Following the recent ELA tests there was an outcry by students, parents, and teachers throughout various social media forums about not only the length of the exams but the content of the reading passages and the ambiguity of questions. National media jumped into the debate. New York State responded by excluding a section from the scoring. (One can only imagine if other test items were similarly flawed yet will be used for high-stakes ratings of students and teachers.)

 
There are real costs to these tests. Districts are required to use time and money for administration and scoring. By the fall taxpayers must purchase or design new assessments for the K-12 system. The new testing mandates, which are unfunded, must be paid for with money that supports existing programs, hence the call for mandate relief.

 
I had a recent conversation with a state official who was reluctant to support a recommendation for a particular mandate relief item because a single special interest group had a stronger voice than the general parent population of public school students. We agreed that it would not be until parents were actually losing services and programs such as the arts, extracurricular clubs, sports, electives, or acceptable class sizes that they would actually speak up. The official reminded me that special interest groups, not parents, are organized.

 
However, there is great potential via the unity and strength of an alliance of our parents and teachers when they come to agreement about what is best for our students. A vehicle for this collaboration is the PTA, although this volunteer organization is frequently underutilized and understaffed. Nationally, there has been a decline in PTA involvement.

 
The PTA can be a powerful voice in influencing education policy. As a result of greater awareness of unfunded and increasing state mandates, PTA groups in southern and central Westchester have recently organized campaigns to communicate concerns to legislators about how unfunded mandates are draining resources from valued programs and services. There is also concern about the overuse of testing and how parents can have a voice in the state’s decisions.

 
Over the past few years we have observed international and national acts of protest such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. Activism is in the air, but because I believe that, at least on a local level, despotism is not the culprit, our approach does not have to be so radical. We have a system and mechanisms that can be used to effect change.

A first step might be simply to join, participate, and even lead in PTAs in SOCSD. As local districts face challenges about over-testing, new unfunded mandates, or state aid cuts, there is a greater need to coordinate a local organization that can represent our students and fight for a quality education that is based on sound and well-rounded learning experiences rather than political agendas that are fueled by special interest dollars and ideologies.

 
As the PTA reaches out to the community over the next few weeks, they will be seeking volunteers who will not only help them to plan assemblies and field trips but will also help to educate parents about unfunded mandates, abusive testing policies, and the external politics that threaten local control and the common good that public schools have and should always provide to each community.

One might argue that school is supposed to be about tests; however, I disagree. School is about learning. Tests are simply one way to measure student progress and are being overused by those who fail to recognize that effective teachers continuously monitor and assess student understanding in both formal and informal ways yet not always through tests.

Following No Child Left Behind and now with Race to the Top, there is an obsession with accountability measures – tests for students and results about teachers and principals – that will presumably make America more competitive on the international testing stage. Unfortunately, the recent increase of tests to “improve” education is on the verge of rapid expansion.

Beginning in 2012-13 in all New York State schools, students in every subject will be tested. Districts are required to use state-approved exams to administer to students at additional and unfunded costs to taxpayers. In areas where vendors have not yet provided assessment options or in districts where additional materials are unaffordable, teachers will be asked to create new tests.

These locally-developed assessments will have to withstand the inevitable legal challenges that will result when it has been determined that the tests have not been effectively designed to measure teacher and principal performance, another objective of the current testing movement. In areas such as art, music, physical education, and electives, schools are being mandated to design assessments to quantify learning. If we think that nine hours of testing in 2012 is too much, just wait until next year.

In September, I shared with SOCSD faculty my concerns about the overemphasis on testing, my skepticism about the connections between tests that are designed to assess student learning that are now being used to evaluate teachers, and my fears about the agendas of the agents of change, including educational entrepreneurs, detached bureaucrats, investors, politicians, and naïve would-be reformers.

There is an exaggerated national narrative on underperforming schools that generalizes poor school performance that is significantly correlated with poverty to all schools. Change agents have built a justification for reconstituting schools through privatization, competition, and investing in costly educational services that will provide profits for an industry that Newscorp’s Rupert Murdoch has estimated to be worth $500 billion dollars. (Recently, test maker Pearson secured a $33 million dollar contract for New York’s tests. )

This is not the first time in the history of American education that fear has been used to drive reform. In 1958 there was Sputnik and the Russian threat; in 1980 there was the rise of Japan and A Nation at Risk. Yet in spite of the alarms, the U.S. performance on comparative international tests remained unchanged while American entrepreneurism, optimism, and innovation sparked an economy that continues to be one of the strongest in the world. Something is amiss.

Among other experts, experienced educators are concerned that this time the reforms could actually harm American education. Sweeping generalizations about school performance have led to statewide mandated changes, excluding no system, no matter how well students have performed. The shift to a testing culture that will encourage a narrowed curricular focus from a comprehensive education that fosters creativity and critical and independent thinking and exposes students to diverse academic experiences, if unchecked, will be detrimental, not only to students but to the nation.

(Next Blog – What can be done?)

Within the rhetoric, there is an implication that up until this new law, school districts have not evaluated teachers and principals. This is not accurate. In South Orangetown, we have had teacher and principal evaluation systems supported by professional development and improvement plans to ensure that staff is current with curricular and pedagogical trends, and those with deficiencies receive support.

The new system ties teacher and principal evaluation to student tests. In non-tested areas where there are no state-approved exams, districts are now required to either purchase new exams or develop tests that meet technical requirements to ensure that they will be approved by New York State.

The new system requires that K-12 students be regularly assessed and that the data be uploaded to the State Education Department. To do all of this, each district must expand its testing system and bolster its technology infrastructure to support on-line exams.

Albany has indicated that this reform is driven by low graduation rates in New York. Even though it is agreed that there is a correlation between a community’s income and its high school graduation rate, all schools, no matter how successful, are being swept into this test-driven approach to learning.

All of this comes at a cost. South Orangetown will receive a total of $23,000 to plan, develop, and implement a massive restructuring of our curriculum, assessment, and evaluation systems that will cost the taxpayers somewhere between one and two million dollars in both new and in-kind monies. The return on investment is likely to be nil; in fact, there is concern that these kinds of reforms could be detrimental to educationally-sound school systems.

While there are policy makers who believe that poorly performing education systems can be transformed through measurement driven by carrots and sticks, those leading high-performing districts and internationally leading school-systems disagree. Singapore’s Minister of Education recently shared that his country, held up as a standard by U.S. education leaders, would never rank teachers by test scores. Ironically, they have been emulating some of the top school systems in the United States.

Instead of ranking and rating teachers based on questionable and inconsistent data sets, they have been seeking ways to enhance critical and creative thinking and avoid overreliance on testing which could undermine collaborative learning, one of the attributes they have found in American schools.

The Governor’s office has publicized a checklist of “compliant” districts that have provided the new evaluation system to the State Education Department. The lists are organized on an interactive New York State map of counties. The map’s existence implies that the State Education Department is ready and waiting for the districts to comply. This is not accurate.

Schools across New York are also being threatened with the loss of aid if they do not comply by the fall; however, the State Education Department has not finalized its guidance on how these systems are not only to be developed but to be submitted and posted. There are many unanswered questions for those required to do the work while many in Albany celebrate what others believe is a hollow victory. There is also serious concern from the field and from observers with backgrounds in measurement who do not believe that the act of learning can be as easily measured as some would like to believe.

South Orangetown is working to comply with the State in a manner that will ensure that we receive our financial aid, especially during these fiscally-precarious times, but also in an approach that will protect the integrity of the learning environment that could be potentially compromised by a grand and unfunded educational experiment. Stay tuned as the rest of the story unfolds.

While that may appear to be good news, unfortunately we will be forced to let go a number of highly valued staff members. Some of these teachers are also coaches or club advisors who have built strong connections to students and families outside of the classroom. Due to the enrollment decline, the staff with the lowest seniority will be the first to be dismissed. This has nothing to do with their competence, dedication, or value but is driven by the fact that the student population in South Orangetown is declining.

The district is not in a position of “deciding” who remains or goes when positions are eliminated due to lower enrollment. Seniority is the determining factor. Even if the economic times were better, we would be unable to retain staff for empty classrooms.

Some of the cuts to stay under the tax levy cap in developing this year’s budget have been made in ways that do not directly impact the classroom. However, the majority of the dollars needed to close the tax cap gap are from staff reductions due to enrollment loss.

While we hope to assist these staff members in finding employment, it is also hoped that via a combination of potential leaves and retirements, several of these staff members may return. All will be placed on a “preferred eligibility list” which allows them to claim positions that may reopen over the next few years.

Later in the spring we may have better news when more staffing information becomes available.

It is likely that the Governor used this data point to create more urgency for improving schools. Education should always be a priority for ensuring the overall advancement of a society.  Nonetheless, it is important that New Yorkers consider multiple and various types of data before making a generalization about all schools and school systems around a single data point and one for which relevance is questionable.  Such generalizations have the potential of justifying systemic changes that may be good for some student populations but deleterious to others.

The real crisis is child poverty.  Sadly, the United States has one of the highest child poverty rates in the industrialized world at approximately 22%.  New York State’s child poverty rate is consistent with the national average. 

Other State-to-State Comparisons

In spite of our high level of poverty, recent data reveal that New York may be actually beating the odds. In its national ranking of school systems by state, Education  Week, in its 2012 “Quality Counts” report, placed New York State in the #3 slot behind Maryland (#1) and Massachusetts (#2).  Each of those states had respective poverty rates of 13% and 14%.  Comparing the “Quality Counts” rankings of education systems across the country with state-by-state child poverty rates indicates that New York is one of the top performing states in spite of its high child poverty status.

Other recent reports also reflect how New York may actually be one of the leaders in education.  According to a recent study on “business-friendly” states conducted by CNBC, New York ranks #1 in the nation for what business needs from schools. It is #2 for technology and innovation.  Perhaps there is a correlation. Here are a few other related facts:

• New York schools have more Intel semifinalists — 105 — than any other state. The next closest state is California with 41. 1,839 students apply with 300 making semifinal status.  New York has a third of these students.

• New York ranks second in the nation for the number of students successfully completing Advanced Placement courses.

What about the International Rankings? 

Again, poverty is the real crisis.  American students attending schools with less than 10% poverty would be ranked number one on the PISA, the international assessment that school critics use to condemn public education.  What also makes the school ranking more interesting is that no other countries involved in the international testing have child poverty rates close to 25%. 

While these reports may provide a different perspective on public school performance in the State, it is important that we do not fall into the comparison trap.  Americans are competitive and like to see rankings and standings.   However, school systems across the country have different standards for graduation, so a comparison of states by graduation rates is irrelevant unless we have information about how they are assessed – by what standards – and which students are being assessed  – their poverty and language status.  Academic proficiency is often more about where one lives rather than how well one has learned. 

What does all of this have to do with South Orangetown? 

New York State has mandated sweeping changes to its education system that include an expanded student assessment system in which student testing – on-line and in school – will proliferate in an effort to systematize the state’s collection of data on student and school performance. Teachers and principals will also be evaluated on how their students perform on tests, even though there is limited research to support making such connections and even though 80% of staff are not in instructional areas that culminate with a state assessment. New tests will have to be created.

There is also an initiative to align New York’s curriculum with the Common Core Standards, a national curriculum that is being adopted by many states.  While much of the nature of this work has great potential for improving schools, some of it comes at a price – of time, money, and misdirection. 

This costly and unfunded mandated reform that overhauls the public school system is being driven by the aforementioned misuses of data.  Great organizations and school systems always strive for continuous improvement, but such improvement must be driven by real and local data.

In South Orangetown we have consistently graduated over 90% of our students with Regents diplomas and with over two-thirds receiving “advanced” distinction.  Yet, we are being asked to make a radical shift in how we use our resources to conform to a new state assessment system that we and neighboring districts have projected to cost much more than we have been provided by the state.  As a district we received less than $25,000 for work that may cost us between one and two million dollars over a four year period.  The initial costs are projected, but we have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first year.  These costs collide with the current period of fiscal austerity.

How will we pay for these new reforms?

The New York State Legislature and the State Education Department can mandate regulations and laws that must be implemented at the local level but funded by local taxpayers.  In New York State, there are over 150 unfunded or underfunded mandates that are paid for by the local taxpayer.  When new mandates are added, the district must find room in their budgets to fund them.  Finding room means eliminating existing programs or staffing to accommodate the mandates, whether or not they are beneficial to the needs of students in the local district.

There may be some elements of New York’s reform agenda that will improve many schools.  Every faculty profits from efforts towards continuous improvement and finding better ways to help students learn.  However, this takes money and time, and every school district has different needs that do not necessarily align with every other system in the state.

To mandate untested initiatives without funding will prove to be disastrous for many school systems.  It is particularly frustrating for school districts, such as South Orangetown, in which the school-community has already identified instructional priorities, uses student performance data, and constantly engages the professional community in ways to enhance the learning experiences for our students, to be asked to conform to an agenda that will narrow the scope of our plan.  What makes this even more frustrating is that we have to pay for it by defunding local priorities.

On Saturday, January 28, 2012, administrators, Boards of Education, and PTA leaders from across the county will be meeting with state legislators to share their concerns about school funding and unfunded or underfunded mandates.  We will keep you posted about any progress in getting legislative relief.

There is a renewed utilitarian perspective on the purpose for school. U.S. and New York State policymakers call for College and Career Readiness. Their argument is based on a need for international competitiveness. While pragmatism is typically healthy, the recent approach is both ironic and counterproductive.

Many educators are concerned that we are narrowing our curriculum and educational priorities to prepare students for assessments while other countries, such as Finland and China, are making advances via the emulation of those elements of U.S. education that foster creativity and innovation. States, such as New York, are abandoning a model that created a generation of entrepreneurs and inventors who led the world in patents and Nobel prizes.

The new reform agenda has produced the following:

• teacher and student-test cheating scandals;

• an “award-winning” school in Texas – discovered to have dropped science, history, and the arts to achieve high scores on the state test;

• school districts that drop their arts and extracurricular programs due to limited resources or a need for more time to prepare students for tests;

• untested professional accountability systems – based on student exam results – that are likely to further narrow the scope of instruction to “make the grade”;

• New York math and reading exams for seven and eight year olds will exceed four hours per test. Tests are being planned for other subjects.

These represent a stark departure from an educational experience that should spark joy in learning, not anxiety. Such changes are occurring with no evidence that they will work.

Of course there is a need to develop skills and knowledge that will be required for future jobs. We are in the midst of a major information technology revolution; but is the education establishment setting a course to provide students with the right learning experiences to truly enable them to help advance our society during these transformative times? Does our focus on testing and accountability allow for a curriculum that fosters creative and innovative learning? What will we lose by narrowing learning experiences?

We must develop creative and critical thinking in our students to spark the next IT idea, healthcare intervention, transportation innovation, or clean energy solution. The U.S. economy needs creative knowledge products to compete in an interdependent global marketplace.

Such creators and creations are not developed in test-driven institutions in which the objectives are to sort and select those who are “college and career ready”. School must be much more than the development of human capital.

Most recently, the International Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducted a study of families whose students took the 2006 and 2009 PISA exams. These are the tests that are used to rank countries according to their educational performance.

The OECD study revealed – to no surprise – that the fifteen-year-olds who performed well on these assessments lived in homes in which parents read to them before they attended school and in their early years of education. The questions also assessed the extent to which parents read to their children and revealed that the greater the frequency, the higher the performance on the assessment.

Okay, so what’s the point? My home recycling bin is brimming with flyers and ads for the annual Black Friday shopping event. Radio and TV ads are promoting midnight madness opportunities for shoppers. Thanksgiving and Black Friday unofficially mark both the “season of giving and consuming.” Yet, whatever opinion we have about these events, for many the season serves as a time of reflection that is often accompanied by a burst of philanthropic enthusiasm. So in that spirit, I present an idea.

Gift or donate a book – even if it is not on anyone’s “list”. Recycle that dust-collecting library of children’s books that you have in your basement or attic by passing on the books to young children. Spread the word about the impact of home reading. Have older siblings read to younger ones. Pick up a book and read in front of your children or grandchildren. If we want to celebrate the spirit of giving, let’s do so with a gift of literacy. This might just be the gift that will yield benefits long after it has been given.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We have recently begun developing the budget for the 2012-13 school year and studying its potential impact on the educational program in our community.  Because of a “perfect storm” of three significant fiscal factors: loss of state and federal funding due to the economic crisis, the new tax cap law, and an abundance of unfunded state mandates, school districts across New York State face an unprecedented budget gap.  Difficult decisions will have to be made.

What does this mean for South Orangetown?

Without other revenue, the school-funding formula that was based on local property taxes was unsustainable.  In response the state has imposed a property tax cap that goes into effect for the 2012-13 budget – a Q&A is on the district website.  With a restriction on raising revenue through taxation and a reduction in state aid, the district will need to close a major budget gap of $2.4 million dollars.

What has the district already done to reduce expenses?

Over the past few years, the district has found efficiencies in operations, facilities, energy and transportation.  Last year we began to seek reductions in some non-mandated programs, such as pre-school education, freshman sports, and the enforcement of voter-approved mileage limits for school buses.  These initial changes combined with a multi-year fiscal management plan have kept district budget increases and residential tax rate increases at an average of 1.8% over the past three years.

Since 2008 SOCSD has cut slightly under $5.5 million dollars from its budget.  (Rockland districts have cut approximately $65 million)  At the same time we have experienced a loss in state and federal aid of over $5 million dollars. 

District teachers stepped up in their last contract by agreeing to 0% increases for a portion of the contract.  In spite of this effort, SOCSD excessed 53 positions over the past three years.

What does the future hold?

Someone recently told me, “The students are more important than money.”  I wholeheartedly agree; however, the educational services that we provide for students come at a cost.   It is exactly for that reason – the importance of each student’s education – that we need to skillfully manage our limited funding, judiciously determine priorities, and advocate for mandate relief.  Without these, SOCSD and all NY districts are going to see drastic reductions in services.  Nothing comes without a price.

Essentially, the district has self-imposed a cap during this difficult economic period. The district has made numerous cuts that equal approximately $5.5 million dollars over the past three years – an average of $1.83 million dollars each year. One can easily infer that we face a daunting challenge of reducing $2.4 million in a single year, especially in light of the cuts that have been made away from student programs and staffing.  There are fewer places to find savings. 

What about unfunded mandates?

There are over 150 state and federal public school mandates in New York that are either unfunded or underfunded.  Some were legislated for good reasons, such as health and safety, others are the result of special interest advocacy that have provided entitlements and were enacted when fiscal times were good.  Times have changed. 

Legislators and school leaders need to come together to either repeal or modify unfunded mandates, since it is unlikely that they will be able to find new funding.   A 2008-09 study of Westchester school districts illustrated that almost 20% of a district’s total budget is the result of unfunded or underfunded mandates.  In 2010-11 South Orangetown estimated that we were spending close to $22 million dollars towards such mandates.  While this does not mean that we can cut that amount, even a small percentage of mandate relief would allow districts to close the budget gap without having to cut into programs.

What is SOCSD’s plan to reduce its budget to close the budget gap of $2.4 million dollars?

We are in the beginning phase of this work.  As always, we will start with an effort to keep cuts away from the classroom; however, as noted this will become more difficult. Over the next few months we will present updates and seek community support on initiatives that may help us to find savings without affecting learning.  We will need parents as partners and other community members to help us to accomplish this goal.  Stay tuned for more information.

In spite of this discrepancy, our students have kept pace with teachers helping them to discern what is essential and what might be tested.  This coincides with the fact that more students than ever are attending school and for a longer period of time.  Prior to the 1960’s students of diverse backgrounds, English language learners, and students living in poverty, in spite of what some people might remember, did not populate the halls of the American high school to the extent to which they do today. Even with a homogenous student body, the graduation rate was only around 50%.  A small percentage of these graduates went on to college with less than a quarter of them graduating with a degree.

Today, we hear that our students need to be “college and career ready” so that America can be globally competitive.  This readiness must happen in spite of the fact that the organizational architecture of the public school has not changed, the curriculum continues to expand, and the population that attends school presents more challenges than ever before.  Of course, there will be more tests in this era of accountability that will take a different form and be based on national Common Core Standards.

In South Orangetown, we have an aligned curriculum and use assessment, not merely as a tool to determine grades, but as a mechanism to determine how well students have learned content or acquired skills.  With that information, we adjust our lessons accordingly, although this often becomes difficult to do when teachers feel pressured to cover the content of a rapidly expanding curriculum.

We have accepted the reality that not all curriculum content can be “covered” well.  Yes, it can be disseminated, but there is a good chance that it will be forgotten shortly after the assessment as the brain tends to dump data that it no longer considers useful or for which there has been neither meaningful engagement nor emotional connections.  The brain is efficient, unlike those who mandate additions to the curriculum.

To help embed learning by making it more meaningful, district instructors have been encouraged to employ approaches that require students to use information or skills that we teach or to which we provide access to think both critically and creatively to solve problems.  In some cases, we present a problem and ask them to find solutions – a task that will undoubtedly be asked of them as they venture to college or in a career.

Gone are the days when American workers are paid well to perform routine tasks that require little independent thinking.  Machines, robots, computers, and cheap offshore labor have provided leaders of the free market with greater opportunities for profit without paying high wages and benefits to American workers.  This reality has changed our world and economy.

Recently, parents contacted me indicating that their child would learn better in an instructional environment in which there were direct transactions between the teacher and his students – a straightforward dissemination of information – and the students and the teacher – demonstration of content retention on a test.   In the experiences and mental models of these parents and many adults of previous generations, this is how school is supposed to work.  In such a model, there is control, predictability, certainty, and a clear cause and effect. 

This instructional model no longer works in a world in which there has been an explosion of information with immediate access to it.  This instructional model no longer works in an information age in which knowledge workers are required to solve problems, create alternatives, understand the complexity of systems, and perform a host of critical thinking processes while technology transforms our society and workplace at an unprecedented rate. 

If we want our children to be prepared for a complex future that will likely be packed with more information than ever in our rapidly expanding universe, then we need to require them to become independent thinkers who will have the skills and capacity to manage vast volumes of information with critical and creative thinking.  This will require an acceptance and understanding that there is too much information for anyone to absorb and retain, and even if one had the capacity to do so, what good would it be if there was no independent ability to use it in a productive way? 

In 2010-11, our school district analyzed transportation to find efficiencies while ensuring student safety.  During this process we learned the following:

• Buses were underutilized, in some cases operating with less than 50% capacity;
• Buses were making multiple stops on streets where fewer stops would safely serve students while saving fuel, money, and time;
• The district could save $480,000 via consolidation of routes and the use of safe centralized stops.
   

During the winter and spring, community presentations about the proposed cost-saving changes were made at Board of Education and budget meetings.  Transportation policy and regulations were revised or enforced in accordance with state law related to child safety and mileage distances. 

There have been questions or concerns from some parents regarding the changes, especially given the fact that families may have different expectations on the matter of transporting students to school.  However, all district transportation decisions must be guided by New York State education law; in addition, such decisions have and always will adhere to the State’s safety standards.

Over the past few years, communities across the state and country have been challenged by difficult economic times.  School funding has been affected.  In SOCSD, we have made every effort to keep costs down while delaying any impact to the classroom. With the legislation of a highly restrictive tax cap, funding our schools will be more challenging than ever.  The district currently spends almost $4 million dollars on busing.  These and many other costs continue to rise while our funding sources have been and will continue to be limited or even reduced.

We need the partnership of parents to help us to make this work.  This begins by understanding why we made these changes and how they benefit the overall education program.  During one of the community presentations in the spring, one parent said, “I would rather have my son walk longer to get the bus than be in an overcrowded classroom.”  With limited funding and many regulated and mandated services, the first to be affected by a loss of funds are those that are not mandated. 

 While we are doing everything possible to find efficiencies throughout the budget, we must separate needs versus wants.  In some instances this relates to convenience versus inconvenience. Changes in the district’s transportation policy that increases safe centralized stops may not be as convenient as they had been during better economic times.  This may result in families having to make alternative arrangements.

No one in the district wants to decrease services or place additional pressures on families.  Unfortunately, with less aid and reduced revenue, we have fewer options and must find more ways to conserve.  Reducing what is not mandated is one of the first places where we will find such savings.   This will not be easy for anyone and will require the cooperation of everyone.

(Please click here to view Questions and Answers about transportation changes in South Orangetown.  You will also find the report on school district transportation that was conducted in September by Dr. Richard Ahola of the Pupil Transportation Safety Institute, the retired Director of Pupil Transportation for New York State and the author of the state’s bus safety regulations.  Dr. Ahola is a national expert on bus safety.)