Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Grading Neighborhood Schools

A review of three web sites that evaulate schools (from the WSJ a couple of months ago):

Education -- an issue that affects everyone in some way or another -- is an ideal candidate for discussions on the Web. There, parents, students and teachers can ask questions under the cloak of Internet anonymity, which enables conversations about personal topics such as learning disabilities and teacher conflicts.

But the vastness of the Internet can leave many people wondering where to begin, especially when asking sensitive questions about education. And, even in a sea of discussions and forums on education, parents are often hungry for one piece of information above all else: data that helps them select a school for their children.

So this week I tried three education-related Web sites that dedicate some or all of their resources toward providing free school comparisons, including demographics, test results, teacher-to-student ratios, and percentages of students eating free and reduced-price lunches.

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Grading Neighborhood Schools

Web Sites Compare
A Variety of Data,
Looking Beyond Scores
February 20, 2008; Page D6

Education -- an issue that affects everyone in some way or another -- is an ideal candidate for discussions on the Web. There, parents, students and teachers can ask questions under the cloak of Internet anonymity, which enables conversations about personal topics such as learning disabilities and teacher conflicts.

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UFT Charter School Leader Will Leave After Clash With Teacher

Many school reformers were unhappy when the UFT decided to start its own charter school in NYC, but I was delighted.  As I said at the time, I looked forward to them having to grapple with the issues charter schools have to deal with.  And if that isn't difficult enough, I pointed out some additional dilemmas that their charter school would have.  For example, to ensure a successful school, they'd have to hire based on merit, not seniority, and I wondered what they would do when (not if) they had an ineffective or rogue teacher.  I recall writing at the time that I wish I could be a fly on the wall to witness the delicious irony of watching the UFT, which grieves every single attempt by the DOE to remove even the very worst teachers, to try to remove one of their own.
 
Sure enough, the chickens have come home to roost -- the principal has been forced out (if you read between the lines; it probably should have happened a long time ago), a teacher went off the reservation, was fired, grieved it and was reinstated, teachers and parents are up in arms, etc.  What a total mess.
 
Here's the beginning of the story from the front page of today's NY Sun:

When the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, opened a school in 2005 — the first ever union-run charter school in New York, and one of the only such schools in America — she promised an “oasis.” Under UFT management, she said, teachers would win a reprieve from the Bloomberg administration’s heavy-handedness, and children would benefit.

Three years later, “oasis” remains the goal, but nearly everyone involved concedes the school isn’t there yet.

With two school years completed, the total number of teachers at the school has risen to 31 from nine. Eleven teachers have left, some of them with ill will. Though many parents are happy, others have recently held an emergency meeting to criticize what they say is sometimes an unsafe environment and a dictatorial management. A tug of war is going on with the traditional public school whose building the charter school shares.

Now the school’s top administrator, Rita Danis, is announcing her resignation to parents and teachers after facing criticism from a teacher who said she was mistreated and subsequently fired in large part because she raised complaints.

“It hasn’t been the utopia that I had hoped for,” Ms. Weingarten said in an interview last week. “I think the processes that we’ve had in place are really good processes now. But we’ve had, just like every other school has, some bumps in the road.”

The article doesn't say what the school's test scores are, but they must be weak if Randi's making lame excuses like this:

Ms. Weingarten said that she believes the school’s difficulties do not stem from its unique labor-management structure, but rather from external pressures created by the No Child Left Behind law and the State University of New York, which as part of its oversight of charter schools inquires regularly on progress, including test score gains.

“I think what’s starting to happen is that the focus and fixation on test scores to the exclusion of all else, that SUNY requires, the pressure that people feel from No Child Left Behind, has really stunted good educational opportunity,” Ms. Weingarten said. “And, you know, I’ve seen that in terms of even our teachers and our school leader being really afraid of what the school scores are going to be like. That dominates their life, and instead of looking at it in terms of taking risks, trying new things, and things like that, that’s dominated their life.”

Now maybe Randi and the UFT can better appreciate why nearly all charter schools are nonunion -- or at least reject the onerous contracts that exist in most big cities (not all contracts have to be this way -- witness Green Dot).  It's NOT because they want to exploit teachers by underpaying or overworking them or subjecting them to arbitrary firings.  Rather, to run an effective school, the principal needs to be able to manage the school, a critical part of which is being able to hire and fire people with relatively few restrictions.  Some principals are lousy at this and treat people badly/unfairly, but the solution to this problem is not to make labor an equal partner with management -- it's to fire the lousy managers. 
 
There's a reason why 99.9% of all organizations in the world, both for profit and nonprofit, have managers and employees that are not equals: because the interests of employees are not the same as the interests of the organization, so you need management to represent the latter.  As we're seeing with the UFT charter school, when one violates this basic principle, while it may sound good -- all kumbaya and such -- in practice it leads to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.
 
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UFT Charter School Leader Will Leave After Clash With Teacher

By

When the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, opened a school in 2005 — the first ever union-run charter school in New York, and one of the only such schools in America — she promised an “oasis.” Under UFT management, she said, teachers would win a reprieve from the Bloomberg administration’s heavy-handedness, and children would benefit.

Three years later, “oasis” remains the goal, but nearly everyone involved concedes the school isn’t there yet.

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Clueless in America

Bob Herbert with a great Op Ed in today's NYT:

We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball.

The nation’s future may depend on how well we educate the current and future generations, but (like the renovation of the nation’s infrastructure, or a serious search for better sources of energy) that can wait. At the moment, no one seems to have the will to engage any of the most serious challenges facing the U.S.

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.

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April 22, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist

Clueless in America

We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball.

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery and the crime of charter caps and the failure of our educational system

At the Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery last Thursday, Joel Klein said "this night will go down in the history of New York City as a truly transformative night. I've been waiting for this since I became Chancellor six years ago." He's exactly right.
Nearly 5,000 (!) people showed up, including parents of 3,600 children who wanted a better educational opportunity for their children. It was a magnificent sight -- see the pictures posted at: http://picasaweb.google.com/WTilson/HarlemSuccessLottery -- and a compelling rebuttal to those dimwits who claim that inner-city parents don't care about their childrens' educations and/or aren't aware of better educational options in their communities. 50% of the eligible parents in the area were there.
Gov. Paterson spoke first, admitting that he at one time was against charter schools, but that he was wrong and now strongly supports them. Then, the Executive Director of Harlem Success, Eva Moskowitz, spoke about the school and its rigorous curriculum, high expectations, etc. (see www.harlemsuccess.org). Eva was followed by two parents (you can hear what they had to say here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EuGJfbz160).
The next speaker was jazz and R&B legend James Mtume, who rocked! You can hear what he said here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpLdJlCAenA. His best line was when he called out the NY legislature for passing the world's most idiotic bill, preventing the DOE from using student test scores when making teacher tenure decisions. Mtume said, "that would be like picking someone for my basketball team without checking to see if they'd ever scored a point, or giving someone a permanent job at a law firm without knowing if they'd ever won a case." Well put!
Joel Klein was the last speaker before the results of the lottery were announced -- unfortunately my video camera battery died at the end of Mtume's remarks so I didn't videotape Klein, but he was great.
All of the speakers made it very clear to the parents that many of the politicians who are supposed to represent them are screwing them when it comes to giving them better educational options like Harlem Success and other charter schools. The parents were very fired up to let their politicians know their feelings about this! The last photo below is of a card from Harlem Parents United that was passed out to the parents, calling on City Council member Inez Dickens of Harlem, a foe of charter schools, to reconsider her views. It looked to me like the bag of filled out cards was stuffed with a few thousand of them...
It was a tragic night as well, however. Even with Harlem Success expanding from one school currently to four schools this fall, there were only spaces for 600 of the 3,600 children who desperately need them. In other words, 84% of the parents went home losers of the lottery. I wonder how many of them know the life-altering consequences of the lottery -- many, I suspect. Most have no other choice but to send their child to a local public school, which means that odds that their child will ever get a four-year college degree -- the bare minimum these days for having a fair shot at the American Dream -- are at best 10% (in Harlem, 60% of children in public schools can't read at grade level). In contrast, I'd guess, based on results from other top charter school operators like KIPP and Uncommon Schools, that 60-70% of the children who win the lottery and stay at Harlem Success will graduate from four-year colleges (we'll know for sure in about 15 years, but I'd bet a lot of money that my guess will be right).
For a far more eloquent statement of the tragedy of charter caps and the resulting need for lotteries, see what I posted on my blog about an email I received a year ago, written by someone at the MATCH charter school in Boston (pretty much the same thing happened at the Harlem Success lottery):

A story from the MATCH charter school lottery and the crime of charter caps and the failure of our educational system

Last October, I visited the MATCH charter school in Boston (see http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/03/visits-to-two-charter-schools-in-boston.html), which is achiving miracles with high school students that enter MATCH in 9th grade doing math at the 5th grade level and reading at the 6th grade level.
So it was with particular interest that I read this email from Danny Clark, a friend of a friend who works at MATCH, describing in heart-breaking detail the lottery to determine which children get what I call "exit visas from hell" (65 lucky ones) and the remaining 500+, nearly all of whom will go back to schools that EVERYONE KNOWS are utterly failing.
I get choked up reading this -- that this exists in our country is so deeply, profoundly wrong:

At the same time, this was an unbelievably heartbreaking moment. I stood there and watched parents overjoyed at the news, while other parents sat tensely waiting, hoping that their child's name would be called. Long after the first 135 names were called, basically after any hope of admission was gone, a couple of parents stayed on, listening to each name being read out.

Continue reading at: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/03/story-from-match-charter-school-lottery.html

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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Legislators Balk at Tying Teacher Tenure to Student Tests

I was going to go off on a rant about this outrageous likely action by the NY State legislature, but I don't need to -- to my surprise (and delight), the NYT editorial page did it for me!
April 9, 2008
Editorial

Albany Fails Again

Prepare to hand out more demerits in New York’s capital. One of the reasons that the budget is late this year has nothing to do with the state’s $124 billion spending plan. The back-room debate in recent days has focused on a piece of language, which was mysteriously inserted into the education section of the budget, that bars school administrators from considering student test scores when determining whether a teacher deserves to get tenure.

It is an absurd ban that does a disservice to the state’s millions of public school students. The State Legislature should remove this language from the budget.

To judge whether a teacher elevates the class or sets students spiraling backward, administrators should look at the biggest possible picture. That includes the teacher’s education and experience, of course. But what about the students’ work, including their performance on standardized tests? Shouldn’t that also be considered before giving a teacher a virtually permanent job in New York State? The ban is so nonsensical that lawmakers clearly decided that the only way to get it passed was to keep it hidden deep in the budget documents.

Nobody in Albany would say who is behind this language. The driving force, however, is the powerful teachers’ union that gives lots of money and time to state campaigns. Union leaders argue that it is impossible to judge a teacher fairly by students’ performance on tests, especially since many are given in the middle of the year.

The chancellor of New York City’s schools, Joel Klein, has argued that test performance can be analyzed in a way that makes it a useful tool for comparing teachers’ performance. Also, he has said that this should be a matter for each local district to decide. For his schools, he has sensibly promised that the scores will be only one of several metrics used. The best teachers teach children how to collect information carefully and how to evaluate it critically. Before they hand out tenure, New York’s school administrators should be able to do the same.

It would be hard to find a better example of the importance of education reform philanthropists setting aside, say, 10% of their giving to the political angle of school reform -- to things like Democrats for Education Reform, All Children Matter, BAEO (Black Alliance for Educational Options), HCREO (Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options), EdVoice (California), ConnCAN (CT), Step Up for Students (FL), etc. 
 
I'd guess that the percentage is far below 1% today, which is why -- let's be honest -- the education reform agenda gets clobbered at the local, state and federal level.  If this passes in NY, the teachers unions will have kicked our butts once again -- and I'm getting really tired of it.
 
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April 9, 2008

Legislators Balk at Tying Teacher Tenure to Student Tests

ALBANY — In the latest rebuke to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s agenda, state lawmakers have decided to bar student test scores from being considered when teacher tenure determinations are made.

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The importance of elite schools

One of my friends had an interesting response to an article I sent around last week:
I had to comment on the absurd quote at the end of the article about the competition for admission at elite colleges.  “I know why it matters so much, and I also don’t understand why it matters so much,” said William M. Shain, dean of admissions and financial aid at Bowdoin. “Where we went to college does not set us up for success or keep us away from it.” 
 
Is he serious?  I Googled Mr. Shain and his bio says he graduated from Princeton and earned a law degree at Columbia.  This bio hardly suggests that he has the personal experience to offer opinions about where one goes to college.  I know from personal experience, as a graduate from York College, a CUNY school in Jamaica, Queens, about how the reputation of a school, or lack thereof, can affect your future success. 
 
When I interviewed at certain elite law schools, two of the admissions directors were quite frank with me and said they had never had a candidate from York and they were unsure of what to do with me, even though I graduated summa cum laude.  Needless to say I was not accepted at those schools, but thankfully was accepted at some other elite schools including my law alma mater, Georgetown. 
 
Maybe Mr. Shain's comments are what helps him sleep at night after rejecting thousands of students, but getting into the right college, particularly if you're a minority, low-income student that survives the hellacious K-12 experience, means everything for one's future success.  If Mr. Shain's comments were true, there wouldn't be so many applicants for elite schools.

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In Test, Few Skilled Student Writers

More evidence of our students' (and schools') dismal performance:

About one-third of America’s eighth-grade students, and about one in four high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to results of a nationwide test released on Thursday.

The test, administered last year, showed that there were modest increases in the writing skills of low-performing students since the last time a similar exam was given, in 2002. But the skills of high-performing eighth and 12th graders remained flat or declined.

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April 3, 2008

In Test, Few Skilled Student Writers

About one-third of America’s eighth-grade students, and about one in four high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to results of a nationwide test released on Thursday.

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'With a Few More Brains ...'

A brilliant article by Kristof on the dumbing down of America -- and our politicians:

A 34-nation study found Americans less likely to believe in evolution than citizens of any of the countries polled except Turkey.

President Bush is also the only Western leader I know of who doesn't believe in evolution, saying "the jury is still out." No word on whether he believes in little green men.

Only one American in 10 understands radiation, and only one in three has an idea of what DNA does. One in five does know that the Sun orbits the Earth ...oh, oops.

"America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism," Susan Jacoby argues in a new book, "The Age of American Unreason." She blames a culture of "infotainment," sound bites, fundamentalist religion and ideological rigidity for impairing thoughtful debate about national policies.

Even insults have degenerated along with other discourse, Ms. Jacoby laments. She contrasts Dick Cheney's obscene instruction to Senator Patrick Leahy with a more elegant evisceration by House Speaker Thomas Reed in the 1890s: "With a few more brains he could be a half-wit."

Her broader point is that we as a nation will have difficulty making crucial decisions if we don't have an intellectual climate that fosters an informed and reasoned debate. How can we decide on embryonic stem cells if we don't understand biology? How can we judge whether to invade Iraq if we don't know a Sunni from a Shiite?

Our competitiveness as a nation in coming decades will be determined not only by our financial accounts but also by our intellectual accounts. In that respect, we're at a disadvantage, particularly vis-à-vis East Asia with its focus on education.

From Singapore to Japan, politicians pretend to be smarter and better- educated than they actually are, because intellect is an asset at the polls. In the United States, almost alone among developed countries, politicians pretend to be less worldly and erudite than they are (Bill Clinton was masterful at hiding a brilliant mind behind folksy Arkansas sayings about pigs).

Alas, when a politician has the double disadvantage of obvious intelligence and an elite education and then on top of that tries to educate the public on a complex issue — as Al Gore did about climate change — then that candidate is derided as arrogant and out of touch.

The dumbing-down of discourse has been particularly striking since the 1970s. Think of the devolution of the emblematic conservative voice from William Buckley to Bill O'Reilly. It's enough to make one doubt Darwin.

There's no simple solution, but the complex and incomplete solution is a greater emphasis on education at every level. And maybe, just maybe, this cycle has run its course, for the last seven years perhaps have discredited the anti-intellectualism movement. President Bush, after all, is the movement's epitome — and its fruit.

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March 30, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist

'With a Few More Brains ...'

Ten days ago, I noted the reckless assertion of Barack Obama's former pastor that the United States government had deliberately engineered AIDS to kill blacks, but I tried to put it in context by citing a poll showing that 30 percent of African-Americans believe such a plot is at least plausible.

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Thursday, April 03, 2008

A Schools Veteran Girds for a Broader Battlefield

This profile of Randi Weingarten from the front page of the Metro Section of today's NYT is (to my surprise, frankly) well done.  Her supporters will think it was too harsh and her critics will think it was a puff piece, which probably means it struck the right balance.  The article quotes DFER

Randi Weingarten has spent more than a decade cultivating a reputation as the archetypal union leader: a combative dealmaker and consummate political street fighter for city teachers. Yet at a recent education conference in Nashville, there was a fellow from the conservative Hoover Institute, Eric A. Hanushek, gushing with praise for Ms. Weingarten, and promising to do all he could to support her bid to become the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the national union.

Just one thing, he added with a laugh: “I don’t know if that’s good for your image.”

Later this month, Ms. Weingarten is expected to announce her candidacy to run the national teachers’ union, with her election widely considered virtually assured. The position would put her in place to be one of the most important people in shaping the national debate on education policy in the next few years.

I've written extensively about Randi and the teachers unions in the past (click here for more).  Here's an excerpt:
I think she's one of the most forward-thinking teacher union leaders in the country (not to damn her with faint praise), as evidenced by embracing Green Dot among other things.  She's smart, very effective at her job, and I think she really cares about what's best for children -- but the interests of her union and the interests of children often do not intersect, which puts her in terribly difficult positions...When she advocates something that I don’t think is in the best interests of children, I blast her for it, but it’s not personal -- she’s just doing her job!
 
Many school reformers become outraged when this happens, but this is an unreasonable expectation.  Just like any other union, they exist to fight for the interests of  their members – things like higher pay, better benefits, shorter work hours and greater job protection – and they have been extraordinarily effective at achieving these aims. Does anyone get angry when the head of the longshoreman’s union fights for work rules that create more jobs, hours, benefits, job protection and privileges for his members, at the expense of the efficient and cost-effective operation of the port? Of course not – he’s just doing his job!
 
There is, however, one huge difference: no-one thinks that the longshoreman’s union cares one iota about the efficient and cost-effective operation of the port, yet the general public, media and politicians tend to suffer from the delusion that the teachers unions represent the interests of children!
 
I'm a Democrat and I believe in the importance of unions in protecting workers, helping level the playing field with management and ensuring that workers receive fair pay and benefits and have job protections against unreasonable dismissals, retaliation, etc.
 
But in districts where the teacher unions have developed a great deal of power -- typically in large cities -- they have gone far beyond this role and frequently start behaving like the longshoreman's union, trying to intimidate or blacklist perceived enemies (just ask Eva Moskowitz), etc.  Worst of all, when it comes to what's best for children, they -- like many unions -- seem to think it's part of their duty to protect the very worst teachers.  Randi's union, for example, grieves every attempt to remove a teacher, no matter how egregious the circumstances -- something that is not generally the case with other teachers unions.
 
Finally, while I think the teachers unions are, in general, obstacles to genuine reform, they are unfairly blamed by many for everything that is wrong with our schools.  They are certainly easy targets for reformers to rail against, but I've never heard a good answer to my response: "Look at schools in Houston, for example, where the teachers union is very weak -- not much more than a professional association.  The schools there are every bit as awful as those in other big cities with strong unions, so what makes you think that if the union went away tomorrow that things would get any better?"  My point (to paraphrase Bill Clinton): It's the system stupid!
 
There's a bit of chicken-or-egg, but I think, in general, the unions are not the cause of the dreadful system but rather the result of it.  Go back and look at the history of teachers unions and you'll see that they rose in response to a system that treated teachers horribly, discriminated against women and minorities, etc.  To a large extent, sadly, we got the unions we deserve.  And once this vicious cycle begins, it's really hard to break.
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A Schools Veteran Girds for a Broader Battlefield

Published: April 3, 2008

Randi Weingarten has spent more than a decade cultivating a reputation as the archetypal union leader: a combative dealmaker and consummate political street fighter for city teachers. Yet at a recent education conference in Nashville, there was a fellow from the conservative Hoover Institute, Eric A. Hanushek, gushing with praise for Ms. Weingarten, and promising to do all he could to support her bid to become the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the national union.

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N.Y. parents must unite to demand better school choices

Speaking of Eva, she sent me this email yesterday:
As you may know, last night was our second and controversial space hearing at P.S. 123.  Hundreds of our parents came out in support.  It was, of course, a heated discussion, but was so incredibly moving to see parents speaking to each other about the issue of quality public schools.

In conjunction with the space hearing, I wanted to make sure to send along this terrific op-ed in today’s Daily News written by one of our parents, Kyesha Bennett.  Kyesha has a son in kindergarten at Harlem Success Academy and is one of the founding parents of Harlem Parents United.
It is indeed a wonderful op-ed -- an absolute must-read.  Here's an excerpt:
Flash forward 22 years. Last year, I needed to find a school for my son. I assumed that things would have changed somewhat - and for the better - within 20 years. I was shocked to find my options in Harlem were almost identical to my mother's in the 1980s. I remember crying to my mother on the phone out of frustration.

Finally, I heard about a charter school in the neighborhood. People said good things about it. I put my son in the lottery.

He was 114th on the waiting list - but I prayed for him to get in, and after a few twists and turns, he did. He's there now and we love it.

My experience made me realize that all parents should have good school choices. That's why I've joined with other mothers and fathers to found a group called Harlem Parents United. I consider this a civil rights movement - because civil rights is about freedom, and freedom is about making choices...

But the swell of support from the grass roots hasn't made a difference to some in my community. Indeed, a hearing last night at PS 123 attracted plenty of opponents to the new charter school.

What's even worse is that some of our elected officials are stoking the anti-charter flames rather than fighting for better options for all our kids.
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N.Y. parents must unite to demand better school choices
By KYESHA BENNETT
Wednesday, April 2nd 2008, 4:00 AM

My mom gave me an early lesson in school choice. I was going to a school in Harlem that didn't meet standards, so she got me into Public School 87 on the upper West Side. I was 9, and I had to get myself and my 6-year-old sister to a school 2 miles away by public bus. Every morning, we'd wake up early to take the M106. I would hold my little sister's hand and make sure I had my emergency dimes for phone calls.

Maybe it sounds crazy to you for kids to travel alone in New York City, but my mom believed that going to my "zoned school" was more dangerous for my future. Most parents in her predicament sent their children to parochial school, but my mother is a fighter. She believed that education was a civil right, and that, as a matter of principle, she should not have had to pay to have her kids attend an adequate school.

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KJ Rocks The DFER House

Speaking of inner-city parents getting involved with their childrens' educations, check out what Kevin Johnson had to say at the DFER event two weeks ago (from DFER's blog at www.dfer.org/posts/blog):

KJ Rocks The DFER House

My sincere apologies for taking so long to post this stuff. We have a lot of video footage from last Thursday's inspiring/rocking Democrats for Education Reform rally at Harlem's Mt. Olivet Baptist Church. Some of the footage is better than others and we're trying to put it all together to make one, nice program for viewing. But until then, I'll post some of the raw footage so that you can get an idea just how fired up the place was.

We had 1,400 charter school crazies packed into the place, some carrying signs and chanting on their way in. (Special thanks to the local police precinct for crowd control as the throngs decended upon the church, especially those parents who marched straight from dismissal!)

Nelson Smith blogged on the rally here.

This clip [www.dfer.org/2008/03/kj_rocks_the_df.php; 7 minutes] shows former NBA star Kevin Johnson (who is opening one of his St. Hope charter schools in Harlem in the fall and is currently running for mayor of Sacramento) accepting his "Education Warrior" award.

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Paterson's School Choice Chance

A great op-ed in yesterday's NY Sun about the potential of Gov. Paterson to be a leader in education reform (though early indications are troubling -- he stood up 1,400 Harlem parents by being a last-minute no-show at DFER's Harlem Charter Night, and it looks like he's being rolled by the unions on the legislation that would (foolishly) prevent the DOE from using student test score data as one (of many) inputs in teacher tenure decisions -- see my post at http://edreform.blogspot.com/2008/04/bill-would-bar-linking-class-test.html):

Mr. Paterson’s challenge now will be to take his support of school choice to new heights through his policy prescriptions. He can find a blueprint just across the Hudson River, where reform is gaining in the deep blue state of New Jersey.

A lifelong Democrat who runs the successful E3 school choice group in Newark, Dan Gaby, referenced the city’s pro-school choice mayor, Cory Booker, a black Democrat, in his explanation for the possible sea change.

“What’s interesting here is that there is change in the Democratic Party all over the country,” Mr. Gaby remarked. “People like Paterson and Booker are the vanguard of this change. They see the hypocrisy in consistently winning the minority constituencies who have been faithful to them for decades, and then going to bed with their oppressors, the teachers’ unions. They can no longer be duplicitous. They know that this must change.”...

Let’s hope that, in the next 33-and-a-half months, we witness Mr. Paterson’s strong support for real school reform. And, as we do, let’s hope also that he and others in his party can see charter schools, school choice, and other seemingly conservative policy principles for what they really are: vital tools through which our elected officials can empower parents and liberate the poor and minority kids unfairly trapped by our nation’s crumbling public schools.

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Paterson’s School Choice Chance

By |

http://nysun.com/editorials/paterson%E2%80%99s-school-choice-chance

Behind the budget battle, Governor Paterson’s public school reform position is particularly scrutinized.

The discussion revolves around whether Mr. Paterson is pro-school choice, if he likes vouchers, and how far he will go to promote charter schools. Some national advocates are certain that he’s Friedmanesque in his school stance.

David Paterson is a passionate advocate for expanding opportunities for disadvantaged schoolchildren through school choice, including private school options,” the former president of the Alliance for School Choice and arguably the nation’s leading educational-choice advocate, Clint Bolick, said. “He is unafraid to stand up to special-interest groups that block opportunities for children who need them.”

Others, as this paper has reported, are not so sure. Randi Weingarten said the other week that she thought choice reformers were “in some ways trying to put words in [Mr. Paterson’s] mouth.”

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My Acceptance Speech at the City Lights Youth Theatre Benefit, 4/2/08

The City Lights Youth Theatre benefit last night was a wonderful event.  Cory Booker and Joel Klein were brilliant and inspirational, which left me with a tall task of following them.  I wrote out my speech, rehearsed it and had it down to the allotted 9 minutes -- and then spoke for 18!  Those of you who know me will not be surprised to hear this -- LOL!  What can I say?  I'm passionate about this issue...  At the end of this email is the long version of the speech I'd written out.  Here's an excerpt:

So the problem is not too many bad kids, it’s too many bad schools.  To give you a sense of the magnitude of the problem, four million children today attended a school that has been identified as failing for six consecutive years.  Nearly all of them are low-income black and Latino children – the children who most need the best schools and teachers, yet get the worst.  Again, I could bore you with statistics, but to summarize the data, every study ever done shows that schools with a high proportion of low-income and minority students are far more likely to have teachers who are inexperienced, did not major or minor in the subject they’re teaching, who failed the basic skills test on the first attempt, who went to a noncompetitive college, and who had very low grades and test scores in high school and college.

 

It’s hard for me to think of anything more fundamental to what this nation stands for than the idea that every child, regardless of income, ethnicity, or neighborhood, has a fair shot at the American Dream.  We are not living up to that promise.  If you’re a low income, minority child in this country, odds are very high that you attend a mediocre school at best, and most likely a failing school at which very little learning is occurring.  This is deeply and profoundly wrong.  It offends me and, as an American, it embarrasses me.

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Acceptance Speech at City Lights Youth Theatre Benefit, Whitney Tilson, 4/2/08

Thank you, Joel, for the kind introduction.  I’d also like to thank City Lights Youth Theatre for this honor and applaud its wonderful work to bring the arts and theater to so many of New York’s children.

 

Before I even say a word, I already have two strikes against me: I’m the only thing standing between you and dinner, and I have to follow two of my heroes – and, as you’ve just heard, two of the most compelling speakers I know of.  I tell you this because I’m reminded of something Warren Buffett once said about the key to a successful marriage: low expectations.

 

In addition, I’d like to thank the people most responsible for my philanthropic work: first, my wife, Susan, whose love and support (and doing the lion’s share of chasing after our three girls) makes it all possible, and my parents, who inspired me through their example.  They were one of the first couples to meet and marry in the Peace Corps in the early 1960s and have spent most of their careers doing international development, so I lived in Tanzania and Nicaragua for much of my early childhood.  They couldn’t be here tonight because they now live and are retiring in Kenya – my dad runs an educational program in Southern Sudan, but is based in Nairobi.  

 

My parents didn’t just lead by example though – there was also a lot of lecturing from my mom.  I remember the many times, going back to my teenage years, that she reminded me of all the good fortune I’ve had in my life and told me that I had a duty to give back and make the world a better place.  It sounds sort of corny, but they believed it – and so do I.

 

Given that my parents are both educators, it’s not surprising that I was drawn to this area – and what began 19 years ago when I helped start Teach for America has become an obsession.  As I think about it, there’s a pattern: the more I learn, the more outraged I get, and the more involved I become in various efforts to try to improve the situation.

 

Let me step back and give you a little background. We have two educational systems in this country.  One has the following characteristics:

 

-                  Public, private and religious schools all compete fiercely for students

-                  No one type of school has dominant market share

-                  Students and their parents choose among a vast array of options regarding which school is best, depending on each student’s interests and needs

-                  Money in the form of scholarships and student loans – both public and private – largely follows students

-                  If students or their parents are dissatisfied with a school, they can easily switch schools

-                  It takes many years for teachers to earn tenure, and the process is generally rigorous and competitive

-                  There is tremendous innovation and specialization among schools

-                  Failing schools face severe consequences and/or go out of business

 

I’m of course referring to our system of higher education.  It’s the best in the world and, as proof of this, the brightest students from all over the world come here to study.

 

Now let’s examine our K-12 school system:

 

-                  Public schools have 90% market share

-                  Students and their parents typically have little or no choice of school; they are assigned to one school based on where they live

-                  Money doesn’t follow students; if they don’t attend their local public school, they get nothing

-                  If students or their parents are dissatisfied with a school – well, tough luck, unless they’re among the lucky few with enough money to opt out

-                  Virtually every teacher gets tenure – often after only two years

-                  Very little innovation and specialization among schools

-                  For all the talk about accountability, No Child Left Behind, etc., the reality is that failing schools typically face few consequences.  Even among the worst schools, it is extremely rare for anyone to lose their job, much less for a school to be closed. 

 

Given the system that we’ve set up, it’s little wonder that our schools are doing poorly.  Not all schools, of course.  Many schools are excellent.  But there’s tremendous variation – and the variation isn’t random.  I’ll come back to this in a minute.

 

I don’t want to bore you with too many statistics, but our 15-year-olds are ranked 15th out of 29 developed countries in literacy and 24th in math.  And here’s the scary part: the longer our students remain in school, the worse they do relative to our economic competitors.  In math, for example, among 4th graders, only 25% of countries are ahead of us.  By 8th grade, 50% are and by 12th grade, 70% are.  There’s one area in which we do very well, however: 72% of  our students agree with the statement, “I get good marks in math” – by far, the highest rate in the world.

 

I’ve just described achievement gap #1 – how we’re falling further and further behind other countries, not, by the way, because our schools are getting worse.  Rather, our achievement hasn’t budged in the last 40 years, despite spending more and more money, while other countries are improving every year.

 

Now let me talk about achievement gap #2: the fact that the achievement of low-income, minority students is dramatically worse than their better-off peers.  The statistics here are truly horrifying – I don’t think even well informed, well-read people have any idea how bad it is.  The average black and Latino child enters kindergarten one year below grade level – and every year falls further behind such that, by 12th grade, the average black and Latino student is reading and doing math at the same level as white 8th graders – and this doesn’t even count the nearly half who’ve dropped out of school!  As early as 4th grade, 58% of black and 54% of Latino children are testing Below Basic in reading.  That means these 9 and 10 year olds are basically illiterate – they’re struggling to read “See Spot Run”. 

 

Barring some sort of miracle, for many of these kids, it’s already too late.  Statistically speaking, the children who can’t read in 4th grade account for nearly all of the high school dropouts, the girls who get pregnant as teenagers and end up on welfare, the boys who turn to a life of crime.  80% of America’s prisoners failed to finish high school and are functionally illiterate and 52% of black men who fail to finish high school end up in prison at some point in their lives.  There are staggering human and societal costs when our youth don’t receive a good education.

 

So why does this achievement gap exist?  There are many reasons – many of which are beyond the control of schools.  There is no doubt that children from troubled communities and families, in which few people have completed high school, much less college, are a challenge to educate.  But I’ve gotten tired of hearing the endless excuses and talk about “bad” kids and “bad” parents because I’ve seen lots of schools that are taking precisely these kids, educating them properly, changing their lives and sending nearly all of them to four-year colleges. 

 

In fact, we have a team of educators here tonight from one of those schools, the KIPP Infinity Charter School.  You may recall that the NYC Department of Education recently started giving every school in the city a letter grade.  KIPP Infinity not only got an A, but was ranked the #1 school in Manhattan and #2 in the entire city of more than 1,400 schools!  Entering KIPP Infinity in 5th grade, the average student was at the 30% percentile in reading and jumped to the 66% and 86% percentile over the next two years.  In math, they were at 48% coming in and jumped to the 94% percentile in the first year!  By the way, the students weren’t selected – by law, there was a lottery.  By the time these students graduate from KIPP in 8th grade, nearly all will be well above grade level, attend rigorous college-preparatory high schools and go to four-year colleges – from a neighborhood in which maybe 20% of young men and women will attend any type of college and well under 10% will ever earn a college degree.

 

At the end of the day, great schools and especially great teachers make all the difference.  Every study ever done shows that teacher quality far outweighs any other factor.  If you give a group of the most privileged kids an ineffective teacher, they don’t learn very much.  Conversely, if you give even the most disadvantaged kids a great teacher, they will learn and achieve at levels that would amaze you.  To see this for yourself, I urge you come visit one of our four KIPP charter schools in New York.  The most convenient is probably KIPP Infinity, which is on 133rd St. just a block away from the Uptown Fairway under the West Side Highway.

 

So the problem is not too many bad kids, it’s too many bad schools.  To give you a sense of the magnitude of the problem, four million children today attended a school that has been identified as failing for six consecutive years.  Nearly all of them are low-income black and Latino children – the children who most need the best schools and teachers, yet get the worst.  Again, I could bore you with statistics, but to summarize the data, every study ever done shows that schools with a high proportion of low-income and minority students are far more likely to have teachers who are inexperienced, did not major or minor in the subject they’re teaching, who failed the basic skills test on the first attempt, who went to a noncompetitive college, and who had very low grades and test scores in high school and college.

 

It’s hard for me to think of anything more fundamental to what this nation stands for than the idea that every child, regardless of income, ethnicity, or neighborhood, has a fair shot at the American Dream.  We are not living up to that promise.  If you’re a low income, minority child in this country, odds are very high that you attend a mediocre school at best, and most likely a failing school at which very little learning is occurring.  This is deeply and profoundly wrong.  It offends me and, as an American, it embarrasses me.

 

So what needs to be done and what can you do?  The first thing I’ll say is that there is no magic bullet.  That’s what everybody looks for – the 100% solution – but there’s no such thing.  We need 100 1% solutions.  Broadly speaking, they fall into two categories: fix the system and create alternatives to it.


Regarding the latter, we need to create a marketplace of alternatives for parents and students, just like the one we have for higher education.  When it comes to schools, one size doesn’t fit all, and there’s no reason to think that the best school for a particular child is the one that happens to be located nearby.  Why shouldn’t parents be allowed to apply to any school in a particular city or district?  And why do charter schools like KIPP get less money per pupil than regular public schools, and why is there a cap on their number?  If we find schools that are working, we should be doing everything we can to encourage them to grow, rather than throwing up obstacles.

 

And if a school is failing to educate children, year in and year out, at what point do we stop telling parents to be patient and endure yet another failed turnaround effort and instead give the parents the money that’s being wasted and let them find a better alternative?  Florida did precisely this a few years ago, passing a law that said if a school gets an F grade for two consecutive years, then every student at the school gets a voucher that can be used at any accredited school, public or private.  A study of the program showed that student test scores went up by 2.4 points at schools that weren’t getting D’s or F’s, 4.3 points for schools that were consistently getting D’s, 9.2 points for schools that got an F the previous year and were facing losing students, and finally, 15.1 points at schools where the students had gotten vouchers and were free to transfer elsewhere.  Competition is a remarkable thing, you know.

 

But competition, by itself, isn’t enough.  Even if charter schools continue to expand rapidly and some students get vouchers to attend private schools, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of American students will attend regular public schools for the foreseeable future, so we need to fix these schools.

 

This will no doubt be a daunting task – there are more than 1,400 schools, 70,000 teachers and 1 million students in New York City public schools alone – but it can be done. I think a relevant model is the reform of the New York City police department over the past 15 years or so.  I recognize that this might be a controversial example for some, but the fact is that the NYPD, as a crime-fighting force, has transformed itself -- and this transformation is a major reason why New York City has gone from the murder capital of the country to being one of the safest cities in America. At the peak in 1990, 2,245 murders took place in the city; last year, the number had plunged 75% to under 600, the lowest level in 41 years. New York City’s murder rate of 7.3 per 100,000 people is the lowest of any large U.S. city. As a Big Apple resident myself, this is indeed cause for celebration.

 

As recently as 1994, the NYPD was a politicized, patronage- and corruption-filled, unaccountable bureaucracy, with an enormous budget, tens of thousands of employees, and a powerful union representing them. In other words, it was just like the public school system in most large cities today. If the NYPD could be reformed so dramatically, I am convinced that public schools can be as well. 

 

It’s a four-step process:

 

1) Empower principals, who today only have limited control over their schools, lacking full control over budgets, hiring, disciplinary procedures, testing, etc. In contrast, principals of successful schools almost always have a great deal of autonomy, most importantly in the areas of spending and hiring or firing staff.

 

2) Adopt the right approach.  Good schools have a rigorous curriculum, set high expectations for students, carefully monitor behavior to create a safe learning environment and so forth.

 

3) Measure results.  In today’s public school systems, while students are often tested regularly (depending on the state), resulting in plenty of data, it’s usually neither granular enough nor widely disseminated enough to have an impact. Principals need the data to evaluate individual teachers, the school system needs to be able to evaluate principals and parents need to be able to evaluate schools.

 

4) Create accountability.  Once measurement systems are in place, the final critical step is accountability. Simply put, there must be consequences for failure -- or even mediocrity.  Chronically failing schools should be shut down and the space should be turned over to proven successful operators like KIPP.  And there need to be consequences for individuals as well.  This doesn’t necessarily mean firing people -- sometimes additional training or perhaps a transfer to another position will do the trick. But being a good teacher or principal is hard and some people are just not cut out for it, so it’s a terrible disservice to them and the children to leave them in positions at which they are failing.

 

What I have just described is not theoretical.  In fact, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein are doing every single thing I just mentioned right now in New York City’s public schools – and it’s working!  But they face enormous resistance and much of what they’ve implemented could be undone under the next mayor or chancellor, if the wrong people get those jobs.  So, the single most important thing that could be done for our schools is to have the right political leaders, because schools are run by governments and governments are controlled by politicians.

 

But this is easier said than done, so the last thing I want to talk about tonight is the politics of education reform because, as I’ve come to realize over the past few years, it’s as important as everything else.  Let me tell you a story: about four years ago, KIPP applied to open additional charter schools in New York City.  At the time, the original KIPP school in the Bronx had been knocking the cover off the ball for many years and was one of the most widely acclaimed and successful schools educating inner-city kids in the country.  As a board member, I naively assumed that when we applied for approval to open more schools, the immediate answer would be, “Of course!  And won’t you please consider opening even more schools?”  Instead, I learned that the process was an ordeal and it finally dawned on me that Teach for America could hire thousands of wonderful teachers and KIPP could open dozens of extraordinary schools – yet with the stroke of a pen, the state legislature could pass a law that could hamper if not shut down TFA or KIPP.  We could win a lot of battles but still lose the war.

 

Given how bad things are and that we have a pretty good idea of what works and what needs to happen, why aren’t school systems around the country being reformed quickly?  There are two big reasons: First, the system works really well for the adults, what I call “the forces of the status quo”.  Second, the people it doesn’t work well for are the opposite: the most marginalized, powerless people in our society.  Imagine for a moment that every person in this room was required to send their children to a NYC public school – but one that was randomly assigned, so your kid might end up at a school in the South Bronx.  Do you think the schools in this city would improve dramatically, virtually overnight?  You bet!

 

So there’s little counterweight to the forces of the status quo, which encompasses most importantly the teachers, but also the principals, bureaucrats, janitors, etc.  The two primary teachers unions, the NEA and AFT, represent 2% of U.S. voters and are well organized and well funded, so I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that together, they are the most powerful interest group in the country.

 

They have been very clever in positioning themselves as the spokespeople for public education, but it’s important to understand that teacher unions exist to look out for the interests of their members – which is as it should be – but these interests don’t always overlap with the interest of children.  For example, teacher unions generally oppose charter schools, make it difficult to remove even the worst teachers and oppose any type of differential pay, which is critical to rectifying the imbalances in teacher talent.  Isn’t it sort of obvious that, as in any other profession, you want to pay bonuses to motivate and retain your best people, pay more for scarce talent like math and science teachers, and for teachers who are willing to, say, teach in the South Bronx vs. the Upper West Side?

 

As a lifelong Democrat, it saddens me to say that my party has been the primary obstacle to meaningful education reform.  After learning this, my first reaction was shock and horror, then I got mad about it for a year or two, and finally decided to do something about it, so with a few friends, we created Democrats for Education Reform.  Our goal is to create a counterweight to the forces of the status quo in the Democratic Party so that our party can return to its roots as a champion for our nation's most vulnerable individuals. 

 

I’d like to conclude with some ideas for how you can get involved and make a difference:

 

1)      The cap on charter schools in New York state was just lifted from 100 to 200 schools, so there are going to be 100 new schools, at least 50 of which will be in New York City.  Every one of these schools needs a board comprised of high-caliber people just like you, so if you’d like to learn more, please contact my friend Michael Duffy, who heads up the DOE’s office of charter schools.  I spoke with him earlier today and he said he’d be delighted to hear from any of you.  His phone number is 212 374-0204 and his email is MDuffy12@schools.nyc.gov. 

 

2)      To the extent that you are at all politically active, make sure every politician you talk to hears about this issue.  Politicians by nature don’t change the status quo unless voters make a ruckus.  And if you’re a Democrat, I hope you’ll go to dfer.org, the web site of Democrats for Education, and sign our statement of principles and get involved.  We’re involved with many races, ranging from the city council and mayor’s races here in New York City, to supporting Cory and his efforts to reform Newark’s schools, to the Presidential race.

 

3)      Finally, if you’d like to keep abreast of what’s going on day-to-day, I’d be happy to add you to my school reform email list, to which I send articles of interest and brief commentary every day or two.  Just email me at WTilson@tilsonfunds.com.

 

I think in both a moral and practical sense, improving our schools is the most important domestic issue facing our country, but it’s not going to be easy.  We need as many agents of change as possible, so I hope you’ll join me.  Thank you!

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