EdVANTAGE Blog

The Pine Plains School District in Dutchess County experienced a terrifying incident this morning which thankfully ended without injury. Read the rest of this entry »

Speaking at Hunter College last week, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch outlined thoughts on charter school policy that resemble positions taken by the Council.

For example, she called for more charter schools at the high school level and resisted calls to eliminate the state’s cap on the number of charter schools that may be authorized. Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday’s New York Times ran an article titled, “Schools Are Where Stimulus Saved Jobs, New Data Show.”

The Times reported,

On Friday, the Obama administration released the most detailed information yet on the jobs created by the stimulus. Of the 640,239 jobs recipients claimed to have created or saved so far, officials said, more than half — 325,000 — were in education. Most were teachers’ jobs that states said were saved when stimulus money averted a need for layoffs.

Of the 40,620 jobs reported to have been created or saved by the stimulus in New York State, 29,212 were credited to funds channeled through the U.S. Education Department, chiefly jobs in school districts.

But many of those jobs could disappear, with the threat of new state budget cuts, to close either an estimated $3.2 billion deficit this year, or projected gaps in future years. Read the rest of this entry »

The Governor’s Budget Division has now released proposed district-by-district mid-year School Aid reductions.

Available here:  http://www.budget.state.ny.us/budgetFP/0910deficitReductionPlan/SchoolAidReductions.pdf

Or go to www.budget.state.ny.us, then click on “School Aid Reductions”

For more information, see our prior post, directly below.

Reportedly, Governor Paterson will release proposals for mid-year budget reductions tomorrow (Thursday).  Read more here.

Meawhile, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warns that current year budget gap could be larger than the $3 billion figure the Governor has been citing, perhaps as high as $4.1 billion.

More on Thursday.

The Albany Times Union reports on discussions over how to eliminate the deficit in the state’s current year budget.  The gap is estimated at between $2.1 billion and $3 billion.  The TU described the activity as “political football.”

Ping pong seems a more apt analogy.

As authorized by law, the Governor is unilaterally implementing $500 million in cuts to state agencies for supplies, equipment, travel and contractual services (see my Wednesday post, “Update on state budget woes”).

His Budget Division asked has asked legislative counterparts to share plans to close the remaining gap, but Legislative Leaders have responded by calling on the Governor to “go first.”

More Read the rest of this entry »

New State Education Commissioner David Steiner spoke at the Council’s Fall Leadership Summit on Monday – his third weekday on the job. We’re grateful to the State Education Department for sharing a video of the Commissioner’s remarks, and to Monroe I BOCES for making the video.

You can view it here.  It takes a minute or so to load.

Every superintendent I spoke with was impressed by the Commissioner’s remarks.  I thought his words had depth, coherence, and eloquence.

Some highlights follow. Read the rest of this entry »

Governor Paterson announced yesterday that he was directing state agencies to reduce their non-personnel spending by a total of $500 million (11 percent) as a first step toward closing an estimated $3 billion budget deficit in the state’s current fiscal year.

This is a reduction in agency spending for supplies, equipment, travel, and contractual services — not in grants to schools or other local entities.

The State Education Department’s target is $5.38 million.

The Governor has taken some criticism for not advancing specific recommendations for closing the current year deficit.  Reportedly, there are divisions within the administration, with Lt. Governor Richard Ravitch and Budget Director Robert Megna advocating more aggressive action to address the state’s budget deficits.

By law, the Governor’s Budget Division issues quarterly updates on the state of the  state’s finances.  The next report is due before the end of this month.

Yesterday (Tuesday), the Governor said he would propose specific cuts, if negotiations with the Legislature fail.

The Albany Times Union reported,

The Assembly and Senate, Paterson said, “are going to need a menu of cuts to make. I’m letting them participate in formulating that menu. And if they don’t come up with one quickly enough, I’ll provide it myself.”

I served as Governor Cuomo’s education aide during his last three years in office and had to explain and defend our proposals for education budget cuts.  (Point of personal privilege:  my tenure started after the 1990 mid-year cuts and steep aid cuts enacted in 1991).

Speaking with unhappy constituents, I would sometimes observe, “The Legislature gets the benefit of our experience.”  By that, I meant that the Legislature had the opportunity to weigh public reactions to our proposals before making its own budget decisions.

By offering the opening proposals, Governors invite a pummeling upon themselves.  But it also creates a more open and transparent process, rather than negotiating in secret with Legislative Leaders, presenting the public with a “done deal.”

Einstein said that “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  Without citing Einstein, I asked my then 13 year-old son what he thought.  I liked his answer — “you need some knowledge to apply your imagination to, both are important.”

This question arises in efforts to revise learning standards.  In national education policy circles a debate is raging over the correct balance that new standards should strike between emphasizing content (or knowledge) and skills (imagination might be characterized as a skill).

The skills-emphasis side is reflected in the 21st Century Skills Project, while E.D. Hirsch and his Core Knowledge Foundation are frequently cited as leading content-emphasis advocates.

Two years ago, the Council called for New York State standards to be revised to place more emphasis on skills, including skills which cross disciplines and therefore cannot be readily taught in a single class (“Skills for Life“).  We did not expressly endorse the 21st Century Skills Project, however.

Writing recently in the Boston Globe, education scholar Diane Ravitch dismissed 21st century skills as a fad — “…skill-centered, knowledge-free education has never worked.”  In this column, at least, I think she oversimplifies the debate as an either/or, all one thing or all the other proposition.

Reacting to the debate, one New York superintendent wrote to me,

“…there is a brave new world that has already arrived in which learners are being drenched with a never ending fire hose of information that they have to learn how to navigate, evaluate, interconnect, transfer and apply. The knowledge we (and kids) need is the knowledge that enables us to effectively and efficiently handle information that is all too available.”

To me, Andrew Rotherham, a former staff member for our national affiliate, the American Association of School Administrators (and the Clinton White House), comes close to striking a sensible balance.

He expressed concern that the 21st century skills movement could devolve into faddishness.  But he also emphasizes that while the skills themselves are not new — they were important in the 20th century too — what is new is a need for universality.  He writes,

Today, by contrast, our commitment to a more equitable society as well as the demands of our economy mean a deliberate effort must be made to ensure that all students learn how to think, analyze, problem-solve and so forth.

Elsewhere, Mr. Rotherham suggests that schools need to become more purposeful about teaching these skills and that the infrastructure of education — curriculum, assessments, and pedagogy — must be rebuilt to support an effective balance.

These are crucial issues that the state and nation will be wrestling with in the months and years ahead.  Superintendents should be conveying their perspectives.

A study of student performance in New York City charter schools is adding to the attention given charter schools as a reform strategy.

The New York Times reported,

Students who entered lotteries and won spots in New York City charter schools performed better on state exams than students who entered the same lotteries but did not secure charter school seats, according to a study by a Stanford University economist being released Tuesday.

Charter schools, which are privately run but publicly financed, have been faring well on standardized tests in recent years. But skeptics have discounted their success by accusing them of “creaming” the best students, saying that the most motivated students and engaged parents are the ones who apply for the spots.

The study’s methodology addresses that issue by comparing charter school students with students of traditional schools who applied for charter spots but did not get them. Most of the city’s 99 charter schools admit students by lottery.

I haven’t read the study yet, but the design seems to avoid defects in some past efforts to compare student performance across schools.  Fair enough.

The Council did not oppose the original 1998 charter school law, but we did express reservations about the funding mechanism and feel those concerns have proven justified.

But here is another reaction to the study:  the fixation on charter schools as a school improvement strategy is excessive, especially if one feels they are effective.

In a prior post on incoming SED Deputy Commissioner John King, I noted that he attributes the success of charter schools he oversees to “autonomy with respect to budget, staffing, curriculum and instruction, and school culture in combination with greater accountability for performance.”

According to state aid data, charter schools enrolled almost 50,000 students last year, or less than 2 percent of all public school students.

If the combination of greater autonomy and accountability are essential to charter schools’ success, why limit their application to schools that now serve only 2 percent of all students?