My visit to a school that has welcomed 50 migrant students but with no more funding, despite confusing claims by DOE

credit: NY Times

Below I describe my visit to a school that has accepted about 50 migrant students with open arms, but doesn’t have the funding necessary to fully meet their needs.  I was quoted in the NY Post as saying it is both irrational and irresponsible for DOE deny these schools with additional funding,  and instead to rely on  volunteer efforts by parents and other students.  No child should have to translate for her classmates as this child at another school has been asked to do, according to her interview on NY 1:  “If they have work and I have work, I have to do my work too,” she said. “I’m not a grownup yet, but I wish I could be and help them a lot. But I’m not a grown up yet.”

Currently, the DOE spokesperson insists that they have provided $25 million more to schools with enrollments larger than originally projected; however it's not clear if this pertains specifically to the schools that have seen large numbers of migrant students, who have special needs over and above simply enrollment increase.  

Comptroller Brad Lander has estimated that given an estimate of 5,500 migrant students, their schools should receive at least $34 million according to the Fair Student Funding system alone; not counting extra funding for 3K, PreK or other additional needs that these students may have. And the latest estimates for the number of these students keeps increasing, and is now up to 6,100 .

The school I visited  hasn't received  an extra penny, and the principal was told that she would have to wait until November or beyond, for the standard mid-year adjustment to their budget.  

When asked when these schools with large numbers of migrant students would receive more funding, Chancellor Banks said at the CPAC meeting this week, and again at a  D75 Town Hall meeting, that they were waiting for  federal government to kick in with more aid.  Here's the exact quote from the Chancellor at CPAC meeting. 

“You might want to be as helpful as possible but if you don't have the dollars I think the sense here is that the federal government will at some point is going to come and provide a level of support um you've got midterm elections that are happening over the next couple of weeks so that's a lot of this is political as well in terms of when the aid and the support will come but I think I think here in New York the leadership feels as though the federal government is not going to abandon us here.”

However, the DOE still has over more than four billion dollars of unspent federal Covid aid, and an $8 billion reserve fund, so the idea that they couldn't front the money to schools before the feds provide more dollars is absurd.  The account of my visit to this school follows. 

 If your school has enrolled significant numbers of new migrant students and has gotten more funding to support these students, or has not received this funding despite the need, please let us know at info@classsizematters.org

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A few weeks ago I visited a Title One school that has enrolled about 50 migrant students from several different countries over the past few weeks.  The school has gone from  86% utilization to over 104%.

Last year, most classes were under 20 students per class; now class sizes have grown, and all the Kindergartens are at 25 – the maximum according to the UFT contract.  Some of the inclusion classes are now as large as 27 and 30 students per class.

The principal recounted how she lost several teachers due to the budget cuts this year; and also has been unable to replace several teachers  who resigned or who were unwilling to be vaccinated.  

She has asked DOE for more funding given the enrollment increase and the high level of need of these students, with families are housed at a hotel nearby.  Many of the migrant students traveled 2-3 months through Central America/Mexico to get here.  Many were bused from Texas without their consent.  Others are escaping war zones.

If she received more funding, the principal said she would hire more teachers, as well as  a  Spanish-speaking bilingual social worker and  Spanish-speaking bilingual counselor. She also needs more funding to pay for iPads; the new families with two students have had to share a single iPad because she doesn’t have enough.

 However, the  DOE has told her that she will receive no more funding until at least November.

The after school program is filled to capacity; and while the principal has asked YMCA and DOE for 60 more slots but this request was also denied.

The school is in a co-located building, and because of the overcrowding, the library has been turned into a room for OT/PT/specialists with makeshift partitions.  Still we saw children receiving their services in the hallway. 

 The Parent coordinator shares a small room – formerly a storage  space w/no windows -- with the safety coordinator and other personnel.  Another room that was a classroom/TV studio now houses their school psychologist, counselor, and social worker, who lost their office space when a 3K was added to the school last year.

The parents and staff at the school have been wonderful; Parents have brought bags of school supplies and clothes for the new families.  Teachers have volunteered to do their laundry by taking it home with them weekly.  The principal has also  tried to set up OSHA training for the families in an effort to help them secure employment but is encountering many obstacles in the process.  They desperately need jobs as they are receiving no cash assistance from the city.  

Send a letter TODAY to NYC Council Speaker & leaders that school budgets must be increased, not cut

Update:  According to insiders, the Mayor is being stubborn and insisting on school budget cuts.  Please send this separate letter to the Mayor and Chancellor today!. 

Please send a letter to the NYC Council  Speaker Corey Johnson today and the Education and Finance Council chairs to say that the DOE budget should NOT be cut next year, as the Mayor has proposed; but instead, school funding should be increased so they can hire more teachers, counselors, nurses, custodial staff as well as purchasing the supplies to ensure that our children can go back to school safely next year and with the full academic and social-emotional support they will need.

The City Council is in the final stretches of negotiating a city budget for next year. Meanwhile, the Mayor proposed a 3% cut in the overall DOE budget next year, with more than $280 million of cuts directed towards schools. And yet it is clear that schools will need more funding not less next year to create the health and safety precautions, as well as the smaller classes needed for social distancing and enhanced instruction.

A recent cost analysis from the School Superintendents Association and the Association of School Business Officials shows that school districts can expect to spend an additional $490 per student just to purchase hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and other cleaning supplies, gloves, masks and other personal protective equipment, and hiring additional custodial staff and nurses to ensure health and safety. Given that NYC has more than one million public school students, that means that nearly $490 million alone may be required.

And that’s not counting the additional teachers necessary to provide instruction either remotely or in-person, and extra counselors to offer the emotional support, so critical given the disruption and distress that so many students have experienced during the Covid pandemic.

While Council members announced that while they are intent on negotiating a $1 billion cut to the police budget, they hadn’t yet decided where the savings would go. Clearly a big chunk will be directed to restore cuts to the summer youth jobs, but a large portion should go directly toward schools to pay for additional teachers, counselors and other staffing, as well as health and safety measures that will be critical for NYC school children next year.

Please send a letter now by clicking here, before it’s too late.

Thanks!

Surveillance, free speech, student privacy and the Pineapple: Pearson gives parents more reasons to opt out

On Saturday night the news exploded through the Twittersphere via Bob Braun’s blog that Pearson was monitoring student social media.  Pearson had sent a warning to the NJ State Education Department, who in turn had contacted the Superintendent of Warren, saying that a student enrolled in the district had posted a picture of one of the PARCC questions on Twitter during the exam.   

That turned out to be incorrect, according to the Superintendent.  Apparently, the student had just commented on the question after taking the test, and deleted his tweet after being contacted by the district.  The most disturbing aspect of the incident was not merely Pearson’s error in reporting this to the State Education Department,  (how did they get this wrong?) but also their suggestion that the student should be disciplined for this behavior – when it’s not at all clear  that he did anything wrong.  But parents and others were understandably alarmed that Pearson is monitoring student social media at all.

I don’t mean to minimize the creepiness of this, but I am not surprised.  Clearly, Pearson has good reason  to defend  against its test items being disclosed in advance of students elsewhere taking the PARCC exams, and will use whatever tools at its disposal to do so.  But it is somewhat implausible that anyone could imagine that they will be able to achieve this. Given the widespread use of social media and the speed and ease of communication, it is near crazy to imagine that questions given to over five million students in 11 states over the period of several weeks will remain secret for any length of time – or even just during the testing window. According to the PARCC website, since February 16, over two million students have now taken these exams  in Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey and New Mexico, with Louisiana, Massachusetts and Rhode Island to start testing soon.

The PARCC/Pearson consortium has also said they refuse to release all of the questions on these exams, a position that is difficult to justify for any assessments in which the stakes for students, teachers and schools are so high.   But then those in power always want to maintain maximum secrecy for themselves, and protect what they see is their own privacy rights, whether personal or commercial – while having little or no respect for the privacy of others.  Witness how technology CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg maximize their own privacy by asking all their employees and  household contractors to sign non-disclosure agreements, while making billions from exploiting the personal information of their customers.  

See how Hillary Clinton has kept her State Department emails on a private server, and NYS officials have apparently been in in the habit of destroying their official emails after three months.  The NSA has refused to disclose how they have been sweeping up the public’s private emails and conversations for years. What should be public is kept private, and vice versa, because information is power – and the less information corporations and governmental officials provide about their own behavior, and the more they gather up about the actions of ordinary people, the more power they can maintain over the rest of us. 

For many years, Pearson has had good reason to try to protect the contents of its exams that transcend security.  The corporation has a terrible record of producing highly flawed exams– and by refusing to release them they have not only saved money by being able to recycle faulty questions over again, but they have also been able to shield the shoddy quality of their product. By closely monitoring social media and chatter they can attempt to suppress any discussion or debate of these questions – which may have occurred in this instance – they are also likely protecting not just the actual content of their exams, but their reputation as well.

In 2012, we first found out about the ridiculously flawed Pineapple items from a comment on our blog on the same afternoon the ELA exams were given in NY State.  A commenter wrote: “Apparently the New York State 8th Graders thought the story about "The Hare and the Pineapple" was so ridiculous that they have started a Facebook page about it.  (I later found out the FB page was started in 2010.) 8th Graders from across NY State are weighing in with comments.”  Someone else posted the link to a website from 2007 (now defunct) that had a facsimile of the passage and the questions, while questioning the rationality of anyone who would put these questions on an important exam. 

I was lucky enough to have an 8^th grader living in my home who could confirm that a very confusing passage about a race between a Pineapple and a Hare was on his exam. You can see the actual text and the questions here. Then in a manner of minutes, I discovered not only found a facsimile of the passage and the questions, but that the same items  had been included in Pearson exams in numerous other states over seven years, causing huge confusion each time.   

Literally, hundreds of thousands of students had been subjected to this reading passage and questions, and many had become understandably upset.  Yet that hadn’t stopped Pearson from re-using the questions over and over.  It was only because reporters read my blog and the Daily News carried the story the next day that the story became viral and broke into the national media – and the NYS Education Commissioner was finally forced to pull the Pineapple questions out of the exam once and for all.  

At that point, Pearson was prevented from reusing these defective passages and subjecting thousands more students to having their achievement scores and transcripts affected by the results.  

Even then, however, Pearson refused to accept what was obvious and claimed in an even more absurd memo addressed to the NY State Education Department and “leaked” to Time magazine via its (possibly lone)  defender Andrew Rotherham, explaining in technobabble jargon how the Pineapple passage and questions were  just fine, including that “the owl declares that “Pineapples don’t have sleeves,” …is a factually accurate statement. This statement is also presented as the moral of the story, allowing a careful reader to infer that the owl is the wisest animal.”  

The memo really has to be read to be believed – full of gobbledegook that sounds as though it comes from a Monty Python skit or an Ionesco play.   The author of the memo, Jon S. Twing, (who is still amazingly Executive Vice President & Chief Measurement Officer at Pearson) confirmed that these items had been used since 2004 in six other states and three large districts, and then made the most indefensible claim of all, given the ubiquity online of complaints from students, parents and teachers: “Until the events of this past week, we did not have any prior knowledge that the passage entitled “The Hare and the Pineapple” had any controversy associated with it from any prior use.”

In reality, Pearson has been continuously plagued with scandal through faulty tests, scoring errors and the like for over a decade.  If there were any accountability for corporations – instead of for the students and teachers who are judged on the results – the company would have lost all its contracts in recent years rather than awarded the biggest one ever – the PARCC contract, worth billions.

Which is a rather long-winded way to explain that Pearson has good reasons to monitor social media, to suppress not just the specific content of PARCC exams but also any discussion of their substandard quality. 

What has also been ignored in the commentary about Pearson’s monitoring of students so far are the extremely porous privacy policies of PARCC/Pearson, including how they claim their right to collect, share and use student data for many purposes:

• to analyze test results to assist member states and their local education agencies for purposes of accountability, including promotion and graduation decisions for individual students; teacher and school leader evaluations; school accountability determinations; determinations of principal and teacher professional development and support needs; and teaching, learning, and program improvement; and 

•  to carry out studies designed to improve instruction on behalf of participating states and their local education agencies, pursuant to separate agreements with the member states and/or their local education agencies. 

In essence, PARCC and its major subcontractor, Pearson, can hand off the personally identifiable information it has gathered directly from students or  that schools have provided them to an unlimited number of third parties, or use it themselves for a wide variety of purposes, as long as the state or district allows.  This includes decisions about whether a student should be held back, how a teacher should be evaluated, or a school should be rated.  Huge amounts of personal student data can also be handed off to researchers or think tanks or anyone doing a “study,” with no security or privacy restrictions, and without parental notification or consent required – as long it is for the vaguely defined purpose of “improving instruction.”  

The other major testing consortium, Smarter Balanced, has no publicly available privacy policy at all – though parents in several states have asked for it without success. 

What information do these companies have about your child through PARCC or its other exams?  This may differ from state to state, but concerned parents and privacy advocates in Colorado asked their state this specific question, as their students started taking the PARCC last week and will again later in the year.

According to the briefing given by the Colorado State Education department last week,  Pearson/PARCC has been supplied with a wealth of personal data, including students’ race/ethnicity, economic status, 504 plan (health conditions that can impact student performance, like allergies or epilepsy), whether they have migrant or immigrant status, disabilities, homelessness, language proficiency, how long they have lived in the state or attended school in the district,  and whether they have ever been expelled.  All of this is quite disturbing and is similar to what we discovered about inBloom. 

 In addition, Pearson/PARCC has access to if a student is using testing modifications, along with their names, unique identifier numbers, etc. Beyond sensitive student information, Pearson also collects everything a student types into the keyboard during the test including words or sentences that were typed and then deleted. Pearson knows whether or not the student views a test item, how long it takes him/her to answer a specific question, and it tracks the student's clicks as he/she navigates the test. This seemingly harmless data, when paired with sensitive information about an individual student, creates a very complex learning and behavioral profile of the child.  

So this is yet another reason to opt your child out of these standardized exams – which every parent should seriously consider. Both Utah and California specifically give parents to opt out of standardized tests if they so choose. So does the NYC Department of Education, writing: “If, after

consulting with the principal, the parents still want to opt their child out of the exams, the principal should respect the parents' decision and let them know that the school will work to the best of their ability to provide the child.”

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Also contrary to what you may have read or heard, schools cannot have their funding cut, even if large numbers of students opt out – there is simply no provision in state or federal law for this to happen.  The “worst” that can happen is the federal government might restrict a school’s flexibility with use of Title One funds, including requiring more  tutoring, which many parents might actually prefer.  (For more on this, see FairTest).

As a matter of fact, more than 60,000 students opted out of the NY state exams last year, and nothing happened to these schools. In a statewide survey of NY districts, more than 35 percent of superintendents estimated test refusals last year at 5 percent of students or more, and 23 percent reported student refusals at 10 percent or more.  Fully eight percent of superintendents estimated that more than 20 percent of their students in grades 3-8 refused to participate in at least one of the state Common Core exams. Not a single NY school or district has faced ANY consequences as a result.

It would be great to see those numbers grow yet larger again this year. 

Opt out and deny them your child’s personal and test score data. Opt out and save your child from the stress of what are unpiloted, and likely flawed exams. Opt out and deny the authorities the ability to use your children’s data in unfair and punitive way, to hurt them, their teachers or their schools.  Opt out to fight for an end to the mechanistic depersonalized insanity that is devouring public education.  Opt out to fight back against the privateers’ attempt to prove that public schools are failing, in order to benefit the interests of the hedge funders, the ed tech companies and the testing companies. Opt out!