9486 in the collection
Cost of Grading Schools Is Said to Be $130 Million
The high cost of what they
call "sophisticated data systems," Orwellian
lingo for numbers with no root in
reality.
By Jennifer Medina
The Education Department is spending roughly
$130 million this year to track the performance
of schools in New York City, according to a
report published on Thursday by the city’s
Independent Budget Office.
Efforts to establish accountability, like
performance bonuses for principals and
teachers, sophisticated student data systems
and report cards that assign letter grades for
schools, have been a cornerstone of the
Bloomberg administration’s efforts to overhaul
the school system.
While the budget office said that the figures
in the current fiscal year included some
spending that the Education Department does not
explicitly count as projects aimed at keeping
schools accountable, the report estimates that
the city will spend $105 million on similar
initiatives next year.
The report found that while private money
initially paid for many of the accountability
efforts, the same kinds of measures were
increasingly being financed with city dollars.
Many of the figures cited in the report had
already been released, but this was the first
attempt to detail the overall costs of
Chancellor Joel I. Klein’s accountability
efforts.
Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s public advocate, had
asked the budget office to review the Education
Department’s spending on accountability
measures amid complaints from some parents,
educators and public officials that the
chancellor and his team were overly focused on
standardized tests.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has asked the
department to make cuts in its $20 billion
budget of $181 million from the school system
this year and another $385 million next year.
Ms. Gotbaum, who has been an outspoken critic
of Mr. Klein, said that education budget cuts
should be made to the accountability office
rather than directly to the classroom.
Ms. Gotbaum said during a news conference at
her downtown office that because of the current
state and city budget cuts, the Education
Department should “re-evaluate the
accountability system from top to bottom” to
ensure that it is “cost effective and producing
real results in the classroom.”
“There are hundreds of millions of dollars that
are being spent without real assurance that our
schools are getting any better,” she said.
She took particular issue with a student data
program called the Achievement Reporting and
Innovation System, developed by I.B.M. and a
group of subcontractors. The $80 million system
has not functioned for much of the school year,
even for principals, and is still unavailable
to parents.
The report also found that the department spent
$2 million on municipal report cards evaluating
individual schools. The report card grades were
released in September for elementary and middle
schools, and this week for high schools. The
city has also spent $6 million over three years
on parent, teacher and student evaluations of
individual schools, according to the report.
Mr. Klein said in a statement: “I believe the
dollars we’ve invested in this work are some of
the smartest dollars we’ve spent. Leading
experts in education in America and around the
globe agree and are working to create
accountability measures in their schools and
districts like the ones we’ve created.”
He added, “The report released Thursday
misunderstands the purpose and importance of
accountability.”
Thursday’s report also provoked a fresh round
of criticism over how the Education Department
reports information on its spending to the
public. Unlike other city agencies, the
department does not make a line-by-line
accounting of its expenses available to outside
groups like the budget office. Ms. Gotbaum and
others have called for tightening the
guidelines next year when the State Legislature
considers renewing the mayor’s control over the
schools, which he won in 2002.
The Independent Budget Office said that its
findings on how much the city spends on
accountability measures were somewhat
subjective, in part because of having to rely
on information the Education Department
provided. The department repeatedly argued that
the accountability efforts were narrower, and
said it would spend $37.1 million on the
initiatives this fiscal year and $48.5 million
in 2009-10.
“It’s been a very difficult process,” said Doug
Turetsky, the communications director for the
Independent Budget Office. “We’ve had a lot of
back and forth over some things that seemed
straightforward.”
One of the most contentious points was whether
to include as spending on accountability the
money that is used to pay for “periodic
assessments” four times a year.
The tests are given at all schools across the
city, but the results have no effect on a
student’s or a school’s evaluation; they simply
provide teachers with an idea of how well
students are performing. The budget office
found that the spending for such tests was $4.3
million in the 2008 fiscal year, which ended
June 30, and that, under a new contract, it
ballooned to $26 million in the current fiscal
year.
The department was protesting some of the
numbers in the report as late as Thursday
morning. After the report was released, David
Cantor, an Education Department spokesman, said
it was unfair to include a $30 million grant
program as an expense, because it used money
that the city received from the federal
government. The grants are awarded to schools
that are struggling under state and city
standards.
Among several initiatives that were initially
paid for with private dollars but that are now
publicly financed is a school review program,
which sent consultants from Cambridge
Education, a London-based company, to visit and
evaluate schools. The $19.1 million contract is
set to expire next August, after which
officials from within the Education Department
will conduct the site visits.
— Jennifer Medina
New York Times
2008-11-14
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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