Chancellor Klein’s School (System) Progress Report: Part 1 – Probationary Teachers

At the end of each school year every teacher receives a rating: for tenured teachers an “S” or a “U,” for probationary teachers either an ”S” or a “D” or a “U.” U rated probationary teachers teachers can, at the discretion of the principal and the approval of the superintendent, also be “discontinued,” aka fired.

After three years of satisfactory service a probationary teacher “achieves” tenure. Probationary teachers who are “discontinued” can appeal. The Department holds an administrative hearing as a recommendation to the Chancellor. It is rare for a probationary “discontinuance” to be overturned.

Chancellor Klein has made the process of granting tenure to probationary teachers  a core initiative of his administration.

How many probationary teachers are formally denied tenure?

Under one percent of teachers are formally denied tenure in any one year.

How many probationary teachers leave the school system voluntarily?

I understand that 37% of probationary teachers leave voluntarily. (source: discussion with journalists)

The new Tenure Notification System is nothing new. For decades superintendents have informed principals of the probationary status of teachers annually.

The data points to a core issue: not unsatisfactory teachers receiving tenure, but, the enormous number of probationary teachers who leave the system.

More than half of teachers in high poverty schools leave within five years – this is a national, not NYC figure.

The Insight column in the current issue of the New York Teacher discusses the issue of retaining teachers as well as attracting teachers to high poverty/low achieving schools. A California-based not-for-profit claims success in retaining new teachers.

What is the Klein administration doing to retain new teachers?

The answer: nothing.

New York State requires a new teacher mentoring program, it is not treated seriously by the administration.

Mentoring and support comes from the teacher next door or down the hall. Hundreds of schools are lead by novice principals who are struggling to survive. The only focused support is from the UFT Teacher Centers, if a school is lucky enough to house a Center.

Why do newer teachers leave?

Uniformly, across the country: lack of supervisory support.

The Department gleefully makes plans to publicly spank probationary teachers – while the very same teachers flee the system.

An irony: after the teacher union president rallied public school parents and advocates and began to cane the Chancellor he backed away  from his threats re denying tenure to probationary teachers.

The core issue is the staggering number of newer teachers that leave the system each and every year and the failure of the Department to address this issue.

The Department grade, using School Quality Review language: underdeveloped, or, School Progress Report metrics, an “F.”

The Plight of Self-Flatterers: Creating a Legacy of Chaos and Confusion

On Wednesday the Chancellor issued a long letter flattering himself over the wonderful job he has been doing in turning around the school system. He reminds me of Dante’s comments re flatterers

   This was the place we reached; the ditch beneath held people plunged in excrement that seemed as if it had been poured from human privies.

   And while my eyes searched that abysmal sight, I saw one with a head so smeared with shit, one could not see if he were lay or cleric.

   He howled, “Why do you stare more greedily at me than at the others who are filthy?”

   And I: “Because, if I remember right, I have seen you before, with your hair dry; and so I eye you more than all: you are ……….

   Then he continued, pounding on his pate: “I am plunged here because of flatteries – of which my tongue had such sufficiency.” (Canto xviii)

In the whirlwind that has descended on the New York City schools we have gone from 32 Community School Districts, a closely monitored Chancellor’s District targeting low performing schools and centrally administered high schools to 10 mega districts with over 100 K-12 schools in each geographic Region.

The Ttitanic-like system is once again reinventing itself.

* Over five hundred Empowerment Schools in about 25 loosely aligned networks with minimal support.

* 4 mega theme-based citywide regions ranging from 95 to 300 schools each.

* a range of not-for-profits supporting small numbers of schools.

* the reintroduction of Community and High School Superintendents who will “Audit, Inspect and Evaluate” schools apart form the support structure supra.

* Integrated Service Centers, redesigned for the third time in three years who will provide budget and operations support services.

The New Century High Schools (NCHS), the Gates funded small high school initiative has disappeared as the schools are now scattered among the range of support organizations.

The Chancellor has announced the abolition of schools for pregnant girls and New Beginnings Schools due to “low achievement,” gee … at risk kids have low performance.

If it wasn’t “invented” by Tweed it is, by definition, flawed.

The Balkanization of the school system is making it only manageable by press release.

The Klein Plan is only in it’s early stages: pay-for-performance, weakening or abolition of tenure are on the agenda.

Aside from the self-flatterers no one is applauding.

The worker drones: teachers, resent the seemingly never-ending change and have no faith in their boss. Parents are ignored and marginalized. Advocacy groups are treated as the enemy.

Am I too harsh?

I think not. Who is speaking for the victims: the children who are being punished as ideologues at Tweed practice on the children of the poor and the powerless? How many of them have children in the public schools? Rather than speaking with parents and teachers they craft programs, the core of which is the carrot and the stick, merit pay and the fear of dismissal.

Dante was right.

Empowering Principals: The Erosion of Quality, Standards and Rigor in the Brave New World

“O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beautious mankind is!

O brave new world

That has such people in’t!”

I keep thinking that the “Brave New World” of School Support Organizations, with 500 unregulated Empowerment schools is simply a “wink and a nod” to principals – do what you have to do to improve results – no questions asked!

High school diploma requirements  are set by the State Education Department and spelled out in detail. For generations complying with diploma requirements was gospel, if you had a question you contacted Larry Edwards, the Guidance Guru ensconced at 110, and a real nice guy! In the Brave New World of empowered principals it has become commonplace to simply hand out credits, an independent study, a project: credit recovery has become synonymous with “alternative” methods of credit accumulation.

Who monitors “credit recovery”? Does the Department have standards for credit recovery programs?

The answer: no one monitors anything and there are no standards. The Department simply “encourages” principals to be leaders … so long as your School Progress Report grade is satisfactory – and the core of the Progress Report grade in high schools are credit accumulation and Regents.

Who monitors the marking of Regents? Should teachers mark the papers of their own students? especially when the student’s grade on the Regents determines the success/failure of the school and in reality is the “grade” of the principal?

Perhaps, just perhaps, the new Community and High School Superintendents will actually monitor what is going on in schools. They should take a look at student transcripts: have schools been following State Ed requirements in the allocation of credits?  Do schools have transparent grading policies? Does the school have a Course Accreditation Committee? Does the UFT Chapter Leader serve on the committee?
Unfortunately I fear that the philosophy of the new Superintendents will be

‘As I was going up the stair,

I met a man, who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today,

Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

In other words: nonsense, as the Superintendents roam from school to school dispensing soma.

“No Stakes” Testing: A Good Beginning, A Long Road Ahead

Last year the Department advertised Empowerment as meaning that principals would be freed of the “oppression of the bureaucracy,” not quite. Three initiatives were non-negotiable:  the School Progress Report, Interim Assessments and the Inquiry Team.

 

School Progress Reports are the “average pupil growth” metric that will be translated into a numerical score and a letter grade. The formula has been “massaged” all year and currently is based upon standardized test scores (credit accumulation and Regents scores in high schools), the School Quality Review, improvement in attendance, school safety and parent and teacher surveys. The weighting of these metrics and the application of statistical adjustments results in that “A” to “F” grade.

 

The Inquiry Team is a school-based action research project lead by the principal. The Team “investigates” a group of low performing students – the Department provides per session, guidelines and professional supports and the results are envisioned to be shared with the school staff.

 

The third Empowerment initiative was the Interim Assessments. Four or five times a year a “no stakes” diagnostic test was administered to all students. Last year the Department contracted with companies and used “off the shelf” tools that schools felt were mediocre at best.

 

This year, no matter which School Support Organization (SSO), the three initiatives will be imbedded in each and every school.

 

The Department actually listened to the criticism of schools and changed the Interim Assessment: they contracted with McGraw Hill who produced a web-based diagnostic tool.

 

Mc Graw Hill has been “rolling it out” around the City and the audiences have been applauding.

 

The assessment tool will enable teachers to disaggregate the results of the diagnostic tool any way they choose.

 

Envision a reading passage with multiple choice answers: the question asks the student to identify the “main idea” and gives four choices.

 

The students can take the exam online or on a Scan-able form.

 

With a few mouse clicks the teacher can find out

 

• how many student chose each answer and the names of the students 
• disaggregate the students by NCLB category
• disaggregate the data by NYS Standards.
• produce reports in any format they choose

 

The teacher can use the Standard test by grade level, customize the test or actually add teacher designed items.

 

Mc Graw Hill will place servers around the City and will maintain the website.

 

The Department deserves accolades: a useful tool that embodies 21^st century technology.

 

While a web-based diagnostic tool will be useful to teachers, diagnostic tools are not new. Twenty years ago I watched a
School District spend mega-dollars on a diagnostic tool that was administered to all students in April. The following September teachers received a loose leaf binder with prescriptions for each and every student in their class.

 

The binders gathered dust.

 

Newer teachers used the prescriptions early in the year while experienced teachers ignored them.

 

An excellent teacher responded, “I know why Joey can’t read … tell me what is going to work … how I get him to concentrate? How do I get him to read at home? How do I get his parents involved? How do I get him to turn off the TV?” And, on and on.

 

The diagnostic tool must be part of a collaborative team of practionners.

 

Effective practice is characterized by a Principal that leads by example, who works as a member of a team that explores practice and creates a synergy. User friendly diagnostic tools are welcome: more welcome is a school climate that trusts and treasures teacher.

Chancellor Jim Leibman Announces New Pay-for-Performance Teacher Remuneration Plan

Chancellor Jim Leibman Announces New Pay-for-Performance Teacher Remuneration Plan

Newly appointed Chancellor Leibman, former DOE Accountability head, has announced that 100 top performing teachers whose students showed the greatest “average pupil growth” over a three year period will be rewarded with $25,000 bonuses.

In the upcoming teacher contract negotiations Leibman and the Mayor will only support raises that are tied to pupil achievement as measured by the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS).

Is the purpose of the $80 million Achievement and Reporting System  (ARIS) to create a tool to drive instruction and inform parents, or create a tool to create a pay for performance plan?

There is no question that Klein is a strong supporter of merit pay and the DOE and Union would be in the throes of a bitter conflict if t wasn’t for the intervention of the Mayor. In the fall the Mayor and the Union, without the participation of the Chancellor, agreed on a new contract, with substantial raises and no discussion of merit pay. 

As the level of conflict between the Chancellor and the Union was bubbling, over Weighted Student Funding and tenure the Mayor, once again, interceded, and, reached a detente, a clear victory for the Union  and a defeat for the Chancellor. 

While merit pay and Weight Student Funding (called Fair Student Funding by the DOE) are “off the table” they are not forgotten.

School districts around the country have dabbled in merit pay schemes. In Denver a plan called Procomp was negotiated with the teacher union – it is actually a plan that is voluntary and pays teachers for achieving career goals. The Houston merit plan has fumbled badly and is stumbling. The Economist takes a look at merit pay plans and warns that there is little research supporting the underlying concept.

Merit pay is the idea that won’t die: academics support and oppose  the idea.

Both Klein and the ideologues of the right see public schools as a heavily unionized monopoly and their solution: the marketplace … charter schools, merit pay, abolition of teacher tenure and the destruction of teacher unions.

Of course the most successful school systems in the world are public school systems with strong teacher unions: France, the Netherlands, Korea and Japan, but, who cares? Ideology always trumps the truth!

SSO and ARIS: Will Support Result in Accountability? Will the Carrot and the Stick Make for Better Schools?

Late Tuesday night the laggard principals will be signing on to the DOE website and selecting their School Support Organizations. In some schools a lengthy process has involved teachers and parents while in many the principals alone made the choice. The DOE website does state that the principal should consult with the School Leadership Team (SLT), the DOE will take their word for it.

The choices: four current Regional Superintendents will sponsor groups around, in three cases, vague eduspeak themes, the fourth will adopt Core Knowledge, a nationally recognized program.

The three hundred plus schools in Empowerment have had mixed experiences. Most of the networks include schools scattered around the city, in three, four, and in one case five boroughs. Many of the networks include schools reflecting all grades. Some schools love the independence while others are struggling, and a few drowning.

The Partnership Support Organizations range from well established programs, Success for All and Middle Start to universities to current Gates intermediaries with extensive school support experience, such as New Visions for Public Schools. 

Ultimately the core question: how much does it matter?

All schools will be measured by the new Department inspection and audit system. Regardless of the support organization the accountability system will drive a School Progress Report culminating in letter grades: A to F.

The heart of the accountability system will be a warehouse of student data called the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, ARIS.  Beginning this August and phased in over a year, by August 2008 the system envisions parents, with passwords, can access detailed info for their child and their child’s school. School personnel can access extremely detailed data dealing with individual children. Cynics fear the purpose of the system is to measure individual teacher achievement: the beginning of merit pay?

Most schools have participated in the first phase of the system – the inspection. Inspectors, mostly from the Britain-based Cambridge Education, have visited schools, written up the results of the visit and the reports are posted on the Department website – although currently it takes two or three months to post the report. The visit is carefully spelled out to the principal prior to the visit.

The October visit to Canarsie High School was quite critical, and, in March the State Education Department cited the school as a School Under Registration Review (SURR). Hundreds of Reports are posted on school DOE webpages.

The audit section of accountability will be the School Progress Report. The Report is an attempt to evaluate a school with a particular numerical score based on “average pupil progress.” While the Report is a work in progress, currently 55% of the score will be pupil achievement data, with the School Quality Review (SQR), attendance, school safety and parent and staff survey results also factoring into the Report.

The current Department “roadshow” is attempting to explain the accountability system to principals – a seventy plus powerpoint slide presentation is dense,fascinating, thoughtful and enlightening – will it resonate in the classroom?

How will the support organizations support the extremely complex accountability metric? Will a dense accountability metric result in more effective instruction? Isn’t the movement to support organizations an abrogation of the responsibilities of the chancellor?

Chancellor Klein is fond of claiming that his intiatives are in the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education – yet the system is more segregated now than it was thirty years ago. How does threatening schools with an “F” help students?

Is the hope for the system encapsuled in ARIS and accountabiltiy or in Mayor Bloomberg’s Poverty Commission initiatives?

The “rubber hits the road” in each and every classroom: a teacher and their kids … will the hundreds of millions of dollars invested by Klein improve pupil achievement? or, will it be yet another failed plan cast into the educational dustbin?

The New Reorganization: Re-arranging the Deck Chairs? Is There An Iceberg In Our Future? Does the “Fish Stink from the Head”?

How do we define a “failing” school?

Who takes the “blame” for failing schools?

The New York State Education Department (SED) uses the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) metric of Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) to measure school progress, or lack thereof.

Hundred of schools in New York State are failing to meet AYP and have been designed as Schools In Need of Improvement (SINI). The schools at the bottom of the list – schools that are actually moving away from their AYP goals, and the rate that they are moving in the wrong direction is increasing, are designed as Schools Under Registration Review (SURR).

SURR schools are in jeopardy is being redesigned. Redesign usually means that the school is “closed,” meaning that the school is phased out – the school does not have an entering class and over a period of years the school ceases to exist. New, usually small schools are started in the same building. Under a provision of the Teacher Union contract teachers from the phaseout school may apply to teach in the “new” schools, however the “new” schools are only required to accept up to 50% of the “qualified” applicants. Union representatives serve on the initial staffing committee.

Many of the teachers in “new” schools are brand new – totally inexperienced.

In her Spring Conference speech the Teacher Union president suggested attracting teams of experienced teachers to transfer into low performing schools – will the DOE listen?

This year the SED identified nine new SURR schools in New York City and the Department, preemptively “closed” five high schools (three large schools, and two small schools) and two middle schools.

Who is to blame? Who is responsible for allowing schools to continue to slide in the wrong direction for years?

The teachers are “bumped” out of the school … maybe some moving along to the “new” school, most are “branded” as teachers in failing schools. Under the new Open Market system they must find their own jobs or be placed in an Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), basically act as a substitute for daily absent teachers, and continue to be paid as a regular teacher.

The principals can be “removed” and under the conditions of their collective bargain agreement: either be moved to another school, or, reverted to a lower title.

What happens to the superintendent?

Nothing …

This spring in Region 6 in Brooklyn: two large high schools and two middle schools were closed and one high school was designated as a SURR school. The superintendent retired in June, 2006 and rumor has it is working at the Leadership Academy training new principals. The current superintendent is moving on to an “important” job at Tweed.

The superintendents, the leaders, the primary decision-makers are “rewarded” while the teachers are “branded” as failures.

Next year the SED will continue to use the NCLB metrics while the Department will use the obtuse School Report Card audit/inspection tool.

Schools (meaning teachers and principals) will be measured by two totally different systems – either one can result in the “redesign” aka closing, of the school. The SSO, Empowerment, PSO and/or Community Superintendent/High School Superintendent, and, of course, the Chancellor, walk away “free and clear.”

Shouldn’t true accountability hold the CEO accountable? Doesn’t the Sicilian proverb, “The Fish Stinks from the Head,” resonate?

In the private sector that Klein tries to emulate, failure results in the changes at the top – a new CEO-and occasionally the corporation merges and disappears.

At the Department failure is rewarded with promotions and the “blame” is placed at the feet of the “assembly line” employees – the teachers.

Will yet another rearranging of the chairs on the Titanic reverse the DOE’s course – or, is there an iceberg in our future? 

Can Messianic Jesus/Moses/Mohammad-like Teachers “Close the Gap?” Is “No Excuses” Nonsense? Can We Create High Performing Schools Without Acknowledging the Pathology of Poverty?

Hundreds of principals and Department/SSO staff attended the “rollout” of the “new thing” at the Grand Hyatt on April 23rd. The “dog and pony” show has meandered around the city at poorly attended boro meetings. At some there were many more SSO  staff members than visitors.

By May 15th all 1400 plus principals will have to chose a School Support Organization (SSO) – with “limiting criteria,” and by early June everybody should be placed. Under the radar the “inspection/audit” system is being put in place. The SSO will NOT rate or evaluate, only “support,” whatever that means. The “inspection/audit” responsibility, aka the accountability police, will manage the School Progress Report, that is now aligned with each principal’s year end evaluation. While the SSO whispers suggestions the accountability folk will wield the whip, and, ultimately, the guillotine.

The goal is to create high performing schools were all children are above average, the Lake Wobegon effect.

By either empowering principals in networks of schools, or, supporting them in theme-based uber-structures, or, partnering them with not-for-profits we will create highly effective principals, and, the accountability folk can sweep away the detritus, the guy and gal principals who fail their School Progress Reports.

This structure will create those messianic, Jesus/Moses/Mohammad teachers who can change the world, or, will it?

Can teachers, no matter how great they may be, close the achievement gap?

Richard Rothstein, author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap (Teachers College, 2004) argues,

“…the influence of social class characteristics is probably so powerful that schools cannot overcome it, no matter how well trained are their teachers and no matter how well designed are their instructional programs and climate.”

“…there is nothing illogical about a belief that schools, if well operated, can raise lower class achievement without investing in health, social, early childhood, after-school and summer programs. But while the belief is not illogical, it is implausible, and the many claims made about instructional heroes or methods that close the gap are, upon examination, unfounded. The only prudent conclusion is that raising achievement of lower-class students will be very expensive, requiring more than high standards, testing and tough accountability.”

The Klein decision to spend hundreds of million of dollars on structure is fatally flawed.

Ironically his boss, Mayor Bloomberg might be moving in the right direction. The recommendations of the Mayor’s Poverty Commission  are a beginning in a direct assault, moving targeting population away from core poverty.

The New York State Teachers Union (NYSUT) is also onboard pinpointing social policy issues that must be addressed in order to “close the gap.”

Mayor Bloomberg and the Teacher’s Union, who have been at odds on numerous issues acknowledge that poverty-related social policy issues must be addressed while Chancellor Klein is leading the school system into the abyss of structural reform after structural reform. Do Mike and Joel occasionally talk to each other?

A British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, reports that the stresses of “audit” have resulted in the suicide of teachers – while the Department bureaucrats chisel the new motto on the Tweed courthouse, “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.”

How many days until Klein sunsets?