DOE announces improvements in class size ... data

Posted by Philissa at 11:52 AM

The DOE has just announced "new measures to improve transparency and detail in class size reporting." Using improved means of data collection, the DOE will start publishing class size reports so parents can know on a grade-by-grade, school-by-school level how large classes are. Now that sounds like the kind of report parents might actually trust when deciding where to send their kids. Of course, they'll have to wade through an Excel file with more than 16,000 entries to get the information they want.

Nowhere in the press release is there any indication that the DOE has intentions of reducing class sizes beyond what principals choose to do on their own, with the help of the DOE's "targeted class size reduction coaching program." But perhaps the improved transparency is a concession by the DOE that parents think class size is important? That would be a major shift from earlier this year, when the DOE worked hard to downplay parents' calls for smaller class sizes in the Learning Environment Surveys.

Student Thought: The first step to saving our schools

Posted by Seth Pearce at 7:07 AM

As of this year my younger brother is no longer a public school student. Like me, he attended public elementary and middle schools, however, when it came to choose a high school, he and my parents decided that he would do better at a private school. Fortunately, they made a good decision for my brother. He is now at a school that he loves, he really succeeds in and he feels does a good job in educating the students.

Out of curiosity, I asked him what the difference was between the public school he had attended and his current school in terms of educational value. His answer was quick and simple: the adults in the building have time to care about the students.

In the NYC education system, the first step to improving schools is creating a situation in which educators have time to care about the students. This can only come for significant reductions in class size and teacher load.

One problem with my brother's public school experience, he said, was the feeling that whenever he approached a teacher for extra help or just general academic support, he felt as though he was burdening them, like they didn't have the time to help their student. This is a major problem and it is not the teachers' fault.

Through my high school experience so far, I can count on one hand how many of my classes were below the union cap of 34 (even though the City claims the average is 25). As a member of the NYC Student Union, I know students from every corner of the city, and over and over I have heard the same sentiment when it comes to class size. Just as problematic is the problem of teacher load, the total number of students a teacher teaches at any given time. This number is often around 170 in high schools.

Education is based on relationships, the most basic and important being that between a teacher and a student. Large class sizes and teacher loads, prevents many teachers and students from developing the relationships necessary to make education happen. Furthermore, while classes of 34 are extremely difficult to manage and teach effectively in, it should be noted that they are equally difficult to learn in. When I entered ninth grade, when confronted with larger classes, I came to an academic standstill. I tried to do the work and do well on tests, but inside I knew that I was just not learning as effectively as I had in previous schools.

Because these factors make teaching and learning just so impossible, they also prevent the clear evaluation of new academic strategies, as even the best programs are doomed to fail under these conditions. Thus, as the title reads, class size and teacher load reduction is the requisite first step to saving our schools.

What we need in New York City, is an education system that makes education possible. When educators are so overburdened that they don't have time to care about the needs of individual students, this is not the case. When the classroom is completely unmanageable and knowledge can not pass through the barrier between teacher and student because of population overload, this is not the case. And when students feel as though they are just another "problem" for the all-to-busy adults in the building, this is not the case.

It is time to cut class sizes and trim teacher loads. If we really want to save our schools, that is the first step.

Cross-posted at NYC Students Blog

CFE: City can reduce class size at struggling schools if it wants to

Posted by Philissa at 5:39 PM

A week after hearing that money it won for the city would finally be on its way, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity has issued recommendations on how to reduce class size in struggling schools. In a report, "A Seat of One's Own: Class Size Reduction in the Lowest Performing Schools in New York City," CFE shows that the city's capital plan falls far short of funding the number of classrooms that will need to be created to drop class sizes at schools on the state's list of those in need of improvement.

Of the 408 schools on the list, CFE found that class size can be reduced immediately at 152 schools and that 43 other low-performing schools can drop class size if they put in place adjustments such as creating annexes or improving the way schools within a building share space. (View geographical maps with school-by-school recommendations.) Beyond that, however, the city would need to add more than 1,500 new classrooms to help the remaining 122 schools that do not already have reduced class size. But the city's capital plan provides only 680 new classrooms, and the DOE is planning to hire only 1,300 new teachers.

With its focus on the lowest-performing schools, the CFE report doesn't even begin to address the investment that will be required to reduce class sizes at the two-thirds of schools not considered failing, many of which are seriously overcrowded. As Class Size Matters's Leonie Haimson has noted, the DOE has not yet released current data about class size citywide; the DOE says the information will be released by Dec. 18.

Student Thought: A solution to the cell phone issue

Posted by Seth Pearce at 11:28 AM

Today, it was reported that the DOE's plan to install cell phone lockers outside of several schools has been put on hold. This plan was created as a possible resolution to the cell phone ban, the contentious rule that states that NYC students are not allowed to have their cell phones in school, even if they are turned off.

In short, the ban is wrong because it puts students, who commute up to four hours per day, into an unsafe situation because it takes away their main line of communication with parents and the police in the event of an emergency. This is in turn contributes to distrust between students and that makes the already difficult tasks of teaching and learning slightly more impossible.

This new plan of building lockers outside of school in which students would pay to store their cell phones is a waste of money. The safety issues that transparent outdoor lockers raise are to complicated to resolve. It doesn't adequately relieve the distrust in our schools. And it does not address the real issue that the cell phone ban is trying to address: academic integrity.

The main reason that Bloomberg has articulated in support of the ban is that students misuse cell phones in class. He says that students make calls and text messages in class and use their cell phones to cheat on tests. While my first instinct is to ask the mayor why he does not ban pen and paper from schools (because if you did a statistical analysis of cheating in NYC schools I'm sure you'd find that students use those as means of cheating much more often than they use cell phones), I believe that it is more important to propose a simple and effective solution to the issue of students misusing cell phones in class.

Instead of banning cell phones and creating a host of new problems, or building super-high-tech-theft-proof-safety-guaranteed-outdoor-transparent cell phone lockers and wasting too much of the DOE's valuable funds, why don't you just LOWER CLASS SIZES!

A student won't get away with using a cell phone in a class of 25! They just won't. And by lowering class sizes you will also increase the amount of actual education that goes on in our school because teachers will be able to develop better learning relationships with their students. As a high school teacher told me, "Lowering class size would fix everything." Everything including preventing students from misusing their cell phones in class and thus getting rid of the need for a citywide ban.

There you have it: a real solution.

Student Thought: Contracts for mediocrity

Posted by Seth Pearce at 8:00 AM

Yesterday, the New York Sun reported that the "Contracts for Excellence" money has been delayed because the state is wary of the city's highly contested plan. Many say that the plan, which devotes the money to five categories which can be determined principal by principal, has given no clear plan on how to reduce the City's ginormous (I hope my English teacher isn't reading this) class sizes (but then again she'd know that it's hard to describe NYC's class sizes as anything other than ginormous) nor has it given enough money to be devoted specifically to that purpose. This great backlash, coming from students, parents, teachers and politicians, has resulted in a "standoff" between New York City and the state.

Last year, the NYC Student Union, having some sort of odd premonition of the city's future plans, lobbied Governor Spitzer's office about setting aside a good portion of CFE money to lower class sizes in New York City. Representatives of the Union also testified at the mandated DOE hearings on the issue and even blogged about it at the NYC Students Blog.

Class size is definitely an important issue (for reasons so numerous I'll have to write another post about it). But in shorter terms my main argument for more class size money has been this: whatever programs we have to better our classrooms, be they improving teacher quality, creating new and innovative curricula, or even working for more "time on task," will fail if smaller class sizes aren't realized. Even if they are good and well designed programs (which we definitely need), there is just something inherently impossible about teaching or learning in our current class size conditions. How can you really keep a class of 34 "on task"?

It seems that the DOE is honestly trying to fix a lot of problems with this new funding. I personally think its leaders have really good intentions. In NYC, however, none of those problems can be solved until we can remedy the class size crisis.

Student, parent, teacher survey results now out

Posted by Philissa at 7:39 AM

Remember the "learning environment" surveys the DOE was pushing parents, teachers, and students to take last spring? Their results are now available in the "statistics" section of each school's DOE website. Each report has a ton of information to wade through, but the New York Times has a useful summary. Some of the most interesting tidbits:

• 26 percent of parents overall answered the surveys, far fewer than the DOE originally said it wanted but a reasonably good sample (though not representative — response rates were much lower in schools with poorer students).
• Most parents' responses indicated that they are generally happy with their schools, just as researchers have discovered pretty much every time they've ever surveyed parents, regardless of the quality of schools from which those parents are drawn.
  
• Perhaps for this reason, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum thinks the survey was "nothing more than a multi-million dollar P.R. effort."
• But there's actually a surprising amount of criticism of principals, coming mainly from teachers. I checked out the reports of a couple of schools that I know are having leadership problems, and it looked like teachers reported freely that their principals don't adequately respect or support them. I wonder whether the DOE will take a closer look at schools like these, even if the final grade into which the surveys are being factored isn't low.
• A quarter of parents said the single improvement they'd most like to see in their kid's school is smaller class size, a request that Mayor Bloomberg immediately downplayed. Small class size advocates mobilized around the surveys, so the results might be a little distorted, but it's still telling that parents almost universally chose class size reduction over "more effective school leadership" and "better communication with parents." And it's simply bizarre to see the disdain Bloomberg has for an idea that makes an unimpeachable goal, even if it isn't immediately attainable.

I'm impressed that the DOE released the survey results in such a straightforward manner. The next step is for the DOE to give parents, teachers, and students a real say in crafting the surveys (that way, perhaps special education would get addressed) and to translate the wealth of information into a language that's more understandable for those of us who aren't trained to analyze data.

Student Action: What is the NYC Student Union?

Posted by Seth Pearce at 9:30 AM

In my first post, I made a quick reference to the NYC Student Union. You might be wondering (and for purposes of this post I hope you are) "What is this so-called NYC Student Union?" Ashu Kapoor, an NYCSU member and organizer puts it this way:

The NYC Student Union (NYCSU) is an emerging collective organization of NYC high school students whose goal is to be a voice for student issues and rights, empower students to take ownership of their education, work with administration and DOE officials to secure an education students deserve, build connections across the NYC school system, and take collective action. The NYC Student Union is entirely organized and run by NYC high school students and is open to all NYC high school students interested in working to make a change in our schools.

The union was started by students from three Manhattan schools in spring 2006 to combat the cell phone ban. Representatives testified at the City Council Hearing on the issue, protested on the steps of Tweed (using cups and string as cell phones), and later had a letter to the editor published in the New York Times. From there we decided to expand.

After launching a student-created and run web site, the union held its first citywide student meeting Sept. 25, 2006. Students from around 15 schools attended. At the meeting, students aired their grievances about their schools and the school system.

For the rest of the year, NYCSU tried to take action on these problems. In addition to holding meetings like the first one every other Monday at the UFT, the union lobbied politicians on issues such as class size, security and funding; conducted workshops with middle school students on becoming engaged in their high schools; held a forum on youth involvement in the education system at Pace University with Future Voters of America; and then ran the Education committee of the 2007 New York City Youth Congress.

This year NYCSU wants to do even more. I'll keep you posted.

If you want more info or are a student who wants to join the union visit NYCStudents.org or contact union@nycstudents.org.

Parents: DOE's spending plan in "bad faith"

Posted by Philissa at 2:09 PM

Above: Parents at the press conference demonstrate the minor effect of reducing class size by less than one kid per class. Philissa Cramer/Insideschools.org

At this morning's press conference on the steps of City Hall, Robert Jackson, chair of the City Council's education committee, and small class size advocates railed against the DOE's "bad faith effort" to reduce class size, as outlined in the city's proposed spending plan. They also took aim at the DOE's "lack of transparency" with the hard numbers behind this initiative and others; in particular, they noted that it's unclear just how many of the 1,300 new teachers the DOE says it is hiring will have their own classrooms. Here are some sound bites from the press conference:

Jackson: "We said, where's the rest of the plan? ... You question [DOE officials], and most of the time they will not come up with answers. ... There's so much lack of transparency, I cannot tell [what's true] as chair of the education committee."

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters: "We asked [DOE officials] how many new general education classes will there be? They couldn't tell us."

Noreen Connell of the Educational Priorities Panel: "What is the advantage of this bad faith effort? What can be gained by not reducing class size?"

Several people who spoke also decried the mid-summer timeline for responding to the DOE's spending plan, which could prevent people from being able to get information quickly and weigh in with their feedback. You can give feedback on the plan at five public hearings on the Contracts for Excellence this week. See the Insideschools calendar for details.