The NY City Department of Education: Is It Real or Is It Parody?

Note: It seems that more and more, I hear about readers who mistake certain GBN News parodies for reality. The last thing I want to do is to create confusion among NY City parents; the DOE does that well enough on their own. The following, I hope, will serve as a clarification of my parodies and of their purpose and meaning. Hint for blog readers: If it says “GBN News” at the top of the article, it’s parody. If it doesn’t, all responsibility for inaccurate, misleading or confusing information rests solely with the DOE.


It is both an occupational hazard and an intended purpose of parody that it may be mistaken for reality. I write education news parodies for the NY City Public School Parents Blog as “GBN News”. But when I look at what comes out of the NY City Department of Education these days, I realize that their reality is often more outlandish than my parodies.

The school Progress Reports (“report cards”) that were recently issued are a case in point. In my wildest imagination, I could never have come up with a “grading” system in which schools with positive quality reviews get D’s and F’s and are consequently closed, schools that are on the state failing list get A’s, and a school that received national recognition under NCLB gets a D. The idea is so far fetched that it is not even credible as parody.

Some time ago I wrote a piece based on last year’s fiasco in which high priced DOE consultants Alvarez and Marsal, to save money, had eliminated numerous bus routes in the dead of winter. With little notice, they had stranded countless children in the cold, and told children as young as five that they should use Metro Cards instead of school buses. I reported that in another move by Alvarez and Marsal, “The traditional ‘lunch period’ will be eliminated from all New York City schools, to be replaced by an as yet undisclosed academic activity period.” I had Chancellor Klein praising the plan as eliminating a cost-ineffective program and improving test scores, and Mayor Bloomberg responding to criticism by saying, “Schools are for learning, not for eating”. Some blog readers reported that they actually believed this at first, and one said, “I also think Klein and Bloomberg would do these things”.

In a somewhat darker vein, I recently wrote a parody in which Blackwater, USA was hired to take over school security from the NYPD. The idea, I wrote, came out of a meeting between Chancellor Klein and President Bush, in which “The President was said to have told Mr. Klein that if Blackwater could take over the Iraq war so successfully from the US military, it could do the same for the NY City Police Department in the war against cell phones.” One reader was so disturbed that he actually asked a Deputy Chancellor and a City Council member if the story was true.

In writing parody, I strive to straddle the line between reality and fiction, to demonstrate how porous that line can sometimes be. But while in one sense I feel gratified that these parodies were effective enough to be believable, it is more than a bit unsettling that people have gotten used to a reality so bizarre that they can accept the parody as truth.

For us public school parents, the world of the DOE can only be described as “Kafkaesque”; rational rules no longer seem to apply. Three times in six years, the entire school system was reorganized. Districts were folded into regions, then regions broken back up into districts. Control was centralized, then decentralized again. Parents and educators were consulted - after the changes had already been made.

The DOE treats cell phones like weapons, banning their possession and enforcing the ban with metal detectors. The Mayor rejects the City Council’s authority to overturn the ban because his control of the system comes from the state; yet, when convenient, he rejects state authority because the DOE is a “city agency”.

School evaluations are based on questionable data, which are wrapped up into a single letter grade by an $80 million supercomputer (ARIS); then those grades fuel a punitive system that can cost a principal his or her job, close a school, or inexplicably deny resources to the failing schools that need it the most. Meanwhile additional millions are spent on no-bid consultant contracts, yet funded state mandates to reduce class size, which could truly boost student performance, are flagrantly ignored.

Given all this, it’s really no surprise that my parodies sometimes get taken seriously. But the real parody is what Bloomberg and Klein have done with Mayoral control of the schools. Whether or not absolute power corrupts absolutely, it certainly can divorce those who hold that power from reality. Accountable to nobody, the Mayor and Chancellor take their advice, not from stakeholders like educators and parents, or from experts in the field, but from people in the business world like Jack Welch and Eli Broad.

While some of these educational dilettantes may be well meaning, none of them, including the Mayor or Chancellor, have any background in education. They listen to no one with the educational knowledge or common sense to tell them that their “reforms” are only a parody of sound educational practices. Meanwhile, our children must try to get their education in what has sadly become a parody of a school system.

Panel for Educational Policy Agenda for December: Q&A with DOE

The next PEP meeting is Monday, December 17th at 6:30

It's in the Bronx at MS/HS 368 Information Network & Technology Academy , 2975 Tibbett Ave.

For the agenda, PEP members are being asked to pose questions in advance and the leadership team of the DOE will be present to answer them.

If you have a question related to schools policy or budgeting that you feel should be asked, send it to me at the blog address or my official address (click on my profile on the right).

Unannounced Closing Stuns Bronx School

December 6, 2007 (GBN News): In a policy that the NY City Department of Education terms “Unannounced Closing”, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has decided not to wait until the end of the year to close some “failing schools”. One such targeted school, PS 422 in the Bronx, was shuttered this morning in dramatic fashion when Blackwater school security officers swooped down on the school, giving teachers and children 30 minutes to clear out their belongings and vacate the building.

The school had recently received an “F” rating on its Progress Report, despite having been considered “Proficient” on its latest Quality Review. One teacher, who spoke to GBN News on condition of anonymity, said, “We figured they’d probably close the school, but nobody expected it to come so fast. They didn’t even let the kids finish their lunch.”

It was a grim scene outside the school. Someone, presumably the Principal, was observed being led away with his face covered. Stunned parents milled about, waiting for their children to emerge. When the children did come out, they did so in an orderly fashion, many of them carrying books and artwork. Blackwater guards kept order, only occasionally prodding a teacher or child to move more quickly.

When reached for comment, Mayor Bloomberg defended the abrupt closure. “If the schools don’t educate our kids, they’re not going to stay open,” said the Mayor. “We don’t see any reason to keep a school open a minute longer than necessary,” he continued. "And by not announcing [the closings] beforehand, we'll keep the principals and teachers on their toes while we hold their feet to the fire."

Chancellor Klein was later asked by GBN News what plans are being made to accommodate the children from the closed school. The Chancellor briefly looked up from his Blackberry and muttered, “They can always go to private school.”

Teacher strike in Israel over class size: What would Maimonides say?

The teachers in Israel have been on strike for nearly two months, and one of the key issues is class size. Apparently there are many classes that are over thirty students, and the teachers insist that is nearly impossible to succeed in these conditions. The courts are apparently going to order the teachers back to work after Hanukah is over.

It is a little known fact that one the first people to discuss the importance of class size was the great Jewish rabbi and philosopher Maimonides in the 12^th century, who wrote:

“Twenty-five children may be put in charge of one teacher. If the number in the class exceeds twenty- five but is not more than forty, he should have an assistant to help with the instruction. If there are more than forty, two teachers must be appointed.’’

(Chapter II of ‘‘Laws Concerning the Study of Torah’’ in the Mishneh Torah.)

According to an article in Haaretz, religious state-supported schools in Israel have smaller classes than the secular schools. Not surprisingly, schools with primarily Arab students are more crowded than those in the Jewish neighborhoods.

The strategy of the Israeli government in responding to the teachers’ demand to reduce class size appears similar to that of the Bloomberg/Klein administration – talk about various options while actually doing as little as possible, especially as it might create the need to build new schools.

Some in the Finance ministry are calling for more parental “choice” and control over principal and teacher tenure instead:

. … in talks with various treasury officials and their colleagues at the Education Ministry, there emerges a vision: using personal contracts to hire principals, term limits for principals, choosing all the teachers in the school, simplifying teacher dismissal and, the perennial favorite, substantially broadening the option a parent has in choosing their children's schools.

As far as senior Education Ministry officials are concerned, as well as education researchers in academia, the plan is disturbing.

"Even countries that did major reforms were very careful about the use of personal contracts," explains one official. "Doing so means inserting unacceptable, harmful tensions into the school. In order to ostensibly justify the use of personal contracts, there will be widespread use of assessments and evaluations of principals, teachers and also students. Everything will then be measured, but it is very hard, and apparently impossible, to quantify all components of education with a simple formula."

"The managerial approach says in effect that it is possible to affect the microprocesses inside the classrooms by changing the macro on the structural level. The problem is that this has never been proven," adds Dr. Dan Gvaton, of Tel Aviv University. As for the expansion of parental choice, a Ministry of Education official said that it would mean "widening privatization. The demand for good schools will prompt them to accept only outstanding students or those whose parents are able to pay thousands of shekels per month."

Sound familiar? Too bad we don't have such wise men at Tweed. Where is Maimonides now that we need him?

The First Step by Seth Pearce

Seth has a simply breathtaking piece at the NYC Student blog:

What we need in New York City, is an education system that makes education possible. When educators are so overburdened that they don't have time to care about the needs of individual students, this is not the case. When the classroom is completely unmanageable and knowledge can not pass through the barrier between teacher and student because of population overload, this is not the case. And when students feel as though they are just another "problem" for the all-to-busy adults in the building, this is not the case.

It is time to cut class sizes and trim teacher loads. If we really want to save our schools, that is the first step.

Do yourself a favor and read it all. I wish all DOE officials who blithely say that class size doesn’t matter, or who pretend they care without doing anything about it, year after year, would do just that.

Sign our petition against the new school grades and for smaller classes today!

Class Size Matters has a new online petition, asking that the school grading system be terminated, and all the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on the DOE’s ill-conceived overemphasis on standardized testing and test scores be redirected towards reducing class size and expanding the capital plan.

Our online petition is posted here. Please go sign it now! We’d like as many signatures as possible by the City Council hearings on the new school grades, scheduled for Dec. 10.

(If you’d like more info on why the grading system is unfair, arbitrary and will hurt rather than help our schools, check out my Daily news oped, Why Parents and teachers should reject the new school grading system, posted here (as a word doc) or on the News website here. Also: Ten reasons to distrust the new accountability system and "Negative learning" and statistical malpractice at the Panel on Educational Policy for more.)

North Carolina, a state that over ten years ago pioneered the move towards more testing, is about to reverse course. See N. Carolina begins to turn away from testing.

“We're testing more but we're not seeing the results," said Sam Houston, the commission's chairman. "We're not seeing graduation rates increasing. We're not seeing remediation rates decreasing. Somewhere along the way testing isn't aligning with excellence."

Here in NYC, rather than be satisfied with all the existing state tests, and the new interim assessments now being given five to six times each year, the administration want to start adding new standardized tests in science and perhaps other subjects next year, as well as yet additional tests for grades K-2.

Rather than go down that same road that North Carolina is now rejecting, Tweed needs to be woken up from its delusion that more testing means more learning, as quickly as possible, before things get even worse.

Please sign our petition today! The full text is below.

We are vehemently opposed to the new DOE school grading system. These grades are unfair, simplistic and arbitrary, are based on statistically unreliable measures, and will hurt rather than help our schools.

By awarding each school a grade from A to F, the progress report trivializes the complexity of teaching, and will drive schools towards even more test prep and less learning, as well as further deprive our children of art, music, and physical education.

We demand that the energy, focus, personnel and millions of dollars that have been spent on devising this system, as well as the entire data collection system known as ARIS, interim assessments, financial incentives for high test scores, and “data inquiry teams” in the name of “differentiated instruction” be instead invested in reducing class size and expanding the capital plan, so that all NYC children can be provided with smaller classes and an equitable and adequate chance to learn.

"Negative learning" and statistical malpractice at the Panel on Educational Policy

At last week’s meeting of the Panel on Education Policy at Tweed, Jim Liebman’s performance in attempting to defend the indefensible – the school grading system that he designed -- was breathtaking in its ignorance.

Liebman, the current DOE accountability “czar,” is a former criminal attorney, currently on leave from the Columbia law school, with no training or experience in education policy, statistics or testing, and yet the entire educational focus of the DOE is now based upon his faulty theories and expensive initiatives, including the $80 million supercomputer called ARIS, assigning letter grades to all schools primarily on the basis of one year’s worth of test scores, devoting millions of more dollars and hours of precious classroom time to interim standardized assessments, and the creation of “data inquiry teams” in all schools – all in the effort to “differentiate instruction” which in the end will be impossible without smaller classes.

At the PEP meeting, in order to justify the school grading system, he fastened on the “F” that PS 35 in Staten Island received, a school in which 98% of its students are on grade level in math, and 86% in ELA. Why did this exemplary school receive an “F”? Because last year, only 35% of its students improved their scores over the year before in reading, and only 23% in math – though research shows that a large part of annual variations in test scores are based on chance alone and are statistically unreliable. (For more on this, see my Daily News oped and a previous posting, Ten reasons to distrust the new accountability system.)

During the discussion, Liebman compared PS 35 to one of its “peer” schools – the Anderson school, a citywide Gifted and Talented school that accepts students on the basis of their high IQ and high test scores. When Patrick Sullivan pointed out the unfairness of comparing PS 35 to a selective school like Anderson, Liebman said it didn’t matter how the kids got there, they should all make the same annual gains. He failed to mention, however, that elementary schools are grouped with other schools according to only the roughest measures of demography –and that no statistician would compare the performance of a school that selects its students on the basis of test scores with a neighborhood school, like PS 35, that has to admit every child in its zone.

There was an abundance of statistical malpractice on display that night -- between Liebman’s presentation and the talk given by the DOE testing “expert”, Jennifer Bell-Elwanger, who tried to convince the panel that the city’s lack of significant progress on the NAEPs since 2003 was indeed real progress. Both of these individuals would have flunked an elementary course in statistics if they had tried to make these arguments in a college exam.

When asked wouldn’t it better to have separate grades for achievement and progress, rather than collapse all these categories into one grade, even if he were convinced that the lack of one year’s progress in test scores was significant (which it isn’t) Liebman replied that the good thing about giving a single grade is that it gets people’s attention (or something like that.) One could say the same about threatening to cut off the hands of someone accused of theft, or even capital punishment, which doesn’t mean it’s a remotely fair practice or even useful.

More recently, in response to questions about class size from parents in Manhattan and Queens, Liebman has insisted that the reason the DOE refuses to reduce class size is that classes would have to shrink to below 15 students to improve instruction and/or student achievement. In other words, lowering class size from 30 to 20 would make absolutely no difference.

Not only is such a statement absurd to anyone who has actually spent any time teaching in the public schools or observing classrooms, it is completely unsupported by research. Instead, it is simply another lame excuse that opponents of reducing class size like to throw up as a smokescreen in order to discourage such efforts.

Here is a comment sent to me from Chuck Achilles, a principal investigator of the famed STAR experiment in Tennessee and a professor of at Eastern Michigan University and at Seton Hall University. Chuck is also one of the premier class size researchers in the world:

“Hi Leonie:

I thought that the “below 15” idea (archaic) had faded. Anyone who says that is uninformed and ought to be asked (challenged) publicly to defend the assertion. It came once from one meta-analysis (Glass & Smith, 1988) that was very limited in its n of observations (77, of which some were for physical skills like hitting a tennis ball against a wall.) Just in STAR, we had more than 1300 observations in the range of 12-28 students. We typically analyzed reading outcomes, but sometimes we did math (giving us 2600 comparisons) and could have used other academic (test) outcomes… I’ve faxed some pages to show the linear effect: About a correlation of -.35 for each student added to a class. Because STAR used the class average as the unit of analysis, this means (approximately) the addition of each student to a class in the n=12-28 range reduces the class average score (about .1 of a month per year.) Later analyses show that it is cumulative.

Chuck A.”

Here is a fact sheet with numerous citations, showing there is no threshold in terms of reducing class size; and that the increase in achievement in relation to the decrease in class size is roughly linear.

Liebman reminds me of a phenomenon called “negative learning” ---in layman’s terms, a little learning is a dangerous thing. One would think that someone who got his reputation by writing about the high error rate in capital punishment would have a little humility and understand the possibility of human fallibility in making absolute judgments, but no such luck.

Late Breaking TV Listing

Concerns have been swirling around a rumored increase in the number of surveillance cameras in some NY City schools; concerns that are heightened by the following GBN TV Guide listing:

Monday, December 3
8 AM***CH 74***6 hours ********PG-13
“Big Brother Knows Best” (Premiere) Daily reality show featuring footage from surveillance cameras in NY City public schools. Starring Joel Klein as “Big Brother”. Today’s episode: A camera turns the tables on Joel as it zooms in on his Blackberry screen.

Mike May Bend on Term Limits

November 29, 2007 (GBN News): Amid speculation that the City Council may be planning another referendum on modifying term limits for the Council and other city officials, Mayor Bloomberg’s opposition to such a move may be softening. The Mayor said today that he would be amenable to a change in the law, and weighed in with a plan of his own as an alternative to the current situation.

Under the Mayor’s proposed plan, Council members would each be rated by a letter grade. 85% of these grades will be based on the progress and performance of their districts, using measurable standards such as income levels, home prices, traffic safety statistics, crime rate, and test scores of the district’s schools. The remaining 15% of the grade will be based on a public opinion poll rating voters’ satisfaction with each member. Mr. Bloomberg is reportedly arranging with the Department of Education to use their ARIS computer system to crunch the numbers and come up with the grades.

Mr. Bloomberg’s plan calls for the letter grade to determine whether a Council member is allowed to run for additional terms. A member who receives an “A” will be allowed to serve indefinitely as long as the “A” is maintained. A “B” grade earns a member one additional term. “C” will leave the member subject to the current two term limit. A grade of “D” could result in recall of the member if the grade does not improve by the next marking period, while an “F” would subject the member to immediate recall and would put the district at risk of being eliminated. "We have to hold the Council members' feet to the fire," the Mayor said. "They have to be held accountable, and if they don't perform, there are consequences."

While the Mayor would not comment on a possible third term for himself, City Hall sources told GBN News that the Mayor’s plan will also include a provision for an end to Mayoral term limits. According to these sources, since the Mayor believes in accountability, his plan gives a Mayor scoring over 60% in public opinion polls an “A” grade and the right to serve additional terms.

In a related story, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein was asked today whether he would remain as Chancellor should the Mayor end up being given a third term. Mr. Klein had no comment, largely because he was so immersed in his Blackberry that he did not hear the question.

Update on School Report Cards and Testing

The DOE's school report cards, called "Progress Reports" continue to be the focus of sharp criticism.

Writing in the Gotham Gazette, David Bloomfield, of the Citywide Council on High Schools points out how the administration has not convinced us they have a credible system for rating schools. His article is titled Report Cards Flunk the Clarity Test. Here's an excerpt:

Klein and Bloomberg have arrived at a highly individual definition of a "good school," without any social consensus on that definition. No matter parents are confused. None of them would have mixed the ingredients in just that way were they to evaluate the school. So none of them should rely on the mayor or chancellor to determine where they send their children or how they behave toward poorly (or, for that matter, highly) graded teachers and administrators.

Also in the Gotham Gazette, Richard Kessler of the Center for Arts Education, explains how the Bloomberg administration's mania for testing harms arts education. Click here for his article.

Time out from Testing continues to gather signatures against the Progress Reports and the increased testing required to compile them. They are looking to complete their petition this week. Add your name here.

N. Carolina begins to turn away from testing

North Carolina, a state that led the nation in terms of emphasizing testing as one of the key methods to improve instruction, now appears to be about to reverse course. According to an article in the News and Observer, A Blue Ribbon Commission on Testing and Accountability is recommending eliminating or discounting many of the state’s tests.

Let’s hope other states follow – and that this testing mania soon fades from view. Somehow, somewhere along the way, a mass delusion seized our elected leaders and the business community, as well as some influential voices in the advocacy world, that more testing itself would somehow lead to more learning:

"We're testing more but we're not seeing the results," said Sam Houston, the commission's chairman. "We're not seeing graduation rates increasing. We're not seeing remediation rates decreasing. Somewhere along the way testing isn't aligning with excellence."

What Joel Klein says about overcrowding and the capital plan

There’s an excellent article in NY Magazine this week, about the crisis of overcrowding and class size, as rising population pressures and development threatens to overwhelm our schools. An excerpt:

And when parents reared up to ask Joel Klein about the issue [of overcrowding] at a recent community-education-council meeting, they say his answer was succinct: “Send your kids to private school.” (Klein’s office flatly denies the remark, calling it “completely inconsistent with his values and obvious commitment to public education.”)

This was not just an isolated slip from Chancellor; I know at least one prominent elected official who was asked by Klein why she sends her child to a NYC public school.

The article focuses on PS 199 in D3, PS 116 in D2, and PS 321 in Brooklyn, but clearly, this is a problem happening all over the city.

Last night, at the Panel for Educational Policy monthly meeting, parents from PS 8 in Brooklyn Height complained that enrollment has tripled and their 2^nd and 3^rd grades now have class sizes of 30, with worse to come, because of the number of new buildings rising in their neighborhood.

Teachers at PS 373 in Staten Island, a special ed school for autistic children, spoke about how the overcrowding at their school has become so bad that all the classrooms had been divided in half, and still, there was no space for a “quiet room”, which is essential for calming autistic children when they lose control. A parent from D 24 in Queens spoke about the rampant overcrowding in her district; in one school, Kindergarten students have to be bussed to another district, and yet the school is officially rated as undercapacity.

I spoke as well last night and first reproved the Chancellor for having let the legal deadline for class size reporting lapse. I informed him that the DOE was now in violation of law by refusing to disclose this information. I then spoke about their new class size reduction proposal, just recently approved by the state, which calls for lowering average class size to no more than 20 in K-3 and no more than 23 in all other grades over the next five years.

This proposal represents a significant improvement – especially if achieved in all schools and communities citywide. But there is no room in our schools right now to accomplish these goals, and the current capital plan would need at least twice as many seats – about 120,000 – to make this possible.

According to my calculations, based on the cost estimates in the current capital plan, it would take about $138 million in annual payments to finance this number of seats, after 50% reimbursement from the state for new school construction. This amounts to less than 3% of last year’s surplus, and less than one seventh what the Mayor gave back in tax cuts last year. Yet if current trends continue, NYC will spend a smaller percentage of its capital budget on schools than at any time in more than ten years.

I asked Klein last night if he planned to expand the current capital plan to allow their state-mandated class size reduction plan to become a reality, or if his proposal was only a convenient fiction concocted to satisfy the state. Do you know what he said? He responded that he would love to have a better capital plan, but he had no control over the budget.

Talk about an excuse-based culture! Well, I don’t think this is good enough answer. It’s his job, and that of the Mayor, to provide the space so that smaller classes can become a reality.

The amended capital plan is coming up for comment before CECs in December. See my fact sheet and let your CEC know that they should demand a better capital plan – one that provides at least double the seats, and the space to fulfill the new state mandate for smaller classes in all grades.

Patrick Sullivan vs. Jim Liebman on the results of the DOE parent survey

See Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan rep to the Panel for Educational Policy and co-blogger here, tangle with Jim Liebman of DOE at the September PEP meeting, as they spar over the findings of the official parent survey, especially as regards testing and class size.

See Liebman manage to present the results without ever allowing the words "class size" pass his lips -- despite the fact that smaller classes came out as the number one priority of NYC parents. See Patrick question the motivation behind the administration's attempt to obscure this finding, as well as effectively counter Liebman's attempt to spin the results as showing that most parents really want more test prep.

New blog: Billionaires for education reform

A civic-minded, selfless billionaire, Smellington B. Worthington III, has started a new blog, pointing out how the NYC school system needs to be improved.

According to his bio, Smellington “pulled himself up with just the sweat of his brow, the grit in his character, a portfolio of stocks and properties, a substantial inheritance, and ivy-league education, and a hefty trust fund. In his younger years, Mr. Worthington attended private schools, as do his three children. He is now selflessly turning his valuable time and attention toward the public schools, in order to produce a better, more reliable class of worker.”

Accordingly, he has lots of worthy things to say about the need to get rid of teacher tenure, extend the school day, etc. Check it out at Billionaires for Educational Reform.

More doubts raised on NYC's NAEP scores

A couple of updates on the NAEP story, which found mostly stagnant results in all categories except fourth grade math for NYC since 2003, when the Bloomberg/Klein reforms were first introduced.

Elizabeth Green of the NY Sun reports today that DOE provided more accommodations and extra time to a larger percentage of fourth graders than any other city in the country – so much so that several testing experts are saying the results should be considered invalid.

On three of four tests, the accommodation rate was around 20%. On the fourth-grade math exam, an extraordinary 25% of students were given accommodations -- and this was the only test that showed significant gains.

Nevertheless, Chancellor Klein sent a mass email yesterday to 100,000 DOE employees, contending that the NAEP results signaled great improvements. To the Daily News, Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf justified this PR effort, saying:

"Our great educators should feel extraordinarily proud of their work," he said. "And it is important to remind them of how much they are achieving on behalf of the children of the city even if others would prefer to ignore the power of their work."

This statement ignores the fact that the poor results on the NAEP are not any sign of failure of our hard-working principals and teachers, but are instead a reflection of the poor leadership at Tweed, which has put into effect one incoherent reorganization after another over the past five years, without fundamentally improving the learning conditions in our schools. Indeed, our educators have had to work overtime just to stem the losses that would have otherwise occurred.

Also see Eduwonkette , who further deconstructs the NAEP scores, showing little improvement, and no real narrowing of the achievement gap – even in 4^th grade math.

She concludes: “The New York City Dept of Ed has demanded "data-driven decision making" from its educators, but is now asking us to deny the data… For the sake of the kids involved, let us hope that those running the Department of Ed will begin to look at all of the evidence and evaluate their policies accordingly.”

City Expands Texts for Tests

November 19, 2007 (GBN News): A plan by the NY City Department of Education to distribute cell phones to city school children as rewards for good grades is being expanded, and the phones will soon be sending text message ads to all students in the city. According to GBN News sources, the new plan came out of meticulous research commissioned by Mayor Bloomberg, and is based on the results of a focus group hand-picked by the Mayor and comprised of trusted friends from the business world. In fact, when Mr. Bloomberg said recently that the only reason parents want their children to have cell phones is for children to tell them if they want beef or fish for dinner, he was basing his statement on information from this focus group.

The Mayor, who made billions selling new technologies through his company, Bloomberg LP, was quick to realize the marketing potential of the situation. According to these sources, he formed a task force to devise a plan utilizing cell phone technology to meet parents’ and children’s needs while simultaneously enhancing children’s education. The plan that reportedly arose from this task force is being called "The Million Program", and is to eventually reach all 1.1 million school children in the city through cell phones that will carry advertising tailored to people’s expressed needs.

As currently conceptualized, the program will distribute cell phones that carry only text messages with specific advertising. For all other purposes, the phones will be locked. Every day, children will receive five text ads, each related to a specific dinner choice. For example, the ad might be for Angus beef, Bumble Bee tuna, or even a local steak of seafood restaurant. After a child has viewed the five messages, the phone will be unlocked so the child can text the parents with his or her choice of menu for the night. Children will then be reinforced with text messages from famous high school dropouts who make millions in sports and entertainment, with cool quotes such as, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Anticipating criticism that the advertising could be a distraction to children in school, the Mayor reportedly said that any such distractions would be offset by the advertising dollars that would flow into the school system. “More money pays for more reforms and that means more test prep,” the Mayor was said to have told the task force. “That will improve test scores, which will more than make up for the effects of any minor disruptions to their day.”

The Mayor also dismissed concerns that the restricted phones do not address parents’ worries over children’s safety before and after school. “The focus group had no such concerns,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They all felt that their children are perfectly safe traveling with their chauffeurs.”

The million program: DOE's new cell phone project as ingenious marketing tool?

See the article in Advertising Age, revealing a new twist in the DOE project, originally devised by Roland Fryer to offer cell phones to students, supposedly as an incentive to improve their academic performance.

It’s now being branded as “The Million program” – referring to the 1.1 million students in the NYC public schools. This proposal was originally described as an “experiment” but is now said to involve 10,000 to 11,000 students in its first year alone - and is apparently being pitched to potential sponsors as a way to market their products to all NYC students in the near future.

According to David Droga, an ad maven involved in the project, who revealed details to Advertising Age's Idea Conference last Thursday,

“There'll also be some room for advertising on the phone. After all, the phones, while provided for free to the students, won't be completely without cost. As such, marketers will be able to infiltrate the students' world through "responsible" sponsorships….There's lots and lots of brands out there that have a place in the students' lives," said Mr. Droga, who wouldn't disclose the specific advertisers because of ongoing negotiations.”

There may also be product “discounts” offered in text messages, according to Droga – a good way to sell more products.

So let me get this straight: this administration will continue to deny cell phones to students who need to communicate with their parents on their way to or from school, or in case of an emergency. But they will be offered as a way to sell them products?

This project is quickly turning into a potential goldmine for some lucky advertising agency as well as a host of possible commercial sponsors, and yet another opportunity to drain the pockets of NYC kids and their parents.

Teacher attrition up 80% under this administration

According to new UFT data, the attrition rate of teachers has risen significantly under this administration.

“City teachers are quitting in record numbers, according to data their union released Sunday. Teacher pay has increased by more than 30% since 2001, giving 83,000 city teachers salaries closer to their suburban peers. Still, the union says the number of certified teachers who left classrooms jumped 81% in the same period - to 4,606 in 2006, up from 2,544 in 2001. This does not include teachers eligible for retirement.

"People are saying, 'I give up,'" teachers union President Randi Weingarten said. She couldn't say whether these teachers quit the profession or moved to another district. But she blamed the exodus on large class sizes, poor teacher support and an administration at the Education Department that "doesn't listen to good teachers."

This is from a Daily News article -- here are NY Post and NY Times reports.

Chris Cerf of DOE denies the accuracy of UFT data and calls this a “stunt”. Cerf himself is perhaps not the most credible of sources as he has been pushing the company line that the stagnant NAEP scores released last week showed great progress for NYC schools.

See also NY Post today, detailing how new small schools formed with Gates funds are graduating students with a disproportional number of lower grade diplomas – diplomas that will be ruled out next year.

Who really deserved to win the Broad prize?

According to the just-released NAEP results, the city that really deserved to win the Broad prize as most improved urban school district in the country was not NYC, but Atlanta; however, lacking the Mayor’s political connections, supportive editorials in major newspapers, and well-heeled PR department, it wasn’t even nominated.

In fact, Atlanta was the only urban school district that has seen a consistent upward trend in all subjects tested by the NAEP--4th and 8th grade reading and 4th and 8th grade math--since 2002/2003, unlike NYC. Coming in a close second? Washington DC, which saw consistent gains in all subjects and years since 2003, except 8th grade reading, though it did make significant increases in even 8th grade reading since 2005.

Not only was the DC school system not nominated for the Broad award, though; its superintendent was fired and its governance system changed over to Mayoral control. Why?

To emulate the well-publicized, if illusory successes of the school system here in NYC.

Will visually and hearing impaired children be the next victims of this administration's obsession with test scores?

A month ago, we posted information about the proposal that had been floated by top DOE officials to eliminate the offices at Tweed responsible for serving visually and hearing impaired students, and to put these very specialized functions under the direct control of principals at individual schools.

Though this radical change was apparently headed off, at least temporarily, because of widespread protest from parents, there have apparently been already many changes made to programs for visually and hearing-impaired students, with some classes closed, and more to come.

Here is an excerpt from minutes of the October 17 meeting of the Citywide Council on Special Education, which suggests that the proposed elimination of these offices had occurred in response to the complaints of principals, who objected to the fact that the test scores at their schools were being lowered by the hearing and/visually disabled children at their schools. Is this development another cost of this administration’s obsession with school test results – and the new school-based accountability system that threatens principals with a loss of their jobs, if they fail to improve scores? Read on:

10/17/2007 Calendar Meeting Minutes of the Citywide Council on Special Education

….Last week at a private meeting held by Marcia Lyles (Deputy Chancellor of Teaching & Learning) the implementation of the DOE's plan to move all Educational Vision Services (EVS) & Hearing Educational Service Divisions (HES) services to the direct control of individual Principals at the school level was discussed.

In attendance were Bonnie Brown (District 75 Superintendent), Helen Kaufman (Lead Regional Administrator for Citywide Programs, District 75), Dr. Lawrence Gardner (Director of Educational Vision Services) and various DOE principals.

In response to the outcry among parents of blind and visually impaired students, Bonnie Brown had reported that this was in response to concerns raised by principals a year ago that blind and deaf children in their respective schools were adversely affecting test scores results.

Consideration of possible changes to Educational Vision Services and hearing Educational Services began. The principals felt that it was unfair that they be held accountable for the test scores for students whose academic programs they have no control over.

Those early conversations eventually led to the meeting held on October 11th, 2007. The CCSE requested information from the meeting. Bonnie stated that Mr. Diaz, Chief of Staff to Deputy Superintendent Dr. Lyles’s took notes at the meeting and will provide them for Maria Garcia and the Council who would them forward them to all interested parties, Mr. Diaz agreed.

Bonnie Brown also addressed the closing of self contained vision classes across the city, saying that due to advances in Medical Care there are fewer blind and visually impaired students entering the system; hence, fewer referrals and the need for fewer classes.

CCSE member, Maria Garcia reminded Bonnie Brown that her statement was based on incorrect information. Data from the Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped (State Agency for the Blind) supports that there are more blind and visually impaired students entering the system not fewer. Ms. Garcia proceeded to clarify; advances in Medicine have resulted in a higher survival rate amongst premature infants including micro-preemies and a correspondingly higher increase in enrollment of cortically blind students in school systems across the nation.

Ms. Brown stated that Principals complained that they felt unwelcome in the self-contained classes. Maria Frieda, Queens EVS Supervisor responded by pointing out the self contained classroom teachers, students and their parents have been historically unwelcome and has not been included in the cultural of the General Education buildings that house them, not the other way around.

Ms. Lawson, parent of a seeing impaired student asked Ms. Brown to refute the rumor that the DOE plans to dismantle Educational Vision Service. Ms. Brown said she would not use the word dismantle.

CCSE Member, Ms. Garcia stated the DOE is currently instructing fewer than 10% of the legally blind students with Braille and the DOE does not require a learning media assessment of kindergarten students entering the system to determine the most appropriate learning media for student. New students are instead automatically placed on a large print tract which will result in functional illiteracy for most if not all legally blind students.

Parents and members of EVS voiced their concerns as to what is taking place. Ms. Brown repeatedly reiterate her opinion that the situation was well in hand. The DOE and Dist. 75 are qualified to determine the final out come of Vision and Hearing Education Services. Ms. Garcia asked for a commitment from the DOE as well as District 75 to involve parent representatives and the CCSE in all future discussions of changes to the administration of services to seeing and hearing impaired students within the NYC Education (DOE); there was no reply.

Important: A town-hall meeting with officials from DOE, sponsored by the National Federation of the Blind of New York State and the Parents of Blind Children of New York, is set for Monday, Dec. 10 at 6pm, at Selis Manor, 135 W. 23 St. For more information or to RSVP, please leave a message at 212 222-1705 or email pobcny@verizon.net

A flyer for this meeting is posted here.

Thanks to John Englert, president of the CCSE and Maria Garcia, CCSE member and President of the Parents of Blind Children of New York for this update.

Broad Foundation To Fund “High Stakes” Degree Program

November 17, 2007 (GBN News): The Eli Broad Foundation announced today that it is offering a $100 million endowment to any university that establishes a Bachelors degree program in High Stakes Test Taking. The foundation hopes to capitalize on the test taking skills that the nation’s schoolchildren are developing under No Child Left Behind, and to insure that those skills will continue to be useful as they move on in life.

Foundation Chairman Eli Broad indicated that he expects New York City to be a rich source of degree candidates who will flourish in the new program. “Due to the brilliant leadership of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein, the city’s students have been uniquely prepared for advanced education in high stakes test taking,” Mr. Broad proclaimed. “Why, they’re so good at high stakes tests that when they take a ‘low stakes’ test like the NAEP, it’s obviously so trivial to them, they don’t even bother to do well.”

Mr. Broad said that the degree program will counter the claims of those “naysayers” who maintain that high stakes testing does not prepare students with the skills they need later in life. He said that if, as he expects, the Bachelors degree program is successful, he plans to provide funding for Masters and Doctoral level programs as well. And, he said, “We are even prepared to fund challenging new jobs in the high stakes test taking field, to prove once and for all that students can go on to lead successful lives after spending their entire education on test prep.”

In other education news, Chancellor Klein personally handed out cell phones to the first class that qualified for his new “reward for performance” program. In an embarrassing glitch, the Chancellor quickly ran out of phones. Apparently, he was unaware of the number of children in the class, since the DOE had delayed the City Council mandated release of its class size figures. It all evened out, however, when school security officers immediately confiscated the phones that the Chancellor had distributed.

NY Times: "Little Progress for City Schools"

The New York Times, often deferential to the Bloomberg administration, today pulled no punches in Jennifer Medina's front-page article laying bare the full extent of the DOE's failure to improve achievement when measured by the national yardstick:

New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in reading and math since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of the city schools, according to federal test scores released yesterday, in contrast with the largely steady gains that have been recorded on state tests.

The national scores also showed little narrowing of the achievement gap between white students and their black and Hispanic counterparts.

The results for New York and 10 other large urban districts on the federal tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, paint a generally stagnant picture for the city, although there are gains in fourth-grade math. On measure after measure, the scores showed “no significant change” between 2005, when the test was previously administered, and 2007.

Mr. Bloomberg has trumpeted improving state test scores as evidence that the city is setting the pace for urban school reform. But the federal scores, on a test often called the nation’s report card, suggest that the city’s gains are limited.

But by far the most depressing news in the article was the "defense" offered by Schools Chancellor Klein and the State Education Department:

“This is not just about a single-year picture,” Mr. Klein said. “The state tests are aligned with our standards, and our teachers know that.”

Alan Ray, a New York State Education Department spokesman, echoed Mr. Klein’s concerns and added that students might not perform as well on the national test because passing the test is not required to advance to the next grade level, as it is on the state tests.

The defense is that teachers prep our kids for the State tests but not the federal ones? In other words, we should expect our kids to know math and English only the way its asked on the NY state tests, otherwise they're out of luck? With promotion, school progress reports, principal bonuses and teacher merit pay all tied to the same state tests, the craze for teaching to the state tests at the expense of real education will only worsen.

Special for parents:

The NAEP sent us a note inviting public school parents to participate in a forum where NAEP Associate Commissioner Peggy Carr will answer questions about the results.

If you are interested, email your question to tuda2007questions@ed.gov by Monday at noon.

Dr. Carr will post her answers to submitted questions on Nov. 20 at 3 p.m at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/2007tudachat.asp.

See earlier blog coverage of the NAEP results from Diane Ravitch here and the NY Sun here.

What grade would you give Joel Klein?

Yesterday, the DOE let the legal deadline for class size reporting lapse. Not entirely surprising, given the fact that they have refused to tell us a single school where class sizes have supposedly been reduced this year. Their official excuse is that they are still working on cleaning up the data.

Interesting that they felt they had enough accurate data to assign grades to every school; but they are still working on providing accurate class size information – as required by a law passed by the City Council nearly two years ago.

Tweed talks a lot about data-driven instruction, and is spending millions of dollars putting together data inquiry teams in every school to pump up test scores. But when it comes to the most basic, most critical data of all – how large are the classes our kids are sitting in – they remain officially at sea. Or else they are simply trying to hide the truth. Which is worse, I can’t say.

• The NAEP (national) test scores were released yesterday. These are the most reliable indicators we have for spotting long-term trends. NYC made no significant improvements in three out of the four categories since 2003, when the administration put into effect its Children First reforms.

No improvement in 4th or 8th grade reading, no improvement in 8th grade math. Only in 4th grade math have there been increases. Below is an article from today’s Times; and here is Diane Ravitch’s summary on our blog.

Also see the NY Post story, in which the Chancellor is quoted as saying that they are going to launch another “comprehensive study” to see what works in terms of raising achievement in middle schools. Parents and teachers could tell him plenty about how our middle school class sizes are not conducive to learning, in which 79% of students are in classes of 25 or more, and 40% in classes of 30 or more, far above the state, national and OECD averages, but I doubt he’d be interested in listening.

Clearly, the fact that this fall, NYC received the Broad award for most improved school district in the country was undeserved. As I said at the time, it was based largely on manipulated graduation data and inflated state test scores.

What grade would you give Joel Klein and this administration, not only for failing to improve student achievement in three of four categories, but in other areas? Say, transparency, communication, fairness? Or pick any category you like.

Our blog has a new poll (see right hand corner.) Please vote, and then put your comments on right here as to why you give the administration the grade you did.

NAEP scores released: mostly bad news for NYC by Diane Ravitch

The NAEP scores for 11 big cities were released on November 15 and there was a little good news for New York City and quite a lot of bad news.

The good news is that fourth grade students made significant gains in mathematics on the 2007 NAEP test. These gains were spread across all groups of students of every race and ethnicity.

The bad news is that NAEP showed no significant gains between 2003 and 2007 for New York City students in fourth grade reading, eighth grade reading, or eighth grade mathematics. In these areas, there were no gains for students of any race or ethnicity.

NAEP has been releasing test results for certain big cities since 2002. The big-city testing program started at the request of the Council for Great City Schools, which wanted a clear measure of how the urban districts were doing compared to states and the nation.

The baseline for Children First begins with 2003 data, as the test was given in the spring of 2003, before the reforms were implemented in September 2003. There was a significant increase in scores from 2002-2003, but that was the year prior to the implementation of Children First.

Here is what the NAEP reports (http://nationsreportcard.gov) say:

• In fourth grade reading: the overall score was unchanged from 2003. The only significant gain was made between 2002 and 2003, before the Children First regime was launched.

For NYC fourth-graders in 2007, lower-income students showed "no significant change in the average score compared to 2003 and 2005."

In addition, there was "no significant change in the average scores for White, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander students compared to all previous assessments"; for Black students, "there was no significant change compared to 2003 and 2005."

The report said that there was "no significant change" in the percentage of students at or above Basic since 2003, and "no significant change in the percentage at or above Proficient compared to all previous assessments." (p. 50).

• For NYC eighth-graders in reading, "The overall score was not significantly different from 2003 and 2005."Results for lower-income students showed "no significant difference in the average score compared to 2003 and 2005."

Results for racial/ethnic groups showed "no significant change in the average scores for White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander students compared to 2003 and 2005."

Achievement-level results showed "no significant change in the percentage at or above Basic compared to 2003 and 2005" and "no significant change in the percentage at or above Proficient compared to 2003 and 2005." (p. 51)

• Fourth-grade mathematics was the one bright spot for NYC students. The overall score was higher in 2007 than in 2003 and 2005. Lower-income students showed a "higher average score" than in either 2003 or 2005. (p.50)

Results for racial/ethnic groups showed "higher average scores for White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander students compared to 2003 but no significant change compared to 2005."

Achievement level results showed "an increase in the percentage at or above Basic compared to 2003 and 2005, and an increase in the percentage at or above Proficient compared to 2003 and 2005."

• In eighth-grade mathematics, "the overall score was not significantly different from 2003 and 2005." Results for lower-income students showed a higher average score compared to 2003, but "no significant change compared to 2005." (p. 51)

Results for racial/ethnic groups showed: "No significant change in the average scores for White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander students compared to 2003 and 2005."
There was "no significant change in the percentage at or above Basic compared to 2003 and 2005."

There was "no signficant change in the percentage at or above Proficient compared to 2003 and 2005."

The NAEP scores may be seen as a report card for the Department of Education for its reforms from 2003 to 2007. In one area, fourth grade mathematics, the DOE gets an A. On three other areas -- fourth grade reading, eighth grade reading, and eighth grade mathematics--the DOE showed no progress at all.

Not a good report card, though I will leave it to others to assign a letter grade.

NAEP is widely considered the gold standard of educational testing. The federal government has invested heavily to ensure its reliability and validity.

-- Diane Ravitch