Central cuts to include universal G&T testing, quality reviews
Last week, at the same time Chancellor Klein started his "classic divide and conquer" campaign to cut the budgets of high-performing schools, he also announced that he would be cutting $200 million from the DOE's central budget. We're starting to get a picture now of what programs and services will go the way of the $200 million. Helen reported that top schools will not receive annual quality reviews and that dozens of jobs will be cut centrally.
Today, we learn that the DOE is jettisoning its plan to screen all kindergarteners for "giftedness" this coming year. The plan has drawn mixed reception since it was announced last year as part of the standardization of G&T admission: anti-testing advocates opposed it as an expansion of the DOE's already swollen testing program, while others, including some parents who commented on this blog while waiting for their G&T letters, saw it as a way to increase equity by finding gifted kids whose parents might not know to ask for testing.
What else do we know the DOE plans to cut from its central administration? Is the chancellor right that individual schools won't suffer more because of the cuts there?
6 comments:
Hmmmmm.....so now that universal testing has revealed that the applicant population in the top percentiles far exceeds the number of seats in existence it seems like a good idea to go back to a system in which only children whose parents seek testing will have a shot at access. That will certainly cut down on the numbers but will not improve equity. The end result is, essentially, to cover up the gross insufficiency of accelerated and G&T seats for kids scoring 97% and up citywide and the crying need for greater differentiation in the general education classroom for the kids between 90th and 97th.
Certainly cuts can be made at Central but this one does look a bit convenient for Tweed to clean up at least part of the mess it made of this year's admissions process.
So much for evening the playing field. This year kids in good hoods got more seats; kids in bad hoods way less. Maybe it is the way 4 y.o. are being evaluated/tested that should be questioned? Bring back the teacher recs!
Re cutting school reviews -- who cares about them. They were meaningless this year. Anybody who wants real info looks at Inside Schools reviews. I was peeved to see the NYT using DOE stats for their review of Kensington (Brooklyn) schools this weekend in the NYT. Meaningless info.
I was annoyed to see those stats from the DOE Quality Reviews in the NYT, too. Parents who have kids in the school system already may know that the reviews are just junk, but the fact that statistics exist, no matter how faulty they are, means that they are floating out in the world to be used by journalists,marketers, etc. Those statistics are meaningless in the context of an article about real estate.
No one believes that $200 million is going to be cut centrally; the City council analysis shows a proposed $12 million cut at Tweed, due to a hiring freeze.
for more on this, including the briefing documents, see the NYC public school parent blog.
I have a feeling this reversal of plans to test everyone has to do with the fact that the DOE has no idea how many qualifiers will actually take the G&T seat offered to them this year. I suspect there will be quite a few programs that will be under enrolled.
To test everyone would make this uncertainty even greater, since at least this year, parents who have no intention of moving their child opted out of the test.
This is not to say I agree with this reversal. They've thrown equality out with the bathwater.
What sad times we are living when education is put in the back burner....Children are in need of a great education and the US being the superpower should provide that great education like other nations who place education as priority. Cuts should be made in other fields that are not as important.
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