New film "Miss Virginia" another attempt by Koch brothers & other privatizers to influence the national education agenda

Miss Virginia is new feature film due to open on Oct. 18, about a mom fighting for a DC voucher program so that her son can go to a better school.

The film is supposedly “based on a true story” and is produced by Moving Picture Institute, which receives funding from the right-wing Koch brothers and Bradley Foundations, according to Source Watch. As of 2016, Rebekah Mercer was also on the board, so the organization probably received support from the Mercer Family Foundation too. 

Here’s a summary of the film, from the MPI website:

Based on a true story, Miss Virginia stars Emmy-winner Uzo Aduba as a struggling single mother who is losing her teenaged son to the rough streets of Washington, D.C. Unwilling to see him drop out and deal drugs, she puts him in a private school. But when she can’t afford tuition, she launches a movement to change the system that is destroying him and thousands like him. This is the Moving Picture Institute’s first feature narrative film. On October 18, the film will be released in select theaters and on video on demand.

According to the movie's website, the film was called "a must-see movie" by The New York Times, USA Today, and Essence, though Rotten Tomatoes says this: There are no critic reviews yet for Miss Virginia.

According to Source Watch, MPI also helped produce a 2006 documentary called "Mine Your Own Business," which criticized environmentalists for opposing mining projects across the world.

Wikipedia described this film this way:  “In the documentary, Lucian meets Mark Fenn from the World Wildlife Fund, who is shown living in luxurious conditions, at one point showing off his $35,000 sailboat to the cameras, all the while advocating the value of living a simplistic, village life... Criticisms of the film included the claim by environmentalist groups that the film was partly funded by Gabriel Resources, the Canadian mining company behind the proposed project, a fact which the filmmakers readily admit."

This new film is reminiscent of the pro-charter school film from 2012, Won’t Back Down, which was a huge critical and financial disaster. (See our review of the film from that time, and our FAQ about its backers and their political agenda.)

Imagine schools: corporate-style reform in NYC rearing its head once again

On Thursday, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza announced a new $32 million initiative, called “Imagine Schools NYC”, described as a “Public-Private Challenge to Open 20 New Schools and Transform 20 Existing Schools Across 5 Boroughs”.  A competition was announced for teams to submit their ideas for new or redesigned public schools, with winners to be announced in May 2020 and these schools to open in 2021 or 2022. 

According to this press release from the Mayor's office, the Robin Hood Foundation will contribute “up to $5 million to support the creation of up to 10 new Imagine Schools”  and the XQ Institute  will contribute another $10 million to create 10  new or redesigned public high schools.  Presumably, this means DOE will itself be putting in an additional $16 million to create or restructure another twenty schools. 

Robin Hood is also spending $1M to expand the  DOE’s District-Charter Partnership work, “centered on proven, effective professional development,”  as well as spending up to $10 million for 18 new charter schools, as mentioned in the NY Times, which is twice as much as they’re paying for new public schools.

The XQ Institute, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, focuses on questionable “competency-based learning” and spent a boatload of money on promoting itself, first via a flashy 2017 TV prime-time special, replete with celebrity performances, and then unsuccessfully pitching the show to be nominated for an Emmy via a national bus tour. 

The DOE press release describes the XQ Institute as “a national leader in transformational high school design…Based on research and expert practice.” Yet the schools that the Institute has helped launch so far have not had an impressive record of success. Four of the first ten high schools that were awarded $10 million each by XQ in their 2016 “Super School” competition  either never opened, failed to expand as planned, or have already closed. 

In addition, one of the schools awarded $2.5 million in a second round of funding, Crosstown, a new high school in Memphis, experienced a student walk-out this fall, to protest how the tenth grade had apparently been separated into two cohorts; one composed of mostly white students and the other black students, with the first group provided with extra attention.  Just last week, the school lost its principal for the second time since it opened last year.

Over the last decade or so, the Robin Hood Foundation has primarily supported charter schools in its education portfolio, as might be predicted considering it was founded by hedge funders and its board is still composed largely of corporate executives and financiers.  According to Wikipedia, its board chair, Larry Robbins, is also the board chair of KIPP NY charter schools, and board chair of the Relay Graduate School that trains teachers in the charter school “no excuses” regimented style of instruction. Robbins is also a member of the NY Board of Teach for America.

Robin Hood’s co- founders have a spotty record.  One co-founder, Paul Tudor Jones, who still sits on the board, also was a board member of the Weinstein Company and continued to support Harvey Weinstein even after the stories of his numerous sexual assaults were exposed in the NY Times. 

Another Robin Hood co-founder and board member, Glenn Dubin, was a close associate and business partner of Jeffrey Epstein, even after Epstein served time for the sexual abuse of minors. Economist Roland Fryer, board member, was suspended in July from the faculty at Harvard for two years and lost his research lab for repeated instances of sexual harassment.

The DOE application form to submit an idea for a new or redesigned ImagineNYC school is here.  Among the information required are the members of the school design team, a theme for the school, several essays and a video. And yet the application is due on Nov. 6, only one month from now.

While the DOE press release claims that this will be a community driven process, and that "Department representatives have attended community events and distributed flyers in neighborhoods across the City to raise awareness,” I have yet to hear from any parent leader or community member who had seen any such flyers. 

The press release also indicates that some design teams “have already begun forming across the City,” which suggests the entire competition may be an inside job, with the administration giving a head start to certain favored groups or individuals. Indeed, the release discloses that “through the spring and summer, the DOE has invited principals to attend design day sessions."

Given that these two private funders will help select the winners, or as Robin Hood put it, “will partner with the Department of Education on a rigorous selection process”, that means DOE will be sacrificing control for the design of these public schools to these two organizations for a relative pittance, compared to what it will cost to operate them.

But an even greater concern, as I expressed it to the Daily News, is that every new school will likely take space and funding away from our existing public schools, which are already underfunded and in many cases squeezed for space. Every new school makes overcrowding worse by eating up classroom space with the need to carve out new, replicated administrative and cluster rooms. 

We already have seen how worse inequities have resulted from the expansion of co-located charter schools in our public school buildings, as well as how the Gates-funded small schools initiative led to many of the remaining large high schools becoming even more overcrowded with the high-needs students that the small schools refused to enroll.  
Many of the disadvantaged students at the large schools ended up more likely to be discharged, enrolled in low-quality credit recovery programs, or graduate without a Regents diploma  -- all of which served the purposes of the organizations running the show as their small schools data appeared better in comparison.  Another piece of evidence that DOE is caught in an infinite feedback loop: the Senior adviser to the XQ Institute is Michele Cahill, who ran the small schools initiative for Chancellor Klein when she was at DOE. 

One of the proposed XQ “Super Schools” awarded $10 million in 2016 was later rejected by the Somerville school board in Massachusetts, because the district Superintendent and school board realized that even with these funds, starting yet another school would cause  big cuts to their existing high schools, and that “opening the new school would force the district to cut at least 20 teacher or counselor positions and to eliminate most before- and after-school programs districtwide.”

As the Somerville Superintendent was quoted in the Boston Globe:

“As someone who believes in and has championed the power of new ideas my whole career, it pains me deeply to not be able to solve this problem,” she said. “In this case, the investment to create something that may only add an unknown amount of benefit to 2 to 3 percent of students, at the expense of the remaining 97 to 98 percent, is one I cannot recommend making at this time.”

NYC already has more than 1800 schools, as a result of the mistaken notion that constant “innovation” (meaning experimentation) and “choice” will raise all boats. Under Bloomberg, 500 new, mostly small schools were created, in addition to 210 new charter schools. How many more do we need?  Instead, it would be better if the Mayor and the Chancellor would focus their attention on making real improvements in the schools we already have, with reforms that have been proven to work, like reducing class size. 

This new “competition” seems like a vanity project and an attempt to enhance the image of Mayor de Blasio, who after coming back from a failed run for President is suffering from a 33% approval rating, and whose sole school improvement effort so far, the Renewal schools, is widely recognized to have failed.  Instead of forging a different and more progressive path, he and Carranza are following in the corporate-style footsteps of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein in outsourcing of decision-making to private foundations with problematic records and vested interests, in addition to their other recently-announced plans to impose a new system of  interim standardized testing on the schools and create yet another new data system. 

Sure enough, Ray Domanico of the right-wing, pro-privatization Manhattan Institute recognizing this when he applauded the-new initiative, writing that "this approach is built on the same valuable concepts de Blasio’s predecessor embraced, which have been missing from the mayor’s agenda until now."

Another deeply concerning development was the concurrent Robin Hood announcement that they intend to fund 18 new charter schools, when NYC reached the cap on charter schools last year.  According to this NYSED chart, there are already 281 charter schools in NYC, with 25 more already  approved and due to open from 2020-2023. 

Does Robin Hood expect to fund 18 of these already-authorized charter schools, or do they plan to use  their billionaire bucks to try to lobby the Legislature to raise the charter cap once again, as they did in 2010? Let’s hope not the latter.  Only time will tell, I suppose.

CEC 16 Letter to Council Member Robert Cornegy Regarding SDAG Recommendations

(Here is a Chalkbeat article on CEC 16’s request to the mayor regarding gifted and talented programs.

A pdf version of CEC 16’s resolution regarding the School Diversity Advisory Group Recommendations can be found here.)

Greetings Councilman Cornegy, 

Thank you for your continued advocacy for improving public schools for our children in Community School District 16.

As you know, District 16 parents of Bedford Stuyvesant (a historically Black and now gentrifying section of Brooklyn) have been advocating for a well-rounded quality education for years.  From the onset of our work together in 2015, you have not only supported us in the creation of the Gifted & Talented (G&T) program being implemented in the 3rd grade, you have also been instrumental in lending your voice to the need for D16 to have a G&T program that uses holistic measures for admission.  We know that these programs would not have been possible without your leadership and support.

Today we write to ask you to support the recommendations of the School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG) to transform the G&T programs because we believe the recommendations of the SDAG support the relentless advocacy we, the District 16 parents, and you, as one of our leaders in our community, have always demonstrated on behalf of our children.

Subsequently, after our annual review of the D16 educational programming, in April 2019 the parents of the CEC16 advocated for the expansion of school-wide enrichment models (such as dual language learning, and advanced math classes) and the replacement of the current G&T program, which has not served our children well.  SDAG recommendations are essentially the same as what we proposed to the DOE in our annual review.

To that end, please allow us the opportunity to illustrate how SDAG recommendations are also in alignment with your efforts to improve our schools. 

Your New York Post op-ed dated August 27 starts with the following passage:

“Excellence in education means providing each student the opportunity to achieve. For our shared community’s young people, that means access to enrichment programs and access to the suite of opportunities that should be open to all students”  

This is exactly what SDAG recommends and is the essence of the schoolwide enrichment model, which aims to challenge all students and offers individualized instruction so that those who excel in a particular content area are provided with accelerated learning.

SDAG agrees that G&T is “a catalyst for helping children from black and brown communities get into specialized high schools.”  However, SDAG questions why the current system only offers this opportunity to 10% of the student population (or a much smaller proportion in our community), determined at age 4 (or age 7 for D16) when we know all children have gifts and talents in different areas, including creativity and arts, social-emotional, athletics, etc., and even within academics, some may be gifted in language arts, others math or science, but no one is gifted in all areas which is why we need to create models that address students’ individual needs. Instead, SDAG recommends we should offer the same level of challenging and rigorous curriculum to all of our D16 students through a community-driven planning process to design a schoolwide enrichment model.

 In your letter to the Mayor, you substantiated the success of G&T by mentioning “students spending an hour on a train twice a day” to attend a school with a G&T program.  We agree the program is “worth it” for many families but we do not want our children traveling two hours every day to receive a high quality education.  If we implement a schoolwide enrichment model, our children will be able to walk to their neighborhood school to receive the high quality education they rightly deserve.  

In the same letter you characterize the students who travel far for G&T as demonstrating “hustle, curiosity, and adaptability.”  As parents of children, most of whom are not in G&T, we can assure you that all children demonstrate hustle, curiosity and adaptability. We need a system that fosters their curiosity not by labeling them “gifted and talented” and segregating them from the rest of the children, but by recognizing individual students’ gifts and talents and nurturing them in a diverse learning environment.

Since we worked with you to establish G&T in D16, we have learned that there are expectations for the G&T that were not met and require us to rethink what is best for all the children of D16.  We believed we were creating an educational equity pipeline for our youngest learners. Instead, we learned that testing 4-year-old children was developmentally inappropriate. We also learned that the quality of G&T programs varied.  Therefore, despite the kindergarten programs in other areas, we opted for a third-grade program. As a result, only 235 students were eligible for the G&T program, of which only 25 students enrolled in the G&T program. We graduated our first G&T class last June, but with only 12 G&T students in a district that has 2,966 elementary school students (excluding PreK).

In addition, the G&T program created more division in our community than unity. This caused us to look at other districts and do further research. What we found was in fact, G&T experts have concluded that a single measure test is not the best way to identify gifts. They also support creating ways to foster advanced learning which will promote investment in the gifts of all our students. We want more for our children, not less.

We are therefore attaching our April 2019 letter to the Chancellor requesting the Department of Education support for a school-wide enrichment model.

We also wanted to pull out the SDAG recommendations verbatim so that you see how they are in alignment with what you and we both seek. 

SDAG Recommendations

• Because we believe all students deserve to be challenged, we recommend that the DOE resource community school districts to pilot creative, equitable enrichment alternatives to G&T. 
  • Provide resources for community school districts to develop enrichment alternatives with community and stakeholder engagement.
  • Provide adequate resources for community school districts to implement enrichment alternatives. 
  • Ensure recruitment to enrichment alternatives is inclusive of multilingual learners, students with disabilities, students who qualify for free and reduced lunch pricing, and students living in temporary housing. 
  • Measure alternative enrichment program demographics against district demographics. 
  • Track and share publicly the impacts on integrative enrollment of enrichment alternatives. 

• • Discontinue the use of the Gifted & Talented admissions test. Institute a moratorium on new Gifted & Talented programs.
  • Allow existing Gifted & Talented programs to continue. Programs will be phased out as students age and will not receive new incoming classes.
  • Eliminate rigid academic tracking in elementary school that results in economic or racial segregation. 

We would like to request a meeting with you and your City Council colleagues so that we can discuss this matter in person and look forward to your favorable consideration to support the SDAG recommendations.

In spirit, collaboration and Community,

The Members of the Community Education Council District 16

Today's "Talk out of School" on the toxic levels of testing and lead in NYC schools

On today’s Talk Out of School on WBAI radio, we spoke with NYC Council Member and Chair of the Education Committee Mark Treyger, about yesterday's oversight hearing on “Breaking the test culture” in our NYC schools, the highlights of which I described on the blog. 

We discussed the success of the the 38 schools that belong to the NY Performance Standards Consortium, that use projects and performance-based assessments instead of  Regents exams that most NYC high school students are required to pass to graduate. The Council Member referred to these schools to as the “best kept secret in our education system”. Meanwhile, the overemphasis on standardized testing in our public schools encourages rote learning and memoritzation rather than develop deep knowledge and critical thinking. We also talked about DOE’s proposal to implement yet another set of standardized tests in our schools and create yet another data system called Edustat.  I followed up by asked him what the powers of the Council were to prevent the implementation of these likely damaging and/or wasteful programs might be given mayoral control.

Christopher Werth

In the second half of the show we were joined by Christoper Werth, senior editor at WNYC’s narrative unit, who explained thow his visit to his young daughter’s elementary classroom led to a groundbreaking investigation of lead contamination, followed by a new round of testing by DOE.  

We also discussed how the risks posed by lead in school water compare to lead in peeling paint and dust, and described how the model bill proposed by NRDC would mandate filtration systems on all drinking water outlets in schools and lower the action level requiring remediation. The possible correlation between the phasing out of lead paint and the national  drop in crime rates was another topic we touched on in our discussion. 

Click here to download or livestream the full episode. More information on these issues are linked to below.

• NYC Public School Parents on NYC Council hearings on Breaking the school testing culture.
• Christopher Werth's reporting on crumbling lead paint in schools
• NYC Public School Parents on high levels of lead in water still found in schools in third round of DOE testing.
• DOE inspection results for peeling lead paint in classrooms
• DOE inspection results for lead found in school water  
• NRDC FAQ for parents on lead in school water: what should you do?
• NRDC Model State Legislation: “Get the Lead Out of School Drinking Water Act” Summary of Provisions

 

Revelations at today's hearings on high-stakes testing and testimony by Emily Carrazana

Teacher Sara Steinweiss and actor Anthony Ramos at today's hearings

Update:  the Daily News ran a good story about these hearings, including the surprise announcement by DOE in the midst of a hearing about excessive testing in our schools that they plan to introduce a new set of standardized tests administered four times a year in our schools. Here is the WSJ  article , focusing on Anthony Ramos and his experience in NYC public schools.

Today's NYC Council hearings on "Breaking the testing culture" were fascinating.  CM Treyger did a great job in asking piercing questions to DOE, especially about the NY State high school Regents exams and why they don't encourage the creation of more Performance- based assessments like those used by the New York Performance Standards Consortium.

There was also compelling testimony from Anthony Ramos, now a Broadway actor who had a lead role in Hamilton and is now starring in the film "In the Heights".  He spoke about how he failed multiple Regents exams at New Utrecht high school, and struggled in school.  His high school had class sizes of 35 which severely hampered his learning: "There are like 35 kids in a class with 35 different issues in their head and one person to deal with that , who probably doesn't even want to teach that because it's just in the curriculum."   

His testimony and that of the Sara Steinweiss, the NYC theater teacher who recognized his talent, put him in a play, found a college scholarship for him and changed his life, is posted here, along with an animated short about his story. Video of the second part of the hearings with testimony from Linda Chen of DOE as well as students, teachers, and parents is here.  

Several Consortium students and teachers also talked about how engaging and challenging the education provided by their schools has been in comparison to the rote learning that the Regents exams require.  When Linda Chen, Chief Academic Officer of DOE was asked why the DOE doesn't celebrate the Consortium school practices, she said it's a complex process to implement performance-based assessments. CM Treyger responded "So is dismantling inequity in our schools, but it's worth doing."

CM Treyger asked about the cost of testing. DOE officials spends $3 million on the administration of Regents/3-8 state exams and prep materials, $1.9 million to Pearson and for "administrative support" for the SHSAT test, and $4.4 million for the gifted exams -- totaling nearly $10 million in all.

The most shocking thing was to hear Linda Chen, Chief Academic Officer of DOE confirm that they intend to implement a uniform system of standardized formative assessments four times a year in place of current school-selected assessments, in order to "streamline" them, because "we can't compare results with so many different tests."

This will undoubtedly lead to more meaningless and wasteful testing and test-prep. They can't completely eliminate the locally-chosen school-based assessments because by the UFT contract, those are selected by individual schools for the purpose of teacher evaluation.

I recall when DOE purchased Acuity exams for $22 million from McGraw Hill, and imposed them as "formative assessments" across all schools and nearly all grades.  After a certain amount of time these exams were dropped because they weren't aligned to what was happening in the classroom and found to be neither predictive nor diagnostic.  They flopped and were eventually dropped.

More on this in the WSJ, which reports on what Chancellor Carranza said on Monday:

 "...he plans to 'dipstick' schools several times a year in every grade to see whether students are on track. He refers to these as “checkups” to measure progress rather than waiting for the “autopsies” of state tests in the spring. While he said many schools are skilled in conducting such periodic assessments that give teachers real-time information, his team is looking for ways to make the practice more uniform."

CM Treyger asked Chen about the Edustat system that the DOE plans to build, the new data system modeled on Compstat.  Chen didn't have any estimate of how much the system would cost or what data it would include, but it is likely that these interim test scores will be fed into this system -- rather than more predictive and important data like class size. 
 
He also asked Chen whether the DOE has done any analysis to look at the relationship between test scores and class size, and of course she said not.  In short, it doesn't seem like DOE is interested in breaking the testing culture at all.
 
Below is the testimony of Emily Carrazana of Class Size Matters, about her experience with the specialized high school exam, the SHSAT, and why that exam as well as the exams for gifted programs should be eliminated. 

Testimony on High Stakes Testing before the City Council Education Committee

 September 24, 2019

Thank you, Chair Treyger for holding these important hearings and for the opportunity to testify before you today. My name is Emily Carrazana, I work at Class Size Matters and I attended public elementary and middle schools in the Bronx. Beginning in the 6^th grade, I would trek up to Bronx Science two or three days a week, and for most of my summers to participate in the Dream/Specialized High School Institute (SHSI), a program designed to help prepare low income and high achieving students for the SHSAT.

After many hours of sacrificed time out of my childhood , I did not get into any of the specialized high schools, despite my good grades and high scores on the state exams. . My parents, first generation immigrants, did not know the first thing about the bureaucratic process that is the complex high school admissions process in this city. So, when I was rejected from the specialized high schools, they did the only thing they thought they could do.

They moved our entire family out of the state to neighboring New Jersey. I ended up graduating from my town’s public high school, successfully completing AP and International Baccalaureate courses and went on to earn my bachelor’s degrees from Rutgers in three years. My results on the SHSAT were no indication of where my abilities stood back in the 8^th grade, just as they are not a valid marker for success for any student today.

While many people argue that eliminating this exam and/or gifted programs will cause the families of high-achieving students to move out of the city, the example of my family shows how the opposite happens currently because of the use of an unfair high-stakes exam – which has been shown not only to discriminate against students of color but also high-achieving girls.

The SHSAT is an invalid and biased exam. While nearly all of the discussion and debate has so far revolved around the way in which it leads to racial disparities, this exam has also been shown conclusively to be highly gender-biased. Though NYC girls receive higher test scores on the state exams and better grades, they are accepted into the specialized high schools at much lower rates. Here are last year’s results by gender, revealing a gender gap of eight percentage points. ^[1]

Gender	#stud tested	% students tested	#got offer	% of total offers
F	14,116	51%	2,206	46%
M	13,405	49%	2,592	54%
Total	27,521	100%	4,798	100%

The disparity at the most selective schools such as Stuyvesant is even greater. Last year, 56% of those admitted to Stuyvesant were boys and only 44% were girls.^[2]

The fact that the SHSAT is biased against girls has been conclusively proven by Jon Taylor, a research analyst at Hunter College, who has published his research findings in a peer-reviewed journal.^[3] He discovered that girls who are admitted to the specialized high schools with the same test scores as boys do better on their course work and receive higher grades, including in the most advanced courses.^[4] His research also shows that a student’s 7th grade point average is the most valid predictive factor for success at New York City high schools in general, including the Specialized High Schools.^[5] This merely underscores the need to eliminate the SHSAT as the sole determinant for admissions to a NYC school.

We oppose the use of high-stakes testing in general and the SHSAT in particular. No other school district in the country bases admissions to any one of their schools on the basis of one test alone.^[6] Moreover, this practice has long been opposed by the American Psychological Association, the National Council on Measurement in Education, and the American Education Research Association, whose standards contain the following statement: “Any decision about a student's continued education… should not be based on the results of a single test, but should include other relevant and valid information.” ^[7]

As the National Academy of Sciences has explained, “current psychometric standards… recommend that a decision that will have a major impact on a test taker should not be made solely or automatically on the basis of a single test score, and that other relevant information about the student’s knowledge and skills should also be taken into account.”^[8]

If we really want more diverse, integrated schools throughout our system, we must rely on multiple measures, including grades and more holistic factors. In addition, we should discourage tracking as much as possible – another form of segregation that occurs within schools that merely widens the achievement gap between racial and ethnic groups. ^[9] Separating out kids by “ability” has been shown to disadvantage those who are concentrated in the lowest–performing classrooms.^[10] This is why we also oppose segregated gifted programs, especially those based on a high-stakes exam given to children as young as four.

Yet only about four percent of all elementary school children are in gifted classes.^[11] As NYC schools begin to enroll students of diverse backgrounds, both racially and economically, this will further highlight the reality that children from disadvantaged backgrounds need more support from their teachers to reach the same goals, and that equality isn’t the same as real equity.^[12] Integration alone without small classes cannot erase those differences.

Moreover, teachers often understandably complain that it is very difficult to individualize instruction with students of different achievement levels, and indeed it is especially challenging given the large class sizes we have in NYC. But if class sizes were lowered, this would make teachers’ jobs much easier.

In Finland, when the government decided to stop tracking in the middle grades, the national teachers union successfully demanded systematic reductions in class size, to ensure that they could meet the needs of students of different academic levels. Both the elimination of tracking and the concurrent lowering of class sizes contributed to the rapid improvement of Finnish schools in the 1970's, along with the elimination of most standardized tests.^[13]

The Department of Education must also reduce class size to allow teachers to deepen their interactions with students and meaningfully individualize instruction. All students benefit from smaller classes in terms of heightened engagement, fewer disciplinary problems and increased learning, but, as studies show, students of color benefit the most. This is why class size reduction is one of very few reforms proven to work to narrow the opportunity and achievement gap. ^[14]

As Shino Tanikawa, co-chair of the Education Council Consortium (ECC) and a member of the School Diversity Advisory Group, and Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters concluded in an op-ed published in the Daily News last May, the integration of classrooms must be accompanied by class size reduction if we want to provide true equity to all children. ^[15] This op-ed is included as an appendix to my testimony.

As NYC schools begin to enroll students of diverse backgrounds, both racially and economically, this will further highlight the reality that children from disadvantaged backgrounds need more support from their teachers to reach the same goals, and that equality isn’t the same as real equity. Integration alone without small classes cannot erase those differences.

In our schools, class sizes have increased substantially since 2007 and are 15% to 30% percent larger on average than class sizes in the rest of the state. More than 336,165 students were crammed into classes of 30 or more this fall. In the early grades, the number of first-through-third-graders in classes of 30 or more has ballooned by nearly 3000 percent since 2007. Our schools can never provide students with an equitable chance to learn with classes this large.

As we eliminate the use of high-stakes testing and move to create classrooms and schools that are diverse in race, ethnicity, gender, language, ability and more, we need to simultaneously push for small classes because this will make truly differentiated instruction possible.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify to you today.

________

^[1] https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2019/03/dismal-results-and-gender-bias-remains.html

^[2] http://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/7871-new-research-shows-shsat-less-valuable-predictor-than-middle-school-grades

^[3] Jonathan Taylor, Fairness To Gifted Girls: Admissions To New York City’s Elite Public High Schools, Journal Of Women And Minorities In Science And Engineering 25(1): 75–91 (2019) at: http://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/00551c876cc2f027,294b56436594090b,2e036b8a364ae7df.html See also: https://hechingerreport.org/the-problem-with-high-stakes-testing-and-women-in-stem/

^[4] Jonathan Taylor, Fairness To Gifted Girls: Admissions To New York City’s Elite Public High Schools, Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 25(1): 75–91 (2019).

^[5] http://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/7871-new-research-shows-shsat-less-valuable-predictor-than-middle-school-grades

^[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/nyregion/specialized-high-school-admissions-test-is-racially-discriminatory-complaint-says.html See also Chester E. Finn, Jr. & Jessica A. Hockett, Exam Schools Inside America's Most Selective Public High Schools, 2012.

^[7] https://www.apa.org/pubs/info/brochures/testing see also: http://www.aera.net/About-AERA/AERA-Rules-Policies/Association-Policies/Position-Statement-on-High-Stakes-Testing

^[8] National Research Council. 1999. High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, p169 at: https://doi.org/10.17226/6336.

^[9] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/gifted-and-talented-programs-separate-students-race/587614/

^[10] https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/pb-options-10-tracking.pdf

^[11] https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2019/09/what-both-supporters-and-critics-of.html

^[12] https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-lower-class-size-and-school-integration-go-hand-in-hand-20190517-jhwyfyxzhvcrrmp5p2vqoeieau-story.html

^[13] Samuel Abrams, Education and the Commercial Mindset, 2016 , p. 281 and footnote 3 on p. 382. Also https://newrepublic.com/article/82329/education-reform-finland-us

^[14] See the numerous research studies at: https://www.classsizematters.org/research-and-links/#opportunity

^[15] https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-lower-class-size-and-school-integration-go-hand-in-hand-20190517-jhwyfyxzhvcrrmp5p2vqoeieau-story.html