Mayoral Control of Schools? Not So Much

A top priority of the handful of oligarchs who control federal education policy and Arne Duncan is the elimination of public governance of the public schools by ceding power to CEOs, once known as mayors, and eliminating elected school boards.  Mike Klonsky gives us a rundown on how it's going in Chicago.  Not well.  Here's a clip, but do read it all, please at HuffPo:

. . . . Duncan couldn't deliver a victory for Fenty, even while resorting to threats of pulling millions of federal grant dollars from D.C. schools should Gray win. This left many wondering if Duncan only favored mayoral control if he could control the mayor.

But now, with Chicago's schools in a state of leaderless limbo, the problems of having a single autocrat running big-city school systems have become obvious to all. After a decade and a half of Daley's top-down reform efforts, seven of those years with Duncan as the CEO, neighborhood schools remain pretty much as they were. Scores have flattened out. The so-called "achievement gap" continues to widen. Violence has reached pandemic proportions and the school system is on the brink of insolvency. Daley's pet reform project, Renaissance 2010, has been discarded and the phrase banned from usage within the bureaucracy.

Daley's appointed school board has been riddled with scandals, including probes of patronage and civil rights violations. Daley's former board president Michael Scott committed suicide when faced with an investigation of his misuse of school board funds.

The mayor's announced retirement has been followed by the departure of Duncan's successor, Ron Huberman. As the crisis deepens, both he and the mayor, it seems, suddenly want to spend more time with their families. So much for stability and strong leadership.. . .

It's Complicated, Mr. Guggenheim; Lesley Off Base

From Davis Guggenheim's recent HuffPo entry:

You can divide the education world into two camps. No, not democrat or republican. Not incrementalist or disrupter. Or even pro-union or pro-charter. The best way to know whether you are on the right side of school reform is determined by how you answer these two questions:

Do you dither?
or
Do you do?

Winston Churchill used the word "dithering" to describe his country's indecisiveness when it came to the looming Nazi threat. He was speaking to the carefully crafted but empty arguments from his countrymen which basically advocated doing nothing. The state of our public schools is also a serious threat and we too have a talented corp of ditherers. Just read the editorial pages of many newspapers and blogs and listen to those on the air. There are many experts who would rather make the issue more complicated, tangled and inspire the rest of us to inaction.

It is complicated, Davis, and your simplistic film doesn't even begin to get at some of the very serious issues facing our schools, students, teachers, and families.

This Week in Education's John Thompson left this thoughtful reply in the comments section (this is only a snippet):

The best way to help schools is to slow down, think through the issues, and stop gambling on a nonstop series of "reform." Let suburban schools deal with their problems. Focus on the problem, our failure to serve kids in concentrated neighborhoods of generational poverty. Focus on win-win solutions, even if they are modest, not win-lose gambles.

Data-DRIVEN decision-making to drive "reform" is just the latest fad, and our democractic principles will outlast it. We need data-INFORMED, evidenced-based decision-making. You call it dithering, but walk in my schools and you will see why its best for kids when adults think before they pick fights.

Well said, John. Too bad Davis will dismiss you as a ditherer. Dither on, my friend.

Meanwhile, the producer of the film (Lesley Chilcott) thinks our big problem is that there's a teacher branding problem:

Before I made documentaries like Waiting for 'Superman', I made commercials. And occasionally I still do. Advertising agencies are often charged with boiling down the essence of a message to 30 seconds, or less, which can be a difficult challenge. What is the essential message and what is the best way to communicate it? When you translate that to the issue of education, no matter who you talk to, the single most important factor in education is great teaching. This is the central message of what makes a great school.

[Two paragraphs then offer typical chatter about the need to "professionalize" teaching and the usual lip-service about the importance of the work]

Organizations like Teach for America are starting to make teaching competitive among college graduates, helping to brand teaching as a distinguished career choice. But this is only one path. There need to be many, many others.

Two years does not a career make, Lesley. And if you think teaching has a branding problem, what, exactly, in your film attempts to uplift the profession? Nothing - and, in fact, you do harm to the profession (even though you pay lip-service to it) by advocating for the expansion of charters and evaluating teachers based primarily on test scores. Keep in mind, Lesley, that teachers in charters are generally paid less, have less job security, and, surprise surprise, there is much higher turnover in these privatized versions of public schools.

I'm not sure which blog posting is more concerning: the film maker's complaints over ditherers making things complicated, or the former commercial producer lamenting the teacher branding problem. Guggenheim seems content to do first, ask questions later (or don't ask them - just "do"); Chilcott seems to think the teaching profession needs a cosmetic makeover. Neither, of course, is a good way to promote sound public policy. But it might be catching and entertaining, just like their schlockumentary, but there's a serious lack of substance here.

Apologies - I think I'm dithering. Time for me to do something. Maybe I'll get started on rebranding the teaching profession. That'd satisfy the desires of both the producer and director - but, of course, is unlikely to really improve public education in any meaningful way.

Preparing the Ground for the Comcast Assimilation of NBC

All across America the nonstop voices of racism, homophobia, and hate spew their toxicity on the public airwaves with the support of the corporate propaganda promulgators, whose highest trump cards remain divisiveness and nastiness.  The most recent corporate Frankenstein, the Tea Party, is a perfect example of manufactured fear-mongering and the fulmination of hate among nervous white voters who have very little left to their privilege besides color, a privilege that becomes even more important for them to maintain as economic privilege of the former white middle class is yanked away by corporate policies that export jobs to increase profits, all the while blaming illegal immigrants, liberals, or the public schools for the fact that the the majority of U.S. is quickly moving to Third World status.  Enter Fox News and the thousands of Clear Channel AM radio stations across the Land whose job it is to maintain fear and hate expressed as rage, and to fuel diversions from the real story of apolitical corporate greed run amok.

Trying to block the takeover of America by a faux-capitalist dictatorship that, by the way, mirrors the faux-communist dictatorship of China, is a shrinking element of the media that daily work to puncture the poisonous gas bags who are leading the takeover of the country for the benefit of a handful of corrupt, fascist oligarchs.  Keith Olbermann is the quintessential voice of that remaining corps of reporters and media personalities who believe enough in the Republic and the liberty for which it stands to put themselves and their families on the line every day.  As the cable monopoly, Comcast, gets ready to gobble up NBC and Microsoft-NBC in a deal worth $30 billion, the attempt to crush all  resistance in the media of complete corporatization of America has begun in earnest, and Olbermann's star status has just lost its glimmer, to say the least.  Comment by Senator Bernie Sanders:

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) “today issued the following statement on MSNBC suspending Keith Olbermann for exercising his First Amendment rights,” according to a press release.

“It is outrageous that General Electric/MSNBC would suspend Keith Olbermann for exercising his constitutional rights to contribute to a candidate of his choice. This is a real threat to political discourse in America and will have a chilling impact on every commentator for MSNBC.

“We live in a time when 90 percent of talk radio is dominated by right-wing extremists, when the Republican Party has its own cable network (Fox) and when progressive voices are few and far between. 
“At a time when the ownership of Fox news contributed millions of dollars to the Republican Party, when a number of Fox commentators are using the network as a launching pad for their presidential campaigns and are raising money right off the air, it is absolutely unacceptable that MSNBC suspended one of the most popular progressive commentators in the country. 

“Is Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz next? Is this simply a ‘personality conflict’ within MSNBC or is one of America’s major corporations cracking down on a viewpoint they may not like? Whatever the answer may be, Keith Olbermann should be reinstated immediately and allowed to present his point of view.”

Tom Nida, DC Bankster and Charter School Board Chair

The open sewer of charter school corruption will be a major challenge for Mayor Vincent Gray's new administration in DC.  Having been run for years now as a source for loan portfolio building by the bank where the DC Charter Board President, Tom Nida, is employed, Gray must decide where to draw the line between public funding of zero tolerance charter schools and the private profits by banksters and charter school CEOs. 

In 2009, alone, the collective net profit by DC charters was $29,000,000.  In the meantime, DC children go to these total compliance corporate madrassahs without the benefit of school libraries, clinics, gyms, or even cafeterias.

Bill Turque has the latest installment on the continuing scam, and here is a clip that captures the moral repugnance by those who prefer to keep public schools under the oversight and governance of the public:

. . . . The debate over equity in the funding of public and public charter schools continues to simmer and is likely to get more attention in a Gray administration. Nida's banker's-eye view of the charter sector did not sit well with some school advocates, who said private financing and public schools are a toxic brew. Mark Simon, a DCPS parent, an education policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, said he found Nida's speech "abhorrent."

"This is the same Tom Nida, the banker who headed up the D.C. charter board while retaining his position as a bank vice president overseeing a profitable increase in his bank's mortgage portfolio due to mortgages extended to charter schools he was helping to oversee," Simon said. "The two concepts of private profit and public education should not be intertwined as Mr. Nida is wont to do. ... He represents what is wrong with mixing private profit and the management of public education." . . . .

Duncan and RTTT in England; NSVF Copy, Too?

Duncan spent yesterday in England touring a school and visiting with his British counterpart, Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove.   The Guardian interviewed the US Ed head last week.  Here's a snippet from the summary:

Duncan will meet the education secretary Michael Gove and tour a London school on Wednesday. The coalition's controversial free schools are inspired by the US charter schools movement, which often demand longer hours from teachers and impose strict discipline on children.

He said: "I just have tremendous respect for the educational work and the leadership that I've seen coming from the UK and we're all working on the same issues and have the same challenges."

The talks with Gove will focus on how to "elevate" the teaching profession, bringing in committed new teachers while ensuring bad ones are eliminated. Both Obama and Duncan have taken a tough line on failing teachers, praising education officials who fired all the staff at a school in Rhode Island in February after they refused to work a longer day.

Gove and Duncan are also expected to look at how best to evaluate teachers' performance, and how to reach "historically under-served" communities.

Duncan has a bigger budget than any previous education secretary, but has made states compete for federal cash by favouring those that are most ambitious in reforming their schools, under the Race to the Top initiative. New York got nearly $700m (£437m) after adopting a new system for evaluating teachers that took students' test performances into account.

Duncan said: "I can't speak for the UK, but I will tell you, in the United States, teacher evaluation is just fundamentally broken and over 90% of teachers receive an exceptional rating in our country." This was demeaning to teachers, he said, failing to reward good teaching or to remove those were failing. "The systems aren't working for any of the adults – I promise you it's not working for the children. It's part of the problem."

He backed a vision of "free schools" which are funded by the taxpayer but able to adopt their own teaching methods and vary the curriculum. Duncan accused critics who said these schools would flourish at the expense of existing state schools of indulging in "phoney debates".

On the same day of Duncan's visit, Gove announced a £110 school initiative aimed at turning around "underperforming" schools.  Sound familiar?  It's modeled, says Gove, after the Race to the Top.  And, like the cutting of food stamps to pay for the $10 billion education aid while staving off cuts to two prized pots of cash, RTTT and TIF, this £110 investment was made by cutting back on extensions to the free lunch program.  Here's a snippet from a recent Guardian article:

Money saved by scrapping free school meals for half a million primary school children will be used for a scheme under which groups compete for cash to improve England's worst-performing schools.

Academy sponsors, councils and headteachers with an outstanding track record will be encouraged to bid for funds to turn around struggling schools in a contest that will reward those that offer the most ambitious plans for reform.

The cash will come from an endowment fund started with £110m of public money, saved by a coalition decision to scrap an extension of free school meals to all primary schoolchildren living below the poverty line. The government plans to outsource the project to a City fund manager, who will assess the bids in consultation with education experts. The education secretary, Michael Gove, said he expected the fund to pay out up to £10m a year.

He said: "We will invite bids from people who want to turn round under-performing schools and the bids will be assessed on the degree of ambition and rigour they show.

"Are they ambitious in showing a clear path of improvement for under-performing schools, and are they rigorous in showing the money will be used either to develop already tried and tested methods of raising attainment, or pioneer new ways of raising attainment?"

The money could be spent on monitoring the performance of individual teachers, extending the school day, or providing one-to-one support for some children.

The funding, which will come on top of the pupil premium, could also lead to higher pay for teachers who generate the best results. Gove said: "My view is that, while I can think of some of these things, the purpose of the fund is to generate a greater degree of innovation." He compares the fund with Barack Obama's Race to the Top initiative, under which US states compete for federal cash.

When the Brits aren't consulting with our top education official about how to improve teaching (cringe!), creating RTTT knockoffs (yikes!), they're copying one of the other staples in the education reform movement: the proliferation of organizations that spring up in this new education marketplace (hide under the desks, kids!).  The premier model in the US would be the NewSchools Venture Fund, but there are many other organization that do a combination of lobbying, funding, advocacy, consulting, PR, development, and provide other support services.  Enter the New Schools Network.  From the Guardian:

Michael Gove's education department failed to invite applications for a £500,000 grant to assist parents setting up free schools, before awarding it to his former adviser.

The New Schools Network, a charity and company run by the education secretary's former colleague, Rachel Wolf, 25, was awarded the grant by the Department for Education in June. No other organisation was asked to bid for the work, which was not publicly advertised.

The disclosure in documents released under the Freedom of Information Act could heighten some of the criticisms the new schools have attracted. The schools, which are independent of local authority control, will allow groups to create more autonomous schools with small class sizes, Gove argues, though critics say they could wreck social harmony by creating ethnic or religious enclaves. [Note: unlike charters, free schools may admit up to half of their students based on religion]

The network – which is yet to receive the money – is at the heart of the plans for the schools which were inspired by US Charter schools and has a role in the application process.

Similar organizations in different countries facing different socio/economic/political environments will have some unique differences, and it's difficult to tell exactly how Wolf's venture will pan out.  Like the early visions of charters, the "free schools" can be operated by teams of experienced teachers, parents, and community groups.  They can also be operated by top-down management organizations and for-profit providers (although the latter are excluded, I believe, from Gove's £110 million fund).  Look for Wolf to eventually push the British equivalent of CMOs: if you're looking to grow, as they say, "to scale," the CMO model is the one embraced by corporate/free-market reformers.  New Schools' webpage does say US charters can be run by parents, teachers, or community organizations, but the examples they list of groups running charters are KIPP, HCZ, and American Indian Public Charter Schools.  The rest of the rhetoric on the organization's website mirrors much of the US "reform" crowd (competition, education marketplace, business-style reforms, corporate speak), and they're likely to borrow from the deformers as the network expands.

If anything, the establishment of the New Schools Network is a nod to the perceived (and real) efficacy of NSVF.  They're a powerful network of players in the education reform field, and almost everyone in what many consider the anti-teacher/privatization movement has ties to the group.  In combination with big philanthropists and other actors, NSVF has effectively pushed the (likely) unsustainable CMO model (both financially and in terms of teaching) to the exclusion of others.  This does not bode well for "public" education, and only further delays the need to address pressing issues while further entrenching the testing/competition/standardization/privatization movement.

Rhee's Self-Serving Extravaganza

Why does an economics journo pen the HuffPo tribute to corporate education's toxic witch, Michelle Rhee?  Because he's paid to?  Because it's all about the money?  Yes and yes.

And so Barry Wood describes the big ticket event Monday night at the Kennedy Center, no less, starring Arne Duncan, middle brow establishment hack, Tom Friedman, and Mr. Entertainment, David Gregory as host.

Billed as a night of recognition for DC teachers, the night was to glorify the Oligarchs' poster girl for corporate ed reform.  The only teachers there were the ones who received the highest score (a "Four") on the deeply flawed evaluation system put together by another TFA alum who worked for Rhee.  Even so, the response to Gregory's efforts to whip up enthusiasm among the assembled guests fell flat, or shall we say, it never rose enough to fall. A priceless clip (my bolds):

. . . .The highly effective "fours" were the ones in the Kennedy Center audience. Doubts about Impact even from its winners may account for the fact that when the host asked that Rhee be given a standing ovation, only half the audience stood up.

Despite reassuring words from Rhee, her interim successor Kaya Henderson, Fenty, and mayor-elect Vincent Gray that DC school reform will continue, real doubts remain.

Education writer and Rhee biographer Richard Whitmire identifies several markers that will determine if Rhee's radical reforms continue. He puts retention of Impact at the top of the list and warns of trouble ahead if Gray appoints a panel of experts to evaluate and improve the system.

A second red flag, says Whitmire, would be the departure of Jason Kamras, a 2005 Teacher of the Year and Teach for America alumnus, who designed the Impact system. . . .

What the "Free" Means in Free (Charter) School

I am beginning to think "free" school is a better descriptor than charter school.  For Brits looking at the American model for inspiration, "free" most often means

free to collect public dollars without public oversight, 

free from democratic governance, 

free to not admit special ed or ELL children, 

free to push out low scorers or those who challenge the totalitarian regimen, 

free to not offer children libraries or gyms or lunch rooms or school nurses or art facilities, 

free to hire and fire at will with no due process rights for teachers, 

free to pay CEO principals 4 to 5 times as much as public school principals, 

free to set up penal pedagogy systems that middle class parents would never allow for their children, 

free to offer the lowest cognitive levels of test prep curriculum, 

free to hire teachers who aren't certified or qualified, 

free to ignore accounting rules that public schools must abide by, 

free to engage in open nepotism and preferential treatment of employees, and 

free to thumb their noses at citizen requests for openness and transparency.

Here's proof that the Brits have learned something from the American and Swedish experiences with "free:"

Posted by Mehdi Hasan - 03 November 2010 13:01

Don't buy the hype from Michael Gove - or Arne Duncan. 

Arne Duncan, Obama's education secretary and the man who invited the US military to run local schools during his controversial tenure as chief executive of the Chicago state school system, is in London visiting our very own Michael Gove. The latter, of course, has been ultra-keen to push his agenda of academies and "free schools" since taking office in May, and has become fond of citing the Obama administration's support for so-called charter schools. (Interestingly, on a side note, Gove and the Tories have very little to say about Obama's position on deficit reduction, which is closer to the Labour Party's view than the coalition's).
From the Guardian:

Gove said: "America is a bigger country and there are differences between us, but I have been impressed by what Race to the Top has done, and impressed by many of the things that President Obama and Arne Duncan have been fighting for."

It's worth noting the cynicism, however, of Gove's approach. At first, the Education Secretary championed free schools by pointing to the supposed successes of the Swedish version, which is said to have been the original inspiration for the Tories' education reforms. But, as emprical evidence emerged over the summer that challenged the Swedish model, Gove and his outriders began pointing instead to America's experiment with charter schools. Hence today's visit by Duncan to the UK.

As the Americans reject the Obama administration, the coalition embraces one of its worst ideas. Peer-reviewed academic research suggests charter schools ain't as good as their well-funded and high-profile advocates make them out to be. Here's what the CREDO National Charter Schools Study at Stanford University discovered last year:

While the report recognized a robust national demand for more charter schools from parents and local communities, it found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter schools demonstrating no significant difference.

Hmm.

It's also worth bearing in mind the view of Diane Ravitch, a leading historian of the US education system, former assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush and one-time supporter of "school choice". Writing for the Wall St Journal in March, in a piece entitled "Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform", Ravitch observed:

Charter evaluations frequently note that as compared to neighboring public schools, charters enroll smaller proportions of students whose English is limited and students with disabilities. The students who are hardest to educate are left to regular public schools, which makes comparisons between the two sectors unfair. The higher graduation rate posted by charters often reflects the fact that they are able to "counsel out" the lowest performing students; many charters have very high attrition rates (in some, 50%-60% of those who start fall away). Those who survive do well, but this is not a model for public education, which must educate all children.

So please don't buy the hype about charter schools - not from our Education Secretary or, for that matter, Obama's.

UPDATE:
If you're looking for more information on US charter schools then I highly recommend the website, Charter School Scandals. My favourite story from that site is the Denver charter school which "broke a new state law by offering families $400 worth of gift cards if they brought new students to the school before the day the state takes a student census" because "state money follows students into the classroom -- an average of about $6,600 per pupil across Colorado, according to the Colorado Department of Education."

Book reading: No decline over the last 65 years.

Book reading: No decline over the last 65 years.

Sent to the Washington Post, Nov 1

It is quite true that "Teens haven't shelved reading for pleasure," (Oct. 31). In fact, there's been no decline in book reading over the last 65 years. The Kaiser study described in the Post article reported that 15-18 year olds averaged 21 minutes a day of book reading. Back in 1946, Link and Hopf, in their book People and Books, reported that those ages 15 to 19 averaged 22 minutes a day of book reading.

Book reading is doing very well, despite increased school pressure today and so much competition from various new kinds of electronic entertainment.

Stephen Krashen

Original article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/31/AR2010103103673.html?nav=emailpage

Update: KIPP Fresno Principal in Brooklyn

From the NY Post:

School big 'bullies' kids
By LACHLAN CARTWRIGHT and YOAV GONEN
Last Updated: 11:25 AM, November 1, 2010
Posted: 1:29 AM, November 1, 2010 

A Brooklyn charter school administrator who gave up his old gig in California amid charges that he had been physically and emotionally abusive to students is at it again, fed-up parents told The Post.

Just over a year into Chi Tschang's role as assistant superintendent of middle schools for the Achievement First charter school network in Brooklyn, a student’s mother said he aggressively grabbed an 11-year-old boy he was kicking out of class last month.

READ THE CALIFORNIA REPORT

"[Tschang’s] not supposed to do that," said the AF Crown Heights mom, who asked to be identified only as Lorna. "He’s supposed to speak with his mouth, not grab him."

Several other parents at the Crown Heights school questioned Achievement First’s judgment in hiring an educator who resigned as head of KIPP Fresno, part of the Knowledge Is Power Program charter network, in February 2009 after an investigation into his disciplinary practices.

Achievement First officials, who have fielded complaints about their strict discipline in the past, stood by Tschang, despite the ruckus raised earlier this year when he took a misbehaving Crown Heights student home in his car.

That incident prompted the network’s co-CEO, Doug McCurry, to write parents a six-page letter in May that qualified Tschang’s move as a misunderstanding of school policy.

The letter also said Achievement First’s review of Fresno’s investigation found it to be factually inaccurate, "bogus" and conducted by a district that was biased against charter schools.

"During his entire tenure in Fresno, Mr. Tschang never hurt a single child," Dacia Toll, co-CEO of the Achievement First network, told The Post. "In fact, he was beloved by the students and parents at his school, so much so that hundreds of them took to the streets to protest his resignation."

[Continued here]

More on the KIPP Fresno story here.

DC Parents and Teachers: Today Is the Last Day (of Rhee) for the Rest of Your Life

The poster girl for militant corporatism in education is clocking out for the last time this afternoon at DC Schools.  It signifies the playing out of the most healthy repudiation of bare-knuckled, anti-public management by those whose confidence and cluelessness are equally matched and whose patronizing and condescending attitudes toward parents and teachers have finally been justly rewarded by the public. 

A clip from Bill Turque, whose negative assessment of the Rhee Reign  comes near the end of his piece in WaPo:

. . . . But there is a fragility to the changes Rhee has wrought. Elementary reading and math scores dipped in 2010 after two years of gains. Testing data also show that efforts to narrow the achievement gap separating white and African American students stalled this year. Many schools remain deeply troubled; 12 percent of sophomores at Spingarn High School in Northeast Washington are proficient in math, 17 percent in reading. At Johnson Middle School in Southeast, 14 percent of the students are proficient in reading and 14 percent in math.

Enrollment, another success story, also comes with questions. It's not clear whether the gains, mostly at the preschool and pre-kindergarten levels, mean that the system is actually capturing a larger proportion of school-age children or merely benefiting from mini-baby booms in some D.C. neighborhoods.

Miguel Rosario, who is a parent at Watkins Elementary on Capitol Hill but lives in Ward 8, said schools in his neighborhood have felt the churn of Rhee's changes but received little benefit. "Principal after principal, security company after security company, a little touch-up paint, but the bathrooms are still the same. The children are not being educated," he said.

The changes also came, as Rhee now acknowledges, without a successful attempt to build a base of support that gave residents ownership of the changes.

"We made a ton of mistakes," she said Thursday. "I thought, very naively, that if we just put our heads down and we worked hard and produced the results, people would be so happy that they would want to continue the work. We were absolutely incorrect about that."

Other stakeholders said they appreciated Rhee's attempts at reaching out. "I think she tried to engage the parents," said Lisa Barton, former PTA president at Ballou Senior High School, from which her daughter graduated last spring. "I would have liked her to stay. I felt like she was doing something good."

Rhee's difficulties were compounded by questionable management and maladroit sense of public relations, embodied most notoriously in her broom-wielding Time magazine cover of December 2008.

A week after a triumphal announcement of a breakthrough contract last April, she touched off a furor that nearly scuttled the deal, first by disclosing that she discovered a $34 million surplus in the school system budget earlier in the year - just four months after laying off 266 teachers for budgetary reasons. That led to a lengthy public scuffle over how to pay for the pact with D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi, who said no such surplus existed.. . .