Union, City Dig In Heels Over Fate of Reserve Teachers
By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 26, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/union-city-dig-in-heels-over-fate-of-reserve/86684/
There appears to be no easy agreement in sight in a battle between the city teachers union and the Department of Education over what to do with teachers who are on the city payroll but not in full-time teaching spots.
The debate kicked off this spring when a nonprofit group reported that the teachers cost the city $81 million between 2006 and 2007. A second round launched this week when the same group, The New Teacher Project, projected that the teachers will cost the city $74 million this year alone.
The report led the union and the department to relaunch private discussions about the issue — and led each to issue public letters with their most detailed proposals yet on how to resolve it.
Both sides say the pool is a waste of taxpayer dollars, but they differ sharply on how to drain it.
The pool of teachers, known as the Absent Teacher Reserve, was created as a result of the 2005 teacher contract, which required that both teachers and principals consent to every placement of a teacher in a school.
The result is that teachers whose positions are eliminated have no guaranteed spot at a school, and they remain on the city payroll without a full-time position unless a principal agrees to hire them.
To deal with the glut — which grew this year by more than 700 teachers, to a total of more than 1,000 — each side is proposing a different solution.
The president of the city teachers union, Randi Weingarten, is proposing that the city halt all hires of new teachers until the teachers in the reserve pool are placed.
Mr. Klein is instead proposing that the city remove teachers who are in the pool if they do not find a placement after a certain period of time.
Neither side is prepared to budge. Ms. Weingarten is calling Mr. Klein's proposal an abandonment of the job security she negotiated for as a condition of allowing the 2005 contract's open-market principles.
She is also saying that Mr. Klein's idea would hurt the city's efforts to attract quality teachers to difficult schools.
Many of the reserve teachers lost their positions when their schools were shut down by the city, and Ms. Weingarten said that allowing their jobs to be cut could send a bad message to possible teachers.
Mr. Klein is fighting back, pointing out that Ms. Weingarten's recommendation to freeze new hires would create a situation in which a principal could only choose his new hires from the reserve pool.
Mr. Klein is saying that tying principals' hands in this way would be a return to the pre-2005 contract, in which teachers were forcibly placed in schools according to seniority, whether prinicpals wanted them or not.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Randi Weingarten and Joel Klein exchange letters on ATR's, Budget
September 24, 2008
Hon. Joel I. Klein
Chancellor
New York City Public Schools
Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
Dear Chancellor Klein:
The latest effects of the Wall Street lending crisis has left us all with a deep sense of
uncertainty and unease, but it also presents us with an opportunity to stand together for
the children of this city. With families across the five boroughs already struggling, it is all
the more imperative that we do all we can to insulate our students and their classrooms
from this economic crisis and ensure that every student has a strong, safe and stable
learning environment.
As we navigate through this crisis, tough decisions obviously need to be made. As is our
practice, we have some ideas and proposals on how we mitigate some of the challenges
ahead without adversely affecting the classroom. Creative thinking and smart choices
protected schools from cuts earlier this year, and I strongly believe that we can duplicate
that success now.
In the spirit of partnership and collaboration, we urge you to adopt and implement the
following three measures:
1. An immediate hiring freeze at the central Department of Education, and at the school
and district level for any license areas where there are people in excess and available for
placement.
2. A redeployment of teachers and other excessed personnel in the Absent Teacher
Reserve (ATR) into vacancies as they arise.
3. Develop a program to recertify excessed personnel in additional license areas, so they
are available to fill vacancies as they arise.
The first two measures should help the Department of Education recognize immediate
cost savings, and the third recommendation would be a valuable investment in personnel
management.
We look forward to discussing these ideas and others in the days ahead.
Yours sincerely,
Randi Weingarten
Cc: Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler
Commissioner of Labor James F. Hanley
Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf
Klein responds
Dear Randi:
Thank you for your letter yesterday regarding the fiscal challenges facing the City and their impact on our schools.
I wholeheartedly agree that our priority should be to limit the impact of the budget reductions on classrooms and I welcome the opportunity to work with you and your team toward this end.
However, I want to reiterate that we will not alter our policy on forced placement of teachers. It makes sense to try to limit the significant and growing cost of unselected excessed teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve, but doing so by forcing these teachers into schools is not the answer. A return to this discredited practice, which harmed our schools for decades, would, once more, require schools to accept teachers regardless of whether principals and faculty believe they are the best candidates or good fits for positions.
At our announcement of the School-wide Performance Bonus awards last week, you and I both emphasized the critical need for teacher quality and effective collaboration among teachers and supervisors. You said, “We know, and I think there has become a real consensus in this City, that teacher quality and collaboration are real keys – pivotal keys – to turning around student achievement in schools.” Forced placement contradicts both of those goals. It would be far better to give excessed teachers a reasonable period of time to find a position before they are placed on unpaid leave. Such a policy would mitigate the cost while maintaining fairness and obviating the need for forced placement and all the negative repercussions a return to that system would bring.
I look forward to continuing our conversation on this critical issue and to receiving your input as we work to address our current budget situation.
Sincerely,
Joel I. Klein
FACT SHEET ON EXCESSED TEACHERS (from DOE)
Background
· Fact: Most Excessed Teachers Are Finding Jobs
o Only about 9% of the 2,742 teachers excessed in 2006 are still in excess. Well over 1,000 excesses – across all seniority levels –found regular teaching positions by applying for vacancies, interviewing with principals, and demonstrating that they were the best candidates for the positions. More than 14,000 positions across the city were filled since 2006.
o Of the 1418 teacher excessed in 2007, only 351 are still in excess after one year.
o Of the 2,039 teachers excessed in 2008, 758 are still in excess today.
· Fact: Excessed Teachers are Provided with Extensive Hiring Support
o The New Teacher Project provides excessed teachers with newsletters, workshops on resume writing and interviewing, one-on-one job-search assistance, bulletins with vacancy lists, job fairs across the City, and an on-line application system exclusively for excessed teachers.
o In the summer of 2008, TNTP sent bi-weekly newsletters to excessed staff with job fair information and job search tips, maintained a web site for excessed staff with job search tips, offered 15 skill-building workshops, answered 1,000 calls to a hotline set up for excessed teachers, and reached out by phone to excessed teachers who appeared to be inactive in their job searches.
· Fact: The Excessed Teacher Pool includes Junior and Senior Teachers, and Senior Excessed Teachers Have Been Hired at the Same Rate as Junior Teachers
o Excessed teachers who haven’t been hired are just as likely to be newer teachers as they are to be more experienced teachers.
Seniority of Excessed Teachers as of 9/5/2008
0 to 3 years 343 24.6%
4 to 6 years 245 17.6%
7 to 12 years 305 21.9%
13 to 19 years 262 18.8%
20+ years 240 17.2%
Total 1395 100.0%
o Excessed teachers across experience levels are equally likely to be hired to a position at another school:
· 35% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 0-3 years experience were hired by April 2008.
· 41% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 4-6 years experience were hired by April 2008.
· 47% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 7-12 years experience were hired by April 2008.
· 45% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 13-19 years experience were hired by April 2008.
· 38% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 20+ years experience were hired by April 2008.
o Another approximately 40% of excessed teachers are reabsorbed into the school from which they were excessed when positions opened up.
· Fact: The DOE Offers Schools a Subsidy for Hiring Senior Excessed Teachers
o The DOE pays the difference between a hired excessed teacher’s salary and a starting teacher’s salary (which could be as much as $55,000) for the first year, and half that difference for the second year, when a school hires a teacher who has been in excess for at least 6 months.
· Fact: Unselected Excessed Teachers Applied to Fewer Jobs
o Of the 235 unselected teachers excessed in 2006, about half did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system, and they attended fewer hiring fairs.
o Of the 351 unselected teachers excessed in 2007, 62% did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system in 2007 and 75% of these same teachers did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system in 2008.
o Of the 758 unselected teachers excessed in 2008, half did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system.
o During 2007 and 2008, more than 4,500 teachers were hired by schools through the open market system.
· Fact: Unselected Excessed Teachers Are More Likely to Have a History of Unsatisfactory Performance
o As of December 2007, nearly 15% of unselected excessed teachers had been rated unsatisfactory by their principal in the past 10 years, compared to only 5% of selected excessed teachers.
o As of December 2006, 20% of unselected excessed teachers with 13 or more years’ experience had prior unsatisfactory ratings compared with 7% of more junior teachers
o Excessed teachers who have been rated unsatisfactory by a principal at least once were hired at less than half the rate as excessed teachers who had never been rated unsatisfactory between December 2006 and September 2007.
o 7% of teachers excessed in 2008 who have not yet been hired by a school had previously been rated unsatisfactory, compared to 2% of teachers excessed in 2008 who have been hired.
o Approximately 1.8% of all teachers overall were rated unsatisfactory last school year.
· Fact: The Cost of Excessed Teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve for a Year or More is Substantial and Growing
o The cost in salaries and benefits for the 635 unselected teachers excessed in 2006 and 2007—who have been in the excess pool for a year or longer—could be as much as $60 million in this fiscal year.
Hon. Joel I. Klein
Chancellor
New York City Public Schools
Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
Dear Chancellor Klein:
The latest effects of the Wall Street lending crisis has left us all with a deep sense of
uncertainty and unease, but it also presents us with an opportunity to stand together for
the children of this city. With families across the five boroughs already struggling, it is all
the more imperative that we do all we can to insulate our students and their classrooms
from this economic crisis and ensure that every student has a strong, safe and stable
learning environment.
As we navigate through this crisis, tough decisions obviously need to be made. As is our
practice, we have some ideas and proposals on how we mitigate some of the challenges
ahead without adversely affecting the classroom. Creative thinking and smart choices
protected schools from cuts earlier this year, and I strongly believe that we can duplicate
that success now.
In the spirit of partnership and collaboration, we urge you to adopt and implement the
following three measures:
1. An immediate hiring freeze at the central Department of Education, and at the school
and district level for any license areas where there are people in excess and available for
placement.
2. A redeployment of teachers and other excessed personnel in the Absent Teacher
Reserve (ATR) into vacancies as they arise.
3. Develop a program to recertify excessed personnel in additional license areas, so they
are available to fill vacancies as they arise.
The first two measures should help the Department of Education recognize immediate
cost savings, and the third recommendation would be a valuable investment in personnel
management.
We look forward to discussing these ideas and others in the days ahead.
Yours sincerely,
Randi Weingarten
Cc: Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler
Commissioner of Labor James F. Hanley
Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf
Klein responds
Dear Randi:
Thank you for your letter yesterday regarding the fiscal challenges facing the City and their impact on our schools.
I wholeheartedly agree that our priority should be to limit the impact of the budget reductions on classrooms and I welcome the opportunity to work with you and your team toward this end.
However, I want to reiterate that we will not alter our policy on forced placement of teachers. It makes sense to try to limit the significant and growing cost of unselected excessed teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve, but doing so by forcing these teachers into schools is not the answer. A return to this discredited practice, which harmed our schools for decades, would, once more, require schools to accept teachers regardless of whether principals and faculty believe they are the best candidates or good fits for positions.
At our announcement of the School-wide Performance Bonus awards last week, you and I both emphasized the critical need for teacher quality and effective collaboration among teachers and supervisors. You said, “We know, and I think there has become a real consensus in this City, that teacher quality and collaboration are real keys – pivotal keys – to turning around student achievement in schools.” Forced placement contradicts both of those goals. It would be far better to give excessed teachers a reasonable period of time to find a position before they are placed on unpaid leave. Such a policy would mitigate the cost while maintaining fairness and obviating the need for forced placement and all the negative repercussions a return to that system would bring.
I look forward to continuing our conversation on this critical issue and to receiving your input as we work to address our current budget situation.
Sincerely,
Joel I. Klein
FACT SHEET ON EXCESSED TEACHERS (from DOE)
Background
· Fact: Most Excessed Teachers Are Finding Jobs
o Only about 9% of the 2,742 teachers excessed in 2006 are still in excess. Well over 1,000 excesses – across all seniority levels –found regular teaching positions by applying for vacancies, interviewing with principals, and demonstrating that they were the best candidates for the positions. More than 14,000 positions across the city were filled since 2006.
o Of the 1418 teacher excessed in 2007, only 351 are still in excess after one year.
o Of the 2,039 teachers excessed in 2008, 758 are still in excess today.
· Fact: Excessed Teachers are Provided with Extensive Hiring Support
o The New Teacher Project provides excessed teachers with newsletters, workshops on resume writing and interviewing, one-on-one job-search assistance, bulletins with vacancy lists, job fairs across the City, and an on-line application system exclusively for excessed teachers.
o In the summer of 2008, TNTP sent bi-weekly newsletters to excessed staff with job fair information and job search tips, maintained a web site for excessed staff with job search tips, offered 15 skill-building workshops, answered 1,000 calls to a hotline set up for excessed teachers, and reached out by phone to excessed teachers who appeared to be inactive in their job searches.
· Fact: The Excessed Teacher Pool includes Junior and Senior Teachers, and Senior Excessed Teachers Have Been Hired at the Same Rate as Junior Teachers
o Excessed teachers who haven’t been hired are just as likely to be newer teachers as they are to be more experienced teachers.
Seniority of Excessed Teachers as of 9/5/2008
0 to 3 years 343 24.6%
4 to 6 years 245 17.6%
7 to 12 years 305 21.9%
13 to 19 years 262 18.8%
20+ years 240 17.2%
Total 1395 100.0%
o Excessed teachers across experience levels are equally likely to be hired to a position at another school:
· 35% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 0-3 years experience were hired by April 2008.
· 41% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 4-6 years experience were hired by April 2008.
· 47% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 7-12 years experience were hired by April 2008.
· 45% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 13-19 years experience were hired by April 2008.
· 38% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 20+ years experience were hired by April 2008.
o Another approximately 40% of excessed teachers are reabsorbed into the school from which they were excessed when positions opened up.
· Fact: The DOE Offers Schools a Subsidy for Hiring Senior Excessed Teachers
o The DOE pays the difference between a hired excessed teacher’s salary and a starting teacher’s salary (which could be as much as $55,000) for the first year, and half that difference for the second year, when a school hires a teacher who has been in excess for at least 6 months.
· Fact: Unselected Excessed Teachers Applied to Fewer Jobs
o Of the 235 unselected teachers excessed in 2006, about half did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system, and they attended fewer hiring fairs.
o Of the 351 unselected teachers excessed in 2007, 62% did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system in 2007 and 75% of these same teachers did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system in 2008.
o Of the 758 unselected teachers excessed in 2008, half did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system.
o During 2007 and 2008, more than 4,500 teachers were hired by schools through the open market system.
· Fact: Unselected Excessed Teachers Are More Likely to Have a History of Unsatisfactory Performance
o As of December 2007, nearly 15% of unselected excessed teachers had been rated unsatisfactory by their principal in the past 10 years, compared to only 5% of selected excessed teachers.
o As of December 2006, 20% of unselected excessed teachers with 13 or more years’ experience had prior unsatisfactory ratings compared with 7% of more junior teachers
o Excessed teachers who have been rated unsatisfactory by a principal at least once were hired at less than half the rate as excessed teachers who had never been rated unsatisfactory between December 2006 and September 2007.
o 7% of teachers excessed in 2008 who have not yet been hired by a school had previously been rated unsatisfactory, compared to 2% of teachers excessed in 2008 who have been hired.
o Approximately 1.8% of all teachers overall were rated unsatisfactory last school year.
· Fact: The Cost of Excessed Teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve for a Year or More is Substantial and Growing
o The cost in salaries and benefits for the 635 unselected teachers excessed in 2006 and 2007—who have been in the excess pool for a year or longer—could be as much as $60 million in this fiscal year.
Sarah Palin in Church
One of clips that begins to get at Palin's lunacy is her appearance last June at Wasilla Assemblies of God Church. Watch Part 1 and especially Part 2.
Robert Weizel writes about this church in "Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: The Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist":
"Introducing Governor Palin to Master's Commission graduates, a youth ministry whose vision is to "see young men and women who are not afraid to lead and are violent in their pursuit of righteous," Ed Kalnins, pastor of the Wasilla Assembly of God church where Palin was baptized, told the audience that she is the "real deal." Pastor Kalnins is the same guy who believes that certain parts of the world are controlled by demons-guess which parts-and preaches an "end times" theology, the radical fundamentalist belief that the corruption of the Holy Land, that would be Muslims, Jews, sundry heretics and unbelievers, must be purified by God's cleansing fire before the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ can occur." Full story.
Robert Weizel writes about this church in "Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: The Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist":
"Introducing Governor Palin to Master's Commission graduates, a youth ministry whose vision is to "see young men and women who are not afraid to lead and are violent in their pursuit of righteous," Ed Kalnins, pastor of the Wasilla Assembly of God church where Palin was baptized, told the audience that she is the "real deal." Pastor Kalnins is the same guy who believes that certain parts of the world are controlled by demons-guess which parts-and preaches an "end times" theology, the radical fundamentalist belief that the corruption of the Holy Land, that would be Muslims, Jews, sundry heretics and unbelievers, must be purified by God's cleansing fire before the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ can occur." Full story.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
UFT Unity Caucus Hack of the Week: Charlie Turner
- We may need more than 52 weeks a year to list all Unity hacks. One commenter suggested I do a Unity Hack of the Day and would still not get to all of them.
- There is some dispute over an anonymous comment by Blue Devil who supposedly attended the ATR meeting with the UFT at Tilden HS. I've edited out specific teacher names. One of the points of contention is whether the teacher said he doesn't want to go to the suspension center because he doesn't want to "teach those kids." Whether he said this or not, I don't see anything wrong with a teacher being ruluctant to go into a situation where there might be a high degree of violence. The conditions in those places can be awful. There are teachers who do very well in those situations, but they should be the ones who really want to work with those kids. This teacher has almost 2 decades in the system. There should be some perk for longevity.
Update Sept. 27:
Anonymous comment:
The Comment [below] about Charlie Turner's visit to Tilden on the Ice Blog and then re-posted on Norm's Notes is a fake. I was at that meeting and NONE of that happened. The teacher who was placed in a Suspension Center wrote a letter to the UFT explaining he that he would rather stay at Tilden where accommodations have been made for him because of his two SPECIAL NEEDS children and where he has worked for 16 years. The only option that the schools in the building, who very much want to keep him, were given was to hire him at full salary, which they can't afford to do. The teacher, known as, "Rock" to everyone at Tilden, is a legend at the school and in academic sports and, in a fair world, he'd be handsomely rewarded by the Dept. of Education, and schools would be begging to get him. They would, if they could afford to do so. We were at Tilden, but we couldn't do it.
I think either a UFT person or someone very anti-teacher wrote that comment, but there was no crying and it was a relatively short meeting. It was not as though people hadn't seen it coming. And it was not as though Charlie had anything to offer besides to write to Randi "to put a human face" on the ATR situation, suggesting that she doesn't "get it" which was kind of interesting. Is she fuzzy on it the way she was the Rubber Room -- does she think the ATR's are incompetent?
It was a useless meeting. But there was no chaos or pathos. Eerie. We're kind of all numb.
- Here's the comment posted on ICE:
- Blue Devils said...
Charlie Turner could not come to South Shore because he had his hands full with a mob of angry Tilden Teacher! Ho he did plan on coming over to South Shore after he was finish with Tilden. He though he would hold our hand and comfort us by showing up and saying I am sorry, and that's the way the ball bounces. Instead he found a crowd of angery teachers that fired away question after question of the injustice that was going on and what the union was going to do about it. Poor Charlie was caught by surprise. He though he would give us his condolences and be on his way to South Shore. In fact he thought it was going to be so quick that he called an emerency UFT meeting in the libery at 2:15. The poor guy thought he would be out in 5 mintues and be on his way to South Shore by 2:25 the latest. Instead he found himself deflecting and avioding key questions. Like way are ATRS from other schools coming to Tilden while the Tilden ARTs are sent somewhere else? Why are teachers who have been in the building for over 20 years told to move? The contrack states that a teacher cannot be removed from the building if they have 20 years. Why are we being moved out of our district? The contrack states that we were to be placed in the same district? Why are you here now? You and the Union Reps, who make a ton of extra money doing nothing, should have been in these closing, phasing out schools from day 1, to prevent what has just happened. To make sure ATRs are not abused! Charles response? OH, What, Where, Who, How? We were not aware this was happening. Some answered back by say, everbody knew this was going to happen by the 19th of Sept. Were where you? Oh, we heard that they were going to do something like this, Charle said, but we did not actually think they were going to go through with it. Oh, 20 years in the building you say, ho grieve it. I was not aware of what was happening, I did not know that ARTs from another school where coming to Tilden to replace ART's in this one. We'll look into it. He said, but we know we will never get an answer. Charle told us to write to Randi, and tell her what was going on,(like she doesn't know). Charlie told us to e-mail her at UFT.com. One teacher stood up and said is that UFT.com or AFT.com. Charlie responed with a big smile, uft he said, while teachers cried in the back ground about leaving the school, friends and students they loved after a life time of service to go to parts unknown. These teacher never did anything wrong. They have a clean record. This did not phase Charlie one bit.Oh the district, there are no more district the DOE, desolved them, so they can send you any where they want. But don't worry they have to keep you in the brough for the frist couple of years. Some teachers where sent to a suspension center in East New York. One teacher stood up and said I don't want to go to a suspension center. Those are not the kind of students I want to teach. These are students who have been kicked out of schools like ours because they can't behave like human beings. They are out of control. Some have an arrest record. I am a swim teacher the man said. What I am I suppose to teach? Is there a pool in the suspension center? Charlie quickly responed. You have to go, or you can be fired for insubordination, your a teacher you can teach any student any subject anywhere, anytime. He said all this with a smile on his face. Of course what does he care, he's safe. He teachs one class and then does stuff like this all day long and collects two salaries and two pensions. It's a beautiful thing. A beautiful life. I was too busy throwing up in the back to ask Charlie any questions. I would rather take my chances with Klein and Bloomberg.
So you see please don't blame poor Charlie for not coming over to South Shore to hold your hand while you cried. He was busy running for his life from the Tilden teachers, he tried to bull s**t. So you see he couldn't come over, he was running late, and after all it was a friday afternoon and Charlie had to get home to beat the rush hour traffic. His job was done. So don't blame him, blame those dam Tilden Teachers, they would not go down without a fight!You want teach the UFT, DOE, and Mayor a real lesson? Don't give up the fight! Go to the news papers. Go to more than one newspapers. Go together as a group of teachers. Go to any newspaper that will listen. Go to your State Sentor, Assemblymen, Congressmen and let them know what is going on! Go to anybody who will listen! Tell them how Principals are hiding incidents and changing teachers grades to bring up the passing rate so Klein and Bloomberg will not close their schools like they closed ours. We failed students that did not come to school, We failed students who did not do their work, we reported and suspended students who commited crimes and broke rules. We did this not to be mean but to get them ready for the real world. Now Principals hide incidents and hire teacher who they can push around and scare them into passing everbody. Now when these kids go to fill out a college or job application after they graduate they can't do it. Go to anyone who will listen. Tell the world about how the DOE, wasted money left and right, tell them about the czay principal like the one you have at South Shore. Let the world know. And above all, tell everybody what has happen to you as ATR, and how the union did nothing about it. Tell them to coop out and vote for someone else in the next uft elections! Long live the BlueDevils.-
Anonymous said... ANONYMOUS SAYS:
The school I was talking about is Tilden. I I keep getting sick thinking of Charlie Turner. He is rated as the lowest of the low by Ed Wise. He is a deflector for the UFT, just don't answer questions. Or give some sacastic answer to a teacher who has just asked him aa important question. Where do they learn this a UFT Rep school? And he always does this with a smile on his face.
He told us he will be visiting us at our new sites to check on us to see how everything is. Sorry Charlie I don't think that you give a damn about us. Out of sight out of mind.- Anonymous said...
The district rep we were talking about is Charlie { I will not answer your questions} Turner. He is a master of deflection, rated the lowest of the low. And for this he mkes a extra $50,000 a year. He only has to teach one class at his school, Maxwell, and then its off to his district rep job.
Try contacting him all you get is voice mail and maybe if you are lucky a return call.
On Monday 9/22 we are going to Adams street the Brooklyn district office to file grievances, for what. They will be turned down and then go to the ad com committe and they will reject it. And even if it goes to arbitration and by some miracle you win the DOE has the last say and you know what that will be. So in other words you are in a kangaroo court.
The UFT wants us to act like good little children and go to our new assignments without a fight, SORRY CHARLIE,we don't plan to take this lying down,
Monday, September 22, 2008
The "Cost" of ATR's- 3 articles today
Report: Absent Teacher Reserve Draining City of $74M in 2008
By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 22, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/report-absent-teacher-reserve-draining-city/86316/
At a cost of $74 million to taxpayers, nearly 1,000 teachers will be on the city payroll this school year despite not holding full-time jobs in public schools, a report being released Monday projects.
That total is on top of an estimated $81 million the city spent in 2006 and 2007 combined on teachers who were not hired for full-time positions.
The report is the second attempt by the nonprofit that wrote it, the New Teacher Project, to draw attention to a deadlock between the United Federation of Teachers and the Department of Education on the question of what to do with the teachers creating the excess costs.
The teachers, part of what is known as the Absent Teacher Reserve, are on the payroll as a result of the 2005 teacher contract, which converted the public schools' hiring process for teachers into an open market, meaning both teachers and principals have to consent to every placement in a school. Previously, schools had been forced to hire the most senior teacher looking for a job.
Teachers move into the Absent Teacher Reserve if they are pushed out of their jobs, or "excessed," without being fired, and cannot find a new full-time position in the system.
Under the current contract, both tenured and untenured teachers receive full-time salary and benefits even if they remain in the reserve pool forever.
Some untenured teachers are also earning tenure — a designation that comes with extra job protections and benefits — while sitting in the reserve, sometimes after teaching in a classroom for less than a year.
As of last September, 30 teachers had become eligible for tenure while serving in the reserve, and 51 more in the reserve could become eligible for tenure this year, according to the report.
Some older teachers complain about being put in the reserve, saying the reason they cannot find placements is that they have higher salaries and therefore cost more to principals already under a budget crunch. (The department offers an incentive to hire senior teachers in their first year out of the reserve, but the incentive disappears after that.)
Both the teachers union and the Department of Education have said they would like to address the situation.
Hopes were raised that some kind of solution would be reached when the New Teacher Project released its first report in April, offering proposals such as placing a time limit on how long teachers can stay in the reserve and making senior and novice teachers effectively cost the same amount to principals. However, the president of the New Teacher Project, Timothy Daly, said he has no evidence that the union and the Department of Education have held meetings on the subject.
The sticking point may be the idea of a time limit, which would mean that teachers who cannot find positions would lose their salary and benefits.
A spokeswoman for the department, Melody Meyer, said the department supports adding a time limit that is "reasonable" but not "unreasonable," presumably meaning one that is not too long. The department listed a time limit of one year as a reasonable option.
The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said in a statement responding to the report that she supports evening the financial playing field between senior and junior teachers. She did not offer support for a time limit, and she also criticized the New Teacher Project as a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the Department of Education that is only pushing for novice teachers to be hired.
Mr. Daly acknowledged that his group holds contracts with the Department of Education, but said that the group's duties include not only recruiting new teachers but also advising senior ones.
Teachers in Absent Teacher Reserve cost New York City $74M - study
BY MEREDITH KOLODNER and CARRIE MELAGO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Sunday, September 21st 2008, 9:40 PM
The city will pay out-of-work teachers $74 million this year to fill in as overpaid subs, according to a controversial report due out Monday.
The teachers - about 1,395 of them who lost permanent jobs because their schools closed or a program shrank - fill in as substitutes as part of the Absent Teacher Reserve.
"The amount of money is too big to ignore," said Timothy Daly of the New Teacher Project, which did the study.
Most are paid directly by the Education Department, not by individual schools, giving principals little incentive to hire the in-limbo educators.
Many also are at the upper end of the pay scale - another potential knock against them when competing for jobs with less expensive newbies.
A similar report issued in April estimated the city would spend $81 million from 2006 through June 2008 on teachers without permanent assignments.
Daly wants the Education Department to put those in the reserve group who can't find a position within a year on unpaid leave.
Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said the report is biased because it was done by a group paid by the Education Department to recruit and train fresh, new teaching candidates.
A report in Sunday's Daily News found there are still 229 brand-new recruits with no classroom assignments.
"Instead of implementing a moratorium on new hires until most [of the Absent Teacher Reserve] are placed, the [Education Department] has exacerbated this situation by continuing to hire new educators from around the nation when there were no jobs for them," said Weingarten.
Teachers in the reserve group say they are being portrayed as incompetent, even though most lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
"They downsized my program," said LezAnne Edmonds, who is in the reserve group at Manhattan's Independence High School. "I don't have anything to do with being in this position."
An Education Department spokeswoman said it makes little sense "to pay teachers who for years are unable to find another position or unwilling to look for one."
"We hope the UFT will work with us to find a solution which ensures that every teacher on the excess list has a reasonable amount of time to find a new position," the spokeswoman said.
mkolodner@nydailynews.com
September 22, 2008
City Teacher Pay Practice Comes in for Fresh Criticism
By JENNIFER MEDINA
New York City might have to pay teachers whose positions were eliminated in the last academic year and who have yet to find a permanent job at another city school more than $74 million to be substitutes or replacements, according to a report expected to be released on Monday by a nonprofit group.
A similar report released in April estimated that the city had already paid about $81 million to teachers whose positions were eliminated in the 2006 and 2007 academic years. Under the teachers’ union contract, teachers whose positions have been eliminated from one school and who cannot find another school to hire them or who do not look for a new job are assigned to fill in as substitute teachers or temporary replacements. They receive full teachers’ salaries and benefits.
The teachers are part of the so-called teacher-reserve pool, which was an outgrowth of an agreement between the city and the teachers’ union to end seniority rights in staffing decisions and to stop automatically transferring teachers who have been cut because of shrinking enrollment at some schools, the closing of large schools or the elimination of programs.
Chancellor Joel I. Klein has said that he would rather absorb the costs of the teachers in the reserve pool than force principals to accept teachers they did not want, based on seniority.
Timothy Daly, the president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that recruits and trains new teachers, and the principal author of the report, said that the policy of not forcing principals to accept senior teachers should remain intact, but that immediate action was needed to prevent the city from spending millions of dollars on such teachers.
In 2008, 2,039 teachers were newly placed in the reserve pool, according to the report. The majority of them, 63 percent, found a new job at another school, were given a different job at their former school or quit, the report said. It also said that of the 1,400 teachers now in the pool, 637 have been without permanent jobs for at least a year.
“The data suggest that the number of excessed teachers without classroom positions will continue to increase annually,” the report said.
But Education Department officials said on Sunday that roughly 230 of those in the reserve pool were new teachers who were hired by the department, largely through programs to attract nontraditional teaching candidates, like Teach for America and the city’s Teaching Fellows program.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, issued a statement responding to the report, dismissing the New Teacher Project as a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of the Education Department. She said that more than 200 of the city’s newest teachers were still without a permanent placement.
The New Teacher Project runs the city’s Teaching Fellows program under a $4 million contract that expires in 2010.
“They might have pointed out how irresponsible it was for the Department of Education to bring thousands of novices into a teacher market where the supply already far outstripped the demand,” Ms. Weingarten said, suggesting that the department instead propose a moratorium on hiring new teachers, until all teachers in the pool are placed.
Although the current contract would not allow the city to unilaterally open up negotiations with the union, Melody Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said that officials hoped that the union would “work with us to find a solution” to the reserve pool.
By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 22, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/report-absent-teacher-reserve-draining-city/86316/
At a cost of $74 million to taxpayers, nearly 1,000 teachers will be on the city payroll this school year despite not holding full-time jobs in public schools, a report being released Monday projects.
That total is on top of an estimated $81 million the city spent in 2006 and 2007 combined on teachers who were not hired for full-time positions.
The report is the second attempt by the nonprofit that wrote it, the New Teacher Project, to draw attention to a deadlock between the United Federation of Teachers and the Department of Education on the question of what to do with the teachers creating the excess costs.
The teachers, part of what is known as the Absent Teacher Reserve, are on the payroll as a result of the 2005 teacher contract, which converted the public schools' hiring process for teachers into an open market, meaning both teachers and principals have to consent to every placement in a school. Previously, schools had been forced to hire the most senior teacher looking for a job.
Teachers move into the Absent Teacher Reserve if they are pushed out of their jobs, or "excessed," without being fired, and cannot find a new full-time position in the system.
Under the current contract, both tenured and untenured teachers receive full-time salary and benefits even if they remain in the reserve pool forever.
Some untenured teachers are also earning tenure — a designation that comes with extra job protections and benefits — while sitting in the reserve, sometimes after teaching in a classroom for less than a year.
As of last September, 30 teachers had become eligible for tenure while serving in the reserve, and 51 more in the reserve could become eligible for tenure this year, according to the report.
Some older teachers complain about being put in the reserve, saying the reason they cannot find placements is that they have higher salaries and therefore cost more to principals already under a budget crunch. (The department offers an incentive to hire senior teachers in their first year out of the reserve, but the incentive disappears after that.)
Both the teachers union and the Department of Education have said they would like to address the situation.
Hopes were raised that some kind of solution would be reached when the New Teacher Project released its first report in April, offering proposals such as placing a time limit on how long teachers can stay in the reserve and making senior and novice teachers effectively cost the same amount to principals. However, the president of the New Teacher Project, Timothy Daly, said he has no evidence that the union and the Department of Education have held meetings on the subject.
The sticking point may be the idea of a time limit, which would mean that teachers who cannot find positions would lose their salary and benefits.
A spokeswoman for the department, Melody Meyer, said the department supports adding a time limit that is "reasonable" but not "unreasonable," presumably meaning one that is not too long. The department listed a time limit of one year as a reasonable option.
The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said in a statement responding to the report that she supports evening the financial playing field between senior and junior teachers. She did not offer support for a time limit, and she also criticized the New Teacher Project as a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the Department of Education that is only pushing for novice teachers to be hired.
Mr. Daly acknowledged that his group holds contracts with the Department of Education, but said that the group's duties include not only recruiting new teachers but also advising senior ones.
Teachers in Absent Teacher Reserve cost New York City $74M - study
BY MEREDITH KOLODNER and CARRIE MELAGO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Sunday, September 21st 2008, 9:40 PM
The city will pay out-of-work teachers $74 million this year to fill in as overpaid subs, according to a controversial report due out Monday.
The teachers - about 1,395 of them who lost permanent jobs because their schools closed or a program shrank - fill in as substitutes as part of the Absent Teacher Reserve.
"The amount of money is too big to ignore," said Timothy Daly of the New Teacher Project, which did the study.
Most are paid directly by the Education Department, not by individual schools, giving principals little incentive to hire the in-limbo educators.
Many also are at the upper end of the pay scale - another potential knock against them when competing for jobs with less expensive newbies.
A similar report issued in April estimated the city would spend $81 million from 2006 through June 2008 on teachers without permanent assignments.
Daly wants the Education Department to put those in the reserve group who can't find a position within a year on unpaid leave.
Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said the report is biased because it was done by a group paid by the Education Department to recruit and train fresh, new teaching candidates.
A report in Sunday's Daily News found there are still 229 brand-new recruits with no classroom assignments.
"Instead of implementing a moratorium on new hires until most [of the Absent Teacher Reserve] are placed, the [Education Department] has exacerbated this situation by continuing to hire new educators from around the nation when there were no jobs for them," said Weingarten.
Teachers in the reserve group say they are being portrayed as incompetent, even though most lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
"They downsized my program," said LezAnne Edmonds, who is in the reserve group at Manhattan's Independence High School. "I don't have anything to do with being in this position."
An Education Department spokeswoman said it makes little sense "to pay teachers who for years are unable to find another position or unwilling to look for one."
"We hope the UFT will work with us to find a solution which ensures that every teacher on the excess list has a reasonable amount of time to find a new position," the spokeswoman said.
mkolodner@nydailynews.com
September 22, 2008
City Teacher Pay Practice Comes in for Fresh Criticism
By JENNIFER MEDINA
New York City might have to pay teachers whose positions were eliminated in the last academic year and who have yet to find a permanent job at another city school more than $74 million to be substitutes or replacements, according to a report expected to be released on Monday by a nonprofit group.
A similar report released in April estimated that the city had already paid about $81 million to teachers whose positions were eliminated in the 2006 and 2007 academic years. Under the teachers’ union contract, teachers whose positions have been eliminated from one school and who cannot find another school to hire them or who do not look for a new job are assigned to fill in as substitute teachers or temporary replacements. They receive full teachers’ salaries and benefits.
The teachers are part of the so-called teacher-reserve pool, which was an outgrowth of an agreement between the city and the teachers’ union to end seniority rights in staffing decisions and to stop automatically transferring teachers who have been cut because of shrinking enrollment at some schools, the closing of large schools or the elimination of programs.
Chancellor Joel I. Klein has said that he would rather absorb the costs of the teachers in the reserve pool than force principals to accept teachers they did not want, based on seniority.
Timothy Daly, the president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that recruits and trains new teachers, and the principal author of the report, said that the policy of not forcing principals to accept senior teachers should remain intact, but that immediate action was needed to prevent the city from spending millions of dollars on such teachers.
In 2008, 2,039 teachers were newly placed in the reserve pool, according to the report. The majority of them, 63 percent, found a new job at another school, were given a different job at their former school or quit, the report said. It also said that of the 1,400 teachers now in the pool, 637 have been without permanent jobs for at least a year.
“The data suggest that the number of excessed teachers without classroom positions will continue to increase annually,” the report said.
But Education Department officials said on Sunday that roughly 230 of those in the reserve pool were new teachers who were hired by the department, largely through programs to attract nontraditional teaching candidates, like Teach for America and the city’s Teaching Fellows program.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, issued a statement responding to the report, dismissing the New Teacher Project as a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of the Education Department. She said that more than 200 of the city’s newest teachers were still without a permanent placement.
The New Teacher Project runs the city’s Teaching Fellows program under a $4 million contract that expires in 2010.
“They might have pointed out how irresponsible it was for the Department of Education to bring thousands of novices into a teacher market where the supply already far outstripped the demand,” Ms. Weingarten said, suggesting that the department instead propose a moratorium on hiring new teachers, until all teachers in the pool are placed.
Although the current contract would not allow the city to unilaterally open up negotiations with the union, Melody Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said that officials hoped that the union would “work with us to find a solution” to the reserve pool.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Teachers Unite Sept. News
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008
ATR's Galore
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09162008/news/regionalnews/new_math__teachers_with_no_class_soar_129307.htm
By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter
Posted: 4:17 am
September 16, 2008
The number of teachers without classroom assignments at the start of the school year - but receiving full pay - jumped by more than 13 percent since last year, according to new data.
The pool of teachers known as the Absent Teacher Reserve - which grew from 1,220 teachers last year to 1,395 this year - has grown annually since a 2005 teachers' contract amendment gave principals more say over hiring decisions.
The agreement gave principals the freedom not to hire teachers who had been cut from shrinking or closing schools - yet guaranteed the teachers who couldn't find new jobs their full salaries to work as substitutes.
The pool has cost the city as much as $81 million over the past two years, according to a study conducted earlier this year by The New Teacher Project, an organization that's paid to train teachers for the city.
The nonprofit agency's April report called for putting teachers on unpaid leave after they had spent a year in the ATR pool as a way to reduce the city's bills and to encourage teachers to actively seek permanent assignments.
Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein supported the report's findings - but education officials said talks with the teachers union have not risen to the level of "negotiation."
One potential remedy - buyouts - has not been broached yet because a price per teacher has not been worked out with the union.
Education officials also said they're wary that teachers who were looking to exit the system anyway might use it as a lucrative escape hatch.
"The buyout isn't a long-term solution, it's a one-time fix that, if it was used as a policy, would be subject to abuse," said Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer.
Officials have ruled out forcing principals to hire teachers from the pool - as was the case before the 2005 contract - because they say it wouldn't be fair to hold the administrators accountable for their schools' performance without giving them a full say on staffing.
Michael Mulgrew, chief operating officer for the United Federation of Teachers, said the city wasn't doing enough to connect the teachers to vacant positions.
"We're not calling for forced placements or anything of that nature, but there should be a process that is helping these teachers in a more active way," he said.
Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said the situation may worsen.
He said some teachers might not be looking for jobs hard enough, while others might be getting rejected from positions because they came with higher price tags.
yoav.gonen@nypost.com
COMMENTS (1)
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Comment: (optional)
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abuse463 wrote:
As a 30 year veteran, who is a satisfactority rated
teacher who has been without a permanent position for
the past 2 years, stop telling the PARTIAL STORY!
1. The reason that I have been without work has nothing to do with my efforts to find work. No principal is willing to pay for a veteran teacher who
earns top salary when they can get about 3 teachers for my salary. 2. The reason that I and others have been without work is because of the "wonderful" small
schools that everyone especially the Mayor and the
Chancellor have been raving about are being opened and the large high schools are being closed and the NYDOE is unable to absorb the personnel displaced from these schools.
3. If the DOE was truly concerned about placing the
ATR's then they wouldn't have hired 4250 new teachers
at $40,000 year salaries.
By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter
Posted: 4:17 am
September 16, 2008
The number of teachers without classroom assignments at the start of the school year - but receiving full pay - jumped by more than 13 percent since last year, according to new data.
The pool of teachers known as the Absent Teacher Reserve - which grew from 1,220 teachers last year to 1,395 this year - has grown annually since a 2005 teachers' contract amendment gave principals more say over hiring decisions.
The agreement gave principals the freedom not to hire teachers who had been cut from shrinking or closing schools - yet guaranteed the teachers who couldn't find new jobs their full salaries to work as substitutes.
The pool has cost the city as much as $81 million over the past two years, according to a study conducted earlier this year by The New Teacher Project, an organization that's paid to train teachers for the city.
The nonprofit agency's April report called for putting teachers on unpaid leave after they had spent a year in the ATR pool as a way to reduce the city's bills and to encourage teachers to actively seek permanent assignments.
Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein supported the report's findings - but education officials said talks with the teachers union have not risen to the level of "negotiation."
One potential remedy - buyouts - has not been broached yet because a price per teacher has not been worked out with the union.
Education officials also said they're wary that teachers who were looking to exit the system anyway might use it as a lucrative escape hatch.
"The buyout isn't a long-term solution, it's a one-time fix that, if it was used as a policy, would be subject to abuse," said Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer.
Officials have ruled out forcing principals to hire teachers from the pool - as was the case before the 2005 contract - because they say it wouldn't be fair to hold the administrators accountable for their schools' performance without giving them a full say on staffing.
Michael Mulgrew, chief operating officer for the United Federation of Teachers, said the city wasn't doing enough to connect the teachers to vacant positions.
"We're not calling for forced placements or anything of that nature, but there should be a process that is helping these teachers in a more active way," he said.
Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said the situation may worsen.
He said some teachers might not be looking for jobs hard enough, while others might be getting rejected from positions because they came with higher price tags.
yoav.gonen@nypost.com
COMMENTS (1)
Report item as: (required) X
Comment: (optional)
User Image
abuse463 wrote:
As a 30 year veteran, who is a satisfactority rated
teacher who has been without a permanent position for
the past 2 years, stop telling the PARTIAL STORY!
1. The reason that I have been without work has nothing to do with my efforts to find work. No principal is willing to pay for a veteran teacher who
earns top salary when they can get about 3 teachers for my salary. 2. The reason that I and others have been without work is because of the "wonderful" small
schools that everyone especially the Mayor and the
Chancellor have been raving about are being opened and the large high schools are being closed and the NYDOE is unable to absorb the personnel displaced from these schools.
3. If the DOE was truly concerned about placing the
ATR's then they wouldn't have hired 4250 new teachers
at $40,000 year salaries.
BRONX SCHOOL CHILDREN 'LOST' IN THE SYSTEM
From Leonie Haimson:
Congrats to Bronx BP Carrion for speaking the truth. Despite the widespread attempt to make it seem like there were few problems this year, the problems of overcrowding, lack of placements, and poor transportation appear rampant.
According to his new report, “we have seen that there is a systemic problem in the way that the Department of Education approaches, and plans for the new school year. A systemic problem that has not gone away despite all the changes the Department has undertaken; a problem that if allowed to persist,will continue to leave countless
Here are quotes from
“I am so overcrowded I don't have enough chairs for the students. I informed HS Enrollment that they were sending too many students but they kept sending them anyway.” ~
In addition to problems with general education enrollment, principals are reporting serious problems with the enrollment of special education students this year. Enrollment and transfer requests for special education students that were supposed to be processed before this school year have not taken place. This has left countless special education students in schools without the appropriate services or out of school all together. This is a grave violation of state education law.
“Students in special education are being given metro cards to ride city busses. I had a grade two child who has turrets [sic] syndrome and hits himself who is asked to ride a city bus. The parent is not given a metro card so it is expected that thd child will ride alone. This is insane. Busses for
special ed children arrive to my school 30 to 45 minutes after school has begun. So instead of more we give less to our most neediest students.” -Thu, 9/11/08 9:53 AM.
“yellow bus service for district 75 students was horrific. Examples: students arriving home at 7 pm with bus company unable to contact bus, buses arriving at practically 10 am to school, parents putting in proper paperwork for change of address during summer- new address not in system and bus goes to old address, students dropped from bus runs and not picked up until a week later” -Fri, 9/5/08 4:23 PM
“OSEPO placements to non-existent or over crowded classes; confusing pre-k enrollment resultingin parents believing they can not register their child.” -Mon, 9/8/08 6:40 PM
“None of the students awaiting special education placement over the summer were placed. This has resulted in many students being in the wrong placement at the start of the school year. In addition, OSEPO has continued to enroll students at our school. This has created an unsafe condition at the school. We need assistance in getting the zone of the school reduced.”
“Special Education bussing for some students was terminated without explanations nor parent notification. No process was in place to rectify situation. OSEPO placed students in Special ED classes without giving priority to our own students. Summer placement was not done. Students are not in the proper classes."
“The prekindergarten application process is a nightmare. The placement of special education students is also horrible. We still have students awaiting placement from last year.”
“Special Ed placement and articulation were not done properly in June causing residual effects in September. Additionally, OSEPO is a poor concept and an even worse reality.”
Wed, 9/3/08 1:21 PM
Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. released a report entitled, "DO WE KNOW WHERE OUR CHILDREN ARE? An Analysis of Major Problems that Cause Children to get Lost in School System at the Start of the Year".This report documents beginning of school year issues and concerns expressed by frustrated principals throughout the borough.
For this report, the Borough President Office surveyed nearly 200 principals and found that problems are not just in individual schools, but are widespread throughout the
Many of the principals surveyed found yellow school buses unreliable and difficult to deal with, causing students to be late for school and stuck on buses for hours. A large percentage of principals believe that poorly planned registration and enrollment policies are causing widespread confusion causing children not being enrolled. In addition too many students are not showing up during the first days of class or registering almost a month after school starts causing them to miss valuable time in school. Another main problem, according to the report, is that strict and complicated transfer processes are forcing too many students to stay in schools that do not have the services or program that they need.
“While the school year has just started, we feel secure in saying that the problems raised by principals are not likely to evaporate over time without significant reforms from the DOE. Simply put – DOE must listen to our school leaders and address the many issues raised within this report. Year, after year they continue to make the same mistakes and keep failing to correct them. .” Carrion said.
The Bronx Borough President Office conducted interviews with DOE officials and educational nonprofits, and held a focus group with
Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum said: “I want to commend Adolfo Carrion for this important report and its sound recommendations. We have seen, year after year, repeated issues with school transportation, registration, and enrollment among others. Already, in the first two weeks of this school year, parents have been dealing with an ongoing problem in the
New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. added: “Despite the multiple reorganizations at the Department of Education, children, parents and principals face the same problems at the beginning of each school year. As the Borough President’s new report demonstrates, principals and parents are still having issues with bus service, transfer policies, and many other problems. DOE must work with parents and principals to ensure that future school years have a smooth start.”
Carrion explained that the goal of this reportis to unravel the recurring problems, and to urge DOE to work with principals to come up with solutions and begin tackling these problems before the next school year.
“More than half of
Some of the solutions offered by the reports are:
1. DOE must respond to excessive and repeated lateness and negligence of yellow school bus drivers. DOE must ensure bus drivers know their routes, children are assigned to the most convenient routes and bus company personnel are properly trained to supervise children.
2. The DOE must simplify enrollment and registration for parents and principals and do a better job of explaining new policies to parents and principals.
3. The DOE must respond quicker to situations where students are absent or register late at the start of the school year. Children that are absent or not registered at the start of the school year need to be tracked better and DOE must do more to follow up with parents to ensure students are in school and register on time.
4. The DOE must simplify the School Transfer Process. The DOE can do more to allow children who have legitimate reasons to transfer within practical limits, especially when it is recommended by principals.
For the Bronx Borough President Carrion, there is no doubt that some of these problems exist beyond school officials' control and that parents need to take a greater role in their children's schooling and daily lives. “But school officials and administrators can step up to deal with management practices that get in the way of running our schools.”
Monday, September 15, 2008
Leonie Haimson Questions Jim Dwyer on F Grade at PS 8
It is almost impossible to keep up with the enormous body of work Leonie produces. I'm just throwing it up on this blog so we can reference it at some point. One day, when someone writes the history of the BloomKlein stewardship of the NYC school system, if they don't shrink away in horror, will find some of this stuff incredibly useful.
Does this school report card have important information about the school, or is it merely an artifact of an absurd evaluation system?
The latter. In addition to all the other statistical problems – basing 85% of the grade on the results of two high stakes exams, with the gains/losses up to 80% random -- the tests themselves are not “equated” or aligned to make the sort of cross year comparisons that Liebman uses them for.
Check out eduwonkette – actually today’s EdWeek commentator is Aaron Pallas, prof. of sociology at Columbia Univ, named Skoolboy: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/2008/09/let_the_spin_begin.html#comments
You drop them off at the beginning of the year, and on average, by the end of the year, your child lost ground in proficiency," Dwyer quotes Liebman as saying. "Where was the child last year, and where is the child this year?" Liebman asked. "You're comparing them to themselves."
A gentle reminder to Mr. Liebman, who was hired in January, 2006: the state math and ELA tests which children take, and are the primary basis for assigning these lovely letter grades, are not vertically equated. (See skoolboy's testing primer here.) This means that there is no basis for comparing performance on the fourth-grade test with performance on the fifth-grade test. For each test, there is a subjective judgment about what level of performance constitutes proficiency, but the tests are independent. There is no basis for claiming that children are going backward; there's no justification for claiming that a child "lost ground in proficiency," since proficiency doesn't exist in the abstract, but rather in grade-specific skills; and the children are not being compared to themselves, but rather their location in the distribution of children's performance in one year is being compared to their location in the distribution of children's performance the following year.
Actually, the first person to point this out to mewas Bob Tobias, former head of testing at the Board of Ed and now a professor at NYU. You might like to contact him about the chronic misuse of test scores by this administration.
I'd like someone to explain to me why consistently poor results are either mere numerical illusions or not relevant to the mission of the school. Or both.
If the school had consistently poor results, why did the Mayor and the Chancellor applaud it only a few weeks ago and call it a model for the city? Why did they not see the consistently poor results that are now so obvious to Liebman?
The truth is that the system is nonsensical; and the grades are either random, or if they happen by chance in this case to be meaningful, the school is being penalized because it doesn’t spend eight months doing test prep, as most schools now do; or worse yet, does not engage in the cheating that is common.
This is what the DOE’s high-stakes reign of terror has led us to, rampant cheating that the administration doesn’t even bother to investigate when whistleblowers complain.
FYI, there’s a relatively simple statistical test that can be used to identify schools where there is widespread cheating, but the DOE doesn’t want to use it because they don’t want to know the truth, since then their entire house of cards of claimed achievement gains would then collapse.
Really, Mr. Dwyer, you cannot say you oppose high stakes testing but then support this version of school reform; the entire system that the administration has built is based on high-stakes tests to reward or punish schools, principals, teachers, and the students themselves.
That’s all they have offered us; and that’s all they appear to believe education consists of.
Thanks,
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/
Please make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!
From: Jim Dwyer [mailto:dwyer@nytimes.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2008 8:49 PM
To: leonie@att.net; Leonie Haimson
Cc: nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com; 'kaneri'; 'Leonie Haimson'
Subject: Re: errors in your column today
Sorry, I mistook your comment to be a comparison of Anderson to PS 8.
The statistics you cite have quite a range, and I didn't respond to them because their relevance to what happened at PS 8 seems unclear to me.
At PS 8, 55% of the kids who were at 3 or 4 went down in proficiency on those tests. On average, they declined 0.17. Why aren't they improving? Is this an utterly random result? Why did fewer than half the kids who were at proficiency levels 1 and 2 in math go up a grade?
Does this school report card have important information about the school, or is it merely an artifact of an absurd evaluation system?
I don't put a lot of faith in high-stakes tests. And I'm not an authority on statistical relevance by any means. But if I had a kid in that school, I'd certainly like to know about those numbers and I'd like someone to explain to me why consistently poor results are either mere numerical illusions or not relevant to the mission of the school. Or both.
Thank you for writing.
Jim Dwyer
At 11:22 AM 9/14/2008, leonie@att.net wrote:
Dear Mr. Dwyer:
thanks for your prompt reply. The relevant sentence in your column is the following:
"Ms. Hirschmann said that test results  which make up 60 percent of a school's grade  did not illuminate the quality of work."
There is nothing indicated here that you were merely referring to the measure of test score growth from the year before -- indeed, test results determine 85% of a school's grade, and relies on the results of only two standardized tests, because the other two provide the baseline measure.
Moreover, when I was referring to the Anderson school, I wrote that it had been in the peer group of PS 35 last year-- the school in Staten Island that received an "F" -- not PS 8 this year.
Here is the quote: "Also, the peer school to which PS 35 was compared was the Anderson School, a highly selected “gifted and talented†school that children have to test above the 95% percentile to be admitted to, while PS 35 is a school that any child in the neighborhood can attend."
Unfortunately, as I'm just a public school parent, and not a NY Times columnist, I have no idea what PS 8's peer group schools were this year, since the DOE has not yet released this information publicly.
You didn't respond to the statistic I cited, which is that 30-80% of the gains or losses in a school's test scores are believed to be essentially random.
In any case, don't rely on my opinion or that of Liebman -- neither one of us are experts in the area. Instead, I challenge you to find one national expert in statistics or testing without a contract with DOE who believes that the NYC system of school grading has any reliability or validity; if you do, I promise I'll buy you a drink!
thanks,
--
Leonie Haimson
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
leonie@att.net
www.classsizematters.org
-------------- Original message from Jim Dwyer: --------------
Thank you for your note. With some trepidation, I must disagree with your arithmetic.
I mentioned the 60% factor following Liebman's comment on measuring how much kids improve after a year, which involves not just the two tests you mentioned, but a total of four tests, taken a year apart; it is the factor of change in test results that is counted as 60 percent of the progress report.
My understanding is that the additional 25% factor you cite involves the two tests take in the same year, and simply uses the gross scores.
It does seem that comparing a highly selective school with a neighborhood zoned school would be unwise. But on a list of about 40 schools that are said to be peers of PS 8, I didn't see Anderson anywhere. Perhaps it's there, but even if it is, I don't think it's accurate to list, as you do, Anderson as the sole peer of PS 8.
Thank you.
Jim Dwyer
At 03:38 PM 9/13/2008, Leonie Haimson wrote:
Dear Mr. Dwyer:
Thank you for your column on PS 8, but it has several inaccuracies:
1- Test results make up 85% of a school’s grade according the system devised by the NYC Dept. of Education – not 60%, as you wrote. Sixty perceent of the school grade is based on the change in test scores from one year to the next; and the scores themselves determine another 25% of the grade.
Though Jim Liebman may have argued that “the school reports are not the product of a single test…, but a blend of measurements thatt take into account how each child progresses and how well  or poorly  similar schools are able to help students move forwardâ€, all these comparisons are made on the basis of the results on two high stakes tests – one a English Language Arts exam taken in January, the other a maath exam in March.
Then peer groups are constructed, that each school’s scores are compared to, and the methodology used to construct these peer groups is itself very controversial.
Researchers have found that 34% to 80% of the annual fluctuations in a typical school's scores are random or due to one-time factors alone – unrelated to the actual learning taking place. (See Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger, “The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures,†The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 16, No. 4. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 91-114. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=089)
The higher level of randomness applies to schools with small enrollments, like PS 8. Thus, under this grading system, a school's grade will be based more on chance than anything else.
Not surprisingly, this system has arrived at many anomalous results. Many schools on the state or federal govt. failing list have received “As†or “Bsâ€, and many high-achieving schools have received “Ds†or “Fâ€s.
See for example, PS 35 in Staten Island that received an “F†last year – despite being a neighborhood school where more than 95% of students reached standards. Why? They had made big gains the year before, and thus were likely to drop the year after.
Also, the peer school to which PS 35 was compared was the Anderson School, a highly selected “gifted and talented†school that children have to test above the 95% percentile to be admitted to, while PS 35 is a school that any child in the neighborhood can attend.
IS 89 last year received a “Dâ€, despite being the only middle school in NYC to have just received a No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon award from the federal govt., as one of the best schools in country in terms of improving achievement for disadvantaged students. http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_231/is89earnsnational.html
PS 8 is far from the only school to have received an undeservedly low grade.
See the oped I wrote for the Daily News here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/11/07/2007-11-07_why_parents__teachers_should_reject_new_.html?print=1
I hope you will reconsider and correct the statements in your column.
Thanks,
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/
Please make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!
From: nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com [ mailto:nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of norscot@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2008 6:54 AM
To: nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [nyceducationnews] Fwd: [ice-mail] At P.S. 8, Image Didn’t Match Performance
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/nyregion/13about.html
September 13, 2008
About New York
At P.S. 8, Image Didn't Match Performance
By JIM DWYER
How could a red-hot school in Brooklyn Heights  with surging
enrollment from middle-class and wealthy families, with test scores
that are above average, and with extras paid for by parents' fund-
raisers  be declared a failure?
For some people, news that Public School 8 on Hicks Street will be
getting an F on its upcoming report card cinches the case that
education officials have lost their test-taking marbles.
And yet there is a strong argument that the F grade is just the sort
of blunt truth-telling needed for schools that are highly regarded
in the vaporous, unchallenged esteem of conventional wisdom.
More than 80 percent of the kids at P.S. 8 passed a standardized
math test. Two-thirds passed the language arts test. In 2006, the
mayor said the school should be imitated. In July, the schools
chancellor announced that an annex would be built to accommodate the
demand in what he said was a "very successful school."
In reality, children who start the year at P.S. 8 with decent or
good scores in math and English actually have gone backward, said
James S. Liebman, the chief accountability officer for the city's
Department of Education.
"You drop them off at the beginning of the year, and on average, by
the end of the year, your child lost ground in proficiency," Mr.
Liebman said.
Children on the lower end of the scale  the ones who had the most
room for improvement  made only the slightest gains compared with
those at similar schools, Mr. Liebman said, while at most schools
across the city, there were big improvements.
"Where was the child last year, and where is the child this year?"
he asked. "You're comparing them to themselves."
For many people, the F grade for P.S. 8 ratifies their skepticism
about standardized tests. If all the children, like those in Lake
Wobegon, are above average, how could the school be failing?
"The whole formula is ridiculous," argued Jane R. Hirschmann, who
founded the Parents' Coalition to End High Stakes Testing. "They
have turned our institutions of learning into institutions of test-
taking." It is only after the standardized English test in January
and the math test in March that real teaching begins, she said.
She noted that in a 2003 journal article, Mr. Liebman himself
bluntly criticized tests.
"High-stakes testing turned out to be an unreliable measure of the
performance of individuals or institutions," Mr. Liebman and his co-
author, Charles F. Sabel, wrote in The New York University Review of
Law and Social Change. "It often created perverse incentives  to
teach to the test, or to exclude from the testing pool the students
most in need of help."
At the time the article was published, Mr. Liebman, a law professor
at Columbia and one of the country's leading authorities on the
death penalty, was not yet working for the Department of Education.
"When he wasn't in the shoes he is in now, he certainly understood
that high-stakes tests are not beneficial to students or schools,"
Ms. Hirschmann said.
Mr. Liebman does not dispute that point at all. The school reports
are not the product of a single test, he said, but a blend of
measurements that take into account how each child progresses and
how well  or poorly  similar schools are able to help students
move forward. Children from better-off families typically do much
better on standardized tests than those from lower-income households.
"If you use high-stakes tests and nothing else, you're measuring ZIP
code, race, socioeconomic status," Mr. Liebman said. "Most
importantly, you need to measure how much kids improve after a year
at their school."
Ms. Hirschmann said that test results  which make up 60 percent of
a school's grade  did not illuminate the quality of work. "This has
nothing to do with education," she said. "It only tells us whether
the child can take a test."
On average, Mr. Liebman said, the higher-performing students at P.S.
8 lost a little more than one-tenth of 1 percent in proficiency in
English and math; the lower performing students gained about a tenth
of a percent. Why should anyone care about such numbers?
They make a major difference by the time the students are 18, Mr.
Liebman said. Students get scores between 1 and 4. Of those who
finish eighth grade with a 3.0 proficiency in math and English, just
55 percent graduate from high school four years later. For those
with 3.5 scores, the graduation rate is 75 percent.
"I know it's troubling to people in the neighborhood, and it should be troubling," he said of the F grade. "The point is, compared to any other school in the city, this school is off the charts on the low end.
"We're trying to move away from a school that gets by on its reputation."
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
Does this school report card have important information about the school, or is it merely an artifact of an absurd evaluation system?
The latter. In addition to all the other statistical problems – basing 85% of the grade on the results of two high stakes exams, with the gains/losses up to 80% random -- the tests themselves are not “equated” or aligned to make the sort of cross year comparisons that Liebman uses them for.
Check out eduwonkette – actually today’s EdWeek commentator is Aaron Pallas, prof. of sociology at Columbia Univ, named Skoolboy: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/2008/09/let_the_spin_begin.html#comments
You drop them off at the beginning of the year, and on average, by the end of the year, your child lost ground in proficiency," Dwyer quotes Liebman as saying. "Where was the child last year, and where is the child this year?" Liebman asked. "You're comparing them to themselves."
A gentle reminder to Mr. Liebman, who was hired in January, 2006: the state math and ELA tests which children take, and are the primary basis for assigning these lovely letter grades, are not vertically equated. (See skoolboy's testing primer here.) This means that there is no basis for comparing performance on the fourth-grade test with performance on the fifth-grade test. For each test, there is a subjective judgment about what level of performance constitutes proficiency, but the tests are independent. There is no basis for claiming that children are going backward; there's no justification for claiming that a child "lost ground in proficiency," since proficiency doesn't exist in the abstract, but rather in grade-specific skills; and the children are not being compared to themselves, but rather their location in the distribution of children's performance in one year is being compared to their location in the distribution of children's performance the following year.
Actually, the first person to point this out to mewas Bob Tobias, former head of testing at the Board of Ed and now a professor at NYU. You might like to contact him about the chronic misuse of test scores by this administration.
I'd like someone to explain to me why consistently poor results are either mere numerical illusions or not relevant to the mission of the school. Or both.
If the school had consistently poor results, why did the Mayor and the Chancellor applaud it only a few weeks ago and call it a model for the city? Why did they not see the consistently poor results that are now so obvious to Liebman?
The truth is that the system is nonsensical; and the grades are either random, or if they happen by chance in this case to be meaningful, the school is being penalized because it doesn’t spend eight months doing test prep, as most schools now do; or worse yet, does not engage in the cheating that is common.
This is what the DOE’s high-stakes reign of terror has led us to, rampant cheating that the administration doesn’t even bother to investigate when whistleblowers complain.
FYI, there’s a relatively simple statistical test that can be used to identify schools where there is widespread cheating, but the DOE doesn’t want to use it because they don’t want to know the truth, since then their entire house of cards of claimed achievement gains would then collapse.
Really, Mr. Dwyer, you cannot say you oppose high stakes testing but then support this version of school reform; the entire system that the administration has built is based on high-stakes tests to reward or punish schools, principals, teachers, and the students themselves.
That’s all they have offered us; and that’s all they appear to believe education consists of.
Thanks,
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/
Please make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!
From: Jim Dwyer [mailto:dwyer@nytimes.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2008 8:49 PM
To: leonie@att.net; Leonie Haimson
Cc: nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com; 'kaneri'; 'Leonie Haimson'
Subject: Re: errors in your column today
Sorry, I mistook your comment to be a comparison of Anderson to PS 8.
The statistics you cite have quite a range, and I didn't respond to them because their relevance to what happened at PS 8 seems unclear to me.
At PS 8, 55% of the kids who were at 3 or 4 went down in proficiency on those tests. On average, they declined 0.17. Why aren't they improving? Is this an utterly random result? Why did fewer than half the kids who were at proficiency levels 1 and 2 in math go up a grade?
Does this school report card have important information about the school, or is it merely an artifact of an absurd evaluation system?
I don't put a lot of faith in high-stakes tests. And I'm not an authority on statistical relevance by any means. But if I had a kid in that school, I'd certainly like to know about those numbers and I'd like someone to explain to me why consistently poor results are either mere numerical illusions or not relevant to the mission of the school. Or both.
Thank you for writing.
Jim Dwyer
At 11:22 AM 9/14/2008, leonie@att.net wrote:
Dear Mr. Dwyer:
thanks for your prompt reply. The relevant sentence in your column is the following:
"Ms. Hirschmann said that test results  which make up 60 percent of a school's grade  did not illuminate the quality of work."
There is nothing indicated here that you were merely referring to the measure of test score growth from the year before -- indeed, test results determine 85% of a school's grade, and relies on the results of only two standardized tests, because the other two provide the baseline measure.
Moreover, when I was referring to the Anderson school, I wrote that it had been in the peer group of PS 35 last year-- the school in Staten Island that received an "F" -- not PS 8 this year.
Here is the quote: "Also, the peer school to which PS 35 was compared was the Anderson School, a highly selected “gifted and talented†school that children have to test above the 95% percentile to be admitted to, while PS 35 is a school that any child in the neighborhood can attend."
Unfortunately, as I'm just a public school parent, and not a NY Times columnist, I have no idea what PS 8's peer group schools were this year, since the DOE has not yet released this information publicly.
You didn't respond to the statistic I cited, which is that 30-80% of the gains or losses in a school's test scores are believed to be essentially random.
In any case, don't rely on my opinion or that of Liebman -- neither one of us are experts in the area. Instead, I challenge you to find one national expert in statistics or testing without a contract with DOE who believes that the NYC system of school grading has any reliability or validity; if you do, I promise I'll buy you a drink!
thanks,
--
Leonie Haimson
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
leonie@att.net
www.classsizematters.org
-------------- Original message from Jim Dwyer
Thank you for your note. With some trepidation, I must disagree with your arithmetic.
I mentioned the 60% factor following Liebman's comment on measuring how much kids improve after a year, which involves not just the two tests you mentioned, but a total of four tests, taken a year apart; it is the factor of change in test results that is counted as 60 percent of the progress report.
My understanding is that the additional 25% factor you cite involves the two tests take in the same year, and simply uses the gross scores.
It does seem that comparing a highly selective school with a neighborhood zoned school would be unwise. But on a list of about 40 schools that are said to be peers of PS 8, I didn't see Anderson anywhere. Perhaps it's there, but even if it is, I don't think it's accurate to list, as you do, Anderson as the sole peer of PS 8.
Thank you.
Jim Dwyer
At 03:38 PM 9/13/2008, Leonie Haimson wrote:
Dear Mr. Dwyer:
Thank you for your column on PS 8, but it has several inaccuracies:
1- Test results make up 85% of a school’s grade according the system devised by the NYC Dept. of Education – not 60%, as you wrote. Sixty perceent of the school grade is based on the change in test scores from one year to the next; and the scores themselves determine another 25% of the grade.
Though Jim Liebman may have argued that “the school reports are not the product of a single test…, but a blend of measurements thatt take into account how each child progresses and how well  or poorly  similar schools are able to help students move forwardâ€, all these comparisons are made on the basis of the results on two high stakes tests – one a English Language Arts exam taken in January, the other a maath exam in March.
Then peer groups are constructed, that each school’s scores are compared to, and the methodology used to construct these peer groups is itself very controversial.
Researchers have found that 34% to 80% of the annual fluctuations in a typical school's scores are random or due to one-time factors alone – unrelated to the actual learning taking place. (See Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger, “The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures,†The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 16, No. 4. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 91-114. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=089)
The higher level of randomness applies to schools with small enrollments, like PS 8. Thus, under this grading system, a school's grade will be based more on chance than anything else.
Not surprisingly, this system has arrived at many anomalous results. Many schools on the state or federal govt. failing list have received “As†or “Bsâ€, and many high-achieving schools have received “Ds†or “Fâ€s.
See for example, PS 35 in Staten Island that received an “F†last year – despite being a neighborhood school where more than 95% of students reached standards. Why? They had made big gains the year before, and thus were likely to drop the year after.
Also, the peer school to which PS 35 was compared was the Anderson School, a highly selected “gifted and talented†school that children have to test above the 95% percentile to be admitted to, while PS 35 is a school that any child in the neighborhood can attend.
IS 89 last year received a “Dâ€, despite being the only middle school in NYC to have just received a No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon award from the federal govt., as one of the best schools in country in terms of improving achievement for disadvantaged students. http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_231/is89earnsnational.html
PS 8 is far from the only school to have received an undeservedly low grade.
See the oped I wrote for the Daily News here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/11/07/2007-11-07_why_parents__teachers_should_reject_new_.html?print=1
I hope you will reconsider and correct the statements in your column.
Thanks,
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/
Please make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!
From: nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com [ mailto:nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of norscot@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2008 6:54 AM
To: nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [nyceducationnews] Fwd: [ice-mail] At P.S. 8, Image Didn’t Match Performance
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/nyregion/13about.html
September 13, 2008
About New York
At P.S. 8, Image Didn't Match Performance
By JIM DWYER
How could a red-hot school in Brooklyn Heights  with surging
enrollment from middle-class and wealthy families, with test scores
that are above average, and with extras paid for by parents' fund-
raisers  be declared a failure?
For some people, news that Public School 8 on Hicks Street will be
getting an F on its upcoming report card cinches the case that
education officials have lost their test-taking marbles.
And yet there is a strong argument that the F grade is just the sort
of blunt truth-telling needed for schools that are highly regarded
in the vaporous, unchallenged esteem of conventional wisdom.
More than 80 percent of the kids at P.S. 8 passed a standardized
math test. Two-thirds passed the language arts test. In 2006, the
mayor said the school should be imitated. In July, the schools
chancellor announced that an annex would be built to accommodate the
demand in what he said was a "very successful school."
In reality, children who start the year at P.S. 8 with decent or
good scores in math and English actually have gone backward, said
James S. Liebman, the chief accountability officer for the city's
Department of Education.
"You drop them off at the beginning of the year, and on average, by
the end of the year, your child lost ground in proficiency," Mr.
Liebman said.
Children on the lower end of the scale  the ones who had the most
room for improvement  made only the slightest gains compared with
those at similar schools, Mr. Liebman said, while at most schools
across the city, there were big improvements.
"Where was the child last year, and where is the child this year?"
he asked. "You're comparing them to themselves."
For many people, the F grade for P.S. 8 ratifies their skepticism
about standardized tests. If all the children, like those in Lake
Wobegon, are above average, how could the school be failing?
"The whole formula is ridiculous," argued Jane R. Hirschmann, who
founded the Parents' Coalition to End High Stakes Testing. "They
have turned our institutions of learning into institutions of test-
taking." It is only after the standardized English test in January
and the math test in March that real teaching begins, she said.
She noted that in a 2003 journal article, Mr. Liebman himself
bluntly criticized tests.
"High-stakes testing turned out to be an unreliable measure of the
performance of individuals or institutions," Mr. Liebman and his co-
author, Charles F. Sabel, wrote in The New York University Review of
Law and Social Change. "It often created perverse incentives  to
teach to the test, or to exclude from the testing pool the students
most in need of help."
At the time the article was published, Mr. Liebman, a law professor
at Columbia and one of the country's leading authorities on the
death penalty, was not yet working for the Department of Education.
"When he wasn't in the shoes he is in now, he certainly understood
that high-stakes tests are not beneficial to students or schools,"
Ms. Hirschmann said.
Mr. Liebman does not dispute that point at all. The school reports
are not the product of a single test, he said, but a blend of
measurements that take into account how each child progresses and
how well  or poorly  similar schools are able to help students
move forward. Children from better-off families typically do much
better on standardized tests than those from lower-income households.
"If you use high-stakes tests and nothing else, you're measuring ZIP
code, race, socioeconomic status," Mr. Liebman said. "Most
importantly, you need to measure how much kids improve after a year
at their school."
Ms. Hirschmann said that test results  which make up 60 percent of
a school's grade  did not illuminate the quality of work. "This has
nothing to do with education," she said. "It only tells us whether
the child can take a test."
On average, Mr. Liebman said, the higher-performing students at P.S.
8 lost a little more than one-tenth of 1 percent in proficiency in
English and math; the lower performing students gained about a tenth
of a percent. Why should anyone care about such numbers?
They make a major difference by the time the students are 18, Mr.
Liebman said. Students get scores between 1 and 4. Of those who
finish eighth grade with a 3.0 proficiency in math and English, just
55 percent graduate from high school four years later. For those
with 3.5 scores, the graduation rate is 75 percent.
"I know it's troubling to people in the neighborhood, and it should be troubling," he said of the F grade. "The point is, compared to any other school in the city, this school is off the charts on the low end.
"We're trying to move away from a school that gets by on its reputation."
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
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