As state testing nears, city directs $10 million to tutoring

on the money

January 18, 2011

As state testing nears, city directs $10 million to tutoring

by Anna Phillips, at 3:21 pm

Nearly six months after the city saw students’ failure rates spike thanks to new, tougher state tests, Mayor Bloomberg is directing extra funding to ready those students for another round of exams.

The mayor announced today that the Department of Education will distribute $10 million to 532 schools where more than two-thirds of students failed the state’s math and English tests last year. The funding will target nearly half of the more than 100,000 students who did not meet the state’s newly heightened proficiency bar. Bloomberg said he expected 48,000 students to receive extra tutoring and in-school help as a result of the new funding.

DOE officials said schools should receive the money by February 8. Principals will be able to spend it on weekend classes, lessons after school, tutoring during the school day, and online programs that will help students cram for the upcoming exams. They will have to race to spend it in time for it to have an effect, as the English and math exams will be administered in early May.

Chancellor Cathie Black cautioned that the new funding does not mean that the department’s budget woes are over. The city is waiting to find out how large the state’s budget cut will be and Bloomberg said he still expects to have to lay off teachers this year. But the $10 million was a modest enough figure that he said the city would be able to cover it.

“This should not be taken as a signal that more money is the answer to all of our problems,” Black said.

“Our best schools are already doing more with less and leveraging resources in a way that benefits our children. But we also recognize that some of those schools need extra help right now.”

When asked why the funding was coming mid-year, the mayor was vague.

“New chancellor!” he said, smiling, then abruptly changed tack. “We’re constantly trying to come up with new things,” he said. “And we’re always sitting there worrying about what’s going to happen to the budget.”

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said she’d met with former Chancellor Joel Klein in October to press the issue, after the Coalition for Educational Justice had brought it to her attention. But criticism of the DOE’s minimal response to the high failure rate began to build much earlier. In a statement sent to reporters today, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said that he’d been asking the DOE to give extra help to these students for the last six months.

In July, when the scores were released, the city’s passing rate on the reading exam fell from 68.8 percent 42.4 percent. On the math test, the passing rate fell from 81.8 percent to 54 percent.

At the time, Klein said that schools would give struggling students “extra attention,” but didn’t say how. In September he announced that schools would be allowed to convert one period of tutoring time into teacher planning sessions aimed at boosting scores.

“It was so obvious that we had a problem,” said teachers union president Michael Mulgrew today. “Something had to be done; this is a start.”

Schools will receive a portion of the funding based on how many more of their students failed the exams last year than the year before. The largest amount any one school can get will be $65,000 and the smallest will be $6,000.

Eight schools will receive the largest amount: P.S. 144 (Bronx), MS 113 (Brooklyn), JHS 88 (Brooklyn), MS 61 (Brooklyn), East New York Middle School of Excellence (Brooklyn), JHS 78 (Brooklyn), IS 61 (Queens), and IS 61 (Staten Island).

More than half of the schools that are eligible for the extra funding are in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Manhattan is home to 102 of them, Queens to 54 and Staten Island to 13.

School Allocation Summary

Empire of Illusion

So Mulgrew stands sheepishly in obeyance while counting the wads in his pocket, mumbling “thank you, Godfather, I’ll do as you wish.” When is this wimp of a president going to take a stand to protect the members who pay their dues? What rock did he crawl out from? Teachers should consider plastering his office with complaint calls and order an all-out strike.
http://www.classsizematters.org leonie haimson

Where’s the money coming from? How do we know that they aren’t just cutting elsewhere in the education budget? Bloomberg says he’ll find the money “somewhere”; looks like sloppy planning to me.
Karen Sherwood

What is most interesting to me about this announcement is that it is probably the first time in more than eight years that Bloomberg has used the term “struggling students”. That term seems to have been banished from the DOE’s lexicon and replaced by their politically expedient- but inaccurate- designation- “failing schools”. For this brief moment in time, it seems that the Mayor is more interested in recognizing a problem and addressing a need than he is in seizing yet another dubious opportunity to lambast teachers or close down schools. I hope that this intervention works, for the sake of the students as well as for the 532 schools which might otherwise be labeled as “failing” and soon after find themselves on the chopping block.
miss teacher

The timing of this is interesting- like they wanted it out there as quickly as possible in the hopes that people would forget Chancellor Black’s most recent idiotic comments.
Peter

Will the allocation of dollars require a collaboratively designed plan with an assessment of the effectiveness of the program?

In the current “let a thousand flowers bloom” environment, with innumerable inexperienced principals I fear too many will simply replicate after school what is not working during the school day.
Mustafa

I’m concerned. I think this is merely a ploy by Tweed.

Without a concrete intervention plan, I believe that this is simply being done so that Tweed can recite this as just another step it’s taken before they close a school.
miss teacher

Looking closer, I noticed my school got a very large chunk of money. I wonder how we will spend it all. We already run SES programs after school till 5:30 and many kids stay for those. I suppose our Saturday program can be expanded, and vacation academies can be held. But we are a small school and I wonder where the personnel is going to come from. I am interested to see how we spend all that money. Mustafa, your comment also concerns me- because I think you make an important point.
bronxactivist

Is there a curriculum or a way to get all the schools on board? They have money for test prep but other vital services get cut? Whys not remove pcbs or restore some of the cuts to after school or during school programs? I believe since wall street and retail had better years the budget shortfall is not as great as politicians have stated.
queens parent

Why do we keep spending more and more money on the failing students? Meanwhile the kids that do pass, that do study and do their homework, they get nothing. The budgets at middle class schools with kids that get 3s and 4s are cut to the bone. No class trips, no extras, no free afterschool. No nothing. And they don’t have rich parents that can make up the difference. How about this. Anybody attending a failing school doesn’t get any extras at all. Just the basic subjects and that’s all. Maybe some of the kids who are scoring level 3 would like some money to help them get to level 4. Maybe the kids at level 4 could use some enrichment or extras to educate them at the appropriate level. Since when did NYC schools become all about the remedial student?
bronxactivist

The problem queens parent is that the test is not an accurate measure of student achievement. Students with level fours still need remediation. Blaming teachers is easy but teachers do not pick the schools programs or even the subjects we cover. We are told how to teach everything and when. We are micromanaged and our ideas are ignored just like parents are ignored.
Michael M.

QP,

“All about the remedial student.” What?

$10M is a lot of money, no doubt. But it is a mere pittance of the $20B or so DOE budget. $1 out of every $2,000. What’s that in percent?

A few months ago, when some commenters (myself included) wrote that the tests were inflated, you wrote that we somehow couldn’t accept that perhaps our less accomplished students might in fact be doing well (as opposed to the tests being bogus), and that the test-knockers wouldn’t be saying the same thing about students in Westchester County. Or words to that effect. Please correct my recollection as necessary.

Now that it’s clear that the NYC education system under Bloomberg and Klein has been a house of cards, it strikes me odd you would begrudge dedicated funds to offset the damage the prior years’ scores has been masking. (The cynic in me thinks it’s as much about Bloomberg repairing his sham education legacy.)

How much money was awarded to our neediest kids by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity? How much was deferred because the state couldn’t afford to pay up? How much that would have flowed through Contracts for Excellence was redirected via a “waiver” letter from Steiner to Klein?

Of course 3′s should be helped to reach 4. Of course 4′s should be helped to reach beyond. Of course the 1′s and 2′s should be given ADDITIONAL help to get to Level 3. Every child should be supported to his or her potential.

How much did Bloomberg spend on his third term? What fraction of THAT is THIS?
http://www.davidcbloomfield.com David C. Bloomfield

These are crumbs timed to increase test scores rather than improve student learning. Better than nothing but will not resolve the problem. See “Testing-Gate: The Case for Reparations,” http://gothamschools.org/2010/11/18/testing-gate-the-case-for-reparations/

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on the money

January 18, 2011

As state testing nears, city directs $10 million to tutoring

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