Many questions remain as to the reliability of the state’s new list of struggling schools and why some schools were taken off the list and others not

On January 17, 2019, Commissioner Elia released a new list of “struggling” schools under the new accountability system created by the state to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act, that replaced NCLB in 2016.  As an article in Chalkbeat explained,

Eighty-four of the city’s schools are on the lowest rung — known as “Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools” — and will be required to craft improvement plans approved by the state. The remaining 40 schools are only in need of “targeted” support and will face less intense oversight.

Yet the state formula used to develop this list of struggling or CSI schools is complex, confusing, and unreliable. Moreover, the Commissioner exempted certain schools that would otherwise have been identified as CSI schools through a decision-making process that is opaque.

Thirty-eight in NYC and 84 statewide were designated as “good standing #”, meaning according to the spreadsheet that their “Accountability status is based on a finding by the Commissioner of extenuating or extraordinary circumstances”. Why certain schools were taking off the list of struggling schools by the Commissioner due to “extenuating circumstances” and others were not is nowhere explained.

There were at least two very controversial issues that repeatedly were raised by parents, teachers and advocates during the hearings and comment period that preceded the adoption of the ESSA state plan. First was how opt out students would be counted, which is an especially critical issue since about 20% of the state’s eligible students in grades 3-8 have opted out of the state exams every year since 2015.

NYSAPE, Class Size Matters and other groups opposed the state plan to count these students as having failed on the state exams – and instead proposed a different system, called Opportunity Learn index, which would measure whether schools provided their students with the conditions for success.
If test scores had to be used, as the federal law required, then we recommended that the scores of opt out student scores should be assumed as average for that school and their subgroup.

The state rejected our proposals, however,  and instead adopted a complex formula that incorporates two variables – one called the Weighted Average Achievement Index, which counts opt out students as having failed in terms of test score proficiency, and another called the Core Subject Performance Index, which removes them from the formula entirely.  These two variables are combined to create a Composite Performance Level, in a mathematical process that is difficult to understand. [See this memo that attempts to explain how the two variables will be combined.]

Sure enough, at least two highly regarded NYC schools, Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies (BCS) and Central Park East One (CPE1) both designated by InsideSchools as “staff picks".  A letter sent by BCS school leaders to parents pointed at that "for the first time, New York State used a formula for calculating proficiency on the state tests where students who did not take the exam counted at the lowest level for schoolwide accountability to generate a Composite Performance Index.  At BCS last year, …76% of parents opted their children out of the Middle school exams.”

They added that BCS serves 36% students with special needs, much higher than the city average, and that while “incoming students have, on average, lower 5th grade Math and Reading levels than the city …  Our internal data shows that all students make progress every year at our school, even if they are not yet at grade level standards.”

Similarly, CPE 1 is well-respected as the oldest public progressive school in NYC. About 80 percent of its students boycotted the state’s English and math exams last year – which makes any attempt to evaluate the school’s quality on the basis of its test scores untenable.  In fact, both these two school earned above average “impact” scores from DOE of  0.55 and 0.51 respectively, which attempts to adjust for the racial, ethnic, disability and poverty level of its students.

An op-ed by Tish Doggett and Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, parents with children attending these two schools, argued that the NY State Education Department privileged narrow indicators such as scores on state exams while ignoring factors such as their students’ racial and socioeconomic background, which affect test scores and absenteeism  and these measures that profoundly affect the accountability status of a school. They proposed a more holistic alternative for assessing schools: “When will we measure whether a school meets state mandates for art and music? How small (or large) class sizes are? The number of guidance counselors and sports teams available? Whether there is a library?”

NYC schools were not the only ones to protest their CSI designations.  In a letter sent to Associate Commissioner Ira Schwartz, Michael J. Hynes, the superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District on Long Island, called the CSI list an "abomination" and demanded answers to why five of his district’s elementary schools were on the list, despite his appeal and the fact that only 10-20% of students at these schools took the state exams.  “I have several questions that need to be answered before we possibly move forward with any next steps.  I also need answers about what happens if, as a school district, we choose NOT to move forward with the nonsensical requirements associate with this false designation.”

In a statement to the community, Hynes related that he appealed to “SED a few weeks ago when we found out our schools were potentially going to have this ridiculous designation. Earlier this week we heard our appeal was denied. I’d like to know why our appeal wasn’t accepted…and I’m just finding out that several others were approved. I’m thankful other schools were approved based on “extenuating or extraordinary circumstances”. I believe ours should as well.  It should be public knowledge since this list is.”

Another controversial aspect of NY State’s accountability formula relates to how high schools with four-year graduation rates lower than 67% would be rated—especially in the case of transfer schools, which enroll students who are already overage and under-credited by the time they enter these schools.

Many parents, teachers and students from the transfer schools flooded the state hearings, to beg the Commissioner to give their schools special credit for having saved them from dropping out altogether, by offering them small classes and the personal attention and close support that they had been unable to receive in their previous high schools. [See the account of the Brooklyn hearings here, and Manhattan hearings here.]

In a joint letter written to Commissioner Elia and Chancellor Rosa on July 10, 2017, state and city officials maintained that applying the same standard to transfer schools would be harmful and unfair:
We are deeply troubled by the New York State Education Department’s (NYSED) intention to designate all transfer schools that have a 6-year graduation rate below 67% as failing schools. We believe that the State’s proposed plan will greatly limit the ability of transfer schools to carry out their mission of supporting NYC’s most vulnerable students.

So we took a closer look at how the new accountability standards assessed NYC transfer schools and found that these schools were nearly four times more likely than non-transfer schools statewide and citywide to be designated as needing comprehensive support.

They were also five times more likely to receive “good standing #”, meaning they were removed from the struggling schools list based on the Commissioner’s decision that there were of “extenuating circumstances.” It is still unclear what those specific circumstances were, and why some transfer schools were taken off the list and others not.

In the table below, we outline the accountability status and the percent of schools statewide, citywide, and NYC transfer schools that received each type of designation.

Table 1. Accountability Status for Schools Statewide, Citywide, and NYC Transfer Schools

18-19 Accountability Status for School	% of schools statewide (4280 schools)	% of all NYC schools (1492 schools)	% of all NYC transfer schools (50 schools)
CSI (Comprehensive Support and Improvement)	5.6%	5.4%	20.0%
GS (Good Standing)	89.5%	89.5%	68.0%
GS# (Good Standing #)	2.0%	2.5%	10.0%
TSI (Targeted Support and Improvement)	2.7%	2.1%	2.0%
TSI# (Targeted Support and Improvement#)	0.2%	0.5%	0.0%
Closing	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%

# - Accountability status is based on a finding by the Commissioner of extenuating or extraordinary circumstances. Data drawn from 2018-2019 Accountability Status Report. Charter schools not included in analysis. Data available here: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/accountability/essa/documents/AccountabilityStatus2018-19.xlsx

Commissioner Elia had promised last year that she would take the special status of transfer schools into account when considering whether to put them into Receivership, which can involve radical changes in governance and staffing:

“As a result of this adjustment, schools that have been identified as being among the lowest performing for more than three consecutive years are placed under Receivership. Alternative schools (e.g., Transfer high schools and Special Act schools) will not be automatically placed into Receivership; instead, the Commissioner will work with the district, should any alternative school be identified as among the lowest-performing for more than three consecutive years, to determine the most appropriate interventions for that school. " (page 111)

However, the disproportionate number of NYC transfer schools on the CSI list questions Commissioner Elia’s commitment to acknowledge and respect the special nature of these schools. Without more transparency, it is impossible to know why certain transfer schools were given special dispensation and others were not, as listed below.

NYC transfer schools that received “CSI”:

• Bronx Arena High School
• Bronx Regional High School
• Brooklyn High School for Leadership and Community
• Jill Chaifetz Transfer High School
• New Directions Secondary School
• North Queens Community High School
• Olympus Academy
• Providing Urban Leaders Success in Education High School
• South Brooklyn Community High School
• West Brooklyn Community High School

NYC transfer schools that received “Good Standing #."

• Bronx Haven High School
• Brooklyn Frontiers High School
• English Language Learners and International Support
• Liberation Diploma Plus
• Research and Service High School

Jeanette Deutermann on why she & thousands of other NY parents will be opting their children out of the state exams

Check out the latest NPE video below with Jeanette Deutermann explaining with heartbreaking eloquence why she and thousands of other parents will be opting their children out of the New York state exams this spring.

Sample opt out letters are posted here; and here's a good FAQ dispelling the myth that your children could be subjected to a failing test score on their records or their schools suffer funding cuts or low accountability ratings as a result of their opting out.  Here's a NYSAPE fact sheet on the same issue.

Instead, NYC DOE and astroturf organizations have put out lots of confusing and misleading information on this issue.  Don't believe them.  See what NYSED itself has said:

To comply with the federal law, one school academic accountability calculation still must be based on the percentage of all students who pass state tests. ...But New York's plan also creates a new "core subject performance index" that reflects the results only for the portion of students who actually take the state tests. If the result using the index calculation is better, that performance measure can be used to determine whether a school is targeted for additional funding and academic support.

"In essence, both of these measures are looked at,"  Schwartz [of NYSED] told the Regents. "...if we have schools that have high achievement but also have high rates of non-participation, those schools will not likely end up on our list of those schools that need to be focused upon."

In addition, parents' data privacy concerns should be even stronger given the recent, unexplained breach of NY students' personal information from Questar, the company that produces the NY State tests.  And the state  has still not implemented or enforced the 2014 student privacy law -- with many weaknesses in data privacy and security practices outstanding, as outlined in the letter we and NYSAPE sent to the NYSED Chief Privacy Officer last year.

Jeanette Deutermann | The True Cost of the Tests from S4E Media on Vimeo.

Another Squandered Opportunity: Parents, Students and Educators Slam NYSED's Flawed ESSA Proposal

Lisa Rudley of NYSAPE interviewed by News12

See the article in The 74 about the Brooklyn hearings and the problems with the NYSED proposed accountability system.  News12 also carried our press conference before the hearings. See this oped by Nick Tampio about  how the proposed accountability system fails students.   

You can send your own comments on the proposed plan through June 16 by emailing ESSAComments@nysed.gov 
A few remaining hearings remain, including in Queens on June 10.  For more information visit the NYSED ESSA page here. 

The auditorium was nearly full at the New York State Education Department's ESSA hearings in Brooklyn last night; especially with students and teachers from the transfer schools, who spoke passionately about how their schools would be unfairly targeted for intervention given the current ESSA proposal to rate schools largely on their test scores, graduation rates, and attendance. 

Students from the S. Brooklyn Community HS, E. Brooklyn Community HS, James Baldwin, and Brooklyn Frontier, all transfer schools, plus Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning school, which like Baldwin is also a performance-based assessment school -- all testified about how these schools had literally saved their lives, but would be at risk of closure or radical disruption given all the challenges the students at  these "second chance" schools face.

Students from S. Brooklyn Community HS

The ESSA law specifically identifies for intervention any high school where fewer than two-thirds of students graduate. The regulations put out by former US Education Secretary King specified that this must be measured by the school's four-year graduation rate, and though those regs were luckily ditched by the Trump administration,  even if measured by their six-year rates plus attendance could doom NYC transfer schools and make them potential targets for intervention or closure.

This is because many students at transfer schools enter these schools undercredited after two or three years of high school or more.  Many also enroll students who must have part-time jobs to support themselves and their families, may have children themselves,  have recently come out of the criminal justice system, or suffer other life challenges that make a rigid assessments of school quality based on graduation rates or attendance unfair. 

One after another, students at spoke of how they had dropped out of large overcrowded NYC high schools where no one knew their name, and had finally found their way to transfer schools which had given them a second home, provided counseling and small classes with the attention they needed to learn,  and had put them on the road towards success.   

One student spoke to how she had come out of a psychiatric ward and had luckily found her way to the Brooklyn Community High school, which welcomed her, gave her the support she needed and now she's in college to become a counselor.  Another student said, "Wouldn't it be ironic if the Every Student Succeeds Act worked against allowing every student to succeed" by unfairly labeling his school as "failing" even as it had provided him the opportunities he needed to thrive.  Another student said, "I don't need to cite evidence for the value of transfer schools; I am the evidence right here.  My school works."

I spoke about how their testimony further revealed the need to measure schools by Opportunity to Learn factors -- including small classes, number of counselors, and a well-rounded education -- which all too few NYC schools now provide, with more than 350,000 students crammed into classes of 30 or more.  Not only would these factors more fairly judge the quality of these particular schools, but if the high schools in which these students were originally enrolled exhibited these qualities in the first place, perhaps these students wouldn't have dropped out.  My full testimony is here.

We would also save thousands more students who fail to graduate to this day or those who receive a second-class education which does not give them the instructional feedback and emotional support they need to succeed in college or career. Moreover, by including a range of factors rather than merely one or two high-stakes indicators, the state would lessen the risk that relying on any single factor would unfairly judge schools or cause them to "game" the system, by excluding or pushing out the neediest students.  As one of the transfer school principals said, if you judge our schools by these rigid metrics, you will be discouraging us from admitting the most at-risk students.

Many Brooklyn parents, including those from D15 Parents for Middle School Equity, also spoke about how rating schools in such a reductionist way may lead to even more inequities and segregation, as the indicators proposed by NYSED are intimately correlated with students' socio-economic status. Below is a video of Tracey Scronic, a Brooklyn parent and educator, making the point that the current ESSA proposal will discriminate against her ESL students. As she said, New York stands at a cross-roads and has the opportunity to lead and promote equity-- rather than further undermine schools and the disadvantaged students that they serve.

Under the video of Tracey is the NYSAPE/CSM press release we put out at the end of the evening, with quotes from parent leaders throughout the state, as well as Kelley Wolcott, a teacher at South Brooklyn Community High school.   It was an inspiring evening; let's hope the Commissioner and the Regents were listening! 



Tracey Scronic at ESSA hearings 6.6.17 from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

For immediate release: June 6,2017
Contact: Kemala Karmen 917-807-9969 | kemala@nycpublic.org

Brooklyn, NY—Frustrated public school parents, activists, and educators gathered in front of the Prospect Heights Education Complex this evening to protest the New York State Education Department’s new schools accountability proposal and the sham process that supposedly generated it. Inside the building, department officials were setting up for one of several hearings scheduled across the state in order to gain feedback on the proposal, which was created to comply with recent federal legislation.  

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is the successor legislation to the Bush-era No Child Left Behind (NCLB) bill. While ESSA preserves much of NCLB, including an onerous and misguided annual testing requirement for all children in grades 3-8, it also gives states more latitude in defining their school accountability systems than did NCLB, primarily through the inclusion of an additional “school quality indicator.”

For this reason, New York’s families and educators were looking forward to the state creating an accountability system that incentivized schools to provide children with a high quality, well-rounded education. ESSA also includes a statement that explicitly recognizes a parent’s right to opt their child out of testing without consequences for the school or district, a point that is crucial in a state where hundreds of thousands of parents have boycotted the tests as developmentally inappropriate and deleterious to their children’s educations.

Instead of benefiting from the flexibility of  the legislation, New York State Education Department, under Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, let down New York’s children, parents, educators, and schools, by submitting an accountability proposal for Board of Regents approval that squanders the  opportunities that ESSA confers. Its proposed accountability system doubles down on testing, counts opt out students as having failed the exams for the purpose of school accountability, and guarantees the continuation of narrowed test-prep curriculum that has spurred the nation’s largest test refusal movement.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and a member of the NYSED ESSA Think Tank’s Accountability work group, said, “Even though the largest number of people who responded to the NYSED survey wanted an Accountability system that would include elements of a well-rounded, holistic education providing the Opportunity to Learn, including small classes, and sufficient instruction in art, music, science and physical education, their input was ignored. Many schools in New York City and elsewhere have already narrowed the curriculum because of the over-emphasis on state exams.  Instead, NYSED proposes to add only a very few high-stakes indicators, such as student attendance and, in high school, access to advanced coursework.  This may have the unwanted effect of making schools offer even less art and music in favor of more AP courses. It is time that the State took account of what matters in providing children with a quality education.  This is their chance to do so by incorporating an Opportunity to Learning index in their formula.”

Johanna Garcia, NYC parent of public school students, contended that the proposal’s use of chronic absenteeism as the sole additional indicator for elementary and middle schools, along with test scores and ESL proficiency, meant that the accountability system would disproportionately punish high-poverty and high-immigrant school populations, while doing little to level the playing field among schools. “It is disheartening to see NYSED once again fail to take the opportunity to finally do right by students who have been ignored, penalized, and re-victimized by the very institution entrusted to lift them out of poverty. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that schools with high chronic absenteeism are suffering from concentrated numbers of homelessness, children in foster care, undocumented immigrant status, economic instability and special health and developmental needs. The proposed policies will further the inequities in our children’s education, while giving credence to the misconception that students from low income neighborhoods are less competent. This disconnect continues to be inexcusable and can no longer be accepted as the status quo.” 

Kelley Wolcott, a teacher at South Brooklyn Community High School, a transfer school that serves over-aged, under-credited students--at least a dozen of whom spoke movingly during the hearing about the lifesaving role the school played--agreed. "The proposed accountability measures would devastate our ability to serve the needs of diverse learners. For true accountability, the state needs to focus on and incentivize supplying the resources necessary for students to thrive, including small class sizes, less emphasis on high-stakes testing, fair funding, and a vastly reduced student-to-counselor ratio for students with a history of trauma. Very few schools in NYC still have nurses, let alone a real school-based support team. Without these things--and with the change in graduation requirements mandated by ESSA--we’ll see the destruction of the safety net provided by transfer schools for students who are pushed out of charter schools or drop out of large underfunded public schools where they are no more than an OSIS number." 

 Kemala Karmen, the parent of children who attend a 6-12 school in New York City, served on the Standards and Assessments work group of the Think Tank. “NYSED seemed intent on perpetuating the narrow strictures of NCLB. The nonpunitive plan (i.e., ask districts to analyze participation to ensure that students had not been systematically excluded, as per the intent of the law) that the majority of my work group proposed to address ESSA’s 95% testing participation mandate was rejected by the NYSED group leader who said it wouldn’t align with the Commissioner’s  expectations. This decision to reject the plan was not reflected in the official notes sent later. Leadership insisted that parents just needed to be ‘educated’ about the assessments, rather than acknowledging that the test refusal movement grew out of legitimate concerns with how testing is reshaping classrooms. Moreover, I couldn’t believe that research-based evidence was never shared or apparently considered during our deliberations.”

Jeanette Deutermann, Nassau county parent and founder of Long Island Opt Out, expressed particular consternation for the way that opt-out students will be figured into the accountability system. “It is clear that the option exists to leave opt out students out of the test score accountability formula. To choose instead, and arbitrarily, to count these students as having received low scores, solely for the purpose of rating schools, would make the entire  accountability system invalid. While we understand SED's temptation to discourage test refusals, accountability regulations will not change a parent's decision to protect their child from an unfair and unreliable testing regime.”

Eileen Graham, Rochester City School District parent advocate and founder of Black Student Leadership, sent a statement to be read: “Accountability needs to flow not only from the school to the state, but from the state to the schools. In order to succeed, the students of Rochester need the state to deliver well-resourced school facilities, prepared professional educators, and opportunities for teacher-created relevant curriculum. They should be ensuring that parents' voices are heeded and that capable leadership is at the helm. Regrettably, Commissioner Elia’s current ESSA proposal is just a continuation of the test-based accountability that we've had for decades and that has done little to lift Rochester City School District out of a state of educational emergency.”

Lisa Rudley, Ossining public school parent and founding member of NYSAPE, said, “As long as Commissioner Elia is steering the ship, the winds of discredited former Chancellor Tisch and NY Education Commissioner John King will remain. If real significant and meaningful change is going to occur, the Board of Regents needs to replace Elia with someone who represents what's in the best interest of the children. Otherwise, New York’s education policies will remain punitive and harmful to children and schools.”

New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) is a grassroots coalition with over 50 parent and educator groups across the state. Class Size Matters is a non-profit organization that advocates for smaller classes in NYC’s public schools and the nation as a whole.

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