DOE Announces Cannes Festival Lion Titanium Award

As the 2007/08 school year drew to a close, the DOE’s public relations machine churned out a little-noted press release entitled, “Chancellor Klein Hails Department of Education’s Student Motivation Campaign for Winning Cannes Lion Titanium Award for Best ‘Breakthrough Idea’ of 2008.” The “breakthrough idea” turned out not to be an educational initiative or new instructional technology, nor a new concept for school operation or administration. The “breakthrough idea” award was not even for the DOE’s pilot program to give free cell phones to 2,500 students in seven middle schools. Rather, the award celebrated the packaging concepts for the underlying “cell phone minutes as motivator" idea, and it was given not to the DOE but to its advertising agency, Droga5, for its Million Motivation Campaign and The Million cell phone.

The Million? That’s the ostentatious but quietly shepherded name of the DOE’s free cell phone. The name is apparently premised on the idea that the City’s one million public school students from Pre-K-12 (you have to include Pre-K to top one million students in the DOE’s official 10/31/07 register) are all potential recipients. Doubtless among that million are hordes of Pre-K to Grade 4 children whose parents relish the idea of cell phones in their wee ones’ hands, just as there are doubtless equal hordes of NYC high schoolers simply salivating over the prospect of a DOE-monitored and DOE–controlled, limited functionality cell phone.

Back to the award, though. The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is exactly that – an advertising industry awards extravanza. Winners are chosen not for the merits of their products or programs but for their promotional packaging effectiveness. Otherwise, the DOE’s free cell phone idea would certainly have difficulty standing next to some of its competitors this year: anti-smoking, homelessness, HIV testing, Down Syndrome, environmental awareness, and drinking water shortages in the less-developed world, to name several. Droga5’s, and by inference the DOE’s, Titanium Award was not granted by experts in the field of academics, but by experts in the arts of style over substance, of emotion and misdirection over logic and content. A truly fitting award, indeed, for the City’s current educational regime.

A look at Droga5’s video submission (it's worth watching the whole thing) to the Cannes Lion Festival makes it clear why the advertising industry was so enamored of their campaign. Yes, it’s graphically slick, as expected from an agency whose client list includes Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Adidas, ecko unltd., and MTV. Better from an advertising standpoint, though, are the prominent displays of the names Samsung and Verizon on the cell phone itself. Better still are the “rewards” programs, featuring among others AMC Theaters, Adidas, Apple Computer, Macy’s, Foot Locker, Sean John, Virgin Megastores, all members of an innocuously described “responsible, on-screen corporate partnership” whose participation ensures that “The Million pays for itself.”

What branded product executive wouldn’t positively drool at the prospect of reaching into the purported Million young minds every day through a free, school system certified, advertising message delivery system? No wonder the folks at Cannes handed The Million its Titanium award -- they could probably barely contain themselves over the prospect of a captive student cell phone rollout across America’s major urban school systems. In Droga5’s video, DOE’s Chief Equality Officer Roland Fryer was already alluding to inquiry calls from the Chicago and Houston public school systems. The video closes with gushing accolades from the education experts at Esquire Magazine (a Droga5 client), Conde Nast, and (wonder of wonders!) Bloomberg News.

The DOE also proudly announced that The Million program was piloted in seven middle schools this year (starting back in February). While those schools are seldom if ever mentioned by name, The Million’s own website identifies four of the seven as KIPP charter schools – Academy Charter, A.M.P. Charter, Infinity Charter, and S.T.A.R. College Preparatory. The remaining three are Ebbetts Field Middle School (K352), JHS 234 - Arthur Cunningham (K234), and IS 349 – Math, Science & Tech (K349), all in Brooklyn. All three of the non-charter middle schools received grades of B on their last year’s School Progress Reports. Although the cell phone rewards were ostensibly connected to positive student behaviors, all three schools declined from between 0.2% to 1.0% in attendance rate this year compared to last year. All three schools did, however, show positive increases in the percentage of students who scored proficient (3 or 4) on the Math and ELA exams despite noticeable longitudinal (cohort) declines from Grade 7 to Grade 8 in Math (-9%) and ELA (-12%) at Math, Science & Tech and a smaller decline (-4%) in Math from Grade 6 to Grade 7 at Ebbetts Field.

The DOE’s press release closed with the declaration that, “Pending available funding, the plot will grow to reach 10,000 students during the 2008-09 school year.” Funding from which corporate sponsor(s), do you think?

Paying for test scores

Harvard Professor Roland Fryer who intends to experiment on our students by giving them cash awards if they score high enough on their interim assessments is going to become "chief equality officer" at Tweed, according to the NY Times.

So much for these supposedly "no-stakes" exams.

The results of this experiment will be monitored by Fryer.

So much for independent evaluations.

The Mayor apparently loves the idea of paying kids cold hard cash for performance, just as much as he approves of the "pay for play" arrangement in his controversial Randall's island deal, now in court, in which exclusive rights to most of the fields in a public park would be granted to private school students for the next twenty years.

But what if you're a conscientious student and you are trying hard, but still can't make a perfect score? What about kids with disabilities, or ELL students?

Too bad for you.

Question: can anyone tell me why this experiment is likely to lead to more equality, rather than even more disparity between high and low achieving families and kids?

This and other similar experiments (in pdf) involving cash incentives to kids for high scores are being funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Robin Hood, the Open Society Institute (George Soros' foundation), and the insurance company AIG, as well as the Mayor himself.

Students who pass all five Regents would be paid $3,000. If the program is seen as "working" and is expanded, it could cost the city "hundreds of millions" a year, according to Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs in the NY Post.

DOE still mum about cash for kids who ace their "no-stakes" assessments

In his Daily News column on Thursday, Juan Gonzalez broke the story about the proposal to give cash awards to students in the empowerment schools who ace the new interim assessments. (Here is an earlier blog entry about these $30 million assessments to be given four to five times a year.)

More than a week ago, we posted a letter to principals from Roland Fryer, the 30 year old Harvard professor leading the project.

Students will be paid five to ten dollars for taking these tests -- and 25 to 50 dollars if they score a perfect score. Every empowerment school that buys into the project will also be awarded a $5,000 cash "gift."

This proposal severely undermines the official DOE claim that these are “no-stakes tests” See this headline on the Tweed press release from June 1 for example: "Customizable, No-Stakes Assessments to Give Teachers, Principals, and Parents Timely Feedback on Student Progress"

Or this, from the DOE website: "These assessments are solely tools for teaching and learning. There are no stakes attached to the results for schools, principals, teachers or students."

The new project was inspired by the Mayor’s poverty initiative. Bloomberg established a commission on eradicating poverty, and then ignored most of their recommendations and instead announced he would implement experiments to pay parents and students cash if they attend school regularly and get good results.

Of course, if the kids who score well are not poor, they will presumably get receive these awards anyway – so this proposal might even enhance economic disparities among students at the school level.

In the NY Times today, Ernest Logan, the president of the principals’ union, said that “We are troubled by additional pressure being placed on children to achieve perfection,” he said. “What really matters in education is continued student progress, not perfect test scores.”

Apparently, the project has not been formally approved by DOE, despite the fact that the Fryer has already held sessions with principals and signed up a number of schools. Eric Nadelstern, head of the empowerment zone, endorses the project, according to the NY Times:

“He has my enthusiastic support,” Mr. Nadelstern said in an email to principals.“I encourage you to give the program serious consideration.”

Bloomberg also likes the proposal: "If we aren't looking at everything, shame on us,” he said at a news conference yesterday, “I hope there are people thinking about how we would implement that and every other idea." (Unfortunately, they still aren’t thinking seriously about how to reduce class size – despite a new state law that requires them to do so.)

According to NY1, late Friday DOE issued a statement: "Performance-based incentives are one element in a range of strategies we are considering. We are still at a preliminary stage in considering how to implement such a program."

Does this reluctance to endorse the project signal a split within the administration?

Check the negative commentary from New York magazine, in a piece entitled "Mike Bloomberg wants to bribe your kids," the blog Ed in the Apple, and a column criticizing a similar program of cash incentives in Florida here:

“Gov. Charlie Crist was correct when, as the state's education commissioner, he said that the prospect of cash rewards for students who score well on FCAT made him “a little queasy.”

We spend loads of time and effort telling kids what's right about learning, that education is something inherently good and valuable. By using cash as an incentive for students to do well on state tests, schools act hypocritically, and they may even be undermining their core missions.”