We all know that Mayor Bloomberg's educational achievement is all "smoke and mirrors" and in today's New York Post the paper's education reporter Yoav Gonen exposed that fact . According to the Post article an astounding 78.4% of the 2011 NYC public school graduates who attended community college in the City were required to take remedial courses. This is an increase of 4% from the 2010 numbers 0f 74.4%. So goes any Bloomberg/Walcott claims of improving student academic achievement.
If Mayor Bloomberg and his poodle, Chancellor Dennis Walcott, really want to improve student academic achievement then they should fund wraparound programs that start with the family and community since the social-economic issues are 80% of the problem for many of these students. Their claim that replacing 50% of the teachers in the 33 schools will really make a difference in student academic achievement is simply ridiculous. Changing the teaching staff is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic if the student population and their needs remain the same. Unless students and their family are given the resources and support to improve their academic outcomes, it is unrealistic to believe that bringing in a different teaching staff while ignoring the social-economic problems is the cure. Moreover, if the school fails to enforce student discipline codes (and many schools fail when it comes to student discipline) , no change in the schools will succeed. However, like all Education Reformers, the Mayor and Chancellor ignore the real world outside City Hall and the Tweed building and blame the Teachers' union and the teaching staff for the school ills rather than face up to the truth that their education policy is a complete failure.
Until the Mayor and Chancellor are gone from the scene it is "children last" always.
When you only need to score 35% of the possible points correctly to achieve a passing grade on the Integrated Algebra Regents, what else would you expect.
ReplyDeleteThe socio economic problem is too expensive/difficult/maybe impossible to solve so a scapegoat is needed. Only when you have effective life skills and true work skills training mandated in HS will you have motivated graduates.
NYC HS teacher
Where does all this race for the top money actually go. What percentage of a schools budget is spent on per sessions to analyze school data and what positions are in a typical school for analyzing date. It gets me crazy that the obvious potential fixes for public schools are smaller class sized, which can be achieved by eliminating pensions and going with 401k plans and stop spending money on analyzing data.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know where exactly the race for the top money goes? what positions in a school are there for analyzing data. What percentage per session is used to analyze data. The only fix is too lower class size by replacing pensions with 401k and eliminate all data analysis spending. Success of education will always be dependent of zip code.
ReplyDeleteThese facts are the true legacy of Bloomberg and Company. An entire generation of students the past ten years have proven the failure of the reforms, yet, many leaders still back this anathema to education.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite is when the colleges become 'outraged' that the admitted freshmen class cannot do the work. I always ask,'if they cannot do the work, why are they admitted?'
ReplyDeleteAll of this is a business. Bloomberg wants to have a cheap payroll and to lower the city's long term costs(ie teachers who are in the system at age 21-22 and are driven absolutely nuts that they leave the system by age 25-26 so they cannot receive a pension).
The sad part is that if you are not in this disgusting system, you have no clue what is going on and you believe the bs.
Shame on the New York Times. They should be exposing and analyzing this. Instead, as you can see on the NY1 Sunday Times CloseUp reporters roundup from last weekend (1/14/12), their education maven is a walking zombie on what the stats say about the city. She says that overall, the mayor's changes have improved education in the city. (Did she ever the constructivist math that destroyed students' computational facilities?)
ReplyDeleteYou see the reporters deferring to their education "expert" in the room, and ask her directly, have the schools improved under Bloomberg? She sheepishly pauses and says, "Yes! They have improved."
But watch the NY Times wake up in about end of October 2012, ah, just in time for teacher-basher U.S. president's re-election. At about a dozen high schools across the turnaround schools of the city we'll see riots or at least serious safety incidents as half the teaching staff are the cherished newbies. Classroom management is something that you get after about five years, not five weeks in some Wendy Kopp style workshop, free of flying books, or foul profanity and administrators that don't want you to call security or the deans. Just wait.
And the Regents scores? Watch them smash through the basement, especially as passing is 65 and scrubbing is supposedly banned.
As you've said, Chaz, discipline standards are a must.
New York City Eye.
Aren't the Regents exams gone after this school year?
ReplyDeleteNo. The January regents were retained because of the uproar.
ReplyDeleteIt has finally happened, the NY Post blames teachers for the dismal record of graduates that are unprepared for college. What a disgrace and those involved in the public schools know the truth but many a New Yorker believes this propoganda.
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