Who speaks for the children? The Governor, the Mayor, or their parents?

Mayor Bloomberg said today that “The teachers' union represents the employees and the city represents the students."  This comment reflects tremendous chutzpah. He and the Governor in recent days have claimed to be acting in the interests of the children who attend our public schools, yet both have ignored the priorities of parents and their right to have a voice in determining education policies.

We parents are the really the ones who speak for our children.  What do New York parents want?  The vast majority want equitable and adequate funding, smaller classes, a well-rounded curriculum, and less emphasis on standardized testing.

Instead, school budgets have been repeatedly cut, our class sizes have sharply increased and our children have been force-fed a steady diet of test prep.  Whenever NYC parents have expressed a different view from him on education issues, Bloomberg has expressed open contempt for their intelligence and claimed they just don't understand the value of a good education.

Now, more than ever, parents realize that the mayor has failed to improve the schools or narrow the achievement gap, as evidenced by his overwhelmingly negative reception on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. His agenda of high-stakes accountability, combined with class size increases, have led to less learning, and caused NYC students to fall further behind their peers in the other large cities, as measured by the NAEPs. 

These new proposals to force districts to adopt a teacher evaluation system based largely on test scores will further undermine the quality of education that our children receive.

Maggie Moroff on how parents need a voice in teacher evaluation

Several months ago, Class Size Matters sponsored an online petition to the Governor and the Regents, asking that public school parents be appointed to their 57-member taskforce on teacher evaluation, which had not a single parent on it.  They ignored us, and instead came up with a new unfair and unreliable system, based 40% on standardized test scores, and that will lead to even more high-stakes testing.  Check out the letter from Maggie Moroff of Advocates for Children below, and let's work together to make sure that parents are not let completely out in the cold when it comes to evaluating their children's teachers. 

New York State is changing the way teachers are evaluated. If things happen on schedule, teachers of grades 4 – 8 ELA and math will be evaluated under the new system beginning this fall, and it will be rolled out to all teachers by the 2012-2013 school year. Importantly, the state law requires the agreement of the teachers union before the new system takes effect.

Once in place, the new evaluation system will affect how teachers are trained, promoted, paid, given tenure, and fired.  It will affect who teaches our children, and it could impact how our children are taught.

Under the new system, 40% of teacher evaluations will be based on student outcomes, as measured by performance on statewide standardized tests and by other methods of assessing student progress chosen or developed by local school districts. The remaining 60% of teacher evaluations will be based on locally determined measurements of how teachers prepare, plan, and conduct lessons, develop their own skills, and create learning environments for their students. For more information about the new evaluation system, see Advocates for Children of New York’s (AFC) fact sheet.

This past spring, staff at AFC talked to fourteen focus groups – comprised of students with disabilities and English Language Learners, their parents, and teachers – about what makes a good teacher. We discussed a number of methods of teacher evaluation, including the use of standardized tests, classroom observation, review of portfolios of student work, and surveys of students, parents, and the teachers themselves.

We heard loud and clear that parents want a voice in evaluation – for themselves, and for their children as well. Parents are eager to complete surveys on their interactions with teachers and also to collaborate in the development of those surveys. Parents also want at least a part of the evaluations of teachers – and principals, too – to be based on their ability to work with parents and diverse communities. One parent told us, “If [the principal] doesn’t care what the parents say, it is as if they don’t exist. But they do exist; that is why our children are there.”

In addition, our focus group participants worried that standardized tests are not always the best measures of what students – particularly those with disabilities and English Language Learners – know and learn. The new evaluation system, so heavily reliant on standardized tests, may act as a disincentive for new teachers to work with these populations. One parent of a child on the autism spectrum asked, “When the principal asks the teachers who will take [my son] into their classroom, who will raise their hand?”

Do you share these parents’ concerns? AFC is now developing recommendations for the New York City Department of Education as it moves forward to change evaluation of our teachers and principals. We want to hear from more of you! If you’d like to add your voice, call (212) 822-9523 or email mmoroff@advocatesforchildren.org.

It is not too late for parents and students to affect the development of the new evaluation system. Although its basic framework is set by State law, the details are a work in progress.

- Maggie Moroff, Special Education Policy Coordinator, Advocates for Children of New York

Listen up, mayor and the NY Times

The Times ran an editorial last week, "Parents need to know", which claimed that NYC parents didn't understand how the weak state exams had been "shortchanging students" and that they did their "children no favor" when they disrupted a Panel for Education Policy meeting on Monday. This was after the PEP chair, David Chang, refused to let them speak in response to a long, deceptive power point that claimed, despite the collapse of the state test score bubble collapse, that the schools had made great progress.

The editorial also excused the state test score inflation by stating, "Weak state tests are a chronic problem throughout the country — one that education departments are only beginning to come to grips with." Oh please. The NY test score inflation has been obvious to nearly all objective observers since at least 2007, despite the fact that it conveniently allowed the mayor to claim great improvements during his campaigns for the renewal of mayoral control and re-election, illusions that were bought hook line and sinker by the mayor's allies on the Times and the other editorial boards.

The editorial ended by claiming that the schools have nevertheless been "narrowing the performance gap between white and minority students." Yet the gold standard, the national exams called the NAEPs, show no narrowing of the achievement gap in any grade or subject since the Klein regime began. Truly, the Times editors "need to know" and start living in the real world, for they, along with the chancellor and mayor, have lost all credibility, and should stop criticizing parents while displaying their ignorance of what's really going on in our schools.Our mayor, who famously said people could "boo him at parades" if people didn't like his educational policies, will likely see more booing of his Panel of Eight Puppets in the months to come, unless he wakes up and starts to listen.

How Bloomberg, and the NY Times fail to listen to parents

The NY Times has an editorial on what they hope and expect from Bloomberg’s third term, which begins today. The section on education reveals how little the editors really understand about what has happened in the last eight years in our schools:

”After the State Legislature finally scrapped the board and gave the mayor control of the schools, he brought much-needed stability.”

Actually, there has been continual confusion and chaos under this administration, with repeated re-organizations, school closings, worsening overcrowding, Kindergarten students placed on wait-lists, changes in management structure, delayed and error-prone admissions processes, mid-year funding cuts, and all the rest.

"He has also swept away the bureaucratic underbrush..."

Here, the Times' credulousness comes into relief. This is one of the administration's most repeated claims, without any evidence to support it. Instead, new levels of bureaucracy have proliferated, with the establishment of the School Support Organizations, Senior Achievement Facilitators, Portfolio officers, Integrated Service Centers, Network leaders, data coaches, and a huge growth in the press office and accountability division at Tweed, not to mention all the other corporate-type positions that are continually created, even as schools are forced to make huge budget cuts to the classroom and the teaching force shrinks. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent annually on consultants and no-bid contracts.

“He also wants bad teachers out of the classroom and off the payroll.”

Of course, everyone wants bad teachers out of the classroom -- parents most of all. Yet by making principals pay for the salaries of their staff out of their own budgets, what the administration really appears intent on doing is getting experienced teachers out of the classroom, no matter what their quality. Why? Perhaps because they are paid more and because they tend to remember the way things used to be before Bloomberg and Klein, which causes them to resist the manipulation of test scores, the granting of credit recovery, and the myriad other ways in which pressure has been exerted on educators to lower standards -- all in the supposed name of improving results.

“In all, the mayor’s education policies have been a good thing for students...."

To the contrary, Bloomberg's top-down policies have not been helpful to students, with
class sizes rising, discharge numbers rising, test prep taking over our schools, art, music and science devalued and diminished, and parental involvement suppressed and repudiated at every turn.

“…but he and his school officials still have to spend more time listening to concerned parents.”

At least this one statement is correct, even as it understates the contempt that Bloomberg and Klein have shown for our views.

Yet if this editorial reveals anything, it is the need for the editors of the Times to spend more time listening to public school parents. It’s not clear from the above remarks that they have any idea of what we've been saying for the last eight years, or how the mayor’s priorities conflict with our desire for our children to attend safe, uncrowded schools with small classes, experienced teachers, along with art, physical education and all the other activities necessary for a well-rounded education. Or perhaps, they simply refuse to take our views seriously.

Let’s hope in 2010, they as well as Bloomberg begin to pay attention. It would be long overdue.