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Tied to Education Aid
Appoint School Czar? Ms. Weingarten, State Board of Regents Member Merryl H. Tisch and Geri D. Palast, the executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, all indicated support for such a shift in power during a Dec. 12 conference entitled "Governing Change: Policy, Politics and the Spitzer Administration" that was sponsored by the New School and the New York Times. Times education reporter David Herszenhorn, who chaired the panel on "Public Education and CFE," asked the three officials whether Mr. Spitzer rather than the Board of Regents should appoint the State Education Commissioner. Such a transfer of power was given to Mayor Bloomberg by the State Legislature in 2002 when it granted him control over the city school system, including the power to appoint the Schools Chancellor, which was previously the province of the old Board of Education. Ms. Tisch noted that at a minimum, Mr. Spitzer will be giving the city more than $2 billion in additional state education aid under the recent Court of Appeals ruling in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case. The Governor-elect indicated following that ruling that he planned to exceed the minimum stipulated by the court and would also bolster funding for other school districts throughout the state, although those commitments are subject to budget negotiations with the State Legislature. Paying for the Privilege Ms. Tisch said that in light of Mr. Spitzer committing significant additional money to the schools, "There is the possibility of giving [him] an awful lot of say in educational policy in the state." Ms. Weingarten concurred, saying, "If the Governor is going to take this kind of responsibility, there has to be some power [vested in his office] to affect that policy." Her belief, she told the audience in the New School's Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, reflected political reality rather than a conclusion that mayoral control had been a positive step in the city school system. The UFT plans to set up its own task force to evaluate the impact of creating the Department of Education as a city agency, Ms. Weingarten said, explaining that some of her members vehemently oppose mayoral control because "they do not get to exercise the latitude that good Teachers should get to exercise." 'Relentless Test Prep' In the past, Ms. Weingarten was sharply critical of Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein's school curricula, arguing that he had stripped Teachers of the discretion that was both vital to creative instruction and a prerogative to which senior staff was entitled. In an interview after the forum, she said she had come to believe that the strictures under the Federal No Child Left Behind Law, rather than mayoral control, were primarily responsible for the onerous changes in the city school system that included "relentless focus on test prep, re-designing schools." Mr. Spitzer in his role as State Attorney General had marshaled the state's arguments against the CFE lawsuit and successfully appealed lower-court rulings to persuade the Court of Appeals to lower the state's obligation from a minimum of $4.7 billion in additional annual aid to the city to just $1.9 billion. Nonetheless, Ms. Palast said she, too, endorsed giving the Governor-elect increased power over education. She said she was optimistic that the actual increase for the city schools would be somewhere between the minimum the court decision requires (which will climb to slightly more than $2 billion a year because of inflation) and the $4-$6 billion Mr. Spitzer promised during the campaign. See City Paying Share
She and Ms. Weingarten both agreed, however, that the Bloomberg administration was likely to have to increase its own education spending to persuade state officials to go significantly above the minimum amount mandated by the court ruling. "It's not going to be no strings attached," Ms. Palast said. Mr. Bloomberg has insisted that the city should not be required to use its own funds to bolster education aid, repeatedly noting that it was the state alone that was found guilty of failing to provide a "sound basic education" because of a discriminatory funding formula that had a particularly harsh impact on the poorer city school districts that most needed extra money. But Ms. Weingarten noted that last year Mr. Bloomberg got the state to commit $6.5 billion for additional city school construction in the city when he agreed to match that amount. "Simplicity ruled the day," she said, predicting that something similar, combined with a change in the property-tax system that pays for a major share of school funding statewide, could provide an amicable solution next year. Clash on Longer Day There were occasional disagreements among the panelists, as when Ms. Tisch said she believed that extending both the school day and the school year to permit "more time on task" were crucial to improving education. Ms. Weingarten, who in two contract agreements prior to her new one had lengthened the school day for her members in return for additional compensation, disagreed. She noted that in some cases, high school students are getting three periods of English instruction to prepare them for the state exam in that subject, and said the most noticeable effect is a growing restlessness among some boys. "Truth be told, more of the same is not the way you educate children," she stated. "We have to differentiate instruction," rather than drilling the same concepts in a way that she said had little to do with real teaching and almost everything to do with prepping for the state exams. Urges Defying NCLB She said it would be preferable to have the State Education Department be hit with Federal sanctions under No Child Left Behind and ask the Legislature to make up for any loss of funding than to continue sacrificing real education to artificially boost test grades. The biggest obstacle to making improvements in middle school and high school achievement, the UFT leader said, remains class size, which averages 34 students in those grades and limits the individual attention that Teachers can provide, even in the additional course they teach to a maximum of 10 struggling students. "From the perspective of a high school Teacher," Ms. Weingarten said, "170 students a day for 42 or 45 minutes a period [means] we're not going to get as deep as we need to." A significant cut in class size, she said, would allow Teachers to get to better know their students and make it easier to maintain discipline. She said she also favored an expansion of the vocational programs that have been a key feature of Mr. Klein's tenure, saying they have already made a difference in schools where the graduate rate is rising. Calls for Career Ladder Her final two priorities, Ms. Weingarten said, would be universal all-day pre-kindergarten classes and a four-step career ladder for Teachers that would involve a progression from intern to resident to career Teacher to lead Teacher. The past three UFT contracts, which boosted starting salaries by more than 45 percent and virtually eliminated the large cadre of Teachers lacking state certification, have meant, she said, that "the issue is no longer how you recruit; it's how you retain the best and the brightest." The conference took place the day after it was announced that five city high schools - including three Brooklyn mainstays, Lafayette, Tilden and South Shore - were being closed because of repeated low achievement. Ms. Tisch said that a big issue for Mr. Spitzer was going to be "school accountability ... what they're going to do with failing schools throughout the state." Too many children, she said, are stuck in "disastrous, large high schools," adding that it was possible to turn around such schools. But one obstacle, she added, is that "some of the least-prepared Teachers [are] teaching in the most-challenging circumstances." Schoolwide Incentives Ms. Weingarten noted that she had made proposals to the Chancellor under which Teachers would receive significant bonuses to work in the rougher schools in the city, and argued that all Teachers in such schools - not just those designated as Lead Teachers - should receive differentials above their basic salaries. She said Rochester had induced many experienced Teachers to work in problem schools by allowing them to transfer in large groups, so that they brought their own support system with them. Because such efforts are aimed at schools with long histories of failure, she said, it was unrealistic to believe they could immediately be transformed, and so top Teachers were unlikely to leave comfortable situations if they knew their new school could be shuttered in a year or two if results were slower to materialize. "If accountability is like this Sword of Damocles hanging over you," Ms. Weingarten said, "how are you going to get people to take the risk to go someplace to try to turn it around?" Funding by Need Ms. Palast said one way the state could help would be to ensure that a greater share of the added education funding was channeled to the districts with the biggest problems, rather than spreading it equally among all city schools. The panel discussion took place a day prior to the Legislature's decision during its Dec. 13 session not to act on Governor Pataki's proposal to lift the cap on charter schools so that the 100-school maximum could grow to 250. All three women said that attempts to compare achievement levels in the charter schools to traditional public schools were skewed by the difference in student populations. The charter schools average half as many special education students as the public schools and have no students with limited proficiency in English. Charters Underachieve Even with those advantages, Ms. Weingarten said, results in the charter schools had been disappointing. The UFT's statewide counterpart reported earlier this month that only 13.6 percent of charter schools produced higher test scores than comparable public schools on the statewide exams for grades 4 and 8 during the 2004-2005 school year. She said the Legislature's lack of enthusiasm for charter schools was evidenced by the fact that Mr. Pataki had to dangle a vote on a bill to raise their own pay to get them to reconvene to consider the issue. And on a national level, she added, "When the Bush Administration puts out the results on charter schools on a Friday afternoon in the middle of the summer, you know the results are not going to be good for the Bush Administration." | ||||||
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