Cindy Black on how "choice" leads to more segregated schools

Much controversy has been aroused and much ink has been expended about the way in which Eva Moskowitz is now defying the original stated purpose of charter schools, and marketing her chain of Success Academies to white middle class families in Brooklyn and on the Upper West Side.  Her glossy flyers, sent to households by the truckload, with many families having already received five or six, increasingly feature the faces of little white children. There has also been much debate about the problems of NYC's demanding school "choice" process -- but not much said about how school choice may further segregate  our public schools, especially in many areas of Brownstone Brooklyn, where the last ten years or more of gradual gentrification have led to more diversity in neighborhood schools.  While the UCLA Civil Rights project has shown how charter schools contributes to more segregation nationwide, here are the observations of one Brooklyn parent who is also a high school teacher, Cindy Black, about what happened when a new elementary school of "choice" -- though not a charter -- opened up  in her community:

From what I've seen, "choice" segregates schools. People are just attracted to communities that feel familiar. It is frustrating.

This is at the elementary level, but when a "school of choice" opened in our district this year, virtually every white student in my daughter's grade left to go to that school, which billed itself as a progressive alternative to zoned schools. Now Brooklyn New School might open a new school in district 13, which will definitely impede the integration of local zoned schools which have already lost many white, biracial, and affluent families to BNS.

I'm fond of progressive pedagogy, but I'm not comfortable with a scenario where one demographic consistently chooses one extreme while another demographic chooses the other extreme. "Teaching to the middle" is now synonymous with bad teaching, but I actually think that if we are to have truly integrated schools, parents are going to have to compromise. I might like to see my child in the least constrictive environment, but another parent sees that as chaotic and distracting and wants their child to learn discipline. "Choice" allows each parent to write the other off, and ensures that their children won't meet. There is this attitude that every child is different and you have to find the right "fit" for your child, but part of being a citizen is putting aside what is easiest for you in order to think about what will be best for the community as a whole.

I think schools should be integrated. Really integrated. I was reviewing capitalization rules with my high school students recently and discovered that they didn't know that England is a country. I came home and asked my five-year-old and she did know, but only because two kids in her Kindergarten class had traveled to England over winter break. Both of those kids transferred to the new, progressive, "school of choice." Most of my students never went to school with kids who travel overseas for winter break. And obviously it isn't just my students who suffer. The kids who travel overseas, they're missing out too. Everybody loses, I think, when our search for the "right fit" allows us to opt out of sending our children to school with children whose experiences have been very different from their own.

  -- Cindy Black

A Brooklyn parent reports on the WNYC/Schoolbook forum on "school choice"

See also NY Times/Schoolbook and GothamSchools on this forum. Here is the account from a Brooklyn parent who wishes to remain anonymous:

Last night I attended the WNYC/Schoolbook forum on “school choice” which turned out to be mostly about promoting Schoolbook--no surprise. Jodi Rudoren of the Times kicked off the evening by telling us all to go on Schoolbook and add comments on our children's schools. 

The Walcott conversation with Brian Lehrer was about what you'd expect. Some gentle probing, but they filtered out any slightly difficult questions by having the audience submit them on index cards or via Twitter. I didn't hear any Twitter questions answered. An OWS person tried to disrupt things and was hauled away after a while. Walcott just kept hammering away on the world as he sees it, where choice and small schools are all that matter.  A 12-year old who attended summed him up nicely: "He just keeps talking about how hard his job is." 

Walcott left and was followed by the panel discussion, led jointly by Beth Fertig and Brian Lehrer. This was a lot more interesting, and I came away impressed by several of the panelists. Kelvin Diamond, the Dist. 13 CEC member, struck me as a decent guy, very committed to building schools and community. His daughter attends Philippa Schuyler, a good middle school in Brooklyn, and he's been in the thick of the high school search. He spoke about how frustrating it was for parents to try to get sense out of the DOE, either about their children's situation or in a more activist role, i.e. through the CEC.

 The 8th grade teacher, Laura Klein, and the principal, Rashid Davis, both of whom have been blogging on Schoolbook, were terrific, actually, and seem like professionals who are very aware of their students and what they can and can't do for them. They both mentioned the fact that by the time kids get to high school, they've had ten years in the system already, and there are limits on what they can achieve. The charter school operator, Miriam Raccah of Achievement First, formerly of Girls Prep, said very little. The parent, Carla Trujillo, is a Mexican immigrant who spoke via a translator. She spoke about the difficulties of negotiating the process without knowing English, of the limitations of having one's child translate at school fairs, and so forth. They also ran a video that showed kids who'd been through the process talking about what had happened: honest and engaging teens.

Lots of bloggers and journalists were there, in addition to parents, quiet a few of whom were from the neighborhood.  But not enough to fill the auditorium, which was quite large and I wondered if they'd expected more of a crowd.  [Note from LH: Despite the frequent announcements on WNYC about how this event would help parents navigate the choice process, the event occurred the week after the high school applications were due.]  

They had perhaps a couple of hundred people, a mix of middle-class parents and those who looked as if they might be school employees. Walcott came in with Tish James, *the neighborhood's* city council rep, who has been dedicated to fighting for local schools. Anyway, I attended mostly because I have a 7th grader, and because it was a few blocks from where I live. It didn't tell us much about the high school process that we did not already know, but it was interesting to see Walcott as the face of mayoral control, with no acknowledgement of what real parents and children face every day.

And we all came away thinking a lot about the difference in choices--and likely outcomes--for our middle-class, high-achieving children and for those young people who have been born with very different opportunities.

Manhattan & Brooklyn parents fight back vs. Success charter invasion

video by Darren Marelli; Manhattan and Brooklyn parents fight back against the spreading invasion of Eva Moskowitz' Success charter schools in their public school buildings.

Leonie Haimson on CNN this morning

Carol Costello interviewing me today on CNN's American Morning.  Here's an accompanying article from the CNN blog.

After the show, I looked up Forest Hill HS; only 38% of their graduates are college ready, meaning they will need remediation.  I'm sure that even this relatively successful school could do better by its students if it provided them with smaller classes.

free movie screening Thurs. Dec. 8, at 6 PM!

Parents, Educators and Community Members You Are Invited To a Free Movie Screening and 

 Learn The Truth About Charter Schools

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting For Superman

    When: Thursday, December 8^th at 6pm

Where: Emily Dickinson School, PS 75

735 West End Avenue (enter on 96^th St) NY, NY 10025

Q & A Panel Discussion After Screening

 

With:  Brian Jones and Julie Cavanagh, Teacher Activists;

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters;

                               Noah Gotbaum, CEC3 Charter/Overcrowding Committee Chair  

Four of the city’s most dynamic education activists discuss the current direction of DOE policies, the truth about charter schools, and what our children really need to succeed.

Sponsors, P.S.75 PTA, CEC 3 and Class Size Matters

The latest Bloomberg idiocy about class size; why wasn't I surprised?

So Mayor Bloomberg stepped in it again, when at a speech at MIT this week,  he said that if he could redesign our  public school system, he would fire half the teachers, double the class size, and pay teachers more.  See the video below. 

(During this same speech, he also bragged about having "my own army... the seventh biggest largest in the world" in the form of the NY police department, but he obviously doesn't want  to fire any of them.)

Here in NYC, while expanding the bureaucracy, increasing spending on education by 50 percent and raising teacher salaries by 40 percent, Bloomberg has also managed to eliminate thousands of teaching positions.  Class sizes this year in the early grades are the largest they have been in eleven years. The result?  Student achievement has stagnated. 

I have become so used to the idiocy that passes as educational policy these days that when David Seifman of the NY Post told me about Bloomberg's remarks, before they were widely reported, I said I wasn't surprised. 

After all, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and countless others on their payroll had made similar, if less extreme pronouncements over the last year -- that class size doesn't matter, that teacher "quality" is everything, and that public schools should increase class size and spend their budget other ways, including expanding online learning,  more charter schools,  more testing, merit pay, etc. -- none of which has any backing in the research, and all of which are already undermining the quality of our public schools.

Just yesterday, Marguerite Roza of the Gates Foundation gave a paper at an event co-sponsored by the Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress, which proposed that districts should

"....raise class sizes in the older grades in exchange for substantial ($10,000) bonuses for the top 15 percent of teachers. Such an exchange, if made, would enable a district to shift funds in a way that emphasizes teacher quality over numbers of staff."

This proposal was originally put forward by Karen Hawley, head of a consulting group called Educational Research Strategies (ERS), whose funders include the Broad and Gates Foundations. Hawley's previous job was at Bain & Company , Mitt Romney's old consulting and private equity firm, known for increasing "efficiency" by taking over companies and firing thousands of their employees.

Of course, neither Roza nor Hawly mentioned the fact that study after study has shown that merit pay for teachers doesn't work to improve student achievement, including an analysis done by the corporate reformers favorite "genius" Roland Fryer.  The evidence on this is so overwhelming that even DOE has dropped its merit pay scheme after wasting $56 million on it.  This contrasts with numerous controlled studies showing that reducing class size has significant positive effects on student outcomes, even in the middle and upper grades. 

Despite this, Roza from Gates and Stephen Frank of ERS were invited to give a presentation before the NY State Regents and others this fall, at the behest of Education Commissioner King, about "rethinking education resource use for greater student achievement."  Bruce Baker of Rutgers has ridiculed Roza's presentation which hyped online learning; here is one of the bullet points in the ERS power point presentation:   

“Redefine individual attention as an outgrowth of effective assessment & differentiation and not as the result of smaller group and class sizes.”  

In other words, if you simply "redefine" testing as "individual attention", it will produce the same benefits as a smaller class size, without any of the support, connection, and/or actual learning that a real-life teacher can provide.  ERS  has even produced a card game called  “School Budget hold em’” which  instructs school district leaders they can “win” by increasing class size, and instead "invest" in merit pay and hiring more bureaucrats.  

All of this reflects the corporate mentality that has taken over our schools, and that ignores both the knowledge and preferences of stakeholders and the lessons of experience.  

For an administration that touts the importance of parent "choice", Bloomberg too seems eager to ignore the priorities of parents.  Each year, in the DOE's own surveys, NYC parents say that their top "choice" for their children's schools would be reducing class size, yet each year for the last four, class sizes have increased.  

In his MIT speech, the mayor also managed to insult the NYC teaching force by saying that they come "from the bottom 20 percent and not of the best schools."  (See Noah Gotbaum's response to this outrageous claim, which also has no backing in reality.)

A recent NY Times/CBS poll provides yet more evidence that Bloomberg is on the wrong track as far as most New Yorkers are concerned.  Parents said the best thing about their children's schools was their teachers; and the worst thing was their class sizes. Not surprisingly, the majority of New Yorkers as well as public parents also said they disapprove of the way Bloomberg is handling education, and are dissatisfied with the quality of the public schools.   

Bloomberg sent his own daughters to Spence, a private school where the average class size is 16-18; half the size of classes in many NYC schools.  Perhaps he should instruct the trustees of Spence and other NYC private schools that they should fire half their teachers to raise the quality of the education to the level that our public school students now receive.

In any event, Bloomberg's MIT speech has caused a firestorm of publicity not seen since Cathie Black's faux pas about the need for downtown public school parents to use birth control.  You can check out the WCBS video of his speech below.

Ellen McHugh: nothing dark but the intent of the DOE

Here is Ellen McHugh's account of the controversial Cobble Hill charter co-location hearing, more description and video of which is here.  Ellen is head of Parent to Parent - NYS, and a member of the Citywide Council for Special Education:

Another hearing another show. (with apologies to Cole Porter).

Outside it really was a dark and rainy night but the sharp lightning flash of argument chased the gloom from the corners of the auditorium at 293 in District 15.  Here, at the hearing on a co-location of a Success charter with three other schools, there was nothing dark but the intent of the DOE.  As the room was filling up it was obvious that one thing was missing: there were no tee-shirted, cap wearing, sign carrying devotees of Success Academy.  Having participated at many of these co-location hearings, the lack of devotees signaled only one thing: a change in strategy.  That, or the ridicule these tactics engendered had caused a shuffle in the war rooms at Success, Inc

Occupy Wall Street came with the people's mic. Students from the affected schools were clustered to right of the panel.  The charters folks were on the left, huddled and lacking in cohesion.  Parents and community members were rapidly filling seats throughout the auditorium. Elected officials or their representatives were here.  On the right near students and administrators were staff members from the schools. DOE staffers trotted back and forth whispering to various DOE representatives, carrying water for the thirsty. B.I.T.s (Bureaucrats in Training*) clattered up and down the aisle.(*my thanks to Mark K for that turn of phrase)

Two armed police officers were in the back and a clique of school safety officers watched the crowd.  This was District 15, home of brownstone Brooklyn and gentrification.  Were they expecting a riot? 

Right on time, at 6:20, Jim Devor, the Chair of CEC 15, began the meeting.  He introduced the members of the panel, about 14 people from the SLT teams, CCSE, CCHS, SUNY and the DOE, as well as the Brooklyn High School Superintendent.  The SUNY representative made a statement. The DOE Deputy
Chancellor Marc Sternberg read the proposal to the audience and a CCSE member [Ellen herself] made a short statement of concerns: the educational impact statement or EIS made no reference to actual education programs or the sharing of best practices between and among schools, lack of appropriate space for specialized services for students with IEPs, an artificial growth limit for all of the schools and programs currently in the building.

Then the questioning, by the Chair of the D 15 CEC, began.  If the purpose of charter schools is to offer choice to parents of students in failing schools, why was the DOE proposing this co-location in an area with high performing schools?  Originally the charter application submitted was approved for D 13 or D 14.  Why the sudden move to D 15?  Why had there been no preliminary discussion with the D 15 CEC or the Community Planning Board, as required by the law?  Why had CUNY ignored its own guidelines of
community involvement?  Why was it appropriate to plan for a school building utilization of 108%?  

Another CEC member asked why, when Sunset Park had many underperforming schools, it was considered appropriate to site the charter in this neighborhood?  Students who have high needs and who were at risk were being ignored by a charter school founder who professed to provide choice for those very parents and students.  It was a very tough half hour of questioning, with only a cursory attempt to provide answers.

But, in the audience there was a little bit of theater.  The Chancellor had come in.  He was sitting in the corner, in the last row of seats, away from the action and slouched down  to avoid recognition.  And, quietly slipping
into a seat on the opposite side of the auditorium, but with enough hustle and bustle to attract attention, was Eva Moskowitz.

As we approached the public comments part of the evening, elected officials were permitted to speak first.  Among the officials to speak, all in opposition to the proposal were Assemblyman Jim Brennan. Assemblywman Joan Millman , Oscar Jones representing State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, City
Councilman Brad Lander,  Councilman Steve Levin, and District leader Joanne Simon. 

Assemblywoman Millman offered an alternative proposal: establish a much needed early childhood program at the site.  The Assemblywoman also noted that, of the 90 or so calls her office had received about the co-location, not one call had been in support of the plan.  Assemblymember Brennan referred to the plan as an attempt to "sever, fragment and divide the community".

While the Deputy Chancellor attempted to justify the plan chants of "Shame, shame, shame" erupted.  He had tried to defend the proposed utilization rate of 108% percent, explain the lack of community involvement, and let it be known that Success could expand to 8th grade. 

Proponents of the charter assured the audience that they were members of the community, some for as long as five years, and had a right to demand excellence and choice.  One or two mentioned the high cost of private school as a reason for their support of charters.  Some of their comments caused hoots of derision from  the audience.  A few times the Chair had to call for quiet and a quality audience.  At one point an irate individual was removed from the building by the security for swearing at speakers.

Students talked about the issues of crowding and asked why the charter school, with only kindergarten and first grade students, would have 10 hours a week of gym time at the cost of  limiting access to the gym for the other three schools.  A community member commented on the lack of electives and wondered if the "efficient" use of the school building would damage the well regarded culinary program. 

Speakers described the history of high staff turnover at charters and the counseling out of students with IEPs or who are English Language Learners. Questions were asked of the SUNY representative.  Why weren't the charter schools paying a fair rent for the facilities they occupied? In all of the 32 speakers I heard only handful supported the co-location. 

In the mean time, as speaker after speaker took the microphone, we noticed that Walcott and Moskowitz had disappeared.  Interesting that they didn't stay to the end, but I guess when you are plotting it's better not to be
blatant.

Noah Gotbaum on the Mayor's defamation of our teachers

The Mayor's statement that teachers represent the "bottom 20%" of our society  is so outrageous, so disdainful and so demonizing of teachers and the teaching profession as to merit a defamation suit.  And the policies which have been generated by these beliefs so destructive and demoralizing to those teachers, to our children, to our schools and to our communities as to merit a recall. 

To our friends at the AFT/UFT, NEA/NYSUT are you on the phone with your lawyers, and if not why not? 

To our friends in the press: will you be asking the mayor whether he stands by these lies about 80,000 NYC public servants, the overwhelming majority of whom hold Masters degrees, are incredibly hard working and intelligent, and supremely dedicated to our children in the face of class size increases, constant budget cuts, annual reorganizations, increasing child poverty, and a testing/accountability regime that lacks any credibility?  Will you also be asking him, as well as public school parents, whether he and we would and should prefer class sizes for our kids of between 50 and 70+ (with "better teachers")?  

And while you are at it please also ask Howard Wolfson, Dennis Walcott, Arne Duncan, Merryl Tisch, John King,  Christine Quinn, as well as the editorial boards of our local and national press if they agree with the Mayor's statements?  If not, will they disassociate themselves?

They are all happy to prattle the call for teacher accountability.  Where is the grading system and Progress Report for those whom - despite nine years of complete and total control of all facets of the education system and a 50% budget increase - haven’t generated a single meaningful improvement in student performance, college/career readiness, honest graduation rates, parent satisfaction, or real and lifelong learning?

To allow the Mayor, his staff or indeed any elected or appointed official to get away with statements like this is unconscionable.  To allow someone with such disdain for our parents, our teachers, our communities, and our public schools, to continue to supervise and to steward the education of our 1.1 million school children, is criminal.

- noah e gotbaum, Community Education Council D3

Brooklyn parents, teachers & community members speak out: we don't want your charter school!

Thanks to Darren Marelli, here are highlights from the hearing that occurred on Tuesday about the controversial proposal to co-locate another branch of the Success Academy charter chain in Cobble Hill, District 15, in Brooklyn. 

Passionate and articulate parents, teachers, elected officials, students and community members spoke out against this damaging, deceptive and most probably illegal proposal, and pointed out how the co-location will likely wreck the schools that now inhabit the building, one of which is in transformation, by overcrowding them, forcing them to increase class size and lose valuable programs.  Does the DOE care?  You be the judge.