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New York City: Schools in Long Island City Are Not Ready for the New Amazon Headquarters

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2018 //
13

Amazon recently announced that Long Island City in Queens, New York (a part of New York City) will be the site of one of its new headquarters. This will be an expensive “gift” to New York City, which has pledged huge tax breaks and incentives to woo Amazon. It will also create a burden on already strained public services, not only transportation, but public schools.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, and Sabina Omerhodzic, a Long Island City resident and a member of the Community Education Council in District 30, warn that Long Island City is not ready. The public schools are already overcrowded.

They write:

The plan to provide Amazon up to $3 billion in city and state tax cuts and other subsidies to site one of their new headquarters in Long Island City leaves the children who are living there in the lurch. The booming community is already severely short on school seats, a problem that Amazon’s move to the area will only exacerbate given recent trends, Department of Education projections, and the details of the Amazon deal that have been released.

The only zoned elementary school in Long Island City, PS 78, is already at 135% capacity, and more than 70 children who were zoned to the school were put on the waitlist for kindergarten last spring, while classes for numerous pre-K kids are being housed in trailers.

There are plans for two small elementary schools of about 600 seats each to be created as part of a huge 5,000-housing unit Hunters Point South development, but these schools are likely to be immediately overcrowded the day they open. There are already three sections of kindergarten students attending class in an incubation site at a nearby pre-K center, waiting to attend the first elementary school, which will not be completed until 2021.

An already-planned middle school had been proposed to be built on city-owned land as part of a mixed-use 1,000-unit project, but this area is now to be incorporated into the Amazon development. Contrary to Mayor de Blasio’s claims, the memorandum of understanding with Amazon includes no new school for the neighborhood. Instead, the MOU merely says that the company will pay for this middle school already in the city’s capital plan – but moved to another location, as yet undetermined. As Chalkbeat NY explained, “The company agreed to house a 600-seat intermediate school on or near its Long Island City campus, replacing a school that had already been planned in a residential building nearby.”

From 2006 to 2017, more than 20,000 residential units were built in Long Island City. A study found that 12,533 apartments in 41 separate developments were built in the community between 2010 and 2016 – not just the highest number in New York City, but more than any other neighborhood in the entire nation….

Another part of the deal includes Amazon making payments in lieu of taxes into an infrastructure fund that, starting 11 years after the deal, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) can spend on nearly any sort of use, “including but not limited to streets, sidewalks, utility relocations, environmental remediation, public open space, transportation, schools and signage,” according to the MOU.

And to add the most grievous insult to injury, the city now plans to give Amazon a large DOE office building, one that community members have been fighting to convert into much-needed schools and a community center instead. A petition, now with more than 1,500 signatures, to the mayor and local elected officials was posted last year by the Long Island City Coalition.

This is not the first time the community’s needs for schools have gone entirely ignored. In 2008, EDC re-zoned city-owned land for the Hunters Point South project without any plan to create a single new school, ignoring the thousand or so children who were likely to inhabit these new apartments. It took a concerted organizing effort of Long Island City parents and elected officials in 2015 for the city to agree to belatedly include two small schools in the plans.

We’ve seen this poor planning repeatedly, wherever new residential developments are springing up. The Amazon deal is but a particularly egregious example of how the city’s policies are driven by the interests of the real estate industry and private corporations while the educational needs of our children are too often overlooked. As many education advocates, parents and community leaders have pointed out, the school planning process in New York City is broken, resulting in more than half a million students crammed into overcrowded schools and classrooms, with the problem likely to get worse as the city’s population continues to grow.

Read the whole thing to learn how poorly the city of New York has planned for the arrival of thousands of people who are employed by Amazon and expect to put their children into public schools.

Categories Class size, New York City

Michael Hynes and William Doyle: What American Schools Can Learn from Finland

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2018 //
48

Michael Hynes, the progressive superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford school district on Long Island in New York, and William Doyle, an author who has lived in Finland, recently returned from a trip to that nation’s schools and wrote this article.

They offer a twelve-step program for American schools, based on what they learned in Finland.

Here are three of the steps they recommend. To learn about the other nine, open the link.

They write:

We were stunned by what we observed: A society that selects and respects teachers like elite professionals; a world-class network of vocational and technical schools; a school system that reveres and protects childhood and encourages children to experience joy in learning — where teachers shower children with warmth and attention; where children are given numerous free-play breaks; where special-education students are supported; and where children thrive.

In Finland, we heard none of the clichés common in U.S. education reform circles, like “rigor,” “standards-based accountability,” “data-driven instruction,” “teacher evaluation through value-added measurement” or getting children “college- and career-ready” starting in kindergarten.

Instead, Finnish educators and officials constantly stressed to us their missions of helping every child reach his or her full potential and supporting all children’s well-being. “School should be a child’s favorite place,” said Heikki Happonen, an education professor at the University of Eastern Finland and an authority on creating warm, child-centered learning environments. His colleague Janne Pietarinen explained, “Well-being and learning are intertwined. You can’t have one without the other.”

In short, we glimpsed an inspiring vision of an alternative future for American education, a future that we believe that all of our children deserve right now.

How can the United States improve its schools? We can start by piloting and implementing these 12 global education best practices, many of which are working extremely well for Finland:

1) Emphasize well-being. Make child and teacher well-being a top priority in all schools, as engines of learning and system efficiency.

2) Upgrade testing and other assessments. Explaining why he doesn’t need standardized tests to evaluate his students, one Finnish teacher said: “I am assessing my students every second.” Stop the standardized testing of children in grades 3-8, and “opt-up” to higher-quality assessments by classroom teachers. Eliminate the ranking and sorting of children based on standardized testing. Train students in self-assessment, and require only one comprehensive testing period to graduate from high school.

3) Invest resources fairly. Fund schools equitably on the basis of need. Provide small class sizes.

Categories Class size, Education Reform, Innovation, International, Play, Testing

My Message to the Teachers of Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2018 //
6

The United Teachers of Los Angeles have voted to authorize a strike. The union has been negotiating with Superintendent Austin Beutner, a former investment banker who has no experience in education.

I sent the following message to the teachers of Los Angeles.

I am writing to my friends who teach in the Los Angeles Unified School District to encourage you to stay strong in your demands for smaller classes and the resources your students need.

Your working conditions are your students’ learning conditions.

You should not be expected to pay out $1,000 or more from your salary for school supplies.

I am astonished that one of the cities with the greatest concentration of wealth in the world is unwilling to pay what it costs to educate its children.

John Dewey wrote more than a century ago: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his children, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

The billionaires who have declared war on public education and who are funding the California Charter School Association would not tolerate overcrowded classrooms, obsolete textbooks, and crumbling buildings in the schools their children attend. They should not tolerate such conditions in the public schools of Los Angeles that other people’s children attend, people without their wealth.

They want the best for their children, and they should demand the best for all children, and pay for it.

Please fight against “school choice,” an idea that was first launched by segregationists in the South to block the Brown decision in the late 1950s. It is now the favorite cause of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who wants to replace our nation’s democratically-controlled public schools with a menu of “choices,” none of which are as good as public schools.

In California, as elsewhere, charter advocates oppose accountability and transparency. Furthermore, charters have been characterized by scandals and fraudulent financial practices, a result of their lack of oversight and accountability.

Charter schools should be subject to the same laws, rules, and regulations as public schools if they want to give themselves the name of “public schools.”

Your superintendent Austin Beutner came to the job thanks to a takeover bankrolled by the charter lobby. He has never been an educator, and you will have to help him understand the importance of teacher professionalism, of reducing class sizes, and of public education in a democratic society. He just doesn’t get it.

Public schools are, have been, and will continue to be the foundation stone of our democratic society. If we lose it, we put our democracy at risk.

Fight for your students. Fight for public education. Fight for the teaching profession. Fight for a better future for the children and for our society.

Your friends across the nation are watching and will cheer you on!

Diane Ravitch

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Class size, Los Angeles, Resistance, Teachers, Unions

Leonie Haimson Explains Why NYC’s Renewal Schools Program Failed

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2018 //
9

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.

Leonie Haimson writes about it here.

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Class size, New York City

Jackie Goldberg: LAUSD Must Reduce Class Sizes Now!

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2018 //
10

Jackie Goldberg is one of the premier advocates for children and public education in California and, indeed, the nation. She was a classroom teacher for 17 years, a member of the Los Angeles school board, and a member of the Legislature, rising to chair of the State Assembly Education Committee. She is a legendary figure to supporters of children and public schools.

She writes in the Los Angeles Times that the LAUSD board must act to reduce class sizes, which in some schools, exceed 40 students.

A few excerpts from her excellent article:


Today, classes of 45 students or more are not uncommon in most secondary schools. (This excludes kindergarten through third-grade classes, which receive state funding specifically for class-size reduction.).

If the district truly wants its students to learn more, it should get rid of Section 1.5 and immediately begin hiring 2,000 new teachers to meet the class-size goals that are already laid out in the current contract. [Section 1.5 is a waiver from a class-Size reduction agreement.]

This would cost $200 million more each year. That may sound like a lot, but the district has a minimum of $1.8 billion in reserve.

Opposition to class-size reduction comes from the top. When I chaired the Assembly Education Committee, lobbyists would often come in and argue that the cost of reducing class sizes in California’s public schools was simply too high.

When I asked these lobbyists where their own children attended school, many if not all of them would respond that they sent their children to private schools — some to schools where tuition could cost as much as $45,000 a year and classrooms would have as few as a dozen students.

In other words, although they paid considerable tuition rates for their own kids to benefit from small classes, they considered it perfectly acceptable for children who live in poverty — 80% of the LAUSD student population — to be relegated to the third-largest class sizes in America. Really?

There is also some quiet opposition coming from a few well placed charter-school advocates. Why? Because if the district were to reduce class sizes by hiring 2,000 additional teachers, it would need to provide 2,000 classrooms to those new teachers — classrooms that some charter-school advocates are eyeing for themselves.

The Board of Education at LAUSD needs to put its students first. Though it claims to do so at nearly every meeting and on seemingly all of its printed materials, its claims are often empty rhetoric.
Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion »
It is common sense that smaller classes make for better learning environments and higher grades and test scores. It’s also well documented.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Arthur Goldstein: Why I Support the New UFT Contract

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2018 //
20

Arthur Goldstein is a veteran teacher of ESL and chapter chair at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York City. Goldstein is a rebel who regularly crosses swords with the city bureaucracy and his union as well. The United Federation of Teachers just signed a new contract with the DOE and the City of New York.

Goldstein explains here why he supports the contract.


I have opposed several UFT contracts. The 2005 contract created the Absent Teacher Reserve, which dropped many of my brothers and sisters into a limbo from which there frequently seems no escape. The last one made us wait until 2020 to get money FDNY and NYPD had back in 2010. Our new tentative contract is not perfect, but also has some significant gains.

On the Contract Committee, we sat and listened while big shots from the DOE told us they were not remotely interested in improving class sizes for NYC’s 1.1 million schoolchildren. I told them what it was like to teach a class of 50 plus. I told them when teachers had oversized classes, their remedy was often to give us one day off from tutoring. Where we needed help, though, was right there in the classroom. I told them the best we could do was use that period to seek therapy to deal with our 50 kids. Via new streamlined processes, this contract should at least shorten the time kids and teachers spend in oversized classes. A similar process has proven very effective with excessive paperwork.

A significant win for teachers is fewer observations. Members have been complaining to me about the frequency of observations ever since the new law came into effect. We all feel the Sword of Damocles hanging above our heads. I don’t really know why I do, because I’m fortunate enough to have a supervisor who’s Not Insane. I think, though, if we want to maintain her ability to stay Not Insane, we have to stop making her write up 200 observations a year.

Of course, this will not resolve the issue of crazy supervisors, something city teachers have been grappling with for decades. While the city plans to institute a screening process for teachers (and we’ll see what that entails) future negotiations need to focus on the issue of self-serving, self-important, foaming-at-the-mouth leaders, likely as not brainwashed by Joel Klein’s toxic Leadership Academy. This contract, at least, will create more work for supervisors who use their positions to exercise personal vendettas.

People who can’t hack teaching don’t want to be responsible for 34 kids at a time. They rise up and become the worst supervisors. They may be lazy, and they may be angry that they have to actually do observations these days rather than simply declaring teachers unsatisfactory. In fact, one principal got caught falsifying observations so as to avoid the effort altogether. Supervisors like that will now have to do additional observations if they rate teachers poorly. They may now think twice now that it can cut into their Me Time. Also, we’ve got new language to deal with supervisory retaliation.

Our new agreement gives long needed due process to paraprofessionals. I’ve seen three paraprofessionals summarily suspended by principals. One of them was able to recoup lost pay via a grievance I helped her file. Another said goodbye to me, and ten days later had a stroke. I received a call in my classroom saying one of her relatives needed to know whether or not to place her in an ambulance, since her health insurance had been discontinued. I was at a rare loss for words. The secretary on the other end of the phone wasn’t, and told the relative yes, of course, put her in the ambulance, The paraprofessional died later that day.

To me, it’s remarkable that paraprofessionals, who spend all day helping the neediest of our students, are not considered pedagogues and therefore ineligible to win tenure. Our new agreement will grant them due process rights they sorely need. No longer will principals be able to suspend them without pay indefinitely based on allegations. There will be rules for when they can be suspended, there will be time limits, and there will be a process, rather than, “Hey you, get lost, and don’t come back until I feel like having you back.” Paraprofessionals deserve more than what we’ve won for them, but this, at long last, is a start.

I’ve read arguments that we should strike, like we’ve seen in red states. We are very different from teachers in red states, who’ve been under “right to work” forever, and for whom collective bargaining may be prohibited. We aren’t making 30K a year and getting food stamps to make ends meet. We haven’t gone a decade without a raise. We aren’t paying an extra 5K more each year for health insurance. In fact, unlike much NY State, we aren’t paying health premiums at all. With our last two contracts, and with no health premiums, our pay is approaching that of some Long Island districts (without the doctorate some of them need), something I’ve not seen in my three plus decades as a teacher.

I’ve read a lot of critiques about the money. We extended our contract last year to enable parental leave for UFT members. The same critics who complained about how that diluted raises from the last contract are now attaching it to this one, making it look like the contract begins months before it actually does. That’s disingenuous. (Now don’t get me wrong, I’m fond of money, and I’d like to have more. I’m writing this on a MacBook that’s partially held together with Scotch Tape.)

I can’t argue with people who say these raises don’t keep up with inflation, because they’re right about that. I know very well, though, that we are getting the pattern established by DC37. I also know exactly how we beat the pattern, which we did in 2005. We do that via givebacks. I’ve already mentioned the ATR. 2005 also brought us extended time. We could agree to more extra time, higher class sizes, or more extra classes, and the city would probably pay us for that. I can assure you that every person I know who opposes this contract would be up in arms about them, as would I. Right now we can’t afford to give back anything.

Concessions about the ATR were the worst thing about the 2014 contract. Thankfully, they expired and were not renewed. The second worst thing, as I recall, was having to wait ten years for money we’d earned. We could’ve had an on-time contract if only leadership agreed to sell out the ATR. UFT hung tough and refused. I don’t like waiting for money, but agreeing to allow ATR members to lose their jobs after a certain amount of time would’ve been a disaster. Any crazy principal could target any activist teacher, and we could’ve been fired at will.

I’d very much have liked to see class size reduced. I’d still like to see class size reduced, and I will work toward that. I also have no idea why we support mayoral control. (I don’t even know why de Blasio wants it, now that the state has hobbled his ability to stop Eva, forcing him to pay her rent.)

Nonetheless, this contract represents significant improvements for us. Chapter leaders, all of whom are sick of the grueling grievance procedure, will now have alternate means to quickly resolve issues involving class size, safety, curriculum, PD, supplies, and workload. Those of us who represented high schools on the UFT Executive Board pushed for fewer observations as per state law, and we were able to work with leadership to achieve it. Those of us on the UFT Contract Committee agreed that we wanted to improve the lot of 30,000 paraprofessionals, and we were able to move in that direction.

I support this contract, and I will encourage my colleagues to do so as well. This is the best contract we’ve seen in decades. It will pass by an overwhelming margin.

Categories Accountability, Class size, New York City, Teachers, Unions

NEPC: What Does Research Say About LeBron’s New School in Akron?

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2018 //
25

The National Education Policy Center reviews plans for LeBron James’s new public school in Akron, Ohio.

Overall it gets good marks.

So are the approaches of I Promise in line with research? For the most part, yes: Practices such as providing additional resources, reducing class size, offering wraparound services like food pantries, extending learning time, and offering free college tuition to graduates are all associated with positive outcomes. But the school may face challenges in educating a large population of struggling students rather than creating heterogenous classes of children with higher and lower levels of performance. And the school’s STEM focus could end up shortchanging other important subjects such as social studies and the arts.

The school can tinker with its model. On the whole, what is most encouraging is that it is a good model for public education. No harsh disciplinary practices. A cap on class size. Wraparound services. Free college for those who persist. Extra supports where needed. Best of all, it was not created to put public education out of business, but to make it better.

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boul-der School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.eduNEPC Resources on School Reform and Restructuringhttp://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/newsletter-LeBron3 of 3

Categories Class size, Innovation, Ohio, Supporting public schools

WSJ: Literacy Coaches in New York City Were Ineffective, so Department of Education Will Do More of Same

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2018 //
54

The New York City Department of Education placed literacy coaches in struggling elementary schools to lift test scores. A new study concluded that the literacy coaches made no difference. The Department responded by increasing the funding for literacy coaches and expressing its confidence that its failed strategy is working. At the least, the Department should try an experiment in reducing class sizes to no more than 12 in similar schools. Hiring literacy coaches is a strategy that was long ago described by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as “feeding the horses to feed the sparrows.”

Leonie Haimson predicted the failure of this initiative last April, as it builds on a similar failed program started by Joel Klein.

A major push by New York City to help poor children in public schools learn to read by assigning literacy coaches to their teachers had no impact on second-graders’ progress, according to a study of its first year.

The city Department of Education conducted the evaluation, but its officials said Thursday it was too early to judge the initiative. They said they would strengthen the program while boosting annual funding to $89 million, from $75 million.

The initiative has been a key part of the education agenda of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who early in his tenure set a target of having all students read on level by the end of second grade, by 2026.

Research shows that if children lag behind in reading in third grade, it is very hard for them to catch up. About 43% of the city’s third-graders passed 2017 state exams in English language arts, with some high-poverty schools showing much lower pass rates.

The literacy program embedded 103 coaches in 107 high-need schools in fall 2016. Each coach was assigned to spend the academic year honing teachers’ instructional skills in kindergarten through second grade.

This evaluation tested second-graders in schools that had literacy coaches, and compared their results with peers in similar city schools that had no coaches. The report found that both groups of students were behind in skills in October 2016 and fell further behind expectations by May 2017.

Each group gained an average of four months of skills, when they should have gained seven months. At the end of second grade, students in schools with coaches on average performed at the level expected in the second month of second grade, on a measure known as the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test. It covered decoding skills, word knowledge and comprehension.

The disappointing results didn’t surprise Susan Neuman, a New York University professor of literacy education. She said the department deployed coaches of varying quality, gave them insufficient training and, in some schools, principals shifted them to drilling for state exams…

Department of Education Deputy Chancellor Josh Wallack said he had confidence in the coaches, their training and principal buy-in. He noted that some schools showed real improvements.

“We think we are on the right track,” he said. “We know we have a lot of work to do.”

Skeptics of the initiative have long argued it would be better to reduce class size, add services for the disabled and require a stronger focus on phonics, which teaches children to sound out letters as a primary way to identify words.

The department has expanded the literacy initiative yearly, and will dispatch about 500 coaches this fall, with every elementary school getting a coach or additional attention.

Nothing is as inexplicable as doubling down on failure.

Categories Class size, New York City

Los Angeles: UTLA Makes It’s “Last, Best, and Final Offer”

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2018 //
18

Negotiations in Los Angeles between LAUSD and its teachers union UTLA are at a critical point. UTLA issued this statement:


We demand a 48-hour response from LAUSD

When UTLA declared impasse earlier this month, LAUSD officials said they would bring significant proposals to today’s bargaining. Instead, they brought a previously proposed 2% ongoing salary increase, an additional one-time 2% bonus and a $500 stipend for materials and supplies. The UTLA bargaining team deemed this insulting, quickly reaffirmed negotiations are at a deadlock and gave the district 48 hours to respond to UTLA’s package proposal in a last, best and final offer.

“Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. We must continue to fight for a sustainable future, yet we don’t have a partner in the very school district we are trying to save,” said Arlene Inouye, Chair of UTLA’s Bargaining Team. “We have been pushing for real change, they are keeping the status quo.”

Some outstanding key issues:

Class Size Matters. LAUSD gave no proposals to reduce class size. LAUSD has some of the highest class sizes in the nation, yet refuses to eliminate section 1.5 of the contract, which allows the district to ignore class size caps.

Fund Our Schools. LAUSD gave no proposals to address funding issues. California is the richest state in the nation, yet ranks 43 out of 50 in per-pupil funding.

Support Community Schools. LAUSD gave no proposals to fund Community Schools. Community schools meet the needs in the surrounding community, including wrap-around services, broadened curriculum and parent engagement.
Less Testing & More Teaching. LAUSD gave no proposals to address overtesting. Our kids are being overtested. Their teachers should have more discretion over what and when standardized assessments are given.

End the Privatization Drain. LAUSD gave no proposals for reasonable charter accountability and co-location measures. LAUSD refuses to address the $590 million lost to the unchecked expansion of charter schools each year.

Despite the need to look at factors that impact student health, safety and well-being, LAUSD has refused to address our common good proposals. In recognition of legal constraints tied to the “scope of bargaining,” UTLA has withdrawn proposals that are not mandatory subjects of bargaining. Nonetheless, we will continue to work diligently with parents and students for these improvements we think are vital to overall student success.

Last Thursday, July 19, LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner told a room of business leaders at a Valley Industry and Commerce Association forum at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City that if things don’t change, ‘by 2021 we will be no more.’ Read the entire LA Daily News story here.

Beutner also said the loss of $590 million to charter school expansion is a “distracting shiny ball” and not a real concern. That amounts to $4,950 per student per year.

“That is much, much more than a ‘distracting shiny ball,’” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. “It amounts to robbing our students of educational resources and programs. That funding could mean more nurses, more librarians, more counselors, more arts, sports and music programs.”

“The real ‘distraction’ is that anti-union, pro-privatization ideologues are currently running the school district, and they are setting us up for failure, not success,” Caputo-Pearl said. “Regardless, UTLA remains steadfast in our fight for a better future for all students. We continue to fight for the heart and soul of public education in LA.”

Click here for more info on bargaining proposals. https://www.utla.net/members/bargaining

UTLA, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union local, represents more than 35,000 teachers and health & human services professionals in district and charter schools in LAUSD.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Teachers, Union

Leonie Haimson: Shedding Light on the Debate about NYC’s Selective High Schools

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2018 //
16

Leonie Haimson lays out the case for reforming the admission practices of New York City’s elite admission-by-exam high schools. Changes are long overdue, she says.

The problem is that so few black and Hispanic students gain admission to the city’s eight specialized high schools.

As a Leonie points out, “Only 10 percent of students admitted to these selective high schools are black and Hispanic, while these students make up 67 percent of the overall public school population. This year, only 10 black students were offered admission to the city’s most selective of these high schools, Stuyvesant, out of 902 students admitted.”

However, only three high schools are shielded by state law from changes initiated by the city’s Board of Education. The Mayor could direct his board to make changes at five of the selective schools now.

New York city’s selective schools are the only ones in the nation that base admission solely on a single test.

The problems are not limited to three or eight high schools.

“The competitive nature of this process worsened under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein. The number of high schools that admitted students through academic screening increased from 29 in 1997 to 112 in 2017, while the proportion of “ed-opt” high schools, designed to accept students at all different levels of achievement, dropped sharply. Even so-called unscreened programs actually do screen students, in covert ways. Moreover, the Gates-funded small schools that proliferated after 2002 initially barred students with disabilities or English language learners from their schools, prompting a civil rights complaint in 2006.“

A major fix would require reducing class sizes in the elementary and middle schools to improve the education of all children.

Categories Class size, Competition, New York City, Testing
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