Friday, October 25, 2013
NYS Department of Education and PTA Collude in Silencing Parents
Whoops. A State Department of Education event designed to recruit parents into the new Common Core agenda in schools has instead triggered a parent revolt. Echoing Rochester's late August protests over Common Core, parents downstate have discovered that they too are being shut out of education policy discussions. When parents came to a packed PTA Town Hall meeting in Poughkeepsie recently to talk about Common Core with NYS Education Commissioner King, they discovered it was not a Town Hall meeting at all. Instead, King monopolized the microphone for over an hour and a half, pushing Common Core merits until parents' opportunity to speak during the two hours was reduced to a mere 23 minutes. In between parents who were able to voice their opinions, King interjected his own comments, reducing speakers' comment time even further. The few parents allowed to speak did so respectfully, but all were clearly against the Common Core. See for yourself. Within hours of this first meeting, New York State PTA suspended the remainder of Commissioner King's series of Town Hall meetings across the state. They declared that the Commissioner had "concluded the outcome was not constructive for those who chose to attend" and that it was hijacked by "special interests".
Let's look at this more closely. The New York State PTA, whose mission is to empower families and communities to advocate for all children, has canceled a series of meetings where many parents want to advocate for their children. How do meeting cancellations of important and controversial education policy align with the PTA's mission to support parents? King, who scheduled a series of Town Hall meetings - a term given to public meetings whose purpose is to voice opinions - dismissed the outcome as "unconstructive". How are such meetings unconstructive for a public that wishes to speak about education policies that were adopted and implemented without field-testing or democratic process? Clearly the goal of listening to people was not King's aim or else he would have been delighted at the strong parent turn out and sharing.
What's happening here is much more worrisome than is at first evident. Although the national PTA has officially passed resolutions against the kind of high stakes testing that Common Core requires, sponsoring and canceling Town Hall Common Core discussion meetings at King's request indicates that the New York State PTA is more beholden to the State Education Department's agenda than to their own mission of supporting parents' voice and advocacy for their own children. Why? Perhaps it is the millions of dollars in special interest money paid to the national PTA by the Gates Foundation several years ago to help position it as a "key player at the front line of education reform" (in case readers are unfamiliar with the lingo, "education reform" is shorthand for pro-Common Core, high stakes testing, and teacher evaluation tied to students' scores). Interestingly, a visit to the PTA website shows that the press release describing Gates foundation award monies to the national PTA has been removed, although the reference is easily found on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation site.
We'll see how far the Gates financial inducements can go. Commissioner King has his Common Core sales work cut out for him because PTA parents are furious and now planning actions all over the state.
Article published in Smugtown Beacon October 15, 2013. Smugtown Beacon
Let's look at this more closely. The New York State PTA, whose mission is to empower families and communities to advocate for all children, has canceled a series of meetings where many parents want to advocate for their children. How do meeting cancellations of important and controversial education policy align with the PTA's mission to support parents? King, who scheduled a series of Town Hall meetings - a term given to public meetings whose purpose is to voice opinions - dismissed the outcome as "unconstructive". How are such meetings unconstructive for a public that wishes to speak about education policies that were adopted and implemented without field-testing or democratic process? Clearly the goal of listening to people was not King's aim or else he would have been delighted at the strong parent turn out and sharing.
What's happening here is much more worrisome than is at first evident. Although the national PTA has officially passed resolutions against the kind of high stakes testing that Common Core requires, sponsoring and canceling Town Hall Common Core discussion meetings at King's request indicates that the New York State PTA is more beholden to the State Education Department's agenda than to their own mission of supporting parents' voice and advocacy for their own children. Why? Perhaps it is the millions of dollars in special interest money paid to the national PTA by the Gates Foundation several years ago to help position it as a "key player at the front line of education reform" (in case readers are unfamiliar with the lingo, "education reform" is shorthand for pro-Common Core, high stakes testing, and teacher evaluation tied to students' scores). Interestingly, a visit to the PTA website shows that the press release describing Gates foundation award monies to the national PTA has been removed, although the reference is easily found on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation site.
We'll see how far the Gates financial inducements can go. Commissioner King has his Common Core sales work cut out for him because PTA parents are furious and now planning actions all over the state.
Article published in Smugtown Beacon October 15, 2013. Smugtown Beacon
Friday, October 11, 2013
No shortcuts to learning
Protesters against high-stakes testing and its relationship to Common Core State Standards gathered in Rochester last Wednesday. What was the commotion about?”
Common Core is a set of grade-specific expectations that were funded with $60 million from the Gates and Broad Foundations. A major concern is that opponents of public education are now using high-stakes testing to legitimize the wholesale closure of our urban schools and their replacement by profit-oriented private initiatives.
While raising standards sounds like a good idea for improving achievement, goal-setting only addresses part of the problem. To be truly successful, we need more focus on how learning happens.
Students learn through a combination of habits, discipline and engagement, but they don’t learn just because the bar is suddenly set higher. One common theory of learning describes a “zone of proximal development”: students learn at the edges of their knowledge but need peer and teacher support to stretch toward those edges. If a teacher pitches material beyond a student’s learning zone, then the student becomes frustrated with failure.
Good teaching practices should include giving students regular experiences of success that build confidence for harder material rather than starting with material that is too far beyond students’ capacities. This approach is common with any kind of learning: a good way to learn to play tennis is to be partnered with others at or slightly above one’s level, but never too far beyond that level.
If we want seventh-grade students with fourth-grade reading skills to improve, we build from where they are, going from fourth, fifth, sixth, to seventh, rather than demanding they start with seventh grade materials because Common Core mandates this as a grade-level expectation. We certainly want students to reach grade level expectations, but demanding compliance and labeling students as failures when they don’t meet expectations immediately won’t make that happen.
Common Core should be offered as a set of goals that help teachers better target students’ learning needs and the district should offer support that helps improve teachers’ abilities to stretch their students’ learning edges.
In Rochester, implementation of the Common Core must not simply be the provision of lesson modules that narrow teachers’ options for reaching students “where they’re at.” Strict fidelity to Common Core modules should not trump the main goal of allowing students’ learning needs to drive instruction. The district should help teachers work creatively with the modules, not as stark scripts, but as inspiring guidelines for learning and instruction. Test results should form the basis for improving schools and identifying areas to work on, not for closing them down and vilifying teachers, students and their parents.
Web essay published in Democrat and Chronicle, September 5, 2013
No shortcuts to learning
Common Core is a set of grade-specific expectations that were funded with $60 million from the Gates and Broad Foundations. A major concern is that opponents of public education are now using high-stakes testing to legitimize the wholesale closure of our urban schools and their replacement by profit-oriented private initiatives.
While raising standards sounds like a good idea for improving achievement, goal-setting only addresses part of the problem. To be truly successful, we need more focus on how learning happens.
Students learn through a combination of habits, discipline and engagement, but they don’t learn just because the bar is suddenly set higher. One common theory of learning describes a “zone of proximal development”: students learn at the edges of their knowledge but need peer and teacher support to stretch toward those edges. If a teacher pitches material beyond a student’s learning zone, then the student becomes frustrated with failure.
Good teaching practices should include giving students regular experiences of success that build confidence for harder material rather than starting with material that is too far beyond students’ capacities. This approach is common with any kind of learning: a good way to learn to play tennis is to be partnered with others at or slightly above one’s level, but never too far beyond that level.
If we want seventh-grade students with fourth-grade reading skills to improve, we build from where they are, going from fourth, fifth, sixth, to seventh, rather than demanding they start with seventh grade materials because Common Core mandates this as a grade-level expectation. We certainly want students to reach grade level expectations, but demanding compliance and labeling students as failures when they don’t meet expectations immediately won’t make that happen.
Common Core should be offered as a set of goals that help teachers better target students’ learning needs and the district should offer support that helps improve teachers’ abilities to stretch their students’ learning edges.
In Rochester, implementation of the Common Core must not simply be the provision of lesson modules that narrow teachers’ options for reaching students “where they’re at.” Strict fidelity to Common Core modules should not trump the main goal of allowing students’ learning needs to drive instruction. The district should help teachers work creatively with the modules, not as stark scripts, but as inspiring guidelines for learning and instruction. Test results should form the basis for improving schools and identifying areas to work on, not for closing them down and vilifying teachers, students and their parents.
Web essay published in Democrat and Chronicle, September 5, 2013
No shortcuts to learning
Letter to Cuomo
Re: Failing schools put on notice
After underfunding the state’s most impoverished schools and pushing through a high-stakes testing agenda, Governor Cuomo said this week “There’s going to have to be a death penalty for failing schools…we’ll give (the schools) a short window to repair themselves.” His State Education Department advocates shutting down democratically elected local school boards and replacing them with three hand-picked Albany appointees.
Let’s call his bluster. Rather than a struggle between local boards and Albany, what if we were to give Cuomo and his power-appointees a “short window of time” themselves? As of the first day of school let them take charge. If Cuomo cannot repair the damage in one year’s time, he and his appointees would be given an equivalent penalty: replacement. The schools’ problems are deep, and will require more than a “short window” to repair. Gubernatorial grandstanding is not a solution.
Unpublished letter in response to August 30, 2013, Democrat and Chronicle article: Cuomo floats 'death penalty' for failing schools.
Cuomo and 'failing schools'
After underfunding the state’s most impoverished schools and pushing through a high-stakes testing agenda, Governor Cuomo said this week “There’s going to have to be a death penalty for failing schools…we’ll give (the schools) a short window to repair themselves.” His State Education Department advocates shutting down democratically elected local school boards and replacing them with three hand-picked Albany appointees.
Let’s call his bluster. Rather than a struggle between local boards and Albany, what if we were to give Cuomo and his power-appointees a “short window of time” themselves? As of the first day of school let them take charge. If Cuomo cannot repair the damage in one year’s time, he and his appointees would be given an equivalent penalty: replacement. The schools’ problems are deep, and will require more than a “short window” to repair. Gubernatorial grandstanding is not a solution.
Unpublished letter in response to August 30, 2013, Democrat and Chronicle article: Cuomo floats 'death penalty' for failing schools.
Cuomo and 'failing schools'
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
A decade of toxic NCLB
Ten years ago No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law. Initiated by the Bush administration but passed with overwhelming bipartisan Congressional support, these educational reforms have focused some much needed attention on our education system, but have done so through actions that have divided the public, narrowed the curriculum, strained student and teacher relationships, and left the most serious problems unaddressed.
First, let’s look at the history: NCLB was modeled after a state version of school-based accountability that former Governor George W. Bush had created in 1994. Originally hailed as the “Texas miracle,” research later found that students who scored better on Texas-created tests could not do the same when tested through independent, nonpartisan measures. Nor did the “Texas miracle” serve to reduce the achievement gap for minority students.
Why was NCLB enacted when neither research nor facts bore out its success? By cherry-picking supportive information. For example, the 2000 Report of the National Reading Panel -- the purported gold standard research underpinning NCLB -- substantially distorted the conclusions of countless reading studies in order to maintain that NCLB was “research-based.” All contrary views of this research were excluded from Congressional hearings leading up to NCLB (Coles, 2003).
What are the worst things about NCLB? It sets up an accountability system that rewards the “successful” and punishes the “unsuccessful” based upon unreliable testing measures that, like the “Texas Miracle”, are highly questionable. Secondly, it makes the assumption that test-taking is equivalent to learning, or that, if we test children more frequently, they will learn more. This faulty logic wouldn’t pass muster in any other areas: would NCLB policy-makers prefer that mechanics test and test and test a car that isn't working rather than spend more time working on the car? Pressure to test takes away teachers’ time from teaching.
How does emphasis on testing play out in the classroom? Early childhood educators are told to rush children toward cognitive masteries they are not yet developmentally ready to achieve. Five year-olds are confined to their desks in “drill for skill” tactics, sapping the joy of learning and discovery right out of them. Kindergarten curriculum has invaded Pre-K classrooms and the 1st grade curriculum has largely moved to Kindergarten. Social studies, science, the arts, foreign languages, and other valued areas of study have been marginalized by NCLB’s exclusive focus on math and reading.
NCLB has created highly pressurized, anxiety-filled school environments where, because of test preparation needs, students are not able to explore their own questions about subject matter, and further, because of the testing regimen, kids are learning that mistakes are the worst things they can make. Focusing only on a right answer has costs: what are the implications of discouraging a whole generation’s capacity to ask a good question?
Although NCLB was touted to boost academic achievement, particularly for poor and minority students, the legislation has served other ends. One of the chief purposes has been to maintain a blindness toward poverty and classroom conditions that strongly influence academic success. Rather than promoting a well-trained, professionally competent teaching force and providing it with all that is required to ensure a rich education, NCLB has focused on scripted, “teacher-proof” programs linked to excessive testing.
Interestingly, none of the above is a plea against testing of any kind. The proper use of testing is for diagnostic purposes rather than for punitive purposes. Teachers and students should be evaluated with a broad set of measures that go well beyond what is counted in high-stakes tests. Since NCLB will probably not be reauthorized in an election year, now is the time for parents, teachers, and school leaders to insist on reform that leads to meaningful learning for all students. The solutions must address poverty, include educators’ and researchers’ insights, and broaden rather than narrow our children’s options.
Published in City Newspaper 2/28/12 under title 'NCLB hurts not helps', by Don Bartalo, Gerald Coles, Elizabeth Hallmark, Jack Langerak
First, let’s look at the history: NCLB was modeled after a state version of school-based accountability that former Governor George W. Bush had created in 1994. Originally hailed as the “Texas miracle,” research later found that students who scored better on Texas-created tests could not do the same when tested through independent, nonpartisan measures. Nor did the “Texas miracle” serve to reduce the achievement gap for minority students.
Why was NCLB enacted when neither research nor facts bore out its success? By cherry-picking supportive information. For example, the 2000 Report of the National Reading Panel -- the purported gold standard research underpinning NCLB -- substantially distorted the conclusions of countless reading studies in order to maintain that NCLB was “research-based.” All contrary views of this research were excluded from Congressional hearings leading up to NCLB (Coles, 2003).
What are the worst things about NCLB? It sets up an accountability system that rewards the “successful” and punishes the “unsuccessful” based upon unreliable testing measures that, like the “Texas Miracle”, are highly questionable. Secondly, it makes the assumption that test-taking is equivalent to learning, or that, if we test children more frequently, they will learn more. This faulty logic wouldn’t pass muster in any other areas: would NCLB policy-makers prefer that mechanics test and test and test a car that isn't working rather than spend more time working on the car? Pressure to test takes away teachers’ time from teaching.
How does emphasis on testing play out in the classroom? Early childhood educators are told to rush children toward cognitive masteries they are not yet developmentally ready to achieve. Five year-olds are confined to their desks in “drill for skill” tactics, sapping the joy of learning and discovery right out of them. Kindergarten curriculum has invaded Pre-K classrooms and the 1st grade curriculum has largely moved to Kindergarten. Social studies, science, the arts, foreign languages, and other valued areas of study have been marginalized by NCLB’s exclusive focus on math and reading.
NCLB has created highly pressurized, anxiety-filled school environments where, because of test preparation needs, students are not able to explore their own questions about subject matter, and further, because of the testing regimen, kids are learning that mistakes are the worst things they can make. Focusing only on a right answer has costs: what are the implications of discouraging a whole generation’s capacity to ask a good question?
Although NCLB was touted to boost academic achievement, particularly for poor and minority students, the legislation has served other ends. One of the chief purposes has been to maintain a blindness toward poverty and classroom conditions that strongly influence academic success. Rather than promoting a well-trained, professionally competent teaching force and providing it with all that is required to ensure a rich education, NCLB has focused on scripted, “teacher-proof” programs linked to excessive testing.
Interestingly, none of the above is a plea against testing of any kind. The proper use of testing is for diagnostic purposes rather than for punitive purposes. Teachers and students should be evaluated with a broad set of measures that go well beyond what is counted in high-stakes tests. Since NCLB will probably not be reauthorized in an election year, now is the time for parents, teachers, and school leaders to insist on reform that leads to meaningful learning for all students. The solutions must address poverty, include educators’ and researchers’ insights, and broaden rather than narrow our children’s options.
Published in City Newspaper 2/28/12 under title 'NCLB hurts not helps', by Don Bartalo, Gerald Coles, Elizabeth Hallmark, Jack Langerak
Thursday, December 8, 2011
EDUCATION: Closing School 6 Will Hurt, Not Help
The mother from School #6 who came to the microphone at Saturday's superintendent selection forum was angry. She was angry that School #6 was being closed, angry that their school based planning representative never came to meetings, angry that their school liaison never visited, angry that the school had been labeled as failing, angry that their school community would be scattered to the winds. Her words were met with silence.
School #6 is in a hard neighborhood - one where somebody is shot regularly and where families struggle with the consequences of what feels like a war zone. In this neighborhood, School #6 exists as a safe zone with the Jordan Medical Center attached to it, and is a place where children can be nurtured, at least during the day. Good things happen at this school although not always the same kinds of good things that we might find at schools where children are more reliably safe, well-fed, and unburdened by unrelenting family tragedy. School #6 is defined by being surrounded by crisis and this demands different evaluative lenses than are used for schools in more stable neighborhoods.
When we use low student scores as a basis for closing schools in crisis locations, that’s as non-sensical as saying, “Let’s use the fact that patients aren’t doing well in war zones to shut down war zone hospitals because their patients don’t compare well to patients in other hospitals.” I don’t mean to imply that students are like patients but highlight that there are parallels in educational and medical human services worth considering. A hospital’s goal is to help its patients thrive and gain health at whatever stage and degree of need they’re in. Learning goals need to be similarly differentiated and are especially challenging at schools in difficult neighborhoods because of the extra stressers in children’s lives. Using testing as the main criteria for judging a school’s purpose, value, and “success” amounts to policy that’s used to destabilize children further.
Any parent whose school community is dismantled because of unjust evaluative criteria would feel like saying what this mother said on Saturday. One devastating thing she shared was that when the children heard their school labeled as failing, they thought of themselves as “almost smart”... not able to make the grade. This kind of thought poisons young learners. Who can justify education policies whose labeling and school closures destroy students’ self-esteem and the very networks that are foundational to any student’s success? That mom’s words remind us of how our last superintendent’s corporate reform legacies continue to affect our children and why we cannot stand for more of the same in our next one.
I’m not arguing to keep every school open no matter what, but ask that we become more creative than simply shutting schools with struggling students. Here are a few ideas. Protect institutions that serve as scarce resources in fragile neighborhoods. Broaden evaluative lenses about what school success can mean and ask the teachers who work in them for improvement ideas. Help children maintain and deepen their relationships with caring adults so that communities are strengthened. And to the board, please design public structures that allow you to respond and interact with speakers in real time. Parent outrage won’t entirely disappear, but it will shrink and become more constructive through two-way discussion and responsive moderators.
Published in Rochester City Newspaper, Dec 7, 2011
School #6 is in a hard neighborhood - one where somebody is shot regularly and where families struggle with the consequences of what feels like a war zone. In this neighborhood, School #6 exists as a safe zone with the Jordan Medical Center attached to it, and is a place where children can be nurtured, at least during the day. Good things happen at this school although not always the same kinds of good things that we might find at schools where children are more reliably safe, well-fed, and unburdened by unrelenting family tragedy. School #6 is defined by being surrounded by crisis and this demands different evaluative lenses than are used for schools in more stable neighborhoods.
When we use low student scores as a basis for closing schools in crisis locations, that’s as non-sensical as saying, “Let’s use the fact that patients aren’t doing well in war zones to shut down war zone hospitals because their patients don’t compare well to patients in other hospitals.” I don’t mean to imply that students are like patients but highlight that there are parallels in educational and medical human services worth considering. A hospital’s goal is to help its patients thrive and gain health at whatever stage and degree of need they’re in. Learning goals need to be similarly differentiated and are especially challenging at schools in difficult neighborhoods because of the extra stressers in children’s lives. Using testing as the main criteria for judging a school’s purpose, value, and “success” amounts to policy that’s used to destabilize children further.
Any parent whose school community is dismantled because of unjust evaluative criteria would feel like saying what this mother said on Saturday. One devastating thing she shared was that when the children heard their school labeled as failing, they thought of themselves as “almost smart”... not able to make the grade. This kind of thought poisons young learners. Who can justify education policies whose labeling and school closures destroy students’ self-esteem and the very networks that are foundational to any student’s success? That mom’s words remind us of how our last superintendent’s corporate reform legacies continue to affect our children and why we cannot stand for more of the same in our next one.
I’m not arguing to keep every school open no matter what, but ask that we become more creative than simply shutting schools with struggling students. Here are a few ideas. Protect institutions that serve as scarce resources in fragile neighborhoods. Broaden evaluative lenses about what school success can mean and ask the teachers who work in them for improvement ideas. Help children maintain and deepen their relationships with caring adults so that communities are strengthened. And to the board, please design public structures that allow you to respond and interact with speakers in real time. Parent outrage won’t entirely disappear, but it will shrink and become more constructive through two-way discussion and responsive moderators.
Published in Rochester City Newspaper, Dec 7, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Cuomo’s Denial: Urban School Districts’ Disaster
A letter to the NY Times editor re: 11-29-11 NYT article
by Dr. Fred Marshall, University of Rochester
Dear Sir/Madam-
I have re-written your recent editorial, entitled Germany’s Denial: Europe’s Disaster, changing some of the dramatis personae, but cleaving closely to the structure and often the actual words of your piece. I acknowledge that this is likely too long for your consideration, but thought you might enjoy (and agree with) the parallelism of the argument:
Each day our urban school districts inch closer to full meltdown, but Governor Cuomo of New York is still blocking what is needed: a real bailout of New York’s poorest districts by their richer neighbors and the wealthiest New Yorkers who enjoy endless extensions of their tax cuts.
Mr. Cuomo and his team have had more than fair warning of the disaster to come, including the possible loss of a generation New York’s urban and rural public school students, who will lack the capacity to successfully compete for jobs in a globally competitive 21st century market place. And it should be utterly clear that no New Yorkers – including the wealthy financiers of Westchester County and Long Island, or the down-to-business suburbanites of our decaying upstate cities – are immune. If we cannot provide an educated work force, we cannot attract business, and everybody loses.
The State has been compelled to sweeten the pot to get businesses to locate here by offering tax breaks and economic development dollars in desperate efforts to attract “job creators”. The crisis is now spreading, with more and more rural districts lacking the resources to offer a sound basic education. The tax-payer funded prison industry has been one of the only growth industries in upstate communities for more than a decade now, and the flow of prisoners from downstate communities to upstate prisons is the single biggest reason there was not an even larger loss of upstate population in the last census.
New Yorkers have clearly figured out that a meltdown of urban and rural public education imposes an enormous human cost. But the governor and state officials are still insisting that these underprivileged communities need to pay for their sinful ways (through draconian school closures and staffing layoffs) – and that New York’s virtuous “job creators” (the wealthiest and most privileged citizens and communities) will not be made to foot the bill. Until recently, New York’s leaders argued that they could quell the crisis with stiff austerity policies imposed on poor districts to re-establish their worthiness. But New York’s families are unpersuaded, and the crisis keeps spreading. New York City schools actually won a court battle mandating equitable state-funding, but the state has failed to fund the district, and massive layoffs and inadequate schools are the result. Within a mile or two of the Lauder estate on Park Avenue (see NYTimes Sunday Cover 11/27/11), that multi-billionaire has poor neighbors whose public-school children must share text-books that are torn, defaced and decades out of date.
A lot more money is needed to finance districts that lack the resources to provide a sound basic education. Urban and rural districts have had little luck in their efforts to improve schools by cutting staff and resources to the bone, and there is little data to suggest that the for-profit private sector (or the not-for-profit charter school movement) is solving the crisis.
What makes this even more absurd is that New York has the resources – if Governor Cuomo would drop his objections. New Yorkers with means – like the denizens of Wall Street, Westchester, the Hamptons and numerous other “outer-ring” suburbs, whose own children enjoy some of the finest public and private schools in the United States, need pony up only a tiny fraction of their wealth to fully fund our urban and rural districts currently incapable of funding themselves. In the long-term interest of the state as a whole, Albany must take responsibility for distributing resources where they are desperately needed. That would insure excellent educations for all of New York’s children, who will in turn become magnets for global business in search of the best educated work-force.
Instead, Mr. Cuomo’s idea to restore “market confidence” is to call for the forced expulsion of 99% protestors and continue to protect the tax advantages of the 1% -- to perpetuate unsustainable state mandates on local districts and fail to comply with previous court orders calling for adequate funding of poor districts to insure a sound basic education for all our children.
Urban and rural districts must be brought into balance over the long term. And New York’s schools will need much more fiscal coordination to survive. But right now, the only way to stem the crisis is to give weak communities more cash and room to recover. More than a generation into our education crisis, it should be obvious that forcing poor districts to keep slashing their budgets will only make things worse – tipping them into deeper privation and educational austerity that makes it even more difficult for our urban and rural communities to grow, raise living standards, attract employers, and ultimately pay for themselves.
New Yorkers have the resources to bail out our weakest districts and thereby save our cities and hamlets – and ultimately our suburbs and wealthiest enclaves. What we cannot afford is another lost generation.
by Dr. Fred Marshall, University of Rochester
Dear Sir/Madam-
I have re-written your recent editorial, entitled Germany’s Denial: Europe’s Disaster, changing some of the dramatis personae, but cleaving closely to the structure and often the actual words of your piece. I acknowledge that this is likely too long for your consideration, but thought you might enjoy (and agree with) the parallelism of the argument:
Each day our urban school districts inch closer to full meltdown, but Governor Cuomo of New York is still blocking what is needed: a real bailout of New York’s poorest districts by their richer neighbors and the wealthiest New Yorkers who enjoy endless extensions of their tax cuts.
Mr. Cuomo and his team have had more than fair warning of the disaster to come, including the possible loss of a generation New York’s urban and rural public school students, who will lack the capacity to successfully compete for jobs in a globally competitive 21st century market place. And it should be utterly clear that no New Yorkers – including the wealthy financiers of Westchester County and Long Island, or the down-to-business suburbanites of our decaying upstate cities – are immune. If we cannot provide an educated work force, we cannot attract business, and everybody loses.
The State has been compelled to sweeten the pot to get businesses to locate here by offering tax breaks and economic development dollars in desperate efforts to attract “job creators”. The crisis is now spreading, with more and more rural districts lacking the resources to offer a sound basic education. The tax-payer funded prison industry has been one of the only growth industries in upstate communities for more than a decade now, and the flow of prisoners from downstate communities to upstate prisons is the single biggest reason there was not an even larger loss of upstate population in the last census.
New Yorkers have clearly figured out that a meltdown of urban and rural public education imposes an enormous human cost. But the governor and state officials are still insisting that these underprivileged communities need to pay for their sinful ways (through draconian school closures and staffing layoffs) – and that New York’s virtuous “job creators” (the wealthiest and most privileged citizens and communities) will not be made to foot the bill. Until recently, New York’s leaders argued that they could quell the crisis with stiff austerity policies imposed on poor districts to re-establish their worthiness. But New York’s families are unpersuaded, and the crisis keeps spreading. New York City schools actually won a court battle mandating equitable state-funding, but the state has failed to fund the district, and massive layoffs and inadequate schools are the result. Within a mile or two of the Lauder estate on Park Avenue (see NYTimes Sunday Cover 11/27/11), that multi-billionaire has poor neighbors whose public-school children must share text-books that are torn, defaced and decades out of date.
A lot more money is needed to finance districts that lack the resources to provide a sound basic education. Urban and rural districts have had little luck in their efforts to improve schools by cutting staff and resources to the bone, and there is little data to suggest that the for-profit private sector (or the not-for-profit charter school movement) is solving the crisis.
What makes this even more absurd is that New York has the resources – if Governor Cuomo would drop his objections. New Yorkers with means – like the denizens of Wall Street, Westchester, the Hamptons and numerous other “outer-ring” suburbs, whose own children enjoy some of the finest public and private schools in the United States, need pony up only a tiny fraction of their wealth to fully fund our urban and rural districts currently incapable of funding themselves. In the long-term interest of the state as a whole, Albany must take responsibility for distributing resources where they are desperately needed. That would insure excellent educations for all of New York’s children, who will in turn become magnets for global business in search of the best educated work-force.
Instead, Mr. Cuomo’s idea to restore “market confidence” is to call for the forced expulsion of 99% protestors and continue to protect the tax advantages of the 1% -- to perpetuate unsustainable state mandates on local districts and fail to comply with previous court orders calling for adequate funding of poor districts to insure a sound basic education for all our children.
Urban and rural districts must be brought into balance over the long term. And New York’s schools will need much more fiscal coordination to survive. But right now, the only way to stem the crisis is to give weak communities more cash and room to recover. More than a generation into our education crisis, it should be obvious that forcing poor districts to keep slashing their budgets will only make things worse – tipping them into deeper privation and educational austerity that makes it even more difficult for our urban and rural communities to grow, raise living standards, attract employers, and ultimately pay for themselves.
New Yorkers have the resources to bail out our weakest districts and thereby save our cities and hamlets – and ultimately our suburbs and wealthiest enclaves. What we cannot afford is another lost generation.
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