Stop Dumbing Down The High School Diploma Requirements

For the last decade New York State Education Department (NYSED) has weakened the requirements for achieving a high school diploma.  Since 1995 NYS Regents was the "gold standard" that showed if high school seniors were academically proficient to succeed in college and the workplace.  However, under political pressure to graduate more students and reduce the racial achievement gap, the NYSED has dumbed down the Regents by grading the gateway Regents of Living Environment (known as Biology lite) and Algebra on a curve that makes the passing rate as low as 29 correct answers to pass, rather than the 65 that was the case in the 1990's.

Despite the dumbing down of the Regents and the curve to get more New York State students to pass, only 38% were considered "college ready".  By contrast, the State graduation rate has risen every year and was 80% as of 2018.  What happened to the 42% who graduated high school but were not college ready?  They were required to take no-credit and expensive remedial courses in colleges and few ended up with a 4-year college degree.

Now it seems the NYSED wants to dumb down the Regents testing requirements even more and approve alternate academic ways for high school students to legitimately graduate. New York State has had the Regents for high school students since 1865 and if there is no push back, the Regents will become optional and only for the academically proficient high school student.,

Some educators suspect that the elimination and weakening of the Regents testing requirements is due not only by political pressure to pass more students but the cost of developing and printing the Regents exams.  Moreover,the educational materials associated with those exams plays into the NYSED''s approving the downsizing the Regents exams. This "education on the cheap" policy only weakens New York State's reputation for academic excellence.

Will the Board of Regents continue to weaken the Regents testing equirements?  Only time will tell.

DOE Paid 303 Million Dollars To Settle Special Education Lawsuits

The DOE practice of "penny wise and dollar foolish" policies has resulted in the City paying out 303 million dollars to settle Special Education lawsuits.  It appears the DOE practice of  "Education on the cheap" has resulted in a 185% rise in payouts since Bill de Blasio took office back in 2014 and a 8% rise since last year.

According to the Education committee of the City Council 22% of the estimated 250,000 students with an IEP do not receive their required services.  Parents are frustrated with the DOE's inability and or unwillingness to provide the Special Education services required by federal law.  The result was an uptick of lawsuits that the City needed to settle.

I suspect that the DOE's Fair Student Funding is a major contributing factor as principals, subject to tight school budgets, try to save funds by withholding needed services for their Special Education students. Moreover, the high administrative costs for paying for the bloated Central Bureaucracy at the DOE also is a problem.  Finally, the lack of accountability at Tweed immunizes the managers to escape consequences when their decisions hurt the child.

Will anything change?  I highly doubt it.

The DOE's Education On The Cheap Policy Academically Shortchanges The Students.

Over the years and certainly since the recession of 2008 the New York City Department Of Education (DOE) has shortchanged the schools with reduced budgets and lack of resources.  Worse, the DOE reuses to fund the schools based on their own Fair Student Funding, with most schools receiving only 90% of what they are allocated for. The result is that New York City's Public School students suffer academically due to the DOE's education on the cheap policy.

In my travels from school to school as an ATR I have noticed the many cost saving strategies school principals use to conserve resources.

First, the fair student funding formula incentivizes principals to :hire the cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school.  With "newbie teachers" who must learn classroom management skills, develop curriculum knowledge and master the Art and Science of teaching, students are simply guinea pigs to these teacher's steep learning curve and suffer academically.

Second, many of the Bloomberg small schools have a limited selection of courses and teachers. Electives are few and extracurricular activities are limited or non-existent Quite a few students complain about the lack of electives. Many schools only have one teacher teaching a subject and if a problem develops between a student and either a teacher or another student in the class, there is no option to put him or her into another class of the same subject.

Third, most schools no longer give Music as a course because of the cost of instruments and their upkeep.  The ATR pool is full of excessed Music teachers as the tight budgets makes Music a prime candidate to be eliminated from the school course selection, especially in the small schools.  The same goes for Health teachers as schools rather use a Physical Education teacher to teach Health than hire a certified Health teacher.

Fourth, most schools have reduced Science to a 4 to 1 program rather than the recommended 5 to 1 program for Regents level Science.  The elimination of the extra day allows schools to reduce their Science teaching staff.  However, the result has been a lowering of Regents passing rates and scores.  While it saves the schools money it hurts student academic achievement.  Only the DOE in New York State allows schools to use uncertified teachers for Regents Earth Science is just another example of putting budget first over the academic needs of the students.

Fifth, our class sizes are highest in the State and most classes are at contractual limits.  This has a negative effect on student academic achievement,

Finally, the DOE encouraged discrimination against veteran teachers has resulted in many highly experienced teachers tobe targeted and retire early which are then replaced by untested inexperienced teachers who usually leave their first hiring school within five years (about 80% according to a Chicago study) and leave the system.system entirely (50%).

The DOE's education on the cheap policy continues as real student academic achievement is a poor second to budget shenanigans by school principals and encouraged by the DOE. This allows the DOE to keep throwing money at their bloated Central Bureaucracy as the schools starve for resources and with tight budgets that do an injustice to their students.

In The DOE, Its Children Last...Always.

Every time I used to go on the DOE website I would see their recently discontinued slogan of "Children First....Always." However, the DOE's actions when it comes to the students of the classroom is far different then their slogan claimed. . Let's look at the DOE action that support my position that its really "Children Last".

First, the DOE has failed to fully fund the schools since 2008 in their "education on the cheap" policy.  Presently, the schools get 89% of their Fair Student Funding (fsf) and that is a measly 3% increase since Bill de Blasio took office in 2014.  At present, the schools can expect no better than an additional 3% increase in their budgets going forward, 92% of the fsf.. This despite the City having a 6 billion dollar surplus.

Second, Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio's promise to lower class sizes, the DOE has failed to do so.  In fact, class sizes have actually risen since he took office and selected the disappointing Carmen Farina as Chancellor. More disturbingly, the biggest increase in class size is in the early years K-2 and New York City has the highest K-12 class sizes in New York State.

Third, The DOE continues to wast over $100 million dollars by refusing to put the 1,300 ATRs back into the classroom for ideological reasons. Add that to the cost of field supervisors, many of them "F" status,  and the administrative cost at DOE Central to run the ATR program and the number is closer to $110 million dollars. Think about how that money could be better spent in the classroom with veteran teachers?

Fourth, The rise of the "Leadership Academy Principal".  About 25% of all principals in the system, correlates with a decrease in Principal quality and incompetent instructional leadership.  Unfortunately, these principals were trained to be the CEO of their school rather than be an instructional role model as the more experienced principals were.  The result is that these principals hide vacancies, reduce Regents Science instruction, and fail to provide mandated services for Special Education and English Language Learners.  Some even use uncertified teachers as the DOE looks the other way.  These principals practice "penny wise, dollar foolish" polices that only hurt student academic achievement.

Finally, despite promises to reduce the Bureaucratic Bloat at the DOE, nothing has changed.  DOE Central has way to many lawyers, managers, consultants,and accountability experts that suck up scarce resources.  While school budgets remain underfunded and essential frozen, the DOE will be getting $29.6 billion dollars in FY 2017.  This is a 28% increase since Bill de Blasio became Mayor and is 54% higher than the $19.2 million dollar DOE budget in 2008.

Next time you go on the DOE website and their long used slogan remember, just look at the checklist above and realize their real action plan is "Children Last....Always."

How High Schools Hurt Students In The DOE's Education On The Cheap Policy.

Sometime during the tenure of Joel Klein, a nameless bureaucrat at Tweed realized that high schools could save on Science teachers by reducing Science instruction from 5 days to 4 days a week by making the laboratory requirement part of the 5 day instructional week instead as a extra period.  At first, many high schools resisted this approach as they realized that the loss of a month's instructional time would result in a significant reduction in the school's Regents passing rate which is based upon a 5-1 program.  However, as the recession deepened and schools saw their budget cut by an average of 14% (86% of fair student funding with some large comprehensive schools only at 82%), gradually and somewhat reluctantly schools adopted the 4-1 Science program.  First, it was only for Living Environment and Earth Science but eventually many schools extended it to Chemistry and even Physics.  The result was, as expected, a much lower passing percentage on  the Regents.

Some schools have resisted this trend and keep the traditional 5-1 Science program such as Hillcrest, John Bowne, and Goodard high schools but they are in the minority.  However, as the schools are expected to get more money (92% of fair student funding), maybe the schools will realize the importance of  going back to a 5-1 program and hire Science teachers to fill these positions while improving student academic achievement.

Over the last few years principals would dole out a "sixth period" to Science and Special Education teachers since DOE Central would pay for the "sixth period" class since these subjects were considered a "shortage area".  Schools soon realized how DOE Central would end up paying for all the "sixth period" classes by giving a Science or Special Education teacher an elective course or making a Math or Social Studies teacher a Science class or ICT class.  According to my sources, the DOE has finally gotten wise to what the schools are doing and starting next school year, the DOE will no longer fund a "sixth period" class, forcing Principals to either pay for them out of their own budget or hire more teachers.  Some but not all schools will opt to do the right thing for the students and hire more teachers certified in the subject rather than dump a "sixth period " on other teachers.

Maybe the idiots at Tweed and our disconnected union leadership will realize that the ATR pool contains many qualified teachers in both Science and Special Education and they would be a valuable addition to schools who are trying to improve student academic achievement rather than continuing the destructive "education on the cheap" policies. However, I'm not holding my breath.

Why Renewal Schools Cannot Attract Veteran Teachers?

The Achilles heel in working in the 94 Renewal Schools for teachers is the extra work expected of them.  There is countless hours of useless "Professional Development", teacher meetings on their prep periods, and mindless assessments that add stress on the teaching staff.  Moreover, the unrelenting pressure in showing improvement simply adds additional stress to an already stressful job.   Finally, while teacher time is the same in all schools teachers are under intense administrative pressure to put in an extra teaching period as the school day is longer in the Renewal Schools.  While the extra teaching period is voluntary, its difficult for a teacher to refuse the administration's request.  With a "high needs" student population the DOE's expectation of real academic improvement is just unrealistic.

The informed veteran teacher will usually not take a position in a Renewal School since the additional requirements put upon teachers who work with these "high needs" schools and the additional stress put on the teaching staff.  Therefore, the majority of teachers who are hired at the Renewal Schools are recently excessed  and untenured teachers or "newbies".  The DOE's "fair student funding" also ensures that even the renewal schools will think twice before hiring a veteran teacher, no matter how desperate the school may need a certified teacher in a hard to staff subject.  An example is Richmond Hill High School which has more than two dozen Earth Science classes without a certified Earth Science teacher.

The Renewal Schools will continue to struggle and fail until the DOE realizes that the first step in attracting more academically achieving students is to hire a veteran and certified staff that have a deep knowledge of curriculum and already posses good classroom management skills.  That means improving the teaching environment of the schools and not the "education on the cheap" policy that the DOE continues to apply that simply follows a failed model of hiring "the cheapest and not the best teachers" for their schools.  Just take a look at Automotive High School and see how that has worked out?  Even the Principal is jumping the sinking ship!

If the De Blasio Administration really wants these Renewal Schools to succeed they may want to revisit the Chancellor's District that was discontinued when Chancellor Rudy Crew was removed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani that seem to work as the DOE made an effort by recruiting veteran teachers with more money and lower class sizes.  Of course, as long as Carmen Farina is Chancellor don't expect the DOE's "education on the cheap" mindset to change and these schools to improve.  For the DOE its "Children last"...Always.

School Overcrowding And Larger Class Sizes Is The Hallmark Of The De Blasio Administration.

Despite assurances and campaign promises by Bill de Blasio to reduce class size and build more classrooms to alleviate school overcrowding, it turns out that class sizes have actually risen and school overcrowding continues unabated.

First, the New York City Public School Parents blog shows that class sizes have actually rose during the first two years of the De Blasio/Farina Administration.  According to the blog, the DOE's own 2014-15 data shows that class sizes rose 0.1 to an average of 26.4 students per classroom from the previous school year and since the 2007-08 school year, the average class size has increased an astounding 8.32%.

Second, there are 540,000 students who are attending overcrowded public schools or about 50% of the New York City Public School students.  Worse are the schools in the immigrant communities where for every 1% increase in the immigrant population, there is a need for 100 more classroom seats.  Unfortunately, the City only projects to add 33,000 seats when the minimum needed is 49,000 and some groups claim it should be 100,000 new seats to account for the under counting of illegal immigrants.in these largely immigrant communities.

Finally, unreasonably tight school budgets that average 14% lower than in 2007-08 and kept frozen the last two years despite the City's 6 Billion dollar surplus along with the unfair fair student funding  continued school overcrowding and large class sizes will make student academic achievement a struggle.

The Quality Teacher Shortage Is Evident In The New York City Schools Based On The DOE Hiring Policies.

Every parent wants a "quality teacher" for their child and school leaders recognized that.  Therefore, principals, who were themselves long-term teachers, did their best to hire the highly experienced teacher for their schools.  The more experience the teacher had, the better.  The result was that the best schools had the most experienced senior teachers who provided the students with deep curriculum knowledge, classroom management skills, and weren't afraid to adjust their teaching to the learning styles of the ever changing student dynamics of the classroom.  To ensure that there was an incentive for schools to hire the best teachers, the DOE did not use a teacher's salary as part of the school budget but provided the school teacher units, based on the student population size.  Therefore, the schools competed with each other for these highly experienced teachers and the best schools had  the most experienced staff.

All this changed when Mayor Bloomberg took control of the City public schools and appointed a non-educator, Joel Klein, as Chancellor.  Chancellor Klein fundamentally changed the school funding requirements and implemented an "education on the cheap" policy that took funding from the schools and added layers of bureaucracy and increased the historically bloated Central Bureaucracy. With the teacher union approval, Joe Klein instituted the "fair student funding"  that was, in theory, to allow high needs schools to attract experienced teachers with more school funding.  However, the real function of the "fair student funding" was not to give high needs schools the extra money but to punish schools with highly experienced teaching staff by reducing their budget and encourage the schools to find any excuse to have them removed from the school and get budget relief.  The result was an explosion of veteran teachers being removed from their schools and dumped into rubber rooms based on phony or frivolous charges..  To encourage principals to remove these veteran teachers the DOE allowed the school to remove the salary of the teacher from the school payroll after 60 days! This resulted in as many as 805 teachers being "rubberized" as these mostly senior teachers, wait for years before their 3020-a charges are heard or the DOE decides to make a deal.

While many long-term principals were reluctant to remove their veteran teachers realizing the collateral damage it does to staff morale and more importantly, the harm it does to the students.  This was not a problem with the newly minted "Leadership Academy Principals" who made up almost 20% of the City's principals.  Many of these principals had little or even no classroom experience, quite a number never were tenured and had little real understanding of the teaching profession.  To the typical "Leadership Academy Principal" it was that they were CEO's of the school and collaboration with staff was replaced with dictates.  Moreover, this "Leadership Academy Principals" were no longer instructional leaders or mentors but administrators that were the point people of the DOE "gotcha system" whose purpose was to discipline teachers and if possible terminated them by any means possible.

The result of the Bloomberg/Klein changes in the public school system meant that principals were pressured to hire the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school.   With 163 schools closed during the Bloomberg era, that excessed thousands of teachers, many of them highly experienced and with little chance of being picked up due to salary considerations.  Combine these excessed teachers with the thousand or so teachers who survived their termination hearings and the DOE has between 1,000 to 3,000 teachers without a classroom.  Many of them "quality teachers".  Instead as we start another school, year, the De Blasio/Farina administration has continued with the "education on the cheap" policy of Bloomberg and Klein which means that its still about hiring the "newbie" rather than the "quality teacher".

Science Education Is Lagging In The New York City Public High Schools.

Yesterday Chalkbeat summarized a report by The New School's Center For New York City's Affairs  and not surprisingly found that most New York City high schools had an inferior and inadequate Science curriculum.  Over the years I have been informing my readers how the New York City public high schools are short changing students in Science education.  My complaints have fallen on deaf ears at the uncaring DOE as they actually encourage school principals to eliminate many Science courses and to reduce others by a period a week in an effort to save on teacher salaries in their "education on the cheap" policy.  For example New York State Regents Science requires that there be five classes of instruction per week and one class of laboratory skills .  However, almost every New York City high school has reduced classroom instruction by 20%, or one class a week to meet their tight budget requirements.  Worse, is the lack of certified Earth Science teachers teaching the subject,  In most schools the Living Environment teacher is required to teach Earth Science and, as one could guess, the Regents results predictably are terrible.  The reason being that Living Environment teachers are life Science teachers not a physical Science teacher and have little understanding of the subject, be it Chemistry, Physics, or Earth Science.  Is it any wonder that 100 of the 600 high schools in the City had no students graduate with an advanced Regents diploma last school year?

Many of the Bloomberg small schools do not offer the courses necessary for students to obtain an advanced Regents diploma, be it Regents Earth Science, Chemistry, or Physics and in Math Algebra II.  In fact, these schools are simply diploma mills, graduating students who are not "college or career ready" academically.  Just 25 of the 600 high schools had 50% of all students who obtained an advanced Regents diploma while few poor and minority schools had no more than a handful, if any, students who earned an advanced Regents diploma.

While Asian and White students make up only 23% of the student population they accounted for 70% of all students who obtained an advanced Regents diploma.  By contrast, in the 100 schools that award no advanced Regents diploma, 92% of them were Black or Hispanic. For a complete list of all New York City High Schools that offers STEM related advanced Math and Science instruction and the ones that do not,  it can be found Here.

Maybe the DOE and the disappointing Chancellor will wake up and stop short-changing the New York City High School students on their Science education but I highly doubt it.   In the DOE Its still "children last"...Always!

Chancellor Carmen Farina Has No Clue What An Effective Teacher Is.

Since Carmen Farina has taken over at Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools she preaches to whomever would listen that she wants every child to have an effective teacher in the classroom.  It matters little to her whether her audience are principals, the media, teachers, or even at the secret February meeting with the 3020-a State arbitrators, NYSUT, and DOE lawyers.  Her message is the same;  "I want all students to have effective teachers instructing them".  Nice words if you ask me but as this post will point out the Chancellor fails to "practice what she preaches".

If the disappointing Chancellor really wanted to have effective teachers in the classroom she would be pushing policies that encourage principals to hire experienced teachers to cover their vacancies and implement polices that eliminated the ATR pool by giving schools an incentive to appoint an experienced ATR to their school.  However, Chancellor Carmen Farina has instead, continued the Bloomberg/Klein ideological policy called "education on the cheap" that shortchanges the schools of vital resources and deprives students of proper educational material for their classrooms.  Her freezing of the already tight  school budget for the 2014-15 school year, despite the City's economic recovery and more money sent to DOE Central is a prime example of the continuation of the Bloomberg/Klein policy to starve the schools and the classrooms in their "education on the cheap" policy.

Moreover, rather than save over $160 million dollars annually and place experienced teachers in vacancies, Carmen Farina continues the destructive "Fair Student Funding"(FSF) formula that not only shortchanges schools of proper funding for their students but forces principals to hire the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their schools.  The result is the most needy students get the inexperienced teachers who suffer from their own steep learning curves in the classroom.  While 50% of new teachers leave the New York City classroom in five years, over 80% will leave the school they started at by that time.  With the Open Market Transfer System, a principal cannot keep an effective teacher if a better school offers that teacher a position.  Therefore, struggling schools suffer from high teacher turnover, which a recent study shows reduces student academic achievement, and lose their best teachers to higher achieving schools.The result is while highly experienced and effective teachers languish in the ATR pool, students in low achieving schools are subjected to many inexperienced teachers who lack the classroom skills to effectively teach and the few who become a "quality teacher" will leave for more comfortable classroom environments in a higher achieving school or district.

Finally, if Chancellor Carmen Farina was really serious about having effective teachers in the 

classroom, she would reduce class sizes to the State average, penalize schools that rely on teachers uncertified in the subject they are teaching in, and ensure that inclusion classes are not being abused by putting too many special education students in the class, a common abuse of Federal and State requirements.  Even in the New York Post, an article showed the problems of having an inexperienced and uncertified teacher instructing poor and minority students. More proof can be found Here!

When it come to Chancellor Carmen Farina she talks the talk but fails to walk the walk.She's shown to be more the problem than the solution.

To The Daily News. It's The DOE's Education On The Cheap Policy That Causes Student Failure.

The New York Daily News ran a series about the New York City schools that was biased and supported Governor Cuomo's badly flawed education agenda.  However, in one of their articles, they did touch on a subject that they, and other media outlets have deliberately ignored in the past. That is the influx of "newbie teachers" and the use of teachers forced to teach in subjects they're are not certified in.  Maspeth High School had an astounding 88% of their teachers who had less than three years of experience while Banana Kelly had 69% of their teaching staff with less than three years of experience.

The Daily News article reported that there were 21 NYC schools that had over 50% of their teaching staff with less than three years of experience and are probably nontenured as well.  Worse yet, are the amount of classes being taught by teachers who are not qualified to teach the subject.  According to the Daily News and my own experience in traveling in the Queens high schools, this is a common problem and the more pervasive the practice, the lower the school's academic achievement ends up to be.  Even the DOE admitted to the Daily News that many schools use their Living Environment teachers (Biology) to teach Earth Science (Physical Science) and the results are uniformly disappointing with the majority of these students who have these uncertified teachers, failing the Earth Science Regents. Remember my article on Excelsior Prepatory High School where the school decided to not give the over 100 students the Earth Science Regents rather than hire an Earth Science teacher?  How's that putting children first?

The question is why does the DOE and the UFT allow our NYC Public School students to be exposed to uncertified teachers instructing in subject areas that they have no business teaching in?  The answer its the DOE's "education on the cheap" policy.  That's right, if you think its about what's best for the students, than you probably believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and yes, Santa Claus.  The truth is that the DOE imposed a destructive budgeting practice on the schools that's called "fair student funding" that forces principals to hire the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school.  Add that to the 14% budget cut since 2008 and the rise of the "Leadership Academy Principals", with little actual classroom  experience and you have a receipt for educational disaster.  I have written about this travesty previously and it can be found Here.  Finally, many schools try to save money by assigning phantom teachers to courses and force the unfortunate students to take an online or blended learning course.  Remember this?  Or in today's New York Post.

Its too bad the Daily News didn't bother to dig deeper into this issue but then they would have found out the real truth that its what's best for a school's budget than what's best for the students in the DOE's "education on the cheap" policy and that would bring into question the validity of the Governor's education agenda and their "blaming the teachers theme" for the school system's many problems.

The Quality Teacher Myth In New York City Public Schools.

One of the most important factors for children to maximize their academic potential at school is to have a "quality teacher" instructing them.  While the various interest groups can differ on what makes a successful student, they all agree that a "quality teacher" is instrumental in student academic success. Yet, when we look at the New York City Public School System, we find that their hiring practices and policy discourages the schools from selecting "quality teachers" and forces them to hire the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their students.  Is it any wonder that the New York City Public school students continue to struggle academically?

While external forces shape the majority of the child's academic development, like poverty, family, and community.  A teacher can make up anywhere from a 1% to 14% difference in a child's academic outcome   Therefore, if a school system really wants to maximize the child's academic potential, they should provide "quality teachers" to these students.  However, in the New York City school system, its "education on the cheap" and the only hiring being done are the "newbies".  For example, there were 6,000 teachers that left the school system last year.  However, few ATRs were hired for these vacancies.  Moreover, experienced teachers who wanted to transfer from their school and had ten or more years of experience, found that other schools were not interested in obtaining their services, despite their stellar record or reputation.  Instead the schools hired "newbie" or untenured teachers, who have a steep learning curve to achieve "quality teacher" status, to fill these vacancies.

The education reform groups and their media allies demand that all teachers be "quality teachers" but when they are presented with the clear evidence that the New York City Public School System is only hiring the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their students, they remain silent. Better to ignore the inconvenient truth than to address the hypocrisy

The bottom line, until the City requires the DOE to revise their hiring practices and eliminate the "fair student funding" policy, its "education on the cheap" and continued poor student academic outcomes. Just like a snake oil salesman, the DOE will claim its "children first" but in reality its all about the money and not about what's best for the students.

Why Schools Don't Do The Right Thing For Their Students.

As I travel from school to school monthly, I have seen too many teachers who have some real deficiencies when it comes to instruction and classroom management skills.  Quite a few are "newbies" and that's to be expected but some are experienced teachers that are teaching out of license.  Worse, is that I have been in schools that have teachers who have no business teaching a subject they have little knowledge of. One example is Earth Science. In school after school, I have seen students being taught by teachers who are not certified Earth Science teachers and, as you can expect, their students do poorly on the Regents as a result.

Examples of uncertified teachers teaching Earth Science are Richmond Hill and Newtown High schools, where there are multiple classes of Earth Science and to my knowledge, neither school has a certified Earth Science teacher on staff!  Moreover, in the Bloomberg small schools many Science teachers are teaching multiple Science courses that they are not certified to teach and may have four different preps.  You would never see this in the suburbs.


According to the UFT, there are six certified Earth Science teachers in excess in Queens but since they are highly experienced and expensive, the schools will not do the right thing for their students and appoint one of them to improve the chances of their students in passing the Earth Science Regents, since its more important in hiring the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school.

While the union could file a PERB complaint and publicize the educational maleficence that hurts the student's academic outcomes, the disconnected union leadership rather ignore this educational abuse and instead aids and abets the DOE  in allowing it to occur.  The union should be going after "fair student funding" and filing both a PERB complaint and informing parents that the DOE is allowing non-certified teachers to teach their students in subject areas like Math and Science.  Instead its business as usual at the DOE practices its "education on the cheap" policy and the union just cheers them on.

Its Quantity And Not Quality When It Comes To Hiring Teachers In The NYC Public Schools.

With the unexpected wave of retirements, the NYC public school system had to hire 6,000 new teachers.  You would think that many schools would be thrilled to replace their retiring teachers with experienced teachers since it would not significantly affect their budget.  Guess again, the schools, rather than during what's best for their students, instead saw an opportunity to hire novice teachers and in some cases getting two for the salary of the retiring teacher. Meaning quantity over quality at the expense of the academic outcomes of the school's students.  In other cases the principals reduced their staff salaries and used the additional funds for their own pet projects.

Unfortunately,  the NYCDOE is famous for its "education on the cheap" policies when it comes to funding schools and the classrooms.  To ensure that schools suffer from tight budgetary constraints, the DOE imposed the "fair student funding" formula on them that forces principals to hire the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their students. Is it any wonder that student academic achievement has shown little or no gains and the racial/income achievement gap is as wide as ever?

Novice teachers suffer from a steep learning curve, in acquiring effective teaching techniques, fully understanding the curriculum, developing classroom management skills, and staying power as 50% of the "newbies" leave the classroom within five years and 80% leave the school they started in.  What a waste of money in training and time when only 20% of the "newbies" will be in the school by the time they get tenure and are considered "quality teachers".  Moreover, how unfair is it to subject the students as guinea pigs to untested teachers who may or may not even last the school year?

Too bad the mass media choices to ignore the DOE's "education on the cheap" policies that hurt student academic achievement but loves to demonize the teaching profession, especially ATRs.

In This School Its Technology Over Quality Teachers.

In a highly regarded large comprehensive high school in Northeastern Queens, a Principal is practicing his own version of "education on the cheap".  In my opinion he is using precious school funds to upgrade technology while paying for it by scrimping on teacher quality in a school known for having highly experienced teachers.  In the long run this can only hurt the academic outcomes of his school's students.

The Principal is a big fan of technology, the more technology, the better.  He is installing all his classrooms with expensive state of the art technology.  That might be all fine and good if there were dedicated funds for such a project.  However, under "fair student funding" all the funds supplied to the school can be spent in any way the Principal pleases.  Therefore, many principals "rob Peter to pay Paul" to fund their pet projects and this Principal is no exception.  How is the Principal paying foir this lavish upgrade of technology at the school?  You guessed it, its at the expense of hiring quality teachers for his school's students.

Since he took over as Principal two years ago, his hiring pattern is to select "newbie teachers", right out of college to fill most of the positions in his schools.  Few experienced teachers were hired and none of them could be considered highly experienced.  As for ATRs?  They need not apply since he has let it be known that ATRs are not appropriate for his school.  Moreover, to limit the amount of teachers the school needs to hire, he encourages teachers to pick up a "sixth period" and if its in a shortage area better yet since DOE Central actually picks up the tab for the extra class.  Interestingly, he has told at least two people that he only wants to hire the best teachers not just good teachers.  Somehow his deeds don't seem to match his words.

For example, this year his Science department was in need of a Chemistry teacher to fill in as a leave replacement.  Instead of interviewing the Chemistry teachers in the ATR pool, the school hired an unknown  substitute teacher to fill the leave replacement.  Unfortunately for the students, this teacher proved to be terrible and the students complained about him.  Now almost two months later the teacher finally decided he didn't want to be at the school and resigned before he could do any more damage to his Regents Chemistry classes.  The result is that these students are behind their peers academically and all the Chemistry teachers were forced to pick up an extra Chemistry class, whether they wanted to or not.

The DOE must be proud of this Principal as he follows their "education on the cheap" policies of Tweed at the expense of his school's student academic achievement. 

Don't Expect NYC Schools To Improve Academically Under The DOE's Present Policy.

With much fanfare and little scrutiny,  Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina praised the miniscule increases the City students achieved on the 2013 State tests and have proclaimed that 100% of the NYC school children will be passing the State tests.  However, when one takes into account the lower cut scores and the large "opt out" cohort, any real academic progress is simply "smoke and mirrors".  The politicians can crow all they want about imaginary academic gains but the truth is that these supposed gains are illusionary.  Moreover, the unacceptably wide racial/income academic achievement gap has not improved and this is shown by the analysis done for the 4th grade citywide.  According to the report, the top schools are predominately made up of students that come from the surrounding diverse middle class neighborhoods or are screened, while the worst preforming schools are in neighborhoods of deep poverty and nearly 100% Black and Hispanic.

The question is how can we improve the academic ability of the New York City school students?  There are ways.  However, the new Mayor and his disappointing Chancellor has done little to take strides in that direction.  For example, despite the Mayor's pledge to reduce class size, the opposite happened, class sizes have actually increased once again for the elementary and middle schools. Numerous studies have shown that class size has a significant effect on classroom learning and the City has the largest class sizes in New York State.  Until class size is reduced significantly, don't expect any academic improvement.

Another issue, is the lack of "quality teachers" in the classroom.  The new administration has continued the destructive "fair student funding" policy that encourages principals to hire the "cheapest" and not the "best teachers" for their schools.  Since 50% of these teachers will leave the profession in five years and over 80% from the school they started at, few will ever become a "quality teacher" for the school that hired them.  Moreover, the steep learning curve "newbie teachers" experience makes their students guinea pigs until the teacher has demonstrated good pedagogy skills and gets tenure three years later, if their the lucky 60%.  A seven year study showed how difficult it was for struggling schools to attract effective teachers.  Even the offer of $20,000 extra for a two year commitment met with few takers.  How does the DOE expect to attract teachers to struggling schools for a measly $5,000?  The answer is they don't.  Combined with a hostile and stressful classroom environment, is it any wonder that retention is a problem?  High teacher turnover and poor academic achievement in these struggling schools go hand in hand.


Shockingly, Chancellor Carmen Farina froze already tight school budgets at 2013 levels and that is 14% less than in the 2007-08 school year.  She unwisely kept the money sucking and useless "Children First Networks" and worst of all, the Chancellor has made the demonetization of the 2,000+ ATRs part of the new contract, meaning that the DOE will waste money and talent by having high priced "babysitters" rotating weekly from school to school.

Finally, under the new Chancellor, the failed policies of the Bloomberg Administration are still evident and many of his architects are still in control of Tweed.  Rather than "clean house" she has kept many of them in place and the classroom environment is still as hostile as ever with loads of paperwork, Leadership Academy Principals" and inadequate school resources a norm.

What needs to change to make real academic progress?  Lower class sizes, the elimination of "fair student funding" with all staff salaries coming out of DOE Central like it used to be. Downsizing and folding the Children First Networks into the Superintendent's Office, with the savings going back to the schools for resources and the placing of ATRs back into the classroom with the 160 million dollar annual savings being used for hiring of more teachers which will lower the average class sizes, especially in deep poverty neighborhood schools.

Mark my words, without the usual academic tricks any real academic progress will be illusionary and will; not result in the narrowing of the racial/income academic achievement gap.

Why The Flat City Scores On The NAEP? The Answer Is The Lack Of Quality Teachers And Rising Class Sizes.

It came as no surprise to educators that the results from the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test showed "NO SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN STUDENT PROGRESS" since the last NAEP test back in 2011.  Moreover, the academic achievement gap between Asians/Whites and Blacks/Hispanics showed no narrowing and is as unacceptably wide as ever. Finally, during the entire Bloomberg tenure from 2002-13, the eighth grade NAEP results have barely budged while the fourth graders improved only one grade level in Math and Reading. To say that the Bloomberg educational legacy is a "mixed bag" is putting it kindly.

Why is there so little academic improvement, when using the NAEP test results, known as the "gold standard" for education?  The answer is quite simple.  Under Mayor Bloomberg's "education on the cheap" program, schools cannot hire the "quality teachers" that make a difference in a child's academic achievement. Instead under the "(un)fair student funding formula", schools hire the "cheapest teachers", usually inexperienced "newbies" who have no classroom management skills, lack deep curriculum knowledge, and many are unable to have the "passion to connect with the students".  In fact, 50% of these "newbie teachers" will leave the teaching profession within five years and many more will leave by taking a less stressful and higher paying position in the suburbs or leave the classroom for Administrative jobs.


Furthermore, class sizes have increased during the Bloomberg Administration's control of the New York City Schools with over three additional students added to the average class and even higher for the lower grades where class size is most important.  Even when the State was required to add extra funding to the New York City Schools as part of a lawsuit.  The Bloomberg Administration gave it to the DOE to do as they pleased without targeting it to  reduce lass size.  The result?  The money went for other things and class sizes actually rose!

Yes, the DOE budget doubled during the Bloomberg years but the funds went for expensive programs supervised by high-priced consultants, technology that was not classroom applicable, and adding unnecessary services that Tweed makes the schools pay for out of their tight budgets.  In fact, since 2007 the average school budget has dropped 14%.

Why didn't the New York City 4th and 8th grades show significant improvement in the 2013 NAEP tests?  It's the lack of  "quality teachers" and rising class sizes that has resulted in Mayor Bloomberg's "education on the cheap" policy.

The Education Reformers "Talk The Talk" But Fail To "Walk The Walk" When It Comes To Having A Quality Teacher In The Classroom.

According to the Education Reform organization handbook the most important factor in a child's academic development is not poverty, nor is it the dysfunctional family environment, and it certainly it's not the social-economic conditions affecting the child, its the quality of the teacher the child has in school.  You might laugh at this ridiculous assumption but when these Education Reformers actually gain control of the school system their "talk to talk" fails to "walk the walk" when it comes to providing a "quality teacher in every classroom".

A prime example of how the education reformers talk out of both sides of their mouths is when reformer heavyweights Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein gained complete control of the New York City Public School System.  This was their chance to show that by putting "quality teachers in every classroom" will result in a narrowing of the income/racial academic achievement gap and raising educational standards.  In other words, its time to "walk the walk".  Unfortunately, given the opportunity to "do the right thing" and put a "quality teacher in every classroom", instead they did the exact opposite and implemented an "education on the cheap" policy.  The New York City School System under these two "heavyweight education reformers"encouraged schools to hire the "cheapest" and not the "best" teachers.  Is it any wonder that during the entire tenure of these two education reformers that the academic achievement of the New York City Public School students has remained flat and the academic achievement gap has actually widened!

Yet, the Bloomberg Administration will falsely claim that they are hiring "highly qualified teachers" That's because under the Obama Administration, led by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan they provided waivers under "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) that exempted schools from hiring "quality teachers".  Under NCLB  all schools should have teacher equality and all teachers must be "highly qualified".  To NCLB  a "highly qualified teacher" is a teacher that is fully credentialed, has expertise in their subject matter, and is experienced.  Just the opposite that the Teach For America's  "two year wonders" or the "one and done" Teaching Fellows brings to the schools.  However, New York City, like many other school districts across the country took advantage and were given waivers that allowed the school districts to hire "newbie" and alternate certification teachers in mass and fool the parents and subject their children  to inferior teaching by claiming they are hiring "highly qualified teachers".

Unfortunately, for political reasons, the Federal Department of Education has "dragged their feet" in showing if teacher equality has been abused by the waivers granted. To date there are no statistics on the distribution of  "newbie" and teachers in training (Teach For America) instructors in the schools that they are required to do by Congress.  However, California did provide a study that showed that schools with a poor and minority population have twice the number of teacher in training and other alternate certification instructors leading a classroom when compared to other schools.

The bottom line, when Education Reformers take control of a school district instead of practicing what they preach, a "quality teacher in every classroom", they find a way around that slogan and in many cases encourage the schools to hire the "cheapest teachers" and practice an "education on the cheap" policy instead. What a bunch of hypocrites.  This is certainly true when it came to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his long-time Chancellor Joel Klein.

To The New Chancellor. Let's Do What's Best For Our Students.

There is little doubt that under the imperious regime of Mayor Bloomberg that the New York City public school system has changed.  The problem was the change was not for the better and was based upon phoney education reform principals and had no appreciable effect on real student academic achievement.  Instead it resulted in closed schools, demonizing the teaching profession, gypsy teachers without a classroom, an influx of inexperienced and untested teachers, and the lowest teacher morale in memory.  Therefore, the new Mayor and Chancellor should bring back long-studied principals in education that benefits the students and not the wishes of those non-educators at Tweed that hopefully be terminated by the new De Blasio Administration.

First,  impose a "hiring freeze" and require principals to hire the many "quality teachers" currently languishing in the ATR pool (2,000+) and not the "cheapest teachers" as is currently being done.  To encourage principals in doing the "right thing for their students", give the school an incentive, similar to the November 2008 ATR agreement   No Principal would be allowed to hire new teachers if there are teachers in the subject area currently in excess in their District.  "No exceptions should be permitted".  The result would be more "quality teachers" in the classroom and the principals wouldn't have to "roll the dice"  and use the students as "guinea pigs" on whether the "newbie teachers" could actually teach.

Second, reduce class size to a more manageable size.  Under the Bloomberg years, class size has actually risen since he came into control of the schools.  In fact, at a speech in MIT two years ago he said that if it was up to him he would have class sizes of 70 students with half the teachers. The biggest increases occurred in the lower grades where study after study showed that class size is an important factor in student learning. The placing of the ATRs into the classroom, where they rightfully belong, will go a long way in achieving the class size reduction goals.

Third, give adequate resources to the schools.  Since 2007 the average school has seen a reduction of 14% in resources and a 32% decrease in school support services from Tweed.  Under Bloomberg it has been an "education on the cheap" policy as the schools are starved for resources, forced to hire the "cheapest teachers", scrimp on classroom supplies, and are required to put the school's stringent budget over the education of their students.  To reverse this, the DOE should, once again, make teachers a unit and eliminate the "fair student funding formula" that doesn't work.  Having the Central Office control the teacher budget line would relieve the pressure on principals to hire untested and inexperienced teachers, instead the principals could interview for the "best teachers" for their schools.

Fourth, Eliminate the nearly useless and money sucking "Children First Networks" (CFN) that have destroyed neighborhood and parent involvement in the schools. Give more authority to the District Superintendent's Office as they are more in touch with community concerns and remediation as well as for a parent to go to with complaints or other issues.  In addition, bring back the neighborhood schools.  It's unfair that some students are forced to travel over two hours to a school because the schools in their neighborhood didn't select them. This is especially true of the Bloomberg small schools where an unofficial screening process is used to keep out the "high needs" students.

Fifth, overhaul the teacher evaluation system and make it more flexible and classroom friendly.  Furthermore, the "common core" requirements need to be loosened until it becomes easier to incorporate into the curriculum.   In other words  let teachers teach in a way that best for their students ability to learn.  One of our colleagues Arthur Goldstein found this video of Charlotte Danielson saying that student tests should not be used in a teacher's evaluation.  Too bad, the State doesn't listen.

Finally, improve the existing "rock bottom" morale in the schools by showing school staff the proper respect for their profession.  The first step is to negotiate a "fair contract" with the UFT, eliminate the "gotcha mentality" that permeates the higher levels at the DOE, and encourage true collaboration between school administrators and staff, not the "us against them" mentality that is encouraged by Tweed. A happy staff makes for improved classroom environment and better student learning.  Now that's "children first, always".

Why The Children First Networks Must Go!

One of the worst ideas that came out of the Bloomberg Administration under the Chancellorship of Joel Klein, was the replacing of the 31 District Offices with 62 Children First Networks (now down to 57).  The idea behind the replacing of the District Offices with the Children First Networks was to eliminate cronyism and geographic control that the Districts had under the Superintendent.  Furthermore, the Children First Networks were to supply administrative and professional development support to the schools of the network at a reasonable cost.  However, the Children First Networks have morphed into something very different. Rather than supporting the schools they dictate to them and gives the schools an inferior product.  Let's look on why the Children First Networks should be eliminated and replaced by a real school support organization.

Many of the Children First Networks are located far from the 30-35 schools in their networks with many schools located in different Boroughs from their own network!  Therefore, the networks are not sensitive to neighborhood or community issues and have little, if any interaction with parents.  In fact, most parents have no clue what network their child's school is associated with or where they are located.

Many of the Children First Networks appear to be a "dumping ground" for failed principals and other administrators and managers that nobody else wanted.  For every effective network there are many more "ineffective networks" and they are all stretched thin by the many demands that Tweed imposes on them.  The networks charge extra for consultant services and many of these consultants hired by the networks are kids right out of college.  .Maisie McAdoo of Edwize has a very informative article called "The DOE networks face a new day" and is a must read as a companion piece to this post..

The Children First Networks suffer from a "talent crisis" and many principals question why they are required to choose a network that provides little or no support to their school.  Even when the Children First Networks tried to rally the principals to support their continued operation, they only garnered 8% of the principals to sign it and a few claim they never agreed to sign it but were included anyway.  Absent in the petition were Queens principals as only one "newbie Principal from a new school" signed the petition to keep the networks.  Maybe the reason is that the majority of Queens schools pay $50,000 yearly for basic services to the networks, excluding additional Professional Development and consulting services, which cost extra, while the majority of Brooklyn, Bronx, and Manhattan schools pay only $16,000 yearly.

Tweed has reduced school support services by 32% since 2005 which corresponds to the rise of the Children First Networks and to add "insult to injury" forces the schools to pay the networks to provide some of those support services that the Central DOE used to pay for.  The networks are used by Tweed to impose their programs and policies that are not in the best interests of the schools or the children in the classroom. For example telling principals to hire the cheapest and not the best teachers.  Remember this?

Finally, the Children First Networks was the creation of ex Deputy Chancellor Eric Naldestern, yes the very same Eric Naldelstern who came up with the idea that principals should have control of their budget including hiring of teachers that has resulted in the "education on the cheap" policy with a 2,000 + person ATR pool. and wasting of $160 million dollars annually.   How has that worked out for our schools and students Eric?  Not good at all.

I hope that the new Mayor eliminates the nearly worthless Children First Networks and replaces them with the geographically sensitive District Offices and with safeguards to prevent cronyism or corruption by pitting all candidates through a vetting process by an independent panel selected by the Mayor.