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Henry Levin

Today’s “Those Who Dared” excerpt is from the essay by Henry Levin, a Columbia University economist whose work focuses on the economics of education.

Earlier in his career, Levin supervised the Accelerated Schools Project, an effort to push a handful of low-performing California elementary schools to offer enhanced instruction to all students. Because of that experience, Levin argues that teachers should spend more time preparing instruction, not delivering it. This opinion sets him apart from some contemporary policy wonks who are pushing schools to adopt a longer school day and school year. He writes:

There is never enough time for planning, problem-solving, group learning, democratic participation in decisions, gathering information, celebrating, and all of the other activities that need to be incorporated into an Accelerated School. So called in-service days are few, and allocations for preparation time are typically encumbered by other demands that cannot easily be shed. Democratic decision-making for the school, problem-solving with inquiry methods, and the formulation and implementation of powerful learning units take considerable time, but all expand equity and effectiveness of instruction considerably. ASP always found that even creative ways of obtaining time outside of instruction were challenging and required compromises of personal time and school activities. Somehow we must find ways of building more time into the school day for planning and collaboration (as the Japanese do), even if there are fewer minutes of instruction.

The Empire Center for New York State Policy, a project of the Manhattan Institute, today added New York City workers to its searchable database of state employees on SeeThroughNY.net, a site that aims to expose how state tax dollars are spent.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is the highest-paid city employee, taking home a quarter of a million dollars every year. Other top earners, with salaries of $196,575, include Jim Liebman, who heads the DOE’s accountability office; Eric Nadelstern, who runs the empowerment schools network; and Christopher Cerf, the chancellor’s deputy in charge of organization. Marcia Lyles, the top-ranking educator in the department, takes home $203,000. According to a summary provided by the Empire Center, more than 11 percent of full-time teachers draw salaries over $100,000.

The database can’t be used to find some information advocates have sought about DOE spending, such as how much each department of the central administration is allocated or how many people work in each department. Nor is the system perfectly up to date. (Terence Tolbert, who died in November, is still in the database, for example.)

Liz Benjamin, on her Daily News blog, explains:

According to Empire Center spokesman Lise Bang-Jensen, the database offers a snapshot of the city workforce as of June 30, 2008, the end of the last fiscal year, and represents the payroll of 85 agencies.

It includes base salaries, but not overtime, shift differentials and other extra pay. It does not reflect the latest round of municipal labor agreements, which increased the pay of many city workers by 4 percent this year, or any raises and promotions given to managerial employees over the past six months.

Still, there’s plenty of interesting information to be found for those who are willing to spend some time digging. I’ll be doing some digging of my own, with more posts to follow.

The city office that investigates the Department of Education today released a statistical summary of its last year’s work, showing that it completed more investigations in 2008 than in any other recent year.

According to the report (pdf), the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation substantiated 327 cases out of 725 started, reflecting a slight uptick in both the number of cases opened and the number of complaints substantiated.

But the office issued only 17 press releases about its investigations. That’s down by more than a third from 2007, when the office issued 26 press releases. And with an increase in the number of cases substantiated, it turns out that SCI made the conclusions of its investigations public less than 5.5 percent of the time in 2008. Nearly 95 percent of substantiated cases never saw the light of day.

Those cases will become publicly available only if somebody knows about an investigation and files a legal request to find out its conclusion, which was how a year-old investigation about a top DOE official made the news last month.

At that time, a spokeswoman for SCI told Elizabeth that the man who oversees the office, Richard Condon, alone makes the decision about which investigations to publicize. I’m going to see if I can find out more about how he makes the determination about what should go public.

That’s right: After six fun and interesting months helping to launch GothamSchools, I have decided to return to teaching.

I have learned so much from seeing the city’s schools from a new perspective. But whenever I visited a school as a reporter, I felt, deep down, that I really wanted to be teaching there. So I’ve very much looked forward to being back in the classroom, and my post yesterday about Citizen Schools will be my last here on GothamSchools.

I want to thank the team here who have made the site possible. I feel very comfortable leaving, knowing the blog is in the hands of top-notch reporters Elizabeth and Philissa. The biggest thank you, of course, goes to readers, for turning to the site for school news, for sending in tips, and for sparking conversation in the comments. Keep it up!

In anticipation of your questions, I’m taking over eighth-grade earth science at a charter school in Harlem, and no, I won’t be blogging about it. I suspect I won’t have a free moment not devoted to plate tectonics and topographic maps.

I really have no firm date by which I’m suppose to hear back from NYC Teaching Fellows. I’ve gotten various answers back from different people. I’ve heard 5 weeks after the interview (which would be tomorrow). I’ve heard mid-January. I’ve heard late-January and even early-February. It’s like they’ve got a drunken monkey spinning a wheel-of-luck doo-hickey in their office deciding our fate.

Later, he notes that the Teaching Fellows Web site says the program will let applicants know within five to seven weeks after their interviews, so he should know by later this month whether he’ll be a teacher in September. And back in October, he worried about how the size reduction in the upcoming Teaching Fellows cohort would affect his chances of admission.

Here are three big questions that will be answered, at least in part, in the next 12 months:

• What will happen to mayoral control? The law giving New York City’s mayor full control of the schools expires at the end of June. Before then, the State Assembly must decide whether to renew the law, alter it, or let the city’s schools revert back to the way they were organized before 2002.

Few in the city are saying that the law should simply be permitted to expire. Many local advocates are instead calling for changes to the law that ensure parent involvement and create an impartial entity to review Department of Education data. State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said recently that he would vote to renew mayoral control if the new law includes changes like these. But some powerful people are lining up behind the mayor’s opposition to any changes, including the editorial board of the Daily News and wealthy New Yorkers who are planning to spend $20 million to support a public relations campaign in favor of mayoral control.

Assembly members will take public criticism and the city schools’ performance into account when they cast their votes. But politics will also play a role. This brings us to the second question:

• Is Mayor Bloomberg going to stay or go? This fall, the mayor won the right to run for a third term. So far Bloomberg hasn’t said for sure whether he’ll run, or what party he would represent if he does, but his advisers say his campaign could cost him as much as $100 million, a sum that any opponent would have a hard time matching. That hasn’t stopped a handful of public officials from declaring their intention to run for the office, including Anthony Weiner, a state congressman from Brooklyn and Queens who supports mayoral control, and Comptroller William Thompson, who has been a vocal critic of the DOE.

If Bloomberg runs again and is elected, it stands to reason that the city’s school reform agenda of the last seven years will persist at least through 2013. But if he decides to move on, or if he’s defeated, a new mayor will move into City Hall, and a new chancellor could take office inside Tweed Courthouse. In that case, we could see substantial changes in the school system as soon as the beginning of 2010.

• How will the dismal budget situation affect the city’s schools? No matter who the mayor is and how the schools are run, the city needs to be able to fund the school system. Right now, the economic picture just keeps looking worse and worse. The governor’s proposed state budget cuts more than $600 million from the city schools, and the mayor has called for sizable city cuts as well.  The mayor has said that budget cuts of the magnitude proposed would hit the classroom hard. Will the schools see a return to the dark days of the 1970s, when teachers were laid off and classes swelled in size? Or will they weather the downturn and emerge relatively unscathed? Only time can tell.

Citizen Schools, a decade-old organization that facilitates apprenticeships for students in almost 20 cities nationwide, set up shop at four middle schools this year, two each in Brooklyn and East Harlem. At each school, the organization is offering professional instruction, an after-school program, and classroom support, according to Nitzan Pelman, Citizen Schools’ New York City executive director.

The centerpiece of Citizen Schools’ programming is the apprenticeship, in which adult volunteers spend 12 weeks teaching students about a particular subject before the students present their work to a panel of experts on that subject. The presentations take place at an event called WOW!, named, Pelman told me, for the typical reaction of audience members.

In city schools this fall, apprenticeships offered instruction in dozens of subjects, including Celtic dancing, skateboarding, cooking, a documentary filmmaking. When I visited the Urban Assembly Academy for Arts and Letters in Brooklyn last month, I saw students rehearsing a group poem about expression and creativity, putting the finishing touches on memoirs they wrote with the help of journalists, and preparing to share what they had learned about the credit crisis.

At IS 45 in East Harlem, investment banker Gregory Mark Hill helped lead an apprenticeship titled “How to Make a Profit.” Hill said he started a foundation to support education, but because he views middle school as “an inflection point” in kids’ lives, he wanted to have a bigger impact.

“It’s one thing to write checks, attend black ties, and another thing to roll up your sleeves,” he told me.

Hill described working with students as a natural extension of his role teaching clients about investments.

But one of Citizen Schools’ major challenges is to prepare professionals, who often lack teaching experience, for the classroom. Pelman said all mentors participate in a 3-hour workshop where they set a goal for their students’ WOW! presentations and then work backwards to decide what they need to teach the students to prepare them.

Citizen Schools provides students more than just apprenticeships. The after-school program also includes help with homework, extra math and reading practice, field trips, and other activities such as sports. And volunteers and paid teaching fellows, usually freshly minted college graduates who want to explore a career in education, help out in classrooms throughout the day, ensuring continuity between academic instruction and Citizen Schools’ after-school program.

It’s one of Citizen Schools’ goals to encourage that kind of continuity, Pelman told me, adding that the four pilot schools in New York were chosen carefully from among dozens that applied in part because they were committed to integrating school-day and after-school programming.

The program charges $25,000 per school. Pelman said principals are usually able to use federal grant money for after-school programs to pay Citizen Schools, and she said the city Department of Education’s new middle school improvement grants could also enable needy schools to purchase the program. Citizen Schools plans to expand to one additional city school in the fall.

First up is Deborah Meier, one of the progenitors of the small schools movement who founded an influential elementary school, Central Park East, in East Harlem in 1974. She went on to help create a host of non-traditional schools in the neighborhood and now teaches at New York University’s education school.

A proponent of play, democratic classrooms, and assessments other than standardized tests, Meier generally isn’t part of the education policy discussion dominated by fans of “no excuses” schools such as KIPP. But in her essay, she describes one challenge currently facing some “idealocrat” reformers: How to sustain innovative schools that are only barely able to exist in the first place. On that question, Meier doesn’t have much advice. She writes:

None of the schools I started were permanently protected from the standardizing influences that have surrounded them in the last 20 years. Above all, I never figured out how, in the world of here and now, such schools could survive without very particular conditions — strong godfathers, politically strong leadership, and few key politically hep parents. Sustainability, short of revolutionizing the entire system to one’s way of thinking or breaking free altogether of the public system, has eluded me.

Pissed Off Teacher, a veteran teacher at a large high school in Queens who was eligible for retirement two years ago, writes that the vacation renewed her spirits:

I am definitely going to wait until summer vacation to decide whether I should retire this year or not. When I am at work, I am tired and frustrated and ready to pack it in. Yet, as I contemplate returning tomorrow, I feel excitement, not dread. (OK, a little dread. I am really not looking forward to getting up at 6:15 while the house is cold and everyone in it is asleep.) I know I am nuts, but I missed the lunacy that goes with my life as a teacher.

A first-year teacher and brand new blogger, teachnyc, didn’t feel the same way, instead creating a TeachFor.Us blog to express his anxiety about returning to the classroom. Teachnyc writes:

I have one day left of glorious winter break and instead of spending it relaxing and simply enjoying it I am trying to figure out way to get the knots out of my stomach. Like most teachers  I am not quite sure why I am having this reaction to going back to school, in fact I never felt this way as a student but for some reason the thought of being back up in front of the class make me want to dig a deep dark hole in the ground and hide in it. To make matters worse, I could be spending this time lesson planning so that my first week will not be miserable and stressful but just thinking of lessons sends me diving back under my covers.

• Caroline Kennedy was not required to disclose her finances when she was a DOE employee. (Times)
• The fate of mayoral control is still undecided. (Queens Chronicle)
• Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he will vote to renew mayoral control if it’s “tweaked.” (Post)
• Both the Post and the Daily News line up in favor of mayoral control, without tweaks.
• The city’s teaching force has grown more experienced in recent years. (Post)
• Because of a quirk in the city’s funding formula, closing schools have lots of extra money. (Post)
• The expansion of middle school choice has created middle school admissions panic. (Times)
• At Queens cram schools, kids spend vacations prepping for high school admissions tests. (Times)
• Most Muslim students feel safe in school. (Daily News)
• Kids are still dealing with the cell phone ban in underhanded ways. (Riverdale Press)
• Nat Hentoff adds another column to his chronicle of police abuse in the city schools. (Village Voice)

AND BEYOND:

• 2008 was no banner year for the country’s public schools. (USA Today)
• All those education plans of Obama’s will probably have to wait. (NPR)
• Schools in Chicago were home to innovations under Arne Duncan. (Washington Post)
• Passed over for ed secretary, Denver’s superintendent is becoming a senator. (Times, Denver Post)
• The country is still short on math and science teachers. (Christian Science Monitor)
• The New Teacher Project says new teachers do better than experienced ones. (Times-Picayune)
• Michelle Rhee plans to fire more teachers and improve those who remain. (Washington Post)
• Nationally, homeschooling is on the rise. (USA Today)
• PTAs are covering the costs of some budget-cut casualties. (Wall Street Journal)
• Some school districts are letting students lead parent-teacher conferences. (Times)
• Jay Mathews tries to unpack the vague phrase “21st-century skills.” (Washington Post)
• Bill Ayers calls Arne Duncan “the smart choice” for education secretary. (Huffington Post)

Photo by teacher-blogger Mildly Melancholy.

We’re making like the public schools and taking the next several days off. Regular activity (resolutely thinner, fitter, and better of course) will resume in the new year.

• Budget cuts to the city housing authority will force 19 community centers to shut down.
• The city students’ union announces a conference on effective student government.
• Patrick Sullivan called for cuts to the press and accountability offices at last week’s PEP.
• Against an apparent anti-textbook trend, an example of how a physics textbook changed a life.
• The National Governors Association is pushing for matching state standards to international ones.
• Rick Hess and Mike Petrilli argue that President Bush let No Child Left Behind get hijacked by the left.
• New research shows 35% of Teach for America members are still teaching five years out.
• Bob Herbert invokes Randi Weingarten to argue for an “attitude adjustment” on workers.

As the year draws to a close, I begin to reflect on the changes that have taken place in my teaching life throughout the last year. I left a wonderful school, with an amazing administration, and a great team of coworkers. I moved states away to New York City to spend a torturous time finding a job (but at least I found one). I have felt miserable more days than I thought possible working at this school, more days than I’d ever thought possible, period. Teaching has always been my highlight, my enjoyment. The past few months have taught me one thing for sure. It’s not always easy, and sadly, it’s not always fun.

Yet, despite all the less enjoyable thoughts that come to mind when I think about the second half of 2008, I can also find some truly amazing things that have happened. I was more than fortunate to be placed in a Collaborative Team Teaching classroom with a perfect match for a teaching partner. Although our class makeup is less than desirable for a CTT room, we are working towards identifying students who deserve different settings. My teaching partner and I have grown together and are developing into a strong team. We have the potential to be successful, and I am very thankful for the opportunity to teach in a CTT situation, an experience I would have probably missed out on if I had never moved to teach in New York City.

I have been given challenges that have frustrated me (and will continue to frustrate me) to no end. Yet, I continue to work towards overcoming these challenges. I have to find ways to move my students up with or without resources, with or without direction from the administration, with or without students who have the prior knowledge and skills a 5th grader should possess. My team teacher and I are devoted to finding ways to making this happen. We are constantly thinking and trying new strategies and methods. Some of our attempts have been successful, while some have not. Most importantly, we, as teachers, have learned.

Our successes have not been as successful as I would like, but we still have them. Parents have told us that their students are more engaged and excited about learning than they were ever in the past — a truly special compliment to any teacher, as all she really wants to do is instill a love for learning into her students. As the year draws to a close, I feel hopeful. I feel as if I can meet the challenges to come in 2009.

1. What is your position on mayoral control? Should it be reauthorized with no changes or are there any revisions that would be acceptable? For instance, Geoffrey Canada’s group has argued that the Bloomberg administration did not do enough to involve parents in decision-making. Do you agree with that assessment?

2. What portion of money raised by the Fund for Public Schools went toward the advertising campaign called “Keep it Going NYC”? Could you explain the specific importance of those advertisements? I’ve heard several explanations but never a really clear one about how they directly or indirectly help the public schools.

You can see the answer Kennedy did provide to a mayoral control question from the Times here, saying she supports it broadly but is open to revisions “so long as they don’t prevent the Mayor from taking the actions he thinks are appropriate and for which he will be held accountable.” I haven’t received a reply to my questions yet. Any others we should be asking?

Echoing concerns that I wrote about last week, Ofer said a central problem lies in the Department of Education’s peculiar position between being a state agency subject to state oversight and a city agency subject to city oversight. He gave two examples of how the dilemma plays out. The first is that the DOE, by his account, refuses to follow both the state and city versions of a law called the Administrative Procedures Act, which forces government agencies to, among other things, allow some finite public comment period before enacting new regulations.

Here’s his explanation (and below it I’ll put his second example, the mayor’s refusal to enact the City Council’s Dignity in all Schools Act):

Ofer on the Dignity in All Schools Act:

Thanks to David Bellel for sending over the video.

The 1980 movie "Fame" was set at one of the two schools that later combined to become LaGuardia.

Add the annual musical at the city’s most selective music and theater school — yes, the one from “Fame” — to the list of potential budget casualties.

Via City Room, here’s what one teacher at the school, Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, had to say:

Paula Washington, the La Guardia chapter leader of teachers’ union and an alumn[a] of the school, acknowledged that it was a “huge loss,” but said it was hard to fault the decision given the broader budget situation. School officials are bracing for cuts of up to $1.5 billion in the department’s $20 billion budget next year.

“There are often agents in the audience at these performances, so there is a real loss of exposure for students.” said Ms. Washington, who teaches orchestra at the school and lamented the loss of two violin instructors who have yet to be replaced.

“We’re down to the marrow here,” she added. “Forget about cutting to the bone, we’re talking about full level amputations now.

Mayor Bloomberg presenting a budget update in November.

In response to GothamSchools’ survey about how schools plan to handle the budget cuts, several principals are saying they can’t begin to speculate about what they’ll slash because they don’t know yet how much money they’ll be losing.

They won’t find out for a while. Their first hint will come next month, when the city presents to the City Council its preliminary budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

Principals will really be able to start planning for next year in the “late spring,” DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte told me. The state’s fiscal year begins April 1, so by then schools will know how much they’re losing from the state and will also have a good idea of how much they’ll receive in city funds.

The process to arrive at the city’s preliminary budget is underway now. This week, the DOE, like other city agencies, is presenting a suggested budget for next year to the mayor’s office, a City Hall spokesman told me on Friday. The spokesman, Mark LaVorgna, said agencies were asked to draw up budgets incorporating a 7 percent cut in city funding. Some speculate that the final percentage could be even larger once the city factors in the effect of cuts from the state.

The public will get to see the broad outlines of the DOE’s budget proposal when the city plan goes to the City Council. The city’s budget proposal will show how the DOE has divided cuts between its central administration and individual schools. Details about how much each school will lose will come after that. Mayor Bloomberg has said that individual schools will “bear the brunt” of the upcoming cuts.

Last year, the city revealed its proposed budget at the very end of January, and a week later principals had money from their current budgets withdrawn from their accounts overnight. Because schools already experienced midyear budget adjustments in November, they are unlikely to lose any more funds during this school year, Forte said.