9486 in the collection  

Mayor Bloomberg’s Crib Sheet

In an arrogant display of
business as usual, Secretary of Duncan is a
cheerleader for claims that have not been
verified by any independent source.

By Diane Ravitch

ARNE DUNCAN, the secretary of education, has
urged the nation’s mayors to take control of
their public schools so that they can impose
radical reforms. He points to New York City as
a prime example of a school system that made
sharp improvements under mayoral control.

Actually, the record on mayoral control of
schools is unimpressive. Eleven big-city school
districts take part in the federal test called
the National Assessment of Educational
Progress. Two of the lowest-performing cities —
Chicago and Cleveland — have mayoral control.
The two highest-performing cities — Austin,
Tex., and Charlotte, N.C. — do not. Mr. Duncan
came to New York City last week to urge the New
York State Legislature to renew the law that
grants control of the New York City public
schools to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. That law,
passed in 2002, will expire at the end of June.

Mayoral control of the schools is not a new
phenomenon in the city’s history. From 1873 to
1969, the mayor appointed every single member
of the Board of Education. The era of
decentralization from 1969 to 2002 was an
aberration, because the mayor had only two
appointees on a seven-member board.

Yet no mayor has exercised such unlimited power
over the public schools as Mr. Bloomberg.
Previous mayors respected the independence of
the board members they appointed. The present
version of the board, the Panel on Education
Policy, serves at the pleasure of the mayor and
rubber-stamps the policies and spending
practices of the Department of Education, which
is run by Mayor Bloomberg and Schools
Chancellor Joel Klein.

Mr. Bloomberg’s allies say that the results of
the current system are so spectacular that the
law should be renewed without change. Secretary
Duncan agrees: “I’m looking at the data here in
front of me,” he said while in New York.
“Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up
... By every measure, that’s real progress.”

It sounds good, but in fact no independent
source has verified such claims.

On the federal National Assessment of
Educational Progress — widely acknowledged as
the gold standard of the testing industry — New
York City showed almost no academic improvement
between 2003, when the mayor’s reforms were
introduced, and 2007. There were no significant
gains for New York City’s students — black,
Hispanic, white, Asian or lower-income — in
fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading or
eighth-grade mathematics. In fourth-grade math,
pupils showed significant gains (although the
validity of this is suspect because an
unusually large proportion — 25 percent — of
students were given extra time and help). The
federal test reported no narrowing of the
achievement gap between white students and
minority students.

The city’s Department of Education belittles
the federal test scores and focuses on the
assessments given by New York State. And,
indeed, the state scores have soared in recent
years, not only in the city but also across New
York state However, the statewide scores on the
N.A.E.P. are as flat as New York City’s. Our
state tests are, unfortunately, exemplars of
grade inflation.

The graduation rate is another area in which
progress has been overstated. The city says the
rate climbed to 62 percent from 53 percent
between 2003 and 2007; the state’s Department
of Education, which uses a different formula,
says the city’s rose to 52 percent, from 44
percent. Either way, the city’s graduation rate
is no better than that of Mississippi, which
spends about a third of what New York City
spends per pupil.

Moreover, the city’s graduation rates have been
pumped up with a variety of dubious means, like
“credit recovery,” in which students who fail a
course can get full credit if they agree to
take a three-day makeup program or turn in an
independent project. In addition, the city
counts as graduates the students who dropped
out and obtained a graduate-equivalency degree.

To further raise the graduation rate, the city
does not include as dropouts any of the
students who were “discharged” during their
high-school years. Some discharges are
legitimate, like students who moved to another
school district. But many others are so-called
push-outs, students who were ejected from
school even though they had a legal right to be
there, often because their grades and test
scores were bringing down their schools’
averages. The Department of Education refuses
to disclose how many students are in each of
these categories. We do know, however, that
more than one-fifth of the members of the class
of 2007, or 18,524 students, were discharged
and not counted as dropouts.

Even those who manage to graduate from our high
schools are often not ready for college. Three-
quarters of the graduates fail their placement
examinations at the City University of New
York’s community colleges and require
remediation in basic skills. These are students
who presumably passed five Regents examinations
to graduate yet cannot read or write or do
mathematics up to the standards of a two-year
community college. This reflects as poorly on
the Regents examinations as it does on the
city’s promotional policies.

This is not to say that Albany should eliminate
mayoral control — nobody wants to return to the
status quo of the ’90s. However, as legislators
refine the law, they should establish clear
checks and balances. The mayor should be
authorized to appoint an independent Board of
Education, whose members would serve for a set
term. Candidates for the board should be
evaluated by a blue-ribbon panel so that no
mayor can stack it with friends. That board
should appoint the chancellor, and his or her
first responsibility must be to the children
and their schools, not to the mayor.

The board should hold public meetings to review
decisions before they are made final. Local
school boards composed of parent leaders should
oversee the schools in their districts,
although they should not have any financial
authority. Moreover, the school system needs a
professional auditing agency to evaluate test
scores and graduation rates. Claims of
improvement are not credible without
independent scrutiny.

Not every school problem can be solved by
changes in governance. But to establish
accountability, transparency and the legitimacy
that comes with public participation, the
Legislature should act promptly to restore
public oversight of public education. As we all
learned in civics class, checks and balances
are vital to democracy.

Diane Ravitch, a research professor of
education at New York University, is the author
of “The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-
1973.”

— Diane Ravitch
New York Times
2009-04-09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10ravitch.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

---

INDEX OF OUTRAGES

Pages: 380   
[1] 2 3 4 5 6  Next >>    Last >>