Comments on: A total review of special education to begin soon at the DOE

By: Garth Harries to leave city for New Haven schools at end of year - Online Education in America

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:21:03 +0000

[...] preparing for some time to take on added responsibilities in school leadership. In January, he launched the special education study, breaking up the portfolio office into smaller offices to do [...]

By: Special ed advocates wary after news of Harries’s departure - Online Education in America

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:40:31 +0000

[...] departure Posted in Uncategorized at June 8th, 2009 / // Just months after adjusting to the news that a schools official with no special education experience would be reviewing the city’s [...]

By: Ellen McHugh

Ellen McHugh — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:20:11 +0000

The issue isn’t Mr. Harries. The issue is education for children with special needs. I am very I confused though about why, and once again, there should be another review of special education. We have the recent Council on Great City Schools report, The Hehir Report, a Report from State Comptroller Di Napoli, a report from the Public Advocate, a report from the Manhattan Institute, surveys of parents by the Citywide Council on Special Education and by the DOE. All of these surveys and reports have been published in the last three years, and there are many more from past years.
What are we doing here? If none of these reports, done by insiders and independents, have unveiled better and, by inference if not by fact, more efficient ways to educate students, who wasted the time or money there? Do we need to keep someone busy? I agree with Kim Sweet, this isn’t about education so much as it is about cost cutting. And in the end we all pay more when students are poorly educated.

By: Mel

Mel — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:50:47 +0000

Yes, my experience working in a small school was that they waited to refer kids to special ed, and especially worked to keep kids out of segregated settings. Knowing the kids better may have been on reason, I think. Yes, LRE and all that, but the additional pressure of not having space or an existing teacher provides small schools even more incentive to comply with LRE. While I think other larger schools find it easier to put kids in a separate class than dealing with more complicated integrated instruction. Wonder if there is data on that…? In any case, it seems to me that simply looking at #s of those identified as special ed is quite misleading – the relationship is bidirectional.

By: KitchenSinks

KitchenSinks — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:50:17 +0000

Has there been any thought to the notion that small schools refer fewer kids to special education because they know kids better, and provide interventions before running to the CSE for help? That’s been my experience, working in one very large school and two small schools. There’s a lot of data out there stating that kids in certain neighborhoods are over-labeled, but I’d like to see a longitudinal study that tracks a large enough, random group of kids from the beginning of their school experience and compares the interventions they get, the referral rate, and gives a little more insight into the “official special ed enrollment” at large and small schools.

By: david cantor

david cantor — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:30:57 +0000

Your tendentious lede is disappointing. Garth has worked in education for many more years than he was at McKinsey. While he had no "experience" creating small schools, he helped build hundreds of them, and students enrolled in them perform at far higher levels on average than their peers at other schools. People like David Bloomfield and Leonie Haimson attribute this at least in part to small school screening of ELLs and students with disabilities. The data, however--publicly available and reported in the media--show that small schools accept a higher proportion of ELLs and students with disabilities (both SETTS students and those who need CTT or segregated settings) than other schoools. I am happy to provide these data. Last, Garth reports directly to Marcia and not to the Chancellor. David Cantor Press Secretary

By: David Bloomfield

David Bloomfield — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:08:02 +0000

The Chancellor has appointed his in-house management consultant — the very guy who bars special needs kids from his pet small schools and knows NOTHING about instruction of special needs or any other student, not to mention his complete disregard for consultative proceeses and parent engagement – to “study” the issue and recommend “efficiencies”. This is a guy who brought criminal charges against a principal for opposing his efforts to add a small school to her building. Bet the Special Ed. Report is already written and likely to recommend willy-nilly placement of sttudents with IEPs into phony CTT classes in the name of LRE but really to just save money, services be damned. His quote about small schools says it all: the goal is promotion of positive data, no matter the tricks pulled to achieve it (barring students likely to be low performing, local diplomas over Regents, credit recovery instead of subject mastery). This is yet another shame on the DOE which puts P.R. first, children last.

By: Leonie Haimson

Leonie Haimson — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:49:12 +0000

It is not true that the small schools educate more special ed students than the system as a whole. They educate fewer special education students, especially those who need services in segregated settings, and far fewer ELL students as well.

Another area that Garth has been in charge of is reporting class size data — which after three years, is still full of errors, with nearly all CTT classes still reported as two separate classes in HS.

He is also in charge of implementing NYC’s class size reduction plan. Last year, the DOE missed all their class size targets, and in more than half of schools, class sizes and/or student/teacher ratio rose, as the State Education Dept. pointed out. And this year, class sizes increased at all grade levels for the first time in ten years.