Choosing Sides in the Fight Over Schools
by Gail Robinson, Gotham Gazette, November 17, 2008
LINK

What is New York City's high school graduation rate?

A. The highest it's ever been.
B. 60 percent
C. 52 percent
D. More than 16 percentage points lower than the overall rate for New York State

The answer is all of the above, depending on how one crunches and spins the numbers. To an ordinary New Yorker, all three answers except A look bad. So it should come as no surprise that A is the response Mayor Michael Bloomberg's supporters use on a Web site cultivating support and enthusiasm for the way Bloomberg has run the New York City school system.

Having won the chance to go for a third term, Bloomberg continues to press hard for a renewal of the state law, which in 2002 gave him control over the city's public schools, including the right to appoint the chancellor and reprieves from many checks, balances and oversights.

As the mayor's allies have marshaled his wealth and prestige to press their case, other key players -- teachers, parents, administrators, politicians -- stake out their positions. On Saturday, for example, the union that represents school principals and other administrators released a report calling for significant change in the current system.

At the crux of this -- beyond the power, politics and money -- is the question of how well the nation's largest school system has served its students over the last seven years and what, if any, changes in governance would help the schools do better.

NEW REALITIES
The legislature has until June to act. If it does nothing, mayoral control ends. The city would return to the old system where the Board of Education, appointed by the mayor and the borough presidents, set broad education policies and named a chancellor to run the schools. Individual community school boards made some, more local decisions. Alternatively, the legislature could extend mayoral control as it currently exists -- or tweak it, raising the issue of what changes to make and how extensive those changes might be.

Term Limits
Much has happened since the battle over running the schools began to shape up almost a year ago. Responding to the mayor's exhortation that the city needs him for four more years, the City Council extended term limits from two terms to three, making it very likely that the mayor controlling the schools for four more years would be Bloomberg, not an unknown successor. In the view of supporters of mayoral control, that has plusses and minuses.

"It makes it that much harder to imagine the abstract issue of mayoral control if we're going to be continuing to talk about this particular mayor," Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, which supports mayoral control, has said.

Merryl Tisch, a member of the State Board of Regents, takes a different view. "If it's not Michael with the hand on the rudder, I would say that you're open for a much broader renegotiation of mayoral control," she told the Times. "I think people have confidence in the job that he's done."

The fight over school control, coming just months before the 2009 mayoral election, will become inextricably tied to Bloomberg's re-election campaign. A private group, set up by close Bloomberg allies, has announced plans to raise $20 million for a public relations and lobbying effort aimed at preserving mayoral control. Meanwhile the mayor has indicated he could spend up to $100 million to win re-election -- and some of those millions of dollars in advertising will undoubtedly trumpet his actions on education.

Senate Switch
In Albany, the State Senate, which must approve any extension of mayoral control, seems likely to have a Democratic majority in January. Bloomberg, though now an independent, has seen the Senate Republicans as allies and contributed money to their campaign hold the Senate. Under those circumstances, Democrats may be less likely to line up behind Bloomberg and mayoral control than their Republican counterparts.

The Democrats already have held hearings on mayoral control with an eye toward reaching a position sometime before the vote. Whatever they decide, said Matt Trepasso, policy director for Sen. Martin Malave Dilan, who serves on the group, Senate Democrats are likely to feel more involved in the issue than Republicans because most of the state senators from New York City are Democrats.

"Whether or not we wind up extending mayoral control, it wouldn't matter if it was Bloomberg or not," Trepasso said. "It's not a personal thing."

Meanwhile Assembly Democrats also remain in question. Speaker Sheldon Silver has reportedly said he does not favor a return to the former system, but he has noted "the real concerns of parents regarding the lack of parental input."

Other Democrats in the Assembly have expressed their concerns more bluntly. One, Alan Maisel, a former principal, has said he supports mayoral control, but not "the Stalinist form of mayoral control” we have now.

Gov David Paterson, who would have to approve any bill on mayoral control, has indicated his support for it.

Meanwhile, long-time state education commissioner Richard Mills, whose policies played out in city classrooms regardless of the local governance system, has announced his resignation, and the new Obama administration in Washington could change many other education policies affecting New York City, particularly the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Economic Effects
Then there is the new budget reality. Between the implementation of mayoral control in 2002 and last summer, the school system's operating budget increased by 42 percent to $16.9 billion. Those additional funds may have papered over policy differences.

Now with funding cuts looming, fights will almost certainly arise over what and where to cut, revealing other fissures.. This has already become apparent. Last week the Independent Budget office released a report, which concluded that the education department spent some $135 million last year on programs to assess and rate schools. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein defended the expenditures as "some of the smartest dollars we've spent." But Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, who requested the report, said, "I'd rather see cuts in the accountability initiative than cuts in individual school budgets."

In a statement, teacher's union president Randi Weingarten acknowledged the changed picture. "Between the budget crisis and the term limits issue, the landscape has certainly shifted The debate over governance, and particularly the issue of checks and balances, is going to be more robust now," she said.

REINING IN THE SYSTEM
While no consensus has been reached, the outlines of the debate have begun to emerge. In general, there is little evidence of support for turning the clock back to the days of the Board of Education.

"I am a realist," said Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, announcing the union's position at a conference Saturday. "I believe the mayor will continue to have control of public schools."

The mayor does have some supporters, including the Partnership for New York City, a business group, that see any changes to current arrangement as dangerous.

But many fall somewhere in between, calling for an extension of mayoral control but seeking more oversight of the Department of Education, particularly its statistics and its contracts, and more consultation with parents and other political leaders.

The first of many reports expected to weigh in fit this mold. Prepared by a commission of education experts for Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, it came down solidly in favor of mayoral control, concluding that the new arrangement had focused attention on education in New York City, brought in more money and allowed for change.

"Although change is not synonymous with progress, it is a prerequisite for progress," the report said. "The capacity to implement change could be the single most important and measurable advantage of mayoral control when the current arrangement is compared to the one that preceded it."

What kind of changes could be in store?

Checks and Balances
The current structure lets the mayor appoint the chancellor. Although the state created a successor to the Board of Education -- the Panel for Educational Policy -- the mayor appoints a majority of its members and can fire them at will. The board has no real power. The education department's Web site does not even have any agendas or minutes for the council's 2008-2009 meetings.

To try to give the board more clout, both the principals union report and Gotbaum's commission call for fixed terms for the panel members and for assigning them power to approve significant educational policy decisions.

The Public Role
The current system eliminated community school board, which many saw as ineffective and even corrupt. In their stead, the city created Community Education Councils, but these, like the central education panel, have little power, and few parents have much interest in serving on them. Similarly the current administration curtailed the role of individual School Leadership Teams, although they still exist.

In the Senate Democrats' hearings on school governance, "the main thing they heard over and over again without fail, were complaints from parents about their lack of a meaningful role in the schools, said Trepasso, Dilan's policy director. "They feel really pushed out. ... They want to have more input. They want to have more say." The avenues for parent participation now, Trepasso said, are "dead ends."

Both the Gotbaum commission and the principals' report call for strengthening the community councils by giving them a more significant role. The principals, for example, want the councils to have to approve new charter schools in their areas or the closing of local public schools.

Klein has frequently indicated he thinks such changes could dramatically undercut efforts to improve the schools. "All these things that people say 'checks and balances,' are basically fundamentally an effort to impose different policies," he has said. "In the absence of mayoral control, I assure you, you'll have paralysis."

In his speech Saturday, Logan dismissed such concerns. "We have to stop believing that if we have to listen to what other people are saying it will take too long," he said.

Accountability
Joel Klein loves to talk about accountability. His department has the accountability initiative. He speaks of making students accountable for what they learn, of holding teachers accountable for the success or failure of their students and of principals being accountable for what goes on in their buildings.

The principals, perhaps chafing at their own performance reviews, think the chancellor needs a yearly reckoning too -- complete with a public hearing.

Other proposals will likely seek greater oversight of the department. While the mayor likes to say he has control of the schools -- and by all accounts he does -- the Department of Education is not subject to the same kind of scrutiny that dogs other agencies.

Gotbaum's commission, citing testimony by City Comptroller William Thompson, noted the department had more than $100 million in no-bid contracts in 2006, up from $15 million in 2001, before mayor control.

It took the Independent Budget Office months to try to figure out how much money the system spends on its accountability initiative -- essentially compiling progress reports, or report cards, for city schools. The department does not release this kind of line-time data, and budget office officials and aides to Gotbaum say the department was reluctant to repond to their requests for information.

"If the Department of Education is going to be treated more like a mayoral agency, then it should be expected to follow the same procedures as other mayoral agencies," the public advocate's report said.

That, the commission said, would mean oversight by the Independent Budget Office, requiring the department adhere to regular city procurement rules and allowing the city comptroller to audit the department.

A Check on the Numbers
Even more in contention than budget figures are the numbers documenting student performance. To resolve the disputes over which data matters and what it says, many advocates have called for an independent research arm to assess the numbers, similar to the Consortium on Chicago School Research. This may well happen. At a panel discussion at the New School last year, Deputy Schools Chancellor Christopher Cerf, said he personally would like the city to have an office "that would be empowered to review or opine on the numbers."

Last month, a group of academics, educators and business leaders announced the creation of the Research Partnership for New York City Schools to consider the effectiveness of the school changes. Whether its efforts will be widely accepted remains to be seen. Diane Ravitch, the prominent education historian who has emerged as a leading critic of the Bloomberg and Klein policies, has expressed concern over the presence of Klein and teacher's union president Weingarten on the partnership's governing board. "A research institution should not be controlled by the people whose work is being evaluated," she told Education Week. It's raises questions about how independent this group will be."

A CASE STUDY
These arguments about numbers -- test scores, graduation rates, reading levels -- lie at the heart of the debate over whether mayoral control has succeeded. The mayor's supporters cite scores on state tests, which have shown advances in the last five years. His critics cast aspersions on those numbers -- the test has gotten easier, they charge -- and instead point to a national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP, where the city has not advanced as much.

A look at specific numbers provides evidence of why determining what works and what does not work in education can be so difficult. Take the persistence of the so-called achievement gap, where white and Asian students consistently score better and are more likely to graduate than their black and Latino counterparts. Bloomberg and Klein have cast their effort to change schools here as a civil rights struggle. They announced their first sweeping actions on Martin Luther King's birthday in 2003.

The mayor's school campaign, Klein told the principals Saturday, as he has told so many other groups around the city, is "an effort to make sure that ZIP code, skin color or family income no longer determines what kind of education a child receives."

And the administration points to sign of progress. ""Over the past six years, we've done everything possible to narrow the achievement gap — and we have," Bloomberg told Congress this summer. "In some cases, we've reduced it by half."

In 2002, one report found, the black-white gap on a state fourth-grade math test was 35 percentage points, with 76 percent of white students scoring "proficient" compared to 41 percent of black fourth-graders. By 2008, the gap had narrowed to 18 points as all scores increased: 91 percent of white students scored proficient compared to 73 percent of black students.

On the other hand, under this administration black and Latino students are less likely than they once were to get into elite academic programs. In an effort to insure uniform access to gifted and talented elementary school programs across the city, the Department of Education instituted a standardized test with a uniform cut-off for admission. Of the of the four, five and six years olds who passed the test, the Times reported, more than half are white. Only 18 percent of city public school students are white.

The disparity continues with older students. The Times found last month that the racial gap at the city's elite high school has widened. For example, in 1999, 9 percent of students at Bronx High School of Science were black; now that number has fallen to 4 percent, while the portion of Asian students has increased from 46 percent to 61 percent. At Stuyvesant, 2 percent of students are African-American and 3 percent Hispanic.

"The trend in specialized high school composition sits uncomfortably with the DOE's claim that they are closing the achievement gap ... 'in some cases by half,'" wrote The Eduwonkette.

The disparity seems to extend beyond the most adept students by some measures. According to research compiled by Citizens Union, the sister organization of Gotham Gazette's publisher, New York students overall put the city in the top third on selected urban areas on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test. But on the scores of minority students only, the city fell to the bottom third. In addition, Citizens Union found some increases in the gap between 2005 and 2007, particularly on the English assessment.

Even if the gap persists, Klein has said, it may be more important to look at the scores themselves. And those, he has said, have gone up for everyone. "If the way to close the achievement gap is to pull whites down, that's not a strategy that any intelligent person or any responsible school district would ever follow," Klein told the New York Sun last summer .

THE DECISION
Educators and parents know that no single number can tell the story of a whole class, let alone an entire school system as large and diverse as New York City's. Even if the scores all told a clear picture, other doubts would remain: How much was attributable to mayoral control? What about aspects of education difficult to measure -- joy for learning, creativity, social skills?

Mayor Bloomberg has certainly sold his plan to other mayors and nations. Since New York City instituted mayoral control, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles have followed suit. Australia and England are looking at copying the school report cards. True to form, though, New Yorkers and their elected officials may prove a much tougher sell.

NYC Deputy Chancellor Christorpher Cerf in Trouble

December 5, 2008
Schools Official Is Chided About Soliciting Donation
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES

New York City investigators have found that a deputy schools chancellor solicited charitable contributions from executives of Edison Schools, an Education Department vendor for whom he once worked.

The city’s Conflicts of Interest Board closed the matter without taking action against the deputy chancellor, Christopher Cerf. But in a letter to Mr. Cerf, the board’s chairman, Steven B. Rosenfeld, said that Mr. Cerf had used his city position to benefit the Darrow Foundation, a nonprofit group on whose board he sits. The letter also provided a “formal reminder of the importance of strict compliance with the city’s conflicts of interest law.”

Mr. Rosenfeld’s letter referred Mr. Cerf to several sections of the City Charter. One of them states that public servants should not attempt to use their positions to obtain privileges for themselves “or any person or firm associated” with them. Another says that public servants should not solicit charitable donations from “persons or firms likely to come before the officials’ agencies or be affected by their official actions.”

“In this instance, it appears that you were aware that Edison Schools was likely to come before the D.O.E. and/or to be affected by your official actions on behalf of the D.O.E.,” Mr. Rosenfeld said in the letter.

Mr. Cerf was president of Edison before joining the Education Department, first as a consultant, then, in December 2006, as a deputy chancellor. Mr. Cerf’s relationship with the company, now called EdisonLearning, first made headlines in February 2007, when he assured a citywide parents’ group that he had “zero” financial interest in Edison. He later acknowledged that he had relinquished his equity stake in the company only the day before.

After that statement, Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for the city school system, began investigating Mr. Cerf’s ties to Edison. His findings were sent to Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein on Aug. 22, 2007. Like most of Mr. Condon’s findings that do not result in arrests, they were not made public. Mr. Condon declined to comment; his report was released to The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Law.

According to the report, Mr. Cerf sent an e-mail message to an official with Edison or Liberty Partners, its majority owner, on Feb. 7, 2007. In that message, he relinquished “any and all equity interest” in Edison and solicited the donation, writing, “I would be most grateful if you were to make, entirely at your discretion, a charitable contribution to the Darrow Foundation in recognition of this voluntary relinquishment of this interest.”

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Cerf emphasized that the Conflicts of Interest Board had taken no action against him. He provided a copy of the board’s letter, which was issued to him on Oct. 3, 2007.

In the interview, Mr. Cerf said that he had written the e-mail message to an official at Liberty Partners whom he knew and with whom he shared an interest in the outdoors, but he would not name the official. The Darrow Foundation, which is based in Maine, supports wilderness canoeing programs and outdoor education for young people.

“If you’re asking me do I have any regrets, I will tell you absolutely not,” Mr. Cerf said. “I did absolutely what I was supposed to do. I disclosed everything; the Conflicts of Interest Board gave it the back of its hand.”

“Raising money for a not for profit, tell me, what’s wrong with that?” he added.

“There is nothing here other than an investigation that exonerated me. The only real story here is that I was put through a rather tortuous experience.”

Officials said Edison or its subsidiaries had three contracts with the department, one of which has expired. Mr. Cerf has recused himself from all matters relating to the company.

According to Mr. Condon’s report, the chairman and chief executive of Liberty Partners, did pledge to make a $60,000 donation, but did not pay it because Mr. Cerf, after being questioned by investigators, withdrew his request.

In a statement released on Thursday, Mr. Klein said: “When this case was closed more than a year ago, the Conflict of Interest Board found that no action was required. I consider this matter closed and look forward to continuing my work with Chris, who has made, and continues to make, an enormous contribution to our city and our schoolchildren.”

Schools big eyed by conflict board
Thursday, December 4th 2008
LINK

Deputy Schools Chancellor Christopher Cerf violated city conflict-of-interest law by soliciting a $60,000 charitable contribution from executives of his former firm while the company did business with the school system.

Cerf asked executives from Edison Schools to give the money to a nonprofit wilderness program on whose board of directors he sat, a probe conducted by Richard Condon, the special commissioner for school investigations, found.

After investigators questioned him about the propriety of the donation, Cerf then sent an e-mail to the executives saying: "I have now concluded that it would be the better course not to proceed with the contribution."

Condon, who is never shy about announcing investigations of low-level school employees, then sent an 11-page report on Cerf to Chancellor Joel Klein in August 2007, but never made it public.

The Daily News obtained a heavily redacted copy of the report last week.

The report also examined other post-employment financial ties between Cerf and Edison, the controversial for-profit company whose subsidiary, Newton Learning Centers, runs tutorial programs at various city schools.

Cerf relinquished 6,000 shares of Edison stock in February 2007, only hours before he was to be questioned about his ties to Edison by the DOE's parent advisory council, Condon concluded. Cerf also renounced any interest in a 10-year consulting contract with another Edison-connected firm - a contract that could have been worth $2.5 million.

Cerf and his lawyers claimed in two interviews with Condon's investigators the stock was virtually worthless, and that he had never signed the consulting contract so it was not "operational." They also noted Cerf had recused himself from any Edison dealings with the city's schools.

In October 2007, the city's Conflict of Interest Board board issued a confidential letter admonishing Cerf for using his city position to benefit the wilderness group.

"It appears that you were aware that Edison schools was likely to come before the DOE and/or to be affected by your official actions on behalf of DOE," the decision stated.

The board recommended no further disciplinary action but it reminded Cerf that such violations "can result in civil fines of up to $10,000 ... and other penalties."

Cerf only agreed to release the COIB letter after The News raised questions about the matter Thursday, but he declined to talk on the record about its findings.

So what does Klein have to say about this?

"When this case was closed more than a year ago, the Conflict of Interest Board found that no action was required," Klein said through a spokesman.

"I consider this matter closed and look forward to continuing my work with Chris, who has made, and continues to make, an enormous contribution to our city and our schoolchildren."

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

Heated debate at New School discussion of city schools control

BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, March 7th 2008, 3:06 PM

A discussion about who should control the city schools quickly heated up Thursday when a member of the state Board of Regents accused an education official of embodying the "A-word."

"When I say the 'A-word,' I mean there is an arrogance here," Regent Merryl Tisch thundered in a public scolding of Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf.

The two were panelists in a New School discussion on whether a law authorizing mayoral control of the schools should be renewed after it expires next year.

Cerf, a controversial official who once led the for-profit Edison Schools, had just finished boasting that the city's graduation rate had reached an unprecedented 60%. That statistic is disputed by state officials, who calculate graduation rate differently and say the city's rate is 50%. The city and state had agreed last year to use the lower number.

"I don't want to be rude here," Tisch said after Cerfspoke. "But one of the reasons people start to question the authority of mayoral control is because of the 'A-word.'...There is an arrogance to how you report data, control data and how you report statistics," Tisch said, adding that even 50% is "teetering on telling the truth."

Tisch is a strong supporter of mayoral control. She voted for the initial proposal that gave Mayor Bloomberg control of schools in 2002 and has cheered his reforms.

But mayoral control was sharply criticized at yesterday's discussion and at City Council hearing on Monday. Before Tisch's rebuke, Assemblyman Alan Maisel, another panelist, said Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein had practiced "the Stalinist method of mayoral control."

Tisch lamented that anger over poor communication had overshadowed the mayor and chancellor's many accomplishments.

"I think the city has a great story to tell about where they came from and where they are," she said. "The problem is that the reason people get angry at us ... is because they don't seem to be able to get a straight story from us."

eeinhorn@nydailynews.com

More on "Education Evangelist" Klein's Visit to Australia

Chancellor Klein Visits Australia to Promote Education Initiatives

Chancellor Klein visited Australia last week to discuss New York City’s education reforms. During his seven day trip to the country, Chancellor Klein met with government leaders, education officials, philanthropic organizations, and media outlets to describe New York City’s approach to educational change and innovation.

“It was an extraordinary trip,” Chancellor Klein said. “Australia is embracing school accountability, pushing for high standards, and thinking big. It was very exciting to share my perspective and learn about efforts going on so far away from New York City.”

To read about Chancellor Klein’s trip, click here, here, and here.(see articles below -Ed)

What People Are Saying…

About Mayoral Control

“The positive changes I've seen have come about in large part because of a law that gave control of the city's school system to the mayor. When the state Legislature passed mayoral control in 2002, I thought it was a bold act of political courage by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and other leaders. It made me believe that we could rise above politics and deliver wholesale reform. And Mayor Bloomberg has risen to the challenge, working tirelessly to come up with new solutions to old problems. The city has created safer schools staffed by qualified teachers and run by engaged principals - all of which has resulted in increased graduation rates and test scores

“We have all benefited from the wisdom and courage of the elected officials who put this system in place. Now, parents and New Yorkers who care about the future of the city's public schools must remind them what is at stake: We are at risk of letting the progress we have made slip away.” –Geoffrey Canada, Daily News Op-Ed, November 23, 2008

About Bold Action in America’s Urban Schools

“We know for a fact that large, urban cities are not working, and they're particularly not working for kids that grew up in poverty, kids of color, recent immigrants. And those kids, no matter what you look at—you look at the NAEP scores over the last 25 years, since ‘A Nation at Risk’—basically, that gap has not moved. And it's being intensified by a global achievement gap as well.

“So, to me, what you need in education is bold action, and school board politics are not the politics of bold action. It's too easy for interest groups, in small-bore elections, to impact outcomes. So, what [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg did, following on what a couple of other mayors did, I thought, was really significant in terms of saying the mayor's got to be responsible, and the city's got to know. I mean, no one would think of turning safety over to a board; the chief executive of the city should be responsible for safety. Well, why shouldn't he or she be responsible for education?” –US News & World Report, December 4, 2008

Worth Reading…

“Accountability is not just about measuring results, rewarding success and doling out consequences for failure; it is also about giving schools tools and resources to help them measure how well they are helping students learn and devise strategies to improve. That is why we have created a system of periodic assessments allowing teachers to measure what students understand and where they need more help. That is why we have invested in teaching our teachers how to use data effectively to advance student learning. It is also why we have created a world-class data-management system, which allows teachers and principals to track student performance, analyse results and connect via the internet with educators in other schools across the city to share ideas and strategies.

“Six years ago, roughly half the city's fourth-graders and a third of the eighth-graders were meeting or exceeding state standards in maths and reading. Today, seven in 10 New York City public school students in years three to eight are meeting or exceeding state standards in maths, and almost six in 10 are meeting or exceeding these standards in English language arts. Since 2002 our graduation rate has increased by more than 10 percentage points. It is now the highest it has been in decades. What does all this add up to? A new culture of learning with a strong focus on student achievement, plus a new focus on working together to put the interests of our children first.” –Joel Klein, The Sydney Morning Herald Op-Ed, November 24, 2008


“Can Barack Obama bring change to American education? The answer is: Yes he can.

“Real accountability is about standing up for children. The adults are supposed to be teaching kids something, and accountability demands hard, objective measures -- through sophisticated testing and information systems -- of how well they are actually doing that. Good performance needs to be rewarded. But poor performance needs to be uprooted: Schools need to be reconstituted, teachers need to be moved out of the classroom, jobs need to be put at risk -- because if they aren't, children continue to be victimized.

“It all boils down to a simple question. Will President Obama have the courage to unite with the rebels inside his party, champion the interests of children over the interests of adults, and be a true leader who really means it when he talks about change? We can only stay tuned. And have the audacity of hope.” –Terry M. Moe, Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, November 24, 2008

“…We must start with the recognition that, despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public K-12 schools have not improved. We can point to individual schools and some entire districts that have advanced, but the system as a whole is still failing. High school and college graduation rates, test scores, the number of graduates majoring in science and engineering all are flat or down over the past two decades. Disappointingly, the relative performance of our students has suffered compared to those of other nations. As a former CEO, I am worried about what this will mean for our future workforce.

“This is a complex problem, but countless experiments and analyses have clearly indicated we need to do four straightforward things to bring fundamental changes to K-12 education: 1) Set high academic standards for all of our kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum. 2) Greatly improve the quality of teaching in our classrooms, supported by substantially higher compensation for our best teachers. 3) Measure student and teacher performance on a systematic basis, supported by tests and assessments. 4) Increase "time on task" for all students; this means more time in school each day, and a longer school year.

“Everything else either does not matter (e.g., smaller class sizes) or is supportive of these four steps (e.g., vastly improve schools of education). Lack of effort is not the cause of our 30-year inability to solve our education problem. Not only have we had all those thousands of studies and task forces, but we have seen many courageous and talented individuals pushing hard to move the system. Leaders such as Joel Klein (New York City), Michelle Rhee (Washington, D.C.) and Paul Vallas (New Orleans) have challenged the system, and elected officials from both sides of the political spectrum have also fought valiantly for change.” – Louis V. Gerstner, Jr, Wall Street Journal, Op-Ed, December 1, 2008

This email was sent to betsy@parentadvocates.org by New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers St | New York | NY | 10007

US educationist talks tough on schools
Dan Harrison and Farrah Tomazin
November 26, 2008 - 12:02AM
LINK

THE tough-talking New Yorker who inspired Julia Gillard's education revolution has called for a shake-up of the American school system amid renewed speculation that President-elect Barack Obama will choose him as his education secretary.

New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein is in Australia as a guest of the Federal Government to talk about his efforts to lift student results by making schools more accountable — ideas Ms Gillard is using as a template for changes to Australian schools.

Mr Klein nominated two priorities for repairing American schools, which he said were not adequate for the challenges children faced today: the development of national standards and assessments and a huge federal investment in teacher quality.

"The magic ingredient in education is teacher effectiveness … and our kids in high-needs communities do not remotely get their fair share of high-quality teachers," he said.

"I would incentivise the greatest teachers to take on the greatest challenges."

In his speech, Mr Klein said his controversial methods, including standardised testing, had transformed the culture of his city's schools from one of excuses to one of performance.

But Australians are divided over Mr Klein's approach. Vicki Froomes, one Melbourne educator who worked with the New York schools Mr Klein threatened to close, said teachers would "teach to the test".

Debney Park Secondary College principal Michael O'Brien said results should be compared only against those with similar backgrounds.

US education evangelist calls for culture of performance
Christian Kerr, November 26, 2008, The Australian

SUCCESS in education is all about hard work, New York City Schools chancellor Joel Klein has declared.

"The philosophy is quite straightforward," said the US education evangelist, who has caught the eye of federal Education Minister Julia Gillard.

"There's a series of skills and knowledge that our children have to master, master at the interface where teaching and learning occurs, between teachers and students. "There is very hard work by both parties. We need to stay with that simple model."

In a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday, Mr Klein bemoaned the multitude of "fads and gimmicks that we try to deal with".

"Higher-order thinking: I hear about this all the time," he said. "Problem-solving, higher-order thinking, it will be necessary for the 21st century.

"Well, let me assure you, kids who don't do math, kids who don't understand algebra, kids who are not fluent readers, they're not doing higher-order thinking.

"We've just got to be candid about that and do the tough work."

Mr Klein talked about transforming New York's schools from "a culture of excuse to a culture of performance" with a mix of tough love and can-do.

"People tell me you're never going to fix education in America until you fix poverty," he said. "I think those people have it exactly backward. I don't think we're going to fix poverty in America until we fix education. In order to do that you do have to have a culture of performance."

Mr Klein, who has drawn the ire of teachers' unions, described accountability as a pillar of the process. This involved giving school principals more responsibility for outcomes and publicising the results.

He rejected claims his reforms had not lifted standards. "State tests show that we're outperforming the rest of the state and everyone else. The overall story is one of success," he said.

A Conversation With NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein
Klein discussed the roles of city government and the private sector in school reform
Posted December 4, 2008
LINK

"America's High Schools: What Works? What's Next?" These questions were the focus of U.S.News & World Report's first education summit held in October 2008 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. U.S. News invited Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City schools, to discuss these questions based on his experience with the NYC school system—a system that encompasses 1.1 million students, 83,000 teachers, and a $15 billion budget. Last year, the New York City school system was awarded the Broad Prize for Urban Education, one of the nation's most prestigious awards for improved urban school districts.

The following are excerpts from Klein's conversation with U.S. News Editor Brian Kelly.

On what works in high school reform:
The most important thing that we can do to change high school outcomes is improve the education of kids before they get to high school. People who have a high school-only strategy are going to fail. And the second most important thing is, we have got to finally crack open the nut and say, these are the standards and these are the assessments of what it means to have successfully completed high school. Anybody can get you a high school degree; all they need to do is keep lowering the standards, and more and more kids will graduate. We're fooling ourselves, and it's time to get serious about national standards and national assessments.

Some of the things we did do there were very powerful, like this alternative certification, where we brought in every year 2,000 teachers from Teach for America and other programs like that. Those things have had a huge impact. But I just think that we're kidding ourselves if we don't understand the dimensions of the challenge and that it's going to take bold, controversial leadership that's willing to take risks—and when you take risks, not everything you do is going to turn out exactly how you want it. But the status quo is not working for poor kids; it's not working for a lot of kids in America.

On No Child Left Behind:
I think it's been very influential. Accountability implies there will be winners and losers, but in the absence of it, you're not going to move large systems forward, so, for that, I give NCLB good marks. I do think we could change the accountability system. I do think having 50 different states with 50 different sets of standards and 50 different assessments makes no sense.

Look around, globally. The world in which Intel competes is a world in which there's going to be increasing global competition, and our competitors are demanding more and more rigor in their standards. You know, I know the old song that we'll never have national standards; you know, the Republicans don't do national, and the Democrats don't do standards. But this is a time of change in our nation. And we've got to get serious about this, and I really think there is an opportunity here. One way to ensure national assessments is to do it at a national level and to bring people together and to make the kind of investments, and one way to ensure the best standards is to really benchmark our standards against global standards.

NCLB does focus on testing, and while I think these tests need to be improved, I will tell you the amazing thing in our city is, if I show you eighth-grade test scores, I can predict, almost to a percentage point, what the likelihood-of-graduation rate will be. So, people want to debunk testing a lot, and I'll be the first to tell you that tests need to be improved—that's why I want national assessments—on the other hand, we're kidding ourselves if we don't think these tests are giving us a reasonably accurate prediction of whether we're getting our kids ready for—at least in New York City—ready for graduation with a regent's diploma, which is a meaningful standard.

On the role of city government in school reform:
We know for a fact that large, urban cities are not working, and they're particularly not working for kids that grew up in poverty, kids of color, recent immigrants. And those kids, no matter what you look at—you look at the NAEP scores over the last 25 years, since "A Nation at Risk"—basically, that gap has not moved. And it's being intensified by a global achievement gap as well.

So, to me, what you need in education is bold action, and school board politics are not the politics of bold action. It's too easy for interest groups, in small-bore elections, to impact outcomes. So, what [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg did, following on what a couple of other mayors did, I thought, was really significant in terms of saying the mayor's got to be responsible, and the city's got to know. I mean, no one would think of turning safety over to a board; the chief executive of the city should be responsible for safety. Well, why shouldn't he or she be responsible for education?

And its impact is enormous, because, basically, if you're going to get bold action, the person with the most political capital to spend—the person who is going to lead from the front—is more likely to do it. And if you look around the country, where have you seen some of the boldest actions? You've seen it in places like Boston, Chicago, New York, and certainly, now, in D.C. And I assure you that the kind of things that are going on in New York and D.C. wouldn't go on in a school board environment.

On the private sector's role in school reform:
It's not the amount of money, although we've been very fortunate, and in the six years that I've been doing this, we've raised $350 million. That's a lot of dollars, and from my end, from being in business, I view that as our R&D money—as our venture capital. When I wanted to start a leadership training program, I happened to take the view that the way to reform the school system is to reform the school. People don't go to a district or a region or all the other things: They send their kids to a school.

So, to me, school reform is all about a system of great schools, not a great school system. In order to do that, you have to have great school leaders. The magic ingredient in the quality of a kid's education is the teacher. The magic ingredient in school reform is the quality of the school leader. If you don't have great leadership, it will not happen at the school—I don't care who runs the district and what the finances are. So, we've started a $70 million, three-year leadership academy. And I didn't want to, and I think I would have had a hard time, taking that $70 million out of my operating budget. So, I was able to go to the philanthropic and business community to raise that.

I'm a big believer in charter [schools]. When I started, we had 16. Now we have—next year, when we open school, we'll have over 100. There was a lot of pulling teeth to get that done. I'm a big believer because I believe competition works, and there's not a person in this room who hasn't had a choice in public education for their kid. I mean, you may have been happy with the school in your neighborhood, but if you weren't, you'd find a choice, and I believe kids who grow up in poverty deserve choices, too, so, we've been really big on these charters.

When I came to New York, it turned out the Gates Foundation was supporting new, small schools, and with the support of the Gates Foundation, we have developed a wholly different and entirely different approach to our high school portfolio. Basically, what we do now is highly differentiated, small schools—what we call transfer schools for kids who didn't make it at their first schools; we're working on a very sophisticated approach to career and technical; we have learning-to-work programs for kids who have dropped back or dropped out that we try to re-engage; we have young adult borough centers where kids can come in the evening to pick up credits; et cetera, et cetera. And the Gates Foundation has given us well over $100 million over the last six years to implement what I believe is the most radical high school restructuring to have taken place in this country.

On school size:
The size depends on the nature of the challenge. As I said, Stuyvesant High School, which attracts kids from all over our city, is large but has got a highly motivated and highly prepared student body. On the other hand, I've got lots of schools in the Bronx and in Brooklyn where kids were coming two, three, four years behind, and in that environment—3,000 or 4,000 kids—it won't work. We were getting 25, 30, 35 percent graduation rates. We broke those schools down—a 3,000-person school into six 500-kid schools—and we're getting entirely different results.

The other thing that I find worked for kids who come from challenging environments is high expectations. Believe me when I tell you that the schools are filled with people who set low expectations, and the kids live up to it. And how you create an environment of high expectations. And then, as we move forward, what I would like to see is much, much more connection to the use of technology, so that you can individualize what's going on for the kid and move away from a kind of standardized, one-teacher-and-26-kids-in-a-classroom approach.

The current economy's impact on schools:
Look, nobody likes these cuts, obviously, and we've—as you say—over the last six years, we've invested heavily in increasing teacher salaries and creating new schools. We'll have to be smarter. I think there will be some difficult times ahead for us. People who, you know, will have to, in certain instances, give up programs that they want. But basically, what we've tried to do is streamline the bureaucracy—we've already cut about $350 million, and by the time this next round is over, it will probably be another significant chunk—and then let schools decide. We've gone to student-based budgeting. So, I don't budget schools; I budget students. And then, if you've got a lot of special-ed students, more for that; if you've got a lot of English-language learners, more for that; if you've got level 1 students, more for that. And so, the kid carries the dollars through the system.

And then I say to our principals, you figure out how to budget this thing. So, if you want additional teachers and lowering class size, that's a strategy. If you want extended day, if you want to bring in professional development coaches—and the same principles will apply in a budget-cutting or belt-tightening environment. But don't get me wrong, I mean—that's going to create challenges. And I don't think we are, as a people, overinvested in education. I don't think we're wisely invested in education, but I think if we invested wisely, we could continue to invest and get good returns.


Joel Klein and the Australian Press

There have been several articles written about Joel Klein in the Australian newspapers recently due to his visiting the country at the end of November. I felt that the stories about the success of Klein in New York City were not factual, so I wrote a letter:

I am a parent advocate in New York City, the mother of four children who were, and are presently in the New York City public school system, and Editor of an online newsmagazine called “Parentadvocates.org” (http://parentadvocates.org/).

Your article on November 29, 2008 describing the reforms of Joel Klein is misleading and simply not factual.

Any reform is only as good as the success of its implementation. The so-called reforms of Mr. Klein have been total failures, and the children of New York City have been harmed forever by the mess created. A brief summary includes at least four re-organizations of the New York City Department of Education, with non-educators holding major posts in the system, none of whom care about the high standards of public education that New York City proudly held in the sixties.

Teachers and students are being thrown out on a daily basis for no reason other than that they are too black, too much in need of special services, annoying, wear glasses, or talk with an accent, etc. The discrimination against any and all persons of color, above the age of forty, disabled, or otherwise impaired (say, don’t speak English) is rampant, visible to the naked eye, and discussed widely…except in the New York City press, which disseminates public press releases that are called “accountability” reports. Thus, the need for your readers to see the blogs and websites describing in detail the appalling lack of transparency of the New York City Board of Education.

New York City, the largest public school system in America, has no school board to complain to. Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg made sure that any possible forum for dissent was removed from the people of New York City, so that the “reforms” could go through without opposition.

To hold Joel Klein and/or anything that he has done for the children of New York City in any esteem is ludicrous.

Betsy Combier
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
betsy@parentadvocates.org
New York City

Below is a memo sent by Joel Klein to the Principals, and the articles from Australian newspapers:

From the Principal's Weekly: Chancellor's Memo

Dear Colleagues,

In the past few years, New York City has set clearer standards for schools
and school leaders; we've created tools to measure how well schools and
students are performing; and we've implemented strategies to hold schools
accountable for how well they help students learn and make academic
progress. As we've taken these steps, you and I have talked a lot about
adopting new approaches to accountability and transparency.

Today, I'd like to tell you a bit about what's happening in Australia, a
country that faces some of the same challenges that New York City faces. The
government has developed national tests in literacy and numeracy. Based on
those tests, it will be designing a growth model accountability system,
similar to our Progress Reports. This information will be available to
families and the public so people have access to information about how well
schools are serving students. Australia is also developing training programs
for principals similar to our Leadership Academy. And it is exploring the
use of data to inform instruction. During my visit, for example, I observed
a data system similar to ARIS that is being used by the state Department of
Education in New South Wales.

Here is a link to a November 29 editorial from The Australian about the
school reforms and my visit:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24722323-16741,00.html.

Here is an Op-Ed I wrote that was printed in the Sydney Morning Herald,
outlining our Children First reforms here in New York.

You should be proud that what we're doing here in New York City is being
recognized on the other side of the globe.

Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein

Chancellor

Pulling themselves up by their bootstraps
November 29, 2008
Article from: The Australian
Julia Gillard's reforms will empower schools
LINK

THE "children first" focus of New York's school system reform that Joel Klein, chancellor of the city's Education Department, explained during his visit to Sydney this week, is based on three principles: leadership, empowerment and accountability. These are the hallmarks of the Rudd Government's education reforms, which Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is progressing with an effectiveness that would have seemed impossible a year ago. As a member of the Left, albeit a highly pragmatic one, Ms Gillard is well-placed to execute change. The Howard government, hamstrung by hostile teachers' unions and bureaucrats, talked the same language but faced such a wall of opposition that it could barely scratch the surface.

In putting her policies into practice, Ms Gillard is creating the conditions to empower schools in poorer areas to help themselves. Disadvantaged students will be the winners. This, the real education revolution, is about much more than culture wars. It is not a left-right debate. But the strident left-wing criticism it is attracting reflects how deeply some on that side of the ideological divide are mired in 1970s thinking, unable to grasp the role of metrics in improving service delivery to those who need it most.

Like black and Hispanic students in New York, whose life prospects have been enhanced by Klein's reforms, it is students in Australia's poorer postcodes, including outer-metropolitan areas like Campbelltown, Sunshine and Logan City, who have the most at stake. Too many schools have wallowed in neglect and underperformance for generations, reinforcing unemployment, welfare dependency and social problems.

Philosophically, Klein's approach resembles that of lawyer Noel Pearson, who eons ago recognised that rigid service-provider models had failed indigenous communities. Individuals and communities, he recognised, needed to be vested with responsibility for their own advancement.

The biggest challenges remain, but income management, Andrew Forrest's indigenous employment scheme and proper monitoring of health, education and child safety are beginning to show results. In a similar vein, Klein set about redressing educational failure in New York by setting high goals, implementing strategies to accomplish them and providing support to lift students' performances.

As David Nason reports today in Inquirer, Klein's approach has seen more black and Hispanic students in New York succeeding in tests than ever. Sharp reductions in the proficiency gap between them and white students have been noted. This reinforces a Centre for Independent Studies paper by Jennifer Buckingham, which found accountability and transparency in Florida has forced sustainable improvements over a decade.

Philosophically, however, this metrics-based approach appears anathema to The Sydney Morning Herald, which treated Klein's visit as a "spruik". "Will she (Julia Gillard) unquestioningly adopt the business mantra of 'standards, assessment and accountability' in the face of opposition from education experts?" Sharon Beder of Wollongong University's arts faculty wrote. The paper rounded up plenty of "experts" to agree with her.

While apparently trying to represent the views of teachers and bureaucrats ahead of the interests of students and parents, the Herald is reflecting the kind of provider capture that also disadvantages customers/taxpayers on the docks, in Aboriginal welfare and in many state health systems. Indicative of the mindset was columnist Adele Horin's gripe about "shaming struggling schools with hard-to-teach students". Notions that some students are so hard to teach that accountability measures are not worth bothering about has no place in the 21st century.

Rampant among the educational establishment are similarly twisted notions of noblesse oblige, which often leave students in poorer schools doing minimal homework compared with the four and five hours a night that many at selective state and more rigorous private schools spend at their desks.

Students, parents and teachers should have no illusions -- if Klein's approach is to succeed in Australia, it will mean harder and smarter work at school and more homework than most students are doing now. But the transformation of education systems in nations such as China and India show why it is their surest path to success. As Rupert Murdoch said in his recent Boyer lecture, instead of suggesting that their students cannot learn, such nations set high standards and expect they will be met, placing an emphasis on competition, merit and doing well on standardised tests.

The fact that in recent decades, tens of thousands of Australian parents have voted with their feet in pursuit of similar values, suggests the Gillard reforms are long overdue. The mushrooming of moderate-fee, non-government schools in outer suburbs and regional centres, many run by evangelical groups, reflects parental determination to give their children a better start in life.

Critics of public accountability as a driver of school performance frequently hold up Finland as an example to follow. Ranking highly in international tests, Finland has minimal external testing and does not publish school-by-school comparisons, to which the Rudd Government and Klein are committed. Finland's system, however, is vastly different to Australia's in important ways that render comparisons meaningless. Children start school later in Finland, and teaching is a prestigious, highly competitive profession to which only about 10 per cent of applicants are admitted. In New York, as in Australia, creating a workforce of highly skilled teachers is an important goal for the medium to long term. But as Jennifer Buckingham pointed out on these pages yesterday, it won't help the children in underperforming schools now. Accountability and insistence on standards are the surest path to better performance. Klein, however, like the Rudd Government, is also addressing the issue of teacher quality, through fast-track programs for high-calibre university graduates and increasing the best principals' salaries by as much as 25per cent. Interestingly, the man who hired Klein, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been a member of both major political parties in the US. Profound, pragmatic educational reform spans the political and ideological divide, because it serves children's best interests.

Children first policy raises bar at New York schools
Joel Klein
November 24, 2008
LINK

Many urban school districts in the United States are inefficient and ineffective bureaucracies where authority is widely dispersed, political patronage is entrenched and no one is held responsible for student outcomes. Rigid and inconsistent rules and regulations stifle innovation and educators are not sensibly compensated. Under these conditions, it is no surprise when student achievement remains stagnant.

New York City's school system functioned in this way for decades. Schools were not safe, parents had no choices, teachers were paid far too little and were rewarded for the wrong things. Curriculums - and standards - varied by neighbourhood. Schools were unfairly funded and school leaders hobbled because they lacked the authority to make good decisions for students.

Public school culture in New York City valued compliance over innovative decision-making and accepted low expectations and finger-pointing as excuses for results in student outcomes. Results were largely stagnant at a very low level. Far too many children were failing in reading and maths, yet were pushed from grade to grade, perpetuating an acceptance of failure. The graduation rate was low and had hardly budged in decades.

Six years ago, when the Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, appointed me as chancellor of America's largest school district, we pledged to transform this broken system. Bloomberg had secured legislation giving him control over his city's school district. Since then, we have worked to create a new system that puts children first and all other (adult) interests second.

We have turned a decentralised system that lacked clear citywide standards into a system in which principals have clear performance goals and have the decision-making power and resources they need to do the best job possible in educating their students.

Our "children first" reform strategy is based on three principles: leadership, empowerment and accountability. If we have strong, prepared leaders who will attract and support great teachers, if we set high standards, and if we give leaders the tools and the support they need, as well as the power to make decisions and the resources to execute those decisions, we will change outcomes for students.

We have implemented strategies to accomplish our goals. We have worked to build leadership capacity by creating a top-tier "leadership academy" to train principals and created more rigorous mentoring and support. We have also raised principal salaries by almost 25 per cent and made principals eligible for up to $50,000 in bonuses each year for taking on the hardest jobs and being successful in helping students make progress.

We have set clear, high standards based on helping students learn - and we have created tools to measure how well schools are achieving. We created a progress report, giving each school a yearly grade of A to F. The grade is based on student performance, student progress and on schools' environments, as measured by a new survey we created, which asks all parents, teachers, and students in years 6 to 12 to assess how well the school is serving students. We also created a system of quality reviews, so each school receives an on-site evaluation by experienced educators.

Accountability is not just about measuring results, rewarding success and doling out consequences for failure; it is also about giving schools tools and resources to help them measure how well they are helping students learn and devise strategies to improve. That is why we have created a system of periodic assessments allowing teachers to measure what students understand and where they need more help. That is why we have invested in teaching our teachers how to use data effectively to advance student learning. It is also why we have created a world-class data-management system, which allows teachers and principals to track student performance, analyse results and connect via the internet with educators in other schools across the city to share ideas and strategies.

Six years ago, roughly half the city's fourth-graders and a third of the eighth-graders were meeting or exceeding state standards in maths and reading. Today, seven in 10 New York City public school students in years three to eight are meeting or exceeding state standards in maths, and almost six in 10 are meeting or exceeding these standards in English language arts. Since 2002 our graduation rate has increased by more than 10 percentage points. It is now the highest it has been in decades.

What does all this add up to? A new culture of learning with a strong focus on student achievement, plus a new focus on working together to put the interests of our children first.

Joel Klein is chancellor of New York's Education Department. He is visiting Sydney this week.

Every good parent deserves truth
Jennifer Buckingham, November 20, 2008
LINK

State governments have reams of data about schools, but parents - and anyone else interested in education - get to see little of it, at least in any meaningful form. Take this year's Higher School Certificate results. They will be released next month, but parents will again struggle to get any sense of how well particular schools are doing, as the statistics published by the NSW Department of Education are meagre, only the number of high achievers in year 12 from each school.

For the past decade, the think-tank I work for, the Centre of Independent Studies, has called for state governments to publish detailed information on all schools so parents can compare their achievements.

Earlier this year, the Federal Government announced its intention to use "co-operative federalism" to provide parents and the public with information about school performance, in the interests of "transparency and accountability". The question now is how best to go about it.

A trip to New York earlier this year by the Education Minister, Julia Gillard, was highly influential on her thinking. The New York Department of Education's schools chancellor, Joel Klein, will be in Australia next week spreading the word about his school reporting and accountability scheme.

The department gives all schools an annual report card with information and statistics, including academic performance. Each school is compared to the average for all schools in the city and to a group of "like schools" with similar demographic characteristics.

The most contentious aspect is the overall letter grade to each school - A, B, C, D or F. Schools that persistently receive failing grades face strong sanctions, including closure. The program is still in its infancy, but initial research indicates that schools given F and D grades improved performance substantially the next year.

A similar scheme was introduced in Florida in 1999. Studies of its impact found schools receiving an F made bigger improvements in in subsequent years than other schools. Florida's overall test score gains have exceeded the national average by far, and the biggest gains were for minority groups. In 1999, 53 per cent of the state's fourth-graders achieved the "basic" level or better in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Last year, 70 per cent did. Over the same period, the proportion of students making the "advanced" level doubled.

Other countries make school performance information public to varying degrees. The OECD's report on the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment - which tests reading, maths and science - looked at the characteristics of different education systems.

It found students in schools that publicly posted their external exam results performed significantly better than students in schools that did not. That remained the case even after accounting for the demographic and socioeconomic background of students and schools.

Providing information is only part of the equation. There must be rewards and consequences. Rather than state sanctions, the best approach is for a government to set standards for educational performance, against which parents and the public can evaluate schools and make informed choices. The Florida system combines accountability with parental choice. Students in failing schools are given the option to attend one that performs better. If a school closes, it is because it has lost the confidence of parents and the community, not because of government decree.

Performance reporting inevitably raises the spectre of league tables. Most arguments against reporting are based on concerns about low-performing schools, and the possibility they will be stigmatised. What this argument really says is that no one should know students in low-performing schools are getting a poor education. But students in these schools have the most to gain. Identifying them may cause schools some initial pain, but history suggests that the long-term outcomes are positive.

Test results can be influenced by factors beyond the control of schools, but there are ways to provide information which is sensitive to such circumstances. And while there is much to like about the New York and Florida systems, we don't have to adopt them wholesale. Australia could have a system of school report cards which are easy to understand, but without the contentious grades. We can learn from the flaws of other countries' systems, and create a reporting system that is as meaningful and fair.

Parents and the public have been kept in the dark too long.

Jennifer Buckingham is a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.

But then, some are seeing through the clouds of misinformation:

Don't mimic US school model: experts
Anna Patty Education Editor
November 25, 2008
LINK

EDUCATION authorities have warned the Federal Government against following the New York education model, saying it has failed to deliver reported improvements in student results.

The architect of the system, the chancellor of the city's education department, Joel Klein, is in Australia this week at the invitation of the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, who wants to embrace his model of publicly comparing the test results of schools. While Mr Klein says student scores have vastly improved under his watch, analysis by Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution in Washington, shows the scores have been mainly flat or declining.

A former Productivity Commission economist, Trevor Cobbold, the convener of Save Our Schools, said reported improvements in New York schools had been artificially inflated and lacked credibility.

"The results of the national assessment of education progress administered by the US Department of Education show the student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003," he said. "Adopting such a model in Australia would lead to inaccurate and misleading comparisons of school performance."

An Australian education authority, Brian Caldwell, professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, said: "If we were looking for international examples, we should be looking at countries like Finland that has no national testing scheme. Their schools operate with a high degree of autonomy and they focus on making sure their teachers are well trained."

Angelo Gavrielatos, of the Australian Education Union, said the US performed 29th in science and 35th in mathematics in OECD assessments.

"The New York model is not one Australia should emulate."

Mr Klein said national testing in the US required a smaller sample than the New York tests and Professor Ravitch was "looking at selective data". "I don't put any validity in her analysis," he said.

Ms Gillard said she agreed with Rupert Murdoch's criticism of the Australian public education system as a disgraceful failure. She endorsed his recommendation that corporations should become more involved in forming partnerships with schools in the same way News Limited had done in the US.

Save Our Schools, An Australian Group, Questions the Validity of Joel Klein's School Grading System

Australia "knows" what is going on in New York City, and is writing about it - more than any journalist at a major newspaper in NY City! Thanks, Canberra!

New York City High School Results Questioned
Friday November 21, 2008
LINK

Last week, report cards for New York City high schools were released for 2007-08. As was the case of the report cards for elementary and middle schools released in September, they beggar belief.

There were huge improvements from the previous year, much of which seem due to manipulation of the results by the New York City Department of Education rather than an actual increase in school performance.

There was a dramatic increase in schools receiving an A or B. The number receiving an A almost doubled, from 57 in 2006-07 to 112 in 2007-08. Overall, 39% of high schools received As, compared to 24% last year. The proportion of schools receiving an A or B was 83% compared to 65% in the previous year.

Several schools that were either failed (F) last year or given a D received a B this year. The number of schools receiving a D or an F fell by one third, from 21 to 14.

No doubt, Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, will be using these new high school results next week as evidence to convince Australian opinion writers and policy makers that reporting school results improves school performance.

However, it appears that the improved performance is largely due to manipulation by the New York City Education Department. The Department has simply reduced the cut-off point scores for each grading level. The cut-off score for an A was reduced from 67.6 last year to 64.2 in 2007-8 while that for a B was reduced from 48.8 to 43.5.

This has contributed to the higher proportion of high schools achieving an A or B. One New York researcher has shown that if the Department had used the same cut-off point scale as last year, only 71% of schools would have received an A or B

About two-thirds of the increase in the proportion of high schools that received an A or B was due to the reduction in the cut-off scores for each grade.

The same researcher also notes that the cut-off scores were reduced for elementary schools in 2007-08 as well and this change fully accounted for the increase in the proportion of elementary schools achieving an A or B.

The cut-off score for an A was reduced from 64 last year to 59.6 in 2007-8 while that for a B was reduced from 49.9 to 45.8. Last year, 70.5% of elementary schools were graded as A or B level. This year, 79.8% achieved A or B grade. However, if the Department had used the same cut-off point scale as last year, only 71.5% of elementary schools would merit an A or B, almost no change from last year.

Another issue about the high school results is whether the system of credit recovery has been manipulated to increase graduation rates, which are a key factor in the grading of high schools. Credit recovery involves allowing students who lack credits for high school graduation to make them up by participating in special programs. They were introduced to help reduce drop-out rates in US schools and are a legitimate means of helping offset the effects of disadvantage in education.

However, commentators such as Diane Ravitch, Professor of Education at New York University, and Aaron Pallas, Professor of Sociology and Education at Columbia University, have raised questions about the standards required of some of these programs and whether they are being abused to ‘game’ graduation rates. An investigative report in the New York Times 11 April 2008 found that principals and teachers are under tremendous pressure to improve graduation rates and credit recovery is a way of getting quick improvement.

The reduction of the cut-off scores for grading schools, together with questions about the use of credit recovery programs to improve graduation rates, mean that latest high school progress reports in New York City cannot be taken at face value. Like the elementary and middle school reports issued earlier, the results strain credibility. The methodology used to prepare reports for New York City schools is so intricate and arcane that it is open to manipulation in a variety of ways to artificially boost results.

The only independent check on student achievement is the National Assessment of Education Progress test results administered by the US Department of Education. These show that student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003 and that the achievement gaps between Blacks and Whites, between Hispanics and Whites and between low and high income students are as large as they were when Joel Klein took charge of the New York City public school system.

Trevor Cobbold
Convenor
Save Our Schools

Fighting for Equity in Education
Media Release - "Creative Confusion" By Mr Klein
Monday November 24, 2008
LINK

Save Our Schools today challenged the claims of visiting New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, about large increases in school performance shown in newly published report cards for the City’s schools.

SOS convenor, Trevor Cobbold, said that the results strain credibility and there are suspicions that school grades have been manipulated to boost results.

“Mr. Klein has said that his approach to managing the New York City public education system was to cause ‘some creative confusion’. His new school report cards have certainly succeeded in creating confusion about the real state of schools in the City. The New York Times said that many New Yorkers are ‘somewhat befuddled’ by inconsistencies with other test results for the City’s schools.

“The huge increase in the number of schools being graded as A is hard to believe. The new progress report show that the number of schools graded as A increased by 80% over the previous year and 70 per cent of schools that failed (F) last year received an A or B. A Columbia University academic has described these changes as ‘magical transformations’.

“Major inconsistencies between City, NY State and Federal assessments of the same schools have been revealed by the New York Times (16 September 2008). For example:

Two elementary schools that received an A in Klein’s report cards were added to the New York State’s list of failing schools this year.
In over 60 of the 394 elementary schools rated A by Klein’s report cards, more than half the students failed to reach proficiency on the New York State’s reading test.
30% of the elementary schools deemed failures under the Federal No Child Left Behind Act received an A in the report cards, while 16 of the 18 schools given an F are rated satisfactory under Federal guidelines.
“The only independent check on student achievement in New York City shows a completely different picture from that claimed by Klein,” said Mr Cobbold.

“The results of the National Assessment of Education Progress administered by the US Department of Education show that student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003. The achievement gaps between Blacks and Whites, between Hispanics and Whites and between low and high income students are as large as they were when Klein began to overhaul the system.”

Mr Cobbold said there was added confusion because the cut-off scores for each letter grade were reduced for the 2007-08 tests (see attached table).

“The reductions in cut-off scores have raised suspicions that the data was manipulated to artificially boost the results.

“This year, 79% of elementary schools received an A or B compared to 71% last year and 83% of high schools received an A or B compared to 65% last year. Virtually all of the increase in elementary schools and about two-thirds of the increase for high schools appears due to the reduction in grade cut-off scores. If last year’s cut-off points had been used, only 72% of elementary schools would be rated as A or B, almost no change from last year, and only 71% of high schools.

“The reduction in cut-off scores is not even mentioned in the list of changes to the school progress reports appended to the new technical guides to the reports published by the Department of Education. The guides for last year’s reports stated the cut-off scores ‘will be used for the next several years’. They lasted only one year before being revised down.

“Clearly, Mr. Klein has some explaining to do before his claims can be taken seriously.”

Mr Cobbold warned against adopting the New York City’s school reports in Australia.

“The New York City system of school reports lacks credibility and reliability. US education experts have criticised it variously as ‘inherently unreliable’, ‘dubious’, ‘baroque’ and producing ‘bizarre results’. Its methodology is so arcane and arbitrary that it is open to manipulation in a variety of ways to artificially boost results.

“Adopting such a model in Australia would lead to inaccurate and misleading comparisons of school performance. Experience with publishing school results elsewhere in the United States and England shows that they increase social segregation and inequity in education and stigmatise low income and ethnic students as failures.

“Publication of school results is heavily criticised in England for these reasons. Wales and Northern Ireland have stopped publishing school performance tables in recent years because they are unreliable and inaccurate measures of school quality and create perverse incentives.

“Governments all around Australia know where the problems are in our schools. We don’t need a reporting system which has already failed to prove its worth to find this out. What is needed is a real commitment of resources to disadvantaged students and schools.”

24 November 2008

Contact: Trevor Cobbold 0410 121 640 (m)

Download table of NYC school grade cutoff scores

Note: The cut-off scores in the attached table refer to the overall rated score out of 100 achieved by a school on a range of measures covering School Environment, Student Achievement and Student Progress. Source: New York City Department of Education. Progress Report Educator Guides

The 2007-08 Guides can be directly accessed while the 2006-07 Guides can be obtained by using the site’s search engine.

What We Stand For
Sunday August 5, 2007
Save Our Schools strives for a high quality public education system that:
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Ensures that all children receive the education necessary for a full adult life and to be active citizens;
Achieves social equity in education outcomes; and
Sustains a democratic and socially tolerant society.
Education for all

Public education should be free and open to all to ensure non-selective and non-discriminatory access to education. Every child has a right to be educated, to develop as a human being. This capability should not be denied to anyone, either by design or neglect.

A public education system should ensure that:

all children, without regard to gender, race, ethnicity or socio-economic status, receive an education that enables them to fully participate in, and contribute to, adult society;
access to schooling is not dependent on family circumstances;
all children learn to respect, understand and tolerate cultural and social differences;
all children have reasonable physical access to a government school;
partnerships between home and school are developed to support children’s learning; and
the public is involved in decision-making about educational policy.

Social equity in education

Social equity in education should be a key goal of public education. Not only should all students achieve the socially expected minimum level of education, but outcomes for students from different social groups should be broadly similar. It means that school outcomes should be free from the effect of negative forms of discrimination and free of differences arising from students’ socio-economic background or geographical location.

While a high quality public education is critical to the achievement of social equity in education outcomes, it cannot be achieved without change in other factors that affect school outcomes. Equity in education also depends on social reforms that address the impact of family background factors such as income, employment, health and nutrition, housing and access to transport on early childhood experiences and school outcomes.

Education for democracy and social cohesion

Public education should not only serve the public but it also establishes the public. It should provide all children with the knowledge and skills necessary for citizenship and participation in the democratic process.

A public education should promote social cohesion amongst people of different cultural and religious backgrounds by providing a common socialising experience while respecting social diversity. It should inculcate values such as mutual respect for others and social tolerance of people of different backgrounds and beliefs.

A public education system should also give effect to democracy by being accountable to the public and by providing for public participation in the formulation of education policy at the system and school levels.

Commenting is closed for this article.

No, Julia! New York is Not Working
Sunday November 16, 2008, SOS

The imminent visit to Australia by New York City Schools Chancellor and prospective US Secretary of Education, Joel Klein, puts his education policies in the spotlight. Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard (pictured at right), has been spruiking them ever since her visit to New York last August.

Gillard says that Klein’s reforms to the New York City public school system are “working” and have produced “remarkable outcomes”. She says that there has been continual improvement in student achievement in New York City under Klein.

However, these assertions are refuted by test results in reading and mathematics. National tests show that average student achievement in New York City schools has stagnated while state tests show a mixture of increases and declines, with no consistent pattern of improvement.

The National Assessment of Education Progress tests conducted by the US Department of Education show no statistically significant change in average student scores for reading in Grades 4 and 8 between 2003 and 2007 in New York City. They show a small improvement in Grade 4 mathematics but no improvement in Grade 8.

They also show that there was no improvement in average reading scores for low income, Black and Hispanic students in either Grade 4 or 8. There were small improvements in average mathematics scores in Grade 4 for low income, Black and Hispanic students. In Grade 8 mathematics there was no improvement for Black and Hispanic students, but a slight improvement for low income students.

Scores for New York City students on the New York State tests are just as unconvincing. Average scores for English across Grades 3-8 show a mixture of increases and declines between 2003 and 2008. For example, average Grade 3 scores increased significantly while average Grade 8 scores declined substantially. Small increases occurred in Grades 4 and 5 while Grade 5 and 6 scores declined slightly.

Large improvements in average scores occurred in mathematics in Grades 3, 4 and 5 between 2003 and 2007 while there was a large decline in Grade 8. There was a small decline in Grade 7 and no change for Grade 6.

There is also little evidence of any improvement compared to the previous four years, as there was a similar pattern of increases and decreases from 1999 to 2003 and from 2003 to 2007/8.

Most experts agree that the state tests are less reliable than the national tests. For example, the state tests do not report measurement errors. This makes it difficult to determine whether results are statistically different over given periods or between different groups of students. Experts have also suggested that the state tests are too easy.

Claims that the achievement gaps between Black and White students, Hispanic and White students and low income and other students have narrowed in New York City since 2003 are also incorrect. They have remained as large as ever under Klein according to both national and state tests.

National tests show no reduction in the difference in average scores between Black and White students, Hispanic and White students and between low income and other students in reading and mathematics in Grades 4 and 8 between 2003 and 2007. There was also no change in these achievement gaps for 2003 Grade 4 students who reached Grade 8 in 2007.

The State tests show a number of small increases and declines in the achievement gaps for reading and mathematics between Black and White students and between Hispanic and White students from 2003 to 2007/8.

Chancellor Klein resorts to several artifices to claim that student achievement has increased and achievement gaps have narrowed.

He often uses the 2002 results as the comparison benchmark instead of 2003. The 2003 tests were conducted 6 months prior to the implementation of his reforms, so this is the appropriate comparison point. Using 2002 exaggerates the impact of the reforms because there were significant increases in student achievement from 2002 to 2003, but this was well before Klein’s changes were made.

Klein refuses to report the margins of statistical error on test results. He dismisses the importance of reporting statistical error in testing as “playing something of a game”.

For example, the New York City Education Department has re-produced the results of the national tests in a special publication to claim significant improvements in student achievement. However, it failed to follow the national practice of reporting the margin of errors and ignored the fact that the results for 2007 are mostly statistically indistinguishable from those of 2003.

The fact is that New York City has very little to offer Australia in the way of education reform. Student achievement in Australia is amongst the highest in the world and far exceeds that of New York.

Australia should be looking to overseas practice to help address its major challenge – reducing the large achievement gap between students from low and high income families. It should look to Finland, which not only has the highest outcomes in the world according to OECD tests but also one of the smallest achievement gaps.

Julia Gillard would have done better to invite Dr. Sakari Karjalainen, Director-General of Finland’s Ministry of Education, to advise on effective polices to improve equity in education rather than someone whose policies have been shown to be ineffective.

Trevor Cobbold
Convenor
Save Our Schools
http://www.soscanberra.com/

New York Parents Condemn Klein’s Education Policies
Tuesday November 18, 2008
Reprinted below are three letters by New York parents on the education policies implemented in the New York City public education system under Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein. They present an entirely different perspective on these policies than that heralded by the Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard.

The letters were originally published on the New York Public School Parents Blog on 10 November in response to revelations that Klein is being considered for the position of US Secretary of Education under Barack Obama.

Original letters on NY Public School parents Blog

The Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators, and no thought of how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to our children and their futures.

He has consistently ignored the crisis of overcrowding in our schools, that in many neighbourhoods has gotten worse because of rampant residential development, as well as a result of his insistence to insert hundreds of new charter schools and small schools into existing, overcrowded school buildings.

In a recent survey, half of all principals say that the overcrowding creates unsafe conditions for students or staff, 29% said that lunch starts at 10:30 AM or earlier, 25% said that they have lost their art or music rooms in recent years, and 18% said they had classrooms with no windows. Thousands of children are being given special services in hallways or in closets.

He has put almost no effort in building new schools, and under this administration, twice as many new seats have been created in new stadiums than schools. The city’s investment in school construction as a percent of its total capital spending is at an historic low, and will drop even more precipitously in the future, if the DOE’s proposed school capital plan goes through.

Joel Klein has refused to reduce class size, despite repeated audits and reports from the State Comptroller’s office and the State Education Department showing how under his administration, hundreds of millions of state dollars meant to provide smaller classes to NYC students have been misused. As a result, 86% of NYC principals in a recent survey have said they are unable to provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes.

Similarly, he has argued that even under Mayoral control, the Department of Education is not subject to city law, and thus he continues to defy laws passed by the City Council over the Mayor’s veto, requiring him to take measures against bias crimes and bullying in schools, to allow students to bring cell phones to school, and to obey the recycling laws required of every household and business in NYC.

The Chancellor has moved to eliminate the authority of school leadership teams –made up of half parents, half staff – to have decision-making authority over school budgets, contrary to the state law that created these teams. He has continued to shut out parents from having any input whatsoever, at the school, district, or citywide level.

He has spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars on no-bid contracts, and rather than decreasing the bureaucracy, the number of highly paid bureaucrats at Tweed continues to grow—- most of whom have no background in education. To counter a recent article by a Daily News reporter pointing out the personal wealth of many of the top education officials, who are former business executives and corporate consultants, the DOE press office responded in defense that two out of twenty of Klein’s top advisers were long-term educators.

The only educational philosophy of those running the system is based on trying to improve standardized test results, no matter how much cheating and test prep that involves. Whatever the rise in state test scores that has resulted is not matched by improvements in the more reliable national assessments called the NAEPs. In fact, NYC was 11th out of 12 urban school districts in terms of its gains in the NAEPs over the course of this administration, and there has been no closing of the achievement gap in any subject tested.

Indeed, Joel Klein’s insistence on basing all decisions on high-stakes tests has led to racial disparities growing in many areas – with far fewer children of color admitted to gifted programs and to our selective high schools, and a declining number of Black and Hispanic teachers in our teaching force.

In short, he has been a disaster for our schools, and Barack Obama should be forewarned not to name him to any position of authority in his administration – as much as we would like to get rid of him!

Leonie Haimson
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The only accomplishment under the Klein administration is the reaffirmation of the fact that we should never have a non-educator be in charge of our education system. Mr. Klein is not an educator but an exemplary student of the Bush School of Public Administration—autocratic, top down (and arrogant) management style, utter disregard of and disdain for stakeholders and constituencies, privatization of public services, competition and monetary rewards as incentives, and the most skillful (and deceitful) use of marketing and PR tactics to advance his agenda are all hallmarks of Mr. Klein’s administration.

Many misguided policies have been introduced by Mr. Klein, who despite the public outcries went ahead and implemented them. Under Mr. Klein, parents have been disenfranchised, teachers have been demoralized, the School Leadership Teams have been stripped of meaningful roles, and the Community Education Councils’ authorities have been eroded. He has created a climate of fear where teachers and school administrators are afraid to voice their concerns or criticisms of the Klein administration.

Mr. Klein has also been very generous with awarding contracts to private for-profit entities, many of them no-bid contracts. For instance, IBM was awarded $80 million to develop a “super database” where parents can access their children’s report cards including teacher comments for all school years going back to kindergarten. As of today there is nothing, at least that parents can access. Mr. Klein has also brought in a consulting firm from Cambridge, UK, to conduct reviews of schools—tasks that used to be conducted by superintendents and school district staff. Many test publishing companies have seen windfalls under Mr. Klein as a result of increased reliance on standardized tests as the most important indicator of students’ learning (an example of a misguided policy, by the way).

Principals are now business managers, with the title of Chief Executive Officer. They used to be considered instructional leaders, who understood and focused their energy on improving teaching and learning in their schools. Furthermore, they are now pitted against each other in a system that provides monetary rewards to principals who improve students’ test scores. Gone are the days when collaboration allowed schools to share successes and pitfalls to benefit all students. There is also a talk of offering money to students who score high on standardized tests. I naively thought we should be striving to teach our children the love of learning—learning for the sake of knowing, not learning for the sake of a few more iTune downloads.

Finally Mr. Klein and the Mayor have relied heavily on marketing and PR firms to cast their “accomplishments” in a positive light. Mr. Klein has boasted that he has increased the high school graduation rates since he took over. However, the numbers are disputed by the State Education Department. Mr. Bloomberg claims to have created 66,000 new school seats, yet there are more schools at overcapacity (meaning more students than the building is designed for) today than before the Mayor took over the control of the school system and our class sizes have not gone down (in many cases class sizes have gone up). Yet, if you are not a highly involved parent, you may think Mr. Klein’s and Mr. Bloomberg’s claims are legitimate and meaningful. The Mayor has launched a subway advertisement campaign claiming his achievements (and I must add, at a time when the school budget is being cut).

I admit there is no guarantee that a Secretary of Education with the appropriate education background would not take a similar path. However, I believe some of the policies and changes instituted by Mr. Klein would never have come about if we had someone who understood the public school system and some fundamentals of what it is like to manage 30 energetic children of diverse abilities and backgrounds in a confined space – an understanding of what it means to educate the future citizens of this country.

Shino Tanikawa
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If you care about the children of this nation and the future of education, please listen to the parents of New York City who have experience with Joel Klein and under no circumstances appoint him as your secretary of education.

What Klein has done as Chancellor here, under the direction of Mayor Bloomberg, is to remove virtually all consideration of actual education from the school system and replace it with a business-oriented model, in which measures of “outcome” have replaced actual learning as the standard—just as most educators in this administration have been replaced with businessmen. In other words, our schools have to a large extent become test-prep factories, with our children the “products.”

Furthermore, actual avenues of input from those knowledgeable about what goes on in the classroom—teachers, students, parents, principals—have been closed. Unlike your bottom-up campaign, education in New York City has become a top-down one-way street. With Orwellian precision, the hugely expensive Office of Accountability is in no way accountable to parents, students, or the public.

Don’t be misled by Joel Klein’s propaganda. Test scores, claims of increasing principals’ control over their own schools, nods to parental involvement, reports from accountability, assessments and “school report cards” that don’t measure what they claim to—all of it is just for show. What our children have lost under this chancellor cannot be replaced.

Please think about the kind of education you want for Sasha and Malia and how you can provide that for the rest of the country’s children, who are no less worthy. Then think about who is likely to create the possibility for that circumstance. As much as we would like to see Klein depart, we cannot bear to see him inflicted on the rest of the country!

Ellen Bilofsky