Three Children Left Behind

Today was the last day of school here in NYC so I thought this was a good time to bring up some issues in regards to education.

After teaching in one of the worst schools in New York City for one year, I've come to some conclusions about the education system:

1. Local control is better than state or federal control. A year ago I might have said that federal involvement in education could only be a good thing because it means more money. Today I would say the opposite. Keep your money. The more localized the decision-making, the better.

2. High stakes testing is just about the worst thing ever to happen to public education.

3. Qualified teachers and (especially) administrators are in woefully short supply. The highest priority for high-needs schools is staffing. Failing schools need serious incentives to attract and keep highly qualified faculty.

I suppose there are a hundred other things I could say but I'm too drunk to really think about it right now. I just wanted to get the conversation started.

Oh, the thread title refers to the fact that three of my students failed the citywide English Language Arts Assessment, which for my school is pretty ********ing spectacular. Yet that statistic is so meaningless, it's actually ridiculous. My class learned nothing this year, and any assessment which says otherwise is clearly flawed.

 

So I woke up this morning with a splitting headache and a shameful suspicion that I had started a new thread last night. I'm rather surprised that my post was even slightly coherent.

For my classroom, specifically, the main problem was that I couldn't manage the kids. It's impossible to teach when the class is out of control. That is, apparently, not unusual for a first-year teacher, especially in a difficult school like mine.

However, I refuse to take the blame entirely -- because frankly I did a lot of things right. In my opinion, the principal of the school deserves most of the blame. She is massively incompetent in pretty much every respect, and provided me with no support, and allowed discipline at the school to deteriorate until the situation there was physically dangerous and hostile to learning.

I don't envy the woman her position. She has insane pressure from above, demanding higher test scores. Yet she has very little freedom to make changes at her discretion. She does not choose the school's curriculum, she is only responsible for enforcing the very detailed, micoromanaged curriculum requirements imposed on her by the city and state. And she gets flack if she suspends too many students. So she's in a bind.

Still, I am convinced that an intelligent, competent administrator could really turn the school around, despite all the limitations. The only thing that will really help the school is new leadership. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen soon - since the test scores my students earned give the impression that things are getting better.

Why did my students do so "well?" Mainly, I think the 5th grade citywide English test was easier this year. 5th grade scores went up across the city. I won't go so far as to claim this is a conspiracy to make Mayor Bloomberg look good. But, additionally, I spent about two months doing nothing but test prep with my class. I used to teach SAT prep, so I know that kind of stuff well.

Last thing - I want to point out that behavior problems were not the only reason learning didn't occur at my school. Other teachers who had great control over their classes still felt like they made little progress, and their test scores were no better than mine. There is one main reason for this. Under Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein, every school in New York City is required to teach the exact same curriculum in the exact same way. The city mandates everything, from the format and content of lessons to the physical arrangement of the classroom. The math and literacy models chosen by the city are not right for the population of students I teach. That's the bottom line.

 

The general principle is: the farther you get from the classroom, the less you know and the fewer decisions you should be making. There are too many cooks in the kitchen of public education. Every classroom is different, and teachers need the freedom and support to do whatever is in the best interest of their children, as administrators need the same for their schools. Yet, somehow, in reality, the closer you are to the classroom, the less decision-making power you have. It makes no sense. Let teachers teach.

 

"They used to call me Crazy Joe..."

Yeah, that's another thing. It's kind of taboo to say so, but what schools in poor black neighborhoods really need is strong, black, male leadership. The kids need positive male role models in their lives, and they respond better to adults with a take-charge attitude, who understand where the kids are coming from.

Where I went to school, teachers had authority because they were teachers. In Bed-Stuy, teachers have authority because they intimidate the children. The kids are used to corporal punishment. They expect authority figures to dominate them with force. Anything short of that is a joke to them.

This isn't to say that I'm advocating corporal punishment. It's just to point out that there are cultural differences which inform the children's expectations and what they will respond to. Black teachers and principals, frankly, can play that role better.

Also, Joe Clark was successful because he made the hard decisions. He decided that 20% or so of his students were ineducable, and sacrificed them to teach the other 80%. That is a pragmatic and ballsy move. Unfortunately, it is not a realistic solution for most schools, for so many reasons.

 

A good place to start might be to look at charter schools. There are charter schools in the same neighborhood where I teach, teaching the same population of students. Yet they have much better results.

I'm no expert on what goes on at those schools, but I do know that they have certain freedoms a city public school does not. For example, they are exempt from the city's curricular mandates. Also, they are not bound by the same definitions of corporal punishment and child abuse which the city uses - which prevent schools from doing
anything which "humiliates" a child or sets him/her apart from the rest of the students.

Also, one can sort of assume that the professionals involved at a charter school have a high level of committment and a proven track record. And the school can't choose it's students; they're picked by a random lottery. But the parents have to apply. So that sort of weeds out the truly un-involved families.

Some of these principles could be applied citywide right away. For example, schools do need more options for disciplining students - especially for removing the most disruptive students from the classroom and possibly from the school, and for getting them the help they need. Also, administrators and faculty need more freedom in designing and implementing curricula to suit the needs of their student populations.

Still, I honestly think the staffing issue is the most immediate and crucial problem in high needs schools. Failing schools don't really need bright, ambitious and dedicated kids just out of college. They need experienced professionals. The only reasons anyone is staying at my school next year are: 1. They are NYC Teaching Fellows who have to finish their second year before they can quit or switch schools, 2. They are unable to find a job elsewhere, 3. They are too lazy or incompetent to get a job elsewhere, or 3. They are insanely committed to helping these kids and will stick it out for another year or two before they are finally driven away.

The city could create a situation in which qualified, experienced professionals would be competing for jobs at formerly hard-to-staff schools - as they do for jobs at charter schools. Interestingly, charter schools have longer hours and shorter summer breaks, and I don't think the teachers get paid more. But the working conditions are superior enough that they can attract the staff they want. City schools need to compensate for the challenge they are asking teachers and administrators to take on.

 

That's a great question. I think the unions are not doing enough to help. The New York UFT is too busy with negotiating a contract (teachers have been working for 2 years now without one). They are primarily concerned with things like pay raises, duty-free lunches, tenure, etc. And those are imporant issues and I guess that is the union's job. But unless you happen to have a union rep who is really active and passionate and involved in making the teachers' lives better, you can't count on the union to even address poor working conditions or the specific problems at high needs schools.

 

Yeah, I can't really speak to that issue. At my school, finding and keeping teachers is the biggest challenge. Incompetent teachers are welcomed, as being preferrable to no teacher at all.

It is true that firing a teacher is very difficult, and that protects the incompetent as much as the skilled. On the other hand, the administration can place a teacher anywhere they want. If someone were doing a terrible job as a classroom teacher, he or she could be assigned to the resource room to provide individual academic intervention, for example. Also, the administration could make that person's life hell, until he or she finally decided to transfer to another school or quit.

If my school is any indication, the inability to fire bad teachers is not nearly as big a problem as the inability to hire good ones.

 

I'm tapped out. You got anything?