This reader echoes a frequent complaint expressed by parents in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg’s choice program gives choice to schools, not students. Sometimes one wonders if he is literally aiming to drive middle-class parents out of the school system and into charters, which will rescue their children from schools that the Tweed gang neglected.
The reader explains her frustration:
“There is No School Choice – Disenfranchising Children and Parents in District 15
School choice is a hallmark of the Department of Education under the Bloomberg/Tweed regime in New York City. But last week with the arrival of middle school placement letters in District 15, Brooklyn, it was made painfully clear to everyone, the choice is not ours, but theirs. My son, along with other boys from our high achieving elementary school was placed in a school that nobody chose. He was placed in a school where only 24% of the students read at grade level, in DOE parlance, a failing school. It is also a school without a rich curriculum of art and music. It is a school that has been forced to share space with other schools including the most recent encroachment of the Eva Moskowitz’s Success Charter Chain. Other students from across the district met the same fate. Boys from one successful elementary school were placed in a middle school where 17% of the children read at grade level and whose mission is to serve at risk children – exactly not the child now being sent there. Does this sound like choice by anyone’s definition?
What does the newly appointed 27-year-old Chief Operating Officer of the DOE do to earn his $202,000 salary? Are we to believe this is all the result of incompetence on the part of Tweed or is it something worse – deliberate mismanagement? One would think that they were intent on driving away families. Indeed, some families of means have already jumped ship. There are plenty of private schools if you have the money.
There is a huge disparity between schools in the district. Some are more desirable than others for good reason – some have a comprehensive curriculum of art, music, dance; others offer little in the way of arts. Some have reputations of being safe, others for violence and bullying. These are not the schools where parents want to send their children. To be clear – I believe that all children deserve to go to safe schools where there is a comprehensive arts program. And I would hope that no child in any school would be bullied or intimidated, but sadly we know that is not the case.
Children who come from crime-ridden neighborhoods and from families that suffer under the stresses of poverty, racism and discrimination, tend to need extra support, a fact that Tweed has yet to comprehend. They have yet to figure out that all this sorting and stacking of children has not improved schools, that we should not relegate low achieving students to one school and high achieving ones to another. Undoubtedly it would be better to have a mix of students with varying skills in a well-funded school with a comprehensive curriculum and a supported staff. This would go a long way towards bringing up those precious test scores. But perhaps it is a deeper problem. Are there too many children living in poverty? Too many children feeling the impact of discrimination and racism? Too many problems that the Tweed is ill-equipped to deal with and therefore chooses to ignore?
The dearth of successful schools for all children is a failure of leadership, vision and planning on the part of the men and women who run the New York City Department of Education. However, in this age of accountability, I suppose all the blame lies with the one man who has had twelve years to right all that was wrong with the system, Michael Bloomberg.
No achievement gap has been closed. No high level of proficiency for all students has been reached. How can it be that 12 years into Bloomberg’s reform agenda we still have schools in which a mere 20% of students can read at grade level? And now we know the Bloomberg administration doesn’t know how to count. In one popular middle school 1,300 students applied for 320 seats, at another smaller school, 1,000 applied for 180 seats. Clearly we need more middle school seats in the district. This situation did not develop overnight. Bloomberg and his minions at Tweed had years to develop new schools or to expand existing successful elementary schools. And no, the two new charter schools in the district are not the answer.
Parents have been left out of this process as they are left out of all decisions Tweed makes on behalf of our children. They unilaterally decided to forgo matching students with suitable placements without bothering to consult the parents. We do not even know how this arduous process for ten-year olds works. It began way back in October with middle school fairs, open houses and tours that many of us took time off from work to attend. Neighborhood middle schools no longer exist; students must apply to district schools. The application process for these choice middle schools also involves interviews and tests. Focus on fourth and fifth grade report cards is intense. Scores of 3 or 4 on the Pearson standardized tests is a pre-requisite for one of the selective schools. We fill out an application and list schools in order of preference. And then we wait months for results. This year some students got their first choice, some got their second or third and some got none of their choices. No rhyme or reason, and certainly no explanation. This should be a transparent process.
Our public school system has been mangled under the reign of Bloomberg leaving behind many children from all neighborhoods across district 15, and the rest of the city. Children and their families who did everything they are supposed to do and were kept in line with the promise of gaining entry to a “good” school were left behind. And the children who attend those “failing” schools were left behind. We need to organize and make Tweed accountable to us. But how does that happen? Walcott puts in appearances from time to time for photo ops, Polakow-Suransky attends town hall meetings and forums when forced to, but how does a parent actually get to speak to someone in charge at Tweed? I would like them to explain to me how schools under their leadership are improving the education of my child, or anyone’s child.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The name “Tweed” rings a bell. Ironic that this name is associated with the 21st century vanguard of privatization as was the other young Tweed a century and a half ago:
Wikipedia:
Tweed became a member of the Odd Fellows and the Masons, and joined a volunteer fire company, Engine No. 12.[5] In 1848, at the invitation of state assemblyman John J. Reilly, he and some friends organized the Americus Fire Company No. 6, also known as the “Big Six”, as a volunteer fire company, which took as its symbol a snarling red Bengal tiger, a symbol which remained associated with Tweed and Tammany Hall for many years.[5] At the time, volunteer fire companies competed vigorously with each other; some were connected with street gangs and had strong ethnic ties to various immigrant communities. The competition could be so fierce that buildings would sometimes burn down while the fire companies fought each other.[7] Tweed became known for his ax-wielding violence, and was soon elected the Big Six foreman. Pressure from Alfred Carlson, the chief engineer, got him thrown out of the crew, but fire companies were also recruiting grounds for political parties at the time, and Tweed’s exploits came to the attention of the Democratic politicians who ran the Seventh Ward, who put him up for Alderman in 1850, when Tweed was 26.
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So much for mayoral control. Time to get city councils all over the U.S. to take them back and kick out the 5 week wonders and weekend supers. The long-term cost of allowing this nonsense too continue will be too great. Time to end it now!
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To the parent who wrote this: You are supposed to blame the teachers and their unions. Stick to the script or you will be shunned.
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There is one thing N.Y. City Schools are not short of and that is money with over $21,000/student one of the highest in the U.S. As always it is what you do with the money and Bloomburg and crew just blow it away. As I tell everyone, go read your budgets. Compare the preliminary and audited actuals for at least 5 years if you want to know anything. No money, No programs. If the money is not under control nothing else will be also. It is just that simple. And yes it is planned destruction for their personal profit and power and that is all there is to it as they believe they have the “Divine Right” to all they can take.
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I couldn’t agree with this post more. As a public school parent in NYC, every contact I’ve had with the DOE has been endlessly frustrating. Our school has been subjected to a couple of the co-locations you have mentioned. All of us parents are pitted against one another and paraded through meaningless hearings, only so the DOE can do exactly what it wanted to do in the first place.
I have also noticed that when the DOE shuts a school down, it doesn’t assign the kids to PS87 the next year. They’re typically expected to go to other schools the DOE labels as failing. And so the cycle continues.
Have things gotten better under Bloomberg? The DOE says tests are the metric we should be using to judge schools. And national tests say no, our kids aren’t learning more.
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I don’t understand how there hasn’t been mass rebellion. Why do people take it?
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I think there has been rebellion. Tons of protests, parents refusing to let their kids take the standardized tests, lawsuits, etc. Short of everyone pulling their kids out of school (which isn’t practical for most of us), I’m not sure what else parents can do. The attitude of the DOE to upset parents is “If you don’t like it, leave.”
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This would be hard to do but while it’s summer and the schools are closed, get the message out and try to get everyone to agree to send their kids to their own local schools next year. Don’t listen to where they said you were supposed to go, just look at the old school boundaries/maps and send your kid to that school. Drive them there if you have to. The schools will be overwhelmed with kids at the wrong schools but eventually they would get it straightened out. You probably live where you live because of the good neighborhood schools. You might have even moved there for the schools, why shouldn’t you be able to access your own local schools?
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People outside NYC might not appreciate the insanity of the process this parent is describing. Yes, most elementary students “are provided the opportunity to choose a middle school that suits their interests and needs.” What that essentially means is they have to apply to middle school. They rank their choices from high to low. Performance on their 4th-grade tests is a big factor. So are their records of attendance and tardiness (this is why you see parents sprinting down the block at 8:45 am, pulling their child behind them like a balloon on a string). The good news is you don’t have to do it again until a few years later when they have to apply to high school. It’s a stressful, opaque process. It’s inherently unfair. In a words, it sucks.
That said, this needs to be unpacked.
First, this parent tells us that her son attended a “high achieving elementary school.” Her son got none of his middle-choices, but was instead assigned to a school “where only 24% of the students read at grade level.” She also notes that other boys who attended a “successful elementary school were placed in a middle school where 17% of the children read at grade level and whose mission is to serve at risk children.”
Second, who are these at-risk children? They are “[c]hildren who come from crime-ridden neighborhoods and from families that suffer under the stresses of poverty, racism and discrimination.” They “tend to need extra support.”
Third, how has the DOE failed at-risk children? They also have been ill-served by the DOE policy of “this sorting and stacking,” which “relegate[s] low achieving students to one school and high achieving ones to another.” “Undoubtedly it would be better to have a mix of students with varying skills in a well-funded school with a comprehensive curriculum and a supported staff.” On the other hand, maybe that’s not a good idea. Maybe the “deeper problem” is poverty, discrimination, and racism — problems that the DOE “is ill-equipped to deal with and therefore chooses to ignore.”
Fourth, and most important, how has the DOE failed this parent’s son and other boys who have attended “successful elementary schools”? By failing to sort and stack them properly, and placing them in schools with at-risk children, which is not where they belong, and is not what they wanted.
I don’t need to spell out the issues of class and race that are at play here. They’re obvious. And I’m not attacking this parent. Her predicament is also mine. This is what every parent of children who attend a “successful elementary school” in NYC fears about the middle school process.
But what do we want? If we think that there is a “deep problem” of poverty, discrimination, and racism, and that the DOE is not equipped to fix those problems, then what do we want the DOE to do? Should there be more choice, or less choice? Choices for whom? Should students be stacked and sorted more, or less? I honestly do not know.
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Wow. What a mess.
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We need the revival of successful neighborhood schools…
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And how do you explain that they randomly placed in undesirable schools only “boys” and only “white” boys? Isn’t it racism and sexism???
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English-to-English translation: if “parent choice” = “consumer choice” then you have captured an essential aspect of the way the leading charterites/privatizers think about everyone who objects to their policies and practices, whether they be teachers and other school staff or students or parents or your average concerned citizen.
Just as elsewhere in the world of ROI, in the “ed biz” you have satisfied customers and dissatisfied customers, brand hits and product line misses, marketing triumphs and pr disasters. If you are Michelle Rhee or Joel Klein or Jeb Bush or Wendy Kopp or Paul Vallas or Arne Duncan et al., you build on brand loyalty among those addicted to your eduproducts and pay little or no heed to the naysayers who obstinately refuse to support the expansion of your market share.
And if the road to $tudent $ucce$$ is littered with the wreckage of public schooling, well, so be it. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Of course, they’re the ones eating the omelette and we’re the ones they’re breaking.
🙂
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We have only two choices: Obey and do as they say. Or fight. There is NO reason now not to stand up and demand our rights as parents. The tsunami has sucked the water out of the Harbor, and if we do nothing, it will be catastrophic.
Time to take a stand. It will be a lost school year for many kids whether or not parents do this. The better choice is to take back the schools. Our kids will learn an even greater lesson about their rights, and what the Constitution stands for!
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This parent’s experience completely accords with my own as a 5th grade teacher in a “low performing” (meaning high poverty rate) school: what is presented as school choice is, in actual practice, schools choosing students, not parents choosing schools. I am also a parent of public school students, and have kept my kids in their local K-8 school, which has relatively high scores. It makes me sad when parents take their kids to other middle schools, instead of using our community school. The lure of “choice” turns out to be far more harmful to neighborhood schools than beneficial to students seeking better options. All schools should provide rich curricula and an inviting learning environment–right in the students’ own neighborhoods!
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And this is District 15, one of the more successful and affluent districts in the city, with many desirable elementary schools and at least three popular and very successful middle schools. Imagine what things are like next door in District 13, where there are, quite literally, no successful middle schools, if by successful you mean the sort of school that routinely sends more than a few students to the top high schools and many more students to the good 2nd tier high schools (yes, they exist). District 13 families have routinely sent their children out of district for middle school, and the DOE has responded by extending the two most affluent elementary schools through middle school, which is nice but doesn’t solve the problem for the rest of the district. Instead, they are trying to move the elementary schools to an all-choice model. The DOE is adept at playing race and class against one another in service of their goal of privatization. Scary stuff.
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I think the goal of DOE, as currently operated, extends past the aim of privatizating. As noted upthread educated, concerned, dedicated activist parents are up in arms. And the administrations reaction has been to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to their complaints. These parents have, up until this year, presented a formidable political bloc which politicians have been loathe to cross. They have been largely successful in making up shortfalls after draconian budget cuts are passed down, in an effort to break the will of these passionate and organized individuals. It seems to me the “like it or leave it” attitude carries an even more cynical implication: get affluent families out of the system and who is left? Disadvantaged families with neither the time, experience nor political influence to fight for their rights or their kids’ futures. And once that happens, the enormous stores of public monies designated for educating the cities children are in danger of being parceled out according to Tweed-style cronyism. If Bloomberg had run his business the way he ran the city, he never would have become a Bloomberg.
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