Debate over NYC performance & Ravitch rebuttal

1) Gee, what a shocker that Diane Ravitch would publich an article that was critical of Bloomberg and Klein -- as usual, selective picking a few statistics that present a totally distorted picture. 

Not every school problem can be solved by changes in governance. But to establish accountability, transparency and the legitimacy that comes with public participation, the Legislature should act promptly to restore public oversight of public education. As we all learned in civics class, checks and balances are vital to democracy.

As I've written in the past (see: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/10/hypocritical-critic.html, http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/11/feud-twixt-wylde-ravitch-laid-to-citys.html, http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/11/unfair-attack.html, http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/10/grading-tests.html, and http://edreform.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-i-resigned.html), Ravitch clearly has a personal vendetta and has gone on a crusade to attack Bloomberg and especially Klein, regardless of how inaccurate or misleading her attacks are -- and, ironically, how totally inconsistent they are with her previously articulated views, as Kathy Wylde so accurately pointed out in this 10/07 Op Ed: www.nypost.com/seven/10302007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/hypocritical_critic.htm. 

 

It's sad to see Ravitch, who was once such a powerful voice for reform, totally turn around and become one of the leading critics of some of the most bold and courageous reforms happening anywhere in the country, becoming in the process nothing more than a mouthpiece for Randi.

 

2) Here is Klein's letter to the editor in response to Ravitch's article:

To the Editor:

Re “Mayor Bloomberg’s Crib Sheet” (Op-Ed, April 10):

Diane Ravitch essentially proposes an independent school board that appoints the chancellor — and a return to the bad old days when divided decision-making and a lack of accountability produced decades of failure for students, particularly the poorest in our city.

3) Here's a letter Klein sent to all NYC principals last night via the Principals' Weekly newsletter:

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, the law granting the Mayor control of the schools expires at the end of June, and discussions about our governance structure are taking place throughout the City and the State. This is the right time to think about the past seven years—and to focus on the governance law and how it can best assure that New York City schools and students excel going forward. In that regard, a number of you have asked me about a recent Op-Ed by Diane Ravitch, which did not fully or accurately portray our record under mayoral control. I have asked the executive director of our Research and Policy Support Group, Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger, to respond to the specifics in Dr. Ravitch’s presentation, and you can read her response here. It is important to correct the record so that our discussions may proceed on a firm foundation of fact.

 

At the outset, I’d like to emphasize three points:

The detailed rebuttal is posted at: http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/360A5553-BEA6-4156-BA3A-4EC0B0A3665E/0/090428_jbe_response.pdf

 

In addition, I've posted a 24-slide presentation with further details about NYC schools' performance during the Bloomberg administration here: www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/NYCresults-11-08.pdf

 

4) Finally, here is a letter from DOE Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf to the Manhattan Institute's Sol Stern, addressing similar critiques:

Dear Sol:

 

It seems that when the press needs to find a negative voice about New York City schools, you have become a pundit of choice. Your writings often echo the same themes. I agree that our record of progress is not without setbacks and I’m all for balanced reporting, but your persistently one-sided perspective and refusal to recognize the improved outcomes of students during the past six years is over the top.

 

Consider what we’ve accomplished in the six years since Mayor Bloomberg won control of the school system:

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April 10, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor

Mayor Bloomberg’s Crib Sheet

By DIANE RAVITCH

www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10ravitch.html

ARNE DUNCAN, the secretary of education, has urged the nation’s mayors to take control of their public schools so that they can impose radical reforms. He points to New York City as a prime example of a school system that made sharp improvements under mayoral control.

Actually, the record on mayoral control of schools is unimpressive. Eleven big-city school districts take part in the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Two of the lowest-performing cities — Chicago and Cleveland — have mayoral control. The two highest-performing cities — Austin, Tex., and Charlotte, N.C. — do not. Mr. Duncan came to New York City last week to urge the New York State Legislature to renew the law that grants control of the New York City public schools to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. That law, passed in 2002, will expire at the end of June.

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April 16, 2009

Letter

New York’s Schools: The Chancellor’s Report Card

To the Editor:

Re “Mayor Bloomberg’s Crib Sheet” (Op-Ed, April 10):

Diane Ravitch essentially proposes an independent school board that appoints the chancellor — and a return to the bad old days when divided decision-making and a lack of accountability produced decades of failure for students, particularly the poorest in our city.

The national tests she cites are not the measure of federal accountability, are given only to a small sample of schools, and are not aligned with New York State standards and therefore with what we teach in our classrooms. (That said, our fourth-grade scores on those tests are strong.)

New York City’s gains on state tests have substantially and consistently exceeded gains made throughout the rest of the state during mayoral control. Even if those tests have gotten easier, as Ms. Ravitch claims without evidence, they have gotten easier for everyone.

You cannot dismiss the gains New York City students have made on students elsewhere. By any measure, our graduation rate — after decades of stagnation — has gone up significantly during the last several years whether you use the city rate, which has been in effect since 1986, or the state rate, which started only three years ago.

The percentage of “discharges” has remained constant during this period, so that can’t explain the gains; nor is there any basis to suggest that improper credit recovery has affected these outcomes. To graduate, all of our students have to pass Regents exams in five subjects, which has long been the standard.

Just a few weeks ago, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein announced that under the mayor’s tenure, the number of New York City high school graduates going to CUNY increased by 50 percent, with more than 70 percent of the increase being Latino and African-American students.

As enrollment has increased, contrary to Ms. Ravitch’s suggestion, remediation rates have declined. Based on our results, last year we won the nationally recognized Broad prize as the most improved urban school district in America. A Brookings Institution report this year found that New York City ranked eighth out of 37 big cities on student achievement gains made largely during the period under mayoral control. Only one of the cities ahead of us had the same range of poor students, and none came anywhere near New York City in size.

Joel I. Klein
New York City Schools Chancellor
New York, April 14, 2009

-----------------

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, the law granting the Mayor control of the schools expires at the end of June, and discussions about our governance structure are taking place throughout the City and the State. This is the right time to think about the past seven years—and to focus on the governance law and how it can best assure that New York City schools and students excel going forward. In that regard, a number of you have asked me about a recent Op-Ed by Diane Ravitch, which did not fully or accurately portray our record under mayoral control. I have asked the executive director of our Research and Policy Support Group, Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger, to respond to the specifics in Dr. Ravitch’s presentation, and you can read her response here. It is important to correct the record so that our discussions may proceed on a firm foundation of fact.

 

At the outset, I’d like to emphasize three points:

 

Our students are making real progress. If you analyze all of the various measures of student performance, the strong positive trend is unmistakable. Many more of our students are meeting and exceeding State standards and graduating from high school. Our racial and ethnic achievement gaps are closing, as is the gap separating New York City students from their peers in the rest of the State. And New York City students are surpassing their peers in other big cities. More New York City schools are meeting the federal “adequate yearly progress” requirements than ever before.

When it comes to high school graduation, in particular, no matter how you measure it, substantially more students are graduating from high school today than when we started. In 2002, after a decade of stagnation, 51% of our students were graduating from high school in four years, according to the City’s traditional methodology, which has been in place for more than twenty years. In 2007, the most recent year for which there is reported data, our graduation rate rose to 62%. The State adopted its own methodology for calculating graduation rates a couple of years ago, and using the State’s calculation method, we have also made substantial gains, rising from a four-year graduation rate of 46.5% for the class of 2005 to 52.2% for the class of 2007. Our five- and six-year graduation rates are also increasing significantly. And, as our graduation rates have improved, we have seen the number of New York City students going to CUNY rise substantially, from approximately 16,000 in 2002 to 24,000 in 2008. These are major accomplishments.

Our record on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a national exam that is given to a small sample of New York City fourth- and eighth-grade students every two years in reading and math, shows strong progress in the fourth grade but not in the eighth grade. NAEP is not wholly aligned with New York State standards, and, as a result, our students don’t learn some of the information on NAEP by the time they are tested. In fact, neither our school system nor our students are held accountable for the NAEP results. We are instead held accountable for the requirements laid out in No Child Left Behind, and for those established by our own accountability system. Both require us to demonstrate progress measured against State standards, and, appropriately, that’s where our schools—and our accountability tools, which are designed to help our schools—focus. Thus, while NAEP is certainly an important measure, it is unreasonable to analyze New York City students’ progress solely, or even largely, on that basis.

 

We know that there is plenty of work ahead of us, but there is no question that New York City students have made real and sustained progress since the Mayor took charge of the schools. This progress is due to the hard work of the City’s teachers, principals, and other staff, as well as our students and their families. I want to thank them all for their conviction and for their dedication to our students.

 

Sincerely,

 

Joel I. Klein

Chancellor

------------------------

Dear Sol:

 

It seems that when the press needs to find a negative voice about New York City schools, you have become a pundit of choice. Your writings often echo the same themes. I agree that our record of progress is not without setbacks and I’m all for balanced reporting, but your persistently one-sided perspective and refusal to recognize the improved outcomes of students during the past six years is over the top.

 

Consider what we’ve accomplished in the six years since Mayor Bloomberg won control of the school system:

 

• Our students are making substantial, consistent progress in both math and reading. Since the start of the administration, the percentage of students in grades 3-8 meeting or exceeding standards in math has risen 37 percentage points. In reading, we’ve seen an 18.3 point gain. And we have been steadily closing the gap with the rest of the state – an indicator that controls for any fluctuations in the difficulty of the tests from year to year. In 4^th grade, the gap separating the City from the rest of the State has narrowed 18 points in math and 8.4 points in reading since 2002. In 8^th grade, the gap has narrowed 11.7 points in math and 2.7 points in reading.
• We are narrowing the racial achievement gap. Since 2002, the gap between African American students and their White peers has narrowed 12.5 percentage points in math and 6.4 percentage points in reading. The gap between Hispanic students and their White peers has narrowed 13.2 points in math and 3.8 points in reading.
• New York City’s graduation rate has risen 9 percentage points between 2002 and 2006 (the most recent year reported) and 6 percentage points between 2004 and 2006, whether you use the City’s or the State’s method of calculating it. By contrast, the graduation rate rose just one-tenth of one percentage point in the entire decade before 2002.
• We have created the most sophisticated accountability system in the country. Every school received a letter grade (A-F) this year based heavily on the progress of individual students from year to year. At the same time, we’ve empowered principals with the authority they need to help their students succeed. We’ve also given them the resources they need by redirecting millions of dollars from the bureaucracy to schools and creating a fairer, more transparent method of school funding.
• We’ve created new educational options for students. By the start of the 2008-09 school year, we will have opened 284 small schools and 78 charter schools during the course of this administration. Those schools are soaring.
• We’ve raised teacher salaries by 43% since 2002 and created innovative incentive programs to help us attract and retain excellent teachers, including one that will reward teachers whose schools meet student achievement targets. 
• New York City won the 2007 Broad Prize for Urban Education, the nation’s most prestigious education prize. According to the Broad Foundation, New York City is a “model of successful urban district school reform.”

To be sure, the gradient – while steeply up – experiences an occasional plateau. We are not making progress in 8^th grade reading at the same rate as we are for younger students. You point, correctly, to evidence of that on the most recent NAEP. But here’s what you don’t report about the NAEP:

 

• The percentage of New York City 4^th graders scoring at or above basic has risen 12 percentage points in math since 2003. Our 4^th graders are now just 2 percentage points behind the national average in math.
• Our African American 4^th graders have made even more impressive gains: 14 points in math since 2003 and 14 percentage points in reading since 2002. They are achieving at higher levels than their peers in large central cities and the nation as a whole, and they are first in reading and second in math among their peers in large urban districts.
• Because of a state change in testing requirements, the number of 4^th grade ELLs taking the NAEP nearly doubled between test administrations. Normalizing for that change, reading scores increased.
• While the NAEP is important evidence of progress, it is not “high stakes,” not based on state standards, and given to a comparatively small sample. At minimum, the significance of the NAEP needs to be considered in the larger context of state tests, which are high-stakes and are taken by all.

You frequently argue that the Mayor and Chancellor should not be given credit for the growth in achievement in their first year. To the contrary, they instituted important changes during that year. Obviously what happened in the past affected the results, just as our work will affect the results of the next chancellor, but that first year was on our watch. Had scores gone down, can there be any doubt that you would have attributed the decline to the Mayor and Chancellor? Moreover, our progress remains striking even if you measure from 2003. Indeed, the Broad Prize was based on our performance between 2003 and 2006, and the pace of our improvement has continued since then.

 

Finally – and I have to admit, this is my personal favorite – last month the State announced record gains for NYC and very strong gains across the state. By virtually every measure, this was a strong year for New York’s schools. Your response? The results are too good to be believed (a point you will need to take up with Commissioner Mills and the psychometricians who validated the test to confirm its year-to-year reliability).

 

Our schools today are at an entirely different level than they were in 2002. Achievement is way up, tens of thousands of students are on track to graduate who wouldn’t have been six years ago, and we have put in place a body or reforms that will continue the progress. This is a record that should give any objective education reformer a reason to smile.

 

Best regards,

 

Chris Cerf

Deputy Chancellor