EdVANTAGE Blog

In this post:

• NYC tenure approval rate down to 58 percent
• Impact of federal debt ceiling debacle on New York State
• State revenue outlook
• Cheating

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Today’s New York Daily News carries a column by State Education Commissioner David Steiner titled, “Back to school, back to reform: N.Y. education commissioner charts a course to higher standards.”

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Yesterday, the U.S. Education Department released results for the 2009 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 4th and 8th grade tests in mathematics.

The results brought renewed questioning of the soundness of the state’s grades 3 through testing program.

The New York Times reports, “New York State’s fourth and eighth graders made no notable progress on federal math exams this year, according to test scores released on Wednesday, sharply contradicting the results of state-administered tests that showed record gains.” Read the rest of this entry »

Several papers around the state have had articles citing President Obama’s call for a longer school day and year.  See here, here, and here, for example.

Back in April, I participated in a “student town hall meeting” on “Why is there so much reluctance to reconfigure the school year?”  It was conducted by Albany public radio station WAMC with students from Berlin Central High School, in rural Rensselaer county.

When I got a chance to speak, I told the students, “Before we can ask taxpayers to pay for more time, our first obligation is to assure them that we are using the time we have now to best advantage.”

So I asked the students, what they thought — are we using the time we have now the best we can?  They were unanimous in saying no, a lot of time is not well-used, especially in the senior year.  A few said they wished class periods were longer.

I also noted that most students do pass state tests, meet state standards, and graduate from high school.  The implication of that is that most students don’t need more time to learn what we expect them to learn — some do, but most do not.

But it also begs the question — do we have the right expectations, or should we be asking more of students?  The students who responded felt we should be aiming higher in our standards.

I did say, to the horror of my own children, that I think we should have a longer school year, and we should be using the time differently.

By the way, the kids were impressive and the WAMC program was a wonderful example of the power of career-like experiences to engage students in learning.  It was evident many of the students had invested lots of effort into researching the subject.

You can listen here.

New York State United Teachers President Richard Iannuzzi warns members of his union, “The economic and political realities we face today make it critical that we act to support one another and to take charge of our professions before others — some well-meaning, but many not — define our professions for us.”

Writing in NYSUT’s bi-weekly New York Teacher (“Taking charge of our professions“), Mr. Iannuzzi observes,

Indeed, to take charge of our profession, we must be willing to develop and accept sound, research-based changes even when they make us uncomfortable; we must be willing to reject unwise changes; and we must develop the skills to demonstrate the difference.

He continues by addressing two issues that arise in New York State’s bid for a share of the $5 billion federal “Race to the Top” education reform fund — the roles of student performance data and charter schools.

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The State Board of regents meets in Albany next week and will continue discussions of issues concerning graduation rates.

Several of the issues the Regents will consider only indirectly affect students.  For example, for purposes of federal school accountability system requirements, the Regents will consider whether to give districts some credit for students who take more than four years to earn a high school diploma and how demanding do the the regents want to make graduation rate goals?

There is one issue to be discussed which does directly affect students.  A background paper prepared for the discussion asks, “Do the Regents wish to continue to implement the phase-out of the local diploma option for general education students?”

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On Monday, incoming State Education Commissioner David Steiner had a column in the New York Post outlining his views of commitments that schools and policymakers need to make to schoolchildren.

On the same day we sent Dr. Steiner a letter outlining hopes that superintendents hold for his leadership of education in New York State, as well as observations on challenges he will face.

You can read it here.

The letter was developed with ample suggestions from the Council’s House of Delegates.

It includes thoughts on new standards, better assessments, closing achievement gaps, “re-imagining” how education is structured and delivered, charter schools and the State Education Department of the future.

It also cautions against “one size fits all policies,” discusses the financial pressures school leaders feel, and explains the practical perspective superintendents bring to policy-making discussions — they are the leaders who are held accountable for making state policies work at the local level.

The advent of new leadership in high state offices is an apt time for the Council and other organizations to reconsider and restate positions on core policy issues.

The State Board of Regents meetings this week centered on issues related to high school graduation. One issue they will have to resolve in the months ahead is whether to revive the “local diploma” option, which ended for students who entered 9th grade after 2007-08.

The State Education Department released high school completion data for all schools and districts for the three most recent 9th grade cohorts.  Statewide, the four-year high school graduation rate has risen from from 65.8 for the cohort that entered 9th grade in 2001, to 70.9 percent for the cohort that entered 9th grade in 2004.

For the latest cohort, the graduation rate rises to 75.6 percent when students are tracked over five years.

The data sparked mostly positive headlines around the state.  Examples here, here, and here.

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This week, Columbia’s Teachers College Record reprises one of the most provocative education articles I’ve come across in the past several years – “Our Impoverished View of School Reform,” by David Berliner. It was first published in 2005.

Ordinarily, TCR requires paid registration to access archived articles such as this one. But for this week, access is free. It’s a lengthy article, but worth the effort.

Berliner introduces his theme, “It seems to me that in the rush to improve student achievement through accountability systems relying on high-stakes tests, our policy makers and citizens forgot, or cannot understand, or deliberately avoid the fact, that our children live nested lives.”  By this he means that students spend most of their lives outside school, in families and communities.

He goes on, “Our youth are in classrooms, so when those classrooms do not function as we want them to, we go to work on improving them,” as well as the schools those classrooms are in. But he stresses that “all educational efforts that focus on classrooms and schools, as does NCLB … might well be subverted or minimized by what happens to children outside of school.”

The performance of America’s schools in international comparisons is frequently bemoaned. But Berliner stresses that the United States ranks even worse on other measures of child well-being – 23rd out of 24 “wealthy” nations in the percentage of children living poverty according to UNICEF for example. Only Mexico ranked lower.

As is well-known, poverty in America is highly correlated with race and Berliner illustrates that the ranking of U.S. compared with peers in other countries also correlates with race – white students typically rank closer to the top, while African-American and Hispanic students typically rank near the bottom. Berliner then recites the ways in which poverty hurts prospects for school success – children in poverty are more likely to suffer asthma, low birth-weight, poor nutrition, lead poisoning, and uncorrected vision, hearing, dental, or other health problems

The article – again published in 2005 – foreshadowed policy debates over education in the recent presidential campaign. Two competing agendas vied for attention among Democrats. The “Broader, Bolder Approach to Education Reform” argued for attention to out of school factors affecting students’ success in school. The Educational Equality Project focused on holding schools and educators more accountable for closing achievement gaps, and empowering parents to do so.

Interestingly, Arne Duncan, now the U.S. Education Secretary, was one of the few education leaders to sign on to support both agendas.

The debate will be resurrected in the coming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, or a successor statute to govern most federal education programs.

The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson used to tell audiences of disadvantaged youth, “You’re not responsible for being down, but you are responsible for getting up.”

Something similar might be said of educators’ duties – we are not responsible for all the impediments to learning which too many children encounter, but we are responsible for helping the children to overcome them.

Our national affiliate – the American Association of School Administrators – is urging that the reauthorization of the NCLB take a more integrated approach to helping disadvantaged students with both the in- and out-of-school factors impeding their academic achievement.