Acceptance rate at proposed closing schools

One of the rationales DOE officials have cited for their proposed closings of twenty one schools is a low demand ratio of applications per seat.

Click on the chart to check out the acceptance rates for the schools slated for closure in the attached chart – with ratios of applications per seat comparable to some of the top US colleges and universities.

The Monroe Academy for Business and Law has an acceptance rate of 8% -- comparable to that of Harvard. Academy of Environmental Sciences has an acceptance rate of 9% -- comparable to Yale.

One of the schools lower on the list, Beach Channel’s Program in Law and Justice, has an acceptance rate of 56%, comparable to Polytechnic University, where David Chang, the chair of the Panel for Education Policy, is Chancellor.

The three zoned schools, Columbus, Beach Channel and Jamaica, that the DOE wants to phase out receive hundreds of applications a year from students in the neighborhood who are guaranteed to receive a seat.

In the case of Columbus, more than one thousand students applied. This means if these schools are phased out, their students will no longer have a zoned high school that they have a right to attend.

NYC Now the Harvard of Public School Systems!

Several years ago, the Boston Globe published a story about Harvard’s “quiet secret” – rampant grade inflation. At that time, over 50% of all grades awarded were A or A-, and 91% of all students were graduating with honors (cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude). The article notes that, “Harvard honors has actually become the laughingstock of the Ivy League. The other Ivies see Harvard as the Lake Wobegon of higher education, where all the students, being above average, can take honors for granted.” One senior student described the school’s grade inflation as “scandalous.”

With the DOE’s release yesterday of the 2007-08 Progress Reports for high schools, we can now assert that the NYC public school system is fast approaching Harvard’s level of extraordinary accomplishment after just two years of report cards. As measured by the DOE’s scoring system, the amount of progress is simply breathtaking. At a time when mayoral control of schools is up for reconsideration by the State Legislature, what evidence could possibly be more compelling in favor of the continuance of Mayor Bloomberg’s guiding hand? Consider the following numbers.

In 2006-07, 61.7% of NYC public schools received an A or a B. This year, the DOE reports a remarkable jump to 79.3% of all schools earning an A or B grade, a gain of 18.4 percentage points in high achieving schools. At the elementary/middle school level, the increase went from 60.9% with A or B grades to 78.3%, and in high schools from 65.5% to a simply astonishing 83.1%. NYC public school parents can now rest assured that some 80% of their children are attending A or B schools, with high school parents even more comforted by their 83% level of quality performance.

Looked at a different way, under a 4.0 grading system (4 points for an A, 3 points for a B, 2 for a C, 1 for a D, 0 for an F), the DOE rated 1,238 schools in 2006-07 and gave itself a net grade of 2.68 (2.67 for elementary and middle schools, 2.77 for high schools). This year, 1,326 schools have been rated so far to the tune of a 3.10 average, a whopping 15.7% increase in city schools’ overall GPA. For elementary and middle schools, the jump went from 2.67 to 3.10, for high schools from 2.77 to 3.16.

As widely scorned as last year’s initial report cards were, this year’s results are laughably worse. No rational adult in NYC, public school parent or not, will believe that 80% of the schools citywide deserve an A or B. The notion that the DOE can somehow grade itself in anything other than a self-serving manner is ludicrous, wishful thinking for the delusional true believers but utter nonsense to anyone grounded in the reality-based world. We all know the line by now. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

I’ve added some additional analysis. Schools that have Progress Report grades for both years can be divided into three groups: letter grade rose, letter grade stayed the same, or letter grade dropped. Here are the breakdowns:

Letter Grade Rose (524 schools)

B to A -- 182
C to A -- 72
D to A -- 17
F to A -- 9
C to B -- 149
D to B -- 45
F to B -- 21
D to C -- 18
F to C -- 9
F to D -- 2

Letter Grade Stayed the Same (470 schools)

A to A -- 181
B to B -- 207
C to C -- 70
D to D -- 10
F to F -- 2

Letter Grade Fell (227 schools)

A to B -- 84
A to C -- 19
A to D -- 3
A to F -- 1
B to C -- 65
B to D -- 18
B to F -- 4
C to D -- 22
C to F -- 8
D to F – 3

Note that of the 43 schools in this group rated F last year, 32 are now A or B schools after just one year!!! Similarly, of the 93 schools rated D last year, 62 of them are now A or B graded. No doubt about it - Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein are turnaround experts extraordinaire!

Follow up letter to Harvard President about Fryer's large scale experiments on inner-city youth

Dear President Faust;

Thank you for your email from Sept. 12. I was relieved to hear that though Harvard may be hosting Roland Fryer’s new institute, you do not endorse the large-scale experiments being carried out on inner-city students to pay them for good test scores and the like.

However, I was disturbed to discover from a recent Washington Post article that Harvard’s name is printed on the checks that DC students receive from participating in this experiment, which appears to be a blatant attempt to exploit the good name of Harvard, and implies a literal endorsement by your institution:

“Others [students] sat quietly and studied the pale green checks with "Harvard University" in boldface across the top. Sixth-grader Kevin Sparrow-Bey, who took in $20, said he was annoyed by the assumption that he and his classmates have to be paid to take school seriously.” (Washington Post, “Delighted -- or Deflated -- by Dollars”, October 18, 2008).

Moreover, today’s Washington Post discusses the research that points to the possibility of a long-term decline in student morale and motivation resulting from such incentives – especially when the money runs out. As DePaul University Professor Ronald Chennault, is quoted as saying,

“…there are ethical issues involved, most of which are experimental and dependent on private funding and local political support. "The potential for harm is, what happens after the incentive no longer exists?" Chennault asked. "Not everything is worth trying." (Incentives Can Make Or Break Students,” November 2, 2008).

I wonder what Harvard’s attitude would be if this were instead a large-scale medical experiment on inner-city students, which earlier research had indicated posed a long term risk to their physical health – and whether you would want your institution’s name associated with it.

Finally, your letter did not respond to the question posed in my earlier email about whether it was appropriate for Professor Fryer to be in charge of evaluating the results of his own experiments – a practice contrary to accepted academic practice, which requires independent evaluation.

Please let me know if you think that 1- Harvard’s name on the checks awarded inner-city students does not imply Harvard’s endorsement of this experiment; 2- whether these experiments, if they are to occur at all, should not be small scale in nature -- rather than applied to half of all middle school students, as they in DC public schools, especially as the research points to a substantial risk of long-term harm; and 3- whether you think its appropriate that Prof. Fryer should evaluate the results of his own experiments.

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Our Children--Only Pawns in Their Experimental Game

"We will have the willingness to try new things and be wrong — the type of humbleness to say, I have no idea whether this will work, but I’m going to try." --Dr. Roland Fryer; 9/24/08

Perhaps discouraged by the refusal of NYC children to respond to financial incentives by actually performing better as opposed to just taking more tests, Dr. Fryer is returning to Boston to head something called the "Educational Innovation Laboratory" (see the splashy EdLabs website).

Dr. Fryer laments that billions are spent researching drugs and developing airplanes, while little is spent “to scientifically test educational theories.” Thus his friend, Eli Broad, (see picture above) and the Broad Foundation are helping him with the first $6 million of a $44 million, 3-year, “research and development initiative” that will have EdLabs “partner” with NYC’s Department of Education, the Chicago Public Schools, and the District of Columbia Public Schools.

What does this “partnership” mean? EdLabs will “connect” top academics from various fields with its own “R&D teams that will be embedded in these three school districts.” (emphasis added). There, the EdLabs folks will “foster innovation and objective measurement of the effectiveness of urban K-12 school district programs and practices” and “quantify the expected "student return from an investment" (sic.) to help leaders direct their limited resources into high-return programs and initiatives.”

In other words, the cheerleader-in-chief for market-oriented education strategies will evaluate the results of programs devised by ideologically aligned education officials, his own teams or even himself (such as the preposterous scheme to reward student performance with cell phones, which apparently has collapsed.). This passes as “rigorous research.”

When a drug company funds research to study the safety and efficacy of its own product, we have no difficulty understanding that conflict of interest is a problem and means the results are suspect. Imagine what credibility a drug study would have if the research team actually included drug company personnel! And would anyone even entertain the suggestion that the head of Philip Morris USA’s Youth Smoking Prevention Program should be included in any study of teenage smoking?

The incestuous relationships in this new initiative would not be tolerated in a scientific study involving drugs or other products. That the proposal is made with a straight face by people who are smart enough to know better shows the utter contempt they have for our children. This is fundamentally a business enterprise, not a serious attempt to evaluate educational strategies by standards that are applied to scientific research. Calling it a “lab” and putting it at Harvard doesn’t cleanse it of this taint.

And here’s the kicker for all us parents and taxpayers. The Broad Foundation is committing a mere $6 million in “jumpstart” funds--where do you suppose the other $38 million will come from? Need I say it? EdLabs’ sources of support include “the three participating school districts.”

-- Paola de Kock

Even Harvard recognizes the value of smaller classes

In response to questions on class size, Joel Klein likes to rhapsodize about his great lecture courses in college. See this interview for example:

“When you enter college, when I went to college, you took some lecture courses, right, that were phenomenal, and they weren't 20 or 25 kids. And I think we should have a much more, if you would, a kind of mix tapered to the needs of the kids and what the class is trying to do.”

Recently at Columbia University, his alma mater, in another attempt to refute the importance of smaller classes, he made a rather bizarre observation:

"There were people here at Columbia who were wasting my time...One of the reasons those classes were so small is because everyone else had realized that those teachers were a waste of time."

Despite the fact that the analogy between Ivy league college students and the high needs (and much younger) population in our public schools is rather farfetched, I remember few great lectures in college. Instead, I recall dozing through all too many.

Now even Harvard has issued a new report that reconsiders the value of lecture courses. In an article in today's NY Times , Eric Mazur, a professor of Physics recounts how he

“...threw out his lectures in his introductory physics class when he realized his students were not absorbing the underlying principles, relying instead on memory to solve problems. His classes now focus on students working in small groups. “

“When I asked them to apply their knowledge in a situation they had not seen before, they failed,” Professor Mazur said. “You have to be able to tackle the new and unfamiliar, not just the familiar, in everything. We have to give the students the skills to solve such problems. That’s the goal of education.”