October 26, 2006

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Charter School Authorizing

Filed under: Charter School by Leo Casey @ 5:56 pm

An interesting discussion of Michigan charter schools is taking place between David Hecker, AFT Vice President and President of AFT Michigan, guest blogging on the AFT’s Blog, and Sara Meade, Ed Sector policy analalyst, blogging on The Quick and Ed Blog. The impetus for the exchange was Sara’s report, which you can read here. As Sara points out, it is a serious and civil dialogue, and that is important.

The UFT’s Charter Schools entered the discussion in the context of discussing authorizing agencies, so it is worth adding our perspective on that question. It is true, as Sara suggests, that the UFT made a decision to seek our charter from the SUNY Trustees, as we were impressed with the quality of their authorizing, including their willingness to close schools which were performing poorly. We would agree that quality authorizing is absolutely key to quality charter schools, and that states should provide chartering entities with sufficient resources to do the work of chartering well. And Sara is right when she says that teacher unions should give credit to authorizers when they do their jobs well — especially when they bite the bullet, and close down failing schools.

Charter school advocates have some responsibilities on this subject as well. Poor charter authorizing almost always comes from poorly conceived charter laws and poorly thought out charter policy, and charter advocates need to join teacher unions in speaking out on that front. In linking funding for the chartering agency to the number of schools it charters, the Michigan law creates an economic incentive to seek quantity, as opposed to quality, in chartering, and creates a disincentive for doing the right thing and closing a failing school, since that would result in a decline in income to the chartering entity. Who should be surprised, then, when David Hecker reports that one Michigan university has turned chartering into a cash cow? It is not as if we did not already know that many universities had turned Schools of Education into cash cows — with predictibly negative results for education.

New York State has its own version of this issue. When Governor Pataki proposed legislation to raise the cap on charters this spring, he included in his omnibus package two other significant measures — a proposal that would allow virtually any non-profit corporation in the state to become a chartering entity, without the slightest quality control, and a proposal that would give the Chancellor of the New York City public schools chartering authority of his own, including unlimited power to convert existing district schools to charter schools without the parental approval vote required for all other conversions. Edwize criticized both parts of the proposed legislation here. It is particularly worth pointing out that the states which have the worst records in policing charter school quality are states that have charter school legislation similar to that proposed by Pataki. We have yet to find a single charter advocate in New York who has a good word to say about either measure in private, but there has also been no public criticism from that quarter.

If quality authorizing is key to quality charter schools, then it is irresponsible to NOT criticize bad authorizing policy and bad authorizing legislation. And that holds true just as much for charter school advocates as it does for teacher unions.

October 25, 2006

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Do teachers of art need unions?

Filed under: Labor by Leo Casey @ 3:09 pm

Today’s New York Times reports on the final disposition of the case of Texas art teacher Sidney McGee, a 28 year veteran of the classroom who was fired for taking her fifth grade students on a school approved trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. A student saw a statue depicting a nude human body [not exactly an unexpected occurence in an museum of art], his parent complained, and suddenly an entire school was being deprived of an accomplished, loved teacher of art. [Edwize first reported on this case here.]

The news is not good — McGee will not be returning to Wilma Fisher Elementary School.

Sara Meade is on target, as she usually is, that this case is an object lesson in the need for teacher unions. If Texas were not a right to work state that legally prohibited collective bargaining, if Sidney McGee had the due process protections a contract can provide, she would still would have her job, and her students would still have an accomplished teacher of art.

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Getting to graduation–two views

Filed under: Middle Schools by Maisie @ 3:02 pm

The DOE’s commissioned study on high school dropouts, which was discussed here on our blog a couple of days ago, is evidently not going to see the public light of day. Instead, we have a paper copy of the prepared summary that DOE used to report to the Board of Regents this week; no URL.

The study was conducted by the Parthenon Group in Boston, many of whose founding and senior partners used to work for Bain and Co., a super-high-end management consulting firm that specializes in mergers and acquisitions and corporate strategy. Parthenon’s roster of talent looks more suited to restructuring the U.S. banking industry than preventing high school dropouts.

What Parthenon Group found for $2.6 million (paid for by the Gates Foundation) were mostly multiple ways to analyze the same data. Unsurprising to anyone who teaches high school is their finding that the best predictor of high school dropouts in New York are students who are over-aged and under-credited for their grades. In identifying effective options for the OA-UCs, as they call them, transfer schools–small full-time high schools focused on their needs–and young adult borough centers (YABCs) that offer evening programs both work well to increase graduation rates. Of these, transfer schools have the best track record.

Essentially, the Parthenon study endorses the DOE’s “Multiple Pathways” strategy of developing transfer schools, YABCs and a few new GED models. These are strategies the chancellor effectively canceled when he first took office and then reconstituted, with his branding, when the need for them became obvious. The instructional strategies Parthenon identifies–adolescent literacy programs and literacy across the curriculum, targeted interventions, and improvements in special eduction and English Language Learner programs–sound pretty generic. The “levers of change” they identify are “empowement, leadership and accountability.” Um, OK.

Compare the Parthenon study, or as much as we can know about it, to a graduation study [PPT] by the Philadelphia Education Fund and Johns Hopkins University. They began with middle schools. While they acknowledge the well-known risk factors of entering high school behind in math and literacy, and being retained in 9th grade, they examine what happens before students get to high school. In addition, they look at indicators like attendance, behavior and effort, realizing that the attitudes and values students bring to school have as much impact on graduation rates as does credit accumulation (or lack of it).

The PEF and Hopkins researchers followed a large group of middle school students for eight years and found four factors that can powerfully predict students in danger of falling off the graduation track in 6th grade (less than 80% attendance, a poor final behavior mark, failing math or failing English).

Early intervention is the obvious implication, but the researchers also have much to say about changes that middle schools should put in place. Chief among these are acknowledging the impact of adolescence and acknowledging the impact of poverty, offering strong instruction, school-wide programs and professional development. Keeping track of absences and intervening early, assuring safety in and out of school, involving families and creating effective, targeted interventions are among the recommendations. Teacher teams, help with grief counseling, anger management and social service coordination are others.

Of course, for at-risk high school students there is no going back to 6th grade and starting over. The system must help these students by offering every opportunity and every encouragement to take and pass the necessary courses. But as the Parthenon study found, there are 140,000 young adults in New York City who have already dropped out or are in danger of doing so. The problem doesn’t start in high school. And Parthenon’s descriptive statistics don’t really get under the skin of the problem. (For example, Parthenon says that raising 8th grade exam scores increases graduation rates. Well yes, but first kids have to be able to do that.) The PEF-Hopkins study does more. It challenges the structure and content of middle school and our approach to adolescence. It acknowledges the complexity of the problem. It offers data-driven conclusions but they are richer and deeper.

With due respect, Chancellor Klein and the DOE might have found the same richness and depth right here in NYC public schools. Middle school improvement and dropout prevention are tough issues but the experience needed to address them is not as readily available in the offices of Boston business consultants as it is right here. They’d just have to ask, and then listen.

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Access to Pre-School Education

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 10:28 am

Our friends at the Drum Major Institute are hosting a panel discussion on access to pre-school education next Monday, October 30.

The featured speaker is Oklahoma State Senator Penny Williams. Author of the 1998 law to fund pre-school for all Oklahoma four-year-olds, Senator Williams established a program of high-quality early childhood education that ranks first in the nation in student access and enrollment rates. Serving 95 percent of the state’s school districts, the Oklahoma program has demonstrated a significant positive impact on children’s math and vocabulary skills. A long-time champion of education at all levels, Senator Williams retired in 2004 after 24 years of service in the state legislature. The discussion following Senator Williams’ presentation will focus on how the Oklahoma experience might apply to New York.

Other panelists include:

Hon. Christine Quinn, Speaker of the New York City Council.

Nancy Kolben, Co-director, Winning Beginning NY Campaign, Executive Director of Child Care, Inc., the leading child care policy and advocacy organization in New York City.

Lorraine Cortes-Vasquez, Vice President of Government and Public Affairs, Cablevision Systems Corporation. Member of the New York State Board of Regents.

Details: Monday, October 30, 8:00-10:00 am at the Harvard Club, West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)

RSVP to: dmi@drummajorinstitute.org

October 23, 2006

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Money To The Schools? Perhaps Not.

Filed under: Education Funding by Leo Casey @ 8:57 pm

One of the premises of the DOE’s experiment in Empowerment Schools is the idea that money should flow to the schools. Flatten bureaucracy, the theory goes, and give the savings to schools to spend on education.

A school based educator would have a hard time finding something in this theory with which s/he would disagree. But there seems to be some problems in the way in which the theory is being applied by the DOE.

Part of the Empowerment Schools initiative is the accountability program which the DOE is rolling out this school year, with its periodic assessments every six weeks. Let us put to the side, for the moment, the educational value of doing standardized testing every six weeks. Informed sources tell Edwize that schools that elect to do the off the shelf Princeton Review program will have that option subsidized to the tune of $35,000 a year — all turned over to Princeton Review. Meanwhile, schools that engage in the hard work to produce a meaningful DYO [do your own] alternative will be supported at a little more than 1/5 of that level, at $7,500.

From where we sit, that seems like money to for profit, private corporations, not money for schools.

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The forgotten 140,000

Filed under: NYC DOE by Maisie @ 4:53 pm

The DOE surely did the right thing by commissioning a study of the city’s high school dropouts, as the NY Times reported Sunday. The DOE was scheduled to report the results to the State Board of Regents today, showing that nearly 140,000 people aged 16-21 in NYC have either dropped out of high school or are unlikely to graduate.

But the study, at least what we know of it, reveals almost nothing that we didn’t already know. Hopefully, the $2.6 million that the Gates Foundation paid on NYC’s behalf to a Boston group that did the study bought more than the highlights summarized in the Times. And hopefully, the Regents and/or the DOE will release it. If it’s privately paid for, do we get to see it?

We learn that students who fall behind in their credits have a hard time getting back on track. We learn that the Regents exams are not the main stumbling block to graduation (credit accumulation is). And we learn that serving the group of kids who are still enrolled after four years of high school is critical to improving the city’s graduation rate.

Well, falling behind in credit accumulation is kind of the definition of not being ready to graduate. Commissioner Mills did the analysis two years ago to show that kids take and pass their Regents in much greater numbers than they get their credits. And the still-enrolled have been the focus of many excellent dropout prevention programs over the years.

What else do they say? Many students come into high school with unsufficient math and reading skills. No kidding. Though here’s an interesting fact: 30% of students who eventually fall behind actually begin their freshman years with proficient or nearly proficient reading skills. So we can’t lay it all on the middle schools. Black and Hispanic students are more likely to drop out than whites or Asians. I hope they didn’t pay $2.6m for that information.

And finally, Michelle Cahill says the findings point to a need for more transfer schools. Aren’t those some of the very programs this Chancellor wiped out a couple of years ago, then rediscovered when the state outed our abysmal graduation rates?

But let’s take a page out of the more charitable book of Elisa Hyman, director of Advocates for Children, who called the study an important first step. It is, and for those who work with these students all the time, it’s essential to reframe this issue. For a long time kids who didn’t graduate on time were either ruining our statistics or they were someone else’s problem. Actually, they’re our kids and deserve our best efforts.

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Anchors Aweigh in LA/Let’s Play “What If” in NYC.

Filed under: Education by Peter Goodman @ 2:34 pm

The Los Angeles School District, 2nd largest in the country has just picked a Superintendent, a recently retired US Navy Admiral, an Afro American who currently resides in Washington, DC. The school district will come under a form of mayoral control on January 1, 2007, however, the LA School Board excluded the mayor from the process and made their selection before its powers are sharply diminished.

The trend around the country is to select businessmen, lawyers and military folk. In NYC we haven’t seen a Chancellor from within the system for almost twenty years.Lately knowledgeable educators have been cast aside as potential superintendents. Retired military leaders have been chosen in a number of cities. The real “plot” is a plan to “federalize” teachers, chose a military type as school system leader, make teachers wear uniforms, “salute” their principals and send “disloyal teachers,” aka union leaders to the equivalent of Guantanemo. Am I too paranoid?

Other cities have chosen corporate types, after all if you could run a major corporation you can run a school district. Right? The Walmart managers might be available. Instead of the corporate path to profits–sending jobs off shore, our schools face the reverse problem, “off shore” workers are flocking to our shores.

Talk radio, blogs and folks in bars love discussing “what if?” If Steinbrenner fired Torre who would be the next Yankee manager? and on and on.

If Klein left who would be the next Chancellor?

NYC has never had a female Chancellor. Two Afro American Chancellors, three Hispanic and a number of Jewish Chancellors, but no women.

Kathy Cashin is the Regional honcho in Region 5 (School District 19,23,27) which has lead the city in both ELA and Math score growth in each of the last three years. Michelle Cahill was a leader at the Carnegie Foundation before joining Klein, she’s a Deputy Chancellor and a top policy advisor at Tweed. Barbara Byrd Bennett was a Community Superintendent in NYC, the founder of the Chancellor’s District and just retired as Superintendent in Cleveland.

On the business side you can point to Richard Parsons, the CEO at Time Warner and an Afro American.Ken Lay is no longer available and neither is Bernie Ebbers, unless it’s part of a work release program.

On the military side we have our Morris High School, CCNY graduate: Colin Powell.

And, of course, there’s this guy from Arkansas who seems to have a lot of time on his hands.

On the serious side, in what other field would a leader be chosen who has no experience in that field? Of course, the predecessors to Joel Klein and Harold Levy were all career educators, but did they do wonderful jobs?

Steinbrenner didn’t fire Torre and Bloomberg is not firing Klein … idyl speculation on a crisp fall day.

October 20, 2006

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Motivating Kids When You Yourself Are Barely Motivated

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by BXMSTeacher @ 11:01 am

So, it’s well into my second month of my second year of teaching. And, I’m so overwhelmed.

I am now teaching in a middle school in the South Bronx. I teach 8th grade ELA/Literacy. It seems like I’m struggling everyday to keep the children motivated and focused. I have two classes, and I teach 20 periods of ELA/Literacy a week. The workload doesn’t bother me. I believe that is the norm across the city. I guess I shouldn’t be upset by the fact that I have thirty-five kids in each class. That also seems to be the norm across the city in middle schools.

But, when you factor in the kids lack of motivation, enthusiasm, confidence, and outside factors, your job becomes less about actually teaching content and more about trying to teach skills about self-esteem, courage, and strength…even when you yourself are struggling to maintain those very things in the classroom.

For instance, I have a student and I will call her “Anne Marie”. I think Anne Marie is a bright girl. But, she’s extremely emotionally disturbed. Apparently, she has been dealing with a multitude of issues since 5th grade. I was told about this a week or so into the school year, and that I had to treat her with “kid” gloves. I thought that she warmed up to me early on. Yet, she started acting out in class. She would go off on me, other students, and just run out of the room and roam the hallways. I tried to discipline her, but to no avail. I learned from my boss that Anne Marie does NOT know how to read and write and has never learned. I tried to put myself in her shoes: How and why would you want to be in school if you can’t read or write?? I thought her outbursts were directed at me, and I find out that she’s embarassed and upset by the fact that she can’t read and she’s about to go to high school??

I have several kids who are several grades BELOW grade level in one of my classes. How am I going to teach them the skills they need to not only do well in 8th grade, but prepare them for high school? I don’t know, and I have been struggling with finding ways of doing this to no avail.

In both classes, I have kids who have verbalized to me that they just don’t care about school. I try to explain to them that are many positive benefits to being in school. But, I commonly hear them say that they believe they have no chance of success because they have no positive role models at home. They feel they are neglected by parents and some of them are and others are in very serious and problematic situations.

I have a student who is withdrawn and never speaks in class. I finally asked him what was going on. He told me that he’s dealing with the possibility of being evicted from his apartment. His parents haven’t been paying rent for months because neither of them work steady jobs and aren’t bringing in a lot of money. I didn’t know what to say; I asked him if he had a relative he could live with while his parents straightened out their crisis. He said he already lives with his grandmother and has been for the past year…The past year????? What can you say to that? What can you possibly tell a childabout how to cope and deal who is faced with this kind of family crisis?

I’m an ELA/Literacy teacher who travels. I don’t have a class of my own. In most cases, ELA teachers have their own room. It is a quick way to foster a sense of community with your kids. But, I’m already at a loss because I can’t really establish community with either classes of students when I don’t have a room of my own. I’m constantly shuffling between the social studies, math, and science rooms of the teachers who teach my kids. How does that establish community?

I actually had a student tell me once: “Mister, the principal must not like you.” I asked him why. He said: “You don’t have a room of your own. You don’t even have a locker to put your things in. Clearly, they don’t care about you. So, it’s hard for us to take you very seriously since you don’t have a place of your own in the building.”

I was stunned. He had actually verbalized what I have been thinking for so long–I don’t feel appreciated one bit. I think the administration at my school really didn’t have any idea what to do when I was hired, so I was placed in the hopes of eventually having the schedule even out. It hasn’t yet. I was promised on several occasions that I would have a room of my own, and it never happened. There is a room open on my floor that I actually have a key for, but I can’t use it because it’s going to be used for a detention center. A detention center??? Why can’t that be my room? I can’t even “push into” another teacher’s room, because all teacher schedules are drawn in a way that the rooms are ALWAYS in use. It’s so hard for me to keep my kids on task when they know I don’t have a room. I almost had to have a class in the library becausethere was a class in a room during the period I was scheduled to teach. So, my boss found a temporary room for me to use.

It has been rough. I struggle to motivate myself to come to work. I was out at the start of the year with a severe illness. I was on sick leave for a few weeks. I came back, and found out that apparently many people believed that I wasn’t committed to teaching and that I was faking it. However, I can say that I wasn’t faking it. The constant throwing up and shakes were real. It hurts my feelings that I had to come back to that. I don’t care what people think, but when you have administrators and your colleagues saying those things about you AND you have proof…it’s demoralizing. And, this comes with medical documentation to prove that I under medical care. So, I have been struggling to deal with this as well.

I have also come to the realization that I don’t think the school is a right fit for me at all. Or, that I am NOT a good fit for the school. I think it might have the potential to become a “good” middle school. I just don’t believe that or see that I will be a part of its restructuring and potential turn around. I’m frightened because I love my kids, and I have no idea how to keep them motivated. I worry that given all of the issues they face as middle schoolers in this particular neighborhood, that they may not reach their fullest potential.

I just dont know what to do right now…..

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Why is the DOE “Creating” Failing Schools and Ignoring the Neediest?

Filed under: NYC DOE by Peter Goodman @ 10:23 am

Joel Klein’s op-ed piece in the New York Sun (http://www.nysun.com/article/41765) brags about a 19% increase in 4th grades Math scores while the Gotham Gazette writes: “The longer New York City students stay in school the worse they do in math …”

You can decide for yourself: glance at the data on the NYS Ed Department website.

Current scores compare last year’s grades with this year’s grades - they compare different kids! The Chancellor is to be congratulated on the change to the new accountability system that will track a kid’s progress and measure the growth of the individual student.

We will no longer be comparing apples to oranges.

In the three years of the Children First initiative, it is difficult to determine “success,” or, “failure.” One region has done quite well (Region 5 - School District 19, 23 , 27) over the three years while another, (Region 10 - Districts 3, 5 , 6) trails the pack. Why? The Chancellor fails to call a press conference with Superintendent Cashin and President Weingarten and point to the Teacher Centers as a key to success … probably just an oversight.

Eric Nadelstern and Michelle Cahill both reference the 40,000 “overage, undercredited” kids in our schools. Eric sees the emergence of small highs and Michelle sees the growth of the multiple pathways programs as answers.

It’s a different story at the school level. High school principals, with some exceptions, do everything they can to avoid having to accept those 40,000 kids into their schools.

The many hundreds of pages of the High School Directory tome “markets” the 1400 schools and programs. Schools produce slick pamphlets and videos and attempt to “brand” their schools. In January high schools receive the list of students that “selected” their school and the student’s “replica,” the middle school transcript - they “rank” students and the computer spins.

Schools all contest for those Level 3/4 kids - no one wants the Level 1 kids with poor attendance - those 40,000 kids who have slipped between the cracks.

Unfortunately the easiest way to deal with the issue is to pack the kids into the large high schools, and into the small high schools that didn’t attract enough applicants.

In the large high schools these kids become the cutters, the “hall walkers,” and eventually “vote with their feet,” they become long term absentees. School data plummets, graduation rates spiral downward and the schools become candidates for closing.

Who advocates for the neediest kids?

Should kids leave incarceration and be assigned to an overcrowded high school? Why do we allow middle schools to “graduate” kids without basic skills?

40,000 kids are part of a lottery. If they’re lucky, really lucky a counselor will connect them up with South Brooklyn Community High School or Manhattan Comprehensive Day and Night School or the Alpha School in East New York, wonderful places that save young peoples lives.

Math and ELA scores are faceless … and “success” is ephemeral and a topic for debate.

Those of us in schools know all too well that we live in a system that drives too many large high schools to redesign and closings and condemns too many kids to the scrap heap.

 

Updated by Admin: The Oct. 22, 2006 edition of the NY Times published an article on this topic.  Study Takes a Sharp Look at the City’s Failing Students

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Crisis in Candyland

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by cmitchell @ 9:58 am

It turns out, it’s not all cocoa kisses and candy canes in Candyland. The last two weeks have been toothaches and root canals without Novocaine. The sugar coating has dissolved and I’m left with a bitter pill. In my last blog entry, I raved about my school and principal, may I now rant?

I believe my principal wants to fire me.

He has indirectly threatened to fire me now three times.

I dread going to school every day with an ax hanging over my head.

Last week, I attended a regional workshop. I prepared a lesson plan complete with worksheets for my students for the substitute. I gave the sub instructions and the materials. I also got all the supplies for my elective and ensured there was a qualified instructor to replace me in my elective class. I felt confident that everything would run smoothly while I was gone. The next day, I received news from the sub that my students had met with the principal during the first fifteen minutes of class. Apparently they complained that all I did was go over the homework and that I didn’t answer their questions. Neither complaint is true but if that is the perception, I can and have reduced the homework questions to two or three questions and conferred more deliberately. My principal did not give me an opportunity to improve. He decided on Friday that I was “unprofessional” and listed all his grievances against me since the beginning of the school year in a letter to me. This letter is going into my DOE file. Many of the items are mistakes of a new teacher that does not know the proper protocol. For example, I had forgotten to inform my CTT teachers I was going to be absent. I had informed my principal at the beginning of the work week and I thought that was sufficient, apparently not.

To make things worse, this week, these same CTT teachers complained about my role in their classrooms. They are disappointed in my performance and would like me to have a more active role. I was hired as the “the fourth math teacher” and my role was never clearly defined. So I’m in a catch-22, I have not met their expectations and yet the expectations were not described. I did not want to overstep my bounds in their classroom so I simply took their cues as to what to do, mainly conferring. It’s difficult enough to know if one is doing the right thing as a new teacher. Without a job description, it’s even more difficult. I have been told that if I don’t change accordingly, I will be fired. The administration is using coercive, intimidating, fear-mongering tactics to make demands and take advantage of my position. I was elated and ebullient about being a teacher. Now I’m discouraged, depressed and damaged by my career choice. The honeymoon in Candyland is definitely over.

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