Results from our Parent Action Conference: how should the eight billion dollars in state and federal funds for our schools be spent? check it out!

On Sat. May 22, 2021, we had a great Parent Action Conference, co-sponsored with NYC Kids PAC and Teens Take Charge, to brainstorm on how parents, educators and students would like the $8B in additional federal and state funds should be spent to meet our students' needs. Thanks to all her participated! 

 Our terrific keynote speakers were from the federal, state and local levels: former NYC principal and now US House Rep. Jamaal Bowman, State Senator Robert Jackson, who was a parent and former D6 School Board member and original CFE plaintiff, and former NYC teacher, City Councilmember Mark Treyger, now chair of the Council Education Committee.

We presented a brief power point (also below) that included more info on the resources our schools are receiving, and summarized the results of our online survey. We then broke into six different groups focused on Elementary schools, Middle and High Schools, Students with Disabilities, Multi Language Learners, Health and Safety, and a student group led by Teens Take Charge. Members of our groups wanted to emphasize the need for smaller classes, more counselors and social workers, a nurse for every building, more extracurricular activities and programs and more. 

 Here is a recording of the session with Passcode: w!vhA8LG. The Jamboard with ideas from our breakout groups is also below.   

Latest Talk out of School podcast with Jasmine Gripper of AQE and MS principal Michael Perlberg

Check out the latest #TalkoutofSchool with AQE's Jasmine Gripper on what state budget deal is looking like for NYC & MS principal Michael Perlberg on challenges faced by his school this year & what students should be offered next year to help them recover & reconnect. 

Resources: 

• New Class Size Matters report on overspending on charter facilities and underspending on public school matching funds
• Daily News article; and WCBS TV segment on the lack of matching funds.
• AQE: Send a letter to Gov. Cuomo and state leaders on protecting students in the state budget by taxing the ultra-wealthy
• More on Outward Bound NYC public schools, including MS 839.
• Gothamist article on different proposals that have been made for the use of the federal funds, including reducing class size.

More sloppy & non-fact based journalism from NY Times on charter schools

David Leonhardt

David Leonhardt's latest NY Times column touting charter schools is full of bogus claims and sloppy journalism.  He inveighs against progressive critics, writes that he wants a fact-based debate over education reform “in a more nuanced, less absolutist way than often happens" but then adds: "Initially, charters’ overall results were no better than average. But they are now." The link is to a CREDO website that doesn't show this.

The most recent CREDO national study of charters from 2013 examined charters in 26 states plus NYC and found significant (if tiny) learning gains in reading on average but none in math.  CREDO is generally considered a pro-charter organization, funded by the Walton Foundation and many independent scholars have critiqued its methodology.

Moreover, the main finding of the 2013 study was that the vast majority of charter schools do no better than public schools, as Wendy Lecker has pointed out.  In 2009, CREDO found, 83 percent of charters had the same or worse results in terms of test scores than public schools, and in 2013, about 71-75 percent had the same or worse results.

Finally, to the extent that in some urban districts, there are studies showing that charters outperform public schools on test scores,  there are many possible ways to explain these results, including an overemphasis on test prep, differential student populations, peer effects, higher student attrition rates and under-funding of most urban public schools.

Leonhardt also writes that "The harshest critics of reform, meanwhile, do their own fact-twisting. They wave away reams of rigorous research on the academic gains in New Orleans, Boston, Washington, New York, Chicago and other cities, in favor of one or two cherry-picked discouraging statistics. It’s classic whataboutism. "

Yet three out of these four links have nothing to do with charter schools, nor are they peer-reviewed studies. The NYC study by Roland Fryer instead focuses on which attributes of NYC charter schools seemed to be correlated with higher test scores compared to other NYC charter schools.

The Chicago link goes to a NY Times column Leonhardt himself wrote on overall increases in test scores and graduation rates in Chicago public schools that doesn’t even mention charter schools.  The DC link also is far from “rigorous research,” but sends you to a DCPS press release about the increase in 2017 PARCC scores, with again no mention of charter schools, or even “reform” more broadly.  

 

If there is indeed “reams of rigorous research” supporting charter schools, one might expect that Leonhardt would link to at least one actual, rigorous study showing this. 

Leonhardt's previous column on charter schools discussed this recent report from Doug Harris of Tulane's  Education Research Alliance on the improved results of New Orleans charter schools.  Others including Mercedes Schneider have critiqued the Harris study.  I immediately focused on the section of the report in which Harris mentions possible alternative explanations for these schools' academic progress, including their substantial increased funding after Katrina.  

After citing the the abundant research that spending matters when it comes to student outcomes, and admitting that the NOLA schools saw a $1,358 funding increase per student after privatization, Harris then argues:

It is questionable, however, whether the results from these studies provide a valid indication of the counterfactual in this case. First, the corruption and dysfunction in the Orleans Parish School Board prior to the storm implies that the additional resources would not have been used to generate better outcomes to the extent that the average district did in the above school funding studies. Second, the city’s spending increase, which came mainly from local funding and philanthropists, may have been partly caused by the reforms. The same inefficiencies that led to public disenchantment with the local OPSB pre-Katrina led to a widespread perception in the city that the reforms improved schools (Cowen Institute, 2016). This increased public support likely contributed to political support for local property tax levies and the backing of philanthropists that produced the spending increase. Any effect of spending on student outcomes, in this sense, may not be just an alternative explanation, but rather an indirect effect of the reforms. Therefore, while spending almost certainly contributed to the overall effect, it is unclear whether it was a substantial cause.

Here Doug Harris maintains that he doesn't even have to attempt to disentangle the differential impact of increased funding in NOLA schools on student outcomes from their charterization, since in his estimation, it was unlikely that philanthropic support or increased local spending would have occurred without privatization happening first.  Thus he posits that the political will to fund schools properly was an effect of charterization, and thus not a possible cause of their academic improvements - a speculative argument at best.

One could study whether increased funding for schools has occurred primarily in those school districts that charters have taken over.  One could also analyze the degree to which public support for public schools has become dependent on their privatization.  Harris doesn't attempt either, as far as I know.  In any case, if either statement is true, this says more about the weaknesses in our political system than the inherent quality of charter schools.

Leonhardt, of course, doesn't mention this weakness of Harris' argument in his column on the NOLA report, nor does he mention any of the evidence that the growth of charter schools nationally has also been associated with reports of corruption, increased segregation, suspension rates, abuse of student rights, and loss of funding for democratically-governed public schools, as the recent NPE/Schott report card points out, among others. 

Research studies focusing on other aspects of the corporate “reform” agenda more generally, including the implementation of the Common Core, teacher evaluation linked to test scores, more closures of public schools, and expansion of online learning, have shown generally dismal academic results.  It is indeed time to engage in more “fact-based” discussions of these trends, and I would urge NY Times columnists like Leonhardt to start doing so.  

Bob Herbert and I talk about hot-button education issues; segregation, testing, charter schools, Betsy DeVos, teacher strikes and more!

Recently I had the pleasure of appearing on Bob Herbert's Op-Ed. TV show on CUNY-TV.  We spoke about segregation in our public schools, charter schools, testing, Betsy Devos' visit to NYC, class size, teacher strikes, how the Democratic party needs to reclaim the issue of equitable education, and more.

I'm so grateful to be able to discuss about these issues in depth rather than be limited to a soundbite in the mainstream media.  Bob used to have a regular column in the NY Times where he wrote incisively and passionately about many about these issues.  Sadly, the Times no longer has anyone on either the editorial staff or op-ed page who focuses on public education with a progressive point of view. Instead, too often we see pieces authored by charter school cheerleaders.  Please watch the segment below and let me know what you think!  thanks Leonie