Archives for category: NYC
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After the Hurricane

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2012 //
33

Many people have written via Twitter or email to ask if I am okay, and the short answer is yes.

Unlike many in New York City, I and my family emerged unscathed. There was a lot of wind and rain, but no damage to body or property.

Many people, including good friends, did suffer terribly. One lives in a neighborhood that was devastated by a terrible fire. Others experienced flood damage.

And the city remains crippled.

The mass transit system is out of commission, so people can’t get to work and children–in this city so dependent on school choice–can’t get to school.

Most Americans depend on private transportation and find it hard to imagine a city where public transportation is critical to the life of the city.

This Forbes blogger explains here how she can’t get to work and her son can’t get to school. Without the subways, people are simply unable to reach their destinations.

Mayor Bloomberg has done a great job as a leader and an explainer during these past few days.

But several people have written to me to complain that the Mayor’s policy of free-market choice for middle schools and high schools has made it impossible for students to get to school when so many depend on the subways to take them on journeys of 45 minutes to an hour from home.

New Yorkers are incredibly resilient and we will get through these trying times, as we got through the horrific aftermath of 9/11 and through various blackouts.

Events like these reinforce our sense of mutual interdependence and our need for a strong and effective government. We live in an age when some extremists want to gut government services, want to strangle the government and reduce it to impotence. I invite them to live in New York City during a blackout or a hurricane and rethink their rugged individualism. Individualism helps to survive, but government is necessary to bring individuals together as a community and support those in trouble.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, NYC

Who Needs Higher Education?

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2012 //
25

The New York City Department of Education intends to ask the state Board of Regents to allow it to grant certification, bypassing the higher education route.

The Regents have already given permission to TFA and to the charter training program Relay to award certification. The Museum of Natural History also has that authority.

Soon there will be Mom-and-Pop certification programs, or maybe online programs, or gosh darn it, just put your money on the barrel, Sonny, and presto! You are a certified teacher.

Two thoughts:

1. We are not trying to elevate the profession.

2. Bye-bye Ed schools.

Categories NYC, Teach for America TFA

If Teachers Ran Their Classes Like NYC Runs Schools, Then….

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2012 //
2

A reader in New York City offers a thought experiment. He invites you to participate:

If teachers ran their classes the way New York City runs its schools…

• Students would get their grades 4-5 months after they finish the teacher’s class. (Progress Report grades for schools are distributed 4-5 months after the end of the previous school year).
• The grades students are given would have no connection to the actual quality of the work they did/the effort they put in. (The school report cards have been shown to rely on questionable use of standardized exams and suffer from irredeemable methodological flaws http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2012/10/05/i-dont-know-about-art-but-i-know-what-i-dont-like/.)
• Teachers would incessantly praise only specific students. Those students would turn out to cheat in legal, but ethically questionable, ways. (The Mayor and the Chancellor consistently praise charter schools although they have been shown to carefully screen out challenging students http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/03/at-kipp-i-would-wake-up-sick-every.html and kick out those they missed the first time http://www.edwize.org/middle-school-charters-suspending-their-way-to-the-top.)
• Teachers would give better supplies and resources to the richer students. (New schools, already receiving special extra funding, get higher budgets than other schools as well http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-09-04/news/33567092_1_turnaround-schools-new-schools-budget-cuts.)
• Teachers would say that “there is nothing to be done” for struggling students in their classes and would remove them from their class lists. (Schools that work with students facing greater incoming challenges are closed down http://www.edwize.org/closing-schools-for-vulnerable-students-a-lesson-in-darwin. This “strategy” is claimed to be a good way to make schools better even though the new schools “fail” at the same rate http://www.edwize.org/meet-the-new-schools-same-as-the-old-schools.)
Do you think this is any way to teach kids? Then why should we believe it is a good way to run a system of a million kids? And why would we want to spread these crazy ideas across the nation?

Feel free to add your own in the comments section…

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, NYC

Testing Madness Is Sick

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2012 //
8

The Wall Street Journal reports that New York City has adopted a new test for its gifted and talented classes. It is said to be “harder” than the previous test. The Bloomberg administration uses a test as the sole means of getting into these highly coveted classes.

Critics say it will reduce the proportion of black and Hispanic students in these classes even lower than it is now, but the test-maker disagrees.

Parents who have invested thousands in test prep for the old test are worried. Now they must invest thousands in test prep for the new test.

One parent has already started her three-year-old on test prep so he will be ready to take the test next year.

Is there only one kind of giftedness? Is there only one talent, the talent for getting the “right” answer? The Bloomberg administration thinks so.

What kind of people think that education can be defined by test-makers? Are they so enamored of standardized tests because they got high marks themselves and want the world to look like them? Do they ever think about cultivating divergent thinkers? What about the dreamers who don’t care about test scores? What kind of a world do they want?

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, NYC, Testing

NYC’s Pointless School Grades

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2012 //
9

Is your state or district planning to create a report card for its public schools?

Advice from New York City: Don’t.

Read this debate. You will see some past and former employees of the school system (and the head of the charter association) who believe in the grades. And you will read some eloquent and knowledgeable critics who know that the grades are erratic, meaningless, and serve no purpose other than to set schools up to be closed.

The city’s Department of Education decided some years ago that the way to improve schools was to grade them. Millions and millions have flown out the window as everyone evaluates everyone else.

And every year, schools learn whether they got labeled A, B, C, D or F.

And with or without grades, the failure continues. And the biggest failure of all is the grading system.

Categories Accountability, NYC

A Blow to Reform/Privatization

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2012 //
9

If you ask leading privatizers where are the examples of success for their theories, they will surely point to New York City.

Surely you heard about the “New York City miracle.” Australia is redesigning its national system because of the success of the alleged miracle.

But what about New York City? More than 100 schools closed, and hundreds of new schools opened. More than 100 new charters. School report cards. Testing and accountability. Constant evaluation and data-based-decision-making.

As New Yorkers know, the claims of a “New York City miracle” collapsed in 2010 when the State Education Department acknowledged that it had lowered the passing mark on state tests. When the scores were recalibrated, the miracle went up in smoke.

Now the people of New York City weigh in. A new Marist poll finds that 49% of New Yorkers say that the public schools are worse now than 20 years ago; only 23% say they are better. The rest are undecided.

Why so much public discontent? Budget cuts. Overcrowded classrooms. Charter co-locations pitting parents against parents.

After a decade of privatization and high-stakes testing in NYC, the public is fed up. And the miracle is gone.

PS: Would someone let the Australian government know?

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, NYC

A Marketplace for Schools?

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2012 //
68

Corporate reform privatizers like Joel Klein, Jeb Bush, Michael Bloomberg, and Mitt Romney like to boast of the glories of a marketplace for schools. They want parents to be consumers, armed with test scores and school report cards and grades. In that great come-and-get-it-day, all schools will be excellent when they compete. That’s why all those programs on all those channels on your TV dial are excellent, and why every product in the marketplace is excellent. Ah, the glories of deregulation!

This teacher describes the new marketplace:

I just spent this past weekend in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Visiting several Autumn festivals I noticed private and charter schools had set up tents in every festival/fair I attended. Right next to the honey and jewelry dealers these ‘privateers’ were peddling their wares. I even saw one at a tag sale!

The good news is that they all were sitting there with no one at their tent.

Wonder if they were unionized Mitt?

What does it say when you need to sit in a tent and peddle the virtue of your school?

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Bush, Jeb, Education Reform, Klein, Joel, NYC, Romney, Mitt

Testing Runs Amok in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2012 //
9

Florida pioneered the use of school grades. New York City followed. Now other states and districts are jumping aboard.

The latest to adopt school grades is Oklahoma. The superintendents there don’t understand what is gained by this action. For some reason, the people who put grades on schools think of this as “reform,” but it is not.

It is a label based mostly on test scores. What we have learned in New York City over the past decade is that the school grades are meaningless. Schools bounce from A to F, or from F to C to B to D. This happens even though nothing has changed.

In this society, we are obsessed with data even when the data are based on flimsy measures. Standardized tests are a good way to measure what percent of your students live in poverty and what percent are affluent. The former school will be labeled “failing,” and the latter will be a success.

How is this “reform”?

Categories Accountability, NYC, Oklahoma

Who Gets into Exam Schools–and How?

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2012 //
8

Alan Singer has written an interesting commentary on the testing regime used to admit students to New York City’s most selective high schools.

Admission is based on one test and one test only. The test is designed by–who else–Pearson.

Many successful students sign up for expensive tutoring courses. So, like SAT prep, the scores reflect ability to pay for tutoring as much as they do “merit.”

Mayor Bloomberg defends the process, saying it was created to identify “the best and brightest” and it will not change.

Very small numbers of black and Hispanic students are able to gain admission to the celebrated exam schools. At Stuyvesant High School, only 19 black students were admitted into an entering class of nearly 1,000.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, NYC

New York City’s Absurd School Grades

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2012 //
7

I live in a wonderful neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. For years, the local public school struggled. It had a poor reputation. Then a new principal arrived, attracted a stable and experienced staff, and the school flourished. Neighborhood families that once sought private school alternatives enrolled in the public school. It became the pride of the community.

A few years ago, when the city’s Department of Education started giving out letter grades to every public school, our neighborhood school got an A. Everyone was very proud. The mayor and the chancellor attended a ceremony at the school to salute its stellar performance and to announce the building of an addition.

But six weeks after the ceremony, the new letter grades were posted, and the neighborhood school got an F. Nothing had changed: Same principal, same staff, same program, mostly the same students.

The next year, the school’s grade went up, but the after-effect of the yo-yo grading left parents disillusioned–not with the school, which they knew and trusted, but with the city’s grading system. They realized that it was meaningless.

Now the latest report cards are out. They are as meaningless as ever. As Leonie Haimson, our city’s leading parent advocate puts it, “no one in his right mind should believe the school grades or the teacher growth scores.”

Some schools plummeted from A to F; others, including highly respected schools, fell to C. No one knows why.

The grades are based mainly on the same test scores that are being used to evaluate teachers. The whole enterprise stinks.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, NYC, Testing
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