What will New York State waiver from No Child Left Behind mean for Great Neck? Not Much
There is no question that No Child Left Behind, the law that codifies the accountability movement and standardized testing, has undermined public education, particularly in communities like Great Neck that place such high emphasis – and local investment – in education and have such enviable success.
No Child Left Behind was structured so that every school district, even ones that are unqualified successes, would be rated as failures – triggering all sorts of penalties, including the ability of parents to take public money to use at for-profit institutions.
That is because by 2014, under the law, 100 percent of students would have to be rated as mastering the core curriculum, as if they were widgets that entered the system years before and could be molded into conformity of standards.
One hundred percent includes children with special needs, no matter how profound (what part of “special needs” don’t they get?).
But children are not widgets; indeed, every school district is a fluid community with people who may have only arrived in the country the day before the test; or children who are ill the day of the test, or whose parents announced they were divorcing, or whose family had just been rendered homeless.
What may be less obvious is that this was the intention of No Child Left Behind. Its stated purpose was to reform education and bring the promise of upward mobility based entirely on one’s ability to every individual but in fact, it was designed to undermine public education in order to justify redistributing tax dollars to for-profit educational enterprises and faith-based schools, to destroy teachers’ unions (they tend to vote Democratic, after all), and to boost the profits of testing companies (those who write, score and coach the tests), like McGraw-Hill and Pearson.
Instead of bolstering public education, No Child Left Behind has been a mechanism to justify diverting public (taxpayer) money to for-profit institutions, such as those with connection to former Education secretaries William Bennett (who founded K12, a for-profit online education corporation) and Rod Paige , who also found a career working for for-profit, online education (and a director for Murdoch’s News Corporation which was seeking a contract for New York State’s online learning).
These objectives have played out with stunning success: for-profit companies are racking up and when they fail, shut down, leaving students and districts holding the bag; public school districts are being bankrupted and have had to cannibalize their programs in order to meet the letter and the law of core curriculum coming down from state education departments. Meanwhile, private fund-raising has risen to an absurd level beyond PTA bake sales, to multi-million dollar auctions so that more affluent school districts can afford a science research teacher when less advantaged school districts cannot (as Brian Lehrer bemoaned on his NPR show).
What has been less successful is the outcomes for students. Indeed, the United States is ridiculed in a television ad campaign by Exxon-Mobil about how lousy our students perform compared to the rest of the world in science and math.
In a column about Great Neck Public Schools budget in advance of the May vote, we noted some of the ways that No Child Left Behind, as repackaged by the state Department of Education, impact our schools, especially in combination with the budget constraints of the state’s tax cap and its own mandated budget items.
For years, now, school districts from throughout the country – and their representatives in state and federal government – have pointed out the destructive aspects of No Child Left Behind, and pleaded with Congress to make fixes before reauthorizing the legislation.
But this Congress being this Congress – unwilling to fix, make better or even do anything – Congress has not acted, so the Obama Administration has stepped in to fix as much as it can using its own authority: allow states which submit a plan that demonstrates it can live up to the spirit of No Child Left Behind, to be granted waivers from its most onerous (and impossible) provisions.
New York State did not get the waiver in the first round, but has received the waiver in this second round (apparently the hold up was in the matter of evaluating teachers).
“The waiver lets New York move away from No Child Left Behind requirements that were unproductive or unrealistic,” state Education Commissioner John B. King stated. “We can evaluate schools in terms of both student growth and proficiency and recognize schools in which students are making good progress toward meeting standards of college and career readiness.”
We posed specific questions to the state Education Department to find out how high-performing districts like Great Neck may be impacted (hopefully benefitted) from the waiver and on the second try, received this response:
Q: What impact will NYS’s waiver have on high-performing school districts like Great Neck?
A: At the end of the 2011-12 school year, NYSED will discontinue the identification of schools as High Performing/Rapidly Improving and will instead identify Reward Schools beginning with the 2012-13 school year. The Reward School designation will be based on schools meeting significantly more rigorous criteria than in the past. NYSED will also identify a second group of schools for Recognition that meets most, but not all, Reward School criteria.
Q: Specifically, will there be some relief from APPR?
A: The federal ESEA waiver application specifically requires states to have a teacher-principal evaluation system in place. Under NYS law, all districts are required to implement a teacher evaluation system.
Q: What other “relief” might high-performing districts have?
A: All districts, not just high-performing districts, are granted much greater flexibility under the law; districts will have flexibility in the following general areas:
* Flexibility to Transfer Certain Funds.
* Flexibility for Schoolwide Programs.
* Flexibility Regarding Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) Improvement Plans
* Flexibility in the Use of Twenty-First Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) Program Funds
* Flexibility To Serve Non-Title I Priority High Schools:
(A summary of the most important provisions of the waiver can be found here:
https://usny.nysed.gov/docs/10-things-to-know-about-the-esea-waiver.pdf)
None of these answers from the education department provide any comfort that Great Neck or any other high-performing district will be able to continue to offer the innovative programs that have made our district the success it has been, with graduation rates among the highest in the country, let alone New York by virtue of relief from standardized testing or performance reviews.
So, I asked Roger Tilles, our regent on the Board of Regents, about whether Great Neck would receive some relief from the obsession with standardized tests, and he replied, “Great Neck is no different from any other district in that sense.
“I have been trying to get answer to question of how successful schools are impacted by waiver. How ‘successful’ is defined is a question – whether it is measured as years with no problems, or schools in trouble that have had more success getting off the list – hasn’t been determined yet, effectively.
“I’ve been asking for relief from certain mandates, such as APPR [annual performance reviews]. We need that rigorous evaluation, but a district like Great Neck shouldn’t have to have them every year, perhaps every 5 or 6 years, after probationary teachers are evaluated, – which would save a tremendous amount of money and time for a principal.”
He pointed to a state bill that state Sen. Jack Martins is working on, which would give relief to districts which are succeeding in some way, as determined by Commissioner of Education.
Regent Tilles has been outspoken in his opposition to the over-use of testing, and of using test scores as part of the evaluation “until we have a much more reliable indicator, which we don’t have.”
There are other mandates, mainly ones that requiring reporting, “that have to be looked into as to what else could be waived for a successful district.”
The only real benefit of the waiver, he said, is that New York school districts “don’t have to use the 2014 anymore. That is the most essential piece of it…. But in exchange for that, we have to do certain things.”
And what about the impact of the 2 percent cap? “The regents,” Tilles said, “have nothing to do with the cap. I am very much opposed to the 2% tax cap, as many of the Regents probably are. This was a political solution that was not based on educational principles, but was based on politics.
“The state will certainly have to take a look at the result.”
He said that several districts in upper New York are already facing what for all practical purposes is bankruptcy, and several in Long Island will be facing the same fate in the next few years.
What can the Regents do? Apparently not much.
“Regents set education policy, but we have to go through parameters of law. We recommended full funding of pre-K education because we think that is absolutely essential. The legislature and governor don’t agree. I’m very concerned … There are certain obligations for providing art, music, special education services that New York City and many of the cities are not doing – and we don’t have any great enforcement mechanism. State education department staff has been cut 35 percent – they are supposed to be monitoring and enforcing these things.
“My biggest complaint is one that will resonate to you,” Tilles told me. “We are bringing the top down to meet the bottom, but the problem is the bottom isn’t moving up at all in this process, and a lot of what we do as Regents, in terms of passing law and regulations, are for the sake of the two-thirds of New York students in the state, who are in the five largest cities and the rest of the state be damned.
“In essence, because the rest of the state doesn’t really need the kind of APPR (annual performance reviews) that the city needs (they’re needed because don’t do a good job of evaluation, and do a poor job of getting rid of poor teachers), even though the rest of state doesn’t have that problem, the rest of the state’s districts is also encumbered with a huge cost and a huge amount of principal’s time. The morale losing-productivity with these regulations are clear, but everyone has to abide by them, even though the problem and the solution was for the city.”
To address the ambiguity regarding what the waiver might mean for high-achieving districts, state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel recently introduced legislation that establishes the Exemplary School Districts and Exemplary Mentorship Programs to foster student success and provide mandate relief for high performing school districts.
The legislative intent “is to foster the development and codification of a best practice model for student success and fiscal responsibility by determining certain districts to be exemplary districts and by establishing an exemplary district mentorship program. To allow certain highly successful schools to help other schools achieve success, the highly successful schools shall receive exemptions from testing and paperwork requirements set forth by the state in exchange for mentoring certain other schools. It is the intent of this program that more districts will become exemplary districts each year and that the criteria for determining exemplary districts shall become more rigorous as student achievement gains are made.”
What is an exemplary district? “Any school district with a sustained graduation rate over 95 percent for a five-year period shall be an exemplary district.”
A key provision would be “Mandate exemption: The commissioner shall establish exemptions from testing and paperwork requirements set forth by the state for exemplary districts for each three-year period that such school is determined to be an exemplary district as an incentive for exemplary districts to participate in the exemplary district mentorship program.”
Tribute to Fran Langsner, Outgoing School Board Member
There is no question that Great Neck is “an exemplary school district.” But how does that happen? There are no entrance requirements to our public schools – in fact, that is the reason that public schools, now faced with the challenge of the best, most motivated students being peeled off to go to charter schools (listen to the commercials underway in Brooklyn) or in New York City, beginning in middle school, do have to take competitive tests to get in. And there are no IQ requirements to live in Great Neck, though our housing costs (and property taxes) create a base of relative affluence, an affluence that comes from a high percentage of professionals and business owners and managers.
Yet, it surprises most people that Great Neck has the same percentage of special needs children as the average school district – indeed, our district has come up with innovative solutions to keep more of our special needs students within the district and within their neighborhood schools.
A high percentage of our students come from households where English is not the first language; from homes that have experienced divorce; and our community, like any other community, is not immune from other social problems including domestic violence.
And not everyone in Great Neck is affluent or even middle class. We also have a surprising percentage of children who qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Yet, if you look into the different demographic groups, Great Neck public schools are astonishingly successful at helping each student achieve to the highest level of their ability, no matter what their circumstance.
This doesn’t happen by itself, though when things go well, people assume it is easy. Our school district achieves largely because of the hard work and talent of our administrators and teachers, specifically, and to a great extent the hard work of our school based committees and parent-teacher associations, but at a macro-level because of our chool board, which sets policy and the mission that makes every decision from the point of view of what is best for our students – all our students.
This is a board of individuals that really do put children first (when others like former NYC chancellor Joel Klein merely mouthed the slogan) who really do set aside personal ego. And that is because of the individuals who have selflessly given their time, their talent, their intelligence and their sensitivity, for the benefit of our students, families, residents and taxpayers.
People do make a difference.
And for so many years, Fran Langsner has been a vital part of this School Board – as a trustee and as Vice President. I have always been impressed by how she has always brought a level of common sense to any discussion, a clarity in communicating complex ideas, and of how she has helped find solutions to the difficult challenges that are presented to the board.
Langsner has made a difference in the lives of hundreds and hundreds of students, who were lucky enough to have the public education that Great Neck Public Schools provided.
When I heard that Langsner had resigned her position because she moved out of the district, I felt that someone had punched me in the stomach. I was really upset. So was everyone else who has had the privilege of knowing her.
Board President Barbara Berkowitz, in expressing sadness and loss at accepting Langsner’s resignation at the June 4 board meeting, has made an inspired choice in naming Monique Bloom,, currently the president of the United-Parent Teacher Council, to fill the vacancy.
But it will be so hard – impossible really – to completely fill Langsner’s shoes.
Our community is blessed with the people who have stood up to take on these demanding roles. And Fran Langsner has been one of our best.
