My comments at last night's PEP meeting in opposition to the co-location of a Success charter in a D22 high school building

Update 12.22.22:  At last night's Panel for Educational Policy meeting, Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg insisted that there will be enough space in the building for Origins HS to lower class size to mandated levels even after this co-location of a Success elementary charter school in the building; while providing no evidence to back up his claim. The proposal passed 10-5, with all the mayoral appointees voting to approve the co-location, joined by the Staten Island borough appointee.  I was the last to speak after countless others -- after the DOE had left me off the list.

My name is Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters, and I’m here to speak against the co-location of Success Academy in Building K495, and in fact all the co-locations of Success charters that have been proposed for Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx. 

As many parents and teachers have pointed out during the public hearings, there is no mention in either the Educational Impact Statement or the Building Utilization Plan for this co-location or indeed any of these co-locations of the need to lower class size, according to the bill signed into law by the Governor in September.  Meanwhile, somewhere between 56%-80% of the 69 classes at Origins High School do not comply with the class size caps in the new law.     

In addition, more than 80% of District 22 high school classes in D 22 did not make the class size cap of 25.  This means that many more classrooms will be needed at Origins HS and in the district as a whole to achieve the smaller classes mandated by the law.  Yet the Instructional Footprint on which the EIS and BUP bases their estimation of space explicitly assumes current class sizes will continue into the indefinite future.  

In addition, neither this EIS nor any of the others actually describe any of the Educational impacts that these co-locations  will cause; in some cases, the loss to students of a science lab, the loss of intervention and support spaces for students with disabilities, or the loss of access to the gym,  or the cafeteria at reasonable times. 

·       In fact, no educational impacts are described in any of these documents, only an abstract accounting of how many rooms each school should get, according to an arbitrary formula that doesn’t allow for either smaller classes or require any of the other elements of a quality education.

Chancellor Banks, I was encouraged by your interview with Marcia Kramer on Sunday, where you appeared to embrace the opportunity to lower class size, and said you want "to ensure that our kids have a great school experience," and you realized that this would require the building of “dozens of new schools.” 

Then why are you proposing these co-locations that will take away necessary space, and why has the DOE cut the capital plan for new capacity by over $1.6 billion dollars and over 11,000 seats since you took office?

Instead, we need a real plan to ensure that all schools and all students will have the benefit of smaller classes in the time frame specified in the law;  rather than any more co-locations that will deprive NYC public school students of their long -awaited opportunity to be provided with their right, according to the state’s highest court, to a sound basic education.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

Dr. Johnny Lops, child psychiatrist, reflects on the damaging pressure from testing on NYC parents, teachers and kids

Dr. Johnny Lops is a child psychiatrist who works at a hospital in Brooklyn and has a private practice.  His website is at Drjohnnylops.com; and he tweets at @drjohnnylops

It’s Monday morning and I am sitting in my office in a clinic in Brooklyn, NY that services primarily low income multi-cultural families.  My phone is blinking that I have a message, most likely over five.  I can already predict the variety of calls I am about to hear.  Many will be mothers informing me of complaints from school that their children have  been acting out again, or that they are not focused, or that they continues to show insufficient effort or motivation.  

Day in and day out, it seems the job of a NYC parents and teachers is becoming more stressful.  I make jokes to the parents of the kids I see that I would not wish my worst enemy to become a teacher in these times.   Gone are the days where teachers were allowed the time get to know their students or their parents and do what I hope schools would provide: the opportunity to develop good social skills, executive functioning , emotional intelligence  and enhance their moral development.  

What schools do instead is put an overwhelming, overbearing pressure on kids to achieve  high scores on standardized test s, on which their teachers are then evaluated..  Well, if I am a teacher, I don’t have time to work on the development of a child.  If my job is simply based on academics, then getting through lesson plans are most important.  If I have a child who has experienced trauma, copes with multiple stressors at home like a majority of my kids, has an anxiety/depressive disorder, and/or a behavioral disorder, these kids are negatively affecting my future. 

 I am very proud of the teachers that do contact me and provide more information about my kids’ mental well-being.  A majority of teachers are quite -tuned in to their student’s emotions.  I find the ability for teachers to make referrals to mental health clinics has improved.  My concern is that with all the stress on schools to produce high test scores, the children who do not carry the full range of academic, emotional, or social intelligence are falling behind, way behind, and they end up in my office developing real psychiatric conditions that are undermining their well –being.  

Parents wish they could complete the homework with them but a majority of my parents struggle academically as well.   I have in my office a stressed out mother AND a child, both developing low self-esteem because of their poor academic skills.  Furthermore, because  children are acting out, has not fully developed healthy executive functioning skills or emotional intelligence, they have less time to do homework, because they need to come see us at our clinic for therapy and/or medications to target their symptoms, many of which are caused by their academic struggles. 

I am happy to work for a clinic where my staff and I are committed to serving local families and can provide them the support they need.  I think all my colleagues would agree, though, that having schools become a place focused so exclusively on academics has put an incredible amount of burden on parents and staff, trying to find alternatives for children facing these pressures.  Watching children in my office exhibit so many psychiatric problems  is upsetting.  I just hope those running  the NYC Department of Education and the State Education Department re-evaluate their strategies to improve children’s outcomes.  

--Dr. Johnny Lops, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist

Common Core forums last night in the Bronx and Brooklyn: what a difference!

Me in the Bronx last night (credit: GothamSchools)

Last night in the Bronx, only about 50-75 people showed up at the Regents Forum at Evander Childs HS.  The borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., who started off the evening, was clearly furious at the poor attendance and blamed it on the fact that NYSED officials had given only one week's notice.

It was a mixed crowd, but most of those who spoke in favor of the Common Core appeared to work at charter schools or were teachers affiliated with Educators for Excellence, an organization funded primarily by the Gates Foundation, that also funded the Common Core.  The director of E4E, Evan Stone, spoke, as well as two (!!) of their Bronx "outreach" directors, one of whom had been excessed [not laid off] when her school was closed last year.

Most of the speakers were against the Common Core and its associated testing regime.  These included Mark Naison, a professor at Fordham, who asked for the resignation of Regents head Merryl Tisch, and several parents who decried that their Kindergarten children were being subjected to inappropriate bubblesheets exams and worksheets labeled "test prep."  While Tisch said that the state did not support standardized testing for small children, the parents called her "disingenuous" and pointed out that these tests were on the NYSED's approved list of assessments. See this video of Monique Dols, a parent of a Kindergarten child at Dos Puentes, a bilingual school in Washington Heights.

Teachers lamented how the scripted and flawed Common Core curriculum hav taken all the joy out of teaching, and how students no longer had access to art, music and well-rounded education.  Parents reported that their children who once loved school now cry when doing homework, and are made to feel like they are failures.  The state had decided beforehand that 70% of the children would fail the tests, to what end? one asked.  Another parent said the quota for informational text was "diabolical" and pointed out that reading literature is what makes us "human."

Regent Betty Rosa, who was there along with Merryl Tisch and several NYSED Deputy Commissioners, said she voted against the teacher evaluation system linked to test scores, and that the Common Core focuses on evidence, but there is none for the Common Core itself.  She concluded that sadly, all the focus has been on the standards and the assessments, but everything needed between had been omitted: sufficient resources, small classes, quality curriculum, and teacher capacity.

I asked the following questions about student privacy: "We've learning that personally identifiable student data was uploaded to the inBloom cloud -- once last December to help with inBloom's "infrastructure development" and again in July for the data dashboard "roadshows."  Exactly what personal data was uploaded and couldn't dummy data be used, given how incredibly sensitive much of this information is, and could be seen by anyone attending the roadshows?"

"Also, thousands of parents signed petitions against the state sharing this data with inBloom; hundreds have written letters begging for their child to opt out and at least 40 superintendents have given back their Race to the Top funds in hope of protecting their students; but the state insists on sharing their data anyway.  Parents, school board members and Superintendents all agree that this plan is not only completely unnecessary but poses huge risks for children's privacy and safety.  Eight of the the nine original inBloom states have now pulled out .  Why is the New York State Education Department so much more resistant to listening to parents and educators and so much more careless with kids' privacy and lives?"

Regent Merryl Tisch handed over the mike to Ken Wagner of NYSED, who repeated the usual blather and didn't answer either of my questions.

credit: WNYC/InsideSchools

In Brooklyn, the scene was completely different. The speaking list was entirely dominated by charter school parents who had been bused in by Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst NY and Families for Excellent Public Schools, two pro-corporate reform organizations financed by the Walton Foundation and other pro-privatization groups.

Officials at Medgar Evers College had been told to reserve a room inside the building for these parents early. Though on its website, NYSED announced that the doors would only open at 6 PM, by 5:30 PM all the speaking slots were already taken.  StudentsFirst was founded to provide the shock troops for corporate reform, and with the help of either NYSED or DOE insiders, they performed their role admirably in Brooklyn last night. The only person who had a chance to speak against the Common Core until the very end of the night was Katie Lapham, a teacher who happened to arrive even earlier at 4:30 PM.  Her statement is here.  An account from a parent posted on Diane Ravitch's blog is here.

One more point: there is no objective evidence that higher standards alone will narrow the achievement gap or enable children to learn what they need to succeed, as Tom Loveless and other experts point out.  And there is even LESS evidence to show that the current crop of Common Core standards and their associated modules and exams are high quality -- and much that argues against this. As Rosalina Diaz, a professor at Medgar Evers said last night,  ""I think this is very sad...The Common Core is the furthest thing from solving inequality. This is the ultimate inequality because people can't speak their mind," referring to the overwhelming dominance of of pro-Common Core speakers.

In fact, by basing all decisions on test scores and  labeling struggling students as failures, it may serve to discourage them, widen the achievement gap and lead to more dropouts.  What actually works to improve student learning and narrow the opportunity gap is small classes, experienced and caring teachers, and a well-rounded education -- all of which is being driven out of schools and actively undermined by NYSED's  narrow and damaging policies.

Charter schools and their segregating effect

Last week, the NY Times ran a very eloquent oped by a Brooklyn parent entitled How Charter Schools Can Hurt, pointing out how the aggressive marketing of a Success Academy charter outside her neighborhood public school could very well lead to her school to suffer even more budget cuts, and become less racially and economically diverse, as white middle class parents choose to enroll their children in the charter school instead. 

In response, a parent and an employee of the Success Academy chain wrote a letter, apparently to the applicants to their new Brooklyn charters, that was subsequently posted on our NYC Education List serv.  His letter claimed, among other things, that the charter school his children attend, Upper West Success Academy, “is among the most socio-economic and racially diverse schools in the entire city.”  His letter evokes several concerns.  First of all, If Upper West Success charter is so diverse, why didn’t he include any data about its racial/ethnic breakdown in his letter?

At the forum last fall called Miseducation Nation, sponsored by FAIR, I noted how in Brooklyn public schools in particular there has been a tremendously valuable trend towards integration, as neighborhoods are slowly being gentrified, and white parents are choosing to send their children to predominantly minority schools.  This growing trend should be encouraged and nurtured by DOE; instead, they continually undermine it by forcibly co-locating new schools in their buildings, many of them charters, causing these public schools to lose their most attractive qualities, including valuable programs and small class sizes, due to loss of space.

Also, the DOE’s expansion of charters and other schools of “choice” too often have led white parents to opt out of their neighborhood school for these new schools that tend to be less diverse.  Cindy Black, a Brooklyn parent, wrote about how a new district school of “choice” led to her child’s public school to become more segregated on our blog here.

In any case, there is little doubt that charter schools have had a segregating impact nationally.  The UCLA civil rights project revealed this trend in a comprehensive report in 2010.  John Hechinger at Bloomberg News, who just won a prize for his education reporting, has written about this cogently as well.   The NAACP has issued a resolution against the expansion of charters, in part because of their segregating effect.

See also the support of the KKK for charter schools, in a response to Hechinger’s article:

Parents have been given a choice as to where to send their children and without government interference, many have selected schools with a student population that reflects the race of those children.  In addition, many of these schools satisfy the children’s longing to identify with their racial history by incorporating cultural studies relating to their ethnicity.  There is nothing wrong with this, yet some think it is terrible. In fact, the majority of people prefer to be around others who are like them.  Even those who enjoy international travel and experiencing other cultures still, for the most part, live the rest of their life among those of similar racial background.  Why does this make some social engineers so angry? It is only natural. Each race should have the right to determine their [sic own affairs without interference.  This is why homogeneous nations are good for world peace. Everyone needs their own space.  And parents who choose charter schools for their children based upon this fact are doing so instinctually [sic] and its [sic] healthy for their families.

Finally, in his letter, the Success Academy parent and employee made the following statement, oft repeated by conservative free marketers:

 “….all parents should have access to and benefit from the resources and facilities that are paid for by our tax dollars.  All of our children should have the same rights to access these resources, facilities, and yes, lunchrooms, regardless of whether they attend charter schools or traditional public schools.”

Does that argument also apply to private or parochial schools?  Should the operators of Spence or the Catholic diocese be able to lay claim to public school space because the parents of the students who attend their schools also pay taxes?  This is a very radical and dangerous notion indeed.

Cindy Black on how "choice" leads to more segregated schools

Much controversy has been aroused and much ink has been expended about the way in which Eva Moskowitz is now defying the original stated purpose of charter schools, and marketing her chain of Success Academies to white middle class families in Brooklyn and on the Upper West Side.  Her glossy flyers, sent to households by the truckload, with many families having already received five or six, increasingly feature the faces of little white children. There has also been much debate about the problems of NYC's demanding school "choice" process -- but not much said about how school choice may further segregate  our public schools, especially in many areas of Brownstone Brooklyn, where the last ten years or more of gradual gentrification have led to more diversity in neighborhood schools.  While the UCLA Civil Rights project has shown how charter schools contributes to more segregation nationwide, here are the observations of one Brooklyn parent who is also a high school teacher, Cindy Black, about what happened when a new elementary school of "choice" -- though not a charter -- opened up  in her community:

From what I've seen, "choice" segregates schools. People are just attracted to communities that feel familiar. It is frustrating.

This is at the elementary level, but when a "school of choice" opened in our district this year, virtually every white student in my daughter's grade left to go to that school, which billed itself as a progressive alternative to zoned schools. Now Brooklyn New School might open a new school in district 13, which will definitely impede the integration of local zoned schools which have already lost many white, biracial, and affluent families to BNS.

I'm fond of progressive pedagogy, but I'm not comfortable with a scenario where one demographic consistently chooses one extreme while another demographic chooses the other extreme. "Teaching to the middle" is now synonymous with bad teaching, but I actually think that if we are to have truly integrated schools, parents are going to have to compromise. I might like to see my child in the least constrictive environment, but another parent sees that as chaotic and distracting and wants their child to learn discipline. "Choice" allows each parent to write the other off, and ensures that their children won't meet. There is this attitude that every child is different and you have to find the right "fit" for your child, but part of being a citizen is putting aside what is easiest for you in order to think about what will be best for the community as a whole.

I think schools should be integrated. Really integrated. I was reviewing capitalization rules with my high school students recently and discovered that they didn't know that England is a country. I came home and asked my five-year-old and she did know, but only because two kids in her Kindergarten class had traveled to England over winter break. Both of those kids transferred to the new, progressive, "school of choice." Most of my students never went to school with kids who travel overseas for winter break. And obviously it isn't just my students who suffer. The kids who travel overseas, they're missing out too. Everybody loses, I think, when our search for the "right fit" allows us to opt out of sending our children to school with children whose experiences have been very different from their own.

  -- Cindy Black

Brooklyn parents, teachers & community members speak out: we don't want your charter school!

Thanks to Darren Marelli, here are highlights from the hearing that occurred on Tuesday about the controversial proposal to co-locate another branch of the Success Academy charter chain in Cobble Hill, District 15, in Brooklyn. 

Passionate and articulate parents, teachers, elected officials, students and community members spoke out against this damaging, deceptive and most probably illegal proposal, and pointed out how the co-location will likely wreck the schools that now inhabit the building, one of which is in transformation, by overcrowding them, forcing them to increase class size and lose valuable programs.  Does the DOE care?  You be the judge.

Teachers at PS 193K; Budget cuttin', it's got to stop!

We've tried petitions, phone calls and protests. What's left? See how teachers from PS 193 in Brooklyn are making their voices heard:

....your child's class will grow till you sob;
Growing larger until it's a mob...
In September, wait till you see
how the budget affects you and me;
Don't expect to see the school you once knew.
Hey Chancellor Klein; we're talking to you!"

Brooklyn briefing on school overcrowding

On May 13, I will be briefing Brooklyn parents, members of Community Boards, CECs, and concerned citizens on the school overcrowding crisis in the borough and citywide, and what can be done.

When: Thursday May 13 at 6 PM

Where: Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street

This briefing, sponsored by Brooklyn BP Marty Markowitz, will be followed by discussion and a strategy session.

Together we need to take action before consigning another generation of children to overcrowded conditions, which the state’s highest court said was a violation of their right to an adequate education.

Here is a flyer you can post in your school; please RSVP to mkelley@brooklynbp.nyc.gov