Klein’s Christmas Gift, A Lump of Coal in the Stocking: The Spector of Hunger and Poverty Haunts Too Many Families.

There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
and its morals aren’t worth what a pin can spit
and it goes by the name of London.
At the top of the hole sit the privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo
turning beauty to filth and greed…
I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders,
for the cruelty of men is as wondrous as Peru
but there’s no place like London!

Sweeney Todd

The number of murders in Manhattan is at the lowest rate since before the Gangs of New York and a thirty story condominium is being built on every other street corner. $700,000 new houses are being sold in East New York: the city seems to be awash in cash! Europeans are flying into the city on shopping splurges, and buying apartments, hard working immigrants from around the world are crowding into the city … seemingly, prosperity has exploded.

But, not for everyone, poverty still haunts too many families.

Michael Harrington’s classic, the Other America is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago.

Speak to teachers:

* kids coming to school hungry …

* kids coming to school with shoddy, ill fitting, worn clothes.

* grandparents as caregivers for grandchildren, because there’s no one else.

* families struggling, working two and three jobs, barely paying the rent and putting food on the table

* fear of gang violence

The spector of poverty in Brownsville, and Rockaway and  Morrisiana, and, too many neighborhoods around the city is the reality of life.

The school system leadership is oblivious.

The Chancellor is proud of shouting “public education is a civil right …” and comparing his efforts to Brown v Board of Education … his cries are an embarrassment.

Schools must do the best job they can … but they are not islands … they are part of neighborhoods. Ignoring the ravages of poverty is dooming too many kids.

Richard Rothstein in Class and Schools  shows us that even the very best of schools cannot overcome the impact of poverty.

Instead of providing lower class size, health clinics in every school, extended school days, counseling services for children and families, and, most importantly, integrating all social services, the Department chases after the illusion that paying kids will improve performance. An approach that is not only unproven, but, the evidence is on the other side.

The Mayor and Chancellor seem more interested in creating a Milton Friedman, market-driven approach to school improvement – that may fuel a presidential campaign rather than confronting a reality. Yes, many in the city are prospering as never before, but, too many families and children are not making it …  For too many families the Chancellor’s “gift” is a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking.

Education Is Not a “Reality Show,” Assessment Should Drive Decision-Making, Not Be Used to Punish Schools.

 We live in a society that is dominated by the quest for “winning,” whether the “winning” is in the world of sports, or reality TV shows or in the stock market. Schools are no different.

For years we ranked and published reading scores by school. The newspapers dutifully interviewed the “winner,” usually some small elementary school in District 26 and the “loser,” some school in Brownsville or the Bronx. The “winners” and “losers” were defined by zip code, and, poverty. The “winner” was a school surrounded by expensive private homes and the ‘losers” were at the center of some of the poorest areas of the city.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was an attempt to create a national assessment of school progress. The goal of NCLB was for all students to reach proficiency by 2014, and, each state, in grades 3-8 was required to test students, and measure Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward that goal.

Schools that failed to make their AYP were in jeopardy of interventions that could lead to redesign, closing, conversion to Charter status or being run by private management organizations.

The problem: some States establish equal steps for each year while others created “tiny, baby steps” in the early years and “giant steps” in the later years .

While the “baby step” States crow about meeting and exceeding AYP, grades on the “gold standard,” the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were poor. A sharp discrepancy shows the failure of NCLB.

NCLB is a “photograph” of school data at a particular time. Unfortunately since the only measurement is proficiency, the location of the school, the zip code, is frequently the determining factor.

A growth model is a more complex, but, a more meaningful measurement.

The NYC School Progress Report is an attempt to combine proficiency and growth.

Unfortunately it is deeply flawed.

As Diane Ravitch shows schools that are SINI (Schools In Need of Improvement), schools in jeopardy of closing, received grades of “A” and “B” on the DOE Progress Reports, and, conversely, highly successful schools, as defined by NCLB, received grades of “D” and “F.”

The NY Times reports on a “persistently violent school,” clearly in chaos, and receives a grade of “A.”

Norm Fruchter in an Education Week article cogently points to the difference between audit and inspection.

The teacher union leader, Randi Weingarten also rebukes the DOE assessment tool and encourages urges improvements (http://edwize.org/report-cards-for-our-public-schools).

We need a system that produces meaningful data about schools, data that will be understandable to parents and can inform decision-making within schools.

Whether on the national level or in NYC punitive assessment of schools does not improve schools. All schools want to be “winners,” we need a system that is highly transparent, that involves all the stakeholders, that is guided by the school district, that offers the opportunity to build capacity over time, and, yes, has consequences.

A lame duck Mayor with no oversight is not the answer. Hopefully the State legislature, with input from the entire school community, can create a system which makes us all “winners.”

A Tale of Two Schools: How Zealotry Trumps Kids …

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …

The Department announced the closing of Far Rockaway and Lane last week. They are both schools with long histories, very poor, underserved kids and young, dynamic principals.

“Turning around” schools is difficult work, with a mediocre record . Unfortunately Tweed simply abandons large high schools and nurtures small high schools. The Gates Foundation and other funders heavily support small schools through their first four years … typically a school will receive an additional $100,000 a year … with entering classes of about 100 students per year. And, of course, are at a significant advantage in recruiting kids.

The data below is self explanatory … the vast majority of entering kids are far below standards, many are over aged, meaning they were probably held over and, many more kids are in self contained Special Education classes, which have meager graduation rates.

                                                               Far Rockaway           Lane        City Average

Entering Student Meeting Standards in:

ELA                                                         14.5%                               15.6            32.7

MATH                                                      20.7                                 21.2            40.8

Entering Students Overage:                       42.6                                 54.8            29.9

Full Time Special Education                       12                                    8.3              5.2

English Language Learners                        13.5                                 36               12.8

A recent highly regarded international study shows that poverty has a significant impact on pupil achievement. The Tweed zealots blithely ignore the ugly reality … poverty counts. They jam the poorest, the least served, the most vulnerable youngsters into underserved large high schools, and, viola, the school is closed.

November 30th was the final day for eighth graders to file their High School Admissions application. In the real world of schools principals scramble for higher achieving kids. Brochures, web sites, open houses, and real fancy school names compete with the large high schools. Four, five or maybe six years from now we’ll see whether small high schools are sustainable.

Rather than intervening the Department, and their predecessor, the Board, allowed large high schools to erode, increasing violence lead to more police leading to student alienation. Large schools became “dumping grounds” for the most troubled children.

A few schools have been able to redesign themselves, for Park West it didn’t matter, they were swept away in a wave of school closings. Columbus and a number of small schools in the same building survive, Hillcrest, in Queens and New Dorp in Staten Island have recreated themselves. Experienced principals and staffs, driven by the needs of their kids, can be proud of their large well functioning schools.  

As the clock ticks and the current mayoral control days dwindle perhaps the denizens at Tweed will assist struggling schools, not simply leaving it to the host of support organization, but provide, in collaboration with principals, teachers and the teacher union, a coordinated effort to assist schools and their students, perhaps the words of Dickens will resonate:

It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done …

We Need Another American Revolution: the Bloomberg/Klein/Barber Reform Is A House of Cards Based Upon A Failed Model.

Is the closing/new school creation process rearranging the deck chairs on the Titantic? or, a thoughtful strategy to improve/create effective schools?

Many Chancellors over more than twenty years have closed schools. Early on the teachers union challenged the process in the courts – and lost.

We are in the fourth phase of the school closing process.

The closing of Andrew Jackson and Erasmus in the late eighties/early nineties and the creation of small schools ultimately resulted in a number of failing small schools.

The Chancellor’s High School District, working in close collaboration with the teacher union closed/redesigned four large high schools: Eastern District, George Washington, Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. Using either State Ed NCLB data or School Progress Report data the Chancellor’s District created small schools are doing pretty well. It was a heavily top-down, highly structured effort.

In the third wave the Gates dollars drove the New Century High School Initiative and closed most of the large high schools in the Bronx. The jury is still out on the impact. The closing of large high schools deflected students to other large high schools accelerating their closings. Eric Nadelstern, the Director of the initiative under the Bronx High School Superintendent points to considerably better student data, others question all Tweed driven data.

The current administration has continued the process in a highly decentralized system with host of “support organizations” that assist but do not supervise schools.

Elementary and middle schools have been closed and reopened with new designations through the SURR process for two decades – some schools are in their third reiteration.

The closing/redesigning of school has not answered the range of issues confronting public schools:

* Are the small high schools “better” than the large schools that they have replaced? How do we define “better”?

* Are the small high schools sustainable? Will small high schools morph into “failing” small high schools once the Hawthorne Effect ebbs?

* Are there recognized models of moving “failing” to “effective” schools?

* Will expanded use vouchers, tax credits and charter schools become the next wave of school reform?

* Are external factors, i. e., poverty, single parent households, etc., ultimately the determinant of success in school?

* Are teacher union contracts the impediment to student success?

These questions should be at the heart of a transparent, public dialogue.

The current wave of school closing does not have the support of parents, teachers, unions or elected officials … it is the result of mayoral control governance and a lame duck mayor.

Unfortunately there is no public role … the effort emanates from Klein’s demi-god: Sir Michael Barber.

The  …big political challenge is: How do you do rapid, large scale reform with sharp accountability?   A lot of people within the system say we went too far too fast and should have made more effort to get buy-in.  I personally don’t believe that.  We had to demonstrate that you could do large-scale, system-wide reform quickly.  But that doesn’t make it any less of a political challenge.

Probably the most difficult political challenge, though, is just how hard it is to stay the course when the going gets tough.  Most big reforms take eight or 10 years. You can make an impact in three to four, as we did, but to really transform a system it’s going to be eight or 10 years.  How you stay the course—not just through changes of party but also with ministerial turnover in one party—is a real issue.

The Barber/Klein “branding” has expanded to Washington DC, Baltimore and Rochester with the assignment of Klein acolytes as school leaders.

The problem: the Barber template has failed in Great Britain. The current Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report compares reading, mathematical and scientific progress for 400,000 15 year olds in countries covering 87% of the world economy. The Economist avers “…the results have embarrassed a government that claims to have put education at the top of their agenda for a decade.”

The entire Children First Bloomberg/Klein program is a “house of cards,” using a failed model and wrecking havoc on our children.

Barber, as other Jihadists, tell their disciples to destroy everything, make changes so radical that the past cannot be rebuilt.

Once Bloomberg and Klein are on to their next jobs we will rebuild, not the past but a future that will truly serve New York City children and their families.

Tis The Season for …. School Closings.

If you want to bury an unpleasant announcement … making it just before the Christmas School Recess would be an excellent time, and sure enough the Department announces the first round of closings.

Once again Tweed is looking for space for new public and charter schools … and looking to divest itself of troubled schools. An example of “addition by subtraction,” making the school system “better” by closing a school, it will take years before we know whether the replacement schools are successful or not.

The practice began with the closing of Andrew Jackson in Queens and Erasmus in Brooklyn twenty years ago and accelerated under the Chancellor’s High School District with the closing of Eastern District in Brooklyn, George Washington in Manhattan and Taft and Theodore Roosevelt in the Bronx. It became an avalanche when the Gates dollars arrived. The New Century High School Initiative (NCHSI), embedded in the Bronx High School Superintendency resulted in the closing of most of the large high schools in the Bronx.

Has the NCHSI created better, higher achieving schools?

A recent evaluation of the initiative is positive. However, only 44% of the graduates received a Regents diploma and only 38% were “college ready” using the CUNY College Readiness Metric. Are the higher graduation rates due to fewer ELL and Special Ed kids, or, widespread use of questionable “credit recovery” programs … ?  Unfortunately we cannot trust Tweed data  … they have “massaged,” “misinterpreted” and downright dissembled.

Wingate had an excellent staff and but was plagued by poor leadership, Park West had already redesigned and was moving forward: too bad … Tweed’s agenda is to close schools, not support schools.

Last year Tweed “closed” five high schools (three large schools, and two small high schools) plus a number of middle schools. Rumor had it that this year the “potential” list has elementary, middle and high schools on it, and sure enough, elementary and middle schools are on the initial list.

No consideration is given to restructuring schools, to supporting existing schools, involving parents and teachers in the process.

Why is Tweed afraid of the public?

Why can’t they schedule public hearing before decisions are made? Schools are anchors of communities … closing a school can destabilize a neighborhood. Elected officials, parents and communities are barred from the process … a handful of folk who don’t live in or know the community, who will soon be off to their next job are making decisions in secret. Yes, some schools should be closed, but stakeholders must be part of the decision-making process.

It is not a surprise that many legislators want to change the present Department of Education governance structure.

Educational Genocide: Are Large Schools Toxic By Definition? Is Klein Ideology a Potemkin Village?

Society is quick to throw

People out with the trash-

If you’re hungry, shut your trap;

Otherwise they’ll beat you up,

And enjoy it too.

 

if you dare to argue,

They kick you out-

For you, poor guys, have been sacked

By the higher-ups.

Hanns Eisler, Welfare Song.

Hillcrest is a comprehensive high school in Queens, over 3400 students, an ethnically diverse population and a glowing reputation. In a recent lengthy article in Education Week explaining the new Department of Ed configuration Hillcrest is featured.

The school has restructured into small learning communities and is deeply studying the progress of their students. The principal has been in place for more than a decade and has lead the school in a total “makeover.”

From the DOE perspective: it is an ”ordinary” school – it’s Report Card grade – a C.

The NY Daily News challenges the Report Card grade - however – Tweed blindly defends the grade.

The Hillcrest community, parents, students, teachers, elected officials rave about their wonderful neighborhood school. The wide range of course offerings, the safety within the building … the achievements of Hillcrest are the goal of many other schools.

Scores of other secondary schools, who look up and admire the success of Hillcrest received grade of A and B.

For ostriches at Tweed: Hillcrest is just average.

Is the School Report Card system flawed, or, is the Department attacking all large high schools?

Let’s take a look at Beach Channel, 1800 students, also with a diverse student body. Many of their students come from struggling middle schools in Rockaway, an area, unfortunately, with serous gang problems. The Tweed response: send “over the counter” students with serious “issues,” and no school notification to the problems these students bring with them.

Carnarsie High School is abandoned by the Regional Superintendent … and no surprise becomes a SURR school and receives and F on their Report Card … the principal is removed … but no other help is provided … are they setting Carnarsie up to be closed?

Last year the Department closed five high schools and reorganized the Alternative High Schools (District 79), the result: hundreds of excessed teachers scattered hither and yon, receiving full salaries, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.  Ideology over sanity.

Following the advise of Sir Michael Barber, the Klein Svengali, a Carthaginian strategy, destroy all that precedes you so that when you leave the past cannot be rebuilt.

They are mistaken: the word “Klein” will become a pejorative verb.