Our City Our Schools 072109

MEMORANDUM TO:

Interested Parties

FR:

Carly Lindauer Communications Director, Bill Thompson for Mayor

DT:

July 21, 2009

RE:

Our City, Our Schools

OUR CITY, OUR SCHOOLS: A NEW VISION FOR NEW YORK CITY’S PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM Bill will put the focus on education during the second week of his five-week, five-borough, “Our City, Our Future” tour. Bill will host a series of roundtable discussions across the City – meeting with parents, educators, and students to hear their opinions, get their feedback, and present his vision for our City’s public education system. Bill, a long-time supporter of mayoral control, recently said: “Mayoral control of the schools, when exercised wisely, is a means of bringing efficiency, transparency, and accountability to decision-making—but it was never intended to be a green light for unchecked executive power. With greater authority and control also comes greater responsibility — responsibility to parents, responsibility to the taxpayers who help fund our schools, and finally — and most importantly — responsibility to our kids, whose educational achievement and advancement are directly tied to the future economic growth and prosperity of our City.” The biggest issue with mayoral control is the current Mayor.

BILL’S VISION FOR NYC’S PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

THE REALITY UNDER MIKE BLOOMBERG

TELL THE TRUTH

NUMBERS ARE BEING PADDED

There must be an honest accounting of performance both inside and outside the classroom – and it has to be done with integrity. The schools should undergo an accreditations type review every two years so that we can restore and maintain credibility in our school system. The findings of the review must be made public.

“If all these investment banks were cooking the books, it's becoming clearer to me that this is also happening in the education world.” [Sol Stern, Manhattan Institute, City Limits Weekly, 6/1/2009] 

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The City’s graduation rates have also been padded by various methods like “credit recovery,” in which students who fail a course can get full credit if they agree to take a three-day makeup program or turn in an independent project. [The New York Times, 4/9/2009] In addition, the City counts as graduates the students who dropped out and obtained a graduate-equivalency degree. [The New York Times, 4/9/2009] To further raise the graduation rate, the City does not include as dropouts any of the students who were “discharged” during their high-school years. [The New York Times, 4/9/2009]

FIRE JOEL KLEIN

WHERE ARE THE EDUCATORS?

New York City needs a Chancellor who is an educational leader and who cares about children and what goes on in the classroom. It’s time to bring back an educator to our schools who can lay out an educational vision that goes beyond taking tests and creates opportunities for our children to be successful in life.

Historically, educators lead departments of education. But of the 16 individuals on Klein’s leadership team, only two are educators. [City Limits Weekly, 6/1/2009] 

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“Klein’s vision of the public schools is not one of a lifetime career, where you work with children all your professional life,” says UFT Vice President Leo Casey. “It’s a Peace Corps mentality – you spend two years teaching, then you’re off to your ‘real’ career.” [City Limits Weekly, 6/1/2009] “[Klein] is so enraptured with…Report Cards, and driving the test scores up that he’s forgotten that the primal scene for all education reform is in the classroom,” said Manhattan Institute senior fellow Sol Stern. “It matters what you do in a classroom. Teacher quality and a curriculum stressing strong content knowledge are the keys to raising achievement.” [City Limits Weekly, 6/1/2009]

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GET BACK TO BASICS We need to fix the curriculum so that we are not just teaching to the test but teaching the whole child. Students have become expert test takers, but cannot retain or apply what they know in a context other than the test environment. We must teach math, reading, and writing – but we must also teach science, civics, history, arts, music, geography, and physical education.

“Teachers are viewed by the chancellor as the problem, not the solution,” said a former Klein cabinet member. “He’s always been averse to having people with education experience around him.” [City Limits Weekly, 6/1/2009] THE FOCUS IS ON TEACHING TO THE TEST

Teaching to the test is leaving New York City school students grossly unprepared for the future. 

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Three-quarters of [NYC] graduates fail their placement examinations at the City University of New York’s community colleges and require remediation in basic skills. [The New York Times, 4/9/2009] “Many students come in very poorly prepared, so we have to remediate them with work that is not college work.”[CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, Center for an Urban Future]

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PUT THE PUBLIC BACK IN PUBLIC EDUCATION Parents must have a voice in their children’s education and future. It is has been well-established that where there are strong school-home-child partnerships, children succeed. Parents should not be shut out and must have a place to go when they have questions or

According to the head of the New York Board of Regents Merryl Tisch, “[A] system where proficiency means you have at best even odds of not graduating, and will probably need remedial education, this is not a victory that we are defining in New York State." [New York Daily News, 6/2/09] I am appalled that schooling in this City has degenerated into little more than testing and preparing for more testing. This is decidedly not great education! [Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution in the New York Post, 11/1/2007] PARENTS HAVE BEEN SHUT OUT

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“The DOE has ignored parents, community leaders and others who have a valid stake in the ways and means of educating New York kids. Virtually shut out of the decision-making process, these stakeholders have been unable to provide

concerns. Options to encourage parental involvement should be streamlined and the number of District Family Advocates must be expanded.

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END PRIVATIZATION AND THE DEREGULATION OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM The deregulation of the financial markets has taught us an important lesson about what happens when the appropriate checks and balances are not in place. The lack of oversight and supervision over the last seven years – with little accountability – has put the school system at serious risk. It has allowed for the proliferation of no-bid contracts, the hiring of private firms to perform the tasks of public employees, and it has meant the closing of the neighborhood public school. Bill will ensure that a system of checks and balances is put in place.

DESIGN PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICES THAT WORK Rather than fixing the City’s public schools, the Chancellor has replaced them with small high schools which don’t work for all students and charter schools that exclude poor and special needs children. The Chancellor has dismantled many of the City’s large

meaningful input about issues that directly affect their children’s education.” – Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum [EducationWeek] Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein have been less than welcoming to parental input or efforts that would even marginally limit their powers. [The New York Times, 7/17/2009] "It's one-man rule, it's 'What I say goes,' it's unbelievable the kind of dictatorial leadership he has over the New York City school system," says Zakiya Ansari, who has four children in the public school system. [NY1, 6/24/2009] "I think parents have been crying out to have input in the process, and the mayor's been very clear that he and Klein call all the shots," says parent Kevin Doherty. [NY1, 6/24/2009] MORE THAN $300 MILLION SPENT ON NO-BID CONTRACTS

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The City Department of Education awarded outside vendors $342 million in contracts in the last three years without following competitive bidding procedures that are standard across other city agencies. [Office of the State Comptroller, 5/19/09] In 2001, the Department had a total of 38 no-bid contracts, valued at nearly $15 million. However, by the end of 2002, after the Board of Ed was transformed into the Department of Education, the number of those contracts doubled to 76, with a total value of over $47 million. In the next year, the number of no-bid contracts expanded to 94, with a total value of nearly $45 million. [Office of the NYC Comptroller]

RUSH TO CLOSE BIG PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS & CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO SERVE ALL STUDENTS A recent report produced by The New School clearly shows that small high schools are “no panacea.” 

Attendance rates, while better than they were at the large schools, have declined each year at a

high schools. While small schools provide a solid option for many students, they don’t work for all students. The Department of Education (DOE) has closed schools with without making any sustained effort to improve them. Had the DOE worked to reduce class size, mandated a research-based curriculum, provided intensive professional development, and supplied prompt technical assistance – the issues in these schools might have been corrected. All students must have equal access to charter schools. All children and families must have the opportunity to have a seat in a charter school near their homes. Rather than opening charter schools in the same neighborhoods, we must do a better job of coordinating openings to maximize the impact of these schools across the City. Charters should be required to accept English Language Learners (ELL) and Special Education students, and should not be allowed to indiscriminately transfer children who are not performing at the highest levels. Charter schools must be reviewed just as all other schools are reviewed.

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majority of the new small schools opened since 2002. [The New School] Of 158 new schools for which data are available, 127 saw their average daily attendance decline while just 15 had attendance rates that were increasing, according to the center’s analysis of Department of Education (DOE) data. [The New School] Graduation-rate trends also point to a significant challenge. Of 30 Bloomberg-era small schools that have graduated at least two classes, nearly half had graduation rates that declined sharply among students in the second four-year cohort.' [The New School]

Rather than fix public schools, Bloomberg has rushed to replace them with Charter Schools that leave poor and special needs children behind. 

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A review of 2007-2008 state report cards for the charter schools reveals that students who are still learning English rarely get admitted. Those students comprise 14% of overall public school enrollment, but they are less than 4% of the charter school population. [NY Daily News, 5/8/09] [T]he poorest children in the school system, those who qualify for the federal government's free lunch program, made up 65% of the citywide school population last year, yet they were only 57% of charter school enrollment. [NY Daily News, 5/8/09] Then there's the disparity in special education enrollments. Last year, a review by city Controller Bill Thompson found less than 5% special education students in charter schools—far below the 15% citywide. [NY Daily News, 5/8/09]