Today's scorecard on our schools: the news ain't pretty & the diagnosis bizarre

We have had nine long years during which NY state and city education officials have relentlessly focused on  high stakes testing, with school closings, grade retention, and teacher bonuses all linked to test scores.  So according to data released today, what have been the results?

• Test score tampering allegations are way up;

• So are suspensions;

• So are class sizes;

•  Meanwhile, our test scores on the most reliable national assessments are flat or declining.

So what do we need, according to NY education officials ?  Better tests.  Read it and weep.

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.

Children handcuffed in school; what is going on?

Two recent incidents provide yet more evidence that the situation with cops in the schools has gotten completely out of control.

Twelve days ago a ten year old girl was handcuffed on a school bus, and on Friday, a five year old boy was handcuffed at his elementary school and taken to a psychiatric hospital -- even after his babysitter came to pick him up. Both these children had serious disabilities which required more sensitive interventions.

According to the Daily News, the Kindergarten student, who suffers from attention deficit disorder, speech problems and asthma, has had nightmares ever since and will start seeing a psychologist soon.

The NYCLU and other advocacy groups have documented in detail repeated abuses of the police and safety agents in our schools-- whose number has grown until they now constitute the tenth largest police force in the country. Several times, even principals have been arrested for coming to the aid of students after they had been manhandled by safety agents.

In 2005, the DOE suspended more students than the entire student population of New Haven.

New legislation has been proposed, called the Student Safety Act, which would provide more transparency and oversight as regards disciplinary and security policies in our public schools. For more on this important issue, see the NYCLU website here.