NYC Public School Parents

City Hall rally today protesting the epidemic of school closings and DOE's broken promises to Jamaica HS

2012-01-31T18:48:00.004-05:00

There was a rally today, organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, protesting against the mayor's wrecking ball policies and school closings. Speakers included NYC Comptroller Liu, Public Advocate De Blasio, Manhattan Borough President Stringer, former NYC Comptroller Thompson, parents and students from the closing schools, Advocates for Children, and many others... Here is my speech; video will be posted soon..

For more on why parents and community members throughout the country strongly oppose the epidemic of school closings, and distrust the top-down "solutions" imposed by them from above, this excellent Public Agenda survey "What's Trust Got to Do With It?"

Theodore Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, John Jay, Martin Luther King Jr.

John F. Kennedy, John Dewey, Paul Robeson, Louis Brandeis, Thomas Jefferson.

Norman Thomas, Roberto Clemente, Jane Addams, Alfred E. Smith.

What do these names have in common? These are some of the greatest heroes in American history, and sadly, they are also the names of schools that Michael Bloomberg has already closed or plans to close in the future.

What will be the fate of the students at the more than 50 schools that are now on the chopping block? A spike in the dropout rate, students discharged to GED programs, and/or graduated with a meaningless HS diploma, by means of substandard credit recovery programs, if past history is any guide.

Of course the DOE will promise otherwise, but their promises are worthless.

I have here a letter from the PTA president and the chapter chair of Jamaica HS, to whose students DOE made all sorts of promises in the Educational Impact Statement after deciding to phase the school out.

The DOE promised that students already enrolled in Jamaica in its various programs would continue to have access to the academic classes they need to complete their program requirements.

Yet as the letter points out, students in the finance, computer and pre-engineering programs no longer have access to many of the classes that are required to complete their programs.

There are no longer any honors courses at any level or in any subject at the school. The DOE promised that the students could take electives at the other schools in the building but this has not occurred.

The DOE promised online coursework, which never happened. In fact, some of the school’s computers are so old as to be obsolete.

There is no longer a librarian in the building, and so there is no access to the library; and social studies courses are taught by teachers who do not have the certification in this subject.

The DOE promised that “As the school becomes smaller, students would receive more individualized attention through graduation to ensure they are receiving the support they need to succeed. Students would also be encouraged to meet with their guidance counselor to discuss all of their options.” Yet two of the three guidance counselors were excessed & there is only one guidance counselor with over 600 students. Class sizes are have grown even larger; with science, math and English classes at 30 or more. As the letter says,

“It is clear to anyone who examines the EIS and then looks at the reality of what is occurring at this school that these students are not being given the supports that the DOE promised, and is their right to receive. Their ability to go onto college and/or be ready for a career has been seriously compromised. … The DOE has betrayed the hopes and dreams of Jamaica students, and gone back on their promises.”

Truly, this administration has acted as a wrecking ball on our schools, uncaring, reckless and destructive. And closing schools with this much history behind them is tearing out the heart of communities -- who cherish their schools even as they are struggling as a result of budget cuts, increased class sizes, overcrowding and the elimination of any support from DOE.

There is also a huge amount of hypocrisy behind all this. I don’t understand how anyone can claim they care about teacher quality and then impose a quota that demands that 50% of all teachers be fired from a struggling school. What kind of quality would that ensure?

There is also tremendous hypocrisy from an administration that prattles on about “parent choice” whenever it wants to push a new charter school into an already overcrowded building; but when it comes to the protests of thousands of parents who ask not to close their children’s school, or the hundreds of thousands of parents who ask them to reduce class size as the top priority on the DOE’s own surveys, they turn a deaf ear.

In fact, the mayor treats parents with the utmost contempt, and says that we just don’t understand the value of a good education.

We do understand this well, Mr. Mayor, and that’s why we know that you have utterly failed over the last decade in providing our kids with the schools they need and deserve.

It is time, no, it is long past time, that we take back our public schools from this megalomaniac billionaire, and give them back to the parents, students, teachers, and community members – who want them strengthened rather than destroyed.

Deadline Mon. Jan. 30 on the state's awful NCLB waiver proposal; please make your voice heard

2012-01-27T15:07:00.003-05:00

The NY State Education Department is proposing to submit a NCLB waiver request to the US Dept. of Education that is posted here. The deadline for public comment is 5 PM, this Monday, Jan. 30.

While purporting to create more district “flexibility,” it will actually lead to even more standardized testing, more test prep, more teachers unfairly fired and schools closed, and hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, while our kids suffer from budget cuts and even larger classes.

Please send a message today! A sample email, adapted and expanded from a letter signed onto by 1/3 of all NYS principals, is below. The comments should be sent to eseathnktank@mail.nysed.gov, with a copy to the Regents who appoint the Commissioner, and Speaker Silver, who is responsible for the appointment of the Regents.

We have also added a statement, asking the Regents to withdraw their recent unconscionable decision to provide our children’s confidential data to a limited corporation funded by Gates and operated by Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation, even though the state comptroller had vetoed a similar contract this summer and there was a huge public outcry when this was originally proposed.

Please make your voice heard, and do it today! And please share this message to others who care.

__________________________________

TO: eseathnktank@mail.nysed.gov

Dear Dr. King and members of the Board of Regents:

As a parent, I strongly disagree with your proposal for a state NCLB waiver and urge you to revise it as soon as possible.

Already my child and other NYC children are subjected to too many standardized tests and too much test prep. All this focus on test scores is seriously undermining the quality of the education our students receive, with no increase in actual learning. In fact, with all the emphasis on standardized testing and high-stakes accountability, NYC kids have fallen even further behind their peers in other large cities, as measured by the only reliable assessments known as the NAEPs, according to an analysis done by Class Size Matters.

All the additional testing your proposal would generate would lead to even less quality instruction, as well as facilitate the use of unreliable teacher evaluations and justify even more damaging school closings. In particular I strongly oppose these elements of your proposal:

I do not want additional ELA tests mandated in grades 9 and 10, in order to create more unreliable teacher evaluations or justify more school closings. I do not want schools held “accountable” for the results of all the other unreliable and often vacuous state tests.

I do not want student test scores used to evaluate teacher education programs -- or individual teachers for that matter. Any reliable teacher evaluation system should be developed carefully with input from all stakeholder groups, and the evaluation system itself should include relevant feedback from parents, students and other teachers, as well as principals.

I do not want proficiency levels on the Regents to be raised, if that means denying students the chance to graduate based on test scores alone.

I do not taxpayer money being wasted by even more testing and data crunching, while our children suffer from school budgets cuts and unprecedented class size increases. I urge you to provide an estimate of the costs that would incur if your proposal is accepted. For example, the state of California has estimated the costs of such a waiver to be at least two billion dollars for their state alone.

I do not want to “reward” schools based on their test scores, if this means giving schools monetary awards, as this will cause funds subtracted from other schools that are either struggling or do not choose to focus so intensively on test prep.

I do not want any of our schools forced to implement one of the four Federal SIG intervention models -- including more school closings, outsourcing school management to a private companies, charter conversions or firing half the staff at these schools. These policies do not work, are very wasteful, disrupt the need for stable learning environments for our kids, and will lead to higher dropout and discharge rates. Moreover, these policies are overwhelmingly opposed by parents and community members throughout the city, as well as parents throughout the nation, as shown by a recent Public Agenda survey.

Finally I strongly oppose your recent decision to give my child’s confidential data, including test scores and other information, to a Limited Corporation funded by the Gates Corporation and operated by Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation. Like the NYS Comptroller who vetoed the state’s no-bid contract with Wireless this summer, I have real doubts about the security of such data, the commercial uses to which it will be put, and the fact that you have agreed to provide my child’s data without any input from parents and without my informed consent. I ask you to renounce and cancel this decision immediately.

Yours, Name, address & school (last is optional)

More on the invasion of S. Williamsburg by Success Academy charter school

2012-01-26T20:58:00.000-05:00

Check out the video below by Darren Marelli, along with Ellen McHugh's account of the hearings to co-locate yet another branch of Eva Moskowitz' charter chain in PS 50 in South Williamburg Brooklyn.

South Williamsburg is largely Latino, but Moskowitz has spent millions in advertising, recruiting and plastering the subways in the north section -- the gentrified part of district -- with ads for her charter school, featuring mostly little white faces. This, combined with the fact that her charter chain enrolls very few English Language Learners, and the community was never asked if they wanted her charter in their midst, has enraged many elected officials, activists, clergy and residents.

And we're back; another public school, another charter. This is getting monotonous, repetitive, scary, demeaning, pick a descriptor. There are co-location hearings such as this at least once a week in NYC and they run under the radar. Large scale newspapers never send reporters, small ethnic papers send young Jimmy Olsen type cub reporters, fresh from school and without knowledge.

We were in the well-lit auditorium of IS 50, in Los Sures, the beating heart of Williamsburgh. Nine people were on the dais: two from the local CEC District 14, two from the SLT, two from the CCSE, the principal from the high school, a representative from the DOE Division of Portfolio Planning and a representative of the SUNY Board of Trustees. There were a requisite number of assistants from the DOE sitting attentively in the front row. And next to them were two men with camera in hand, microphone extended, catching every word, filming every member of the panel on the stage or speaker in the well. Whispers in the audience let me know they were from Eva's Success Academy public relations shop.

The DOE rep began the meeting intoning the standard speech about the reasons we were here. None of us were surprised. We could read too. That's an issue with the DOE. Most of their employees think we (the public) only come with stupid. Not a brain among us.

He introduced the panel and began the public period of the meeting. While we were listening to him there was some action among the members of the panel. The principal of the high school heaved a sigh and whispered that she was glad she'd be out of the building in the fall. The SUNY rep busily scribbled notes, rarely lifting his head and startled when asked a question.

Over fifty individuals had signed up to speak. Many of the speakers were long time residents of the area. They spoke English and Spanish to a sympathetic crowd. There were cheers. There were standing ovations. There are four elementary schools within walking distance of PS 50, but there was no high-performing junior high school. This plan would lead to further polarization in the community.

Progress Inc. produced 1,000 signatures protesting the charter school. Councilwoman Reyna received a standing ovation when she told the crowd that she would work to oppose the move. Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez sent a representative who promised that Congress would be looking at this co-location plan. A young man read a poem blasting the plan. Many asked hard questions: "What does it take?" What does it take for the DOE to hear us? What does it take for the DOE to hear the neighborhood and not Eva? Only one person favored the proposal for the charter school: one young, woman who was a resident of Williamsburg for about three years. It was heartbreaking.

Then a shiver of excitement went through the room. Occupy was outside. The people's mic made an appearance. In the back there was a bit of scuffle between two burly members of the security team the DOE folks travel with and some protestors. Quickly a huge banner on three poles was unfurled : "Success Academy = Vampires". The security people wanted the banner down. The poles were dangerous. To keep the peace, and keep the banner up, the poles were removed and some protesters held the banner.

But hanging in the air, over all of the excitement and between all of the shouts, were ugly strings of words. "We will take over the school." "We will go to jail." It's come to that. Threats, not plans: not plans that include the community, not plans that end social inequalities, not plans that build a school.

What does it take? -- Ellen McHugh of Parent to Parent and the Citywide Council on Special Education

Note: a mistake in the published EIS requires another meeting on this co-location. The vote by the PEP has been delayed until March 1, 2012

The decline of science education in NYC high schools as shown by the falling number of Intel submissions and semi-finalists

2012-01-26T17:19:00.001-05:00

These posts about the decline of independent science research at NYC high schools – especially at the less selective non-specialized high schools – were written and researched by NYC parents Steve Koss and Melvin Meer. For earlier posts by Steve on this discouraging trend, see here and here.

This year's list of Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists has just been announced, and the news for NYC public schools is both good and bad. On the plus side, Stuyvesant HS appears to have regained some of its former Intel mojo with 13 semifinalists, its best year since 2003 when it scored 19 semifinalists. In the last four years, Stuyvesant's numbers had been 11, 10, 9, and 5 (last year), creating a substantial drag on NYC public schools' traditional solid performance in the Intel competition.

Bronx Science scored 8 semifinalists this year, the same number they had last year. It is worth noting that even for these two science-oriented schools, their average number of semifinalists in the five years before mayoral control were 13.67 for Stuy and 10.33 for Bronx Science; in the nine years from (January) 2004 - 2012, the Bloomberg years, those numbers have been 9.67 (down 29.3%) for Stuyvesant and 6.56 for Bronx Science (down 36.5%).

The most alarming result of this year's Intel competition results is that Stuyvesant (13), Bronx Science (8), and Staten Island Tech (1) were the ONLY NYC public high schools with a semifinalist. The entire rest of the NYC public high school system -- including such traditional STS achievers as Townsend Harris, Murrow, Cardozo, Midwood, and Susan Wagner--had no semifinalists.

Of course, this is only the culmination of a trend that has been readily apparent since Mayor Bloomberg test- and data-driven school policies have practically driven all but the most basic, Regents-required science instruction from our classrooms. The six years before Bloomberg (January 1998 - January 2003) averaged a bit less than six Intel semifinalists per year from public high schools other than Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and Staten Island Tech. Above is a chart showing the numbers since Bloomberg took over.

While this year's total number of semifinalists shows an improvement over the past several years, even the 22 spots earned by our science high school students is less than it was in all but one of the six years prior to Bloomberg/Klein. For the rest of the city's public high schools, Intel STS appears to be virtually out of reach any more.

Michael Bloomberg has single-handedly managed nearly to kill advanced science research for most of NYC's public high schools, where once those students' achievements were one of our city's (and those kids') greatest sources of educational pride. As only George Bush could put it, "Great job, Mikey!!" -- Steve Koss

Here's an excerpt from a report I put together last year, with numbers, for our Community Board (Q11). Queens parents might also want to take notice of the very few specialized high school seats there are in Queens (only 100 entry ones each year) compared with each of the other boroughs. Queens is a very significant exporter of students to the other boroughs and travel times can be outrageous.

One of the reasons that the City is doing so poorly over the Bloomberg years is that there are many fewer Intel Science submissions from New York City schools lately. Consider the school by school data (chart to the right).

These results illustrate the deterioration of science education in the New York City high schools over the last 13 years. It is bad enough that our brightest kids are not winning in the semi-finalist contest. Clearly they are not even submitting in the numbers to which we had become accustomed. That takes faculty mentoring and encouragement that seems no longer there. -- Mel Meer

Concerns with the MDRC study on small schools released today

2012-01-26T15:01:00.004-05:00

MDRC released a study today, which the NY Times writes “appeared to validate the Bloomberg administration’s decade-long push to create small schools to replace larger, failing high schools.” The report mentions the current controversy over the massive number of school closings, here in NYC and across the country, and thus there may be a political element in the timing of its release:

MDRC’s findings about SSCs are relevant to current federal policy on high school reform, particularly the U. S. Department of Education’s School Improvement Grants (SIGs) for failing schools. Reforms funded by SIGs include school transformation, school restart, school closing, and school turnaround. SSCs straddle several of these categories since they are typically replacements for schools that have closed and they operate as regular public schools.

This is the second MDRC study to conclude that students who attended the new small schools had significantly improved outcomes. The first MDRC study, released in 2010, looked at students who entered these schools in 2005; this one adds students who entered in 2006 to that group.

I have a lot of reservations about using this study or the previous study to justify the small schools initiative and especially to justify the current massive round of school closings. I am no expert in statistics, but my concerns revolve around these issues:

1- Though the study points out that the small schools were supposedly “unscreened” and evaluates their results by comparing the outcomes of students who applied to the school through lotteries, compared to those who lost the lottery, it ignores that the students who attended these small schools were far less high-needs on average, as evidence by their lower rates of English language learners and special needs, as shown by this Annenberg study by Pallas and Jennings. In fact, they were allowed to openly exclude special needs students during the first two years. Thus even with a “lottery” for admissions, there are substantial peer effects for students who are grouped with higher-achieving students which this study does not mention. (This is also a problem with many of the charter school studies, like this one, which tend to ignore peer effects.)

2- The results in terms of higher graduation rates and college readiness (based on Regents scores and credit accumulation) ignore how in NYC, teachers and principals are able manipulate these in ways that do not reflect real learning (especially as teachers grade the Regents of students in their own schools, and in these schools, their own students!) It has also been alleged that the small schools pioneered the now widespread and largely discredited practice of “credit recovery.” With newer teachers at many of the small schools, who did not have a memory or tradition as to earlier practices, it may have been easier to pressure these teachers into employing such methods.

3- The study ignores that the small schools on average were allowed to have smaller classes and were far less overcrowded than the large high schools, which legitimately could have led to better results. The class size at the small schools during these years were from 13 to 20 students per class, according to the PSA first year report, compared to 30 or more at the larger schools. If the higher needs students in the larger schools had been provided with smaller classes, very likely their chance of success would have been improved substantially as well.

4- Yet the study doesn’t examine how the opening of the small schools had a negative impact on the system as a whole, by flooding nearly large high schools with the most disadvantaged and academically challenged students, leading to even more overcrowding, larger class sizes, and damaging their opportunity to learn, as reported by many observers and confirmed by the New School’s report, The New Marketplace.

5- The MDRC study deals with only a subsection of the small schools that were oversubscribed and required a lottery for admissions, so like the charter school studies which use a similar methodology, their success rate may not be representative of small schools overall.

6- It study ignores the reality that these so-called random “lotteries” may be far from actually random. The MDRC study compares the baseline characteristics of students who “won” the lotteries to those who lost, in a Supplemental Table 1, which purports to show that both groups were “virtually identical”; but the comparison does not include students who required collaborative team-teaching or self-contained classes; does not include prior attendance rates, a key factor that principals often examing when selecting students; and does not differentiate between free and reduced price lunch students. The table also does not include data on previous rates of suspension. According to an earlier evaluation done by Policy Studies Associates. the ninth graders who entered the small schools had far better attendance records (91% compared to 81%), and were less likely to have been suspended as 8^th graders compared to students at the schools they replaced.

Even in the categories the MRDC study does compare, there are greater numbers of higher achieving students, though the differences are not statistically significant, according to the model used. Most strangely, the table compares the baseline data for four cohorts – entering ninth-graders from the 2004-2005 to 2007-2008 years; while the report compares outcomes for only the first two of these cohorts, students who entered these schools from 2005-6 and 2006-7. This is despite the fact that that the need level of students increased significantly after that point – and likely, the challenges faced by these schools as well. See the above chart, for example, from the Annenberg study by Jennings and Pallas.

I have no idea why the MRDC study lumped together all these cohorts to examine their baseline characteristics, even as they only compared the outcomes for the first two, but it may considerably bias their conclusions. Indeed, more than half of the middle and high schools being closed by the DOE this year for poor results are small schools that were founded after 2003.

7- There are several ways in which, especially in the early years of the small schools initiative, principals were able to manipulate the admissions process to get the students who were more likely to succeed, even though by definition these schools were supposedly “unscreened” and used “random” lotteries for admissions. See this excerpt from a published study by Jennifer Jennings, who embedded herself with three small schools between March 2004 and September 2005:

My observations revealed that many schools used applications, mandatory information sessions, and much stronger language to deter unwanted applicants. For example, 12 unscreened schools shared a similar application requiring that students provide the most recent report card and two letters of recommendation, one from an eighth-grade teacher and one from a guidance counselor, assistant principal, or principal. The application also asked for the student’s test scores, retention history, and involvement in advanced courses during the eighth grade. Finally, the application included additional questions requiring a narrative response….
The district’s application system provided opportunities for unscreened schools to choose higher achieving students. Through this computer system, each school received a list of students applying to the school, although the school did not know whether the student ranked it, for example, 1st or 12th. ….
The district’s application system provided opportunities for unscreened schools to choose higher achieving students. Through this computer system, each school received a list of students applying to the school, although the school did not know whether the student ranked it, for example, 1st or 12th. This data file included each student’s English-language-learner and special education classification, reading and math test scores, absences, grades, address, and junior high school. Schools were told to identify students who made an ‘‘informed choice’’ by assigning them a 1, while students who did not make an informed choice but the school was willing to accept were assigned a 2. If the school did not fill all of its seats with students making an informed choice, additional seats would be filled by students in the second category. The Department of Education prohibits unscreened schools from using student performance data to select students. Nonetheless, both Marlena and Anna [pseudonyms for two principals of small schools] learned through their relationships with other principals that such regulations were loosely enforced….
In addition to the English language learners and full-time special education students whom new schools had a waiver to eliminate, Renaissance [pseudonym for one of these small schools] eliminated part-time special education students and chose only those with 90 percent or higher attendance. Excel eliminated full- and part-time special education students and chose students with attendance rates of 93 percent or higher.

There are many more revealing insights in the Jennings study about how the small schools were able to deflect over-the-counter students and counsel out low-performers to achieve better results, despite the fact that they claimed to be non-selective. (Update: I have removed the link to the paper at the author's request; the abstract is here.)

All of these concerns should provide one with reservations about the validity of the MDRC study and especially its apparent endorsement of the mayor's policies.

Resolution on busing, with FOILed data showing DOE granted more busing thru safety variances to private school students

2012-01-24T14:08:00.002-05:00

The DOE unilaterally eliminated middle-school busing from many areas of Queens and Staten Island that have no public transportation, and this may have contributed to the death of at least one public school student. Along with some news clips, the data on how few safety variances the DOE has granted in authorizing busing in hazardous areas is here, FOILed by Michael Reilly of CEC 31. What's somewhat shocking is how DOE has approved more safety variances authorizing busing for a greater proportion of private school students than public school students.

Here is the resolution introduced by Dmytro Fedkowskyj, Queens representative to the Panel for Educational Policy, asking to create advisory committee of stakeholders to oversee the process of granting busing variances, which was tabled ~~rejected~~ by the mayoral majority of appointees on the PEP at the last meeting. Correction from Dmytro: the resolution was "tabled it until the next PEP meeting based on the conversation that PEP members had when it was introduced for business. It will be back on the agenda next month if we can't come to an agreement. I am hopeful that DOE will take action before the next meeting."

Panel Recommendation to the Chancellor that the Department of Education Create the “Safety Hazard Advisory Review Program (S.H.A.R.P.) for Office of Pupil Transportation Hazard Variance Applications – Dated January 18, 2012

Whereas, a joint NYC independent Budget Office and NYC Board of Education report stated “The proportion of general education pupils in public and private schools who currently ride yellow buses varies considerably across boroughs”; and

Whereas, the Department of Education (DOE) eliminated certain school bus variances in September 2010 which disproportionately affected students in specific areas within the New York City, particularly in Queens and Staten Island; and

Whereas, the DOE Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT) stated at that time that individual variance applications would be reviewed and granted where appropriate; and

Whereas, according to DOE hazard variance application and approval data covering the period from January 2010 through September 2011, 1,130 applications were submitted (881 by public schools and 249 by private schools) but only 177 were approved citywide (108 or 12% for public schools and 69 or 28% for private schools) ; and

Whereas, 1,028 of the variance applications submitted during this time period (468 or 42% from schools in Queens) and (560 or 50% from schools in Staten Island) – the two boroughs acknowledged to have the greatest need for yellow bus service in the IBO/BoE report; and

Whereas, Queens submitted 468 applications with only 42 approved (18 or 5% for public schools and 24 or 34% for private schools) while Staten Island submitted 560 hazard variance applications and only 123 were approved (82 or 20% for public schools and 41 or 27% for private schools);

Therefore be it RESOLVED, that the Panel for Educational Policy, within its power under State Education law, recommends that the Chancellor authorize the DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation to implement the following Safety Hazard Advisory Review Program (S.H.A.R.P.) to establish a standard operating procedure for reviewing hazard variance applications, while providing transparency to the variance process:

• Establish school district advisory committees by May 2012, based on a Community Education Council written request whose primary function will be to establish clear and concise criteria for granting hazard variances.

• The criteria for granting hazard variance could be modeled after a NYS Education Law 3635 (b) which establishes Child Safety Zones

o A list comprised of identifiable road hazards would be established
o Each road hazard will be assigned a point value
o Lack of adequate public transportation will also be allotted points
o In order to grant a pupil transportation hazard variance, a clearly defined total score must be achieved
o Each grade level will require a specific number of points to meet the eligibility requirements for a hazard variance.

• Each school district wanting to create S.H.A.R.P. committees would be comprised of nine (9) representatives; (3) Community Education Council members, (1) DISTRICT Community Superintendent, (3) DOE representatives from the Office of Pupil Transportation, (1) DOE Office of Parent and Community Engagement and (1) respective Borough President designee.
• Each S.H.A.R.P. committee will collectively analyze the conditions and grant hazard variances by majority consensus.

• Each S.H.A.R.P. committee will meet twice yearly. (September and February). DOE, OPT and individual schools will advertise the hazard variance application process in June of the preceding school year.

- Dmytro Fedkowskyj, Panel for Educational Policy, Queens Representative

On teacher evaluation: the responsibility of the media to dig a little deeper

2012-01-23T21:36:00.000-05:00

The mainstream media has contributed heavily to the rampant public confusion over the teacher evaluation debate in recent weeks. Most recently, on Sunday the NY Times featured two superficial accounts of this issue.

The first, by Nick Kristof, told a familiar if touching story about an Arkansas school librarian named Mildred Grady, who bought some books by a favored author and slipped them onto the shelves to appeal to one particular at-risk student who later became a judge--to prove the notion that good teachers can change lives. This story was apparently first told in a Story Corps 2009 piece on NPR radio.

Kristof concludes that this example reveals how “we need rigorous teacher evaluations, more pay for good teachers and more training and weeding-out of poor teachers.”

Not so fast. The so-called “rigorous” system currently being promoted by the state and the mayor would base teacher evaluation largely on unreliable test scores, combined with the opinion of a principal only, without any assurances that the sort of librarian described in this story would ever be recognized as “effective” and indeed could be “weeded-out” herself – as many librarians have already, due to recent budget cuts.

In fact, Kristof's column could more easily be used to buttress the other side of the debate: showing the many imponderable ways that teachers – and librarians – transforms lives that are unquantifiable; and that cannot be captured in the sort of reductionist systems now being imposed on states throughout the country because of “Race to the Top” and the support of corporate executives like Bill Gates, who claim that the major cause of school dysfunction is incompetent teaching.

The other NYT column that ran Sunday was written by Ginia Bellafante and entitled “Petty Differences Mask Consensus on Teachers”. It was just as misleading as Kristof’s, implying that the differences in the positions taken by the state and the city versus the teacher unions on the teacher evaluation system were trivial.

Nothing could be further from the case. NYSUT, the state teacher’s union, sued the state in court and won, because Education Commissioner King had subverted their agreement to include multiple measures for teacher evaluation. Instead, he wrote regulations that would allow districts to use state test scores as 40 percent of the evaluation system, rather than the 20 percent that the union had agreed upon. More importantly – and missing in most press accounts – is the way in which King devised a rubric that would make it impossible for any teacher who did not succeed on the test score metric alone to be rated “effective” – no matter how highly he or she was found to be through observations or any other means. (See the judge’s ruling here.)

The differences between the city and the UFT are just as fundamental. The NYC Department of Education obdurately refuses to allow any independent appeal of a negative subjective evaluation by a principal – no matter how obviously wrong it might be. Many principals have shown themselves to be unfairly give poor evaluations to teachers in recent years, under the system of "principal empowerment," with little or no oversight from DOE.

Nothing in this system would protect great teachers from vindictive principals or inherently volatile value-added test scores – and in fact, DOE has built in to its school funding system a poison pill that incentivizes principals to fire experienced teachers, since they have to pay for their higher salaries out of their school budgets.

Both authors fail to recognize that the current evaluation system being proposed could hurt teacher quality and undermine the quality of education our children receive, by causing teachers to focus even more on damaging and inane test prep over reallearning – something that is already severely damaging our schools.

Neither author bothers to mention the fact that over one-third of the principals in New York state strongly oppose the evaluation system the state is pushing…which one principal calls "nutty" and which will calls for even more ridiculous and expensive assessments in all subjects, including music and art.

Both also apparently support the same prescription of merit pay for teachers, as though this is a given: “Paying good teachers more is important — and the mayor, admirably, has committed to doing that” writes Bellafante. Both ignore the fact that merit pay has never worked to improve outcomes for kids, and that in 2011, NYC just axed its program that cost $75 million, because of null results.

So why in his State of the City address did the mayor now propose an even more expensive merit pay proposal , that will cost $250 million to implement; at the same time that schools have suffered huge budget cuts and our kids are crammed into the largest class sizes in eleven years?

When challenged on Twitter to provide evidence for such heedlessness, both Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson and Andy Jacob of The New Teacher Project pointed to a New Year’s Day front-page story in the New York Times by Sam Dillon, which featured an interview with a DC teacher named Tiffany Johnson, who had received a big bonus from DC’s new Impact evaluation system. Ms. Johnson said that her bonus might persuade her to teach longer. When it was pointed out to Wolfson that this article consisted of anecdote not evidence, Wolfson responded on twitter that this was “good enough for him.”

At the time the DC Impact article was published I criticized it for the way it completely glossed over the fact that the vast majority evaluations of teacher merit pay have had negative results; though I could not have guessed that a single flawed article would lead the mayor to make such a wasteful proposal.

Now praise for this bonus system from the very same DC teacher, Tiffany Johnson, has been recycled repeatedly several times. On Jan. 9, she was interviewed on local DC TV;

And two weeks after the NYT article, she was quoted again in a story in the Daily News, making the very same points.

Of course, one teacher’s comments do not prove anything, and unfortunately, there will apparently be no actual evaluation of the Impact system because the DC Schools Superintendent could not agree on a methodology with Roland Fryer, the researcher who had been selected for the task. Fryer had found no positive effects of the previous NYC merit pay program. This lack of a study doesn’t look to me that the people in charge have much faith that the Impact system could prove itself through actual results.

After Gov. Cuomo joined in the charge in his budget address, and threatened to cut state aid from any district which did not impose a new test-based evaluation system within a month, the howls from the editorial boards at the major dailies have grown even louder, inveighing against the unions for resisting whatever bogus evaluation system the state or the city have the yen to impose.

On Sunday, the Daily News spread spread more misinformation by publishing an oped by a teacher who wrote that her group, the Gates-funded Educators for Excellence, looked at all the failed merit pay programs, and found “that the efforts that have failed either didn’t offer a compelling enough incentive or linked bonuses to school-wide results and not individual performance.”

Again, this is complete misinformation. The best study of a merit pay program in the nation was of the Nashville program that provided bonuses of up to $15,000 to individual math teachers whose students saw the greatest gains in their test scores – very similar to what Bloomberg is now proposing. This study showed no results in terms of improved student achievement or teacher retention.

At least the News oped was accompanied by a far wiser column by Arthur Goldstein, veteran teacher at Francis Lewis HS, who pointed pointing out how merit pay would likely incentivize teachers to focus on test prep even more or even tempt them to cheat:

“These days, we work in a pressure cooker environment, in which test scores are almost everything. Ridiculous credit recovery programs render credit meaningless. Media outlets feign shock when they discover predictable “erase to the top” style scandals where scores are fabricated. What do they think will happen when teachers are asked to raise grades to the exclusion of everything else we do?

….We are role models. We inspire kids. We teach them to speak out, stand up, to express themselves. That will be particularly tough if we’re all placing knives in one another’s backs chasing bonuses.”

We have also posted the account of Stephanie Black, a teacher who quit DC schools because the Impact system threatened to make her become less of a teacher than she yearned to be.

In a recent Scholastic survey funded by the pro-merit pay Gates Foundation, teachers overwhelmingly rejected performance pay, with this coming in last of nine proposals to help retain good teachers. In another national survey by Public Agenda, merit pay again came in last – with only 12% of teachers saying that ‘tying rewards or sanctions to teacher performance” would be a “very effective way” to improve the quality of instruction in our schools.

In contrast, 86 percent of teachers told Public Agenda that reducing class size would be “very effective” way to improve teacher quality – a proven reform that is rejected by the same corporate reformers, like Mayor Bloomberg and Bill Gates, who relentlessly promote merit pay.

If columnists like Kristof, Bellafante and others really respect teachers and want to dip their toes in the education debate, they should take a serious hard look at the research. They have a responsibility to dig a little deeper before drawing broad conclusions –lest our children’s education be furthered damaged and millions more wasted on policies that have repeatedly failed in the past.

Chancellor Walcott Out of Order on Transportation Safety at January PEP

2012-01-22T21:35:00.008-05:00

Queens representative Dmytro Fedkowskyj introduced a resolution recommending the Chancellor consider an approach to granting transportation variances based on a joint committee comprised of parent and DOE representatives.

The approach, called Safety Hazard Advisory Review Program (S.H.A.R.P), was developed by CEC 31 on Staten Island. All five borough president appointees supported the resolution which would not be binding but would simply require the Chancellor to consider the approach.

PEP Chair Hernandez recognized me to to speak in support of the resolution. I mentioned several cases in recent years where children were killed while commuting to school. The most recent was a middle school student killed crossing Delancey Street in Manhattan. Before I could finish, Chancellor Walcott interrupted me, asserted that I was accusing the DOE of killing children and began to lecture me. I responded that the chair had recognized me to speak, not him, and he was not only out of order but rude to interrupt me.

Eventually he relented and I was able to continue. I explained that I was not accusing the DOE but rather simply trying to relate why this issue is so important to parents. Apparently in the Chancellor’s view mayoral control of education extends to deciding even how parents can feel about the most important issues affecting our children. As the State Legislature acted to strip the Chancellor of both voting power and the the role of chairing the PEP, Chancellor Walcott ought to show respect to the parent members of the Panel as well as conduct himself with appropriate decorum.

The DOE staff offered a variety of reasons why the resolution should be rejected. One absurd reason was they could not verify the variance statistics Dmytro included in the resolution. The DOE took four months to provide the data after Michael Reilly of CEC31 requested it via FOIL in mid September so they had ample time to ensure it was accurate. With the mayoral bloc promising to vote down his resolution, Dmytro tabled it in exchange for a promise from the Chancellor to work on addressing the Queens / Staten Island requests.

Tesa Wilson on the charter invasion of Williamsburg: "We can no longer let the one percent dictate to the 99 percent"

2012-01-21T18:23:00.001-05:00

Tesa Wilson, public school parent and president of the Community Education Council in District 14, Williamsburg denounces the "separate but unequal" proposal to insert a Success Academy charter school in PS 19 in her community: "We can no longer let the one percent dictate to the 99 percent."

She points out that Eva Moskowitz, the head of Success Academy charters, makes over $300,000 a year; "If you're telling me that she knows more about what happens in my community; I say you're wrong."

Who speaks for the children? The Governor, the Mayor, or their parents?

2012-01-18T14:13:00.001-05:00

Mayor Bloomberg said today that “The teachers' union represents the employees and the city represents the students." This comment reflects tremendous chutzpah. He and the Governor in recent days have claimed to be acting in the interests of the children who attend our public schools, yet both have ignored the priorities of parents and their right to have a voice in determining education policies.

We parents are the really the ones who speak for our children. What do New York parents want? The vast majority want equitable and adequate funding, smaller classes, a well-rounded curriculum, and less emphasis on standardized testing.

Instead, school budgets have been repeatedly cut, our class sizes have sharply increased and our children have been force-fed a steady diet of test prep. Whenever NYC parents have expressed a different view from him on education issues, Bloomberg has expressed open contempt for their intelligence and claimed they just don't understand the value of a good education.

Now, more than ever, parents realize that the mayor has failed to improve the schools or narrow the achievement gap, as evidenced by his overwhelmingly negative reception on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. His agenda of high-stakes accountability, combined with class size increases, have led to less learning, and caused NYC students to fall further behind their peers in the other large cities, as measured by the NAEPs.

These new proposals to force districts to adopt a teacher evaluation system based largely on test scores will further undermine the quality of education that our children receive.

A teacher's story: Why the DC Impact system Bloomberg wants NYC schools to emulate caused me to leave teaching

2012-01-17T23:00:00.001-05:00

There is huge pressure from all sides – the federal government, Governor Cuomo, and Mayor Bloomberg – on the UFT, the NYC teachers union, to agree to a test-based teacher evaluation and compensation system in NYC. Similar pressures are being exerted on teachers throughout the US, as a result of "Race to the Top" and the corporate reform agenda being promoted by the Gates Foundation and the other members of the Billionaire Boys Club. In his State of the City address, Bloomberg also proposed that teachers rated highly through such a system should get a salary increase of $20,000 a year.

Merit pay has been tried in many cities, including NYC, and has never worked to improve student outcomes. When challenged about the evidence for such a policy, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson tweeted a link to a recent NY Times puff piece about DC’s Impact system, in which a couple of teachers who had received bonuses after being rated “highly effective” were interviewed as saying that this extra pay might persuade them to stay teaching longer.

Stephanie Black is a former teacher in Washington DC. In both 2010 and 2011 she was rated “effective” by the DCPS evaluation system. She is now living in Chicago where she tutors math and coaches in an after school program. Here is her story.

From 2007 until 2011, I taught in the same DC Public School. My first year, like many teachers' first years, was a stressful learning experience full of trial and error, but a disproportionate amount of error. In my second year, I believe I got fantastically lucky. Since I was picked to teach a newly formed fifth-sixth grade combination class, I was allowed to have a much smaller class than most – only about 17 students – as we figured out how the combination would work. My second year was wonderful. My students and I formed magnificent bonds, and since I was still relatively new to education and no test-based evaluations yet existed, I was blissfully ignorant of any sort of need to teach to the test.

That year, I planned standards-based lessons, but also incorporated time for projects, field trips and even journaling. Gasp – journaling. We actually called it “Freaky Friday Free-write,” but it was a 20-minute block for students to write about whatever they wanted to, after which, students who wanted to could share. Like many of the things we did that year, the students loved this time, and so did I. Thinking back, though, I can only laugh at how bold I was to take 30 minutes of my school day, even just once a week, for such an activity.

That was, without doubt, the year I realized how much I love teaching, and that I was actually pretty good at it; I realized I had a knack for helping kids learn and making them laugh at the same time, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Moreover, despite all the giggles coming from my classroom, I was never considered the easy or lax teacher, because I absolutely wasn’t. We learned many untested skills and concepts, but we also learned the tested ones; I just didn’t give much thought to which ones we were focusing more on.

Anyway, that year now seems like a distant memory, perhaps even a dream. The next year, DCPS implemented their new evaluation system, IMPACT. IMPACT is the (non-opt-in) evaluation system which is used to classify teachers as either ineffective (meaning you get let go at the end of the year); minimally effective (meaning your salary is frozen, and if you are minimally effective two years in a row you are let go); effective (meaning you get your step increase, but no recognition); and highly effective (meaning you get a step increase, the option of accepting a bonus in return for losing future job security, and a night of celebration called “The Standing Ovation”). The system is set up so that most teachers fall into the (non-recognized) effective category.

During IMPACT’s first year, I was pretty ignorant to all the changes. My school got a new principal; I started teaching a new grade; and, overall, I still didn’t really care that much about whether I was considered a good teacher or a great teacher. Furthermore, I welcomed a system of more accountability, as I didn’t really think I had that much to worry about – I was (pardon my confidence here) a good teacher who was willing to go above and beyond for my students and my school, I already had extremely high expectations for my students, and I was already borderline obsessed with figuring out how to become an even better teacher. At that point, I naively believed that a merit-based system would recognize that while perhaps I wasn’t yet a great teacher, I was on my way. So, I bumbled through that first year, pretty unaware of how the new system was about to change pretty much everything – how it was about to take NCLB and put it on steroids. I focused on my testing game that year, and I still continued to let my life get consumed by work, but I never felt defeated or like I was falling off the path towards becoming a great teacher.

The summer after that year, however, everything changed. Before the test scores were even back, the district sent out ranges to all the teachers that predicted what our final score would be (the range was based on all possible testing outcomes). In wide-eyed amazement, I looked at my predicted range to see that, depending on the test results, I could get rated anywhere from minimally effective to highly effective. Oh, yes; without the test scores that made up 55% of my final score, they had no idea whether I was one of their least valuable or most valuable teachers. Up until that point, I hadn’t “got it”; I had naively thought I could keep teaching well, with attention to the tests, but without a narrow and all-consuming focus on them, and that I would be fine. Apparently, as my predicted range showed me, that was not the case.

Then, the scores came back. Thankfully, they were good enough to secure me an “effective” rating, but they weren’t good enough to help my school make AYP, something that, as one of the two lead math teachers at my elementary school, I felt unduly responsible for.

Come the school year 2010-2011, I had a much better understanding of how the new evaluation system worked. I knew what I needed to do for both my school and myself to be considered a success – I needed to get those test scores up, and I needed to get them up a lot. My naivety about the system was gone, and I somehow, perhaps because I realized I had no other option, became willing to have my worth and value as a teacher judged by little more than my students’ test scores.

Students who had me in 2009 would hardly have recognized the teacher I was last year. The new teacher-me was a warped version of my former teacher-self; I still brought the rigor and expectations I had previously brought, but there was no Happy Birthday singing hamster, no Freaky Friday Free-write, and no partnerships with the American Ballet Theater. And it wasn’t that I stopped caring about these things, I just found myself so consumed with trying to survive within the new system that they fell by the wayside. I had to choose my priorities, and even though supporters of accountability systems based on test scores will try to convince you that this doesn’t have to be the case, I had little time or energy to think about anything other than test data and how to get my students’ scores higher.

By the end of last year, my students had made tremendous gains in math. Here are the graphs, straight from the DCPS site to prove it:

Before last school year, I had worked crazy hours and given up much of my life for work, but only because I loved my job and really believed in what I was doing. Last year, my mindset was completely different. I started doing everything I was doing because I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t do those things. I was no longer motivated by a passion for teaching and learning, nor was I trying to develop myself into the great teacher I had once dreamed of becoming; I was motivated by a fear of being stigmatized a loser, and I was trying to do whatever it would take not to be considered one.

Not to give away the ending to my story, but in this process I burnt out and lost faith in what I was doing in teaching. I grew tired of caring so much about a test that I didn’t really care that much about. I became frustrated with having to pass up opportunities to teach skills and concepts that I really thought my students needed to learn in order to teach them things I knew they were going to be tested on. I couldn’t stand the taskmaster role I had to take on as a teacher. Basically, I became sick of caring too much about all of the wrong things, and not enough about the things that really mattered.

In my quest to prove my worth and value, I started to feel worthless and easily replaceable. Even worse, I felt like I was being told at every opportunity possible by the district to do this or that better. And they weren’t telling me to do the things I knew I should be doing – if anything, the system seemed to be encouraging my worst behaviors, and seemingly suggesting I might even want to do them more intensely. At every turn, I was presented with more data, more practice test scores, and more suggestions for how I might do things differently in order to get those test scores even further up.

And with each spreadsheet that came back to analyze, each one attached to an invisible memo that said, “Please, teach better,” my dreams of becoming the fun, loving, and rigorous teacher who could inspire her students to think critically and compassionately slipping further and further away. I often heard that great teachers didn’t need to worry about the tests - that if they just did their great teacher thing their students would do well. I knew this wasn’t true; if it were true, I would have tried it. There were just too many things to master, too little room for error; we couldn’t take our eye off the testing ball.

The thing is that while I still don’t think I know exactly what it means to be a great teacher, I do think I know a couple things. Great teachers teach many subjects – tested subjects and untested subjects. Great teachers don’t worry about whether or not their students can recognize question types; they worry about whether or not their students understand skills and concepts so thoroughly that they could apply them in multiple contexts. Great teachers don’t worry constantly about whether or not their students will master every single concept that is discussed within their classroom, because they know that at times students must get confused and seek out clarity in order to truly understand things. Great teachers understand the difference between holding their students to high expectations and undermining their confidence so that they believe they are dumb or that they will never be as good as other students. Great teachers realize that while their primary role in their students’ lives is to teach, it is also important for them to be mentors and sources of compassion and love.

Last year, as I ate up the data and strategically planned the path to success in a system based on test scores and quantifiable data, I realized that I couldn’t have my cake and eat it, too. The measures of success – for both my students and for me – were too narrow. There was no time to even think about trying to play the World Peace Game; there was no time to learn about programs like Scratch; and there was certainly no time to read The Lemonade War and plan our own lemonade wars. None of these things – international relations, computer programming, or entrepreneurial skills – would be tested, and every minute spent doing one of these things was a minute I could have been using to help lead my students through the laundry list of standards they were responsible for knowing come test time.

I had chosen to give the new system a try and play by its rules. Of course, the joke was on me. I gave up my life, and played the game as well as I knew how - I planned lessons that were IMPACT-friendly, and I got my students’ math scores to go up dramatically (at the end of third grade, only 23 percent of my fourth graders had been proficient, and by the end of fourth grade, 64 percent of them were proficient or advanced).

Unfortunately, since I had failed to factor into my quest for success the fact that I would be dealing with an imperfect evaluation system – as all teacher evaluation systems are right now – I failed to predict that even if I did everything I was seemingly being asked to do, I might still fall short of “success.” Come the end of the school year, one of the rubrics – the one used to score elementary math teachers – was so flawed (it didn’t account for student growth at all) that I somehow managed to barely squeeze into the “minimally effective” category (meaning I was very close to being considered “ineffective”). Imagine that – my students made some of the most dramatic math gains in the district, and, yet, somehow according to the rubric used to score math teachers, I was only slightly better than ineffective!

After giving this “merit”-based system of ranking and sorting a real chance, last spring I made the excruciating decision to hand in my resignation letter. I still loved the idea of teaching, and I absolutely adored my school community, but for all the reasons I describe above, I was frustrated, exhausted and felt beaten up by an evaluation system in which I couldn’t win for losing. And even though I decided not to return several months before our final evaluations came out, I knew that no matter what the results were, they wouldn’t make me proud. If I did manage to be considered highly effective, it would have been because I had figured out how to play the testing game, and had abandoned my dreams of becoming the teacher I wanted to be. If I wasn’t rated highly effective, I knew it would feel like I had been slapped in the face by a district I had given up so much for.

Now, as NYC considers implementing their own merit pay system similar to the one in DCPS, I warn parents, educators and community members not to let it happen. These systems set up perverse incentives for schools and teachers to stop considering what students really need or what really constitutes a great education, and start trying to do whatever it takes to be considered successful, which usually involves playing a test-score and data game that narrows the curricula and turns students into data points.

There are other ways to improve schools and create systems of accountability that don’t create these perverse incentives. These are usually systems that focus more on what and how students are learning, and less on ranking and sorting teachers. The goal of any education system should never be to set up a Where’s Waldo culture of seeking out and paying great teachers; it should be to create a system that is so powerful and supportive that almost all teachers can be considered great and where all students, rich and poor, are receiving educations that will allow them to flourish intellectually, emotionally and socially.

video: Bloomberg facing protests & boos at MLK Jr. event

2012-01-16T22:42:00.003-05:00

Students were out protesting the closing of their school followed by booing from the audience at today's MLK Jr. event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Video thanks to NY1; more on Bloomberg's negative reception at Daily News here. Later in the day he met with more heckling at Al Sharpton's event in Harlem. When Bloomberg claimed test scores were up, the audience yelled "Wrong, wrong!"

The impeccable logic of Turnaround schools

2012-01-16T21:14:00.000-05:00

Check out the new TV campaign on "Turnaround" schools produced by Last Stand for Children First. Though the campaign is focused on Chicago's efforts , the same strategies are being used here in NYC and in many of the major urban centers around the country where there are struggling schools.

The formula is very simple; just watch the videos and you will see. Our thanks to Last Stand for Children First, for showing us the way, and please see their website for more brilliant insights on how education reform must happen -- for the sake of the kids.

Martin Luther King Jr. and education reform: what would he say about the attack on teacher unions and class size?

2012-01-16T16:40:00.001-05:00

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, too many of our elected leaders are using this day as an opportunity to attack teachers and their unions, and put in a system which would lead to 50 percent of NYC teachers to be fired at struggling schools, if the UFT does not succumb to the DOE’s demand to impose an evaluation system with no safeguards against unfair or abusive principals and no appeals.

Let us remember that MLK Jr. was highly supportive of unions and the right of their members to collectively bargain and have the right to due process. Let us all remember that many of these same oligarchs who are now scapegoating teachers actually favor increasing class size at a time when NYC schools still have the largest class sizes in the nation – despite the fact that smaller classes is of the few reforms proven to work to narrow the achievement gap. I wrote more about this last year on MLK Jr. birthday here.

There is little doubt that Martin Luther King Jr. would support a far different agenda: one that was supportive of teachers, integration, and equitable resources and conditions in inner city schools, including smaller classes.

Bayard Rustin was another brilliant civil rights leader, who promoted non-violent resistance and acted as a mentor for MLK Jr. In 1964, Rustin gave a speech (link also for the audio) in which he pointed out that many public schools were still inferior; stuck

“a 19th century school system, incapable of dealing and educating people for the 20th century. … It is quite clear to anyone, from the debate today, that it is Negroes after their share of the cake that has catapulted the true discussion of an American school system, adequate for the technological revolution, etc.”

He specifically about how inner city schools were inadequate in part as a result of their large classes:

The school system of this country is a bad school system for many reasons, but one of the reasons in our large cities, take Harlem for an example, teachers teach three sessions within the regular period. They become cops, they become babysitters, they become nursemaids.

He suggested that more Black New Yorkers be hired as assistant teachers:

“…..if we can get many more schools built, if we can get smaller classrooms, I mean a smaller number of children in classrooms, these people can play a very vital role.”

Instead, the ruling class --the one percent -- who are running our schools are intent on imposing a class-based system, in which poor children are relegated to large classes, and taught by computers through a mechanized system, while their own children receive the actual personalized attention and the critical thinking skills that can only come through questioning and debate.

Bloomberg's damaging education proposals to cost $350 million per year

2012-01-14T12:59:00.003-05:00

There's horrific news in today's Daily News: that NY State Education Commissioner King is likely to approve the mayor's proposal to fire half of all of teachers at 33 struggling schools:"That's a pretty aggressive teacher evaluation system,” the state insider said. “We believe the switch meets all the federal requirements.”

Firing a fixed and arbitrary quota of at least half of all teachers, regardless of their ability, is not a real teacher evaluation system; it's a meat cleaver approach. This proposal reveals Bloomberg's phony hypocrisy and any supporter who claims to care about the importance of "teacher quality."

Moreover, the city is supposedly intent on pushing through this plan so they can get $60M in federal School Improvement Grants, but as more than 1700 teachers are involved, this will likely double the Absent Teacher Reserve pool and cost the city more than $100M, according to the Daily News.

And the mayor's pointless proposal for merit pay -- to give $20,000 raises to those teachers rated "highly effective" -- which has not worked anywhere it has been tried , including NYC, to improve student outcomes? The Daily News estimates this would cost about $250M per year, for a total of $350M.

In contrast, DOE estimated in 2009 that it would cost about the same amount ($358 million) to reduce average class sizes across the system to the state-mandated goals of 20 students per class in K-3; 23 in 4-8 grade and 25 in HS. Instead, class sizes have increased every year for the last four.

If they do manage to fund these new proposals, with a static overall education budget, this would probably require even more cuts in staffing, which will mean even larger classes in the future. In contrast, class size reduction is a program that has been proven to work through rigorous evidence, according to the federal government, and is the highest priority of NYC parents every year in the DOE's own surveys, but no; Bloomberg and his cronies would rather scapegoat teachers, fire as many as possible, and waste taxpayer money on policies that have been proven to fail.

Meanwhile, the NY Times runs an editorial approving the mayor's proposals, the link to which Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson tweeted to Diane Ravitch, Randi Weingarten, Patrick Sullivan and me last night. (Way to go, Howard! Glad you're thinking of us at 11:26 PM on a Friday night!)

The Times opines that the UFT "should meet Mr. Bloomberg’s challenge to help create a fair system for evaluating teachers to be used in providing extra pay as well as to claim more than $60 million in federal education funds that depend on having an evaluation plan in place."

I agree that would be a good goal. Only the mayor doesn't want a fair teacher evaluation system, he wants one that is based solely upon the views of principals -- with no possible appeal to a more objective party, despite the fact that many NYC principals have been found to base their teacher ratings upon personal grudges and worse, and yet been kept on the job by DOE.

Moreover, built into the NYC school funding system is a poison pill called "fair student funding," which means that principals have to pay the full salaries of their teachers out of their individual school budgets, which acts as a built-in incentive for them to fire experienced teachers to save money, especially as budgets have been cut back harshly -- by about 14% -- over the last several years.

Our only hope is that these blustering and wasteful ideas will bite the dust, which has occurred to many of Bloomberg's proposals in previous State of the City addresses As the scorecard of New York Times reporter Fernanda Santos' reveals, very few of his promises have come to pass.

For example, in 2005, while running for re-election, Bloomberg promised to reduce class size in grades K-3 (which are now the largest in 11 years), and to "eliminate all pockets of overcrowding" in schools (last year there were waiting lists in one fourth of all elementary schools.) Other proposals, like increasing parent involvement while wreaking scorn upon them and disempowering them in every way imaginable, have died a similar, lonely death. Let's hope a similar fate meets his latest, most reckless and wasteful education ideas ever.

The Williamsburg Latino community fights back against Success charter expansion

2012-01-13T19:18:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's State of the City, Mayor Bloomberg said he would encourage Eva Moskowitz' Success Academy charter chain and KIPP to accelerate their expansion. He may have a fight on his hands. First, see the stickers being pasted all over the glossy recruiting ads in the Williamsburg subways and bus stops for her new charter, to be co-located in MS 50. (thanks to GothamSchools for the photo to the right.)

According to many observers, Eva Moskowitz is recruiting almost exclusively in the northern, primarily white sections of Williamsburg. (This is a practice she followed with the Upper West Success charter on the Upper West side, holding recruiting sessions in the Trump hi-rise condos and at the Jewish center, and producing thousands of glossy promotional flyers in English and almost none in Spanish -- despite the charter law which requires the recruitment of English language learners.)

In Williamsburg, a new coalition, called the Southside Community Schools Coalition has emerged to fight the charter, and its openly racist tactics, including long-time educational leaders and activists like Luis Garden Acosta, founder of El Puente, Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, CM Diana Reyna, several local churches, and the District 14 Community Education Council. An excerpt from their message is below; the full message is here.

SOUTHSIDE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS COALITION

01-05-2012

Preamble to the SCSC

The Latino Community and all communities of Color are under attack throughout New York City. We are being displaced from our traditional neighborhoods at the rate of an endangered species.

City Policies are driving forward a city that, each day, is more polarized, more segregated by class, color, and ethnicity. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Williamsburg, in general, and the Southside of Williamsburg, specifically. The Southside, a community, that in the 1980’s was the most concentrated Latino neighborhood in New York City is now being “cleansed” of the Latino working class in favor of those not Latino or working class.

We must make clear that we will continue to and have always welcomed non-Latinos to our neighborhood. The Southside Community Schools Coalition (SCSC) is committed to creating a vibrant community for all. What we will never allow is a racist and classist inspired takeover of our schools – one that will raise, again, the ugly head of division in Williamsburg.

The New York City Department of Education’s proposals to both allow the Eva Moskowitz “Success School” into the Southside’s Middle School 50 as well as to impose the transformation of the Southside’s Roberto Clemente School (PS19) without community direction is an unethical, immoral policy that will only serve the eventual elimination of the Latino community from its longtime, iconic home of Los Sures (The Southside).

Eva Moskowitz’s corporation has never met with any Southside Community organization or any recognizable Southside leader to assess the needs of our community. Instead, she has blatantly canvassed, advertised and campaigned for the acceptance of her school in the Northside, creating a dangerous climate of potential polarization between Southside Latinos and Northside newcomers. She has invested in costly Madison Avenue-like advertisements but only in the L train, Bedford Avenue Station, ground zero of the newcomer movement.

That the city has not prohibited these renegade, racist advertising campaigns or sought a court ordered injunction tostop Ms. Moskowitz’s flaunting of the rules governing the development of charter schools, exemplifies their complicity. Nowhere in their advertisements in the subway station or in their glossy hand-outs does it state, as it must, that the school is just a proposal. On the contrary, their tag line is; “A New Public School – Proven Record of Success – Easy to Apply Online”.

The SCSC does not want to imply that the Mayor is racist, nor that the NYC Department of Education is driven by anything other than the need to house Ms. Moskowitz’s school in the Southside. However, it is troubling that in a school system that is composed of well over 80% students of color, that the Department of Education would allow such disrespect to our community.

The impact of Eva Moskowitz’s School would be to undermine and destabilize the Southside’s Latino Community and its Middle School 50 in favor of the newcomer/non-Latino community. Again, we welcome Northside children to our schools, but our schools must remain characteristic of the communities in which they exist. They must be driven by our community, our vision of excellence, our moral sense of responsibility for all our children.

The entire, unfortunate effort to locate Ms. Moskowitz’s school in the Southside’s MS 50 is without educational merit. We do not need another elementary school. The NYC Department of Education’s own statements flatly declare that our elementary schools are underutilized. What we desperately need is a quality, A+ rated middle school. That is our community’s vision for MS 50.

The SCSC is committed to leading a plan to make all Williamsburg schools excellent learning and development centers, worthy of the needs and potential of our children, of all children.

DEMANDS FOR PS 19:

We demand that the SCSC be formally recognized as an advisory body for decisions regarding District 14 schools, particularly with respect to the development of PS 19.

· We demand, with respect to the proposed transformation of PS 19, that the SCSC participate in the decision-making on the hiring criteria of incoming school leadership; the development of new academic curricula and/or grant-funded programs; school outreach/recruitment and enrollment; monitoring of school resources (budgets, grants, etc.); and overall oversight of the school moving forward.

• We demand that the Department of Education reissue the RFP for the transformation of PS19 to expand the range of proposals for consideration. Additionally, as a recognized advisory body, that the SCSC be part of the review process.

• We demand that any transformation of PS19 stipulate that the name stays as is, “The Roberto Clemente School”.

• We demand the assurance that the magnet grant previously awarded to PS 19 is secured, and will be maintained as part of the development of the school.

• We demand that the new PS 19 School Leader be bilingual (English/Spanish) and culturally competent.

• We demand that the new PS 19 School Leader be experienced working with and creating effective programs for English Language Learners, specifically dual-language programs.

• We demand that the new PS 19 School Leader be skilled and experienced in networking with community organizations and resource development.

• We demand that the new PS 19 School Leader be experienced in progressive, accelerated academic approaches to address the holistic development needs of our young people.

• We demand that the transformation of PS 19 include the integration of a dual-language program.

DEMANDS FOR MS 50

• We demand that the SCSC be formally recognized as an advisory body for decisions regarding District 14 schools; particularly with respect to the proposed collocation at MS 50.

• We demand that the Department of Education reject the proposal to collocate a Success Charter School into the MS 50 building.

• We demand that the Department of Education reissue the RFP with an open, transparent process for a new school at MS 50 or for the expansion of MS 50 into a grade 6-12 school. Additionally, as a recognized advisory body, that the SCSC be part of the review process.

• We demand that any RFP resulting in a new school or school expansion, include a 1-year planning process before full implementation.

Bloomberg's State of the City address: an administration that has run out of education ideas -- even bad ones

2012-01-12T19:05:00.004-05:00

The education proposals in Bloomberg’s State of the City address are being described as “ambitious” in the New York Times and GothamSchools. I see it differently.

First he claimed that “By almost any measure, students are doing better and our school system is heading in the right direction.” Of course that is not the case at all. By most reliable measures, achievement has stagnated and our students are falling further behind their peers in the other large cities.

Not surprisingly, Bloomberg focused in his speech on the controversial factor of teacher “quality.” The first education proposal he mentioned in the speech is to recruit better new teachers by repaying the college loans for those who graduated in the top quartile of their class, giving them an extra $5000 per year for up to five years of teaching. I’m not sure if this means even higher subsidies for TFA’ers without proper training or certification, including those who don’t intend to stay for more than a couple of years anyway. In any case, since the city intends to allow the teaching force to continue to contract over the next few years and will not be hiring many new teachers, I’m not sure what the likely effect of this proposal would be, if any.

His second proposal was ridiculous. The mayor said he wants to improve teacher retention by re-introducing teacher merit pay -- giving a $20,000 raise to teachers rated “highly effective” for two years in a row. Teacher merit pay has been tried all over the country and has failed according to nearly every study, to increase either student achievement or teacher retention. NYC tried starting merit pay in 2007, wasted $75 M on it and dropped it in 2010, because it had null results, according to studies by Roland Fryer and RAND. Both analyses also concluded there was no evidence it worked to increase teacher retention.

In response to horrified tweets from Randi Weingarten and me, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson tweeted that the “evidence” for merit pay could be found in a recent NY Times article about the bonus pay program that is part of DC’s IMPACT teacher evaluation system . When Lisa Fleisher of the WSJ pointed out in a tweet that the evidence in that article was purely anecdotal, Wolfson responded "Good enough for me."

When the article was first published, I called it a “puff piece” and an example of the worst kind of journalism, because it glossed over the numerous studies that have shown merit pay doesn’t work to improve retention, while quoting a couple of DC teachers who said their bonuses might keep them teaching in DC schools longer. A good summary of some of the other research on this subject is posted in today’s Shanker Blog, which points out that there has been no published study of the effect of the DC IMPACT teacher evaluation system, and that the majority of studies suggest that financial incentives have negligible positive effects on the teaching force.

(Apparently, the leadership of the DC Public Schools canceled a proposed study of the IMPACT system because they would not accept the methodology proposed by Roland Fryer, the researcher that had been selected. New doubts have been raised about whether the IMPACT system even correctly identifies the best teachers, as most of those who have been found to be “highly effective” work in neighborhoods with the most advantaged students. As teachers rated ineffective can be fired, the system seems to have provided a powerful disincentive against working with the highest needs students.)

Clearly the Mayor and his staff read the NY Times, since he also quoted an unfortunate oped in today’s Times by Nicholas Kristof, in which Kristof described the recent study on the long-term value of a good teacher and mistakenly concluded that the findings showed that five percent of teachers should be fired based on their student test scores. Kristof ignored the cautionary tone of the study, which warned that placing high-stakes on tests could lead to even more test prep and cheating – the sort of negative effects that have undermined schools here in NYC and elsewhere in recent years.

The mayor also announced (ho hum) that the DOE would create one hundred new schools over the next two years, including fifty more charter schools. He said that he had asked KIPP and Success Academy to “expedite” their expansion and that he had invited Rocketship charter schools – a much-hyped chain of charters that started in California and offers online instruction with huge class sizes – to come to NYC.

Finally, he said DOE would seek to obtain the $58 million in School Improvement grants that the state is withholding because of the deadlock between the DOE and the UFT, by setting up “school-based evaluation committees” that could fire up to half of teachers. How this would work I have no idea, but the DOE released a letter dated tomorrow, from Chancellor Walcott to Commissioner King that has a lot about switching schools from “transformation” and “restart” to “turnaround,” (while letting those private managers like New Visions keep their big bucks for “restart” schools) but doesn’t mention these committees except to say that DOE will “measure and screen existing staff using rigorous, school-based competencies…”

Anyway, not an inspiring speech and not one based on any change in direction or real vision for education, but more of the same damaging free-market policies of expanding privatization and high stakes accountability that he has pursued for the last nine years, without any evidence that they work, except for misleading and flimsy newspaper articles. It is very sad that in the second half of the mayor’s third term, Bloomberg has so run out of new ideas that he is impelled to re-introduce an expensive and useless experiment that was tried and abandoned only two years ago -- because it had utterly failed.

The Real Deal on Morris High School & Bloomberg’s Failed Education Policies

2012-01-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

As Bloomberg is giving his State of the City address today at Morris HS...

Claim: Bloomberg likes to contrast the graduation rate at the old Morris HS to graduation rates at the high schools currently housed in the building, as evidence of the success of his education policies.

Reality: The types of students enrolled at the old and new Morris campus are very different. Of the students enrolled in the four schools currently housed in the Morris building, only 1.7% are in self-contained special education classes– revealing their higher level of need, compared to 14% of students enrolled in the old Morris HS in 2001-02.[1] Also, dividing up the building has caused its own problems; for example, according to a teacher at one of these schools, there is no longer any librarian and the library is completely unutilized: “Lots of books with no one tending to them or using them.”

Claim: In response to criticism that students at phase-out schools suffer a loss of resources and services, Deputy Chancellor Suransky has said that graduation rates actually improved at Morris HS in its final year: “… it was a school that used to take 700 kids into the ninth grade every year and graduate 70 four years later. And as it was phased out, in the second year of the phase out it graduated 120 kids …In the third year it graduated over 200 and in its last year it graduated 300.”[2]

Reality: According to state figures, only 121 students in the last class at Morris HS graduated and only 3% of them attended college.[3] Meanwhile, the student discharge rate soared to 55%, compared to 33% of the prior class, a pattern repeated in many of the phase-out schools.[4] Of the 21 schools closed by this administration between 2003 and 2009, 37% of the students in their final classes graduated on average, 20% dropped out, 33% were discharged, and 10% were still enrolled when the schools closed their doors. [5]

Claim: Bloomberg’s educational policies are helping more students leave school college- and career-ready.

Reality: The schools now housed in the Morris building have college readiness rates ranging from 0% (High School for Violin and Dance) and 2.9% (Bronx International High School), to 4.8% (School for Excellence) and 5.7% (Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies.)[6]

After a decade of school closures and other free-market policies, only 21% of NYC high school students overall and only 13% of Black and Latino HS students are college ready after four years. [7] 79% of NYC students entering community colleges need remediation, and the percent of high school graduates who require triple remediation in math, reading and writing has increased 47% since 2005.[8]

Claim: The Mayor’s educational policies are equitable and fair.

Reality: Most of the schools closed in recent years and those proposed for closure this year enroll higher than average concentrations of English language learners, students who entered the schools overage, and/ or students with disabilities.[9] In fact, Mayor Bloomberg’s school closing policy is a shell game that displaces high-needs students from one school to another, without addressing their educational needs.

Claim: The new schools started during the Bloomberg administration are uniformly more successful.

Reality: More than half of the middle and high schools that DOE proposes closing this year were started during his administration. Many of the new schools have small percentages of the highest-needs students. However, when the new schools serve comparable populations of students in self-contained special education, their students tend to succeed at the same rate as the high schools that preceded Bloomberg.[10]

Claim: Under Bloomberg, student learning has increased and the achievement gap has narrowed.

Reality: As measured by scores on national exams, NYC is second to last in student progress compared to ten other cities since 2003, when Bloomberg’s policies were first put in place. And the achievement gap has not narrowed significantly between any racial or ethnic group.[11]

For nearly a decade, Bloomberg has had complete authority over our educational system. Yet of last year’s eighth graders, who entered Kindergarten when he first took office in 2002, only 35% read and write at grade level. [12]

Truly, these are Bloomberg’s kids and Bloomberg’s responsibility.

NYC can’t afford any more of Bloomberg’s failed education policies.

Prepared by the Coalition for Educational Justice and Class Size Matters, January 2012.

[1] NYC DOE School Progress Reports 2010-2011 & NYS School Report Cards 2001-2002.

[2] GothamSchools, “Chief DOE deputy to parents and teachers: Check our work ,” March 15, 2011.

[3] NYSED, Office of Research and Information Systems, “NYS High School Graduates & Their NYS Public College Participation and Persistence, 2004-5.” June 24, 2010.

[4] Jennifer L. Jennings & Leonie Haimson, “High School Discharges Revisited: Trends in NYC’s Discharge Rates,”

April 2009.

[5] Urban Youth Collaborative, “No Closer to College: NYC High School Students Call for Real School Transformation, Not School Closings,” April 2011. The denominator for discharge rates is the total reported cohort plus the number of discharges. Discharges are taken out of the official DOE reported cohorts on which graduation, still enrolled and dropout rates are based. Each of these outcomes was based on revised cohort figures which included discharges.

[6] NYC DOE School Progress Reports, 2010-2011.

[7] NY Times, “College-Readiness Low Among State Graduates, Data Show,” June 14, 2011. NYC Black and Latino percentage calculated from NYC DOE. Graduation Results. School Level Regents-Based Math/ELA Aspirational Performance Measure 2010.

[8] NY Times, “In College, Working Hard to Learn High School Material,” October 23, 2011.

[9] Parthenon Group, “NYC DOE “Beat the Odds” Update,” March 6, 2008; GothamSchools, “Internal report stokes questions about city’s closure strategy,” January 26, 2011; NYC Independent Budget Office, “Schools Proposed for Closing Compared With Other City Schools,” January 2011; NY Times, “State Approves School Closings, but Puts City on Notice,” July 22, 2011; Jackie Bennett, “Closing Schools: DOE Spins Itself an Alternate Universe of Facts,” Edwize, December 14, 2011.

[10] Jackie Bennett, “Closing Schools, DOE Spins Itself an Alternate Universe of Facts,” Edwize, December 14, 2011; Jackie Bennett, “Meet the New Schools, Same as the Old Schools,” November 21, 2011.

[11] Class Size Matters, “NYC second to last among cities in student progress on the NAEPs since 2003,” January 9, 2011.

[12] NYC DOE, NYC 2011 Mathematics & English Language Arts Citywide Test Results Grades 3-8, Aug. 2011.

Parents give a thumbs down to NY-CAN and the "Parent Trigger"

2012-01-11T18:37:00.001-05:00

For immediate release:
January 11, 2012

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, leonie@classsizematters.org, 917-435-9329
Caroline Grannan, Parents Across America, cgrannan@gmail.com, 415-412-5758

Today, a pro-charter school organization launched in New York called NY-CAN, and announced they will be advocating for a version of the so-called "Parent Trigger" legislation to be passed in New York State. The organization is headed by Christina Grant, former deputy director of NYC Department of Education's Office of Charter Schools.

The Parent Trigger law was first passed in California in 2010, the creation of by an astroturf group based in Los Angeles called the Parent Revolution. Since then, model legislation based on the Parent Trigger has been written and promoted by ALEC, the shadowy organization backed by the Koch brothers that has a radical right-wing agenda.

In California, the Parent Trigger law was first tried at a Compton CA elementary school in 2010. The efforts of the Parent Revolution to turn the school into a charter failed, because some of the signatures on their petitions were not dated and many parents said that they had been misled about what the petitions called for. So far, the Parent Trigger has never been used in California or in any other state, which makes it unclear as to why the NY State Legislature would want to approve similar legislation here.

According to Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and a public school parent in NYC, "The Parent Trigger was devised as an underhanded trick by the charter lobby to manipulate parents into letting them privatize more public schools. The fact that it has aroused huge controversy and has so far failed to achieve any results in California is one more reason legislators should be wary of passing it here in New York State. Parents want to be involved from the ground up in devising positive reforms to improve their children's schools, like class size reduction or offering a more well-rounded curriculum. They do not want their schools either closed, converted into charters or half their staff fired."

Caroline Grannan, one of the founders of Parents Across America, adds: "Here in California, the Parent Trigger has never been used successfully in any school, and the organization behind it, Parent Revolution, has admitted that they "made mistakes" and say that they are now organizing parents to advocate on whatever school improvement issues that concern them. The Parent Trigger is not real parent empowerment, but the attempt of wealthy edu-entrepreneurs to take advantage of parents for their own narrow ends."

For more on why Parents Across America opposes the Parent Trigger legislation, in New York and elsewhere, see our position paper. Background on recent events in California involving the Parent Trigger is here.

###

NYC Principal Hall of Shame: Why does DOE protect abusive principals?

2012-01-11T18:22:00.000-05:00

There was a rally yesterday at Bronxdale High School to protest the DOE's refusal to remove its principal John Chase, despite his horrific record of sexually harassment; this follows last week's rally at Bronx Science, of former students protesting the egregious behavior of principal Valerie Reidy, which has led to a steady exodus of teachers leaving the school. (See also the NY Magazine article about Reidy's mismanagement of the school, especially the hundreds of comments from former students and teachers.) Below are the comments of Lynne Winderbaum, former Bronx UFT HS district leader, about how DOE protecting abusive principals is standard operating procedure:

John Chase

Chancellor Walcott was quoted in the Daily News: “I’m not going to remove him, but he knows he cannot have any similar type of comments. He is on a very strict line as far as his behavior'…he added that some school staffers want Chase to remain in his post.”

Following the deplorable moral standards of his predecessors under Bloomberg, Dennis Walcott staunchly asserts that he will not remove principal John Chase from his leadership position at Bronxdale High School.

I represented teachers for many years as a UFT chapter leader and borough representative. Given the unique position of teachers and the damage done if they display immoral behavior in front of children, there has been no tolerance for them to remain in the classroom after even an allegation of misconduct. Teachers are immediately removed pending a hearing to err on the side of safety. Yet the Department of Education does not apparently see the need to protect staff or students from abusive principals.

The article in yesterday’s Daily News focuses on a disgusting sexual remark Chase recently made regarding the copy machine but omits inappropriate comments he made earlier made to female employees for which he has already been found guilty.

As far as school staffers wanting him to remain in his post, his entire teaching staff consists of eight untenured teachers (another good argument for tenure). They can be fired for any reason at any time while on probation. So their position must be taken with a grain of salt until they can speak without fear of consequences.

But this is just the latest example of the practice of DOE ignoring abusive and even illegal behavior on the part of principals:

Iris Blige

When 400 people marched outside Roosevelt High School in support of teacher Raqnel James, a respected and beloved tenured teacher on March 13, 2009, the Department of Education stood idly by as she was shipped to the rubber room and arrested.

The principal, Iris Blige, had fabricated charges to have her removed from the school after James had taken the principal’s friend to court for unpaid rent. It cost James her job, three years of salary and legal battles until she was finally found “not guilty” last month in a trial. Previously, the Special Investigator had reported that Blige had told assistant principals to give teachers “U” (for Unsatisfactory) ratings, which can imperil their careers, on the basis of personal grudges. And yet DOE has done nothing but fine her a measly $7500.

Richard Bost

The Department of Education ignored years of allegations of sexual misconduct by Richard Bost, former principal of Fordham Leadership Academy, who was also found guilty of abusing a secretary and stealing $7000 of school money to give to his AP. Finally, after committing unwanted sexual advances against a parent, Sen. Jeffrey Klein’s office got involved and Bost was removed.

Valerie Reidy

The Department of Education continues to support Valerie Reidy, principal of Bronx Science, though her egregious behavior has led to a well-documented mass-exodus of excellent teachers from the school and an independent arbitrator found that she unfairly harassed and gave a “U” rating to Peter Lamphere, a former teacher at the school.

Barbara Kirkweg

The NYC DOE keeps Barbara Kirkweg, principal of Bronx Aerospace HS, in place even after numerous complaints by parents of harsh and unfair disciplinary practices, teachers accusing her of falsifying grades, and a finding by the Air Force that $66,800 in ROTC funds were unaccounted for.


Anthony Rotunno

Despite five years of allegations about the misrule of Anthony Rotunno, principal of Kennedy HS, including changing test scores, he remained in his job until the state comptroller found him guilty in 2010 of allowing staff to misuse $90,000 raised by students. Then he finally forced to resign.

The protection of abusive principals at all costs appears to be the unwavering policy of the Department of Education. It is again time to fight back against this policy and demand the removal of John Chase. -- Lynne Winderbaum

NYC second to last among cities in student progress on the NAEPs since 2003

2012-01-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

Class Size Matters has done a detailed analysis of the trend in student achievement in NYC since 2003, when Mayor Bloomberg's educational policies were first implemented, as measured by the NAEPs - the national assessment carried out every two years by the federal government in 4th and 8th grade English and math.

Despite the DOE's claims of great progress when the latest NAEP scores were released in December, our analysis shows that NYC came out next to last among the 10 large cities tested over this period, plus the large city category (all cities above 250,000 inhabitants) when the gains of our racial, ethnic and economic subgroups are averaged and compared to their peers elsewhere. The only city to make less progress was Cleveland.

The gains in NYC have been particularly minimal among White, Hispanic, and non-free lunch students, all of whom dropped in their relative position compared to these same subgroups in other cities - falling especially sharply at the 8th grade level. White students made the smallest gains compared to their peers in other cities in both 8th grade reading and math; Hispanics in 8th grade math. In fact, Asians were the only NYC subgroup to increase their relative ranking at any level, compared to their peers in other cities.

The performance of non-poor students has been particularly disastrous. NYC is only city in which our non-poor students scored lower in 2011 than in 2003 in any category. The proficiency levels of NYC non-poor students also dropped sharply in both 8th grade reading and math. (This is the one point extracted from our analysis in today's Daily News, though the article fails to attribute its source. The article also featured the DOE's claim to have improved results for non-poor students; though this group also made fewer gains than their peers in many other cities over this period.)

What else do our findings suggest? Clearly, mayoral control is no panacea, as the two cities that have made the least progress since 2003 on the NAEPs, NYC and Cleveland, both feature this governance system. Moreover, the administration's free-market strategies of high-stakes accountability, school report cards, "fair student funding", principal empowerment, and the closing of more than one hundred schools & the opening of more than 400 new schools and charters, while allowing class sizes to increase, have not worked to increase student achievement compared to cities elsewhere.

Our power point, with lots of user-friendly graphs to illustrate our findings, is below; it is also posted on our website, if this version is too hard to see. Our presentation also contains rebuttals of specific claims made by DOE about the city's NAEP results. Please post your observations or questions in the comment section. Thanks!

NAEP Power Point Version 2011