|
Snap Schott:
Every week The Schott Foundation for Public Education highlights a select list of articles of interest to you. Simply click the article headlines below to expand the article.
This Issue:
An Interview with Dr. John H. Jackson, Ed.D. J.D.
Lesson Tensions
School Budgets to Be Cut by 5 Percent Next Year
New report says Education Reform Law has brought mixed results to Mass. schools
Ware Schools Superintendent Mary-Elizabeth Beach accepts $25,700 pay cut
NJ court: New school funding system is constitutional
Study Links Teacher Movement to Influx of Black Students
Grantee News
Announcement
|
An Interview with Dr. John H. Jackson, Ed.D. J.D.
Michael F. Shaughnessy - May 28, 2009
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico
John H. Jackson is President and CEO of The Schott Foundation for Public Education. In this interview he responds to questions about “Lost Opportunity: a 50 state Report on the Opportunity to Learn in America”.
1) John, how did you first get involved in this 50 state report?
For years now, the education community has talked about the concept of an “opportunity to learn.” Unfortunately, that rhetoric has resulted in little in terms of action and results. Last month’s release of the NAEP long-term data shows that the achievement gap in this country is the same as it was a decade ago, and the same as it was two decades ago. Despite all of the promises, we are not making sufficient progress addressing the academic needs of minority and low-income students. They are miles behind their White, well-resourced peers. If our students are going to compete on equal footing for college slots and jobs, we have to close the achievement gap. And we cannot close the achievement gap without first addressing the growing opportunity gap.
In the Schott Foundation’s work on opportunity to learn issues, we often hear that opportunity and access are difficult issues to quantify. Lost Opportunity was designed to provide policymakers and educators such quantification. At Schott, we know from our equity work in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity in New York and our early education work in Massachusetts, as well as the work from parents and advocates in over 40 states that have filed equity and adequacy suits, that a lack of access to a quality education is one of the most significant barriers to both student achievement and to hope. In far too many states, students are being denied access to the resources that provide a meaningful opportunity to learn. A quality education should be a right held by all students, not just a privilege enjoyed by some.
We developed this 50-state report to provide decision makers a fresh look at the data that has troubled many of us for far too long. By looking at both NAEP and NCES data, we are able to see how the states stack up when it comes to providing students “opportunities to learn” through access to moderately proficient education systems. . And we are able to see that there is much work ahead of us if we are to provide this American dream to all, particularly to minority and low-income students.
2) What states are doing well and why?
We found that Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Virginia are providing their students a moderately proficient, high-access public education. Students in these states – particularly Black, Latino, Native American and low-income students – have a greater chance of attending a top high school and have a greater chance of achieving on national assessments. Only 16 percent of our states are providing the quality and access we both seek and require.
It is important to note, though, that these states score in the top, comparatively. States fall within the moderate proficiency parameters if a third to 40% of their students are scoring proficient or better on the NAEP 8th grade reading exam. No state scores higher than 43% on NAEP 8th grade reading. It is hardly worth celebrating that quality in the United States means that fewer than half of 14-year-olds are able to read at an eighth grade level.
Similarly, those states that score in the high-access category do so because they provide a better than 50% chance at access to a good high school. Providing a minority or low-income student a 50% or 75% chance of attending a good high school is not the bar our states should be aspiring to. But we need to start somewhere. We need to understand where our states rank when it comes to both achievement and equity. That’s why these NAEP and NCES measures were utilized.
At the end of the day, no state should be declaring “mission accomplished” here. Every state has work to do with regard to both quality and access. No state should be setting a goal of 40% proficiency and 55% access so they are designated a moderately proficient, high-access state. Our goal should be 100% proficiency and 100% access, regardless of race, income, or zip code.
3) Which states are not doing so well and what do you attribute this to?
Based on NAEP and NCES data, Missouri, Texas, Rhode Island, Illinois, Michigan, Arkansas, Arizona, Nevada, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia are providing their students a low-proficiency, low-access public education. These states are our national laggards, and are the ones requiring the most work to provide all students a high-quality education.
Often, when we talk about student achievement and equity, the discussion usually comes back to resources and dollars. The data shows that money alone does not solve the problem, though. The District of Columbia has one of the highest per-pupil expenditure rates in the nation. Yet, DC scored last both in terms of student proficiency and student access. Neither is acceptable, particularly in our nation’s capital. It isn’t just about dollars, it is also about what we do with those dollars. For those states at the bottom of the list in particular, we can see that they struggle to provide their students a high-quality early childhood education, access to effective teachers, well-funded instructional materials, and a college preparatory curriculum. If we expect our students to perform, we must provide them the teachers and learning resources needed to support it.
4) Let me play devil’s advocate here and pick on Alaska. That particular state faces some real challenges in terms of ice, snow, weather, and the extreme land mass. Is it really fair to compare Alaska to say Rhode Island?
Alaska actually fares well when it comes to the access issue. Across the state, a historically disadvantaged student has a 93 percent chance of attending a top high school, compared with White, non-Latino peers. Where Alaska struggles is with regard to student reading proficiency. Quality is not an issue that knows geographic of meteorological boundaries. Alaska is already compared to other states when it comes to NAEP. That is why we used The Nation’s Report Card. And one can’t ignore the fact that only 27 percent of Alaska’s eighth graders score proficient or better when it comes to reading.
We are now in an era where we are focusing on national education standards and student achievement on national and international measures such as NAEP, TIMSS, and PISA. So comparing our states is not only fair, it should be required. In Lost Opportunity, we looked at both student proficiency and equal access to a high-quality school. Those states at the bottom of the list, including Rhode Island, failed to provide either. Geography, high-minority populations, high-poverty populations, and public perceptions are not excuses for providing a poor education. This study shows that every state has work to do when it comes to providing a high-quality, high-equity public education.
Every state has an equal obligation to provide all of its students – regardless of race or socioeconomic status – with access to a high-quality, high-equity education. No exceptions. Students in Vermont, New York, Georgia, and every other state take the same NAEP exam, so those comparisons are quite valid. In terms of access, each state was measured on their ability to provide minority and low-income students access to the top quartile of high schools in the state. There, responsibility rests entirely with the state. Hopefully, these numbers show states like New York and Massachusetts the true gaps in access between the haves and the have nots.
5) What exactly is the Schott Foundation for Public Education? What is your involvement with them?
The Schott Foundation for Public Education was created in 1991 with the goal of building a more inclusive and representative education system that delivers a high-quality public education to every child. As a foundation, our work is focused on ensuring that all children graduate from high-performing, well-resourced public schools, regardless of race, gender, class, or native language. As part of this mission, the Schott Foundation supports an Opportunity to Learn frame on education policy, which focuses on ensuring that resources are provided for all students to have an equitable opportunity learn and produce high achievement outcomes. Lost Opportunity is part of our Opportunity to Learn commitment.
I am President and CEO of The Schott Foundation.
6) What kinds of criteria did you look at in terms of evaluating the 50 states?
The Lost Opportunity report looks at two criteria for evaluating whether a state is providing its students a fair and substantive Opportunity to Learn. The first is access, which is measured by looking at NCES data regarding the chances that a historically disadvantaged student (minority and low income) will attend a high school ranked in the top quartile in the state. As a way to measure how substantive the access is, the second criteria is quality, which is measured by looking at the percentage of students scoring proficient or better on the 8th grade NAEP exam. By looking at both the NAEP and NCES data, we determined the “Opportunity to Learn” for each state, ranking each state by its ability to provide all students a high-quality, high-equity public education.
7) Now, graduation rates- why do you see this factor as an important variable?
President Obama has established, as a national goal, that the United States is to have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. We have heard from the U.S. Department of Education for years now that most of the new jobs that will be created in the coming years will require some form of postsecondary education. A high school diploma is now a non-negotiable when it comes to the future success of our kids.
Dropping out is no longer a viable option, yet so many of our historically disadvantaged students are on a path to attend our nation’s drop-out factories, where half or more of all students will end their educational careers without earning a diploma. We can’t expect our kids to succeed, both in career and in life, without a proper education. A high school diploma is a key piece of that education.
Last month, McKinsey & Company showed us the economic impact of the current achievement gap in this country – costing us more than half a trillion dollars in GDP. When we look at access to a high-quality high school and a student’s true opportunity to learn, we see that the opportunity gap costs us more than $59 billion annually. By improving access to a high-quality education, we can yield a 250-percent return on every dollar invested in school improvement efforts.
8) If schools lowered standards and diversified the curriculum, could we not raise graduation rates?
If anything, we need to raise our standards. We should all be offended that a high-quality public education in the United States is measured by whether one-third of eighth graders can score proficient or better on the 8th grade NAEP reading exam. Instead of congratulating ourselves for those 32 percent of students, we need to be focusing our efforts on how we equip the two-thirds of students who are struggling readers with the skills needed to achieve in both school and career.
Likewise, we should not be satisfied with providing historically disadvantaged students with a 50 percent or 60 percent chance at attending a top-quartile high school. Our goal should be to transform every high school into a high-performing high school, destroying each and every drop-out factory at their very foundations.
Our primary goal should not be raising graduation rates. Improved graduation rates are an outcome of improving both student proficiency and access to resources. That is why student achievement cannot be our sole measure of school effectiveness. Access and equity are just as important. If we show every student that they have the chance of attending a good public high school and can access a path to success, more will take advantage of it.
Much of the work on improving graduation rates starts in the middle grades. Lost Opportunity provides us a clear measure of where our states stand in ensuring that every student entering high school is proficient and has an opportunity to attend a good high school. Without those two components, we can’t expect to see any measurable increases in high school graduation rates.
9) John, what about states with a great many racial, ethnic and minority groups. Is it fair to compare them to more homogeneous states such as Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma?
All states were measured based on their NAEP score and their ability to provide equal access to high-quality high schools to historically disadvantaged students. Historically disadvantaged students, including low-income students, are present in each and every state in the union.
Kansas and Nebraska may have a more homogeneous population, but they still struggle to provide minority and low-income students with access to a top high school. A state like Oklahoma lags when it comes to the NAEP.
Each state is measured by how well they provide minority and low-income students access to a high-quality high school, compared to White, non-Latino students in that state. The data here is clear. Regardless of how diverse or homogeneous a population a state may have, each and every state has much work to do to improve quality and equity in its public schools. We should not be satisfied when only eight states are able to demonstrate moderate proficiency and access. And we should not be making excuses for those states that fail to meet proficiency goals, access requirements, or both.
10) What does Arne Duncan have to do if he reads your report and takes it seriously?
First off, we have a lot of work ahead of us. The federal government must view its primary role in Education as guaranteeing and protecting all children’s fundamental right to a high quality education. In 84 percent of our states, students simply do not have a fair and equitable opportunity to learn, despite all of the rhetoric and activity taken over the past several decades. Lost Opportunity provides Secretary Duncan, along with our governors, state legislatures, chief state school officers, and other policymakers with a great deal of information and guidance. First, we can’t measure our success based solely on student achievement. If we do that now, the grading curve makes 43 percent an A-plus. No student in even our worst of schools would expect to get an A for a 50 percent.
The Secretary of Education should lead the federal government’s effort to develop an Opportunity to Learn Resource Accountability system to monitor and support state’s efforts to improve all students’ access to at least four high quality core educational resources: 1.early childhood education, 2. Highly effective teachers; 3. College preparatory curricula; and 4. Equitable instructional resources.
Secretary Duncan has made clear that one of our top priorities, as a nation, is to turn around chronically underperforming educational systems and schools. Secretary Duncan should require each state receiving ARRA funds to develop five-year Opportunity to Learn state plans with economic forecast beyond the two-years of the ARRA funds. The plans should outline the states’ strategy to improve access to high quality education systems across the state for all children. Lost Opportunity shows that in far too many states, are educational systems and schools underperforming both on student achievement and student access. Both components must be considered, addressed, and resolved if we are to truly improve public education for all and close the achievement gap.
Lost Opportunity now provides us all a clear benchmark, a starting point for our education improvement efforts. We must seize advantage of this benchmark and use it to shape policy, direct funding, and build public will for the changes and improvements necessary to increase proficiency and access for all students.
In the immediate term, I hope the U.S. Department of Education uses the data found in Lost Opportunity to ensure four key principles. First, federal early childhood education dollars should be committed to improving access to high-quality programs aligned with learning and social development goals. Second, we must use newly available dollars to ensure that at-risk and hard-to-staff schools have access to qualified and effective teachers and that those teachers are incentivized to improve opportunities to learn. Third, we need to prioritize the implementation of a college preparatory curriculum for all students, improving secondary and postsecondary opportunities for all students. And finally, we need to ensure that dollars are getting to those districts and schools that have long been at an instructional disadvantage, providing the educational resources necessary to transform poorly resources schools and bring them up to par, in terms of both dollars and access to quality programs, with high-performing schools.
11) John, how do I get a copy of this report?
The Lost Opportunity report, along with the individual reports for each state, can be found at www.otlstatereport.org.
12) What have I neglected to ask?
Lost Opportunity is not merely a report, it’s a platform for change. A galvanizing call for philanthropic partners, our grantees, and grassroots, grasstops and netroots advocates to organize to build a public will movement to strengthen our democracy, economy, communities and become better global citizens by guaranteeing that all students have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.
In 2008, Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males, revealed that nationally, only 47 percent of America’s Black males were graduating from high school. As the Schott Foundation moved beyond the surface level outcome data, we discovered even larger resource disparities which, in many respects, explained the large outcome disparities. These inequities extended far beyond just dollars; the students were also less likely to have access to highly effective teachers, early childhood education, and college preparatory curriculum.
In the states where Black males were more likely to have access to those critical resources, they performed better. Likewise, in the places where White males were denied access to these same key resources, like in Detroit and Indianapolis, their outcomes also suffered severely. Simply put, what we witness today in the achievement gap is the silhouette of a larger opportunity gap that is identifiable both by race and socio-economic status. The achievement gap is merely one of many symptoms of a larger systemic illness. Lost Opportunity: A 50 State Report on the Opportunity to Learn in America not only helps us better diagnose the illness plaguing far too many schools, it begins to point us toward a prescription and cure.
Return to TOP
Lesson Tensions
By DAVID SEIFMAN and CARL CAMPANILE
May 23, 2009
Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that parents should butt out of trying to dictate educational policy as the debate over mayoral control of the schools intensifies.
"You do not want parents setting educational policy. You do not want parents telling teachers how to teach. Teachers would not be happy about that," Bloomberg said on his WOR radio program.
"That's what you have professionals for," he added.
Bloomberg is battling to persuade the state Legislature to extend the 2002 law that gave him authority to run the schools. The law expires on June 30, and there's a push to rein in the mayor's powers over city education.
The biggest criticism of mayoral control is that Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have rammed through policies -- such as school closings -- without adequate parental notification and input. They have disputed those charges.
The mayor sees parental involvement as positive when parents help their children with studies and hold schools accounta ble for results. But he draws the line at policy.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg op poses plans pushed by school activists and some lawmakers to beef up community school districts and empower school superinten dents. He said that's a return to the failed policies of the old Board of Education.
"If you want to really hurt the school system," Bloomberg said, "let's take some money out of classrooms and build 32 more bureaucracies."
Parent activists said Bloomberg's comments prove their point that Hizzoner and Klein ignore their concerns.
"That's dismissive and arrogant," said Jim Devor, a parent leader with Community Education Council 15 in Brooklyn. "He's contemptuous of parents."
Even lawmakers in Albany who support mayoral control said Bloomberg should give parents greater say.
"We want the school districts to be basically what they should be: a place where parents, teachers and principals can deal with problems," said state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Queens).
Return to TOP
School Budgets to Be Cut by 5 Percent Next Year
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: May 19, 2009
New York City schools face budget reductions of roughly 5 percent for the 2009-10 school year, Chancellor Joel I. Klein said on Tuesday, predicting they would lead to deep cuts in after-school and weekend programs.
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein will send schools their budgets on Wednesday.
Principals will formally receive their budgets on Wednesday.
In announcing the cuts — totaling $405 million — Mr. Klein emphasized that they were not as deep as he had feared, largely because of federal stimulus money.
Many schools have made efforts to save money in anticipation of further cuts. They will be able to roll over their savings so that the cuts will have less of an impact on next year’s budget, Mr. Klein said. Those savings will mean that, on average, schools will have 3.8 percent less to spend for the 2009-10 school year.
Budgets for the several dozen schools that receive the largest amount of federal money for poor students, known as Title 1 funds, will increase slightly, Mr. Klein said. The city also changed its regulations to allow more schools to qualify for the federal funds, spreading the money among nearly 200 schools that were not eligible last year.
The city expects to receive nearly $1 billion from the stimulus package, but Mr. Klein said that much of that will be used to pay for annual increases in areas like pension contributions and federally mandated special education services.
Mr. Klein cautioned that while there would be no systemwide teacher layoffs, some schools might feel forced to lay off teaching assistants and school aides.
Principals should “think hard about any personnel cuts,” Mr. Klein said, adding that “the projections were much worse, but this is still a very difficult situation.”
Schools are also likely to curtail their teacher-training programs, Mr. Klein said. He said he expected to trim $20 million from the central administration budget, though he could not identify where the cuts would be made.
Schools have faced cuts totaling about 3 percent over the last two years, and principals have worked to trim programs while trying to avoid losing teachers.
“Until we see the impact building by building, it’s hard to know what will happen,” said Peter McNally, the executive vice president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the principals’ union. “The questions will be, ‘Well, will I have 9 first-grade classes instead of 10 first-grade classes?’ ‘Should I have 18 or 22 kids in a class?’ ”
Perhaps in a sign of how willing Education Department officials are to compromise with the city’s teachers’ union, Mr. Klein backed off a pledge to create a financing system that he has said would make school spending more equitable.
That system, known as Fair Student Funding, was unveiled two years ago. It would force schools to pay for teachers with higher salaries out of their budgets in an attempt to distribute experienced teachers more evenly across the system. When the teachers’ union balked, the department created a provision to ensure that no schools received less money under the new system. That provision was to expire this year, but Mr. Klein said it would be extended and re-examined next year.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the union, the United Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that while it would continue to fight to have the City Council increase the education budget, the figures released on Tuesday showed that the administration had “gone a long way to protect the classroom and maintain services for students in these difficult times.”
Also on Tuesday, the state comptroller released an audit examining the Education Department’s use of no-bid contracts. After examining nearly 300 contracts totaling more than $340 million, the audit recommended that the department create concrete standards for such contracts and provide written explanations of why the contracts are necessary. The audit was in response to a request from Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s public advocate, who has criticized the use of no-bid contracts in the Education Department.
Return to TOP
New report says Education Reform Law has brought mixed results to Mass. schools
by The Republican Newsroom
Thursday May 28, 2009, 12:01 AM
By JEANETTE DeFORGE
jdeforge@repub.com
A study of the 15-year-old state Education Reform Law being released Thursday said there continues to be a dramatic achievement gap between different school districts, but $1 billion in additional funding for districts has helped.
The Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, a public policy think tank known as MassINC, studied the law to determine if it met three goals: to provide adequate funding for all schools, raise all student test scores and equalize achievement district to district.
"The state's success in meeting these goals is mixed, with both clear progress and also goals not realized," the report said.
The study, funded by Bank of America, includes six recommendations to close the gap between low- and high-achieving schools, including extending the school day and placing the best teachers in high-poverty schools.
"One of the things we are trying to do is talk about a greater sense of urgency in urban school reform," said John Schneider, executive vice president for MassINC.
The study showed students in poor schools, which are mostly in urban districts, are not excelling and the concentration of low-income students in specific districts, including Springfield and Chicopee, is growing, the report said.
In 1992, 51 percent of Springfield students were from low-income families. In 2009 that number has grown to 82 percent, statistics show.
Achievement gaps between school districts remained about the same over 5 years, but the analysis shows the law did have an impact, said Gregory Torres, president of MassINC.
"The performance trends were on different tracks," he said, explaining low-achieving districts' scores were flat or climbing slightly while high-achieving districts were making big gains.
Without the law, the gap would be larger because changes allowed low-achieving districts to make bigger gains, the report said.
Over the 15 years of Education Reform, the state increased spending to schools by more than $1 billion. A spending formula which defined the amount a community must spend on schools and an agreement the state would provide more money to communities unable to raise that money has helped equalize funding gaps, the report said.
The districts with the largest number of students, more low-income students and more children learning to speak English have received the largest amount of funding, said Dana Ansel, director of research for MassINC.
But higher-spending districts which rely more on property taxes tend to have the most stable funding. In an economic downturn in 2001 districts who received more state aid suffered more from spending cuts, said Thomas Downes, an associate professor of sociology at Tufts University who wrote the report.
"We can't predict what is going to happen," he said about the current recession.
Mitchell D. Chester, commissioner for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the report is consistent with his observations after finishing his first year working in the state.
"A lot of people in Massachusetts don't realize we have a lot to be proud of, our performance is second to none in the country," he said. "We do have large gaps in achievement; we are providing a world class education but not to all of our students."
Return to TOP
Ware Schools Superintendent Mary-Elizabeth Beach accepts $25,700 pay cut
Friday May 29, 2009, 7:08 PM
By CHRIS HAMEL
chamel@repub.com
WARE - Schools Superintendent Mary-Elizabeth Beach may have spared more pink slips for administrators, faculty members, and staffers with her decision to cut her annual pay and weekly hours.
She received final approval of her offer on Tuesday at the Junior-Senior High School, when the School Committee decided in executive session to create an addendum to her contract.
Chairman Christopher T. Desjardins said the panels vote to approve the additional language will see Beach's annual salary in fiscal 2010 drop by 20 percent, along with a 20-percent decrease in formal workdays from five to four a week.
The reductions will go into effect at the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.
For the present fiscal year, Beach will earn a total $125,170. With a contractual 3-percent increase in fiscal 2010, she was slated to earn a total of $128,925.
But the 20-percent cut will pare her fiscal 2010 salary to $103,140. The decrease will amount to a $25,785 savings, at a time when the towns education budget is at bare bones.
Beach, who first offered to take the reductions in February, will not be in her office on most Mondays in fiscal 2010 as part of the agreement, said Desjardins. But he noted that current technology, including e-mail and cell phones, will make her easy to reach, as is already the case.
The agreement "revolves around the concept that a superintendents job is not 9 to 5 Monday through Friday," he said. "We can get hold of her at any point in time."
Desjardins and Beach expressed relief that the matter of the reductions had reached an end.
"I'm really glad we were able to resolve this ... that we will not have to issue any additional pink slips," Beach said.
In molding its fiscal 2010 budget of about $15.3 million, the committee trimmed the district curricular directors job and the equivalent of one assistant principals post. Consideration also was given to cuts in jobs and classroom schedules at the kindergarten, but there was no approval.
The School Committee first voted to accept Beachs offer in concept on April 1. But the state Department of Elementary and Secondary declined to sign off on the plan.
Beach then sought special legislation that would allow the cuts, through State Sen. Stephen M. Brewer, D-Barre, and Reps. Anne M. Gobi, D-Spencer, and Todd M. Smola, R-Palmer. The legislators sent Beachs request for special legislation to Gov. Deval L. Patrick.
Beach said that Patrick's office chose not to seek special legislation. She said that ultimately, lawyers for the district, the state, and the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents agreed on the idea of a contract addendum for consideration by the School Committee.
Return to TOP
NJ court: New school funding system is constitutional
Published: Thursday, May 28, 2009
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
Associated Press Writer
MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey's Supreme Court has ruled the Corzine Administration's new system for funding schools is constitutional, a major step toward ending the system of special help for 31 urban school districts that has been a sore spot for many taxpayers and politicians for decades.
Thursday's 5-0 ruling is the closest the court has come in 39 years of litigation to saying the state has found a way to provide a the "thorough and efficient" education required by the state constitution without special treatment for urban schools.
There are two catches in the opinion by Justice Jaynee LaVecchia: The court says New Jersey must continue to make some extra money available to the 31 urban districts for at least three more years, and the system must be reviewed for fairness in three years.
The question of how to fund schools is wrapped up with one of New Jersey's biggest education conundrums: How does a mostly suburban state where the schools generally perform very well deal with the gaps in learning in its cities, some of which are deeply impoverished?
The court has ruled 20 times in the 1981 case Abbott v. Burke, and several times on a previous lawsuit, Robinson v. Cahill, which was filed in 1970. Generally, the justices have found that the state is responsible for improving schools in those cities. The rulings are often cited by those who say the state's top court goes too far in making laws rather than merely enforcing them.
There's a second major issue involved, which makes any solutions to the educational one politically unpopular: The state has the nation's highest property tax bills, used mainly to support local schools. Meanwhile, a disproportionate amount of the state education subsidies go to the urban districts, known as the "Abbotts" after the lawsuit Abbott v. Burke.
For years, the state tried to satisfy the court's opinions by pegging spending in the Abbott districts to the school spending in the state's wealthiest communities — with the state picking up most of the bill.
In 2007, Gov. Jon S. Corzine introduced an alternative, which has been in place since July 2008. Under it, all districts get state money under the same formula — though there are caps on increases and decreases allowed in a single year. A major factor in how much they get is the number of low-income children they have.
The new formula calls for many shifts. For several years, for instance, the state has paid for preschools of 3- and 4-year-olds in the Abbott districts. Now, the state is requiring districts to provide such preschool programs for all low-income children, regardless of where they live.
Even in tight budgetary times, that state has put enough money into the system to give more aid to schools. Those that benefit the most are the districts with many lower-income families but that were not covered by the Abbott decisions.
But advocates for children in the Abbott districts say that the new formula is a problem because it means aid to those schools could decline in time and because it doesn't recognize the special challenges of education in places where the concentration of poverty is especially high.
In her opinion, LaVecchia said the court weighed that argument carefully.
"The legislative and executive branches of government have enacted a funding formula that is designed to achieve a thorough and efficient education for every child, regardless of where he or she lives," she wrote.
Return to TOP
Study Links Teacher Movement to Influx of Black Students
By Debra Viadero
The best teachers tend to leave when their schools experience an influx of African-American students, according to a study of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district published today.
C. Kirabo Jackson, an associate professor of labor economics at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., studied patterns of teacher movement in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools between 2002 and 2003, which was when the 137,000-student district ended its long-running policy of busing students to keep schools racially integrated. His results, published in the Journal of Labor Economics, show that, at all levels of schooling, high-quality teachers—both black and white—were more likely to switch schools as the policy change began to take effect and student populations shifted.
“I’m not showing that teachers don’t like black students,” Mr. Jackson said. “I’m showing that, when you substantially change the makeup of the student population, teachers react in this way.”
A growing body of research has found that students in schools with high concentrations of poor students and students from minority groups tend to have teachers who are considered, on average, to be of lower quality than teachers in better-off suburban schools. And a handful of studies also suggests that, in states such as New York and Texas, teachers have tended to move from those disadvantaged schools to more affluent ones.
According to Mr. Jackson, though, it’s been hard to home in on the reasons for those teacher-migration patterns. For instance, were teachers moving to schools out of convenience, so that they could be closer to their own suburban homes, or for higher salaries, or because they were drawn to certain types of students, such as high achievers or students from white or wealthy families?
Mr. Jackson said his study offers a better handle on those questions because he was able to track the changes that occurred before and after the busing policy ended and correlate teachers’ movement to changes in student demographics. When the policy changed, the racial makeup of some schools changed suddenly, yet the neighborhoods surrounding those schools essentially remained the same.
The researcher measured teacher quality in three ways: years of experience, scores on licensure exams, and teachers’ “value added” scores, showing how much their students’ achievement scores improved over the course of a school year.
Patterns More Nuanced
His findings don’t suggest that Charlotte-Mecklenburg teachers were flocking, across the board, to the whiter schools. Even though the best of them were leaving, African-American teachers, overall, were more likely to stay in the schools experiencing a large inflow of black students. Likewise, the average white teacher in those schools was no more or less likely to leave as black students migrated in.
“It’s just a difference in the type of teacher leaving,” Mr. Jackson said. “There are teachers who have preferences for low-income, ethnic-minority students and others who do not. They are simply kind of re-sorting themselves.”
He calculated that, for the average school with a student population that is 60 percent black, a 15 percent increase in the number of African-American students translates to a .3 standard-deviation drop in teacher quality. That effect is about the same size, he said, as the boost in achievement that students might get from reducing a class of 23 students by two to three students, or from having a more experienced teacher vs. a novice. He said it could also explain between 3.3 percent and 7.5 percent of the achievement gap between black students and their higher-performing white peers in the district.
“An important implication of these findings is that policymakers should be cautious when advocating policies such as vouchers, school choice, district consolidation, or school busing that require the reshuffling of students across schools,” the study concludes, because the resulting shifts in student population might also lead to shifts in the quality of teachers.
Whether the teacher-movement patterns in Charlotte-Mecklenburg would be typical of other large, urban school systems is unclear.
In a series of studies looking at teacher mobility in Texas, Eric Hanushek, a senior education fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, found that teachers tended to move to whiter, higher-achieving schools as their careers progressed, but that the teachers who moved were not necessarily the best in their schools, as measured by their value-added scores.
“How much is due to circumstances in one district or another is an open question right now,” Mr. Hanushek said. “We’re just starting to build the right kind of evidence now about what’s behind teacher labor markets, and that’s really important.”
Return to TOP
Grantee News
Highlighted below are some of the exciting projects of the Schott Foundation’s grantees. Please visit the Schott Foundation website at www.schottfoundation.org to see a listing of current grantees.
Almost half of New York City students attend overcrowded schools
CFE Proposes Action Plan to Relieve Overcrowding, Launches Website for Parents to Track Overcrowded Schools in their Neighborhood
New York City — A new report from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity finds that 48% of New York City’s public school students attend an overcrowded school or a school that utilizes a temporary structure such as a trailer or annex.
The report, Maxed Out: New York City School Overcrowding Crisis, examines data from every school in New York City to provide a comprehensive overview of the most urgently overcrowded schools and school districts and proposes a policy framework for the Department of Education (DOE) to tackle the crisis.
The report found 515 school buildings with a total enrollment of 501,632 students (approximately 48% of the 1,042,078 students enrolled in the city’s public schools that year) were either overcrowded or had associated temporary structures during the 2006/07 school year based on the city’s own data available in its Enrollment–Capacity–Utilization Report for the same school year.
“Every day, nearly half of New York City’s school children go to an overcrowded school or are forced to attend class in a trailer or annex that is cut off from their main school building,” said Geri Palast, Executive Director of CFE. “This level of overcrowding makes it impossible for New York City to lower class size consistently across the city, has led to the loss of countless arts and science classrooms and libraries and limits space available for special education.”
Helaine Doran, Deputy Director of CFE, who directed Maxed Out, explained: “Previous counts of overcrowding have swept temporary structures under the rug. But this study’s comprehensive accounting remembers that schools with temporary structures are overcrowded. Their common spaces— gyms, libraries, and cafeterias— are overtaxed and their principals— whose main job should be as instructional leaders— spend too many hours overseeing the smooth running of all their buildings.”
CFE also analyzed the city’s Enrollment – Capacity – Utilization Reports dating back to the 1997-98 school year and found that 129 of the 515 schools have been overcrowded for more than a decade.
“The report’s analysis shows a snapshot in time of the overcrowding in our schools, but clearly, this is a sustained crisis, not a fleeting problem,” added Doran.
With the release of Maxed Out, CFE launched OvercrowdedNYCSchools.org, a website aimed at parents, educators and policy makers that uses an interactive, database-driven school building utilization map to visualize and track overcrowding at the borough, district and school grade level.
“Overcrowding is making it especially difficult for us to serve our lowest performing and highest needs schools and students,” Palast added. “More than 162,000 students in low performing schools attend class in an overcrowded building while more than a third of all the temporary structures such as trailers and annexes are located at low performing schools – cutting off some of our highest needs students from the broader school community.”
The Court of Appeals’ decisions in CFE v State of New York specifically cited overcrowding as a deficiency in schools with struggling students, and stated the problem of overcrowding is inseparable from excessive class size.
The report found that 105 low performing schools on the state’s 2007/08 Schools In Need of Improvement (SINI) and Schools Requiring Academic Progress (SRAP) lists— attended by a total of 162,274 students— were located in overcrowded school buildings. At the same time, 75 schools on the 2007/08 SINI/SRAP lists— with a total enrollment of 95,089 students— had 86 temporary structures between them, over 34% of the 252 temporary structures across the city.
In addition, the report found that 391 school buildings— with a total enrollment of 381,582 students, 37% of the city’s public school students that year— were overcrowded during the 2006/2007 school year, with utilization rates greater than 100%. Of those, 299 were elementary school buildings, 20 were middle school buildings, and 72 were high school buildings. At the same time, 215 school buildings— with a total enrollment of 207,236 students— had 252 temporary structures. These schools included 191 elementary school buildings, 13 middle school buildings, and 11 high school buildings.
CFE identified 51 highest priority schools that have utilization rates greater than 150%; are SINI/SRAP schools and overcrowded with utilization rates greater than 125%; or are SINI/SRAP schools, overcrowded, and have temporary structures. There are 20 schools in the first category, including 18 elementary school buildings, 1 middle school and 9 high school buildings, with a total of 32,794 students enrolled in buildings that have a targeted capacity of 20,131 students. There are 12 schools in the second category, and 18 in the third.
RECOMMENDATIONS
CFE called on the Department of Education to leverage the next capital plan and underutilized space to combat overcrowding in the 51 highest priority schools identified in the report. In addition the report recommends that the DOE develop a long-term strategy to eliminate overcrowding, with specific criteria, including releasing an annual written report for public review.
New School Construction
CFE called on the DOE to use 80,000 planned new seats to eliminate overcrowding in their 51 high priority schools. The DOE’s primary tool in relieving overcrowding is new school construction— funded through the New Capacity Program in their 5-year capital plan.
The current DOE capital plan, ending this June, aimed to construct approximately 63,000 new seats, but only approximately 21,000 have come on line, while 34,239 seats are underway but incomplete and 8,000 postponed until the next capital plan. The new 5-year plan proposes to build approximately 25,194 new seats— including the approximately 8,000 seats rolled over from the current plan. Together the two plans have the potential to add 80,000 new seats to New York City’s public school system.
The report recommends DOE re-position the new capital plan to focus on eliminating the most egregious overcrowding - particularly for high need students.
The proposed capital plan for FY2010 to 2014 contains vague goals with no specific plan to eliminate the worst conditions through either the building of new schools or other strategies.
Given that the 34,239 seats currently under construction—over 50% of the funded total seats in the last capital plan— will not begin to come on line until September 2009 and will extend out to 2012, as well as the seats that have been postponed to the next capital plan, CFE also recommended the DOE re-examine their timelines to ensure critical projects are completed in a timely manner.
Underutilized Space
The report recommends DOE develop a plan to ensure that under-utilized space is used to combat overcrowding. The report identifies 308 underutilized school buildings— with fewer than 75% of their seats filled and a cumulative excess capacity of 128,618 seats. The new DOE capital plan proposal states that there are approximately 100,000 available seats. CFE recommends the DOE identify all school buildings with space available and proximate to overcrowded buildings, use rezoning to eliminate overcrowding, and establishing new programs in underutilized buildings.
Declines in Enrollment
The report cautions against relying on projected declines in enrollment to address overcrowding. DOE enrollment projections forecast significant declines in many neighborhoods. However these declines are not evenly spread throughout the city and throughout school buildings. Projected declines —if they occur as predicted— have the potential to impact overcrowding in only a limited number of neighborhoods in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. Enrollment projections will have little impact on overcrowding in Queens and Staten Island and in the balance of the other three boroughs.
Return to TOP
Announcement
Reparable Harm: Assessing and Addressing Disparities Faced by Boys and Men of Color in California
Important study available now at Rand.org
By: Lois M. Davis, M. Rebecca Kilburn, Dana Schultz
The study identifies some of the greatest disparities for boys and men of color relative to their white counterparts across specific socioeconomic, health, safety, and school readiness indicators in California and provides information about different strategies for reducing the disparities — including effective programs, practices, and policies — that can begin making an important difference in changing the life course of boys and men of color.
Return to TOP
|
