Nothing in what I stated promoted, “good enough” and there is a large gap between a B+ and ‘good enough not to get u-rated’… and you ignored everything else I said, of course. Clearly you have a vew coming from a certain subject position that varies greatly from mine. I make no assumptions for your part, I can only express my perspective based on more than ten years of experience working with and adovcating for communities and children in areas like Red Hook. What I offer is based in facts and authentic connections and experiences with the people who these policies deeply affect. Your comments from my perspective, focus on narrow and overly simplistic views of something vastly complicated rooted in years of discrimination and band-aid reforms. I fight everyday for excellence in education for all children and strongly believe that the rode to getting there does not involve outsourcing our most cherished right in a democratic society- free, fair and public education- to corporations, millionares, lawyers, and private, well organized interests. Education is a public good and must remain in the hands of the public.

Ah Dissenter: of course you find my comments condescending… your oversimplification of my comment makes you look condescending, not me. The perspective I gave was not only my own, but one shared by the parents I serve whose students have been targeted by charters as well as other parents across the city who I have spoken to. Propaganda is a real thing and this movement and other movements like it, like what is going on right now with the fight against health care for all, are organized by a group of people who have one interest and are cynical and use and manipulate other groups of people to vote or make decisions against their own interest. This happens with poor populations, minority populations, nonminority populations and religious populations- all populations (except of course that 1% who owns 90% of the wealth) and to suggest that is condescending to talk about how corporations, the wealthy, or even our own government try to control people is disingenuous on your part. The predatory nature of those in power pervades our society every day to deny it is to deny the years of discrimination and oppression we have had in this country, it is to deny events like Tuskegee; would I be condescending to say that those men were tricked into doing something that went against their own interests or as you would suggest, they didn’t know any better? Wake up to the reality of, in this case, racism in this country and how it is used to manipulate all races.
In addition, inherent in your comment is the assumption that HSA is better than PS 123… PS123 is a B+ school, by Bloomberg’s own accountability system, you have no grounds in claiming it is simply ‘parents choosing a better school’- how do you know one is better than the other? The same can be said for a school community in Red Hook. P.S. 15, an AAA school is now pitted against, in the same building, a charter who is certainly not better in fact, they are a disaster, but they do have pretty smart boards, paint, and pictures on the wall.
I am not trying to decide what is best for parents, I spend my life serving the parents in my community, you do not know me or what I do, there is no place for the kind of judgments you are spewing in what should be a policy debate. What I am trying to do is provide information as to what is happening out there: the propagation of a privatization agenda that uses propaganda and manipulation that is born out of the work of privileged folks who seek to have our education system mirror the faulty systems we have in our society. This agenda creates a two tiered system which will subordinate those without advocates, those with IEPs, this system targets minority populations and is not honest and transparent about what their ultimate goal is.
Finally, your lazy comments only highlight your disdain for teachers and public education and are not rooted in any fact. Are there teachers, doctors, lawyers, police officers, secretaries, firemen, you name it who are lazy, of course there are. Teachers are part of the same human race as everyone else and there are some duds, but the constant and again cynical, focus on these duds as if they are what represent the teaching profession is just disgusting and has no place in any debate. Competition in our schools will not create the kind of reform we need because it creates an inherently unjust and inequitable system, it drains resources rather than supplies them, and excuse me- since when did capitalism become a social policy?
A society is a collective, not a group of individuals. Education is a public good, which is supposed to seek to work to better the collective, not privilege one individual over another based on a lottery or whether or not you have an advocate who will fight to get you into the best school. All of our children, our citizens, deserve the best schools, and if we are serious about education reform, there are plenty of great community public schools out there that can lead the way!

I think Norm’s point was that we’re not trying public-schools-with-smaller-class-sizes as sort of a “control experiment.”

Indeed charter schools often tout their small class sizes, as do private schools.

Then there’s the ironically named “School of One” pilot program, ostensibly to provided 1:1 math instruction via smart computer software…. but piloted in a 10:1 student:adult environment. Despite that ratio, the administration is all set to brag about the benefits of the program — not the student-teacher ratio — and has already stated it will be expanded to three as-yet-unnamed schools.

Why is smaller class size in conflict with charter schools? If smaller class size is part (or all) of the solution, won’t charter schools (and all schools with flexibility on how they manage their budget along with incentives to perform well) head in that direction?

At some point I’ll address the the inherent racism in Dissenters constant attacks on PS 123 and its teachers and supervisors, many of whom are black, while highly praising HSA which is mostly staffed by white teachers. All in spite of an admission of not knowing anything about schools in Harlem. But not here. But constantly shifting the terms of the debate from Arthur’s main point of inequality – from paint to having aids in early childhood classes to creaming by charters- is what people looking to obfuscate the issues do, often for a living.

Ken let me take a crack at your questions for Julie by asking you some questions.

Based on what evidence did you and other marketeers come to a conclusion that the solution to the problems with our urban schools was to set up a competing system instead of trying things such as drastically reducing class size even in a small number of schools as an experiment?

I find it interesting that with people calling teachers lazy people just awaiting a pension, so many great teachers I know – many of them commenting here – are outraged not at these supposed lazy people they supposedly have to work with but at the anti public ed people. One would think the competetive model would appeal to good teachers who would want merit pay and to get rid of the lazies. I see few signs of that. Many of these teachers are the real ed reformers who have called for years in both the pre and post mayoral control years for a rational system of education that properly allocated funds to schools as they struggled with all the issues of urban ed.

As Leonie Haimson pointed out today, gold star studies show that class size reduction is the single most effective means of improvement of schools, teacher quality and leads to all sorts of other benefits. Yet you feel that an unproven system of market based competetive schools will do the trick instead of having those funds invested in the public schools.

We heard all about how much it would cost but when Bear Sterns needed its version of low class sizes hundreds of billions appeared. So I say,YES, let’s throw cash at the problem before setting up dual competetive school systems. After all, that’s what the rich do with their kids.

Here are some of Leonie’s comments which I published on ed notes:

See this nasty column in Flypaper – put out by the right-wing Fordham Institute, attacking my Huffington Post column on Frank McCourt posted here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson/what-frank-mccourt-could_b_241331.html

Check it out at http://www.edexcellence.net/flypaper/index.php/2009/08/no-offense-frank-mccourt/ and please leave a comment.

The author actually argues that smaller classes are “unsubstantiated remedies….- Rather than adhering to rigorous research standards, we resort to sweeping generalizations and sentimental stories about children’s lives.”

Hogwash! Actually, the research is stronger for class size reduction than for nearly any other education reform – and certainly stronger than the favored remedies of the Fordham Institute crowd.

See my comments below:

I’m glad that my column is being so widely read and cited, even by hidebound contrarians.

Actually, the scientific and empirical research is so strong for class size reduction that it is cited as only four evidence-based education reforms that have been proven to work by the Institute of Education Science — the research arm of the US Dept. of Education. You can check it out yourself by googling the title: “IDENTIFYING AND IMPLEMENTING EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES SUPPORTED BY RIGOROUS EVIDENCE”

There are literally scores of studies indicating that smaller class sizes lead to better results — not just STAR, which was one of the few large scale, randomized experiments in the history of education reform — the gold standard according to most researchers.

Over and over again, smaller classes have been shown to lead to fewer disciplinary referrals, more learning, more student engagement, and less teacher attrition. Class size reduction has also been proven to be cost-effective. A recent study showed that in terms of health care, the economic cost-benefits would be expected to surpass childhood immunization.

Alan Krueger, formerly of Princeton and now the chief economist of the US Dept. of Treasury, has demonstrated that the number of positive studies on class size reduction far outnumber the negative ones. The links you provide above do not show otherwise.

Why ideologues and zealots put so much energy into disputing the simple fact that teachers can reach their students better and students learn more in smaller classes is beyond me. Why anyone would seriously argue that only student load matters and not class size — as though the only learning and personal connection between teachers and students happens outside of the classroom — I cannot possibly understand.

And Frank McCourt was a huge champion of smaller classes, as evidenced by his frequent comments on the subject as well as his agreement to be honorary chair of the campaign to lower class size in NYC public schools.

Perhaps its because unlike their own favorite strategies, such as privatization, vouchers, the expansion of charter schools and/or teacher incentive pay, none of which has any backing in the research, class size reduction has been proven to work, over and over again. Thus it is the dragon that they are unable to slay.

If anyone would like some fact sheets on this issue, including recent papers with findings about the importance of smaller classes in the middle and upper grades, you can email me at leonie@att.net.

I just took a look at the three links above — supposedly research studies that weakens the case for smaller classes. One of the studies contains the following statement:

“Studies that used high-quality experimental data have consistently demonstrated the positive effects of small classes on average student achievement-for all students….The findings also indicated that although all types of students benefited from being in small classes, reductions in class size did not reduce the achievement gap between low and high achievers.”

{This conclusion, by the way, is not shared by other researchers — who have shown that class size reduction narrows the achievement gap between racial groups by more than 30%.)

The second is an EdWeek summary of the first article.

The third, an unpublished “discussion” paper by Boozer and Cacciola, also does not dispute the effects of smaller classes, but appears to divide class size into direct and indirect effects, with some of the significant gains exhibited by students in smaller classes attributed to peer effects.

Thus students who are in classes with other students who are doing better because of smaller classes also benefit because their peers are doing better. At least that is what the article seems to conclude: “Small class type treatment induced not just potentially a boost in that child’s test score outcome, but an indirect or spillover effect on the child’s classmates through the peer group effect. This is what we mean by the feedback or social multiplier effect of the Small class type treatment.”

There are many positive feedbacks that occur in smaller classes. The smaller the class, the more engaged are its students, and fewer disciplinary problems occur. The fewer disruptions, the easier it is for teachers to teach and low-performing students to focus and model their behavior on more engaged students. Also there is less stereotyping in both directions — from teacher to students and students to teacher.

Teachers can figure out quicker who is or is not responding to a specific technique, style or approach, and alter their methods more quickly and effectively to reach specific students; and students feel as though their teachers understand and care about them more, and are willing to put back into the classroom their focus and energy.

None of this is surprising, and none of it is difficult to understand.

In any case, according to my reading of these articles, not one of them weakens the case that smaller classes leads to better outcomes.

I am not going to stop using the term paid troll simply because if someone does in fact represent the interests of HSA and does not reveal it, that IMHO is fraud. Too many comments skirt over the things I have put forth and if it were never written. Trolls come in all shapes, sizes and political party affiliations. I have not written anything anti-charter as much as I have written what public schools need. And I agree that there is a level of segregation happening at this school when it becomes the haves and have nots, and the have nots are being blamed for the condition of the school building.

I would have to do a search on the articles written about Eva and the initial protest at this school where Eva response to the parents, and I don’t remember the exact words, that she would get her way. So before you go criticizing my rhetoric, you may need to have a conversation with her. Then there are the articles about staff turnover.

I think I have made a very valid argument in terms of allowing public schools the same parameters for student and parent responsibility as the charters.

As for privatization. In the long run, it will not work. Monies will run out and the same problems that exist in the public school will follow. Didn’t Edison run into problems??
I wish that donor money would be allowed in the public school and that each school, the principal, teachers and parents, decided what was needed. However, when City Hall houses a charter by throwing out another school for that charter, it is telling that mayoral control is not working for the best interest of our public school students.

If any donor out there would like to help a struggling school, I am sure you can start by buying books and supplies or underwriting a grant to bring the Arts into the schools. That to me would prove you care about the interests city students instead of caring about a privatized philosophy.

And yes, why is everyone so harmed by the idea that schools have to compete against one another for students. Clearly many public schools need some kind of competition to get the lazy staffs off the asses and stop counting the days until their pensions kick in.

GS does not have a comments policy as yet. I’m hoping it stays that way, but that depends on all of us.

Cheers.

Interesting stuff. Why does privatizing the management of schools necessarily hurt, rather than help, the NYC system? How does it necessarily lead to “privilege and subordination? What did you think of the system prior to charter schools? Was it equitable? Who was at fault then? Lots of big questions, but I would be curious to hear your views if you have time.

1. The DOE is getting around The Freedom of Information Act by using monies for mailers and robocalls for charter schools from private money (like Bloomie’s Trust for Public Schools) (so public schools can’t legally cry foul, because it is not public money they are using). In addition, they get around the law by hiring a private company to collect the data and parent information and then this company makes the contact. Very sneaky, very true. That is what this administration is all about and this is why they have corporate lawyers working for them rather than educators.

2. It was very disturbing to me to see comments that made assumptions about bad leadership, bad decisions about allocating money, and negative slaps at the quality of P.S. 123. One poster even said, if the parents choose another school, that is all you need to know. Let me be very clear here: this movement is targeting minority populations and they are spending millions of dollars on marketing and propaganda campaigns to convince people to go against their own interests. These campaigns prey on the fact that in many of these communities, the immediate is privileged over the long term. In other words, when you live in an area where you usually are not lavished with nice things, and then someone comes along and says here are all these nice things for you… you take it, no question. This is predatory and the people behind it from Bloomberg to the NeoCon Center for Education Reform know exactly what they are doing. This is an agenda aimed at privatizing education… look up ‘faith based urban schools’ for example. Do some digging on the Center for Education Reform website, if you can stomach it.

We cannot allow this debate to be reduced to arguing about paint and how data is shared or not shared (which I strongly believe it is and have spoken to parents first hand whose students have been targeted)… what this debate really needs to be about is the bigger beast behind this movement; the real goal, which has been in the works since the Regan Administration, was fortified in 1989 at an Educational Summit to plan a vision for the 21st century (organized by Bush 1 and led by Bill Clinton, where not a single teacher was invited), was then reworked through Bush 2′s Goals 2000 and set in motion with NCLB and now unbelievably Obama is continuing to propagate it at the behest of Arne Duncan (who by the way we are seeing the repeat pattern of modeling NCLB after Texas, which all turned out to be a fraud, Duncan’s policies are beginning to unravel in Chicago), the real goal is to privatize education, to create a system that mirrors the roles of privilege and subordination we have in our society, to protect the disturbing and disproportionate distribution of wealth in this country as we head toward globalization and cannot maintain the level of American middle class we have as other countries around the world grow theirs. We cannot allow this to happen. There needs to be awareness and a real policy debate. We need to talk about what the role of education is in the country and decide if we are going to protect it. For my part, I believe free, public, and equitable education is the pillar of our democracy. I believe as a country we are only as good, and we are reflected by, those who are most marginalized. We must fight for real education reform; we must fight to protect and preserve public education.