Bloomberg School Deform #1

This is my first entry on the Huffington Post. Most of my blogs will address school related issues in the New York metropolitan area. I am a former New York City high school teacher, a graduate of New York City public schools, a parent of three children (now adults) who attended New York City public schools, and the grandparent of two kindergarten kids. I currently teach secondary education at Hofstra University, but I think I know New York City schools. I will try to get some of my friends, colleagues, and former students who are working teachers to share their insights into what is going on. I welcome replies.

Should New York City Mayor Bloomberg, or any other local government official, be fired because the local economy is in decline? Most political commentators and voters would give elected officials a pass, at least temporarily, because the causes of a city or county's economic woes are often too complex. Many of them, such as the mortgage crisis, the volatility of global financial markets, and an impending nationwide recession, are beyond a mayor or county executive's control. Reason says, give them a chance to work with what they have to improve conditions. Find ways to support them, rather than undercut their efforts.

But reason does not function when it comes to the evaluation of teachers, especially by the Bloomberg Administration in New York City. A deputy chancellor in the city's Department of Education, which is under direct mayoral control, announced the latest panacea that will supposedly boost student scores on standardized tests by carefully monitoring how the students of individual teachers perform. In theory, beginning teachers whose students score below expectations would be denied tenure, and veteran teachers would be brought up on charges and replaced.

There are a number of problems here. First and foremost, most of the reasons students fail to perform as expected on standardized tests are beyond the control of individual teachers. In the United States, the best indicator of an individual student's performance remains the socioeconomic status of his or her parents. When families are doing well, meaning parents have decent jobs, can afford adequate housing and regular health care, and children live in safe neighborhoods, students perform well in school. While there are always individual exceptions, this is overwhelmingly the case.

In 1983, my stepdaughter graduated from Midwood High School in Brooklyn. At the time, I was teacher at Franklin K. Lane, also in Brooklyn, but serving a very different student population. At the graduation ceremony, the principal of Midwood waxed poetic about how wonderful the school's faculty was and gave them full credit for outstanding student performance and their acceptance, with scholarships, into elite colleges. I approached him after ceremony and suggested, if the difference is the teachers, perhaps he and his staff would change places with me and my colleagues at Lane and turn the school around. Needless to say he declined my offer.

As far as I know, and I challenge anyone to provide an example that can be verified, no school, and no school district, anywhere in the United States, where the student population is overwhelmingly drawn from families that are poor and suffer from all of the disabling effects of poverty, has even been "turned around." The examples that are usually cited are actually the result of changing demographics, very selective admissions policies, or a heavy, but temporary investment of money and other resources. The simplest way to boost test scores is to change the student population.

Monitoring test scores on standardized tests in the way that is being proposed by the Bloomberg transforms schools for students in poorer communities into test prep academies. It undermines substantive education, their preparation for the real world as adults, and our society's hopes for an educated, thoughtful citizenry. No elected official, business leader, or middle class professional would allow their own children to attend such a school. Further, recent comparative studies demonstrate that when tests are changed, students in these test prep academies who mastered one set of questions or a particular test format, do poorly again. Whatever they had learned, was not transferable.

I think I was a decent high school teacher, and as a teacher educator for nearly two decades I have worked with some outstanding and many good teachers. In my experience, it takes three to five years to master the trade, and that is with a lot of hard work, and with a lot of support. Even then, for a number of reasons, students do not always do as expected on standardized tests.

In New York City, where on-site school supervisors are expected to be middle managers who pass along directives and write-up employees for a range of inadequacies, support is lacking and the turn-over rate in hard-to-staff-schools, a euphemism for schools where students are overwhelmingly minority and poor, is between one-third and one-half over the course of three years. Either the Department of Education is recruiting a lot of inadequate teachers, or something is wrong with the system.

There is no simple solution to the problem of poor student academic performance, especially if it is rooted in broader social and economic problems beyond the power of schools to address. The easiest answer is to blame the teachers. Unfortunately, it will change nothing.

 

 

Comments

[NYCSSTeacher]

Very well said Alan

I agree that the problem is not the actual teaching for the most part, but the broad social and economic concerns out of their power. I am a teacher with 6 years experience, a hard-working one at that, and, a solid teacher as well. I have made many observations in my 6 years teaching in Queens that contrast greatly with the education I recieved growing up.

We, as a society, prefer, short term fixes, that look pretty, such as putting more of an effort into state tests or even more time in school. We try to cram too much content into a student, put money in programs that look good, brag about rises in test scores (despite comparing it to the level of the test) and say its progress. We look for easy, temporary fixes, but not the permenant ones that will enable our future generations to succeed in an increasingly competitive world.

I do not see any change happening at this time. I do not feel comfortable that my children will have the same opportunities and success that I have had.