GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Losing our Metrocards to budget cuts would prevent students from so many low-income and middle-income families from grasping success.

My mother is a single parent. She is putting two kids through college — one at Howard University and the other at St. John’s in Queens — and she still has to keep up with her mortgage payments and other bills. Her job gives her great benefits and a good salary. But it is still really hard and I see her struggle every day to provide for her family and keep us together especially lately in this economic downturn. The last thing she needs on her plate is the question, “How am I going to get transportation to and from school for my son?” Providing a Metrocard for me to get to school would be another bill and another burden on her back.

I wouldn’t even attend the great school I go to, Francis Lewis High School in Queens, if I hadn’t known I would be able to get there for free. But my mom knew I couldn’t go to the schools in my neighborhood. Now those schools are among 19 that the mayor and chancellor are closing. Next year, if I don’t get a free Metrocard, it would be hard for me to stay enrolled at Francis Lewis for my senior year. And all the students who might have gone to the schools that are closing will have to spend their own money to get to schools like mine, which are already overcrowded.

And it’s not just about getting to and from school for me. (more…)

The mom of a former student of mine became started following me on Twitter today. It was a surprise and presents a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, up to this point I’ve mainly used Twitter to share inane updates (Quest for a Niners bar has finally come to an end.) and funny/interesting headlines (RT@TheOnion Friendship Between Caterpillar, Horse Exploited for Cheap Children’s Book http:/onion.com/5iCtj4) with friends. At the same time, it’s become increasingly clear that Twitter is not the place for privacy.

Still, while I’ve worked to maintain an appropriate public image on Twitter, I still hoped to keep it a personal space. Connecting with parents (and eventually students presumably) ends that, and blurs the space between my professional and personal realms. To paraphrase George Constanza, “My worlds are colliding!”

It seems simple enough to block this woman and any other professional contacts from following me. I just worry about her taking offense since she’s already started following me. Maybe someone with a better knowledge of Twitter can tell me whether she will have any way of noticing she’s not getting my Tweets?

Regardless of how I solve the problem, it’s definitely a new problem characteristic of the new era teaching is entering. (more…)

A worn “High School Musical” wallet with two dollars in it is currently sitting in my jacket. I acquired it after school today, when a student I’ve nicknamed Mastermind handed it over to me, her mom standing next to her with a look somewhere between bemusement and exasperation. The wallet, Mastermind had told me earlier, was hers, as was the money. I was asking since that exact sum had gone missing from another girl I’ve dubbed Digo’s pencil case. Mastermind is the only student with what passes for a prior record in the third grade.

The story changed of course once her mom explained to me that she hadn’t given her daughter any money, and her daughter wouldn’t have any money otherwise. When her mom took charge of the inquisition Mastermind tried a new performance. Now the wallet was a gift from the guidance counselor and the money was given to her by her friend (aka follower), another student of mine.

I’m looking forward to getting to the truth tomorrow. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to try out a good old fashioned prisoner’s dilemma with eight-year-olds. I’m sure however, the experience will be less than enlightening and somewhat anticlimactic. Relying on these two students to tell the truth will probably be something like a reenactment of Rashomon, but with third graders instead of samurais.

It’s not the first time I’ve faced a situation like this obviously, and they always begin and end practically the same. This is actually one of the rare cases where I’ve resolved who took the money. Still, even with this pretty much settled, the resolution remains unclear. (more…)

This month marks the eighth anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act. This legislation has redefined education in America and it’s worth looking back now at the ways NCLB has done so. I started my reflection last week by saying that for all it’s faults NCLB has changed education for the better by putting the achievement gap at the center of the education debate.

Unfortunately the theory of accountability for everyone has had some very detrimental practical effects for high-need students and their teachers. On Friday I discussed the problems with standardized testing. But while the debate over standardized testing is somewhat abstract, the creation of a new testing-centered culture, particularly in high need schools is indisputable.

You might argue that creating a high-stakes environment based around testing is essential for these failing schools. But that assumes that 1) these schools have been failing mainly because a lack of effort and 2) the high-stakes culture benefits the students. Both assumptions are false, but still they allow the general degredation of public schools and the educators who work in them.

It is important to understand the actual consequences of the NCLB testing culture. Namely the reallocation of energy and resources toward test prep materials, test prep instruction and test prep professional development. This is especially egregious during a time of economic downturn when principals are being told to “do more with less.” The result is that schools like my current and former workplace no longer have after-school arts and sports programs but still have the latest test prep books. (more…)

Our current education policy debates have me depressed.

“But there’s so much going on! Look at all the intersecting issues we’re juggling in New York:  school closings, small and charter schools opening or expanding, our Race to the Top application, the Regents proposal expand preparation options, eliminating the charter school cap, another DOE restructuring, teacher merit pay and tenure based on student performance! Isn’t this a great time for addressing the BIG ISSUES in education?!”

No.

Arguably, I feel this way because of deep flaws in most of the above proposals. But it’s not mere opposition that drives my ennui. (more…)

In New York City, schools live and die by statistics. If statistics take a nosedive, schools are closed, no ifs, ands or buts. Of course, everyone knows the old saying about liars, damned liars, and statisticians. So you’d think before taking the draconian step of closing a school, statistics would be checked with great care.

You’d be wrong, of course. But if you were relying on the local papers to inform you, you’d never know it. In fact, it appears Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gets his info straight from Mayor Bloomberg’s PR machine, and that appears good enough for President Barack Obama as well. Amusing though it is to watch politicians jump like trained seals, doing whatever it takes to grab the money Obama and Duncan dangle before them, their utter lack of vision and common sense is unsettling, to say the least.

One of the most vexing aspects of this administration’s frenzy to close schools is its absolute willingness to accept and propagate explanations like this one. While the much-ballyhooed statistics are outrageous and inaccurate, it appears true that no one’s actually planning to bulldoze Jamaica High School, as far as I know. Of course, that’s only as far as I know.

Still, even if the building will remain, does that mean residents will still get what they’ve always gotten? (more…)

Earlier this week on my blog, I wrote about the positive achievements of the No Child Left Behind Act. I argued that for all its faults, the NCLB has had an overall positive impact on American education.

Now for the bad news. And I hope President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein will pay attention for this part, because it’s important. NCLB hasn’t fixed education. In fact, it has created some problems of it’s own. And if policymakers aren’t extremely careful over the next few years, the so-called cure will become much worse than the disease.

The three main problems with NCLB are testing, testing and testing. More specifically the assessments themselves, the school and classroom environments created by testing, and the coalescing of corporate interests with education policy are all major problems created directly or indirectly by the changes enacted by NCLB.

Let’s start with testing. (more…)

Like 20 other schools across the city, Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Corporate Academy recently received word that Chancellor Joel Klein has recommended that the school be closed. In some ways, MCA outshines other schools. For example, in June 2009 MCA outperformed 74% of city schools in weighted US History Regents performance and more than 62% of city schools in weighted Integrated Algebra Regents performance. Of course, like all of the schools on Chancellor Klein’s shutdown list, MCA has real deficiencies and areas where improvement is needed. But the chancellor’s recommendation does not reflect the learning community that has been created here, and his selective use of statistics to justify his decision is upsetting.

The progress reports do show how MCA compares to other schools that share some of its characteristics, but that comparison doesn’t reflect the nuances behind MCA students’ specific needs and accomplishments. And when DOE officials visited MCA on Jan. 14 to explain the decision to close the school, they compared MCA to schools citywide. Considering the emphasis on differentiation of instruction in the classroom to meet the needs of students, it seems reasonable to ask the same of our chancellor: Differentiate your evaluation of each school to reflect the needs of that particular school. The decision to use failures to reach citywide averages as the basis to close schools is unreasonable and unfair because it fails to account for the unique needs of each school’s population.

Klein should recognize that a school like MCA (where 80% of students who entered in 2006 scored 1 or 2 on their 8th grade statewide ELA exams) is going to have a harder time getting its students to pass the English Regents exam than a school that receives a more skilled 9th grade class. The performance of an incoming 9th grade class has great influence on the expected results, especially when the numbers are not outliers, but trends. It is unreasonable to expect that students who earned mostly 1s and 2s on their 8th grade exams will graduate at the same rate as students who earned mostly 3s and 4s. Similarly, while MCA’s attendance rate is too low, it’s not fair to assume the problem lies with MCA; forty percent of this year’s 9th graders, for example, also missed more than one in 10 school days in middle school.

(more…)

We all know about strong and weak regulation. In this era of economic crisis we debate stronger regulations, and decry the weakening or loosening of financial industry regulations.

We all know what that means. Stronger regulation means some combination of more laws, more controls, closer scrutiny, stricter limits, etc.. Strong price controls would be strict, and weaker regulation of the airline industry has lowered prices dramatically.

And yet, many charter school proponents have twisted the language around 180 degrees. They think that having few charter schools is “weak,” and having multiple authorizers (each of whom might have its own criteria) is “strong.” They think that freedom from preexisting school regulations makes a “strong” charter school law, and many believe that imposing strict requirements on schools as a condition for them to remain open after their initial characterization period is “weak.” (more…)

Test scores now have regal status. They drive many of our policy decisions, yet we pay too little attention to their content and merit. We know they leave much to be desired, but we need to understand why.

Often the reading passages and questions are poorly written and geared toward limited thinking. For example, the New York State sample sixth-grade ELA test (the actual test from 2005) on the NYSED Web site includes a short anonymous “poem”:

The Giant Pipe

To me, this giant pipe
Is the secret brain center of the world,
The biggest spaceship, the deepest cave,
The longest tunnel, a haunted house,
A submarine, the home of a queen.
Like a lizard that changes colors,
I can live in different worlds.
Like treasures in a pirate chest,
My secrets are hidden
Inside this giant pipe.

A picture below the poem shows a pipe on a playground. (more…)