Parent leaders demand NYC Mayor give parents a voice in choice of a new schools Chancellor

Jessamyn Lee,Co-Chair, Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council (credit S. Ochshorn)

For immediate release: January 23, 2018

For more information: Leonie Haimson, leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329

On Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018, leaders of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council (CPAC), representing all the PTAs and Parent Associations in NYC public schools, along with the leaders of the Education Council Consortium, representing the elected and appointed members of the Community and Citywide Education Councils, along with about 30 other parent leaders,  gathered on the steps of Tweed

Marco Batistella, CPAC co-chair (credit S. Ochshorn)

Courthouse, the NYC Department of Education headquarters.  As representatives of more than one million public school parents, they demanded that Mayor de Blasio implement a transparent selection process for a new Chancellor, and give parents a voice in this process, as he promised to do when he first ran for Mayor, instead of the quiet, internal decision that he currently plans.  

If there is a public vetting that includes the input of parents and community members, the likelihood will be that the individual selected will work well with parents and be responsive to their concerns.  As the first step in devising  this process, they asked to meet with the Mayor as soon as possible.

Shino Tanikawa, Co-Chair ECC, President NYC Kids PAC (credit S.Ochshorn)

Jessamyn Lee, the Co-Chair of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory said: “The Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council (CPAC) urges Mayor de Blasio to honor Chancellor Farina's commitment to parent engagement by including parents in the selection of the new Schools Chancellor. We are partners in the education of our children. The city trusts parents to participate as partners in the hiring of our school principals and local superintendents. The 1.1 million students in our school system are wholly disenfranchised, represented only by the voices and activism of their parents. For the Mayor to deny parents the opportunity to represent the interests of our children in this critical decision is to ignore the voices of our most vulnerable, underrepresented New Yorkers. CPAC insists that parents be included in the hiring of the Department of Education's new leader. “

NeQuan McLean, Co-chair, ECC (credit S. Ochshorn)

Shino Tanikawa, the Co-Chair of NYC Kids PAC and the co-President of the Education Council Consortium said, “I sincerely hope the Mayor considers an open and public selection process that includes parent leaders.  This is an opportunity to ensure that the next Chancellor has the qualities and qualifications necessary to run the nation's largest public school system and is someone who can truly collaborate with all stakeholders including parents.”

NeQuan McLean, the Co-Chair of the Education Council Consortium said: “The next chancellor will need to address the challenge of ‘separate is not equal’ in NYC’s highly segregated school system.  NYC students deserve a chancellor who will work to stop the well- documented harm done to the majority of students who attend our public schools. These students are children with disabilities, English Language Learners and children from economically disadvantaged communities. They are our most vulnerable students with the most to gain as educated and career-ready citizens. Our next chancellor needs to be a champion for these children and all children in our public school system.”

Pam Stewart,  CCHS (credit: S. Ochshorn)

Eduardo Hernandez, CEC 8 (credit S. Ochshorn)

Marco Batistella, CPAC Co-Char, Pam Stewart of the Citywide Council of High Schools, Eduardo Hernandez of the Community Education Council in District 8, Nancy Northrup of the Queens High School Presidents Council, and many other parent leaders explained why it was critical for parents to have a real voice in the selection process, to ensure that the next Chancellor will be successful in collaborating with parents for the benefit of  NYC children. 

For more information, see the CPAC letter here:  https://tinyurl.com/y8r5y7pu ; 

ECC letter here: https://tinyurl.com/y739q5yk

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NYC Parents: the Tripod survey is being given in 134 schools and you have the right to opt out

UPDATE:  A list of  the 133 NYC schools in which the Tripod survey is being given this spring is here.  One school apparently dropped out.  The UFT and the DOE are still in negotiations about whether this $5M survey will be used next year, or another one will be chosen to replace it.  In the meantime, check to see if your school is on the list, and if so, make sure you as a parent has been notified by your principal and received an opt out form.

Watch out parents!  Whether you know it or not, the DOE is giving a controversial survey to NYC students in 134 schools called the Tripod Survey.  DOE officials say they are allowing parents to opt out of having their children take the survey, but they won't disclose to us in which schools they are being given. Some background:

Last year when the UFT and the DOE could not come to an agreement about their teacher evaluation system, Commissioner King stepped in and mandated that the Tripod Survey would have to be  part of the evaluation system.  The Tripod is a student survey that the Gates Foundation used in its Measures of Effective Teacher studies.  With the apparent consent of the DOE, King determined that the survey would be given to students in grades 3-12, and the responses would count for 5 percent of a teacher's rating.

The survey was devised by Ron Ferguson of Harvard and is now owned by Cambridge Education LLC, a for-profit firm that the DOE has also used in the past for quality reviews.   Over the summer, the DOE agreed to pay a whopping $5.9 million to use this survey for one year, slightly negotiated down to $5.5 million when the Panel for Educational Policy approved it in September.  (At the same time, the PEP also approved a contract with Danielson Associates for half a million dollars, also for the teacher evaluation system, with their consultants being paid $4600 per day.  Too bad that we couldn't get John King to cover the cost of both contracts.)

Apparently because of UFT resistance, King said the survey would only be piloted for the first year, and then given to all students the second year.  After this announcement was made, Valerie Strauss wrote in the Washington Post: "There are several questionable elements to the new teacher evaluation system just imposed on New York City schools by state education Commissioner John King, but the one that jumps out for sheer nitwittedness is this: Students starting in third grade will now have a say in the official assessment of their teachers."

In February, I volunteered to serve on a committee formed by the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council to work with DOE officials on how this survey would be administered. We had our first meeting March 20.  During the meeting, DOE officials from their Research division promised that no personal student information would be provided via the survey,  and that in fact, no personally identifiable information would be included anywhere on the survey sheet or the envelope containing each survey, provided to the company for its calculations.

I asked if parents would be allowed to see the survey in advance, and opt their kids out.  The DOE officials were reluctant to agree to this until I pointed out that according to Joel Reidenberg, privacy expert at Fordham, the federal law called the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) requires this. We also pressed them to make the survey available to parents online, but they subsequently decided to make it only available at the school site, so a parent has to actually go to the school to check the survey in advance.  Finally, when they said that the survey would be voluntary on the part of schools as well,  we urged them to allow the School Leadership Team to make the decision as to whether to administer it.

On March 31, we met again with DOE officials as well as Ron Ferguson and the team from Cambridge Education LLC.  They took us through a power point and explained that the survey questions are built around the "7 C's": Care, Control, Clarify, Challenge, Captivate, Confer, and Consolidate.  They explained that the survey was originally designed for teacher feedback and NOT teacher evaluation, and that a different version is used in grades 3-5 and in grades 6-12.  

Many of the questions relate to a student's emotional state,  like "Being in the class makes me angry" or "I get nervous in this class"  or "My behavior is a problem for the teacher in this class"  or "I feel out of place in this class, like I don't really fit in."  Other questions relate to classroom control and how able students are to have their questions answered; these seem to me as though the responses would likely be affected by conditions outside a teacher's control, such as class size.  Ferguson admitted that class size was somewhat correlated with the responses that students provide.

The survey also includes a Part II, with questions relating to the student's economic and family background, including what ethnic group they belong to,  how many adults they live with at home, whether they own a computer, and how many books are in their bedroom.

There are several sample versions of the Tripod survey online, though the DOE told us that they were using a new version, so the ones assigned to NYC schools will not match up exactly. First, see Appendix A of this Advocates for Children report, with sample Tripod survey questions for the Elementary (grades 3-5) and Secondary students (Grades 6-12.)  See also this version for Secondary students that was on the Rochester Teachers website, though DOE says they will not be using part III,  which includes some very personal questions.

We were led to believe that there would be another meeting of the CPAC committee before the survey was given, but repeated emails got no response, until a parent sent a message that she had heard the survey administration had already begun in her district.  Then the DOE admitted that they had already begun giving the survey on May 3 and this would run through June 26. In the 134 schools in which it is being piloted, according to the DOE, "school leaders and UFT Chapter leaders agreed to participate and were encouraged to collaborate with their School Leadership Teams on their administration plan."

Anyway, be sure to ask if your school is participating in this survey, remember that as a parent, you have the right to see it in advance, and can opt your child out if you prefer.