New York State Tip-Toes Toward a Measured School Opening with Significant Local Input and a Long List of Unanswered Questions.

As the President and the Secretary of Education call for a full school reopening, with threats aimed at states that are more cautious, the fifty states and 14,000 school districts consider the options.

John Hopkins University posted a reopening policy tracker, a user-friendly source that enables the user to click on every state and organization and view whatever documents they posted.  Impressive!!

For example, see the Texas plan here and the New York University, Guidance on Culturally-Responsive Sustaining School Openings here.

New York State is complicated and confusing. The governor, who was granted wide-ranging emergency powers by the legislature appointed a “Reimaging Education Task Force” and, at daily press conferences emphasized again and again that he will decide on whether or not schools re-open. The chancellor reminded us that the State Constitution places education under the leadership of the Board of Regents.

The State Commissioner, after a number of regional meetings with representatives from across the states, presented the state plan to the Board of Regents. See plan here

A few hours later the governor held his press briefing and laid out the data points required for school reopening, by region. The specifics of the plan will be determined by the school district, and approved by State Education Department (SED) and the governor. The Board of Regents and the governor seem to be somewhat in conflict: does the governor decide on the “health and safety” and State Ed on the education plan?

Watch the governor’s press conference here.

The governor made it clear, abundantly clear, that the first week in August he will determine “go/no-go” based on data points by state region.

Later in the day the NYS Department of Health released a 23-page “Guidelines for School Re-Opening” here,

New York City has released a detailed plan, very detailed, planning for a hybrid reopening and schools will select from a number of school scheduling models. See models here.

In New York City any parent can opt for full remote.

In spite of trepidation, parents and teachers are nervous, concerned; perhaps fearful;  the state is inching closer and closer to a re-opening with the details left to local school districts.

For parents and teachers the overriding issue is safety.

• Can meaningful instruction take place in an environment with social distancing and mask wearing?  Can you actually enforce the rules with younger children?  In many schools only small percentages of parents returned surveys, will parents abide by the staggered school schedules?  Will the staggered school schedules reduce attendance?
• Can schools actually enforce daily temperature taking at entry? Can schools clean using appropriate cleansers every day?
• What are the protocols if a staff member, student or family member of a student tests positive?
• Will testing be made readily available to staff members?
• When will the “accommodation” guidelines/application (request to remain fully “remote”) be available for staff?
• What happens if many more staffer members apply then are required?
• Who funds required protective personal equipment (PPE)?
• Are there plans for childcare for staffs?

Who answers these questions?  For many (most? all?), the answers will be made at the local level; with 700 school districts in New York State the burden on smaller school districts will be overwhelming. The larger urban districts are facing severe budget cuts; will they have the dollars to fund the additional safety requirements?

To remain fully remote when the contagion rates are low and declining is difficult to defend. One outstanding question is how you define “safe for children, families and staff.”

To the question of school reopening Michael Mulgrew, the leader of the UFT, the New York City teachers union gave a “qualified yes.”

Schools can reopen, but only when they are safe for students, their families, and the staff.

The current proposed reopening plans for New York City public schools – based on state and CDC recommendations – call for no more than 9-12 people in the average classroom, meaning that most schools will have to create cohorts of students who alternate between in-class and remote learning. Everyone in school will be masked, and there will also have to be extensive cleaning, testing, and contact-tracing protocols.

All of the scheduling plans are complicated to implement and present logistical challenges for working parents, but we believe a blended learning model is the best option under the circumstances. The (New York City) Department of Education is working with principals to develop more detailed plans, particularly the best instructional strategies for the most vulnerable students.

Mulgrew is correct: the area that has been neglected, sorely neglected is the question of instruction

Eric Nadelstern, a former deputy chancellor, reminds us,

Eric Nadelstern | July 8, 2020

The DOE plan for reopening schools has tackled the question as if it is a managerial problem rather than an instructional one. The first problem that demands solution is which instructional approaches can be equally effective if students are in school, online or a hybrid of the two as pandemic safety will require at different times during the COVID crisis. Once determined, then the managerial issues fall into place.

Should the leadership at the state and local levels have explored the most effective remote and/or hybrid models before determining the questions of the models?  The answer is obvious

For better or worse the education decisions (scheduling models, curriculum, etc.) will be made at the local level.

While the fog is lifting the questions still far outnumber the answers.

Can We De-Police Schools and Assure Safety for Students and Staff?

A world turned right side up … the grandchildren of the civil rights demonstrators of the sixties seized the day, injustices centuries old bubbled and erupted, maybe our quiescent world is changing.

In New York State a number of police accountability and transparency concepts rapidly passed the legislature, signed by the governor and became law.

Cries of “defund the police” were heard across the nation, n some school districts zero tolerance and armed police are commonplace in schools.

The sharp criticism of the police is not new; the Black Lives Matter in Schools movement has been calling for “counselors not cops,’ as part of their platform.

School policing is looked upon as repression,

School policing is inextricably linked to this country’s long history of oppressing and criminalizing Black and Brown people and represents a belief that people of color need to be controlled and intimidated. Historically, school police have acted as agents of the state to suppress student organizing and movement building, and to maintain the status quo. Local, state and federal government agencies, designed to protect dominant White power institutions, made the intentional decision to police schools in order to exercise control of growing power in Black and Brown social movements

 In New York City the de Blasio administration removed police from schools and ended the position of Youth Officer in precincts. If there is a situation requiring police principals are instructed to call 911, no longer any special treatment.

School suspensions have been dramatically reduced as well as the length of suspensions.

The reaction to accusations of over-policing has been calls for sharp reductions in police budgets, and, in New York City the elimination of scanning and the movement of the supervision of School Safety Officers from the police back to the Department of Education. (See NYU Metro Center blog)

During this moment of nation-wide opposition to police killings of Black men and women, we should consider ending two longstanding NYC public school security policies–the NYPD’s control of the city’s School Security Agents, and the imposition of metal detectors in selected city schools.

  Kathleen Nolan, Police in the Hallways, (2012) spent a year in a high school in the Bronx and paints a dreary picture of a school oppressed by a “culture of control,” leading to frequent summonses and arrests,

         Although a variety of policies and practices were part of the culture of control inside xxHS, the most central was the systematic use of order-maintenance-style policing. This included law-enforcement officials’ patrolling of the hallways, the use of criminal-procedural-level strategies, and the pervasive threats of summonses and arrest

Will the removal of scanning improve the quality of life for students?

In the midst of the pandemic we see states opening their economies in spite of spiking numbers of infections: a triage, weighing increasing fatalities against the wishes of voters and the revival of the state economy.

Is the removal of scanning the equivalent?

In early 1990’s the Board of Education decided to place scanners in twenty schools. The principal of one of the schools, Thomas Jefferson High School, objected vociferously, her students must not be treated as criminals. The Board relented and Jefferson was removed from the scanning list. A year later a student was fatally shot in the school.

I blogged about the incident here, take a few minutes and read, one of my better efforts.

What is lacking is asking students and staff: do they feel safe in schools?  Have the de Blasio reforms made schools safer?

Max Eden uses student and teacher school climate surveys, an annual collection of data by the Department of Education, over 80% of students and staff complete the surveys; in “School Discipline Reform and Disorder Evidence from New York City Public Schools”    2012 –2016 (March, 2017) Eden challenges the impact of the reforms and concludes,

 … [schools] where an overwhelming majority of students are not white saw huge deteriorations in climate during the de Blasio reform. This suggests that de Blasio’s discipline reform had a significant disparate impact by race, harming minority students the most.

How do we reconcile the positions of advocates, both inside and outside of schools with the data reflecting the views of large percentages of students/staff inside of schools?

UPDATE: How do students feel about the impact of School Safety Officers in schools? See article from Chalkbeat  here.

To add to the complexity, the de-policing of schools advocates and electeds (many running for office next year) demanded that SSO supervision be removed from the police department and moved back to the schools, to the principals.

The Police Commissioner immediately agreed, the move would remove $300 million from his budget without the loss of a single police officer.

The Speaker of the City Council, Corey Johnson agreed with the concept, without speaking to the union leader, who unleashed a scathing attack calling Johnson a racist

There are 5,000 SSO’s, 90% are of color, 70% are women, many live in the neighborhoods of the schools in which they work, and many have worked in the schools for many years.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew was aghast, as the Department is struggling to maintain services, struggling to create a school opening scenario, struggling to prevent a wave of layoffs, ” … this is not the time to consider dramatic and possibly disruptive changes in school security.”  The SSO’s are currently being used to hand out masks, to work in the feeding centers, working in communities,  distributing informational materials and answering community questions.

The weekly “Stated Meeting” of the City Council was held today, and, the question of “defund the police” was defined as transferring dollars from the police budget to fund “safety net” programs in the most CIVID impacted communities, Council Speaker Johnson made it clear that Mayor de Blasio has resisted.

The budget must be agreed upon by the Mayor and the Council by June 30^th, if the Mayor and the City Council fail to agree on a budget a Financial Control Board can replace the Mayor and the Council in making financial determinations and the Governor would no qualms about becoming the “de facto” mayor.

When elephants fight, it is the [New Yorkers] that suffer, [amended African Proverb]

States, counties and cities are facing catastrophic budget shortfalls; unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression and uncertainty over the re-opening of businesses and schools.  Each day as expenditures exceed revenues the deficits widen,

While the state budget was approved on April 1, under his emergency powers the governor can adjust the budget, in other words the budget is malleable; depending on revenues the budget can be adjusted after the July 1^st.

A bill, the HEROES Act passed the House, it provides over $1 trillion for a wide range of supports.

Will the HEROES Act  pass the Senate? And, if so, how will the Senate change the House bill?

The current House bill would be a life-saver for New York City as well as cities across the state (See proposed $$ to each city here). Speculation is that the final bill will not come before the Senate until late June and will look considerably different than the bill that passed in the House.  The final bill has to “satisfy” Senate leader McConnell, the Republicans and the President.

In a normal year the Mayor and the City Council Speaker would be deep in discussions over the final budget. New York City, since the sweeping governance changes in the late eighties, is a “Strong Mayor,” system. The Mayor has wide discretion over the allocation of resources, the Council, aside from approving the budget; its powers are limited to land use and the holding of hearings.  (Read a fascinating account of New York City governance and the emergence of the current configuration here).

Corey Johnson, the leader of the Council is a candidate for mayor.  Scott Stringer, the Comptroller, is also running for mayor, as well as the Eric Adams, the Brooklyn Boro President and who knows who else …. Andrew Yang? The ranked-choice primary will be held in June, 2021.

Taking “shots” at a weakened term-limited mayor is de rigueur in the world of politics.

Stringer calls for a $1B cut in the NYPD over four years by attrition and using the funds for community programs (Read presser here).

Meanwhile the Independent Budget Office (IBO) paints a bleak picture of New York City’s economy over the next few years,

The coronavirus pandemic has put New York City in the worst economic crunch in decades, with 22% of residents currently out of work and City Hall mired in a nearly $9 billion budget gap.  

 The state government in Albany is facing an even more dire fiscal situation than the city. Rather than providing assistance to the city, the state has looked to the city for fiscal relief. The state budget adopted last month includes hundreds of millions of dollars of cost shifts from the state to the city, including a direct raid on the city’s sales tax revenues. In short, New York City is facing nearly unprecedented challenges as it struggles to maintain budget balance, protect vital services, and provide a safe and healthy environment for individuals who want to live, work, or visit here

After the police clashed with demonstrators and widespread looting occurred the governor threatened to remove the mayor. Can the governor remove the mayor?

(See the text of the City Charter and State law below)

 “What happened in New York City was inexcusable,” Cuomo said during his Tuesday press conference, unprompted. “I have offered the National Guard; the mayor has said he can handle it with the NYPD. My option is to displace the mayor of New York City and bring in the National Guard as the governor in a state of emergency and basically take over … the mayor’s job. You’d have to displace the mayor.”

One would hope and expect that electeds: the governor, the mayor and the candidates will work together to restore the city, to make the city into a better place. We are in a moment in time when sweeping change is possible. Change is inevitable, and change can be disruptive, not all change make education better.

• David Kirkland, NYU Metro Center, “How can we center equity and racial justice when schools open”
• Governor Cuomo “Reimagining Education,    “The Council …can answer key questions about what education should look in the future using new technologies and to develop a blueprint to reimagine education in the new normal”
• Randi Weingarten suggested capstone projects in lieu of traditional end year testing
• Minneapolis, Portland and Denver are removing police officers from schools.

Teachers simply want to back to their classrooms in a safe environment, and we have yet to define safe.

I suspect some of the elements of remote teaching, can be incorporated, adding remote parent conferences to in-school conferences, one on one remote learning to reinforce in-school learning, remote conferences in lieu of out of school meetings, etc., and probably more.

If, however, the decision-makers, continue to bicker, to try and use the crisis for political advantage schools can slide into an abyss.

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

Dante Alighieri

 

Its Friday; gray and rainy, listen to Rhiannon Giddens, “Leaving Eden,” a poignant song in troubling times, one of my favorites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcCmg9Oj9XM

 

The Removal of a Mayor in New York State

“The mayor may be removed from office by the governor upon charges and after service upon him of a copy of the charges and an opportunity to be heard in his defense. Pending the preparation and disposition of charges, the governor may suspend the mayor for a period not exceeding thirty days.”  (NYC Charter)

“The chief executive officer of every city and the chief or commissioner of police, commissioner or director of public safety or other chief executive officer of the police force by whatever title he may be designated, of every city may be removed by the governor after giving to such officer a copy of the charges against him and an opportunity to be heard in his defense.  The power of removal provided for in this subdivision shall be deemed to be in addition to the power of removal provided for in any other law.  The provisions of this subdivision shall apply notwithstanding any inconsistent provisions of any general, special or local law, ordinance or city charter.” (NYS Law)

 

 

Its Friday; gray and rainy, listen to Rhiannon Giddens, “Leaving Eden,” a poignant song in troubling times, one of my favorites.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcCmg9Oj9XM

What Would Re-Opened Schools Look Like? Who Decides?

The UFT President Michael Mulgrew has been holding virtual meetings with teacher union (UFT) members: focus groups to get 1:1 feedback, scores of them as well as Town Halls, virtual meetings with many hundreds of members. One of the first questions was about school re-openings. Mulgrew was frank, the re-opening meetings are just beginning, nothing will be decided for many weeks, on the table, half days to reduce class size in the elementary schools, alternate days in upper grades, and, of course, safety first will be the guide.

A few days ago the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued long delayed guidance; however, Washington has no authority over school openings or closing, these decisions are reserved for the states.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

 Governor Cuomo has daily briefing and opening sections of the state to phase 1 openings, Long Island may join the others areas next week. (See detailed re-opening guide here).

The CDC guidance has a special section for schools with specific recommendations.

o Ensure that student and staff groupings are as static as possible by having the same group of children stay with the same staff (all day for young children, and as much as possible for older children).

o Restrict mixing between groups.

o Cancel all field trips, inter-group events, and extracurricular activities.

o Limit gatherings, events, and extracurricular activities to those that can maintain social distancing, support proper hand hygiene, and restrict attendance of those from higher transmission areas.

o Restrict nonessential visitors, volunteers, and activities involving other groups at the same time.

o Space seating/desks to at least six feet apart.

o Turn desks to face in the same direction (rather than facing each other), or have students sit on only one side of tables, spaced apart.

o Close communal use spaces such as dining halls and playgrounds if possible; otherwise stagger use and disinfect in between use.

o If a cafeteria or group dining room is typically used, serve meals in classrooms instead. Serve individually plated meals and hold activities in separate classrooms and ensure the safety of children with food allergies.

o Stagger arrival and drop-off times or locations, or put in place other protocols to limit close contact with parents or caregivers as much as possible.

o Create social distance between children on school buses (for example, seating children one child per seat, every other row) where possible

Read the entire school section here

The CDC sets a very high bar, for many unrealistic for schools; CDC guidance is not a requirement; the governor can accept the CDC guidance, can set New York State opening standards or can derogate the standards to school districts.

What will be the role of teacher unions? Parent groups? Other elected bodies, such as school boards, local elected leaders or the Assembly and Senate?

In New York City the UFT, the teacher union will play a major role.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the national teacher union led by Randi Weingarten released a data-based guide to schools openings, read here

The unanswered questions are endless: will high risk teachers (by age or health concerns) be required to return to school or can they continue to remote instruct in some capacity?

What happens in a school if a child or teacher tests positive? Does the entire school return to remote instruction?

What would instruction look like in a world of fully implemented CDC guidance?

The NYU Metro Center issued a report, GUIDANCE ON CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE-SUSTAINING SCHOOL REOPENINGS: Centering Equity to Humanize the Process of Coming Back Together.(Read  report here).

The country is on the brink of beginning again. And as we restart our national engines, let’s do so with a steady and caution hand, not taking for granted the sobering lessons that COVID-19 is teaching us: that in a nation as fundamentally carved out of its differences as ours, equity matters. Thus, it would be a mistake to imagine the school reopening process absent an acknowledgement that something fundamentally has taken place in our world, that the thing that interrupted life for millions of Americans afflicted vulnerable populations in ways disproportionate to more privileged populations. In acknowledging this, we provide this document—a set of suggestions and topics to think about—for humanizing the school reopening process

The report goes far beyond the CDC guidance and sees an opportunity,

A joy-based reimagining of schooling will involve more human-to-human interaction, collaborative learning, less or no homework, very few assessments that are continuous in nature and group assessments that feel less burdensome. A joy-based reimagining of schooling is one where we replicate spaces that center students of the global majority (BIPOC)* and let go of anything that continues to marginalize, exclude, and harm them.

 * Black/Indigenous People of Color

 

For many the NYU Metro Center paper will be treated with exultation, a fresh start, for others, disdain, let’s return to an instructional model that we have spent decades fine-tuning.

A  respected college professor,Sarah Woulfin,

Yessss! I’ve shared this plan with a couple of districts

The highly influential LI Opt Outs leader, Jeanette Deutermann gives thoughtful advice, with over 150 comments, many angry …

Jeanette Brunelle Deutermann

I know the question of whether schools will reopen in the fall, and if so what they will look like, is scary and making everyone anxious (with anger mixing into that anxiety). … Everyone is arguing over things that are just theories right now …please take a breath. The virus itself is not political. The solution for schools won’t be either. I don’t care if you believe the virus is real or not. It doesn’t change the fact that September will be unrecognizable. That is the only fact we know. The real work will be in designing something that works to keep our kids and school staff safe.

I am updating this by saying that I’m not urging school officials not to begin planning. I’m urging parents not to go to war over theoretical possibilities. The work on this will be a four month process that is just beginning. One thing is for sure- raging battles in our communities amongst each other will NOT benefit the process…

As Jeanette says, “please, take a breath,” any decision will be driven by data and, the decisions require extremely complicated logistics. How do you create social distancing on school buses? How do you arrange bus schedules if schools go to separate morning and afternoon sessions?  And on and on.

Stress is unhealthy: exercise, meditate, healthy diet, take care of yourself, anger can be corrosive.

Listen to Carole King, “You’ve Got a Friend”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qde5NMy7WTU

Stumbling Towards a Post-Racial World: We Have a Long, Long Path Ahead

The stain of slavery and Jim Crow appeared to be erased with election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Many commentators, both conservative and liberal, have celebrated the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States, claiming the election signified America has truly become a “post-racial” society. It is not just Lou Dobbs who argues the United States in the “21st century …is a post-racial society.” This view is consistent with beliefs the majority of White Americans have held for well over a decade: that African Americans have achieved, or will soon achieve, racial equality in the United States despite substantial evidence to the contrary.

 America was looking forward to a new emergence of Camelot. Younger voters flocked to the poles in unheard of numbers; a wave of progressive voters revived and seemed to presage the end of the Republican Party and a new era of progressive legislation waiting to become law.

A black president would influence generations of young children to embrace a new vision of American citizenship. The “Obama Coalition” of African American, white, Latino, Asian American and Native American voters had helped usher in an era in which institutional racism and pervasive inequality would fade as Americans embraced the nation’s multicultural promise.

While the two terms of Obama may not have lived up to expectations, and while the Republican Party didn’t fade away we seemed to have moved past endless decades of racism and repression.

We brushed away the increasing number of vile racist comments and threats and failed to comprehend that the election was only the first step of a long, long road

Claude Steele … argued that the crippling academic achievement gap between Black and White Americans can be closed if the nation has the sufficient will to end the decades-old practice of imposing negative stereotypes on Black children.

Eight years later Obama’s farewell address was a list of achievements; an upbeat view of the future and a realization that we were far from a post-racial society.

There’s a … threat to our democracy – one as old as our nation itself. After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America. Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. For race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society. I’ve lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago – you can see it not just in statistics, but in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum.

 Three years into the Trump presidency much of the Obama achievements have been ripped away or hanging on frayed strings. The future of our democracy is threatened from within and we fear we are edging towards wars abroad.

Beneath suits and dresses of too many Americans we see the cloaks of the Klan.  Attempts to address inequities that were once collective actions across the political spectrum are now bitterly attacked.

In New York City attempts to address the inequities of the Specialized High School Admittance Test (SHSAT); the results of the SHSAT test in the spring of 2018: only nine offers of admittance to Black students out of over 900 offers. The Hecht-Callandra Law (1971) contains an alternative admittance pathway,

The special schools shall be permitted to maintain a Discovery Program to give disadvantaged students of demonstrated high potential an opportunity to try the special high school program without in any manner interfering with the academic level of those schools.

The Bloomberg-Klein (2002-2014) mayoral administration abandoned the implementation of the Discovery Program; attempts to replace the law failed.

A report from the Center for NYC Affairs examines the impact of the new admissions standards proposed in the de Blasio bill, a bill that has not moved forward in the legislature.

The School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG), a blue ribbon mayoral panel, issued two reports, one supporting the integration of schools and a just-released report to end the Gifted and Talented programs created, once again, by the Bloomberg-Klein administration. G & T programs begin testing for admissions  at age four and the overwhelming number of classes placed in middle class schools.

David Kirkland, the Director of the NYU Metro Center, is a member of SDAG, and, a highly respected, award winning scholar, wrote an op ed in the New York Daily News defending his recommendation to end the G & T programs,

Though cloaked in language that attempts to make the focus on race less obvious, it boils down to a defense of systems that have unfairly and disproportionately benefited whites for generations.

 In the world of Twitter Kirkland was subjected to personal attacks,

David E. Kirkland

@davidekirkland

Sep 20

When you challenge the system and those who benefit from it, both the system and the privileged resist. Perhaps, I’ll analyze the discourse of those who are resisting me. This analysis will makes a point; however, I’m more interested in conversation and a commitment to our kids.

David E. Kirkland

@davidekirkland

Sep 20

I wrote a piece about how racism motivates resistance to change in education. All of today, I’ve been inundated with people calling me names and distorting my argument, attempting to pit me against Asians. This is how I know that the perspective is right–it’s challenging people.

The debate around school integration and the elimination of G & T programs has dominated the news cycle; and, unfortunately the “debate,” fueled by the NY Post, is nasty and nibbles at the edge of racism.

In our democracy challenging the status quo is at the core of our political system. Change is inevitable, incremental and is constantly seeking pathways.

Integration plans were designed by the local school boards, the Community Education Councils; the best decisions are made by those closest to children and classrooms.

I believe the recommendation to wipe away all G & T programs is the wrong pathway. The aeries of power rarely bring about embedded change. The decision by the John King, the former commissioner of education rammed through the adoption of Common Core State Standards and Common Core state testing and, an unintended consequence, created the opt-out movement. Virtually no one is a fan of the tests; they are required by federal law and have not raised student achievement.

I believe that G & T programs should be a decision made at the local level. School districts should have the authority to keep or abandon the programs as well as the ability to set admissions standards. Yes, awkward, the programs would vary across the city, and, most importantly, districts would have ownership.

Only through dialogue, through continuing dialogue, through challenging and uncomfortable debate can we identify pathways to eradicating the burdens of centuries of oppresson.

Kirkland keeps stirring the pot, encouraging us to think about questions of race and inequity.

When students do not come packaged the “right” way, too often our systems decide we cannot teach them. Instead of adapting to them, our systems label them, suggesting that something is wrong with vulnerable students. They label them as lazy, unfocused, misguided. In a sense, they blame their families, their genders, their socioeconomic circumstances, or anything else about vulnerable youth that deviates from the ideal. Our systems fail to see them, and thus our systems fail them.

There is clear evidence that this inability to see some students drives educational outcome disparities. The problem is not necessarily the unseen but our assumptions about what we see. Seeing is not neutral.

The Power of Culture: The the Specialized High Schools Admittance Test (SHSAT) Roots are Embedded Deeply in the Past

We visit our favorite Dim Sum restaurant every few weeks and the maitre’d knows we’re teachers. She asked us, “My kids go to Chinese language classes after school every day and all day tutoring for the specialized high schools on Saturday, do you know of a tutoring class after church on Sunday?” You might say: a classic Tiger Mom, yes; however, far more typical among Chinese parents.

An examination system has been at the core of Chinese culture for more than a millennium.

 In China, a system of competitive examinations for recruiting officials that linked state and society and dominated education from the Song dynasty (960–1279) onward, though its roots date to the imperial university established in the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). Candidates faced fierce competition in a series of exams dealing primarily with Confucian texts and conducted on the prefectural, provincial, and national levels. Despite a persistent tendency to emphasize rote learning over original thinking and form over substance, the exams managed to produce an elite grounded in a common body of teachings

 And,

 The civil service examination system, a method of recruiting civil officials based on merit rather than family or political connections, played an especially central role in Chinese social and intellectual life from 650 to 1905. Passing the rigorous exams, which were based on classical literature and philosophy, conferred a highly sought-after status, and a rich literati culture in imperial China ensued.

Today the exam system is still at the heart and core of Chinese culture, it is the pathway to a prosperous life.

The Chinese examination, the gaokao is widely considered to be the most important exam which can make or break a young person’s future. It is intended to help level the playing field between the country’s rich and poor … [it is] the academic qualifying test for almost all high school gradates hoping to receive an undergraduate education.

 … their scores in large part determine their future – whether they can go to university, which institutions they will be admitted and consequently what careers await them.

Candidates must perform well in the gaokao to gain admission to the better universities, where graduation guarantees a bright future with status, wealth and even power.

For most Chinese, especially those from less privileged backgrounds, a high score in the gaokao is their only means to significantly alter their fate.

 When electeds or elites or progressives or civil rights advocates tell Chinese families that an examination system, a thousand years old, will no longer be a path to a prosperous life, you can anticipate opposition, vigorous opposition.

In fact, our nation has a long history of antipathy towards Chinese. From the beginnings of Chinese immigration in the mid-nineteenth barriers were erected to immigration, for example the Chinese Exclusion Acts, it wasn’t until the 1940’s that these barriers were lifted; we needed China as an ally. The Chinese laborers who built the transcontinental railroad were virtual slaves, and thousands died and lie in nameless graves.

Chinese are now the largest immigrant group coming to New York City each year. Of the 3.1 million foreign born New Yorkers 10% are Chinese (only Dominicans are a larger group).There are nine “Chinatowns” scattered throughout the city and for the last few years Chinese new immigrants led the list of new arrivals.

The SHSAT fight has mobilized the Chinese community; they have become a political force.

The examination system is embedded in the Chinese psyche, the national culture, and a plan to deprive Chinese students of perceived pathways to prosperity is viewed as Sinophobia.

Chinese aren’t the only supporters of the examination.

Back in my union representative days I worked with a high school with mostly Caribbean students and many Caribbean teachers. The school rep called, a crisis, she was concerned about her state certification. I checked the website, no problems she had passed all the required exams.

Yes, she passed all the required exams, she was dissatisfied with her scores; they were too low, it was embarrassing  and she wanted to take the exams again: she was Jamaican.

The Caribbean population in New York City has been quite successful economically. Many professionals and have moved through the civil service system, teachers, transit authority, nurses, medical technicians, others are small business owners; and, they have been both active and successful in politics. From the City Council to the Albany legislature there are many with Caribbean roots.

And, there are excellent high achieving high schools with students with Caribbean backgrounds.

Medgar Evers High School and  Bedford Prep High School are high achieving screened schools with many students with Caribbean heritage.

At an Assembly hearing on Friday over the SHSAT Jumaane Williams, the newly elected Public Advocate, a specialized high school graduate (Brooklyn Tech), with Jamaican roots clashed with Assemblymember Charles Barron, an Afro-American with Black Panther roots  – it was hot and heavy.

While Williams and Barron agree on a wide range of progressive issues they disagree, rather vehemently on the SHSAT question. Barron argues the test is racist, Williams defends the test and advocates for more gifted schools.

David Kirkland, the Director of the Metro Center for Equity and the Transformation of Schools at NYU and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams are friends and on the same side of most social justice issues, not the SHSAT

David E. Kirkland‏ @davidekirkland May 13

I supported @JumaaneWilliams from jump. He’s smart and has a righteous commitment to justice. While I support the brother, I couldn’t disagree with him more on the issue of specialized high schools but hold out hope that he (and others) will reconsider their positions on #SHSAT

I doubt Jumaane will change his mind.

The SHSAT inequities have been allowed to fester for years and blame can be attributed to mayors and chancellors; the challenge is how to work within cultures and not require that deeply held cultural beliefs be abandoned.

Race and Ethnicity: Does the Race/Ethnicity of a Teacher Impact Student Learning?

Back in 2008, after the election of Barrack Obama I began to read the words, “post racial America” (“There is No Post Racial America“), maybe not so fast.

I believe the subtext of conversations are race, gender and class, and, maybe add sexual orientation. From Colin Kaepernick, “white privilege” the twitter war  between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornell West, to the biting humor of Dave Chapelle (“Is Dave Chappelle’s Comedy Style Racist?,”) discussions about race, uncomfortable to some, is essential.

In 2014 the UCLA Diversity Project released a report accusing New York of creating the most segregated schools in the nation.  Slowly, inexorably, New York City moved to create a school integration plan and finally released the plan in June, 2017.

In some districts students of different races live in the same general neighborhoods, in others schools are hyper-segregated, the term to describe neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly neighborhoods of color.

I blogged about the issue last week and mused whether the emphasis on integration/segregation is distracting from working to improve the majority of schools in hyper-segregated neighborhoods

The de Blasio/Farina team continues to look for the “secret sauce,” the highly touted Renewal Schools program is struggling, integration is a politically heavy lift and another initiative is increasing the diversity among the staff.

The Men Teacher initiative, a mayoral program is in its third year,

While male students of color make up 43% of NYC’s public school demographic, only 8.3% of the entire teacher workforce is made up of Black, Latino and Asian men.

By 2020, the majority of U.S. children will be youth of color.  Yet their classrooms—which are the bridges to opportunity, access, and success— will not reflect this diversity.  Research shows that students benefit from being taught by teachers with similar life experiences who help create a positive learning environment and leave a profound impact on students’ grades and self-worth.

 The Men Teach cohort will be closely tracked, do they remain in teaching? Are they more, less or equally effective as all other teachers? A rich source of future research.

Does research actually show that “students benefit from being taught by teachers with similar life experiences,” and what the hell does that that mean? Let’s be more direct: Does the Race/Ethnicity of a teacher impact student learning?

The State Education Department (SED) sponsored report from the Wallace Foundation on Principal Preparation and a recent research paper from David Kirkland at the NYU Metro Center both call for increasing numbers of teachers of color in the schools.

The Wallace Foundation report calls for a quota system,

…[State Education should] put in motion an expectation that local school districts begin to set goals to recruit, select, develop, and place individuals from historically under-represented populations within the ranks of school building leaders, so that the racial and ethnic mix of the principal corps in the district matches the mix of the student population within the district at large.

 Will the State Department of Education actually endorse a racial/ethnic quota system for principals?  A “Rooney_Rule ” for school districts?

The NYU Metro Center report, “Separate But Unequal” recommends,

 The researchers … recommend recruiting and retaining teachers of color and hiring from the beginning culturally competent educators.

Education Trust has released a sortable tracker of teachers of color by district ; teachers of color predominantly work in districts that are hyper-segregated.

Schools with large percentages of teachers of color identified in the tracker do not appear to be any more successful than all other schools with similar students.

Does research support that teachers of color positively impact the achievement of students of color?

Dan Goldhaber and others, well-regarded researchers have taken a deep dive into the research around impact of teachers of color.

The Center for Education Data and Research, “The Theoretical and Empirical Arguments for Diversifying the Teacher Workforce: A Review of the Evidence,” (Goldhaber and others, 2015) reports,

Concerns about the (lack of) diversity of the U.S. teacher workforce—and, in particular, the mismatch between the demographics of the teacher workforce and the nation’s students—are not new. Indeed, the recruitment of minorities into teaching has long been a policy goal, particularly in districts with large percentages of minority students….  As then Secretary of Education Richard Riley put it nearly two decades ago, “Our teachers should look like America … Despite this rhetoric, we have made relatively little progress toward ensuring that the diversity of the teaching workforce reflects the diversity of the student body in U.S. public schools.

 These theoretical arguments suggest several ways that increasing the diversity of the teacher workforce might improve outcomes for racial/ethnic minority students. However, as we describe in the next section, empirical researchers have put these theories to the test and generally found that, all else being equal (and, importantly, all else is often not equal), minority students do appear to benefit when they are taught by a teacher of the same race/ethnicity.

 … there are good theoretical reasons to believe that minority students would benefit from a more diverse teaching workforce, and these theoretical arguments are largely backed by empirical evidence suggesting that there are small but meaningful “role model effects” when minority students are taught by teachers of the same race. Thus, our perspective is that policy makers should consider policies to increase the diversity of the teacher workforce as one of many strategies to attempt to close racial and ethnic achievement gaps in public schools.

 The answer to original question: does race/ethnicity of teachers positive impact student achievement, the answer is yes, with the caveat, “all else being equal” and additionally “there are small but meaningful ‘role model effects’”

Goldhaber’s caveat: “all things being equal.”

I worked in a large high school, over 3,000 kids with only a few Afro-American teachers. The principal called one of the black teachers, a friend of mine, into his office, praised him to the sky, an extraordinary teacher, etc., and offered him the job of one of the deans of students.

The teacher thanked him and turned down the job, the principal pushed, “Why don’t you want the job, you understand these kids?” The teacher asked, “Which kids?” The principal: “Your people.” The teacher: “I’d rather be the faculty adviser to the Honor Society.”  The principal, clearly shocked.” You’re not qualified.” The teacher: “I’m not qualified because I’m black? I’m only qualified to be the slave master keeping the bucks in line?”  They never spoke again; the principal left a couple of years later.

A close friend of mine, one of a few black teachers became the music teacher in an elementary school. The principal asked, “Are you going to teach ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ and spirituals?”

My friend: “First, “America the Beautiful,” “The National Anthem,” and “This Land is Our Land,” and I’m going to teach our students to read music.” The principal: “Why would you teach them to read music?” The teacher: “Aren’t your kids in their Scarsdale school learning to read music? Why should our kids be any different?”

Are the principals referenced above racists or just insensitive?

What we learned?

• A black teacher in a school with a predominantly white staff can have a difficult time.
• Schools with large numbers of teachers of color do not have better results than schools in general according to the tracker referenced above.
• Studies show teachers of color “modestly” improve outcomes for children of color.
• Studies also show the most diverse schools also “modestly” outperform students in the least diverse schools.

School integration and staff diversity should be pursued; however. these efforts will only “modestly” impact student achievement.

While student integration and teacher diversity dominate the headline there is a relatively inexpensive fix that will have significant impact, David Steiner writes,

Shifting from a poor to an excellent curriculum can increase student learning by the annual equivalent of several months of additional learning, or, to put the same point differently, can move a student who is performing at the 50^th percentile to the 70^th. This level of impact is greater than replacing every first-year teacher in America with a veteran teacher.

 Hopefully the new chancellor will move the school system from responding to external criticism to developing a system-wide research-based approach.