DOE Must Get The Lead Out

An investigation found  938  NYC classrooms, which includes many of the youngest students, are in classrooms  that had lead paint levels that were considered a health risk.  High levels of lead are associated with mental retardation, inattentiveness, behavioral problems, and low intelligence as the lead interferes with the developing brain in young children.

Worse, parents of these children in lead contaminated classrooms were kept in the dark by the DOE Is it any wonder these young children are potentially exposed to lead paint chips and, air pollution that negatively affects their academic ability.

 I bet DOE headquarters have no lead problems. The DOE's children first policy is simply a joke.

This District 75 School's Students Are Treated Like S--T By The DOE

PS 9 in Maspeth Queens is a District 75 school that has students with severe disabilities.  These students can be autistic, emotionally disturbed, or mentally retarded.  Some have more than one severe disability. and need an environment of small classes,  .up  to date classrooms, and physical education facilities to help these student succeed.  However, at PS 9 only small classes are met and that is because of Federal regulations require it.
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In the classrooms of PS 9 there are badly damaged chairs and desks and lack of appropriate technology to help the students master academic and behavioral programs. Further, there are too few bathrooms for the students.   Read the New York Post story Here

The school lacks a gym and uses the school cafeteria and kitchen as a gym which is a safety issue.  Moreover, the school is smack dab in the middle of an industrial area and the classrooms are subject to industrial pollution and truck noise.  Finally, the school itself needs to be modernized and despite the DOE's claim that they will spend $14 million dollars to upgrade PS 9, most people don't believe it and want a new and modern school that caters to the needs of this severally disabled students.

The Union Must Negotiate With The Chancellor To Eliminate Danielson

New York City is one of the few New York State districts that evaluates teachers by using the Charlotte Danielson rubric. This evaluation tool, when used appropriately by fair-minded administrators, the Charlotte Danielson rubric is an efficient teacher evaluation tool.

However, there are far too many incompetent and vindictive administrators who use Charlotte Danielson as a weapon to rate teachers who are effective as developing or ineffective.  Moreover, approximately 33% of the principals are graduates of the infamous " Principal Leadership Academy".  These principals are selected, not by talent, but who they knew who can recommend them.  Finally, these Leadership Academy graduates are told that they should run their schools as a CEO and not as the instructional leader.

These Leadership Academy principals are told they should demand staff cooperation and not collaborate.  In other words it's "my way or the highway".  In addition, due to tight school budgets and Fair Student Funding, these principals are sure to target senior teachers.  Since they can save money if they encourage the senior teacher to leave and replace that teacher with an inexpensive "newbie".  The difference can then be used by the Principal to put in his slush fund and use it as he or she sees fit.

Will the union push for the removal of Charlotte Danielson as a teacher evaluation tool?  Don't count on it since Michael Mulgrew and company are not in the classroom and are not subject to the Charlotte Danielson rubric. The union does not even try to remove these vindictive principals who make teaching a living hell in their school.

Will The Chancellor's Desegregation Plan Cause "White Flight?"

Chancellor Richard Carranza has proposed a school integration plan that will desegregate schools.  While the idea is goal worthy, the results may not be.  It may cause "White Flight" when they only make up 15% of the student population in the public schools as is.

Various studies show that Black and Hispanic students who are bused to integrated schools do better than those who remain in their segregated schools in minority neighborhoods.  These minority students who are bused to integrated schools have lower dropout rates, more likely to go to college, and have better job prospects which allows them to become a positive role model to the next generation family members.  So far, all this appears to be positive.  However, there are negatives as well.

The most negative is "White flight".  When a school district tried to integrate their schools by "forced  busing" like the federal government did in the South.  White families, rather than allow their children to be bused across the district to lower academic achieving schools,  either moved out of the school district, or enrolled them in private or religious schools..  The result was the public schools ended up to consist of high poverty, minority students with reduced political power and consequently, lower school funding.

Moreover, if the school district bused minorities to more White schools, those bused were usually the more academically proficient students, leaving the academically struggling students behind in high poverty and minority segregated schools. The result was that peer pressure of low academic expectations became the rule for those schools and their students.

Finally, by integrating schools it became extremely important to have fully credentialed teachers to  sell the unpopular integration plan which resulted in a lower percentage of Black male teachers and less positive adult role models for Black students.

While voluntary busing has a positive outcome for minority students.  Forced busing is extremely negative since it causes "White flight",  high transportation costs, involuntary school selection, and loss of the middle class in the urban areas.  In addition, there is a loss of neighborhood school pride and parent involvement.

Joe Biden is right, federally mandated forced busing was wrong and the negative outweighs the positive.  Will the Chancellor's desegregation plan work if there is forced busing across the district?  I think not unless he doesn't care about "White flight".

Chinese-American Community Rise Up Due To The SHSAT Debate

Until Nayor Bill de Blasio and his Chancellor, Richard Carranza, pushed to eliminate the SHSAT by claiming it was a "racist" test and anybody supporting it was "racist",  the East Asian community was non-0political and accommodating.   The blowback to the Mayor and Chancellor was immediate and severe.  The Chinese-American community rose up and called their politicians and the Mayor's plan was never voted on in Albany.

The Mayor and Chancellor tried to get their allies to support his plan to eliminate the SHSAT and allow every middle school student who was in the top 5% to be automatically enrolled in the specialized high schools.  The problem was they deliberately excluded the East Asian community and it was so blatant that even many of the Mayor's allies saw the exclusion of the East Asian community as discrimination.

The Mayor's and Chancellor's ill-advised attempt to eliminate the SHSAT gave rise to a politically conservative Chinese-American group that has become politically savvy and media sensitive that resulted in the City's plan to eliminate the SHSAT to become dead on arrival when it showed up at the Democrat controlled State Senate.

Many of the Serrate Democrats were recently elected in previously moderate Republican districts and are not allies of the progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio and don't want to be associated with him when they try to get reelected in their districts.  The Mayor's integration plan, while not directly affecting their communities still will have negative consequences by giving their Republican challenger a talking point that they are a "rubber stamp" for the Mayor.

Obviously, the Governor is no fan of the Mayor and with the Senate Democrats shifting toward the middle of the political spectrum as reelection nears, he Mayor's plan to eliminate the SHSAT looks to be a goner in Albany.

New York State Wants To Drop High School Regents Exams

After 150 years the New York Education Department gave an outline of a proposal to the State Board of Regents that is entertaining the notion of dropping the high school Regents exams and replacing it with different alternatives.  The reason is that fewer and fewer New York State students are academically eligible to obtain a Regents diploma, according to Newsday.

It seems that in the major New York State cities too many students end up getting a local diploma or a certificate of completion rather than a Regents diploma which hurts their chances of getting into a 4-year college. Too many of the students cannot pass four or five Regents exams to get a Regents diploma.

At one time the New York State Regents was the gold standard of final exams and over the last twenty years the New York State Education Department has dumbed down the exam and added a curve to the gateway Regents of Algebra 1 and Living Environment.  Now they are considering eliminate them altogether.

Soon the New York State high school diploma will end up to be a worthless piece of paper.

More Speed Cameras Rolling Out, More Money For The City

New York City will start rolling out more speed cameras and will have 720 by June of 2020.  The hours of operation will expand from 6am to 10pm weekdays.  This is an expansion from 7am to 4pm on school days.  This is part of Mayor De Blasio's vision zero policy.

Moreover,  the speed cameras can be placed in a 4 square mile parameter around a school.  This means that the City will maximize those locations where the can catch the most speeders and generate the most money.

While its true it will help school safety, the main purpose is to generate income for the City.  If it was simply a school safety issue, the City would install speed bumps around schools,

The Carranza Hypocrites

Chancellor Richard Carranza's prime objective is to integrate schools, by any means possible.  However, the Chancellor's integration policy seems not to apply to his top level cronies.  According to columnist, Susan Edelmen, of the New York Post, two of his cronies, Deputy Chancellor, Cheryl Watson-Harris and Executive Superintendent Meisha Ross-Porter got DOE zoned waivers from their majority Black and Hispanic schools to a more Asian and White schools outside their zone.

Deputy Chancellor Cheryl Watson-Harri's younger child was zoned for PS 170 an elementary school; that largely serves immigrant children. Its 1,000-student body is 24 percent white and 58 percent Asian, with 32 percent of students learning English. In contrast, PS 185’s 650-student body is 68 percent white — the kind of school Carranza would blast as “segregated.” Only 7 percent are English language learners.

Moreover, Deputy Chancellor's  Watson-Harris' older child was given an exemption to get in the highly selective IS 187 schools which is  91% Asian and White, despite not going through an academic screening committee like everyone else

Supervising Superintendent, Meisha Ross-Porter who took in a friend's child, using her connections she, Instead of enrolling the child in her zoned Mott Hall Community School — which is 90 percent Hispanic and black and 8 percent white — Porter requested a seat at MS X101, which offers advanced classes for gifted kids. Its student body is 67 percent Hispanic and black and 15 percent white.

What a bunch of hypocrites!

Comparing An Apple To An Orange

District 9 of the Bronx, a high poverty and minority neighborhood, saw over 50% of the students fail the Algebra I Regents.  Moreover, only 2% reached the top tier scores   By contrast  Success Academy 2 in the Bronx had a 100% pissing rate and all were in the top tier.  However, on further inspection its like comparing apples to oranges.

If you read only the New York Post you would think that the above paragraph is all there is,  Sure, District 9 has academically struggling schools but that's due to high percentages of Special Education, English Language Learners, homeless, and family dysfunction, both financially and the lack of a two parent household.  By contrast, Success Academy 2 of the Bronx have few Special Education students or English Language Learners, and homeless students.  Furthermore, the family situation is much more stable than in District 9.

A closer look at Success Academy 2 of the Bronx show what the New York Post failed to include.  the 30% of students who dropped out (pushed out?)  of the school since 6th grade when there were 72 students.  That left only 53 students to take the Algebra 1 test.  I strongly suggest that you read Gary Rubenstein's blog who did a deep study of the data and showed how poorly Success Academy students did on the Geometry and Algebra II Regents..

Schools Still Practicing Academic Fraud

I have been posting about academic fraud for years, you can read them Here.  Now the esteemed columnist, Susan Edelman of the New York Post, wrote an eye opening article about the grade inflation tha goes on in most of the New York City public schools.

As a high school teacher, I used to get many of these middle school students who could not do simple Math and had no clue what commonly used words meant.  Even worse, because these students were academically unable to do high school course work, they would act up and become discipline problems.

Of course the Department Of Education (DOE) would blame the high schools and the teaching staff for their failure to improve student academic achievement when these students do not have the academic tools to succeed in yhe first place.

Teachers have often complained that school administrators pressure teachers to pass undeserving students and the DOE supports school administrators in artificially inflate grades and passing rates. In the high schools many poorly performing schools require teachers to have a "scholarship requirement" that forces the teacher to pass up to 85% of their students.

Unfortunately,  if the teacher is not tenured, the teacher will not go against the administrator and pass the students, despite their academic failure.  Let the next teacher or school deal with the low performing student.

Despite a new Chancellor who is attempting to "clean house", the DOE mentality is to still punish schools who have low graduation rates. Therefore, principals are encouraged to pass and graduate students despite their academic shortcomings.  

New York City Cannot Retain Teachers

City Controller Scott Stringer held a press conference that criticized the Department of Education for the low teacher retention rates in the New York City schools.  According to Mr. Stringer 40% of all new teachers  leave the New York City public schools within five years.

The Bronx had the lowest teacher retention rates with 21.5%  leaving within a year in the 2017-18 school year..   he worst retention rate was District 12 in the Bronx with 26% of the teachers leaving after one year.

According to Scott Stringer, the problem is the DOE failed to provide appropriate support to new teachers.  He believes that a teacher's first year should be a residency program while having a veteran teacher mentoring the teacher before being permanently hired the next year.

While I agree with Scott Stringer, it will still  not solve the teacher retention problem and unless you improve the quality of school administrators, solve the many student discipline issues, and improve the classroom environment by respecting teachers, the retention problem will remain..

Mayor Bill De Blasio Retains Too Many Bloomberg Policies For Our Schools

When Bill de Blasio ran for Mayor he claimed he was to fully fund the public schools and reduce class sizes.  He also pledged to "clean house" of the Bloomberg ideology at the DOE and reduce the administrative bloat at Tweed.  Instead, he appointed a Tweed insider, Carmen Farina, as Chancellor and she retained 80% of the Bloomberg policymakers and failed to reduce the administrative bloat, especially lawyers..

The Mayor and Chancellor failed to fully fund the public schools, giving them only 90% of their fair funding, despite a 6 billion dollar surplus..  Further, the Mayor and Chancellor has repeatedly refuse to reduce class sizes, despite a CFE court case that allocated State money to do that.  Finally, the Chancellor continued the tricks that reduced the need for more teachers by reducing class time and limiting classes to three days for physical education, art, and music.and reduces Science from six classes to five.

The ATR pool still exists with a thousand ATRs rotating from school to school.  The discrimination against senior teachers continues, and the school based fair student funding which penalizes principals who hire veteran teachers and financially incentives principals who hire inexpensive "newbie" teachers.

Now Bill de Blasio has hired an outsider as Chancellor and while the new Chancellor is starting to clean house at the DOE .  However, the Chancellor's racial policies are very disturbing and are inappropriate.  The well respected.   Ed the Apple blog gave the Chancellor a APPR ratting of developing and to me, that's being kind.  Unfortunately,, Chancellor Carranza has not tackled the problems identified above.  Instead he is selecting people with questionable or no credentials to run the DOE, while not changing the policies that are damaging the NYC public school classroom.

District 28 In Queens Tries Integrating Their Schools

I read the article in Chalkbeat that District 28 in Queens is going to try to integrate their schools. While the policy of integration is a worthwhile goal, I believe that the unanticipated consequences will lead to the middle and upper middle class parents taking their children out of the public school system or send their children to relatives who live in the adjoining District 25 or 26 schools.

While District 28 is a highly diverse school district which includes the relatively wealthy White and East Asian communities of Forest Hills and Kew Garden Hills in the far north of the District and the poor Black neighborhood of South Jamaica in the South.

The schools are highly segregated and the school district is going to try to start integrating the schools.  How they will achieve integrating the schools has not been spelled out but I cannot see it succeeding without integrating the communities involved.

First, most parents will not allow their children to take public transportation (two buses) and a commute of an hour or more from their homes in the northern part of the school district to schools in South Jamaica and adjoining communities, where the schools are academically low achieving and through dangerous neighborhoods.

Second, most parents want to send their children to neighborhood schools, rich or poor, Black and White.  These schools are the social gathering place f0oor families and their children make life long friends through the neighborhood schools.. Integrating the schools destroys the social fabric of the neighborhood schools.

Finally, many families do not own a car and if a problem occurs at the school they cannot easily get to the school to pick up the child.

While District 28's goal is noteworthy I cannot see it succeeding without losing the middle and upper middle class..

Should Richard Carranza Resign As Chancellor?

 



When Mayor Bill de Blasio hired Richard Carranza as Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools and I was somewhat pleased.  Hiring a well qualified outsider, with no ties to the Bloomberg era, I expected the new Chancellor to "clean house" and to some degree he has.

The problem is that Chancellor Carranza is playing racial politics, replacing White female administrators with lesser qualified minorities.  At first, I supported the Chancellor as he was pushing out Bloomberg holdovers, mostly long term White females an to a lesser degree Black females.  However, it is quite obvious that he is appointing his cronies, some without proper credentials to lead highly sensitive positions at Tweed.

His policies are so appalling that seven members of the City Council'  penned a letter to the Mayor objecting to what Chancellor Carranza is doing. Also another Cararnza aide hs been reported for alleged misconduct.

Just look at the latest selection, Abram Jimenez, who was hired for a newly created $205,416 position to improve schools.  It turned out that Mr. Jimenez had an extensive disciplinary history and was forced to resign due to mismanagement. Now it seems that Mr. Jimenez has taken some "personal leave" once the New York Post wrote an article about his disciplinary record.

While I don't think Chancellor Carranza is a racist, he appears to be playing racial politics and that is unacceptable and should resign.

Charter Schools Drain Resources From Traditional Public Schools

Charter advocates are trying to pressure the New York State legislature to expand the charter school cap in New York City and has the support of the Governor.  However, charter friendly Chalkbeat has an article on whether charter schools drain resources from traditional public schools and the answer is yes!.

The article looked at various studies and concluded that charter school expansion added to the financial stress of traditional public schools.  Moreover, an analysis of the Los Angeles and San Diego school districts found similar results.

Charter schools drain students and resources from traditional public schools and try to claim that they alleviate overcrowding  in school districts that see a population influx of students.   That might be true to some degree in Florida and Arizona but overall it causes financial stress for the school district.  These school districts must either raise taxes, increase class sizes, or reduce staff, usually a combination of all three.

The bottom line is that charter schools are a negative factor when it comes to funding traditional public schools in a school district as every student who leaves the traditional public school takes the funding with the student to the charter school.

How Will The City Integrate The Schools Without Losing The Middle Class?

According to Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza, the City is on track to integrate the public schools.  The student demographics and geography tell me that is an impossible task.

The City public schools are 70% Black and Hispanic and only 15% White.  How can you integrate the schools with so few White students?  Even if you included East Asian students, it only adds up to 25% of the public school cohort.  Moreover, I highly doubt the majority of middle class families will allow their elementary and middle school students to travel long distances into poor neighborhoods and poorly performing schools to achieve some semblance of integration.  Finally, the City has no control of the family environment, where many students are homeless, without a father, and financially insecure which affects student learning. This doesn't take into account the geographic isolation of many of the racial cohorts.

A retired middle school reading teacher wrote an article in the New York Post showing the racial disparity of different cohorts and according to the 2017 State test in Math,the racial breakdown for students who achieved the highest scores (level 4) was as follows.  Asians (52%), Whites (28%), Hispanics (17%), and Blacks (6%).  Why is there such a disparity between racial cohorts?

To me, the reason is that many of the inner city schools have a weak academic curriculum and lack student discipline to achieve a peaceful classroom that is necessary to improve education.  Further, peer pressure in the middle class and  East Asian community to excel in school is just the opposite of the peer pressure in the poor, minority schools that think education is for nerds.  No wonder there is a wide achievement gap between the racial cohorts.

Good luck integrating the schools without addressing the social-economic problems in the communities that the schools are located in.

The Lesson Plan

It has come to my attention that many principals are telling teachers what must be in their lesson plan.  Let me clarify what the school administrators can demand from the teacher.

 The administrators can RECOMMEND not tell the teacher what should be in his or her lesson plan.  Moreover, the lesson plan must be made available to the administrators when being observed.  That means a hard copy on the teacher's desk or a digital copy in the teacher's open laptop.  Finally, the administrators can make sure the lesson plan represents the lesson observed, as long as it complies to the unit and topic being taught.  Under no circumstances can an administrator dictate to the teacher what format the teacher's lesson plan should be.

Remember, the administrator can only evaluate the teacher, based on the actual lesson and not the lesson plan.  The lesson plan is the teacher's guide to the lesson and not part of the administrator's observation.

A simple one page lesson plan that uses bullet points of the lesson being taught, with a introduction, body, and conclusion, with an exit slip should be sufficient to cover any one lesson.

Brooklyn Charter High School Forgot To Pick Up The Global Regents

On Monday sophomores and a few juniors and seniors showed up at their Brooklyn charter high school, only to find out that the school's administration failed to pick up the Regents and now these students must wait to August to take the Global Regents and some of the seniors will not graduate in June.

It appears that the school's administration are set to resign at the end of the school year due to their lack of an administration license, as the City is cracking down on both uncertified teachers as well as administrators.  Therefore, its possible the school administrators were either too lazy or simply incompetent for their failure to pick up the Global Regents in time to give it to the students.

This is the same charter high school where a 18 year old male student give brownies to a bunch of freshman girls that was laced with synthetic Marijuana   Most of the girls got sick and were throwing up and many of them ended up in the hospital.

Like most charter high schools most of the teaching staff will not be returning next school year as wel as the administrators.  This is due to a few factors like not being asked back, are not certified, or decided to go on to other schools or professions.The news media may love charter schools bu the truth is that the charter high schools are a very unstable educational facility with a transit teaching staff, unqualified administrators, and a student population that usually had trouble in their previous public schools before ending up at the charter high schools..

Principal Irene Sanchez Of PS 15 - White Teachers Need Not Apply

 


It appears that a Principal in Community District 1 sent out a help want-ad on Indeed.com that asked that only minority teachers need to apply for vacancies in the District.

The Principal, Irene Sanchez of PS 15,  sent this racially targeted want ad and this was an apparent violation of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it is “illegal for an employer to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for or discourages someone from applying for a job” due to race, color, religion, sex or other characteristics".

The DOE had the Principal remove the help waned-ad the next day when the New York Post was given  the offending want-ad.

Since the apparent racially targeted want-ad by the Principal was removed under DOE pressure, what penalty will the DOE impose on Principal Irene Sanchez?   If she was a teacher, I have no doubt she would be subject to  3020-a charges and probably be fired.  However, my guess is that the Principal will simply get a reprimand, if that.

I will be very interested to see who Principal Irene Sanchez of PS 15 hires for the next school year. If no White teachers are hired then the UFT should use their resources and force the DOE to take corrective actions against the Principal.

Why Does The DOE Continue To Shortchange Schools?

   Since 2008, the DOE has shortchanged schools when it has come to funding.  According to the City budget for 2019, only the now discontinued Renewal Schools received 100% of their Fair Student Funding (FSF).  In fact, most schools received far less with a minimum of 87%,  To fully fund NYC public schools under FSF, it would cost an additional 750 million dollars.

The FSF is broken down as follows:

Fair Student Funding Fair Student Funding (FSF) is $6.1 billion this school year and is used by schools to cover basic instructional needs. FSF funding usually comprises between 60 to 70 percent of an individual school’s budget and Principals may spend it at their discretion, with the ability and flexibility to decide how much to spend on teachers and other instructional needs. 

 The FSF formula allocates funding to schools through five categories:  

1.Foundation, which is a fixed amount of $225,000 for each school and may be used at the principal’s discretion for administrative staff, teachers, or other services the principal would like to provide. 

 2.Grade weights, based on student grade levels; 

 3.Needs weights, based on students’ needs; 

 4.Enhanced weights for portfolio high schools, which include CTE and transfer schools; and 

 5.Collective Bargaining,related to increases for staff funded with FSF

 While Mayor Bill dr Blasio committed to fully fund the public schools and lower class sizes, he has failed to achieve either one despite a $4 billion dollar City surplus.

Obviously, the Mayor and his Chancellor rather use the money for other needs then to  help the students by reducing class sizes, hire more teachers, and fully fund the schools.