Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg shocked most of the city last week by appointing publishing executive Cathleen Black schools chancellor, there has been no shortage of reaction.
Critics have assailed Bloomberg's secretive anointing of a woman with no education experience or firsthand knowledge of the city's public schools, but who travels in the same social circles as him and his companion, Diana Taylor. In response Bloomberg has defended his choice -- calling Black a world class manager.
As the week wore on, critics stepped up their efforts to convince State Education Commissioner David Steiner to deny Black the waiver she needs (because she lacks experience in education) to head up the nation's largest schools system.
Regardless of who the next chancellor is, she or he will come to Tweed courthouse at a critical time for city schools. Budgets have been cut back -- and almost certainly will need to be chopped further. The contract between the city and the teacher's union has expired -- while an increasingly restive union leadership challenges some of the city's education policies in court. Up to 47 schools face closing -- a move sure to produce rancor and controversy. Tougher high school graduation requirements threaten to create a huge obstacle for many city students. At the same time, critics claim the city's test score surge has been increasingly indicative of dumber tests and lenient scoring than of better educated students.
As the new chancellor confronts these tasks, Bloomberg will undoubtedly continue to be the real educational power in the city. In light of that fact, few expect policies to change very much. "I doubt that she will take any initiative that will really revolutionize or change. She doesn't have the freedom to do that," said the Manhattan Institute's Sol Stern. "Bloomberg didn't put her in there to conclude that something that happened on his watch was wrong."
Nonetheless, the departure of Joel Klein after eight years -- the most served by a New York City schools chancellor in more than 50 years -- presents a good opportunity for New York's top education experts and advocates to propose what Cathleen Black should do.
What would you like the new chancellor to do in her first days on the job? Please send us your ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or use the comment space below.
The "assignments" follow.
Diane Ravitch, New York University
Kim Sweet, Advocates for Children
David Bloomfield, Department of Education, College of Staten Island
Billie Easton, Alliance for Quality Education
Sol Stern, The Manhattan Institute
James Merriman, New York City Charter School Center
Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters
Mona Davids, New York Charter Parents Association
Helen Doran, Campaign for Fiscal Equity
Javier H. Valdes, Make the Road New York
Jane Hirschmann, Time Out from Testing
Richard Kessler and Doug Israel, Center for Arts Education
Members of the Urban Youth Collaborative
I would love to see Cathie Black take on four assignments, all within the realm of the possible:
First, to reach out to parent groups and really listen to them, acknowledging that every parent or guardian cares more about their own child than any public official, and show them the respect they deserve.
Second, to give teachers the recognition they richly deserve for their daily work in our city's classrooms.
Third, to lead a campaign to expand the arts into every grade in every school in the city, so that every child has full opportunity to participate in music, arts, visual arts, and other art forms.
Fourth, to stop the school closings and to apply her best efforts to helping and supporting the schools that need help so as to better serve their students.
--Diane Ravitch, research professor of education, New York University and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System
I would like the new chancellor to explain to all the parents whose children are not yet meeting state standards what she will do to ensure that every child gets the extra help he or she needs.
--Kim Sweet, executive director, Advocates for Children
Educational attainment of black and Latino males should be a priority for the new administration. The 2010 Schott Foundation 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males found that New York City is among the 10 worst large districts for black males when measured by graduation rates.
Some 28 percent of black males in New York graduate on time with Regents diplomas, compared to 50 percent for white males, resulting in a 22 percent achievement gap. The graduation rates are probably inflated since they are based on students starting ninth grade, when an untold number have already dropped out. The state Education Department reports that the Latino male graduation rate -- including students who receive either a Regents or less demanding Local diploma -- in New York City is 50 percent (including August grads). Even if not inflated, this is a devastating picture of educational inequity and systemic failure. It implicates not only graduation rates but over-referrals to special education, empty efforts at credit accumulation and other perversions of real educational attainment.
My fear is that the new chancellor will fit the problem into the former administration's formula of school closures, small schools, charters and extra points in progress reports. But eight years of such "solutions" have resulted in the data above. I am not against such strategies when rationally targeted but they are clearly not enough.
An unfulfilled promise of mayoral control of schools, hardly mentioned anymore, was that we could undertake a concerted citywide effort to deal with educational problems beyond the scope of the Department of Education. Early intervention; provision of a range of social services including housing, health and employment assistance; diversions from punitive criminal justice strategies; after-school, GED and adult education programs; and other inter-agency contributions to student and family well-being are necessary ingredients to combating this scourge. If the new chancellor is serious about eliminating the achievement gap, she will undertake creative, constructive, comprehensive efforts to address this issue rather than revert to current nostrums.
--David Bloomfield, chair, Education Department, College of Staten Island, CUNY
1. In order to build public trust, explain to the public how it is that you are prepared to lead the nation's largest school district despite having no professional background in education.
2. Conduct meetings across the city with parents, and youth and community organizations. As a result of these meetings identify four priorities to make the Department of Education more responsive to parents, students and communities.
3. Acknowledge that the racial achievement gap in New York City schools remains a chasm.
4. Declare a state of emergency due to the fact that new state standards revealed that in one out of every four schools two thirds of students are reading below grade level. Form an Emergency Task Force chaired by yourself and comprised of parents, teachers, school leaders, academics and business leaders to come up with a comprehensive plan to address this educational crisis.
--Billy Easton, executive director, Alliance for Quality Education
If there is a suspicion she was brought in because she will present a more human face [than Joel Klein did] … she should go out and talk with rank and file teachers to ask them, "what are your complaints?" She could go and sit in classrooms -- talk to the veteran teachers, those 25-year teachers, some of who are great teachers. She would have to find teachers who are really independent and in a position to speak honestly." Ask them, 'What do you need? What do you think?"
--Sol Stern,senior fellow, The Manhattan Institute
If there is one thing thicker than the September issue, it is the portfolio of advice that Cathie Black will get. Here’s my addition to the pile.
In terms of charter schools, Chancellor Joel Klein recognized their potential and championed charters both inside and outside the system. I expect that Black will advocate just as vigorously for high-quality charter schools. That means giving the great ones space to open and grow and showing a willingness to fight locally and in Albany for equitable funding. You can't support charters on the one hand and starve them on the other. At the same time, she has to adopt a zero tolerance policy for those charters that are under performing. If charters are to be a model for accountability-based results, then Tweed has to be tougher about closing charters that aren’t raising achievement. These aren't easy decisions, but they are necessary.
On a larger scale, I'd like to see a continued commitment to results-based accountability across the system. But Black should explore refining the measures. For instance, instead of issuing single letter grades to schools, she should look at the Colorado model, which separately measures absolute performance and progress (without trying to meld them together). This system, while not perfect, is one that parents understand and that corresponds to the day-to-day reality of the schools their children attend. At the same time it preserves an important aspect of the present system, namely demonstrating to all that even good schools can get much better.
By making accountability more intuitive, more parents will embrace it as a valuable tool. This in turn will strengthen the ability of the Department of Education to make high-stakes decisions around school closure and turnaround -- and draw support for those decisions.
Finally, Black should work hard to articulate where the reforms are taking us and why -- and listen carefully to those who are affected by those reforms. For parents, some account of history must be taken; the simple fact is that parents in poor parts of this city have seen reforms come and go along with the people who instituted them. They have good reason to be profoundly suspicious. The department owes it to them to spend time quietly talking with (and listening to) them to win their trust and faith -- and equally, to be brutally candid with parents when things the department tries don't work. And of course she should spend time speaking and listening to teachers and leaders who must excel if we are to see improved results for students.
Being chancellor of the school system, former Chancellor Frank Macchiarola once said, was like listening to Frank Sinatra: incredibly enjoyable, the best. The catch was, however, you had to listen to him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The fact is that the job is an excruciatingly tough one. I wish her the very best.
--James Merriman, chief executive officer, New York City Charter School Center
What the next chancellor should do:
1. Obey the law, follow the research, listen to parents, and start reducing class size immediately. It is a scandal and a crime that city students are still suffering with the largest classes in the state, and with class sizes still increasing, despite the state law passed in 2007 and a written agreement of the chancellor to reduce them in exchange for more than $2 billion in additional state funds.
Start by assigning the thousand or more teachers on Absent Teacher Reserve to regular classes, especially in the highest-need schools. For example, start with the schools that the education department says it wants to close. At Jamaica High School, whose budget has been slashed to the bone, there were over 80 classes this fall that exceeded the contractual limits of 34 students per class, and yet the department "quality reviewers" had the nerve to blame this on the school!
As a second step, start redeploying some of the 10,000 out-of-classroom positions that have been created since 2002 -- while the system has lost more than 1, 600 classroom teachers.
2. Call an immediate moratorium to any more school closings or co-locations, which merely make the overcrowding problem worse, lead to higher class sizes and concentrate high needs students elsewhere. Put together a taskforce of parents, teachers, administrators and educational experts to come with a real plan to improve the schools that are currently threatened with closure. Enough of the top-down and useless education department proposals of more "merit pay," more testing, more "coaches" and more "data analysis."
3. Assemble another taskforce of stakeholders to redesign the school utilization formula and the "instructional footprint," which seems to see space in schools where there is none, forces students into rooms that violate the building code, and leads to special education students receiving their services in hallways and closets.
4. Put a halt to the creation of more new, small schools, which have multiplied throughout the system like rabbits, with little or no quality control, and which are very space-intensive and expensive to fund. Instead invest maximum resources and energy in improving the 1,500 schools that we already have.
5. Restore the district structure, offices and supervisory functions, which allow parents to have a place to go with their concerns by eliminating the sprawling "Children First" networks that have mushroomed to almost a thousand people, without any geographical base or reason, and whose members waste much of their time traveling from one end of the city to another.
6.Put a stop to all no-bid contracts and expensive consultants; and cancel the hugely expensive contract for "interim assessments," which most teachers find useless and a waste of time.
7. Revamp the school progress reports, which are unreliable and confusing to parents; and instead, in consultation with parents and other stakeholders, devise a new system that provides several grades for every school based on various attributes and more holistic factors. Put more attention into the results of the parent, student and teacher surveys, so that any school that receives poor survey results for more than one year would receive immediate intervention from the district to see if the principal needs to be removed or given more training or help.
8. Deep-six the unreliable and unfair teacher data reports, and convene a working group composed of parents and other stakeholders, which will design a more accurate evaluation system, in which peer, student and parent views are taken into account with test scores only one factor.
9. Tell charter schools in Department of Education buildings that are run by the scions of billionaires or who have deep-pocketed hedge-fund supporters to find leased space elsewhere -- as soon as possible -- because district students should not be squeezed out of their own school buildings.
10. Ask for the city comptroller to perform a top to bottom performance audit of every discretionary expense, consultant, contract and spending item, and release the results to the public.
11. Inform high schools that they must end the scandalous practice of substandard, online credit recovery programs immediately, and put in place strong oversight mechanisms to make sure that these abuses end.
12.Restore Project Arts, which existed for years before Joel Klein canceled it, and provided dedicated funding for arts programs in our schools, to better ensure that our children receive a well-rounded education.
13.Commission an independent assessment of Collaborative Team Teaching classes (special education inclusion classes) and online learning programs, which have expanded rapidly over the last few years, to see if they are working and whether they need to be rethought or reformed, before expanding these programs any more.
14.Re-establish a true Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, in which parent leaders from throughout the city actually advise the chancellor, without just having to listen to the chancellor or one of his minions tell them what they intend to do. Involve the members of Community Education Councils as well, and embark on a new era of mutual respect and collaboration with parents, sadly missing over the last nine years of this administration.
15. Release transparent enrollment projections based on numerous sources of data, including birth rates, census data regarding family in-migration and out-migration rates, day care and pre-k enrollments, building starts, and analyze and report on this data on the school zone, district, and citywide levels. In short, start being honest with parents and other New Yorkers about the real need for more seats throughout the city to relieve the overcrowding crisis, before it gets even worse.
16. Build more schools, and take advantage of the many parochial schools that are closing throughout the city by leasing them. Re-allocate nearly $1 billion toward this critical goal, by canceling the expansion and construction of new jails in Brooklyn and the Bronx that community members don’t want and the city doesn’t need. While our jail population has been falling, our student population is rapidly expanding; and if these funds were invested in schools, they would yield $2 billion , because the state puts up matching funds for school construction.
And then, take a day off!
--Leonie Haimson, executive director, Class Size Matters
The new chancellor needs to show some tough love to charter schools authorized by the Department of Education. When they receive complaints from parents, they need to step in. They should not wait five years for a charter school to fail [before revoking the authorization]. I think they know that after two years. The charter school office needs to be more receptive to the concerns of parents and to communicate with parents. She needs to do a complete overhaul of the charter school office. I hope she won't wait like she did with shutting down Talk magazine.
--Mona Davids, president, New York Charter Parents Association
Campaign for Fiscal Equity recently published a study on Regents diplomas. In grouping schools together, we tried to find out whether there schools who have students who are highly challenged and are helping them to get Regents diplomas. It should be a priority to find out why this list of schools is succeeding -- why this list of schools is getting it done.
This is going to be one of the most wretched budget years for schools in 20 years. We always care about the students who are not receiving their constitutionally required sound basic education, and we would want to make sure that those students are a priority.
For schools, there's no accountability other than the letter grade to help them get better. Schools need to have strong support and accountability -- not just a letter grade but someone who has resources to help them change.
We lure good teachers with higher salaries, but we continue to lose them. Why are we not retaining these people so we can get the kind of quality schools we want?
--Helaine Doran, deputy director, Campaign for Fiscal Equity
Chancellor Joel Klein had some accomplishments running our schools but he is also leaving behind 239,000 students who are not reading or doing math on grade level. After the recent test score debacle, 27 percent more of the city's students were not reading on grade level than they were in 2008, and 28 percent more of our students weren’t doing math on grade level. For immigrant students, the trauma of the department's failure is devastating: 14 percent of English Language Learners are on grade level for English language arts, compared to 35 percent in 2008.
Cathie Black is stepping into an incredibly hard role. Parents and students with our organization and others throughout the city have been working for years to secure the resources and support that our schools need. We look forward to building a strong relationship with the new chancellor, but one that is based on mutual respect. It is essential that Black immediately begin meeting with organizations like ours in order to establish a respectful and productive working relationship. She will not be able to do a good job without parents and students at her side.
For those students who did not fare well on their recent tests, Black needs to provide Academic Intervention Services. We need all of our students reading on grade levels.
She needs to work with communities to ensure that any reforms that the department puts into place, such as restructuring or closing schools, will be likely to work. Our communities are tired of seeing schools closed and re-opened, our students shuffled around, or shoved out of school into the streets, with no clear accountability for making sure these reforms really work. We need schools that provide all of our students a path to college and careers. We also need to make sure that students with limited proficiency in English are not forgotten off but real support is provided to them and their families for them to strive.
-- Javier H. Valdes, deputy director, Make the Road New York
I would like to see the new chancellor put an end to excessive and high stakes tests. In other words, I think that she should think about enriching the curriculum with the kinds of subjects her children had in private boarding school. Replacing test prep with real learning and allowing teachers to teach would be a welcome beginning, as would putting the word public back into public education. This means giving parents a major voice in their child's education and investing in the existing public schools rather than putting our much-needed resources into charter schools.
--Jane Hirschmann, Time Out From Testing
For school districts across the nation, including New York City's, there is a watershed moment rapidly emerging as federal funding that has kept education jobs afloat will be coming to an end next year. This is further compounded by cuts in state funding for education, and a growing appetite to cut government spending.
Cathie Black will be at the helm of a system that will face this profound financial reality. Should this reset moment combine with what has been an over-reliance on test scores in English language arts and math, we will witness a reshaping of public K-12 education in the narrowest form imaginable, one that establishes a meager education devoid of the rich and well-rounded instruction and experiences our students ultimately need to be college and career ready, and perhaps most important, to be prepared to be active members of our democratic society.
Black can choose the road of more of the same, one that narrows the curriculum even further, or another path, that will seek a balance even during severe financial constraints. We hope that she will seek real solutions for how a well-rounded education can be ensured, so that all of our students will be prepared to be successful in life and work.
--Richard Kessler. executive director, and Doug Israel, director of research and policy, Center for Arts Education
As chancellors and mayors come and go, it is students and parents -- the communities of people who live in New York City and attend its public schools -- who remain. That is why all stakeholders -- students especially -- need to be consulted on education policy and involved in decisions about how to improve schools.
The Urban Youth Collaborative, a coalition of high school students of color from some of New York's poorest neighborhoods, has a broad vision for fixing our city's schools: engaging, rigorous and well-rounded curriculum; a respectful and supportive school culture that treats us like the students we are, instead of criminals; counseling and academic support that puts us on the path to college; real student and parent voice and role in decision-making; and equitable funding.
The collaborative hopes to work with the new chancellor on implementing some of our ideas to fix schools, like offering more AP classes at low-income schools; giving more high school students the opportunity to take college classes while in high school; and implementing creative and positive approaches to school safety instead of continuing the de facto zero tolerance safety policies that exist now.
We hope that instead of closing schools without first trying to fix them, or without a clear plan about how what comes next will offer students a different and better education, Chancellor Cathleen Black will take the important step of meeting with students and parents to listen to our experiences, the challenges we face and our ideas for improving -- not abandoning -- public schools.
Chancellor Black, will you meet with the Urban Youth Collaborative?
--Members of the Urban Youth Collaborative
At City Polytechnic High School in Brooklyn some students take courses on engineering and architecture taught by college professors; they also can accumulate enough credits to graduate in just three years or earn an associate's degree in five years. The students can do all this because City Poly has divided the school year into trimesters, packing core requirements into a shorter time frame, allowing them to use the third trimester for less traditional classes.
Across the city in Harlem, every student at Global Technology Preparatory, a middle school, receives a laptop at the start of the school year. They use them to develop Power Points for social-studies presentations, take online language classes, play math games and build a digital portfolio that the students will use in their high-school applications. This year, the school day also has been extended to 6 p.m.
These new schools are part of the New York City Department of Education's innovation zone, a high-stakes gamble to reinvent New York City public schools. Launched two years ago as part of what has become the iZone, it originally included 10 schools and now has ballooned to 81. So far, the schools have shown promise by many measures, including attendance, student and parent satisfaction, and student progress toward graduation. The city now hopes to expand the iZone to 300 schools within the next few years.
Some question, though, whether the Department of Education has the money to continue and expand the initiative. A dearth of research on kindergarten through 12 online education means that much of what the iZone is doing is highly experimental. And now, at the start of its third year, the iZone is undergoing a raft of changes that could unsettle the experiment -- and even help determine whether it succeeds or fails.
The iZone is rooted in using digital technology to better serve and educate New York's 1 million public school students. "In any field but education, if you fell asleep 100 years ago and woke up today you wouldn't have a clue what was going on," Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said at a gathering of iZone principals, teachers and vendors Thursday night. "The notion of the teacher behind closed doors delivering instruction has to change."
The disconnect between students' wired lives and the typical chalk-and-blackboard classroom makes kids today less receptive to traditional modes of education than previous generations, argues a 2008 white paper by Cisco, the high-tech company that has been the iZone's "thought partner."
"How can traditional modes of classroom instruction engage and inspire students when life outside the classroom has changed so dramatically?" asks the paper, "Equipping Every Learner for the 21st Century." The paper also argues that a changing and global workforce has put a premium on cross-cultural knowledge, multilingualism and collaboration, including problem-solving, decision-making, and creative and critical thinking, as well as written and oral communication.
What is at stake is the ability to teach young people -- many who are poor and have limited access to computers and the internet -- the skills they need to function in a global, digital world. The scope of that challenge was highlighted by a 2010 report by the Schott Foundation for Public Education, which found that only 28 percent of black males in New York City received Regents high school diplomas, compared to 50 percent for white males and well below the national high school graduation average of 48 percent for black males.
Two key features characterize the iZone's middle- and high-schools: First, fully half are "virtual schools," many of them developing a so-called blended model that combines in-class teaching with a range of digital technologies. Second, the schools offer new approaches to scheduling that include City Poly's trimester system and extended-day programs.
The push to go digital, though, represents the greatest change for the schools and, arguably, the biggest challenge for the education department.
In seeking to offer more education online, the department is tackling three hurdles at once. One is money: Online instruction requires a huge upfront investment in technology and infrastructure. Second, introducing online education requires a drastic rethinking of education -- nothing less in the words of one iZone participant, than turning traditional notions of schooling "upside down." For one thing, a wired school can redefine the role of a teacher from being the primary conduit of knowledge to more of a facilitator.
Finally, the iZone is entirely experimental, and while many experts laud the education department’s efforts toward going digital, scant research exists on which specific strategies are effective for grades kindergarten through 12, and which are not. If it wants to learn from its experiment and expand on it, the education department, which has become notorious for seasonal changes in everything from organization to curricula to personnel, will need to stick with the iZone long enough -- and monitor it closely enough -- to figure out what works, what doesn't work and how it will know.
A number of changes in the program as the school year began also raised concerns among iZone participants. Julian Cohen, who served as executive director of school innovation and was well respected in the schools and a welcome buffer from department politics, has moved to a different job in the department.
Cisco, which has been providing technical and financial support on a philanthropic basis has taken a step back. Gene Longo a manager with Cisco's Networking Academy, one of the company's corporate responsibility programs, who oversaw Cisco's non-profit initiatives with the education department, has transferred to a new job and has not been replaced.
Cisco had promised the department free access to a much anticipated prototype portal the company was developing for commercial use. According to iZone insiders, when work on the portal fell behind schedule this summer, the education department pieced together an in-house version and took over the professional training that Cisco had been conducting. Cisco is expected to be a leading candidate for developing an ambitious expanded portal -- or "virtual learning environment" -- for which the department requested bids this summer.
"Cisco continues to support the New York City DOE," including "investment in the New York City DOE iZone innovation initiative," Robyn Jenkins-Blum, a public relations manager for Cisco, wrote in an email message. Cisco refused requests for an interview.
In August, after teachers cut short vacations to attend a Cisco training session, only to find out it was being taught by the education department, one iZone insider wondered, "How many changes can the iZone sustain before it loses its credibility?"
Arthur Vanderveen, chief of innovation research and development at the education department, denied the iZone project has hit stumbling blocks. "At the school level, we're fully meeting our commitments," he said, adding that the department has "many partners" and is providing an "online environment to access courses in a seamless, integrated way."
The education department is expanding the iZone at a time when its budget is strapped. While the department won't provide estimates, wiring New York City's aging school buildings is an enormous challenge, as will be the expanded "virtual learning environment" that the department expects to have in operation by 2011-2012 school year and that one software vendor described as "unprecedented."
Although the department intends to allow every school to tailor its portal to its own needs, it aims to offer schools a range of options, including "anytime/anywhere access" to a catalog of online courses and the ability to customize and share courses and professional development online with other schools. It expects students to use the portal to access schoolwork anytime, communicate with teachers and collaborate with classmates. The portal also will offer teachers an easy management system for both face-to-face and online courses, and the ability to communicate online with students and parents and to share information about student work and progress with other teachers.
Even without the portal, schools face huge start-up costs for technology, including laptops, teleconferencing systems, and white boards as well as professional development. Teachers, especially the less tech-savvy, will need training along with help developing entirely new approaches to instruction.
At a single school like Global Tech, which is more than doubling its size to about 130 students, the official budget for the 2010-2011 school year is just under $1.2 million dollars, about 10 percent higher than it was last year. An additional $100,000, which comes from the iZone, helped pay for laptops for the incoming class; $25,000 from Cisco completed the purchase. Last year, Global Tech benefited from donations worth tens of thousands of dollars. (For our story on Global Tech's first year and its plans for the future, go here.)
So far, much of the technology funding for iZone schools has come from private donations. The iSchool alone has received at least $2 million in cash and in-kind grants, most of it from Cisco and Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of U.S. News & World Report and The Daily News. City Poly also has received generous private-sector donations.
"There’s a whole new world out there and new learning platforms that can empower teachers" to offer differentiated instruction to kids who struggle with material, as well as those who are more advanced, Klein said at the iZone celebration in the rotunda of Tweed Courthouse, the education department headquarters. Klein reminisced about his own physics classes, and said, while his teachers were excellent, none of them influenced him more than hearing the lectures of the late Nobel Prize-winning scientistRichard Feynman. Digital technology, he added, could bring Feynman’s lectures into the classroom, and augment the curriculum.
The iSchool in Manhattan's District 2, a new selective high school, has taken that message to heart. Last year, it hired a teacher from a Bronx school to teach a virtual geometry course, via teleconferencing, to a handful of freshman who had mastered algebra. Without the technology, paying a part-time teacher would have been prohibitively expensive.
Students at the school take about seven hours of classes online each week, including one of several languages, an example of how technology allows schools to offer more options with limited resources. Under state regulations, a teacher must be present for online classes; but, eventually, the iSchool envisions students taking the courses on their own time, freeing up the school day for other work.
When done well, the key advantage of being wired is that it leads the schools to "rethink every element, including instructional design, assessment, teacher-student interaction," said Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the International Council for Online Learning. She notes that because technology places extraordinary new demands on teachers, wired schools have the added benefit of attracting “motivated and student-centered teachers."
Perhaps nowhere is the rethinking and the connection to strong teaching more evident than at the iSchool.
Its challenge-based modules—nine-week collaborative projects -- cross disciplines. A green roof project, for example, includes the study of botany and government regulations. The projects also promote collaboration among students who work in teams as well as with outsiders. To develop an exhibition for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero students collaborated with museum officials and, via videoconference, interviewed young people around the world about their views of the terrorist attacks.
Of course, iSchool students must still meet New York State standards and pass Regents exams. At the iSchool, Regents courses are conducted online, allowing students to work at their own pace; 44 percent of last year’s 10th graders passed their Regents exams, and most of the rest are expected to do so by this coming January.
But the online courses get some low grades from students milling in the hallways. "We hate the online component,” said Ruby Craker, a ninth grader who studied American history part of last year via Compass software and partly in a traditional class. Ruby said she learned "everything" during the nine weeks when she was in a traditional class. "Sometimes the technology doesn’t work," she said. "The software doesn't explain everything. You can't ask it a question. I can't stand it. I hate it."
When interviewed in June, Ruby said she also was behind in online English Language Arts and needed a teacher to keep her on task. "I feel like a guinea pig," she added.
Her friend Morgane Stuart has a somewhat different view. Describing herself as a poor foreign language student, she said that online instruction helped her progress at her own pace and avoid the embarrassment of having to speak up in class.
Ask the students what they like best about the iSchool, though, and almost all say they "love" the teachers "I always hated math, dreaded it," says Morgane. "Now I love math, love my teacher. She's got great teaching strategies, it's always fun."
Alisa Berger and Mary Moss, co-principals of the school, argue that some of the unhappiness with online curriculum is to be expected, especially among incoming students who were successful in their previous, traditional schools. Also, they note, the curriculum is a work in progress.
Eli Szenes-Strauss, a history teacher, concedes that some of the online software, such as the Compass history program, didn't work. "It's difficult to navigate," he said. "It's condescending. It doesn't match up to the Regents standards." So, the iSchool bought new software and Szenes-Strauss spent the summer crafting an entirely new online history curriculum.
The reworked curriculum recognizes that a passive online format has limits and will include weekly tutorials to expand on, and answer questions about, the online course. "You don't need a teacher to learn the fact that the Louisiana Purchase occurred in 1803," explains Szenes-Strauss. "You need a teacher to discuss the ideas behind manifest destiny."
A more serious problem relates to whether the new approaches -- the projects, the technology, the required internships -- can overcome prodigious gaps in student knowledge. "I never met so many smart kids with awful skills," said Szenes-Strauss who says many incoming freshman were among the smartest kids in their middle schools and got used to coasting.
Beyond the interest in online education, many of the iZone experiments spring from a belief that the traditional school day with its 50-minute periods precludes in-depth multidisciplinary course work. The assumption is that rethinking the traditional schedule can make time for real-world experiences -- not by sacrificing basic knowledge, but by reinforcing it.
"Why do you need the quadratic equation?" asked Chris Aguirre, principal of City Poly. Aguirre then makes the connection between a mathematical abstraction and a tool that jet engine designers use to calculate thrust.
To teach students about both, Aguirre, has tried to eliminate the "padding" from the traditional school day. By squeezing requirements like geometry and algebra into two trimesters per year, he takes the slack out of the system -- students can no longer miss days of school without consequence. The extra trimester is used to give struggling students extra support or to allow more advanced kids to take applied courses on, say, Art and Architecture or Math Problems in Engineering, and to graduate early or to earn college credits at City Tech.
Meanwhile, Global Tech, where last year's digitally enriched curriculum produced off-the-charts student and parent satisfaction as well as high attendance -- is adding 2.5 hours to the schools day. Principal Chrystina Russell expects that by teaming up with Citizen Schools, a not-for-profit that partners with middle schools in poor neighborhoods to offer afternoon programs, she can boost students' academic performance and support her teachers. Over half a dozen staff from Citizen Schools start their day at Global Tech at 10 a.m., assisting in classrooms and providing continuity for the extra work that begins after the end of the traditional school day .
The challenge for the education department is how to take what the iZone schools are learning about what succeeds and what does not and adapt the lessons to existing schools that may have principals and teachers who are more resistant to change and lack mentors with deep pockets. More importantly, if the iZone schools are successful, how will the department identify what it is that makes them so: Is it the teachers? The principals? The schedules? The online technology? Or some combination?
Little research exists on the efficacy of K-12 online education. The number of U.S. students enrolled in online courses surged 47 percent in 2008 to just over 1 million, up from 700,000 two years earlier, according to two studies conducted by Anthony G. Picciano and Jeff Seaman. However, in the 2008 study, K-12 Online Learning, the authors note that as of 2007, "no organization-public or private was systematically collecting" data on K-12 online schools.
The education department says it is conducting its own research, collaborating with the Ford Foundation to collect data on iZone schools. In addition, CUNY colleges will provide valuable data on students' college readiness.
If these first iZone schools turn out to be successful in the long run, it may be because they have the single ingredient that research has shown, over and over, to be key to improving education: good teachers. As new schools, they have the luxury of selecting their own staffs; and, as a group, the principals seem to have taken to heart the old adage that hiring is the most important decision a manager makes.
One assumption undergirding the push to go digital is that the sheer volume of new knowledge in many fields, as well as the availability of information over the internet means that teaching kids how to think and find information is more important than learning content for its own sake. Yet, for many teachers, the biggest challenge they face -- technology or not -- is a lack of skills and fundamental knowledge among students.
Last semester, Marc Kantrowitz, the iSchool's cantankerous and well-liked science teacher asked 80 or so students to answer the following question: How does drug trafficking increase the subjugation of women?
"Twelve minutes into the assignment, I realized that they didn't know what 'subjugation' means," says Dr. K, as he is known. "None of them knew. ... Worse, they had been sitting in front of their laptops and no one -- no one -- had looked it up."
Dr. K continues his litany: "So I said, 'what countries are the largest producers of opium?' One kid said Afghanistan."
"'Who is benefitting from the drug trade?' Not one kid out of 80 or 90 kids out of three sections could come up with the Taliban. Opium, drugs, Taliban, bad guys, subjugation of women. … Not one kid.
"I asked, â€how many of you read The New York Times?' Only one hand went up."
How can you educate kids to be critical thinkers when they have no basic knowledge? That is Dr. K's question. For all the talk about “authentic” real-world experiences, that is a key issue that the iZone project will have to address.
Andrea Gabor is a professor of journalism at Baruch College/CUNY and the author of several books, most recently The Capitalist Philosophers (Three Rivers Press, 2000).
Being a beautician is all Jong Ae Shul knew. She ran a beauty salon in Flushing for 25 years, serving mostly Korean-speaking customers six or seven days a week. She didn't need to speak English, and she had no time to learn it.
"I wanted to learn English so I can go to other places by myself," said Shul. "I was scared. I couldn't even take the subway because I didn't speak English."
Retired four years ago, she is making up for lost time.
Shul now studies English at the Queens Library's Flushing branch. And she loves it. She goes there for about three hours three or four times a week to attend classes, reads the textbooks, listen to CDs and get help from the tutors.
All of these activities are offered at the Adult Learning Center, one of the seven such centers in Queens. And the program, which includes English and civics classes as well as adult basic education, is absolutely free. Places in the program are awarded by lottery, and Shul is one of the few lucky ones who won one of the limited spots.
The free English classes are funded by the city. Traditionally, those free classes provided an opportunity for immigrants who otherwise cannot afford them. But the three primary sources of funding for the program -- Immigrant Opportunities Initiative, Adult Literacy Services Initiative by the City Council, and the Department of Youth and Community Development's adult literacy programs -- have suffered cuts that resulted in loss of 3,500 slots for potential students.
During the city budget negotiations this spring, Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed eliminating the initiative's entire budget of $5 million, which already had been slashed from $11 million in fiscal year 2009-2010, as well as the City Council's $1.5 million. The mayor also wanted to cut $5.18 million in the youth department's adult education programs, which include English classes, civics and adult basic education classes.
After protests by community organizations and elected officials, in late June the City Council restored $1.5 million in funding for adult education programs, but the council's initiative suffered a $500,000 cut while the Department of Youth and Community Development received a $1.6 million cut.
Many viewed restoration as a victory. But the pain of cuts has already been felt.
"Every year we are under the threat," said Susan Dalmas, adult learning program manager at Queens Library.
The library in Flushing regularly runs 34 conversational English classes, ranging from beginning to intermediate. In September, the number of classes has been cut to 27, according to Alla Osokina, director of its adult learning center.
"We will have to find other ways to provide services to our students," Osokina said, noting that there are only four full-time administrative staff serving more than 600 students in English, civics and computer classes. With the cut, the center lost a full-time instructor and the other instructor’s workload has been reduced to half.
In the fall, the center will rely heavily on interns and volunteers to teach classes. "The quality of classes would not be the same as there will be fewer classes taught by professionals," said Osokina.
At CAMBA, a nonprofit community-based organization in Flatbush, Brooklyn, 16 of the 92 three-month classes it offered last year were funded by the Department of Youth and Community Development. This year, four of them were eliminated, and half of the remaining classes were reduced from 17.5 hours to 12 per week.
"As of today, we have 1,027 applicants on our waiting lists," said Jude Pierre, a program administrator at CAMBA.
Meanwhile, Korean Community Services for Metropolitan New York, which provides community services such as day care, a senior citizen center and public health programs, has also cut the hours of the free English classes. The center, on the north side of Kissena Park, runs four semesters per year and has cut each semester from 10 weeks to seven weeks because it is receiving 30 percent less funding than it did last year.
More than 200 students attend the program and 100 people are on the waiting list, According to Annie Shin, the English as a second language coordinator,. The average wait to get into a class is six months.
"They can go to fee-based programs, but many of the schools, like colleges and institutions, are targeting the students who want to pursue colleges or higher education, not basic literacy levels," said Shin. "So even though our students are willing to pay, they cannot follow the course since it is too difficult for them."
Some places are facing a total loss of city funding. Flushing Jewish Community Center, located on Bowne Street, is one of them. It stopped offering ESL classes in July because its contract with the Department of Youth and Community Development was not renewed.
"The funding is completely gone," said Megha Mehta, a social worker at the cent. "The recession hit us badly."
According to Mehta, the center used to offer four ESL classes, one civics class, and one immigration class. Now there is only one ESL class and one civics class, and volunteers teach both.
"We are still applying to other agencies," Mehta added. "We were hoping that we could offer something in September. That doesn't seem likely the case anymore."
Many immigrant advocates expect the cuts to continue. They note that the restoration by the City Council applied only to this year.
"Let's not go through this budget dance every year," said Anthony Ng, deputy director of the United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella group of community centers and settlement houses. "We'd like to see the mayor stabilize the funding, make it permanent."
On a recent Friday afternoon, Christine Fisher worked with nine students in a basic conversation class in the Flushing library. Seven of her students are from China, one India and one from Colombia. At least two people needed reading glasses. and four had electronic dictionaries. More than half of the students are unemployed or retired.
Zhi KangYao, 66, who retired from a business association in Shanghai six years ago and moved to Flushing, said his goal is to be able to read and communicate with others in English.
"My generation didn't learn English. We learned Russian," said Yao, who said he has no income and cannot afford to pay to go to school. "This is a wonderful opportunity for me to learn English so I can read the documents I receive in the mail."
Ling Chen, a native of Shandong Province, China, said it took her three tries before she won a spot in the class by lottery.
"I just kept trying," said Chen, who was a kindergarten teacher in China and now baby sits for her daughter. "My goal is to be able to talk to Americans."
Yao and Chen would not be able to attend classes if they had to pay.
"This is a segment of the immigrant populations that by and large do not have resources to pay for these kinds of programs," said Fisher. "If we continue to be a country that welcomes immigrants, we have to be able to support them."
After learning basic English, some of the students find jobs or continues their education.
Ray Li, a former English student at the Flushing library, moved on to attend LaGuardia Community College and then City College of New York. He is majoring in electrical engineering.
"I love this program," said Li, 24, who now works part-time at the library’s adult learning center. "I was new in this country and I found a community here. This place is full of information, not just about learning English. The people who have been here longer always share a lot of tips about living in America with the new immigrants."
Students who reach fifth-grade English proficiency can take classes to prepare for the General Equivalency Diploma or GED exam. Wai Bing Chan, 62, is one of the success stories. After finishing the ESL program, she continued with the pre-GED program and got her high school equivalency diploma last year on the first try.
"It was my biggest accomplishment," said Chan, a native of Hong Kong who came to the United States 15 years ago. "We didn’t have opportunity to go to school because the economy in Hong Kong was not very good. Now I have a chance to study and I don’t have to pay."
"At least now we can communicate with Americans. We don't always have to stay in Chinatown," said Chan. "We know more about the culture."
As for Shul, the retired beautician, she is having the time of her life learning English at the library.
"Here, I can’t speak Korean," said Shul, adding that her English is still broken but she is not afraid to speak it. "I speak and speak. I am really happy."