Why is the DOE stigmatizing CSI schools and encouraging families to transfer out?

See this item from last week’s March 12 NYC Principals Weekly:

The Public School Choice (PSC) program offers students enrolled in schools identified by NYSED as Comprehensive Support & Improvement (CSI) schools, the opportunity to apply for a transfer to a higher performing public school. This transfer program is required under the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. [emphasis mine] Principals of sending schools (i.e., CSI-designated schools), received an email about their status in January from sfesupport@schools.nyc.gov. Principals of receiving schools (i.e., schools with non-CSI status that may be eligible to accept PSC transfer students), should have received an email from psc@schools.nyc.gov on March 5, with the number of seats identified for PSC transferring students in September, for the 2019–20 school year. If you are the principal of a receiving school, you can also use the link that will be provided in the email, to review and give feedback on identified seats at your school by March 29. 

For more information, please visit the PSC website. For questions about the PSC program, email Arnab Banerjee

Yet the sentence in bold is completely untrue.  Neither the federal government nor the state require DOE to offer transfers to kids in CSI schools, which in many cases can be begin a death spiral for these schools as they lose students and funding.

In fact, unlike NCLB, ESSA left the decision up to states as to whether to require districts to offer “Public school choice” i.e. encourage parents to transfer their students out of CSI schools. See this memo:

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA… allows states to exercise flexibility in granting NCLB transfers for students enrolled in schools in PI [program improvement] status. Two guidance letters sent out by the U.S. Department of Education, in January and February 2016, respectively, explain states’ new flexibility under ESSA, under which states can determine not to require local educational agencies (LEAs) to offer public school choice transfers.

Most states including California did not include transfer options at all in their ESSA plans though New York did – but only by the fourth year of a school’s CSI status. NY’s ESSA plan said that if a school’s CSI index declined for two years in a row, a district would have to offer parents “choice” after that point.  Before the fourth year, the state leaves it up to the district to decide whether to offer “choice."

… New York State will make Public School Choice an option, but not a requirement, for any district with a CSI school, when the district believes that Public School Choice will support stronger outcomes for students and for CSI schools. In districts offering Public School Choice, a parent of a student attending a CSI school may request a transfer to a school classified as In Good Standing. …, in any instances in which the Achievement Index of a CSI school declines for two consecutive years, public school choice will no longer be an option, but, instead, will be a requirement, and the district must offer Public School Choice for parents of students attending that specific CSI school.

This is the first year of CSI designations so no transfer option is required by the state, and certainly not the feds.   Yet here is the letter sent to parents this week in at least two schools – wrongly calling them “among the lowest performing statewide” based on an unreliable formula that counts opt out students as having failed the state exams.

Chancellor Carranza at  the City Council budget hearings today spoke at length about how parents shouldn't judge the quality of schools on test scores alone.  Neither should they be told that schools are "low-performing" based on an unreliable formula that relies on  test scores plus opt outs - and worse, be encouraged to transfer out.

CM Treyger described how the stigma of being identified as a Renewal school hurt these schools chance of improvement.  Let's hope that the Chancellor reverses this unwise decision to label these schools as "low-performing" and stops encouraging parents to take their kids out of them  before its too late.

Dismal results and gender bias remains evident in specialized high school exam

The latest results from the specialized HS exams were more dismal than ever before.  Articles are here:  New York Daily News, Chalkbeat, New York Times, Staten Island Advance, Gothamist, NY1, Politico.

Only 7 black students admitted to Stuyvesant out of nearly 900 offers. This compares to 10 black students admitted into Stuyvesant last year, and 13 the year before, meaning there actually has been nearly a 50% decrease in two years.

Bronx High School of Science, made 12 offers to black students this year, down from 25 last year – a 50% decrease in one year.

Only one black student admitted to Staten Island Tech and 11 Hispanic students were admitted out of more than 300.

Overall, 506 black and Hispanic students received first-round offers …down from 527 black and Hispanic students who received offers last year.

See also the account in the Daily News about the bitter debate between the Governor and the Mayor about who is at fault.  For once, the Governor is right in pointing out that the Mayor could change the admissions unilaterally at five of the eight specialized high schools, including Staten Island Tech, without any change in state law.  The Daily News article also touches on the fact that while more girls took the exam, far fewer girls were admitted, as in past years.  See the stats from the DOE below:

Yet girls receive better scores on the state exams and better grades. 

If you're interested in my views on the specialized high school admissions process, you can read my Gotham Gazette article from last year that deals with several issues seldom reported in the mainstream media, and/or Jon Taylor's in-depth analysis showing how the SHSAT is clearly gender biased and is less predictive of success at these schools than a student's middle school grades.

Clearly this erroneous and deeply unfair admissions system must be changed.   Carl Heastie, Speaker of the NY Assembly, announced on twitter that there would be legislative hearings on the issue, likely in early May. 

Community-based PreK directors urge the Mayor and Chancellor to change course or their centers will be forced to close

Articles about this issue have now been published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the Daily News.

For immediate release: March 20, 2019

For more information: Alice Mulligan, oslpreschool@oslp.nyc

Community-based PreK directors urge the Mayor and Chancellor to change course or their centers will be forced to close

Fifty-eight directors of community-based preschool programs from all five boroughs have now written letters to Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza, warning them that the expansion of PreK and now 3K has put their centers on the brink of financial collapse.

They explain how despite having worked for decades with DOE to provide early education, they have lost thousands of students as DOE built too many of their own free-standing PreK centers close to existing CBO-run programs.  These free-standing DOE PreK centers cost taxpayers $811 million, and many themselves now stand half-empty.

.In addition, the DOE insists on placing excessive numbers of PreK children in public elementary schools – even in schools that are already overcrowded and have waiting lists for Kindergarten.  As documented in a recent report by Class Size Matters entitled The Impact of PreK on School Overcrowding in NYC: Lack of Planning, Lack of Space, the DOE’s inserted PreK classes in 352 public schools that were at 100% utilization or more, thus contributing to worse overcrowding for about 236,000 elementary school students.

The letters from the CBO directors describe how many of them shared their concerns with Deputy Chancellor Josh Wallack and his staff at a meeting in November 2018.  Though Wallack admitted that mistakes had been made by the city in building too many PreK centers, he refused to change course or correct the DOE’s practice of overfilling elementary schools to the detriment of the community-based programs that are suffering severe economic distress as a result.  

Though the CBO directors suggested to Wallack that the DOE assign more students to their centers to help ensure their financial viability and to use their own PreK centers for Kindergarten classes, which would relieve some of the overcrowding at nearby elementary schools and offer these children smaller classes, he refused.

During a subsequent phone conference with the DOE, CBO directors were informed that there was no plan to limit further expansion of PreK or 3K in district elementary schools. The new proposed five-year capital plan allocates another $95 million to build 3K centers and $85 million for PreK centers. Thus, this initiative will continue to come at the expense of the city’s long-time CBO partners, city taxpayers, and hundreds of thousands of elementary school students, who will experience even worse overcrowding in NYC public schools as a result. 

The letters from the PreK directors conclude with this heartfelt plea:

“Community-based organizations like ours have been the backbone of early childhood education in our city for generations.  When the DOE needed us as their partner, we provided.  When the Mayor needed us to help reach his goal of serving 70,000 children, we provided.  Again and again, the DOE has come to us when they needed us and now we are being dismissed and ignored. Why must our centers, dedicated to helping families and improving early education opportunity for NYC children be the collateral damage of the Mayor’s signature initiative? “

The fifty-eight letters, 25 of them from Pre-K directors in Brooklyn, 17 in Queens,  seven in the Bronx, five in Manhattan and four in Staten Island, are posted here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ja02hEMkExJfFr193eg-F_vJxRHrjbI-/view?usp=sharing

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Queens forum with AOC on how our schools must make every child feel like they matter

There was an amazing education forum yesterday with standing room only. Thanks to Jackson Heights People for Public Schools for organizing it. Among the wonderful speakers were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents the district in Congress,  NY Senators Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, who represent the district in the Legislature, as well as Senators Robert Jackson and John Liu.
Among the terrific education advocates who spoke were Johanna Garcia of NYC Opt out, Maria Bautista of AQE, Carol Burris of Network for Public Education, Diane Ravitch, Kate Menken  of the NYS Association for Bilingual Education and me. 

I was thrilled to be there and meet AOC, who spoke eloquently about how her family had moved out of the Bronx for good schools, and how no one should ever have to move from their home or to a charter school because the public schools aren't good enough.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Jackson Heights education forum from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Jackson Heights education forum from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

My presentation on the fundamental inequities of NYC schools and what we need to do to make every child feel like they matter by lowering class size is below.