Unintended, Unforeseen Consequences

The challenges surrounding the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) plan to replace principals at underperforming schools across the nation (New York Times: "U.S. Plan to Replace Principals Hits Snag: Who Will Step In?") reminds me of the unintended consequences of California's class size reduction policies during the 1990s.

As the New York Times reported yesterday about the ED's $4 billion plan to radically transform the country’s worst schools by installing new principals to overhaul most of the failing schools, "[T]here simply were not enough qualified principals-in-waiting to take over."

California experienced a similar human capital problem when it reduced class sizes statewide in grades k-3. An unintended consequence of its state policy was the hiring of more emergency-credentialed and unqualified educators as a result of the additional teaching positions needed to enable smaller class sizes. As this Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning report noted, "[T]he implementation of class size reduction ... dramatically increased the shortage" of fully qualified teachers. In addition, the Public Policy Institute of California reports that it exacerbated educational inequality and disproportionately affected schools that served low-income and minority students:

CSR led to a dramatic increase in the percentages of inexperienced and uncertified teachers. In 1990, there were few differences in these characteristics by racial/ethnic and income groups. Even as late as 1995–1996, the year before CSR, schools with high percentages of nonwhite and low-income students were only slightly more likely
than other schools to have inexperienced teachers who lacked full certification and postgraduate schooling. By 1999, large gaps in teacher qualifications had emerged between schools attended by nonwhite and low-income students and other schools. For black students in schools with more than 75 percent of the students enrolled in subsidized lunch programs, nearly 25 percent had a first- or second-year teacher; almost 30 percent had a teacher who was not fully certified. At the other extreme, for white students attending schools with 25 percent or fewer of the students enrolled in subsidized lunch programs, only 12 percent had a first- or second-year teacher, and only 5 percent had a teacher who was not fully credentialed. These differences reflect the varying levels of difficulty that many schools experienced in attempting to attract and retain teachers following the implementation of CSR.

With all the current hullabaloo about wanting to fire more underperforming teachers as a chief reform strategy, the critical question is: "Who will replace them?" The belief that 'we can do better' does not necessarily make it so. We've got to attend to and recognize such human capital challenges before we put forth such policies, however well intended.

More on the worst schools in NYC, and their principals

Out of the 33 schools with the lowest Environment scores in 2009-2010, only four of them have new principals this year, according to the DOE website. At least five of their principals were Leadership Academy graduates, from simply checking the web.

Six schools had the absolute worst score: a “0”. One of them is Ross Global charter. An account from Mariama Sanoh, a parent at the school, was posted a few days ago here.

Another school that got a zero is PS 50 in the Bronx. Its principal, Francisco Cruz, was removed from his job last summer, after he was found to have rigged the bids for an afterschool program he had financial interest in.

Tied for seventh worst in the city is MS 571 in Brooklyn. The principal, Santousha Troutman is a graduate of the Leadership Academy, and remains in her job. Eighth worst, tied with four other schools, is PS 11 in the Bronx, run by another Leadership Academy alumni, Elizabeth Hachar. Ms. Hachar appears to be quite a tyrant and has a long history of infuriating parents.

According to a 2008 article in the Highbridge LowDown,

Hachar first made headlines when she fired popular parent teacher coordinator Charles Woods on the final day of term last June. Hachar is in her third year as principal and is a graduate of the New York City Leadership Academy (NYCLA). This June NYCLA was designated the city's official principal training program in NYC's efforts to implement new "Children First" school reforms. A linchpin of the initiative is "empowerment", giving principals "broader discretion over allocating resources, choosing their staffs and creating programming", according to the New York City Department of Education's website.

Problems began before Wood's dismissal, says Nelson Mar, senior staff attorney and education law specialist at Legal Services NYC-Bronx, a civil legal service for low income individuals. On May 2nd of this year, Mar's firm, along with a coalition of community activists, teachers and staff, filed a complaint with school superintendent Dolores Desposito.

Among the allegations was a claim that Hachar's mandate to lock bathrooms led some children to soil themselves. "One mother told me her daughter had to be hospitalized because of an obstruction in her bowel," said Mar. On Sept. 10th at the first PTA meeting of the 2008 school year, the principal addressed the bathroom issue, said attendee Theodore Garcia, first vice president of the Community Education Council for the district. Hachar "stated that 'all the teachers in the building have keys to the bathrooms to let students in'", said Garcia, but did not explain why they were locked at all. Hachar did not respond to multiple attempt s to contact her, and ordered the removal of a reporter from the September 10th PTA meeting by six police officers…. Hachar is currently under investigation because of those allegations, said Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the DOE. Hachar is credited with raising test scores. English proficiency has nearly doubled according to data from New York State School Report Cards, the government's yearly schools assessment….

She's made other changes as well. According to the community organizer, over 30 teachers from the school's full-time teaching staff of 59 have left or been fired in the time she's held office.

Yet perhaps because of her ability to keep test scores up, Hachar remains in her post.

Tied with the above school at no. 9 was the Academy of Business and Community Development. Last year, the principal and founder of the school was Clyde Cole, yet another graduate of the Leadership Academy, who received a bonus of $7,000 from the DOE in 2008-9. Here is an excerpt on his alumni page at NYU’s Steinhardt School:

After graduating from NYU Clyde joined the Aspiring Principals’ Program at the New York City Leadership Academy because he’d be guaranteed a principal position within one year. A few months into the program the Department of Education’s Office of New Schools presented the group with the possibilities and the process of opening a new school in New York City. As per Department of Education requirements, Clyde assembled a Planning Team, which included Urban Assembly, a nonprofit organization that has been founding schools since 1997, a fellow Aspiring Principal, a parent, a high school senior, three middle school principals, his former high school basketball coach, and two teachers, one of whom was once Clyde’s student.

Mr. Cole is gone now, replaced with Simone Mcintosh.

Also tied at 9^th worst last year was PS 52 in Staten Island, whose principal was Evelyn Mastroianni. Ms. Mastroianni made headlines last year when she threatened to suspend a 9 year old student who was holding a 2- inch plastic Lego gun. She only relented when the parents threatened to sue. The school has a new principal this year, Jane McCord.

The parents at Muscota, at 15^th worst, managed to rid themselves of their much-despised principal Tomasz Graski, another Leadership Academy alum, but now he has been installed instead at ms45/ in East Harlem.

The 20^th worst school, according to the surveys, was PS 6 in the Bronx, whose principal is Darlene Mcwhales. That school was afflicted with mold in the portable classrooms last year, and yet the DOE resisted allowing students into classrooms in the main building even though there was apparently room for them. Here is a comment from a teacher on the Yournabe website about Ms. Mcwhales:

I worked in a portable classroom for many years. In one of the classrooms the mold was so bad there was a big gaping hole in the wall. When principal, Darlene Mcwhales at PS 6 saw the hole she responded to the teacher, "place a bookshelf in front of the hole so parents won't complain." I was infuriated with her response, so I contacted every possible agency to respond to the serious mold problems. Mrs. Mcwhales even went as far as firing one of the teachers she believed contacted DOSH.”

Gregory Hodge is the well-known principal of Frederick Douglass Academy, which has the 25^th lowest score for environment in the city. Mr. Hodge is famous for his “no excuses” attitude to teachers and students;

“In my final interview with the [teaching] candidate, I lay down the law,” says Hodge. “As quickly as you’re hired, you can be fired. If you don’t perform—

you’re gone.” At this point Hodge says certain candidates get squeamish and ask how they will be evaluated. “How will you evaluate your students? Through test scores,” Hodge replies. “That’s how I’ll evaluate you—through their test scores.”

A former teacher describes the harrowing environment at the school in an article in the Indypendent last month:

The worst part of working at FDA was the principal, whose management style was described by the district United Federation of Teachers representative as “abrasive.” In my experience, shouting was the norm, often peppered with derogatory words and phrases. Neither children nor teachers were spared the kind of verbal abuse one expects from a drill sergeant, not a school principal. But seeing most of my colleagues cowed or resigned to it, I rolled along, until he threatened me one day — saying, “teachers are gonna get their throats cut” — shortly after I and a couple other teachers had called the city and the state to complain about the lack of a certified special education teacher for the sixth grade.

FDA’s not the grittiest school in the city or the country, but its shortcomings highlight many of the problems with urban education. Social services and counseling are almost nonexistent. But as I began to advocate further for certain students, I directly exposed myself to the potential loss of my livelihood. But even our calls didn’t solve the special ed problem. Instead, the sixth-graders got a certified teacher at the expense of another class.

This was only the most obvious example of our principal not doing his job. As the year went on I began to compile documentation of harassment. I first called our district superintendent, whose secretary helpfully suggested I look for a job at another school. I also called the DOE ’s office of special investigations and was told that unless children were being physically harmed at the school, that office was unlikely to investigate any further than calling the school principal. The person I spoke with in the office of special investigations helpfully added that it might “come back on me” if I decided to file a complaint.

Mark Clarke, principal of the Bronx Mathematics Preparatory School, 23^rd on the list, strangely took on the job as the chair of East NY Prep charter’s board, right before it was closed down by SUNY last year, because of alleged mismanagement, the principal’s self-dealing, and the pushing out of students with low test scores. According to Gotham Schools, Mr. Clarke said the school had not forced students to leave, but that “they left on their own,”

25^th worst school in the city was E. Flatbush Community Research School, run by David Manning, who is another Leadership Academy grad and received a bonus from the DOE in the fall of 2009.

The 27^th worst school last year was PS 24 in the Bronx, led by Donna Connelly, known for turning down a grant for two years of music appreciation for the students at her school, apparently because “there was no educational value to it.”

Gary Babad breaks his contract and is demoted to DOE's press office

In a violation of his exclusive contract with the NYC Public School Parent blog, Gary Babad has published a exclusive report on the Washington Post blog about the appointment of a new Superintendent of DC schools.



We dragged Gary out of obscurity and propelled him to fame and fortune, and this is how he repays us? (Okay, there was no pay involved, but still!)

Gary's photo is at right, at the Class Size Matters fundraiser in May, talking to famed attorney Norman Siegel and to me; an occasion in which he never even hinted at his future betrayal.



As punishment, we are sending Gary to the bowels of the Tweed building to head their PR department, otherwise known as the NYC Department of Education press office.



This department is short-handed because of much turnover in recent months; and it's obvious they need help with their spin control. (The new hires haven't even managed to subscribe to our NYC education news list yet, the first step in any genuine attempt to control the news.)



For example, last week, when a press spokesperson tried to explain the lack of action for five years in a DOE investigation into the misconduct of a principal, recently shown to have misused funds in an audit from the State Comptroller's office, the excuse was that "Our lawyers are very thorough."



More recently, a DOE press spokesperson fed the absurd line to an Ed Week reporter that the DOE "is poised to introduce online credit-recovery options for students this coming school year in 10 schools" and then, only when a teacher is present.



Meanwhile, we know from numerous news articles that credit recovery is pervasive throughout the city, and credits are being handed out like candy to students, through cut-and-paste online programs, even when they failed to attend their classes and had flunked their courses.

We also know through DOE's own job postings and RFPs that online "learning", as they call it, is being used in at least 42 schools this year, with a plan to spread the discredited practice more widely next year, through "multi-million dollar online learning technology development projects" to be utilized during and beyond the school day - from home, library, or anywhere students have access to online resources.""



And in today's Daily News, this is how the DOE press office explained their decision to grant tenure to a principal, two days after a girl had drowned on a field trip at his school, a trip which had occurred without adequate supervision and permission slips:



"In the heartbreaking days following Nicole's death our primary focus was not on the tenure status of Columbia Secondary School officials," said Education Department spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz..



As Steve Koss, contributor to this blog pointed out, "such a statement is ridiculous and belied by their own actions, since it certainly didn't take them long to focus on the employment status of the teacher (now fired) and the AP (now demoted from administration back to being "just" a teacher.)"



We're sorry, Gary, that we have to demote you to heading the press office at Tweed, but at least at DOE, you can be assured that poor performance and/or misconduct are not punished, but are rewarded with a higher salary and assurances of lifetime employment.

Race To The Top: Under The Hood

My colleagues and I at the New Teacher Center submitted revised language during the public comment period to strengthen proposed Race to the Top (RttT) regulations. (8/28/2009: "RttT: Redefining Teacher Effectiveness".) I am delighted that most of our suggestions were adopted. Specifically, three changes I am pleased to see in the final RttT regulations and state application released by the U.S. Department of Education today are:

(1) A focus on multiple measures in teacher evaluation.

We have defined effective teacher to mean “a teacher whose students achieve acceptable rates (e.g., at least one grade level in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice). States, LEAs, or schools must include multiple measures, provided that teacher effectiveness is evaluated, in significant part, by student growth (as defined in this notice). Supplemental measures may include, for example, multiple observation-based assessments of teacher performance.”

We have revised criterion (D)(2)(ii) to read, “Design and implement rigorous, transparent, and fair evaluation systems for teachers and principals that (a) differentiate effectiveness using multiple rating categories that take into account data on student growth (as defined in this notice) as a significant factor, and (b) are designed and developed with teacher and principal involvement.”

(2) A stronger focus on school leaders and the inclusion of positive teaching and learning conditions in the definition of effective principal.

We have changed the definition of effective principal as follows: (a) replaced “States may supplement this definition as they see fit” with “States, LEAs, or schools must include multiple measures;” (b) added ”Supplemental measures may include, for example, high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates, as well as evidence of providing supportive teaching and learning conditions, strong instructional leadership, and positive family and community engagement;” and (c) replaced “so long as principal effectiveness is judged, in significant measure by student growth” with “provided that principal effectiveness is evaluated, in significant part, by student growth.”

(3) Greater attention to the need for high-quality teacher induction, mentoring and professional development.

We agree that induction programs and coaching by accomplished teachers and principals can be important and effective strategies for supporting novice teachers and principals upon their entering the profession. We are revising the criterion to clarify that States’ plans in response to this criterion should provide for coaching and induction programs as supports for teachers and principals. Changes: We have revised criterion (D)(5)(i) to clarify that plans should include providing effective, data-informed “coaching” and “induction.”

We agree that professional development, including mentoring and coaching, are important aspects of teacher effectiveness. For this reason, criterion (D)(2)(iv)(a) focuses on using evaluations to inform decisions regarding developing effective teachers and principals, including by providing relevant coaching, induction support, and/or professional development. Criterion (D)(5) also provides for evaluation of the extent to which a State has a high-quality plan for its participating LEAs to provide effective, data-informed professional development, coaching, induction, and common planning and collaboration time to teachers and principals.

Sources of great analysis on the final RttT regulations here:

• Education Week (Michele McNeil): "Rules Set for $4 Billion 'Race to Top' Contest"
• New York Times (Sam Dillon): "After Criticism, The Administration Is Praised for Final Rules on Education Grants"
  
• Teacher Beat: "Teacher Elements of Final Race to the Top Guidelines"
  
• Eduflack: "Just The Race Facts"
• Eduflack: "The Race Officially Begins ... Now"
• Eduwonk: "Racing To The Top"

Research: Attracting New Teachers to Urban Schools

New research led by Tony Milanowski of the University of Wisconsin-Madison provides more evidence that increasing teacher pay may not be the best approach to attract new teachers to high-need, hard-to-staff urban schools. A key finding of the study -- published in the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership -- which explored job factors important to pre-service educators was that "working conditions factors, especially principal support, had more influence on simulated job choice than pay level."

'Policy implications' include:

• "[M]oney might be better spent to attract, retain, or train better principals than to provide higher beginning salaries to teachers in schools with high-poverty or a high proportion of students of color."
• "[I]nduction programs and curricular flexibility are important to new teachers. The finding that induction programs are attractive, combined with evidence that such programs can be
  effective in reducing teacher turnover (e.g., Ingersoll and Kralick, 2004; Smith and Ingersoll, 2004), suggests that urban districts may want to implement high-qualityinduction and mentoring programs, especially for new teachers in schools with high proportions of poor students or students of color."