April 6, 2007
Klein’s Unfair Fudging
Filed under: NYC DOE by Jackie Bennett @ 6:45 am
Wherever I go these days, parents and teachers are confused about what Klein is planning for our schools. Partly that’s because the changes are progressing on many fronts at once (funding, accountability, organizational structure, etc.), kind of like a multiple assault. But the other part of the problem is Klein. Klein misleads us. And it surely does not help the public dialogue when our appointed public servants misrepresent the facts.
The misrepresentations take several forms. Some are designed to make his current programs seem far more successful than they are.[1] Others are designed to degrade teachers.[2] But for me, Klein’s most serious misrepresentation is the one he is using to push through radical funding changes. In order to get the public to buy into a money shuffle that has no track record of success with student scores, Klein misrepresents the way schools are currently funded and exaggerates the funding inequities. To do that, he relies on sleight of hand.
Before I explain what I mean by that, I want to be clear about something: I am not suggesting that funding inequities do not exist between our schools, or that we should ignore them. Any funding gaps must certainly be addressed. But, in order to address those gaps, we first need an accurate assessment of their magnitude. Rather than giving us that accurate assessment, Klein heavily skews the numbers. That’s not right.
To see how Klein skews the current funding, let’s look at the presentation he made on March 19 to PEP (the mayor’s appointed panel). Klein began by saying there is a gross and fundamental inequity in how we fund our schools. To convince the audience of that, he displayed a chart that compared the current funding of two similar schools, A and B.
He said, “School A’s average teacher salaries are 51K. School B’s average teacher salaries are 58K.”
Then he told the audience that once you multiply the salary difference by the number of teachers, School A comes up about a million dollars short. [3]
“We,” he said, “are trying to fix that.”
Sounds logical, right? If you compare the total amount of teacher salaries between two schools, and one school pays out more, then clearly one school gets more money and the other school’s been rooked. Sounds logical. Sounds like an economic travesty. Problem is, it’s just not true.
In fact, as anyone close to the schools knows, teacher salary is not really a factor in school budgets. Any claim that it is distorts (and inflates) the true funding differences, and distorts them greatly because by far the greatest part of school budget is staff salaries, and teachers make up the major portion of the staff.
But why do I say that teacher salary is not a factor in the differences in budget? It’s simple. I say it because principals in the current system are empowered to hire whichever teacher-applicants they want, regardless of cost. If a principal chooses to hire a transferring, experienced teacher with a masters or a doctorate, instead of a first-year teacher with no classroom experience, then that principal will get the extra money to cover that teacher’s salary. The money, in other words, follows the teacher.
What is more, the school that lost the teacher in the example above, did not really lose any funds. That principal will be free to hire another teacher for the one he lost.
So then, to return to Klein’s original example, if school A has less money showing in its budget for teacher salaries, it does not follow that school A is short a million dollars. Rather, the budget is simply a reflection of the experience and educational level of the teachers who are at that school. Teachers in school A probably have less experience than teachers in school B, and a lower level of education, too.
Of course, in high needs schools especially, the lack of experienced teachers is a real problem. But that problem is not caused by – and cannot be rectified by — the changes in how we pay for teachers in the schools. And that’s one of the things I find so odious in Klein’s sleight of hand. There are inequities in our schools that demand the chancellor’s attention, not least of which is that some of our neediest children are taught by our least experienced teachers. It was Klein’s responsibility to focus on the root causes of this inequity (which have a lot to do with working conditions and little or nothing to do with funding). Had Klein focused on these root causes, however, he would have also had to confront the fact that his own administration is contributing to them. Among other things, Klein dismantled a program that had begun to alleviate the teacher-experience gap between schools. As UFT Vice President Michelle Bodden pointed out in recent testimony, “The former chancellor’s district, which provided smaller classes, a more collaborative way of operating, and a 15% salary incentive, was very successful at attracting certified teachers with more than 5 years experience.” That’s the program Klein destroyed.
In any case, when it comes to current funding, Klein misleads us. And he doesn’t just mislead us in oral presentations, but in the printed glossy he hands out to sell the changes. It would have been nice if two months ago, when the brochures were first distributed, they had been clear about the formula they used to arrive at statements such as “…there may be $1 million separating two schools.” Then we could have had a public discussion on the merits of the plan. Unfortunately, the brochure is classic Klein: opacity under the guise of transparency – charts that look impressive in their complexity, but cannot tell us anything at all.[4]
Still, what’s so bad about a little opacity, and a little misrepresentation, so long as it’s in the service of a good and worthy cause? Don’t we want principals to be empowered by the freedom of the new budgeting system? And more important, don’t we care if there is a fundamental unfairness wherein some schools get money they don’t need, while kids who start out disadvantaged (poor kids, ELL kids, kids at higher risk for failure) get less than they deserve?
Sure we care about these things. But here’s the problem:
1. Without more accurate information, it is not at all clear where the funding inequities are. A March 5 Times article, for example, suggests that the answer may be more complex than we think. Says the Times, “Analysis of the current budgeting system by the city Education Department has shown that most of the budget disparities are between schools serving similar racial and ethnic populations of students with high concentrations of poverty and low academic achievement.” If that’s true, we’ll be robbing one high-needs kid to fund another. What kind of progress is that?
2. I’ve never met a school that had money to spare. Just this week I got a call from panicked principal in a low-needs school in a middle-class neighborhood, the very kind of school that Klein implies can operate on smaller budgets. The principal was in a panic. Her school had been asked to house a suspended child from another school for several days. Where was she to get the money (maybe $250) to pay for personnel to monitor the boy? If low-needs schools have a hard time coming up with $250 (and anyone in the schools can tall you this is typical), can they really spare much more?
3. Principals will not be empowered – in fact precisely the opposite. In the current system (but not the future one) our school leaders are empowered to hire whomever they want based upon the qualifications of the individuals who apply. That’s empowerment. In the new system, money is what matters. Principals will lose virtually all power to choose “best fits” for their schools, even as the pressure rises for better and better scores. That’s called, between a rock and a hard place – disempowerment at its core. And that’s the irony: Klein tells the public he wants to empower principals, but in fact he’s cut them off right at the knees.
So then, let’s have an honest talk about funding, so we can fix the inequities. What happens once we factor out salaries? What happens to the disparities in funding? Do the disparities shrink? I suspect they do, but I don’t know.
And the reason I don’t know is that like everyone else really trying to understand the plan, I’m forced to ferret out the truth, dig up scraps of information on the internet, and rely on newspaper research and my own meager wits to get the information I need to determine if this is a good plan or a bad.
Is this right? I don’t think so. I think that if the public is being asked (told) to buy into radical changes for our schools, then it deserves an open and honest presentation of the true state of the schools, whether we are talking about the scores, the success of the small schools, the graduate rates, or – as I’ve discussed here – how we fund our kids.
And that honest information should come from our appointed public servants, not from some schlemiel like me.
[1] See for example: Diane Ravitch’s article on the test scores:
[2] In his Children First Brochure, Klein says, “Tenure is almost automatic. About 99% of teachers receive it after three years as a matter of course.” What Klein fails to mention is that only about 66% of teachers survive the first three years and reach the tenure point. This number is important because it shows the real problem isn’t that weak teachers get tenure, but that too many teachers leave.
[3] It is possible that I do not have the exact words or numbers here, but they are certainly close. I believe Klein claimed there was a 1.5 million dollar gap between the schools, but I’d prefer to err on the side of caution.
[4] For example, the student funding brochure contains a chart that is a blur of dots. The brochure says that the chart illustrates a 1.16 million dollar gap in funding between two schools, but that gap includes teacher salaries (“tax levy” funds). What’s more, the brochure says, “Because [teachers in high-poverty school] earn less, these schools can have lower budgets. That means they have less money to spend on meeting the needs of kids who need help most…” Actually, it doesn’t mean that at all. If the teachers in a particular school have higher salaries, then the school gets money to fund that, and the amount the school has to spend on other things remains the same.
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Being correct is not enough. We need to simplify this information, to make it more widely accessible (but without distorting it).
Jonathan
Comment by jd2718 — April 6, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
Remembrance on Things Past
By Phyllis C. Murray
“In his Children First Brochure, Klein says, “Tenure is almost automatic. About 99% of teachers receive it after three years as a matter of course.” What Klein fails to mention is that only about 66% of teachers survive the first three years and reach the tenure point. This number is important because it shows the real problem isn’t that weak teachers get tenure, but that too many teachers leave. “Kleins Unfair Fudging” By Jackie Bennett Edwize.org
On May 7, 2004, this point was made quite clear in a City Council Survey of 2,781 teachers. In ‘Fleeing in Droves’ by Stephanie Gaskell and Carl Campanile the following statistics were reported in the NY Post:
*Over 70 percent of teachers with at least 25 years of experience were expected to retire within two years.
*29 percent of new teachers with less than five years of experience said it was likely they’d quit within three years.
* 26 percent of mid-career teachers were likely to leave within two years.
*Veteran teachers were most dissatisfied with salary and school discipline/safety problems.
*Rookie teachers were unhappy with lack of support, instructional materials, supplies, and large class sizes.
* The median city teacher salary was $47,3345 compared to $66,262 in Nassau County and $90,000 in Scarsdale.
* The Study recommended raising salaries, improving discipline and lowering class size.
Although the brain drain continues as NYC loses some of the brightest teachers and students, a solid core of over 100,000 UFT professionals have remained to fight the good fight. They have remained to become the best advocates for teachers and students. Since 2004, we have seen UFT initiatives to raise salaries, improve discipline , and lower class size. The UFT won support from a cadre of organizations that valued UFT initiatives. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity is just one of many clarion calls which was heard as the UFT waged a lobbying campaign with parent groups to win class size reductions for all grades. Lowering class size will become a reality. But, we must remain vigilant.
School discipline and safety concerns still exist as well as concerns about the escalation of violence in general throughout the five boroughs of New York City and throughout our nation. And lest we forget: the issue of adequate compensation for teachers remains… nationwide. “America, the richest nation on earth has never allocated enough of its abundant resources to build sufficient schools, to compensate adequately its teachers, and to surround them with the prestige their work justifies. We pauperize education.” Dr. King 1964
Our fourteen year fight for Fiscal Equity for New York City Public Schools shows us that we can fight the good fight, we can finish the course, and we can keep the faith that justice will roll down like a mighty stream.
Therefore when the UFT press reported that New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer and the State Legislature approved a state education budget on April 1,2007 that guarantees “meaningful class size reform” , Randi Weingarten, UFT President stated the following:
“This is a tremendous victory for public education in New York City. It is a great breakthrough for CFE and class size to be a part of the governor’s new foundation funding formula. We applaud everyone involved for getting it done.”
Today, as we continue the fight to ensure that raising salaries, improving discipline and lowering class size in New York City become a reality, we must seek to enlist the support of the Board of Education of the City of New York because history tells us…a house divided cannot stand.
Phyllis C. Murray
UFT Chapter Leader
District 8 Region 2
Comment by phyllis c. murray — April 6, 2007 @ 3:31 pm