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| Panel for Educational Policy meeting, April 26, 2012 |
Last Thursday,
April 26, in another
long, highly emotional meeting that stretched late into the evening, the Panel
for Educational Policy voted to close 24 schools and put them in “turnaround”
mode, one of the federal models for
school “improvement” in which the entire teaching staff is fired and is forced to
reapply for their jobs. The city is doing this, despite the fact that the state may deny them the federal funds that are supposed to be the “reward” for this
model.
In defending his decision to close these
schools in general, and in particular to close Long Island City, as compared to
Grover Cleveland HS, which was taken off the “turnaround” list at the last
minute, Chief Academic Officer Shael Suransky explained:
… that the schools post some very
different data points. At Long Island City, for example, only 11 percent of parents
responding to a city survey said the school is doing well, he said. (Long
Island City had a massive scheduling debacle earlier this year, and the
department is replacing the principal it installed just last year.)
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| Long Island City students, arriving at school |
He
didn’t mention that Grover
Cleveland HS is also the alma mater of NYS Assembly Education Chair of
Cathy Nolan, a fierce critic of these proposals.
But
let’s provide a little history and context here:
In
addition, in Oct. 2010, the school was on a list of struggling schools with very
high class sizes in which DOE
promised the state to reduce class size, as part of their Contract for
Excellence plan.
Here
is what InsideSchools said about the school
in 2010: when it first landed on the
DOE’s list of “transformation” schools:
In an effort to boost academic
performance, the Department of Education named Long Island City High School a transformation
school in 2010. Under the terms of the $1.8 million federal grant,
which requires new leadership at transformation schools, the 17-year-principal,
Williams Bassell, stepped aside and Maria Mamo-Vacacela, formerly an assistant
principal for math, was named interim acting principal. Basell was named as a
“mentor” to the new principal and continues to work full-time in the school. …
To accommodate the huge
enrollment, students come to school in four shifts, some beginning as early as
7:00 a.m. The lockers are not used: Because there aren’t enough to go around,
nobody is assigned to one. To help the transition to high school, 9th
graders are placed in groups of 130 students and four teachers. In 10th
grade, students are placed in one of eight theme-based Small Learning
Communities (SLC), which have replaced the ability-based Personal Learning
Environments. One student acts as a “leadership liaison” to each SLC.
What
else were the plans to improve the learning environment? According to the Comprehensive
Education Plan for 2011-2012, students with disabilities and ELLS were to
be assigned a commercial online learning program called Castle
Learning.
Here
is what the school was supposed to do to boost parent involvement: “Parent
Coordinator will designate time in the Parent-Teacher Association Meetings for
APs to discuss the format and importance of Regents Exams. APs will use the
periodic assessments to generate a mail merged letters giving parents and
students detailed feedback on student performance on the assessments.”
Here is what their
"Strategies for attracting Highly Qualified Teachers" consisted of:
o Administrative staff regularly attends hiring fairs to
identify and recruit highly-qualified Math teachers.
o The pupil personnel secretary will work closely with
the network HR point person to ensure that non-HQT meet all required
documentation and assessment deadlines.
o Mentors
and/or master teachers are assigned to support struggling and non-highly
qualified teachers.
They also intended to offer extended day – one of the
prescribed “transformation” strategies, although there is very
little research showing this strategy works for at-risk students. Even the CEP admits the school has had little success with these programs in the past.
Historically, after school programs for ELLs at LICHS
have been very sparsely attended and ELL attendance to the school's general
Saturday Academy has also been low. Saturday academies run six Saturdays at the
end of each semester from 8:00am to 11:00am. By creating a special ELL section
of the Saturday Academy focused on Regents Prepartion [sic] and College
Readiness the intent is to create a welcoming environment that intentionally
uses instructional techniques proven to work with ELLs, including the MEAL
paragraph for scaffolding writing.
[Apparently, the MEAL paragraph means: “To help writers
understand how to craft clear and effective paragraphs, writers should remember
this formula: MEAL. This stands for Main
idea, Evidence, Analysis, and Link.]
The CEP
also mentions in passing “smaller learning communities”: “The teachers
of the ninth grade advisory classes are provided with a curriculum and have
weekly meetings in their small learning community teams.”
Now,
as mentioned above, the DOE decided to replace the 17-year principal with an
inexperienced principal in the fall of 2011.
What
else happened? The year before, in
2010-11, Long Island City had 3300 students, despite a school target cap of
2100 students. That means the school
exceeded the target cap by 1200 students, with a utilization rate of 157%.
In
2011, the educrats at Tweed sent 208 more
students than the year before, meaning the school this year has a population of
3508 students – exceeding its cap by 1398 students, and with utilization rate
of 166%!
So DOE took this severely
overcrowded and struggling school, replaced the experienced principal with a
new principal, sent the school more than
200 additional students.
Not
surprisingly, instead of reducing class
sizes, as DOE had promised the state,
class sizes rose sharply.
According
to the DOE
class size reports, class sizes surged from an average of 26.8 in the fall
of 2010 to 31 in the fall of 2011. (We
believe that both these figures probably underestimate the actual class sizes, as
a result of systematic errors in DOE’s reporting method, but never mind.)
Here
is a chart showing what class sizes have been in core academic subjects at the
school over the last few years, according to the DOE official figures, compared with state averages.
Last
week, 120 class sections were cut out of the schedule. Four course offerings
were canceled entirely, meaning 900 students attended two months of classes in
courses that no longer exist. All 3,500 students were given new class schedules
with different teachers. The school blames the transformation program...
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| A "small learning community" at DeWitt Clinton HS |
“There
were a lot of things that weren't broke that they wanted fixed, and sometimes
that causes more problems that really have to be fixed. And it's been a
difficult time dealing with people from Washington feeling that they know
better than the people on the ground,” said teacher Ken Achiron.
The
grant required replacing the school’s longtime principal, who teachers say
dealt well with the complicated scheduling, and also called for the school to
be divided into smaller "learning communities."
Then,
early in April, the DOE took the school out of “transformation” mode, put it in
“turnaround” mode, and replaced the new principal,
this time with the network leader:
The city’s choice to take over is
Vivian Selenikas, Long Island City’s current network leader…. Selenikas led the
High School for Arts and Business in Queens from 2003 to 2007 and will replace
Maria Mamo-Vacacela, who does not actually have to be removed under turnaround
rules.
So to
“transform” a school the principal needs to be removed, but not to “turn” it
around? One also wonders why the network
leader was chosen to lead this school, given that it had remained in chaos
throughout the fall; clearly her support had proven insufficient to prevent its
severe problems. (Selenikas was also
involved in a controversial
move in 2007 to fire the respected director of an anti-domestic violence program
in East Harlem, a move that was questioned by the Councilmember Melissa Viverito,
as well as community activists.)
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| LIC HS students at school closure hearing; credit GothamSchools |
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Here
is a description of the recent closure hearings at Long Island City HS in Gotham Schools:
As a Queens network leader,
Selenikas is no stranger to the large high school on Broadway, which required
help from her and other Department of Education officials last year to resolve
massive scheduling problems….But many parents say they are worried that the
city is not planning adequately for turnaround. Some say they are wary of the
abrupt leadership change, which would be the third in less than four years….
Selenikas said she would
lead the creation of several new Small Learning Communities, including an
academy for freshmen, and possibly an arts-focused community and a
sports-focused community that would integrate the school’s many electives and
clubs. She also wants to add more Advanced Placement classes to the 18 already
on offer…Selenikas was more vague about her plans for the more
nearly 100 LICHS teachers whose jobs would be placed in jeopardy this summer if
the turnaround begins. …. The hiring committee will include Selenikas, two
members picked by the teachers union and two members picked by the city.
So here the supposed "fix" for next year is even more Small Learning Communities, or are they supposedly redoing them all over
again? And what do small
learning communities mean, in a vastly overcrowded school with large class
sizes?
1.
Facilitative & distributive leadership
2. Dedicated teaching, learning, & support teams
3. A data
driven system of accountability
4. Rigorous curriculum
& instruction for all students, centered on a unifying focus
What that means aside from a lot of buzzwords, I have no idea, but it
certainly does not mean smaller classes. Indeed,
as apparently happened at Long Island City HS this year,
creating Learning Communities can lead to even larger classes, because one of
the assigned periods for each teacher became an “advisory,” rather than an
academic class.
Now remember,
at the PEP meeting last week, Suransky explained his decision to close the
school was based upon the fact that 11% of parents didn’t believe the school
was doing well. Of course the parents
are angry and dissatisfied! Wouldn’t you be if your child had been rescheduled
into new classes in November?
But whose fault is this, the teachers, or DOE and the network leader?
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| Rally for Long Island City HS Credit: GothamSchools |
If Suransky
and/or Selenikas had been doing their jobs, why did they allow the school to
devolve into chaos in the first place? Who
is really responsible for this sorry mess, the teachers who are now being
fired, or DOE for sending even more students into a vastly overcrowded school, imposing
a model that led to larger classes, and failing to provide the support that an
inexperienced principal needed to properly devise student schedules?
And is
it possible for anyone to believe that replacing up to half the staff at the school over
the summer will help solve these problems, instead of making them worse? The whole theory behind this is unbelievably absurd.
Note: similar
stories could be told most of the other NYC “turnaround” schools as well. See my testimony before the Assembly Education Committee here. In nearly every case,
the DOE is directly responsible for the fact that these schools are struggling;
and has demonstrably failed in their duty to deliver a quality education to NYC children. Truly, if there were any justice in the world, it would be the educrasts at Tweed who should be fired, and a committee of parents and educators established to decide which ones might be rehired, instead of the staff at these schools.
