To see my School Reform Resource Page, see www.arightdenied.com. To be added to my school reform email list, email me at WTilson at tilsonfunds.com.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/students_first_in_line_program_to?utm_source=videomrss_67737
The nation's poorest schools will receive extra government funding to teach their students skills like rifle assembly and precision marching.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:20 AM
Eddie Rodriguez (Exec Dir of REACH) and another friend, who used to be a NYC public school teacher, have been having an interesting discussion about whether schools or parents are more to blame for the underachievement of low-income, minority kids. Here are my friend's comments:
Here's Eddie's reply:
I fear I will get a tongue-lashing from Whitney for "blaming the victim" here. I don't believe I had low expectations for my students; quite the opposite. I was irritated, if anything, that I was more ambitious for them than they were -- or their parents were -- for themselves. But I do believe the children I worked with grew up in a low- to no-expectation culture. Frankly, I think the culture at large is sclerotic, but it's easier to mitigate against it if you're well-off. I'm simply out of my depth on what seems to make Asian communities different, but education appears to be a core civic value in many, perhaps most, Asian communities. There were very few families that I worked with that came from educated backgrounds. Indeed, I often felt that, apart from a few standard homilies, most of my students’ families didn't really internalize the idea that education could be a means to any meaningful end. On the other hand, I'm stunned at the percentage of the student population at the selective high schools that are Asian.
One of the reason that I'm interested in doing more for the high-achieving subset of low-income minority kids is my belief -- utterly untested, I'll allow -- that we're not doing anything meaningful to create a core of highly educated, upwardly mobile families in our most economically devastated neighborhoods. Everyone focuses on outcomes, but they define it too narrowly: rising test scores, even high school graduation rates, are meaningless unless those things lead to higher education opportunities and success in college and beyond. I'm on the board of a non-profit that runs a new small school in the inner city -- and a supposedly successful one. Privately, I'm not convinced yet. I'll be convinced when the school's graduates go to reputable four-year colleges, stay there, and take their place at the economic table after graduation. Anything less is not satisfying. Or acceptable, really.
As for my "tongue lashing for blaming the victim," I actually agree with what my friends are saying. I don't think schools deserve all the blame for the awful academic underachievement of low-income, minority kids. In fact, if I could push one button and either fix parents or fix schools in this country, I'd push the parents button in a heartbeat.
I don't think you're blaming the victim at all. If anything, you're keeping it real. At some point, people in the hood need to stop hating and start duplicating.
Honestly, though, I have always struggled with the issue. Most of the time I firmly believe that kids and families are so far removed from being "in the know," that the absence of high expectations is understandable. Nonetheless, there is a saying -- "If you don't know, you better ask somebody!" -- that you always hope folks will just do (but we understand may not be happening). It seems to me that Chinese dishwashers and laundromat workers know at least to ask, and have access to some answers pointing them in the right direction, no matter how removed they are from "being in the know."
Other times, I may be a bit harsher on folks and the low expectations they may have, but the concern about behavior probably needs to be articulated more. Indeed, if we're about obtaining real results, perhaps it's counterproductive to sugarcoat things -- let's keep it real. The statistics are real; our low achievement is real; the difficulty that so many poor kids of color will experience to get on the track of true upwardly social mobility is real.
We should also keep it real, particularly if all that means is setting the bar high in order to help folks understand how high the bar is and how attainable meeting high expectations is if we all keep it real.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:19 AM
Regarding the emails I sent out a week or so ago about the Cristo Rey schools, one friend has a different view. I'd welcome others' views:
Their results are mediocre at best. See their scores at: http://www.cristoreynetwork.org/about/facts_figures.shtml
Their ACT scores are essentially the same (around 17 on average) as their neighborhood schools despite the fact that they get 50% of their students from Catholic middle schools. They also lose half of their students over the 4 years and still claim to get 100% college matriculation.
So they basically aren’t adding any value at all except maybe focusing what’s left of their senior class on college a bit better than the neighborhood schools do. But then again, if half of their entering kids are from Catholic schools, they may have been headed to college already.
What a sham.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:07 AM
Diane Ravitch claims that national test results show New York's tests are flawed. She is wrong, and her attack ignores many facts and distorts others.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:05 AM
It's about time somebody pointed out that the empress has no clothes. Diane Ravitch has an obvious personal vendetta against Bloomberg and Klein's education reforms in NYC, which she should be cheering based on her frequently stated past views. Three cheers for Kathy Wylde for giving her the ripping she so richly deserves:
This is just the latest of many examples of an odd Ravitch turnaround on local education issues -- reversals that seem more tied to her unhappiness with the personalities in the Bloomberg administration than its policies.
During the past five years, the administration's school reforms have included many of the ideas that she championed in the past. But rather than support their adoption, Ravitch has emerged as Bloomberg's most vocal critic...
It isn't clear why Diane Ravitch is so intent on discrediting the policies she once championed. What is clear is that, when it comes to public education in New York City, she's no longer a source we can rely on for fair-minded commentary.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:03 AM
A very different view of the Jena 6:
By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they've all heard the story of the "Jena 6." White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics.
There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.
I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.
The reason the Jena cases have been propelled into the world spotlight is two-fold: First, because local officials did not speak publicly early on about the true events of the past year, the media simply formed their stories based on one-side's statements – the Jena 6. Second, the media were downright lazy in their efforts to find the truth. Often, they simply reported what they'd read on blogs, which expressed only one side of the issue.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 1:23 PM
I used to say that teacher union contracts had such absurd job protections for teachers that you'd have to be a sexual predator to get fired -- but apparently even that doesn't qualify...
An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five ears in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.
There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators — nearly three for every school day — speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.
Most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action. Cases investigated sometimes can't be proven, and many abusers have several victims.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 1:21 PM
while the WPRI report purports to address the impact of school choice in Milwaukee, it excludes two of the major education options available to Milwaukee parents. Further, it relies on no data from MPS or MPS parents.
An initial review of the study suggests that it contains notable factual errors. A more deliberate review of the report is forthcoming. It will address factual errors and analyze the study’s controversial methodology.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 1:18 PM
Jhomel, 16, and Arisleydi, 17, attend Cristo Rey New York High School on East 106th Street, where every student works to pay the tuition. It is a jarring notion at a time of stupendous wealth. Cristo Rey is a small Catholic college preparatory school open to boys and girls whose families cannot afford private school tuition. Many have average scores or are a few years behind on standardized tests, so they would not be seen as the minority students so prized by elite institutions that they would win scholarships.
The premise of the East Harlem school, and 11 others in the loose Cristo Rey network across the country, is that age 13 is the exact moment to fan kids’ expectations, not snuff them out. Their jobs do more than pay tuition...
The first Cristo Rey school opened in Chicago in 1996, backed by the foundation of a venture capitalist named B.J. Cassin, and later by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Each Cristo Rey school functions as a temporary employment agency that provides entry-level clerical help — their students — to law firms, cultural organizations, banks. The 12 schools in the network serve about 3,000 students, most of them poor. Another one is planned for Brooklyn next year.
In the class of 2006, 96 percent of the graduates enrolled in college, according to the Cristo Rey network.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 4:04 PM
After every cataclysm had struck — after his father had died and his mother had fallen ill with heart disease, after one older brother had gone into jail and another into a psychiatric hospital, after exhausting the welcome at a sister’s home and moving into a shelter, after shuttling through 13 schools by the eighth grade — after all of that, Bukhari Washington clung to one vision.
Somehow, he would still attend Christ the King Prep.
By last spring, he had been admitted to the school, the first new Catholic high school to open in this epically troubled city in half a century. Come September, he was to enter with the first 100 freshmen. Donors had put forward not only tuition for Bukhari, but also money for his school uniform of blue blazer, pressed trousers and striped tie.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 4:02 PM
An interesting article about Teach for America:
That kind of thinking has paid off. This year's 2,900 new teachers were picked from 18,172 applicants—an acceptance rate of only 17 percent. Ninety-eight percent of those accepted chose to join the program, a remarkably high "yield," and the corps members are steadily more impressive <http://www.slate.com/id/2175963/sidebar/2176233/> than they were before. But the goal isn't to attract the teachers who were the best college students, it's to pick the ones who will be most effective in the classroom. Comparing its reasons for selecting corps members to their performance as teachers, TFA refines its selection methods based on what it learns by cross-referencing. The organization's goal is really to improve performance and the likelihood that its corps will stay committed.
Which gets to a number that regularly raises eyebrows, though no academic study has challenged it frontally: the scale of the would-be movement. While TFA is careful to say the number is based on an extrapolation from the three-fifths of former corps members who responded to a questionnaire, it reports that 67 percent of its alums, or more than 8,000 people spanning 15 years, remain in education—half as teachers, the others in various roles. At last count, 285 were running schools as principals. In three networks of charter schools that are especially effective in serving low-income students—Achievement First; Uncommon Schools; and the Knowledge is Power Program, founded by two TFA alums -- 60 percent of the principals are TFA alumni. TFA alums are also spread through the administration of the Washington, D.C., school district.
What makes TFA so influential, Heather McLeod Grant and Leslie R. Crutchfield explain in the Stanford Social Innovation Review , is this kind of leverage.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 3:58 PM
"The report you are reading did not yield the results we had hoped to find," George Lightbourn, a senior fellow at the institute, wrote in the paper's first sentence.
"We had expected to find a wellspring of hope that increased parental involvement in the Milwaukee Public Schools would be the key ingredient in improving student performance," Lightbourn wrote. But "there are realistic limits on the degree to which parental involvement can drive market-based reform in Milwaukee."
Even some of the most ardent supporters of school choice in Milwaukee have seen that the purest version of the idea - in which there is little government oversight of schools, and parental decisions in a free market dictate which schools thrive -- does not square with the reality of what happened in Milwaukee when something close to such a system existed.
That reality can be summed up in two phrases: "bad schools" and "little change."
posted by Whitney Tilson at 3:54 PM
Bronx Preparatory Charter School is in the South Bronx and serves 540 students who are admitted by lottery. They're from neighborhoods that have more than a fair share of poverty - and they're a case study in what happens when regular kids get an opportunity to excel. They also prove why opening more publicly funded, privately operated charter schools is critical.
What follows is an e-mail sent by the director of admissions of Stanford University, one of America's top colleges, to Bronx Prep's leader, Dr. Samona Tait:
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:07 AM
The Harvard Crimson today had two editorials about the REACH program (apparently without knowledge that the funder and founder of the program, Bill Ackman and I, know each other from our Harvard undergrad days -- we met selling advertising for the Let's Go series of travel guides in the summer of 1986).
Might monetary incentives pervert the ideal of education and demotivate students since now they're studying for money rather than the joy of learning?
We don't think so – in fact, we believe that rewarding hard work and high achievement will result in even higher motivation. These students are not children – most are savvy young adults, about to go off to
college, and have held jobs and know what it’s like to earn money in exchange for hard work. But almost all of them are poor and thus don’t have the same opportunities and resources that most other students
do. They have very real and pressing financial needs to, for example, pay for college visits and applications, books, class trips and the senior prom, so in many cases they are forced to make a choice no student
should have to make: between committing to their studies or taking a job (usually a low-paying, dead-end one).
REACH seeks to level the playing field and help ease the students’ financial burdens so they can make an important investment in their future, which is tremendously exciting and motivating. To see students’ enthusiastic reactions to the REACH program, click here <http://www.reachnyc.org/Launch.htm> to go to the web page for the REACH launch event and watch some of the videos, and click here <http://www.reachnyc.org/Saying.htm> to read what students and others are saying about REACH.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:05 AM
Another charter school that sounds like it's going to be highly successful is starting in Wilmington, Delaware next September (also founded by someone currently in the Building Excellent Schools program). Here's a report from a good friend (also in the hedge fund business), who's given over $100,000 to support alternative education in Camden and Chester:
I had lunch today with Jack Perry, the founder of Wilmington, Delaware's charter school to be opened next September. The Prestige Academy http://www.prestigeacademycs.org
Jack grew up in what he describes as "the projects" in Brooklyn "notorious for its violence". He got a good education and went into social work, but found that social work means nothing if the kids he's working with can't read. He realized he needed to get to these kids a lot earlier. He changed his career and went into alternative education to influence urban kids a lot earlier in life. Jack got one of 13 slots out of nearly 700 applicants for Building Excellent Schools in Boston where he was trained to start a charter school and now that is his mission in life.
He is in the early stages of starting one in Wilmington, Delaware, where there is great need for alternatives for parents. His vision is to open next September for 100 fifth graders and take it to 6th, 7th and 8th grade the next thee years. It will be all boys, with a long school day and every other Saturday in school. Very rigorous on math and reading. He is very familiar with KIPP's model.
Over lunch today Jack showed me energy, intelligence and integrity -- all three. They need some money to start up. I live near Wilmington and support alternative education in Chester and Camden, the two worst public school districts in my region. I've always looked for something in Wilmington, and I think I found it today with an exceptional man in charge. They need some bigger donors to get this off the ground.
You can learn a lot more about this new school on their website. http://www.prestigeacademycs.org Jack's e-mail is jack.perry@prestigeacademycs.org
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:01 AM
I am working to submit an application to SUNY to open a No Excuses public charter school, Coney Island Prep, serving students in the Coney Island community in grades 5-12. I am currently in a Fellowship with Building Excellent Schools, a national non-profit that works to train leaders to open and run high quality urban charter schools. Through this Fellowship, I have had over 300 hours of professional development trainings on designing and operating charter schools. Additionally, the Fellowship has afforded me the unique opportunity to visit over 15 high-performing public charter schools including Williamsburg Prep, KIPP Bronx, KIPP Team, Roxbury Prep, Amistad Academy, and Northstar Academy, and speak with those school leaders in order to incorporate the best practices from those schools into the educational design of Coney Island Prep.
I was an English and Political Science major at Middlebury College, and upon graduation I joined Teach For America and taught high school English for three years in Newark, NJ. After teaching, I returned to school and recently completed both my Masters in Public Affairs and Urban & Regional Planning from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
I am currently looking to put together a founding board of like-minded people who bring a diverse skill-set to the founding team. If anyone is interested in learning more about joining the founding board, please contact me at jmnookin@buildingexcellentschools.org.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 9:58 AM
The reason this is so funny is that the guy confuses correllation and causation (another classic example is that flood deaths in Bangladesh are highly correllated with ice cream sales in NYC, but nobody thinks that our consumption of ice cream is killing Bangladeshis -- it's just that both peak in July and August).
At a U2 concert in Dublin, Bono asked the audience for a moment of silence. When the room became perfectly quiet, he began to clap his hands slowly. Then, into the microphone, he said, "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies." After a few moments, a lone voice from the crowd pierced the profound silence: "Fookin’ stop doing it then!"
In other words, Americans have it precisely backwards: they think schools are being victimized by lousy students, parents and communities, rather than the reverse!
Most Americans view educational inequity as an intractable problem. Every year, Gallup surveys the public, asking why we have low educational outcomes in low-income communities. Out of twenty options, the public responds 'lack of student motivation,' 'lack of parental involvement,' and 'home-life issues.' In other words, most Americans believe this is an entrenched societal problem rather than a problem that our schools can change.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 9:48 AM
For three years, Mr. Cosby and Dr. Poussaint have been traveling the country, meeting with as many people as possible to explore the problems facing the black community.
There is a sense of deep sadness and loss — grief — evident in both men over the tragedy that has befallen so many blacks in America. They were on “Meet the Press” for the entire hour Sunday, talking about their new book, a cri de coeur against the forces of self-sabotage titled, “Come On, People: On the Path From Victims to Victors.”...
The book lays out the difficult route black people will have to take to free the many who are still trapped in prisons of extreme violence, poverty, degradation and depression.
It’s a work with a palpable undercurrent of love throughout. And yet it pulls no punches. In a chapter titled, “What’s Going on With Black Men?,” the authors (in a voice that sounds remarkably like Mr. Cosby’s) note:
“You can’t land a plane in Rome saying, ‘Whassup?’ to the control tower. You can’t be a doctor telling your nurse, ‘Dat tumor be nasty.’ ”
Racism is still a plague and neither Mr. Cosby nor Dr. Poussaint give it short shrift. But they also note that in past years blacks were able to progress despite the most malignant forms of racism and that many are succeeding today.
“Blaming white people,” they write, “can be a way for some black people to feel better about themselves, but it doesn’t pay the electric bills. There are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before in the history of America.”
posted by Whitney Tilson at 3:22 PM
For those who doubt the value of NCLB, read this recent NYT article, Failing Schools Strain to Meet U.S. Standard. The law is finally providing a well-deserved kick in the ass to those who would prefer to whine about how hard it is to operate schools that actually educate children at even a basic, minimal standard rather than doing whatever it takes to actually accomplish that goal.
As a result, the law is branding numerous schools as failing, but not producing radical change — leaving angry parents demanding redress. California citizens’ groups have sued the state and federal government for failing to deliver on the law’s promises.
“They’re so busy fighting No Child Left Behind,” said Mary Johnson, president of Parent U-Turn, a civic group. “If they would use some of that energy to implement the law, we would go farther.”
Beyond that, the federal law does not trump contract agreements, and so teachers have generally not lost their jobs or faced transfer when schools stagnate.
A. J. Duffy, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, said the union supported test score reviews provided they did not affect teachers’ jobs. Mr. Duffy said the federal law glossed over the travails of teaching students living in poverty. “Everyone agrees that urban education needs a shot in the arm, but it is not as bleak as the naysayers would have it,” he said.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 3:19 PM
Just wanted to let you know that I visited Bronx Prep yesterday and I was really floored. The visit was one of the best of my career and I’ve been visiting high schools for over 10 years, representing Boston University, Columbia University and Stanford Universit, respectively. I was greeted with 40 or so students who were clearly already prepared for the college admission process and they peppered me with thoughtful, important questions non-stop for nearly a full hour. Not only were they knowledgeable about the college admission process, but I was really pleasantly surprised to learn that they already had done their homework on Stanford as well. They were all incredibly respectful of not only me as a presenter, but of their fellow classmates as well. Jenny and Jessica are clearly doing a top-notch job at preparing your students for even the most highly selective colleges and universities.
Just thought I would pass this information along. I didn’t know about Bronx Prep until Shaunte Edmonds, a former intern of mine at Columbia, exposed me to the school. I have to admit I was initially skeptical that I would meet many (if any) students who were Stanford-caliber. My visit yesterday restored much of my faith for public secondary education in New York.
Shawn
__________________
Shawn L. Abbott
Director of Admission
Stanford University
Email: shawnabbott@stanford.edu
posted by Whitney Tilson at 3:16 PM
All too often in U.S. public education, ZIP code is destiny. Kids from poor neighborhoods are six times less likely to graduate from high school than their middle-class peers, and attempts to close that gap have been the source of exhaustive research and expensive battles. But as politicians argue over No Child Left Behind and school boards debate whole language versus phonics, a pair of teachers has quietly spent the past decade developing a magic formula that sends low-income kids to college at an astounding rate.
Are you ready? Here it is ... (drum roll please).
Work hard. Be nice. No shortcuts.
It may be as quaint as the eat-right-and-exercise model of weight loss, but those are the very real pillars beneath the Knowledge Is Power Program, known as KIPP. It was developed in 1995 by two young, idealistic fourth-grade teachers in Houston. As members of the Teach for America corps, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg landed in a barrio school and quickly had their grand aspirations beaten to a pulp by reality.
Despite their best efforts, an alarming number of their students went on to middle school only to drop out, join gangs or become parents. "At first, it was very easy to go into the teacher's lounge in elementary school and point the finger," Feinberg told me. "Blame the other schools, blame the district, blame the kids, blame their parents, blame the community. And we had an epiphany one night where we realized you know what, all this finger pointing is ... just adding to the problem. And it's not finding a solution."
posted by Whitney Tilson at 3:11 PM
It's really quite remarkable the enormous innovation that's happening in education all across New York City: the REACH program launched two days ago, some of the best charter operators in the country expanding (or, in the case of Green Dot, coming) here, Teach for America huge and growing, and the best mayor/chancellor team in the country (keep an eye on Fenty/Rhee, however, and maybe Booker and whoever he picks someday) relentlessly pushing the ball forward -- you name it, it's happening here! Very exciting...
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Randi Weingarten today announced an historic agreement to award cash bonuses to teachers at high-needs schools that raise student achievement. The schoolwide bonus program, a cash incentive program, will be implemented in about 200 of the City’s highest-needs schools during the current school year, and expanded to roughly 400 schools in the 2008-09 school year. Schools participating in the program whose students achieve significant measurable academic progress will receive bonus money, which they will distribute directly to teachers and other United Federation of Teachers (UFT) members. Schools that are not successful in meeting the performance benchmarks will receive no additional funds.
For all the flak she gets from reformers (some of it well deserved, to be sure), it's hard for me to think of a major teacher union leader who's more progressive: launching two charter schools, inviting Green Dot here, not taking shots at REACH yesterday and now this. We could do a lot worse -- just ask our friends in LA, Newark and DC, for example.
“This schoolwide bonus program recognizes and builds upon the UFT’s core philosophy that students learn, achieve and benefit most when all educators in a school collaborate to provide the best possible education,” said UFT President Weingarten. “It properly refocuses the misguided debate over individual merit pay. Respecting and understanding the importance of teamwork and collaboration is precisely why the UFT enthusiastically supports this schoolwide initiative and has consistently opposed the idea of individual merit pay for teachers – especially when based solely on student test scores.”
My bet: at most schools, they'll duck the tough decisions and spread it around evenly, but at least this will be extra comp for teachers at high-needs schools, a much-needed step!
Each participating school will have a four member “compensation committee,” which will decide how to distribute the funds. Each school will receive enough money to give each full-time UFT educator $3,000. While compensation committees could distribute the funds evenly to all UFT members, they could also differentiate those bonuses based on individual contributions. The compensation committee at each school will include the principal, a designee of the principal, and two UFT members chosen by the UFT members of the school. The committees’ work will reinforce the teamwork concept that is built into this program. Members of the committee must reach agreement on how to distribute the funds before any funds are sent to the school.
----------------------------
In its first year, participating educators will be eligible to receive about $20 million in bonuses. These dollars are being raised privately and, so far, commitments have been made by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Robertson Foundation and the Partnership for New York City.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 9:41 AM
Educators and private philanthropists announced Monday a program that awards cash prizes to high school students who do well on Advanced Placement exams.
The program, funded by the Pershing Square Foundation, is intended to increase the number of low-income and minority students who are prepared for college.
Fewer than 1 percent of black students in city schools currently pass an A.P. test.
"Many African-American and Latino students in New York City continue to face barriers that prevent them from realizing their full academic potential," said Edward Rodriguez, the executive director of the program, called Rewarding Achievement, or REACH.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 3:00 PM
The privately funded REACH - Rewarding Achievement - program will award up to $1,000 to students who do well on the tests, as well as $2,000 to their schools and the chance at grants to bolster their Advanced
Learning for Earnings' Sake
New York Post
October 16, 2007
Editorial
A new pilot program is offering hefty rewards to kids at 31 public and private city high schools who pass or ace demanding Advanced Placement tests, which let high schoolers earn college credit.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 2:58 PM
Joel Klein gave a great five-minute speech at the REACH launch yesterday. Below is the transcript and I posted the video clip at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yq9AD8IqIQ
REMARKS BY JOEL KLEIN, CHANCELLOR,
NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
REACH Launch at The Frederick Douglass Academy
October 15, 2007
First let me start by saying what a joy it is to be here at Frederick Douglass. You know, sometimes people say, “You have a tough job. What do you do to have fun?” The things I do to have fun are to go to schools like Frederick Douglass. It’s great to be here, surrounded by all these great leaders and educators in our city.
I want to commend The Council of Urban Professionals. I want to commend Whitney Tilson and Tarrus Richardson. They had an idea and then they made it happen. They went out and raised some money and got the program off the ground. They went through all the hurdles they had to go through. You know what? It would’ve been just as easy for them to have done something else. But they wanted to make this happen. They wanted to bring innovation to this city.
In education today, ask anyone: “Education and innovation: NEW YORK CITY.” This is another innovative, different way to try to change outcomes for our students in our city. These guys are making it happen. They deserve a great deal of credit.
(To Eddie Rodriguez, REACH Executive Director) Eddie, thank you again. I’m always sorry to lose a great attorney (he used to work for us), but you’re doing the right thing here, Eddie, and you have made a career advancement that I admire, and I thank you for doing it.
Now I want to say a couple of words to you folks here at Frederick Douglass and all of the schools who are represented here. I know all these principals. I know what they’re going to do with this program.
First of all, we have got to change, and change in dramatic ways, educational outcomes for kids who grow up in poverty, kids of color in this city and throughout this country. Don’t believe for a second, don’t believe for a second, that because your family is poor, because your family recently came to the United States, because you are a minority student – don’t believe for a second that you can’t outperform everyone else.
I went to public schools in New York City. My father was a postman, he never made it out of high school. People always told me when I got to Columbia, “If you don’t shoot for the middle of the class, you’re not gonna do right.” And I would say, “My teachers at Bryant High School didn’t send me to Columbia College to be in the middle of the class.” And I want every one of you – when Eddie asks you what magna cum laude means, that means highest honors – and I want every one of you to graduate from college and go on to graduate school. You are leaders. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t leaders. And I want the bar really high.
And tell your friends in other schools. Let’s not start the stuff that “school ain’t for me,” or “it ain’t what I do,” or “that’s for somebody else.” School is for everyone, and we need more kids from this community and from the communities represented by a lot our elected officials here today. I need to challenge those communities – we need to see those kids in colleges and graduate school. We have got to eliminate the racial and ethnic achievement gap in America today, and you guys are going to play a big, big part in that.
Now this program, what it’s going to do is just reward excellence. And I’m all for it. Frederick Douglass stands for excellence and we want to support our kids’ excellence.
Now a lot of people say, “Why are you doing all these innovative things?” And they all have an opinion. Everybody has an opinion who reads a newspaper. Everybody has an opinion: “This is a good idea, this is a bad idea.” Look, you wouldn’t be at Frederick Douglass if you weren’t concerned about achievement and performance academically.
But I have a good idea. For the first time, let’s hear from the people who are going to participate in this program. Let’s hear from those students here today who are taking AP courses. Let me hear by the amount of noise you make what you think about this program. If you think it’s a good program, you better let me hear a lot of noise. (SCREAMING, APPLAUSE)
You guys have silenced the Chancellor. You’ve said it all. Thank you. When I see the results, I know you are gonna knock the leather off the ball at Frederick Douglass.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 2:54 PM
Here is our response:
UFT President Randi Weingarten on student cash awards for AP scores
October 16, 2007
The city launched on Oct. 15 a privately funded Rewarding Achievement Program that will offer cash awards to 25 public high schools and their students for doing well on Advanced Placement tests ($1,000 to students for an AP score of 5, $750 for a 4 and $500 for a 3, and up to $100,000 for participating schools).
UFT President Randi Weingarten statement:
"While this privately-funded program will provide assistance to students in 25 schools, the city needs to increase its commitment to Advanced Placement and other college-prep coursework in all of the City's middle and high schools.
AP classes provide high school students with important opportunities to pursue rigorous courses of study that can result in college credits at a minimal cost. Unfortunately, there are far too few AP courses in New York City public high schools, and those that do exist are concentrated within a much-too-small number of high schools.
We need to expand AP opportunities for our high school students, especially in schools serving high needs communities. We need to provide schools, teachers and students with the needed support to start and expand these programs -- the funds to schedule the extra AP classes, to purchase expensive college textbooks and to pay the exam fees for low income students, and the professional development for teachers to design and execute college courses."
We agree wholeheartedly with the UFT president's sentiments and join her in calling for Advanced Placement rigor in all high schools, especially those REACH is focused on, that serve low-income communities and, in particular, African American and Latino students, who are often left off the rigorous academic track that leads students to college success.
If the REACH program is successful, we plan to expand it to many more schools that seek to build Advanced Placement programs. As a first step toward this goal, REACH will provide grants of $2,000 to an additional 50 New York City schools that serve low-income students, so they can invest in their AP programs and potentially become part of the full REACH program in future years. REACH is also working to expand professional development opportunities for teachers at 80 low-income schools in New York City.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 2:50 PM
Smart kids at 30 city high schools are in for a windfall this year if they ace their Advanced Placement exams.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 9:52 AM
-.4) Another friend commented:
You’re certainly right about the disproportionate use of private school placement by upper income families.
In general, low income and minority kids cluster in district-provided self-contained settings (which are considered more restrictive), while white students tend to be in resource room and inclusion placements (less restrictive), and also in district-paid private school placements (which are considered quite restrictive).
In other words, there’s a kind of bell curve effect by restrictiveness of setting. Low-income, minority students cluster in the mid-range (self-contained in-school) settings, which tend to have very poor outcomes. White and affluent students show a reverse bell curve, clustering in the least restrictive and most restrictive (private) settings, both of which tend to have much more positive outcomes.
For any individual kid, the placement determination is supposed to be made based on the student’s unique needs, but obviously race and SES status play a huge role in where kids actually end up. When I investigated these issues for the feds, we would even hear occasional admissions in NYC from members of the placement team that they wouldn’t put a particular white child in a self-contained district setting because he would be the only white student in the class.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 1:07 PM
Re: "blaming the victim"...
Having closely observed Achievement First schools for the past five years, I've come to believe that great schools stand on four indispensible legs: a well-designed curriculum; effective use of data to track student progress and teacher effectiveness; the ability to select and shape a great staff; and a strong and consistent system of values embraced and actively promoted by the staff that defines the culture inside that building.
For some reason we have difficulty talking about the last piece, but without it school culture and student behavior will be defined by the standards of each student's household and community. Solid execution of the processes that define culture is as demanding as any of the other processes that define the institution. In the case of Achievement First, it includes a myriad of well-defined elements: Morning Circle; Town Meetings; Scholar Dollars; REACH (Respect, Enthusiasm, Achievement, Citizenship, and Hard Work) and the 20 or so rules associated with practicing REACH; the school uniform (which is earned by the students based on their individual behavior); a language of achievement ("climbing the mountain to college"); and so on. When processes like these are consistently and intelligently implemented, the serious issues of poor student motivation and disruptive behavior are largely ameliorated and residual problems are manageable.
These practices are not unique to Achievement First schools: many of them were copied from KIPP, which no doubt copied from others. The baffling question about public education is why obviously effective practices like these are not widely adopted by district-run schools.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 1:03 PM
posted by Whitney Tilson at 12:59 PM
After nine months without an executive director, the city's charter school office will get a new leader this month, Chancellor Joel Klein told staff in an e-mail memo sent yesterday.
The new director, Michael Thomas Duffy, enters as pressure ramps up to create 50 new charter schools before Mayor Bloomberg leaves office in 2009.
Mr. Duffy, who now runs an inner-city charter school in Boston that has ssent every graduate to college for the last six years, said yesterday he is eager to travel south, where he said the contrast with Boston is stark.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:31 AM
