I sent this today to Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio and a slew of other government and school officials.
Dear Mayor-Elect de Blasio,
I write to you as a parent of two NYC public school children
(3rd grade and kindergarten), the daughter of two NYC public school
teachers, a proud NYC public school graduate, and a concerned citizen. My children have had, to date, wonderful
teachers. But the current atmosphere of
education “reform” is making it almost impossible for those teachers to do
their jobs. With that in mind, I ask you
to take action on the following education issues.
1
There
need to be fewer, shorter, better designed tests which count for less in
evaluating both our students and our teachers. Class time devoted to test preparation – for
any test – should be reduced and class time devoted to learning, discussion,
questioning, and the arts should be restored.
2
The DOE
should give schools a set amount of money to purchase any curriculum they choose. There should not be certain subsidized
curricula. This subsidization results in
schools like my daughters’ purchasing substandard curricula such as Pearson’s
ReadyGen ELA curriculum. In addition to
being poorly designed, with books that are not age-appropriate, lessons which
are too long (90 minutes!) and too boring (how many times can you answer the
questions: what did you read, what did you learn, what questions do you have;
they read each text three times), as
of the middle of this school year, this curriculum is not complete and the schools do not have all their materials in
their possession. It is impossible for
teachers to become familiar with the materials, make a considered judgment
about them, modify the curriculum as appropriate, and teach without the materials. But our local school purchased it because it
was subsidized and any other choice was too expensive. This is shameful.
3 Once a
school chooses curricula, those curricula should be guides, not scripts and teachers should not suffer negative
repercussions if they use their own creativity and expertise to depart from
those curricula. Rather, they should be commended for doing so. For example, at my daughters’ school, the
third grade students are required to
read a book which the third grade teachers think is inappropriate on many
levels: reading level, vocabulary, context, content and literary quality. Who
should decide what book my daughter’s class reads? The answer is obvious: her teacher. Not Pearson, not the principal, and not
me. The specific book is irrelevant;
teachers are being increasingly stripped of their autonomy and
flexibility. No wonder they are
demoralized. They are professionals and
we should respect and trust their professional opinion. Moreover, teachers at my daughters’ school
have informed me that they get “in trouble” if they do things like assign
homework they created rather than assign the curriculum-created workbook
page. Those modifications should be
applauded, not excoriated.
4
Cancel
all contracts with Pearson. It is
hard for me to believe that in light of last spring’s egregious G&T scoring
errors (I was one of the parents who brought these to the attention of the DOE.
Any kind of spot-checking by someone able to
do 6
th grade math should have turned up the errors. Children with 99
on two portions of an exam should not end up with an overall score of 98.) and
the recent fine by the State’s Attorney’s Office because its not-for-profit arm
participated in the for-profit ventures of its corporate parent (see The New
York Times, December 12, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/nyregion/educational-publishers-charity-accused-of-seeking-profits-will-pay-millions.html?_r=2&),
the DOE does not have legal grounds to cancel Pearson’s contracts.
If it does not, those contracts should not be
renewed.
Pearson makes money by selling
the poorly designed, developmentally-inappropriate curricula mentioned above, and
by selling poorly designed tests.
Pearson
earns its position not by competence but via lobbying and campaign
contributions (see
http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/pearson-education/2ec67ad263c448739699876db162f88f ).
We should not turn education over
to for-profit companies.
5
Reduce
class size. The current cap on class size for grades 1-5 is 32 students. 32!!
My older daughter’s class is approaching that limit, with 30 children. Any teacher and any parent can tell you that
30 students and 1 teacher is just too many.
Students cannot get individualized attention, and the teacher is overwhelmed
with grading tests and homework.
6
Universal
pre-K. I fully support your proposal
to provide truly universal pre-K.
7
Reduce or
eliminate charter schools and hold the ones that exist to the same standards as
traditional public schools. Charter
schools are destroying neighborhood schools.
The lotteries by which they enlist students are, of course
self-selecting, and when students with problems – academic, behavioral, or
otherwise – enroll, they are “counseled [that is kicked] out” sending those
kids… you guessed it, back to their neighborhood schools. Charters are “sharing” space with
neighborhood schools, kicking those schools out of their own gyms, libraries,
and auditoriums. And yet studies show
that charters, on average do no better job of educating our children. This must stop. No further charters should be granted and
those that exist should not be renewed when they come up for renewal. Instead, let’s improve all our schools.
8
Appoint a
former NYC public school teacher, and preferably a current or former NYC public
school parent, as chancellor.
9
Change
the way teachers are evaluated. Of
course teachers should be evaluated. But
not primarily based on their
students’ test scores. Furthermore, it
is ridiculous that principals are made to feel they must find something –
anything -- to criticize in a teacher’s lesson, just as teachers feel compelled
to give students 3s on their earlier report cards so that when they get 4s at
the end of the year they can “show progress.”
1
The cost
of hiring substitute teachers should not be borne by individual schools. The DOE should have a fund to pay for
substitute teachers. This should not come out of individual schools’
budgets. One of the few advantages of
having system as large as NYC’s, which otherwise, quite frankly, is unwieldy
and whose size is often a disadvantage, is economies of scale: negotiating
power for purchases, but also spreading the risk of a school having teachers
who are pregnant, who have deaths in the family, and who have appendicitis (all
of which happened at our school last year!).
The likelihood is that one school may need more subs one year; fewer the
next. Spread the risk. Since these burdens currently fall on the
school, last year my daughter, then in 2nd grade, ended up spending
several days in first grade, with her classmates spread out in other classes
throughout the school, some in classes taught in a language they do not speak,
because the school ran out of money to pay for subs back in April.
1
There
should be a sliding scale of government assistance to schools, not tiers with
hard and fast cut-offs. This is not
a “tale of two cities;” it’s a tale of three cities: the poor, the wealthy, and
the middle class. My daughters’ school
has a student body which just barely misses the cut-off for Title 1 (i.e.,
poor) schools and yet does not have a student and parent body that can raise
money like truly wealthy schools. Just
as the middle class is being squeezed, so are middle class (or lower middle class)
schools – like ours. I know this is a federal
issue, but please, do what you can to create a sliding scale of government
assistance, rather than tiers with hard and fast cut-offs.
I am looking forward to a new era in public education under
your administration. Please don’t
disappoint me – or my children.
The Keeping Quilt and The Blessing Cup. The Keeping Quilt is perhaps Polacco's best-known work and is a modern classic for a reason. The just-published 25th anniversary edition adds to the history of the quilt. These books tell the history of a family - and the times it lived through - by tracing the history of an object. Again, not a new topic, but Polacco treats it like no one else. With the title object in color and the rest of the illustrations in black-and-white, Polacco shows how these objects have special meaning for her family.
