Michael Hynes is the superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District on Long Island in New York. He has a progressive vision of what schools should be, and he is implementing it in the schools of his district, with the support of the elected board.
Take a few minutes and watch his TED talk, where he explains how to transform our schools and make them schools of thoughtfulness, learning, and joy.
The New York Times published a lengthy article about New York City’s complicated and byzantine high school admissions process, which was launched 14 years ago to give choice to every student. With few (if any) exceptions, neighborhood high schools were a thing of the past. Students went to school fairs and scanned a lengthy catalogue to review the offerings of hundreds of high schools across the city. Zip code mattered not at all. Some schools had specific entry requirements, such as a difficult entrance examination or a talent audition. Most were open admissions. Now, a generation later, the results are in:
Under a system created during Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration, eighth graders can apply anywhere in the city, in theory unshackling themselves from failing, segregated neighborhood schools. Students select up to 12 schools and get matched to one by a special algorithm. This process was part of a package of Bloomberg-era reforms intended to improve education in the city and diminish entrenched inequities.
There is no doubt that the changes yielded meaningful improvements. The high school graduation rate is up more than 20 points since 2005, as the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has built on Mr. Bloomberg’s gains. The graduation gap between white and black or Hispanic students, while still significant and troubling, has narrowed.
But school choice has not delivered on a central promise: to give every student a real chance to attend a good school.
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.
The average black or Hispanic student attends an elementary school where 80% of his or her classmates are black or Hispanic.
The average black or Hispanic students attends a high school where 79% of his or her classmates are black or Hispanic.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
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.
The New York City public schools are highly segregated. The demographics are challenging. According to a report from The Century Foundation, the city school system is predominantly black and Hispanic (and has been since 1966, when whites became a minority): As of 2015, citywide student demographics2 were 27.1 percent black, 15.5 percent Asian, 40.5 percent Hispanic, 14.8 percent white, and 2.1 percent identified as “other.” Nearly 77 percent of students were classified as living in poverty, while 12.5 percent were identified as English language learners, and 18.7 percent as students with disabilities. With a total enrollment of 1.1 million students, of whom only 14.8% are white, it is hard to see racial balance, except in isolated instances, because the opportunities are limited.
The choice system is difficult to maneuver, even with the help of a guidance counselor. Eighty thousand students apply to 439 schools, broken up into over 775 programs. When Michael Bloomberg took office as mayor, the city had 110 high schools, most of them enrolling thousands of students. Most students went to their zoned high schools. Bloomberg eliminated zoned high schools and embraced small high schools, with the support of the Gates Foundation.
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….
The citywide graduation rate for all kinds of high schools is 72.6 percent, according to the Education Department. But that average masks sharp variations between schools based on their admissions methods. When Measure of America analyzed the rate for each method, it found that selectivity and graduation rates declined essentially in lock step, and that as graduation rates fell, the students were more likely to be poor and black or Hispanic…
Kristen Lewis, one of the directors of Measure of America, said the data revealed, in essence, two separate public school systems operating in the city. There are some great options for the families best equipped to navigate the application process. But there are not enough good choices for everyone, so every year thousands of children, including some very good students, end up in mediocre high schools, or worse…
An analysis by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School found that half of all students who got top scores on state tests came from just 45 middle schools out of more than 500. And 60 percent of students who went to specialized high schools came from those same 45 schools. None of those middle schools are in the Bronx.
The Times’ article focused on a middle school in the Bronx called Pelham Gardens. About 95 percent of the middle school’s students are black or Hispanic, many of them the children of Jamaican immigrants or immigrants themselves. Most of them come from poor families…
Last year, 146 seventh graders at Pelham Gardens took the state tests. On the English exam, 29 passed, which requires a score of at least 3 out of 4. Fifteen did that well in math. Only seven scored at least a 3 on both tests.
This means that a majority of the children had no real chance of getting into the most selective schools, like Manhattan/Hunter Science High School or Townsend Harris High School in Queens, where students must have a 3 or higher on the tests. The high school directory lists 29 programs in the city that did not accept anyone with a score lower than 3 on the math exam.
In a system with 1.1 million students, change is difficult. School segregation tends, inevitably, to mirror housing segregation. Housing segregation tends to reflect family income ad deliberate government policy decisions made decades ago when locating large housing projects. The choice plan assumed that students would be freed form the constraints of their zip code and that choice would promote desegregation. As the article shows, it has not.
Ralph Ratto teaches fifth grade in New York. The state math tests are ending today. His students spent nine (9) hours being tested about math and reading. This is child abuse. Why should students spend more than an hour on a math test or a reading test?
The tests, he says, are ridiculously hard for fifth graders. He thinks that most members of Congress could not pass the tests.
He can’t post any of the actual questions but he offers a question comparable to those on the test:
Here is a general idea of what one of these questions looks like.
A factory produces 4,861 items in 30 days. They then package them in crates hold 8 each. These crates are delivered to 26 distributers daily. How many are delivered each week to each distributer?
Ten year old children must be able to answer this question correctly, otherwise their teacher may be labeled ineffective.
Christine Langhoff teaches in Massachusetts and is a member of the Network for Public Education.
She writes:
Massachusetts public education is being run by a cabal of reformsters, many of them affiliated with a local thinkster tank, The Pioneer Institute. Jim Peyser, state Secretary of Education, is a former director of The NewSchools Venture Fund, having run the Pioneer Institute from 1993-2000. Gov. Weld named him as undersecretary of education in 1995, shortly after the introduction of charters to the state, for which Peyser was – and is – an advocate. In charge of higher education is perennial gadfly Chris Gabrieli, failed gubernatorial candidate, who has developed no fewer than three reformy edu-businesses. (Time on Learning – extended day and year no extra pay; TransformEd – measuring grit and feelings; and Empower Schools, which seeks to destroy union contracts and impose a “third way” in urban districts – so far 3 and counting). So, to use the local dialect, all of them are wicked reformy.
Things have not been going so well for Chester. He signed on as chairman of PARCC, but that boat sank under the weight of the Common Core. This past November, when he thought the charter cap would be lifted and privatization could proceed apace, that too went down to an ignominious 2-1 defeat, in the process awakening parents and taxpayers to the charter scam. He has lately signed on to be a Chief for Change. Reformsters, unlike teachers, don’t need tenure because they have sinecures.
I think this latest peevish salvo stems from Chester’s frustration at being unable to simply sign executive orders and command the world as he would have it. Recently, after testimony from Lisa Guisbond of Citizens for Public Schools, he was forced to revise a punitive policy for students opting out:
“On the related issue of state testing, I thought you should know that some teachers are being given these instructions for handling students whose parents have chosen to opt them out:
‘When a student opts out they will remain in the classroom, listen as the test directions are being read and given the test. If after 15 minutes the student doesn’t write anything down, then, and only then, may the teacher remove the test.’
A 4th grade teacher shared her reaction:
‘This is public shaming, will cause emotional harm, and is a travesty to the precious relationship between teachers and students. Remember we cannot say anything except the scripted words on the test document or we are threatened with job termination, legal and or criminal action.’
So we have a fourth grader embarrassed and crying and a teacher who could lose his or her job for consoling the child. The teacher must ignore this child in need and say nothing.
I trust that these instructions are in error, and that your humane instructions from last year, Commissioner Chester, that students should not be pressured or punished for opting out, remain in place. I urge you to communicate this to the field.”
Delay and Revise MA ESSA Plan to Help, Not Harm, Struggling Schools
At the April 18 board meeting, one of the topics under discussion was the use of the scores from this year’s round of testing. Chester proposed to have 2017 scores included in the average for determining school levels. That was nearly unanimously rejected by the Board due to the use of several variants of tests in the past three years. Previously, it had been agreed that schools would be “held harmless” during the transition to a new test.
A recess was called, during which time Secretary Peyser expressed his belief that if the 2017 scores were not included, teachers would deliberately have students tank the exams so that they could increase scores in future years. In other words,he believes teachers across the state would INTENTIONALLY have thousands of children do poorly on tests in order to create a low baseline. NB: At the time of the discussion, we were already halfway through the testing period.
These people have no respect for the work teachers do. They do not believe we have any integrity. They do not treat us as professionals. It is indeed shameful.
Campbell Brown first became an education “reformer” in 2012 when she discovered that there were teachers in the New York City public schools who had been accused of inappropriate sexual contact with students. They were in the so-called “rubber room,” awaiting a hearing, and she wanted to know why they had not been fired outright. She concluded that the union was protecting sexual predators. Since then, she has gone on to became one of the faces of “reform,” attacking tenure, unions, and public schools and promoting charters and vouchers. And of course, she pals around with Betsy DeVos, who has helped to fund Campbell Brown’s website; and Brown, in turn, was on the board of the American Federation for Children, DeVos’s organization that lobbies for charters and vouchers.
But, lo!
The New York Times revealed that there is a practice at elite boarding school of covering up instances of sexual misconduct by teachers. When they are asked to leave, they move on to another private school or even to a public school, with no one the wiser. This is known, says the article, as “passing the trash.”
Davis Guggenheim, in his mendacious film “Waiting for Superman,” said that ineffective teachers were shifted to other public schools, in what is known as “the dance of the lemons.” If he ever gets around to writing about elite boarding schools, he might take a look at “passing the trash.”
Since the elite private schools don’t have unions or tenure, whom shall we blame for this indifference to the well-being of students in their care?
In an inexplicable move, Secretary of Education DeVos canceled rules–some of which date back to the first Bush administration–to set standards for student loan agencies.
This benefits the industry that fattens on student loans, but it will harm students.
The New York Times editorial board asks “Whose Side is Betsy DeVos on?” I think we know.
“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is inexplicably backing away from rules that are meant to prevent federal student loan borrowers from being fleeced by companies the government pays to collect the loans and to guide people through the repayment process.
“On Tuesday, she withdrew a sound Obama administration policy that required the Education Department to take into account the past conduct of loan servicing companies before awarding them lucrative contracts — and to include consumer protections in those contracts as well.
“The department is doing the loan industry’s bidding at a time when student debt has crippled a generation financially and the country’s largest loan servicing company, Navient, is facing several lawsuits accusing it of putting its own interest before that of the borrowers it is supposed to help.
“A suit brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau claims that Navient saved itself money by steering borrowers into costly repayment strategies that added billions in interest to their balances. But as Stacy Cowley and Jessica Silver-Greenberg reported in The Times on Monday, states’ lawsuits are especially damning with respect to Sallie Mae — the company that spun off Navient in 2014.
“The Illinois and Washington attorneys general argue that Sallie Mae engaged in predatory lending, saddling people with private subprime loans that the company knew in advance were likely to fail because borrowers would not be able to repay them. The two attorneys general — part of an investigative coalition of 29 states — argue that borrowers deserve to have these tainted private loans forgiven.
“The scenario outlined in the court documents bears a frightening resemblance to the subprime mortgage crisis of a decade ago — when mortgage companies caused millions of borrowers to lose their homes by steering them into risky, high-cost mortgages they could never hope to repay.
“The Illinois and Washington lawsuits argue that Sallie Mae used subprime private loans to build relationships with exploitative schools that then helped the company make more federal loans to their students. Those loans were the jackpot for the company, the lawsuit argues, because they were guaranteed by the government, which steps in to reimburse the lender when a borrower defaults.
“The defaulted private loans destroyed the financial lives of students. But they benefited the schools — which sometimes made deals with Sallie Mae to subsidize the losses — allowing them to comply with federal rules requiring that no more than 90 percent of a school’s revenue can come from federal financial aid. The case shows the dangers inherent in letting companies service federal and private loans simultaneously.”
Will it make America “great again” by impoverishing a generation of students?
I thought she was a Christian. What would Jesus do? Didn’t Jesus throw the money-lenders out of the Temple?
The National Education Policy Center is inviting high schools to apply for recognition as a “school of opportunity.”
A School of Opportunity is one that works hard to make sure that all children have equal opportunity to succeed.
The deadline for applying is May 1.
Learn more by going to this site: schoolsofopportunity.org
High schools still have three weeks left to apply for recognition for working to close opportunity gaps: schoolsofopportunity.org @NEPCtweet #schoolsofopportunity
Here are the criteria:
At the most basic level, a School of Opportunity must strive to ensure that all students have access to rich, challenging and supported opportunities to learn. This means that the school’s best opportunities cannot be exclusive or rationed. For this reason, we will recognize a school as a “School of Opportunity” only if it declines to restrict or stratify student access to those best opportunities. In addition, we seek to highlight schools with strong and welcoming cultures, therefore we will only recognize schools if they reject “zero tolerance” policies and other discipline policies that unnecessarily exclude students from opportunities to learn.
Accordingly, all applicants need to address the first two practices, Criterion 1 and 2. Then applicants may choose which four of the remaining eight criteria they wish to highlight in their application.
Criterion 1: Broadening and Enriching Learning Opportunities, with Particular Attention to Reducing Disparities in Learning Created by Tracking and Ability Grouping
Criterion 2: Creating and Maintaining a Healthy School Culture, with Attention to Diversity and to Reassessing Student Discipline Policies
Criterion 3: Provide More and Better Learning Time During the School Year and Summer
Criterion 4: Use a Variety of Assessments Designed to Respond to Student Needs
Criterion 5: Support Teachers as Professionals
Criterion 6: Meet the Needs of Students with Disabilities in an Environment that Ensures Challenge and Support
Criterion 7: Provide Students with Additional Needed Services and Supports, Including Mental and Physical Health Services
Criterion 8: Create a Challenging and Supported Culturally Relevant Curriculum
Criterion 9: Build on the Strengths of Language Minority Students and Correctly Identify their Needs
Criterion 10: Sustain Equitable and Meaningful Parent and Community Engagement
Ira David Socol wrote a provocative post that ties together how we educate children on a daily basis with how we live in a democracy. At heart, he argues against the adult authority structure that imposes control over children. His argument echoes John Dewey, the progressive education movement, and the free-school reformers of the 1960s.
Anna Allanbrook is principal of the Brooklyn New School in Brooklyn, New York. She explains here how her elementary school became “the Opt Out School.” Very few children in New York City opt out. Some are afraid they won’t get into a good middle school or a good high schools if they don’t have scores. Some are afraid the Immigration Police will come for them. Some are intimidated by administrators who want to play it safe. Read what happened at BNS.
Dear Families:
Tomorrow on April 4, 2017, fifty years after Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous speech, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, at Riverside Church and forty nine years after he was shot and killed, we will join with communities across the country, by reciting a few excerpts from those words. This reading is an initiative organized by the The National Council of Elders. Just as Martin Luther King saw a need to condemn silence in 1967, so too does the National Council of Elders see that need today. They have asked schools, churches, civil rights groups, labor organizations, museums, community organizations, and others to join in the building of a movement to break silence, promote dialogue and engage in nonviolent direct action.
In that speech, Martin Luther King said, “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
As the daughter of someone born in Vienna, Austria in 1924, I can’t help but remember his story when grappling with recent times. When we think of that big fifth grade curriculum question: What Are You Willing to Stand Up For?, I am reminded of Martin Niemöller’s famous quote:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Educators in the public schools are told not to talk about anything political. This puts us in somewhat of a bind as in the last twenty years, politicians have made school performance a political issue. But there is hope and that hope is reflected in the story of the Opt Out Movement.
At BNS the idea of not taking a state test started with one child and one mom, a mom who said, “No, my child would not be taking the citywide tests.” Within just a few years, BNS became known as the “Opt Out” school. Lots of folks ask how this happened and the answer is very simple. The staff in our school came together around our thinking about the tests. We did this because of what we saw happen when kids took these new tests. We did this by meeting and sharing ideas, first amongst ourselves and then with others. Simultaneously, parents were mobilizing and talking to parents in and outside of the school community. Teachers and parents held meetings to talk about assessment in general, and to talk about the Pearson tests, the specific tests that led to such a major revolt. Teachers described what they saw when kids were testing: children banging their heads, children throwing up, children crying.
Opting Out gave Brooklyn New School the freedom to not teach to the test. In fact our third to fifth grade teachers met again and decided as an entire school not to do any test prep. This became BNS policy. That in a nutshell was the result of one family initially saying no to the test.
This year, the opt out movement may not seem that important. Somehow what has happened nationally is more frightening and certainly more destructive than six days of standardized testing.
There is a sense of urgency today in the United States of America.
We must frame our actions in our commitment to our children, knowing that a big part of our work is the development of the citizens of tomorrow, people who are thoughtful, who read, who think, and who have the skill set to distinguish between facts and alternative facts.
The reality is that many of our New York City public schools are already doing that, offering rich curriculum and programming, which invites learning and encourages inquiry and reflection. As a part of our work, just as social media has made protest visible, we need to make public education visible and we need to work with our colleagues to embrace the possible.
All too often, folks come into our school and marvel at our projects, our trips, the art, the music, the science, saying, “I didn’t know this was happening in public schools.” It is happening in public schools and it could happen even more. The potential is unlimited. Schools that have the freedom to determine what it is they are teaching and how they are teaching, are working in remarkable ways.
If we reframe the conversation to be about kids, if we remove the stigma of low test scores and focus not on bad schools and good schools, but rather on giving our children what they need, we have the power to effect change.
We have no idea how the new administration is going to affect us, although we know that the decisions of prior Secretaries of Education have had tremendous impact. And we know that decisions made at the national level can hurt us locally unless we stay focused on our vision.
At BNS, we took away the impact of standardized tests by reminding parents of their rights. In the next days, weeks, months, we need to be attentive and vigilant, never tiring, being active citizens, and always staying true to the children.
It is not the nineteen thirties, but it is worth remembering the years of my dad’s childhood when it was decided that he and other Jewish children would no longer be allowed to go to school with the Gentiles. That was not normal, and resistance did happen. As policies that are not normal are implemented today, we need to stand together as educators to do what is right for our kids.
All for now,
Anna
Quote of the Week:
Anonymous, as told by the ELA testing proctor: “I think two answers are right. Where should I explain (in writing) my thinking?”
The students are our future. And the students give me hope.
When I hear “reformers” like DeVos and Gates and Klein and Rhee claim that our schools are “failure factories,” that they are “obsolete,” that they are a “deadend,” and that our students are woefully undereducated, I will think of the students at this typical high school in Kansas. They unmasked a fraud. They engaged in critical thinking. No one paid them to do it. They demonstrated initiative, intelligence, and persistence. They are far smarter than the “reformers” who run them and their generation down.
In Kansas, student journalists checked out the credentials of their newly hired principal. The “university” that she cited as the source of her MA and doctorate didn’t exist. They investigated further and broke the story. The new principal resigned without ever taking office.
Connor Balthazor, 17, was in the middle of study hall when he was called into a meeting with his high school newspaper adviser.
A group of reporters and editors from the student newspaper, the Booster Redux at Pittsburg High School in southeastern Kansas, had gathered to talk about Amy Robertson, who was hired as the high school’s head principal on March 6.
The student journalists had begun researching Robertson, and quickly found some discrepancies in her education credentials. For one, when they researched Corllins University, the private university where Robertson said she got her master’s and doctorate degrees years ago, the website didn’t work. They found no evidence that it was an accredited university.
“There were some things that just didn’t quite add up,” Balthazor told The Washington Post.
The students began digging into a weeks-long investigation that would result in an article published Friday questioning the legitimacy of the principal’s degrees and of her work as an education consultant.
On Tuesday night, Robertson resigned.
This is a reminder why freedom of the press is so important to our democracy.
