The New York Annenberg Institute for School Reform compiled. Shocking report on the Bloomberg administration’s policy of dumping “over-the-counter” students into struggling schools or schools already set for closure. This as a terrible disservice to the students. For the already struggling schools, it was like throwing a concrete weight to a drowning man. Instead of support, the schools got the neediest students. It was a charade. Neither the students nor the schools got the help they needed. Was there no one at Tweed with a conscience? Or was it all a cynical numbers game, with students as the victims?
Here is the New York Post story, written by the fine reporter Yoav Gonen:
METRO NEW YORK POST
Dept. of Ed. ‘dumping’ tough students in struggling schools
By Yoav Gonen
October 10, 2013 | 3:56am
The city Department of Education has been harming rather than helping poor-performing public schools by assigning them many of the most challenging kids, according to a new analysis of enrollment data.
The study by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, relying on data secured from the city by The Post, is the first to confirm complaints that struggling schools have been unfairly burdened with high-needs kids who enroll in the school system late.
The students who don’t participate in the regular high-school selection process — known as “over the counter,” or OTC, students — are likelier to be new immigrants, have special needs, be homeless or have a prior history of behavioral issues.
Yet the DOE knowingly assigned huge numbers of them to dozens of schools that were either already being shuttered for poor performance or that were subsequently approved for closure, the study found.
“Compelling evidence suggests that the DOE’s inequitable assignment of OTC students to struggling high schools reduces the opportunities for success for both the students and their schools,” said Norm Fruchter, an Annenberg associate and one of the study’s authors.
At Sheepshead Bay HS in Brooklyn, the percentage of OTC kids assigned each year grew from 18 percent in 2008 to 25 percent in 2011 — well above the average for large high schools. After the school’s performance began to suffer, it was approved for closure earlier this year.
In The Bronx, Christopher Columbus HS took in between 32 and 40 percent of its population over the counter each year from 2008 to 2010. Despite being approved for closure in 2011, it was still assigned 37 percent of its enrollment through OTC placements that year.
“We reconfigured our academic and support programs to meet the needs of our very sizable annual percentage of OTC students,” said Christine Rowland, a teacher at Columbus.
“But without sufficient resources, the burden on the school staff was enormous.”
DOE officials said that during the annual spring-enrollment process, the best high schools “tend to have the fewest seats available for students who enroll on the first day or midyear.”
Yet it wasn’t until state education officials expressed concern about the over-concentration of high-needs kids in struggling schools that the DOE began setting aside additional seats in the best schools last year.
Thanks for covering AISR’s new report! To get a hold of the document please visit http://bit.ly/1hEzS3I to download both the executive summary and full report. Thanks again.
This is one of the primary tactics they’ve been using for years, and they’ve been largely successful: neighborhood high schools have been almost completely destroyed in NYC, middle/intermediate schools likewise, and they have their eyes on the elementary schools.
Where were these reporters and editors 10 years ago, when this social vandalism began?
Oh, that’s right, they were providing all manner of verbal fellations to Bloomberg and Klein.
It’s great that someone is finally admitting that reform harms existing public schools.
I think it’s borderline criminal that these schools and these kids weren’t taken into account when all the Grand Plans were made. Was there any consideration at all given to the effect of reform on PUBLIC schools? Is it now, finally, time to look at that?
This is what happens when one puts “agnostics” in charge of school systems. Public schools end up without advocates in government, abandoned.
Chiara…not borderline criminal. It is criminal. Brown v. Bd.of Ed is still the law of the land. This treatment is not even separate but equal. These students sadly are always in the purview of the’deciders’ who use them for numbers as in ADA, but put them in school venues to perpetually fail.
It’s especially great that the Annenberg institute is actively framing research questions. I ad thought we had lost them, and was sorry to see that.
Here’s the link:
http://annenberginstitute.org/news/2013/10/10/research-reveals-late-enrolling-new-york-city-students-disproportionately-assigned-s
I have seen worse.
Once the teachers union gave up their rights in their contract to do indoor air quality testing in schools, schools began appearing on known toxic sites and zoning laws that protected schools were changed. I was in one.
LAUSD in their mighty wisdom,. built a $350 Million dollar High School on a toxic dump site. So who got the payoffs for that decision?
Thanks Ellen
George Buzzetti has also been a champion on this issue.
We need to empower teachers and children to bring air quality canisters into the schools. j.mugivan@yahoo.com
If you want to prove that public education is failing, be sure to set things up so that it can do nothing but fail. I want to see the Harlem success Academy volunteer to take in 25% of OTC kids as a gesture of good will and to demonstrate that their abusive “no excuses” culture works for the neediest children.
Good point, Michael. Now that the Bloomberg is on his way out, the press decides to report on his underhanded tactics to destroy public schools. But let’s not forget, he is not done yet. As the NY Daily News reported and Diane posted, our billionaire boss wants to do away with the last of the zoned high schools. I have the misfortune to be in the middle of the process of “choosing” a high school for my 8th grade daughter. It is as time consuming as a part time job – (1) which schools does she have the grades to apply to (2) which schools require interviews, tests, portfolios, and/or auditions (3) which schools require a tour or open house visit (4) which Manhattan schools accept Brooklyn kids (4) when do you find the time to (a) research this (b) actually visit all these “choice” schools? The high school application gives you the opportunity to list 12 schools – if you can find 12 that are suitable. But guess what?! All the “choice” schools are extremely competitive because everyone is trying to get into the same schools! The amount of stress on a 8th grader, and their families is tremendous.
I grew up in NYC. I walked to my high school, the same one both my parents and my brothers and sisters attended. It was a big traditional high school with a football, baseball and basketball team. We had art, music and drama. Yes, NYC had the specialized schools and some kids took those tests or went on auditions but it is nothing like today. Most kids went to their zoned high schools because they offered a wide variety of options within one building. We are in hyper-competitive mode now because we know that if we don’t get our kids into a choice school – there is no alternative, there is no zoned school for our district.
The reason we have the “failing” schools is because the challenging students, the ones who need extra help and support, are warehoused. After all the kids are stacked and sorted, after all the choice schools are filled up with high achieving kids, the struggling students are left with nothing.
The answer – BRING BACK THE NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL. Every school should have art, music, drama, and sports. Some of the students attending these schools will be high achieving and need to be challenged with higher level classes, some will fall in the middle and be satisfied with their classes and some will need extra help and support. Students should not have to travel an hour on the subway to have access to these things.
You were fortunate in the NYC neighborhood you grew up in, but for many others, the system was similar long ago in NYC as what you are seeing today in your area under ed reform. In the late ’70’s I watched my single-mom roommate go thro the same horror show multiple times for her 2 kids, trying to find the right hs fit on the upper WS. By the time I was raising kids in a nice Bklyn nbhd in the late ’80’s, the zone schools were already dumping grounds for those who couldn’t make it anywhere else, & friends w/smart kids sent them alone at 14 on long long subway rides to the schools of their choice. It seems in the long run, ‘school choice’ even when under the aegis of public magnets ultimately brings us to the same place.
More on our latest billionaire benefactors, the folks who loaned 10 million to Head Start:
“The majority of the foundation’s 2011 grants, according to the most recent 990 tax form available, went to education, including $7 million for StudentsFirst Institute, $6 million for YES Prep Public Schools, $5 million for Teach for America Inc. (plus an additional $1.1 million for Teach for America Houston), $1.6 million for the D.C. Public Education Fund, $1.1 million to the KIPP Foundation, and $2.5 million for the New Teacher Project.”
I know there are a lot of ordinary people who support public education, but damn these reformers have a lot of money.
This is not going to be easy, hanging on to our local public schools. Lotta money behind “reform”. Just piles of it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/who-are-head-starts-angel-investors/2013/10/11/b68e15f4-2f9c-11e3-8906-3daa2bcde110_story.html
It may take a week, it may take longer
they got the gun$ – but we got the numbers
gonna win yeah, we’re takin over
come on
J. Morrison
Yes…why are they writing on this now? This started over ten years ago. Obviously, they were scared shitless of Bloomturd, or were looking for favors.
These policies were cynically racist, class -warring crimes against the neediest young people in this city-all to destroy the public school system, and it’s staff. Bloomturd should be prosecuted, then flushed…
Tsk,tsk Jd. I wish your language was more decorous. I could easily go with “scared shitless” (my Daddy was a combat infantry sergeant, and my native language is calm and reasoned expletive-laced discourse). I’m uncomfortable quoting a sentence where you’ve defaced a person’s name, though.
But, damn, you just wrote something true and concise. Annenberg is publishing this now to curry early favor with the new administration! I hadn’t made the connection.
So sad, I agree, bring back out local neighborhood schools. We won’t have the community, the kids, parents, teachers together any more and this disassociation really affects the educational experience. Its not fun anymore when your school has 2 or 3 other schools in it and all of them have different names and administrators. There is no school spirit and identification. I hate how they are dividing all the high schools into separate schools when small learning communities within the larger schools were working in Los Angeles. Yes, school is a place for learning but why can’t learning be fun? Right now in education, we have a hostile working environment, for students and staff.
Bloomberg is making Anthony Wiener look good.
Despicable.
Edweek has closed the comments on Bridging Differences!
On this very topic, Petrilli wrote a column today defending policies that “dump” the vast majority of inferior, undeserving needy students. He calls on today’s reformers to establish a mercilessly demanding environment like the one that once allowed a few exceptional, highly motivated and “deserving” negro students a straight and narrow path upward:
“Though relegated to second-class status and stifled at every turn, Dunbar produced a coterie of graduates that the most elite schools in the country would envy. Doctors, lawyers, Ivy League professors, generals, and titans of business all graced and were graced by Dunbar’s faculty and community.”
After waxing nostalgic for the Golden Age of segregation, Petrilli actually wrote these words:
“And this, of course, was in the Jim Crow era.
Dunbar later became a regular, de-tracked, “comprehensive” high school–and started its long slide. Would anyone argue that Washington, D.C., is better off as a result?”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2013/10/the_especially_deserving_poor.html
I just want to say, with all my heart, yes. Please consider all that rose up, among the generations of “undeserving” poor children who gained access to our public schools. I want to say, a promise has been made that can’t be called back.
Anthony Cody has written a column in response, “Social Darwinism in the Gilded Age”
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/10/social_darwinism_resurrected_f.html
Comments have been closed on Cody’s blog, also! Diane, please link his column, and write about this where we can discuss it.
I’m double posting because I accidentally included two links. i want to get this out there, because the comment system on edweek is bugged out this weekend, and people can’t engage it there.
On this very topic, Petrilli wrote a column today defending policies that “dump” the vast majority of inferior, undeserving needy students. He calls on today’s reformers to establish a mercilessly demanding environment like the one that once allowed a few exceptional, highly motivated and “deserving” negro students a straight and narrow path upward:
“Though relegated to second-class status and stifled at every turn, Dunbar produced a coterie of graduates that the most elite schools in the country would envy. Doctors, lawyers, Ivy League professors, generals, and titans of business all graced and were graced by Dunbar’s faculty and community.”
After waxing nostalgic for the Golden Age of segregation, Petrilli actually wrote these words:
“And this, of course, was in the Jim Crow era.
Dunbar later became a regular, de-tracked, “comprehensive” high school–and started its long slide. Would anyone argue that Washington, D.C., is better off as a result?”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2013/10/the_especially_deserving_poor.html
I just want to say, with all my heart, yes. Please consider all that rose up, among the generations of “undeserving” poor children who gained access to our public schools. I want to say, a promise has been made that can’t be called back.
“On this very topic, Petrilli wrote a column today defending policies that “dump” the vast majority of inferior, undeserving needy students. He calls on today’s reformers to establish a mercilessly demanding environment like the one that once allowed a few exceptional, highly motivated and “deserving” negro students a straight and narrow path upward:”
He’s not addressing the issue of what this “dumping” method does to public schools.
While it’s great they’re admitting the plan was to “dump” students they don’t want into public schools in disproportionate numbers, MOST children attend public schools.
What happens to public schools under ed reform? That’s the question. Petrilli can sell charters all he wants. Most children go to public schools, not charters.
The public was sold on ed reform because they were told public schools would improve.
If ed reform harms public schools, ed reformers not only failed, they’re actively harming the majority of children.
I have to say, I’m continually amazed at this aspect of ed reform. It’s as if public school kids simply don’t exist. All analysis stops at charter schools. Where are the kids that charter schools dump going? What effect does that have on existing public schools?
That they never address this is shocking to me, as a public school parent. My kid and his school has just been sacrificed to the reform agenda? When did I agree to that deal?
Anthony Cody has written a column in response to Petrilli, “Social Darwinism in the Gilded Age”
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/10/social_darwinism_resurrected_f.html
Comments are closed down on Cody’s blog, also.
Diane, please link his column, and write about this where we can discuss it, especially in light of this “dumping” study.
chemtchr: is the next step being openly nostalgic for the “segregation academies” of not-so-long-ago openly die-hard racists because they were all about “choice” and “parental preferences”?
I fear that the answer for many “education rheephormers” will be an unapologetic “yes!”
What a sad but destructive bunch…
😦
The GED high school equivalency exam has traditionally been a reasonable option for struggling students, drop-outs, and immigrants. About one third of the students who pass it go on to college. Just read an article in today’s NY Times regarding changes in the GED exam. As of January it will be a new more rigorous and challenging exam aligned with the . . . you guessed it – aligned with the Common Core!
Today’s New York Times: “Randy Trask, president of GED Testing Service, said the price increase, raising the cost of the test to $120, would cover services like same-day scoring and detailed exam reports for students…So far, 40 states plan to offer the new G.E.D. test in January, while seven states are transitioning to the Educational Testing Service exam. New York and Indiana have selected McGraw Hill…New tests in math will add more advanced algebra, while reading and writing tests will assess higher-order critical thinking skills.”
Book companies are making a fortune off of testing and now are making money off students who are academically struggling. Why do these students need testing in advanced algebra? This is to guarantee few will pass.
Disgusting.
And Coleman is about to align SAT and ACT test to his Corrupt to the Core empire.
Speaking of dumping, I’m glad New York City is finally dumping Bloomberg, if even by default of the electoral system.
“Dump” is such a great word to describe such a massive piece of garbage . . . .
So smelly and putrid . . . May the flies all lay their eggs in him.
If you can divide the neighborhood with “school choice” then you can divide the community politically.The school was the strongest political entity when all in the neighborhood attended.
The funding of students labeled “learning disabled” in the early years is yet another subdivision.