The decline of science education in NYC high schools as shown by the falling number of Intel submissions and semi-finalists

These posts about the decline of independent science research at NYC high schools – especially at the less selective non-specialized high schools – were written and researched by NYC parents Steve Koss and Melvin Meer.  For earlier posts by Steve on this discouraging trend, see here and here.

This year's list of Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists has just been announced, and the news for NYC public schools is both good and bad. On the plus side, Stuyvesant HS appears to have regained some of its former Intel mojo with 13 semifinalists, its best year since 2003 when it scored 19 semifinalists. In the last four years, Stuyvesant's numbers had been 11, 10, 9, and 5 (last year), creating a substantial drag on NYC public schools' traditional solid performance in the Intel competition. 

Bronx Science scored 8 semifinalists this year, the same number they had last year. It is worth noting that even for these two science-oriented schools, their average number of semifinalists in the five years before mayoral control were 13.67 for Stuy and 10.33 for Bronx Science; in the nine years from (January) 2004 - 2012, the Bloomberg years, those numbers have been 9.67 (down 29.3%) for Stuyvesant and 6.56 for Bronx Science (down 36.5%).

The most alarming result of this year's Intel competition results is that Stuyvesant (13), Bronx Science (8), and Staten Island Tech (1) were the ONLY NYC public high schools with a semifinalist. The entire rest of the NYC public high school system -- including such traditional STS achievers as Townsend Harris, Murrow, Cardozo, Midwood, and Susan Wagner--had no semifinalists.

Of course, this is only the culmination of a trend that has been readily apparent since Mayor Bloomberg test- and data-driven school policies have practically driven all but the most basic, Regents-required science instruction from our classrooms. The six years before Bloomberg (January 1998 - January 2003) averaged a bit less than six Intel semifinalists per year from public high schools other than Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and Staten Island Tech. Above is a chart showing the numbers since Bloomberg took over.

While this year's total number of semifinalists shows an improvement over the past several years, even the 22 spots earned by our science high school students is less than it was in all but one of the six years prior to Bloomberg/Klein. For the rest of the city's public high schools, Intel STS appears to be virtually out of reach any more.  

Michael Bloomberg has single-handedly managed nearly to kill advanced science research for most of NYC's public high schools, where once those students' achievements were one of our city's (and those kids') greatest sources of educational pride.   As only George Bush could put it, "Great job, Mikey!!"  -- Steve Koss

 Here's an excerpt from a report I put together last year, with numbers, for our Community Board (Q11).  Queens parents might also want to take notice of the very few specialized high school seats there are in Queens (only 100 entry ones each year) compared with each of the other boroughs.  Queens is a very significant exporter of students to the other boroughs and travel times can be outrageous.

One of the reasons that the City is doing so poorly over the Bloomberg years is that there are many fewer Intel Science submissions from New York City schools lately.  Consider the school by school data  (chart to the right).

These results illustrate the deterioration of science education in the New York City high schools over the last 13 years.  It is bad enough that our brightest kids are not winning in the semi-finalist contest.  Clearly they are not even submitting in the numbers to which we had become accustomed.  That takes faculty mentoring and encouragement that seems no longer there.  -- Mel Meer

Protections against institutional cheating in NYC schools

Spurred by reports of widespread cheating on standardized tests in Atlanta; Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Pennsylvania; and elsewhere, New York State Education Commissioner John King announced last week the creation of a “high level working group” to address "the integrity of our testing system.” The Bloomberg administration responded that this was "a knee-jerk reaction to cheating scandals in other states."

Unfortunately, the announcement was marred by the state’s failure to reveal who was appointed to this task force. As the NY Post noted,

“Oddly, the announcement came two weeks after the formation of the group, and department officials couldn't say who or how many people were on it other than Executive Deputy Commissioner Valerie Grey."

Indeed, there is a crying need for more systematic protections against cheating, which were eliminated when Bloomberg and Klein took office, as pointed out in our book, NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein. Here is an excerpt from the chapter on "Institutional Cheating" by Sol Stern and Andy Wolf, showing how multiple procedures were in place previously – even before there was such huge emphasis placed on test scores:

Before test documents were destroyed, the Board [of Education] routinely conducted several levels of analyses to detect cheating. Robert Tobias, former director of testing and assessment for the BOE, provided us with the following summary of the board’s actions to screen for possible cheating:

“One was an erasure analysis that identified classes and schools with a high incidence of answers that were erased and changed from wrong to right. A second was a gains analysis that identified schools where students showed extremely high increases in test scores over the previous year. The third was an item analysis that detected unusual scoring patterns, such as large numbers of students who answered difficult questions correctly but easy questions incorrectly. In addition to these forensic analyses, we collected information on allegations of cheating from District Assessment Liaisons and other informants.

“When this information raised credible suspicion, we placed the respective test answer documents in secure storage, referred the matter to the Office of Special Investigations, and did not destroy the test documents until the investigation was completed. In other instances, we were directed to send the test documents to the State Education Department or the Special Investigator for the NYC Public Schools to facilitate investigations of cheating allegations referred directly to them. These procedures were in place when I retired from the public schools in Nov. 2001.”

It was also the practice of the old Board of Education to dispatch district administrators to each school on test days to oversee procedures. They would check on whether the tests were stored in a secure place in unopened cartons, observe the opening of the cartons and removal of the shrink wrap on the exams, and monitor the distribution and collection of the test materials. Finally they would oversee the delivery of the completed test papers to the district office.

All this was eliminated when Bloomberg and Klein took office. In a 2009 audit, the NYC Comptroller’s office concluded that the city Department of Education had “engaged in sloppy and unprofessional practices that encourage cheating and data manipulation.”

As to this new, rather mysterious state task force, one can hope that it will propose meaningful reforms, though there are many reasons to be doubtful. The NY State Education Department (NYSED) has in the past been known as the murky graveyard of whistleblower complaints, as ineffective as the endlessly inconclusive investigations of the NYC Department of Education, which tend to trail on for years, like a replay of “Waiting for Godot,” with little or no results.

Indeed, one might argue that having NYSED rely on an internal working group to guard against cheating is a little like Rupert Murdoch putting Joel Klein in charge of News Corp’s internal investigation into the phone hacking scandal: neither can be fully trusted to pursue this issue aggressively since they are fatally compromised by their institutional desire to look good; in this case, to show that schools are improving when there may be no actual gains.

Note the way in which NYSED and the Regents have just acceded to DOE’s demands to deregulate virtual (online) learning, with no attempt to provide any sort of oversight or quality control, and no requirement that students even attend classes to graduate.

Instead, the new regulations are a blank check, enabling DOE to continue and expand its fraudulent use of online credit recovery – deregulated by NYSED in 2009 --except that now, high school students won’t have to fail courses initially to gain enough credits to graduate through this substandard educational delivery system.

Jackie Bennett has analyzed how credit accumulation has soared in in recent years, just as it became one of the central components of DOE’s high-stakes accountability system, determining which schools will remain open and which will be closed:

In this city, the number of credits awarded to students in high schools truly is high stakes. It counts as nearly one third of each high school’s Progress Report grade, and the Progress Report counts for just about everything, including the removal of principals and the closing of schools. Since the Progress Reports were introduced in 2006-2007, the percent of students earning 10 or more credits each year has leapt a (truly) incredible 16 percentage points citywide. For schools with the highest concentration of high need students (the schools most likely to be threatened with closure) the jump is 18 points.

At the same time as credit accumulation and graduation rates have risen, the number of NYC high school graduates needing triple remediation (in reading, writing and math) at CUNY community colleges has doubled.

On this blog, we recently featured a post by a teacher revealing how credit recovery was used -- or misused -- in her school, after DOE coached her principal on how to implement it. See also here, and here, for even more cases of fraudulent online credit recovery -- which  flourish with the open encouragement of the educrats at Tweed.

Yet rather than attempt to put the brakes on this growing scam, last month the Regents and the NY State Education Department agreed to eliminate all controls on online learning, including any attendance requirements, allowing schools to give credits to students whether they come to school or not. There are no longer any class size limits as long as the course of study is undertaken under the general “supervision” of a teacher, who can “oversee” any number of students, according to the new regulations.

In the end, however, even if the state was really committed to preventing cheating, nothing is likely to work as long as our high-stakes accountability system remains in force. Campbell’s Law (which Steve Koss wrote about in our book, and as far back as 2007 on our blog) predicts that the more high-stakes testing is used for decision-making, the more cheating and gaming of the system is inevitable. As Bob Tobias pointed out in a recent interview,

“the current emphasis on high-stakes accountability …encourages some people to do the wrong thing. So as you kick the stakes up, people are going to focus on the metrics that will be used to determine their fate. They’ll be looking for ways to elevate those metrics, and some people will try to take a short route.”

Yong Zhao, eminent professor at the University of Oregon, has explored the numerous ways in which the growing overemphasis on standardized exams is undermining our public schools. He used the proliferation of school cheating scandals as the jumping-off point for a brilliant five-part series on his blog, concluding that the nation’s public schools must “ditch testing.” In an interview with Education Week, he suggested that as an alternative, the country should move to a portfolio-based assessment system:

“You can’t fix this by changing internal security,” Mr. Zhao said. “If the stakes are so high that the teachers don’t even believe the measurement itself, they’re going to try to cheat.”

UK government to drop high-stakes testing?

The new Conservative Education Secretary in the UK, Michael Gove, is to appoint a commission to re-evaluate the use of high-stakes testing in elementary schools in that country, called the Sats, as well as the "league tables" or report cards based on their results:

The education secretary, Michael Gove, wants teachers to be more autonomous – or "free to set their own direction". The Department for Education said "too many schools believe they must drill children for tests and spend too much time on test preparation at the expense of productive teaching and learning".

Yet the same so-called "expert" who helped devise this system in the UK under the Labor government went on to develop our accountability system here in NYC and is still pushing the adoption of these systems nationwide -- Sir Michael Barber, now at McKinsey.

The above article also omits mentioning that one of the primary reasons driving this re-evaluation was provoked by the fact that one fourth of UK teachers had their students boycott the tests this year. Steve Koss has written extensively on this blog about the widespread dissatisfaction with the high-stakes accountability system among British teachers and parents alike and its negative impact. See this, for example:Want to See the Future of NCLB? Look to the UK.

Is it too much to hope that the re-evaluation in the UK triggers a similar re-examination of this issue here in the US, where the Obama administration seems wedded to this version of education reform?

Too little and much too late, the Times finally reports on the state test score scandal

In yesterday’s front page story, entitled "On NY School Tests, Warning Signs Ignored," the NY Times' account of the state test score scandal left its own deficient reporting conveniently off the hook.

Anyone who was paying attention knew at least as far back as 2007 that there was rampant test score inflation, primarily through articles by Erin Einhorn and other reporters at the Daily News. These articles, which themselves relied on analyses from testing experts like Fred Smith, revealed that the test score inflation started as early as 2002, with questions and scoring on the state exams becoming easier over time.

See this 2007 article on our blog by Steve Koss, relating the ingenious experiment done by Einhorn in which she gave the 2002 and 2005 math tests to the same bunch of children, with the results showing that the 2005 exam was much simpler, a fact also reflected in the changing "P" values of the questions. Or this follow-up Einhorn article, where leading testing experts called for an independent audit, which of course did not occur until three years later.

Where was the NY Times amidst all these revelations? Absolutely nowhere. Even now, the Times article omits any mention of the Daily News’ earlier exposes – which brought attention to this issue to the wider public – and instead recounts as somehow meaningful that a few individuals who supposedly had doubts about the apparent rise in test scores, like Pedro Noguera and Kathleen Cashin, didn’t directly mention them to Klein– as though he might otherwise not have noticed the evidence that was splashed all over the Daily News!

The article also offers a rather irrelevant story, relating how Joel Klein earnestly tried to convince the state to change its scoring system to use a value-added method instead, as though that would have addressed any of the problems regarding the score inflation. In fact, that might have made things worse, as indicated by the way in which the inflation led to 84% of all NYC elementary and middle schools receiving "A" last year, based primarily on the value-added method, falling precipitously to only 25% this year, when the state decided to reset the cut scores.

The article also gives Regent Merryl Tisch a pass, letting her have the last word, saying “We came in here saying we have to stop lying to our kids,” without mentioning that throughout the test score inflation period, she was Deputy Chancellor of the Regents, and yet reliably supported Bloomberg and Klein's claims of great improvement.

The Times itself had plenty of reason to know about concerns about the state test score inflation throughout this period but not only failed to report on it, but generally toed the company line.

On August 4, 2009, at the very moment when Bloomberg was pressing for the extension of mayoral control of the schools, and two years following the Daily news exposes, the Times published a credulous story that recounted the steep increase in state test scores and the apparent narrowing of the achievement gap, including this quote from Joel Klein:

“Mr. Klein, for his part, said he was confident that rising scores reflected real improvements. “No matter how you look at them,” he said, “the picture is one that shows that the city is making dramatic progress.”

In the article , Klein put more emphasis on the apparent rise in proficiency levels rather than scores, “saying that the pass-rate was the more critical measure because it indicated proficiency, an important gateway to success…Our job is to get all kids to basic proficiency and then continue to move them forward, and I think we can do that.”

Now, of course, Klein emphasizes the higher scale scores on the state tests, since the reported proficiency levels have dropped so dramatically.

To the degree that the Aug. 2009 Times article expressed any doubts about NYC's dramatic rise in test scores, it was only the possibility that the drive towards high-stakes accountability had led to excessive test prep-- not any of the overwhelming evidence that the tests were simply and the scoring more lenient.

Indeed, yesterday's article focused on the same set of concerns -- excessive test prep, the public release of prior exams, and the limited number of questions on the exams -- rather than any of the more damning findings, showing how the state had rigged the results with easier questions as well as lower cut scores, both of which would directly implicate the state in the fraudulent outcome.

As I wrote in August 2009 to the Times editor, Ian Trontz:

“… there are many prominent administrators, researchers, teachers and principals who believe strongly that there has been rampant state test score inflation in recent years. Not only are huge jumps in the scores occurring in nearly all districts and in all grades– the middle grade increases last year were especially unprecedented -- but as has been widely reported in the Daily News and elsewhere, the cut scores have been lowered each year. To leave this out of your story seems negligent at best, especially given the room and the time your reporter had to expound on this issue.”

I also pointed out that the article had wrongly attributed gains to Bloomberg/Klein on the NAEPs by giving them credit for the increase in test scores since 2002, even though their reforms had not begun until 2003. Here is how Trontz responded to this point:

"We do not, however, think that your email points out any inaccuracies. It is not incorrect to say that fourth grade reading scores rose after the mayor took over. You are correct that some of the biggest gains occurred before his major reforms took effect, but we are not incorrect."

I concluded at the time:

“Given the evident bias of this article, it appears clear that the Times has been captured by the Bloomberg/Klein PR machine, and can no longer be trusted to provide objective analysis of their education record."

Shortly afterward, Wayne Barrett wrote about the controversy in the Village Voice,

"The Times front page piece last week -- headlined "Gains on Tests in New York Schools Don't Silence Critics" -- failed to quote any real critics, but gave Klein six self-promoting paragraphs. It did bury a single questioning quote from two academics not known as critics of the test scores in the thirty-fourth paragraph, but the top of the story trumpeted success scores that would have silenced any critic. If, that is, they were true."

Two days after the NY Times article ran, on August 6, the NY State Senate voted to renew mayoral control without any checks and balances, essentially allowing Bloomberg to retain his stranglehold over our schools. One of the few Senators who voted against the renewal, Sen. Carl Kruger, argued that the achievement gains claimed by Bloomberg and Klein would soon be found to be fraudulent.

In response, the Daily News editorial page, as Bloomberg-sycophantic as all the other NYC major dailies, argued vociferously against Kruger's claims. In the piece, the News editors referenced the recent NY Times article (since they could not cite the far more explosive reporting of its own staff ):

“Good luck with that. He'll sooner find Sasquatch under Chancellor Joel Klein's desk. The New York Times double-checked test results and concluded this week that they showed "a steady march upward."

Indeed, Sasquatch was hiding in plain sight under Klein’s desk all along.

Just a few days after the Senate vote, on August 11, 2009, Meredith Kolodner of the Daily News pointed out that the cut scores had been set so low on the 2009 exams that a sixth grade student could pass the ELA just by randomly guessing, while 7^th graders had to get just one extra question right to pass. At Gotham Schools, Diana Senechal tried taking the exams herself and confirmed that in the 5^th grade ELA, 6^th grade math, and 7^th grade ELA exams, a student could indeed achieve a level 2 through random guessing .

What’s most scary is that according to the latest Times article, the state is now apparently going to keep the questions on the exams secret forever, supposedly to ensure that they can keep their difficulty level stable -- to guard against excessive test prep using old tests.

So in future, it will be impossible for another reporter like the intrepid Einhorn to test the same bunch of kids with exams from two separate years, to prove how much easier they have become. Or for any parent to examine how flawed the questions may be. (Remember Brownie the Cow, the absurd questions on the 2006 4^th grade ELA exam?) As though keeping the questions secret is the only method that can be used to keep standardized exams stable over time!

Meanwhile, companies like the College Board manage to release the SATs each year, and still are able to equate them, by holding back the ungraded questions (what the Times article calls “field test questions”). Why that could not occur in the case of the NY State exams is never explained by the article.

Sorry, NY Times, this article is too little and too late. Years before, when Bloomberg was pushing to retain unilateral control over our schools based upon these inflated test scores, the paper of record owed it to its readers to inform them of these issues, and yet utterly failed.

(See my critique at the time of their August 2009 article, NY Times falls in line with the Bloomberg PR spin control; and the response from Times editor, Ian Trontz: The NY Times response, and my reply.)

Wishful Testing in this week's New York magazine

Check out the just-published piece in NY Magazine called Wishful Testing, featuring the comments of Steve Koss, blogger here, and which analyzes the state test score bubble, Campbell’s law, the over-hyped Harlem Village Academy, and connects the dots.

Between this, the recent Robert Kolker piece on the national craze of scapegoating teachers, and features by Jeff Coplon on Eva Moskowitz’ chain of charters and school overcrowding, the magazine has shown itself to be most valuable in dissecting the Bloomberg/Klein mirage.

Especially as compared to the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, whose reporting on the subject has been execrable.

Read it and leave a comment on the website!!

Amidst the NAEP findings, hypocritical Joel Klein proves he still doesn't get it

In Jennifer Medina's NY Times story --"No Gains by New York Students on U.S. Math Tests, Unlike State Scores" -- she quotes Joel Klein as saying that, as she puts it, "the city has no choice other than to use the state exam to reward and penalize schools, because it is the only test that measures all city students."

Of course he has always had another choice, and that was not to "reward or penalize schools" based on a narrow, standardized, and predictable exam in which the bar for passing is being consistently lowered year after year.

To argue otherwise is no different than a street thug who murders an old lady for her handbag and defends his actions on the grounds that there was no one else around at the time for him to rob and there were no gas stations handy. It's the same sort of false dichotomy that Klein and Bloomberg have been practicing for eight years, the type first inspired by George Bush with his infamous, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists." We're not talking terrorists any more, but Klein's policies have been, in their own way, nearly as devastating for our schools and children as terrorism.

Ms. Medina's article goes on to quote Mr. Klein's self-defense in light of the extraordinary embarrassment of the just-released NAEP results, the ones that show the world just what the emperor's new clothes have really been all along. “I have said many, many times that we should raise the bar,” Mr. Klein said. “The state’s definition of proficiency needs to be tethered to a more demanding standard.”

In these two sentences, the chancellor of over one million children in NYC's public schools proved just how badly he doesn't get it. Let's just leave aside for the moment the fact that over the past six years, Klein and Bloomberg have positively crowed over the grade 3-8 NY state exam results, preening like peacocks over the numbers without ever suggesting in those moments that they found fault with the standards or the exams or worried that NYC schools' extraordinary results might be overstating students' real gains.

Instead, they and their crony owners of the NY Daily News and NY Post have consistently used the results in furtherance of their own political careers and/or agendas at the expense of NYC's children and their families.

What Klein's statement above shows, most significantly, is that even at the height of his regime's biggest embarrassment to date, he's not calling for a rethinking of his strategy. Instead, he's essentially asking for more of the same, and simultaneously blaming unidentifiable others for his failure! "We just need to change the tests," he's implying. "Make them more demanding."

Never mind that his policies have subverted the educational process, converting classrooms into test prep mills and teachers into Kaplan-style advisors on test-taking-strategy, demotivating students and removing exploration and creativity from the classroom, narrowing the curriculum, shoving aside other subject areas like science or social studies (and art and gym) because schools are not measured on them and principals and teachers are not incentivized with bonuses on them, and threatening principals and schools with closure if they did not "get on board" with their exam scores.

No, if only the NY State exams were made a little more difficult, then all would be well and NY students would be champions on the NAEP and truly well-versed in their understanding and use of mathematics. Yes, that's it, it must be the tests that are at fault.

Clearly, this man does not, and never will, get it. Nor will he ever admit that, just maybe, he has been wrong.

If someone wanted to devise a strategy for destroying the efficacy of America's public education system, they could not have developed anything more devious than the one Chancellor Klein has imposed on NYC schools with Michael Bloomberg's blessing and the encouragement of many others who should have known better (and probably did). --- Steve Koss

Editor's Note: the line that Joel Klein used here, as echoed by Chris Cerf, Merryl Tisch and so many others in their pack is that the state exams should be made more demanding. But not once have any of them admitted what it is obvious -- that the state tests have gotten embarassingly watered down over the last eight years; so easy that now, a student can pass them through random guessing. Why? Because to do so would essentially destroy their claim to have improved student achievement during their administration -- which even now they continue to claim, based on non-existent evidence.

Cupcakes or carcinogens: is DOE really interested in protecting student health?

Last week, the members of the Panel for Educational Policy unanimously rubberstamped hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts in about twenty minutes, including two contracts that will give exclusive right to sell snacks and beverages to two commercial companies, effectively banning student bake sales during the school day, under the guise of protecting their health. Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan rep, was away on business and thus the lone voice of sanity on the PEP was sadly absent. Actually, the ban appears to be an attempt to maximize the revenue stream for these two companies, now able to market their commercial products through email ads to students and their families and test new products on students and staff.

Meanwhile, most NYC public schools still fail to provide the state minimum of hours of physical education, nearly one quarter of the schools in the Bronx have no gyms, and school lunches continue to offer many unhealthy items. An oped in the Daily News pointed out that the ban on student bake sales will seriously hamper their ability to raise money to support sports teams, further detracting from the opportunities to promote physical activity in our schools. You can also join a group on Facebook, organized by NYC students to protest the bake sale ban.

Here is an update from Steve Koss, addressing the DOE’s claim to be motivated by an interest in protecting student health:

When I was PTA President at Manhattan Center for Science and Math high school, we parents learned (from an October 30, 2007 FOX NEWS report) that our school building was sitting directly atop a toxic site, a buried, oozing tank of coal tar left over from the days when our site was home to a coal gassification plant (known as an MGP, or manufactured gas plant). This fact was known by school administration and the DOE who purchased the property in the late 1930s but was never conveyed to current or prospective parents.

At the same time that the School Construction Authority (SCA) was doing major, major renovation to our building, including digging a huge, deep trench on the grounds, we parents were learning that highly carcinogenic coal tars had been leaching under the school yard and FDR Drive and beneath the Harlem River riverbed. We further learned that no substantive indoor air quality testing had been done by the DOE or anyone else in the previous four years, and none for over five years during the winter heating season when windows are closed and the heating system creates negative pressure that draws vapors inward or upward into the building from below that would then be trapped inside and allowed to accumulate.

Our PTA Board immediately sent a letter addressed to Chancellor Klein and others expressing our concerns as well as our call for immediate, updated air quality and soil testing. What response did we receive from the DOE regarding our children's wellness? None -- just silence. No reassurances or expressions of concern, no offers to meet with persons who could address or allay our concerns, no offers of assistance in how to proceed or whom to contact, no offers to fund an independent air quality assessment, nothing. When we arranged, entirely on our own, to have Con Edison representatives (they were responsible for the site under a Voluntary Cleanup Agreement with NY State Department of Environmental Conservation) come to our next PTA meeting just two weeks later, some guy from SCA showed up and dozed through the entire meeting without saying a word. It wasn't until we got NY Lawyers for the Public Interest involved that anyone from DOE would even begin speaking with us -- I'm sure it was the threat of bad publicity or a lawsuit that prompted their response, not a concern over students' health being potentially endangered.

We're not talking about cupcakes here; we're talking about cancer-causing coal tars known to have been leaching from a tank buried inside and under our school basement. So when the DOE claims to be concerned about student wellness, I have to take those concerns with some rather large grains of salt.

I'd be curious to know how many parents and/or teachers have expressed such outrage over the horrendous health effects of cupcakes and brownies in their children's schools that the DOE found itself with no recourse but to take swift and decisive action. Apparently, in the DOE mindset, calories are more dangerous than carcinogens to children's health.

I see this bake sale prohibition policy as nothing more than another way for the DOE to take away parent and student initiative and weaken their ability to raise funds over which they can have some modicum of control. No matter how you slice it, this attempt to remove a classic, long-standing school tradition is another step in kneecapping parent/student influence and involvement, hiding behind the veneer of a supposed concern over student "wellness."

---Steve Koss

Banning bake sales: another way Bloomberg is trying to kneecap our public schools

It isn't enough that budgets keep getting cut, superintendents are banned from visiting schools in their own districts, and classrooms practically have kids hanging out of the windows, they're so crowded. Now it's banning bake sales as student fundraisers during the school day; while requiring that all student stores buy from a particular vendor chosen by DOE, no doubt at inflated prices. How about no hot dog and cotton candy eating on July 4th, and no pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving while we're at it? This is just adding another nail in the public school coffin, hiding behind a phony argument about "wellness."

The implication that school bake sales are a major contributing factor to child obesity is beyond laughable. If the DOE was truly concerned about children's health, they'd make a real effort to ensure that schools had adequate budgets and time for recess and gym classes instead of worrying about the Chess Club selling cupcakes to raise money for transportation so they can compete in a tournament somewhere. [Editor's note: most NYC schools violate the minimum hours for physical education required by the state, and many lack gyms altogether; see this Public Advocate's report and this from the Bronx Borough President.]

Having been involved in multiple bake sales as a teacher/club advisor and as a PTA officer, this latest diktat just sickens my stomach.

There's just no end to the ways this administration keeps trying to kneecap the public schools. Now they want to kneecap athletic teams, cheerleaders, student governments, senior trips, after-school clubs, and pretty much any other activity that relies on funds not granted by the DOE. To say nothing of the student camaraderie and initiative that comes out of these fundraising events. Yeah, YOU go out and try to sell trail mix and key chains as a school fundraiser -- good luck!

When I became involved as PTA President at Manhattan Center for Science and Math high school in East Harlem, we took over a parent association that was dormant to the point of comatose, with about $300 in the bank and virtually no parent involvement. We used coffee and donuts (donated gratis by a local Dunkin Donuts shop) to help bring parents to our PTA table set up on Parent/Teacher Conference evening and days, and we used a cheesecake sale through Ashley Farms as one of our first halfway decent fundraisers. On those same parent conference nights, we'd see the cheerleaders with a table set up with homemade cakes/cupcakes, and the Advanced Science Research kids were doing the same thing upstairs on the building's third floor. Not to mention the various candy and other bake sales sponsored by the freshman class, the seniors, and various clubs.

These fundraisers not only bring in needed funds, they get kids involved working toward a common goal, and they usually end up integrating the parents into the activity in some way (if only by baking something at home). This is just one more way for the DOE under Klein to assert control -- by removing it from parents and students -- under the absurd guise that they actually care about students' health. This is more than just government as overreaching Mommy, it's a way to reduce local initiatives and parent involvement. It also perversely undercuts the various clubs and student activities that help make schools more than just educational factories and test prep mills, the things that differentiate schools from one another and make them attractive to parents.

Why would we want public schools to look attractive when we have the choice of all these wonderful new, privately-operated charter schools? So at the same time Joel Klein is attending the 2009 grand opening celebration for the Harlem Success Academy charter schools at the Roseland Ballroom (not exactly the school gym), he’s telling regular public school parents and students that they can’t sell homemade cookies or cupcakes in their school lobbies or cafeterias to raise a couple of extra dollars. The day will come when New Yorkers will look back and wonder where their public school system went. By that time, we'll have McDonald's Elementary School and Nike High School. --Steve Koss

The importance of 19th century skills

Check out Diane Ravitch's post at Common Core -- The Partnership for 19th Century Skills, in which she points some of the important skills that schools should impart to their students, but that are rarely mentioned anymore in the obsession with high test scores. These include:

The love of learning
The pursuit of knowledge
The ability to think for oneself (individualism)
The ability to stand alone against the crowd (courage)
The ability to work persistently at a difficult task until it is finished (industriousness, self-discipline. (and more)

Steve Koss adds: Well said, Diane! Thanks for making us all take a moment to think about what really matters. Such a radical concept, to return to the values of a liberal education and the goal of forming a well-rounded citizenry!

In those regards, despite the Internet and the massive onslaught of technology that serve primarily as distractions rather than educational aids (when was the last time you heard of students actually going to a public library and doing research from -- heaven forbid -- a book rather than copying and pasting from the Internet?), there really is nothing new under the sun.

May I suggest the following additions to your already beautiful list?

· Ability to think logically and draw valid conclusions from evidence (reasoning).

· Ability to anticipate the consequences of one's actions (foresight).

· Ability to view one's self and the world as others view them (other-centeredness).

· Ability to construct an argument and defend one's position through facts and reasoning rather than by ad hominem attacks and other forms of fallacious argumentation. (logical coherence).

· Ability to think and calculate mathematically (mathematical reasoning).

· Understanding the difference between fact and opinion.

· Understanding the difference between faith and reason.

· Appreciation of the value and role of empiricism and the scientific method.

· Appreciation of literature and the arts, especially the lifelong joy and benefits of reading.

· Acceptance of the notion that reasonable individuals can in good faith differ in their views and agree to disagree rather than demonize one another.

· Learning to be a lifelong learner.

Since none of these "skills" can be tested by multiple choice or short answer questions, they are obviously worthless in the eyes of NCLB, the NY State Education Department, and the NYC DOE's School Progress Reports. If it can't be tested and measured (and then touted as proof of political legitimacy by politicians and educational administrators who really couldn't care less), why would anyone want to bother with it? ----Steve Koss

News flash: the Educational Testing Service is adding a new tool to report on the characteristics of students applying to graduate school, including “personal attributes like resilience and creativity, which can't be measured by standardized admission tests. And it's just a matter of time before undergraduate admissions offices have a similar means at their disposal, says the testing company that designed the tool.”

Too bad the NYC DOE and its Accountability office never heard of these qualities, no less imagined that they deserve nurturing in our public schools.

Klein Lied to the National Press Club in Australia

Check out the latest report from the Australian organization Save Our Schools. Here is an excerpt from Klein Lied to the National Press Club:

New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, was exposed as a dissembler at his National Press Club address in Canberra last week. Under forensic questioning from The Canberra Times’ education reporter, Emma Macdonald, Klein resorted to lies and deceptions to justify his claims of increases in student achievement in New York City schools.

Macdonald challenged Klein on his claims by citing national reading and mathematics assessments which show that there has been no improvement in student achievement in NYC since 2003, except for 4th grade mathematics. She questioned him on whether the grades given to schools in this year’s school progress reports had been manipulated by reducing the cut-off scores to achieve an A or B.

Klein denied both charges. He said that Macdonald was wrong on both facts. His response was to falsely assert that the cut-off scores for school grades had not been reduced, falsely claim that New York State tests were a better measure of student achievement than the independent national assessments, and to selectively cite evidence about the success of African-American students.

Check out the entire document, complete with bibliography.

By the way, it was our own Steve Koss who first figured out the cut-off scores had been manipulated in this way: Don’t Like the Results? Change the Scale!

See also the report by the Australian Education Union, Joel Klein and the New York School Accountability Model