In his latest NY Times column, Bob Herbert has shown that he belongs to the Nick Kristof club of "journalists" who helicopter into an issue, traipse around for a few hours, get treated like royalty and receive a king's tour, hear a one-sided pitch, watch a show being put on for their benefit, and then go write a story as if they actually know something about the broader topic.Herbert decided to dabble for a few hours in NYC public school education, and the Potemkin village story he presents is about the marvels of Harlem Village Academy (HVA) charter school on West 144th Street. Herbert makes much of one his one selected statistic: "In 2008, when the math and science test scores come in, Ms. Kenny's eighth graders had achieved 100 percent proficiency." That's commendable, of course, but here are a few figures he overlooked or failed to mention:
-- In 2006-07, the first year on which DOE reports data for HVA, the school had a Grade 5 class of 66 students. HVA has no students in Grades K-4, so Grade 5 appears to be the school's primary intake class. The next year, that same cohort as Grade 6 students numbered 45. A 32% loss of students in a single year for such a stellar school, even in the middle school crossover year, is worth explaining.
-- In 2006-07, HVA had a Grade 7 class of 42 students, but the next year's Grade 8 cohort numbered just 31, another 26% loss of students that raises an eyebrow or two.
-- One-third of the school's classes in 2008 were "taught by teachers without appropriate certification" according to the DOE's own data, and 42% of the teachers were reported either without certification (18%) or teaching outside their area of certification (24%). HVA did not report its teacher turnover rates for the DOE's 2007-08 report, nor does it appear to have ever disclosed those figures for the DOE's public reporting.
-- In 2006-07, HVA had zero students out of 200 classified at Limited English Proficient (LEP); in 2007-08, that number was still only three out of 233. By comparison, PS/IS 210, located just eight blocks away on West 152nd Street, had 173 LEP students out of a student population of 360 in 2007-08, or 48%.
-- In 2006-07, 53% of the HVA student body qualified for free lunch, rising to 61% in 2007-08. By comparison, 91% of the student population at nearby PS/IS 210 qualified for free lunch in 2006-07 (no data reported for 2007-08).
-- HVA reported 75 student suspensions in 2005-06 and 87 suspensions for 2006-07. The student body in those two years totaled 200 and 233, respectively. Nearby PS/IS 210 reported just 10 suspensions in each of those two years for student populations of 192 and 257, respectively. Both schools reported 94% attendance rates for 2006-07, the only year reported by HVA.
-- For 2007-08, HVA reported a Grade 8 cohort of 31 students. Thirty took the Grade 8 Math exam, but only 25 took the Grade 8 Science exam in which 96% were rated Proficient. What happened to the other six students, almost 20% of the class? If they were all too weak academically to have reached Proficient, the school's percentage would have dropped to 77% -- still good, but not as chest-thumping as 96%. Curiously, 41 of HVA's 43 Grade 8 student the previous year took the Science exam for 2006-07, and their proficiency percentage came in just there, at 76%.
-- A recent executive search letter seeking teachers on HVA's behalf included the following statement: The organization [Harlem Village Academies] recently completed a $67 million capital campaign to build a new high school in the heart of Harlem and has a robust pipeline of donors. Harlem Village Academies recently held its first ever gala, hosted by Hugh Jackman, with performances by John Legend, Patti LaBelle, and Joss Stone. The event, attended by Mayor Bloomber and Governor Patterson, generated net revenues of nearly $2 million. I can't resist adding here that the DOE is still aggressively pursuing its edict that NYC public school students are forbidden from selling homemade brownies, cupcakes, or cookies to raise $50 or $100 for their clubs and activities; if they could just get Hugh Jackman and Patti LaBelle!
-- Other recent news items from HVA's own website cite the involvement of Jack Welch (GE), Dick Parsons (Citigroup), Brian Williams (NBC), and Tiki Barber. Again, compare all this to the (steadily shrinking) resources DOE provides to PS/IS 210 and its much needier student population nearby. Note as well that Mayor Bloomberg is repeatedly quoted in the school's literature and on its website as describing HVA as "the poster child for this country." Is this really the Mayor's vision for NYC public schools: dependent on celebrities and the feel-good charitable funding fad of the moment among NYC's corporatocracy and its nouveau riche hedge fund managers?
-- Principal Deborah Kenny, as chief executive of Harlem Village Network (which includes one other school in East Harlem, the Leadership Village Academy Charter School), commanded a neat little compensation package totaling slightly under $420,000 last year. She is not the acting principal of any of her network's three schools, yet her compensation, spread over the 400-odd students in her network, adds a $1,000 per student overhead burden. If the entire NYC public school system operated in the same manner for its one million students, the combined compensation for all the comparable "network chief executives" would add one billion dollars to the city's education budget!
I should state here that I am not categorically opposed to charter schools in principle, any more than I have ever been opposed to parochial schools (from which, in Indianapolis, I am a partial product). What I object to is the unthinking, unquestioning acceptance by people like Mr. Herbert, who are supposed to know better, that privatizing public education based on hidden investors (with potentially their own agendas), paying outsized salaries to members of the club, dumping at will any kids who are difficult to teach or control, ignoring kids with English language or special education needs, and then blindly comparing these cream-skimmed apples to a wholly different and far more inclusive set of underfunded oranges somehow represents "the answer" for urban education in America. Mr. Herbert owes us much better than the misleading storyline he has provided in this instance, whatever his personal feelings and connections are.
Schools like Harlem Village Academy may indeed work well for the population they create for themselves after dumping the kids they don't want back into the "traditional" public school system, and they deserve to be credited for what they achieve as a result since their students appear to be benefiting. But that's not public education, that's just a tuition-free private school operating on public money in public space, supplemented by lots and lots of private money and making a few more, mostly white people like Ms. Kenny and Ms. Moskowitz shamefully well-paid.
7 comments:
Thanks for posting this. I read the Herbert piece and was very curious about what it didn't include. You certainly answered my question.
Magnificent, Steve. When does your Times column start?
I find your your posting comical! admittance into charter public schools are by lottery, students are not hand-picked! And due to their rigorous academics, not only HVA, but most charter public schools scores surpasses most public schools scores!!!!
You should take a lesson from the charter public schools and perhaps your students will score better or as equal as their charter school counterparts!
Oh, and one more thing, CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!!!!
You make a good, if one sided, argument. This is pubic education, and shows that for the children and importantly their families that are willing to make the necessary sacrifices in and out of classroom, this intensive approach can work. Yes, it is much more expensive (class sizes are smaller, school days are longer), but this only illustrates that this expense is necessary. This one school's financial backing is unusual, but the approach is more expensive in general. I have seen parallel public and charter schools operating side by side. Students from the same population with similar abilities do better at the charters. Importantly they behave better and study harder both at school and at home. Keys are the ability and threat to suspend or expel that is not possible at the public school, and the lower percentage of students with learning and behavioral dissabilities. It is akin to tracking, but the percentage who make the grade is much much higher than with tracking at traditional city schools. One should note that the most successful approach is extremely taxing on teachers. Most teachers at these schools work extended hours, are very young, and don't have children. Many of the teachers are from the seemingly endless supply of Teach-for-America and teaching-fellows once they finish their initial 2-3 years in the regular school system. Is the system sustainable in the long run as a life-long career for these teachers: the answer to that is not clear. Maybe our country needs an army of teachers instead of soldiers, most of whom would serve for 5-10 years-- only an exceptional few would make a career out of it.
Excuse me, but I happen to go to one of the schools, Harlem Village Academy Leadership, and I will be going to the high school next year. I advise that you don't base your opinion by just some facts. Have you ever been to one of our schools? Have you ever looked into the classrooms and see how focused we are, how hard we have worked all year? Today was our last day of school and guess what? Today the 8th graders took REGENTS, the same ones that our high school students were taking at the exact moment. We were taking 9th grade Integrated Algebra regents AND 11th grade US History and Government Regents and I'm pretty sure that we aced it. Yes, we have more suspensions, but we have stricter rules than any other school and it helps us shape our character. Yes, classes decrease in size as they move up in grades, but thats because kids who didnt care about their education CHOSE to leave and we cant stop them from leaving because its not in our control. We dont kick out students, we try to help them succeed to the very end. Remember that we have hundreds of more students who will do all that it takes to get the education that they deserve. Yes, some of our teachers are without certification or are teaching outside of their certification, but every single teacher cares about every single student and thats what really matters. They try their best, spend hours, HOURS, on lessons for us and are so dedicated to their work. Kids are picked by lottery, which means by random, so its only by chance that we dont have any LEP students. Yes, we have a less percentage of kids with free meals in our school, but our school is young, we are still growing, that percentage will increase. Yes, we get very large donations and more money is spent on each student, but thats because the DOE is not enough for the price of success and our teachers want the absolute best for us. You say that Bob Herbert wrote about something that he didnt know about but you should not be talking because you know nothing about us until you really look at us, and not just some reviews from the DOE, because they are only there to grade, and they dont see the deeper meaning of our school.
Obviously, this school filters those on track from the struggling students. My son was in public school for 5 years from kindergarten to 4th grade and he had never been suspended or even given a warning before and he did very well. He spent 2 years in this charter school from 5th to
6th grade. Within those 2 years, he was detained 4 times and suspended 2 times for nothing. I tranfered him to another charter school and I have been at peace of mind since then. Kids can never be kids in this school. They have no tolerance for kids at all. Parents should think twice before sending their children to this school.
My son attends the Village Academy that is located on 144th street in Harlem. At this school there is no rule about cell phones as long as they are not seen or heard. I seen are heard they are taking from the student and are held for a parents pickup. My problem is the school does not secure the property well enough by listing the students name/make and color of cellphone. My son phone was recovered by a teacher who allegedly secured it. When it came time for his Mom to pick it up, first she was told it was secured by the teacher who had taking it and that when the teacher return the property would be giving back to the student. Today a message was sent with the student that there was an alleged break in and the cell phone is missing. I plan on filing a Police Report against the teacher who took the property, due to the fact that the teacher became responsible for the property once he/she took it from the student and should've secured it.
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