A warning to Australians: don't let your kids suffer, as have ours!

This week, Joel Klein is visiting Australia to promote his educational policies and perspective. To alert Aussies to the disinformation campaign he will likely be spreading, we have deconstructed a recent interview on Australian TV with Klein, carried out by journalist Kerry O'Brian, and aired last month on Australian TV.

[The full video of the Klein interview is here and the transcript here.]

Question: "You can't have a system corrupted or distorted by a principal under pressure or a principal that wants to boost his or her status by encouraging teachers at the school to go soft on the students in tests to help them cheat in effect?"

JOEL KLEIN: "It's happened on a handful of occasions since I’ve been here and we’ve terminated principals, terminated a couple of teachers at one point, but I don't think systematically that's a powerful explanation.

And even before our system there was a Federal system here in the US under "no child left behind." So schools are under a certain amount of pressure, but I don't think somebody is going to imperil their livelihood by taking the risk of trying to have students cheat on exams."

In reality, there is now rampant test prep in NYC schools – as well as many serious allegations of cheating – few of which are ever followed up by this administration, even when the allegations are based on reliable evidence from people on the ground. In fact, many principals have been promoted and given bonuses whose schools have seen large and unexplained boosts in test scores. See for example this article, detailing allegations about cheating at one school, where test scores jumped 30 points in one year, where Chancellor Joel Klein spoke at the school's graduation while wearing a "Best School in the Universe" T-shirt.

In fact, Klein doesn’t appear to care what’s causing test scores to rise, as long as they do. And as pointed out by independent experts like Diane Ravitch, as well as in the NY Times and elsewhere, test scores on state exams have not been matched by NYC's results on the more reliable national assessments called the NAEPs. Indeed, an analysis of NAEP scores between 2003-2007 reveals that NYC came in 10^th out of 11 urban school districts across the nation in changes in test score changes over the course of this administration.

JOEL KLEIN: "The class sizes have reduced…”

Actually, Joel Klein has stubbornly refused to reduce class size, the top priority of NYC parents, even when it means ignoring the law. As a result, our class sizes remain the largest in the state and among the largest in the nation, despite hundreds of millions of dollars allocated by the state to reduce class size.

In a 2006 audit, the State Comptroller found that only 20 additional classes were formed in NYC schools over the baseline figure, despite $89 million in annual state funds specifically allocated to reduce class size. The audit concluded that “while the [NYC] DoE was receiving State funding… it was reducing its own support for early grade class size reduction and using it for other purposes.” The NY State Comptroller proposed a number of recommendations to improve compliance with the law– all of which the Chancellor rejected.

Then again, this past September, the NY State Education Department found that despite commitments by the city to use millions of dollars in new state aid to reduce class size, instead “53.9% of New York City schools reported that either class size or pupil-to-teacher ratio increased in 2007-08.”

Accordingly, over 80% of NYC parents say that there has been no improvement in class size under this administration, and 86% of NYC principals say that they are unable to provide a quality education to their students because of excessive class sizes at their schools.

JOEL KLEIN: "The President of our [teachers] union, who's also the President of the National Union, she said on the first day of school this year in September that she had been traveling around the US and no place, in any urban area, was comparable to the work that we're doing. In fact he word she used was that New York City had become a beacon."

Among NYC teachers, there has been overwhelming disapproval of the leadership and policies of Joel Klein. Last year, the NYC teacher’s union released its own survey, showing that 85% of its members believe that Klein has refused to provide the support and resources they need to succeed; 85% disagreed with his emphasis on high-stakes testing; and 83% said that he had put other interests above the learning needs of the children.

According to Klein’s top spokesperson, only two out of twenty of the top administrators at the Department of Education are long-term educators; instead, he has largely staffed the Department with corporate consultants and attorneys.

In the past few weeks, thousands of teachers in NYC and elsewhere have signed petitions, warning President-elect Obama not to appoint Joel Klein to his administration, because of his misguided policies.

Check out this petition, which has been signed by nearly 4200 educators in NYC and nationwide:

"The NYC Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship -- with no input from parents or educations. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. And little thought has been devoted to how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to the children and their futures...While focusing on test scores, he has consistently ignored the crisis of overcrowding in NY schools. Thousands of children are being given special services in hallways or in closets."

See also this petition, signed by more than 3600 teachers and academic experts nationwide, in opposition to Joel Klein's "vision of privatized, corporatized, and anti-democratic schools."

QUESTION: "How do you answer the critics who say your school statistics are flawed because of wild statistical fluctuations or results from year to year, which suggest fundamental flaws?"

JOEL KLEIN: "I don't think that's a fair criticism. I've actually studied the statistics. There are some year to year fluctuations that are significant, but that's because schools that weren't making progress refocused and decided that the risk to them was they were gonna close.

"And so they decided that they would focus much more effectively on promoting student performance. But all of these things will come out over the years, meaning this is not a one year or two year experiment.”

Some year-to-year fluctuations? School grades have widely varied between one year to the next, which is not surprising considering they are primarily based on one year's worth of test score gains or losses, which experts have shown to be 30-80% random.

See this analysis by Daniel Koretz, an expert on testing and statistics from Harvard, pointing out that three quarters of NYC schools that received an “F” last year received an “A’” or “B” this year. As Koretz writes:

“It strains credulity to believe that if these schools were really “failing” last year, three-fourths of them improved so markedly in a mere 12 months that they deserve grades of A or B ...This instability is sampling error and measurement error at work. It does not make sense for parents to choose schools, or for policymakers to praise or berate schools, for a rating that is so strongly influenced by error.”

Aaron Pallas and Jennifer Jennings of Columbia University have concluded that “The progress measure…is a fruitless exercise in measuring error rather than the value that schools themselves add to students.”

As another of their summaries suggest, “a Monkey [could] Do a Better Job of Predicting Which Schools Show Student Progress in English Skills than the New York City Department of Education."

In short, NYC parents and teachers have this advice for Australians: Do not be fooled by either Klein or his claims.

Achievement has not significantly improved under his leadership. Instead, his administration has consistently misused millions of dollars meant to reduce class size that would have provided children with a better chance to learn, while spending millions more in taxpayer funds on expanding the bureaucracy with high-paid corporate consultants, no-bid contracts, and more testing in our schools.

Along the way, he has stubbornly refused to listen to parents, teachers and academic experts who have pointed out the destructive impact of his policies.

Take heed -- and reject these policies that will cause your kids to needlessly suffer -- as have ours.

The answer to the question, what do teachers make?

From slam poet and former NYC teacher, Taylor Mali. Check it out!

Another way in which Joel Klein's misguided policies are hurting NYC kids

From Confirmed: testing = teaching, the blog of a 2nd grade reading teacher:

Meanwhile, ... poor Azul has taken to hanging around the desk where I am conferencing with other students, wearing his best puppy dog face, clutching his B books and saying, "When you teach me? I want be C!" Hmm, does anyone know how to say, "I'm sorry, Azul, but I can't work with you individually to give you the help that you need in English and in reading because my bosses at this school just told me I need to listen to your classmates read long lists of high-frequency words for the second time in two months even though it's highly unlikely that their skills have improved in that time because I haven't gotten the chance to actually teach them anything" in Arabic?

Parents speak out against Mayoral control at Cooper Union's Great Hall

Check out the Villager, about Assemblymember Deborah Glick’s forum on Mayoral control at the Great Hall in Cooper Union last week. I was a member of the panel, and it was an honor and a privilege to be able to speak at the same venue where Abraham Lincoln and so many other historic figures once appeared.

As the reporter describes, one parent after another in the audience spoke out against the abuses in the current system of school governance:

“Of the 70 audience members, mainly parents, at the Great Hall, none spoke in favor of mayoral control. Of the three panelists, one said he actually favored the idea — though not under Mayor Bloomberg, who he charged is running things terribly.”

Joel Klein as a tone-deaf Oedipus?

Check out this piece in the Huffington Post by Benjamin Barber, who criticizes the so-called pundits like Jacob Weisberg of Slate, who are pushing Larry Summers and Joel Klein as two potential picks in the Obama administration because of their supposed braininess. As Barber points out:

What's wanted in anyone's cabinet is not brilliance but judgment. Not genius but wisdom. And the former is a lousy predictor of the latter. Like Summers and Klein, a number of the wannabes are arrogant and unlistening. Known for what they know and where they went to school (like Harvard and Yale).

Summers folded as Harvard's President not because he said something politically incorrect about women (too baby-obsessed to be good scientists) or tried to tell one of America's leading public intellectuals (Cornel West) how to be a "good" scholar, but because he was seen as dismissive of faculty, indifferent to contrarian ideas and unwilling to listen to others - traits he had shown during his tenure with the Clinton administration.

Joel Klein's career as chief education honcho for New York City has been marked by a similar disrespect for teachers and parents, and a techno-corporate approach to education that, while putatively wedded to equal opportunity, has been completely tone-deaf to the communities he supposedly serves. He knows a lot and knows it. But he lacks elementary judgment.

President Obama will be in need of counselors with wisdom as well as smarts, and will quickly learn that arrogance isn't merely a "defect of a superior mind" (as Weisberg puts it), but a form of deafness that incapacitates the hubristic for leadership. Oedipus was smart as they come, but, as I recall, made a terrible king.

Performance bonuses: DOE throws away money to benefit adults rather than our kids

In the DOE press release yesterday about the teacher performance pay program that will cost $20 million of taxpayer money this year, amidst budget cuts to schools, that are causing the loss of critical enrichment and intervention programs, Klein claimed that “The biggest winners, though, were the students in these high-needs schools, who received the instruction and support they needed to reach new levels of performance.”

Yet despite these encomiums, today’s Gotham schools has an analysis showing very little difference in test score gains between the elementary and middle schools participating in the program and schools throughout the city as a whole; and no difference at all for high schools.

Sure, teachers who are receiving the bonuses may be happy, but I wonder how many of them actually believe in the integrity or the efficacy of the program. See Gotham schools here: Teachers are happy with bonus program, but questions remain.

In short, another way in which this administration seems intent on throwing money away in ways that may benefit adults, but not our kids.

Weingarten Endorses Teacher Pay Based on High Stakes Testing

Randi Weingarten’s recent speech, where she was introduced by Mike Bloomberg, includes a strong endorsement for teacher merit pay based on high-stakes standardized testing.

From an AP article entitled “Union Prez: Performance Pay Works”:

Weingarten described the teacher pay system in New York City , where school-wide bonuses are based on overall test scores in high-poverty schools. Weingarten, as head of the New York teachers union, negotiated the system last year with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The new system is working, she said: Teachers already are getting bonuses for improving student achievement in 128 of 200 eligible schools.

But it wasn’t so long ago we were hearing a different story from the Weingarten-led United Federation of Teachers. Last year, a more detailed analysis in the UFT newsletter was entitled: “Pay for performance not performing well: Places using such models have run into snags”. The UFT article starts out this way:

“Guess what? New teacher pay-for-performance plans in Florida and Texas have run into big problems. Not surprised? Aha. You may be a teacher”.

It's not just teachers who should be concerned. The program here in NYC makes standardized testing even more high stakes which will lead to more cheating, test prep, teaching to the test and the narrowing of the curriculum. It's our kids who will suffer.

Weingarten’s new position is certainly disappointing. Is it a result of politics and ideology trumping research and actual experience?

Full AP article here.

Full UFT newsletter article here.

What's going on with Mayoral control around the country?

On Friday, there will be a public discussion/forum on Mayoral control elsewhere in the nation; sponsored by the Parent Commission on School Governance. If you’ve come to one of our previous forums on governance, (see videos here and here), you know how good they’ve been. If you haven’t, it’s time you found out.

When: This Friday, Nov. 21 at 6:30 PM

Where: Judson Church Assembly Hall, 239 Thompson St. in Greenwich Village.

(Take A, B, C, D, E, F, or V trains to West 4th Street, or #6 train to Astor Place, or #1 to Sheridan Square)

What: A dynamite panel of experts including:

Mary Levy of Washington, DC: Parent advocate and Project Director of the Public Education Reform Project,Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs

Julie Woestehoff of Chicago: Executive Director, Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE);named one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in Chicago by the ChicagoSun-Times in 2004

Stefanie Chambers of Trinity College: Associate Professor and author of Mayors and Schools: Minority Voices and Democratic Tensions in Urban Education

If you think that all that is wrong with Mayoral control is Michael Bloomberg or Joel Klein – guess what! You might hear otherwise.

For more information, email parentcommission@gmail.com or call 917-435-9329.

Why does the NY Times feature the voices of LA public school parents, but not ours?

See the latest column by LA public school parent activist, Sandra Tsing Lo, on the NY Times blog , called Public School Parents, Unite!

It’s a good column, pointing out that parents of public school children should have a real voice in the policies in their children’s schools, as well as nationally, and how her group has been actively working so that a fellow parent can elected for a seat on LA’s school board.

It’s sad that parents here in NYC do not have the same opportunity, as we have no elected school board. The PEP is made up of mostly mayoral appointees and votes in lock step with every decision announced by Joel Klein, no matter how arbitrary and ill-considered, and as a result, its meetings are almost never covered by the NY Times.

Nor, to my knowledge, has the Times covered a single one of the many hearings and debates on Mayoral control that have occurred over the course of recent months, sponsored by legislators and other independent groups, featuring the informed views of countless disillusioned parents, advocates and the elected officials themselves, who have openly decried not only the manner in which this administration unilaterally imposes its policies but have also offered substantive critiques of these policies.

Indeed, it is disappointing that the NY Times has never offered the same sort of platform to a NYC public school parent as they have to Ms. Lo, but consistently excludes our voices from the public debate.

As a result, I think they have done a disservice to their readers, as few regular subscribers to the Times, supposedly the paper of record, probably have any idea how discontented most parent leaders feel about this administration.

Please let the NY Times know what you think, by posting your views in the comments section of Ms. Lo’s blog. My comments to the NY Times are below.

-------------

I enjoy these columns by Sandra Tsing Lo, admire her activism and agree with many of her positions, especially as regarding the need for bottom-up reform from actual stakeholders like public school parents, rather than the top-down ideological approach that now prevails on how to reform urban schools, propounded by so-called experts, most of whom have never actually sent their own children to these schools.

But my question is this: why does the NY Times feature her column, while not giving the same sort of access to any NYC public school parent? Are our views not equally worthy of consideration? Or is our perspective simply too challenging to the opinion elite and the powers-that-be here in NYC?

It is disappointing that in the city that the NY Times makes its home, our views are consistently ignored and shut out of the debate over education policies. And yet there are many NYC public school parents who can write with the same passion, conviction, and intelligence as Ms. Lo.

Take a look, for example, at our NYC public school parent blog. Perhaps the NY Times might someday consider our voices as worthy of being heard as the public school parents in LA.

In Rochester, the clone wars begin!

In today’s Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Jean-Claude Brizard, formerly top administrator at Tweed and now the Superintendent of Rochester schools, responds to criticism that he has adopted NYC’s discipline code almost word for word – even though the code was supposedly prepared by a committee of twenty five Rochester citizens, including advocates, district employees, and others, with additional “input” from parents and students.

See the expose entitled Rochester School District adopts new discipline code:

“…the 24-page code, in the works for seven months, is almost a carbon copy of the discipline code introduced in New York City public schools in 2003.

The code contains a disclaimer stating that "excerpts" of it were adopted with permission from the New York City Department of Education, but a side-by-side comparison of the two documents shows they are virtually indistinguishable.

Rochester School District spokesman Tom Petronio acknowledged the similarities but said that after months of devising drafts of original documents based on elements of codes in New York City, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia and elsewhere, the district embraced the New York City code.

"What it ended up being after this process of revising and restructuring was that what New York had was largely what people wanted here," Petronio said. "That's fine because New York's is a well-respected plan."

The "Rochester City School District Regulations of Intervention and Discipline," as the code is called, was prepared by a committee of 25 people, including district employees and local youth advocates, with input from parents, students and district staff. It was implemented last week.”

Subsequently, an editorial in the paper, City School District's disciplinary code borrows too liberally, pointed out that this was plagiarism and set a terrible example to students and others:

“The new code, frankly, is in many places a word-for-word lift from the disciplinary code for New York City public schools…. Submit original work. And if it isn't original, use quotations and clear and direct source attribution…. Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard should rewrite the existing disclaimer on the print and Web versions of the code to state that it was adopted with permission from New York City schools using, in many instances, identical wording and phrasing. Or something to that effect.”

Guess who was the sharp eyed reporter who noted the word by word steal from NYC? Bad luck for Brizard is the fact that David Andreatta, formerly of the NY Post, is now working for the Rochester paper and clearly knows his way around the DOE website, where the disciplinary code can be found.

See Brizard’s response, Praise city schools for adopting what works, in which he argues that the NYC disciplinary code is so perfect, and nearly everything else that Tweed has done is similarly successful, including our graduation rates, etc. etc., why shouldn't he adopt our code word for word, and that “Team members in New York City hosted our team and were technical advisers during the creation of a safety infrastructure.”

He also writes, in his defense:

“I am a Broad Fellow, part of the Broad Superintendents Academy started in 2002 to transform urban school districts into effective public enterprises. I'm also a former New York City Department of Education regional superintendent and policy executive.”

What’s most disturbing is not just that Brizard is copying word for word the flawed DOE regulations, but that he had originally claimed that it was the collaborative product of local staff, advocates, parents, etc – when clearly, they must have had absolutely no input at all.
Tweed has trained lots of officials in its top-down management style, who impose their rigidly ideological policies no matter what the consequences, while often claiming that their decisions are the result of real consultation with stakeholders. They are now wreaking the same sort of damage in districts around the country.

If the Rochester papers are any indication, perhaps the editorial boards elsewhere are not as prone to defend whatever nonsense the district leadership wants to propound, as unfortunately appears to be the case here in NYC, but has maintained their independence and a healthy skepticism.

Let the Clone wars begin!

School Budget Cuts Presented at Panel for Educational Policy

Monday's Panel for Educational Policy meeting included a briefing on the budget cuts. Click here for the full Powerpoint. At Mayor Mike Bloomberg's insistence, the cuts must total $180 million for this year and $385 million for next year. Most of the cuts will come directly out of school budgets.

After the presentation, I asked for cuts to be made in the new standardized testing program, specifically for teachers to do their own interim assessments instead of the $26 million scheduled to be spent and for elimination of the pilot program extending testing in the K-2 grades. I also asked for the Chancellor's large press office to be shuttered and instead have DOE senior leaders speak directly to the press without intermediaries. As you'd expect, Chancellor Klein dismissed these suggestions. It has become increasingly clear that no matter what cuts are required, the Bloomberg administration's massive ramp up in standardized testing will go largely untouched. For more ideas on better places to cut see our list compiled here.

Here is how the cuts were presented by DOE -- in five "buckets":

Bucket 1: $40 million* for a 6% cut to Central and Field

• Includes reduction of 338 positions for 8% of Central and Field positions through a further rationalization of these operations.*
• Revise scoring of state assessments in Math and ELA, grades 3-8
• Reduce and/or combine publications in OSEPO
• Reduce meeting/conference expenses
• Cancel mid-year teaching fellows program, reduce size of next cohort of teaching fellows
• Eliminate citywide science assessments
• Defer OTPS spending for the Office of School & Youth Development
• Hold ARIS training in DOE facilities only
• Reduce training in DIIT
• Reduce consulting expenses for ECLAS2 assessment program
• Reduce HS enrollment tool costs

Bucket 2: $27 million cuts with an indirect impact on schools

• Reduce facilities work – will monitor cleanliness and make necessary repairs
• Reduction in custodial services
• Reduction in maintenance and repair contracts and related materials
• Elimination of 137 positions in the trades workforce and management
• Delay initial trial of GPS implementation (transportation)
• Eliminate school bonuses for AS and WD on the progress reports
• Reduce family worker positions (not required) for Pre Kindergarten as revise support and technical assistance for PK in public schools
• Mandate that schools with ATRs use them as substitutes rather than hiring an external substitute teacher
• For FY10, estimating cutting less than half of a percentage point from the transportation budget

Bucket 3: Reduce school funds by $104 million for a 1.3% reduction in FY09

• Schools were notified of targets on November 10th
• Schools have through Nov 21st to work with ISC/CFN/SSO to identify specific targets
• Guidelines on reductions were provided to schools
• An estimated cut for FY10 was provided to help schools consider impact on and from FY10
• No school layoffs for FY09
  

Bucket 4: District 75 -- $2 million

• District 75 schools were exempt from the last 2 round of cuts but this year will take under a $2 million cut for 0.26% reduction to their tax levy funding in FY09.

Bucket 5: Other – Fringe

• FY 09 cut: $7.5 million
• FY 10 cut: $12.3 million

Palin Hired by DOE as PR Consultant

November 19, 2008 (GBN News): NY City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has hired Alaska Governor and former Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin as a public relations consultant for the Department of Education, according to GBN News sources. The move has not yet been made public, the sources say, due to fears over possible negative publicity. However, it appears that Ms. Palin is already on the job. The abrupt change in agenda at last Monday’s PEP meeting was said to have occurred on her recommendation.

GBN News was told that Chancellor Klein had been very impressed with Ms. Palin’s performance in her debate with Joe Biden, where she brazenly deflected a topic she did not want to address, in favor of one more compatible with her agenda. The PEP meeting was just the sort of situation that Mr. Klein hired her to help deal with; the agenda, special ed, was one which the Chancellor had no interest in addressing.

Because the meeting was supposed to feature an update on special education, numerous special needs parents and advocates were in attendance. However, at the last minute, the meeting was switched to a briefing on accountability instead of special ed, risking the fury of those who had come specifically for the special ed update.

Chancellor Klein, at Ms. Palin’s suggestion, began the meeting by stating, “I may not talk about the stuff that those elitists around here wanna hear, but I’m gonna talk straight to the children of New York City and let ‘em know what we’re gonna do.” He then introduced the DOE Chief Accountability Officer James Liebman, referring to him as “Jim the Tester”. The Chancellor’s use of this moniker was also attributed to Ms. Palin, who advised him that the people attending the meeting would feel more comfortable with the change in agenda if the presenter were portrayed in a folksy, non-threatening manner.

Ms. Palin’s PR imprint was apparent in other ways as well. At the meeting, when a questioner challenged Mr. Liebman’s qualification to be Assessment Officer because he is not a professional educator, Liebman responded, “But I can see a school out of my living room window.” And the DOE may also be trying to discredit certain members of the press whom the Chancellor is said to feel are too critical of the Department. A DOE official, on condition of anonymity, accused GBN News Editor and CEO Gary Babad of “palling around with terrorists”, citing a NY Times article in which Babad admits that his grandmother was a Communist.

Klein Stiffs Parents of Children Receiving Special Ed Services to Defend Accountability

At Monday's Panel for Educational Policy meeting, Chancellor Joel Klein made a last minute agenda change to make room for Chief Accountability Officer Jim Liebman's rambling and defensive account of how much money his office spends. To make time for Liebman, Klein postponed an update on special education, drawing howls of protest from the many parents of children receiving special education services who had come specifically to hear the briefing. Citywide Council on Special Education member Patricia Connelly waited patiently for the public comment period, then gave an impassioned speech on how Klein's indifference was emblematic of his attitude toward the 180 thousand public school children with IEPs.

The impetus for the Accountability briefing was a report by the Independent Budget Office demonstrating how DOE will spend $129.6 million this year and $105 million next year on its Accountability initiative. The report, which drew wide press coverage, must have struck a nerve because Liebman came loaded for bear with a thirty-page Powerpoint, three live testimonials from DOE administrators and a live demonstration of the much-delayed ARIS system.

You can find the Powerpoint here. From start to finish it is a preposterous document. Some highlights:

• There are the usual statistics on DOE "success" which carefully omit any mention of Federal NAEP tests showing a lack of progress.
• An absurd statement from Columbia's Jonah Rockoff insisting school progress reports released only a couple of months before children sat for state tests were responsible for improving their scores.
• Not one but two pages of endorsements from those great sages of pedagogy, the editors of the Daily News.
• A blatantly false assertion that the $80 million spent on ARIS had to be spent on technology as part of the city's capital budget (actually, new schools, gyms or science labs would have been fine -- exactly the things Bloomberg tells us we can no longer afford)
  
• An extensive assault on the IBO analysis, the only point of which appears to be that, yes DOE is spending the hundreds of millions IBO said they are but technically speaking, it's not really on "accountability".

The reality is that Liebman is spending even more than even what IBO enumerated; they agreed to exclude the massive Interim Assessments expense which will be $26 million this year alone and another $8+ million in Senior Achievement Facilitators went uncounted.

At the end of his presentation, I asked Liebman how he could justify the six positions posted on the DOE web site with titles like "Knowledge Manager" and "Achievement Facilitator" when we are likely to see layoffs of art & music teachers and cuts in custodians. His reply that he was not necessarily really hiring people drew chuckles from the audience. The net of all this is that the Bloomberg administration is set on protecting this standardized testing juggernaut even if it means passing on the cuts on to our classrooms.

The PEP meeting ended with a long barrage of public comment. The parents who had come for the special education briefing were bitter, ATR and rubber room teachers were out in force and several parents spoke on the ever-present overcrowding crisis. See EdNotes for another account of meeting.

Some Final Thoughts on School Progress Reports

What do we now have after two years of the DOE handing out reports cards on our schools? Here are a few not-so-random questions and thoughts.

Does it ease the minds of current and prospective public school parents to know that 79.3% of the city’s public/charter schools are now operating at an A or B level, or that 93.8% merit a C grade or better? Or do parents simply disregard these results as self-serving happy talk, a sort of Panglossian fluff? (Don’t forget Voltaire’s memorable mantra for his character, Candide’s tutor, Pangloss: “All for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”)

Do parents find credibility in a measurement system under which 26 D- and F-rated schools miraculously became A-rated in just one year and 66 D- and F-rated schools improved to a B rating? Or how about the 4 schools whose A rating last year fell to a D or an F this year, or the 22 B-rated schools who fell to a D or an F, or the 8 C-rated schools who fell to an F? Do parents at these last-mentioned 34 schools whose grades "crashed" in just one year rush headlong for the exit doors based on these results?

Can parents bestow objectivity on a measurement scheme in which every level of the organization has a vested interest in positive outcomes? Can they assign credibility to a system whose pressures lead inevitably to skewed classroom emphasis, rule-bending, gaming the system, and even manipulating statistics or exam results at the local school level?

Can parents reliably use the Progress Report Grades when they evaluate schools? Do they even care about the DOE’s letter grade when their criteria are based on what they see, hear, and feel around them during a visit: leadership qualities of the principal, academic environment, teacher quality, hallway atmosphere, student engagement, range of programs and activities offered, school safety, graduation rates, and the like? Do they simply view the letter grading scheme as too volatile to be trustworthy and/or too reductive to be meaningful?

Are the School Progress Reports really about children, or are they simply measuring adults and a bureaucracy in support of a political agenda? Potentially even worse, are the school report cards really about education, or are they, as David Bloomfield so astutely put it after James Liebman’s infamous City Council Education Committee testimony, “just about real estate?” After all, is it not cheaper and easier to spend a few millions on a Progress Report system that legitimizes and (at least partially) depoliticizes school closings and secures real estate for new charter schools than to build actual school buildings?

Don’t Like the Results? Change the Scale!

A recent Daily News editorial regurgitated its usual “retain Mayoral control” mantra (under the unintentionally ironic moniker, Save Our Schools) by citing the “perfectly visible” progress shown by this year’s DOE school report cards.

Leave aside for the moment the patent absurdity of buying into a measurement system that allows the agency in question to measure itself while incentivizing its employees in every conceivable way to cheat and otherwise bend rules to make their numbers. Leave aside as well the debatability of a rating system in which 80% of the schools being measured are graded as B or better, a remarkable year-to-year increase of some 18 percentage points. Rather, let’s just look at the numbers behind how those grades were established.

In 2006-07, the DOE established conversion scales at each level (elementary, middle, and high school) under which each school’s raw score on a roughly 100-point scale would be converted to a letter grade. This year, the DOE has apparently reset these scales significantly downward for elementary and high schools, enough to account for the great majority of the gains at these two levels. In other words, when you control all the data and define your own success and you want better results, simply adjust your scales downward and, voile, you’ve got them!

Here are the elementary school scale conversion cutoff scores for each letter grade for the last two years (the cutoffs for F scores are irrelevant, since they simply reflect the lowest scoring school in their category).

A -- 64.0 (2006/07), 59.6 (2007/08)
B – 49.9 (2006/07), 45.8 (2007/08)
C - 38.8 (2006/07), 32.6 (2007/08)
D - 30.9 (2006/07), 28.4 (2007/08)

Note that it takes 4-6 raw score points less this year for a school to achieve an A, B, or C. Last year, the DOE rated 70.5% of elementary schools as A or B level. This year, they claimed improvement to 79.8% of schools achieving A or B scores. However, using the same conversion scale as last year, only 71.5% of elementary schools would merit and A or B, almost no change from last year despite the enormous pressure placed on school principals and teachers.

Almost the same results can be found at the high school level, beginning with the slightly less dramatic reductions in scale conversion cutoff scores:

A – 67.6 (2006/07), 64.2 (2007/08)
B – 48.8 (2006/07), 43.5 (2007/08)
C – 35.1 (2006/07), 34.3 (2007/08)
D – 28.9 (2006/07), 29.7 (2007/08)

Last year, the DOE rated 65.5% of high schools as A or B level. This year, that percentage increased to a mind-bending 83.1%. However, if the DOE had applied the same letter grade conversion scale as last year’s, only 70.8% of high schools would have received A or B grades, and 6% would have received D or F grades. Roughly two-thirds of the percentage point improvement in high schools achieving A or B grades came from lowering the cutoff scores!

The DOE had announced plans earlier this year to modify its school rating system, so year-to-year comparisons are not necessarily straightforward. Nevertheless, for reasons that have not yet been made clear, the score cutoff scales for elementary and high schools have been adjusted significantly downward while those for middle schools remained nearly the same. Perhaps the rationale is mathematically legitimate, but the action is so suspect and the effect so pronounced, further explanation is warranted. Otherwise, lowering the grading bar has the appearance of being little more than an effort to influence the publicly reportable “success” of Mayoral control and the Chancellor’s accountability regime.

Given the DOE's tight control over data, its lack of accountability to any higher review body, and its general opacity to outside view, how is the public to know whether the reported increase in A- and B-rated schools is real or simply illusory? Assuming, that is, that you accept the legitimacy of the grades themselves, an already dubious proposition.

One mother's letter to Obama

There have been many eloquent emails sent and petitions signed in the past few days, warning Barack Obama against hiring Joel Klein as Secretary of Education, ever since his name was first floated as a possible appointment.

See for example, this petition, which as of this morning had been signed by over 2500 parents and educators nationwide, and this petition, signed by over 2000 more, as well as the eloquent comments posted to our blog about this issue.

Even the national media has finally picked up on the fact that Joel Klein is not universally adored among NYC parents; see this excerpt from today’s US News and World report:

Teachers and parents, however, have complained about his management style, saying he is too brash and unresponsive to their concerns. Is the country ready for his reformist agenda or would he demand too much, too fast without enough support from key players?

We just received a copy of the following letter to Obama, from an Upper West side mom, and wanted to share it with you. You can send a letter to the President-Elect's website at http://www.change.gov/yourvision

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Dear President-Elect Obama,

I am a New York City public school parent. My son is a fourth-grader at a public school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I understand that New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is rumored to be one of your choices for Secretary of Education. In my view, Chancellor Klein is a truly abominable choice for this position and I feel compelled to speak out. New York City public school children and their families have suffered under his authority and it would be a shame for the country’s children to similarly suffer.

By far, Chancellor Klein’s most egregious transgression relates to the serious overcrowding of New York City public schools.

During Chancellor Klein’s tenure, Manhattan has experienced a real estate boom. Numerous new residential buildings have been built but Chancellor Klein has not ensured that there is adequate public school space for the growth this has brought to many neighborhoods. The Office of the NYC Comptroller, William J. Thompson, Jr. issued a report in May, 2008 entitled, “Growing Pains: Reforming Department of Education Capital Planning to Keep Pace with New York City’s Residential Construction.” Tts opening sentence is this: “The capital planning process for public schools in New York City is broken.”

It goes on to detail numerous Department of Education failures in everything from flawed enrollment projections to the fact that capacity needs are understated and are “not sufficiently forward-thinking or responsive to changing neighborhoods”.

In April, 2008, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer released a report entitled, “Crowded Out”, a borough-wide analysis of residential development and its relationship to school capacity. In a press release dated September 5, 2008 discussing the report, Stringer says, “While the Department of Education continues to announce the opening of schools – either new or replacement facilities – it is not keeping up with the pace of new development, and with the commitment New York families are making to stay in the city and use their neighborhood public schools.”

What does this mean for New York City public school children on a daily basis? Let’s take my son’s school as an example. In the last few years, we lost our lower-grades art classroom. Lower-grade (K-2) children now have art in a cramped, windowless former teacher’s lounge. We have also lost both our lower-grades and upper-grades (3-5) music classrooms. Our music teachers carry equipment, instruments, music, etc. from classroom to classroom. We also lost our computer room. The computer teachers travel from classroom to classroom with 25 laptops in tow. Many times, half of the computer period is taken up just setting up the computers at the children’s desks and then putting them away.

I applaud our teachers for making the necessary sacrifices and for doing their best under the circumstances but teachers shouldn’t have to work in these conditions and children shouldn’t have to learn in these conditions. With the loss of these classrooms, outside of lunch and recess, our children now leave their classrooms only twice a week: once for gym and once for art. There is a natural benefit to some physical movement between classrooms during the day but our children don’t have that option. Besides classroom issues, there are numerous teachers who work out of closets. We also have some children with no choice but to have lunch at 10:30am because of the number of classes our cafeteria must accommodate.

Because of Chancellor Klein’s failure to make certain that adequate space exists to meet the demand for public school, the conditions under which many New York City children now attend school are unacceptable. As the highest-ranking education official in the city, Chancellor Klein ultimately must bear responsibility for the current and extremely serious overcrowding affecting thousands of public school students.

Additionally during Chancellor Klein’s tenure, an inordinate focus has been placed on standardized testing, test scores and test preparation. All children in grades three through eight are subjected to multiple standardized tests in a variety of subjects.

Test scores affect our school’s ‘report card’, compensation for our principals and teachers and our school’s funding. I recently learned that my son’s class would have no publishing parties (celebrations of the children’s writing pieces to which parents and other family members are invited typically held several times throughout the school year) and no field trips with the exception of an hour-long museum trip for the first five months of the school year because upcoming testing and the preparation for those tests requires too much time.

Chancellor Klein’s excessive emphasis on testing is at odds with essentially all other partners in a child’s education: parents, the children themselves, teachers, administrators. Yet the emphasis continues so that now we see the Department of Education instituting standardized testing for kindergartners! Please see a New York Times article discussing results of a survey in which 85% of New York City public school teachers disagree with the statement that the Chancellor’s emphasis on testing had improved education in their schools.

Can our country really afford to have 85% of its teachers dissatisfied with how the Secretary of Education leads?

Finally, Chancellor Klein has consistently conducted himself in an authoritarian fashion. Parents, in particular, have repeatedly been disenfranchised and diminished. While great show is made of soliciting input from parents, teachers and administrators, in fact, it is just that . . .show. Parents realize that their input means little in the eyes of the Department of Education, as run by Chancellor Klein.Chancellor Klein’s poor performance in his role as highest-ranking education official in New York City is likely due to the fact that he is not an educator. He is an attorney. Education needs a human touch. I believe that successfully educating our nation’s children requires a thoughtful and highly-functional partnership between administrators, teachers and parents. In New York City, Chancellor Klein has proven that he is incapable of being such a partner.

Sincerely,

Rochelle Hestnas

Norm Scott and Leonie Haimson on WBAI -radio

Esther Amah, of WBAI's Wake-Up Call, interviews Norm Scott of Education Notes and Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters on November 13, about the state of public school education in New York and the prospect of Joel Klein becoming the Secretary of Education in an Obama administration.

Would national testing really improve our schools?

Now that Bill Gates has offered to write new “national standards” and a national exam to go along with them, and many of our most influential opinion makers, including usual opponents like Joel Klein and Diane Ravitch, appear to support this notion as a solution to the country’s educational problems – I have a question:

Why wouldn’t a national test be open to the same sort of grade inflation than the state tests are now? With rampant test prep, cheating, narrowing of the curriculum, and all the rest – as predicted by Campbell’s Law?

And wouldn’t this lead to the loss of one of our few semi-objective measures of how schools are doing – the NAEPs?

The NAEPs, after all, are considered more reliable than state tests for a number of reasons which derive directly from the fact that they are not used for accountability purposes and no stakes are attached to theo9r results.

Only a random sample of students are assigned to take these assessments and because of their low-stakes nature, many of the questions can remain the same over the years, which makes the scaling (or difficulty level) more consistent; finally, there is little or no concerted attempt on the part of districts or schools to “game” the system.

Again, why do is there this national obsession with testing, and assuming that with more or better testing, more learning will follow? Where’s the evidence for this anywhere, in the research or the experience of any state or district? In North Carolina, the state that led the nation in terms of emphasizing standards and testing, the chair of a recent blue-ribbon commission concluded,

“We’re testing more but we’re not seeing the results....We’re not seeing graduation rates increasing. We’re not seeing remediation rates decreasing. Somewhere along the way testing isn’t aligning with excellence.”

Finland, whose students score the highest in the world on the international assessments called the PISA, has no standardized tests in their schools, which, as the Washington Post points out, is “a stark contrast to the current test obsession in this country.”

Since when did more or better testing become identified as more learning? Or am I missing something here? Please post your responses on the blog.