Another disappointing UFT contract when it comes to helping kids learn

Picture: We Are Teachers

UPDATE:More from the UFT on the new process for addressing violations of the class size cap in the new contract here:   All class-size overages that the chapter leader and principal cannot resolve by the 10th day of school will be sent to the UFT district representative and the superintendent to work to fix and later up to a central class size labor management committee. Does this sound like it will lead to speedier resolution than the process now?

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Today the Mayor, the Chancellor and UFT President Michael Mulgrew announced a new tentative four-year contract. In contrast to their claims that it is innovative and far-reaching, the provisions of the agreement seem familiar in many respects, a retread of past failed efforts. I can't really comment on the salary, health insurance or other financial provisions. Instead, I looked more specifically as to whether the contract is likely to improve learning conditions, and my prediction is no.

Class size limits weren't altered, which haven't been lowered in fifty years and which since the 1960's have range from 32 students per class in grades 1-5 to 34 students in high school. The only apparent policy change to class size in the UFT summary is this brief passage: Class size overcrowding must be remedied within 10 days.


I assumed that meant when contractual class size violations are grieved by the union, they will be remedied by the city within 10 days. However Arthur Goldstein, Francis Lewis HS chapter leader, has more details on his blog:

Class size will not change. Action for oversized classes must be taken within 21 days. Chronically oversized schools will have only ten days. These will go to superintendent and chancellor and will hopefully result in fewer arbitrations.


This description doesn't address when the grievance can be made - right now, teachers and chapter leaders have to wait ten school days before even filing a class size grievance, and only a set number of grievances can be heard by arbitrators each week, which considerably slows down the process of holding class size to the legal limits.

If teachers (and their students) have to wait another 21 days to have the violations addressed this could drag on until November and December, as too often happens currently. Not to mention that there are many loopholes in the contract which continue to allow schools to evade these limits, which are already far too high. There's no mention if any of these contractual loopholes have been eliminated or tightened.


Rather than address the crying need to cap class sizes at lower levels, especially in struggling schools, the contract seems to feature but a variation on the failed Renewal school initiative. Here is an excerpt from Carranza's letter:

At the heart of this groundbreaking contract is The Bronx Plan. The Bronx Plan is a partnership between the DOE and the UFT that allows us to recruit and retain educators through the use of a targeted salary differential in schools that have, in the past, struggled to attract and keep teachers in key subjects. The Plan also creates the Collaborative Schools Model – an idea grounded in the knowledge that our schools perform at their best when teachers, leaders, and staff work together to solve longstanding problems.


Like the Renewal schools, the Collaborative Schools Model or the Bronx Plan [couldn't they settle on a more compelling epithet, or at least choose between them?] will supposedly feature more teacher and community "collaboration" --which usually seems to be nothing more than a public relations fig leaf, especially when it comes to heeding the parent voice.

Also like the Renewal schools, teacher incentive pay will be provided to recruit teachers to these struggling schools. In the case of the "Bronx Plan" or the "Collaborative Schools Model," $8,000 will be offered to teachers who fill hard-to-staff positions.

Many other districts have used incentive pay to try to attract teachers to struggling schools without much success. In 2014, Fulton County schools in Georgia announced a plan to recruit teachers to the lowest-performing schools by offering them $20, 000 stipends:

A year later, in 2015, the AJC checked on the progress of the Fulton pilot and found the district laboring to lure these highly qualified teachers to lower-performing schools....Although 375 were eligible to participate, only 32 applied....So what finally happened to the Fulton experiment? It faded away.

The Renewal schools also featured a $4.9 million teacher-leadership program which "several principals said it has not been much help as they try to recruit teachers from other schools."

This same sort of teacher leadership program will now be expanded citywide, to create "Teacher Development Facilitators" and "Teacher Team Leaders," the latter to train more "Master Teachers, Model Teachers, and Teacher Development Facilitators." All of these positions will likely take more teachers out of the classroom and add them to the bureaucracy, rather than deploy their talents more effectively by deploying them where they can teach kids.

In contrast, our analysis of the Renewal program found that despite DOE promises to the state, most did not cap class sizes at lower levels, and the vast majority continued to feature maximum class sizes of 30 or more. Those that did cap class sizes at lower levels had a significantly greater chance of boosting student achievement. Lowering class size, by the way, has also been shown to reduce teacher attrition, especially at low-performing schools.

The "Collaborative Schools Model" or the "Bronx Plan" will also feature enhanced "data coaching." Shades of Joel Klein and Jim Liebman; remember their misplaced almost messianic faith in "data coaches" and data inquiry teams?

I predict that the "Collaborative Schools Model" will go the same way as the Renewal program, and the Klein era data inquiry teams, and will continue to leave thousands of students behind, that is, unless support, focus, and funding is put on lowering class size in these schools.

There are other aspects of the new contract that appear to be going in the wrong direction. For example, students in the Bronx will be put on computers to receive distance learning from their teachers, instead of offering them the close, in-person support that they need:

Remote teaching pilot: Starting in Spring 2019, Bronx high school students will participate in a 3-year, remote-teacher pilot program. These courses will be led remotely by teachers, who will be able to engage their students and answer questions in real time. The pilot will expand access to AP courses, advanced foreign language courses required for an Advanced Regents Diploma, and elective courses, allowing schools to expand course offerings.

Clearly, the Chancellor and the UFT haven't paid attention to the research showing online learning rarely works, except for the most motivated, self-directed students.

Another disappointing aspect of the agreement is the way Mulgrew seems to have traded pay raises and other goodies for his support of continued mayoral control that is up for renewal this spring. Mulgrew's position on this issue seemed often to be shape-shifting and depend on who was in the room at the time, but along with the announcement of the contract was his unabashed, full-throated assent to submit to the mayor's top priority, and allow him to continue his one-man rule into the indefinite future:

" Given the importance of the issues and the long-term initiatives that are part of this contract, the UFT is calling for the continuation of mayoral control as the governance structure for New York City public schools.”


One wonders if the UFT membership gets to vote on that issue separately; or if the organization itself operates similarly as one-man rule.

It's not as if the members of the UFT are unconcerned with this issue, as its leaders must know.  See the 2014 UFT survey of NYC teachers that showed that 99% of respondents said reducing class size would be an effective reform -- outstripping every other option.  (Though the survey is supposed to be given every year, I couldn't find any posted since that year. If others can, please provide the link in the comment section.)

In contrast to the lack of attention given class size in this new contract, see how Nevada teacher Angela Barton just wrote about the frustration of growing class sizes and how it relates to teacher attrition on the We Are Teachers blog:

"With these large numbers, it has become increasingly more difficult to recognize students that may be struggling...It’s almost like they are invisible.” It’s true. The more students in one room, the louder, smellier, and more distracting it becomes. Individual teacher-student interactions and meeting student needs are impossible....

We know firsthand that teacher and student morale, along with academic and social development, suffer with larger class sizes.

We also know that smaller class sizes would help restore the joy of teaching and retain quality educators. Routinely, state legislators who vote on education funding choose to ignore the voices of teaching professionals.

So what’s next? I think it’s time we take action, raise our voices, and walk hand in hand with parents and community members to our legislatures and other governing bodies. We can not and will not be crowded out of our own classrooms.

In fact, according to an analysis of the Economic Policy Institute, the teacher gap keeps growing nationwide -- with nearly 400,000 jobs lost since the recession just to keep up with student enrollment growth, meaning larger classes as well:

Rather than passively give in to these conditions, other teacher unions have made class size a central focus in their negotiations; most recently in Los Angeles. Let's hope for the sake of NYC kids we don't have to wait another fifty years for the UFT to do so.

Comments on DOE Questionable Contracts and Fair Student Funding formula

Leonie Haimson and Patrick Sullivan of the Citizens Contracts Oversight Committee provided the following comments to the members of the Panel for Educational Policy about the proposed contracts to be voted on April 20, 2016. If you want to join our Overight committee, please email us at info@classsizematters.org. If you would like to send in your own comments, please do so tonight by the public comment deadline at 6:00 pm.

To: CGFarina@schools.nyc.gov, Budget@schools.nyc.gov, panel@schools.nyc.gov, fbaptiste@schools.nyc.gov , ecleveland@schools.nyc.gov,  vleung@schools.nyc.gov, lpodvesker@schools.nyc.gov   lzingmond@schools.nyc.gov, ICarmignani@schools.nyc.gov, ddillingham@schools.nyc.gov , kpaynehanks@schools.nyc.gov, mzorrillaaristy@schools.nyc.gov, bshuldiner@schools.nyc.gov, GLinnen@schools.nyc.gov

April 19, 2016

Dear Chancellor Farina and members of the Panel for Education Policy:

On behalf of Class Size Matters, the Citizens Contract Oversight Committee, and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, we have the following concerns about the proposed contracts and the Fair Student Funding formula to be voted on tomorrow night, April 20, 2016:

The Amazon contract

DOE proposes to pay $30 Million to Amazon over three years to provide digital textbooks and tradebooks. The ultimate plan, according to the RA, is to provide 29%-42% of all content online by Year 5 at a cost of up to $64.5 million.

·         Yet there is no cost/benefit analysis in the RA discussion of the proposed contract, including the huge cost of having to purchase tablets or laptops for all the students who will access their assigned readings through digital devices.  The contract also implies that some students will use “a school-provided device or a personal device to access their profile and content,” Yet latter which cannot be relied upon given the fact that many families cannot afford to supply a suitable e-reader for their children to use at home.

·         The RA also proposes that students will “request content for independent reading” via Amazon, which implies that the DOE will be steering students’ personal purchases to this provider, which will allow Amazon to further expand their market share.  Yet many authors and publishers have protested the way in which Amazon uses their dominance of the market to engage in  illegal monopolistic practices, which goes unmentioned in the RA.

·         The DOE omits any discussion of the growing research showing that reading comprehension and retention are significantly reduced with the use of digital devices compared to actual books.  Here's just one of several recent studies on this critical issue.

·         Finally there are the privacy concerns, which are insufficiently addressed in the RA:

“Despite this technology’s capacity for track and reporting student progress, students’ personal identifiable information will be safeguarded in this system, as Amazon will use a DOE-provided proxy with encrypted information and limited student information.”

It is unclear what “limited student information” is going to be included, but in any case, many parents are not just worried about potential breaches, but about teachers and administrators tracking students at school and at home, and what will be done with their personal data.

For more on some of the concerns with the Amazon contract, as yet unexplored by DOE, see today’s Wall Street Journal.

Contracts with Special Education providers

The DOE proposes to award contracts to pay seven special education vendors who have engaged in fraud in the past or who have failed to pay Workman’s compensation and thus are barred from public work contracts.  We strongly believe that any company that has engaged in fraud or failed to properly follow the law should be barred from future DOE contracts for at least five (5) years.

We are also concerned that the DOE admits that “background checks have not been completed for all vendors…Should noteworthy information become known to the DOE after the Panel meeting, it will be reported to the Panel.” 

No contract should be approved without a background check, and there is no point in reporting it to Panel members once negative information is found.  

The fact that the DOE would even consider proposing contracts for companies to provide services to special needs students, a highly vulnerable population, without conducting any background checks, only reaffirms our conviction that there is insufficient care and due diligence maintained by DOE officials to minimize risk to children, fraud and waste. 

More evidence of the insufficient care shown by DOE is shown below in the section below headed “Reimbursing the Fund for Public Schools for PreK vendors found “non-responsible”.

An article about these highly questionable special education contracts was published in yesterday’s Daily News here

Whole School Reform

DOE seeks funding for a vendor, Southern Regional Education Board, who has provided these services in the past and whose expertise with NYC schools has been previously questioned.  It is regrettable that the new proposed contract is presented without any accounting for how the vendor has performed in the past.

Pre-K providers

DOE continues the unacceptable practice of proposing to award many pre-K contracts without providing any information in advance on the vendors or their backgrounds and history (see items #3-5 on pages 49- 51 and #24-25 on pages 109-110,)  This again is risky and irresponsible.

Professional development contracts

We are concerned about the proliferation of professional development contracts.  This month there are seven PD contracts, items #7-11, #16 and #19, at a total cost of $14,697,447 or $8,050,447 annually.  Including these, there have been a total 36 PD contracts since October 2015, costing over $27 million annually, or $98 million over the course of these contracts. 

Nearly half of these contracts are proposed to provide training aligned to the Common Core standards, even though the State Education Department is now planning to revamp the standards. 

Retroactive contracts

DOE also continues its unacceptable practice of asking the PEP to approve retroactive contracts after the funds have already been presumably spent.  This month, there are nine proposed retroactive contracts: items #2, 16-20, 26-28.

Reimbursing Fund for Public Schools the City of New York for PreK vendors found “non-responsible”  [Update: wrote the wrong Fund here}

Serious concerns are prompted in the information found in the Addenda (page 132).  Many pre-K providers were approved by the PEP in July 2014, despite the fact that their background checks were not complete.

Three providers were subsequently found to have engaged in fraud or other illegal behavior, including B’Above Worldwide Institute, FootSteps Child Care Inc., and West Harlem Community Organization Inc.

Church Avenue Day Care did not file NYC corporate taxes for 2010-2014.  While this transgression would normally disqualify a vendor (categorize them as "non-responsible"), the DOE decided to pay the firm anyway with private funds raised by the Fund for the Public Schools City of New York.  The documents now make clear the firm hasn't corrected the issue.  But the DOE wants now to reimburse the Fund for Public Schools for its payments to this vendor.

The DOE also proposes to reimburse the Fund for Public Schools the City of NY for it payments to another preK vendor, Footsteps Childcare Inc. despite the fact that earlier audits from the NYS Comptroller had found this vendor had engaged in “systematic abuse of child care grants awarded by the NYS Office of Children and Family Services, including evidence that funds…had been misappropriated to defraud the State.”

A third vendor, B’Above Worldwide Institute, exhibited unspecified “performance and contract compliance issues” during the 2014-2015 school year.  Despite the fact that the vendor was offered the “opportunity to show cause why it should not be found non-responsible,” B’Above failed to do so.  Now the DOE wants to pay back the Fund for Public Schools the City of NY for the “bridge loan” that the Fund had provided the vendor.

Panel members should oppose these reimbursements.  Moreover, the DOE's practices of using a private fundraising entity to fund questionable vendors, presumably because they had been barred from receiving city funds, should immediately cease.

These examples provide more evidence of unacceptably sloppy and risky contracting practices on the part of DOE, and why no contract should be approved by the PEP for vendors whose background checks have not been completed.

Fair student funding

While in FY 2008, schools were provided with 100% on average of their Fair Student funding, this year the average is only at 89% and if the mayor’s proposed budget is adopted, next year this figure will rise to only 91% — reflecting a 9 percent cut to our schools since 2007.  Moreover, the Mayor’s proposed budget does not project any increase in Fair student funding in the out years.

In many cases, the overall use of the Fair student Funding formula has forced class sizes upwards, or forced principals to choose between retaining their experienced teachers or keeping class sizes at acceptable levels.  

In addition, as Class Size Matters discussed in testimony before the City Council last month, the specific formula being proposed is unsupported by logic or research.

·         The smallest amount of funding is allocated to students in grades K-5, where the investment in smaller classes has huge pay-offs in terms of increased student achievement. 

·         More funding on the level of 8 percent is allocated for students in grades 6-8, an additional 3 percent for high school students, and 40-50 percent additional funding for remedial services as a student falls behind, starting in 4^th grade. 

·         Yet as many studies indicate, remediation is  far less effective than prevention,  which  ensures that students do not fall behind in the first place, especially in the form of smaller classes in Kindergarten through 3^rd grade.

·         The FSF weights are far greater for special needs students if they are assigned to inclusion classes starting in Kindergarten, (with a weight of 2.09) and in grades 1-12 (with a weight of 1.74), though the class sizes in these ICT classes are generally far too large to provide students with the individual attention they need.

·         The failure of DOE’s inclusion program, caused in large part by the excessive class sizes of ICT classes, is something we hear constantly from parents of special needs students. 

·         This is further evidenced by the fact that since the fall of 2012, there have been sharp increases in the numbers of students recommended for special education services, as well as the number of students attending non-public schools at city expense, according to the Mayor’s Management report.

·         Total special education enrollment in grades K12 has increased by 25 percent in four years since the inclusion initiative began in earnest in 2012, at a huge expense to the city.  The increase in the number of students identified as having special needs is yet another indication of the hidden cost of rising class sizes, especially as class size reduction has been shown to significantly reduce the number of students identified as requiring special services.

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters and co-chair, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Patrick Sullivan on behalf of the Citizens Contract Oversight Committee

Mayor's Appointees Force Big Testing Contract Despite Looming Classroom Cuts

Wednesday's Panel for Educational Policy meeting held on Staten Island focused exclusively on contracts.
 
My resolution to rescind our prior approval of the tutoring services contract for Champion Learning passed unanimously.  Following the disclosure that the comptroller's office had rejected the contract due to an ongoing federal investigation even the mayor's appointees agreed to revoke our approval.  See here for text of the resolution.

Deputy Chancellor Polakow-Suransky presented an awful $19 million testing technology contract for Pearson.  The contract includes both assessment content and the assessment technology platform.  The platform includes important things like: "the capability to import and host ("ingest") content from varied and multiple sources".  You can read all the details of what we bought here.  I pointed out to Chancellor Walcott that the mayor's intransigence in refusing to agree to the evaluation system DOE negotiators had worked out with the UFT had brought us $250 million in punitive budget cuts from Governor Cuomo.  I asked the Chancellor why, if by his own estimation, the governor's funding reduction will cost our students "2,500" teaching positions and "essential" class room supplies, we should spend $19 million on unneeded testing technology.   His answer focused on how surveys had shown teachers used our current technology.  The idea that we could avoid some of those 2.500 teacher cuts by deferring this contract was not of interest to him.

During public comment we heard from Council Member Deborah Rose, members of the Staten Island CEC (District 31) and the public including a number of striking bus drivers and their supporters.   Panel Chair Tino Hernandez shut off CEC 31 President Sam Pirozzolo's mike after deciding he had talked too long.   I made a motion to extend his speaking time by two minutes citing the fact that we were guests on Staten Island and we ought to allow some additional time to hear the concerns of the elected parent representatives.   Queens PEP member Fedkowskyj seconded my motion.   Chair Hernandez first said "no" and then apparently realizing he had violated parliamentary procedure, agreed to provide one minute of additional speaking time.

Several CEC members including Michael Reilly and Frank Squicciarini as well as members of the public spoke in favor of their security proposal which would add modern security to school entrances including video and buzzer systems.   I was disappointed to learn Chancellor Walcott had dismissed the proposal out of hand and accused the CEC of self promotion.  I will ask the Chancellor and staff to revisit the proposal as I did see merit to some of the ideas after speaking with CEC members, many of whom have deep expertise in law enforcement.

Chancellor Walcott responded to concerns about the bus drivers strike by insisting there was no role for the DOE or City despite the fact that the National Labor Relations Board had found that both the bus companies and DOE were primary employers of the drivers and matrons.