GBN News To Acquire NY Times

July 18, 2008 (GBN News): In a surprise move, GBN News announced today that an agreement was reached yesterday for the upstart news service to acquire one of the nation’s oldest and most venerated newspapers, the New York Times. GBN News, which despite its brief existence has gained a reputation for being the gold standard in education reporting, will be taking over the Times as of next Monday.

It is unclear just what effects this takeover will have on the Times reporting, or their staff. GBN News is a shoestring operation, run off a single computer in a small house in Bellerose, NY, while the Times has hundreds of employees and numerous facilities all over the world. Whether the newly merged news organizations will be headquartered in the Bellerose facility or the Times building in Manhattan has not been announced.

Also unclear is just how such a small news organization with virtually no assets was able to take over such a renowned industry giant. However, GBN news was recently awarded an exclusive no-bid contract as the sole distributor of NY City Department of Education press releases. Given the size of the DOE public relations budget, industry experts speculate that this contract alone could have financed GBN’s takeover of the Times.

Education in China: Far from Nirvana, but Not So Far from NCLB

Andrew Wolf’s July 11 column in the New York Sun referenced my June 28 posting on this blog concerning the complexity of the math problems China’s education system expected its fifth and sixth graders to be capable of solving. While the example problems he cited were accurate (and real), readers of his column might well infer that we endorse China’s educational approach. I cannot speak for Mr. Wolf, but I can state that, having seen it at relatively close hand for several years in the rapidly industrializing and modernizing eastern coastal city of Suzhou (about fifty miles west of Shanghai), I categorically do not. Here in highly summarized and generalized form are some of the characteristics of Suzhou’s school system:

-- Primary school from Grades 1 – 6, middle school from Grades 7 – 9, and high school from Grades 10 –12. Mandatory education ends with middle school.

-- Public school principals run their schools like small businesses, collecting tuition, leasing real estate on their grounds, and operating conference centers and even small factories on their campuses for extra income.

-- Teachers are permitted to act as paid tutors for their own students, an incentive if ever there was one not to be overly effective in the classroom. Teachers also receive sizable annual bonuses from their principals depending on the school's success in the citywide, province-wide, and/or national exams.

-- Students remain in one classroom all day, even in high school. The school day begins at 8:00 am and usually runs to 5:00 or 5:30 pm, with a 60 – 90 minute lunch break. Non-academic school activities such as clubs are minimal, and organized interscholastic sports teams are limited to perhaps boys soccer, boys basketball, and boys track.

-- Typical class sizes are 48 – 50 per class, with almost universal tracking (grouping students by “ability”) by the start of middle school.

-- All middle schools and high schools citywide are ranked from highest to lowest academically. Admissions to both middle school and high school are dictated by students’ scores on a single citywide entrance exam. Thus, a child’s academic future (including college) is fairly well determined on the basis of a single exam he or she takes at the end of sixth grade.

-- Teachers conduct just two class periods per day, entering the classroom just before the bell rings, leaving almost immediately after, and spending the rest of the day sequestered and largely unbothered by students in their departmental office. Typical teacher’s office activities include checking homework (copying is rampant but goes mostly unremarked), grading exams, reading the newspaper, playing computer games, and napping.

-- Nearly every class period consists of teacher lectures, often nothing more than reading directly from the textbook. Students are strongly discouraged from asking questions and generally only speak when called upon to read or reply to a direct question. The spirit of intellectually curiosity or exploration is non-existent.

-- Much of students’ sixth, ninth, and twelfth grade years is spent preparing for the round of exams that will determine their access to middle school, high school, or college. College exams are nationwide, lasting three days and covering eight different subject areas, including English language. Those exams are virtually the sole factor in deciding which students will qualify for which universities across the nation. They are so dreaded that students used to refer to them by the nickname “he qiyue” – black July - until the exams were moved to June (perhaps now "he liuyue" - black June?).

The list could go on quite a bit longer, but the outlines should be clear enough: large scale performance tracking of schools and students based on high stakes standardized exams with reward systems to match, curricula and teaching focused almost exclusively around preparation for those exams through rote learning and repetition, discouragement of intellectual inquiry and suppression of anything that might suggest a student’s scholarly passion, and systemic disinterest and disregard for non-academic activities and students’ social development.

China’s is an educational system that specializes in book knowledge at the expense of critical and creative thinking, as well as conformity, pressure, and self-discipline at the expense of individuality, self-motivated inquiry, and free-spirited thinking outside the box. Far from being a model to emulate, it is in many ways an intellectually stultifying system that reflects the Bush/NCLB/Bloomberg-Klein philosophy taken to its logical if extreme conclusion.

Quinnipiac poll on Mayoral control and term limits

See the new Quinnipiac poll that show that even though people like Bloomberg, they strongly oppose (56 - 38 percent) ending term limits.

And while they think he’s done a good job with the schools, they believe that the next Mayor should share power with an independent board. Only 29 percent say the next Mayor should keep complete control of the schools, while 55 percent say he or she should share control with an independent school board.

Despite a massive advertising campaign about the rise in state test scores, Klein’s approval ratings are only up slightly – at 44%, and his disapproval rate remains high at 37%.

Among women, Klein’s approval rate is almost tied with his disapproval rate– 41% compared to 40%.

While 53% of public school parents say they are generally satisfied with the quality of the public schools in New York City, 45% are not.

Klein’s highest disapproval rate is in Staten Island, at 41%.

Staten Island also has the highest rate of those who say that the next Mayor should share power with an independent board.

Jonathan Alter blusters about KIPP and merit pay

Jonathan Alter blusters in a column in Newsweek about what Obama should do to reform our schools:

…. we know what works to close the achievement gap. At the 60 KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, more than 80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-income students go to college, four times the national average for poor kids.

Here is the response of Caroline Grannam, a SF parent and blogger who is one of the few people to independently assess KIPP’s claims:

In the current Newsweek, columnist Jonathan Alter earnestly claims that 12,800 alumni of KIPP schools have gone on to college. Here's what Alter wrote: At the 60 KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, more than 80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-income students go to college, four times the national average for poor kids. The actual number, according to KIPP itself, is 447.

It turns out that that 80% figure was derived from calculating the matriculation rates at only two KIPP schools.

Alter also omits to mention the self-selection process involved in applying to KIPP, well as the rigorous interview process the school uses that discourages less motivated students from enrolling, including making them promise to attend school six days a week and most of the working day. Nor the high attrition rates, with some schools losing 50 percent of their students over three years.

Yet Alter continues to spin wildly:

[Obama] …hasn't been direct enough about reforming NCLB so that it revolves around clear measurements of classroom-teacher effectiveness. Research shows that this is the only variable (not class size or school size) that can close the achievement gap. Give poor kids from broken homes the best teachers, and most learn. Period.

Where is the research base for this? Don’t bother to ask, as there is none.

We don’t even know how to identify potentially effective teachers, not to mention how to make them more effective once they’ve been hired. Aside from treating them like professionals, giving them a smaller class and persuading them to stick around in the profession longer.

More from Alter:

To get there, Obama should hold a summit of all 50 governors and move them toward national standards and better recruitment, training and evaluation of teachers. He should advocate using Title I federal funding as a lever to encourage "thin contracts" free of the insane work rules and bias toward seniority, as offered by the brilliant new superintendent in Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee. He should offer federal money for salary increases, but make them conditional on differential pay (paying teachers based on performance and willingness to work in underserved schools, which surveys show many teachers favor) and on support for the elimination of tenure.

What? Surveys, including this one from Education Sector, which generally favors such proposals, show that teachers overwhelmingly oppose basing salaries on performance (read test scores.): “…one in three teachers (34 percent) favors giving financial incentives to teachers whose kids routinely score higher than similar students on standardized tests. Most teachers today (64 percent) oppose the idea, up 8 percentage points from the 56 percent who opposed it in 2003.”

Nevertheless, Alter continues in this same vein:

And the next time he [Obama] addresses them, he should tell the unions they must change their focus from job security and the protection of ineffective teachers to higher pay and true accountability for performance—or face extinction.

Good luck with that one. I’m sure the NEA and the AFT are quaking in their boots.

As Grannam points out about Alter’s error in reporting the number of KIPP students that have gone to college that could also be applied to his false claims about teacher surveys and class size:

It's ironic that Alter made that rather significant error in a column mostly devoted to blasting and blaming teachers for troubled schools and calling for getting rid of problem teachers, along with eliminating tenure and increasing "accountability" for teachers. I wonder how he feels about more accountability for journalists.

In case you’re interested, Alter lives in Montclair NJ, where no doubt the class sizes are small, and teacher tenure reigns supreme, along with high salaries, and performance pay is nowhere in sight.

But in a school district like NYC, with lots of immigrant and poor students, it doesn’t matter what class sizes they are crammed into or what overcrowding exists. All will be well and teachers will magically be able to reach all thirty plus kids per class, as long as the people in charge crack the whip loud and hard enough and can threaten them with losing their jobs if they don’t deliver.

A sure fire formula for success if ever I’ve heard it.

I’ll end with Grannam’s conclusion in her SF Examiner blog:

I suspect that anyone more familiar with the inside of a diverse urban classroom than Jonathan Alter is (it’s evident that such a setting is as familiar to him as the surface of Mars) would have the same reaction I did: Send that man to teach in an overwhelmed inner-city school for a few months, and then let’s see how he feels about blaming and bashing teachers for the challenges such schools face.”

Comments? Write to webeditors@newsweek.com; copy to jalter@newsweek.com

Joel Klein tries to shake down the heavy hitters at Sun Valley... and provides an excuse for ridiculously expensive day care

Joel Klein is continuing his mission for world domination by hobnobbing with the media and hi tech elite at the annual summer confab hosted by Allen and Co. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find any photos of Klein at Sun Valley, but here is one from two years ago of Bloomberg whose appearance at the event earned him a position on the NY Daily News worst-dressed list.)

We posted earlier about the fact that Klein had made a presentation on his new vision of education reform, along with the other favorite of the business establishment, “Take No Prisoners” DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee. The response of one corporate insider, according to Media Bistro:

“Sony Corp.'s Katsumi Ihara called the presentation "fascinating" and said it broke down some of the causes and problems in the education battle in the United States and should yield interest from CEOs around the country. He added that Klein wasn't simply asking for money. He wanted their help in initiatives and projects to stimulate educational programs.”

Get that? “Not simply asking for money.” Presumably, Klein is not asking for money to improve the NYC public schools, which are still hugely overcrowded and burdened with the highest class sizes in the state, nor the “Fund for Public Schools,” a non-profit organization established to provide services and resources to our public schools, but now spending millions to run ads about the great job he and Bloomberg are doing.

I would guess – and this is pure speculation – that Klein is probably asking them to subsidize his new alliance with Al Sharpton, the so-called “Education Equity Project”, announced with great fanfare at a press conference in last month, which the Washington Post called “the kind of odd coupling that seemed more like the premise for a reality show than a news conference on education policy.” At the press conference, Klein and Sharpton announced that they would stage events at both political conventions this summer, to influence the agenda of the future President, as well as undertake other unspecified activities.

Whether or not Klein will raise major bucks at Sun Valley from Sony and the like to fund this operation is hard to predict; perhaps he has learned some tricks from Sharpton, well known for his success in “shaking down” corporations to fund his own operations.

Yet the need for more funding is clear, as the Klein-Sharpton alliance still seems to be primarily financed through our NYC taxpayer money, in the midst of a major budget squeeze that has made major cuts in social services for the elderly, housing, jobs for youth etc. In fact, Tweed’s very busy chief press officer David Cantor the main media contact on all its press releases, while also tasked with monitoring and responding to blogs and list servs like ours.

Not to mention Cantor’s primary responsibility of managing a large press operation that has to try to make it look like Klein and Co. actually know what they’re doing.

Apparently, Klein’s presentation did make an impact, at least with Sergey Brin, the head of Google, who sat down with reporters at Sun Valley to attempt damage control on their decision to cut subsidies and sharply raise the cost of child care for their employees – a blunder which made the front page of the NY Times recently. The full Times article is well worth reading, but here is a summary from InfoWeek:

… Google already had reasonably priced day care, when it decided to open a vastly more costly Euro-style operation, called the Woods, which uses something called the Reggio Emilia philosophy. Then Google also decided to upgrade the first, cheaper day care to mimic the Woods. Corporate push has come to shove because the more expensive approach is the pet project of Google VP Susan Wojcicki, who also happens to be Sergey Brin's sister-in-law.

The result? Google raised the price of day care to their employees by 70%, meaning that it will now cost parents with two children $57,000 per year.

How did Brin rationalize this? By referring to Joel Klein’s earlier presentation on the need for quality teaching. Apparently, the supposedly poor teaching in our public schools is now a blanket excuse that now can cover any management failure, from spending millions a year to keep more than a thousand teachers sitting in idle in ATR and/or rubber rooms, failing to address the ongoing crisis in class size, or the fact that the achievement gap still remains.

Perhaps Klein should advise Google to deal with this PR disaster by hiring Robert Gordon and renaming their efforts “fair student funding.”

See the latest update from the Silicon Valley Insider here: Sergey Explains The Crazy Cost Of Google's Day Care: He's Trying To Fix The Schools.

Secret Papers Reveal Klein Power Grab

July 12, 2008 (GBN News): Secret papers obtained by GBN News reveal a plan, masterminded by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, to put Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the White House notwithstanding the Mayor’s declared intent not to run. The plan entails a massive last minute stealth write-in campaign, financed by the Fund for Public Schools, which is chaired by Mr. Klein.

Furthermore, the papers portray a far different relationship between the Mayor and Chancellor than publicly revealed; in fact, they show the Chancellor as the Mayor’s “Dick Cheney”, running the government from behind the scenes. Moreover, the plan reportedly goes beyond simply getting the Mayor elected, and lays out plans for government “reforms” that could amount to the functional equivalent of a “coup d’etat”.

Once Mr. Bloomberg is inaugurated, Mr. Klein plans to move quickly to secure a no-bid contract for the NYC Leadership Academy to install its graduates into all key civilian and military leadership positions, thus giving the Chancellor unprecedented control of the government. While publicly the Leadership Academy’s purpose has been to train principals to run NYC public schools, in actuality the Academy has been quietly training managers to become a sort of “shadow government”, ready to step immediately into positions heading up a number of government agencies.

Sources at the DOE have confirmed to GBN News the authenticity of these papers, and also indicated that there was some initial controversy at the DOE as to whether Leadership Academy graduates would be qualified to take over such sensitive positions as Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. However, Mr. Klein insisted that if individuals with limited or no educational experience could become NYC principals with nothing but Leadership Academy training, certainly they could run government agencies since the principles of business management apply to all leadership positions.

Mr. Klein has also reportedly expanded the DOE “Truth Squad” to manage the information flow so that this secret plan will not be revealed before it can be implemented. In fact, it is surprising, given the “truth squad’s” effectiveness, that GBN News has been allowed to report the existence of this plan at all. But while GBN News will of course endeavor to continue reporting details as we learn them, readers should anticipate that our coverage of this story could be impeded by DOE operatives at any [rest of paragraph deleted by order of the DOE].

In other news, Chancellor Klein had an embarrassing moment today when he was briefly detained and questioned by school security officers during a visit to PS 445 in Brooklyn. According to sources at the school, a sixth grader had reported being accosted in the hallway by a “creepy guy who kept asking me about my test scores and then tried to take away my cell phone.” Security officers immediately pulled Mr. Klein aside and questioned him, before realizing who he was. One of the officers defended the action, saying, “How were we to know he was the Chancellor? The kid said it was a ‘creepy guy’, and we just stopped the first creepy guy we could find.”

Why are inside-the-beltway so clueless at diagnosing the real problems of our public schools?

See the typical screed in Slate, by Ray Fisman, a professor at the Columbia Business School, subtitled “Why are public schools so bad at hiring good instructors?” It decries the inability of principals to get rid of incompetent teachers, and attributes poverty, the achievement gap and God knows what else to teacher tenure.

Strangely enough, it reports that the principal featured in the story, Anthony Lombardi at PS 49 in Queens, managed to get rid of one third of entire his teaching staff since he arrived, despite the existence of tenure, and, you got it, test scores rose.

The article doesn’t question that looking at test scores alone may not be the best or the only way to evaluate teachers or the quality of education. This is peculiar, especially since Lombardi seems to have rated his teachers not by looking at their test scores, but by examining their lesson plans and observing them in action, which is exactly how tenure decisions are made now.

(By the way, the school got a “B” in its recent DOE school progress report, for whatever that’s worth. And the teachers who remain at the school, though they may have been spared Lombardi’s wrath, don’t seem to respect him much – in the teacher survey, 50% disagreed with the statement that “School leaders invite teachers to play a meaningful role in setting goals and making important decisions for this school for this school,” And 57% disagree that “School leaders encourage open communication on important school issues.”

Most notably, the article omits the fact that teachers no longer have the right of automatic transfer – and in fact implies otherwise: “Since his arrival, a third of PS 49's teachers have been squeezed out through Lombardi's efforts. Of course, this just meant they were moved to another classroom in another school, lowering the test scores of someone else's children.”

Perhaps this inaccuracy results from the fact that much of the description of Lombardi and his schools seem to be lifted directly from a now-outdated NY Magazine article from 2003 (click here).

But the most interesting aspect of the piece, to me anyway, is that it cites the findings in a study by Kane, Staiger and Gordon (yes, the infamous Robert Gordon) that the quality of teaching in LA did not diminish one iota after they had to triple their hiring of teachers to reduce class size, despite the repeated claims of the Bloomberg/Klein administration that lowering class size in NYC would inevitably do just this. In fact, there is no evidence in the research literature that this has ever occurred.

To the contrary, providing them with smaller classes is the most certain way to improve the effectiveness of the teachers we already have in NYC, as well as reducing our sky-high attrition levels, in the process making it more likely that students have experienced teachers – the most reliable predictor of effectiveness, as parents know and which is also backed up by research. It is widely known that no private school in NYC will hire a first year teacher, but makes them spend a couple of years of “seasoning” in the public schools first.

Chris Cerf, if you’re reading this, your press office is not doing their job!

See Elizabeth Green’s story in the NY Sun about how seven DOE PR officers monitor 24 key education blogs and list servs, and occasionally try to refute the critiques within them, including our NYC education news list serv, and this blog.

They call themselves the “Truth Squad” but we know that the members of our list serv are the real truth squad. I am glad, however, that the powers that be feel compelled to respond to some of our observations, even though it is so often done in a perfunctory and unconvincing fashion.

As I was quoted in the article, "It's good that the press operation actually hears our complaints, because Joel Klein doesn't seem to."

The article does not come as much news to me, since we all figured out more than a year ago that this was happening.

We had a fun time when the now-departed but not-forgotten Robert Gordon, author of the highly flawed “fair student funding” scheme was the first Tweedie to subscribe (Feb. 9, 2007). Gordon answered some of our questions, unsatisfactorily – and then quickly unsubscribed. (Mar 21, 2007)

David Cantor, the chief press officer, soon followed by subscribing in Feb 28, 2007. Adina Lopatin, of the Accountability office, subscribed one week later, around the time that I’d attended one of their screwy focus groups for their screwy parent survey.

Though the NY Sun article says that only one person from the press office is assigned to each blog or list serv, actually three of them, including Cantor, subscribe to our list serv: Melody Meyer (who joined up in Apr 2, 2007) and Lindsay Harr (Apr 11, 2007).

Cantor began to post himself occasionally, in a rather perfunctory manner, but not until December 11, 2007 -- nearly one year after he had joined, initially about the NY Mag article which quoted Klein as saying to parents that they could send their kids to private school if they didn’t like class sizes in the public schools. It later turned out that Klein said something else very similar – that District 2 parents had “choices,” but when I asked Cantor what that specifically meant, if not sending their kids to private schools, he never replied.

Since then he has interjected so rarely (only about ten times ) that the main effect of his desultory comments makes me suspect that nearly everything else that I and the other members of this list serv write, including some extremely inflammatory statements, must be true. I also don’t get the feeling that poor David enjoys the task that Chris Cerf has assigned him to.

None of this is particularly surprising, but what did surprise me is what I learned during a forum a few months ago, in April, on “Grading NY’s public schools.” During the question period, I asked Cerf a question. I began by introducing myself, but he quickly interrupted me to say, “I know who you are; I read your stuff every day.”

Every day? Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined that Cerf or anyone at that high a level at Tweed had the inclination or the time to do this. Sometimes I don’t even read myself every day – I’m too busy. I know my husband almost never does. I doubt most of the people on the list serv do.

But I was happy to hear this, if a bit surprised that Cerf had admitted this, for if I and others on our list can cause him one tenth the headaches that Tweed causes us every day, not to mention the other one million plus NYC public school parents -- that does give me a small sense of satisfaction.

After looking at the historical record, I now conclude that what probably started as a pure monitoring exercise, instigated by Cerf in Feb. of 2007 eventually turned into a rather lame attempt to beat the critics at their own game nearly a year later.

It was in October 2007, after all, that it emerged that Diane Ravitch had been taped by the DOE at various speaking events, and a file compiled of her remarks.

This news was also broken by Elizabeth Green in the NY Sun, following a vicious attack on Diane published in the NY Post the day before, in the form of an oped with the byline of Kathy Wylde, head of the NYC Partnership, but with information put together by the DOE press office. This was a terrific PR blunder on the part of Cerf and Co., as nearly everyone and their mother came to Diane’s defense – not that she needed their help; she offered her own eloquent response in the NY Post.

It was shortly thereafter, in Dec. of 2007 that David Cantor started commenting on our list serv, after the NY Magazine article was published that must have caused them much grief. It was only then that the vociferous rage of public school parents about school overcrowding, which had reached crisis proportions in certain neighborhoods, without the administration even so much as lifting a finger, began to break into the mainstream media.

In Elizabeth’s article, it says that “The squad's latest triumph should appear today on a Listserv operated by the parent organizer Leonie Haimson — in the form of an e-mail message arguing that Ms. Haimson's characterization of summer school programs as underfunded was incorrect.”

We’re still waiting for that email message, by the way. As well as answers to lots more questions we have posed to David Cantor over the last few days and weeks.

Chris Cerf, if you’re reading this, your press office is not doing their job!

Update: the article in the NY Sun has delighted the bloggers, of course, many who have blogged about it already -- for some links click here.

Joel Klein devises a plan in which he can stay in power....forever!

Last week, the DOE announced, with a straight face that, after competitive bidding, it had awarded a five year, $50 million contract to train principals to the (drum roll please) NYC Leadership Academy.

Ten million dollars a year of taxpayer money that will continue for five years, long after Bloomberg has left office. This news, delivered with a straight face, went mostly unreported in the press, with a few exceptions.

That the Leadership Academy – created by Joel Klein, with Joel Klein chair of the board, Joel Klein who had selected the other board members, Joel Klein who had appointed the director, Joel Klein who had raised $75 million in private money to start it through the Fund for Public Schools, an organization which is also chaired by Joel Klein….had now been awarded a $50 million contract by Joel Klein, went mostly unreported. (see partial correction below)

The press has had a field day reporting much smaller City Council grants to organizations that employ relatives of City Council members. But when Joel Klein awards a $50 million to an organization that he himself heads, nothing but….silence. The bare faced absurdity of it all cannot be outdone.

Encouraged by the lack of critical reception, Klein and his overpaid deputies have devised a new plan by which they can remain in power indefinitely, even after the Mayor leaves office, even if Mayoral control is significantly amended.

How? Simple. Before leaving office, Joel Klein will grant himself a contract to run the schools for the next twenty years, running the entire operation from an outside corporation, and eliminate DOE altogether. Whether this device is legal or not is uncertain, but that has never stopped him before.

At the same time, by eliminating the need for the entire central office at Tweed, he can claim a great victory by having shrunk the bureaucracy.

News update and partial correction:

A savvy reporter informed me that Joel Klein took himself and Chris Cerf off the board at the Leadership Academy about a month ago – just before awarding them the $50 Million competitively bid contract. Not that this would fool anyone, but…

Sure enough, when you go to the Academy's website here , you see the original board listed; but the links are missing for the bios for Klein, Cerf and Robert F. Arning, who is head of the NYC office of KPMG and has a huge contract with DOE as well.

And when you go to another page listing the board, their names are omitted.

Wonder if any of this is legal….since Klein stepped off the board right before granting the contract, presumably he thought there might be a problem.

Another Reality Check on NYC's State Exam Scores

The privately-backed Fund for Public Schools has once again entered the public relations arena on behalf of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein with television ads touting the “remarkable” gains made by NYC public school students in this year’s NYS Math and ELA exams. In so doing, they have joined every imaginable constituency from the UFT to the State Education Department to the editorial boards of major NYC newspapers in extracting as much credit as is humanly possible. After all, nobody’s personal or political agenda is harmed by rising test scores, so why not bathe in their afterglow, real or otherwise?

A few reports, such as Elizabeth Green’s story in the New York Sun or Jennifer Medina's in the New York Times have cast clouds of doubt over this year’s “too good to be true” results. It’s interesting, however, to step back for a moment, take a longer look at the data, and insert a little historical perspective (credit here goes in part to Sol Stern’s City Journal story, “Grading Mayoral Control” and Diane Ravitch's earlier posting in this blog from 2007).

To begin with, the DOE’s formal presentation of this year’s results makes the following self-congratulatory assertion:

Since 2002, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding State standards is up 27.7 points in 4th grade math and up 29.8 points in 8th grade math. In ELA, the percentage is up 14.8 points in 4th grade and 13.5 points in 8th grade.

Governor Pataki signed the legislations authorizing mayoral control of the NYC public schools on June 12, 2002. Joel Klein was appointed Chancellor in August, 2002 and spent his first year learning the system, creating task forces, and the like. As Sol Stern wrote, “Klein knew he couldn’t convincingly claim credit for the 2003 test scores, and he didn’t even hold a press conference to celebrate them.” Clearly, the earliest reasonable base year the Mayor and Chancellor can use for measuring the impact of their efforts would be 2003. Even starting with 2003 as the pre-Mayoral control base year assumes that Mr. Klein moved so quickly and forcefully in one school year as to achieve results in 2004 that could be attributed to the changes he had effectuated, but let’s be charitable and concede that possibility. So what do we see in looking at this year’s Summary Report numbers since 2003?

In 4th Grade Math, the five-year percentage point gain of students at Levels 3+4 shrinks from 27.7 points to 13.0, or by more than half. Furthermore, an inexplicable jump of 9.3 points in 2005 has never been duplicated; NYC 4th graders’ proficiency has only increased 2.3 percentage points in the last three years despite teacher bonuses, principal incentives, accountability threats, cell phone minutes and cash for students, and endless test preparation. In 4th grade English, we see the identical story. The DOE’s claimed 14.8 percentage point increase shrinks to just 8.9 points, and another inexplicable 9.9 percentage point increase in 2005 leaves today’s 4th graders only 1.8 points better off in terms of proficiency that they were three years ago.

In 8th Grade Math, the story is a bit different, but suspiciously so. The DOE’s claimed increase of 29.8 points in percent of students at Levels 3+4 shrinks slightly, to 25.2 points. However, after an 8.0-point jump to 42.4% in 2004, those scores had declined in 2005 and again in 2006 before reaching 45.6% in 2007, a three-year gain of 3.2 percentage points. After essentially flat-lining over four years (2004-2007), this year’s scores rose by an astonishing 14.0 percentage points, a logic-defying increase that certainly calls for further examination. In 8th Grade ELA, the increase since 2003 has been 10.5 percentage points (compared to the DOE’s claim of 13.5 points), and a respectable (and believable) 7.4 points since 2004.

To the extent that some of the test result increases are undoubtedly “real” (despite stories about cheating and suspicions that the tests are being "dumbed down"), consider the following viewer comment posted anonymously on NY1’s The Call blog (thank goodness there are still a few honest souls out there):

I am a fourth grade teacher in the Bronx, and my class is comprised entirely of Second Language Learners. Starting in November, we had to basically drop everything and teach to the test. I had to sit through meetings where my administrators would talk about "strategies" to help them succeed, like looking for key words. During this time, I was never teaching for learning, I was teaching to just scrape by on this test. We are told to stop teaching Science and Social Studies so we can do test prep. The students go until 5pm to the "Test Prep Academy" and in the two weeks before the test, we have to do ALL DAY TEST PREP. While the Language Arts test is challenging for second language learners, the math test is so far below what fourth graders should know it's just embarrassing! There is no long division, no double digit multiplication, no real problem solving that requires actual critical math application skills. I don't get to teach content, and I will leave for the suburbs as soon as I finish my Master's Degree.

Is this the price we have agreed and accepted to pay in our children’s education in order for Messrs. (and Ms.) Bloomberg, Klein, Weingarten, and others to wallow in their accolades? A devil’s bargain if ever there was one. SHAME ON US. ALL OF US.

silly editorials and summer school confusion

Today’s Washington Post features a ridiculous editorial in support of the Sharpton/Klein alliance, which is described as “a fast-growing national coalition of educators, politicians and academicians that aims to focus attention on the real issues of education reform.” No doubt this was written by the same credulous bunch who bought the line of the Bush administration that we needed to declare war on Iraq. Perhaps they should occasionally try visiting planet Earth.

The NY Times blames the City Council and not the Mayor for the refusal to restore all social services by eliminating the reduction in the property tax, ignoring the fact that Bloomberg's budget neglected to countenance any such change. They write: “Traditionally, New York mayors propose cuts needed to balance the budget as required by law, and then the City Council fights to restore funds to education, health and other social programs”, thus letting Bloomberg off the hook.

While during the negotiations, the Mayor apparently gave the council the option to reduce the property tax cut if they wanted to restore social services, he made it clear that they would have to shoulder the blame if they chose to do so. This is not political leadership and he deserves at least equal condemnation.

Meanwhile, the Staten Island Advance reports on the chaos created as students scramble for seats at summer schools. Apparently, Tweed has now given up planning summer school and is now leaving it up to principals, each of whom has imposed different rules at different schools. Rationale?

“In the past, summer school enrollment was handled centrally by the city Department of Education (DOE). However, in the last year or two, principals have been making the rules at their own schools.

Maibe Gonzalez-Fuentes, a spokeswoman for the DOE, said the change was part of a larger initiative to give principals more decision-making power.

"We have such a huge and diverse school system so the same idea doesn't work for everyone," she said. "Principals know best what their students need."

Ironically, Tweed also created huge confusion this year by taking over the admissions process for preK, middle school and Gifted and Talented programs that they once left up to districts and individual principals -- and in each case, they botched it. They just can't seem to leave anything alone.

Actually, despite the line that they want to give more discretion to principals, it’s only those programs and services that DOE doesn’t care about that they are leaving up to individual schools, like class size. Anything they think is important, like more testing, data analysis, and data inquiry teams, they are spending millions of dollars on and forcing upon schools -- no matter how useless.

Clearly, they have lost interest in summer school, which is now so underfunded that schools are forced to restrict which groups of failing students are eligible to enroll.

ELA and Math Test Scores -- Experts Question Increases

State test scores for 2008 can be found here (Math) and here (ELA)

An expert who serves as the State's top technical adviser on testing is concerned about grade inflation and has called for an independent study of this year's unusual and unprecedented rise in test scores across the state. Writing in the NY Sun, Elizabeth Green has the story here.

Elizabeth also has a disturbing story about cheating on the state tests here. An excerpt:

A sixth-grader at M.S. 201. said that a teacher once looked over his shoulder and said, "Ooh, is that right? Is that the right answer?" encouraging him to erase and try again.

Meanwhile, 11 of 12 P.S. 48 graduates interviewed last week said they were coached during the state tests.

They said that teachers would look over their shoulders and instruct them to try again and again until they got answers right.

"They'd be like, 'Is that the right answer?' — until they make sure it's right," a sixth-grader said.

"When I was at 48, I never went to class, and I still passed the test," a seventh-grader said. "If you go to graduation, you pass."

Higher test scores could pay off for M.S. 201's teachers this year. The school is one of about 200 participating in a trial project to give teachers bonuses if their students perform well on state tests.

The bonuses average $3,000 a teacher.

Under the Bloomberg administration, test results have been woven into a complex system of carrots and sticks where principal bonuses, teacher merit pay, school ratings, school budget bonuses, principal dismissals and school closings all hinge on test scores. It is not surprising that pressure to score high has lead to a culture of test prep, grade inflation and cheating.

Update: see the NY Sun for a properly skeptical oped about the sharp rise in NY State test scores.

Overcrowding Rally Rocks City Hall

Bravo to the parents of P. S. 234, 89, and 116 for organizing a tremendous rally at City Hall last week (6/26) to protest school overcrowding.

These three schools face truly crisis situations next fall, when booming enrollments will overflow their kindergartens. A recent "blueprint" from the DOE to address overcrowding in D2 offered only cosmetic solutions. P. S. 234 and 89 at least have the prospect of two new schools on the distant horizon (Beekman and the so-called Green School), but 234 parent Eric Greenleaf estimates that by the time these two schools open the downtown population will see enough new children to open a third. P. S. 116 has no relief in sight. Next year they will have kindergartens of 28 and may be busing kids ten blocks south to the American Sign Language school. Cluster rooms are disappearing, and kindergartens swelling into the high twenties.

Parents from these schools mobilized families from throughout the city to march on City Hall after school let out on Thursday to demand a capital plan that realistically addresses the city's needs for seats and real short-term solutions to current overcrowding. The day began at Teardrop Park in Battery Park City, where small dissidents made signs and celebrated the end of school on a very long slide. The rally moved to City Hall at 3:30, and at 4:00 protesters were addressed by a number of elected officials and parent leaders: Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer; Councilmember Alan Gerson; Chair of Community Board 1 Julie Menin; Matthew Borden, Community Liaison and education advisor for Assemblymember Deborah Glick; representatives for Representative Carolyn Maloney and Representative Jerrold Nadler; John Scott, Vice President of the Community Education Council for District 2; and Cynthia Wachtell and Paula Seefeldt of the Kids Protest Project, which has been delivering kids’ pleas to preserve school budgets to City Hall for weeks. P. S. 3 parent Robert Ely spoke of efforts to convert state property at 75 Morton Street to school space. State Senator Martin Connor said the crisis in overcrowding originates with mayoral control, and that Senate hearings on school governance will begin this summer. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver walked through the crowd and spoke with many parents and children to give them his support.

Organizers estimate that in the neighborhood of three hundred protesters showed up for the rally. City parents mourn that kids should face such conditions when they return to school this fall, but at least this latest DOE fiasco has brought to parent activism a new bunch of motivated and imaginative parents who in a short time have done much good. Now to the big job of pressing for an increased five-year capital plan for school construction this fall, in a city faced with shrinking budgets.

Update: See the Downtown Express about this rally, and about how DOE forced the PTA of PS 89 to take down a banner reading “STOP Overcrowding Our Schools” that was hanging from the school beforehand.

Funny, when they made all schools hang banners publicizing the highly controversial Broad prize when they won it. There seems to be a double standard here.