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Can you imagine what a $52 million capital improvement could do for the increasingly overcrowded Beach Channel High School? Keep imagining -- the $52 million is going to soundproof the building against the noise from nearby JFK airport.
School officials in Dallas have started giving GPS devices to kids who regularly have trouble making it to school — so they can't pass off illegitimate excuses when they're truant. The GPS devices appear to be improving attendance for these students, and one expert notes in the Times article on the subject, “It’s far better than locking a kid up” — not to mention less expensive, despite paying for a full-time case manager to check in on students.
Still, some in Texas have complained about the tracking systems, saying the ankle bracelets used in an earlier iteration of the Dallas experiment, and currently used in a similar program in another Texas city, are reminiscent of slave chains. I, too, am uncomfortable with a program that eases kids to the indignities of being monitored electronically. On the other hand, perhaps if students at Brooklyn's Boys and Girls High School were part of a program like the one in Dallas, they would make it to school in time for the starting bell, after which, according to the Post, students complain they are sometimes barred from admission. (Boys and Girls is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit over illegal pushouts filed in 2005 by Advocates for Children, Insideschools' parent organization.)
Today Sam Freedman reprises his jeremiad from earlier this year about what happens to schools when large high schools near them begin to phase out. The only thing that's really different in today's story is the schools involved: Instead of Beach Channel accommodating students zoned for Far Rockaway, to apparently disastrous results, now its kids who would who have gone to Brooklyn's Lafayette flooding into the unconventional, highly rated John Dewey High School. Freedman writes:
Faculty members, students and administrators at Dewey say that the students coming from Lafayette are academically deficient, although Education Department statistics show that the current crop of ninth graders performed essentially similarly to previous cohorts on the citywide reading test. Still, the perception at Dewey is that Lafayette students did not choose Dewey for its quality, but landed there by default because they did not qualify for any of the Lafayette building’s mini-schools. With the overcrowding, Dewey students and staff members say, in many periods of the day there are several hundred students with no assigned room, often roaming the halls. A round of budget cuts this year sharply reduced staffing of the “resource centers.” ...Reading between the lines, it seems possible that administrators and students at Dewey are using Lafayette-zoned kids as scapegoats for trouble that's not always caused by them and that the problem is just as much a school program that is inflexible in the face of crowding pressures as it is the particular kids who have started enrolling.
The nadir for Dewey came in March, when a student — not newly admitted from Lafayette — was spotted by classmates and a teacher handling a gun and the building was put under police lockdown for several hours. Though the weapon was never located and no charges were ever brought against the student, a heightened sense of disruption continues.
At about half of all city high schools, the only foreign language offered is Spanish, creating a challenge when, as is often the case, many students are already fluent Spanish speakers, according to a new article in City Limits.
What do high schools do with those students? “The schools design classes in Spanish for Spanish speakers,” says Maria Santos, chief of the DOE’s Office of English Language Learners and Foreign Languages, in the article. “They focus on developing more of their literacy in Spanish.” Sounds like a great plan -- but the article's author didn't speak to any students, so I'm left wondering whether this is true.
Many of the high schools I've visited take advantage of native Spanish speakers' language proficiency to let them place out of fulfilling the state's one-year foreign language requirement, and then fill their schedules with more English and math class time. I'd be willing to bet that this happens even in many of the high schools that offer instruction in French, Italian, Russian, and other languages. And that's a far cry from taking AP Spanish literature classes.
Earlier this week, a blogger at The Chancellor's New Clothes took aim at Credit Recovery classes, where students who have failed classes can "recover" those credits by completing makeup assignments over the course of a few days. The teacher writes:
[Students] are earning credit in a course that they failed because they deserved to fail. And they will be making it up in 9 hours.It looks like this teacher is not alone in asking these questions. In today's Times, Elissa Gootman and Sharona Coutts write that educators citywide are concerned about the Credit Recovery option and that the State Education Department is investigating whether the short classes are in fact legal, since "seat time" is one criterion it sets, along with subject mastery, for earning credits.
So what are we telling our students? What are we telling those students who decide that coming to class or doing work is not important? What are we telling those students who work hard every day for their grades and their credit?
Over at the Insideschools high school forum, user LeonDMatthew describes what happened earlier this week when the mobile scanning unit showed up at his school:
I came into school today and was surprises to see the police presence. I knew what was happening we were being scanned. This time I was determined to keep my belongings but was unsuccessful. I was told that if I did not surrender my cellphone and zune (like and i-pod), I would be handcuffed and they will be forcefully taken. So I surrendered them. While my belongings were being bagged and tagged I voiced my opinions to the school aid. I said "I can understand if they were taken because I was caught using them but the scanning and threatening and all the commotion were unnecessary." All he said was this is what the principle says and I'm doing my job. I also petitioned to him all of the "what ifs" I could think of. For example I mentioned an incident that happened last week when there was a gang shoot-out in front of my school, but still no cigar. I was told my belongings would be returned on Thursday. What do you think? Was I and my fellow students wronged today? Please tell me what are your opinions about the whole no cell phone policy I want to know what parents are thinking. Please give me some adult insight.So, adults, what can we tell LeonDMatthew? Hope you're not caught without a cell phone next time gang violence flares up in your neighborhood? Shut up and obey the security guards -- it's the only way you'll be able to get to class? There has to be a better way to deal with school safety.
Oops. Administrators at the Bronx High School for Performance and Stagecraft are in hot water with the DOE after they allowed the Barack Obama campaign to film students discussing a class assignment based on Obama's "Yes We Can" speech. It's against DOE policy for schools to be used in political or promotional films; the 13-minute film has been circulated as a fundraising pitch by the Obama campaign. In addition, students are identified by their full names, and several say they are 9th graders — it's unclear whether the campaign sought releases from those students and their families before filming.
We already know that military recruitment goes "unchecked" at many high schools around the city and that the DOE says it prefers schools to have freedom from regulations than freedom from military incursions. But did you know that the Marines routinely fly teachers, counselors, and parent coordinators — those they consider "influencers" over high school students' decisions whether to enlist — to South Carolina to "see how we make Marines"? The Daily News recently reported that when the parent coordinator from W.E.B. DuBois High School came back from her trip to Parris Island, she said, "They had a belief in what they were doing. ... It changed my mind about the whole thing. It was real." Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which spearheaded the report about excessive military recruiting in NYC schools, told the Daily News that teachers were getting "a sugar-coated experience that is designed to turn teachers into cheerleaders for the Marines." With teachers as cheerleaders, who needs recruiters?
As the mayoral control forums have heralded in an open season against the last five years of New York City school reform, I've heard a growing defense of large high schools. Last week at a New School event, Merryl Tisch called on the DOE to "revitalize the concept of large high schools," noting equity issues in the assignment of students to small schools; increased curricular and extracurricular options generated by a larger student body; and increased bureaucracy of having 1,500 principals citywide. Now, in today's Post, we see the smiling principal of 4,500-student Francis Lewis High School, where despite the problems caused by overcrowding, students are successful and happy. It's useful to know that some students prefer having "something for everyone" over small class sizes — although that's a choice students and schools shouldn't have to make.
Great news!! We got our specialized and non-specialized school results back yesterday, and I got into my first-choice specialized high school...
In Insideschools' most recent college advice column, our counselor noted that guidance counselors in many high schools are responsible for so many students that they often are unable to give each kid the attention he or she deserves. I recently heard from a father who said the same situation persists in middle schools as well. Kids applying to high school or college don't get adequate support, nor do kids who need help solving personal or family problems.
Why doesn't this issue get more attention? Possibly, it's because the situation hasn't changed much in decades. Check out a 1990 New York Times article on the subject, "Trying Times for Guidance Counselors." The article describes a system that is underfunded by the state, where guidance counselors can just barely stay on top of paperwork, much less grapple with the individual and very adult challenges of their students. If that doesn't sound familiar, perhaps this will:
''Our kids are feeling totally alienated and not connected,'' said Caesar Previdi, the principal of Martin Luther King Jr. High School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. ''The schools have gone too far in the direction of judging kids on the basis of test scores and grades. In the schools we should not be ducking our responsiblity to support the family if and when thqe family is crippled.''Some things never change.
Many of us know that kids with limited English proficiency have limited high school options. But it's a lot easier to understand what that means to immigrant kids and their families after reading Jessica Siegel's article about Ralph Antony Toussaint, who arrived from Haiti in August at age 16, in the Village Voice's education supplement this week.
For weeks this past fall, Ralph Antony and various members of his family ping-ponged around Brooklyn, encountering obstacles at the enrollment center and finding that several schools suggested by the DOE were too crowded to take another student or lacked the special English language instruction that a new immigrant would need. Eventually, it took the help of an advocate to get Ralph Antony admitted into overcrowded Clara Barton High School, which has a Haitian Creole dual language program.
No one should have to spend five weeks finding a high school, but at least Ralph Antony finally landed in a school that was right for him. A DOE spokesperson told the Voice, "If a school is sent a student from the enrollment center, the school should take him or her." But several of the small high schools to which the enrollment office directed the family rejected Ralph Antony because they couldn't provide him the services he needed. Last year, Advocates for Children Director Kim Sweet explained to the Citywide Council on High Schools that the DOE requires kids with special needs to go through the regular high school admissions process without having any assurance that their match will have the services they need. The DOE's thinking in this situation appears to be similar, and kids who need English language services lose out.
(Incidentally, I know that I read this article last fall I read an article on the Voice's website — and for a while I tried to find it again to link to it, but it was gone. I guess holding articles for six months is one way New Times is cutting the Voice's costs. It's too bad, because articles like this one deserve to be seen.)
Lunch at 8:59 a.m.? That's what some kids at Richmond Hill High School are scheduled for -- so they've taken to drinking water all day to feel full. In today's "On Education" column in the Times, Sam Freedman continues his crusade against overcrowding in the city's few remaining comprehensive high schools, writing about conditions at Richmond Hill now that it enrolls 3,600 students, twice what it is meant to hold. He last wrote about the impact on Beach Channel High School of being slammed with dozens of poorly behaved students entering through "over the counter" enrollment.
Principal Frances DeSanctis says only a construction project can reduce the crowding pressure. But while DOE officials say it's a "priority" to reduce enrollment, their only plan seems to be to hope that new small schools in the area siphon away entering 9th graders.
This letter, signed by Dana O'Brien, was published last week in the New York Times.
As a public school student myself, as well as on behalf of the New York City Student Union, I would like to commend Assemblyman Mark Weprin on his public statement on the overemphasis on high-stakes testing in New York City public education.
While there are still many great teachers in this city who are working hard to foster critical thinking, creativity, imagination and all of the qualities that make a truly educated person, their efforts are often squelched by Department of Education policies and curriculums that value uniformity and accountability over teaching and learning.
While we at the Student Union recognize and appreciate the need for accountability in such a large system, we believe that a degree of flexibility and subjectivity is necessary in evaluating schools and students. We are working with Chancellor Joel I. Klein’s staff on improving aspects of the school report card system, but there is still much to be done.
In October, Comptroller William Thompson issued a report lamenting the declining status of vocational education. But now with a new head of Career and Technical Education, the DOE may be planning to bulk up vocational school options, the Sun reports. Students in the city's CTE schools and programs post higher Regents scores and graduation rates, despite the fact that CTE schools are not funded as well as other schools. According to the Sun, rumors are swirling that the DOE plans to build and open "model" CTE schools to seize on these strong results.
The DOE's new head of CTE programs, Gregg Betheil, was until recently a senior vice president of the National Academy Foundation, which coordinates vocational programs in a number of NYC schools, including the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at Erasmus, where every student participates. Betheil also worked as a teacher and technology coordinator at Martin Luther King before it closed; according to a 1998 Village Voice article, he was the "champion" of integrating technology and education and inspired students.
I've liked the vocational schools I've visited. Kids are engaged in their work and generally seem happy to be at school. This feeling was especially prevalent at George Westinghouse High School when I visited this fall. There, as at many larger schools, enrollment has declined in recent years as kids enjoy more high school options. But the DOE has not slammed Westinghouse with "over the counter" transfers, as it has other, non-vocational large schools. I wonder whether this is because of the DOE's bias against vocational education. Let's hope that if that bias is truly changing — and it should — the DOE doesn't start filling vocational schools with kids who aren't looking for career-based high school programs.
Nestled in a Times article yesterday about the pedagogical values of graphic novels was the information that fans of the genre tried to start a comics-themed high school but were not approved by the DOE. I'm not sure if I feel better to know that there is some limit as to what school themes are approved, or worse knowing that the DOE thinks wildlife management and fire safety are more likely than comic books to get kids excited about learning.
The Comic Book Project is a national program run out of Teachers College that aims to trick kids into developing literacy skills by reading and writing comic books. Since starting in a Queens elementary school eight years ago, the project has expanded to almost 900 schools nationwide, according to the Times. Check out some comic books by New York City kids at the Comic Book Project's gallery.
And if you're looking for something to do this holiday week, go see "Persepolis." It's based on Marjane Satrapi's excellent graphic novel series about growing up in Iran.
Two news stories today about grading improprieties remind us of the unintended consequences of placing high stakes on tests and scores.
At Central Park East High School, Principal Bennett Lieberman is under fire for a memo he sent to his staff calling for teachers to hand out higher grades, telling them, "If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities." Teachers and students are upset, and Deborah Meier, a founder of the school who now works as an education professor and activist, hypothesized in the Daily News that Lieberman's memo was a response to the progress reports, which give credit to high schools based on how many classes students pass.
Also, Yoav Gonen reports in the Post on the investigation of a cheating scandal at Wagner High School on Staten Island, where an assistant principal engineered an attempt to artificially raise students' scores on June 2006 Regents exams. The report of investigators recommends that the assistant principal, who is now an AP at MS 88 in Brooklyn, be fired, but Wagner Principal Gary Giordano, now the AP's husband, will go almost entirely unscathed. The Post bills the story as an exclusive, but the most recent edition of New York Teacher, the UFT's newspaper, has more details about the testing improprieties, as well as other allegations of wrongdoing against Giordano.
There have always been corrupt administrators, but as pressure to improve performance ratchets up even more, I think we can assume we will see more incidents like these.
Teachers, administrators, and students at Canarsie High School got the news they feared earlier this week: the Department of Education will phase Canarsie out because of its consistently poor performance. It won't accept any new 9th graders in the fall of 2008, and the last seniors will graduate in 2011. Presumably, new small schools will open in the Canarsie building.
With the school scoring an "F" on its progress report and an "undeveloped" rating on its Quality Review, its demise seemed inevitable. But a teacher told the Daily News that news of the closing "came as a shock to everyone," and a Daily News article last week described the school's attempts to stop its doors from closing. Administrators planned to ramp up the level of academic work and tighten security this spring, saying, "We won't go down without a fight." Teachers told the Daily News that they think Principal Tyona Washington is receptive to change -- but she's also experienced in ushering troubled schools to their deaths; after graduating from the Leadership Academy, she was principal of IS 390 in Brooklyn for its final year.
The DOE has announced the closing of two more schools: Far Rockaway High School in Queens and PS 220 in the Bronx. PS 220 will close at the end of the school year; it will reopen next year with a new name and new leadership. Far Rockaway will phase out and graduate its last students in 2011.
Those students will not, however, include the more than 50 kids who were transferred earlier this year to Beach Channel High School, where many of them disrupted the school's tenuous stability. Enrollment is down, fights are up, and more safety agents have been installed at Beach Channel. I'd say Beach Channel is on the chopping block, but then where will Far Rockaway kids go, now that their zoned school will cease to exist?
Update 12/7: Andy Jacob of the DOE writes: "You should know that those students [Sam Freedman] mentioned weren't actually transfers from Far Rockaway - they were students who are zoned for Far Rockaway but were placed in Beach Channel during the OTC process. The whole thing is a red herring, since (1) plenty of students zoned for Beach Channel were placed in Far Rockaway, (2) if you look at students who actually transferred from one school to the other, more went from Beach Channel to Far Rockaway than vice versa, and (3) as I'm sure you know, which high school a student is zoned for really doesn't matter unless they actually want to attend that school (maybe a student zoned for Far Rock is interested in Beach Channel's unique oceanography program, for example). And it's worth noting, too, that Beach Channel's enrollment is several hundred students under their register projection this year, whereas Far Rockaway is a bit over theirs. Beach Channel has available seats, which is the biggest factor in determining OTC placements."
In keeping with its promise to produce more of the "Best of ..." lists that make newsstand customers open their wallets, US News has just come out with its first-ever list of best high schools in the country. New York City has six schools in the top 100. All of them -- Stuyvesant (No. 15), Bronx Science (20), Staten Island Tech (22), Brooklyn Tech (39), Townsend Harris (45), and NEST (74) -- are highly selective.
Schools were evaluated on how well their students do on state tests, how well "disadvantaged" kids did, and how kids fared on AP tests. So it's no surprise that the most selective schools come out on top, and that good schools that don't offer AP classes, such as Bard, didn't make the list.
Thirty-eight more NYC schools made the cut for the silver and bronze categories. I didn't check every school, but scanning the list I saw at least a handful of schools that got C's on their progress reports. The more lists and grades we have, the less each one will mean.
