Gifted and Prepped

Gary Rubinstein, one of my most favorite education bloggers, has written a fantastically interesting post about his own experience with the kindergarten lottery/enrollment process in New York City. Anyone who's interested in the whether-where-high-profile-education-people-send-their-children-to-school-matters conversation should read this, as well as advocates of lottery or "choice" systems, gifted educators, and people who study school accountability and ratings. Gary has given his readers a real and honest window into all of this.

The New York City Public School lottery system, which I have read a lot about, just seems crazy. Calling it a choice system is a joke, unless you mean that the schools choose the students, not the reverse. And even for families, it's so complicated. I can't imagine most people can navigate it. And even many savvy parents don't navigate it on their own--they pay someone to help them navigate it. I remember reading an argument that this system is more fair than the previous system, and that may be so, but I don't know if that's saying much.

I also want to address the twenty children with a mediocre or bad teacher vs. forty children with a great teacher debate. I think that's a false dichotomy. First of all, as I've said here, I don't really believe in inherently great teachers (teachers are made not born) and I think that circumstances such as class size or total student load can help to make or break great teaching. Yes, some teachers are just bad at their jobs, no matter what, but good teaching is highly dependent on working conditions and other circumstances.

And then there is something Gary totally left out: curriculum. He says for his child, peer group is more important than the teacher to him, that

 I’d want my daughter, ideally, in an ethnically diverse class where all the students are functioning above grade level. 

And I totally agree with him about the peer group effect and honesty and charter schools (bolded emphasis is mine):

Here I want my daughter to be in a ‘peer group’ with kids, like her, who come to kindergarten already able to read while I seem to have a problem with charter schools excluding the toughest to educate kids and then kicking out the few that make it through their initial defenses, thus creating a peer group of motivated low-income students with motivated parents.  The truth is, though, that I wouldn’t have such a problem with charters creating this enhanced peer group if they would not lie about doing more with the ‘same kids’ as the nearby ‘failing’ school.  What this has caused is those ‘failing’ schools getting starved of resources, their schools shut down, and their teachers fired.  All because they did not try to game the system.

But for me, while the teacher and the peer group are important neither is as important as the curriculum, what my children are being being taught. Now, I do acknowledge that math curriculum works differently--after a certain point, it's very hard to differentiate a subject that is so heavily dependent on sequence, on mastering a previous skill, concept, or even set of math facts. I say this as a language and social studies teacher, though I guess I should be careful in asserting myself with too much confidence here because Gary is a maestro of math teaching. But anyway, I don't see what good it does my child if they're in a room full of above-grade level peers with or without a "great" teacher if they're learning gibberish.

Finally, I want to address the gifted identification and placement process he discusses. I have to admit though I don't advocate against it and I am relatively uninformed about it, that I have some reservations, generally, about gifted education. I think there are very few truly gifted people in the world. Hence, I am deeply skeptical of any gifted assessment(s) that would find as many as 40% of any population gifted, as the assessments do in NYC. That's not gifted-ness that being identified, it's something else. Second of all, I am deeply skeptical that you can prep for gifted diagnostic tests without invalidating their results. I understand that most people of means get their children prepped for these tests in New York City--this is not about judging Gary for following suit (and I deeply respect him for his honesty about it); the system only works as it should if no one preps their kid. As for the Hunter School and the playdates and the clipboards, that's mostly a matter of luck--what any four-year-old happened to say in that time and what the clipboard-wielder happened to denote is random. There has to be some way of choosing, but I don't see this way as being any more scientific than a lottery is.

In response to the question at the end of his post, I do not think Gary is a hypocrite for wanting the best place for his children, but I do not envy his having to be a part of a such a rat race. Most people prep for gate-keeping tests (I will write a series about my recent personal experiences with the GRE soon), but there's something obscene about preparing and assessing four-year-olds in this way--it makes it almost totally about the parents and their resources.

My father, a native New Yorker and (Gary should appreciate this) a Stuyvesant grad, often repeats this quote which he attributes to Norman Mailer, "New York has the best of everything: the best restaurants, the best plays, the best criminals. . ." and the best gifted and talented program, and the best ways to game it.

Terriblus Tyrantus

Blogger's note: This is the third in a series of posts that I wrote in February of 2012 as part of a writing fellowship application. See the introduction to this series here. All of the school closing announcements of late--in DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, and of course, New York reminded me of this post.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York sees himself as the “Education Mayor.” But lately New Yorkers seem to wish he weren’t. While a recent poll (more coverage here) shows they approve of some of his education policies, for example paying higher performing teachers more and basing layoffs on teacher performance rather than on seniority (the poll didn’t define “performing” or “performance”), it shows that voters don’t approve of his handling of the schools overall or of strict mayoral control, and that they trust the teachers union more than the mayor to be advocates for students. Nor are Chancellor Walcott’s numbers so good: only 34% approve of his performance.

Bloomberg’s cynical reaction: a) I don’t care what the public thinks and b) the public doesn’t really think that—they were manipulated by advertisements except for c) when the voters approved of me in which case they were sincerely happy. I should know because I buy public opinion when I need to. You want a poll in my favor? Believe me, I can get you a poll in my favor by 3 o’clock tomorrow, with nail polish.

What’s most concerning about this is Bloomberg’s utter disdain for democracy. These are the times when I hear Bloomberg talking in Jon Stewart’s thug voice. Yes, he gave that donation to Planned Parenthood during the Komen ordeal. Yes, he supports gay rights and gay marriage. Yes, he gave his own money to a program in New York City to help unemployed, previously incarcerated, and uneducated young men look for jobs. But that’s just the point: he buys policy he approves of but cuts government funding to those he doesn’t approve of. He bypasses democratic institutions and processes.

He has closed schools at an amazing clip, sending students off to try their luck at getting into small schools, charter schools, or, if that fails, other comprehensive schools. Those schools then become dumping grounds for the kids are hardest to educate, and become vulnerable to being closed for low performance, beginning the process anew. In 2002, the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) was set up to replace the central board of education; of thirteen members, the Mayor could appoint eight. In 2004, in an incident known as the “Monday Night Massacre” Bloomberg had three of his appointed members removed as they were planning to oppose his proposal regarding social promotion. His appointees on the PEP haven’t voted against one of Bloomberg’s proposals since. I’ve heard some New Yorkers call it the Puppets for Education Policy.

Last night’s PEP meeting featured intense protests regarding the closure or truncation of 33 schools. That brings to over 100 the number of schools Bloomberg has closed with over 400 co-locations of charters in public school buildings, many of those schools already making full use of the building. That’s an astonishing assault on an essential public democratic institution, especially given that it’s occurring without any meaningful public input.

Immediately after Bloomberg engineered the chance to get a third term and won, Hendrick Hertzberg wrote a column in The New Yorker bemoaning the conditions of Bloomerberg’s reign but ultimately approving it. Hertzberg ended with a shrug of the shoulders and a question:

“If Bloomberg had been satisfied with two terms, he would be leaving office a beloved legend, a municipal god. He’ll get his third, but we’ll give it to him sullenly, knowing that while it probably won’t measure up to his first two—times are hard, huge budget gaps are at hand—it’ll probably be good enough. The Pax Bloombergiana will endure a while longer. But then what? Will we have forgotten how to govern ourselves?”

The question is not only whether New Yorkers will have forgotten how to govern themselves but whether after the dismantling of New York’s public democratic infrastructure, they will be able to, whether there will be institutions and processes in which to do so. Bloomberg may give money to good causes, he may be in favor of gay rights, and he may support immigrants, but he’s still a machine politician, and even worse, he’s a machine politician for the party of Bloomberg.

The Teacher Tea Leaf Reports on SchoolCrock: An Explanation

SchoolCrock has published the teacher tea leaf reports using a new tool that was created by interactive journalists at The New Hack Times and WNLIC. The goal of the tool: to make the tea leaves easier to understand and put the prophecies into context.

The tool can be found on Web pages created for every school whose teachers’ prophecies were released on Friday by the city’s Department of Testucation. You can find those pages by typing in a school name in the box on the left.

You will find a wealth of tea leaf reports on that page, starting with an overall snapshot of the school, as told by the percentage of teachers at that school whose leaves from herbal or black tea were “above average” or high — two of the city’s five prophecy categories. You’ll also be able to see how that compares to schools across the city.

Below those school tea leaf reports are the names of individual teachers, grouped by grade. The complete tea leaf report listed with the teachers’ names are the prophecies, meaning that teacher’s place when compared to other teachers like her or him, on a scale of 0 to 99.

A teacher can have up to four rankings for each grade taught: for black teas during the 2009-10 school year, black tea career, herbal teas in 2009-10 and herbal tea career. Career prophecies are based on one to five years of tea leaves.

The leaves are situated along a black line. That line indicates the margin of error for that teacher’s prophecy. A fuller divination, and an example, can be found on each school’s page.

Clicking on a teacher’s name brings up additional foretellings: the amount of coffee grounds in the cup the prophesy is based on; an “expected” divination based on images manifest in the clouds; and the actual average tarot card readings of those students. Tarot card readings are reported as standard deviations above/below the citywide mean.

The difference between the expected divination and the actual divination is considered the “value added” by the teacher.

One more piece of foretelling can be included with a teacher’s listing: his or her response or explanation of the ranking, as submitted to SchoolCrock. We encourage teachers to add their responses.

A module that allows you to search by teacher name is also on that page.

For more information, see our FAQ (Frequently Avoided Questions).

In creating this tool, SchoolCrock decided to showcase only the most recent and career prophecies, since we agree with many critics that the older tea leaves are less useful. We wanted to make clear the margin of error, since one of the weaknesses of these prophecies is the large margins. And we wanted to put every collection of tea leaves in the context of the school and expected divinations.

All of the leaves were provided by the city’s Department of Testucation (prophecies for teachers in charter schools and District 75 are expected to be released on Tuesday). A team of journalists spent several hours verifying the tea leaves, dealing with anomalies, searching for missing tea cups and making sure everything foretold as planned before posting it on our site.

We are interested in your feedback. You can add your thoughts in the comment section below or e-mail us at SchoolCrock@nhtimes.com.