Superficial and biased coverage of the controversy over personalized learning in Chalkbeat

Matt Barnum has posted an article at Chalkbeat on the controversy over online learning.  I spent nearly an hour talking to him about its myriad problems, including the negative experiences of parents and students in schools where online learning predominates, serious privacy concerns because of all the data-mining by vendors that is involved, and a serious lack of research evidence  -- but the only quote he used from our conversation is one sentence: that the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy which I co-chair. has worked with allies in right-wing groups on the privacy issue.

Instead, when I spoke to him about this, I emphasized that the concerns about the expansion of online learning and its impact on privacy was shared by groups and individuals of all political persuasion, left right and center, and many parents with little interest in politics at all.  That's why our campaign against inBloom was so successful, and that's why in NY State and elsewhere, parents and teachers in all nine states and districts that were participating were able to force them from dropping out of the program to share their children's personal data and make it more accessible to vendors without parental consent.  But he left that part out of my quote and his story as a whole, because it did not fit into his pre-ordained narrative.

Indeed, Barnum seemed eager to mischaracterize the opposition to so-called personalized learning as led by conservatives.  He is also quick to frame the pushback vs Common Core in a similar fashion --as driven by many of the same right-wing groups -- when one of the most successful protests against the standards occurred here in NY state, led by NY State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of mostly left-wing and politically moderate parents and teachers who also oppose the expansion of ed tech.

Barnum didn't mention any of the other progressive groups, medical associations, and researchers across the country who are very concerned about the expansion of online learning in schools, including Screens and Kids, Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, the  ACLU, Commonsense Media, National Education Policy Center, Parents Across America, the Badass Teachers Association and many others. 

Nor did he bother to interview any of the many prominent progressive critics of ed tech like Diane Ravitch, Peter Greene or Audrey Watters.  Nor did he acknowledge that Silicon Valley parents themselves are increasingly rejecting computerized learning,  as reported in the terrific NY Times series by Nellie Bowles.

Instead, he quotes only one non-right wing critic of online learning by name– Merrie Najimy, the President of the Massachusetts teachers - while featuring many paragraphs of rosy spin from defenders of ed tech, like Diane Tavenner of Summit and Bethany Gross of CRPE, both funded by Gates and Zuckerberg. 

Barnum cites a CRPE report also paid for by Gates that apparently says, oh yeah, teachers really like personalized learning – while ignoring the survey results in our Educator Toolkit for Teacher and Student Privacy, which showed widespread concern among teachers and administrators alike about the expansion of digital apps and online programs in our schools.  He also quotes Randi Weingarten who, surprisingly, has nothing but kind words about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which has done absolutely nothing that I can think of to earn her confidence.

Amazingly, Barnum also manages to write an entire piece about edtech and personalized learning, Summit, Gates and Zuckerberg without once mentioning the issue of data privacy, the widespread occurrence of breaches, the potential misuse of algorithms, and the over-reach of student surveillance in schools.  The only mention of the word “privacy” is in the one sentence that quotes me about working with conservative allies on the issue.

Quite an achievement and yet more evidence of a serious blind spot in Chalkbeat’s education coverage, reminiscent of their failure to cover the parent opposition against inBloom that started here in New York and led to such a firestorm across the country that more than 120 state student privacy laws have been passed as a result of the inBloom controversy since 2013. 

Student data privacy is still huge issue among parents in New York and throughout the US, but it has been almost entirely ignored by Chalkbeat, including in their failure to report on the recent Brooklyn student walkout against Summit that was covered by the NY Post, New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Fast Company , and other major outlets. 

Too bad; this piece will yet serve as more ammunition for the many  critics  who maintain that Chalkbeat, also supported by Gates and Zuckerberg, serves primarily as a PR outlet for corporate education reform.

Here are some antidotes: check out the NPE report, What Every Parent Should know about Online Learning, or our Parent Toolkit for Student Privacy,  Educator Toolkit for Teacher and Student Privacy,on or our many articles on the problems with the Summit online platform, starting here.  

Or the presentations that the brilliant Audrey Watters, the inestimable Peter Greene and I gave at the NPE conference this fall in Indianapolis. 

Or this terrific oped by Dipayan Ghosh and Jim Steyer in the NY Times last week, entitled Kids Shouldn't Have to Sacrifice Privacy for Education, or an excellent summary posted today by Ben Williamson, which concisely explores the many substantive problems with online learning, ignored in Barnum's superficial piece.

DOE and SCA going backwards not forwards in terms of rational school planning

Yesterday's City Council hearings on the capital plan reveals how the NYC remains stubbornly resistant when it comes to expeditious, transparent school planning. 

As explained in my testimony and the report we released yesterday on preK and school overcrowding, 50,000 seats of the 57,000 seats  in the new proposed five-year plan won’t be finished until 2024 or after, long after the Mayor has left office.

from the City Council briefing paper

The DOE disputed this finding to the Daily News: "City Education Department Doug Cohen said the new seats would be done sooner than Haimson projected, although he did not give a concerete time line for their completion."

Yet these figures were confirmed by the Independent Budget Office and the City Council - see the chart above - and neither Lorraine Grillo, President of the School Construction Authority nor Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark disputed them when they were asked about this undue delay by Education Chair Mark Treyger at the hearings.

Only 11,000 seats will have been built over the lifetime of the current five-year plan, with 23,000  folded over into the next plan.  Meanwhile our schools are becoming
more overcrowded due to pre-K expansion and rampant development. Already more than 575,000 students suffer in overcrowded schools.

When Council Members Dromm and Treyger asked School Construction Authority President Lorraine Grillo why thousands of seats are going to be unfunded in severely overcrowded districts like District 10 (-1,172), District 13 (-1,636),  District 15 (-3.023), District 20 (-2630) and District 24 (-3961), especially as compared to the last identified DOE needs assessment released in Nov. 2017, she couldn’t explain why. 

First she claimed she had been so successful siting schools in those districts that they didn’t really need many more seats, then she said it’s too hard to find good sites for schools in these areas, and then she said we just have to focus on creating seats in the rest of the city.

The DOE also basically eliminated the class size reduction section of the current plan that was funded at $490M but over five years went mostly unspent, revealing they never intend to lower class size in the first place. According to the Council briefing paper, “The Council was informed that as of Spring 2018 SCA hoped to identify additional projects but none were.  In addition there is no explanation as to how the projects identified will reduce class size.”

There is no identified needs assessment for new seats in the capital plan by the DOE/SCA for the first time since at least 2011.  While the Council has been begging for a more transparent and accurate needs assessment, the DOE decided to take that figure out of the plan altogether.  When asked why, Lorraine Grillo couldn’t explain why, and then said it was all up on the SCA website, [which is untrue.]

CM Dromm said he was very disturbed about the lack of identified needs assessment and the severe cuts to District 24.  CM Treyger said that he saw no reason that the timeline to build schools has to be so painfully slow and that the Amazon deal showed that the city could act faster to encourage economic development; also when it comes to creating new housing  in the various re-zonings happening throughout the city.

CM Brad Lander pointed out that the planning process is dysfunctional.  When a large-scale development is proposed and then approved, too often more schools may be promised on paper, but  aren’t really incorporated  into the overall plan and if and when they are built, this happens years later.  Often, this occurs long after the rest of the development is complete and when  school overcrowding is already at a crisis level and sites are hard to find.  Instead, schools should be included as part of the development’s planning, design and construction at the outset.  He said he hopes this will happen with the Gowanus rezoning happening in his district.

When he asked about the promised installation of air conditioning, and the fact that the DOE’s last progress report to the Council on this had contained inaccuracies, Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark insisted that teachers can teach and students can learn no matter how warm the room. (Lots of research shows this is just untrue.)

My testimony is here. When I spoke extemporaneously I said that all this new development could and should be used by the city officials as a way to help them get schools built quickly, yet they fail to take advantage of it. I despair that in the year 2025 when a new five-year plan is introduced, the same problems will be in evidence yet even more severe. There will be yet another Mayor who makes campaign promises to solve the problems of school overcrowding but when he is elected sells his soul to developers.

New report finds pre-K expansion has led to worse overcrowding in hundreds of NYC public schools

The expansion of Pre-K led to worse overcrowding at 352 elementary schools, with about 236,000 students. At 76 schools it pushed the school to 100% utilization or more. The expansion of 3-K will likely make the overcrowding even worse. Daily News coverage here; full report here.  Press release below.  Moreover, of the 57,000 school seats in the new proposed five-year capital plan for 2020-2024, 50,000 seats will not be built until 2024 or later -- long after the Mayor has left office.

For immediate release: December 18, 2018

More information: leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329

New report finds pre-K expansion has led to worse overcrowding in hundreds of NYC public schools

School overcrowding in NYC has been worsened by the expansion of pre-K and 3-K classes, as detailed in a new report, “The Impact of PreK on School Overcrowding: Lack of Planning, Lack of Space.”

About 575,000 students, more than half of all students, attended schools that were at or above 100 percent capacity in 2016-2017, according to data from the NYC Department of Education.  In recent years, overcrowding has worsened significantly, especially at the elementary school level. Nearly 60 percent of elementary schools are at 100 percent or more and 67 percent of elementary grade students attend these schools. This is due in part to the fact that enrollment in these grades has increased faster than new school construction.

The report’s analysis finds that 14,220, or more than half of the pre-K students enrolled in public elementary schools in 2016-2017, were placed in 352 schools that were at 100% utilization or more, thus contributing to worse overcrowding at these schools for about 236,000 students.

In about one quarter (22 percent) of these schools, the expansion of pre-K actually pushed the school to 100 percent or more.  As of 2016-2017, 76 elementary schools, with a total of 45,124 students, became overutilized, according to the DOE’s data, because of the additional number of pre-K students at their schools.

In addition, thirty schools with pre-K classes had waitlists for Kindergarten, necessitating that these children to be sent to schools outside their zone and sometimes far from home.  

District 20 in southwestern Brooklyn is the most overcrowded district in New York City with a critical shortage of elementary school seats.  The average utilization of elementary schools is 130 percent.  Yet the DOE continued to place pre-K classes in already overcrowded District 20 schools, despite the presence of an under-enrolled pre-K center nearby.

Laurie Windsor, the former President of the Community Education Council in District 20 said: “It is appalling how the DOE insists on keeping pre-K classes in elementary schools when there is such severe overcrowding and families are forced to travel for Kindergarten, sometimes quite far away, without available public transportation. Especially egregious is that there are pre-K centers nearby which could absorb these classes easily. This practice has put unnecessary hardships on families and is insensitive to the needs of the community.”

The DOE began to implement 3-K in 18 schools in two districts last year, and three of these schools were already overcrowded in the prior year. Additionally, of the 61 additional schools which added 3-K during the current school year, more than one fourth were already overcrowded. Several of these were also Renewal schools, meaning they were struggling with low performance and in danger of being closed. 

The new five-year capital plan will not sufficiently address the worsening overcrowding. Although the Department of Education claims that new plan includes “funding for 57,000 seats over the next five years,” 50,000 of these seats won’t be completed until 2024 or later, when the Mayor has long left office.

To make things worse, the NYC Department of Education has failed for many years to update its methodology to project the need for new school capacity.  The formula used for estimating enrollment, called the Projected Public School Ratio, has been based on census data over twenty years old. and has not accounted for the expansion of thousands of new pre-K students placed in the schools. Though the formula was updated this fall, it remains uncertain whether it fully accounts for additional pre-K students and it does not anticipate the mayor’s plan to expand 3K.

Cramming more pre-K students into public schools worsens school overcrowding, which in turn can contribute to larger classes, and/or sacrifice the space necessary for a well-rounded curriculum.  If this occurs, then the educational benefits of the program will be undermined.

A recent large-scale experimental study in Tennessee found that pre-K was no silver bullet, and failed to produce gains in achievement. The chief investigators of the study emphasized that the lack of positive results underscored how the quality of the entire early childhood educational experience through 3^rd grade must be addressed if improvements in student learning are to be achieved.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, said: “The DOE must stop its practice of making overcrowding worse in our already overutilized elementary schools by jamming more pre-K and 3-K classes in these schools, or else the education of students in other grades will be seriously impaired and the eventual benefits of expanded pre-K undermined.” 

She added: “The Mayor needs to increase the number of seats in the capital plan and build them in a more efficient, accelerated manner, or else his legacy will be seriously marred by even more extreme overcrowding and educational neglect.”

The report, “The Impact of PreK on School Overcrowding in NYC: Lack of Planning, Lack of Space” is at: https://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/PreK-report-12.17.18-final-final.pdf

###

Parents ask, where are the schools? Please send a message to the new Charter Revision Commission improve school planning now!

NYC does a rotten job of school planning.  The Mayor has encouraged rampant development to occur throughout the five boroughs with little or no forethought as to where all the additional children living in these buildings will attend school.  This has led to over 570,000 students attending overcrowded schools, according to the DOE's own data.    

Now the city and the state intend to give Amazon $3 billion in tax incentives while handing over a large DOE building for their new headquarters in Long Island City, which the community had been urging the city to instead be converted into schools -- especially as their only elementary school is already bursting at the seams.  

Yes, Amazon agreed to take over the cost to build one new school -- but that school had already been promised by the city, and the site is now undetermined, since the land it was supposed to be built on is also to be given to Amazon for its offices.   I wrote an oped on this issue along with Sabina Omerhodzic in Gotham Gazette last month, showing how this deal is symptomatic of how the education of our kids too often comes last in the city's estimation.  

At a town hall meeting in Queens with the Mayor and Chancellor, Sabina pointed out that for many years, activists have had a plan for the large DOE building that is now used for offices to be used for integrated elementary, middle and high schools that would include kids both from Queensbridge public housing, the largest housing project in the city,  and the rapidly developing, Long Island City section of the district.  Neighborhood activists wanted the large DOE building to also incorporate a job training and community center as well.  But the Mayor responded to Sabina's question by refusing to take the DOE building out of the deal  (See the video here , at about 1 hour, 11 minutes in).

Please send a message now to the new City Charter Revision Commission, urging them to improve the school planning process, so that these Amazon-like deals that ignore the need for schools don't happen in the future -- and ensure that enough new school space is built along with new development and not years after, contributing to even worse overcrowding. CECs should be involved in the development  process along with Community Boards, and new schools should be required wherever they are already over-utilized or likely to become so in the future.

Right before Sabina spoke up, another parent named Anna Maria Leon spoke in Spanish about the need for DOE to reduce class size without making schools reduce their budget (at 46 minutes in).  (Right now the so-called Fair Student funding system is tied to enrollment, so that when principals try to keep class sizes low, they have to sacrifice needed funding. ) While translating, Carranza left out the part about class size but instead said her comment was about school overcrowding , which is a related but different issue.  

De Blasio responded  that overcrowding was a "central concern" that he hears all over the city and claimed he is putting billions of dollars into new school space, eliminating trailers, and increasing boosting the number of schools that receive 100% of the Fair Student Funding formula.  He did not address the issue of class size. He called on Lorraine Grillo in from the School Construction Authority, who announced 20,000 new seats will be created for Queens in the new proposed 2020-2024 five-year capital plan.  What she didn't reveal is how only a small fraction of that number --about 7,700 seats -- will be completed during those five years. 

Immediately following, (at 53 minutes in), Deb Alexander of CEC 30 talked about how parents don't feel they are included in DOE decision-making.  Her CEC and other CECs pass resolutions with no response whatsoever from the DOE.  Another example, she said, of how parents are left out is that no CEC member was invited to be part of the city's advisory commission on the Amazon project.  De Blasio said they will create a new process so that the DOE responds in some way to CEC resolutions (after five years of failing to do so!) and will now appoint a CEC member to that commission.

At 59 minutes in, Nancy Northrup, a Queens parent and former President of the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Counsel,  talked about need for more high school seats for Queens. In response, Carranza mentioned he has new demographic information about enrollment trends, he would share.

He added that he's worked in five different states and in all of them, in a great disservice was done to high school students because of the small schools movement. You can't have a comprehensive high school experience in a small school, he said. He revealed he will be considering more school mergers in future and include CECs in that conversation.  

Later, in response to another comment, Carranza said that if and when the DOE receives the $1.3 billion they're owed from the state, as a result of the CFE lawsuit, they will be able to add more air conditioners, sports teams and extra-curricular activities, with no mention of the need to reduce class size -- which was the main issue in the CFE case.  The Mayor's priority for these funds, as is well-known, will be to use them to further expand 3K. 

All in all, the comments of the Mayor and Chancellor at this Town Hall meeting reveal how little they recognize the need for aggressive action on school overcrowding and class size.  

Again, please send a message now to the new City Charter Revision Commission, urging them to  ensure that sufficient new schools are built along with housing and not years later. CECs should be involved in the advisory process, and new schools should be required where ever they are already overcrowded or likely to become so in the future.  

A letter we sent the Commission late last month about this is below, signed onto by elected officials and many parent leaders from all over the city.  Thanks!

Proposal to amend the City Charter by improving the school planning process

Dear members of the Charter Revision Commission:

Many education advocates, parents, community leaders and local elected officials realize that in NYC, the school planning and siting process has long been broken. With more than half a million students crammed into overcrowded schools, the problem is likely to get worse as the city’s population is growing fast, there is a boom in residential construction, and school capacity is falling further behind.

In March 2018, the New York City Council released a report, Planning to Learn: The School Building Challenge, which documented existing overcrowding in New York City public schools and the challenges related to planning and siting new schools. Before that, Class Size Matters released two reports, Space Crunch and Lost Seats: the Untold Story, which identified many of the same problems.

One of the challenges identified in these reports is how the methodology used by the City Planning Commission to project the need for new schools via the process outlined in the City Environmental Quality Review ("CEQR") Technical Manual is inherently flawed in the following ways:

The CEQR process relies on a formula called the “Public school ratio” to project the potential impact of new residential developments on schools.  Yet the formula is rarely updated, and until this fall was based upon Census data more than twenty years old.  The formula still excludes any of the 3K students that the Mayor plans to add to our public schools, and doesn’t differentiate the potential impacts on schools by the type of residential units to be built, including the number of bedrooms in these units.  Nor does it differentiate the impact by school zones or the smaller sub-districts within large Community School Districts, which may be experiencing very different levels of overcrowding

The housing start data is also unreliable, especially the ten-year data, which estimates only a tiny number of new units to be built after the first five years.  For example, the housing start data used to develop the current five-year capital plan projected not a single new housing unit to be built in Brooklyn between 2020-2024.  The new housing starts data used for the new five-year capital plan reports more than 41,500 additional units will be built in ten school districts between 2018 and 2024, but the estimate drops to zero between 2025 and 2027. 

Moreover, the CEQR process only requires the building of a new school where the proposed project will increase projected school overcrowding by more than five percent by means of this formula – regardless of whether the schools in the area are already overcrowded.    And only Community Boards are consulted in the advisory process to provide input on the likely impact of these projects, and not Community Education Councils which, in some cases, may be more closely aware of constraints involving school capacity in the particular neighborhoods in which they are proposed.

That is why we propose the following revisions to the City Charter to improve the process of school planning and to address the problem of overcrowding more efficiently:  

-       - The CEQR methodology and process should be regularly reviewed and updated at least bi-annually, based upon the latest housing, Census and American Community Survey data. 

-       - The projected impact on schools should be analyzed on both a five and a ten-year framework, with ten-year estimates based on more realistic current trends, rather than arbitrarily dropping to zero or near zero after five or six years.

-       - The expected impact on enrollment should include the need to provide school seats for 3K and preK students and take account of the expected growth of charter school students currently co-located in public school buildings.

-       - The CEQR formula should be differentiated according to school attendance zones, as well as Community Board districts and the neighborhood-based sub-districts of Community school districts;

-       - Every new large-scale project should require sufficient school seats to be built to address expected population growth and to bring schools to less than 100% utilization, wherever they are already overcrowded or likely to become so as a result of new housing planned and/or current enrollment trends. 

-       - Finally, the views of Community Education Councils and Citywide Councils should be solicited along with Community Boards on the expected impact on schools and mitigation strategies for projects proposed for their respective districts.

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters

Robert Jackson, NYS Senator Elect, 31st District

Brad Lander, NYC Councilmember, Council District 39

Shino Tanikawa, co-Chair, Educational Council Consortium*

Isaac Carmignani, member of the Panel for Educational Policy

Naila Rosario, President, NYC Kids PAC

Renee Kinsella on behalf of Manhattan Community Board 5

Jeannine Kiely, Chair, Schools and Education Committee, Manhattan Community Board 2

Johanna Garcia, President, Community Education Council District 6

Farah Despeignes, President, Community Education Council District 8

Ayanna Behin, President, Community Education Council District 13

Maria Farley, President, Community Education Council District 14

Laurie Windsor, 1st Vice President, Community Board 11 Brooklyn*

Deborah Alexander, co-President, Community Education Council District 30

Valarie Lamour, co-President, Community Education Council District 30

Anna Lembersky, President, Community Education Council District 21

Marvin Shelton, President, Community Education Council District 10*

Dr. Eduardo Hernandez, BP appointee, 1st Vice President, Community Education Council District 8

Victoria Frye, member, Community Education Council District 6

Paul Hovitz, co-chair, Youth and Education Committee, Manhattan Community Board 1*

Hilda Martinez, member, Community Education Council District 6

Tricia Joyce, co-chair, Youth and Education Committee, Manhattan Community Board 1*

Peter Patch, Youth, Education and Libraries Committee Co-Chair, Manhattan Community Board 8

Mirian Lopez, Vice President, Community Education Council District 14

Luis Camilo, Recording Secretary, Community Education Council 6

Kathy Park Price, co-VP, Community Education Council District 15

Eric Goldberg, member, Community Education Council District 2

Francisco Santiago, Community Education Council District 6

Margaret Kelley, Chair, Education Committee, Cobble Hill Association

Noah E. Gotbaum, Citywide Council on Special Education, ECC Steering Committee.

Angela Garces, member, Community Education Council District 6

Carmen Figueroa, member, Community Education Council District 7

 (list in formation)

_______________________

*Affiliation for identification purposes only