I was invited to write about the changes that the next mayor of New York City should. Make in the education system.
This is what I wrote.
I begin thus:
“My grandson starts second grade in a Brooklyn public school, so I hope to see real change in the city school system, not just for his sake but for the benefit of all the 1.1 million students.
“By real change, I mean a new vision for education. I mean a shift away from the failed policies of the past decade that have turned our public schools into testing factories.
“Today, our schools are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on testing and test preparation that should be spent instead on reducing class size, enriching the curriculum, and giving extra help to the students who need it.
“Polls show that only 1 in 4 New Yorkers think the schools have improved after a decade of heavy-handed testing and accountability. They are right.”
Meanwhile Chancellor Dennis Walcott has been speaking to business groups and penning opinion pieces warning that any deviation from the status quo of high-stakes testing, closing schools, and privatization would be a disaster.
Hopefully, a new mayor will bring fresh ideas.
The status quo of the past decade has left too many children behind, while destabilizing communities and demoralizing teachers.
It is time for a change.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sad that they consider Michelle Rhee an “expert” whose opinion should be valued. She is not in nor of New York, and by now people should know that she did not accomplish positive things either as a teacher in Baltimore nor as Chancellor in DC – Diane has a chapter that details all this in her new book which is officially out one week from tomorrow
Thanks to you, Diane, I believe we will see an end to the status quo soon.
It is kind of like the Asian “Saving Face” and what will I do if my free money and power is cut off. We need to say to them “Tough Luck” now go make a real living if you can. Isn’t that capitalism? Not what it is now everyone pays for the capitalists robbery but them. Bloomburg is a failure as is Daley, Emmanuel, Deasy, Rhee, Brill. They are jokers telling lies for money and power that is all. Kind of like here with the I-Pads. They say $500,000,000. Yet in the Jaime Aquino’s, asst. sup. of instruction at LAUSD formally from N.Y., Feb.12 power point which a kind commenter posted and I downloaded and analyzed on page 10 it shows a little over 31,000 students and teachers at this groups schools. It says $50 million. It does not divide as usual so you do not know the end game. Well, divide and it is now $1,592.71 each not $1,000 each or $500,000,000 which is a phony number anyway as it does not match teachers about 33,000 or enrollment or ADA. By the way if you take 550,000 students,ADA, and divide by 30/classroom you come up with 18,999. Where are the rest of the teachers? The district is also not talking about the replacement cost and where that money is coming from and they all forgot about the keyboards.
Do not let them blame the public for their stupidity and being bought and sold. Elect a good mayor who cares about the students of N.Y. the largest in the U.S. with aroung 1.1 million students. This is a societal necessity.
“It is kind of like the Asian “Saving Face””
It is, which is why we will never see an admission or recognition of error.
The people pushing this are simply too big to fail. Gates, Broad, Duncan et al don’t fail they ARE failed, by unions, by teachers, by parents, by students, by local leaders. They were so blindly promoted by media it becomes even harder to re-evaluate, because now media are invested in “success”.
Gates never renounced testing. He wrote an op ed where he blamed any failures on the local dummies who didn’t properly execute The Brilliant Idea. He actually used my state as an example. “We” got it wrong. He was right.
The best we can hope for is a gradual, face-saving series of “mid course corrections” driven by public school teachers, principals and parents. But that’s achievable, and it’s enough.
I was please to see your Op-Ed at the top of the list. But disappointed that Michelle Rhee is still viewed an education expert.
Rhee is only viewed by reformers as an “expert.” She’s getting angry and wants to hold public forums to redefine her image. Her ability to control the limelight is in decline. That’s what happens as her narcissism and lies are exposed.
Sad they did not ask Sy Fliegel. He knows a great deal about what needs to be done.
Sad that no one mentioned the elite quasi private “magnet” schools that use admissions tests. But I understand these are quasi private schools are acceptable to the anti-improvement folks.
Too bad that no one mentioned the wonderful space sharing going on at Julia Richman complex – great combination of public schools and social service agencies.
The Julia Richman complex contains no privately managed charter schools, only public schools.
It contains a variety of public schools and other organizations. That’s co-location.
Charter public schools are accountable to the state, just like district public schools.
Can you explain what you mean by “enrich the curriculum”?
Yes. Enrich the curriculum means ensuring that all children have regular and frequent instruction in the arts, history, literature, civics, science, geography, math, physical education, and foreign languages.
Yes we need changes!
I would love to see moratorium on all standardized testing and using that money to develop smaller classes, more reading teachers, and workshops for parent and caregivers explaining to them how they can support their child’s education.
Thirty four years of teaching reinforces the fact that teachers can not teach reading with their entire class as a whole; they need to individualize their teaching by teaching groups. There are three major groups: the advanced, the on-level, and the At Risk. The At Risk could have as many levels as there are students in that group.
Research has shown that we need to teach children on their instructional level. This is where a reading specialist is needed to give extra support to the At Risk children. Standardized tests do not/can not provide instructional level information.
There must be flexibility among the groups: when individuals progress faster that their group they should be placed in the next group. The reading gap will keep getting wider if we don’t group according to ability when teaching reading. ( Reseeach shows that we need to maintain the heterogeneous classroom- homogeneous classrooms is not the answer.) Some people will never be able to run a 4-min. mile or play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. However, educators must create an environment that is based upon every child’s instructional level, where children feel safe enough to learn with all the mistakes that are part of learning, where they can achieve and feel good about themselves. This will not happen to children who, for a variety of reasons, are competing against more advanced peers or have that monster standardized test looming over them.
Who says we all have to be Beethovens anyway? Common Core’s approach is ludicrous.
Secondly we need to get rid of any program that is anchored in phonics. Reid Lyon’s phonetic program must go. Research on Reading First proves that with the Reading First Impact Final Report. Use the money set aside for testing to support the Reading Recovery Program – a one to one intervention program for the emergent reader until they can function with the on-level group. Otherwise use the Arkansas Literacy Intervention Program – very balanced programs which engages the three-prong cueing system: graphophonics, semantics, and syntax and teaches strategies at the same time which develop higher order thinking skills. Irere Fountas and Gay Sue Pinnell’s Literacy Coloborative Program also utilizes the three-prong cueing system approach.
The Standardized tests are demoralizing for the students, parents and the teachers. Why put fear and trepidation into the hearts of accomplished teachers and force them to place aside the joy of teaching and learning to the drudgery of teaching to a test. And all the money wasted on standardized testing! How can our nation permit such injustice! So appalled at such callousness! It is criminal – robbing children of their self-esteem, of their self-worth. One test, furthermore, can not validate all the learning that transpired in a year’s work.
Think of all the teaching time that has been lost preparing for this asinine test! Think of all the pressure and frustration we needlessly subject our children, parents and teachers to.
Goodlad states that we need to go beyond quantitative appraisals to qualitative appraisals of what goes on in schools. For Goodlad how a student spends precious time in school and how he/she feels about what goes on there is of much greater significance than how he/she scores on a standardized achievement test.
As regards high grades, Goodlad states that we do not know what high grades mean. They do not predict compassion, good work habits, nor vocational success, not social success, nor happiness. He argues against a set of topics constituting the core but is for a common set of concepts, principles and ways of thinking.
These standardized tests can’t evaluate complex thought, can’t avoid cultural bias, can’t measure non-verbal learning, can’t predict anything of consequence (and “waste boatloads of money”). “Standardized minds are about as far out of sync with deep-seated American values as it’s possible to get,” as one educator stated.
Our education system is going through Dark Age; how can we ever regain what we are losing?!
Governor Cuomo’s call for “death penalty” for schools with low test scores tells us how uninformed our governor is about what true education is all about. Governor Cuomo calls for ‘death penalty’ for schools with low test scores will only cause more anguish and hardships leaving true learning in the dust.
Mary: You are correct about the Reading First scam. Here’s some background –
UT-System “researchers” can’t get kickbacks on Reading Recovery so they created phonics driven nonsense and called it the Texas Reading Initiative and repackaged it as Reading First for GWB’s political purposes. Their aim was to take their phonics lessons from Texas to the national level by generating fear about literacy levels to generate more money for themselves and their favored vendors.
You’ve named Lyon. I’ll add these names: Barbara Foorman, Susan Landry, Jack Fletcher, David Francis, Beth Ann Bryan (Wireless Generation lobbyist and friend of Spellings and Landry), Sandy Kress (Wireless Generation lobbyist and NCLB architect), and Larry Berger (CEO, Wireless Generation). Of course, Rupert Murdoch now owns Wireless Generation/Amplify.
You are on the right track, but the details are beyond this post. They worked together to undermine Reading Recovery. That’s proven –
They used the word “science” over and over with Lyon as the reading bully and gate keeper of NIH funds without disclosure of conflicts with favored vendors. They wrote their own self-reports and “research” – no disclosure.
From the mid 1990s, documents show that the UT-System was focused on commercializing “intellectual property” with federal and state grants that were funneled over from the Texas Education Agency and the US Department of Education.
One of the initial commercial scams, was the Texas Primary Reading Instrument – TPRI). The handheld or computer version is available from Wireless Generation. Of course, Murdoch sees these assessment devices as cash cows with unending education contracts from local, state and federal sources.
As a result of commercializing their bogus tax funded research, the UT-System, TEA, individuals and departments receive “royalties” funneled to UTHSC-H now known as UT Health from Wireless Generation and other vendors. UTHSC-H distributes the royalties without disclosure of conflicts of interest to TEA, UT Houston, individuals and UTHSC-H departments. Of course, UTHSC-H gets a cut.
As a former Gov. Bush insider, Spellings had a critical role. As USDOE Secretary, the position gave her the power needed to cover for her friends who were involved in the Reading First and Early Reading First phonics boondoggle, fake curriculum, progress monitoring scam and surface level OIG investigations. Like Rhee’s scandal with DC cheating, the Reading First investigations were a whitewash.
Countless teachers across American have been forced to monitor students “literacy progress” and waste valuable learning time for the purpose of bogus NCLB Reading First.
To reformers through back room deals, children and teachers are worth lucrative corporate licenses. Again, there’s ZERO disclosure of kickbacks or royalties unless open records are filed in Texas and other states. Whistleblowers have tried to move forward and have been shut down.
Actually, some of us who are “reformers” have worked very hard to put the decisions at the local school level about how to spend $. This is part of the charter public school idea – giving people at the local school the power to decide what curriculum and text materials and technology they will use.
Empowering educators at the local school level is one of the central ideas of the charter public school movement. One of the most encouraging things to me about this movement is the # of veteran educators who have moved into charters as teacher and school leaders – because they do want their opinions respected.
I’d like to see all public schools have those freedoms so long as they are willing to be responsible for improving achievement.
Nice thoughts but I would be more specific.
Free universal quality pre-K is mandatory for school readiness which research has shown over and over works. Significantly reduced early elementary school class sizes (15-18) so that the gains shown by pre-K don’t evaporate during K-3. Dump the one size fits all academic curriculum which doesn’t work for many students, who should be allowed a choice between academic or career-technical (with internships) curricula. Offer summer employment for all HS students passing classes. Raise standards in teacher colleges, but get out the micro-managing in the classroom and let teachers be the professionals they are. Lower state tuition fees for instate students (like much of Europe) so the current 1.2 trillion dollar in student loans doesn’t become the next sub-prime mortgage fiasco. More or less testing won’t make any difference although the former just produces more stress. The type of curriculum won’t make any difference as long as its reasonable.
Something like this I suppose.
“Today, our schools are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on testing and test preparation that should be spent instead on reducing class size, enriching the curriculum, and giving extra help to the students who need it.”
Let me just focus on class sizes. Does *any* candidate for mayor in NYC have a plan to reduce class sizes? That’s a rhetorical question and the answer is no, unless I’m overlooking something, in which case I’d appreciate the information.
Not only have I not seen any candidate with a plan to reduce class sizes, but I also haven’t heard anyone complaining about the lack of serious attention to this issue — not the NYC papers, the UFT, the education bloggers, or even the commenters on the education blogs. I hear a lot of discussion about retroactive raises, teacher evaluations, and pre-K. But nothing about what class sizes should be and what we need to do to make that happen. I don’t know what else to conclude other than one of the following: (1) we really don’t care about class sizes in the first place; or (2) we care about class sizes but we don’t think it’s politically or financially possible to lower them substantially. It’s very disheartening.
FLERP, I can express my views based on research regardless of what politicians say or do. The legislature appropriated hundreds of millions for class size reduction in NYC but the Bloomberg administration used it for other purposes.
dianerav: A great way of answering the inane “you can’t solve an education problem by throwing money at it.”
You have a zero chance of solving any education difficulty when you take the money earmarked for a critically useful purpose (e.g., “class size reduction”) and waste it on high-stakes standardized testing and high-priced consultants and the like. It’s a sucker punch argument, well understood by Marx:
“A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”
er, Groucho.
🙂
KrazyTA: this is a very, very complicated issue, but it’s not nearly as simple as Bloomberg misdirecting money earmarked for class size reductions. NY state funding to NYC schools collapsed in the late 2000s, and NYC picked up all the slack (while the city’s pension costs were also blowing up into the multi-billion dollar range). The money that NY state gave to NYC for class size reduction goals was far less than the money it took away.
Pension costs did not blow up by themselves. Bloomberg made unsustainable promises. Fred Siegel writes today in the NY Post: “The new occupant of Gracie Mansion will inherit a city debt that doubled under Bloomberg, in part because city spending grew 55 percent on his watch while pension costs have grown by more than 300 percent. This means that the city now spends nearly six-and-a-half billion dollars a year just on debt service. In what has been one of the great – though little discussed – public policy failures in American urban history, Bloomberg spent an additional thirty billion dollars on education over the course of his three terms to scant academic effect.”
I tend to agree, although Giuliani did his part, as did the NY legislature, a couple governors, and of course the UFT. I’d quibble with the word “unsustainable,” because the promises will in all likelihood be sustained. They’re just not sustainable without cutting services or dramatically raising taxes.
Careful, though — saying that Bloomberg (or any other city or state politician) made “unsustainable promises” on pensions is heresy among you core readership. You might have to walk this one back a bit.
Diane, I’m not trying to play “gotcha.” Obviously you are free to express your views about what the next mayor should do, and it’s nice to see class size reductions on your list. What I’m saying is that I am very disheartened by the general lack of interest in the candidates’ failure to take class size seriously. “It’s Bloomberg’s fault” does not make me feel any better about it.
Maybe reducing class size could come with a school day that includes half the school from 7:30 to 2:30 and the other half from 11:30 to 5:30, with teachers having the option of working more for more pay. Something creative like that. Then your for profit places can run child care on the off hours (or non profits like YMCA) and it doesn’t demean the teaching profession but people wanting to make money on child care still can and the public schools can be given back some of the sanctity they used to have. TFA can run the before and after school hours parts and University trained teachers can work in the public schools. Then those wanting to change trajectories still can.
We need ideas like these to build bridges. And reduce class size.
Responding to Joanna Best’s idea of double session days.
Teachers and students alike need time to recoup. Five hours of class is exhausting. Teachers need time to plan and organize. The students need their school hours to be complemented with other activities such as sports, dancing, music, family activities, reading, a little homework and just plain free time- unorganized play time to do what their spirit moves them to do.
The day begins hours before school is in session. 7:30 AM could mean rolling out of bed at 5:30 AM for some. By 11:30 the most valuable learning time is used up before the school session even begins. 5:30 for dismissal could mean dismissing in darkness- too dangerous.
Mary: of course I mean it would be staggered for teachers with plan time. Many teachers already give up a plan time to pick up an extra AP course (they choose to do that and are compensated). Also, many elementary kids already stay at school until 6:00 with After care and older kids with sports and clubs.
It will take creativity to work large classes back into smaller ones (as a start). Also if there is a way to utilize motivated people who are not University trained (but not while wiping out the profession of teaching, there should be).
And now, to add further injury to the students, the NY DOE has requested a waiver to allow them to eliminate HS librarians – This administration is beyond the pale. Thank you for pointing out that so much money has been spent but not in ways that reduce class size or enrich the learning experience of students.
Your terrific column mentions a career ladder for administrators and principals. RIGHT ON.
This would end the current practice of schools being run by unqualified principals and aps, who never taught a day in their lives. If such a system were in effect for chancellors we would be spared such incompetents as Klein and Walcott. (If such a system were in effect in DC, Rhee would be an unknown.)
We hear and read volumes of material about incompetent teachers (and how to fire them), while the real problem in NYC lies in the large number of inept administrators. If you had qualified pro-teacher administrators in inner city schools, staff members would not want to leave in droves. I have taught over the years in some of the most difficult schools in NYC with some of the hardest to educate students in the nation. Yet, the main problems in the building were not the students but the administrators.
Diane, I sincerely hope your new book is more convincing than this piece. You are the only person from the anti-reform camp with any chance of changing the reformers’ minds. If your book is, in fact, not more convincing than this, the reform agenda will not be threatened and surely will not change. Your voice is important, but you need to fashion more compelling points if you hope to change minds.
Paul Hoss, what would you say in 500 words?
I’ll work on it.
Paul, parents listen to their children. Parents’ minds have changed related to misguided reforms and high-stakes tests. Parents are on top of the reformers’ propaganda in every state and are acting. It’s not about changing the reformers minds. It’s about the truth.
This does not have to do with NYC specifically, but it does have to do with status quo.
The testing frenzy revolves around very little oral tradition of learning. I think there used to be a more certain and specific “lore” that comprised Western history and approach to American education. Trained teachers, I imagine, were well-versed in the lore upon which everything was based. And then over time the lore was revealed to be biased towards whites, males, Christians, etc and it began to fall by the wayside and has never been replaced, really.
So now we are reliant on measurable objectives to prove achievement or mastery of material, whereas before being educated allowed for more sense of nuance than anything measurable on a standardized test.
Music, because it is understood aurally, and is limited in scope by the discovery of what works well within certain cultures (it builds on previous tradition) is still not measurable in a bubble test (albeit certain aspects of it can be, like theory) but music in practice cannot. So of we take cues from music, it seems the country is at a loss for an oral tradition of lore upon which our understanding of the world is based. This is why religious schools appeal to folks—the lore is defined.
So we must find what that new lore is. Right now our lore revolves around the material success of the computer age. And many of us are not satisfied with that as a defining lore. I have always imagined our lore to be based on our rich diversity and within states on the specific lore therein (which revolves around industry, geography, climate, indigenous animals, history, architecture). This is why CCSS do not appeal to me. The richness of lore dies with it.
What will be our lore? We must answer that question in order to grow beyond the standardization movement.
Then perhaps the big dollar guys who have pushed CCSS can see themselves as a stepping stone to defining our lore in the 21st Century. And the face save will have occurred.