CFE: Money for High-Need Schools
[I hope this post about education funding proves interesting. It was originally posted on Edwize and written by Edwize blogger Maisie.]
It took 13 years, but the Campaign for Fiscal Equity forced the state to start spending on poor children. After dickering while a whole generation of children passed through the school system, the state finally relented and allocated $7 billion in new education spending over the next four years. Real money. The possibility of real change.
So why does it feel as if nothing's changed--or it's changing in tiny increments? Where are the small class sizes? What's up with universal pre-K? Why aren't our middle schools restructured? What happened to serious mentoring of new teachers? And where are all the new school facilities?
Wait, they say. Rome wasn't built in a day. But on the other hand, Rome might not have taken this long to build either. Patience, they say. (And you should have learned that in pre-K. But we don't have pre-K! Well, you should have learned it anyway.)
Here's the simple explanation: It's a lot of money, but it has to go a long way. Four years of budgets, all around the state, to thousands of schools and districts. Maybe with all the places that need it, this money isn't going to change anything at all.
Stop. Right. There. The CFE money wasn't supposed to be spread around to everyone with a hand out. It was specifically won to benefit high-needs schools and to address the yawning achievement and resource gaps between poor and not-poor students.
Now CFE has analyzed the city's plan for spending this new money and found that the budget directs more than 40 percent of the funds to schools where students are performing relatively well.
For example, it found almost $400,000 allocated to a school in Manhattan's District 2 where 80 percent of students scored at Levels 3 or 4 on the 2007 ELA test. Another school in District 26 in Queens, the highest performing district in the city, got $454,000 and has 83 percent of its students at Levels 3 or 4. One high school with a 24.4 percent poverty rate and a 68 percent graduation rate is receiving $1.3 million.
Meanwhile, In District 17 in Brooklyn's Crown Heights, two elementary schools, with 40 percent and 36 percent meeting standards, respectively, are getting just $22,000 and $52,000. In District 23 in Oceanhill-Brownsville, one school with 61 percent of students meeting standards gets almost $500,000; another, with 31 percent passing, gets just $43,000.
Fortunately, the state Regents are starting to take an active role in overseeing this distribution of CFE funds, and they may be able to more closely target the money to schools that need it, to impoverished students and to schools that have long been underserved.
But don't let the budget makers tell you, "It doesn't amount to that much once you spread it around." It's billions of dollars and it could transform the neediest schools if it's spent on them. There is great power in a concentration of resources; things don't change in dribs and drabs.
Last point: The other thing about funding is it has to actually get here. Read Rep. Anthony Weiner's startling new analysis of promised NCLB money that never got to New York.
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Education
um, no
Submitted by Steve Perez on 31 October 2007 - 1:37pm.
Dan, it's hard to see how you could read posts like this one and miss the point that the UFT opposes high-stakes testing.
Don't knock it, if you haven't tried it
Submitted by Daniel Millstone on 31 October 2007 - 8:44am.
Throwing money at a problem has never been tried in NYC's schools. The main solutions have involved multi-million dollar no bid consultants and less money for classrooms.
Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have consistently refused to reduce class size, the one expensive but proven method to improve school outcomes for lower-income and minority children. It is for that reason that I and other parents have called on the Regents to reject NYC's "plan"
to spend the CFE money. Consider writing the Regents yourself.
While I am concerned with the impacts of "high stakes" testing on children and schools, I think Dan Jacoby misstates things when his says "We need to stop pretending that standardized tests actually test anything important." There's a vast literature out there about testing and its limits and little of it suggests that standardized tests are valueless. There are important roles for such tests, in my view. Some of you may recall that, when non-standardized evaluations were the rage, every child, teacher and school did well. In addition, used properly they can provide timely feedback to teachers, parents and principals.
Of course, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein have amassed a scandalous record of excluding parents from school decisions
Well said
Submitted by Steve Perez on 31 October 2007 - 1:51pm.
Both on the importance of class sizes and on the use of testing. High stakes testing is a mistake, but testing and accountability are important. It's possible for tests to be a useful thing without having it be the only thing.
I will offer one correction on testing history: it used to be that tests were graded so that half passed and half failed, that is, a C was designed to be the average. That grading system was used to argue for the current proficiency focus (half our students are below average!) that is used to justify high stakes tests.
The problem with
Submitted by stevenman5000 on 31 October 2007 - 11:18am.
The problem with standardized tests are that they are being used as basis for promotion in public schools, which doesn't work. Also, they are being used to make funding decisions, another fallacy. In response to the person above, there are many purposes these tests can have which may or may not be beneficial, but I think the argument here is that when you base the curriculum on the test, and not the other way around, you are only hurting the students.
I agree with Steveman5000
Submitted by Daniel Millstone on 31 October 2007 - 12:26pm.
that the "high stakes" use of standardized tests as a single measure for evaluating children, teachers or schools is wrong. It does pervert curriculum (in part by making test prep the central focus of class time). The tests, because they are standardized, highlight some educational successes and failings of individual students, teachers and schools. The tests are tools and used properly can be helpful; used as idols to be uncritically worshiped, I think they're harmful
Money is not enough
Many of the problems with education in this city and this state (and this country) cannot be solved by throwing money at them.
Yes, we need to hire more teachers, pay them more money, build (and maintain) better schools, replace outdated textbooks (some science classes still have books that talk about "when we reach the moon"), buy supplies and materials, etc. And all of this costs money -- a lot of money! So the CFE efforts, first to get the needed money and then to ensure that it is spent properly, should be applauded, cheered -- and actively supported.
But it's not nearly enough.
We have to put an end to NCLB. We have to put an end to this mania for standardized testing. Those tests not only fail to test most of what schoolkids should be learning, but the relentless barrage of tests requires teachers to spend significant portions of valuable class time giving their students "practice tests."
A word about tests and the teachers union -- Randy Weingarten, at least, appears to have given her stamp of approval to all these tests. It makes sense, when you look at it from the perspective of the purpose of the teachers' union she represents. The purposes of the union are to gain better pay and benefits for its members and to increase job security. In an era where people are mindlessly demanding "accountability," these standardized tests provide an easy way for teachers to "prove" their abiilties without actually teaching students.
On many issues, the teachers' union's self-interest coincides with students' interests. Smaller class size, better school buildings, more supplies, even higher pay for teachers -- all these things are perfect examples. But when their interests diverge, you can count on the union to protect its own interests, even to the detriment of the students' education. Standardized testing is one such area of divergence.
Moving past standardized tests, another area that needs to be completely revamped is the state's curriculum. I have tutored math privately for the past few years, and have been in classrooms. I have talked with a number of teachers. One thing is absolutely certain: The state's "Everyday Mathematics" curriculum is almost universally despised by anyone subjected to it. I don't know about the curricula for other subjects, but from discussions with true education professionals (i.e. teachers) I suspect that those curricula are no better.
Finally, rather than removing parents from the educational recipe, parents should be fully engaged in their children's education. Unfortunately, Mayor Bloomberg and his puppet Chancellor refuse to acknowledge that parents are often far more important than schools, teachers, districts, tests, or any other element in education. If you needed to rate a school system based on one number, your best choice would be the percentage of parents who attend parent-teacher conferences.
We need to stop pretending that standardized tests actually test anything important. We need to replace the curricula with something that works. We need to get parents more involved. Those things don't cost money (well, not much), and they will do far more to improve our educational system than smaller class size, higher teacher pay and new schools combined. Kudos to CFE, AQE and other people and groups for the vital work they are doing, but don't pretend that money, even money well-spent, is the end-all and be-all of improving education.