Closing the Achievement Gap - -DoE discussion Series

DoE is hosting a discussion series titled “Closing the Achievement Gap Series” with various prominent educators and policy makers. The last night’s session, Ensuring Equality for All of Our Student, was a “conversation with Chancellor Joel Klein and Reverend Al Sharpton” moderated by Dominic Carter of NY1.

Howard Dodson, Chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cutlure, the event sponsor, made a passionate plea for an urgent action calling the current educational state of affairs the direst of all crises.

Asked what the biggest contributing factor to the achievement gap was, Klein’s answer was to empower and engage families. Yep. You read that right. Empower and engage families. Evidently, he has not noticed the hundreds of parents who have been sacrificing their precious time to make their voices heard, only to have their efforts entirely ignored.

He went on to list two more factors: the low expectations placed on disadvantaged students and unequal allocation of resources, both financial and human. Sharpton’s replies (which came before Klein’s) were pretty similar – special interests , underlying inequalities, and lack of familial involvement.

On the latter two points, Sharpton went on to say we needed to change the “culture of kids” by involving the community beyond the school. There is too much glorifying of “being nothing” and too much defeatist attitude. He talked about his college experience where an African American man told him if he could write and read, then he was trying to be a white man. But the only way to change that is by involving everyone – not just teachers, administrators, parents, but kids themselves and the community at large. He further suggested parental involvement should be tailored to each community.

Klein offered his thoughts on how to close the achievement gap. He proposed longer school days and school year. He wants schools to start at an earlier age. He suggested bringing in the community. He wants to offer families more choices. He talked about how choice will lead to competition which will improve the system. Especially now with the funding tied to students, he believes that schools that can attract more students will excel but the competition will also drive low performing schools to do better. He also mentioned the word, accountability, several times and said that Mayoral control provides accountability because the Mayor can be voted out.

It was painfully clear that Klein has never spent a day in a classroom. While I am not opposed to longer school days or school year, I cannot in good conscience ask even the most veteran teacher to teach until 5PM or well into July (not to mention do both) with so many students in a cramped classroom with so few resources and so many constraints. If Klein had any first-hand experience with a real classroom, he may have thought twice about making this suggestion.

It is ironic that some schools in District 2 had to eliminate pre-K classes to accommodate ever increasing kindergarten enrollment, while he preaches the importance of early childhood education.

As for his comments on bringing in community, judging from the way he has treated parents willing to work with the DoE on various issues, I can only presume he means businesses and consultants when he says bring in the community. He has certainly brought in many consultants to do the job that used to be done by DoE employees. And, remember Caroline Kennedy who was hired to specifically to reach out to and bring in resources from the private sector (i.e., businesses)?

Klein also firmly believes that running the system on a business model of competition will improve our schools. He talked about giving families choice several times during the night, even while Sharpton cautioned that limitation and narrowness of choices will make the system too competitive. Klein does not seem to understand that when you have a competition, someone always loses. Why not base our system on collaboration? Collaborate with stakeholders – parents, guardians, community based organizations, education experts, policy makers. Foster collaboration among schools and replicate successes. Competition is inherently the wrong model for education where we want to lift everyone up.

Naturally of all the times he mentioned accountability, he was not talking about himself or the Mayor. True, the Mayor can be voted out, but the election happens only every four years and there are many voters who do not vote based on the Mayor’s performance on education. I wondered why the Chancellor couldn’t be elected or booted out every two years. After all, Chancellor can do whatever he wants so long as the Mayor approves it, but he can blame the Mayor if anything goes wrong. That’s not accountability.

As an example of how his strategy has worked, Klein mentioned how an all-African-American boys school in Bedford Stuyvesant was able to have 100% of its students reading at grade level. Marcia Lyles, his own Deputy in Division of Teaching and Learning, later set the record straight by saying that the school is a charter school – hardly a good example of how his policy works.

The cluelessness of Klein became apparent when an audience member made a plea to re-evaluate our pedagogical model and foster creative learning. She very eloquently explained how children learn best in a creative environment. His response was that first and foremost children needed to know how to read and write. He missed the whole point of her comment. Dodson, Sharpton and most of the audience understood what she was asking for (to be fair there seemed to be many educators in the audience, including a NYS regent), yet, Klein, the man in charge of educating our children, was clueless as to the significance of her comment.

Some education experts have said that the Chancellor need not be an educator. Perhaps that is true. However, I expect the Chancellor to at least understand how children learn and what it is like to teach in our schools. So, I left the lecture hall feeling we had a longer way to go to close the achievement gap than I thought.