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This Issue:
The Illusion of “Fresh Ground”: The Conflicts That Have Arisen From the Political Context of the New Small Schools Reforms

President pushes states to rewrite education legislation

ACT Scores Show Little to Crow About

D.C. Student Scores Show Fluctuations

Charter schools lag in serving the neediest

Budget cuts squeeze early ed and care programs for homeless and teen parents

The illusion of “Fresh Ground”: The conflicts that have arisen from the political context of the new small schools reforms

by Sarah Butler Jessen — July 07, 2009

This commentary article looks at the differences between the political contexts of the original small schools reform movement in New York City, attributed to Deborah Meier and the East Harlem "miracle," and the current small schools reforms. It argues that many of the problems raised in the recent report released by The New School's Center for New York City Affairs, The New Marketplace, are rooted in the conflicts between the current small schools movement and other, simultaneously occurring policies.

The recent release of a report by The Center for New York City Affairs at The New School—The new marketplace: How small-school reforms and school choice have reshaped New York City’s schools-- has raised serious questions about the small schools reforms, which, up until recently, had been touted as the savior of failing schools in the city. In aHuffington Post article about the released report, one of the authors, Clara Hemphill (2009), writes, “I've long been a fan of small schools, and there's much to admire in the 200 new small high schools that New York City has created since 2002. But there's a dark side as well.”  Many people—from educators to policy-makers—support the idea of having smaller learning communities. How, then, did the small schools reform movement in New York City, which began with such broad support, end up evoking such criticism? One of the fundamental reasons lies in the political contexts in which this reform has emerged.
 
In The Right to Learn, Darling Hammond (1997) writes, “policies do not land on fresh ground; they land on top of other policies, many of which are not conducive to the strategies needed for enacting the new ideas” (p. 218). This image of new educational reform policies conflicting with previously (or simultaneously) enacted policies is one of the central problems with the new small schools reforms in New York City. Indeed, this current iteration of the small schools movement is based on an earlier small schools movement that started in the 1970s in East Harlem. However, these are not our mothers’ small schools. Major differences in the current political environments of New York City’s public schools have resulted in important disparities in implementation of the new small schools, which primarily consists of the New Century High Schools Initiative. In the rush to implement the new small schools, and to “scale up” citywide, there has been little reflection on the efficacy of the reform process or on the potential outcomes resulting from it.
 
To better understand the current political context in which the new small schools exist, we must first appreciate the political environment of the original small schools reform movement in New York City. This movement, often attributed to Deborah Meier and The Coalition for Essential Schools (CES), had its origin in unique political and organizational circumstances in New York City. Enabled by unparalleled political and organizational autonomy, these reforms were based on Deweyian educational philosophies, and were characterized by their bottom-up implementation processes and individualized educational programs. New York City’s public school system was dramatically decentralized in 1969 in order to ease racial tensions that had been escalating for several years. This decentralization allowed for political and organizational autonomy from the Board of Education, which was central to the initiation of the alternative schools in East Harlem, where, in 1974, Meier began her first small school—Central Park East. According to Meier (2002), decentralization of authority in the school system was essential to these reforms: “We just kept our fingers crossed that ‘they’ [the Board of Education] would leave us alone. We pretended that we were a one-school district— just us” (p. 76). Autonomy allowed Meier and her colleagues in the Central Park East schools to create their own systems and standards independent of the larger system requirements.
 
The combination of smallness and autonomy allowed District Four not only to create small, autonomous schools, but also to change pedagogical practices. Portfolios were used for student assessment, and Regents exam requirements were waved. Teachers played central roles in developing the new, holistic learning environments. Choice was a component of the original small schools, however, the implementation of that choice was not based on market theory. In District Four, choice preference was given to local students before seats were opened up to the rest of the city, which maintained parent and community involvement in the local schools.
 
While the New Century High Schools Initiative and other, similar new small school reforms are based on many of the same ideals as the original small schools movement—creating smaller, more personalized learning communities—they are more fundamentally shaped by the current political environment which has changed dramatically since 1974. Most significantly, the current small schools initiatives differ in that they are top-down implemented reforms occurring in an era of increased political centralization and privatization, academic standardization and accountability, and market-based choice.
 
Standardization, test-based accountability, and centralization have all become fundamental components of New York City public school reforms in the last few years. In addition to federally mandated standardization and accountability through the No Child Left Behind act, in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg gained central control of the public school system. Test-based policies for everything from school admission to grade promotion have proliferated throughout the city. Private organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and IBM all have invested heavily in the educational policies of New York City. As businesses have become more involved in educational reform, the system has begun to adopt business-based models in order to obtain financial support.
 
In conjunction with privatization and accountability, market-based choice plays a central role in the city’s public school policies. In educational market-based ideology, competition for students will spur schools to improve their performance, and, like natural selection, only the highest performing school will survive—or avoid being closed down by failing to bring in students. Private market-like competition is clearly an essential aspect of the new New York City small schools, as demonstrated in a 2007 radio address given by Mayor Bloomberg:
 
In the private sector, competition encourages innovation, weeds out failure, and ensures that quality rises to the top. For too long, this concept eluded our school system. That's why we've dramatically expanded school choice - injecting some healthy competition into our schools. Today, students and parents can choose among 200 small secondary schools and more than 40 charter schools. (NYC Government website, 2007)
 
While choice may indeed assist schools in creating cohesive communities, the more significant political agenda underlying these reforms is that opening the small schools for citywide choice will provide “healthy competition” for other schools.
 
All this leads back to Darling-Hammond’s (1997) analogy of “fresh ground.” In organic farming, even the purest organic growing practices can be contaminated by soil that was previously saturated with pesticides. To produce the crop you want, you need to know the history of your soil. Perhaps the New York City Department of Education would have benefited from better knowing theirs.
 
It seems, however, that over the last decade, the mounting political and academic demands of federal accountability, combined with the implementation of mayoral control of schools and the availability of vast private funding, have created coercive pressure on New York City public school system to rush to find a solution for the ailing public schools. The solution they “landed on,” for a while, was small schools. For many years, the New York City Department of Education pushed this reform forward at such a rapid pace that there was no time for reflection. While small schools increasingly gained support in political fields, many of the values on which the original small school models were based—autonomy, flexibility, and creativity—were lost.
 
Only now, it seems, have the differences between the original model of small schools and the policy’s new iteration started to surface in the public eye. The release of the report The New Marketplace by the New School highlights some of the key issues. I am sure that many more layers of soil are yet to be uncovered as the research catches up with the reform.

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President pushes states to rewrite education legislation
Holds out billions in stimulus funds

Sam Dillon - August 17, 2009

NEW YORK - Holding out billions of dollars as a potential windfall, the Obama administration is persuading state after state to rewrite education laws to open the door to more charter schools and expand the use of student test scores for judging teachers.

That aggressive use of economic stimulus money by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is provoking heated new debates over the uses of standardized testing and the proper federal role in education, issues that flared frequently during President George W. Bush’s enforcement of his signature No Child Left Behind law.

A recent case is California, where legislative leaders are vowing to do whatever is necessary, including rewriting a law barring the use of student scores in teacher evaluations, to ensure that the state is eligible for a chunk of the $4.3 billion the federal Department of Education will soon award to a dozen or so states.

The law had strong backing from the state teachers union.

Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Tennessee, and several other states have moved to bring state education laws or policies into line with one or more planks in President Obama’s school improvement agenda.

The administration’s stance has caught by surprise those educators and officials who had hoped that Obama’s calls during the campaign for an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind law would mean a reduced federal role and less reliance on standardized testing.

The No Child law requires every American school to bring all students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014 and penalizes those that do not meet annual goals.
The proposed rules make testing an even more powerful factor in schools by extending the use of scores to teacher evaluations.

The proposed rules for the $4.3 billion in grants, which the administration calls the Race to the Top, require states to show they are fostering innovation, improving achievement, raising standards, recruiting effective teachers, turning around failed schools, and building data systems.

Just to be eligible to apply, a “state must not have any legal, statutory, or regulatory barriers to linking data on student achievement or student growth to teachers and principals for the purpose of teacher and principal evaluation,’’ the proposed rules say.

While many educators and advocates support the administration’s push, there has been an outpouring of complaints as well, including in comments on the rules filed in recent days with the Department of Education.

“The proposed regulations are overly burdensome,’’ said Robert P. Grimesey, superintendent of Orange County Public Schools, a rural district in Virginia, in written comments. “They give the impression that stimulus funds provide the federal government with unbridled capacity to impose bureaucratic demands.’’

Much of the grumbling is from educators who say they supported Obama’s candidacy.

“I am a public school teacher who vehemently wanted to vote for a president who would save us from No Child Left Behind,’’ Diane Aoki of Kealakekua, Hawaii, wrote to the Department of Education.

But requiring a linking of test scores to teacher evaluations, Aoki said, means “the potential is there for the test frenzy to get worse than it is under No Child Left Behind.’’

Peter Cunningham, an Education Department spokesman, said, “There’s a healthy debate around this grand application, which is what we were hoping for.’’

“We’re mindful of all the criticisms about federal overreaching, about too much testing, of all the complaints about No Child Left Behind,’’ Cunningham said. “These complaints come up all the time in conversations about all our programs, not just this one, with education officials across the country. The context that No Child has generated is the context that we have to live with.’’

Not everyone is upset with the administration’s tactics.

“We like the way the administration is using Race to the Top to send a message about its priorities,’’ said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. “We like that it’s gotten states to take a close look at their laws and practices, and whether they continue to make sense.’’

Diane Ravitch, an education historian at New York University, disagreed. “The Department of Education should respect the requirements of federalism and look to states to offer their best ideas rather than mandating policies that the current administration likes,’’ Ravitch said in comments filed with the department.

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ACT scores show little to crow about

The new ACT scores are out, and they're, um, nothing to get excited about. Not even one-quarter of last year's test-taking seniors make the college-ready grade.

In a reprise of Tevye's memorable speech in "Fiddler On The Roof," ("on the other hand... ... but on the other hand...") there is a flip side to the blandness of the report. More students are taking the test, especially minority students. But with so few teenagers ready for college, there is still plenty to worry about.

ACT Inc. tries hard to make the exam a reflection of college expectations (note to K-12 systems: it kinda creates a problem when your high school curriculum doesn't do the same). Every few years, it surveys college professors and high school teachers to refine and update its concept of what kids should know and be able to do when they get diplomas.

Hmm. So if that is effective at ensuring that the ACT accurately reflects the input and expectations of higher ed, how do high schools get the message and adapt their curriculum and teaching? Isn't this what we need to start closing the college-readiness gap?

Jon Erickson, ACT's vice president of educational services, stopped by to see me yesterday morning, so I asked him that question. He said this is actually an area that ACT is working on. They're designing professional development that would help teachers align their teaching to the curriculum surveys.

A work in progress, worth watching.

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D.C. student scores show fluctuations
Schools' results improve overall

Forty D.C. elementary schools logged double-digit gains in pass rates on the citywide spring math exams. But 19 had double-digit losses. In reading, 26 elementary schools gained at least 10 points in pass rates on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System. Nineteen lost at least that much.

Such wide year-to-year, school-to-school fluctuations, found in a Washington Post analysis of 2009 test data the city released Friday, underscore anew that reform is a challenge not only for Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and the public charter school movement. It is also a challenge for principals who are seeking to instill a culture of student achievement in many schools where it has long been missing.

In July, the District reported a significant upward trend overall on the tests for elementary schools and, more modestly, for secondary schools in the 45,000-student school system.
Those results gave a snapshot of school performance two years into Rhee's tenure as she seeks to shake up the school system through a variety of measures, including school closures and mergers and the appointment of a cadre of new principals. She is also considering changes in how teachers are hired, evaluated and paid.

Scores also rose this year at public charter schools, which operate under independent management but receive taxpayer funding and serve about 25,000 students.

Exams are given in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school to satisfy the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.

Friday's data release offered details on the performance of nearly 200 individual schools, crucial to helping principals and teachers learn what worked on a given campus in the past school year and what did not.

"Anytime we have a group of kids who aren't on grade level, people need to take it seriously," said State Superintendent of Education Kerri L. Briggs. "The principals who got more children proficient -- great, they absolutely should celebrate. The principals who stayed the same or fell behind -- they've got more work to do."

Forty-eight schools (35 regular and 13 charter) made adequate yearly progress on test scores and other academic measures required under the federal law, Briggs reported. The rest fell short, with many facing federally mandated interventions to improve instruction.

Rhee was in Nashville for a conference and was unavailable for comment.

Among secondary schools, 15 had double-digit gains in pass rates in math, and 16 had such gains in reading, the Post analysis found. A handful had double-digit declines. Experts cautioned that major drops and gains could be attributed to such factors as school consolidations, changes in the student population and rules for testing special education students.

"Every educator knows that from year to year you can have swings," said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, based in the District. "The cohorts are often different. Every teacher knows that one class is not the same one year as the next. But given all the reforms that have gone on in D.C., and the speed of them, and the number of schools that were closed, it's perfectly plausible that you'd have swings in scores that you wouldn't otherwise have."

Some schools are showing steady progress.

At Reed Learning Center, an elementary school in Northwest Washington, pass rates have climbed to 69 percent in reading (up from 48 percent in 2007) and 74 percent in math (up from 30 percent in 2007). Principal Dayo Akinsheye attributed the math gains to the school's use of Japanese lesson study, a collaborative professional development process developed in Japan that teachers use to examine and improve their practice.

At D.C. Preparatory Academy's Edgewood Middle School campus in Northeast, reading and math scores also showed steady growth. Since 2006, reading pass rates at the charter school have risen 23 percentage points, to 65 percent; in math, 70 percent of students are now proficient, up 27 points.

Emily Lawson, the school's founder and chief executive, said the gains have been made as teachers have streamlined curriculum and interventions.

In addition, she said, teachers used a new tool this year: Every eight to 10 weeks, students took tests developed by the Achievement Network, a Boston-based nonprofit organization, to determine which standards they had mastered and which they had not. Teachers used the results to tailor their lessons to students' needs, Lawson said.

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Charter schools lag in serving the neediest
Disparity widens rift with districts

By James Vaznis
Globe Staff / August 12, 2009

Governor Deval Patrick has touted his proposed expansion of charter schools as a way to help students who face the greatest academic challenges, such as language barriers and disabilities. But a Globe analysis shows that charter schools in cities targeted by the proposal tend to enroll few special education students or English language learners.

That imbalance raises questions about how much expertise these schools can offer and about their efforts to recruit such students, whose academic needs are generally greater than those of other youngsters.

In Boston, which hosts a quarter of the state’s charter schools, English language learners represented less than 4 percent of students at all but one of the charter schools last year, although they make up nearly a fifth of the students in the school system. Collectively, the 16 Boston charter schools taught fewer than 100 students who lacked fluency in English; six schools enrolled none.

While Boston charter schools had a higher representation of special education students, more than half still lagged at least 6 percentage points below the school district’s average of 21 percent. In urban districts statewide, special education enrollment was 10 percent or lower at about a third of the charter schools.

The figures highlight a long, divisive debate about charter school success that has grown louder in recent weeks: Are many charter schools achieving dazzling MCAS scores because of innovative teaching or because they enroll fewer disadvantaged students?

Superintendents, school committees, and teachers unions have long accused charter schools of dodging a public duty to teach special education students and English language learners because those youngsters are more expensive to educate and could drag down MCAS scores. But charter schools say that local districts impede efforts to recruit more diverse applicants by refusing to provide mailing lists of district students, for fear that recruiters will instead go after the most gifted students.

Patrick, who filed legislation last month to double the number of charter seats in districts with the lowest MCAS scores, has urged new charter schools to create student bodies that better reflect the makeup of the area in which they are located, including enrolling students with a variety of learning needs.
Paul Reville, the state’s secretary of education, emphasized in an interview that the legislation would replicate only those charter schools, both here and across the country, that have a strong record with special education students, English language learners, or other disadvantaged groups, such as low-income students. He pointed out that charter schools have been successful in raising the achievement of low-income and minority students, who have generally been well represented at urban charter schools.

“We’re unapologetic about this emphasis,’’ Reville said. “Given the cost of adding charter schools at the time of a budget crisis, we need to make judicious use of charter providers and make sure they get to students with the greatest needs.’’

Charter school proponents, however, have been fighting the measure. Earlier this year, they lobbied against a more stringent proposal that would have established quotas for the percentage of special education and English language students at new charter schools, requiring their enrollment to exceed the district average for those populations.

Dominic Slowey, spokesman for the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, said records indicating a low number of special education students at charter schools do not provide an accurate picture. According to Slowey, a significant number of special education students eventually do so well at charter schools that they no longer need special help and therefore shed that designation on state enrollment reports.

But he expressed disappointment that charter schools have been unable to attract more immigrant students, despite aggressive recruitment by some schools.
At Excel Academy Charter, which opened in East Boston to serve the Latino community and has achieved high MCAS scores, leaders are baffled as to why their school has few English language learners. Although 70 percent of their students last year were Latino and half were not native English speakers, just eight students lacked fluency in English, according to state data.

“I think the school goes to great lengths to make recruitment efforts open to all families,’’ said Rebecca Cass, the school’s interim executive director. She said the school prints materials in English and Spanish, advertises in Spanish-language newspapers, and even goes door to door in immigrant-rich neighborhoods.

Created under the 1993 Education Reform Act, charter schools run under fewer regulatory restrictions, and nearly all run independently of school districts, enabling them to employ nonunion teachers. The freedom is supposed to foster innovative teaching. While many of the state’s 62 charter schools boast high MCAS scores or college-going rates, the state has shuttered a handful for poor performance. In June, it closed Uphams Corner Charter, where nearly a third of students required special education.

Through the years, charter schools and traditional schools have sparred over funding. Each student who departs for a charter school takes along several thousand dollars in state aid, which is allocated largely on a per-student basis. The district schools lose that funding.

Under Patrick’s bill, which the Legislature will consider this fall, new charter schools will have to set enrollment goals for the targeted student groups and develop a recruitment and retention plan to reach the desired numbers. Charter schools will have to justify to the state any unmet goals.

For their part, districts would be required to share the coveted student mailing lists.

“It’s a step in the right direction but not sufficient enough,’’ said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, whose membership preferred Patrick’s original call for quotas.

Some charter schools have emerged as standouts with disadvantaged student groups, Slowey said. At Community Day Charter Public School in Lawrence, for instance, a quarter of students were not fluent in English last year and 19 percent received special education services. The school, which opened to help children learn English, has achieved academic success.

“It’s absolutely essential that charters, like everyone else, face the challenge of educating English language learners and students with disabilities,’’ said John Mudd of Massachusetts Advocates for Children, a nonprofit that works on behalf of disadvantaged students.

“We as a society have to deal with all those students, and we can’t write them off. I think the charter system has to face more broadly the challenge of the neediest.’’

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Budget cuts squeeze early ed and care programs for homeless and teen parents

By Jim O'Sullivan/State House News Service

Wed Aug 19, 2009

Boston, Mass. - Thousands of homeless and teen parents will not be able to enroll their children in education and care services over the next year under budget cuts the Patrick administration handed down Monday night.

Children in homeless families whose parents do not qualify through the state's welfare program on the basis of work-related activities will not be allowed to enroll in Department of Early Education and Care after Sept. 1. Teen parents looking to find child care so they can return to school but do not meet state welfare criteria will lose access to vouchers on Oct. 1.

Current enrollees will not lose the benefits, officials said.

Starting last November, the state began restricting access to education and care services for income-eligible families. Then the program's account encountered a $25 million deficit for the current fiscal year, according to a letter Early Education and Care Commissioner Sherri Killins sent Monday night. The state spent $11 million last fiscal year to provide early education and care vouchers for families that did not meet eligibility standards, helping roughly 3,000 children, according to state and non-profit officials.

Killins encouraged colleagues to send homeless families to local Head Start organizations, and said the department would continue serving families who qualified for federal assistance funneled through state shelter programs.

Children of teen parents who drew services last fiscal year from a $3.4 million account, for those who did not qualify under Department of Transitional Assistance standards, would also be shut out. More than 800 teen parents enrolled in the program last year, Killins told the News Service.

In her letter, Killins said the agency decided on the service cut-offs after "reviewing a series of equally dismal options."

In a telephone interview, Killins said she was hopeful the state could backfill enrollment through attrition, and pointed out that an extensive waiting list had already lined up for the services.

"There's a large number of families who are income eligible that we are unable to serve at this point," she said.

Advocates said the cuts would throw up further obstacles to homeless families seeking to gain self-sufficiency. Many teen parents, advocates said, would likely be prevented from going back to school or opting to enroll in welfare programs.

"We're particularly concerned about the cuts right at this time, because this is the time that teen parents are looking for care so they can reenter school," said Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy.

"Those teens have really two choices at that point, and that's welfare or not returning to high school, and I think in the long term that's going to do a lot more damage than a savings of $3 million will do for us," Quinn said.

Killins said the department chose the October cutoff for teen parents specifically so they had time to enroll in the program before heading back to school.

Plummeting revenues have rocked state human service programs, forcing 30,000 legal immigrants off state-subsidized health-care rolls, pulling from AIDS prevention programs, and cutting back on emergency food assistance, while Beacon Hill has continued to chase elusive revenue benchmarks and pushed through a series of hefty tax increases.

The administration on Tuesday indicated it hoped to disburse $45 million in federal homelessness prevention funds. Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray said some of the money might be used for daycare vouchers for families at risk of losing their homes.

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