Today's "Talk out of School" on PreK reopening and how to improve online learning

This morning, on my “Talk out of School” podcast, I spoke to Alice Mulligan, director of a preschool in Brooklyn and head of CBOs for Equity, whose school reopened last week.  She described the changes and renovations she had to make to ensure proper safety precautions, without help or reimbursement from the DOE. 

Alice almost had to cancel the interview when right before the broadcast, one of her students developed a runny nose.  As she explained, she hurriedly put on PPE and waited outside for the parents to come to pick up and take the child home.  Luckily, Alice was able to return to her office right before 10 AM to speak on the show. Just one of the many unpredictable events that educators will have to deal with during this unpredictable year.

Then I interviewed Tom Liam Lynch, director of education policy for the Center for NYC affairs and editor in chief  of InsideSchools, who explained their new project, InsideSchools plus, an online community site for parents to share information about their schools and express their concerns.   

Tom also helped develop the iLearn learning platform when he worked for DOE several years ago.  iLearn was used during this past summer school with  inconsistent results. Tom explained how he believes remote learning could be strengthened from the version that was implemented over the summer and last year, that is, if teachers are properly supported. He has also developed a free online course for parents to let them know how to help their children succeed with learning remotely. 

As I made clear during our discussion, I’m not a fan of online learning, and strongly believe that at its best, learning is a collective, social endeavor and that most students need the steady in-person support of their teachers to thrive. And yet given the fact that most students will be relegated to remote instruction for much of their time, even if they opted into in-person learning, it is important to try to improve upon the method by analyzing the failures of the past .

The NYC School Survey: Changes over time leading to possibly skewed results and how the survey could be improved

The following was written by the new research associate for Class Size Matters, Emily Carrazana. Take a look!

Since 2007, the NYC Department of Education has issued something called the “Learning Environment Survey,” administered to students, parents, and teachers to collect their views about each school's quality and the system as a whole. Every year between 2007 and 2014, when parents were presented with ten choices, class size came out as the top priority of 21% to 24% of parents when they were asked “Which of the following improvements would you most like your school to make (Choose ONE)?”  

In 2015, this question related to parents’ top priority was completely left out of the survey, possibly because then-Chancellor Farina seemed uninterested in listening to parents in general and especially on the need to lower class size. In fact, her peculiarly unique view was that class sizes in NYC schools were too small.   

  After significant pushback from Class Size Matters and others, this question was resurrected the following year, but with a few other "tweaks". While class size was still offered as one of the choices, options relating to more or less state test preparation were removed, and “a safer school environment” option was added. The phrasing on the choice of more enrichment programs was expanded from “Stronger enrichment programs” to “Stronger enrichment programs (e.g. afterschool programs, clubs, teams)”. 

This choice now became the only one that provided any additional descriptive information, including specific examples of what might qualify as an enrichment program. Before that point, the percent of parents choosing “enrichment programs” as their top priority had significantly fallen, from 19% in 2007 to 12% in 2014.  Unsurprisingly, in 2016 for the first time, the number of parents who chose enrichment exceeded those who chose class size –with enrichment the top choices of 23% to 27% of parents from that year onward, compared to class size at 20% to 21%.

(Take note of the sharp uptick in enrichment programs in year 2016, the same year that the wording changed)

This is not to downplay the importance that schools should place on improving their students’ access to extracurricular and afterschool programs, especially to parents, many of whom work a full day; but to highlight the way in which the question seems to have been altered that might have skewed the results.

For instance, it is reasonable to assume that had the option for smaller classes been elaborated on in a similar fashion, for instance - "Smaller class sizes (e.g. more small group instruction, one-on-one feedback from teachers,  resulting in a more cohesive class culture and fewer disruptions, all of which have been proven to result from class size reduction), more parents might have chosen this option as their highest priority. Admittedly, expanding each option into a long-winded description is not optimal or efficient for a survey design, and might have led to even more slanted results. Instead, all options should be presented in a manner that does not persuade respondents to distort their own priorities. 

Another change that may have resulted in smaller class sizes being knocked down from first place citywide was the rapid expansion of the preK program starting in the 2014-2015 school year, and the inclusion of the responses of thousands more parents whose children attended preK that year and the following one.  Moreover, only in 2015 did the DOE begin to include the responses in the survey results of parents at hundreds of private preK centers operated by community based organizations. 

PreK classes  are strictly limited by state law to class sizes of 18-20 students per class, depending on whether there are one or two teachers plus an aide; so it is not surprising that preK parents would not choose class size reduction as their top priority. The survey data also includes the responses from hundreds of thousands of parents of students with special needs who are in self-contained classes and/or attend District 75 programs, whose class sizes are limited to only 8 to 15 students.  

It is therefore understandable to see why these parents might not view lowering the size of their children’s classes as important as those whose children are crammed into classes of 25, 30 students or more; conditions which are quite common in NYC public schools.  To be more informative, it would be preferable to disaggregate and report separately the priorities of parents of students in District 75 programs and especially those enrolled in preK classes.

Information on how DOE officials analyze or use these survey results, if at all, is virtually untraceable. Any follow-up conducted by school administrators seem to be done on an entirely voluntary basis. While the DOE provides a few pre-populated worksheets and  PowerPoint decks with suggestions on how the overall results can be presented to and discussed by parents, nowhere in these documents can you find any mention that their priorities as reflected by their responses to this key question should be addressed. 

This is a disappointing omission, especially for an administration that claims to base their policies on a “Framework of Great Schools” centered on mutual respect and strong family ties,  and a Chancellor who often insists he wants to focus on “parent empowerment”.

If the Chancellor really wants this survey to be more useful, the actual structure of the question might also be changed. Parents are asked to choose from a list of nine options, all of importance, and select only one that they would most like to see improved in their child's school.  Instead of asking them to do the mental backflips needed to weigh the pros and cons of a safer school environment vs. more arts programs or hands-on learning, the question might allow them to assign corresponding priority levels to each area. For instance, 5 = Highest Priority, 4 = High Priority, 3 = Priority, 2 = Somewhat of a Priority, 1 = 1 Low Priority. This would be advantageous for administrators to inform decision-making at their schools.

What the DOE said last night about sending school transfer letters to parents and what the mayor said about reducing class size

Last night the Mayor, the Chancellor and NYC Department of Education officials spoke at a Town hall meeting for Manhattan parent leaders at P.S. 153, Adam Clayton Powell School.  A video of the entire meeting is posted here.  Mayor de Blasio and the Chancellor have scheduled these meetings in all the five boroughs as part of their push for the renewal of Mayoral control.  As de Blasio said last Friday at the Senate hearings on mayoral control and school governance, he knows they have to do a better job listening to parents and they will be trying to do so over the next few weeks.

Among the highlights (or low lights)  of the meeting:

Cheryl Watson- Harris, First Deputy Chancellor of DOE, admitted that they made a mistake sending letters to parents at schools that just made the state list in need of Comprehensive Support.  These letters said their children's schools were among the lowest-performing in the state and informed them they had the right to transfer their children to higher-performing schools. See yesterday's post about this.  Though the DOE claimed in the Principals Weekly this transfer option is required by federal law, that is  untrue.  The transfer option, known as "Public school choice" under the previous law NCLB is not required by either the feds or the state.

Rather than simply saying that sending these letters to parents was wrong, Watson-Harris said the letters went out "prematurely" and that the DOE would "support" any parents  "if their option is to go to another school."

See the video taken by Kaliris Salas-Ramirez at the meeting.

See also the video of Mayor de Blasio's comments below  that while he is aware that class size is the number one concern of parents (the issue has come up at every parent Town Hall meeting this year), he is looking for savings in the DOE budget and he cannot afford to hire more teachers to lower class size.

No one followed up by asking why the Mayor can afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on hiring more teachers to expand classes for four year old children and now three year olds,  but not a dime to hire more teachers to lower class size in Kindergarten or any higher grade.

In the above video, the Mayor claimed he is building more schools without any help from the federal government or the state, saying "It's our money." Actually, the state provides matching funds for every dollar the city spends on school construction or repair.

He also claimed that they are "making progress in the here and now" on relieving overcrowding and providing more school space.  The reality is that the new five-year capital plan is so back-loaded  that fifty thousand out of its fifty seven thousand new seats won't be built until 2024 or later - long after the he has left office.

By then our schools will likely be even more overcrowded than ever, due to rezonings and rampant housing development throughout the city, as well as the further expansion of 3K in our elementary schools.  This year they added 3K classes to seventeen schools that were already at 100% or more.

When de Blasio leaves office, his record in each of his two terms in building new school seats will be worse than that of any of Bloomberg's three terms. See below - with data taken from the Mayor's Management Report and the new proposed five-year capital plan.

See also this graph from our report The Impact of PreK on School Overcrowding on the projected timeline for finishing seats in DOE preK projects by year compared to K12 schools in de Blasio's first and second terms.  The contrast is stunning:

One more word about the Mayor's evident bias towards PreK.  A few weeks ago, I wanted to see to which elementary schools the DOE was admitting new 3K, preK and Kindergarten students for next year. Given the lack of transparency at DOE, the only way I could figure out how to do this was by logging into the DOE website, creating imaginary profiles for three young children, and searching to see which schools  had openings.  I never completed the application because I didn't want to disrupt or disturb the enrollment process at these schools.

Since then, I have received five emails from DOE urging me to finish my PreK application process for my imaginary three-year old and four-year old children, as well as a personal phone call this morning.  I have yet to receive a single email or call about completing the application process for my imaginary Kindergarten child.

All in all, the Mayor's focus on expanding PreK is so extreme that he has reneged on his responsibility to improve the learning conditions of NYC children once they turn five.