New
York City Issues 2001: Education Option Paper
By Norm Fruchter and Joseph P. Viteritti
The most significant problem facing public education
in New York City is poor academic performance in too many
schools - the so-called "failing schools." A report issued
by the State Education Department in March, 2001 indicates
that three out of four city schools are not meeting acceptable
levels of performance, based upon students' English and
math exam scores. In at least
300 city schools, student outcomes are dismal. Schools
can linger as failing - on the state's School Under Registration
Review (SURR) list - for years before they either improve
or are closed. In the meantime the life chances of thousands
of children - a disproportionate number of which are African
American and Latino - are severely compromised.
There is broad agreement that the most effective way
to deal with such widespread failure is to develop educational
and organizational strategies to turn such schools around.
Schools that have demonstrated resistance to change over
a long period of time should be closed, and children who
have been attending them should be given new options.
Strategies would then be adopted to address the needs
of those students who still are unable to meet academic
standards.
Many of the school system's needs, particularly in terms
of significant school transformations, will require significant
expenditures of new money. Recently, new hope was held
out for the availability of such funds when a state supreme
court justice found that the state's system of school
funding provided inadequate resources to New York City
schools and denies many children in New York City the
opportunity for an adequate education that is their entitlement
by law. Plaintiffs hope that the resolution of the suit
will result in a large infusion of funds commensurate
with the city's extraordinary educational needs. The court
decision is now being appealed by the state. Some experts
have cited research showing that there is no direct correlation
between educational spending and educational performance,
claiming that money doesn't matter so long as the school
system continues to do business as it has done in the
past. However, a more nuanced reading of the research
indicates that money does matter when it is spent intelligently.
Why have many schools failed their students for so long?
This paper addresses the major issues and those approaches
most widely discussed for dealing with them, as well as
those that are believed to show promise, all the while
recognizing that there is rarely unanimity within the
education profession about what methods and practices
will work best.
Class Size
For years many parents, teachers and experts believed
that smaller class size produced better education, though
some researchers told us that class size didn't affect
academic outcomes. Recent research results, from a large
Tennessee study, demonstrate that when you reduce class
size to about 15 students in Kindergarten through third
grade, student achievement improves significantly. What's
more, the gains that kids make in smaller classes don't
disappear when they move into larger size classes in fourth
grade. The gains were largest for poor students of color.
State funding is available to reduce class size, but
not to fifteen students per class. There also isn't enough
money to reduce class size to an average of 15 across
the entire New York City school system. Many schools and
districts can't reduce their class sizes because they
don't have available space to accommodate the new classrooms
that must be created. Overcrowding, and the failure to
build new schools in densely populated districts, means
that many schools have no space for new classes and must
spend available class size reduction funds on a second
teacher in an overcrowded class, a solution that has not
shown the same improvement in educational achievement
that reduced class size has shown. So the issue of how
to reduce class sizes across the city, to improve student
achievement, is directly tied to the need for more school
facilities, more qualified teachers, and the issue of
how to finance and build the new schools we need.
Absent across the board class size reduction, smaller
class size can serve as part of an overall intervention
strategy for addressing the specific needs of children
who have deficiencies in the basic skills of reading and
math. This approach has been used in summer programs with
some success, and it might be used more widely during
the school year as a way to reduce the need for summer
school.
Universal Pre-Kindergarten
Another way to raise student achievement, particularly
in low-performing schools, is to improve the levels of
skills, capacities and overall school readiness that kids
bring with them to school. Many research studies have
demonstrated that good pre-kindergarten education significantly
improves not only students' academic achievement, but
also their life-chances. Again, there is state funding
available for pre-kindergarten instruction. But like the
class size issue, the problem of how to provide universal
pre-k, is intimately tied to the need for more facilities
and more qualified teachers. Many schools and districts
are so overcrowded that they cannot provide the space
necessary for pre-k programs. To provide a quality pre-k
experience so that all our students enter kindergarten
equipped to learn, we have to solve the issue of how to
finance and build the new schools and hire the new teachers
we need.
New School Buildings
Overcrowding, and the resulting shortage of space that
prevents class size reduction and provision of quality
pre-k programs, is severe across the city; three out of
every five students attend overcrowded public schools.
Solving this problem requires a variety of new and innovative
approaches. Funding currently available from traditional
state and city sources is far too meager to meet the need.
New forms of financing, utilizing creative fiscal strategies
and tapping private credit markets as well as public sources,
must be developed to generate new funding streams.
The traditional construction institutions we've relied
on to erect school buildings must also be reconsidered,
because they are often too slow, too cumbersome and too
inefficient to meet the more rapidly expanding need. We
need varieties of public-private partnerships, utilization
of leasing mechanisms to convert warehouse and office
space to schools, and enlistment of non-profit developers
to construct multi-use, neighborhood-rooted buildings
anchored by schools.
Qualified Teachers
Every September the Board of Education starts the school
year with about 15% of its teaching force unlicensed and
uncertified. But by the beginning of the 2003 school year,
the state will require that all New York City teachers
be licensed and certified. Where will these qualified
teachers come from? The programs recently implemented
by the Board of Education have not fully addressed the
enormous shortage of certified teachers. Worse, the chronic
shortage of teachers the city faces will grow far more
severe as an expected wave of teacher retirements rolls
through the school system during the next five years.
The usual response to the increasing severity of the
shortage of qualified teachers has been to urge salary
increases. Certainly salary increases will help recruit
more qualified teachers; teachers are among the lowest
paid of all professionals, and the many consider the demands
of the job out of line with the meager financial rewards.
But many of the qualified teachers who get their experience,
and hone their skills, in New York City classrooms are
eventually drawn to the Westchester, Long Island and New
Jersey suburbs by significantly higher pay. If the suburbs
match the City's salary increases with raises of their
own, we may well boost teacher salaries and still find
ourselves with a teacher shortage crisis as the teacher
drain to the suburbs continues.
New solutions that go along with increased salaries but
make teaching in the city more attractive to qualified
teachers have been proposed, as have new routes and methods,
to help new teachers gain their qualifications. School
districts across the country are experimenting with varieties
of teacher incentives, such as signing bonuses, housing
allowances, and mortgage down payments, to make it economically
advantageous for teachers to choose, and remain in, urban
districts. Districts and universities are experimenting
with new forms of recruitment, instruction, apprenticeships
and other forms of on-the-job training so that new teachers
quickly develop both the teaching skills and the credits
they need for licensure and certification.
Increasing the overall supply of qualified teachers is
a necessary but not sufficient solution to the problem
of improving poorly performing schools. Recent research
studies have demonstrated that in many urban districts,
and certainly in New York City, the most qualified teachers
gravitate toward the most advantaged schools. This means
that the most inexperienced, unqualified, and poorly prepared
teachers wind up in schools that serve the students with
the greatest need. In New York City, there is a direct
relationship between student need and teacher inexperience:
the poorer the school, the more likely the teaching staff
will be unlicensed, uncertified and inexperienced.
So we not only have to solve the problem of how to recruit,
train and retain qualified teachers; we also have to develop
mechanisms to insure that qualified teachers are teaching
in the schools that most need their skills - or are at
least spread evenly throughout the school system. This
will require a range of incentives that will attract qualified
teachers to commit themselves to poorly performing schools
for an extended period of years. One suggestion is to
provide a substantial salary bonus for each member of
a team of teachers who would commit to teaching at a poorly
performing school for a five year period. Offering as
much as a $25,000 annual bonus to each teacher in a six
teacher team in each of 300 schools would cost $45 million
per year, a small portion of the school system's $12 billion
annual budget, but an expenditure with enormous potential
to improve outcomes for students now least well served.
Other solutions are possible, including the renegotiation
of union contractual clauses governing transfer based
on seniority rights. But a mix of new commitments to more
equity in the distribution of teacher quality, combined
with the development of a range of powerful new incentives,
could transform poorly performing schools by providing
the infusion of quality teachers they sorely need.
School Leaders
We are facing an equally critical shortage of effective
school leaders - principals and assistant principals.
Current advertisements for principal vacancies often draw
too few candidates for competitive interviews, and overall
candidate quality has deteriorated significantly. In part
this was an issue of insufficient compensation, combined
with the severity of the demands placed on those in school
leadership positions. But even after salaries were significantly
increased, the shortage of effective leaders remains severe.
To address this problem, New York City can create a leadership
training institute to recruit, train and supply highly
qualified principals and assistant principals. This institute
could take advantage of the university and corporate sector
leadership training experience available in the city.
In addition, we could give principals more discretion
over running their schools so that authority is commensurate
with responsibility.
Governance Structure
Many argue that the poor performance of many City schools
is related to an ineffective governance structure that
does not allow for adequate accountability. In New York
City, the issue of governance operates on at least three
levels - citywide, community, and school.
At the citywide level, the central Board of Education
is appointed by the five borough presidents (one appointee
each) and the mayor (two appointees). Critics claim that
this system breeds dissention at the highest levels of
policy making, minimizes accountability, and leads to
micromanagement. They contend that giving the mayor direct
control over the school system would create a more direct
line of accountability to the city's chief executive who
is directly elected by a majority of city voters. Plans
designed to increase mayoral control of the school system
usually come in one of three forms. One would allow the
mayor to appoint a commissioner of education, as he would
any departmental commissioner within the city government.
A second would allow the mayor to appoint all members
to the board from a list of nominees put forward by an
"independent" committee. A third would allow the mayor
to appoint a majority of the board. Opponents to such
plans argue that they violate a long tradition of allowing
the school system to operate with a degree of independence
from city hall, and that the mayor's power over the locally
provided portion of the school budget is already considerable.
In 1996 the state legislature passed a law that significantly
reduced the power of the city's thirty-two locally elected
community school boards. Some would argue that we should
end their existence altogether. The size of school districts
is so large that they bifurcate or awkwardly bind many
different neighborhoods. In addition, school board elections
in New York City draw an extremely low turnout (as they
do in any school board election in the U.S). As a result,
many doubt that they serve any real community role. Others
support a more subtle - though significant - change that
would treat community boards as an arm of central headquarters.
Under this arrangement community superintendents function
as though they are appointees of the chancellor. Their
role would be to help implement policy enacted at the
central board.
Finally, many would argue that the most important level
of governance is at the individual school, the point of
service delivery. Under the current arrangement there
is a mismatch between the amount of responsibility imposed
on principals and teachers and the amount of discretion
they enjoy. Recent changes in the principals' contract
has given them greater compensation (which they deserve)
in exchange for their loss of tenure. While the new plan
raises the level of accountability for these site-based
managers, it does not give them any more power over personnel
decisions, and arguably gives them less authority over
budget decisions, which are now shared with leadership
teams, and limits their ability to operate as real leaders.
Some have held this to be the reason for the exodus of
principal talent that continues even after significant
pay raises were implemented.
Would a more effective governance structure, one that
linked mayoral appointment power with a blue-ribbon nominating
commission more representative of the city's constituencies
than the borough presidents, produce more effective schooling?
Would smaller (or no) community school districts, perhaps
commensurate with Community Planning Boards, generate
more effective local support for schools? What impact
would greater authority for principals have?
Accountability
Many experts believe that changing the forms of school
governance will ultimately be a far less effective a strategy
than changing the ways in which we hold our schools accountable.
State and Federal requirements are moving the Board of
Education toward tougher forms of performance accountability.
This is because it is believed that holding students back
in grade or prohibiting them from graduating when they
don't score high enough on gate-keeping tests will motivate
them to higher performance, and retain integrity for public
school diplomas. Supporters of tests also argue that the
school system has paid insufficient attention to effective
instructional strategies that teach basic skills in reading,
writing and math. Testing students and reporting school-wide
scores, they argue, will focus attention on strategies
that would improve these skills. While tests are not perfect,
their supporters maintain that they are still the most
objective form of measurement available. Critics of tests
contend, however, that tests that measure limited aspects
of a student's knowledge force schools to use an inappropriate
amount of time teaching specific items of information
(teaching to the test), rather than focusing on important
skills. They would say, in addition, that if the core
problem of poor performance is limited school capacity
- insufficient numbers of qualified teachers and leaders,
for example - these measures won't help schools improve.
Another form of accountability is to reward individuals
for a job well done. Thus, merit pay has been suggested
as a form of accountability. Recently, New York City Schools
Chancellor Harold Levy has announced a plan to award merit
pay to school principals, making available as much as
$15,000 to principals and other administrators in the
300 schools showing the greatest improvement in test scores.
There is also discussion and debate around providing performance
pay for teachers. This raises questions of whether testing
or other evaluation for merit pay purposes should be done
on a school-wide or some other basis. In addition, since
comparisons between schools are fraught with problems,
merit pay should be based upon measurement of progress,
rather than raw scores.
Encouraging competition among schools so that a range
of choices is provided and market forces become the ultimate
arbiters of school quality has also been championed as
a way to improve accountability. Two forms of such competition,
charter schools and the use of vouchers, are discussed
below.
Charter Schools
Charter schools now exist in thirty-eight states across
the nation, including New York, where thirteen new schools
and seven conversions have been approved. Charter schools
are public schools that may be run by public school entities,
non-profit or for profit organizations. They function
outside the ordinary jurisdiction of a local school district,
enjoying more discretion over budget and personnel matters
and freedom from many state and local regulations. Their
charter theoretically functions as a performance contract
in which the autonomy they enjoy is granted in exchange
for accountability. Opponents of charters have claimed
that they have not been held to a high enough standard
of accountability, and that there is no consistent evidence
that charter schools perform at a better level than regular
public schools. Proponents claim that charters provide
new options for parents who want alternatives to chronically
failing public schools. They point to surveys that show
a high level of parental satisfaction with charter schools.
They argue that since most charter schools are smaller
than typical public schools, and are schools of choice
where students, teachers and administrators are assigned
on a voluntary basis, it is much easier for them to create
the sense of community that is crucial to the success
of any academic institution. Under the current law, in
New York City these schools receive only 80% of the funding
enjoyed by other public schools, making comparisons with
public schools difficult and unfair.
School Vouchers
School vouchers remain one of the most controversial
issues in American education. Presently publicly supported
programs exist in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida. Opponents
claim that they drain off public dollars from public schools,
while failing to improve the public schools. It is also
claimed that they violate federal and state constitutional
requirements for the separation of church and state when
they are used to support attendance at religious schools.
Proponents argue that they can be used to provide poor
children alternatives to failing public schools and offer
poor families opportunities that they do not now have.
Evaluations of public and private voucher programs show
mixed results. The more positive assessments indicate
that children who attend non-public schools with vouchers
perform better than their public school counterparts,
the more negative ones show that there is no significant
difference between the two. There is more consistent evidence
that parents whose children attend non-public schools
through vouchers report higher levels of satisfaction.
A recent study in New York City showed that poor children
who attend Catholic Schools perform better on state reading
and math exams than their public school peers. The same
report states that while vouchers may provide a desirable
alternative for some children in failing public schools,
they are not a complete solution to the problem of school
failure.
The applicability of vouchers as a useful policy alternative
may depend on the design of such programs and their ability
to target those students with the most severe needs. Their
political viability is rather questionable. While polls
seem to show strong support for vouchers among African
American and Latino parents, most political leaders in
the city oppose them. However, the recent 4-1 vote by
African-American and Latino parents against for-profit
management of failing public schools suggests that the
support for privatization efforts may not be as broad,
or as deep, as polls suggest. Some would argue that many
other factors complicated the picture in this vote, making
it a poor proxy for a vote on for-profit schools.
Replicating What Works
The system has demonstrated a remarkable incapacity to
learn from its own successes, and replicate them in schools
with a record of chronic failure. One vision of school
improvement would be identify capacities and strategies
that work in some schools, and use them to systematically
transform failing schools across the City.
Norm Fruchter is director of the Institute for Education
and Social Policy of New York University. Joseph P. Viteritti
is the director of the Program on Education and Civil
Society of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public
Service of New York University.