NYC DOE still putting out false discharge data and inflating the graduation rate

Throughout the Bloomberg years, when the administration would trumpet rising graduation rates, I noticed how the discharge numbers were very high and seemed to be increasing. Every student listed as a “discharge” rather than a “dropout” can inflate a school’s figures,  as he or she are no longer counted in the cohort  -- in either the denominator or the numerator for the purposes of calculating the graduation rate.

So in 2009, I co-authored a report with Jennifer Jennings, entitled High School Discharges Revisited: Trends in NYC’s Discharge Rates, 2000-2007.   Our analysis showed that discharge rates had increased over this period, especially among Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, and English language learners.  

 Between the classes of 2000 and 2007, the discharge rate for students with disabilities increased from 17 to 23 percent, including in the class of 2005 where it spiked at 39 percent.  The report provided evidence that a thousand students had been “moved” into the special education cohort that year, possibly in order so DOE could claim an increase in the overall graduation rate.  Finally, we pointed out how some of the students categorized as discharges according to the DOE codes, such as students who left school to attend GED programs or because of pregnancy, should have been listed as drop-outs instead, according to state and federal standards. 

Our report led the DOE to change its coding for some of the categories and the City Council to pass a law called Local Law 42, to require detailed and disaggregated discharge reporting each year.  The results of that reporting are here.

A related law, Local Law 43, was also passed required the reporting of discharge rates at closing high schools, shown here; in these schools the discharge and drop out rates increase sharply.  Here is my testimony in support of both these bills.

Also as a direct result of our report, Betsy Gotbaum, then the Public Advocate, asked the NY State Comptroller to audit DOE’s discharge rates.  When the results of that audit were finally released in 2011, they revealed that 14.8% of students who were labelled as discharged should have been identified as dropouts instead, and fully 20% of the special education students. Moreover, the auditors found that DOE had no evidence to show that more than half of their sample of discharged students weren't actually dropouts; taking DOE months to come up with documentation. 

Just a few weeks ago, on Sept. 9, 2014, the NY State Comptroller’s office released a little noted, follow-up report showing almost no improvement in this area. According to a DOE internal audit from 2012, as many as 14% of reported discharges still should have been reported as dropouts.  A subsequent audit from December 2013 continued to find unspecified errors in DOE’s discharge classifications. 

I have now FOILed DOE and the State Comptroller for these two audits; we will see how long it takes them to respond.  Yet it is disappointing that there has been so little progress in the accurate reporting of this data, whether out of sloppiness or to inflate NYC's graduation rate, especially given DOE’s claims of being a “data-driven” agency.

Public Advocate’s Commission on School Governance Report Hugely Disappointing

Mayor Bloomberg’s reaction in the NY Daily News to Thursday’s much-anticipated Commission on School Governance Report from the NYC Public Advocate’s Office was, predictably, haughtily dismissive. “Just a political thing,” he commented, as if the steady stream of press releases and television ads emanating from the Tweed public relations machine was something far more noble and pure. Ever on the alert for the telling metaphor, Mayoral supporter Kathryn Wylde threatened the dangers of ANY legislative changes in the Mayoral control law by hearkening back in one fell swoop to Condoleeza Rice's smoking gun/mushroom cloud and Hillary Clinton's doomsday, 3:00 a.m. call on the dreaded red telephone: "Who knows what can happen in the middle of the night in Albany." Yes, that's right, NYC public school parents: Be afraid, be VERY afraid.

The Mayor and his mouthpieces have little reason to complain, however. Instead of a badly-needed call for action and meaningful change, the Commission offered up a timid program of tweaking around the edges that would leave governance of the public school system virtually unchanged: the Mayor and Chancellor in full and unfettered control, accountable and answerable to no one, with parents and children still on the outside, looking in.

Given Ms. Gotbaum’s past criticisms of the DOE under Mayoral control, her Commission’s 48-page School Governance Report is an astonishing disappointment. The document is larded with typographical errors, overly devoted to background material on its own workings and theories of school governance, and devoid of any genuine assessment of the last five years of Mayoral control. Far worse, however, the report offers up recommendations that run from the non-relevant-to-governance obvious (follow City Charter guidelines on procurement of services, a reference to the DOE’s 100 million dollar plethora of no-bid contracts) to the blandly ineffectual (please make the CDEC’s and SLT’s more effective and give parents more opportunities for meaningful input!) to the maintenance of a barely modified status quo in the actual governance structure.

In essence, the Commission recommended retention of Mayoral control under the theoretically watchful eye of the Panel for Education Policy (PEP). That oversight body would continue to have 13 members, with eight still named by the Mayor and one each named by the Borough Presidents. The “bold” changes would be to give members fixed four-year terms corresponding to the terms of their naming authorities -- thereby ostensibly increasing their independence by immunizing them from sudden removal – and removing Chancellor Klein from Panel Chair and voting member to non-voting, ex officio participant. Under such a scheme, the Mayor still retains 61.5% control (8 of 13) of those named to PEP and purse-string control over most of the rest.

As we have seen over the past few years, the Borough President’s representatives (with the sole exception of Manhattan BP Scott Stringer’s representation by Patrick Sullivan) have been no more independent in their behavior or voting records than have been the Mayor’s hand-picked representatives. PEP has consistently looked more like a dozen rubber stamps wearing business suits, or a Jesus and his twelve disciples following in lockstep (Mr. Sullivan the doubting and often denying 13th), than an independent oversight and decision-making body. The Commission’s report does nothing to change this situation and leaves the Mayor’s and Chancellor’s current dictatorial powers to manipulate the public school system according to their whims and political needs virtually untouched.

To its credit, the Commission recommends reinstating the 32 school district offices to bring the DOE back closer to the local community level. It also offers a vaguely worded and rather weak-kneed suggestion that the Independent Budget Office (IBO) be given “explicit responsibility to report on the performance of the Department of Education.” The IBO offers hope for at least occasional independent evaluation and reporting, but even this recommendation falls far short of honest data auditing and investigative analysis.

The bottom line here is simple but alarming. Public school parents who have looked to the Public Advocate as one of their critical voices on NYC educational policy and governance have been dealt a harsh body blow. The Commission on School Governance Report is a clarion call for the status quo, long on rose-colored vision and short on specifics or real change. Under the governance system proposed in the Commission’s report, parents remain standing powerless on the outside, their voices barely heard and, even when heard, inevitably ignored or condescendingly dismissed as just so much carping by a disgruntled few.

In the coming days, I will have much more to say about the assumptions underlying two key aspects of the Commission’s report: Mayoral accountability and public participation.

C4E Redux: Manhattan

The present observer had thought that long exposure to NYC C4E hearings had dulled her to lofty sentiments arising therefrom, but last night’s hearings in Manhattan were unusually substantive and sometimes downright inspiring. Parents, teachers, and other citizens from across the borough seemed somehow to have managed to study the dense and extensive documents in the few allotted days and come forward with an unusually cogent and consistent critique, ringing various compelling changes on a few central themes. Debra Freeman, Irene Kaufman, and I read testimony on behalf of Class Size Matters, and submitted a list of forty reasons why the state should reject the city's Contract for Excellence proposal.

- There was a resounding endorsement of the idea that smaller class size is essential to improving educational outcomes in NYC; and that smaller classes cannot be achieved without more capital investment; and that the NYC C4E does not take the necessary steps to make smaller class size a reality;

- There was rejection, on several grounds, that CTT programs, though desirable and welcome in many respects, constitute a class size reduction regime; indeed, DOE’s approach to CTTs seems to be having the effect of increasing class size for many students;

- There was an argument that ELL students were not receiving their share of the funds that they were drawing in from the state;

- There was a call for greater transparency and more comprehensive reporting, and a claim that a failure specifically to account for the dispersal of C4E funds had led to supplantation of tax levy spending;

- The Leadership Academy and the Teacher Performance Pay initiative were challenged as neither new nor expanded programs qualifying for C4E funds;

- There was a call for more funds directed at special education programs.

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, City Council Education Chair Robert Jackson, Campaign for Fiscal Equity Executive Director Geri Palast, City Councilmembers Rosie Mendez and Gale Brewer, Douglas Israel, director of Research and Policy for the Center for Arts Education, UFT Vice President for Special Education Carmen Alvarez, CB 7 Chair Helen Rosenthal, and many really well informed and well spoken parents and teachers gave terrific testimony, some of which we will make available to you below.

There is still, until August 27, time to submit testimony to DOE directly, by emailing ContractsForExcellence@schools.nyc.gov. Tell them how much class size means to you, and whether you think DOE is using vital C4E funds as they were meant to be used.

See this report on the Manhattan hearings, and articles on the hearings in Queens and Staten Island.

Here is testimony from Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, Council Member Robert Jackson, Council Member Rosie Mendez, Luis O. Reyes, Josh Karan of CEC 6, Jennifer Freeman of CEC 3, Doug Israel of the Center for Arts Education, and John Elfrank-Dana, teacher at Murry Bergtraum HS.

Make your voice heard on the future of Mayoral control

Two opportunities to make your opinions known about the effects of Mayoral control on our schools, as the State Legislature has to decide whether or not it should be renewed next year:

• A series of public hearings hosted by the UFT in all boroughs starting next week; for more information, click here.

• A new website hosted by the Public Advocate's Commission on School Governance, where you can send your comments to the members of the Commission online. There are also some interesting papers posted on the history of Mayoral control here in NYC and elsewhere, including one by our own Diane Ravitch.

No one can say you weren't asked!

Public Advocate’s Office to Seek Data on DOE’s Random Scanning Program

Last Thursday, January 3, the DOE’s random scanning team appeared on the doorstep of Benjamin Cardozo High School to execute their standard cell phone and iPod seizure program. Regardless whether weapons or dangerous instruments were found, one thing is certain: Cardozo’s attendance rate dropped from 83.9% on January 2 to 73.9% on scanning day. Given Cardozo’s register of 3,907 students, the DOE’s mobile search and seizure program created about 390 extra truants that day, and about 2,350 extra missed academic periods. [This 10% drop matches the 9.7 percentage point drop in attendance at Forest Hills High School when that school was subjected to random scanning on September 11 of this school year, resulting in 326 extra absences beyond the school’s normal rate.]

Amid discussions and questions raised by various parents about Cardozo and the DOE’s random scanning program on the NYC Education News listserv on January 3, the following response was posted:

I am writing you on behalf of the Public Advocate. As you may know, Betsy Gotbaum has long opposed the DOE's policy of turning schools into armed camps. She has also spoken out against the cell phone ban, citing parents' rightful concern for their children's safety. Furthermore, she has serious problems with and has raised objection to the lack of fiscal accountability at the DOE. Parents and taxpayers alike deserve answers to the questions you ask. Our office will be writing to the DOE as you have suggested. When we get a response we will post it here. Tomas Hunt, Office of the Public Advocate

I have since sent a letter to Mr. Hunt that includes the following ten questions, in the hope that the Public Advocate’s Office can secure data and answers from the DOE:

1. What are the dates, school names, and results (number of weapons, other dangerous items, and cellphones, iPods, and other electronics confiscated) from the inception of this program through year-end 2007?
2. For items categorized as weapons or dangerous items, what were those items (that is, were they guns, knives, chains, and brass knuckles or were they scissors, math compasses, laser pointers, and pocket knives)?
3. What was the daily attendance rate at each of these schools for the three school days immediately preceding the random scanning date(s) and/or the school’s Year-to-Date daily attendance rate immediately preceding the scanning?
4. What was the daily attendance rate for the date(s) that random scanning took place?
5. Has the DOE through its responsible school safety office conduct any controlled study of the deterrent effect of random scanning on students carrying weapons or other dangerous items? If so, when, where, how, and what were the results?
6. How many persons in the DOE and/or School Safety are assigned to the random scanning program?
7. How many portable scanners has the DOE purchased for this program, and what was their total cost? What is their annual maintenance cost?
8. What is the annualized cost to operate this program in terms of personnel and equipment expenses for transport, set-up, operation of the equipment, search and confiscation of students’ property, logging and bagging of confiscated items, and disassembling this scanners for removal?
9. What are the costs of additional personnel attached to this program for outside the building security (to keep students from leaving the area or otherwise hiding their property when they see that scanning is taking place)?
10. What are the costs of additional personnel assigned to this program for recordkeeping, reporting, and program administration?

In a final but hardly amusing irony, Mr. Hunt’s email acknowledging receipt of my letter included the following anecdote:

Just last week Betsy [Gotbaum] and I entered a high school where we both were sent through the magnetron and on the other side four school safety agents surrounded Betsy told her to put her hands on a desk and to spread her legs as she was wanded-down. We were there with a principal from the building who was pleading with guards not to do this, but they did it anyway. It can seem like sense and purpose has given way to force and order.

Bloomberg Testing Mania Decried by Public Advocate

New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum issued an analysis and statement today in support of parents complaints about excessive testing. The analysis confirmed what parents are seeing -- that eight year old third graders are now faced with twelve standardized tests, made up of two state tests and ten Bloomberg-mandated city tests.

For the full statement click here. See press coverage here in the Sun and here in Newsday. In the press coverage, DOE spokesman Andrew Jacob adopted the condescending tone that has become standard when the Bloomberg adminstration addresses parent concerns.

The new standardized tests are part of the DOE's "accountability" initiative, the primary thrust of the administration's education reforms.

While state governments, Congress and presidential candidates are questioning the wisdom of excessive standardized tests, the Bloomberg administration continues to hew to its extremist positions. DOE Chief Accountability Officer Jim Liebman has overseen both the sharp ramp-up in standardized testing and the system to assign letter grades to schools based on the test results. The letter grading system has been widely criticized by parents, teachers, academics and our political representatives. Gotbaum's report is welcome scrutiny of the similarly misguided testing regime.

Voices in opposition to the school grading system grow louder

Diane Ravitch has an oped in today's NY Sun about the new school grades:

Is the grading system accurate and reliable? Did the grading system identify the worst schools? Is the closure of the lowest-performing schools likely to improve public education? Could the Department have taken other actions that might have been more effective than closing schools?

The answers to all of these questions, she suggests, is no. Diane also provides an important critique of the whole notion that simply closing schools is the best way to make significant progress:

Nor is it enough to turn out the lights. Schools are not a franchise operation. They are deeply embedded community institutions. They should be improved with additional resources, smaller classes, and additional training for educators. The starting point in reforming schools is to have a valid evaluation system that correctly identifies the schools that need extra help. It may not be easy to transform the schools that are in trouble, but if we want a good public education system, there really is no alternative.

Indeed, this is an essential element of the school reform process for which Tweed no longer feels accountable -- their responsibility to provide the support and resources schools need to improve.

See the show on PBS about the NYC school grading controversy, including parents and principals at some of the schools that got low marks, and one that got high marks, talking about the meaning and impact of these grades. The show also includes an interview with the Chancellor, in which he attempts to explains the "F" that PS 35, the Staten Island neighborhood school received, despite having 98% of students at grade level in math, by comparing it unfavorably to Anderson School – a highly selective gifted and talented school.

The interviewer, Rafael Pi Roman points out that William Sanders, the father of value-added accountability systems, told him that the sort of one year’s test score gains that the NYC grades are based upon are not meaningful. Klein responds that nevertheless, the school grade is a positive motivational factor in getting schools to work harder on improving test scores.

You can also listen to audio clips from the City Council hearings on the school grades from December 10, now posted on You Tube:

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum , who says out that closing schools unilaterally, as the Chancellor has done, without first consulting Community Education Councils is potentially illegal.

City Council Education Chair Robert Jackson (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), who aggressively questions James Liebman on many issues, including whether the DOE reached out to parents sufficiently.

Council Member Lew Fidler of Brooklyn, who flunks the school grades for their lack of transparency. (Part 1 and Part 2.)

And Council Member John Liu , who is masterful in showing that these grades are derived primarily from the results of only two tests -- though Liebman keeps trying to argue that these are really "multiple assessments" given out over "multiple days." (Part 1 and Part 2.)

Finally, watch the Channel 2 news segment featuring the hearings and showing Liebman fleeing from parents, now also posted on YouTube.

UPDATE: see also this article in City Limits: PARENTS, COUNCIL STILL ANGRY ABOUT SCHOOL GRADES

James Liebman on the run

On Monday, at the City Council hearings on the school grades, James Liebman, the chief accountability czar and former law professor, faced fierce criticism from Council Members. No wonder; his testimony was evasive, full of misleading statements and outright errors.

Liebman went on to make many questionable statements, among them, that a school at which "hundreds of children on average lost 10 percent of a proficient level in a year almost certainly has a significant problem."

Instead, experts say that one year's gain or losses in test scores at the school level is 34-80% random, and unrelated to the amount of learning taking place.

Liebman also claimed that factors related to overcrowding and class size were taken into account when devising the grades, when they clearly weren't.

In his testimony and power point, he claimed that he had consulted with many groups and experts, including the United Federation of Teachers, the Council of Supervisors and Administrators (the Principal's Union), CPAC, Community Education Councils and the NY Performance Standards Consortium in devising these grades.

Ann Cook, the co-chair of the Consortium, later testified to the fact that this was untrue. Her group had asked for and gotten a meeting about the interim assessments, but the topic of the school grades never even came up.

Ernest Logan, President of the CSA also denied that he had ever been consulted, and laughed when Jackson asked him this question. (See this letter from Logan to the Chancellor, about the many flaws in the school grades.) The UFT VP, Aminda Gentile, said they had “conversations” with DOE about the school grades, but there was no consultation.

Betsy Gotbaum, the Public Advocate, also criticized the unreliability of the school grades, and said that the Chancellor's decision to close schools without consulting first with Community Education Councils is against the law. She cited the state law, (2590-h) , which says that the Chancellor has the authority to:

Establish, control and operate new schools or programs…or…discontinue any such schools and programs as he or she may determine; provided however, that the chancellor shall consult with the affected Community District Education Council before substantially expanding or reducing such an existing school or program within a community district. (The law is posted here.)

Yet, she added, this has not happened in this case. "And the truth is, I can't think of an example where it has happened."

When asked by the chair of the Education committee, Robert Jackson, Liebman admitted that CECs had not been consulted before the announcement to close schools. Instead, they had been consulted afterwards, "entirely consistent with the process that has applied for the last several years."

Did he believe that parents should be consulted? Liebman said that the process that was used "was sufficient and adequate and very comprehensive."

Jackson said this response was "totally unacceptable", and if this was the direction the chancellor is going, he is in "big trouble." Liebman also claimed that the method he used was very "transparent" with very "clear rules" and that the results of the Quinnipiac polls showed that parents understood the methods used. (!!)

Liebman kept returning to the results of this poll in his defense, though it turns out that only 143 public school parents were polled.

City Council Member Lou Fidler was concerned that stigmatizing schools with failing grades will likely accelerate the decline of these schools, rather than helping them improve. Melinda Katz said it best: In her 14 years as an elected official, she’s never seen an agency so sure they’re right, when all the parents she has spoken to believe they’re wrong.

John Liu was very effective, asking Liebman repeatedly if the 85% of each school's grade was not just based upon a single measure, the results of a test taken once a year. Liebman kept on evading the issue, saying these grades were not based on one measure but actually "many measures" from a "series of assessments" that take place over a "series of daysm" and that each assessment "cuts across many hundreds of different items, and many skill areas." Liu pointed out the fact that its still only one test!

Finally, Liebman blurted out, "Life is one test" and everyone booed. Liu concluded that not only was Liebman trying to obfuscate, but that that his entire testimony was an obfuscation.

At the end of Liebman's three-hour testimony, the Chair, Robert Jackson, politely requested that he step outside the hearing room to receive petitions from Time Out from Testing and Class Size Matters, signed by nearly 7,000 parents, calling for a halt to the school grades. (Thanks so much to those of you who signed.)

In preparation, we filed out in an orderly fashion, (see above photo from the NY Times) but rather than have to confront us directly, Liebman slipped out a side door, out the back exit of City Hall, and ran away from us like a thief in the night, as we tried to catch up. He then entered the private gates to Tweed, but refused to let us in.

Liebman’s flight from parents was captured on video on many of the nightly news shows. As Lisa Donlan was quoted as saying in the Daily News, all this is symbolic of DOE’s arrogant and dismissive attitude. "He wouldn't even stay to hear our questions ... after we sat for three hours and listened to his testimony."

Here is an excerpt from today’s Times story, “Defending School Report Cards, Over a Chorus of Boos”:

“Mr. Liebman, whose title is chief accountability officer of the Education Department, ducked out a side door, leaving parents to chase him out the back of City Hall to behind the Education Department’s headquarters at Tweed Courthouse.

There, several education officials ran in circles for several minutes to avoid Jane Hirschmann, the director of Time Out From Testing, an advocacy group, as well as parents and reporters.”

Later in a phone interview, Liebman claimed to Times reporter that “he had not deliberately avoided the parents.” This claim is about as trustworthy as the school grades themselves.

See also article in Daily News, Escape from NY parents, the CBS newsclip here and NY1 here.

The CBS story repeats the erroneous statement that Liebman has met with Time out from Testing “many times”; in fact, according to Jane Hirschmann, head of the group, he has refused to ever meet with them.

I also gave testimony posted here about how unfair, inaccurate and destructive these school grades are, and entered into the record the comments criticizing the school grades from many of you, including parents, teachers, and at least one retired principal, that were posted online at our petition.

Update: Erin Einhorn of the NY Daily News pointed out today in Only in NY schools can get an 'A' & 'F' that of the 26 SURR schools on the state failing list, nine got As or Bs.

"The city can do whatever they want to do, but at the end of the day, I think the public deserves better," said Merryl Tisch, the vice chancellor of the state Board of Regents and a longtime supporter of Mayor Bloomberg.

Controversy Over Bloomberg Survey For Public School Parents Continues

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum has sent a letter to Chancellor Joel Klein, asking him to reverse the decision to exclude special education parents from the parent survey. The widely-publicized survey was sent to all parents except those with children in District 75, the city-wide district comprised of schools dedicated to children with special needs. Here is an excerpt from Gotbaum's letter:

I urge you to rethink the decision to exclude parents of students with disabilities from the parent survey.

Furthermore, the justification for this exclusion, that District 75 students are "too unusual," attributed to school officials in recent published reports, is invalid and offensive. Parents of students in District 75 would be more than happy to participate in this survey and again in a survey specific to them next year.

Not only is the DOE excluding the parents of District 75 students from the survey, the DOE is also muffling the voices of all students with disabilities and their families.

The letter also points out the many other problems with special education under this administration: lengthy delays in referrals and providing necessary services resulting from the elimination of relevant staff in the district offices, hiring attorneys to contest parents in expensive and lengthy hearings , overstuffing classes so they exceed the size mandated by state law, and excluding special needs students from the new small schools for the first two years of their existence.

Click here to see the full text of the letter and here for our earlier post about the controversy over the parent survey.