UPDATE: No performance evaluations for any Chancellor or top administrator at Tweed since Bloomberg took office

Correction!  Lisa Fleisher FOILed for the DOE performance evaluations BEFORE I did.  Apologies to her.  I had wrongly assumed otherwise.
UPDATE: Lisa Fleisher of the Wall Street Journal FOILed for the job evaluations of the top leadership at Tweed shortly after I did – but smartly, she asked for all the evaluations back to 2001, when Bloomberg took office. 

Guess what?  There are none.  She also shows how this is sharp departure from pre-Bloomberg days and the way things are done in other school districts.  Walcott explains the disparity from the strict accountability demanded of teachers:

"They're in front of the classroom and teaching our children, and we need to have a sense of how well they're doing," he said. "With us, we're not teaching children directly, we're setting policy. And I don't think it's hypocritical at all."

That really makes a lot of sense.  

Klein claims that instead of evaluations, he fired any of his aides who weren’t doing the job.  And those were who again?  

This latest revelation is perfect coda to the Bloomberg era, when accountability at the top was promised New Yorkers, but instead we got mismanagement, corrupt and wasteful contracts, privatization, and damaging policies that were abhorrent to parents and educators alike.

Last night's PEP meeting approving a further expansion of the DOE (Department of Eva) and Walcott's falling poll numbers

As expected, the Panel for Educational Policy (otherwise known as the Panel of Eight Puppets) rubberstamped two new, very controversial charter co-locations of Eva Moskowitz’s expanding chain of Success Academy last night, despite huge community opposition, and hundreds of raucous and vociferous parents and teachers who turned out.  Perhaps DOE should be renamed Department of Eva.

Before the meeting began, the audience voted no-confidence in the PEP, with a show of hands; and the public comment period featured a very funny interview of “Eva” played by Gloria Brandman.  (Here are some news clips:  Times, NY1, Daily News.) There was even more police presence than usual and signs up everywhere that people disrupting the meeting would be ejected; clearly DOE is very spooked by the growing militancy of protesters.

GothamSchools reported that the pro-charter parents (who were relatively few) were brought by a new organization called Families for Excellent Schools.  This is the third or fourth organization that the privateers have started up in their attempt to organize charter parents.  Is it  so difficult to pull this off, or do they figure that with Bloomberg in charge they get their way anyway, without any pretense of widespread grassroots public support?

At the conclusion, Patrick Sullivan of Manhattan was the only one to vote no;  Queens & Bronx appointees abstained &  the Brooklyn rep, Gbubemi Okotieuro, voted yes, along with all of the eight mayoral appointees and Staten Island.  Okotieuro said that Brooklyn BP Marty Markowitz’ position favoring the charter co-locations was “well-known.”   (Did everyone know this but me?  Did Markowitz ever put out a statement explaining why?)

Credit goes to the hundreds of people who made the trek out to a fairly remote part of Queens, including three elected officials from Brooklyn, who all spoke in opposition: AM Jim Brennan and CMs Lander and Levin.

Just as contentious as the charter school co-locations was the proposal to expand Esperanza Prep Academy inside a building where the kids in the TAG school are already pressed for space. TAG is the only diverse Gifted and Talented school in Manhattan, with more than half black and Hispanic kids.  The school is already overcrowded at 108% utilization and the kids already eat lunch at 10 AM;  with the Esperanza expansion, it is slated to lose additional rooms.   The parents are justifiably concerned about increased overcrowding as well as safety issues, with Kindergarten students potentially sharing bathrooms with HS students.  The parents and teachers at Esperanza, one of the few dual language middle schools,  also came out, understandably, to support expanding their school into the upper grades. 

You would think that if there’s any group Walcott would be interested in nurturing it would be the city’s high-achieving minority kids, given the DOE’s sorry record with diminishing numbers of minority students enrolled in gifted programs and  at the selective high schools, but if so, that was not evident last night. He apparently lets his incompetent Portfolio office make all their decisions on their own. 

Marc Sternberg, head of Portfolio, was as unimpressive as usual, with poor command over any of the facts or figures,  and could not even promise that the TAG kids would not be forced to share bathrooms and the lunchroom with HS students.  He justified the moving of Brooklyn Success to Cobble Hill because of Kindergarten overcrowding…on that basis, you could see charters in nearly every part of the city, since one quarter of all schools had waiting lists for K last year. 

Of course, the DOE’s ultimate failure to deal with this overcrowding crisis that seems to be neatly falling into the hands of the privateers & charter operators. 

I made a short and probably futile speech about how all the DOE has done over the last nine years is undermine our public schools, anger parents, and  tear apart communities, with a regimen of school closings, charter expansion, worse overcrowding and increased class size.  And the results are dismal: NYC’s uniformly poor results on the NAEP scores, which were released last week, revealing how our black, Hispanic and white students have all fallen further behind their peers in the other large cities since 2003 in all categories tested, and no significant narrowing of the racial achievement gap.  I urged Walcott and the other PEP members to reconsider, learn from the past, and take another course.  Did they really want to sit through two more years of protest and harangues from furious parents?

If I’d known, I would have mentioned how badly his poll numbers have slipped, as indicated in yesterday’s Quinnipiac poll .  The survey shows Walcott's approval ratings falling from 39% to 33% since October, with 33% of voters having no opinion.  His overall disapproval rate is at 34% and among public school parents he fares even worse, with 45% having a negative view of his performance.   

I don’t know who  the mayor or Walcott talk to or get advice about school policy, aside from (probably) Eva Moskowitz and the hedge fund crowd, but they need to wake up,  because at this point their education legacy looks dismal.   (For more on these poll numbers, see GothamSchools and Daily News.)

Shino Tanikawa on NYC DOE's attitude towards parent engagement then -- and now

Honorable Robert Jackson

Chair, Education Committee,NYC Council

Dear Councilmember Jackson,

Thank you for this opportunity to submit my comments on the Department of Education’s Division of Family and Community Engagement.

I am a public school parent of a junior in high school and a fourth grader.  I have served as an officer of the PTAs and on the School Leadership Teams of my daughters’ schools as well as on the District 2 PTA Presidents’ Council.  I was a member of the Parent Commission on School Governance in 2009.  I currently serve as the President of the Community Education Council District 2.  I submit my comments as an activist parent who has participated in various levels of parental engagement.

I have come to realize parental engagement means different things to different people.  The DOE appears only willing to accept a very rudimentary definition: parents help with their children’s homework.  I have written to the Chancellor a few times with my view on this issue: parental engagement is a spectrum.

I began my “parental involvement career” with reading to my children at home but quickly moved up to face painting and cleaning up at a fundraiser.  From there, I branched out to teaching as a volunteer environmental educator in my daughters’ schools, serving on the PTA as Treasurer then as Co-President, and participating on the SLT.  From this school level involvement, I became interested in district-wide issues and got involved with the District 2 PTA Presidents’ Council.  I even went further and worked on overhauling the Mayoral control law with the Parent Commission on School Governance.  While I am currently focused on District 2 issues through the Community Education Council District 2, I am interested in larger issues at the city, state and federal levels.

It is my experience that the Mayor’s administration has no interest in anything but the individual-level involvement (i.e., homework help).  His policy on bake sale has dampened even the most benign of the school-level involvement.

Since Mr. Mojica has been appointed, the only change I see is the way in which the DOE interacts with parents.  Gone are the arrogance and the contempt of the former Chancellor (I am not counting the one without due qualifications).   We are treated with respect and with a little more responsiveness.  This is a welcome change.

As an example, one year ago, the CECD2 hosted a Town Hall with the then Chancellor.  The Chancellor’s office dictated the format of the Town Hall (no open microphone, questions to be submitted on index cards).  The CECD2 had to fight to allow parents to speak directly with the Chancellor.  In contrast, at this year’s Town Hall, which took place last week, the Chancellor’s office was open to suggestions and the CECD2 ran the Town Hall as we felt appropriate.  The staff from DFACE was most helpful and communicated frequently with me on this matter.  

While it may be more pleasant to interact with the DOE when they do not openly disdain parents, unfortunately I have not seen signs of any truly meaningful change.  Cell phones are still banned in schools despite the fact so many parents spoke out against the ban.  I have not seen any responses from the Chancellor on the CEC & Citywide Council Task Force report titled A Vote for Change: A Blueprint for Reforming Community and Citywide Education Councils in New York City and The Department of Education’s Approach to Engaging Parent Leaders or announcements on implementing any of the recommendations from the report.  School phase-outs continue to be planned without input from the affected communities.  The public hearing process on school utilization changes still makes a mockery out of public input. 

I believe Mr. Mojica believes in the same things I do.  I believe he understands the spectrum of parental involvement.  However, I am not so sure if he will be allowed to make any significant changes within the system.  Unless the Mayor and the Chancellor have a change of heart, I do not expect parental engagement to move beyond homework help regardless of how capable Mr. Mojica is.

As a colleague aptly put it, the DOE is still telling parents to get out of the way but now with a polite “please.”

Respectfully submitted,  Shino Tanikawa, shinot@verizon.net

A Brooklyn parent reports on the WNYC/Schoolbook forum on "school choice"

See also NY Times/Schoolbook and GothamSchools on this forum. Here is the account from a Brooklyn parent who wishes to remain anonymous:

Last night I attended the WNYC/Schoolbook forum on “school choice” which turned out to be mostly about promoting Schoolbook--no surprise. Jodi Rudoren of the Times kicked off the evening by telling us all to go on Schoolbook and add comments on our children's schools. 

The Walcott conversation with Brian Lehrer was about what you'd expect. Some gentle probing, but they filtered out any slightly difficult questions by having the audience submit them on index cards or via Twitter. I didn't hear any Twitter questions answered. An OWS person tried to disrupt things and was hauled away after a while. Walcott just kept hammering away on the world as he sees it, where choice and small schools are all that matter.  A 12-year old who attended summed him up nicely: "He just keeps talking about how hard his job is." 

Walcott left and was followed by the panel discussion, led jointly by Beth Fertig and Brian Lehrer. This was a lot more interesting, and I came away impressed by several of the panelists. Kelvin Diamond, the Dist. 13 CEC member, struck me as a decent guy, very committed to building schools and community. His daughter attends Philippa Schuyler, a good middle school in Brooklyn, and he's been in the thick of the high school search. He spoke about how frustrating it was for parents to try to get sense out of the DOE, either about their children's situation or in a more activist role, i.e. through the CEC.

 The 8th grade teacher, Laura Klein, and the principal, Rashid Davis, both of whom have been blogging on Schoolbook, were terrific, actually, and seem like professionals who are very aware of their students and what they can and can't do for them. They both mentioned the fact that by the time kids get to high school, they've had ten years in the system already, and there are limits on what they can achieve. The charter school operator, Miriam Raccah of Achievement First, formerly of Girls Prep, said very little. The parent, Carla Trujillo, is a Mexican immigrant who spoke via a translator. She spoke about the difficulties of negotiating the process without knowing English, of the limitations of having one's child translate at school fairs, and so forth. They also ran a video that showed kids who'd been through the process talking about what had happened: honest and engaging teens.

Lots of bloggers and journalists were there, in addition to parents, quiet a few of whom were from the neighborhood.  But not enough to fill the auditorium, which was quite large and I wondered if they'd expected more of a crowd.  [Note from LH: Despite the frequent announcements on WNYC about how this event would help parents navigate the choice process, the event occurred the week after the high school applications were due.]  

They had perhaps a couple of hundred people, a mix of middle-class parents and those who looked as if they might be school employees. Walcott came in with Tish James, *the neighborhood's* city council rep, who has been dedicated to fighting for local schools. Anyway, I attended mostly because I have a 7th grader, and because it was a few blocks from where I live. It didn't tell us much about the high school process that we did not already know, but it was interesting to see Walcott as the face of mayoral control, with no acknowledgement of what real parents and children face every day.

And we all came away thinking a lot about the difference in choices--and likely outcomes--for our middle-class, high-achieving children and for those young people who have been born with very different opportunities.

Dennis Walcott infuriates parents once again, this time in District 6

On Thursday November 10, the Community Education Council in Northern Manhattan hosted a Town Hall meeting with Chancellor Dennis Walcott.  The CEC prepared an excellent power point containing key data about the district, along with specific questions for the Chancellor.  It was a contentious meeting, according to all reports; see the Gotham Schools story.  Unfortunately, despite lots of PR spin about "partnering with parents," there is no evidence that Walcott is willing to listen to parents and shift away from the wrong-headed and damaging policies of his predecessor, Joel Klein, including repeated budget cuts, class size increases, worsening overcrowding, preferential treatment of charter schools with continued co-locations , and incessant testing. Here is the account of the meeting from Victoria Frye, CEC 6 member and public school parent: 

We described the issues facing our schools: too little resources to provide a quality education; overcrowded schools; disgraceful school conditions; budget cuts; co-locations; THE LIST GOES ON!

With each, Dennis Walcott got up and...spouted the party line: 

"The reality is that in this economy there will be mid-year budget cuts."

"With shrinking budgets, leaders must be creative."

"By creating school choice we are allowing the market place to drive the issues."

"I respect Joel Klein tremendously. I think the world of Joel Klein."

"There are no plans in our capital budget for a new facility for Mott Hall" [the only program for gifted D6 IS students and a national model].

And then something along the lines of: "your D6 schools are so bad that we will not replicate or grow them; we will simply bring in [charters] that really know how to educate your D6 children."

What to say?

OCCUPY EDUCATION. IT IS THE ONLY WAY.

-- Victoria (Tory) Frye, CEC 6 member.

A court decision on the teacher data reports that will hurt our kids

It is unfortunate that the day after a court decision held that NY teachers should be evaluated by use of multiple assessments, with student scores on state standardized tests only one minor factor, today, the appellate court said that the DOE could release the teacher data reports to the public, based only on these same test scores. 

Most testing experts agree that these reports are highly unreliable and reductionist, and they will unfairly tarnish the reputation of many excellent teachers:

1.     The state tests were never designed for such a purpose – and are technically unable to make year to year judgments on “progress” or value added. 

2.    Many studies have shown the extreme volatility of these measures, and how the results differ even from one sort of test to another.  See Juan Gonzalez’s column on how DOE consultants themselves believe these reports are highly unreliable; here are links to the original documents revealing this, obtained through a  FOIL.

3.    As John Ewing, former executive director of the American Mathematical Society, recently concluded, ”if we drive away the best teachers by using a flawed process, are we really putting our students first?  Mike Winerip reported on a top-notch NYC teacher who was denied  tenure in just this manner.

If NYC goes ahead and releases this data it would likely be the first school district in the country to do so willingly and enthusiastically; when the LA Times generated its own value-added data for Los Angeles teachers, the paper was widely criticized.  Chris Cerf, former deputy Chancellor and now acting State Superintendent of NJ schools, was originally in charge of creating the teacher data reports; he promised that they would never be used for teacher evaluations and that the DOE would fight against any effort to disclose them publicly. In a 2008 letter to Randi Weingarten, Cerf wrote: "It is the DOE's firm position and expectation that Teacher data reports will not and should not be disclosed or shared outside the school community."

Chancellor Walcott should think twice before releasing this data, if he cares about real accountability, the morale of teachers,  and the potential damage to our kids.

Here are some of the recent studies from experts on the unreliability of this evaluation method:

Sean P. Corcoran, Can Teachers be Evaluated by Their Students’ Test Scores? Should they Be? The Use of Value-Added Measures of Teacher Effectiveness in Policy and Practice. As  the author concluded from his analysis, “The promise that value-added systems can provide a precise, meaningful, and comprehensive picture is much overblown… .Teachers, policy-makers and school leaders should not be seduced by the elegant simplicity of value-added measures. Given their limitations, policy-makers should consider whether their minimal benefits outweigh their cost.”  

Economic Policy Institute, “Problems with the Use of Student Test Scoresto Evaluate Teachers.” 2010.

National Research Council, Henry Braun, Naomi Chudowsky, and Judith Koenig, eds., GettingValue Out of Value-Added: Report of a Workshop, 2010: “Value- added methods involve complex statistical models applied to test data of varying quality. Accordingly, there are many technical challenges to ascertaining the degree to which the output of these models provides the desired estimates.”  

John Ewing, former executive director of the American Mathematical Society, current president of Math for America;  MathematicalIntimidation: Driven by the Data; “Why must we use value-added even with its imperfections? Aside from making the unsupported claim (in the very last sentence) that “it predicts more about what students will learn…than any other source of information”, the only apparent reason for its superiority is that value-added is based on data. Here is mathematical intimidation in its purest form—in this case, in the hands of economists, sociologists, and education policy experts…And if we drive away the best teachers by using a flawed process, are we really putting our students first?"

Sean P. Corcoran, Jennifer L. Jennings, Andrew A. Beveridge, Teacher effectiveness on high- and low-stakes tests; April 10, 2011. " To summarize, were teachers to be rewarded for their classroom's performance on the state test or alternatively, sanctioned for low performance many of these teachers would have demonstrated quite different results on a low-stakes test of the same subject.  Importantly, these differences need not be due to real differences in long-run skill acquisition…

That is, teachers deemed top performers on the high-stakes test are quite frequently average or even low performers on the low-stakes test. Only in a minority of cases are teachers consistently high or low performers across all metrics… Our results… highlight the need for additional research on the impact that high-stakes accountability has on the validity of inferences about teacher quality. "

Class sizes to rise to thirty in elementary schools next year?

I have heard from several sources that elementary school principals have been told by their network leaders to plan for average class size of thirty in grades K-5 next year.  (see letter below from the School Leadership Team at PS 3.)

This would represent an increase of 6.4 children per class compared to last year; or an increase of 27%, and would represent the largest class sizes in these grades in at least twenty years or more.  

When Dennis Walcott was testifying before the NYC Council, he said that even with 4100 teacher layoffs, he did not expect class sizes to increase any more than 1.5 students per class. The layoffs were averted, but because budget cuts to schools are still so large, principals are being told to that the increase may be more than four times as large.  See the letter in protest from the PS 3 SLT below.

This is despite the fact that class size reduction is the top priority of parents again in the DOE learning environment survey, for the third year in a row, and a law was passed by the state legislature in 2007, requiring that NYC reduce class size in all grades..

If you have heard anything about your school’s class sizes next year, please contact me at leonie@att.net

____

July 20, 2011

VIA EMAIL (dmwalcott@schools.nyc.gov)

Dear Chancellor Walcott,

One of the phrases that we hear all too frequently is, “Class size is not important. Teacher quality is.” This argument rings hollow.

We are graced with high quality teachers; however when they have too many students whose needs they are trying to address, their effectiveness declines. The image that comes to mind is that of the juggling troupe, The Flying Karamazov Brothers, who juggle odd assortments of objects, even soliciting some from the audience. However, no matter how skilled the juggler, if s/he attempts to manage too many objects at once, some fall. In our instance, unfortunately, what falls is children.

The Department of Education is considering a budget premised on increasing class sizes for grades 1-5 to 30 students per class.  We are writing to urge you not to adopt a budget that requires such an increase.

While we are sympathetic that budget cuts must be made and priorities must be shifted, increasing class size will fundamentally hinder learning. The simple fact is that teachers cannot provide optimal, differentiated instruction for 25 young children as well as they can for 20, let alone for 32. Even excellent teachers have limits to their energy, time, patience, and ability to solve the infinite array of problems that facilitating learning involves.  At PS 3, we have seen firsthand how increase in class size can negatively impact teachers’ energy and students’ ability to learn.

The timing of this proposed class size increase is particularly unfortunate, as our school community has been enthusiastic about incorporating instruction and assessments that address the new Common Core Standards, an initiative that New York City and State are supporting with great vigor.   Larger class sizes are likely to be highly discouraging to instructional staff.  This has nothing to do with teacher attitudes, which are positive and inclusive, but rather the difficulty of implementing so many changes at once.

 We urge you not to move forward with a budget that requires increased class size.  It would be a major step backward for closing the gap in providing quality education for all.

 Sincerely, PS 3 SLT

Denise Collins, Chairperson                         

Dana Abraham                                               Patricia Laraia

Liz Craig                                                         Kirsty Mogensen

Nick  Gottlieb                                                 Jackie Peters

Jean Hale                                                       Amie Schindel

Kimberly Jensen                                             Cassidy Sehgal

Stephanie Kim                                                Lisa Siegman

Susan Korn                                                     Susan Soler