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Snap Schott:
Mayor Bloomberg comes out in support of Assembly bill to extend mayoral control of city schools |
Assembly Gives Nod to Mayor on Schools
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ The swift passage of the Assembly bill, by a vote of 121 to 18, was considered a triumph for Mr. Bloomberg. Over the past seven years, Mr. Bloomberg’s emphasis on hard-line accountability and high-stakes testing has stoked calls from parents and elected officials to rein in his nearly unilateral power. But on Wednesday, the mayor’s authority over the school system, which has grappled with low student achievement for decades, appeared to be nearly intact. The bill would maintain the mayor’s power to appoint a majority of an education oversight panel but limit his ability to close schools and approve contracts. Senate Republicans are expected to rally behind the bill, and they would have to woo only a few Democrats to win its passage. Still, opponents cautioned that some Senate Democrats were planning to vigorously oppose the bill and seek guarantees of more parental power and fixed terms for members of the oversight board, the Panel for Educational Policy. Senator John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, the new Democratic leader, told reporters on Wednesday that he planned to push for removal of the mayor’s power to appoint a majority of the panel, even if it required allowing the 2002 law authorizing mayoral control to expire on June 30. “As far as I’m concerned, the status quo needs to be changed,” said Senator Bill Perkins, a Manhattan Democrat and frequent critic of Mr. Bloomberg. “I don’t want us to say, ‘Time is short, let’s just go with the status quo.’ ” Impeding the debate in the Senate is a leadership crisis that has brought action in the chamber to a halt and created an impasse between the two parties. For example, when asked if he was hopeful that the bill would pass in the Senate before June 30, Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat, scoffed, “Do you know what’s going on in Albany right now?” But Mr. Schneiderman added that it was crucial to take action on the bill before the existing law expires. “I have strong feelings about the need for more parental involvement, engagement and more transparency,” he said. “But we have to get the Senate back on track. We’re very cognizant of the bill.” The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, who brokered the bill, called on the Senate to act quickly on the legislation. If it is approved by the Senate, it would require the signature of Gov. David A. Paterson, who supports mayoral control. “Clearly something has to happen by June 30,” Mr. Silver said, adding that he was open to negotiation on some issues, like fixed terms for members of the panel. “I will negotiate anything that brings about a result,” he added. Mayor Bloomberg issued a statement praising the bill passed by the Assembly. “It maintains the central accountability that has been the driving force behind the dramatic turnaround we have seen in our school system,” he said. New York City legislators showed strong support for the bill, with 47 of 65 voting for it. The bill’s passage came as word was leaked by a union official that Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, would announce her resignation next week. The official, who is familiar with Ms. Weingarten’s plans, said she was stepping aside to focus on her role as president of the national teachers’ union, the American Federation of Teachers. She has led the New York City teachers’ union since 1998. She is expected to formally announce her departure at a delegate assembly on Wednesday, but her resignation may not be effective until later next month, the official said. While an executive board of several hundred union representatives will ultimately select her successor, it is widely anticipated that Michael Mulgrew, currently a vice president and chief operating officer of the union, will be named to lead the union until a general election in the spring. In recent months, Mr. Mulgrew, a native of Staten Island and a former Brooklyn high school teacher, has sometimes served as the public face of the union. He helped manage its response to the swine flu outbreaks and filled in for Ms. Weingarten in a debate in May with the schools chancellor on the issue of mayoral control. Mr. Mulgrew’s appointment would come as the union is trying to negotiate a new contract with the city. The current contract expires in October.
Mayor Bloomberg comes out in support of Assembly bill to extend mayoral control of city schools
By Kenneth Lovett In Albany and Frank Lombardi In New York Mayor Bloomberg voiced his support Friday for an Assembly bill that would make some changes to mayoral control of schools, but still keep the mayor in charge. Mayor Bloomberg came out for the first time in support of an Assembly plan to extend his control over the schools. "It preserves the parts of mayoral control that really are important and addresses some of the criticism where people felt that you could do it better," Bloomberg said in his weekly WOR-AM radio show. "You can always improve things; change, change, nothing bad about change." The Assembly plans to print the bill this weekend and pass it sometime next week. "If you destroy the essence of mayoral control then you just go right back to the old Board of education. This doesn't do that." Bloomberg said he believes the votes are there in the Senate to pass the plan, "but then you don't know when they can vote." The Senate this week has been paralyzed in the wake of a disputed leadership coup. The mayoral control law expires June 30. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Education Committee Chairwoman Cathy Nolan unveiled the finalized plan to extend it another six years to the entire Democratic conference on Wednesday. Under the plan, Bloomberg would continue to have eight appointments, including two who must be parents, to the Panel for Educational Policy. The appointees would continue to serve at will, despite a push by some Assembly members to require fixed, two-year terms. The schools chancellor no longer would be chairman or have a vote on the panel. The board also would be required to vote on all no-bid contracts, any contract exceeding $1 million and any changes in education policy. The city Independent Budget Office and the controller's office would have full auditing powers over the system to review not only spending but also performance data such as test scores and graduation rates. The Assembly plan also would strengthen the role of the superintendents by requiring them to have an office and staff within their districts. "It's not a surprise that the mayor would bless this proposal," said Billy Easton, of the Campaign for Better Schools. "Without fixed terms, it rubber stamps his rubber stamp PEP." Many Senate Republicans say they will support whatever bill the mayor backs - even if it comes from the Assembly.
N.Y.C. Small-Schools Push Found to Hurt Big High Schools
By Catherine Gewertz Replacing large, underperforming high schools in New York City with dozens of small new ones has kept many teenagers from dropping out, a new study has found , but also has lowered graduation and attendance rates at some of the remaining large schools by diverting hundreds of at-risk students into their classrooms. The report, issued Wednesday by the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, examines the impact of one of the signature initiatives of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, since 2002: closing 21 big high schools and opening nearly 200 smaller secondary schools. New York has a decades-long history of opening small schools, but the pace skyrocketed in the past seven years under the Bloomberg administration as it sought to improve student engagement, boost achievement, and maximize choice. A team of researchers from the New School spent 18 months studying data and interviewing school staff members, parents, and students to produce the report. While they found that the new crop of small schools offered important early advantages to their students, they conclude that opening so many caused “collateral damage” to the existing large high schools as they absorbed the students displaced by closures of their large schools. The researchers offered a note of caution for administrators mulling the role small schools might play in their portfolios. “Any gains of the small school movement must be weighed against this collateral damage,” the report says. The researchers noted that only one-fifth of New York’s 297,000 high school students attend the new small schools, making it crucial for policymakers to have effective strategies to use in improving large high schools. “Nationally, everybody has been trying small schools,” said Clara Hemphill, who has written a series of guidebooks to the city’s schools and who served as a co-author of the study. “What nobody looked at is how that affects the system as a whole. While we are encouraged by what small schools do for their students, we were discouraged by their effect on the system as a whole. “Overall, I still think the small schools initiative is a good thing. It kept kids in school who might otherwise have dropped out. On the other hand, there was a cost to the big schools.” ‘Growth Pains’ Melody Meyer, a spokeswoman for the city’s department of education, said the initiative was complicated by a 15,000-student bump in the high school population between 2001 and 2005. Also, she said, when the administration first started closing big high schools, there were fewer small schools to absorb those students. That is changing as more small schools open. But Ms. Meyer acknowledged that the city’s small schools initiative has placed stress on some of the nearby large schools by channeling so many high-need students to them, and that the education department has been “more mindful” of that as it gets further into the initiative. One factor officials examine more closely now before closing a big school, she said, is whether there are “transfer” schools nearby that are specially designed to serve the overage, undercredited students who are often the ones displaced when large, dysfunctional high schools close. “It’s a thoughtful report on an important topic,” she said of the New School’s report. Ms. Meyer said that despite the stresses experienced by some large high schools, the city's overall graduation rate has risen by 10 percentage points since 2002. The large schools that struggled to absorb the displaced students showed varying levels of success coping with the influx, according to the report. Case studies illustrate their responses, and the researchers found that those with strong leadership often endured the transitions the best. But those with weaker leadership or a particularly high concentration of at-risk students could be destabilized, some even to the point of being shut down. David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College professor of education who serves on a citywide parent advisory group for high schools, said in an interview with the researchers that while “everyone agreed” that the big, dysfunctional high schools had to be fixed, the education department’s approach created unanticipated consequences for the existing big schools. “They problem is, they didn’t plan enough for the contingencies,” he said. “They actively made the [remaining large high schools] worse. They created a death spiral, where the graduation rates and attendance rates go down further, violence increases, and there is even more excuse to close the schools.” Questions About Small Schools In examining the small schools themselves, the researchers found that they offered their students a number of advantages, but also grappled with struggles of their own that raise questions about their futures. For instance, the new schools initially produced higher graduation rates than the big ones they replaced, but as time went by, those rates decreased. The research team examined 30 new, small schools that had graduated at least two classes, and found that in nearly half, graduation rates fell sharply in the second four-year cohort of students. They found declining trends in attendance as well, and high turnover among teachers and principals. Ms. Hemphill said a mix of dynamics can produce the declining numbers. As a small school adds more grades each year, it becomes more difficult to track and tend closely to more students, she said, and younger, relatively inexperienced staff members can burn out from working 80-hour weeks.
Room for improvement in city class-size crisis
Friday, June 19th 2009, 4:00 AM Will the City Council rubber-stamp the Bloomberg administration's disregard of state education law? We'll find out on Friday when Council members vote on a new capital budget for city public schools. "City Hall is not complying with the law on reducing class size," Robert Jackson, (D-Manhattan), chairman of the Council's Education Committee, said yesterday as he urged a "No" vote on the budget. Back in 1991, Jackson was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that eventually forced the politicians in Albany to increase state aid to schools by billions of dollars. But now he claims Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein are flouting the settlement agreement in that case. The agreement, which was incorporated into state law, mandates that some of the extra money be used to reduce class size by 2012 to an average of 23 from fourth grade through high school. Klein is proposing to spend $3.8 billion over the next five years to add 25,000 new seats. The plan, however, will only reduce "target maximum class size" to 28 in grades 4-8 and to 30 in the high schools. That's far higher than what the law requires, Jackson claims. Education Department spokesman William Havemann said the councilman has it all wrong. Those are "maximum" numbers per class, Havemann said, while the average number of students per class throughout the system will be lower. For years, the DOE has systematically eliminated cluster rooms - spaces that were used for art, science, computers and physical education - and turned them into regular classrooms, he said. A citywide survey his committee conducted found 40% fewer cluster rooms throughout the system than the Education Department itself says are minimum standards. Jackson is "mistaken" again, Havemann said, because "the recorded capacity of a school does not change when cluster rooms are used as regular classrooms." But Jackson can't be so easily dismissed. To illustrate his point, he pulled out for me a floor plan of just one school, Intermediate School 218 in Washington Heights. When the school was built in 1993, it had an official capacity of 1,210. As a state-of-the-art building, it boasted 12 science labs, a dance studio, music rooms, cooking and sewing rooms, computer labs, instrument storage rooms. But as the school got more crowded, many of those cluster rooms were turned into classrooms, and the city kept increasing its "official" capacity. Today the Education Department lists the capacity of IS 218 at 1,726. Without any new rooms added, the building now magically can accommodate 500 more students. "How can you tell me you're not overcrowded when your school doesn't have an art room, a science lab, a computer room, a guidance room or even sufficient lunchroom space to provide for its students," Jackson said. And that's happening all over the city. That's why Jackson and many parent advocates want the Council to reject this capital budget. Instead of spending $1 billion to build new jails in Brooklyn and the Bronx that those neighborhoods don't even want, they say, the mayor should use that money to build more classrooms. "I understand the parents' frustration, but we have to have a budget in place," Council Speaker Christine Quinn said. For the past week, Quinn has been repeating the administration's line: if the Council doesn't approve this budget today, all school capital projects will be in danger. Nonsense. The Council is not another rubber stamp like the mayor's Panel for Educational Policy. Jackson is urging his colleagues to send Bloomberg a lesson: Follow the law and reduce class size.
SCHOTT GRANTEE IN THE NEWS
Recent CFE Report Showed almost Half—48%-- of NYC Students in Overcrowded School or School with a Temporary Structure “Based on our findings, we showed that by leveraging the 2010-2014 capital plan, the DOE could combat overcrowding in the highest priority schools.”
Final work on budget underway
By Nancy Reardon BOSTON — The budget slashes state aid to cities and towns by $936 million – which means some towns may see up to a 15 percent cut. These budget cutbacks translate into layoffs and service reductions at the local level. Education funding, known as Chapter 70 aid, will stay at 2009 levels with the help of federal stimulus money, the two budget chiefs told reporters Thursday night outside the House clerk’s office. “We are hopeful the governor will sign it,” Murphy said. “It is responsible; it is balanced.” Murphy said the budget includes language that says if the MBTA accepts this funding, it cannot raise fares. The transit agency has proposed hiking fares by as much as 20 percent this fall. In addition to a sales tax hike, the budget also includes a 25 percent statewide meals tax increase, also from 5 percent to 6.25 percent. Cities and towns may also opt for an additional “local-option” meals tax of .75 percent, down from the 1 percent local-option tax previously recommended. These two local taxes are aimed at giving municipalities more revenue sources beyond property taxes and state aid. “The fact is, we had to balance the budget, and we did,” Panagiotakos said, noting that as a result residents will see a “decrease in state services across the board.” In particular, he noted that wait times will increase at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which will be closing 12 offices across the state.
Mayor Menino delivers plan to advance public education in Boston
June 9, 2009 BOSTON - Mayor Thomas M. Menino today addressed a crowd of Boston’s business leaders during the Chief Executives’ Club Luncheon, part of a speaker series sponsored by Boston College Citizen Seminars in association with the Boston College Carroll School of Management. In his keynote speech, Mayor Menino emphasized the need to transform public education in Boston, a critical facet of the City’s long-term economic health. Noting the substantial progress that the Boston Public Schools have achieved since the early 1990s, the Mayor articulated a strategy to advance the school system to meet the demands of the future. Mayor Menino outlined his plan to accelerate progress by pursuing two reforms – creating a new form of in-district charter schools and introducing performance pay for educators in the Boston Public Schools. “Although we’ve made tremendous gains in the Boston Public Schools, I am frustrated with the pace of our progress, especially in our low performing schools,” Mayor Menino said. “To get the results we seek – at the speed we want – we must make transformative changes that boost achievement for students, improve quality choices for parents, and increase opportunities for teachers.” Mayor Menino’s plan calls for empowering educators in order to quickly innovate and implement successful practices. By creating a new form of in-district charter schools, schools will have the greater flexibility they need – in hiring, budgeting, staffing, teacher collaboration, and in the hours kids are in school. To expedite the pace of reform, these schools will be established solely by the School Committee. While the staff can unionize, no union approval will be required to create the schools. This flexibility will allow the schools to attract and retain the best teachers to tailor the school day to students’ needs. Accountability will be ensured by performance contracts, and schools that work will be replicated, while those that do not will be closed. By working with legislative partners on Beacon Hill, Mayor Menino intends for the in-district charter school bill to be passed by the end of this legislative session. If the legislation is not adopted, the Mayor is prepared to support another way forward by calling for the cap on charters to be lifted. To further transform the school system to provide better educational opportunities to parents and families, Mayor Menino also proposed introducing performance pay for educators. This system will reward teams of educators who achieve significant results in the classrooms of the lowest performing schools. Teachers will be jointly accountable for their students’ results, fostering greater collaboration and allowing the Boston Public Schools to attract more excellent educators. “I need you to fight for this legislation,” Mayor Menino urged the crowd of leaders at this afternoon’s speech. “I need you to demand performance pay. I need you to expand your commitment to summer jobs, putting kids to work right now. Above all, I need you to be strong advocates for excellent education for every school child.” The newly proposed plan builds on the substantial progress that has been made in the school system since the early 1990s, when seven Boston Public Schools were losing accreditation and parents were leaving the district. Under Mayor Menino’s leadership, underperforming schools were closed, while pilot and K-to-8 schools were opened. The City began investing heavily in early childhood education, creating full-day kindergarten for four year olds, and applications for kindergarten are now up ten percent. The school system now boasts one of the highest college enrollment rates of any city in the nation. These progressive steps have led U.S. News & World Report to rank eight of Boston’s high schools among the nation’s best. In presenting his strategy, Mayor Menino emphasized that while charter schools are not a cure-all for public education, they can be an important part of a comprehensive approach to education – one that surrounds children with opportunities from dawn to dusk and from birth to college graduation. In recent years, Mayor Menino and Superintendent Carol R. Johnson have worked to introduce a number of other education initiatives that will complement this new strategy. These initiatives include Community Learning, which links schools, libraries, and community centers to provide a continuum of education resources, Thrive in 5, a program that emphasizes early childhood education to prepare children for classroom learning, and “Getting Ready, Getting In, and Getting Through,” a collaborative to promote college success and to double the college graduation rate among graduates of the Boston Public Schools.
Commentary: Accountability 2.0
By Tony Wagner I have reviewed studies on the skills employers consider most important, and interviewed scores of senior executives who work in the high-tech industry, retail, service, manufacturing, and the military. I discovered near-universal agreement on the core competencies that employers need most in today’s workplace: the ability to think critically, the capacity to collaborate with others, and effective oral and written communication skills. I also heard frequent complaints from employers about the extent to which these skills are weak, or altogether absent, among new hires—young people just out of high school as well as college graduates. Why do we have such poor results after seven years of dramatically increased accountability requirements for all public schools? What I observe in classrooms all over the country is that, increasingly, there is only one curriculum in our schools: Test Prep. I believe in accountability, but the tests widely used by states to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act rely primarily on multiple-choice questions that assess students’ ability to recall facts—and little else. And what’s tested is what’s taught. As a consequence, much less class time is spent on research projects, text-based discussions, and other activities that teach effective communication and critical thinking. Many students graduate from high school today having never written a paper longer than five paragraphs—the writing format taught to pass state tests—and not knowing how to ask good questions, weigh evidence, reason, analyze, hypothesize, or work with others. Businesses spend nearly $3 billion a year teaching their employees how to write, while nearly half of the students who pass the MCAS test in Massachusetts—the state that the president held up as a model of success—still need remediation when they go on to college because they lack these skills. Ensuring students’ mastery of core academic knowledge is an essential purpose of education. But if this knowledge is all that’s tested, increasingly school will become a high-stakes game of Trivial Pursuit, and we will fall farther behind in the race to develop an innovation economy—one based on the continuous creation of new ideas, products, and services. In the 21st century, core competencies are as important as core knowledge. Information is changing constantly and doubling at an astounding rate. The best-run companies require every employee to be able to work with others to analyze the most current information and apply it to new problems. What is different about work in the 21st century is the demand that all employees be able to think critically, collaborate, and communicate effectively. Young people who want to get and keep a good job in the new global knowledge economy must master core competencies that only a few students have had in the past. And the country that has the greatest number of workers with these skills will create an economy that produces more innovations and so gain an enormous competitive advantage. The choice is not between teaching and testing core knowledge vs. core competencies. Critical-thinking and communications skills are best learned through in-depth study of challenging academic content. There are a growing number of tests—assessments widely used in other countries—in which students have to show that they can apply their subject-content knowledge to new questions and problems. We urgently need to begin research and development for a next-generation accountability system that assesses the skills that matter most in the 21st century. Our children’s future—and the future of our country—are at stake. Tony Wagner, a former high school English teacher, is the co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His most recent book is The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—And What We Can Do About It. Return to TOP
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The Snap Schott is distributed by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. For more information, please visit www.schottfoundation.org. |
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