Yet another unconvincing report on the results of Bloomberg's school closure policies

Update: the Research Alliance tweeted that discharge rates were decreasing over this period; though this is not what our discharge report found according to DOE data between 2000-2007, see Figure 2.  Another issue ignored by their report; the well-documented use of sub-standard credit recovery to boost graduate rates in the closing schools of over 10%. 

Yesterday, another dubious report was released by the Research Alliance, claiming better outcomes for students as a result of Bloomberg's draconian school closure policy.  A major problem with the study is that it doesn't examine the well-documented destabilizing impact of closing these schools on other large high schools nearby, as discussed in this New School report.

Nor does the report mention the issue of soaring discharge rates at the closing schools.  In fact, the word "discharge" is never used in either the report or the technical appendix.

In the report Jennifer Jennings and I wrote on the DOE's rising discharge rate between 2000 and 2007, we found this problem especially evident at the closing schools, with rates as high as 50% for the last two graduating classes at closing schools.  See this graph :

Theoretically, these students were supposed to have transferred into another high school or GED program program outside the NYC public school system, and thus were not counted as dropouts -- but probably should have been.  Indeed, a subsequent audit from the NYS Comptroller's office revealed that 15% of general ed students reported by the DOE as discharges should have been categorized as dropouts, and 20% of special ed students.  Probably an even larger percentage from the closing schools were really dropouts.

The Research Alliance was founded with $3 million in Gates Foundation funds and is maintained with Carnegie Corporation funding, which help pay for this report.  These two foundations promoted and helped subsidize the closing of large schools and their replacement with small schools; although the Gates Foundation has now renounced the efficacy of this policy.  Michele Cahill, for many years the Vice President of the Carnegie Corporation, led this effort when she worked at DOE.

The Research Alliance has also been staffed with an abundance of former DOE employees from the Bloomberg era.  In the acknowledgements, the author of this new study, Jim Kemple, effusively thanks one such individual,  Saskia Levy Thompson:

The author is especially grateful for the innumerable discussions with Saskia Levy Thompson about the broader context of high school reform in New York City over the past decade.  Saskia's extraordinary insights were drawn from her more than 15 years of work with the City's schools as a practitioner at the Urban Assembly, a Research Fellow at MDRC, a Deputy Chancellor at the Department of Education and Deputy Director for the Research Alliance. 

Levy Thompson was Executive Director of the Urban Assembly, which supplied many of the small schools that replaced the large schools, leading to better outcomes according to this report -- though one of these schools, the Urban Assembly for Civic Engagement, is now on the Renewal list.

After she left Urban Assembly, Levy Thompson  joined MDRC as a "Research Fellow," despite the fact that her LinkedIn profile indicates no relevant academic background or research skills.  At MRDC, she "helped lead a study on the effectiveness of NYC’s small high schools," confirming  the efficacy of some of the very schools that she helped start.  Here is the first of the controversial MRDC studies she co-authored in 2010, funded by the Gates Foundation, that unsurprisingly found improved outcomes at the small schools.  Here is my critique of the follow-up MRDC report.

In 2010, Levy Thompson left MRDC to head the DOE Portfolio Planning office, tasked with creating more small schools and finding space for them within existing buildings, which required that the large schools contract or better yet, close.

And where is she now?  Starting Oct. 5, Saskia Levy Thompson now runs the Carnegie Corporation's Program for "New Designs for Schools and Systems," under LaVerne Evans Srinivasan, another former DOE Deputy Chancellor from the Bloomberg era  Here is the press release from Carnegie's President, Vartan Gregorian:

 We are delighted that Saskia, who has played an important role in reforming America’s largest school system, is now joining the outstanding leader of Carnegie Corporation’s Education Program, LaVerne Evans Srinivasan, in overseeing our many investments in U.S. urban education.

How cozy! In this way, a revolving door ensures that the very same DOE officials who helped close these schools continue to control the narrative, enabling them to fund -- and even staff -- the organizations that produce the reports that retroactively justify and help them perpetuate their policies. 

MDRC report on NYC small schools and gaming graduation rates

 

The latest version of the Gates-funded reports from MDRC has been released, showing graduation rates for NYC students who were assigned to the new small schools through the supposedly random HS admissions process were 6 to 9.5 percent higher compared to those who “lost” the lottery and were assigned to large schools instead.  Overall, it has some of the same weaknesses that I noted – along with others in the previous report:  

1-The comparison groups are not necessarily equally matched – it does not separate out free and reduced lunch students, who are expected to have very different outcomes.

2 – The comparison also does not separate out special education students who are severely disabled – those that are taught in a regular classroom vs. those assigned to self-contained classes.

Indeed, though it claims comparable figures in both sets of schools, the authors admit that for both special education students and English language learners, “the sample sizes for these subgroups” at the small schools were so limited they could not compare outcomes between both sets of students.

3- Not all small schools held lotteries, as not all of them were oversubscribed – only presumably the more popular schools which may have been those with the most successful outcomes.

Assuming that there are real advantages to attending a small school, there could be many reasons for this higher rates unmentioned in the report:

•  Peer effects:  given that a student has to attend an information session and apply to a small school, this screens out many of the most at-risk kids, including recent immigrants, those with unstable home lives and “over-the-counter” students – those who do not enter the high school application process and who, according to most accounts, are usually assigned to the large schools.  The effect of being in a class along with other more actively engaged students or those with more ambitious parents may in itself bring substantial benefits – apart from any quality inherent in the school itself.

• Though the report cites no difference in 10^th grade average class sizes (28), stats apparently drawn from the state report cards, this is highly unlikely, as many large high schools feature classes at the union contractual maximum of 34.  Generally small schools have been able to cap enrollment and thus class size at lower levels than the large schools.  In fact, the report says that the new schools were chosen by DOE according to whether they planned to have their teachers “responsible for a manageable number of students” with a “reduced teacher load” –which is unlikely to occur with class sizes at the contractual maximum.

•  During the Bloomberg administration, there has been tremendous pressure placed on New York City teachers to pass at least 80 percent of their students, and to boost their scores on Regents exams – with schools graded and teachers evaluated on the results. Until this year, in fact, teachers graded the Regents exit exams of students at their own schools, with staff at small schools marking the exams of their own students. 

See the terrific book by John Owens who worked at one of the small schools, entitled  Confessions of a Bad Teacher – making clear the immense pressure imposed on teachers to graduate as many students as quickly as possible. Given that the small schools have younger teachers and those less likely to have institutional memories of the way things used to be, the more likely it is that they will be responsive to these pressures.  As the report notes, principals appreciated how their teachers were more “adaptable.”

• Yet another issue that the report fails to address is how the rapid increase of small schools that are more space intensive and capped their enrollments at lower levels exacerbated conditions at the large schools– making them even more overcrowded with the highest need students, and significantly diminishing their educational opportunities.  Although the report notes that graduation rates have increased to a lesser extent at the large schools as well, many schools that had been relatively successful soon found themselves on the failing lists – including Lehman HS and quite a few others.

•  Finally, data is a funny thing and graduation rates can be calculated in all sorts of ways.  The state and the DOE both claim that the city’s graduation rates for the class of 2010 was 61 percent. The MDRC report estimates graduation rates for the same year in their study for students at the small schools at 74.6 percent and 65.1 percent for the matched comparison group – suggesting that those who applied to small schools were a comparatively higher achieving group, even among those “randomly” assigned to large schools.

Yet the most recent analysis from Education Week published last June showed NYC graduation rates for the class or 2010 at 54 percent. Among the 50 largest districts in the nation, only Albuquerque, Denver and Detroit had lower rates; with NYC tied with Milwaukee. Why the difference? 

EdWeek’s methodology is complex, but it basically calculates the graduating rate by comparing the number of students that enter high school each year to those who are promoted to the next grade, and then graduate four years later with a regular high school degree – figures that are hard to fudge.  In contrast, the state and the DOE exclude all students who are said to have transferred out of district or to private or parochial schools or who are “discharged” – including those who leave for GED programs.  

The oversight for student transfers and discharges is notoriously lax.  In a report I co-authored several years ago, we found a very high and rising discharge rate in NYC schools.  This report led to a 2011 audit from the NY State Comptroller’s office, which stated that more than half of all discharges lacked proper documentation; and that even after extensive searches by DOE, 10-15 percent of discharges should have been reported as dropouts. There has been no audit since. The MDRC study reports that data for fully 19 percent of students who entered both small schools and large couldn’t be found four years later.

The EdWeek list of graduation rates of the largest school districts in the country for the class of 2010 are here and below.  Official DOE figures show that the rate has only declined slightly since then.  Almost as disturbing is that NYC is the only district listed among the fifty that failed to provide enough information for EdWeek to conclude whether its graduation rate is higher or lower than would be predicted, given the demographic background of the students.  So much for transparency at Tweed!

District Grad Rates 2010 from Education Week by CSM

DeWitt Clinton HS: another victim of the Bloomberg preference to close schools rather than allow them to improve

DeWitt Clinton High School

The Bloomberg administration has been defined by its determination to close as many schools as possible, and has shut more than a hundred so far, rather than make attempts to improve them. It is now threatening to close down DeWitt Clinton High School, one of the last remaining large schools in the Bronx, with a renowned history. Over its 115 years, its alumni have included 32 Oscar, Emmy and/or Tony Award winners, 11 Pulitzer Prize winners, 5 Olympic medalists, and 54 current or former members of the NY State Supreme Court. 

Just 13 years ago, Clinton was ranked among the top 100 high schools in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report.  But then came the Gates-funded small schools initiative, as implemented by Bloomberg/Klein, which undermined all the large comprehensive high schools in the Bronx through overcrowding.  For at least the last six years, Clinton has been at 120 percent utilization, with nearly one thousand more students than it was designed to hold. 

Perhaps as a consequence of this overcrowding, many of its classes have 34 students or more -- far above the goals of 25 or less in the city's Contract for Excellence plan.  Moreover, in March, 2011, almost two years ago, a “joint intervention team” of the State Education Department and the city recommended changes in leadership: 

·         Assign new leadership with the capacity to clearly communicate and implement a plan for improving student achievement in ELA and mathematics, including ELLs and students with disabilities.  

·         Develop a new leadership team with a focus on improving instruction to include differentiated instruction and the infusion of higher level thinking skills into the instructional program for all students.

Yet nothing was done: not a reduction in class size to allow for differentiated instruction; not a lessening of overcrowding, and not a change in leadership. Despite all these problems, Clinton students exhibit relatively high rates of college readiness, a goal that the DOE claims to care about most. According to the recent Progress Reports, the school’s students average SAT scores of 422-437; a hundred points higher than the scores of the high school that DOE says is the best in the city.

In response to concerns expressed by State Commissioner King, the DOE promised last year to refrain from continuing to flood high-needs students in certain schools, which consultants to DOE had pointed out years ago relegated them to failure.  From Alan’s description, DOE does not seem to have followed through with its promise in the case of Clinton. 

It is obvious what should be done to improve a school: refrain from overcrowding it, do not overwhelm it with high numbers of at-risk students, reduce class size, and if this doesn’t work, replace the principal. Yet the DOE has taken none of these steps. One has to wonder if they purposefully want the school to fail so they can close it down. 

A community forum to help determine the fate of DeWitt Clinton will take place on Thursday December 6, 2012 from 6-8 in the auditorium. The school is located at 100 West Mosholu Parkway South, Bronx, NY 10468.  Here is Alan Ettman’s account; for more information, you can contact him at 917-613-7047, aettman@optonline.net.

The NYC Dept. of Education has included DeWitt Clinton HS in the Bronx on its recently released list of “failing schools”, which means that it may shut down Clinton – a school that is more than 100 years old - within the next year.  Clinton is one of a few large comprehensive high schools remaining in NYC; the others having been undermined then closed by the DOE.  This policy of closing schools rather than helping them is part of the effort of “reformers” to privatize public education.

There has been a systematic sabotage of large high schools by the Bloomberg administration.  After more than a decade in office there are more and more schools that, based on the Department of Education’s questionable “Progress Reports,” are slated to close.   We believe that schools do not fail, which is what education “reformers” claim; rather, it is policies that fail.

In 1999, U.S. News and World Report listed Clinton as one of the 96 outstanding schools in the country.  During the Bloomberg regime, the school has declined to a point where we now have received an “F” on the city’s dubious report card.

The story of our decline, like that of dozens of high schools in NYC, is a tale of bad policies, lack of support, and statistical calculations that favor newly created small schools over large comprehensive ones.  Over the past few years, we have watched as the city funneled high needs students into specific schools, and then closed those schools based on declining scores.  DeWitt Clinton is one of those schools which have been flooded with students who are known to be the most challenging to educate. 

Currently DeWitt Clinton has 748 students who are English Language Learners (ELLs), which is 19% of the total school population, and 556 Special Education students which accounts for 13% of the school.  (Many of the Bloomberg-created small schools have 400-500 students in the entire school.)  It should come as no surprise, then, that the number of Clinton students who graduate in four years is below the city average – the population of incoming students is simply a different caliber and requires extra services than those that we are being measured against. (However, the number of students who graduate in six years is 71.5%, which is higher than the city-wide average.) To those critics that say DeWitt Clinton is just a dropout factory, we say in response that it is the city’s policies that have created this dropout factory.

Other factors that are relevant include the fact that our per-pupil spending is lower than city-wide norms; the number of students whose families are considered poor is higher than the city average; and the number of students who have low scores, poor attendance and/or discipline issues in middle school is quite high.  For example, out of a current incoming class of 950 students, more than 100 were considered long term absents (LTAs) in 8^th grade and more than 100 failed a majority of their 8^th grade classes.  It is the current administration’s practice of closing schools based on assessments that do not take certain factors into account that are too heavy-handed and ignore the reality of the lives and environment of our students.  Indeed, there were a number of schools on the potential closing list from last year which have improved their performance and are no longer being considered for closure.  It would seem to us that this measure of closing our school – which is so rich with tradition and history – is drastic, when it has been proven that additional time, resources and investment can result in a school’s rebound and improvement. 

The Mayor has chosen his toughest battles for his final political year. With the potential closings of more high schools, we are witnessing Bloomberg touting his agenda of opening small schools (which have not been shown to be any more effective than the large schools) in one last ditch attempt to claim that his educational policies are successful, despite the concerns of the community, current students and education professionals.

Despite the factors described above, we are proud of our significant achievements.  DeWitt Clinton offers more than a dozen Advanced Placement classes, has a large number of highly engaging student  clubs (which faculty supervise without pay because of budget shortages), and approximately 30 athletic teams.  The number of students who attend public colleges and who earn at least 30 credits in their first two years is 61%, which virtually matches the NY State average of 61.5%.  Our students attend some of the best universities in the country – the honors program at DeWitt Clinton High School is still so highly regarded that college recruiters make it a point to recruit our students because of the quality education they have received.  These are the same students that continually demonstrate the fine teaching being practiced at Clinton, through AP scores that far exceed city and national averages.  Bronx middle schools continue to send their best and brightest to Clinton because we serve these gifted minority students. None of this is factored into the school report cards, but it is widely known in the Bronx education community.  There are simply too many good things happening here at Clinton for the city’s “solution” to be closure.

Many students do thrive in small schools; however, it is the large schools that offer a wide array of course offerings, extra-curricular activities and traditions.   It would be a shame to close the last comprehensive high school on the west side of the Bronx – and one of only a handful left in NYC.  We believe strongly that the tradition of our school extends beyond the current student population, teachers and administration – the institution of DeWitt Clinton is 115 years old, and we owe it to future generations to keep this rich tradition alive.   The list of our notable alumni is 38 pages long and includes such luminaries as James Baldwin, Richard Avedon, Ralph Lauren, Paddy Chayefsky, Countee Cullen, Avery Fisher, Irving Howe, Robert Klein, Stan Lee, Neil Simon, Burt Lancaster, Tracy Morgan, Charles Rangel, and many others.

There will be a public hearing to discuss the fate of our school on Thursday December 6 from 6 – 8 PM.  It is my hope that this event can be covered and that the story of the undermining of the NYC public school system be addressed. -- Alan Ettman

Concerns with the MDRC study on small schools released today

MDRC released a  study today, which the NY Times writes “appeared to validate the Bloomberg administration’s decade-long push to create small schools to replace larger, failing high schools.” The report mentions the current controversy over the massive number of school closings, here in NYC and across the country, and thus there may be a political element in the timing of its release:

MDRC’s findings about SSCs are relevant to current federal policy on high school reform, particularly the U. S. Department of Education’s School Improvement Grants (SIGs) for failing schools. Reforms funded by SIGs include school transformation, school restart, school closing, and school turnaround. SSCs straddle several of these categories since they are typically replacements for schools that have closed and they operate as regular public schools.

This is the second MDRC study to conclude that students who attended the new small schools had significantly improved outcomes.  The first MDRC study, released in 2010, looked at students who entered these schools in 2005; this one adds students who entered in 2006 to that group.

I have a lot of reservations about using this study or the previous study to justify the small schools initiative and especially to justify the current massive round of school closings.  I am no expert in statistics, but my concerns revolve around these issues: 

1-      Though the study points out that the small schools were supposedly “unscreened” and evaluates their results by comparing the outcomes of students who applied to the school through lotteries,  compared to those who lost the lottery, it  ignores that the students who attended these small schools were far less high-needs on average, as evidence by their lower rates of English language learners and special needs, as shown by this Annenberg study by Pallas and Jennings.  In fact, they were allowed to openly exclude special needs students during the first two years. Thus even with a “lottery” for admissions, there are substantial peer effects for students who are grouped with higher-achieving students which this study does not mention.  (This is also a problem with many of the charter school studies, like this one, which tend to ignore peer effects.)

2-      The results in terms of higher graduation rates and college readiness (based on Regents scores and credit accumulation) ignore how in NYC, teachers and principals are able manipulate these in ways that do not reflect real learning (especially as teachers grade the Regents of students in their own schools, and in these schools, their own students!)  It has also been alleged that the small schools pioneered the now widespread and largely discredited practice of “credit recovery.” With newer teachers at many of the small schools, who did not have a memory or tradition as to earlier practices, it may have been easier to pressure these teachers into employing such methods.

3-      The study ignores that the small schools on average were allowed to have smaller classes and were far less overcrowded than the large high schools, which legitimately could have led to better results.  The class size at the small schools during these years were from 13 to 20 students per class, according to the PSA first year report, compared to 30 or more at the larger schools.  If the higher needs students in the larger schools had been provided with smaller classes, very likely their chance of success would have been improved substantially as well.

4-      Yet the study doesn’t examine how the opening of the small schools had a negative impact on the system as a whole, by flooding nearly large high schools with the most disadvantaged and academically challenged students, leading to even more overcrowding, larger class sizes, and damaging their opportunity to learn, as reported by many observers and confirmed by the New School’s report, The New Marketplace.

5-      The MDRC study deals with only a subsection of the small schools that were oversubscribed and required a lottery for admissions, so like the charter school studies which use a similar methodology, their success rate may not be representative of small schools overall.

6-      It study ignores the reality that these so-called random “lotteries” may be far from actually random. The MDRC study compares the baseline characteristics of students who “won” the lotteries to those who lost, in a  Supplemental Table 1, which purports to show that both groups were “virtually identical”; but the comparison does not include students who required collaborative team-teaching or self-contained classes; does not include  prior attendance rates, a key factor that principals often examing when selecting students; and does not differentiate between free and reduced price lunch students.  The table also does not include data on previous rates of suspension.  According to an earlier evaluation done by Policy Studies Associates. the ninth graders who entered the small schools had far better attendance records (91% compared to 81%), and were less likely to have been suspended as 8^th graders compared to students at the schools they replaced.

Even in the categories the MRDC study does compare, there are greater numbers of higher achieving students, though the differences are not statistically significant, according to the model used.   Most strangely, the table compares the baseline data for four cohorts – entering ninth-graders from the 2004-2005 to 2007-2008 years; while the report compares outcomes for only the first two of these cohorts, students who entered these schools from 2005-6 and 2006-7. This is despite the fact that that the need level of students increased significantly after that point – and likely, the challenges faced by these schools as well.  See the above chart, for example, from the Annenberg study by Jennings and Pallas.

I have no idea why the MRDC study lumped together all these cohorts to examine their baseline characteristics, even as they only compared the outcomes for the first two, but it may considerably bias their conclusions.  Indeed, more than half of the middle and high schools being closed by the DOE this year for poor results are small schools that were founded after 2003.

7- There are several ways in which, especially in the early years of the small schools initiative, principals were able to manipulate the admissions process to get the students who were more likely to succeed, even though by definition these schools were supposedly “unscreened” and used “random” lotteries for admissions.  See this excerpt from a published study by Jennifer Jennings, who embedded herself with three small schools between March 2004 and September 2005: 

My observations revealed that many schools used applications, mandatory information sessions, and much stronger language to deter unwanted applicants. For example, 12 unscreened schools shared a similar application requiring that students provide the most recent report card and two letters of recommendation, one from an eighth-grade teacher and one from a guidance counselor, assistant principal, or principal. The application also asked for the student’s test scores, retention history, and involvement in advanced courses during the eighth grade. Finally, the application included additional questions requiring a narrative response….

The district’s application system provided opportunities for unscreened schools to choose higher achieving students. Through this computer system, each school received a list of students applying to the school, although the school did not know whether the student ranked it, for example, 1st or 12th. ….

The district’s application system provided opportunities for unscreened schools to choose higher achieving students. Through this computer system, each school received a list of students applying to the school, although the school did not know whether the student ranked it, for example, 1st or 12th. This data file included each student’s English-language-learner and special education classification, reading and math test scores, absences, grades, address, and junior high school. Schools were told to identify students who made an ‘‘informed choice’’ by assigning them a 1, while students who did not make an informed choice but the school was willing to accept were assigned a 2. If the school did not fill all of its seats with students making an informed choice, additional seats would be filled by students in the second category.  The Department of Education prohibits unscreened schools from using student performance data to select students. Nonetheless, both Marlena and Anna [pseudonyms for two principals of small schools] learned through their relationships with other principals that such regulations were loosely enforced….

 In addition to the English language learners and full-time special education students whom new schools had a waiver to eliminate, Renaissance [pseudonym for one of these small schools] eliminated part-time special education students and chose only those with 90 percent or higher attendance. Excel eliminated full- and part-time special education students and chose students with attendance rates of 93 percent or higher. 

There are many more revealing insights in the Jennings study about how the small schools were able to deflect over-the-counter students and counsel out low-performers to achieve better results, despite the fact that they claimed to be non-selective.  (Update: I have removed the link to the paper at the author's request; the abstract is here.)

All of these concerns  should provide one with reservations about the validity of the MDRC study and especially its apparent endorsement of the mayor's policies.

Powerful play blasting DOE's school closure policies

Check out the performance of the play "Declassified: Struggle for Existence (We Used to Eat Lunch Together)" at the off-Broadway Abingdon Theater in NYC. The play was written and performed by students at Queens Collegiate and Jamaica High Schools, directed by Brian Pickett of Queensborough Community College.

Jamaica is now slated for closure by the NYC Department of Education, while Queens Collegiate is a newer, better-funded small school with a more selective admissions process, that offers more opportunities for students and has taken space in the Jamaica building.

The play, initially banned by the schools' principals because it was too critical of the DOE's decision to close Jamaica, is a powerful critique of the current direction of education reform in NYC and the nation as a whole, in which those making policies for our schools have decided that the best way to improve them is to close them down.

It also points out the huge inequities involved in the small schools initiative, which provides students in the small schools with more space, better equipment, more textbooks and smaller classes than students in the large schools, who were deprived of these conditions in the first place, and are subjected to even worse conditions while their schools are phased out.

Also see this excellent report by the Urban Youth Collaborative, with evidence of the challenges the schools slated for closure face, overwhelmed with high-needs students that the new small schools did not enroll, and yet given no support for their efforts to improve. The report also reveals the spike in dropout and discharge rates as these schools phase out.

The performance is followed by a discussion with the audience.

Jamaica HS- Declassified: Struggle for Existence (We Used to Eat Lunch Together) from Grassroots Education Movement on Vimeo.

Leaked DOE memo: "Everyone is not alike"

One of the many unproven large-scale experiments on NYC kids is the rapid move towards more CTT (inclusion) classes for special needs children who were formerly in more small scale settings. The push towards CTT often happens regardless of the student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

The leaked memo Rachel Monahan disclosed yesterday in the Daily News revealed a high number of special education students suspended in the Bronx, many of them emotionally disturbed, many of them from the new small high schools. These findings are in line with the NYCLU report, showing a sharp rise in suspensions under Bloomberg and Klein, with fully one third of those suspended special education students.

The leaked memo further points out that many of these students were placed in inclusion classes in the Bronx in small schools. These small schools by and large do not offer the 12-1-1 settings that these students often require and are mandated according to their IEPs.

This situation will likely worsen in the future as the DOE closes down more large high schools,and is simultaneously expanding CTT programs, while pushing for maximum class sizes of 34 in all CTT high school classes.

In addition, despite numerous pleas, the Regents ruled that there can be a higher percentage of special education students (exceeding 40 percent) in these classes.

Like the leaked Parthenon report from 2008, which revealed how DOE was informed in advance of how they had set the large high schools up for failure by sending them large numbers of overage students, this leaked memo shows just how careless those who work at Tweed truly are.

Sometimes, critics of DOE (like me) assume they don’t understand their policy errors, but often, they have even more evidence of their mistakes than we do, which they heedlessly ignore. It is shocking how careless adults can be with kids’ lives.

See excerpt from the memo above, which points out not all students are alike. But in the DOE flawed system, everyone is. Every NYC child is a victim of their unfounded ideas.