Regents Officially Cancelled This June

The NYSED has officially cancelled the high school Regents exams on Tuesday and we give school districts flexibility how to evaluate teachers Here.  For high achieving students this is not a problem since they took all their Regents before their senior year but for many New York City students they still must take their Regents exams in their senior year and cancelling the Regents obviously affects low achieving studentsdisproportionally, especially minority students.

It now appears that if schools open at all, it wouldn't be to Mid May at the earliest. My best guess is that schools will probably open after Memorial day weekend.

The Two Worst Academic School Districts On Long Island

Long Island is known for their high quality and expensive school districts in the nation.  Many middle and upper income families who live in New York City will wait for their children to become school age and move to the suburbs for their excellent schools.  The flight of middle and upper income families to the suburbs may accelerate with the Mayor's and Chancellor's ill-advised integration plan. Moreover, most Long Island school districts have a full plate of academic courses and extracurricular activities that most school districts don't or cannot offer.  Finally, the Long Island school districts have strong parent involvement, because of the high school taxes they must pay, and that's a very important aspect when it comes to excellent schools.

Another important consideration is peer pressure.  At the elementary school level its not that important since most elementary schools are parent and teacher dominated, especially at the lower grades.  However, by the time the students are in middle school and high school, peer pressure becomes the most important factor in student academic achievement. This is where the suburban Long Island school districts have an advantage since school taxes are expensive and range from $8,000 to $22,000 a year and the parents put pressure on their children to do well academically to justify paying such high property taxes.  Therefore, the peer pressure to succeed translates in academic achievement for the majority of the students.  By contrast, many urban schools, especially in low income minority communities, peer pressure is just the opposite as academic excellence is frowned upon, with many students doing as little work as possible to pass with a low academic average.

There are a few school district on Long Island that mirror many off the urban schools. In Nassau its the Hempstead school district and Suffolk its Wyandanch school district. Both school districts are considered poor and heavily minority with many immigrants who speak poor English and came from countries that had a poor education system.  The Hempstead school district is a majority Hispanic student population with most of the rest Black. While Wyandanch is about evenly divided between Black and Hispanic students. The table below show the passing rate of State tests for 3rd thru 8th grades for the two school district and the county as a whole.

Percent passing the State test

School District.......3rd.....4th....5th....6th.....7th.....8th

Hempstead  ELA    33%...31%...25%...23%.....13%...26%
Hempstead Math....36%...31%...28%...15%.....13%...0%

Nassau ELA...........66%...61%...51%...60%....52%...69%
Nassau Math.........67%...67%...61%...68%....58%...38%

Wyandanch ELA....34%...28%...12%...31%....15%...21%
Wyandanch Math...31%..29%...16%...18%....10%....4%

Suffolk ELA...........50%...44%...34%...45%...35%...44%
Suffolk Math.........50%...48%...42%...48%...43%...19% 

One noticeable trend is when peer pressure starts to become the most important factor as students advance in grades, passing rates decrease in the poor and minority communities and this is especially true in the two school districts.  On the other hand, in Long Island as a whole, except for 8th grade Math where many of the advanced classes take Regents Algebra instead of the 8th grade Math test., the passing rates remain static.

See all Long Island school district test results and opt out rates Here.

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 Real Reason Black And Latino Students Have Low acceptance Rates For The Specialized High Schools

Black and Latino students only had a 10.6% acceptance rate for the specialized high schools.  The question is why so low?  According to Susan Edelman's article, education experts cited three reasons.

1. The reduction and elimination of gifted and talented programs in minority neighborhoods.
2. The influx of East Asian immigrants who emphasized education.
3. The introduction of test preparation courses.

Add to the above three reasons was the elimination of academic tracking that allowed high achieving students to benefit being in with other high achieving students, be it the gifted and talented classes in elementary school and Special Program classes in middle school.. These students were given advanced academic instruction and more academically difficult work to challenge their ability.

In the eighties, student advocates pressured the Board of Education to eliminate academic tracking and the result was that potentially high achieving students in poor minority schools no longer were given advanced academic courses since schools needed to pass as many students as possible and dumbed down the curriculum in both elementary and middle schools to achieve that passing rate.  This resulted in that poor, academically proficient Black and Latino students were at a disadvantage when it came to competing with manly middle class White and Asian schools.

Add to the disadvantage that poor Black and Latino students had due to the elimination of academic tracking, was the overall poor academic performance of their schools,  when compared to the middle class Asian and White schools in the better neighborhood where more academic challenging coursework were offered.  Then there was the test preparation courses that were offered and costs a thousand dollars or more that was not affordable to poor families.

While Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza want to integrate the specialized schools, using the Texas model. (top ten students of each middle school are automatically accepted), not all middle schools are the same.  Adding more Black and Latino students will result in less Asian and White students who are academically superior to those accepted and that's not fair either.

My solution would be to bring back academic tracking by having all elementary and middle schools to have gifted and talented and special programs that have academically challenging coursework that will increase Black and Latino acceptance rates in the specialized schools.

The Racial Academic Achievement Gap Keeps On Widening.

The New York Post did an analysis of the racial achievement gap, based upon State tests, for the last five years and found out that it actually widened, despite efforts to close it.  This shows the failure of Mayor Bill de Blasio's and his Chancellor, Carmen Farina's policies to improve public education for Black and Hispanic students.

According to the Post's article between 2014 and 2018 the racial academic achievement gap increased from 37.2% in 2014 to 38.2% in 2018 between Black and White students in Math.  The racial academic achievement rates also inched up in English as well.

In addition the proficiency percentages in Math between Hispanics and Whites also widened, going from 32.7% in 2014 to 33.3% in 2016.

In English, the racial academic achievement gaps between Black/Hispanic students and White/Asian students also inched up.

The bottom line is that the failure to close the racial academic achievement gap is a real problem that hurts the Mayor's claim that his policies are making the New York City public schools better.

Will The District 15 Middle School Integration Plan Work? I Doubt It.

Count me as being skeptical that Brooklyn's District 15 middle school integration plan will help disadvantaged and English Language Learners become academically proficient as they mingle with middle class White students.  Why do I think it won't work?  Let me count the ways.

First, many of the disadvantaged and English Language Learners come from the low achieving elementary schools and are academically behind when entering middle school.  Only people blinded by their ideology cannot see that these students will never catch up at this late age and might actually get frustrated and fall even further behind academically.

Second, these same elementary schools have no "gifted and talented" programs that can be a source of minority recruitment to diversify the middle schools and that is a major factor in the low minority student body in the "screened" middle schools..

Third, it could spark an exodus of middle class White families to the suburbs as their middle schools receive an influx of academically low achieving minorities, thereby, defeating the purpose of integrating the middle schools.

Finally, if the White middle class students flee the middle schools, look for the best teachers to transfer from those schools since teacher turnover is high when it comes to middle school teachers. If the student population becomes more difficult to educate, then these teachers will leave for a better teaching environment.  Consequently, these middle schools will end up with an inexperienced and short-term teachers who lack classroom management skills, curriculum knowledge, and lack of teaching skills.

I see the District 15 integration scheme to be a failure and will backfire.

Read more at Chalkbeat and the New York Post.

Bring Back Academic Tracking To Help Diversify The Specialized High Schools.

Back in the 60's and 70's every child was tracked academically starting in upper elementary school and when they entered junior high school (grades 7 to 9), they were placed, based on their academic achievement.  The smartest students were assigned to Special Placement classes (SP or SPE).  The next group were placed in classes 7-1 to 7-4.  Academically struggling students were dumped into the lower numbers . like 7-10 to 7-14.   By the time the junior high students were eligible to take the SHST, every high achieving student from every junior high school in the City had a fighting chance to be selected to the three specialized high schools, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx high school of Science, and Stuyvesant.

During this time period, all three schools were more diverse.  In fact, Brooklyn Tech had a majority minority student population.  What changed?  Simple, the city eliminated academic tracking when child advocates and minority pressure groups claimed that Black and Latino students were dumped into the lower tracks.  Eventually, the City caved and eliminated tracking.  The result was that many middle class parents of high achieving students moved to better neighborhoods with better schools, leaving behind lower class parents and less desirable schools.

To make matters worse.  The lack of a father in many households, especially in the Black community, resulted in financial insecurity, a lack of discipline, and disrespect which adversely affected academic achievement.   With no "gifted and talented" programs and tracking, the schools in lower class neighborhoods were at an academic disadvantage, when compared to the middle class neighborhoods.

Adding to the problem was the influx of East Asian  (Chinese, Koren, Japanese) of recent immigrants  who emphasized academics to their children.  Is it any wonder that the three specialized high schools have an over representation of this cohort?

The bottom line is that to diversify the specialized high schools the City must form a "gifted and talented" program, for every elementary school and tracking for the middle schools.

Most NYC High School Students Are Not College Ready.

 

Over the years, fewer that 25% of NYC high school graduates were college ready and must take no-  credit remedial courses at the seven community colleges.  However, this year, only 62.5% of the NYC high school graduates were subject to remedial college courses, down from 80% the year before.  Did the students get smarter?  No, the reason for the drop was that CUNY loosened the Math requirements.

Just like the State who lowered the cut scores on their Math test, CUNY used the SATs or allowed the student to take the exam again if she or he failed the first time.  Moreover, the student no longer needs to take or pass Algebra II (Trigonometry).  CUNY's dumbing down the Math requirements does not make the entering students anysmarter.

While the NYC high school graduation rate keeps rising, only 22% of the students complete three years at the CUNY Community colleges.

Read the New York Post article Here.

School District Student Acceptence Rates For The Three Specialized High Schools.

The tables below are the list of School Districts, the number of students who passed the SHST, and the percentage accepted to the three specialized high schools in NYC. Brooklyn Tech, Bronx High School of Science, and Stuyvesant.

School District.............# of Offers........ Accepted

Manhattan 22.0%

..........1..............................51.................1.0%
..........2............................655...............12.9%
..........3............................295.................5.8%
..........4.............................26..................0.5%
..........5.............................38..................0.7%
..........6.............................55..................1.1%

Bronx 5.6%
..........7.............................12..................0.2%
..........8.............................53..................1,0%
..........9.............................17..................0.3%
.........10............................92..................1.8%
.........11............................97..................1.9%
.........12...........................19...................0.4%

Brooklyn 23.3%
........13...........................104..................2.1% ........14............................48...................0.9% ........15...........................365..................7.2% ........16............................21...................0.4% ........17............................33...................0.7% ........18............................21...................0.4% ........19............................32...................0.6% 
........20...........................527................10.4%
........21...........................251..................5.1%
........22...........................202..................4.0%
........23............................13...................0.3%
........32............................10...................0.2%

Queens 34.1%
........24..........................324..................6.4%
........25..........................358..................7.1%
........26..........................382..................7.5%
........27..........................124..................2.4%
........28..........................229..................4.5%
........29...........................96...................1.9%
........30..........................220..................4.3%

Staten Island  6.0%
........31..........................305..................6.0%

Chalkbeat has a map that also can prove useful, you can see it Here.

If you look at the table only two school districts make up more than 10% of the entering class.  They are District 2 in Manhattan and District 20 in Brooklyn.  Both areas are upper middle class neighborhoods and have a diverse student population.   The worst acceptance rates, less than 1%, occurred in Districts 7, 9, and 12 in the Bronx as well as Districts 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, and 32 in Brooklyn.  

 In addition, the total Bronx student acceptance rate is only 5.6%, less than the acceptance rate of seven districts.  They are Districts 2 and 3 in Manhattan, Districts 15 and 20 in Brooklyn, Districts 24, 25, and 26 in Queens, and District 31 in Staten Island.

Good luck Bill de Blasio trying to desegregate schools and getting the State Legislature to remove the SHST as the basis for being accepted in the three specialized high schools.

Bill De Blasio's Blunder On Specialized High School Admissions.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's ill advised proposal on how to achieve some semblance of diversify has stirred up a backlash, mainly by East Asian parents and their political allies.  In addition, the Republican controlled State Senate has splashed cold water on the Mayor's plan to diversify the three Specialized High Schools which are Brooklyn Tech, Bronx High School of Science, and Stuyvesant.

The Mayor's plan would set aside 20% for low income students and he would scrap the Specialized school test altogether and allow the top academic students of every middle school in the City to be given a seat, based on their school grades and the State test scores.  There are major problems with the Mayor's approach.

First and foremost, .the Mayor's plan will allow for every student accepted by the school, another, more deserving student will be rejected.  His "robbing Peter to pay Paul" is not only discriminating against higher academic students but ignores the mission of the specialized schools, to nurture the top students in the City and provide a college like curriculum and atmosphere.

Second, if the Mayor's proposal is implemented, that would set aside seats in the specialized high schools based on middle school grades, which is subjective and subject to grade inflation.  Then what happens when those students who were accepted but cannot handle the tough academic environment of the specialized schools?  Will the Mayor allow them to transfer out or pressure the specialized schools to dumb down the curriculum?  My guess is the later.

Third, the Mayor's plan to use the State competency test is a poor replacement for the significantly harder specialized school test which is based upon selecting the top academic talent in the City.

Finally, the Mayor's plan discriminates against the high achieving Asian community and to a lesser degree, the White neighborhoods.  Moreover, it also discriminates against the middle class community's middle schools, which have more high academic achieving students than the City as a whole. Finally, under the Mayor's plan the specialized schools will no longer be elite.

My plan would be to provide free or low cost test prep for all middle school students who have ambitions to be accepted to the specialized high schools and pay for it by one or more of the following.

• Take it from the City's budget surplus.
• Eliminate the ATR pool and the $136 million it costs by placing ATRs into vacancies before schools can hire new teachers.
• Reduce the administrative bloat at the DOE

Furthermore, we need to reduce class sizes and eliminate Fair Student Funding so that the middle schools can have experienced teachers instead of the steady turnover of "newbies". which hurt student academic achievement.  Finally,  the City must improve both the administrative leadership and teacher quality at the middle schools which is the weakest link of the NYC public schools.

The Racial\Income Achievement Gap Is As Wide As Ever

New York State and City published the latest graduation rates for the 2016-17 school year and both inched higher.  More about the bogus graduation rates is in a later post.   This post will concentrate on the racial/income achievement gap which is unacceptably wide.

The latest data from the New York State Education Department found that the academic achievement gap between White and Asian students and Black and Hispanic students was 20%,  Moreover, graduation rates for English Language Learners, who are mostly Black or Hispanic and low income, actually declined.  The schools with the lowest graduation rates in the State were in low income urban districts who tend to have a high percentage of "high needs" students, primarily low income Black and Hispanic students.

In another report the older a student gets, the wider the racial achievement gap.  A study reported by Chalkbeat found that while Black and Hispanic student started out slightly behind their White and Asian peers, the achievement gap became larger as the students went into higher grades.  In particular Black boys fell furthest behind and girls did better than boys.

The report came up with the following conclusions:

• Black and Hispanics started out behuind.
• Black students lost ground as they got older.
• Hispanic students did slightly better.
• By eigth grade Asian students did the best.
• Black boys came out on the bottom.
• Girls did better than boys.

Looking at the data is disturbing and for Black boys it seems the school to prison pipeline is not just a saying but a reality as Black boys struggle through high school and never acquire the necessary skills to be successful in higher education or the working world. Is it any wonder that the minority communities have trouble becoming financially independent and keeping the family intact. The bottom line, after two decades of trying to eliminate the racial\income achievement gap, little progress has been made in doing so and that means poverty in the low income, minority communities will continue..

The NYC Racial Achievement Gap Widenes As Students Get Older.

A decade ago Mayor Micael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein proclaimed that their education reforms had significantly narrowed the racial achievement gap.  Of course those claims turned out to be "smoke and mirrors" as the primary cause was the State drastically lowering cut scores and providing questionable rubrics on the State tests that eventually led to the removal of the State Education Commissioner Mills.  When the State redid the tests the following years it showed that the racial academic achievement gap actually widened and led to the resignation of Chancellor Joel Klein as Mayor Bloomberg, embarrassed that his education reforms were a mirage , pressured Mr. Klein to leave.

Now in a new study by the City's Independent Budget Office (IBO), the report shows that as children advanced from third to eighth grades the racial achievement gap between Asian and White students grew, when compared to Black and Hispanic students.  The study tracked 71,000 third graders back in 2008 and ended the study in 2013, when the students were in eighth grade. This time period encompasses part of Michael Bloomberg's second term and all of the third term as Mayor of New York City.

The report shows that the Bloomberg/Klein education reforms to narrow the racial achievement gap was a failure and in fact, widened over time as the students advanced to the next grade.  Here are the six takeaways of the IBO report.

1. Black and Hispanic students started far behind. 
2. As they got older Black students fell further behind.
3. Hispanic students made slight gains in English but not Math,
4. By eigth grade Asians led the back in both English and Math,
5. Black boys were at the bottom of the list.
6. Girls out did boys in Math for all races.

Read the IBO report and its obvious that the racial achievement gap is not only real and persistent but widens as the students move up in grade   At least the IBO report doesn't blame the teacher for the poor academic results in high poverty minority schools.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly When It Comes To Screened High Schools.

There is a debate on whether there is too many screened high schools in New York City.  During the Bloomberg years, the amount of screened high schools quadrupled and about 33% of the high schools screen their students.  In addition, the high school admissions program seemed like the wild, wild, west with each screened school having different criteria, making the admission process a bewildering maze of conflicting information fo sort through.

The Good: 
The screened schools are good for the high achieving student  who are with other academically proficient students who want to learn;  This allows for positive peer pressure to achieve the most of the student's academic potential.  Moreover, it keeps middle class families in the public schools, who might otherwise leave the City for the suburbs or enroll in private schools.  Further, middle class parents will provide the additional resources that the school request to supplement their budget and provide the academic enrichment that attracts the high achieving student.  Finally, The screened schools allows for more advanced placement and honor coursers, which in turn, makes the student better able to be "college ready".

The Bad:
Screened schools help segregate schools by academic ability.  Many of the New York City schools suffer from segregation as the high achieving students that live in the neighborhood refuse to go to the local high school and are selected by the screened schools.  In addition, the academically weaker performing high schools struggle to retain effective teachers and teacher turnover is much higher.  The result is an unstable school environment as students see many of their teachers leave the school and question their own abilities or even blame themselves for the teacher leaving.  Furthermore, tracking hurts low achieving students who are relegated to basic skills and few opportunities to take higher level courses.  Finally, the student body struggles academically and being smart is a negative where the "cool kids" are the ones that have social skills but little academic ability and most never make it to college.

The Ugly:
The screened and specialized schools are not only segregated academically but are racially segregated as well.  The specialized schools have a student body that is primarily East Asian and White while the academically struggling schools are located in deep poverty neighborhoods and are primarily Black and Hispanic.  Many of the Renewal Schools fall into that latter and is one of the main reasons they struggle academically.

The online newspaper Chalkbeat has a nice article that deals with this issue and you can read it Here.

The Academic Achievement Gap Is Caused By Family And Community, Not The Schools.

Approximately 50 years ago, the Coleman Report was published and it showed that the primary factor in a student's academic achievement was  the family environment, the community the child lived in, and peer interaction.  On the other hand, the quality of the schools and teachers had minimal effects on the student's academic achievement gap.  While many education scholars have tried to debunk the Coleman Report but the study has stood the test of time.  Even the esteemed Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan realized that the family unit was the primary factor in the success or failure of a child.  He even wrote his own report that showed racial inequality was due to the family structure.  The Senator started citing the Coleman Report as well as his own study in speeches around the nation and received blowback from Liberals and Progressives for laying the blame on the crumbling family unit (lack of fathers and lack of income) in high poverty Black communities and not on the inequality and segregation of schools.

Now 50 years later both the Coleman Report and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's study has withstood the test of time and while education scholars have used more sophisticated methods in determining the factors that cause the student achievement gap, the bottom line is it all starts with the family and community environment that the child is exposed to before they even start school.  Chalkbeat has an excellent analysis of this and can be found Here.

While schools matter, the most important factor is the family unit and the income that unit generates and when children grow up with limited childcare, lack of fathers (role models, and financial stability) and is surrounded by similar family units in low income communities, these students are starting off educationally behind when they enter school and will increase the academic achievement gap going forward unless drastic action is taken to improve the family environment.  Blaming the schools and their teachers for the academic achievement gap is simply ignoring the real truth.  Its the family unit and the community the child lives in that are the primary factors that determine a child's academic success or failure not the quality of their teachers.

Is student diversity of the schools a worthy goal?  Absolutely.  However, will it really help narrow the student academic achievement?  Not likely, since the students will still be leaving school back to a low-income community (especially the public housing complexes) that feels unsafe, and insecure where deep poverty and lack of fathers are common, and their role models are the community's adults who hang out on the corner rather than their teacher.  Not a hopeful outcome for educational success.

NYCDOE Teacher Hiring Policies Ensure That There Will Be Little Improvement In Student Academic Achievement.

This school year, mostly due to a wave of retirements added to the normal teacher attrition rates, there were 6,000 teacher vacancies that principals needed to fill.  One would think the DOE would have encouraged the schools to interview and hire the ATRs since they represent a group of highly experienced teachers that many schools are desperate to have for their students.  However, because of how the DOE funds the schools, and the many Leadership Academy principals in the system (20%), the opposite is true.  Many schools selected the most inexpensive teachers they could find so that teacher salaries didn't eat up their tight budgets.  The few ATRs that were hired were either untenured or had less than five years in the system.

While new blood helps a school, when they are hired to fill selected positions, many schools only hire the "newbies" simply because they're the most inexpensive.  This is especially true in the small schools with Leadership Academy principals.  The problem is that these "newbie teachers" lack the characteristics of what a quality teacher has.

• Content knowledge
• Teaching experience
• Classroom management
• Overall academic ability
• Professional certification in content specity

The students who are exposed to the "newbie teachers" find themselves as guinea pigs to the teacher's steep learning curve and can't achieve their academic potential since the teacher is learning his or her craft themselves.  In the better schools that might not be as great a problem since the students tend to be self motivated and peer pressure helps them stay on the right academic path.  However, in the struggling schools the influx of "newbie teachers" instructing academically challenged students is a recipe for disaster.  The students instantly realize the "newbie teacher" is floundering and turn off to learning as they misbehave and lack respect for the teacher. Furthermore, I have been to many high schools where teachers are not teaching in their certification area, an example is Richmond Hill where all Earth Science classes are taught by teachers without certification in the subject. Last year I was in a school that simply decided not to give a Regents in the subject rather than hiring a certified Earth Science teacher in when their teacher took extended leave.

While a quality teacher only makes about a 1% to 14% difference in a student's academic outcome (VAM), having a quality teacher is still very important for the student.  However, the present DOE policy ensures that the high poverty struggling schools will experience high teacher turnover and an influx of "newbie teachers" that will not only limit a student's academic achievement but will maintain the already unacceptably wide racial/income academic achievement gap.

What can the DOE do about this?

 First, they must eliminate the "fair student funding" that is a disaster for schools and make staff salaries units that are funded by DOE Central.  This will; allow principals the ability to hire the "best and not the cheapest teachers" for their schools.

Second, encourage principals to hire ATRs by giving them a subsidy, similar to what was done back in 2009 that allows principals the ability to pick up an ATR  at the salary of a "newbie teacher" with DOE Central picking up the rest, if the DOE refuses to eliminate the "fair student funding".  Paying over $150 million dollars annually for babysitting services does not help student academic achievement while starving schools of much needed funding.

Third, significantly reduce the DOE bureaucratic bloat that starves the schools.  A good start would be the downsizing of the Accountability and Legal departments.

Finally, reduce class sizes.  Teaching 34 students in a class is much too large for real academic achievement.  Classes should be capped at 25 and even less for the K-2 grades which is more in line with the rest of New York State..

Until the disappointing Chancellor, Carmen Farina, actually changes the DOE funding policy, don't look for any real student academic achievement and a narrowing of the racial/income achievement gap.

How To Really Improve Student Academic Achievement.

We all know that the graduation rates are a poor indicator of student academic achievement.  There are too many gimmicks used by the City and State to show academic progress when the reality is that there really is little, if any real progress over the years.  The extensive use of "credit recovery", Principal pressure to pass them along and make it society's problem. When these students leave the school system unprepared academically for the real world with their devalued high school diploma, it becomes a worthless piece of paper when these poorly prepared students can't fill out a job application form or show up to work on time.    The income/racial academic achievement gap is unacceptably wide and the policies out of the DOE has not resulted in any real progress to narrow the achievement gap. The question is how can we really improve academic achievement? Here are my ideas.

School based issues:

First, we need to reduce class sizes across the K to 12 spectrum.  Having up to 34 students in a class is not conducive to a proper learning environment.  The ambient noise level in a crowded classroom hampers learning.  Furthermore, it gives teachers little chance to work individually with struggling students with such large class sizes.  Mayor Bill de Blasio had promised to reduce class sizes and use the CFE funds, earmarked for this purpose.  However, his disappointing Chancellor, Carmen Farina, has failed to do so.

Second, reduce the bureaucratic bloat at the DOE where an increasing amount of funds are allocated to the Central Bureaucracy, their high priced consultants, and technology programs like ARIS and SESIS,  while the school budgets are frozen and average 14% lower than it was back in 2008.  The freeing up of additional funds and redirected to the schools will bring more resources to the schools and provide students with the necessary supports to help them academically.

Third, encourage the hiring of experienced teachers by eliminating the destructive "fair student funding" that forces principals to hire the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their schools. How can any right thinking educator believe that hiring "newbie teachers" who have a steep learning curve and lack curriculum knowledge and classroom management skills is good for struggling students?  Worse, 50% of these teachers will leave the school system within five years and 80% of the teachers that remain in the system usually leave the school that hired them.  This instability and teacher turnover wastes time and  money as many of these teachers need to be mentored and as they attempt to acquire the necessary teaching skills. This should include the removal of the poorly trained "Leadership Academy Principals" who have little real classroom experience and don't collaborate with their staff as a result the students suffer.

Fourth, have stringent and enforceable student discipline codes.  Too many school administrators look the other way when students misbehave and blame the classroom teacher rather than take appropriate action.  The result is an out of control school and continued disruptive behavior in the classrooms that make learning next to impossible due to the chaos.

Fifth, make all middle and high schools magnet schools that can attract high achieving students  from their and other communities and hopefully bring diversity to the school's student population.  The City schools are too segregated by race and that's a problem.  By encouraging students to follow a path that best suits their interests will stimulate their love for learning and will help them improve their academic outcomes.  This would include vocational, CTE, and academic programs.

Sixth, recombine failing small schools that were carved up from the large comprehensive schools such as Campus Magnet, Far Rockaway, Springfield Gardens, all the Bronx schools, and many of the Manhattan and Brooklyn schools.  The shared resources and additional courses will enhance the variety and scope of the academic experience for the students.

All the various improvements to the schools will result in nothing without addressing the social-economic factors such as family, community. and poverty that makes up over 80% of a child's development and damages the student's ability to learn.  Therefore, the City must step up efforts to deal with these issues otherwise its like putting a bandage on an infection without treating the source of the infection.

Comparing Two Similar Schools With Different Academic Outcomes.

In my previous post where I compared the Queens high school's racial composition with the "college readiness scores" and found that schools with a high concentration of black students had, on the average, the lowest "college readiness scores".  As expected, I had some real push-back publishing the data.  Included in this push-back was a popular and well-respected blogger who told me that I didn't account for the dumping of a large percentage of  "high needs students"  that made these schools low preforming.  He further stated that I was using the same methods that the Bloomberg administration did by dumping "high needs students" in these struggling schools to justify their closing.  Therefore, to prove that's not the case,  I decided to look at two similar small schools with nearly identical SAT scores and who had single digit Asian/White populations, to see if there was dumping of "high needs students" and did it result in one school having much lower "college readiness scores" than the other.

The two schools selected was the Civic Leadership Academy (24Q293) that has a 78% Hispanic student body and the Humanities & Arts Magnet High School (29Q498) with a 80% Black student body.  The three parameters I used came from the 2013-14 High School Quality Report and were the percentage of English Language Learners, Special Education students, and Free Lunch, used as a marker for poverty.  The table below compares the two schools.

  School.............................ELL...........Sp Ed..........Free Lunch

Humanities & Arts.................3%............20%.............58%
Civic Leadership...................9%............23%.............67%

When one looks at the three parameters, you would think that the higher "college readiness scores" would be found with the school; with the lower percentages of the three categories.  Wrong!  The Civic Leadership Academy had a "college readiness score" of 28% while the Humanities & Arts Magnet school had a dismal 5% "college readiness score". 

Since the SAT scores were nearly identical at 1208 at Civic leadership and 1209 at Humanities & Arts.  What accounted for the different "college readiness scores" between the two schools?  The answer is the educational culture of the different student population of the two schools.  At the Civic Leadership Academy, the student body comes from families and communitioes that apparently value education while the student body at Humanities & Arts Magnet School come from families and communities that apparently don't seem to value education the same way.

One thing is obvious, the poor "college readiness scores" at Humanities & Arts were not due to the dumping of "high needs students" into the school but is caused by other factors.  I don't pretend to know the answer but if one looks at the social-economic factors like family and community impacts on the academic outcomes of the child, it will go a long way in identifying the problems associated  with poor student academic achievement.

When It Comes To College Readiness, Race Matters.

One of the third rails of education policy is the inclusion of race in evaluating academic achievement.  Politicians and the media will look the other way or ignore the inconvenient truth that a school's racial composition is an important parameter in the academic outcomes of the students of that school.  Better to blame teachers and their tenure than to actually investigate the data to determine the cause of poor student academic outcomes. Therefore, I took the DOE's "High School Quality Snapshot"  for the 2013-14 school year of all the Queens High Schools and compared their racial composition with their "college readiness" percentages and found that race does matter.  I used the "college readiness" percentage since its more difficult for schools but not impossible to manipulate as the other parameters are. For some reason the way the City calculates "college readiness" is different from the State and is higher than what the State calculates as college ready.

To simplify the comparisons I placed schools in five categories.  These categories are Majority of Asians and Whites, Diverse (no majority by any races), Majority Hispanics, Majority Black and schools that were 80% or more Black.  Admittedly, one can find fault in how I selected the categories but this seemed the most appropriate way to determine if the racial composition of the schools correlated with the "college readiness" percentages listed for each high school school in the DOE snapshot.

The results were very disturbing as the data showed that the schools who had the highest "college readiness" percentages had a majority of Asian and White students while the lowest percentage of "college ready" students were in schools that had a black population of 80% or greater.  The table below and the graph above summarizes my findings.

Majority                                        College Readiness

Asian/White.............................................73%
Diverse...................................................38%
Hispanic..................................................29%
Black......................................................18%
>80% Black.............................................12%

Not surprisingly, the screened and specialized schools showed the highest "college readiness" percentages and they usually have a majority of Asian and White students.  However, even if you eliminated those schools from the data, the majority Asian and White schools still had a "college readiness" percentage of  55%, significantly higher than the diverse category, where no majority exists and includes some screened and audition schools as well.  The lowest college ready scores listed by the DOE snapshot are all found in primarily black schools.  Listed below are the schools with the lowest "college readiness" percentages.

School                                             College Readiness

Business Computer Applications....................4%
Humanities and Arts...................................5%
Rockaway Park..........................................6%
August Martin...........................................6%
Fredrick Douglas Academy VI.......................7%
QIRT........................................................8%
Law Government and Community Service........9%


Blaming teachers, administrators, and schools for the poor academic outcomes is not only wrong but misguided. The DOE snapshot clearly shows that schools with high percentages of Black students are associated with low "college readiness" percentages which strongly indicates that its the social-economic factors that affect student academic outcomes, like poverty, community, and family.   When one looks at the DOE "High School Quality Snapshot" the racial composition of the school strongly correlates with the "college readiness" and academic outcomes of the school's student population.  In this case race matters.

Teacher Absences Increased Significantly Due To City And State Polices That Adds Stress To The Already Hostile Classroom Environment.

It was no surprise that the DOE reported a !2.3% increase of teachers that took excessive absences, meaning  11 or more days off in the 2013-14 school year over the year before.  That comes out to be an astounding 13.2% of the entire teaching force of 74,000 or almost 10,000 teachers who called in sick that used over the ten sick days allocated for the school year. The New York Post article can be found. Here. 

Interestingly, the DOE claims this 12.3% increase in excessive teacher absences isn't significant, really?  In addition, our union leadership claimed it was that maternity leave accounted for the increase. However, a union member blamed it on the Common Core. The real reason that there was a 12.3% increase in excessive teacher absences can be associated with the State's Teacher Evaluation System, the Danielson framework, and the failure of many school administrators to properly support their teachers when it comes to misbehaving and disrespectful student behaviors. 

To me, the increased excessive absences is proof positive that the classroom environment has become even more hostile and stressful, when the State and City policies and paperwork are rammed down the teacher's throat. Waiting for the new Mayor and his disappointing Chancellor to make the classroom environment less stressful and more peaceful is simply a pipe dream that our disconnected union leadership tries to sell.  However, the reality is very different and the significant upsurge of excessive teacher absences demonstrates this reality.as many of these teachers are fleeing the hostile classroom for as many days as possible to keep their sanity.

I also believe if one broke down the statistics and look at the individual schools, I bet one would find that the low academically achieving schools and those schools with terrible administrations suffer the greatest teacher absences and yearly turnover.

Finally, when one combines the increased teacher absences with the DOE's recruitment over retention policy, the result is a failure by the DOE to implement workable strategies to improve student academic achievement and to narrow the unacceptably wide income/racial achievement gap in the New York City Schools.

The John Hopkins Study Shows That Family & Poverty Are The Major Factors In Academic Achievement.

This June, John Hopkins published a study called "Children's Life Trajectories Largely Determined By The Family They Were Born Into".  The study showed that the family and poverty were the most important factors in determining a child's fate as an adult.  This study followed 790 children in Baltimore as they entered first grade in 1982 and ended when these children became 28 or 29 year old adults in 2004-05.  The results were disappointing if you are an education reformer since it shows that the two major factors were unrelated to the school the child went to.  The two factors are family and poverty. You can hear the study Here.

The John Hopkins study just reinforces the many previous studies that show that a child's social economic factors were the major factor in a child's development.  Most of these studies show that the school environment contributes to anywhere between 10-20% of a child's academic achievement and some studies show an even less of an impact. Obviously, the John Hopkins study supports this as well.  Sure, that an amazing teacher is nice to have but the major driving force for students are outside the classroom and lies with the family's financial condition and the community that the child grows up in.

The John Hopkins study found the following from children who grew up in low income backgrounds:

1. Almost no children from a low income household made it through college.
2. Only white males from a low income family, without a college degree found high paying jobs.
3.  Low income women did much netter when they were married or in a committed relationship.
4. Low income men had a criminal conviction rate of 41% (white) to 49% (black)

The study convincingly shows that growing up in a low income family makes life difficult to find success as an adult.

That brings me to the education reformers who ignore the major factors of family and poverty that accounts for 80% or higher of a child's fate and instead concentrates on eliminating teacher tenure and "due process rights" as if that will magically result in better student outcomes.  Of course as any educator knows it won't. If Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdock, and Bill Gates really want to help students as they claim, then they need to use their wealth and influence to eliminate poverty and improve access to good paying jobs and most importan tly, keep the fathers as part of the family rather than relying on single mothers to carry the load.  As the graph above shows, the deeper the community is in poverty, the lower the academic scores the children produce.   The Annenberg Institute report showed almost the same correlation for New York City when they used communities Ignoring the effect of family and poverty and blaming it on teachers is not only wrong but results in the continuing failure of these cohort of child as they advance through the education system without the proper and necessary family and financial support necessary to narrow the academic achievement gap.