As Leonie Haimson explains in this post, the New York Times published a front-page article on the failure of Mayor Bill deBlasio’s $773 Million Renewal Schools Program. The Mayor touted it as the antidote to former Mayor Bloomberg’s preference for closing schools. Ironically, many of the Klein-Bloomberg people were left in place to run the new program.
But, says Haimson, that’s not why Renewal Schools failed. The program failed because its leaders resolutely ignored the one reform that has proven to get the best results: reducing class size.
The few Renewal Schools that did reduce class size actually succeeded.
Those that didn’t struggled and failed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Speaking of the self-described God, Bloomberg, he and Guiliani are members of the Metropolitan Republican Club. This month the Club invited Gavin McInness (a bigot who runs a hate group) to speak. At a prior meeting, Pamela Geller, a friend of Milo Yiannapoulis spoke. Fully expected, the Club’s president, a White, affluent woman from a party that controls all three branches of the federal government told the public she is a victim because citizens viewed the speaker invite as an affront to American values and therefore felt compelled to protest McInnes’ appearance.
Fully expected that racist Georgia Gov. Talmadge’s plan to avoid integration by privatizing public schools, would find footing among the “elite”. It is America’s obligation to fight the insidious plot and its present day promoters.
America owes a huge debt to Diane Ravitch.
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Reducing class size costs money. Education on the cheap is preferred by reformers. ESSA requies new details on per-pupil funding at the school level, and the person in charge of helping states and districts figure out how to this reporting is Marguerita Rosa, Director of the Seattle-based Edunomics lab and Research Professor at McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University. She is also former Senior Economic Advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who has led a campaign for “productivity measures” since 2005. She is among the promoters of the idea that class size does not matter if you: a) expand instruction on-line and by computers “because it may be better and less costly than human teachers,” b) put the best human teachers in charge of more students and managing student use of technologies,”and c) train this generation of students to be more dependent on distant teachers at multiple sites and less dependent on learning from direct contract with “proximate teachers.” See the whole pitch from (ugh) David H. Monk, Dean of the College of Education at Pennsylvania State University. https://www.crpe.org/publications/out-box-fundamental-change-school-funding
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Roza is a rationalizer of every bad Reform theory who works for the Reformers
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Laura, that doesn’t excuse DiBlasio. Some Renewal Schools were allowed to use $$ to lower class sizes which were already much lower than in the schools highlighted here. Presumably he could have used that strategy for all 94 schools w/o threatening NYS’ ESSA plan approval. It’s hard to know how far the $773million would have stretched w/o enrollment figures, but over the 3 yrs it averages $2.7million per school. Seems like that could have made a real dent in class size across the board
DiBlasio’s Renewal planners must be a different breed of reformer than Roza. No mention of productivity, bringing in tech to supplement “human teachers” ( 😀 ) of already-too-big classes. The wide array of social services probably helped. But what’s w/the other leg of the program, a cadre of “new higher-paid out-of-classroom teaching coaches”? Oh, yeah– it’s all about bad teachers. Now that does sound right out of the typical ed-reform playbook.
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in our district, setting up the goal of suddenly having “teacher coaches” meant shoving a big lump of money into the budget and THEN looking for those magical teacher-trainer employees: what we actually ended up with were many young mostly female coaches/facilitators/evaluators/supervisors/managers with limited classroom experience receiving relatively high salaries to come into schools and spout reformer dogma
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Good lord, Ciedie. And yet, that’s exactly what to expect when elected executives turn to loud-mouthed deep-pocketed ed-reform “experts” looking to impose [top-down] generalized “solutions” to unique school problems in their own city districts. God forbid they should consult the folks in the trenches to assess needs. Most likely, veterans of this article’s ‘failing schools’ could teach rings around ‘new higher-paid teaching coaches.’
This issue speaks to one of my pet peeves: US public-school teaching lacks the sort of apprenticeship/ mentorship career ladder which is typical of other professions. Professional collaboration can achieve same goals. But either set-up is optional [/ discouraged], & only happens under astute/ innovative admin leadership. Pubsch teachers correct me if I’m wrong: most newbies are essentially on their own & left to twist in the wind/ exit on their own [before achieving tenure], w/little support from colleagues or admin.
Once upon a time I was a newbie teacher right out of college: a 20-y.o. w/ 5 preps [French I-IV + AP]. But it was a private academy w/small classes & an experienced Dept Head (a polyglot teaching Latin & French), who observed often– & more importantly, shared lunch in his office daily w/our tiny crew of Fr, Span, & German teachers– an advisor and friend. I left in a couple of yrs for a diff profession, but only because I was too young to ‘get’ classroom mgt; I knew I would return after family/ Mom experience [& did].
Had I been a certified teacher in that city’s large pubsch classes, w/o that sort of guidance, I would never have returned to teaching.
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Reducing class sizes costs money, but it’s not like De Blasio refused to spend “money” on these schools. A boatload was spent. Would have been interesting to see what happened if all the money spent on wraparound services went solely to lowering class sizes.
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I know people who were directly involved in NYC’s failed Renewal program. Too many programs, too many consultants, too many cooks, too much flailing, too many leftover commanders from the BloomKlein world. Some Renewal schools had no social services. Slapdash. Hit and miss.
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listened to De Blasio talk about that article in the NY Times, and wrote him, using an earlier blog piece here.
Here is the one thing that you missed in your WNYC talk. CLASS SIZE MATTERS, is proven to be the single most crucial factor to assist learning by the professional is class size.
Here https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-citys-use-of-non-profit-to-pay.html is Leonie Haimison’s scathing report on the failure of your administration to perform due diligence before it awards contracts, in this case, for special education services, for Amazon, and for new technology.
Leonie reads every contract that the New York City Department approves and did the same during the Bloomberg years. Once again, as under Bloomberg, the city’s Panel on Educational Policy (actually known in the law as the New York City Board of Education) mutely acquiesces and approves whatever the administration asks for, without debate or discussion.
Leonie Haimson (Class Size Matters) is unpaid but tireless and determined to police the awarding of contracts, as well as the administration’s attention to class size. She also is deeply involved in protecting student privacy.
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