I recently had to administer SATS to 10th graders who did not have the chops for the test. They were miserable and frustrated, and their self-esteem dropped to new levels. I hated being in that room forcing them to stay the required time when they started drawing blanks about 15 minutes into the session. There’s nothing like negative reinforcement to keep kids from learning.

Tillie (2/10): Yes, massive failure.
Klein & Co. may be out to define school “success” but not because they are interested in successfully educating our kids. They use cookie-cutter plans for pedagogy and programs; ill-conceived standards; maniputable data and analyses; and newly minted principals from the Leadership Academy who have no right, with such limited experience as educators, to run schools. Their school report card is a sham, and anyone who buys into those grades has fallen for their PR. Their strategy is slash and burn, and the way their distorted notions of “success” helps them destroy schools, not improve them, and replace them with charters.

Klein and everyone associated with the corporate model of public education goes from one whimsical project to another, trying project after project out on inner-city kids until it fails. Take fuzzy math now being rejected (HS kids are still counting on their fingers), Gates’s denunciation of small schools (he admits they didn’t work), the dumbing down of school libraries, or putting thousands of non-certified grad students into schools and calling them exciting new “teachers.” These are the hallmarks of BloomKlein, and yet not one of them produces a better functioning student.

2004
Total: 155,925
Black/African American: 14,831
Mexican/Mexican American: 655
Puerto Rican: 4,362
Other Hispanic: 7,763
White: 70,421
No Response: 42,638
Scores: 497 510

2005
Total: 163,452
Black/African American: 16,945
Mexican/Mexican American: 908
Puerto Rican: 5,070
Other Hispanic: 9,159
White: 80,768
No Response: 24,188
Scores: 497 511

2006
Total: 153,518
Black/African American: 16,392
Mexican/Mexican American: 923
Puerto Rican: 4,787
Other Hispanic: 9,670
White: 80,610
No Response: 22,431
Scores: 503 518 497

2007
Total: 157,591
Black/African American: 17,965
Mexican/Mexican American: 1,000
Puerto Rican: 5,064
Other Hispanic: 11,690
White: 82,585
No Response: 20,097
Scores: 491 505 482

2008
Total: 160,875
Black/African American: 20,342
Mexican/Mexican American: 1,412
Puerto Rican: 5,955
Other Hispanic: 13,062
White: 88,002
No Response: 10,794
Scores: 488 504 481

Note that the number of test takers who did NOT identify their ethnicity (i.e., “No Response”) has gone down significantly since 2004. The numbers are: 42,638 in 2004; 24,188 in 2005; 22,431 in 2006; 20,097 in 2007; and 10,794 in 2008. It is thus difficult to compare the ethnic breakdown from one year to another. We do not know how many of the non-respondents (to the ethnicity question) belonged to each ethnic group and why there was such a decrease in their numbers, especially between 2004/2005 and 2007-2008.

Note also that the surge in the overall number of test score takers from 2004 to 2005 was not accompanied by a decrease in test scores.

As for Mr. Berger’s claim that SAT participation increased by 25% over the past four years, that seems odd to me. In New York State, there were 155,925 SAT test takers in 2004 and 160,875 in 2008. That’s an increase of 3%. If participation in NYC went up by 25% in NYC, there must have been a significant decrease throughout the rest of the state. Was there?

Also, in New York State, 45% of the test takers in 2004 were white; in 2008, 54% were white. At least statewide, this hardly seems a dramatic increase in the percentage of nonwhite test-takers.

I was simply refuting the argument that the decline in SAT test scores in New York State could be attributed to the increase in test takers alone. I stand by my points.

In the interim. Diana Senechal, tried to assert that NYC SAT scores have genuinely declined by pointing out that there was also an increase in test takers nationally of 2.1%.

Well, it turns out that the increase in SAT participation in NYC is more than 25% over the last 4 years, only 2.1% of which is an increase in white students.

So, as I suggested, it would seem that Klein should first be commended for this remarkable increase, and for keeping scores almost steady during it. Only after acknowledging this achievement should he be challenged to get the scores of all the new test-takers up.

But I did work in a new small school, so I can attest personally to the fact that we had fewer ELL/Sp Ed students in the first two years, and then our numbers increased dramatically. However, we did not get particularly “strong” students–our kids were all students who would have gone to the original school. They were mostly free lunch students, mostly scoring level 1 or level 2 in their 8th grade. In fact, the way we were required to take students in prevented us from “creaming”–we couldn’t rank students based on their test scores or their attendance. (Poor MS attendance is a pretty good indicator of who is struggling by the 8th grade.)

I wonder if the problem you highlight is mostly in Manhattan? I don’t know, since I only have experience with my school, which was in Brooklyn.

Instead the new small schools will cream off the best students, and the highest need students, many of them ELL and special ed, will be sent elsewhere, left to fend for themselves in some other overcrowded low-performing school.

NYC Ed–I don’t think anyone in this dialogue is asserting that the only option is to go back to the former way. I’m just pointing out for all the folks who hate the current system that the previous one was not working either. There are some fundamental questions that we as a city need to solve, including what we mean by a successful school, what we mean when we say accountability, and what we mean when we say stakeholders should have voice. I like some things that Klein & Co have done–at least in theory–around looking at what school success means and giving credit not just for schools that start with strong kids and keep them strong but for schools that start with weaker kids and build their strength. That said, other parts of their plan don’t work. Massive failure , though? Really?

“Such creative programs must be tested to ensure that they work as they are meant to.”

There needs to be full, public disclosure of practices at charter schools, within reason, if district public schools are ever going to learn from the successes and if the public is going to be able to judge whether they are a wise use of tax dollars.

I say within reason because the NY State Comptroller is currently on a rampage trying to destroy charter schools by putting them through duplicative, pedantic program and fiscal audits that are inconsistent with charter law and unnecessarily drain resources.

I want to add this comment to the conversation, going back to Rudy Crew’s reforms and the other countless reforms over the years:

“Likewise, “whole-school interventions,” in which teams of education engineers descend on a school and change its curriculum, introduce new textbooks and train teachers — often at great expense — typically produce little in the way of educational gain.”

It’s from Richard Nisbett’s recent op-ed in the NY Times, and is one of a litany of voices citing research that endless reform of the system-as-it-is is going nowhere. Far more important are issues of culture and psychology, the very things that charter schools tend to emphasize in the name of proving the worth of their school’s existence every five years.

Frederick Hess probably would disagree with me on a number of issues, but his book, Spinning Wheels, is a stinging indictment of this idea that working within the box is going to bring real, lasting change to large urban school systems. Bloomberg and Klein have acted as if they have learned from this book, having the guts to stick out their necks, anger a lot of people along the way but shake up those who are very comfortable collecting their paychecks while children in the schools they run or administer flounder. I’ll never agree with everything they do, but I think they have earned the right to continue their shakeup.

It’s important to note that Diane Ravitch supported mayoral control when it was first proposed. Only after witnessing its massive failure did she determine it needed to be changed. I don’t recall her advocating a return to things exactly as they were, and it’s ridiculous to assert that’s the only alternative.

And this issue of credit recovery is problematic, as well. While I”m sure some schools have some ill-advised credit recovery options, some schools have great ones. And for many of the subjects, the student has to pass the class AND pass the Regents exam, so there is a mechanism in place for checking to see if they have some grasp of the material. (Personally, I think some of those Regents exams are ridiculous and irrelevant, but students have to pass them nonetheless, and they’re controlled at the state level.

Ultimately, I wouldn’t be opposed to taking away *some* of the mayor’s control, but I think everyone should be cautious about pushing the DOE back into the pre-Bloomberg model, when those checks and balances made it impossible for any change to occur at all. Who was accountable then? What progress did we see then?

As ably pointed out above, were there mayoral control, Rudy Crew may have been able to enact some of the changes he wished. It’s neither here nor there that Mikey would have dismissed him posthaste before allowing him to squander funds on such nonsense. And it’s also important to note that, as pointed out above, it makes no difference whatsoever whether or not the rabble gets good test scores. The important thing is to involve as many of them as possible in the process, so as to keep the little urchins occupied and off the streets.

I for one have had it up to here with hearing the chancellor needs to protect the interests of the students. What rot. The chancellor must protect our interests , not the whims of the bootless and unhorsed. I daresay he’s doing a damn good job of it. Thanks to you good people for providing voices of reason against unruly rabble who insist on raising needless objections.