March 1997
New York fourth and eighth graders improved in mathematics performance from 1992 to 1996 according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Education Secretary Richard Riley cited New York on a short list of states that had improved the most. The nation as a whole improved at the same rate so New York is still only average. Nevertheless, the improvement was significant. Fourth grade performance rose from 57 percent at or above the basic level in mathematics in 1992 to 64 percent above basic in 1996. We saw a similar pattern of improvement in the State Report Cards in January. We still have far to go. Performance at the basic level means "partial mastery of the prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade."
Vice Chancellor Louise Matteoni and I visited some schools last week. I have always heard of schools so crowded that meetings had to take place in closets but I actually happened on such a meeting last week. It wasn't a part of the school that I was intended to see. A parent, her child, and a teacher were squeezed into a book closet for their conference. Down the hall, I got off the tour again because my eye was caught by the crowd in one classroom. The teacher showed me all his class rosters and none had fewer than 32 students and some went on to the second page. And in another school I was impressed by the third grader with the huge vocabulary who interviewed me on camera, but I couldn't miss the many other children in the class who didn't speak English yet.
People are tired of hearing that one in five third graders can't read and that the figure is two in five in New York City. I will repeat these facts anyway. Quality pioneer Edward Deming urged his listeners to seek "profound knowledge" of systems and their problems because that is the only route to effective improvement. We don't do that in education. It's more comfortable to talk about solutions. And for that reason, many national, state, and local education reforms are solutions in search of a problem. And they usually fail. New York's education reform isn't going to fail because we will make sure that we know the problems so that we find the right solutions. Let's look at New York City where a third of our children attend school.
Children and Families. The City Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows a disturbing picture long before we get to the school data:
When compared to the 50 large city school districts in the nation, New York City ranks 42nd in the percent of births to mothers with late or no prenatal care, 44th in the percent of youths 16-19 who were unemployed in 1990, and 37th in the percent of children of live in "distressed neighborhoods."
The point of this is not to explain away low student performance. As Hugh Price, president of the National Urban League has written, we have come to the "no excuses" era in urban education reform. Nevertheless, many City children face huge obstacles to success, and our reform efforts must seek to overcome those obstacles.
Student performance. The School Report Card presented the stark facts about what students know and can do, but we cannot let that information grow cold. Look again:
These figures show how enormous the effort must be to bring New York City students to the new standards. And there are many other unpleasant statistics. Such as the fact that the average building is 55 years old and that hundreds need major repair. Or the fact that 12% of the teachers are not fully licensed. Or that class sizes are larger than 30 students in many schools. And the City spends far less per pupil than the average in the state.
Like everyone else, I can suggest a list of solutions. But adopting solutions is not the same as getting results. I suspect that most people are not yet scared enough or offended enough by the facts to act on real solutions yet. Maybe they don't yet believe that improvements are possible. Better results really are possible, but will take lots of help. So let's keep insisting that more people attend to the problem. New York must come together to help improve the performance of New York City schools.
We must continue to support Chancellor Crew's efforts to implement the governance legislation, root out corruption, boost reading scores, and improve the low performing schools. Together we will advocate for major elements of the Regents agenda that will help the children in New York City schools: assessment, the reading initiative, the $5 billion bond issue, and special education reform. And at the ground level, what should it look like?
At bottom, people have to be urgent about the situation that many children face every day. And then we have to put that sense of urgency to work.
President Clinton used his State of the Union message to call for national standards and tests in mathematics and reading. There are huge technical issues and lots of ways to do this badly, but if it were done well, it could be very helpful to the New York reform. The proposal is to use the standards embedded in the National Assessment for Educational Progress and perhaps in the recent Third International Math and Science Test to compare performance across the states. Unlike the current national tests that are based on samples of students, this would test individual students and would enable parents and educators to know how all children were doing in relation to common standards.
A quick look at the testing frameworks shows that the material to be covered is comparable to the standards in New York, and probably in most other states. If such a test became available, it could be incorporated as one element of a system of exams, and the results could appear in the Report Card. The President proposed the test for 1999.
There will be a number of regional forums held from late April through early June. During those months the Regents and the State Education Department will hold three series of local forums. One will focus on gaining a better perspective on the racial and ethnic climate on college and university campuses. A second round of meetings will offer the first look at draft policy recommendations from the Regents Task Force on Teaching. And a third series will prepare for Regents action in late summer or early fall on the graduation requirements.
On March 31, the State Education Department will again hold a parent teleconference on PBS. Meanwhile, hundreds of parents continue to respond to my first letter about what they can do to improve student learning. The letters are long and specific. Some parents write to express their dismay at the higher standards. One parent said that she couldn't understand the math that her child brought home now and why did we have to make it harder. Others resented the pressure on their children. Still others applauded the higher standards but demanded to know what we will do for students who can't learn enough to pass the tests. More than a few rewrote the whole letter to strengthen our strategy.
A particularly engaging parent group were the Reach Up parents in one of the BOCES that I visited recently. One woman entered this basic literacy program because she had received a note from school about her child's spelling problems but she couldn't read the note although she has a diploma from a New York school. Her child's school responded quickly with encouragement to learn to read herself. She is making rapid progress and now reads to her children.
