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School Letter Grades Are Preposterous

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
20

On this blog, we have often discussed how easy it is to get drawn into accepting an intolerable practice. When it is first introduced, no one objects because it is worth trying, and over time, as this innovation becomes standard practice, those who don’t like it are ignored because it’s too late, it’s done that way and will go on being done that way.

Take the idea of giving letter grades to schools. My best recollection is that this idea started in Florida under Governor Jeb Bush, who thinks that testing and accountability solve all problems. Then New York City copied Florida. Now other jurisdictions are doing because, well, because Florida and New York City are doing it.

In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, there is an excellent public school. One year it got an A, and everyone was happy and proud. The next year, it got an F, and no one knew why: Same principal, same teachers, same methods, same materials, same students. What was the point of the A or the F? The principal didn’t know. Neither do I.

Several readers sent me an article about how the state of Florida made a mistake in giving out letter grades and raised the grades of a number of schools in Palm Beach. Good for Palm Beach, but remember that the whole system of letter grades is stupid. Of course, there are mistakes, including many that will never be corrected. Just because you get an A doesn’t mean that the competition is valid. It is not.

One of the great things about fiction, especially science fiction, is that we see how people get trapped in a world that is not of their making, a world that offends their sense of decency. Most people accept that world as it is. A few don’t. The question is always whether the dissidents figure out a way to get others to see the world as they do or whether they die fighting an unjust system.

Giving a letter grade to a school is the height of absurdity. It’s one thing to create a report card, which informs the school about ways it can improve. Such a report card might have thirty different categories, each evaluated to show the school its strengths and weaknesses and to start a conversation about how to improve.

But a letter grade is a Scarlet Letter. It says “This is an A school” or “this is a D school,” whatever.

Imagine if we sent children home with a report card with a single letter on it. “This child is a D.” Parents would be outraged. They would immediately understand that you are branding their son or daughter, not evaluating their performance. The purpose of evaluation is to support and improve, not to stigmatize.

To change the world, which now seems so locked into bad and destructive practices, we must change our vision. We must spread our vision to others and help others to understand that schools, like children, are complex, not unidimensional. We stopped putting dunce caps on children many years ago. We should stop thinking that schools will get better if we put a dunce cap on them.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Florida, NYC

Real Life in a “Turnaround” School

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2012 //
4

Mayor Bloomberg and Secretary Duncan like to describe the firing of teachers and the closing of schools as a wonderful reform strategy.

Something magical is supposed to happen because of clearing out half or all of the staff and starting over with a new team, or half a new team.

The public knows nothing about the details, reads that “reform” is happening, and is satisfied to know that someone is doing something even if they don’t know what it is.

There is an implicit assumption that the teachers who got fired must be “bad” teachers because they work in a “failing” school.

Change the teachers, goes the story, and the school won’t be a failing school anymore, It will be a “turnaround” school.

If only it were that easy.

Here is a comment by a teacher who worked or works in a turnaround school in New York City. I don’t know which verb tense to use because he was fired, then he was reinstated by the ruling of an arbitrator, and now Mayor Bloomberg is litigating to reverse the arbitrator’s decision. So, for the moment, he has a job. But only for the moment. If nothing else, his account gives the lie to the claim that those who were fired deserved to be fired and that getting rid of them would “help the school” and “save the students.”

I work in one of those 24 turnaround schools in NYC and was appalled at the hiring process. The majority of the teachers who were NOT hired back were indeed effective and amazing teachers. They were “culled” from the herd because they were senior teachers and made too much money. Among the teachers who were not hired back were the bilingual science teacher whose Regents passing rate was the highest of all the science teachers. She is amazing, but her sin was being in the system too long. Honestly, teachers were stunned when they were not hired back.Ironically, some of the teachers who were hired back were among the weakest on our staff. Nobody really understood the hiring process or how these decisions were made. Yes, we knew there was a rubric and yes, the UFT sat on these committees, but let’s be honest–none of this addresses the real issues in many of these students’ lives. They are sent to the high school with deficient skills and other social problems.And “Harold,”,none of this, please be clear, was about helping kids. It was about hiring the least expensive workers. Kids be damned. Morale at my school was so low to begin with. Nobody even knows if they are back or not, nobody knows if the old principal is in or not and nobody even knows what the school’s name is.This is chaos. This is destruction. This is immoral. This is DANGEROUS!

 
Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Education Reform, NYC, Race to the Top

Now It Can Be Told! The Secrets to Success and Riches

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2012 //
42

Bruce Baker has distilled the qualities of successful charter schools. In this post, Baker looks at the reasons that some NYC charter schools succeed.

The reason for creating charters in the late 1980s was that they would have the freedom to try new ideas and thereby to help public schools improve.

As the charters tried new things, public schools would learn from their experience and would improve.

The charters were supposed to gain freedom from most state regulation in exchange for their willingness to be held accountable.

After twenty years of charter school experimentation, we now have a pretty solid idea of “what works.”

The same things that “work” in charter schools should also work in public schools.

We should not waste time. Let’s learn from the charters so all schools can be successful schools.

First, the best charters spend considerably more money so that they can provide additional services and tutoring. Some spend thousands more per student.

That is an important lesson. Every public school that wants to see dramatic improvement should get extra funding.

Second, the charters are free of burdensome regulation by the states and districts.

That’s an important finding. The states and districts should immediately give public schools the same regulatory relief now available to charters.

Third, the charters do not accept the same proportion of students with special needs or students who are English language learners.

Uh-oh. That’s a hard one. Public schools are required by state and federal laws to have their doors open to all students. I don’t think that public schools can follow the charter model here. If public schools didn’t take these students, where would they go?

Fourth, the charters have even more money to spend because of the small proportion of children with disabilities and English language learners; this is a budget plus. But again, I don’t think public schools can maximize their dollars by excluding the most expensive-to-educate kids. So that’s another no-go.

Fifth, the charters make their own disciplinary rules and can toss out kids who misbehave by their rules, like bringing chips to school or not looking in the eyes of the teacher, or speaking up when they are supposed to walk in silence.  But if public schools kicked out kids for minor infractions, where would they go? To another public school.

Sixth, the charters have longer school days, longer school weeks, and a longer school year. More time to teach, more time to get ready for state tests. Public schools can do that too, unless those pesky unions insist on being paid more for working longer hours.

Seventh, charters keep their costs low by  encouraging or tolerating or not minding constant turnover among the teachers. That way, the bulk of teachers are in year one or two, at the bottom of the salary scale, and they are more malleable. Senior teachers cost more, and have ideas of their own.  But public schools will have a hard time learning this lesson because senior teachers have job rights. Of course, with the current move on to eliminate seniority and tenure, even public schools will soon be dealing mainly with inexperienced and malleable teachers in their first year. Who will train the new teachers if the senior teachers have left? Well, that’a a problem we will deal with some other time. No one has time to think about that now.

But one thing seems clear: If public schools get more money; if they can be freed of regulations, if they can exclude the most challenging students, if they have longer hours, if they have constant teacher turnover to save money, if they can keep out or push out the students who don’t obey or who can’t pass the tests, then they too will get fabulous results.

Now that we have the secrets of charter success, what should we do? And what arrangements should be made for the children who are unwanted by the new schools of success? The children who don’t speak English, the children with disabilities, the children who don’t obey the rules, the children who get low scores. What should we do with them?

The charters show us how to Race to the Top. What they don’t show us how to achieve equality of educational opportunity.

Categories Alternate Route To Certification, Charter Schools, Education Reform, NYC

Ten Years of “Reform” and Still So Much Failure

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2012 //
6

The New York Daily News has an editorial this morning complaining about an arbitrator’s decision to stop Mayor Michael Bloomberg from closing 24 schools.

As usual, the editorial lambastes the teachers’ union, which is supposedly the font of all evil in education. The editorial writer forgets that the city Department of Education agreed to enter into binding arbitration. Having lost the decision, the city and the newspaper forget the plain meaning of the word “binding.”

The crucial issue: No question is raised about why so many schools continue to “fail” after a full decade of “reform” in New York City.

How many years must it take before the failure stops? Twenty? Thirty? Forty?

The Daily News editorial writers will never hold the mayor accountable for improving the schools, over which he has had total control for ten years. He has a puppet board, which routinely approves whatever the mayor wants. Never in ten years has the board said no to any decision of his. He negotiates with no one.

They will never call him out for the charade of closing schools and opening new schools that exclude the students with the lowest scores. Those children will be shunted to other schools that will eventually be closed. And the new schools will also be in line to be closed too.

This is not reform. It is a shell game. Guess who is under the shell? Children with disabilities. Children who can’t read or speak English. Children who are homeless. Children who are failing.

Should I mention that Mort Zuckerman, the owner of the Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, served on the Broad Foundation Center for the Management of School Systems? I will mention that the Daily News has some of the best, most independent reporters and columnists of any newspaper in the city.

For some reason, the newspaper editorialists like to talk accountability but never mention that accountability starts at the top.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Education Reform, NYC

About Those Superintendents on Broad Board

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2012 //
15

At the suggestion of a reader, I posted a list of the board of directors of a Broad Center for the Management of School Systems, dating from 2009. It included several school superintendents.

Readers have commented on the track record of the superintendents on that board.

Let’s see:

Joel Klein: Resigned in 2010, after NY State Education Department revealed  statewide score inflation and New York City’s celebrated test scores collapsed

Michelle Rhee: Resigned in 2010 after D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty defeated, largely because of her divisive reputation

Arlene Ackerman: Resigned in 2011 in Philadelphia after tempestuous reign

Maria Goodloe-Johnson: Fired in 2010 in Seattle

Arne Duncan: His plan called Renaissance 2010 failed to lift Chicago public schools, now U.S. Secretary of Education

Margaret Spellings: Not a superintendent, but architect of disastrous NCLB

And to think that this is the organization that is training superintendents to “reform” urban education!

Categories Broad Foundation, Chicago, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Klein, Joel, NYC, Philadelphia, Rhee, Michelle

The Only Egg in NYC’s Basket Is Broken

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
18

After ten years of mayoral control of its public schools, New York City has only one strategy to “reform” the schools: Closing existing schools and replacing them with many new small schools.

You would think that after ten years with one person in charge, holding the unlimited power to do whatever he wants, the schools would now all be successful–that is, if he actually had a good idea about how to improve the schools.

But no, the game of closing schools continues, meaning that every year a new group of schools will be single out for a shutdown. As readers of this blog know, the New York City Department of Education (i.e., Mayor Bloomberg) decided to shut down 33 schools this year. When powerful politicians in Queens complained loudly, the closing list dropped from 33 to 24. When the city realized that it could scoop up about $40 million in federal funds by calling the schools “turnarounds,” rather than just closing them outright, the 24 became “turnaround” schools, in which at least half the staff was fired.

But an independent arbitrator ruled that the “turnaround” plan violated the teachers’ union contract, so everyone who was just fired got reinstated, unless they decided to take whatever job they had lined up in the meanwhile. At last writing, Mayor Bloomberg was steamed that he lost “binding” arbitration and announced his intention to sue to overturn the arbitrator’s ruling, which apparently is only “binding” if it goes the way the Mayor wanted it to go.

So here is an additional twist to this story.

The city’s dependence on closing schools and opening schools relies heavily on one study, which said that the city’s small high schools had a higher graduation rate. The brilliant Gary Rubinstein decided to take a closer look at this study and found it to be flawed. How sad that so many lives of students, teachers and administrators have been disrupted, how many careers ruined, how many communities fragmented, based on a theory that lacks evidence.

How sad too that this path of destruction and ruin is considered “reform.” No, not reform. Destruction, chaos, upheaval. And not in the best interests of students.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Education Reform, NYC

School’s Out at a Turnaround School

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2012 //
4

This era may be remembered as the time when our nation’s leaders decided to break the spirits of our teachers and to close enough schools to instill fear in the hearts of all educators

I don’t know which “thought leader” came up with the idea that the best way to “fix” a school with low test scores is to fire the principal and at least half the staff. I don’t know the evidence to support this policy of wiping the slate clean without individual evaluations.

But now with the federal imprimatur of Race to the Top, it’s happening in many school districts. And of course, the U.S. Department of Education will stretch to prove that lowering the boom works, because it’s their idea. But how do you persuade the public and especially communities of color where the axe will fall most often that this punitive strategy is a good idea?

Imaginary scene: Some bright PR guy or gal figured out how important language is in selling a really destructive idea. “How can we explain to people that we are firing most of the teachers and renaming the neighborhood school? The one that everyone knew and loved for fifty years? How do we make this unpleasant reality palatable?” Ponder, ponder.

“Ah, I’ve got it! When we shut down their school and fire everyone, let’s call it a “turnaround!” That sounds like a dance around the Maypole. It sounds so festive. It’s positive and happy.

“Crazy idea. No one will believe that. No one is that stupid.”

“Think so? Let’s try it and see how it goes.”

With that context, here is how it went for this teacher in New York City.  This comment and the events it describes occurred before the arbitrator postponed the school turnarounds last Friday. Some teachers had already found other jobs. Those who choose to remain have a one-year lease on life, unless a court throws out the arbitrator’s decision. The bottom line: chaos, uncertainty, disruption. This is no way to run a school or a school system.
Categories Accountability, Education Reform, NYC, Race to the Top

Bloomberg’s Defeat..For Now

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2012 //
10

Mayor Bloomberg is intent on closing as many public schools as he can before he leaves office at the end of 2013 (his third term). He has already closed about 150 schools, maybe more, of the 1,100 or 1,200 that he started with. He has added hundreds of new schools. I’ve lost count. Maybe he has too.

The mayor loves privately managed charter schools, competition, and choice. He has done his best to promote those ideas over the past ten years. There was a time when the mayor and his public relations team sold the idea of a “New York City miracle,” but those claims blew up in 2010 when the state acknowledged that it had manipulated the passing score for years. When scores across the state were recalibrated, the “miracle” about which Bloomberg and Joel Klein had boasted for years evaporated. Now, the big boast is about climbing graduation rates, but since 80% of the city’s graduates require remediation in the city’s community colleges, those claims too must be taken with a large helping of salt.

By now it is clear that the mayor’s central “reform” strategy is to close schools, fire the entire staff, and open new schools, either small schools in the same building with new names or charter schools. Many schools that were the heart of their local community have been killed during the time in which the mayor has ruled the schools with an iron hand. Most of the closed schools had low test scores, and he assumed it was because they were bad schools, but they enrolled disproportionately large numbers of poor students, students with special needs, and English language learners. As large high schools closed, the new schools tried to avoid enrolling the same students, to burnish their own scores.

Last week, at a press conference called to announce that 1,100 professors across New York state had signed a petition opposing high-stakes testing, Pedro Noguera of New York University (who recently resigned as chair of the State University of New York’s charter school authorizing board) denounced the mayor’s school closing strategy as a “shell game” that harmed the city’s most vulnerable students. In a blistering critique, he said that our public officials literally have no idea what they are doing and  cling to failed policies rather than listen to their constituents.

Last Friday, an independent arbitrator ruled against the mayor’s plan to do a “turnaround” at 24 public schools. Originally, the mayor planned to close 33 schools outright, but some powerful politicians stayed the executioner’s hand and got him to reduce it to 24. The mayor doesn’t listen when thousands of parents and students show up at public hearings, but he does listen when the head of the State Assembly’s education committee complains.

The mayor’s usual strategy is to just close the school outright, but he wanted to get millions of federal dollars available for the “turnaround” so he proposed to fire at least half the staff instead of everyone. The United Federation of Teachers sued to block the closings, on grounds that it violated their contract. The arbitrator agreed with the union.

The city will appeal. The mayor is defending the children, of course. Stay tuned.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Education Reform, NYC

How Charter Schools Get a Bad Reputation, part 2

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2012 //
10

Yesterday I wrote about Juan Gonzalez’s article on Success Academy, which was seeking a 50% increase in its management fee from the state, even though it has a surplus of $23.5 million and spent $3.4 million last year on marketing. The typical charter management organization in New York City has a management fee of 7%, but CEO Eva Moskowitz wanted to increase hers to 15%. Given her surplus, it is hard to see a case for “need,” especially in light of her fund-raising prowess and the presence of several well-heeled hedge fund managers on her board. Needless to say, she is handsomely compensated at a salary close to $400,000 a year.

So here is the update: yesterday, the SUNY Charter Institute gave her everything she asked for. Six new schools plus a 50% increase in her management fee, which will bring in many new millions of taxpayer dollars for her operation.

But there is more to the story. Today, the New York Times ran a story about the “co-location” of a Success Academy school with a New York City public school. (Co-location is a term of art that means that the NYC Department of Education gave free public space in a public school building to a private charter operator, saving the charter the cost of rent and utilities and crowding the kids in the public school out of their classrooms.)

The New York Times article is simply horrifying. The contrast between the Success Academy charter and P.S. 30 defines the meaning of “separate but equal” even though the kids may all be of one race. In one school, the kids get the best of everything. In the other, they struggle with whatever the NYC Department of Education is willing to supply. Some critics call the new system “academic apartheid.” The charter school has fewer students with disabilities. Its teachers work a 9 1/2 hour day, and they don’t last long. When Success Academy first arrived, P.S. 30 was making great strides and earning an A on its progress report. Now it has a D rating, a fact that Success Academy delights in retelling to the reporter.

This charter chain represents the competitive spirit that corporate reformers love. It flourishes by sucking the life out of public schools and killing them.

Diane

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, NYC

How Charter Schools Get a Bad Reputation

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2012 //
37

The best investigative reporter in New York City–and possibly in the nation–is Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News.

Gonzalez writes about politics and occasionally writes about the politics of education. He has written some of the biggest scoops about the inner workings of the New York City Department of Education. He won the George Polk Award in journalism for reporting about the Citytime fraud, a giant high-tech scam in which a contractor ripped off the city for years and eventually agreed to repay almost $500 million.

This morning he revealed that Eva Moskowitz is seeking a big increase in her management fees from the state because she claims to be running a deficit. Today, he writes, the State University of New York is likely to approve “a huge 50% increase in the per-pupil management fee of one of the city’s wealthiest, biggest-spending and most controversial charter school operators.”

Gonzalez writes that “The Success Network, in fact, is a fund-raising colossus, having received $28 million from dozens of foundations and wealthy investors the past six years, and millions more in state and federal grants.” It has reported huge surpluses to the IRS, currently $23.5 million.

Last year, it spent more than $3 million on marketing and recruitment to drum up applicants for its much-ballyooed lotteries. The more applicants for every seat, the more Success Academy looks “successful.” It is a marketing tool in which people and their children are used to get more charters for Success Academy.

Whenever there is a public hearing about closing schools, hundreds of Success Academy children and parents are bused in–all wearing identical T-shirts–to insist on closing more public schools so that Success Academy can take their space and open more charter schools. Why would charter students demand more charters? They are already enrolled in one and they can only attend one school. They are used. You can imagine the opprobrium that would be heaped on a public school principal if he or she hired a bus to take children to public hearings to demand more space or more funding. The principal would be called out, rightly, for using the children and would be fired.

Today Success Academy will appeal for more public funding. It gets whatever it wants from city and state officials (Eva’s charter PAC–called Great Public Schools– made a $50,000 contribution to Governor Cuomo’s campaign).

This is how charters get a bad reputation.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, New York, NYC
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