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With IBM's Help, New School Hopes to Groom Students for Tech Jobs


p-tech
As the Department of Education "phases out" Paul Robeson High School, a new technology school, created in collaboration with IBM and CUNY, will open in the building next fall.

(This is the second of two articles on science teaching in New York City public schools. To read the previous article on city students falling short in science, go here.)

This September, if all goes according to plan, the New York City Department of Education, the City University of New York and IBM will unveil an entirely new kind of high school in Brooklyn.

Eventually the school will have about 600 students in grades 9 through 14. Those who successfully complete the six-year program will receive an associate degree in a computer science-related field – and, in theory, first dibs on a job at IBM.




In some ways, the plan fits into the prevailing narrative of the Bloomberg administration's approach to education: trying to fix what ails public education by looking for expertise in the private sector.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announcing the project last fall, trumpeted the school as a way of "taking an education system that has fallen far behind the times, and moving it into the 21st century." He presented it as part of a broad initiative to modernize the city's schools, which includes increased funding for innovative new school models and linking teacher tenure and pay to merit.

While there is little if any opposition to the concept of the school, some question whether it will be able to deliver on its ambitious goals.

Breaking the Mold

The IBM school, called Pathways and Technology Early College High School, or P-Tech, will not be a charter school but a regular public school working in partnership with IBM. The school is also the first grade 9 through 14 school in the country (someone dubbed it a hollege) where students can leave with an associate's degree in information technology -- though students may end up leaving after grade 12 and attending a CUNY school for grades 13 and 14, according to IBM. In either case, CUNY staff would be involved in teaching the technical side of the school's curriculum.

The school's staff will be drawn from a pool of New York teachers and administrators experienced in math and science education. Rashid Davis, currently principal of Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy, has been chosen as its principal. IBM's role will be primarily to provide financial support and administer mentor and internship programs.




IBM, for its part, conceives of the new school partly as a way to test a new model of education. The company has said that it sees public education partly as a kind of long-term investment -- a way of ensuring that the pool of trained technology workers stays strong.




"It's looking at having a more vocational focus on a specific topic area where there's a need and a desire for those skills in the future," said IBM spokesperson Lisa Lanspery. Starting vocational training in grade nine, instead of waiting until a student community college, could be a "huge advantage," she said. She said students also would benefit from the mentor, internship, training and career placement programs IBM planned to offer at the school.




"You think of a current high school today, they're not going to get access to mentors," Lanspery said.




Ultimately, Lanspery said, the company might try to replicate the model elsewhere in New York and other cities – though for now, she said, the company is taking it "step by step."

Initial Support





In December 2010, IBM hosted a reception for New York public school and CUNY administrators to share their thoughts on the project and on challenges it might face. That reception was attended by principals of various New York public schools, especially those focused on science and technology, including Aviation High School, George Westinghouse High School and Midwood High School. Stanley Litow, IBM's vice president of corporate affairs and chairman of its foundation, represented the company. 
Chiara Coletti, a spokesperson for the administrators' union, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, said she has received "100 percent positive feedback" from members of her union and praised IBM's involvement. "They're really taking the initiative," Coletti said. "This is like a little laboratory of learning for doing this kind of thing."

While enthusiastic about the idea, the administrators cautioned IBM that the school would face unique challenges. Foremost among them is that, unlike existing technology-focused schools like Brooklyn Tech, the planned IBM school will not choose its students through a competitive application process. September's incoming class -- about 100 ninth graders -- will be selected by lottery, with some preference given to students who attend an information session. As a result, those attending the school will likely have a wide range of abilities and aptitudes.

On its web site, the school says it expects students to be wiling to put in extra hours, to be interested in computers, math and science and to be "curious, dedicated learners."

The school already has encountered opposition, largely because the city plans to put it in the Crown Heights building that now houses Paul Robeson High School, which it is starting to close. Robeson, which itself was created as a technical high school in 1985, has had a particularly challenging student body. About one eighth of the students, according to a report by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, is homeless or living in temporary housing, its graduation rate had dipped to 40 percent, and many of the students are overage, often indicating they had fallen behind in high school or been forced to repeat a grade earlier in their school careers. The school had launched efforts designed specifically to help struggling students, such as a program for students who had children of their own.

To critics of the IBM school, P-Tech looks like another flashy "innovation school" pushing out a struggling, but viable, traditional school. City Councilmember Al Vann, who represents Paul Robeson High School's district, told New York 1 that, while he supported the idea of the IBM school, closing Robeson is not fair to its students.

In addition, having a corporate sponsor does not guarantee success. While some of the Department of Education's public-private partnerships -- used most notably in publicly funded, privately run charter schools -- have done well, other have faltered. The city founded Metropolitan Corporate Academy in downtown Brooklyn with the help of Goldman Sachs, which provided mentors and internships. But this year, the city decided to shut the school, which had a crumbling facility in downtown Brooklyn and suffered from poor attendance.

IBM's Pledge

For all its commitment to the school, IBM's long-term role remains unclear. An important unanswered question is how strongly IBM has committed to hiring graduates of the school. When Bloomberg announced the school, he said in a televised address on NBC that that its graduates would be "guaranteed" jobs at IBM.




In fact, IBM has said no such thing. What it is promising, according to Lanspery, is that graduates of the school will be "first in line" for any jobs at IBM for which they are qualified -- that is, that they will be considered for these jobs before other applicants.




"It has to be an appropriate job with the appropriate credentials," Lanspery said -- and many jobs at IBM aren't appropriate for someone with only an associate degree in computer science.




"If we're looking for someone with a business or graduate degree, probably someone graduating from a 9-14 school would not be the most qualified applicant," Lanspery said. More appropriate jobs, she said, might include "lower-level" programming and software development.




Moreover, Lanspery said, given the rapid evolution of the technology sector, IBM's job openings might look very different by the time the school's first class graduates.


 “It's tough for us to say what those jobs are going to look like six years from now," she said. "Six years from now, the tech world is going to look totally different." 


Nonetheless, Lanspery stressed that graduates who don't get hired at IBM will hardly be adrift. Nearly every sector is creating more and more tech jobs, from telecommunications to energy, and graduates of the IBM school will have an excellent shot at those jobs, she said.




To help make that happen, IBM plans to appoint a committee to develop a "core set of minimum requirements for entry-level IT jobs that will serve as benchmarks and targets" for the school. At this point, it is too early to say what those benchmarks might look like, or how they will be met.




Department of Education spokesperson Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld said that the actual curriculum for the school, which will include both traditional instruction and vocational training during all six years, is still in the early planning stages. He said the department should be able to announce more details this spring.

City Students Fall Short in Science


science education
Photo by Art Jessen
As the city attempts to lure high-tech jobs, city students, by several measures, seem to lack basic science skills.

With Google having purchased property in Chelsea for almost $2 billion and Internet Week New York looking to its fourth year, city officials hope the technology and bioscience industries will continue to expand here, bringing new job opportunities with them. But will graduates of the city’s public schools have the skills to get those jobs?

Results of a new national science test released late last month, along with a steep decline in the number of students qualifying for a prestigious science award and testimony from teachers indicates that even if new, high-tech jobs come to New York City, the positions may not go to people who attended the city's schools.

Earlier this month Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president's appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy, asked schools Chancellor Cathie Black about what Sullivan described as " the continued decline in science education under the mayor's watch." According to Sullivan, Black said she would look into the issue.

The Test Scores

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, recently released results for the fourth and eighth grade students from 17 urban districts, including New York City who took a national science test in 2009. Also referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, NAEP, a product of the National Center for Education Statistics, serves as a barometer for national student performance. Fourth graders in 14 of the 17 city districts and eighth graders in all but one of the districts scored lower than the national average of 149 on a scale of 0 to 300. New York City's fourth and eighth grade students scored below the national average, at 135 and 129, respectively. That puts the city's fourth graders in the middle of the urban districts; the eight graders lagged behind those in many other city schools systems.

In all types of districts across the country, a large percentage of the nation’s fourth, eighth and twelfth graders did not reach the level of proficient on the NAEP tests. The 2009 results for the 17 urban districts "are worse, not better," said Alan Friedman, former director of the New York Hall of Science who explained the results in a National Center for Education Statistics webcast.

"Urban districts in general performed less well in math and reading compared to the nation as a whole, while performing even further below in science," Friedman said.

New York's Department of Education has said not all cities considered "urban districts" face the same challenges that New York does. "While our kids have a long way to go, right now we're outperforming districts with much lower levels of poverty," said the department's chief academic officer, Shael Polokow-Suransky, in a statement.

And the department has noted that New York fourth graders eligible for free or reduced-price lunch -- a poverty indicator --outperformed similar students in other large cities, and that New York fared better than other cities with similar poverty rates, such as Chicago and Los Angeles.

The department, though, also has expressed some dismay about the scores. "The gap between how our students perform in elementary and middle school is a real concern," Polokow-Suransky said.

A Lack of Talent?

While the students taking the NAEP represent a sample of city students, some observers also see a falloff in achievement among the city's best science students. This year, for the first time in recent memory, no city school student, public or private, reached the final round of the prestigious national Intel Science Talent Search. Only 14 students were among the 200 semifinalists, according to Steve Koss, who has written extensively on the issue.

For decades, city school students dominated the competition, but Koss writes, "Since 2002-2003 ... NYC schools' participation in STS has dropped by nearly half, and the level of semifinalist winners by nearly three fourths."

In his post on NYC Public School Parents, Koss links the decline to the advent of mayoral control of schools. He offers a number of possible explanations, including that the emphasis on math and reading tests have minimized or "dumbed down" science instruction.

Science Requirements

The city science curriculum, according to the Department of Education website begins with a hands-on approach for elementary school students. At the high school level, students are required to complete three years of life or physical science, as well as 1,200 minutes of lab time to qualify for a Regents diploma.

Overall, the department says, "The city's approach allows students to practice problem-solving skills, develop positive science attitudes, learn new science content, and increase their scientific literacy."

Based on discussions with several New York City teachers that may not be working. (The teachers asked to remain anonymous.)

One teacher in a public high school with a business focus who has taught biology for 10 years said that the majority of students entering her classroom have not been "well prepped" for high school science. More importantly, the students lack basic skills, she said. For example, students had difficulty answering review questions because they didn’t understand words such as "predict" or "sequence." To address this, the teacher has enrolled in a class to help her teach reading to her students.

Another teacher said her students have difficulty using a ruler because they’re not familiar with the measurements.

Other educators echo such concerns. A professor at LaGuardia Community College recently told the New York Times that his students -- people who have graduated from high school -- "have serious challenges remembering the basic rules of arithmetic.”

To try to bolster science education, the city has begun introducing state standards, called Common Core. Among other things, these would have students analyze academic, non-fiction texts, including science texts, similar to those they might encounter in college.

The NAEP scores, Polokow-Suransky said in his statement, point up the importance of "working toward the tougher Common Core Standards as quickly as possible." The standards, he continued, will "build literacy skills in science ... and prepare our kids for the critical thinking and problem solving they begin to face in middle school."

In the Lab

The high school teachers also expressed frustration over the lack of lab time. Student are supposed to have 44 minutes of lab a week "but they aren't experimenting the whole time because time has to be allotted for setup, explaining the lab instructions because students have difficulty comprehending them, and then clean-up,” said one of the teachers.

She thinks students would need a minimum of 90 minutes per week to see the results of and have the opportunity to change their experiments.

The education department says it is in the midst of what it describes as "a multi-million dollar effort ... to improve the quality and quantity of science laboratory facilities." But while many schools have added new science labs, a recent report on NY1 found that they don’t have teachers for them, making it hard to boost time spent on hands-on experiments.

The department admits that it has had shortages of science teachers but says it has tried to fill science-teaching positions and, in the last three years, hired more than 500 new middle school science teachers. Impending teacher layoffs, though, could bring a halt to those gains and even erase some of them.

Extra Help

Whatever the school day may lack in science education, some city students try to make up for it after hours. The Department of Youth and Community Development's Beacon Program offers an opportunity for several hundred students to build and program robots. Enthusiastic science graduate and post-doctoral students teach the elementary and high school students, according to Darryl Rattray, the Beacon Program’s assistant commissioner.

This program, though, could also be vulnerable to budget cuts. In testimony before the state legislature, city youth commissioner Jeanne Mullgrav said that Gov. Andrew Cuomo's 2011-2012 budget proposal could result "in the loss of 4,800 afterschool slots" out of an afterschool population of approximately 80,000 students.

As exciting as building a robot is, the afterschool program does not guarantee that students will learn the essential concepts required to excel in physical, life and earth and space sciences or boost their test scores. Meghan Groome, the director of K-12 science education for the New York Academy of Sciences who is responsible for recruiting graduate students to teach in afterschool programs, said the "program's mission is to engage and interest students in the sciences, not to ready them for test taking."

Ms. Black Goes to Albany


Cathie Black
Photo by Edward Reed
Schools Chancellor Cathie Black on a recent visit to P.S. 262

"Is Cathleen Black here?" The pointed, almost scolding voice of Sen. John DeFrancisco rang out across the hearing room in the legislative office building in Albany on Tuesday. DeFrancisco, who was overseeing the joint budget hearing on education for the senate majority, was looking for a copy of the schools chancellor's testimony.

Black made her presence known. "You weren't going to keep it for yourself were you?" DeFrancisco chuckled as she handed in her testimony.

With only two months on the job, Black has weathered a storm of controversy after being appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Formerly a publishing executive, Black had no experience in education and has made only limited and carefully controlled appearances since taking office at the beginning of January.

Black, who also has little to no experience dealing with organized labor, took her new job as the city's dealings with the teacher's union turned notably contentious. In his State of the City address, Bloomberg pushed for new control over pension negotiations and the elimination of state mandates such as the first-in, last-out rule that means newer teachers must be laid off before teachers with seniority. United Federation of Teachers’ head Michael Mulgrew has taken the mayor's push as an attack on seniority and a move designed to cut costs by getting rid of more highly paid teachers.

The Exmining Board

Black's testimony on Tuesday before a joint hearing of the notoriously cantankerous legislature was supposed to be her biggest test to date. Instead Black delivered her written testimony and had a basically cordial question and answer session with legislators. But it wasn't all smooth sailing.

As Black took her seat in front of a microphone and a large panel of legislators, the chanting began. At first it was muffled, but the noise of human voices protesting in unison was unmistakable. Most of the audience looked at one another nervously, assuming the protest was directed at Black.

"Wanna take a break?" one legislator asked. "Can we have some order please!" shouted DeFrancisco. The protesters got louder, closer to the floor and to Black. "Gov. Cuomo, don't kill the CFE!" they chanted, demanding the state honor a settlement in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit that requires it to provide more aid to under-funded school districts. "You have the wrong room. Gov. Cuomo is on the second floor of the capitol," DeFrancisco said. When the protesters exited the room, Assemblymember Herman "Denny" Farrell told a staffer, "Lock the doors when they leave." But the protest brought a round of applause from legislators and audience members alike.

With that, Black began her testimony. "Thank you for that warm welcome," she said, smiling. Legislators laughed. Black was accompanied by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and the Department of Education's chief financial officer, Veronica Conforme.

Black read from her testimony, thanking the legislators, especially the "New York City delegation."

Pleading the City Case

"Let me say from the outset that we recognize the state's precarious financial condition. As Mayor Bloomberg said, ‘What we are urging you to do is provide our students with their fair share of state aid and our city with the tools and reform needed to end unnecessary mandates and crippling policy that otherwise will accelerate an already daunting situation,'" she said.

Sen. Martin Golden agreed with Black that Cuomo's budget calls for New York City to bear an unfair share of the cuts in state education aid. He asked Black what legislation City Hall plans to put forward to deal with the state mandates the Bloomberg administration says are so burdensome. Black replied that a bill dealing with last in, first out was forthcoming.

She was asked what criteria, other than seniority, could be used for evaluating teachers. "We have a number of plans to have a more formulaic evaluation of teachers," she said. "The current system is only two letters: satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Ninety percent get satisfactory. That number by any stretch of the imagination doesn't fly. At the moment we can't move forward on teacher evaluations in any significant way because that is a contract we have to work out with the union."

Dodging Controversy

Assemblymember Nick Perry had sharper questions.

"What is your own vision?" he asked Black. "The reason I'm asking the question is, it seems to me you got on the train and just took the driver's seat, and my observation is the train has been going down the wrong track for long time, and my perception is that you have been driving the train in the same direction as your predecessor."

Black's response did not include any criticism of her predecessor and avoided any hot topics.

"I have a very clear vision that our children deserve the best schools that they possibly can have for all of the years they are in school -- to prepare them for a world they are going into, which is more complex than it has been in the past," she added, "I want to do much better job of reaching out to the community in tandem to work together to assure our children a better future."

Perry pressed on. "Do you believe that the policy of routinely closing schools after what seems in a lot of cases deliberate policy by the department to let these schools deteriorate until they are not worth keeping open, do you think that is policy that should be part of your vision?" Perry asked.

"We do not have policy for closing schools," Black promptly responded.

"Excuse me! Did you just say you don't have a policy for closing schools?" Perry asked in disbelief.

"We have a very strong belief we should phase out failing schools," Black continued. Perry tried to interject but Black continued. "We visit schools not once, but multiple times," she said, explaining how students, principals and teachers were evaluated in failing schools." Walcott then added to what Black said, insisting that the city works in tandem with the state to identify poorly performing schools.

Cutting Costs or Keeping Teachers

Perhaps the most pointed questions came from Sen. Andrew Lanza on the topic of last in, first out.

"What is the anticipated cost savings if we were to move away from the LIFO system or process?" asked Lanza.

"I don’t have an exact number on that but with this kind of budget shortfall it’s going to be a significant number," said Black.

Walcott quickly interjected, "We don’t view this as a cost saving measure. We view this as an issue of how to provide the best teachers for schools during a very difficult time around layoffs."

"Well, this is a budget hearing," said Lanza, "and the issue of changing LIFO has been advanced in the context of saving the city a lot of money. So I am trying to get an accurate picture as to what the expectation is. Why is it the city's expectation that so many experienced teachers would be let go?"

Black seemingly missed the point of the question -- whether intentionally or not . Black said that she expected teacher layoffs in general would be necessary because of Cuomo's proposed budget cuts.

Visibly frustrated, Lanza responded: "I’ll tell you my concern is that this is being driven by cost savings, because this is being advanced as a cost savings measure for the city. Would you agree all else being equal experience matters?"

Black told the story of meeting a "fantastic teacher" and finding out that she only had a year of experience.

Lanza still didn't have the answer he was looking for. "We can agree to disagree," he said.

But he had one more question -- this time about pensions. Lanza noted the teacher had agreed to a new -- and lower -- tier for new teachers in 2009. "Are we saying that we need to move beyond that? That that's not going to work?" he asked the chancellor.

"The deputy mayor may want to add to that," Black responded, quickly handing the question off to Walcott.

More questions came and went, about building funds, closing the achievement gap, class size, using e-readers in the classroom. Some legislators were anxious to talk about their experiences as a teachers. Others seemed pleasantly surprised that Black was talking about the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit and reducing state cuts to city education aid.

Assemblymember Daniel O'Donnell seemed almost incensed when he asked Black if she agreed with a recent "tabloid editorial" that said this was the wrong time to make good on the CFE lawsuit. He appeared relieved when Black said she did not agree with the editorial and thought an injustice was being done by not funding it.

Report Card

So what did legislators think of Black's performance?

"She's only been in for less than a month. I think she did a good job. I would give her a B pus," said Sen. Ruben Diaz. But Diaz added he wasn't particularly concerned with who serves as chancellor. "It is the mayor's way. It is his agenda. No one else matters. This is the same administration-- it has nothing to do with the chancellor.

Sen. Liz Krueger said she thinks that the teachers union, Black and Bloomberg all agree that the city is bearing an unfair share of education cuts -- whether the union and the administraiton are getting along or not. She said she has disagreed with past legislation that would do away with protections for senior teachers, but thinks there may be some sort of formula that takes more than just seniority into account. That said, she added, "I don't think it is an appropriate budget discussion," because it should not be about cost savings

As for Black's performance, Krueger thought she did well but that she wasn't facing much of a firing squad this time. "She gave her answers, and sometimes referred to the deputy mayor. When she didn't have the answer she was reasonable and said she would get back to us on that. It was a civil Q and A. I don't think it could have been harder than having 3,000 angry people screaming at you," Krueger said.

Later Black told the press she prepared for weeks for the testimony.



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