Has NYC's "Emperor's New Clothes" Moment Finally Arrived?

From the little boy who proclaimed the truth about the Emperor’s nonexistent new clothes to the fearless mothers of the disappeareds in Argentina to Edward R. Murrow’s renowned reporting on Senator Joseph McCarthy, despots and those who aspire to despotism have often been brought down by the humblest of truth-tellers. An editorial in today’s New York Times has finally taken a small but meaningful first step in truth-telling about the educational despotism of the Bloomberg-Klein regime.

Entitled “Grading the Grades,” the Times editorial lauds the Chancellor and Mayor for instituting accountability and “rating” of the City’s schools while meekly calling for “replacing the A through F system with a more subtle and flexible one.” No mention is made of the DOE’s incessant emphasis on standardizing testing as the prime measure of educational achievement. Nothing is said about paying students and teachers for attendance and test results, devoting increased time to rote test preparation, or suffering the concomitant loss of educational attention to the arts, sciences, and social studies. Nowhere is the systematic and nearly total disenfranchisement of public school parents mentioned. Rather, the editors view the problem as simply one of over-reductionism. In the Times’ view, schools just need more than one A to F grade to characterize their performance. How many then? Three, five, ten? What’s the point?

As the Bloomberg Klein program drags NY City’s educational system increasingly toward charter schools, voucher programs, and a handful of elite public schools immune to, or politically connected enough, to ignore their grades (or simply demand they be revised upward as necessary), where will we find the voice who will reveal the Emperor’s new clothes for the fraud they are? And what a fitting tale for the last few years of Mayoral control. After all, the premise of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale was that the swindling Farabutto brothers convinced the Emperor that their marvelous new suit of clothes would be invisible to anyone who was stupid or not fit for his position. That sounds eerily similar to past comments directed toward his educational reform critics by Mayor Bloomberg.

So where are our media leaders? Where are our political leaders? When will our Borough Presidents, City Councilpersons, State Legislature representatives, and/or Congressional representatives finally stand up for the public, speak the truth, and say, “No more!” Where will we find our century’s first Joseph Welch, the attorney who heroically stood up to Joseph McCarthy and uttered those now-immortal words, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

letter to Mayor from David Bloomfield about the school grades

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

Sufficient questions have been raised regarding the grading of New York City public schools (except charters) that it is time to rescind all recently issued letter grades. The system's unreliable data; the subjective, crazy-quilt method of computation; and the politicization of scores make useful judgments about school quality impossible.

Further, the grades bear little or no relation to other evaluations of school quality, sowing confusion rather than clarity among students, parents, educators, public officials and the general public. Perhaps you want to see this as a noble experiment gone bad. Fine. Whatever the rationale, as today's New York Times editorial suggests, it is time to replace this system since it has so obviously failed any reasonable measure of public or professional confidence.

David C. Bloomfield
Program Head, Educational Leadership at Brooklyn College
NYC public school parent and member, Citywide Council on High Schools

SCHOOL NETS THOUSANDS WITH “DUNK-THE-KLEIN” GAME

November 11, 2007 (Gadfly News)

A public elementary school in Brooklyn that has requested it remain anonymous received an unexpected windfall on Saturday during their annual fall fair, netting thousands of extra dollars for their PTA because of an unusual attraction. The game was Dunk-the-Clown – with a difference.

As is customary, a clown sitting on a chair hurled taunts and insults at the fair-goers, while they took turns throwing balls at him, attempting to dunk him in the basin of water below. But the clown was Joel I. Klein, NYC Schools Chancellor.

“Your school gets an F!” Mr. Klein shouted.

Or was it Mr. Klein? A label across his chest proclaimed he was, but a woman in the crowd revealed, “It’s actually Joe Ruiz, president of our PTA. Our school got an undeserved bad grade on the school report cards last week. Our principal and teachers were pretty demoralized, so people around here are a little angry. We know how hard our teachers work, and frankly, we’d all like to take a shot at Klein.”

From his perch atop the game, Mr. Ruiz shouted a steady stream of insults. Some were about the marked increase in standardized testing in the schools. When a group of students stepped up to the plate, he shouted, “I’m going to give you more tests! More tests! More!”

When a teacher took her turn, Mr. Ruiz cracked an imaginary whip and shouted, “Test prep! Test prep! Test prep!”

When a parent took aim, Mr. Ruiz addressed the issue of the cell phone ban. Referring to a statement made repeatedly by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, that parents want their children to carry cell phones to school merely so they can ask them what they want for dinner, Mr. Ruiz shouted, “What do you want, chicken or fish?”

Notably, the principal of the school did not hurl a ball, though she smiled appreciatively at those who did. As she stood on the sidelines, Mr. Ruiz taunted her with comments about the repeated reorganizations of the schools. “I’m replacing the districts with regions! No! I’ve decided to do away with the regions! Ha! Ha! Who’s going to help you now?

The crowd, which appeared unruly, attracted the attention of a uniformed police officer patrolling the neighborhood, though when the officer saw what was going on, he joined the line himself. “I’d like a piece of this guy,” he said. “Last winter my daughter’s bus route got cancelled. She waited hours in the cold for a school bus that never came, and now, to get to school, she has to cross a busy highway by herself.”

A quick sampling of those waiting take shots at the “Chancellor” revealed that many were not from the school hosting the fair.

“My daughter goes to high school in the Bronx,” said one man. “She has to take 2 subways, so she checks in with us each leg of the trip. But last spring, the DOE confiscated her cell phone. It took us 3 days to get it back. I had to lose a day of work to go demand it.”

Behind him, another woman said, “My son is in third grade at a neighboring school. This week his teacher announced she just can’t take it anymore. She’s accepted a job in Westchester. Twice the pay for a fraction of the aggravation.”

By the end of the day, the school hosting the fair had netted over $10,000 at the dunking game.

Mr. Bloomberg, reached at a $5,000-a-plate fundraising dinner for the private school his daughter had attended, was asked his reaction to the outpouring of anger at his schools chancellor. “Running a school system is not a popularity contest,” he said curtly. “You get a few disgruntled parents out there and they do a lot of whining.”

But Mr. Ruiz dismissed Mr. Bloomberg’s comment. “A few?” he said, fanning a fat stack of bills. “Ten thousand dollars at a dollar a pop? I’d call that a lot of angry parents. Maybe I should call the mayor’s cell phone and ask him what he’s eating there at his black-tie dinner. Chicken? Or crow?"

-- by Jan Carr

The NY Times calls for ditching the school grades

Today, the editorial page of the NY Times comes out squarely against the new school grades.

The paper calls on the Mayor to “ditch the simplistic and counterproductive A through F rating system."

The editorial points out that "a single letter grade that does not convey the full weight of this approach and lends itself to tabloid headlines instead of a real look at a school’s problems.”

It also notes how the formula is statistically untenable, as it is based on one year’s test score gains, and that “a high-performing school was given an F and several low-performing schools — those actually on the state’s failing list — were given A’s and B’s.”

This editorial is especially notable as the Times very rarely comments on the radical changes going on our schools.

Today's City section also has an excellent oped by parents at a school that received a "D" --Central Park East I:

“Central Park East I and other “failing” well-regarded schools like it have become collateral damage in a clash of competing educational philosophies: waste time and energy training children to do well on a test and get the grade; or educate them to be creative in their problem-solving, but fail on the Department of Education’s report card. That’s just not an acceptable choice.

It’s not Central Park East I that deserves the D, it’s the educational specialists who can’t or won’t accept that testing young children is not the best way to judge how well an elementary school is doing.

Yes, we’re angry about the bureaucrats giving us a failing grade, but we’ll wear our scarlet letter — our D — with pride if it’s the price we have to pay to stand up and fight for a great education for our children.”

See also the many letters published in the NY Times yesterday, protesting the concept and the formulation of these grades.

Master file of school "peer index" scores here!

A list of schools sorted by their "peer index" scores is now available in an excel file -- along with their grades and rankings on quality reviews.

Each school's grade was determined in large part by comparing its test results, attendance and survey results to the 20 schools above and the 20 schools below. For high schools, the "peer index" score must be within 0.5 of theirs.

A low peer index for elementary schools reflects a low-need, higher demographic student body; for some reason, this is reversed for middle and high schools. Check out the list to see which other schools your child's school was compared to in order to determine its grade.

Here is DOE's explanation:

1) Elementary & K-8 - peer index is a value from 0-100. We use a composite demographic statistic based on % ELL, % SpEd, % Title I free lunch, and % Black/Hispanic. Higher values indicate student populations with higher need

2) Middle & High - peer index is a value from 1.00-4.50. For middle schools, we use the average 4th grade proficiency ratings in ELA and Math for all their students that have 4th grade test scores. For high schools, we use the average 8th grade proficiency ratings in ELA and Math for all their students that have 8th grade test scores. Lower values indicate student populations with higher need.

Have any observations? Leave them as a comment on the blog. Thanks to Jim Devor for the file.

Stop the new grading system! petitions and fact sheets available

Each school’s grade and “progress report” will be distributed to parents at the parent/teacher conferences next week.

Time Out From Testing has put together excellent petitions and fact sheets, calling for a halt to the school grading system, showing how it is likely to further degrade the learning conditions at our schools. It would be very helpful if parents set up tables at their schools next week, and collect signatures.

• Download the fact sheet
• Download the petition

I have also posted an easily downloadable copy of my Daily News oped to hand out, with more information about why the grading system is inherently unfair and destructive. Petitions can be returned at the address below and I will get them to Time Out from Testing. thanks!

Class Size Matters, 124 Waverly Pl. New York, NY 10011

See also the many letters to the NY Times today -- all protesting the many inadequacies of the formula and the grading system itself.

Eduwonkette on the "statistical malpractice" of this administration

Check out the telling critique of the new school grading system from Eduwonkette, an astute new blogger:

"Earlier this week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg flexed his muscles by threatening to close F schools as early as June. He quipped, "Is this a wake-up call for the people who work there? You betcha."

Through analyzing these data, I've concluded that the people in need of a wake-up call work not at F schools, but at the NYC Department of Education....There are five reasons the report cards might kindly be called statistical malpractice".

One statistical anomaly she points to: the grades received by the schools that run from 6-12th grades. Of the 33 schools, 22 have different grades at the middle and high school level -- many of them sharply different. Examples?

"Consider the Academy of Environmental Science - its high school got a C, but its middle school got an F. At Hostos Lincoln Academy of Science, the middle school got a D, but the high school got a B. At the Bronx School for Law, Government, and Justice, the middle school got an F, but the high school got a C."

Clearly the grades these schools received reveal nothing useful about the leadership or the overall quality of the school, as the administration would maintain.

Is this a wake-up call for the people who work there? You betcha.

School Report Cards: Is There Method to the Madness?

November 8, 2007 (GBN News): The release this week by the Department of Education of new school “report cards” has sown tremendous confusion among parents and educators. Many highly rated schools are getting mediocre, even failing grades, and many schools on the state failing list are getting high grades. While education experts may be baffled, GBN News has spoken to a source at the DOE that may cast some light on the situation.

This GBN News source works for a group within the DOE termed the “ARIS Control Team”. The team is a group of computer experts charged with devising the programming used to evaluate students’ test scores and other data, and to ultimately translate them into individual schools’ report card grades. However, what the source told us about the role of ARIS and his team was surprising. The following is GBN News’ interview with this source, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity:

GBN News: So tell us, what exactly does this “ARIS Control Team” do?

Source: Actually, most of us just sit around all day playing computer games. It’s the easiest job I’ve ever had.

GBN: But if that’s all you do, how do you come up with all the data that the DOE uses to figure out the schools’ report card grades?

S: Well, nobody’s supposed to know this, but the grades are actually assigned to schools totally at random; they have nothing whatsoever to do with the school’s actual performance. Our only role was to develop a simple program that randomizes the data that ARIS collects, then distributes grades based on a curve predetermined by the DOE. The whole thing took us about 10 minutes. Any college kid could do it.

GBN: Why in the world would the DOE do such a thing?

S: We’ve been wondering that too. So when we got bored of the computer games, we had ARIS do a little research for us, to see if we could figure out what was going on. We plugged in some keywords like “Chancellor”, “chaos”, and “confusion”, sent ARIS to the web, and lo and behold, ARIS came up with a bit of analysis that may have put it all together.

GBN: What did it come up with?

S: What ARIS found on the web was an article from 2004 that may just explain why they’re putting us through all this insanity. The article shows the Chancellor pushing a concept called “creative confusion”. The idea seems to be to shake up the system repeatedly, and to break down the opposition by sheer virtue of confusing the hell out of them. It’s all done on purpose. Well, if that’s what they’re trying to do, they certainly succeeded with the constant DOE reorganizations, and they’ve really hit the jackpot with these school report cards.

GBN: Do you really think this is what the DOE is up to?

S: When you think about it, there can be no other explanation. Award winning schools getting “F’s”, schools on the failing list getting “A’s”. It defies logic, unless this is all being done to for the express purpose of confusing everyone.

GBN: So this $80 million ARIS computer is just being used to generate a randomization program that any first year computer science major can write?

S: Oh, that’s not the whole story. You forget that the Chancellor has threatened “consequences” to schools that get low report card grades.

GBN: But what does ARIS have to do with consequences?

S: Remember HAL in the movie “2001” - a supercomputer that took over a spaceship and locked the captain outside in the void of outer space? So now it’s 2007, and it’s amazing what computers can do these days. $80 million buys a pretty powerful computer. Put it this way, if I were a “low performing” principal, I’d think twice before I ventured out of the school building.

How the school grading system is a fiasco

Check out my oped in today’s Daily News, calling the new school grading system a “fiasco” and pointing out the reasons why.

It ends this way:


The new grades are merely another simplistic, misleading attempt by this administration to look tough - and evade its duty to improve our schools.

(Click on the picture to the right to enlarge it.)

Not surprisingly, the NY Post ran an oped in support the new grades– written by a charter school operator. Interesting that DOE could apparently find no one involved with a traditional public school to back them up.

What’s especially ironic is that the Post also ran an article on p.2 revealing that charter schools have been exempted from receiving grades – supposedly because the DOE can’t require their parents and staff to fill out the surveys.

The Daily News ran an excellent article, entitled “How a good school fails.” It looked at PS 35 on Staten Island, in which 49% of the students live in poverty, yet 86% passed last year's state reading test, and 98% the state math test. Citiwide, this school was in the 91st percentile in reading, and 97th in math. But it got an “F”.

How can this be so? Because last year, only 35% of its students improved their scores over the year before in reading, and only 23% in math.

How absurd! As my oped points out, between 34-80% of the annual fluctuations in a school's test scores are random, or based on one-time events alone.

While many excellent schools like PS 35 received “F"s yesterday, a lot of struggling schools also received “A"s.

I went through the state's list of failing schools for nine districts: Districts 7, 8 and Districts 10-16. Of the 141 schools that received grades yesterday, 27 of them received As, 51 Bs, 44 Cs, 13 Ds, and 6 Fs.

So if a school was on the state failing list, it was far more likely to get an A than a D or F. The distribution of grades of schools on the failing list was remarkably similar to schools citywide: 19% As, 36% Bs, 31% Cs, 9% Ds, and 4% Fs. (According to the DOE press release, 23% of schools overall received As, 38% Bs, 25% Cs, 8% Ds, and 4% Fs.)

John Elfrank-Dana, a teacher at Bergtraum HS analyzed the grades in terms of the quality reviews that every school received last year – a more holistic approach:

Fully 80% of the schools that got F or D grades were rated as “proficient” or better in their quality reviews, while 37% of those that were rated unsatisfactory in their quality reviews got As and Bs on their report cards.

Here is a quote from the NY Times today from Emily Horowitz, a parent at Muscota school, which unfairly received an “F”:

“I find the methodology to be confusing, problematic and flawed” … Ms. Horowitz said that the grade “doesn’t mean anything” to her, and that parents were planning a rally this morning to “celebrate our school.”

Hurray for Emily and the parents at her school! See our previous posting of individuals who should be celebrated for standing up for reason during these difficult times,

Please nominate others for our Profiles in Courage series by leaving a comment here.

Update: see this NY1 story about the principal and parents at Muscota.

Profiles in courage

Here's a toast to the educators who have spoken out against the reductionist, test-driven stranglehold that the administration is attempting to impose on our schools:

First, to the teachers of PS 196 in the Bronx who, according to the NY Post, voted to reject the new merit pay scheme that offers an extra $3,000 to teachers if they improve test scores enough.

"I'm trying to move away from test scores being the be-all, end-all," said a PS 196 teacher. "I'd rather impress upon them the importance of a well-rounded education."

Then, to I.S. 318 in Brooklyn, for deciding not to take any extra steps to improve the school’s grade of “B”, since it would require too much additional test prep. As the assistant principal, John Galvin explained to the NY Sun :

“Moving to an A, he said, would require spending many hours on small improvements, moving students who are already passing tests to get just one or two more questions right on a standardized test.

He said test prep would leave students bored, not stronger learners. " We're not going to give up doing art, music, chess, robotics — all the great programs we have during the day that gifted kids are interested in — just to make sure they get a better or equal score than they got the year before," he said. "We do care about the test, but not enough to sacrifice."

Finally, to Ellen Foote, the principal of IS 89 in lower Manhattan, for protesting her school’s grade of “D” to the NY Times in defiance of strict orders from Tweed, and in advance of the official announcement:

“I do not want to devote more time to teaching to the tests,” she said, adding that she would have to sacrifice art, music and individualized instruction. “Is that what’s required now to get a good grade on this progress report? That’s a compromise that I don’t think I am willing to make.”

Bravo, to these courageous individuals, for resisting the administration – and standing up for the authentic meaning of education in these difficult times. As islands of sanity in the testing mania that threatens to overwhelm our schools, we salute you!

More nominations, anyone?

The New Scarlet Letter: A BloomKlein adaptation

Click on the picture to enlarge it :

With thanks to David Bellel for creating the image and Norm Scott for its inspiration....

List of school grades

For those who are interested, here is the excel file with all the grades of schools released today. Update: here is an html version that should work in your browser.

But whether your child's school received an "A" or a "F", remember -- these grades are based 85% on one year's test scores alone . As such, experts say that the results are so unreliable as to be nothing more than a winning the lottery or a roll of the dice.

These grades are merely another simplistic, misleading attempt by this administration to look tough – and evade their own responsibility for the inadequacies of our schools.

More soon.

Update: here is the revised version, released Nov. 12, with one grade changed and some additional grades for schools that were "under review"

A failing grade for Joel Klein by Jan Carr

Dear Chancellor Klein,

I was horrified to read on today's DOE website that my son's school, Salk School of Science, received a C on its "Report Card." The principal of this school, Rhonda Perry, is one of the most hard-working, gifted and visionary educators I have ever encountered or can imagine encountering -- and that includes all the inspirational professors I was privileged to work with when studying for my M.Ed., and all the smart, committed educators I worked with and learned from when I myself worked as a teacher.

The teachers whom Ms. Perry has employed at Salk are also shining stars of the system. They work long days, long beyond what is called for contractually, personally shepherding the 36+ students they have in their classes, meeting regularly to discuss and compare notes on kids who might be falling behind. Ms. Perry and the teachers at Salk bring a vibrancy and enthusiasm and creativity to a DOE curriculum that is increasingly hidebound and dominated by test prep.

You should be interested to know that in the time my son has been at Salk I have been so impressed by the teachers and curriculum that I regularly have written educator friends of mine in other states to describe the exciting learning community we are privileged to be part of. But if my son is getting a great education -- an education that engages and excites him at every turn -- it is because of Ms. Perry and the teachers at Salk, and largely IN SPITE OF what the DOE is doing and the ill-advised, miserly, destabilizing changes you have initiated in the last few years.

It is outrageous to me that our schools are given a letter grade at all, and even more so that that grade is principally determined by a narrow assessment of test scores. According to your website, Salk School of Science is now threatened with "consequences" if they get 3 C's in a row. Shame on you!

How are our smart, hard-working educators supposed to feel in the face of a grade that might merit "consequences?" If they feel completely demoralized and are now considering throwing in the towel and leaving the castigating DOE behind them I could not blame them one whit.

But me? I feel angry. Angry that you've reduced our educational system to this, angry that you show such disrespect for the hard-working educators who are on the front lines, working with our children day in and day out, principals and teachers who have devoted their lives to the education of our city's children. The way you treat our educators is part and parcel of the way you treat our students -- constantly barraging them with narrow, deadening tests and demoralizing them with meaningless scores.

You claim to be concerned about the schools that are failing our most vulnerable students. BUT DEADENING TESTING AND HUMILIATING OUR EDUCATORS IS NOT THE WAY TO CORRECT THAT. When I was a teacher, I worked in the Head Start program with a low-income population. I know that, given the right environment -- small class size, smart teachers, good staff development -- those students can become real learners, despite the many other challenges they face.

Mr. Klein, it pains me to say it, but you are not an educator. Nor do you seem to understand in any way, shape or form how to work with professionals who are.

My grade for the DOE? A resounding F. Unfortunately, I fear that your actions will now resound throughout the system. And it is our schools and students who will feel the "consequences" of your grade.

Sincerely,
Jan Carr, M.Ed.

Principals Balk at Report Card Signatures

November 4, 2007 (GBN News): Many New York City principals are said to be incensed over a Department Of Education requirement that they have someone at home sign their school “report cards” before they bring them back to school the next day. One principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she feels “totally humiliated” and that, “I feel like I’m a kid back in school going home to face the music.” Another principal said, “I can’t show this to anyone at home. I haven’t even told my wife I’m a NYC school principal. She’d never let me take such a risky job.”

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says there should be no such concerns, however. “We empower our principals to make their own decisions,” he told GBN News. “It’s totally their own choice who signs their report cards. It can be a parent, a spouse, even a friend.” But as to the potential consequences, the Chancellor sounded less sympathetic. “The glue that holds all of our reforms together is that principals are accountable for their scores,” he said. “Whether it brings them humiliation or adulation, we spent $80 million for ARIS to come up with these report cards. We certainly have a right to ask for a signature to make sure someone actually reads the damn things.”

Diane Ravitch poses a question about the new school grades

A question for everyone to think about:

What is the purpose of giving a letter grade to schools?

In what way is this better than the previous report cards that included test scores, attendance, proportion of teachers who are certified, and a variety of other factors?

Isn't this akin to giving each child a single letter grade that lumps together his performance in every single area of his or her life at school? Would we really want to tell kids "you are a D student because your test scores are not as high this year as last year"? Doesn't it
make more sense to mark them in relation to their performance on a variety of tasks?

The whole scheme is simplistic and misleading. It humiliates people who are doing a good, even a great job, of educating children. It attempts to replace nuanced human judgment with a computer's calculations. The effort to remove human judgment is yet another sign of the degradation of education--a supremely human and judgmental activity--under the current DOE.

Diane Ravitch

For more reasons to distrust the new grading system, see an earlier posting here.

Gifted and Talented Policy at October Panel for Educational Policy Meeting

This month's PEP meeting was held on Staten Island. A special thanks to the D31 CEC who provided a warm welcome. Here are the highlights from my perspective as the Manhattan representative on the Panel:

Proposed Gifted and Talented Policy

The new G&T admissions policy was presented but not discussed. Highlights:

• Request for testing forms available starting December 3rd
• There will be two tests used to determine each child's score: the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) and the Otis Lennon School Abilities Test (OLSAT). The OLSAT will count for 75% of the score and the BSRA for 25%.
• There will be strict cutoff for the combined score. A child must fall in the 95% percentile nationally to be considered gifted.
• All children at or above the cutoff score will be guaranteed a seat in a G&T program. Children not passing the cutoff will not be eligible for G&T programs.
• The three citywide programs (NEST, TAG and Anderson) will have an additional onsite assessment.

Beyond these changes scheduled to take effect starting in December, the DOE is proposing for next year to test all Kindergarten students with the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA).

See the G&T proposal document (pdf) for more information including the proposed timeline.

Already I have heard many complaints from parents about the proposal, especially the following:

• The standardized tests being used are correlated with socioeconomic status and may be heavily influenced by child's preparation in the home. It's not clear that the proposal brings us any closer the the stated goal of a more equitable system. See more on this viewpoint here.
• Notifications of acceptance are given too late for parents who are also considering private or parochial school options. This late notification retards parental choice, supposedly one of the key elements of the Chancellor's reform program.
• The implication of the plan is that some districts have too many G&T seats and these may need to be curtailed. While it is important to add capacity where it is needed, there is no good argument to close programs that are working. Based on last year's OLSAT results, DOE should have a sense of impact on each program but don't seem to be discussing it with principals.
  

DOE will take comments for a month, take them into consideration and release the final plan. Members of the public can submit comments through November 25 via e-mail (to giftedandtalented@schools.nyc.gov), phone (call (212) 374-5219) or at a public hearing:

Manhattan: Monday, November 5, Fashion Industries HS (225 W 24th St.)
Staten Island: Tuesday, November 6, PS 58 (77 Marsh Ave.)
Queens: Thursday, November 8, John Adams HS (101-01 Rockaway Blvd.)
Bronx: Thursday, November 15, Evander Childs HS (800 E. Gun Hill Rd.)
Brooklyn: Monday, November 19, Brooklyn Technical HS (29 Fort Greene Pl.)

Speaker sign up is at 6:00 and hearings start at 6:30

School New York City Educational Construction Fund (ECF)

The ECF provides long term leases on city land to developers who then build both a commercial project and a school. It's a way for the city to get school capacity without capital funds.

Jamie Smarr presented the two current projects of the ECF, 1765 First Avenue (future site of East Side Middle School) and 250 East 57th Street (PS 59 and High School for Art & Design).

While the idea behind the ECF is fine, there just have not been enough projects to make a dent in the capacity needs of school system. The ECF has been in existence since 1967 and has built 18,000 seats, or roughly 450 a year. Against 1.1 million kids, that's not much. But even these seats are not necessarily incremental. For example, the 1765 First Avenue project is replacing a school that was closed earlier. I asked Jamie what was stopping us from doing more projects and he pointed to the need for developers to cooperate. I asked if he got support from the Mayor and Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff in reaching out to developers. He said he had the cooperation of the Chancellor.

Chancellor's Regulation A-655 (School Leadership Teams)

Martine Guerrier presented the proposed changes to the SLT regulations. Many parent leaders have expressed the concern that the changes to the regulations would weaken SLTs by giving the principal more influence than the current regulations allow, especially by placing the SLT task of creating the schools Comprehensive Educational Plan (CEP) behind the principal's responsibility to define the budget. For more information on this point, see testimony at the City Council hearings from myself, Jim Devor and Joan McKeever Thomas (here).

Martine and I had some back and forth on these issues. She said the final A-655 regulations are not yet ready.

Public Comment

There were many speakers at the Staten Island session who complained about poor treatment of special ed students - lost IEPs, poorly trained teachers, lack of programs and a tendency on the part of school staff to criminalize the behavior of special ed kids. There were several speakers who had accounts of police being called to deal with misbehaving students including one disturbing story of a very young girl who was threatened with arrest and handcuffing.

Peter Calendrella, 1st VP of the District 31 CEC made an impassioned plea for DOE to find ways to allow students to carry phones to and from school. Mr. Calendrella, who was formerly an Assistant District Attorney working with the Special Victims Unit, pointed to two recent cases where Staten Island students could not call police when they witnessed a crime in the immediate vicinity of their school.

Back Atcha! A Report Card for the DOE

In recognition of the DOE's imminent release of school Report Cards, it only seemed fair to offer one in return. And what do you know? It's STRAIGHT A's!!!





GROWTH IN TASK AREAS

Grade -------- Item

-- A -- Discourages Parent Engagement
-- A -- Disregards Parent Concerns and Needs
-- A -- Obstructs Use of Cell Phone Technology to Facilitate Daily Parent/Child Interaction
-- A -- Minimizes the Relevance of SLT’s and CEC’s
-- A -- Fully Obscures Organizational Structure and Lines of Responsibility
-- A -- Avoids Open and Honest Public Discussion
-- A -- Discounts Improving the Learning Environment through Smaller Class Sizes
-- A -- Rejects Whole Child Education in Favor of Whole Child Test Preparation
-- A -- Rejects Preparing Students for Success in College and Beyond in Favor of Developing Lifelong Skills with Timed Multiple Choice Tests
-- A -- Dares Teachers to Explore Material Deeply, Teach Creatively, and Inspire Students
-- A -- Motivates Students to Become Lifelong Learners Only When They Are Paid to Do So, Thereby Maximizing Their Future Income Streams as Adults
-- A -- Increases Principal and Teacher Focus on Standardized Test Scores
-- A -- Centralizes Control over Educational Policy
-- A -- Undermines Public School System to Facilitate Increase in Privately Managed and Charter Schools
-- A -- Focuses Student, Teacher, and School Evaluations Exclusively on Quantifiable Metrics
-- A -- Awards Lucrative No Bid Contracts to Consultants
-- A -- Maximizes School Accountability with Funds from Unaccountable Corporate Sources
-- A -- Implements Corporate Governance Model for Public School System
-- A -- Uses Public Funds to Build Dossiers on Critics
-- A -- Creates Meaningless Report Card System to Enrage and Confuse Parents
-- A -- Massages Data to Spin Self-Favorable Analysis and Reports
-- A -- Maximizes Inappropriate Use of Standardized Test Scores
-- A -- Makes Effective Use of PR for Maximum Obfuscatory Effect


GROWTH IN PERSONAL BEHAVIOR (Not Included in Overall Grade)

-- D -- Listens Attentively
-- D -- Plays Well with Others
-- D- -- Deals with Others in Honest and Trustworthy Manner
-- D- -- Shows Courtesy and Consideration to Others
-- F -- Respects Others’ Opinions and Beliefs

Oh well, nobody's perfect, and there's always next year.

Deborah Meier on the Chancellor's inequitable G and T proposal

The notion -- like NCLB -- that it's all being done in the name of equity, on behalf of the oppressed is such nonsense.

They are using two instruments we know for a fact provide racially biased results--it's the data that the canards about racial inferiority are based on and comes with a history of bias. Both class and race.

Furthermore, we know that psychometricians have unanimously warned us for years about the lack of reliability of standardized tests for children under 7. So this is a way to insure that not just West Side moms get gifted classes?

But it is a sure way to get every child in NYC, by mandate, measured and sorted on the basis of IQ and so-called "school readiness" indicators in a "objective" way--one that does not allow us to note any gifts or talents besides those that show up on such tests. It would exclude Einstein, for sure. All children will thus get labeled in the most vicious way for the purpose of picking out those in the top 5%? Does that sound credible?

Write anyone and everyone you can think of, including the local press, about this. Overwhelm them with a barrage of indignation over this sneaky and professionally unsound practice.

Meanwhile, we also have to launch a letter-writing campaign against the very idea as well as the tool by which schools are being "graded". This must come at least as much if not more from the schools who got A and B grades. Don't leave it to the colleagues under attack to defend themselves against these damaging absurdities.

-- by Deborah Meier

To comment on the proposal to give IQ tests to all Kindergarten students, email giftedandtalented@schools.nyc.gov thru Nov. 25. Or sign up to speak at a Town Hall Meeting starting next week, at 6 PM; dates and times here.

School Cell Phone Incentive Program Hung Up on Details

November 2, 2007 (GBN News): A plan currently being considered by Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Education to offer cell phones as rewards for high performing students may have hit a major stumbling block. While the belief at the DOE is that the cell phones would be an effective incentive for children to learn, they cannot be handed out to children in school without running afoul of the Mayor’s school cell phone ban.

Sources at the DOE told GBN News that the Department is considering several ways of getting around this problem. Some officials suggested having the children pick up their reward at local bodegas instead of at their schools, for a nominal $2 fee. Others favor burying the phones outside, and having the prize winners dig them up after school. The solution that the Mayor is said to prefer, however, is a “zero tolerance” policy whereby the phones would be given out at school, but they would then be immediately confiscated. “Schools are for learning,” the Mayor reportedly said. “And the lesson they’re going to learn is that no matter how they get them, no cell phones means no cell phones.”

Diane Ravitch emerges victorious against the billionaire bully

Though at first it seemed shocking that the administration would try to stamp out dissent by taping Diane Ravitch at speaking events, developing the sort of research file on her that candidates create on their opponents, and then having Kathy Wylde of the NYC Partnership try to smear her in an oped in the NY Post. In retrospect perhaps it’s not surprising at all.

Bloomberg and Klein run their respective fiefdoms as though they're involved in a non-stop political campaign. Many of the top officials in the Mayor's cabinet are PR people rather than policy experts – including most of his deputy Mayors. And as we know, Klein has the most extensive -- and expensive --PR staff in city government, short of the Mayor.

And while both of them may pretend that they believe in competition, clearly they only allow this notion to prevail when it means leaving schools, and students, to succeed or fail on their own, without throwing them a lifeline. When it comes to their own turf, they refuse to allow the sort of free exchange and expression that real democracy depends upon.

As Leo Casey writes in Edwize: “It seems that for some, markets should rule all education — except for the free marketplace of ideas. There, their monopoly must go unquestioned and uncriticized.”

Remember how Bloomberg won office in the first place– not on his qualifications or political experience, which were nil, but because he was able to use his own personal fortune to ruthlessly dominate the airwaves? In 2001, he spent a record $71 million; even though early in the campaign, he himself said that spending more than $30 million would "look obscene." He went on to spend more than twice that amount.

Four years later, even though he was the heavy favorite in the race, he broke his own record --- spending $78 million, more than any other nonpresidential campaign –nearly ten times as much as his opponent, Freddy Ferrer. During the 10 days before the election, he spent $12 million, mostly for television, radio and newspaper advertising.

Remember how he fired three of his appointees on the Panel on Educational Policy, the day of the vote about third grade retention? The man uses brute force when he cannot persuade. Never does he stop to think that perhaps he might be wrong. The absolute power that he wields when it comes to our schools is not enough -- he also feels that he should own public opinion as well.

Now, whether its our taxpayer money going to develop dossiers against dissenters, or persuading charities that were originally set up to help the public schools (the Fund for Public Schools) to spend millions more to burnish his image by spreading disinformation, precious resources that should have been devoted towards improving education for our kids is being diverted – and perverted – into his narrow political ends.

Only in this case, the good guy won, and rather than besmirching Diane’s reputation, the administration has sullied their own . No one seems to have told these bullies that you don’t treat a national treasure like Diane as you would a political foe.

Commentators of every political stripe have come out in her defense. Not that she needed them. First, you must read Diane’s eloquent response in the NY Post.

Also, the Daily Kos, Steve Koss in our own blog; Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute, the National Review, Eduwonkette, Education Notes, and Gotham Gazette : all of which decry Tweed's underhanded tactics to suppress dissent.

The only person not in his payroll of the Mayor who seems to support the administration is Whitney Tilson, former hedge fund manager and charter school proponent.

Last but not least, check out one of my favorites -- The Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

The real issue here, and its one that we've commented on before, is the way in which the DOE acts more like the DOD in its ruthless approach to dissent. …It is, as Ravitch, Sol Stern and Andrew Wolf have all pointed out, the way that an agency behaves when it has a good deal to hide. It is an agency that will go to great lengths to do bureaucratic sleight-of-hands, and when that doesn't work on seasoned educational experts, the agency will bring out corporate toadies to do ghost-written character assassination.

Thanks to David Bellel for the illustration. Yes, that’s Kathy Wylde down for the count.

Another DOE Critic Trashed

November 1, 2007 (GBN News): Just days after an op-ed piece in the NY Post savaged the well-respected educational historian Diane Ravitch, another education critic has now come under attack in the same paper. In an op-ed piece entitled, “Another Hypocritical Critic”, MS 445 eighth grader Josh Kent was blasted for a piece he wrote in last month’s school paper. In his article, Mr. Kent had criticized a new school policy that eliminated outdoor recess time during lunch period. The Post op-ed contends that there is “an inconsistency between Mr. Kent’s past position and his more recent response to educational policy.” In Kindergarten, the article contends, the child had taken quite the opposite stance on the outdoor recess issue, when he reportedly had complained to the teacher, “It’s too cold. I don’t want to go outside.”

GBN News has learned that there is more to this story than meets the eye, however. While the op-ed purports to be an independent piece, sources at the DOE say that the writer was given access by someone at the Department to young Mr. Kent’s school records. Why the DOE would maintain such a record of a remark made in kindergarten, and why it was released to an outsider is unclear. A DOE spokesperson would not comment on these questions directly, but said, “This kid is the most influential educational commentator probably in the school. If he is typically either distorting what we're doing, or if he is reversing long-held opinions in order to attack us — that's an indication that there's something more there than fair-minded observation.”

In other news, according to the New York Times, the DOE plans to begin giving away cell phones to children as a reward for good schoolwork. GBN News has learned, however, that the phones will not be totally free for the children. Due to the DOE cell phone ban, the phones cannot be given out in the school buildings, so the children will have to pay $2 to retrieve them from a bodega down the street.

Bush, Rove ... and Wylde??

For the past decade or more, the radical Right’s playbook – perfected by Karl Rove on behalf of George Bush – has been the same. If you don’t like the message, attack the messenger using conservative media outlets like Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the Washington Times. In that shameful Bush/Rove tradition now comes Kathryn Wylde with an acrimonious public attack in the shameless NY Post on Diane Ravitch’s criticisms of Mayor Bloomberg’s and Chancellor Klein’s education policies.

Diane Ravitch is arguably the nation’s leading educational historian, a fierce defender of public education and a constant voice of reason in assessing education policy. What are Ms. Wylde’s educational credentials? President & CEO of the Mayor’s Partnership for New York City (an organization of corporate CEO’s who scour up private funds for Mayoral initiatives so they do not have to be approved by the City Council) and a board member for the corporate-funded NYC Leadership Academy and the Research Partnership for New York City Schools. In a prior email, Ms. Wylde wrote that her involvement (in the new Research Partnership) was “intended only to provide some additional tools to help out the schools and the experts in the educational field (which I am definitely not!).”

In a lengthy editorial reputedly crafted with the assistance of the Department of Education and uncharitably titled “Hypocritical Critic,” the ostensibly independent Ms. Wylde implies that Ms. Ravitch’s criticisms are personally motivated. She writes that Ms. Ravitch’s “reversals … seem more tied to her unhappiness with the personalities in the Bloomberg administration than its policies.” She draws inappropriate inferences by lifting Ms. Ravitch’s writings out of context and makes patently ridiculous, Rush Limbaugh-like assertions that Ms. Ravitch “appears not to share the core belief of the mayor's reforms - that every child can be educated and there are no excuses for failing to provide a child with the opportunity for a great education.” This is an insult to a true proponent of child education, coming from an uninformed, elitist dabbler, because Ms. Ravitch has the temerity to question the Mayor’s methods and approach.

According to the New York Sun, Ms. Wylde’s editorial was crafted with the explicit assistance of the DOE. In a manner disturbingly reminiscent of Nixon’s enemies list, spokesperson David Cantor flatly admitted that the DOE has compiled a dossier on Diane Ravitch (with taxpayer money, naturally). Mr. Cantor’s defense of this tactic was indeed priceless: that she’s “either distorting what we’re doing” or “attack[ing] us.” Has anybody seen J. Edgar Hoover hanging around Tweed lately?

Mayor Bloomberg and a handful of his millionaire/billionaire friends are actively recasting the City’s public school system in a corporatist image of their own devising. They seek no input beyond their own well-heeled coterie, brook no dissent, dismiss parents as ignorant or irrelevant, spend millions on misleading and self-congratulatory public relations campaigns funded by the same cronies, and now attack those who dare speak out. Public and private moneys intended to help the public schools are being diverted into a personal PR machine that simultaneously touts the Mayor’s purported “successes” while stamping down dissent from any and every quarter.

Mayoral control has morphed into Mayoral dictatorship, and the NYC school system is being transformed into little more than a Princeton Review-styled test mill. It’s time for those who would never deign to send their children to the City’s public schools to stop imposing their blindered will on those parents who do. Mayoral control as currently devised – arrogant, belittling, non-responsive, so pro-standardized testing as to be anti-educational – cannot continue to stand.

Periodic assessments: a waste of precious time and dollars

Great piece by Jackie Bennett on the UFT blog Edwize about the so-called periodic assessments – which start next week. She says they will produce “junk data” while taking away valuable time for teaching and learning.

If you’ve ever looked at the stuff coming out of the Accountability office, you’d know there’s no one there that understands either teaching or the limits of testing.

She also says that as part of this program, “Multiple choice sheets will be picked up by courier and graded by the DoE’s vendor.”

Can you imagine the cost of this exercise in futility! Couriers picking up millions of bubbled in answer sheets in hundreds of NYC schools, and scanning them to get the results five days later – all happening five to six times per year?

Not to mention all the "Senior Achievement Facilitators" and "data inquiry teams" in each school, working overtime to analyze this junk data in order to squeeze better test scores out of our kids.

It's no wonder they're trying to steal millions of dollars from our kids’ CFE dividend to pay for this ridiculous distraction.

G and T: what makes some children more special than others?

Chancellor Klein announced that starting next year, all Kindergarten students would be tested for Gifted and Talented programs, uniform programs would be instituted citywide, and admissions would be based solely on testing in the 95% percentile. This is apparently his idea of equity.

My fear is that this policy will lead to even more segregated schools and classrooms -- the last thing we need. In addition, tensions will rise if the new funding system, as promised, distributes more resources to these students than others -- in the mistaken notion that only "gifted" children need extra enrichment. The truth is that all NYC students are being deprived in our schools; all children deserve the special treatment, as well as smaller classes , that too often are reserved for a special few.

Here are observations from Ellen Bilofsky, public school parent:

The saddest thing to me about gifted programs is the fact that virtually every child could benefit from the advantages that these programs offer, especially in the earliest years, when all children are mostly learning the same basic concepts and haven't had time to diverge as much as they will later.

When I first visited the gifted program that both my children later attended, I asked about the educational philosophy of the program. The principal responded, "Oh, the children in that program have the best of everything--the best books, the best materials, the best trips ..." and, not least, the best teachers and the lowest class size. (Yes, I know that many gifted programs have higher class size on the theory that these children don't need as much attention, but this program had small classes.) Some educational philosphy, huh?

What child wouldn't do better in a nurturing atmosphere with high expectations and the best material supports and enrichment experiences, rather than a large classroom with a lot of rote learning, where they taught lots of phonetics and wrote rows of identical letters over and over?

I once edited a book about teaching young children who were blind to read braille. I was surprised to discover that the author used the same methods to encourage literacy in these children, some of whom were also cognitively impaired, as my own children's teachers did. Of course, these children had the advantage of the individual attention of a braille teacher, but the point is that despite their disadvantages, they were able to benefit from the same methods used with gifted children and learn to delight in writing and reading their own stories.

Of course, testing is the other primary issue when it comes to gifted programs. Talk about high-stakes testing! These children going into kindergarten are only 4 years old, and this test may determine their entire educational future. How does it level the playing field to compare children who come from different backgrounds on the extent of their "preliteracy skills," when one might have been read to every night of her life while the other has no books in her home? Not only that, but at this age, the difference of several months in age is extremely significant in terms of development and maturity and can put the younger child at an enormous disadvantage. On the other hand, children do mature at different rates, so a child who is too immature to be tested at age 4 may be a perfect genius (assuming there is such a thing) a few years later.

My own children did not pass the initial tests they were offered. One of them simply refused to go into the room with the tester. This was back in the day when us knowledgeable middle-class parents could still work the system, and they scored high enough on a private IQ test to be admitted into a second round of testing. They each went on to be salutatorian of their elementary school, attend gifted middle schools and Stuyvesant, and the older one is at a prestigious college. I say all this not to boast, but to show how ridiculous is the idea that testing 4-year-olds can accurately predict their future educational attainment.

Instead of spreading the advantages of gifted programs to as many classrooms as possible, this administration is attempting to narrow them to smallest upper stratum, as if they were a reward children deserved for having educating parents. As usual, they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, dumbing down to the lowest common denominator in the name of equal opportunity. It is a travesty that seats for gifted programs were allowed to go empty last year, rather than filled with students who could have benefited, even if they didn't take the test, or score in the 95th percentile!