The Bald Piano Guy is a very clever public school teacher in Great Neck, New York, who posts musical videos on YouTube expressing his views about education and politics, always with a smile. I erred in thinking he was a NYC teacher.
In this video, he has advice for Betsy DeVos:
“Go back to selling Amway/
Teaching really isn’t your thing.”
What happens now to students in New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic?
Here is an open letter to Mayor DeBlasio and Chancellor Carranza from the city’s leading advocates for children:
April 24, 2020
Dear Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza,
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the ugliest inequities in our society into the glaring light for all to see. We must not continue the same system that resulted in these inequities, but must instead fundamentally change the way we think about our education, our society, and the world. In addition to the enormous number of lives lost and many more having fallen ill, New York City’s most vulnerable families and communities are suffering the ripple effect of harm caused by decades of segregation and systemic disinvestment in historically marginalized communities. Schools, which have increasingly carried the burden of serving the basic needs of families, have seen perhaps the most intense upheaval in day to day practices. This upheaval has been particularly hard on our most marginalized communities: multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and those living with housing instability.
The transition to “remote learning” has exposed and exacerbated existing gaps in access and opportunity for students across New York City. The Department Of Education launched an extensive effort to get devices and wifi access to every student, yet the remaining technical disparities alone warrant complete restructuring of the way students are evaluated towards a more humane grading system. To adhere to traditional grading at this moment would only serve to perpetuate the real impacts of pandemic-related stress, racial and economic disparities, and the fact that most teachers were not and still are not adequately prepared to provide high-quality instruction remotely.
Clearly, we are at a moment of global and local transformation. We need to respond and transform as well—by embracing responsive teaching and grading that honors and embodies the principles of equity and excellence as espoused by the DOE. A system-wide policy on grading and promotion grounded in equity and humanity is critical.
To that end, we propose the following for all NYC district schools in the 2019-20 school year and students who are alternately assessed in the 2020-21 school year:
Instruction during the school shutdown should be built around social cohesion, critical consciousness, social-emotional support, belonging, inclusion, and wellness.
Schools provide a responsive curriculum with space for students to reflect on their current reality. Teachers will co-develop learning targets/goals with students and families and pathways to achieve those goals through individualized learning plans. These plans will be prioritized for vulnerable students for next school year, based on core competencies and the four principles outlined in NYSED CRSE framework. All students on alternate assessment must be re-evaluated when schools reopen next year.
2. All seniors graduate.
Provide post-graduation and college transition support and planning for graduating seniors. Provide summer instruction to seniors who need to complete work from prior terms so they can graduate in August. Allow 21-year-old students who have not met graduation requirements to return to high school for the 2020-21 school year.
3. All students are promoted to the next grade.
Teachers identify essential skills and knowledge from their 2019-20 courses to be spiraled into the next level course/grade. DOE provides resources and a platform for summer learning courses that is accessible to all students to ensure continuity of learning. Schools conduct diagnostic assessments in person and when it is safe to do so to determine students’ progress, and plan curriculum and supports accordingly. Diagnostic test results should not be used as a tracking function in which vulnerable students are subjugated and inequalities are further exacerbated. This policy will not supersede individual parent choices to hold students back.
4. All elementary school students receive narrative reports only for the marking period (no grades).
Narrative reports communicate important information to students, families and next year’s teachers while maintaining a focus on learning.
5. All middle and high school students receive full credit for the marking period.
Assessment of assignments during remote learning is based on mastery of core competencies, rather than on compliance/completion factors. Students receive intensive supports over the summer and next school year to progress academically.
We believe quickly resolving the promotion and grading policies can help educators and the DOE focus on responding to the immediate needs of students and investing in long term strategies to support students in the coming school year. Moving forward, we hope we can deepen the conversation on what the purpose of schooling and education should be, what we should value and elevate, what we can eliminate, and how to create a school system that is authentically rooted in social justice values. This pandemic is an opportunity to dismantle systems of oppression and build a society that honors our collective humanity. We look forward to creating this school system with you.
cc: L. Chen, Chief Academic Officer
J. Williams, Public Advocate
C. Johnson, Speaker, City Council
Signed by: (organizational affiliation for identification purposes only):
Mark Treyger, Chair, City Council Education Committee
Advocates for Children New York City
Alliance for Quality Education (AQE)
Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC)
Class Size Matters
Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF)
D30 Equity Now
El Puente
Good Shepherd Services
Immigrant Social Services (ISS)
INCLUDEnyc
IntegrateNYC
Literacy Trust
Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJ-ROC) at NYU Metro Center
Masa
Mekong NYC
MinKwon Center for Community Action
New Settlement Parent Action Committee (PAC)
New York Immigration Coalition
NYC Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ)
Parents Supporting Parents
Peer Health Exchange New York City
Read Alliance
South Asian Youth Action (SAYA)
The Child Center of NY
YVote/Next Generation Politics
Shannon R. Waite, PEP Mayoral Appointee
Shino Tanikawa, CEC 2
Ushma Neill, CEC 2
Robin Broshi, CEC 2
Emily Hellstrom, CEC 2, Chair Students with Disabilities Committee
Kaliris Y. Salas-Ramirez, CEC 4
Pamela Stewart, President CEC 5
Ayishah Irvin, CEC 5
Tanesha Grant, CEC 5
Aide Zainos, President, CEC 9
Thomas Sheppard, CEC 11
Ayanna Behin, President CEC 13
Tajh Sutton, President CEC 14
Yuli Hsu CEC 14 Vice President
Camille Casaretti, President CEC 15
Antonia Ferraro Co-Vice President CEC15
Nequan McLean, President, CEC 16
Erika Nicole Kendall, President CEC 17
Jessica Byrne, President CEC 22
Tazin Azad, CEC 22, Diversity and Cultural Inclusion Committee Co-Chair
Jonathan Greenberg, CEC 30
Martha Bayona, CEC 32
Amy Ming Tsai, CCD75
Grisel Cardona, CCD75
Sonal Patel, D2 parent, SLT member at PS 11
Mar Fitzgerald, D2 Parent Leader
Patricia Laraia, D2 Parent Leader
Nina Miller, D2 Parent Leader
Akeela Azcuy, D2 Parent Leader
Nina Miller, D2 Parent Leader
Cheryl Wu, D2 Parent Leader
Jeannine Kiely, D2 Parent Leader
Atina Bazin, D28 Parent Leader
Rashida Harris, D4 Parent Leader
Amy Hsin, Associate Professor of Sociology, Queens College, CUNY
_._,_._,_
Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters asks why the NYC Department of Education is spending millions for school buses that are useless while planning to cut the budget of the schools by $827 million?
She writes:
If DOE suspended our busing contracts now, the DOE would save $700 million through the end of the year – even after paying for the two weeks in March when they were used. This would prevent the need for most of the cuts planned for next year, including most importantly the entire $100 million planned for school budgets.
Chalkbeat reports that at least 40 NewYork City educators have died because of the coronavirus but the Department of Education refuses to release their names or to explain their reticence.
Christina Veiga writes:
Rosario Gonzalez, a 91-year-old paraprofessional who cared tenderly for children in an East Harlem special education program, rarely missed a day of work in more than three decades.
Claudia Shirley continued to teach in Bushwick even after retiring, and loved her job so much that she inspired her two daughters to become educators themselves.
Carol King-Grant, a special education teacher in the South Bronx, was known for her love of sudoku and beautiful singing voice.
All died in recent weeks from suspected cases of the coronavirus, according to the United Federation of Teachers. The union announced that, as of Friday, it knew of more than 40 of its members presumed to have been claimed by the pandemic, including both active educators and retirees.
The union is naming names, and releasing a tally of the lives lost at a time that the education department has refused to do so. The department’s silence has sparked an uproar among teachers, who feel the lack of recognition is a smack in the face, particularly as they continued to report for work even after the danger of COVID-19 was The education department has kept mum on the number of cases within its ranks even as other public agencies, including the police department and transportation authority, have released figures. However, the education department stopped confirming cases as community spread became rampant and the health department told New Yorkers to assume they have been exposed.
“We understand there is a lot of uncertainty across the City surrounding COVID-19,” education department spokesperson Miranda Barbot told Chalkbeat on April 2. “School employees are sometimes reporting information to their principals and superintendents, and we are determining how best to collect this information in one place.”
Teachers have demanded that the city publicly disclose deaths among their colleagues. In the absence of official information about the disease’s spread within school communities, teachers have taken it upon themselves to inform their co-workers of positive cases. They have blasted the city for keeping campuses open even as the number of sickened New Yorkers skyrocketed. well known.
Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced this morning that the city’s public schools would remain closed for the rest of the academic year, but lessons online would continue.
Governor Andrew Cuomo promptly contradicted the mayor and asserted the decision was his, not the mayor’s.
Parents were outraged by the childish food fight.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Natasha Capers, 347.610.2754, ncapers@nyccej.org
PRESS STATEMENT:
Parent Groups Respond to School Closure Decisions:
During a Health Crisis, Leaders Demonstrate a Lack of Leadership
New York City, NY (April 11th, 2020)- Early today, Mayor Bill DeBlasio under the advice of public health experts, announced that schools would be closed for the remainder of the school year due to the raging coronavirus pandemic. At the epicenter of the decision is the crippling impact the virus has had on our city and people. Later today, Governor Cuomo announced that there was no decision to close schools yet and that as governor it was legally his sole decision to make.
This squabbling between the mayor and the governor is embarrassing and causing tremendous stress for families, students, and educators. Their inability to come together, and make decisions informed by the well being of students and families, is immoral and will continue to have disastrous consequences for our communities, especially those so deeply impacted by the inequity in healthcare and testing. Parents need clarity in this moment, but Governor Cuomo’s constant need to have control once again takes precedence over him making the right decision for families.
Delayed decision making has led New York City and the surrounding suburbs to become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, with far more cases than many countries have. It is time for Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio to end their narcissistic feud and start working together for the benefit of all of New York’s students and families.
We need leaders to put aside egos during this crisis and prioritize the well-being of students and their families. We need them to show leadership and to be on one accord for the health and safety of New York State and City. The consequence is unnecessary confusion and additional stress in a time when school communities are already traumatized.
Many teachers are using the ZOOM videoconferencing tool for their online classes, but there have been numerous complaints about ZOOM classes being hacked, and intruders interfering with the class or expressing inappropriate comments.
Consequently, the New York City Department of Education is forbidding teachers from using ZOOM.
New York City has banned the video conferencing platform Zoom in city schools weeks after thousands of teachers and students began using it for remote learning.
The education department received reports of issues that impact the security and privacy of the platform during the credentialing process, according to a document shared with principals that was obtained by Chalkbeat. “Based on the DOE’s review of those documented concerns, the DOE will no longer permit the use of Zoom at this time,” the memo said.
Instead, the guidance says, schools should switch to Microsoft Teams, which the education department suggests has similar functionality and is more secure.
The change is likely to cause headaches for schools and families, as the use of Zoom became widespread after the city shuttered school buildings on March 16 and moved over a million students to remote learning a week later.
Not all schools use Zoom, though many have since the platform offers a free version and is relatively simple to set up. Last month, the city’s Panel for Educational Policy met via Zoom, a meeting that included schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and other top officials.
But the platform has also caused problems for educators and has come under fire nationally for a range of security and privacy issues.
In some cases, students have taken to “Zoombombing” online classes, essentially logging into online classes uninvited and hijacking everyone’s screens with inappropriate images or audio. “Zoombombing is no joke. I don’t think we were ready for that,” Pat Finley, a co-principal at the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in Queens, previously said.
Students have also sometimes flooded the platform’s chat function with inappropriate comments, disrupting virtual instruction.
Last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James raised concerns about the platform, including whether third parties could secretly access users’ webcams, reports that the company shares data with Facebook, and whether the company was following state requirements about safeguarding student data.
What began as “Grab and Go” locations to feed students has turned into free meal dispensaries for all who are in need of food.
The city Department of Education’s 435 meal hubs for children will be expanded to serve adult New Yorkers with grab-and-go meals, meaning anyone in need of food can access it at one of the locations. Children and families can pick up meals 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Adults with no children are asked to go to one of the hubs from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
During the Great Depression, there were soup kitchens. Now there are “grab and go” hubs for the hungry. With millions suddenly out of work, it becomes our obligation as a society to ensure that no one suffers because of hunger and no one is denied healthcare because of inability to pay.
Chalkbeat reports that the number of African American and Hispanic students offered admission to New York City’s elite high schools continued to be very low.
Admissions offers are based on the results of one test given on one day. No other factors are taken into account.
The statistics for next year’s freshman class show sharp disparities:
Only 4.5% of offers went to black students and 6.6% went to Hispanic students, virtually unchanged from last year. Citywide, black and Hispanic students make up almost 70% of enrollment.
Once again, a majority of offers went to white students (25.1%) and Asian students (54%).
The figures were a stark reminder that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to integrate the schools — which he’s dialed back this year — have failed to win support. In pushing for admission changes, the mayor unsuccessfully lobbied state lawmakers, who must approve any admissions changes to the city’s three largest specialized high schools, Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant, and Bronx Science.
At Stuyvesant, the most competitive of the specialized high schools, only 10 offers went to black students and 20 went to Latino students — out of 766 total offers. At Staten Island Technical, only one black student was offered admission, the same number as last year. The number of Hispanic students offered a seat at Stuy dropped to 20 from 33, and at Staten Island Tech, only eight Hispanic students received offers, from 11 the year before.
Mayor
Mark Green was a young, vigorous, popular progressive who won the Democratic primary for mayor in 2001. New York City is overwhelmingly Democratic, and usually the Democratic nomination is enough to assure election.
But Mark Green faced an unusual Republican opponent, billionaire MIchael Bloomberg. No one knew much about Bloomberg, but he had the endorsement of Republican Mayor Rudy Guiliani, who had turned into a symbol of resilience and heroism after the devastating attack of September 11, 2001.
Green is now supporting Elizabeth Warren.
Mark Green writes here about what happened next in 2001.
Three weeks before the New York mayoral election in November of 2001, I got a call from Mark Mellman, the pollster working on my race against Michael Bloomberg.
“Well, I have good and bad news. The good news is that I’ve never had a client 20 points ahead this late in a campaign who lost. The bad news is that Bloomberg is spending a million dollars a day — not a month but a day — and gaining a point a day.” I quickly did the math and shuddered.
I lost the race by a margin of 50% to 48%, after being outspent $73.9 million to $16.3 million. Ironically, I raised more money than any other U.S. mayoral candidate in history, making 30,000 phone calls and receiving 11,000 contributions. But Mike, who didn’t have to make phone calls, spent the most money ever on a mayoral campaign. He simply wrote checks.
It’s no great surprise that after buying the mayoralty, Bloomberg decided to see if he could do the same with the presidency. There have been other self-funded candidates, of course, and they have all failed. Ross Perot spent $79 million in 1992 and Steve Forbes $60 million in 2000.
But if Mike gets the nomination, his spending already has dwarfed what they spent. He is a bank posing as a person.
I know what that looks like. In the closing weeks of our 2001 race, I had the helpless feeling that there was no strategy that could counter his spending. Everywhere I went I saw or heard a Bloomberg ad: in between innings during the Yankees’ World Series games, on hip-hop stations, on walls in Chinatown, on the rotating billboard at a Knicks game, on mailings that piled up in the lobbies of buildings across the city. He even sent small radios with his name on them….
Bloomberg does have some solid liberal credibility — on climate, guns and public health — but on many core issues his record is a liability. He has called Social Security “a Ponzi Scheme.” He opposed raising the minimum wage. He blamed the 2008 Great Recession, in part, on laws against predatory lending. He denounced Obamacare and Dodd-Frank. He enthusiastically endorsed the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004, was an apologist for the Russian takeover of Crimea and has a long record of making demeaning comments about women. And, as late as last year, he was still advocating a “stop-and-frisk” approach and defending his record on the practice.
Given Bloomberg’s shaky performance in the Nevada debate, it’s hard to feel confident he can reassure liberal Democrats on those issues.
Based on my knowledge of him from our own two debates, as well as his record as mayor and now presidential candidate, I have three questions about his prospects for 2020:
First, will his ability to carpet-bomb the country with ads be enough to overcome the liabilities of his record in the minds of millions of Democrats? Maybe. That certainly worked in New York City in 2001.
Second, if no candidate wins enough delegates to secure a majority, will Bloomberg have a large enough bloc of convention delegates to influence who the party’s choice of a nominee will be on a second or third ballot? Again, the answer is maybe.
Finally, in the event that Bloomberg secured the nomination, would liberals embrace him if Trump is the alternative? Here, there’s no maybe, even for a Warren supporter like me. After four years of watching Trump try to destroy democracy, the answer is yes.
This article appeared in the New York Times in 2017. It evaluated Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s legacy in high school admission.
Mayor Bloomberg eliminated zoned high schools and instituted a policy of citywide choice. Students could apply to any high school in the city.
This was supposed to reduce racial segregation, but instead it increased it.
Bloomberg, who had sole control of the New York City school system, also increased the number of schools with selective admissions policies.
This too increased the segregation of schools.
Graduation rates are up, but graduation rates are always suspicious since they are easily manipulated and manufactured by devices such as “credit recovery.”
What is certain is that segregation has intensified.
Fourteen years into the system, black and Hispanic students are just as isolated in segregated high schools as they are in elementary schools — a situation that school choice was supposed to ease.
Within the system, there is a hierarchy of schools, each with different admissions requirements — a one-day high-stakes test, auditions, open houses. And getting into the best schools, where almost all students graduate and are ready to attend college, often requires top scores on the state’s annual math and English tests and a high grade point average.
Those admitted to these most successful schools remain disproportionately middle class and white or Asian, according to an in-depth analysis of acceptance data and graduation rates conducted for The New York Times by Measure of America, an arm of the Social Science Research Council. At the same time, low-income black or Hispanic children like the ones at Pelham Gardens are routinely shunted into schools with graduation rates 20 or more percentage points lower.
While top middle schools in a handful of districts groom children for competitive high schools that send graduates to the Ivy League, most middle schools, especially in the Bronx, funnel children to high schools that do not prepare them for college.
The roots of these divisions are tangled and complex. Students in competitive middle schools and gifted programs carry advantages into the application season, with better academic preparation and stronger test scores. Living in certain areas still comes with access to sought-after schools. And children across the city compete directly against one another regardless of their circumstances, without controls for factors like socioeconomic status.
Ultimately, there just are not enough good schools to go around. And so it is a system in which some children win and others lose because of factors beyond their control — like where they live and how much money their families have.
Choice does not solve the problem of scarcity. Instead of concentrating on increasing the number of good schools, Bloomberg focused on choice.
Each year, about 160 children from Pelham Gardens join the flood of 80,000 eighth graders applying for the city’s public high schools. The field on which they compete is enormous: They have to choose from 439 schools that are further broken up into 775 programs. One program may admit students based on where they live, while another program at the same school may admit only those with strong grades.
The sheer number of choices offers up great possibilities, but it can also make the system maddeningly complex, with so many requirements, open houses, deadlines and portfolios to keep track of. Yaslin Turbides helps middle schoolers apply through the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization in Brooklyn. She said that she and her colleagues called the application system “the beast.”
Rare is a 13-year-old equipped to handle the selection process alone.
The process can become like a second job for some parents as they arm themselves with folders, spreadsheets and consultants who earn hundreds of dollars an hour to guide them. But most families in the public school system have neither the flexibility nor the resources to match that arsenal.
Diane Ravitch's blog 