EDUCATION: New York Style (Note: The Metrics)

new york times EDITORIAL

A New Education Mayor

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: July 6, 2013 

The next mayor of New York City will assume control of the country’s largest school system at an especially challenging moment. That person will oversee installation of the rigorous new Common Core learning standards. This ambitious set of academic goals, which has been adopted by all but a handful of states, is intended to move schools away from rote learning and memorization toward a writing-intensive curriculum that cultivates reasoning skills required by the new economy.

In addition to a new curriculum, this transformation will require new tests, and, most important, a high-quality professional development system that helps teachers master a whole new approach to instruction.

And that’s not all. The next mayor will have to negotiate a new contract with teachers and install a new teacher evaluation system while managing a system that consists of 1.1 million students, 75,000 teachers and about 1,800 schools. One huge challenge is that only about 22 percent of students who started ninth grade in 2008 were college-ready by state measures when they graduated in 2012. Improving on that distressingly low figure has to be a high priority.

Nearly all of the candidates speak passionately about education. And some — notably Bill de Blasio, Christine Quinn and William Thompson Jr. — have been thoughtful and specific in terms of what they would do to move the system forward. But emotional flash points in this campaign have centered on three issues: mayoral control, specifically whether the State Legislature gave Mayor Michael Bloomberg too much power when it consolidated authority over the schools in City Hall in 2002; failing schools and when to close them; and the role of charter schools, which receive public money but are exempt from some state regulations.

THE MAYOR’S ROLE Mr. Bloomberg has accomplished a great deal since becoming the first mayor to gain full control of the system. He brought coherence and stability to a troubled organizational structure that saw school chancellors come and go as if through a revolving door. He swept away a byzantine bureaucracy that had defeated his predecessors and created clear lines of authority. He negotiated a union contract that ended a transfer policy allowing senior teachers to move from one school to another, pushing out younger teachers, even if the receiving school did not want them. He improved graduation rates.

Mr. Bloomberg’s often highhanded style, however, alienated parents, teachers and lawmakers, some of whom now want a greater check on mayoral power. One solution would be to tinker with the 13-member board that he consults with on policy issues and to which he appoints eight members. Mr. Thompson proposes an arrangement under which the mayor would appoint only six members. The chancellor of the City University of New York would appoint a member, as would the chairmen of local groups known as Community Education Councils. This could conceivably give the community and educators more of a hand in policy.

The old system involved 32 school districts and plenty of bad governance and patronage. None of the candidates want to return to that. But centralized mayoral control undermined local support for teachers and principals and closed off access for parents. Most of the candidates seem to understand that, in one way or another, the next mayor needs to rebuild some of the system’s local apparatus. Mr. de Blasio, for example, promises to “revamp mayoral control” to allow for more community input. Similarly, Ms. Quinn has promised to create an online “parent university” where adults can learn about the system.

FAILING SCHOOLS Mr. Bloomberg’s policy of closing large, failing schools and replacing them with smaller schools is unpopular with teachers, many of whom have to find jobs elsewhere in the system. And some adults have emotional ties to a school, however terrible it has become. The city has sometimes made matters worse by handling closures badly. But replacing dropout factories with specialized schools that provide individual attention is a sound idea. Of the 142 schools the city has either closed or begun phasing out, many had outlived their usefulness.

A 2012 study by the nonprofit research group MDRC found that New York City students who attended small, specialized high schools that typically served about 400 students each were more likely to graduate than students at large, traditional high schools, some of which served 3,000 students or more. More striking, city data show that the average graduation rate for the large high schools that were in the process of phasing out during 2006 was only 38 percent. Last year, the average graduation rate for the schools that replaced them — often in the same building — was 70 percent.

Nevertheless, Mr. Thompson has said that as mayor he would “stop school closures and introduce a comprehensive system to support struggling schools.” Similarly, Mr. de Blasio promises to fight “unfair closures by standing up for struggling schools.” Ms. Quinn criticizes the current administration for “treating school closings like a goal in itself” and said closure should be used as a last resort when “all else has failed.” But the candidates should not shrink from closing schools that are no longer serving their students.

LOCATING CHARTER SCHOOLS New York City has 159 charter schools, which educate about 5.5 percent of the city’s children. Nationally, charter schools often perform no better than traditional public schools and sometimes worse. But a study this year by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes showed that New York City was an exception, and that typical charter school students learned more in a year in reading and math than peers in their neighborhood district schools. New York City has a rigorous charter oversight process and a large supply of education talent, and perhaps most important, it provides charter operators free space.

But critics say the city’s charter school effort has a big problem — namely, it allows some charter schools to share precious space with regular public schools. In a few extreme cases, critics say, the regular school students are treated like second-class citizens in a building that once belonged to them.

The candidates generally respect what high-performing charters can do, but some are worried about co-location. Sal Albanese, for example, promises to end “the aggressive co-location of charter schools in public school buildings, which has created a sense of segregation and resentment between students.” Adolfo Carrión Jr. believes the city needs to be smarter about how it places charters, but he is firmly committed to expanding such schools. Similarly, Christine Quinn would continue co-locations but wants a consistent, transparent process that would be the same in every neighborhood.

 Given the tension over this issue, some critics have suggested opening new charter schools only in school buildings that fall vacant. But a proposal by the teachers’ union that would give a local community panel veto power is a bad idea. If anything, the city should find ways to cross-pollinate, so that struggling schools learn from the excellent charter networks that sometimes occupy the space next door.