Kate Taylor of the New York Times checked with a few nonpartisan experts on Governor Cuomo’s claim that New York public education is in “crisis,” and in dire need of the draconian “reforms” he favors.
The experts said that New York public education is NOT in crisis. The public schools fare about the same as they did on national assessments as they did 20 years ago. Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution says that if they are in crisis now, then they must have been in crisis for the past 20 years.
Aaron Pallas of Teachers College says it is unfair to use the Common Core test scores to gauge achievement because they are have a different passing mark from the previous tests. Only 30% passed the Common Core tests, but the year before, 80% were passing. The teachers didn’t suddenly get worse. The State Commissioner decided to change the standards.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As I mentioned in a Tweet earlier today, this story is a great example of the Strawman Syndrome. Do we have to resolve the issue of “crisis” (including the inexorable debates about what the word means to education), to determine that schools in cities across America are educating less than 50% of their students? And worse. Do you have to visit dozens of schools (as I have) to know that thousands of kids are not getting educated and that many dozens of schools schools are not doing what they should be doing?
So the solution, obviously, is to take what’s not working and double down on it. Triple and quadruple down if necessary. If students have no interest or motivation to sit still in rows and silently listen to a teacher pour irrelevant and disconnected facts into their heads so they can be regurgitated on a test, the solution is to have more conformity, more standardization, more disconnected facts and more tests. Do I have that right?
It’s a funny thing in education. For the last 30 years we’ve been jumping on this literacy program or that literacy program, this structure for classroom teaching or that one, this comprehensive method or that comprehensive method.
As a teacher for nearly 10 years, and having had parents who were teachers in NYC schools, I know the pendulum has been ticking back and forth so fast teachers couldn’t keep their heads screwed on straight.
Now, we’re going to test and test and test again until by golly we’re sure of exactly where these kids are (when they come in and leave Ms. X’s classroom).
It is simply cruel that testing beyond measure is the reform everyone seems to agree we should stay fixated on, and blame the teacher for the results no matter what they did – it must have been wrong and they should have known better or else the results would be better.
You need to visit dozens of homes and neighborhoods that feed into those schools.
I have so visited. And those terrible circumstances are why we created public schools in the first place: to give kids from these kinds of homes a chance! Many charters are doing that. Transfer high schools in NYC are doing it. Catholic schools have been doing it for years.
Catholic schools…. right. Our son on the autism spectrum was locked in a Catholic school closet by your shining example of excellence. Eventually, the “Christian” principal said they did not have the desire or willingness to educate our son, unless we could find “resources” to help. We were unable and asked to leave. He was enrolled in the public schools you so despise and now attends college. Just visiting one Catholic school was enough for me. It is called “cherry picking”.
Peter,
It is clear by now that neither charters nor vouchers can raise up the achievement or test scores of low-scoring kids in big cities. The rightwing has nothing to offer but false hope and profits for a few.
Yes – there are students being tragically short changed. And wow – you’ve visited dozens of schools? I’ve actually taught in many schools – and I know first hand what’s up. Teachers do not fail for lack of trying and dedication. The schools are underfunded for what the politicians say they want them to do – overcome the effects of poverty, learning disabilities, and myriad other problems. It would be great if I had fewer students. It would be terrific if they got to take music or art. I’d love for some of my students to have access to counseling, for them and their families. And for the love of God, I’d love not to have to spend so many instructional days testing my kids on DIBELS three times a year, CELDT testing, mandated district tests – 3 in writing, 3 in math, OLSAT every year, and if you are in third or above, the new mandated common core testing, given on-line. My kids don’t have computers at home, but they are supposed to do this? We don’t have them for their use at school either. So what do you propose? Please don’t fall for the propaganda, and think charters, with their lack of oversight, is the answer. But hat do I know? You’ve visited schools. You must know more.
You point out the tragic neglect our government has inflicted on our poorest students. They have built in a system like this by design. Now they have made everything worse with charters and over testing. Charters are a public school money drain, often with a narrow curriculum and an untrained staff. Now they are setting up inequitable charters. Whenever minority students are isolated, they wind up with less. We should mix our students while we offer a comprehensive school for all.
“Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution says that if they are in crisis now, then they must have been in crisis for the past 20 years.”
1. New York’s public schools have always been in crisis
2. We have always been at war with Southeast Asia
Were you intending to sound like 1984?
Public school teachers and their unions are double plus ungood. New York is on the verge of eliminating Oldteach completely and replacing it with Joyschool.
Got it! Hard to tell sarcasm in this format.
I’d argue that New York Public Schools (like public schools in many parts of the country) are indeed in crisis. But the crisis is precisely because of “reforms” like those Cuomo favors.
Not sure what you mean by “reforms,” but in NYC graduation rates are up, NAEP scores are up — this is after the Bloomberg/Klein era.
I’d need to see the calculations behind those graduation numbers. We’ve been sold the same song and dance here in Chicago about improved graduation rates, but when people really looked at how those numbers were figured, it was a bunch of hooey. In Chicago anyway, a large part of “improved graduation rates” is (among other things) that we’ve chased out so many of the poor and minority students. Now it’s the collar counties that are dealing with those students and guess whose graduation rates are plummeting?
And by “reforms”, also known as rephorms, I mean things like KIPP as detailed in the post a few below this one which rely on total behavioral control and punishment of poor and minority students, giving them the option to conform and be part of the menial workforce of the future, or buck the system and end up in prison.
If the graduation rates are up and the NAEP scores are up, then the schools are not in “crises”, right?
Why do you want it both ways, pbmeyer?
They are up exactly enough to prove that Bloomberg, et al did a great job and their methods works, while still being down exactly enough that the crisis still exists. Just so.
Yet our unions leaders tell us to tweet the anti-Christ Cuomo. I have invited him even prepping food from Sandra Lee but he hasn’t shown up.
I am waiting for Mulgrew, Magee and Randi to wake up. I’m annoyed not as a teacher of their lack of a plan but as a parent, I’m pissed. My kids deserve a better education than this and I don’t see it getting better with these three running the show.
I used to say ten years now I just hope I get to twenty years for something of a pension that Cuomo wants too.
I hope he rots in hell. Sorry for my language but I’m pissed
Were things better when 80-90% of the kids in New York were passing the state tests? This Michael Winerip piece is worth reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/education/24winerip.html
Poor families of color who are warehoused in a relatively small number of communities in New York State probably don’t think “crisis” is hyperbole. And the various interests who are pushing the message that there is a funding crisis in the state seem to have underestimated the public’s financial acumen.
Agreed. But the “funding crisis” is a ‘how’ problem not a ‘how much’ problem. Check out my report on NYC’s small high schools program: http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Meyer%20Paper2-KLM%20%281%29.pdf.
http://nypost.com/2009/08/13/toughen-the-tests/
“Political Crisis”
When a crisis rears its head
Don’t let it go to waste
When of crisis there’s no dread
Create a one post-haste
Cuomo is a smearer,
and a liar and a fool
he looks into the mirror
and he knows he sees a Ghoul
The dude is Mr. Evil,
He’d push a child
into a train,
a parasite bole weevil,
to democracy a drain,
And Andrew is so hateful,
his parents are his aim,
competes with father dearest,
leaving teachers all to blame . . . . .
There is a vast difference sociologically among urban, suburban and rural schools. As an extremely successful suburban school district and a BoE member we have endured 4 years of frozen foundation aid and GEA gap elimination financial loss. We have let teachers go, cut back on programs and raised our class sizes. Money that should be going to public schools now goes to pad the pockets of charters who are supported by private entities. Cuomo now wants to extend the charters and add tax exemptions to private schools. It is very real to us that we are being starved of financial support for a nefarious purpose which has nothing to do with and consistently ignors our continuous academic success. Add to that the 2% tax cap and we are over a barrel financially. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but it is really hard not to read the writing on the wall. This has nothing to do with schools in academic crisis. It has everything to do with eliminating unions and pensions and destroying the whole profession of teaching. It will be replaced with a right to work, no protection, and no benefits positions much like working at Walmart. That ought to draw the best and brightest into education…disgusting!
Yes, agree, if there is a crisis in the majority of NYS suburban and rural schools, it’s mainly bugetary in nature, for now. Many districts have adjusted to the cuts in aid, but deep cuts in non-mandated programs still threaten districts, kindergarten for example, if the governor withholds aid increases.
Also, add “PILOTs” to the list of economic factors adding to the problem as community after community give sweet, special tax breaks to businesses to encourage development.
We have politicians who like to talk about the education funding crisis here in Vermont, as well. Fortunately, when unbiased and intelligent people study the situation, they illustrate how the share of taxes going to education has remained steady for 20 years. “Out-of-control spending” is a manufactured crisis if there ever was one. This may be helpful to folks in other states who are in the middle of this battle.
http://publicassets.org/blog/testimony-to-house-education-committee-011615/
Education is not in crisis, reformers are just hellbent on destroying it, by any means necessary.
The only crisis is that education has not magically produced the jobs our society needs by blaming the fake skills gap (hello fired Microsoft programmers).
There are so many holes in that theory oth is sick. Further in NY we were lied to by the regents as they adjusted cut scores to meet their political aims. Now they swear they are tellingthe truth and our schools are really in crisis!!
Such BS – and the public schools have debt they can’t get rid of such as for facilities, and taking tax money out of the local economies to give businesses does not have a public ROI.
It is hard to see this a as being about anything other than money and not yet another way of hurting easily oppressed communities.
Reblogged this on seldurio and commented:
#AllKidsNeed
The end game is that with Silver gone, Cuomo will get this passed free and clear.
Hopefully, the affluent districts will wake up and perhaps lead the revolt.
I just heard Costco is upping starting salary to $20 an hour, that’s my future.
I’m going back to school to become an RN…another “woman” dominated profession…yet I am drawn to service and helping others. Several years of being whipped though is starting to convince me of exactly what they’re aiming for – that as noble as teaching is, it’s not worth it in any sense for the emotional and physical toll it takes with the level of bureaucracy being leveled at teachers.
That gives me the courage to stand up and fight, knowing I will give myself a viable alternative. I didn’t go into teaching because I’m incompetent as the powers would be would have you and me believe (as they believe of all teachers) – I did it to help.
I will find another way to help that doesn’t involve being brutalized daily by society.
Nursing has been brutalized for the last thirty years although not quite to the extent that they are doing to teachers these days. But it’s been going on for quite a while.
There’s no bigger hypocrite than Ohio’s Kasich. He opens his political pockets for charter-operating cheats and for west coast test and curriculum-generating oligarchs.
After 4 years in office, Ohio still lags the nation in job growth.
Wall Street doesn’t do any thing for Main Street, except rob it of hope.
“. . . except rob it of hope.”
and money!
When changing the test format affects the performance of the students while the curriculum is still the same there must me a question on what knowledge is being acquired. Unfortunately, that’s the results we get when we teach to the test. Passing a test doesn’t mean acquiring knowledge.
Just wondering if Nick Kristof read the piece.
It probably wouldn’t matter. He writes so many good things, but he seems to have bought the “failing schools” narrative. (No realization that schools where students-according to suspect measures-are failing are usually in poor neighborhoods where families face many challenges.) I guess everybody has a blind spot.
Schools are a direct reflection of the communities they serve. Schools in crisis are found in communities in crisis. Defining “crisis” by low test scores of 8 to 14 year old children diverts resources and attention from the true problems: crime, substance abuse, family dysfunction, generational poverty – and the hopelessness and apathy that come with it. For many kids in such neighborhoods, their “failing” schools are the best part of their day.
MY Teacher, I totally agree with your judgment that schools in crisis are a reflection of communities in crisis. Those clamoring for more tests and for firing teachers are averting their eyes from the causes of low scores, especially generational poverty. Help the families, help the communities, raise the standard of living and test scores will go up.
Democracy is a slow, deliberative process and it was designed that way on purpose. Reformers don’t like democracy because it allows the public to ask questions and actually think about the answers. So we invent a crises so we can suspend democracy. Hitler tried something like that, worked well for about 13 years, then the crap hit the fan!