Just weeks after President Obama awarded New York State a reform-friendly waiver to onerous federal "No Child Left Behind" education rules, for-profit education firms are threatening to strangle the new reforms in the crib.
At issue is the federal Supplemental Education Services (SES) program, which currently diverts hundreds of millions of federal Title 1 dollars from school districts to outside tutoring providers. A few of these outside groups do good work. But multiple reports and investigations of the SES program have shown bloated budgets, profiteering and corruption. An evaluation of the implementation of SES revealed that providers were providing, on average, only 45 hours of services to these high-need students. And national evaluations sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences, most recently by the leading educational evaluation firm Mathematica Policy Research, have found that SES has little to no impact on raising student achievement. Current SES programs are often poorly coordinated with school-day instruction, and success is often driven more by marketing budgets than impact on students. New York can put these funds to better use.
On May 29, New York State became one of 19 states granted a waiver by the federal Department of Education to provide greater flexibility in the use of federal dollars in exchange for pursuing rigorous reforms that have a track record of helping students learn more. An important provision of the waiver allows states and schools more flexibility in using Title 1 money -- including the more than $200 million now set aside for SES providers annually. Instead of paying for special interest programs, these Title I dollars should support proven reforms, such as a longer learning day for low-income students; community school models that provide school-based early childhood programs, health care and social services to help support student achievement; blended learning programs that utilize the best educational software; and better extra-curricular activities such as apprenticeships with professional scientists and engineers.
New York State Education Commissioner John King and reform-minded district leaders have already begun to craft strategies for steering this SES money toward proven interventions to support students and schools. Districts could make savvy choices and work with providers who have a track record of success, including the best of current SES providers. But even before these reforms have taken hold, a group of for-profit SES providers and their lobbyists have been working back-channels in the state Senate and Assembly to preserve the status quo and keep the millions of dollars now going to these SES providers, regardless of their effectiveness. Comptroller Lu found that one New York SES provider collected $860,000 for tutoring students who never showed up.
Our organizations -- Citizen Schools and The Children's Aid Society (CAS) -- and dozens of other non-profit educational support organizations currently work closely with needy schools across New York City and State to expand the learning day and to erase opportunity and achievement gaps. Students in the CAS community schools engage in quality, supervised experiences that enhance their learning and promote participation in the life of the wider community. Additional program offerings, such as poetry clubs and chess teams, build self-confidence and support worthy career aspirations, besides reinforcing classroom gains. Students at Citizen Schools get extra help with writing and math, plus enroll in four apprenticeships a year taught by leading professionals from Google, AOL, Ernst & Young and other successful firms. Students in Citizen Schools and CAS and similar programs benefit from an extra 300 to 500 hours of learning per year -- not 45 hours as in the average SES program. Rigorous evaluations of our programs have indicated significant short and long-term academic and social gains.
After years of rising costs, New York and other states now face a period of flat or declining investment in education. In this climate, it is critical that every dollar -- whether local, state, or federal -- is steered toward effective programs, a priority held by Education Commissioner King.
We urge the New York State legislature and Governor Cuomo to let reform blossom in New York. If the SES status quo is preserved in a back-room deal, the hard-won flexibility offered through the No Child Left Behind waiver will be at risk, the for-profit SES special interest will win, and children will lose out on proven and cost-effective reforms to improve their schools.
Richard R. Buery, President and CEO, The Children's Aid Society
Nitzan Pelman, Executive Director, Citizen Schools New York
Follow Richard Buery on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RichardBueryCAS
That a handful of providers violated the trust put in them by taxpayers is inexcusable, and EIA would be among the first glad to see them go. As to SES's effectiveness, numerous studies show a correlation with student achievement.
But it wasn't the misdeeds of tutors or a couple of reports that led state education officials to apply for waivers. Rather, they pursued the waivers because they want to take away any choice and control parents might have over educational funding and their children’s education, and put it where they believe it rightly belongs – with themselves!
Yes, the same administrators who were supposed to manage and promote SES programs over the past 10 years. How good a job do you think they did?
In most cases: poorly. Why? Because they wanted SES to fail from the start.
With waiver in hand, NY officials now must answer this question: The fall, what will you say to, and do for, the thousands of New York families for whom after-school tutoring has been welcomed and highly valued?
Instead of throwing out a program that works, improve it. With more than 10 years of experience in the field, we have some ideas.
Steven Pines
Education Industry Association
There are thousands of parents whose children are struggling and they have neither the resources nor the options to do something about it. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Fix the way SES is delivered; be more rigorous in selecting who delivers these services, but don't take away parents' options to help their children.
I went to HS w/girls who came from the public school system and most were honest why they didn't go public high school - safety. One girl was pulled out of the former Julia Richmond HS when another female student was raped (!) in the hallway of the school. This is going back 25 years ago and from what some public school teachers have told me, not much is changed.
Trust me when I say that I, and the circle of kids I grew up w/, did NOT grow up w/a silver spoon in my mouth. My parents were just middle class folks, both of which worked full time.
Kids in private schools are, for the most part, in a whole other league.
Public schools K-12 in many areas of NYC have been wholly abandoned by white and or middle class and above parents. What you are often left with are children not only dealing with poverty but a whole vast range of social, emotional and physical problems as well. Yet teachers who only have custody of these children for several hours per weekday are supposed to work miracles. This is expected of them with little resources and often scant support.
We are now several generations into "babies having babies" and this the result. When a poor or lower middle class girl without the skills to cope in life has a child it is all but damning both to a life of poverty.
When behavior like this takes place in government agencies, it's trumpeted by the privatization crowd as evidence of "government ineptitude/corruption". But the same behavior by private organizations is either ignored or touted as "entrepreneurial".
EDUCATION IS NOT A "PRODUCT" and should not be treated as such. It is, in a very real sense, the future of this country and leaving it up to the "free market" to fix our educational system's problems (and yes, I agree that our current system has many problems) is complete idiocy. The sole goal of the free market is to extract as much short-term profit it can from its operations, not to build a stable long-term foundation that will benefit everyone (not just the shareholders).
Simply, which it is not, stated, is the education departments need to be totaled, destroyed and new ones made. Sadly the same people who now are fighting for their power would remain and nothing would happen.
Or you could look at schools that work and use them.
Best of luck NY, when you are able to address the union issues, you can finally tackle actually helping create better schools.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31494936/ns/us_news-education/t/nyc-teachers-paid-do-nothing/
700 NYC teachers paid to do nothing
Accused of misconduct, taxpayers foot bill at cost of $65 million a year
Unions are not an obstacle to quality education. All things considered, they're usually an aid in accomplishing it, since they give the people who best understand it a collective voice in how it's run. That's why unionized systems tend, on average, to be better than those without unions.
I encourage you to check out this article about Finland's success. They are made out to be a model of education due to their results, but no one seems to study and examine what EXACTLY they have done. The Finnish Minister of Education himself mentions his interpretation on the idea of private schools and school choice in this article.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
In the list of proven reforms he provides, he neglected to mention that the receipt of this federal funding is also contingent upon "reforms" that have been refuted by research (high-stakes testing, privatization, deregulation, etc.). The author listed all of the problems with private sector SES providers but completely ignored the same problems that are created as traditional neighborhood schools are given to deregulated private sector charter and turnaround operators.
Many cities having been embracing "reform" in order to receive funding and not be punished for years. The results have been: academic stagnation, widening achievement gaps, high teacher turnover, community and parent disenfranchisement, increased school violence, etc. Philly embraced "reform" so much, they are handing every single one of their public schools over to the private sector. The community school-based model the author speaks of is being destroyed with "reforms" as neighborhood schools are replaced with city-wide attendance schools.
Once schools and districts spend their paltry budgets on test prep materials and training, there isn't much left for extra-curriculars, services, or anything that isn't measured on a test.