The city welcomed its latest crop of Teaching Fellows, twice the size of last year’s. (GothamSchools)
Parents and advocates are filing suit over the city’s treatment of English language learners. (Daily News)
Jim Dwyer: A city program has “drown-proofed” 14,000 second-graders in the last 18 months. (Times)
Ginia Bellafante: A Republican politician has taken sides in a school spat that’s been distorted. (Times)
Michael Goodwin: The city should be looking to its Catholic schools for school reform advice. (Post)
Should read
Should read: Nationally, charter schools are discriminating against students with disabilities.
Citizen X
I really do not understand how the fact that charter schools need to discriminate against students with disabilities — and students who have the most intensive learning needs — is news. In a system where we make high-stakes decisions based on group-administered student achievement tests scores and schools can be shut down if the scores are not high enough, why would any school want to take students who will lower their scores?
Copernicus
“The Post says Cuomo’s compromise bill is clearly bad legislation because teachers unions back it.” Maybe it’s just me, but, besides the bad grammar (teacher’s), this statement seems somewhat biased and insulting. The Post, and GS, need to be reminded that, unlike many politicians and journalists, teachers are not criminals, they are highly educated professionals. In all other countries on this planet teachers are treated with respect and teaching is an honorable profession. In the “greatest country in the world” teachers are treated as the lowest form of life on the planet with disrespect, disdain and mistrust. This behavior is more a comment on the “greates country in the world” rather than on teachers.
http://twitter.com/BNiche B
As both a former public school and former Catholic school student, I feel Michael Goodwin’s article about Catholic schools is (possibly) purposely dishonest about three factors I feel aid in the “pristine” numbers Mr. Goodwin presented:
1) Discipline. I am not advocating any of the pre-1970s Catholic school discipline techniques at all (nuns using rulers, etc.), but if I’m not mistaken, Catholic schools aren’t held to the same discipline guidelines that public schools are. Catholic schools aren’t judged by the amount of suspensions they have at the end of the year and teachers don’t have their hands tied in reporting discipline concerns and addressing discipline problems. In addition, as a quick look into Catholic discipline practices show, Catholic schools work together to support a student struggling with behavior, while many public schools leave the teacher to fend for himself or herself.
Lastly, I remember a few students who were behavior problems in high school get kicked out due to their actions and some student-athletes at some schools lose their scholarships due to being on academic probation and beyond (you really think Don Bosco Prep’s football program recruited football players only on academic scholarships?). Could you do that in any non-specialized public high school?
2) Money, money, money. The Catholic Church provides some assistance, but not much for all students in inner-city families to afford Catholic school. This alone weeds out families who aren’t able to afford Catholic school, especially as tuition payments keep rising every year. As the recession ate away many families’ money reserves and ability to pay tuition fees of up to 5 digits, less students are attending Catholic schools and are instead going for the public/charter options available.
3) Special education. Catholic schools aren’t required to serve students who require special education services as public schools are mandated by law to do. If Catholic schools were mandated to teach students who require special education services, wouldn’t that drastically change the numbers Mr. Goodwin is presenting?
So what exactly is Michael Goodwin advocating here? Should families start paying public/charter schools to attend them? Should most public schools (especially the elementary set) start shunning students who require special education services to attend their schools? Should public schools be able to kick out any student who presents a grave behavior or academic concern? What is it, Mr. Goodwin?
I should also mention, the Catholic elementary school I went to from 4th grade on? Had to close two years ago. Taken over by a charter school. This isn’t a one-time thing too either as this NYDN article speaks about: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-02-22/news/31088718_1_charter-schools-catholic-schools-new-charter
Unfairly blaming the teachers
The enormous variable Michael Goodwin ignores is this:
Families who send their kids to Catholic schools (as well as those sending their kids to Charter Schools) VALUE education and teach this value to their children. They also seek to have their kids go to school with other kids from families who VALUE education.
Most children who come from a family with this kind of values system will do well in school, or at least will accomplish at a level reasonably close to their potential.
Any “educational leader” for the NYC DOE who comes from a Catholic School background (or, for that matter, a private school background), or from a Charter School background, will soon discover they are now swimming with the barracudas of reality: too many kids who come from families where education is either not valued or downright made fun of.
They’ll also discover that attendance rates are not what they were in their former Ivory Towers. And they’ll see that the “other side of America” has had money and “flavor of the month” so-called educational innovations (cooked up in other Ivory Towers of the University System!) thrown at it, over and over again, for the last several decades — to no avail.
Mr. Goodwin — nice try, but your idealistic nostalgia doesn’t even begin to address the biggest problems faced in NYC public education: the fact that a school is no substitute for good family values, and the fact that any school that seems like it might have solved this problem, in reality, is a school that was selected on purpose, by familes that VALUE education (and thousdon’t really prove anything about the program!)
Unfairly blaming the teachers
(Sorry about the typos at the end — ‘got caught typing blind again, beneath that pesky “Post as” line!)
That last line should read:
…by families that VALUE education (and thus doesn’t really prove anything about the program!)
Mr. Flerporillo
This will be the ten billionth time I’ve posted something along this line, and probably the ten billionth time I’ve gotten no response from anyone in the one group with the most at stake. But whatever:
If you were starting from a clean slate, with no concern about lawyers and advocacy groups, you could imagine a system where excessive absenteeism and disciplinary issues would result in public school students being “kicked out,” just as they would be kicked out of a private school. But unlike private schools, the public school system would continue to offer education to these students. Would it create a two-tiered system in the public schools? Absolutely. Would certain ethnic or racial groups be overrepresented in one of the two tiers? I wouldn’t bet against it. But there could be a lot of ways to mitigate the downsides of a structure like this, and I don’t think anybody would be surprised if the quality of instruction would increase at the tier-one level, without replacing a single teacher.Maybe the downside of emulating private schools in this respect is too big. But we shouldn’t keep pretending that school reform will improve education meaningfully as long as teachers are not given control over their classrooms.
Ticked-Off Taxpayer
Re — ” …
why would any school want to take students who will lower their scores?”
No school would “want to” as you put it, but the point is that charter schools use taxpayer dollars, and so are “public schools,” as their operators constantly remind us. As such, they are obliged to adhere to the same standards of equal educational opportunities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that public schools do. It is unacceptable for lawmakers to allow otherwise. If charters want to function as private schools, nothing is stopping them from converting to private schools — least of all their flow of hedge fund money.
Larry Littlefield
Having sent my children to both Catholic and public schools, I would agree that the populations are not compable. Basically teachers do only half the work of education, with parents doing the other half. In the Catholic schools, the parents do their half, but in the public schools that isn’t always the case.
But you can’t ignore the differences between the two systems with regard to the two issues where the interests of teachers and everyone else diverge — how easy it is to drop teachers who aren’t doing the job, and how much those who are not working get paid.
In the Catholic schools, if a principal does not want to keep a teacher, they simply do not renew them at the end of the year. Sometimes it’s just a personal clash, but those teachers tend to get new jobs elsewhere. Meanwhile, “retirement” for Catholic school teachers is what the word has historically meant — a short period of rest at the end of a long period of making a contribution.
Even so, the Catholic schools are collapsing because they cannot afford to charge parents who have already paid for public schools in taxes enough to adequately pay their teachers, particularly since unlike the public schools the Catholic schools actually educate the working class. Next time you hire a plumber or electrician, ask where they went to school. For the public schools in NYC , it has been gifted programs and on to college for some, and the social landfill for most.
There are also lots of UFT memebers who sent their kids to Catholic schools. Among those who didn’t move to the suburbs. Says it all. And now, inadequate funding compared with other places can no longer be considered a reason.
Paul Rubin
I can’t think of a single teacher that I work with that really takes issue with the right of parents to know how a teacher’s classes tend to perform on standardized tests. Sure there are privacy issues being violated and such but the far larger issue is that the data itself is completely useless, a poorly constructed science experiment gone awry. Statistical results with a margin of error much beyond the low to middle single digits should be taken with a grain of salt. At 10-15% they’re not worth the paper they’re written on. With these results, the margin of error is upwards of 50% and that’s in part because the entire foundation of the experiment is flawed. To use such data anyway is not just bad judgment, it’s criminal.
Mr. Flerporillo
“Maybe it’s just me, but, besides the bad grammar (teacher’s)”
There are two accepted ways of punctuating this. The first is “teachers union,” with no apostrophe. This construction conveys “a union of teachers.” (See also “Ladies Auxiliary,” “Chicago Teachers Union,” or the “Service Employees International Union.”) The second way is “teachers’ union,” with an apostrophe on the plural “teachers.” This conveys a union owned by teachers.
Each construction is used heavily, and although the first is probably the dominant one, neither can be fairly characterized as incorrect. Your suggestion, “teacher’s union,” is far less commonly used, and I expect would be viewed by experts as incorrect and nonsensical, as it conveys a union owned by one teacher.
The comparison between Catholic schools and public schools is not fair. Catholic schools get rid of kids who are not doing what they should. I know. I’ve taught many who were expelled from St. Francis Prep and Chaminade, two very prestigious Catholic high schools. They also don’t odiferous credit recovery. Getting a grade under 75 means summer school at a hefty price to the parent.
Larry Littlefield
This was the practice until, I think, the 1960s. The schools for kids with discipline issues were known, AFAIK, as the “700″ schools.
The practice was ended, or semi-ended. Because in some ways the “gifted” and “magnet” programs became what most city schools were, while most city schools became what the 700 schools were.
Mr. Flerporillo
It’s interesting how little discussion there is of this topic today, given that, as it seems to me, the vast majority of parents, students, and teachers would benefit greatly from this kind of system. But we’ve made our choice (or full-time advocacy groups have made it on our behalf), and “better that 100 students have a sub-standard educational experience than 1 unfairly disciplined student be removed.”
Tiredofyou
Keep fishing it shows what you really don’t know about education. Its called being ignored because of you arrogant attitude towards the hard working people who make a difference everyday. Spend one day working as a teacher and your attitude will definitely get changed.
Ellen
They were 600 schools, not 700. While you are correcting grammar get your numbers straight.
Ellen
This is almost too easy, and at the same time hard, to say…Catholic schools are closing in record numbers. Financial support from the various dioceses is drying up because of huge legal bills brought on by large scale sexual abuses of children. The scope and scale of the abuse dwarfs anything reported about other teachers yet this sanctimonious clerical leadership politics to hide abusers, destroys lists of repeated abusers and watches as the abused are vilified by the church.
Good for Michale Goodwin. Let him support a corrupted version of St. Ignatius. I hope his conscience can stand the strain.
Mr. Flerporillo
Larry doesn’t correct grammar. That’s my vice. I try to manage it by only correcting the grammar of other pedants who try to force bad grammar on others. Kind of like on that TV show “Dexter.”
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