One Out Of 10 NYC Students Are Homeless

The amount of homeless in NTC schools stayed stubbornly high at 114,000.  This is nearly the same as the previous year with 85% of the homeless students are either Black or Hispanic and that indicates that Mayor De Blasio's homeless policy has failed to put a dent in the homelessness.. Here is what the Mayor said about it.

It's common knowledge that homeless students have lower academic performance, higher absentees, and are more likely to be associated with behavioral problems.  Moreover, the lak of a permanent home usually results in the student to move from school to school and cannot establish a stable social structure which also negatively affects academic achievement.  Finally, many homeless students lack financial support and am involved faster which is associated with academic success.

Reducing the student homeless population is essential to improve student academic performance, especially in many of the Bronx and Brooklyn schools.

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.

No Change In The Gifted And Talented Programs This Year

After receiving intense push-back from parents and the Asian-American community, the DOE has decided not to change the gifted and talented program for this year.  The gifted and talented program was drastically reduced by the Bloomberg administration by requiring 4 year olds to take an entrance test to qualify for the program.  The result was the City's gifted and talented programs were reduced from 60 to 10 as the low income, minority communities had few entering students that can qualify for the program.

The existing gifted and talented programs have only a 21% Black and Hispanic component, despite the two minorities making up 85% of the City's student body.  Finally, the 10 gifted and talented programs are found in the more diverse neighborhoods, like Districts 2(Manhattan),15(Brooklyn), and 26 (Queens) where there is enough middle and upper income families that attend the public schools to fill the classes. 

If the City eventually adopts the crazy proposals by the diversity advisory group  that wants to eliminate the gifted and talented program and diversify the Borough's schools, upper and middle class flight would follow.  Just imagine you live in Little Neck Queens and the City forces your child to be sent to South Jamaica by a 2-hour forced busing to integrate the school.  You would either sell your house and move to Long Island or send your child to private school and who can blame them?

I highly doubt that Mayor Bill de Blasio will agree with the diversity advisory committee's recommendations but you never know since the Mayor is more progressive than practical.  However, I do see that the City will try to increase the gifted and talented programs throughout the City but the question is how?

NYC Public School Students Had Lower English And Math Regents Passing Rates - So Much For DOE's Claim Of Academic Improvement.

It appears that the DOE's claim that students academic achievement is getting better took a major blow when the New York State Regents results came in.  Both in English and Math there were significant drops in the passing rate.  According to the New York Daily News, English passing rates dropped 7% from 77.7% last year to 72.2% this school year.   While the Math Regents drop was 9% from 66.2% to 60.5%.

While the English and Math Regents passing rate dropped, at the same time  the high school graduation rate increased.  This shows the disconnect between the graduation rate and student academic achievement.  In other words the New York City schools are graduating students who are unprepared academically for the adult world .

Interestingly, the DOE cited the improved graduation rate  as proof of student academic achievement  while claiming that the lower Regents passing percentage was due to this year's harder Regents which the State denies. Based upon my previous posts on the graduation rate, I suspect the State is correct.

Further proof, I did an analysis of all Queens, unscreened high schools and that shows the disconnect. In addition, here are the Queens high schools that had poor college readiness scores.

Why Did The DOE Hide The SHSAT Report?

After an over five year wait, the DOE finally released the Metis Associates report on whether the SHSAT is an indicator of student academic achievement in high schools.  The report's conclusion was that there was a strong correlation between passing the SHSAT and academic achievement in high school.  The question is why did the DOE refuse to release the report to the public for five years?

The report was commissioned by the DOE after the NAACP filed a civil rights complaint that the SHSAT was not a valid indicator of student academic achievement.  In the New York Times article the report found that the mean G.P.A. for students who scored high enough on the test to be accepted to one of the specialized high schools was 3.036 in their first year compared with 2.387 for students who were not accepted to the specialized schools. Similarly, the mean scores for accepted students on Regents examinations ranged between 82.59 and 93.41 across various subjects. The mean scores for students not admitted ranged from 68.69 and 79.16.

Obviously, the Metis Associates report did not support the NAACP's claim that the SHSAT was not a valid indicator of student academic achievement in high school and the City administration decided not to release the report.  Why?

The answer to that question needs to be made public.  Was it a racial issue?  How about poverty?   Maybe it was due to political considerations?  Could it be all three?  The public has a right to know why the DOE refused to release the report to the public?  What were they afraid of?

Why Giving Principals Unlimited Authority Hurts Student Academic Achievement

In 2005 the UFT leadership under Randi Weingarten, irreversibly changed the dynamics of a school by agreeing to a contract that gave principals unlimited authority to run the schools as they saw fit.   This post is not about how terrible the "giveback" laden contract was but about how principals used and abused their newly won power to do as they pleased and how it hurt student academic achievement.

Principals were given unfettered authority to hire and fire as they pleased.  The result was that far too many schools hired newly minted teachers with little or no actual classroom experience and student academic achievement suffered as these "newbie" teachers had a steep learning curve themselves when it came to curriculum knowledge and classroom management issues.  Some schools like Maspeth High School in Queens has an entire staff of untenured teachers.  Moreover, many of the Bloomberg small schools have a majority of untenured teachers on staff.

The DOE policies encouraged principals to hire inexperienced teachers with their "fair student funding" that incentivized principals to "hire the cheapest and not the best teachers" for their schools.  Moreover, approximately 25% o0f all principals came from the infamous "Leadership Academy" many of them with limited classroom experience and were trained to be the CEO and not the instructional leader of their school.  Interestingly, where you find both Leadership Academy principals and an inexperienced teaching staff, student academic achievement suffers.

I once wrote the weakest link in the school system is the Superintendent.  In New York City this is especially true as the superintendents seem to get their position based upon who they know ands not what they know.  Just take a look at all the bad principals associated with Superintendent Juan Mendez, who has been indited by the feds for racial discrimination.   Many of the "bad principals" in Queens high schools wee either appointed by or protected by Mr. Mendez.  Again, student academic performance suffers as these "bad principals" experience high teacher turnover, an unstable school environment, and lack of collaboration.

The bottom line giving principals unlimited power only hurts student academic achievement.

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A Utah High School Fines Students Who Show Up Late For Class.

Most schools I have been in the last decade have a similar problem.  Students taking their ever loving time to show up for class.  Even in the small schools, students can't seem to move quickly enough from one classroom to the next to make it on time to the classroom, despite being given 3 to 5 minutes to do so.

Well one Utah high school has decided to do something about it.  Students that show up late to class during the school day are fined.  The first offense is a warning.  The second offense cost the student $3 and every following lateness cost the student $5.  Students that cannot afford the fines will be given lunch detention and clean-up duties.   Interestingly, during the first two weeks of the school's lateness policy saw students getting to class on time and the hallways were empty as the late bell rang.  So far not one student has been fined and only a few warnings have been issued,  You can read the story Here.

Obviously parents and students were not too happy with the school's lateness policy and believe its too draconian.  However, school staff and administration are supportive of the lateness policy and the potential monetary penalty has, so far,  curbed student lateness and added more instruction time to the classroom.   It will be interesting if the policy lasts the year and how it affects student academic achievement.

For Principals Its Not About What's Best For The Students.

Most principals control their school budgets (some Renewal school principals do not).   Therefore, the Principal has complete control on staff hiring.  Because the DOE's policy of school based Fair Student Funding and the fact that the average school only receives 90% of what they should get under the fair funding budget incentivizes principals to hire the "cheapest and not the best " teachers for their school.  Moreover, most schools have stuffed classrooms with the maximum amount of students that the contract allows.  Finally, quite a few schools rather pay a "sixth period" to existing teachers rather than hire much needed additional teachers for their students.

Ask most parents and students would they want a "newbie" teacher, with no classroom experience or an experienced teacher who has good classroom management skills and curriculum knowledge and the answer is obvious, unless you are Nicole Thomas, and the education deformer organizations.  In other words would you want a novice surgeon, with no operating room experience, rather than a veteran surgeon to operate on your child?  The same goes for teaching.  Few parents want to make their child a guinea pig for a "newbie" teacher who has a steep learning curve to master the Art and Science of teaching.   Yet, the education deformer organizations and their media allies conveniently ignore the obvious and rather demonize veteran teachers, especially the ATRs.

Interestingly, our union leadership has kept silent and fails to launch a counter attack showing why its important for all children to have an experienced teacher and demand that all "newbie" teachers have a complete mentoring and support system to assist them in mastering the classroom.  School after school in high poverty areas suffer from high teacher turnover and every year has a staff composed of untenured teachers.  In fact, a study done for Chiago found 75% of all new teachers in poor urban schools leave their first school within three years.  The refusal of our union leadership to fund an advertising campaign on why its important for children to have veteran teachers is unacceptable.

The bottom line is that between DOE policies, principals caring more about their budget than hiring the best teachers, and our union leadership refusal to embarrass the DOE contributes to a "
children last" policy that hurts student academic achievement.

The New York Post Blames Teacher Benefits For Student Failure, Rather Than The Real Reason - The Socialeconomic Factors.

I read today's New York Post article on how much the City spends on each student and they questioned why student academic achievement doesn't match the money spend?  Of course they blamed teacher salaries, fringe benefits, and pensions as the major reason that students are not showing significant improvement.  For some reason they believe there is a direct one to one relationship between the two.  Nothing is further from the truth.  There is little correlation between the two.  Admittedly, they did mention how the DOE lacks transparency and awards questionable contracts.  However,  the article primarily blamed the teachers contract and our benefits for the lack of student achievement.


Nowhere in the article did the paper mention how the schools are only funded at 89% of their proper funding, nor did it mention that New York City class sizes are the highest in the State, or that the perverse "fair student funding" formula forces schools to hire "the cheapest and not the best teachers" for the students. Finally, the article totally ignored the social-economic factors that studies showed account for 80% of a student's growth. By contrast, teachers make up between 1% and 14% of a student's growth.

Blaming teacher benefits for the lack of student academic achievement is simply scapegoating the teachers when the problems lie with the family, community, and peers.  Moreover, when schools are not fully funded, and students are exposed to a merry go round of "newbie" teachers who lack classroom management skills and strong curriculum knowledge, and are subject to high teacher turnover.  Who's fault is that?  The teachers? Or the policies and ideology that find over a 1,300 veteran teachers being used as babysitters rather than providing students with effective teachers and significantly lower class sizes?

While our salaries have improved over the years, its also true we have given the City extensive "givebacks" a longer day, senseless professional development, administrative micromanagement, and our TDA was reduced by 1.25%. Furthermore, Nobody believes that a 10% raise for seven years is considered excessive. While we have slightly closed the salary gap with the suburbs, we still are at the bottom when it comes to the salary scale and the City classroom is a much more stressful environment than the smaller class sizes of the suburbs.

Unfortunately,  scapegoating teachers and ignoring all the other factors that negatively affect student academic achievement is plain wrong.  Eliminating deep poverty, homelessness, and keeping families intact would go a long way in improving student academic achievement.  Moreover, fully funding schools, eliminating  "fair student funding" and reducing class sizes would also help improve student educational outcomes.  Finally, reducing the bloated DOE Bureaucracy and transfer the funds to the schools will ensure that the schools are fully resourced and that students, especially Special Education students, would be provided with the services they need to succeed academically.

The Hiring Of Inexperienced Teachers Hurt Student Academic Achievement On Many Levels.

There is no secret that almost all of the 4,500 annual vacancies in the New York City Public School system were filled by "newbie" teachers as the DOE's Fair Student Funding (FSF) policy and the ever increasing Leadership Academy principals in charge of schools result in the hiring of the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school.  How does that affect student academic achievement?  Let me count the ways.

First, 50% of the "newbie" teachers will not be in the New York City school system in five years and 80% will not be in the same school that hired them.With both Long Island and Westchester now hiring after a 5 year freeze, even more teachers will flee the City schools for higher pay, better behaved and academically proficient students, with lower class sizes and better working conditions. Moreover, many of the "newbie" teachers lack classroom management skills, deep curriculum knowledge, and experience dealing with different student personalities.  Finally, what's left unsaid is how do the students feel when a teacher leaves the school? They feel betrayed, blame themselves, or feel undeserving enough for the teacher to stay.

In the school I am in, three teachers are leaving at the end of the semester.  One for Long Island and two others are quitting the profession as they got better offers from private companies.  I covered one of the classes as the teacher took the day off after telling his class he was leaving the day before.  Despite my best efforts, many of the students were angry, cursed, and complained about how their school sucks.  The school is a decent school and has a relatively well behaved student body.  The biggest complaint was why do so many teachers leave the school?  "Don't they like us"?  We forget how leaving affects the physic makeup of students who look to to their teacher as an island of stability and guidance in a world of chaos.

Had this Principal hired more experienced teachers, they would be more likely to stay since they have a stake in the game, be it the pension, the TDA, or simply they are acclimated to the New York City Schools and their student population.  I don't blame the Principal since as a Leadership Academy Principal she was trained to hire "newbies" and not think about whether these teachers would actually stay at her high school.

Maybe Mr, Asher, in his new position, should be bringing up this reason to the principals on why they should be hiring ATRs since these teachers are more likely to stay long-term and provide stability to the teaching staff.  More importantly, these experienced teachers will not flee the classroom and hurt student academic achievement.  Isn't that what education is for?  Something to seriously think about if you ask me.

Cellphones In Schools Are Not Only Distracting But They Hurt Stiudent Learning.

Ask most any teacher and they will tell you the worst decision that Mayor Bill de Blasio and his disappointing Chancellor, Carmen Farina, made was allowing students to carry their cellphones into the school.   Even in the most structured classroom environment students peek at their cellphones from under the table or behind their notebook or textbook and get distracted.  Since the New York City public school classroom usually has thirty or more students, its almost impossible for teachers to eliminate cellphone use in the classroom.  Now a new study was published by the London School of Economics found that cellphone bans at schools raised student test scores by 6%.  Moreover, for under-performing students the increase was 14%!  The study was for twelve years from 2000 to 2012 and included thousands of students.

By contrast, since Mayor Bill de Blasio lifted the ten year cell phone ban, the schools have dumped the enforcement of cellphone usage on the teachers which has resulted in increased classroom management problems, distracted learning, and downright student defiance and insubordination when told to put their cellphones away by the techer. Even the teachers who have strict classroom control must still remind various students to put their cellphones away only to have them look at it during class time and take away precious instruction time while dealing with the cellphone issue.

Ask a school administrator to enforce the rule of cellphone usage and you get various responses, mostly negative, that dumps the responsibility on the teacher.  Just yesterday, an Assistant Principal walked into a classroom for an informal observation and told the teacher today that she saw two students in the back peeking at their cellphones and blamed the teacher for not being observant enough while she was teaching the lesson.  This very same Assistant Principal regularly walks right past numerous students in the hallway using their cellphones during change of periods and does nothing to stop it, despite the school policy to only use it in the cafeteria.  In other words, accountability is only dumped on the teacher while the school administration is held unaccountable for the school behavior when it comes to cellphones.

If school administrators were really serious about improving student academic achievement they should do what the Lehman campus in the Bronx did.  Have the students check their cellphones at the school entrance and any cellphone found in the classroom results in the cellphone being automatically being confiscated by a Dean or administrator and only returned after a parent shows up. Holding teachers accountable and then penalizing them when the school administration fails to support the teacher with a strict and coherent cellphone policy is the primary reason why schools fail to show the real academic achievement as demanded by people who want to see their children get a world class education and not by academic fraud as is far too prevalent in our schools..

Horror Stories That Hurt Student Academic Achievement This Halloween.

As we approach Halloween, its "trick or treat" time for the kiddies.  However, when it comes to the New York City Public Schools, its all about tricking the students and their parents rather than treating them to a good education. Thanks to the DOE and Chancellor Carmen Farina, the schools remain underfunded, short on teachers, and continue to have the largest class sizes in the State.  Here are some villainous actions the schools and the DOE has done to their students.

 A middle school in District 24, with a significant immigrant population from Latin America had hired provisionally a bilingual ATR guidance counselor to service this needy population.  The guidance counselor has loads of experience and her ESL extension on her license gave her the ability to better serve the students and their parents.  The Principal, rather than hire this person, hired a friend of the Principal's sister instead.  The "newbie" has no school experience, is not fluent in Spanish and has no bilingual extension.  The joke is on the students because its what's best for the Principal and not for her neediest students.

 A high achieving high school in District 28 found out that the DOE will no longer pay for the "sixth period" classes  and the school would need to pay for them out of their own budget.  The Principal's response?  He eliminated all Science Advanced Placement courses and reduced electives to save on teacher hiring.  The riddle is how can these high achieving students, having fewer options, can advance in their field of interest and help their college ambitions?

 A high school in District 29, that saw an exodus of over 50% of their staff this school year, had a 0% passing rate in Regents Chemistry,  The Principal decided to hire a Physics teacher who hasn't quite mastered to English language to teach two classes of Regents Physics and one class of Advanced Placement Physics.  Quite a trick to expect students who couldn't pass Chemistry to pass the much harder Physics Regents. Moreover, this school needed twice as many over the counter students as the other schools in the campus just to stay afloat  More level 1 students and higher level courses is a two-faced policy that's doomed to fail.



This high school in District 24 is known for an infamous Principal that has one of the lowest staff trust factors in Queens.  She targets veteran teachers and has numerous investigations dealing with her running of her struggling school.  She is poison to ATRs who dare complain about the school,   I have been told that 5 ATRs were subject to discipline in the first semester last year alone..  This school made the papers for academic fraud, financial mismanagement, and age discrimination. Yet, the DOE refuses to take action against this Principal.  How this situation is good for student academic achievement is beyond me and she is poison to any teacher who dares to fight back.

The "Leadership Academy Principals" that put their petty and vindictive behavior above the academic needs of their students.  School after school run by these principals have untenured staffs, high teacher turnover, and an unstable school environment that hurts the academic needs of their students.

The bloated Renewal School administrative staff, led by Superintendent Amiee Horowitz who are moistly rejects due to discipline or poor performance in their previous positions.  This high salaried staff provides little leadership to the Renewal schools but demand accountability to show improvement while not being held accountable themselves.

The DOE claims that they must essentially freeze school budgets and keep the schools underfunded  They only give the schools 89% of Fair Student Funding and even when they grant the schools a measly 3% raise, they take things away like forcing the schools to self fund a "sixth period" that eats up the increase.  Yet the DOE budget has increased by 54% since 2008 as they must pay for a bloated bureaucracy and questionable consultant services.  As the students suffer from lack of resources and large class sizes that hurt academic achievement, the DOE says "feed me more"!

Comparing Apples And Oranges - The New York State Common Core Tests Of 2016.

With great fanfare our inept Mayor, Bill de Blasio, and our disappointing Chancellor, Carmen Farina, hailed the academic improvement of the New York City students.  What was left unsaid was that the 2016 tests were radically different from the previous years.  The 2016 tests were shorter, with less questions, and more importantly, there was no time limit.  Furthermore, because of the large "opt out" numbers in the higher achieving middle class suburbs the cut scores are lower.   NYSED commissioner, Maryellen Elia even stated that this year's test was "not an apples to apples comparison" as she told the New York Post.  Furthermore, the esteemed CUNY education professor, David Bloomfield said the following.  "The increases are illusory.”


Unfortunately, real academic achievement has not been demonstrated by the badly flawed and manipulated high-stakes State tests.  In fact the NAEP national test, the gold standard, has not shown any improvement in student academic achievement since 2013. Therefore, the 2016 State tests are probably invalid as a meaningful measurement to show real academic gains.  Read the NYC Parents Blog for a clearer and more complete analysis of the State test flaws.

Let me give you a real world example, if you were a chess player and played chess with and without a clock  which game would you fare better in?  The game without a clock of course since there is no time pressure to contend with..  The same goes for the State tests, the students are bound to do better without the pressure of a time limit. Moreover, the fewer questions also contributes to higher student achievement, especially when the State once again lowered the "cut scores".  Finally, teachers were given more test preparation materials and were better able to concentrate their test preparation instruction.  This is especially true in the charter schools where the majority of the day is concentrated on the English and Math test preparation.  Therefore, it's little surprise that the charter schools had relatively large increases in the badly flawed State tests.

The bottom line is that the NYS high-stakes Common Core tests are badly flawed, manipulated to meet certain political goals, and are geared to test preparation rather than real learning.  Consequently, these State tests and have no validity when it comes to real academic achievement.

More Proof That There Is A Correlation Between Poverty And Academic Achievement.

In 2004 Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, heeding the education reform community, decided to eliminate the neighborhood high school and give students "free choice" to apply to any high school in New York City that was not a specialized school.  This "free choice" was supposed to narrow the academic achievement gap and help diversify schools.  In fact, Chancellor Joel Klein in his exit interview with the New York Times said " poverty is not destiny" when it came to student academic achievement. Well, fast forward to 2016 and the high schools are far from diverse with far too many of them segregated by race and income.  As for narrowing the racial/income?  It has been a total failure as the "college and career readiness" numbers show.  In other words, the education deformer claim that poverty is not the primary factor in academic achievement but teacher quality is has been proven false.  In fact, Joel Klein himself grudgingly acknowledged this in a speech this year.

Now adding to the evidence that poverty is correlated with poor academic achievement, a study just completed convincingly shows that a students home zip code is strongly correlated with academic achievement, regardless of what high school these students attend.  A study prepared by Measure for America found that neighborhoods are even more important than race or culture.  A Washington Post summary of the report is found Here.  Some of the findings are as follows: when linking the best and worst neighborhoods to graduation rates.

Neighborhood.............................................Graduation Rate

Morris Heights.....................................................60.9%
Ocean Hill/Brownsville.........................................61.4%
Crotona Park.......................................................61.4%
Highbridge..........................................................63.4%
Hunts Point.........................................................63.4%
East Harlem.........................................................65.1%
Far Rockaway......................................................67.7%
Bedford Stuyvesant.............................................67.7%



Neighborhood.............................................Graduation Rate

Greenwich Village/Soho....................................95.1%
Bayside/Little Neck...........................................92.2%
Forest Hills........................................................91.0%
Tottenville.........................................................89.0% 
Upper East Side.................................................88.3%
Murray Hill/Gramercy........................................86.8%
South Beach......................................................86.0%
Fresh Meadows.................................................83.9%

What the report shows that regardless of what high school the student travels to, the biggest factor in the student academic achievement is the community that student lives in not the quality of their teachers or the location to school resides in.


Note:  While I believe the graduation rate is inflated and the college and career readiness rate is probably a better indicator of student academic achievement, the study is simply comparing the graduation rate for different neighborhoods which shows the true academic achievement gap.

Poverty Is The Reason We Can't Narrow The Academic Achievement Gap.

The education reformer holy grail is to reduce the income/racial academic achievement gap and to attempt to achieve this goal they have tried different strategies to try to make it happen with little success.  Bill Gates is the poster child of the education reformer organizations and he has tried various strategies, none of them have worked.  First, it was the small school movement which he admitted failure.  Then it was cameras in the classroom that was to be used to identify good teaching that was shot down like a lead balloon.  Next, was advocating charter schools and blended learning which has been a disaster where it has been tried, including New York City.  Finally, his new emphasis is on "teacher quality"  which is a major part of the program of high-stakes testing to evaluate teachers.  However,  many states have retreated from using test scores to evaluate teachers (New York State) or are eliminating it all together like Seattle Washington.

The primary reason that the education reformer organizations can't seem to significantly narrow the income/racial achievement gap is their failure to address the poverty issue.  Nationwide 42% of children who live only with their mother are living in poverty and instead of trying to eliminate poverty by keeping families together, promote safer communities, and have financial and food security. Its easier to lay the blame on the lack of "quality teachers" for poor student academic achievement.

Now we have a 10 year study done in San Diego California that tried mightily to narrow the income/racial achievement gap by hiring more teachers of color, increased teaching professional development, and better teacher certification practices.  The blueprint can be found here.  The result has been disappointing, the ten year study showed only marginal progress and in some cases no progress in narrowing the academic achievement gap.  .

The reason that none of these programs have worked is the failure to address the poverty issue and as long as the education reformer organizations ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room and that is poverty, blaming teachers or the schools will not result in any significant improvements in narrowing the income/racial achievement gap.

School Diversity And Reality.

The big push by Chancellor Carmen Farina is to try to diversify schools but how do you do this without forced integration which was declared illegal by the Supreme Court back in 2007?  Trying to diversify a school is a very tricky issue.  You don't want to scare off middle income families, manly White, by encouraging them to send their child to a school with low test grades and that cater to low-income minority students from the housing projects.  Moreover, by establishing a quota system as some elementary schools are trying to do has resulted in failure when tried in the past.  The end result was that many middle class families will just send their children to the local parochial or private school, defeating the purpose.  Finally,  no right-thinking parent from well to do households will allow their elementary school child to be bused to a lower performing school outside the neighborhood when their child's friends are going to the higher-performing neighborhood school?  Not many parents will allow their elementary school child to be a guinea pig just to satisfy someone's idea of social engineering.

That brings me to school choice.  Many districts allow parents to select their school and many middle class parents select schools with high test scores and low poverty rates that has caused clustering in specific schools. Few, if any, parent would gamble their child's education and well-being by having them travel outside the safety of their community  for lower quality schools., How will the diversity forces encourage the middle class parents to take a chance in integrating a lower performing school?  Unfortunately,  there is no real solution to this thorny diversity issue.  Even when one or two schools succeed in becoming diverse, they usually tip the other way by ending up to attracting many of the middle class families to the school and crowding out the low-income minority student.  Brooklyn is a prime example where a school that is majority middle-class and white is located a couple of blocks from a near 100% minority school who are usually low income and struggle with low test scores. How do you force middle class families to send their children to these low performing schools?  You can't!

At the high school level, school choice is real and any student can apply to any school in the City.  However, look at our high schools, few are diverse.  Some in Northeastern Queens, Southern Staten Island, and parts of Brooklyn are. Otherwise, most of the city high schools are near 100% minority or, when it comes to highly screened and specialized schools, majority Asian/White.  School choice is a joke when it comes to Southeastern Queens where my school is located in a solidly middle to working class community, with no low income projects in the area.  Yet, many of the students in the four schools that inhabit the Campus find that the majority of their students live in Far Rockaway, South Jamaica, and Rochdale Village, all two bus rides from the campus.  Had the Bloomberg Administration retained zoned schools, the Campus would have retained the student population of the community rather than scrounge for low-achieving and over-the-counter students who are usually "high needs".  Three of the four schools in the Campus were short between 75 to 130 students for their freshman class this year and took far too many level one students just to meet the numbers.

The reality of the situation while income and racial diversity is a worthy goal but achieving diversity in the New York City schools is simply a pipe dream.   Bbringing back the neighborhood schools while attacking the poverty issue is a better approach to improve our schools in the long run, even if we cannot solve the school diversity issue...

Education Deformer Pursuit Of The Holy Grail.

Since the turn of the century, education deformers have been in pursuit of the "holy grail" that would make every American student academically proficient.  This futile search for education excellence has been met with disappointment, frustration, and failure as all their attempts to improve education has made it worse instead as they ignore the root cause of the problem..

First, there was no child left behind that required all schools and their cohorts meet academic standards by 2014.  Over the years many states obtained waivers,  like not hiring "highly qualified teachers" and carving out exemptions for different cohorts of students.  Then there was the Bill Gates pushed small schools initiative that claimed small schools that replaced large schools help students.  Once the playing field was leveled,  (take a look at the Bronx) even Bill Gates realized that small schools were not the answer. Next, were the charter schools, surely the charter schools freed from union regulations was the answer.  Innovative teaching and the ability to impose strict discipline will allow for academic achievement.  However, most charter schools became test prep factories and failed to provide a stable teaching staff as teacher turnover hurt the very student academic achievement they were trying to achieve.  Moreover, in the few successful charter schools like "Success Academy" , those schools found ways to suspend struggling students, not promote them, and make life miserable for their parents until the student was removed from the school.  Even, the biggest supporters of charter schools are slowly realizing this model does not work,

Bill Gates, then spent his billions to push for a teacher evaluation system, making teachers accountable for student growth scores.  Encouraged by the Obama Administration who dangled billions of federal dollars to the states during the depth of the recession, 47 states jumped at the money, called "Race To The Top"with many of the largest teacher unions supporting it.  It mattered little that most teachers were dead set against such an unfair teacher evaluation system but it was much needed money.   Furthermore, despite a study that shows teachers account for between 1% (high school) to 14% (K-2) of a student's academic growth, some states like New York requires student growth scores to be an astonishing 50% of a teacher's evaluation!  Now, many States are rapidly retreating or eliminating their teacher evaluation systems as being punitive (Danielson)  and riddled with errors (junk Science). However, the damage has been done with a teacher shortages spreading throughout the country and fewer qualified individuals willing to be disrespected and abused by electing to become a classroom teacher.

Finally, the newest  idea that ed deformers are picking up on is "blended learning" that is a combination of classroom and online courses.  However, experience has found that "blended learning" has not lived up to its promise and many school districts, including New York City, are using it to eliminate teaching positions to save money and use it as a "credit recovery course" .  Unfortunately, the use of "blended learning" is already morphing into just another way for struggling students ti get easy credits.

Will the education deformer world find the "holy grail" for that great education?  Not very likely unless they solve the social-economic factors of family, poverty, and community first and then spend the funds needed to reduce class sizes and provide quality teachers to the schools.  Unfortunately,  that's the ed deformer blind spot on what's really needed to improve student academic outcomes.

Time To Bring Back The Community High Schools To Combat Academic And Racial Segregation.

At the beginning of the 21st century (2000), high school were community based as each high school was zoned and the students who lived in that community zone went to their high school.  The only exceptions were the specialized and vocational schools.  Along came Michael Bloomberg and his Chancellor, Joel Klein, who decided that school choice was the cure for the ills of the New York City public school system.  The zoned high schools became a thing of the past and a student can choose any high school throughout the City.  This became known as school choice and was supposed to make all high schools competitive and diverse.  However, the exact opposite happened instead.  Here we are in 2016, after 12 horror-filled years under Mayor Bloomberg and the high schools are more segregated both academically and racially than ever before.

The Bloomberg/Klein tenure saw the DOE deliberately segregate schools both academically and racially.  First, they eliminated zoned high schools, allowing high performing students go to any school they wanted to while the low performing students were left behind.  Second, the DOE encouraged an increasing numbers of schools to become screened schools whose sole purpose was to attract high performing students to the school.  Third, the Bloomberg/Klein administration decided to close many of the large comprehensive high schools and to achieve that purpose was a deliberate policy of dumping "high needs" students in increasing numbers in these schools to ensure these schools fail and be replaced by the Bloomberg small schools.  Finally, to ensure that the targeted large high schools  struggle and eventually close, the DOE would discourage high achieving students from either going to the school or allowing them to transfer out.

The result of the deliberate Bloomberg/Klein policy was to segregate many of the high schools both academically and racially.  Many of the struggling high schools academically in the City are nearly 100% minority.  By contrast, the academically proficient high schools are either diverse or majority Asian and White.  While bringing back the zoned high school is not a complete solution to segregated schools, its a start as each school will have a layer of high achieving (minority) students and these students will go a long way to improve the schools academically and bring in school pride that is sorely lacking in far too many schools.  More importantly, over time as neighborhoods change and slowly gentrify, the schools will also become more diverse and attractive to all the community's student population.

You want more diverse schools both academically and eventually racially then bring back the community high schools.

THE NAEP Results Show That Common Core Doesn't Work.

For the first time in twenty-five years the NAEP scores went down or remained flat for both Math and Reading nationwide and in New York State,  In New York City the scores remained essentially flat despite the rise in charter schools and  more intensive after school programs.  This is the first, and I suspect not the last time, that the data shows that Common Core is a failure.

The NAEP scores is the "gold standard" of testing and this proves that the emphasis on Common Core is a failure.  Interestingly, education officials tried to deflect the blame by claiming the flat or declining NAEP scores were due to poor teacher preparation, larger percentage of poor and minority children, and that it was a one year hiccup.  However, its very obvious to me that Common Core is not the answer to student academic achievement.

The bottom line is that the NAEP results show that Common Core is a failure on so many levels when it comes to improving student academic achievement.

Teacher Inequality In Poor And Minority Schools Cointinues In New York State

Despite rhetoric from the Governor, NYSED, and the Chancellors of NYS and NYC, teacher inequality continues in the poor and minority schools of New York State.  In a report by the State conclusively shows that the poor and minority schools suffer from higher teacher turnover.  Moreover, these schools are staffed with inexperienced teachers, teachers not certified in the subjects they are teaching in, and have lower evaluation ratings than other schools.

The report goes on to show the familiar socioeconomic and racial disparity that the Race to the Top (RttT) was supposed to eliminate with an influx of $700 million dollars that is now all spent by the State with little educational result. Most disturbing is how teacher inequality continues in the schools with the highest percentage of poor and minority students, especially in the big cities.  In a takeaway from the report is the following statement.

In a quarter of schools with the highest percentage of poor and nonwhite students, more than 7 percent of teachers were in their first year, compared to less than 2 percent at the whitest and most affluent quartile of schools in 2013-14. And while less than 1 percent of teachers in those schools were deemed “not highly qualified” — because they lacked an appropriate college degree or teaching license — that rate was between 6.9 percent and 8.8 percent in less affluent schools.

How can these schools close the student academic achievement gap when these schools suffer from not only funding issues but staffing issues?  In fact, the report was able to link schools with a large percentage of "high needs" students with low-rated teachers (of course the teachers may have been low rated because they have high needs students based upon the junk Science of the Value Added Method),  According to the report, blacks are twice as likely to have "ineffective" teachers than white students. 

The report recommended that school districts recruit top-rated teachers to work in the lowest performing schools.  Good luck achieving that goal.  In New York City, the DOE is willing to give a teacher a measly  $5,000 and I believe no top rated teacher is willing to give up a position in a good school for such a small sum of pocket change and be exposed to an "ineffective" rating based upon the junk science of VAM for teaching "high needs" students. 

With a teacher shortage looming and few top college recruits willing to be a career teacher, look for the racial/income student academic achievement gap and teacher inequality to continue as the few top quality teachers will only work in the most academically sound learning environments that can only be found in the higher achieving schools.