The Kids Nobody Wants

February 11, 2010

It’s scary when schools close. No reasonable person wants to see that happen. But look at the closing schools and you’ll notice they all have certain things in common. The one that really stands out is the large population of students with special needs. Now don’t take this the wrong way — I make my living teaching kids like that, and I adore them for the most part.

But whose fault is it, really, if it takes my kids longer to graduate? I mean, most kids pass my beginning English classes. I always hope to pass 100 percent of my students, and I sometimes come very close. But when I see a kid who came from Korea 18 days ago carrying around a two-inch thick biology text, I’m not optimistic. How on earth is that kid gonna differentiate between enzymes and hormones? I just spent 10 minutes showing him the difference between “kitchen” and “chicken,” and I count myself lucky he got that far.

Unfortunately, school report cards are serious business nowadays. And don’t fool yourself into thinking they mirror report cards your kids get. If my kid, for example, came home with a D, it might be a long time before she’d see her iPod again. Of course it’s well known that neither Mayor Bloomberg nor Chancellor Klein sent their kids to public schools. That’s probably for the best, because if they had, and their kids brought home Ds, it’s entirely conceivable they’d have been tossed onto the streets and replaced with 3 or 4 smaller kids, just as they replace D-rated schools with 3 or 4 smaller ones.

Yet new small schools are unlikely to take the kids who pull down the all-important graduation rates. Queens Collegiate is a shiny new school on the third floor of closure-slated Jamaica High School. Jamaica’s UFT chapter leader, James Eterno, told me that when Queens Collegiate got a special education/ESL student it wasn’t equipped to handle, they sent the kid right back downstairs to Jamaica.

Some schools, like mine (Francis Lewis High School) take kids we know won’t graduate — they’re on track for “alternate assessment” instead of academic diplomas. And every one of these kids — about 2 percent of our total population — is counted against us when they fail to achieve a traditional graduation. You might say they are dropouts on the day they enroll.

Have we failed these kids? We’ve sent them to programs where they train for jobs they can do when they get out of high school. Isn’t that a good thing? According to the metrics that closed 19 schools this year, it’s of no value whatsoever. I’d argue that preparing kids to support themselves is of far more value than preparing them to pass a Regents exam. But Joel Klein’s Tweed gives little or no weight to the arguments of teachers.

Francis Lewis got an A last year, by the skin of our teeth. Actually, our ESL kids did well and earned us extra credit, bless their souls. But I know, whether or not our kids helped us out, we are a great school, overcoming enormous odds, all of which are dumped on us by the wholly indifferent Department of Education. They would close us tomorrow with just as much ease as they take credit for our accomplishments today.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew told me, “They send high-needs kids to other schools with no strategy to help them.” And that’s absolutely true. Everyone, whether or not they admit it, now sees the shell game that the school closings have become. Close Far Rockaway and move the kids to Beach Channel. Close Beach Channel and send them over the bridge to somewhere else. Close all the large high schools, doomed to failure by the deliberate shuffle of difficult kids, and turn them over to the next schools on the firing line. When they run out, close the new schools and start newer ones.

Meanwhile, why would city principals want these kids? They’re a drag on their statistics. And in today’s DOE, statistics are all that counts.

But it takes a few years to learn English, and it’s entirely unreasonable to expect kids to pass biology before they do that. My kids will learn English. They’re as smart as anyone else. But they need a little time. That’s a simple fact, and we shouldn’t be penalized for preparing kids for a better future. It beats the hell out of Joel Klein’s apparent policy of shuffling them off somewhere else and hoping for the best.

So, again, why would any principal want ESL, special ed, or alternate assessment kids? DOE policy appears tailor-made to penalize those of us who take on the second toughest educational challenge there is-helping the kids who cannot reasonably be expected to get Regents diplomas in four years.

The toughest educational challenge, of course, would be getting Joel Klein to do what’s best for children. Since that will never happen, we can only focus on overcoming Tweed’s stranglehold on mainstream media. It’s contract time, and the tabloids are busily dispensing nonsense designed to tar all teachers for the alleged sins of a few. Were they targeting an ethnicity rather than a profession, people would see them for the bigots they are.

Meanwhile, who’s speaking up for those of us who embrace our most challenging kids? Schools taking on these kids ought to be rewarded. Under Joel Klein’s stewardship, they are dumped onto the scrap heap. The same could be said for these kids, left without neighborhood schools, and without Metrocards to get them wherever Tweed sees fit to send them.

These kids deserve better. Their neighborhoods deserve better. And it appears New York City is waking up to that fact. Joel Klein knows it, and that’s why he didn’t wait till 6 a.m. to close schools yesterday. Will that fool New Yorkers into believing he’s got their interests at heart?

Not this time. That ship sailed on January 26^th, when he chose to ignore Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and every single speaker who came to the PEP meeting.And much as the mayor and chancellor might wish otherwise, neither they nor the local tabloids will be able to ignore the joint school-closing related lawsuit of the UFT and the NAACP. This suit, of course, comes directly on the heels of the one protesting the city’s consistent failure to deal with class size, despite having accepted hundreds of millions for that very purpose.

These lawsuits will help show the public once and for all who really cares about the education of these kids-and make no mistake-those people are UFT teachers in neighborhood schools.

Pogue

The DOE of Bloomberg and Klein is about everything except children’s success. It is about their own selfish success and it is fraudulent. They were given the power to help ALL the schoolchildren of New York City and they have failed miserably. They are uncreative, uncaring, and unbelievably committed to a destructive educational course. Hopefully, our other politicians, media, and general public of NYC wake up to this travesty, put a stop to it, and turn this rotten ship around.

Great piece, Mr. Goldstein.
http://sinksalive.blogspot.com KitchenSink

This is a damning and convincing piece.

I’m not out to defend DOE closure decisions. As a charter school guy, I’m focused on the authorizers closing charter schools.

But the same issues come into play: when you are in the land of incentives, you are on some level telling principals, “Don’t take on challenging students.”

In my mind, and I’m not a high school guy so I see kids long before they have been tracked for one life path or another, we need a grand public conversation about tracking. We need to hear about the role of voc ed, and we need to measure the progress in voc ed differently than we do everybody else. I have no comment as to its appropriateness, but the District 75 schools are treated as their own separate universe. It seems to me that you (Arthur) have a major point in that the voc ed students, if they must be consigned to being voc ed students, should not be counted in the “general” statistics describing a school.

Same goes for ESL. These matters can be quantified, with some combination of a LAB-R score, an age and a proxy for prior education in home country. An ESL kid in kindergarten, who already knows how to read in Spanish or Arabic or Chinese or whatever, is very different than the fresh arrival 14 year old you described, or even an 8 year old who has never been to school in his or her home country.

To me, the next logical question is, Why are kids in voc ed tracks? Is it biological or neurological, or the influence of home and school? What can be done in prior schooling (pre-K to 8) to address these kids’ needs before they end up on this track? I refuse to accept as normal a universe where whole ethnicities, neighborhoods and classes of kids are tracked one way while others are not. And I refuse to hear that “home life” is a valid reason until we either have (a) a lot more data about this home life problem and (b) a coherent list of strategies that schools, districts and school systems have tried to counter these problems. Let’s not throw our hands up in the face of challenges we have inherited because of our unwise forefathers.

Michael F., I know what you’re going to say – don’t blame the teachers, bla bla bla. I’m not blaming teachers. I agree with you, Arthur, that there are huge nuances and challenges out there in the student population, and treating Student A and Student B as equivalent educational challenges serves no one. I’m not pointing fingers, I’m asking about root causes and ways to organize our thinking differently.

And that includes charter schools demonstrating that they are taking on at-risk kids. Notice I said demonstrating; I think there is a wide variety of approaches among charters and some or most are quite inclusive…we have a fluctuating special education rate at our school partly because we have now decertified more kids than we have put through the CSE – three more students are LOSING their IEPs later this month because they no longer need services. And yes, that means even less funding for our school.

All in all, I know we don’t agree on every issue but I think in this piece you are mostly on the mark!
http://sinksalive.blogspot.com KitchenSink

Hmmm..that’s pre-K to eighth grade…there’s nothing really sunny about this information.
http://themortonschool.blogspot.com Miss Eyre

Unfortunately, Mr. Goldstein is correct. There are no schools being opened (to my knowledge) that will be specifically tasked with helping our neediest students. So, with many new small schools not accepting any or many ELLs and special ed students, where will they go?

Teaching in a middle school, I see some of our special ed students getting ready to go to high schools. Some of them, despite their challenges, are eager to learn and willing to work. But with small schools not accepting these students and many schools treating their IEP requirements so cavalierly, will they get the support they need? Or, even if they find a school that will work with them compassionately and effectively, will they be able to stay there because those same students tend to be a drag on the stats?

It’s unacceptable that dropout rates among ELLs and special ed students remain pitiful. But it’s equally unacceptable that schools who take on large numbers of these students don’t get extra support, extra money, extra time, and–yes–extra understanding.
Michael M.

Great, great, piece.

It’s not a question of who wants these kids — it’s a question of who’s RESPONSIBLE for these kids.
Arthur Goldstein

We are responsible, of course. But there’s an active disincentive to take them. And new schools, frankly, ought to be embracing and providing enrichment for precisely this kids. Instead, they shun them, causing established schools to fall like dominos. And it’s quite clear that’s precisely what the plan is.

Being responsible means giving these kids the best education we provide. If, for them, that does not entail a Regents diploma, it’s preposterous to therefore judge their schools as failing.
Arthur Goldstein

And thanks to all for the kind words!
Michael M.

Arthur,
I meant responsible in terms of the system.
Caring educators like yourself eloquently decrying the emperor’s new clothes are too far and too few between.
Still waiting for Joel Klein’s “accountability moment.”
Random Question

Powerful piece. A friend of mine is now looking for a middle school for her child. One of the schools, ICE, actually has some parents of current students screen potential incoming students. This seemed wrong on many levels and came to mind when reading your piece. I’d be curious what they were looking for and what kind of questions they asked. (And I wondered who screens the parents who are screening the students…)
Linda Silverman

Not only are the schools being punished, but teachers are being punished as well. I always manage to fill my classes with the kids no one else wants to teach. Sometimes I am successful and sometimes I’m not. My AP only looks at passing statistics and mine are often on the low end. I’ve been nicknamed the “60% woman” because of this. Thank goodness we don’t have merit pay as I know I would never qualify.
Arthur Goldstein

That’s an inevitable consequence. I often teach ESL kids how to pass the English Regents. I do so because they can’t graduate unless they do so. I run the class like a combination workshop/ boot camp. It’s write till you drop. It’s fairly effective, but not the sort of class I like to teach. The fact is ESL kids learn English very differently than native speakers, and very much need to learn different things than native speakers.

When I teach them how to pass the Regents, I largely ignore the things they really need in favor of getting them to do what they need to do to minimally pass. And really, now that the chancellor is judging teachers on test scores, he’s giving people like me a lot of incentive to decline to help these kids do what they need to graduate.

It’s counter-productive and backward thinking, the sort that’s characterized most every initiative that’s come from Tweed over the last eight years.
http://ww Khaair Morrison

Hello Mr Goldstein,
My name is Khaair Morrison and i am a Junior at Francis Lewis High School. Many teachers i have discussed education with, or the UFT with keep telling me i must speak with you. I guess because the idea that im a student with so much knowledge of the system and so many thought ideas surprises them. I would like to get that chance, when you have time. I would like to make a comment though on what you said about Regents exams, and how preparing people for life and work have much more value. I totally agree with your point, and in discussion with NY politicians i think i may have a solution. I dont know if idealist like the Chancellor and Mayor would agree because one is a lawyer and has no idea how to run schools, and the other one is a wall street tycoon who turned our schools into company’s. I see Francis Lewis our school has not yet turned into one by i fear it might. My solution is to get rid of the Regents exams as we see it today. Not just because i dont want to take them though. Regents are for statistic not for anything else productive and i scares me that i can get a 90 in a math class but get a 64 on the regents and fail the class. So i propose we do what they do in middle school for statistics a standardized test that you take in your sophomore year and senior year exiting. These exams just will be to test your logic and wont be seen by any colleges etc. These exams will test logic like the SAT’S and wont be divided into sections. In the end we can see what school do better than others but when a school does bad we dont just close them down. We see where improvement needs to be made and act on it. what are your thoughts ?
Shino Tanikawa

Arthur – thank you for doing what you do and having the courage to speak up against this administration. I, too, was an ESL student as a new arrival in this country as a sophomore in a private high school and I know how hard it is to learn biology or US history in a language that is not your native tongue. It is one thing for Klein not to understand this hardship (after all, he has never been an ESL student or teacher, I’m sure), but his arrogance in pretending to know what is best for our children is simply criminal.

I can only hope that the system does not break your spirit and you will continue your important work. We are so fortunate that we have teachers like yourself. If it weren’t for dedicated teachers and us screaming parents, I think we would really be doomed.
Schoolgal

The rule changes, mostly under NCLB, has made it difficult for the ELL population. These children were given 2 or more years to catch up before being tested. Now if a new admit comes from a foreign country that speaks English, they are expected to take the same tests our kids take even if they are not prepared. The worst is when a newly arrived 5th grader from an English-speaking country is expected to take the Social Studies Assessment which is based on US history which includes very detailed essay responses. I never learned their history, but the government expects that they know ours???? So many of the new rules are unfair to these students. I always paired my ELL students with someone who spoke their language. I also had them work on computer programs that would help them learn the language as well as provide them with a dictionary in their home language. I would give them 10 spelling words a week that they would put in their notebook along with the translation.

About 10 years ago, before the rule changes, our ELL (then called ESL) teacher started a Welcome Class. This was a class for all new admits. She would spend 90 minutes with them (this was before ELA and Math 90-minute blocking) doing a curriculum she developed. Within 5 months, these children were able to speak and write in English. It was a marvelous program until the district put in a mandated reading program.
The results were never the same.
I really think the government should not make or enforce rules that go against common sense.
Arthur Goldstein

Khaair,

Thanks so much for your comment. Your piece was great, right on target, and I was thrilled to see a Lewis student featured here. I’d be happy to speak with you.

I’m afraid I haven’t got strong opinions either for or against the Regents. It upsets me, for example, that my students have to take the English Regents because they really need to learn things the exam doesn’t cover. It’s inappropriate for them to take this exam, and they’d be better off spending their time studying English–but not the exactly the same English native speakers like you or I might benefit from. On the other hand, I think native speakers like my daughter really ought to be able to pass that test. I’ve no doubt it poses very little challenge for you, having seen your writing.

They’ve been giving Regents exams in New York State ever since I went to high school, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Actually, I think it’s unlikely someone might get a 90 in math and a 64 on the Regents. I do recall, however, spending an entire year in biology utterly tuned out, buying a Baron’s review book, reading it for a week in June and passing the Regents exam. Though I don’t recall one thing about biology, that Regents exam saved my butt. I don’t like to brag, but I am now a high school graduate and I owe it all to that Regents exam.

And the red Baron’s book, of course.

Shino,

Thank you for the kind and encouraging words.

Schoolgal,

Language acquisition has been widely studied, but not by the people who designed NCLB or the NY State Regents exams, at least not as far as I can tell.

A pet peeve of mine is the great ELL replacement of ESL. Actually ELL means English language learners, the kids while ESL means English as a second language, the subject.

I believe we teachers were labeled ELLs in our last yearbook. Though we can always learn new things, that wasn’t precisely an accurate label.
http://ww Khaair Morrison

Yeah i see your point. I did take the English regents i got an 89. I do though from a more inside view, see how the Regents exam isn’t pointless but it doesn’t help students. I see it more hurt them than anything else. Personally i think it pressure students not to learn a curriculum that will benefit them for college or life but for a June or January test. In English for example , if Freshman and Sophomore year students had more time to review a book or read it. It would benefit them so much better but teachers rush through books.

Another point is that it does not help to make student all around good students. I got around an 85 on the global regents and a 89 on English Regents but for example the Earth Science regents i got a 62 and the graders cant find 3 points. I passed the class but not the Regents. I don’t have the class anymore, so alone i have to find a way to pass that regents studying by myself after i forgot everything. There must be something in place to distinguish the weak students from the strong. I just don’t think the Regents is the way to do that or an Advance Regents Diploma. tall only NY and California waste there time with them. Yet we still have very bad school systems. Teachers need to teach kids not a test. I do agree with you your students shouldn’t have to take the test but then again the school system has turned into a big business and not a school.

Thanks glad you liked the article, i was surprised so many teachers read this site the pirncipal, my guidance counselor and everyone said they saw it.
http://MKaye@mlbki.com Marilyn Kaye

High Schools in America should not be closed without careful examination of their value to the community as well as examining if they have been given the tools to help the incoming students with different needs.In America, we still have the concept of a free public education but today with the amazing diversity that has made this country strong, we still need to support the needs of each school as well as our students equally. While it is important to give everyone this opportunity, many teachers will tell you the challenges. If a student doesn’t speak English can be very difficult and support classes should be made available. If a student is very bright in Math or Science than honor classes should also be available and If a student writes well then this talent should be maximized. If a student wants to go to a special school like Hunter or Stuyvesant and passes the test, then this opportunity should be there. If a student wants to go to a Charter school & is accepted thru a lottery and can afford to make a payment for school depending on income, then that should also prevail. If a student has dyslexia, then perhaps he couldn’t attend any of these schools but that student should have support at a public school and as an added benefit to our society you eventually learn so many of these students have created the greatest inventions as they think differently,.just go to the special program at John’s Hopkins and they will show you the list of the great inventors of our time who had dyslexia. Now if a student isn’t sure what he wants to do, then perhaps he or she will need more time to study and grow and as these students do so, they begin to become interested in many areas and make choices that could be politics, art, teaching,law, medicine, entertaining,entrepreneurship, professors or athletes.. That is where our public schools come into play and particularly our high schools. There is no reason for junior high schools to exist, the private schools have grade schools then high school and they are very successful. If the financial consideration for multiple schools under one roof exists, then the high school, the charter school and the special schools should be under the same roof and share expenses. The high school of an area supports the financial stability of the area. We are a country that has always educated everyone and we have learned that support is needed in many areas; this too should be divided in an equal manner. The neighborhood and businesses are supported with local high schools as students purchase items. While we want to excel in a global community, businesses should be encouraged to participate and bring their expertise to the schools for the country’s future,. In order to still be the land of the free and that includes a free education, we may need to have multiple schools today in our high schools for economic reasons. As businesses have learned to change in this economy, then our schools must change as well but the brand stays. The brand is the school in the area, like Forest Hills High School,Jamaica High School & Flushing High School. The area is the brand and there are many sub brands under it with many diverse schools. We must keep our high schools and build them in the best way we can change with the needs of the school, the needs of the students and the needs of the community. Nothing should be compromised when it comes to maintaining our high schools and keeping with the American tradition of freedom and diversity, we can co-exist with many schools for the best education to guide young students into successful adults for a strong American future.. Everything must be examined very carefully and at all costs as a good public school education should be available to all. I was lucky to be an alumni of Jamaica High School in the late 50′s and everyone should have the same opportunity today. There are needs for many different schools but everyone should have this opportunity not just the super bright as the race is not always to the swiftest.The American way is freedom to all, not the select few. If the new needs today are to have many schools under one roof fine but don’t forget the brand, the local high school Our high schools must be saved for the sake of our American public school tradition… a free school for all!

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February 11, 2010

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