Something good is happening in New York City. The number of low-performing schools in New York City dropped from 91 to 27. Some were merged or closed, but many improved their education.
Unlike the Bloomberg administration, Mayor de Blasio is determined to improve schools instead of closing them or turning them over to charter operators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Last year, you said:
“Governor Andrew Cuomo released a report which identified 178 “failing schools,” with more than half in Néw York City. His report was an implicit–if unintended–critique of mayoral control, since the schools in Néw York City have been under mayoral control since 2002.”
I think we can all agree that this is good news (though I admit I haven’t read anything about methodology yet), but what do you attribute this to now?
In reading the article about improvements in Kingston, it seems to support for external testing, identification of issues and incentives to fix them, and ongoing monitoring. It looks like teachers made substantial changes there to get their schools off the list. Might not the same thing be happening here?
The story isn’t that schools improved. The question one must ask is what phony twisted metrics statisticians are using to gauge this reversal. In my school admin subscribes to the dictum that the beatings will continue until morale improves among teachers while following an increasingly contrived pedagogical process. Meanwhile our students haven’t changed as they’re still coming to school with enough baggage to travel the world.
Schools have not improved from an educational standpoint. They have simple gotten much better at playing the game they were forced to play. They finally learned how to keep up with the moving goal posts. Smoke and mirrors, that’s all.
The narrowing of the curriculum with an emphasis on test prep has not gone away. Forcing cognitively disabled children through the same tiny key hole of success as the valedictorian improves nothing for either end of the spectrum.
This is so very well stated that it hurts, hurts, hurts. Our whole district, and to some degree our whole, very confused state, has just gotten better at playing the game they have been forced to play. We have so many stupid educational laws — laws written and then supported by naive, inexperienced legislators — laws which then force everyone (and not just the lowest-income schools originally targeted) to play the Big Money game.
This.
“The story isn’t that schools improved.”
I’m sure there is some measure of this, but can everyone see clearly that defining it this way completely absolves anyone of looking at what those schools did or changing anything in response?
That is exactly the definition of “status quo” and one of the key mechanisms for protecting it.
Next, I point out some things that these schools have done differently that clearly have beneficial results and everyone either says that “everyone is doing that” (despite that clearly not being the case) or says that the behavior is not proven to work.
it’s a collection of logical fallacies that rationalize what’s wrong and reasons not to do anything about it.
Do you seriously purport that there is nothing of value to learn from something like Kingston High School (NY) getting off the failing schools list for the first time in 16 years? Are you willing to just assume that without any evidence (that I’ve seen yet) that the measure has changed or that the school has used some gimmick to achieve this?
http://www.kingstoncityschools.org/news.cfm?story=114711&school=1511
FWIW, I tried to find out what the Kingston Teachers federation has to say about this great accomplishment, but there’s nothing at all about student achievement on their web site (http://www.ktfesp.org/), and it is password protected. There are some nice links for car detailing and vacations in paradise though if that was what I was looking for.
A couple of individual teachers that I’ve spoken to are proud of their results and attribute them to a lot of hard work, especially by the 9th grade team. It’s a shame their colleagues here don’t join them.
There’s more great news for NYC schools in the latest Independent Budget Office report on education:
“[C]ontrolling for student characteristics, IBO also identified the New York City advantage based on whether students attended a charter school or a traditional public school. Again, performance was gauged against schools in the rest of New York State (all schools outside of the city). After controlling for demographics, traditional public schools in New York City have a 13.1 percentage point advantage over the rest of the state on ELA and a 12.5 percentage point advantage on math proficiency. The gaps are larger for charter schools in the city: 18.8 percentage points on ELA and 30.1 percentage points on math.”
Click to access new-york-state-student-achievement-test-results-new-york-city%20-public-schools-no-longer-lag-rest-of-state.pdf
Incredible stuff–when comparing apples to apples, NYC schools are outperforming the leafy suburbs. And this is even with suburban schools shedding lots of low scores through the opt-out movement.
Perhaps the narrative about the dangers of charter competition and schools being “starved of resources” should be reconsidered.
This must be an indication that NYC schools have “improved their education” as a result of the Mayor’s determination to improve schools.