Education in New York: Looking Back and Looking Forward: Remembering 2019 and Anticipating 2020

The decade of the teens began with high expectations and ended in confusion, both for New York State and New York City.

The decade started with a new leader of the Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch, and a new commissioner, David Steiner. Ever rising questionable test scores led to Tisch and Steiner, bravely, demanding an external audit and asked Daniel Koretz; a Harvard testing expert, to examine the testing regime in New York State and Koretz found the testing seriously flawed.

John King replaced Steiner and the state adopted the Common Core State Standards, moved to Common Core-based state tests, imposed four pre-service exams for prospective teachers, won a $700 million Race to the Top grant and began “scaling” the Regents exams.

It appeared like the state was moving in the right direction.

At the end of the decade the commissioner, after a contentious relationship with the Board precipitously announced her resignation.  NAEP scores remained in the middle of the bottom half of states, and five months later the Board is still searching for a new commissioner.

Were Tisch/King moving in the wrong direction?  Why was the current Board and Commissioner  relationship so conflicted? The members? The structure? Or, were the sharp disparities in school funding across the state impacting outcomes?

If graduation rates are inching upwards; why do NAEP scores continue to be dismal?

On other hand the era of the school reformers, or, if you please, (de)formers, has faded.

The Portfolio Model, a combination of pubic and charter schools competing with each other is no longer viewed as the savior of schooling. New York City has reached the charter cap and the legislature had no interest in increasing the cap. The NAACP called for a moratorium on the creation of new charter schools ..

The flirtation with using test scores to rate teachers has been rejected by the legislature and the Board of Regents.

Almost twenty percent of parents opt their children out of federally- required state tests; a rejection of testing driving instruction.

The leading Democratic contenders have all been critical of charter schools.

New York State is beginning a lengthy process to explore/assess/change what are called graduation measures, the route to a high school diploma.  See an excellent summary of the suggested directions of the process and the pathways of a number of other states.

While the initial discussion centers on whether to keep or abandon the regents examinations hopefully the discussions will explore course requirements and curricula beginning in elementary schools: Is New York State preparing students for the post secondary world of college and career?  The discussion will be taking place in an environment without a commissioner; a challenging impediment.

The last decade in New York City has also been turbulent.

The third term Bloomberg administration years were characterized by a vengeful mayor punishing teachers and their union. Forty percent of new teachers had their probation extended, unsatisfactory rating increased precipitously. Sol Stern in a City Journal article referred to a survey; parents viewed teachers as more trustworthy than the mayor.

A Zogby Analytics [poll showed that] New Yorkers now trust the oft-maligned teachers more than they trust the mayor’s office: almost half of all respondents said that teachers should “play the largest role in determining New York City’s education policy,” compared with 28 percent who thought that the mayor-appointed schools chancellor should.

 Newly elected Mayor de Blasio brought back a retired friend, Carman Farina as chancellor. Farina repaired the relationship with the union and de Blasio negotiated a five-year delayed collective bargaining agreement.

New York City can proudly point to Universal Pre-K for four year olds, over 70,000 children in school and an expanding Three-for-All, a pre-K program for three year olds beginning in the poorest neighborhoods.

The successor school leader, Richard Carranza, has had a highly controversial tenure. One can speculate: were educational decisions made by the mayor to enhance his futile run for president with Carranza carrying out orders?

The educational policies of the last two years have centered on the specialized high schools, gifted & talents programs and school integration ; while impacting a very small percentage of the school system they have dominated the media.

I recommend reading two superb essays exploring school segregation/integration in New York City, Norm Fruchter, NYC School District Integration Then and Now here  and the Research Alliance for NYC Schools, Which Schools are Racially  Representative? It Depends  here.

New York City schools are only 15% White with many of the districts hyper-segregated, with limited opportunities to integrate without cross-district busing.

The Carranza educational initiatives have made a large bureaucracy larger and more distant from classrooms; in my view moving in the wrong direction; more than twenty-five years ago Stan Litow described a management model that appears to have resurfaced.

Utilizing a model adopted by many large corporations in the late 1960s, a military-style, hierarchical structure was placed atop the already fiercely hierarchical and top-down structure of the individual school. This structure changed little over the decades.

Another major Carranza initiative are Instructional Leadership Frameworks (Read here), looks like cut and pasted from a leadership; textbook, an old textbook.

William Julius Wilson described a “truly disadvantaged” population, several sections of the city fit Wilson’s definition. Will de Blasio/Carranza craft policies, across city agencies to address the major impediment to educational progress? Yes, occasionally heroic efforts “beat the odds;” however, they are dragged down by the oppressive weight of generational poverty.

A cohort of schools do shine, PROSE schools make use of a section of the union contract that allows schools to alter union “rules” and Department regulations.

Gardens, if nurtured, can grow and flourish.

What can we look forward to in 2020?

At the state level the continuing battle to implement the CFE lawsuit – the battle to force the governor to pony up the $3 billion plus dollars deferred during the fiscal crisis of 2008-09 as well as rethinking the Foundation Aide formula.

A new commissioner will be hired, eventually.

The Graduation Measures process will continue to move forward.

Will the governor announce any educational policies in his January 8^th State of the State message?

With a June primary election (instead of September) the legislative session will be accelerated and probably many more challenges to incumbent Democratic legislators, the session might be bumpy, even with overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses.

In New York City how does a term limited mayor make his mark?  How do the many contenders for mayor approach educational policy?  With a new rank order voting  primary in June 2021 the pretenders will be seeking endorsements and voters in what will be a very contentious primary, and, will a deep-pocketed Republican challenge in the November general election?

Remember: in the words of Thomas Wolf, You Can’t Go Home Again, 2020, a new year and a new decade, and, oh yes, that “Event” the first Tuesday in November.