A Brooklyn parent reports on the WNYC/Schoolbook forum on "school choice"

See also NY Times/Schoolbook and GothamSchools on this forum. Here is the account from a Brooklyn parent who wishes to remain anonymous:

Last night I attended the WNYC/Schoolbook forum on “school choice” which turned out to be mostly about promoting Schoolbook--no surprise. Jodi Rudoren of the Times kicked off the evening by telling us all to go on Schoolbook and add comments on our children's schools. 

The Walcott conversation with Brian Lehrer was about what you'd expect. Some gentle probing, but they filtered out any slightly difficult questions by having the audience submit them on index cards or via Twitter. I didn't hear any Twitter questions answered. An OWS person tried to disrupt things and was hauled away after a while. Walcott just kept hammering away on the world as he sees it, where choice and small schools are all that matter.  A 12-year old who attended summed him up nicely: "He just keeps talking about how hard his job is." 

Walcott left and was followed by the panel discussion, led jointly by Beth Fertig and Brian Lehrer. This was a lot more interesting, and I came away impressed by several of the panelists. Kelvin Diamond, the Dist. 13 CEC member, struck me as a decent guy, very committed to building schools and community. His daughter attends Philippa Schuyler, a good middle school in Brooklyn, and he's been in the thick of the high school search. He spoke about how frustrating it was for parents to try to get sense out of the DOE, either about their children's situation or in a more activist role, i.e. through the CEC.

 The 8th grade teacher, Laura Klein, and the principal, Rashid Davis, both of whom have been blogging on Schoolbook, were terrific, actually, and seem like professionals who are very aware of their students and what they can and can't do for them. They both mentioned the fact that by the time kids get to high school, they've had ten years in the system already, and there are limits on what they can achieve. The charter school operator, Miriam Raccah of Achievement First, formerly of Girls Prep, said very little. The parent, Carla Trujillo, is a Mexican immigrant who spoke via a translator. She spoke about the difficulties of negotiating the process without knowing English, of the limitations of having one's child translate at school fairs, and so forth. They also ran a video that showed kids who'd been through the process talking about what had happened: honest and engaging teens.

Lots of bloggers and journalists were there, in addition to parents, quiet a few of whom were from the neighborhood.  But not enough to fill the auditorium, which was quite large and I wondered if they'd expected more of a crowd.  [Note from LH: Despite the frequent announcements on WNYC about how this event would help parents navigate the choice process, the event occurred the week after the high school applications were due.]  

They had perhaps a couple of hundred people, a mix of middle-class parents and those who looked as if they might be school employees. Walcott came in with Tish James, *the neighborhood's* city council rep, who has been dedicated to fighting for local schools. Anyway, I attended mostly because I have a 7th grader, and because it was a few blocks from where I live. It didn't tell us much about the high school process that we did not already know, but it was interesting to see Walcott as the face of mayoral control, with no acknowledgement of what real parents and children face every day.

And we all came away thinking a lot about the difference in choices--and likely outcomes--for our middle-class, high-achieving children and for those young people who have been born with very different opportunities.

Our daily newpapers: four different takes on NYC test scores

•   The Wall Street Journal says charter schools’ scores – especially those of Eva Moskowitz’s schools -- are so stellar that they should stop opponents in their tracks.

Of course!  Privatization is the goal.

• The Post says the test scores, though nothing stellar,  should be commended.

Let’s keep boosting Bloomberg, half-heartedly, even though we don’t really believe anything he says.

• The Daily News says there were only “miniscule gains”  and show that the city’s teachers are at fault and need to be "weeded" out.

Let’s keep attacking the UFT and teachers, whatever happens!

• The NY Times? No editorial.

Let’s ignore our public schools as much as possible since really, who cares?

For my take on the results, see yesterday's post . 

What's the real story behind Black's fall from grace?

The three NYC dailies have conflicting accounts, sometimes within their very same pages, about why Black was fired by Bloomberg, after three short months. Bloomberg usually sticks by his deputies, no matter what their level of incompetence. Despite all the emphasis on "accountability" at the school level, there is generally little accountability at the top at City Hall.

The Daily News claims that the mayor didn’t like her inability to cut the budget:

Two sources said the mayor became increasingly disenchanted with her inability to do the grueling and technical work of cutting the education budget.

Meanwhile, the NY Post says it was because she made decisions to expand programs too slowly:

The Department of Education under Black actually delayed plans to expand citywide an ambitious special-ed pilot program and increase the number of schools containing a high-tech education program. Even when she rolled out a program -- finding $10 million to spend on after-school tutors -- Black drew criticism for bragging about such a paltry expenditure.

These programs – the special ed pilot and expanding the Izone -- are both very controversial, of course, and the latter is going to cost millions of dollars, not less; of course, which doesn't exactly help with cutting the budget.

In a different NY Post article, it says that John White was actually running the department, and when he left, Bloomberg realized he needed someone else in there quick:

Bloomberg admitted the breaking point came earlier that day when Black's most competent deputy chancellor, John White, quit -- the fourth top DOE official to defect since Black took over the nation's largest school system. "White was running the system," a source said. "The mayor felt he needed to make a move."

Yet the NY Times features an account that claims that decisions were being made too slowly, because they were vetted through her two top deputies, as well as Walcott and Wolfson at City Hall, and doesn't even mention John White:

Under Ms. Black, proposals meandered through layers of review: Ms. Black, her two powerful deputies, and City Hall officials, including Mr. Walcott and another deputy mayor, Howard Wolfson. …Ms. Black often deferred to Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief academic officer, and Sharon Greenberger, the chief operating officer, giving them so much power that education officials jokingly referred to them as “chancellor,” the two aides said.

Meetings were rife with jockeying as senior officials tried to steer Ms. Black toward their view, the aides said. Mr. Polakow-Suransky and Ms. Greenberger served as gatekeepers, deciding which proposals to endorse and which to scuttle.

One of the few named sources in this NY Times article is Joe Williams of DFER, while failing to identify him as a charter school lobbyist:

“Anybody working on any plan for the last two and a half months had no assurance that it would ever get done rather than just having dust gather on top of it,” said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, who works closely with schools and education officials. “Not having a leader there makes them wonder why they are showing up every day to this giant bureaucratic blob.”

Clearly, Joe felt that the DOE under Black was not giving him and his hedgehog friends the sort of access they got when Klein was there.

Here’s another quote from the Times, this one from an anonymous source:

Among some charter school operators, there is also frustration. When new charter schools open, the Education Department guarantees most of them space. But there have been challenges to the space allocations, brought on by flawed plans that needed to be amended due to lack of detail or typographical errors.

The problems have also meant that e-mails and phone calls are not getting returned. “I’m trying to hang a sign on a building, and the czar of signs is not answering his phone,” said the head of a high-performing network of charter schools, who asked not to be named for fear of angering the department.

My guess that this quote is from Eva Moskowitz, who works closely with Joe. Few other charter operators would be so open about their desire to acquire space to admit frustration in "trying to hang a sign on a building".

So charter operators were fed up with the slowness of DOE to respond to their demands, especially as compared to Joel Klein, who was at Eva's beck and call and responded to every one of her innumerable emails.

Is the real explanation, then, that Black was fired because the privatizers complained that they weren’t getting their co-locations quick enough?

Who knows? My guess is that the story is far more simple: Cathie Black was fired because the mayor’s poll numbers were falling fast, down to 27% approval for his handling of education, in spite of the millions of dollars of TV ads he is paying for out of his own pocket. Wolfson, his political guru, probably told him the ads weren't working, and that he had to throw her overboard, fast. Loyalty only goes so far, after all.

Letters to the Times re high-stakes tests

Five letters were published in today's NY Times -- all pointing out flaws in their June 18 editorial about test-tampering, “That Cheats the Kids.” I wrote one of the letters about how the editorial completely missed the point about high-stakes testing -- that it makes the results unreliable. It is the system imposed by the city and increasingly the federal government that cheats our children; not the teachers.

Times article on Klein's campaign to fire teachers regardless of seniority provokes more questions than it answers

In yesterday’s paper, the NY Times writes about Joel Klein's campaign to have the legislature pass a law that would allow principals to fire teachers, regardless of their seniority.

Excerpt: In 2008, New York City began evaluating about 11,500 teachers based on how much their students had improved on standardized state exams. A Times analysis of the first year of results showed that teachers with 6 to 10 years of experience were more likely to perform well, while teachers with 1 or 2 years’ experience were the least likely.

This article confirms what all research shows, that experience leads to more effective teaching. In fact, there are only two objective, measurable correlatives to effective instruction: smaller classes and more experienced teachers, and yet the administration has done everything it can to prevent either one from taking hold in NYC public schools.


Yet the article glosses over or omits much critical information.

Why does Klein want principals to be able to fire teachers with more seniority? It is not because of their quality, or lack thereof, but because they cost more money.

Why would principals tend to fire more experienced teachers if they get the chance? Not because they are less effective, but because of the “fair student funding” scheme imposed by Klein, principals now have to pay for their higher salaries out of their limited school budgets, meaning they are forced to choose between higher class sizes and experienced teachers.

Why is it that given the similar squeeze on the police and fire budgets, no one in the administration is recommending that either the Commissioner of Police or Fire Department be able to fire staff regardless of seniority? Indeed, there would be huge public outcry if the administration proposed firing senior police officers or firefighters; even though in their cases, there is far less research to show their increased effectiveness.


Of course, no one would dare put into place a system where police captains had total control over the staffing in their precincts, and had to pay for it out a limited budget, regardless of changes in local conditions and/or spikes in crime. Or for all the police officers to be fired in a precinct to be replaced with newbies if the crime rate rose.

No, this is part of the concerted attack on the whole notion of professionalism in the teaching force, and an attempt to destroy anything (read the union) that might interfere with the administration’s free-market, deregulatory, pro-privatization education policies.

One more question: how did the NY Times get a hold of the teacher data reports, based on value-added analysis of student test scores, to allow them to do the analysis mentioned above? Weren’t they supposed to be confidential?

According to an email from Jenny Medina, the reporter on the story, the Times submitted a FOIL request last year and received the teacher data reports on the district level, without names attached. It allowed them to “do some analysis, albeit fairly limited.”

Yet it is astonishing to me that there is a system in place for the last three years, in which these reports (see sample to the right) are distributed to principals and teachers, and now the Times as well, yet no member of the public has been allowed to see or vet the mathematical model on which they are based. This is especially the case, as given the chance, principals will likely refer to these reports to determine who to lay off.

More than a year ago, in February of 2009, I FOILed for the value-added formula embedded in the teacher data reports; as well as the identity of the supposedly expert (but still secret) panel that had approved of its validity and reliability, and the DOE has still not provided this information.

Every few weeks, I get the same canned response from the DOE, that “due to the volume and complexity” of the requests they receive, as well as the need to determine whether any redactions are needed, additional time is required, and I that should expect a substantive response within a month. And then I get the same exact email a month later. So much for transparency!

What's especially dangerous about all this, of course, is that through the "Race to the Top" fund, Arne Duncan and the US Department of Education is pushing states to adopt similar schemes, with teacher evaluation, pay and tenure based on student test scores, without any independent vetting of the reliability of such systems.

In fact, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report last October, warning that these systems are not ready for prime time, and might do more harm than good if implemented on a broad scale. From their press release:

"Too little research has been done on these methods' validity to base high-stakes decisions about teachers on them. A student's scores may be affected by many factors other than a teacher -- his or her motivation, for example, or the amount of parental support -- and value-added techniques have not yet found a good way to account for these other elements...

From the NAS report itself:

In sum, value-added methodologies should be used only after careful consideration of their appropriateness for the data that are available, and if used, should be subjected to rigorous evaluation. At present, the best use of VAM techniques is in closely studied pilot projects. Even in pilot projects, VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness should not be used as the sole or primary basis for making operational decisions because the extent to which the measures reflect the contribution of teachers themselves, rather than other factors, is not understood. ....such estimates are far too unstable to be considered fair or reliable.

And yet little attention was given these vehement warnings of the nation's top academic experts in testing and statistics; with no mention in the NY Times or other national media, and no acknowledgement by the administration that their efforts to impose these models on the nation's school districts might be off track.

No, the motto of Joel Klein and Arne Duncan as well as their sponsors in the business community and the Gates Foundation continues to be: full speed ahead! And the reckless high-speed train of experimentation that threatens to run over our children's schools hurtles forward, without any end in sight.

Correction needed for Times article on charter school construction

The NY Times misreports yet another important education issue, this time as regards charter school construction. See our previous attempts to correct the record in their recent article on test score increases in NYC schools here and here.

As in the previous article, they uncritically buy the administration’s PR, and in the process, make several important factual errors.

The news that the administration was prepared to spend city capital funds to build new charter schools, despite the fact that the city receives no reimbursement from the state to do so, was first broken in June by Yoav Gonen of the NY Post here.

----

to: nytnews@nytimes.com

Dear Editors:

Your article from August 19 re charter school construction is replete with misinformation. First, the reporter writes: “School building in general has exploded in the last five years…..”

Correction no. 1: School construction has not "exploded"; in fact more school seats were built during the last six years of the Giuliani administration than during the first six of the Bloomberg administration.

See the chart above, from a chapter in the recent book, NYC schools under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know. As noted, the data comes directly from the Mayor’s Management Report.

And the new five year capital plan further cuts the number of new seats by 60% -- which will provide only approximately one third of the space necessary to eliminate overcrowding and reduce class size to state-mandated levels.

Three different reports, from the NYC Comptroller’s office, from the Manhattan Borough President, and from the Campaign for a Better Capital Plan, a consortium of advocacy groups, public school parents, and unions, all have pointed out how school construction has lagged considerably behind the need to eliminate overcrowding, reduce class size and meet our growing school-age population.

Correction no. 2. “…since the School Construction Authority for New York City financed about $13 billion worth of projects, some of them charter schools. In June, an additional $11.3 billion was allocated for public school construction over the next five years.”

Of the $13 billion in the previous capital plan, only $4.7 billion was allocated for public school construction. The rest went to maintenance, repair, facility enhancements, environmental remediation, technology (including for ARIS, the supercomputer used to crunch test scores) and other ancillary uses.

Moreover, of the $11.3 billion in the new capital plan, only $3.8 billion is for school construction.

Correction no. 3: “If they plan to build in neighborhoods that need more schools because of population growth, charter schools may now apply to dip into a $3.8 billion pool of state money for school construction.”

Actually, the $3.8 billion is not state money for school construction, but the amount of city funds allocated to school construction over the next five years, as noted above.

Moreover, though the state does provides 50% reimbursement for every dollar the city spends to build new regular public schools, the state does not reimburse the city for any funds spent on charter school construction.

Indeed, the reality is the reverse of what this statement implies. The fact that the DOE is now prepared to allocate a portion of its limited capital funds to build new charter schools with no reimbursement by the state, indicates that they are prepared to spend twice as much per seat for charter school students than for regular public school students.

Correction no. 4: the quotation from the head of the Center for Charter School Excellence: “As a result, charter schools often lease buildings or they start operations in unused public school space, he said.”

Unused public school space? This is incorrect. Perhaps you should have asked some of the parents or staff at PS 123, or one of the other many regular public schools that have lost classroom space and cluster rooms to charter schools over the last five years. These controversies have been widely reported in recent months, even occasionally in your paper, and should have been mentioned here.

I trust you will print these corrections ASAP.

Thanks,

Leonie Haimson

Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Stop the new grading system! petitions and fact sheets available

Each school’s grade and “progress report” will be distributed to parents at the parent/teacher conferences next week.

Time Out From Testing has put together excellent petitions and fact sheets, calling for a halt to the school grading system, showing how it is likely to further degrade the learning conditions at our schools. It would be very helpful if parents set up tables at their schools next week, and collect signatures.

• Download the fact sheet
• Download the petition

I have also posted an easily downloadable copy of my Daily News oped to hand out, with more information about why the grading system is inherently unfair and destructive. Petitions can be returned at the address below and I will get them to Time Out from Testing. thanks!

Class Size Matters, 124 Waverly Pl. New York, NY 10011

See also the many letters to the NY Times today -- all protesting the many inadequacies of the formula and the grading system itself.