Education beat losing its best reporters...and now Elizabeth Green

We have lost several terrific reporters from the education beat recently. Erin Einhorn of the Daily News, perhaps the best investigative reporter on schools over the last five years, has moved on to covering City Hall.

Michael Meenan of NY1 has recently departed the station; Mike was the hardest working reporter I've ever seen, in terms of covering hearings, meetings, rallies, and doing his best to cover both sides of every story – including the deep dissatisfaction that many parents and other educational stakeholders have with the Bloomberg/Klein policies.

Today, the NY Sun is closing its doors, which will end Elizabeth Green's peerless education reporting for the paper.

In her short time at the Sun, Elizabeth had one scoop after another: The fact that the Department of Ed had been spying on Diane Ravitch and had enlisted Kathy Wylde of the NYC Partnership to smear her in an oped for the NY Post. That the DOE launched a "truth squad" to scan blogs and list servs for critical coverage. A big cheating scandal at the Ross charter school, founded by the multimillionaire Courtney Ross and located in the basement of Tweed itself.

She also produced a lot of great reporting on the city's vaunted test results, breaking the story that the state scores were likely inflated, according to experts, and that there had been an unusually high level of special ed accommodations in NYC on the national exams.

She led everyone on what will be one of the biggest political stories of this year, the fate of mayoral control of the schools. She was the first to report on the unusually high level of discontent among legislators with the Bloomberg administration's handling of education; and provided leaked testimony from some biggies to the Gotbaum commission studying the subject. Elizabeth was also the first to reveal the likely successor to Randi Weingarten as the head of the UFT, weeks before it was announced.

Many prominent commentators recognized her talent. Eduwonkette called her "the sharpest and most inquisitive education reporter in New York City." Eduwonkette's main rival, Eduwonk, entitled a post about one of her scoops: "Elizabeth Green Strikes Again!"

Alexander Russo, a well-known blogger, included Elizabeth in his 2008 national "Hot...For Education" list, and described her work as follows:

With ability (and ambition) to spare, the NY Sun's relatively new education reporter Elizabeth Green regularly breaks news and scoops her competitors. All the while looking snazzy. Watch out, big-time education reporters. Elizabeth is eating your lunch.

Elizabeth intends to keep reporting on education, and I have no doubt that given her talent, energy and ability to spot the big story wherever it can be found, she will land on her feet very quickly. But it is a huge loss nonetheless to have her missing from the daily education beat – especially now, when we need her most.

Why I resigned by Diane Ravitch

An article in the NY Sun reported on Wednesday that Diane Ravitch, eminent education historian and contributor to this blog, resigned from the board of Education Next, a journal that covers education research and policy.

Today, Diane herself explains in her own words in an Sun oped, Why I resigned. Excerpt:

…. I resigned because Education Next published a deeply flawed account of Mayor Bloomberg's school reforms. I resigned with regret because I admire Education Next. I have found it to be the most consistently interesting and lively publication about American education currently available.

That is all the more reason why I was surprised to read Peter Meyer's article, "New York City's Education Battles," which is a thinly veiled puff piece for reforms that have been both costly and ineffectual. As a member of the editorial board of Education Next and as someone who has written extensively about education in New York City, I was stunned that I did not see the article until after it was published.

The article treats school reform in New York City as a matter of conflicting opinions, of "he-said, she-said," rather than as a matter of verifiable fact, even when facts are available.

For example, Mr. Meyer says that the New York Times reported "no significant progress in reading and math" between 2003 and 2007 for city students on the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress and "little narrowing of the achievement gap." Mr. Meyer then quotes a hedge fund manager and blogger, Whitney Tilson, who said that the Times' story was "lousy" and that city students actually made gains in three of the four measures.

But the NAEP scores are not a matter of opinion; the facts can be easily checked — google NAEP TUDA 2007 and look at pages 50-51. Anyone who does check will learn quickly that New York City students made no statistically significant gains between 2003 and 2007 in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading, or eighth-grade math. There were no significant gains for black students, white students, Hispanic students, Asian students, or lower-income students. New York City was the only city (of eleven tested) where eighth-grade reading scores declined for black, Hispanic, and lower-income students, and the achievement gap grew. Only in fourth-grade math did city students make statistically significant gains. If facts matter, Mr. Tilson's opinion is wrong.

…..I admire Mayor Bloomberg but I do not admire what he has done to the public schools. I hope that the state Legislature, when it reconsiders public school governance next year, abolishes the bumbling, tyrannical Department of Education and restores an independent Board of Education, appointed by the mayor.

The school system needs checks and balances. It needs a regular, independent audit of graduation rates and test scores. It needs a leadership in which education decisions are made by educators. Such changes won't solve all of our schools' problems, but they will end the pointless turmoil of the past five years, provide honest information about academic progress, and reestablish the role of the public in public education.

The article in Education Next by Peter Meyer that Diane refers to is here.

Bloomberg Administration Intransigence on Contract for Excellence Undermining Support for Mayoral Control

While the mayor and chancellor were being lionized in Washington yesterday by the Broad Foundation and Bush Administration, back home some key stakeholders in public education were not so flattering. In this article by Elizabeth Green in the NY Sun, Queens Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette expressed his frustration over the Bloomberg Administration's failure to submit an acceptable plan to spend new state funds:

Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette, a Democrat of Queens who is the deputy speaker, said he is concerned that the city might not agree to revise its plan. "We're offering all that extra money, but the city refuses to use it as they're requested to do," he said. "They're like petulant children."

Mr. Lafayette said the resistance has convinced him that his support for mayoral control of the schools was a mistake. "The one nice thing we did about this turning the power over to the mayor is that it sunsets in '09," he said.

The article goes on to quote Regents Vice Chancellor Merryl Tisch who also made the misbehaving-children comparison.

Several members of the Board of Regents, the body that governs state education policy, said they have been assured that the city will add a five-year plan to reduce class size and revise its distribution of funds among schools.

"If you don't like the rules, you just don't pick up your marbles and walk away," the Regents vice chancellor, Merryl Tisch, said. "The mayor and the chancellor are such responsible leaders that they would never adhere to ‘I'm picking up my marbles and walking away,'" she added, referring to Mr. Bloomberg and the schools chancellor, Joel Klein.

Earlier coverage of the Contracts for Excellence controversy can be found here and here.