Diane Ravitch Wins the 2011 Moynihan Prize! by Leonie Haimson -NYC Public School Parents

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Diane Ravitch was just selected as the 2011 recipient of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize, created by the American Academy of Political and Social Science to honor those individuals whose careers in the academic or public arena have been dedicated to the use of social science research to improve public policy. The $20,000 prize was awarded in recognition of her long career of distinguished work on urban education as a researcher and public official. More on the Prize here.

Diane is a true public intellectual, someone who has engaged fully in the public arena in order to ensure that local, state, and federal education policy is informed by history, social science research and good sense. She has also passionately advocated for the parent and teacher voice to be recognized in the national debate over education reform. I can think of no one else in any field of public policy who is more esteemed, or who has made more of a contribution to the wider understanding of the history of public education and what should be done to ensure that all children receive a quality education.

Over the past few years, she has tirelessly written and travelled the country, cogently and persuasively arguing that the current craze for privatization and high-stakes accountability is neither research-based, nor an effective means to improve our public school system. Rather, she has pointed out how the imposition of these policies will further degrade opportunities for children, particularly the most disadvantaged students who reside in inner cities and other high-needs areas.

If it is indeed true that education is the civil rights issue of our generation, Diane is one of our most esteemed leaders in the struggle for the right of all children, no matter where they attend school, to be provided with a well-rounded and rich curriculum, high standards, small classes and experienced teachers – indeed, the same conditions as the elite have long demanded in the schools that their own children attend.

As John Dewey once wrote, "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children". Through her eloquence, vision, and scholarship, Diane has passionately and convincingly argued that our public school system should be strengthened, rather than undermined – so that it can provide for all the nation’s children the kind of education that the best and wisest parent wants for his or her own child.

I cannot imagine a more deserving candidate for this award. Like Daniel Patrick Moynihan himself, Diane’s vision is entirely non-partisan, transcends ideology, and is based on the best evidence and scholarship, as opposed to the latest political fads or fancies. Her immense courage and honesty has impelled her to speak truth to power, whereas lesser individuals would keep quiet or repeat the delivered wisdom.

More personally, Diane has been a mentor and a friend to me, as well as a personal inspiration, when I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the immense power and money of the oligarchy that has come to control education policy in this country.

She will receive the prize at an award ceremony in New York on June 2, 2011.

I know that many of you reading this post would like to give her your congratulations for receiving this honor, which so richly deserves. You can either comment here, or send your thoughts privately to her at gardendr (at) gmail dot com.

Obama Defends Sweeping Education Reforms in Face of Criticism from Minority and Teachers' Groups - Democracy Now!

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President Obama took on critics of his administration’s sweeping education reform plan on Thursday in a nearly hour-long speech at the National Urban League’s 100th anniversary convention. His address came on the heels of news that New York public school students are not performing nearly as well as prior state tests had revealed. We speak with Diane Ravitch, the former Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush, and Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters.

Harsh Lessons for the Editors of the Daily News and NY Times by Leonie Haimson - NYC Public School Parents

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The Daily News editorial board finally gave up today, and admitted that the city’s big gains in state test scores over the Bloomberg era have been a vast mirage, in an editorial called Harsh lesson for N.Y.

They were apparently briefed by NY Commissioner Steiner on the findings of Harvard's Daniel Koretz, which, according to this editorial and numerous news reports, has found that almost half of NYC 8^th graders who score as proficient on the state exams will never graduate from high school; and three-quarters of those who do graduate need remedial courses before entering CUNY community colleges.

Yet the editors of the News have up to now been very willing victims of this deception – and a lapdog of every single false or exaggerated claim from the Bloomberg/Klein administration.

This, despite the warnings of many testing experts like Bob Tobias, Diane Ravitch, Jennifer Jennings, and Fred Smith that the standards had been lowered, and their own terrific reporting staff of Erin Einhorn, Meredith Kolodner, Rachel Monahan, and Juan Gonzalez, who, for at least three years, have revealed the numerous ways in which the state test scores have been systematically inflated over time.

Those of us at the NYC parent blog have also written about this extensively; see this entry from Steve Koss, analyzing an Erin Einhorn story from Sept. 4, 2007. Einhorn did an ingenious experiment with middle school students, showing how the math exams had gotten easier, and how SED and the DOE should have and probably were aware of this fact (I can’t find the original article online anymore.)

Let’s hope that the News editors will finally learn something from this “harsh lesson” and start showing some independence.

The NY Times also bears some of the blame. I have never seen an editorial in the Times that even mentioned the possibility of state test score inflation; and the paper hasn't yet reported on the Koretz' findings.

In August 2009, when Bloomberg was pressing for extension of mayoral control of the schools and his own re-election, the Times published a credulous story that recounted the steep increase in state test scores without directly quoting any of the skeptics; and also incorrectly used the DOE’s preferred date of 2002 instead of 2003 to claim improvements on the national exams called the NAEPs.



The article omitted any of the abundant evidence that the state exams and their scoring had become easier over time. (See my critique of their August 2009 article, NY Times falls in line with the Bloomberg PR spin control; and the response from Times editor, Ian Trontz: The NY Times response, and my reply. See also Wayne Barrett's take on our critique of the Times.)


What are the chances that now that Bloomberg has successfully won his battle to retain nearly unlimited control over our schools, and is in the midst of his third term, the editors of the News and the Times will apologize to their readers, and admit that the smell they’ve told us was roses was really an artificial chemical, successfully concocted to fool them? Don't hold your breath.

Don't Blame Teachers for Our Education Failures by Raina Kelley - Newsweek

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What Charter Schools Really Tell Us About Education Reform

I think it’s fair to say that most people know we’re in the midst of an educational emergency. Just this week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told CNN, “There isn’t one urban school district in the country—Chicago, L.A., New York, D.C., Philly, Baltimore—there’s not one urban system yet where the dropout rate is low enough and the graduation rate is high enough.” And for those people who work in the school system, no issue has come to represent the struggle to save public education more than the fight over charter schools. For the sake of clarity, let me just note that a charter school is one which uses public funds to run a school that is managed privately, thus giving them the freedom to experiment as well as hire nonunion teachers. Charters such as the Harlem Children’s Zone HCZ in New York have longer school days (and a longer school year) with kids often required to come in Saturdays to work with tutors. The most successful charter schools (and they are not all the same in either quality or mission) have produced stunning results. At the Harlem Success Academy, 100 percent of third graders passed their state math exam and 95 percent passed the state English exam.

I am thrilled by these test results and I am very glad that the educational needs of poor urban students are finally being addressed in a serious way. But lately I’ve grown increasingly cynical about the assertions of charter-school advocates that the most pressing problem facing our public education system is the plethora of lazy, incompetent teachers who cannot be fired under any circumstances. As Steve Brill wrote for The New York Times Magazine last week: “Indeed, the core of the reformers’ argument, and the essence of the Obama approach to the Race to the Top, is that a slew of research over the last decade has discovered that what makes the most difference is the quality of the teachers and the principals who supervise them.” Maybe it’s because I was a teacher’s pet growing up, or because of my undying love for school supplies, but a lot of this sounds to me more like a full court press to break the admittedly powerful teachers’ unions than simply an effort to improve public schooling.

Full disclosure: my husband is a public-school teacher in a middle school in one of Brooklyn’s toughest neighborhoods. But we try not to discuss education reform for the sake of our marriage. Personally, I’m a little confused about the all-out push for charter schools by billionaires such as Bill Gates and Bruce Kovner. On the one hand, I support charters for their ability to prove there are solutions to some of the huge and seemingly intractable issues facing our country’s education system. I’m very grateful that schools like HCZ have proven that the achievement gap between urban students and their suburban counterparts can be closed. But I do not support using their existence to demonize teachers. For the vast majority of public-school teachers, so much of their job is out of their control that asking them to be held accountable for their students’ performance is tantamount to blaming car salesmen for Toyota’s accelerator problems. Poverty is still a huge barrier to learning, for instance. Just a quick look at some of the other differences between charters and their public-school brethren should be enough to prove that the path to an improved educational system is not all about firing teachers.

1. Charter schools, by their nature, have students whose parents are motivated and involved in their education. On the off chance that charter-school parents are not motivated to help their children succeed, they are often given support and help by the charter school itself. Indeed, New York Magazine revealed that parents of kids at the Harlem Success Academies “must sign the network’s ‘contract,’ a promise to get children to class on time and in blue-and-orange uniform, guarantee homework, and attend all family events.” The same cannot be said of public schools, which are required to take any child who resides in their district and do not have the resources or mandate to teach parents as well. But rather than push to raise the cap on charter schools, why not copy and fund some of their parental-support programs for existing public schools?

2. Charter schools often receive the same amount of public funding per student as public schools, and also benefit from their ability to raise and use charitable donations. Public schools receive their budgets from their local departments of education and have no ability to receive more. In fact, they’re prey to budget and service cuts and layoffs—New York City expects to lay off 4,400 public school teachers this year but no charters will be affected.

3. Charter schools have many more resources than the public schools they’re trying to replace. Surely, classroom teachers would have more opportunity to teach and teach well if they had enough books and study materials for all their kids. Donors Choose, a charitable organization where teachers submit proposals for funding by ordinary folks like you and me, estimates that the average public school teacher spends more than $500 of his or her own money on supplies for their students, or more than $1.3 billion dollars nationally. As Charles Best, founder of Donors Choose and a teaching veteran, told me, “We were all spending our own money on basic stuff—copy paper and pencils. We had a tough time innovating and none of our ideas would go past the planning stage. Now, at any one time, there are 15,000 to 30,000 live classroom requests on our site. This is a testament to the character and spirit of teachers.”

4. Charter schools are not required to accept special-needs children or children with learning disabilities. Diane Ravitch, author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “The students who are hardest to educate are left to regular public schools, which makes comparisons between the two sectors unfair. The higher graduation rate posted by charters often reflects the fact that they are able to “counsel out” the lowest performing students … This is not a model for public education, which must educate all children.”

5. When discussing charter schools, advocates often mention the difficulty in firing public-school teachers. In that same Times Magazine article, Brill notes that “Once they’ve been teaching for three years and judged satisfactory in a process that invariably judges all but a few of them satisfactory, they are ensured lifetime tenure.” But teachers are not judged by themselves, but by their principals and other administrative staff. So isn’t there a way for school systems to strengthen their professional development programs or put forth proposals for more effective teacher observation, mentoring systems or remedial teacher training, if necessary?

It is simply not true that teacher quality is the sole difference between charter schools and public ones. As I’ve written in the past about the Harlem Children’s Zone, but which also applies to many other charter schools, “what the HCZ does is first recognize that the amelioration of poverty does not begin and end with an excellent education, but also requires a full belly, parental education, safety, advocacy, and the expectation that every student will succeed.” So until charter-school advocates can show me how teachers and teachers alone can be held responsible for all the learning that charter schools provide, I just can’t believe that holding only teachers accountable—and not the school systems they work for—is the fair or even the best way to improve public education.

Bloomberg's Bogus School Report Cards Destroy Real Progress by Diane Ravitch - NY Daily News

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The latest school grades released by the city's Education Department are bogus. An astonishing 84% of 1,058 elementary and middle schools received an A (compared with 38% last year and 23% in 2007). Another 13% got a B. Only seven schools rated a D or an F.

Four schools labeled "persistently dangerous" by the state got an A from the city, and three of these deeply troubled schools got a B. Three schools that the city wants to close because of low performance got an A. Every school that got an F last year got an A or B this year.

The problems with the report cards were apparent from the start. When the system was launched in 2007, testing experts warned that it relied too heavily on single-year changes in standardized test scores, which are subject to random error and therefore unreliable. But the Education Department did not listen.

The report card system makes a mockery of accountability. No one can be held accountable when almost everyone gets an A or B. No one can tell which schools are getting better or worse. Nor do parents get enough information to make good choices.

This debacle is caused mainly by the state tests, which have been dumbed down in recent years. Daily News reporters Meredith Kolodner and Rachel Monahan were the first to break the story about the collapse of state standards between 2006 and 2009. Last June, they revealed that the test questions have gotten easier and more predictable. They found that the state asks nearly identical questions year after year, and the excessive focus on test preparation has corrupted the test results.

A few weeks ago, Kolodner reported that city students were able to pass the state tests by guessing. After the article appeared, a city schoolteacher, Diana Senechal, tried an experiment, which she described at gothamschools.org. She took two state tests without reading the questions. She answered the questions at random (checking A, B, C, D) and received enough points to reach Level 2, sufficient for promotion in the city.

Because the state tests have been dumbed down, test scores soared. The number of students at the lowest level - those who are at risk of being held back in their grade - dropped dramatically. In sixth-grade reading, 10.1% (7,019) were at Level 1 in 2006, but by 2009 only 0.2% (146) were. In fifth-grade reading, the proportion of Level 1 students fell from 8.9% in 2006 (6,120) to 1.0% (654) in 2009. In seventh-grade math, the proportion of Level 1 students plummeted from 18.8% (14,231 students) in 2006 to 2.1% (1,457) in 2009.

In almost every grade, the state has lowered the bar, making it easier for students to get a higher score. In 2006, students had to earn around 60% of the points on the state math tests to reach Level 3, which the state defines as proficiency, but by 2009, they needed to earn only 50%. With teachers administering daily practice tests containing questions very nearly the same as those that would appear on the state tests, it became easier for students to become "proficient."

What the report cards do not show is that most school districts in New York City scored in the bottom 5% of the state in science and social studies or that nearly a third of the schools don't have a teacher of the arts. Those subjects don't count.

The school report cards should be revised or scrapped. First, they are based on dumbed-down state tests. Second, the city will hand over $33 million to teachers and principals as a bonus for these phony scores (and more later to high school teachers and principals). Third, the report cards focus only on reading and mathematics, thus neglecting science, history, the arts, literature, civics and geography.

We are reaching a perilous stage where the test scores go up while real education - the kind that is available in the best schools - disappears.

Ravitch is a historian of education at New York University. Her new book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," will be published next spring.

Mayor Bloomberg’s Crib Sheet by Op-Ed Contributor Diane Ravitch - - NYTimes.com

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ARNE DUNCAN, the secretary of education, has urged the nation’s mayors to take control of their public schools so that they can impose radical reforms. He points to New York City as a prime example of a school system that made sharp improvements under mayoral control.

Photo: Diane Ravitch Website...

Actually, the record on mayoral control of schools is unimpressive. Eleven big-city school districts take part in the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Two of the lowest-performing cities — Chicago and Cleveland — have mayoral control. The two highest-performing cities — Austin, Tex., and Charlotte, N.C. — do not. Mr. Duncan came to New York City last week to urge the New York State Legislature to renew the law that grants control of the New York City public schools to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. That law, passed in 2002, will expire at the end of June.

Mayoral control of the schools is not a new phenomenon in the city’s history. From 1873 to 1969, the mayor appointed every single member of the Board of Education. The era of decentralization from 1969 to 2002 was an aberration, because the mayor had only two appointees on a seven-member board.

Yet no mayor has exercised such unlimited power over the public schools as Mr. Bloomberg. Previous mayors respected the independence of the board members they appointed. The present version of the board, the Panel on Education Policy, serves at the pleasure of the mayor and rubber-stamps the policies and spending practices of the Department of Education, which is run by Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Mr. Bloomberg’s allies say that the results of the current system are so spectacular that the law should be renewed without change. Secretary Duncan agrees: “I’m looking at the data here in front of me,” he said while in New York. “Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up ... By every measure, that’s real progress.”

It sounds good, but in fact no independent source has verified such claims.

On the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress — widely acknowledged as the gold standard of the testing industry — New York City showed almost no academic improvement between 2003, when the mayor’s reforms were introduced, and 2007. There were no significant gains for New York City’s students — black, Hispanic, white, Asian or lower-income — in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading or eighth-grade mathematics. In fourth-grade math, pupils showed significant gains (although the validity of this is suspect because an unusually large proportion — 25 percent — of students were given extra time and help). The federal test reported no narrowing of the achievement gap between white students and minority students.

The city’s Department of Education belittles the federal test scores and focuses on the assessments given by New York State. And, indeed, the state scores have soared in recent years, not only in the city but also across New York state However, the statewide scores on the N.A.E.P. are as flat as New York City’s. Our state tests are, unfortunately, exemplars of grade inflation.

The graduation rate is another area in which progress has been overstated. The city says the rate climbed to 62 percent from 53 percent between 2003 and 2007; the state’s Department of Education, which uses a different formula, says the city’s rose to 52 percent, from 44 percent. Either way, the city’s graduation rate is no better than that of Mississippi, which spends about a third of what New York City spends per pupil.

Moreover, the city’s graduation rates have been pumped up with a variety of dubious means, like “credit recovery,” in which students who fail a course can get full credit if they agree to take a three-day makeup program or turn in an independent project. In addition, the city counts as graduates the students who dropped out and obtained a graduate-equivalency degree.

To further raise the graduation rate, the city does not include as dropouts any of the students who were “discharged” during their high-school years. Some discharges are legitimate, like students who moved to another school district. But many others are so-called push-outs, students who were ejected from school even though they had a legal right to be there, often because their grades and test scores were bringing down their schools’ averages. The Department of Education refuses to disclose how many students are in each of these categories. We do know, however, that more than one-fifth of the members of the class of 2007, or 18,524 students, were discharged and not counted as dropouts.

Even those who manage to graduate from our high schools are often not ready for college. Three-quarters of the graduates fail their placement examinations at the City University of New York’s community colleges and require remediation in basic skills. These are students who presumably passed five Regents examinations to graduate yet cannot read or write or do mathematics up to the standards of a two-year community college. This reflects as poorly on the Regents examinations as it does on the city’s promotional policies.

This is not to say that Albany should eliminate mayoral control — nobody wants to return to the status quo of the ’90s. However, as legislators refine the law, they should establish clear checks and balances. The mayor should be authorized to appoint an independent Board of Education, whose members would serve for a set term. Candidates for the board should be evaluated by a blue-ribbon panel so that no mayor can stack it with friends. That board should appoint the chancellor, and his or her first responsibility must be to the children and their schools, not to the mayor.

The board should hold public meetings to review decisions before they are made final. Local school boards composed of parent leaders should oversee the schools in their districts, although they should not have any financial authority. Moreover, the school system needs a professional auditing agency to evaluate test scores and graduation rates. Claims of improvement are not credible without independent scrutiny.

Not every school problem can be solved by changes in governance. But to establish accountability, transparency and the legitimacy that comes with public participation, the Legislature should act promptly to restore public oversight of public education. As we all learned in civics class, checks and balances are vital to democracy.

Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, is the author of “The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973.”

The Pencil Portfolio by Andrew J. Hawkins - City Hall News

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The law that gives Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Unaff.) complete control of the city's 1,100-plus public schools expires in a little less than 13 months, but Dennis Walcott, the deputy mayor of education, is barely sweating.

Walcott, who also serves as one of Bloomberg's top education negotiators in Albany, is confident state legislators will reauthorize the five-year-old law. But with more than a year left to negotiate the terms, Walcott said he is concentrating instead on improving graduation rates and student performance.

“Right now our goal is results, results, results,” he said, sitting in a conference room at City Hall, his eyes narrowing behind a pair of throwback horned-rimmed glasses.

Especially in the wake of the Sean Bell verdict, Walcott’s public presence of late has been through his role as the most senior African-American member of the administration, going beyond his education portfolio to advise and assist the mayor in this racially charged situation.

But most of his time and energy is devoted to ensuring the continuation of mayoral control past the end of Bloomberg's term, in the hopes of securing a key part of the mayor’s political legacy. That means the private conversations with those who will ultimately make the decision, the public testimony and the constant effort to make the system as strong as possible going in to the review process next year.

After six years of mayoral control, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum (D), Albany legislators, Council members and the teachers union are all looking to weigh in on the debate, which has sharply divided many New Yorkers. Over half a dozen reports and assessments on school governance are slated to come out before the State Legislature even takes up the issue.

Mayoral control could mean the difference between success and failure, Walcott said. A product of New York public schools, he believes today's system is the best that has existed in decades. Higher math scores, smaller class sizes, safer schools and more choices for families are all products of Bloomberg's ability to run the system from City Hall.

But opponents of mayoral control contend that the policy shuts parents out of the debate over school reforms. With the law set to sunset next year, many parents, politicians and educators are pushing for greater checks and balances and a larger role for parents.

Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University and an opponent of mayoral control, points to poor reading and math scores in 4th and 8th graders from 2003 to 2007 as evidence of the shortcomings of mayoral control.

And those are not the only problems she sees.

“Did the mayor or the chancellor resolve to investigate the cause of the flat reading scores?” Ravitch wrote in an email. “No, they did not. Did they promise to install a better reading program? No, they did not. Did they admit that the reading program they mandated across the city at great cost was a failure? No, they did not.”

Ravitch predicts that the State Legislature will reauthorize mayoral control, but with caveats.

“There should be a restoration of some form of democratic governance in education and some ability by the public to limit no-bid contracts and get real accountability by the education authorities,” she wrote.

But Walcott said any effort to limit the mayor's management of the schools would be regressive.

In his frequent trips to Albany to talk with state lawmakers, he said the concerns he hears are mainly parochial, and not about the system as a whole.

“Obviously there's an overarching issue in reauthorization,” he said, “but in my interaction with them, in my engagement with them, it's really around a lot of the district issues.”

If anything, mayoral control has improved policy discussions between lawmakers, school administrators, parents, teachers and community leaders because it has made the system more transparent and less bureaucratic, Walcott said.

Raised in Queens by a social worker and an exterminator for the city's Housing Authority, Walcott worked as a daycare instructor and a kindergarten teacher before becoming the executive director of the Harlem Dowling's West Side Center, a social services non-profit. He started during the height of the crack epidemic.

Those who know him from that role say he still carries the experience with him.

“Dennis is both a social worker and an educator,” said Dorothy Worrell, the center's current executive director. “Without a doubt, he's from the trenches. And he doesn’t hesitate to go back into the trenches when he’s needed.”

In 1990, Walcott was tapped to head the New York chapter of the Urban League, where he launched countless new services for the disadvantaged.

Bloomberg appointed him deputy mayor of policy in 2002. At the start of the second term, Walcott transitioned to deputy mayor of education and community development, overseeing the Department of Education, the Department of Youth and Community Development, the City University of New York and the New York City School Construction Authority.

Walcott has weathered several crises over the years—from the school bus fiasco of 2007, to accusations of school security officers using excessive force with some students, to the fierce debate surrounding metal detectors in schools.

Throughout all, he has retained his trademark calm air about him, said City Council Member Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), chair of the Education Committee and an opponent of mayoral control.

“I have not known Dennis to yell or scream or get emotional sometimes like I do,” said Jackson, who has known Walcott since his days at the Urban League. “And over the past several years, he’s gotten smoother and more in tune with the bureaucratic processes.”

But their disagreements, including those over proposed education cuts, have cooled Jackson's opinion of Bloomberg, and, as a result, his opinion of Walcott.

“Dennis maintains the status quo,” said Jackson. “I don't think that he’s making waves. And I don't think that in his position the mayor would want him to make waves.”

On the contrary, Walcott said he has been working with the mayor to radically change the education system in the city, improving outcomes for students and raising graduation rates, which Walcott says are “getting better and needing to get better-er.”

Like most in the administration, Walcott hesitates to reflect too much on his career post-Bloomberg, preferring instead to stress the intimidating workload he has in the remaining 19 months.

But there was one job Walcott said he would consider: principal of a rough-and-tumble high school, like Morgan Freeman’s character in Lean on Me.

“It's a different kind of job,” Walcott said wistfully. “Because I'd be right there directly in the heart of what I've been talking about my whole life."

Why I Resigned - February 15, 2008 - The New York Sun

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Photo - nyla.org

A story on Wednesday in the The New York Sun reported that I resigned from the editorial board of Education Next. I resigned because Education Next published a deeply flawed account of Mayor Bloomberg's school reforms. I resigned with regret because I admire Education Next. I have found it to be the most consistently interesting and lively publication about American education currently available.

That is all the more reason why I was surprised to read Peter Meyer's article, "New York City's Education Battles," which is a thinly veiled puff piece for reforms that have been both costly and ineffectual. As a member of the editorial board of Education Next and as someone who has written extensively about education in New York City, I was stunned that I did not see the article until after it was published.

The article treats school reform in New York City as a matter of conflicting opinions, of "he-said, she-said," rather than as a matter of verifiable fact, even when facts are available.

For example, Mr. Meyer says that the New York Times reported "no significant progress in reading and math" between 2003 and 2007 for city students on the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress and "little narrowing of the achievement gap." Mr. Meyer then quotes a hedge fund manager and blogger, Whitney Tilson, who said that the Times' story was "lousy" and that city students actually made gains in three of the four measures.

But the NAEP scores are not a matter of opinion; the facts can be easily checked — google NAEP TUDA 2007 and look at pages 50-51. Anyone who does check will learn quickly that New York City students made no statistically significant gains between 2003 and 2007 in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading, or eighth-grade math. There were no significant gains for black students, white students, Hispanic students, Asian students, or lower-income students. New York City was the only city (of eleven tested) where eighth-grade reading scores declined for black, Hispanic, and lower-income students, and the achievement gap grew. Only in fourth-grade math did city students make statistically significant gains. If facts matter, Mr. Tilson's opinion is wrong.

Despite these dismal outcomes, writes Mr. Meyer, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein "defended the results." Mr. Klein said they showed "good progress." But at the same time, Mr. Meyer says, the mayor and chancellor were "sobered." Why would they be sobered if they thought the results showed "good progress?" Certainly they were not chastened enough to throw out the failed reading program that they had mandated citywide in 2003 nor did they open an inquiry to find out why eighth-grade students made no significant gains in math.

The two graphs accompanying the article were even more misleading than the text. One shows state and city test scores in math and reading between 2001 and 2007. The text on this graph says, "Both Mayor Bloomberg and his critics seek to prove their points by comparing city and state trends in student test-score performance. Each side picks certain tests and certain points in time to make their claims and counterclaims."

But it is not simply a matter of opinion about when the Bloomberg school reforms began. The state Legislature passed the mayoral control law in June 2002. The mayor and chancellor spent the fall of 2002 considering reform proposals. In January 2003, they announced what they planned to do the following September.

At the very time that they made their announcement, New York City students in fourth and eighth grades were taking state tests. When the scores were released in May (for reading) and October (for math), there was a large jump in the city's fourth-grade scores, with double-digit gains in some of the poorest neighborhoods.

Others were jubilant about the good news, but newspaper reports said Chancellor Klein's reaction was "muted." He knew that these were not his gains since his new programs would not be implemented until September 2003. The graph in the article, however, leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein should get credit for the test score increases in the two years from 2001 to 2003, before their programs started.

Another graph shows a closing of the achievement gap between black students in New York City and black students in New York State. This is an irrelevant factoid. The term "achievement gap" invariably refers to score differences between black/Hispanic students on one hand, and white/Asian students on the other. Thus, this graph celebrates the closing of a gap that is of no significance, while ignoring the achievement gap that is of greatest concern.

I admire Mayor Bloomberg but I do not admire what he has done to the public schools. I hope that the state Legislature, when it reconsiders public school governance next year, abolishes the bumbling, tyrannical Department of Education and restores an independent Board of Education, appointed by the mayor.

The school system needs checks and balances. It needs a regular, independent audit of graduation rates and test scores. It needs a leadership in which education decisions are made by educators. Such changes won't solve all of our schools' problems, but they will end the pointless turmoil of the past five years, provide honest information about academic progress, and reestablish the role of the public in public education.

Ms. Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution. She also is the author of "The Great School Wars," a history of New York City's public schools.

Roundup of Education Articles...

Ravitch Quits a Publication That's Boosting Bloomberg

By ELIZABETH GREEN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 13, 2008

Mayor Bloomberg standing atop Tweed Courthouse, the headquarters of his education department, in an the illustration for an art in the upcoming issue of a prominent education journal. Graphic by Dale Step

A prominent education journal will suggest in its next issue that Mayor Bloomberg's commitment to improving schools would make him a good candidate for president. But the idea is already running into resistance, with one of the journal's board members, the historian Diane Ravitch, resigning as a protest of what she called an effective presidential endorsement.

The article, which will appear in the spring 2008 issue of Education Next, opens with an illustration depicting a defiant Mr. Bloomberg standing atop Tweed Courthouse, the Lower Manhattan headquarters of the city Department of Education. He grips a long sword in one hand, carries a shield decorated with the New York City seal in the other, and is dressed in full knight's armor.

Headlined "New York City's Education Battles," the article describes Mr. Bloomberg's education plan as a victorious destruction of what had been a "personal patronage mill." It also says that the management changes have been a mixed bag for students, whose math scores the journal says are rising, while reading scores are flat.

It ends on a positive note, arguing that, despite critics' attempts to burst his bubble, "Bloomberg just may have outsmarted everyone."

The mayor's presidential potential is addressed in a sidebar, which concludes, "With all that cash on hand, why not go for the whole ball of wax? If he does, Americans might have a renewed opportunity to ponder the state of American education."

An editor's note by the magazine's editor in chief, the Harvard government professor Paul Peterson, also tackles the presidential question, applauding Mr. Bloomberg for tackling head-on a problem that he says the current presidential candidates have failed to address.

Ms. Ravitch, a professor at New York University who has followed the changes in the New York City schools under Mr. Bloomberg closely and has been a vocal critic, told The New York Sun that she resigned from the board of Education Next after reading the article. "How can a magazine with an editorial board endorse a candidate for president when no one on the editorial board was consulted?" she said.

She said she was also protesting inaccuracies in the story, which she said is "based on ideology, not evidence." Math scores have risen, she said, but only among fourth-graders. A respected national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, last year concluded that New York City eighth-graders had made no significant progress on math and English since Mr. Bloomberg took control of the schools.

Mr. Peterson said yesterday that he had not received Ms. Ravitch's resignation letter, and he said he would be disappointed if he does receive it.

He said the article is balanced and an example of good journalism. He added that his personal opinion is that he would be happy to see Mr. Bloomberg jump into the presidential race.

"It would put education on the national agenda," Mr. Peterson said. "We would start talking about education policy, and I think that would be good. That would be good for our schools."

In an interview, the author of the main article, Peter Meyer, said he agrees with Ms. Ravitch that the city's education results during the Bloomberg administration have been minute. "It is pretty amazing that, six, seven years into this, we barely see a blip," he said, adding that had Ms. Ravitch been given an instructional role in the city schools there would have been more improvement.

But Mr. Meyer said of the mayor, whom he interviewed for the story, "I think he'd make a great education president."

He said Mr. Bloomberg's potential to elevate education as an issue is just one reason to support him. "He would make a great manager of the bureaucracy, I think as he has proved in New York," Mr. Meyer said. "I think he would be good for education and good for education reform."

The article describes Mr. Bloomberg as a compact man who "carries himself like a linebacker." It says the mayor was "sobered" by last year's NAEP test results. "Even though there was some progress in math scores for eighth-graders, overall the results for them weren't what we would have liked them to be," Mr. Bloomberg is quoted as saying.

Contacted yesterday, two other Education Next board members said they would not support a Bloomberg presidential run.

A professor of political science at Stanford who chaired Mayor Giuliani's education advisory team before Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the race, Terry Moe, said Mr. Bloomberg is a good manager but he should not run for president. "What's the point except to serve as a spoiler?" he said.

The president of the Fordham Foundation, Chester Finn, said he is leaning toward Senator McCain.

"We elect mayors to fix schools and such; we elect presidents to keep the nation safe in a dangerous world," Mr. Finn said. The Fordham Foundation led by Mr. Finn and Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance are sponsors of education next, which is sponsored by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Ravitch Quits Ed Next Board Over Lazy Bloomberg Puff Piece

According to this Elizabeth Green story in the NY Sun Ravitch Quits historian Diane Ravitch has slpit from Paul Peterson et al on th board of Education Next over a new article that to praise Mike Bloomberg's stewardship over the New York City Schools and endorsed his candidacy.

Maybe this is just Ravitch throwing a tantrum -- I'll be interested to see what others think -- but publishing a puff piece about Bloomberg seems like a tin-eared and a cockeyed move to me, given all the substantive and widespread criticism that his DOE has received, not to speak of the political moment having long passed.

Losing Ravitch and endangering Ed Next's reputation over a freelancer's article seems even dumber. The Ed Next folks had to know she'd have strong feelings about the piece, which upon first skim reads like it was written by someone new to the topic -- not in a good way (here).

It's full of first-person "I met Bloomberg" fluff, includes fuzzy snapshots that look like they were taken with a disposable camera, and ignores things like the high exclusion rates that made NYC's NAEP scores seem higher than they otherwise would have been, the zigzag path of the Klein reforms, the failed efforts at weighted student funding, etc. Several other recent articles about school reform in NYC have done a much better job (LynNell Hancock in The Nation here, Sol Stern in City Journal here, Elizabeth Green from the Sun here.)

Disclosure: I have written for Education Next in the past and could have written a much better article. Of course, I'll probably never be asked to write for them again.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says Brooklyn's Racial Quotas are Old School...

By CARRIE MELAGO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, February 13th 2008, 4:00 AM

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is asking a federal judge to immediately remove 34-year-old racial quotas from seven Brooklyn middle schools.

The motion asked the judge to lift a 1974 desegregation order that calls for a 6-to-4 ratio of whites to minorities in the schools that house sought-after gifted and talented programs.

The order "has outlived its usefulness as a remedy for unlawful segregation that itself has long since disappeared," the motion reads.

The Education Department's motion comes several weeks after a student of Indian descent sued the city because she didn't get into one of the schools, Mark Twain Intermediate School, even though white students with lower test scores did.

McKinley Unique On Cell Phone Suspension

Buffalo, NY (WBEN/AP)--Districts around the nation are balancing security against disruption with a range of anti-cell phone policies, but few enforce things the way McKinley High School did, with the suspension of a student for talking to school board officials recently about the firing of a favorite coach.

A WBEN survey of area districts found most will not allow any student to use a phone during regular school hours, but few would suspend for a first offense.

A few examples:

• In the Sloan, Depew, Lakeshore, East Aurora and Kenmore-Tonawanda districts, phones are not banned, but can not be used during the day.

• In New York City, an outright ban on having cell phones in school has prompted a lawsuit by a parents group.

• Several districts loosened their policy after the West Virginia shootings, as colleges move toward encouraging phones as a means of emergency text communication.

• Some districts allow student use with prior permission from a teacher, usually only granted for calls to a parent or guardian, for special or urgent purposes.

• Detroit bans cell phones, and a two-time violator will not get the phone back.

• Boston relied on a school-by-school approach until recently, when it changed the policy to let students have a phone, but only if it is turned off and out of sight. Locally, Kenmore-Tonawanda is considering similar changes, to erase a school-by-school patchwork.

• Los Angeles lets kids have cell phones, but they can use them only during lunch and breaks.
  
  Kenneth Trump, president of Ohio-based National School Safety and Security Services, said his research indicates most schools ban the phones. Others require students to turn off the devices during school hours.

"It's really very simple," says Buffalo Teachers' Federation President Phil Rumore.

"You have to have strong rules and you have to continue to enforce them, otherwise kids will continue to get away with it," Rumore says, adding that cell phones have been used in bullying, gang fights, and planning an attack on teachers.

Yet McKinley's tough policy used recently against student Jayvonna Kincannon seems to be an exception to the regional rule.

"It would be progressive disicpline," says Jeffrey Rabey, Lakeshore superintendent.

"It would range from, if it were the first time incident, it would be probably a verbal warning, and if it's a continued issue, it could lead to confiscation of the cell phone with where they can get the cell phone back if the parent picks it up. If it continues it can be anything fom in school suspension to anything like -although I don't believe it has ever happened- an out of school suspension."

Adds Sloan Superintendent James Mazgajewski: "First offense it might be just a warning, the second time it might be detention. Eventually if it continues it may end up being a suspension, but it would take some time."

New York City Ban in Court

Elizabeth Casanola carries her cell phone everywhere — even through the metal detectors at her school.

The high school senior puts the phone under her pants by her waistline, where she knows she won't be patted down. Or she smuggles the phone into school in pieces — the battery separate from the main body.

A ban on cell phones in the nation's biggest school system is creating an uproar among parents and students alike, with teenagers sneaking their phones inside their lunches and under their clothes, and grown-ups insisting they need to stay in touch with their children in case of another crisis like Sept. 11.

Parents have written angry letters and e-mails, staged rallies and news conferences, and threatened to sue. Some City Council members are introducing legislation on their behalf.

But Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have staunchly refused to drop the ban. They insist cell phones are a distraction and are used to cheat, take inappropriate photos in bathrooms and organize gang rendezvous. They are also a top stolen item.

Students have refused to give up their phones, saying the devices have become too vital to their daily existence and to their parents' peace of mind.

“My mother, she needs me to have the cell to call me and check up on me,” said Steven Cao, 16, a sophomore who lives in Staten Island and attends Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He called the ban stupid.

Some parents would prefer a policy that lets students have cell phones but prohibits their use in classes.

New York's 1.1-million-student school system has banned beepers and other communication devices since the late 1980s. But schools have long used an “out-of-sight, out-of-trouble” approach. Then, late last month, city officials began sending portable metal detectors every day to a random but small set of schools to keep out weapons. And the detectors have led to the confiscation of hundreds of cell phones.

New York has one of the country's toughest policies on student cell phones. It also bans other electronic devices, such as iPods.

New York principals said the ban is tough to enforce, especially in large schools without metal detectors.

“Every kid today does carry a cell phone,” said Howard Lucks, principal of New Utrecht High in Brooklyn. “The kids keep them in their backpacks, their pockets. As soon as they see an administrator or teacher, they put it away very quickly.”

Even at schools with permanent metal detectors, students find ways to sneak the phones inside.

Once inside the school, another tactic is to hide the phone in a sandwich roll, according to one principal. Some students leave phones at nearby stores that charge small holding fees.

Yen Ramirez, a junior at Manhattan's Washington Irving High, said students need their phones for emergencies. The ban is a problem “because you never know what could happen.”

Students insist that most classmates use their cell phones responsibly, and they brush off criticism that previous generations got along fine without them.

"It's kind of ridiculous that we think we can't survive without a cell phone when people did it for thousands of years," said Elisa Muyl, 14, a freshman at Stuyvesant. "But now that they have this invention, we should use it."

A Flawed Reform - December 17, 2007 - The New York Sun

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By DIANE RAVITCH
December 17, 2007

The New York City Department of Education has embarked on a perilous new path in its efforts to raise test scores. Just a few weeks ago, the Department released letter grades for the city's schools, from A to F. In recent days, the Department announced the closure of 14 schools that received a D or an F.

Is the grading system accurate and reliable? Did the grading system identify the worst schools? Is the closure of the lowest-performing schools likely to improve public education? Could the Department have taken other actions that might have been more effective than closing schools? The grading system itself is questionable because it awarded high grades to many schools on the state's and federal government's failing lists while stigmatizing some highly regarded schools with grades of D or F. More than half of the nearly 400 schools that the state or federal government has identified as academically weak received an A or a B. At the same time, 99 schools that are in good standing with the state and the federal government received a D or an F from the city.

The city's grading system produced some other odd results. For example, I.S. 289 in Tribeca, the only middle school in the city that was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for its superior performance, received a D. And P.S. 35 in Staten Island, a school where more than 85% of students regularly pass the state tests, was labeled an F.

The reason for these strange outcomes is that the city gives greater weight to improvement than to performance. High-scoring schools are handicapped by what is known as the "ceiling effect." If their students score consistently well on the state tests, a one-year dip in the scores can get them branded with a D or an F.

When a grading system produces such bizarre results, it lacks face validity. That is, on the face of it, the evaluation system is suspect. Of what value is it to anyone when excellent schools, highly regarded by parents, students, and their community, are officially stigmatized as failures? Conversely, of what value is it to anyone when academically distressed schools win an A or a B?

This dubious evaluation system is now being employed to decide which schools will be shuttered forever. Fourteen schools have been picked out for closure, based on their having received a D or an F. Six of these 14 schools are in good standing with both the state and the federal government.

Will the closing of these 14 schools improve public education in New York City? It is hard to say. No one knows if the replacement schools will be better. What will be different about them? Will they enroll the same pupils? Will they have new principals and a new staff? Will the staff of the closed schools be reassigned elsewhere? Where will the new staff come from? Are there scores of stellar teachers waiting for a new assignment? None of this is clear.

Was there an alternative to closing the 14 schools? When Rudy Crew was chancellor, he created a Chancellor's District, where he clustered the lowest performing schools under his immediate care and redesigned them. These schools had a longer school day, highly-structured reading and math programs, classes in kindergarten through third grade of not more than 20 children and classes in fourth through eighth grades of not more than 25 children, and additional teacher training.

Independent evaluations showed that the Chancellor's District worked; it helped turn around struggling schools. The D.C.-based Council for Great City Schools cited New York City's Chancellor's District as one of the most successful programs in the nation.

New York City currently has nearly 400 schools that have been identified by the State Education Department or the federal government as "in need of improvement," a euphemism for a school in academic trouble. The city Department of Education needs an educational strategy to help these schools, not just a plan to close them.

It is not enough to hand out dire letter grades. Schools should get report cards that evaluate their different strengths and weaknesses.

Nor is it enough to turn out the lights. Schools are not a franchise operation. They are deeply embedded community institutions. They should be improved with additional resources, smaller classes, and additional training for educators. The starting point in reforming schools is to have a valid evaluation system that correctly identifies the schools that need extra help. It may not be easy to transform the schools that are in trouble, but if we want a good public education system, there really is no alternative.

Dr. Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the BrookingsInstitution.

NY Times Op/Ed - Get Congress Out of the Classroom by Diane Ravitch...

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Get Congress Out of the Classroom...

By DIANE RAVITCH

Published: October 3, 2007

DESPITE the rosy claims of the Bush administration, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is fundamentally flawed. The latest national tests, released last week, show that academic gains since 2003 have been modest, less even than those posted in the years before the law was put in place. In eighth-grade reading, there have been no gains at all since 1998.

The main goal of the law — that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 — is simply unattainable. The primary strategy — to test all children in those subjects in grades three through eight every year — has unleashed an unhealthy obsession with standardized testing that has reduced the time available for teaching other important subjects. Furthermore, the law completely fractures the traditional limits on federal interference in the operation of local schools.

Unfortunately, the Congressional leaders in both parties seem determined to renew the law, probably after next year’s presidential election, with only minor changes. But No Child Left Behind should be radically overhauled, not just tweaked.

Under the law, the states devise their own standards and their own tests. Based on the test results, every school is expected to make “adequate yearly progress” in grades three to eight so as to be on track to meet that goal of universal proficiency by 2014. Schools that do not meet their annual target for every group of students — as defined by race, poverty, language and disability status — are subject to increasingly onerous sanctions written into the federal law.

Schools that fail to meet their target for two consecutive years must offer their students the choice to go to a more successful public school; if they fail the following year, they must provide tutoring to their students. If the students continue to miss their target, the entire teaching and administration staff may be replaced, or the school may be turned over to state control, or it may be converted into a charter school.

Yet these tough sanctions thus far have been ineffective. Federal agencies report that only about 1 percent of eligible students take advantage of switching schools and fewer than 20 percent of eligibles receive extra tutoring.

In inner cities, where academic performance is weakest, only a handful of students move to successful schools because there are very few seats available to them. In rural America, choice is limited by the small number of other schools in the geographic area. Furthermore, neither research nor experience validates any of the “remedies” written into law. There is little evidence that failing schools improve if they are turned over to state control or converted to charter status.

No Child Left Behind can, however, be salvaged if policymakers recognize that they need to reverse the roles of the federal government and the states. In our federal system, each level of government should do what it does best. The federal government is good at collecting and disseminating information. The states and school districts, being closer to the schools, teachers and parents than the federal government, are more likely to be flexible and pragmatic about designing reforms to meet the needs of particular schools.

However, under current law, state education departments have an incentive to show that schools and students are making steady progress, even if they are not. So the results of state tests, which are administered every year, are almost everywhere better than the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the benchmark federal test that is administered every other year.

Many states claim that 80 percent or more of their students are proficient in reading or math at the same time that the federal assessment shows only a minority of students in those states reaching its standard of proficiency. We will never know how well or poorly our students are doing until we have a consistent national testing program in which officials have no vested interest in claiming victory.

Under current law, Congress now decides precisely which sanctions and penalties are needed to reform schools, which is way beyond its competence. The leaders of the House and Senate Education Committees are fine men, but they do not know how to fix the nation’s schools.

The obvious solution is to reverse roles. Washington should supply unbiased information about student academic performance to states and local districts. It should then be the responsibility of states and local districts to improve performance.

Congress should also drop the absurd goal of achieving universal proficiency by 2014. Given that no nation, no state and no school district has ever reached 100 percent math and reading proficiency for all grades, it is certain that the goal cannot be met. Perpetuating this unrealistic ideal, however, guarantees that increasing numbers of schools will “fail” as the magic year 2014 gets closer.

Unless we set realistic goals for our schools and adopt realistic means of achieving them, we run the risk of seriously damaging public education and leaving almost all children behind.

Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University, was the assistant secretary of education for research from 1991 to 1993.