than in the Panel for Educational Policy.