By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: May 18, 2010
It was meant to be a cheerful visit to put the spotlight on successful teachers and charter schools — an event that more-cynical observers tend to call a dog and pony show. But when Arne Duncan, the federal education secretary, arrived in Brooklyn on Tuesday for a tour of some of its schools, he was stepping into a sensitive moment in New York education politics. News releases and rejoinders flew during the day, and even deciding which schools he would visit provoked a squabble.
Mr. Duncan is prodding states to overhaul their education laws with the carrot of millions of dollars in competitive federal grants, under a program known as Race to the Top.
Among other changes, states can score points by raising the number of charter schools. The New York Senate has passed a bill to do just that, but the teachers’ unions are fighting efforts to pass the same bill in the Assembly. The second round of Race to the Top applications is due June 1.
When word circulated that Mr. Duncan planned to visit Kings Collegiate Charter School in Brownsville and Public School 65 in East New York, Randi Weingarten, the former head of the city’s teachers union, who is now president of the American Federation of Teachers, called him to express her disapproval. The principal of P.S. 65, Daysi Garcia, is one of only a few principals who have managed to have a teacher fired for incompetence. Several teachers have left since she took over several years ago, in part, union officials said, because they felt Ms. Garcia had treated them disrespectfully. So at the union’s request, Mr. Duncan’s aides added a third school, Public School 241 in Crown Heights, to his itinerary.
And it was there that he stood with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, pleading with Congress to pass legislation that he said would save thousands of teaching jobs. Mr. Bloomberg echoed the plea but focused his demand on the Assembly, calling on the Democrats there to raise the cap on charter schools.
“A number of reform ideas are under consideration by the State Legislature, and while I can’t talk about the specifics of any of them, I can say we share many of the underlying values they propose,” Mr. Duncan said. “The president has called on states to allow good charter schools to flourish while ensuring that there is real and equal accountability.”
As Mr. Duncan spoke at P.S. 241, he was flanked by Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, on his far left and Lauren Harris, the principal of Kings Collegiate, on his far right. Neither of the two spoke during the news conference, but their supporters were battling from the sidelines. Hours before the event at the charter school, the teachers’ union’s press secretary sent reporters a fact sheet titled “A Tale of Two Schools.”
Like many charter schools in the city, Kings Collegiate, widely praised for its high test scores, shares a building with a traditional public school, Intermediate School 588, which does not score as well. The union was trying to point out that students who arrived at I.S. 588 were not as well prepared as their peers at Collegiate.
It also asserted that nearly one-third of the approximately 80 Kings students who entered in fifth grade had left the school by the next year.
Ms. Harris told reporters that approximately 18 students who began fifth grade were held back to repeat the grade and that less than a handful of them left the school. Education Department officials later said that the rate of students who left the school was closer to 20 percent. But documents the school filed with the state show that 11 percent of the students left the school between their first and second years.
A version of this article appeared in print on May 19, 2010, on page A22 of the New York edition.
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