September 1996
New York has high academic standards for students and we expect all students to meet them. But they need safe, equipped schools to do that. New York also has a serious problem with the condition of its schools. It is a statewide problem. Outside New York City, more than 700 of the 3,000 schools are not adequate. In New York City, more than half of the 1,000 school buildings need major repair and modernization. The repair and modernization costs statewide are a multi-billion dollar challenge.
The Regents have taken testimony from political and educational leaders and other members of the public. Several other distinguished panels have documented the situation in the last two years. The Regents are shaping the solution by asking basic questions: What is the scope of the problem? What set of actions add up to an effective strategy? What are the tradeoffs? After all, we must invest in both better instruction in reading, for example, and in better buildings. We can't have all that we want. We have to find an affordable mix.
A reasonable strategy would include at least the following:
How much? A $1 billion bond would hardly resolve the problem, and it would add $75 million to the cost of State construction aid. In the coming legislative session, New York must weigh the needs against the resources and then decide.
Every day demonstrates the need for persistent, visible, effective leadership. Here are some examples.
I.S. 164 works
I.S. 164 in northern Manhattan is a fine school with a report card to prove it. It is in a district that used to rank last in the City on test scores and has now scrambled up to 20th. And they are climbing higher. Regent Tisch and I toured the school to see what was behind the good results.
We heard about high expectations from everyone, starting with the superintendent and community board chair. And we heard the same expectations from students, parents, and teachers. Why became obvious. For an hour and a half, the school and district leaders used every classroom visit, every introduction of faculty or student, every encounter with parents as a forum for their high performance message.
Stable, persistent leadership matters. The principal has been there for twenty years, the board chair for seven, the superintendent for nine or ten, a mathematics teacher for ten. The school doesn't have initiatives or new programs or flash of any kind. It has superb teaching, a rigorous curriculum written down for all to see, and deeply engaged children with library cards and full book bags.
There are obviously schools in trouble in the City and elsewhere, but there are so many that work. Why they work isn't hard to understand. It starts with leadership.
New boards and superintendents
In separate meetings with new superintendents and new school board members, I stressed the importance of visible local leadership in bringing students up to the standards. It is all too easy for people who educate children to divide on issues of power, money, and politics. It is the job of leadership to seek cohesion around a good strategy. When we divide, when we defend the indefensible, we slow down our main work on behalf of children. We must put a premium on shared goals, joint effort, urgent improvement in results, and a simple message about what we are doing to get all students ready for citizenship, ready for work, ready for life.
Conflict resolved with dignity
We saw an example of effective leadership this month in the peaceful resolution of a conflict between Mohawks and the Salmon River School District. The native American community had occupied the Mohawk Central School and the children were not receiving instruction. After several days of discussion, the parties agreed that the children would return to school, the building was returned to normal operation, and the Salmon River Board created an eight member school council with equal representation from the board and the Mohawk community. Discussions about the long term future of education in the community will continue. Thanks go to Mohawk chiefs and others such as Jim Ransom, District Superintendent Dave DeSantis, Superintendent Mike Singleton, and Department of Education members Minerva White, Sam Corsi, Sharon Bowles, and Steven Golas. In particular I want to commend Deputy Commissioner Jim Kadamus for his action in this matter.
On September 4 and 5, State Education Department staff observed opening day at each of the 13 New York City schools that had been closed in June 1996 and redesigned. They also visited each school at least two more times during the first two weeks of school. Our colleagues were pleased with what they saw. Some of them who were familiar with the old schools commented that they found the atmosphere in the new, redesigned schools decidedly more positive. In one school last year, for example, there were 13 vacancies on opening day. This year there were none. In general, we found clean, attractive, and inviting buildings, a welcoming environment for students and parents, manageable teacher/pupil ratios, strong Central Board presence in schools, and meaningful instruction occurring in classrooms.
Virtually every redesign building received a new management team. More than half of the teachers who had taught at the old schools were not brought back to teach at the successor redesign schools. The percentage of uncertified teachers was reduced from an average of 20 percent in the old schools to 14 percent in the redesign schools. These uncertified teachers are concentrated in the areas of bilingual education and middle school math and science. The State Education Department is working with the New York City Board of Education to develop strategies to address the issue of uncertified teachers in these schools.
There were problems at some schools, such as poor student attendance, slow processing of over-the-counter registrations, lack of materials and supplies, and unfamiliarity of staff with or resistance by staff to the redesign plan. In two schools, significant problems were observed on opening day, with one school not having the programming completed for the students and the other school still under renovation. Despite these conditions, the schools were orderly, and in most classrooms, instruction was taking place. State Education Department staff will monitor progress in these schools closely, and I will report periodically on their findings.
On September 3, we had our first statewide faculty meeting with the help of public television and a huge number of people who worked hard to bring it off. The purpose was to give basic information about the standards and the tests to come, and to answer teachers' questions. Sometimes teachers feel alone in asserting high standards in a society with so many powerful distractions. The statewide faculty meeting showed all that we are in fact united in projecting these standards. More than 100,000 teachers watched live that day, including all faculty in Yonkers, Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo. Nearly 90 percent of the districts in the State reported either watching the program live or recording on video tape for later use.
Just producing the program took an extraordinary amount of cooperation, as the following thank you list shows. First, thanks to Mac Cowling, who served as executive producer. Mac is coordinator of the New York State Satellite Distance Learning Network operating out of the Oneida-Herkimer-Madison BOCES. In the Department, thanks go to Assistant Commissioner Ed Lalor and his staff members, John Quinn, Major Capers and Mike Yates who coordinated promotion and planning. In the Department's Office for Public Broadcasting, thanks go to Director Bob Reilly, and staff members Tom Dunn, Susan Burns and Peter Hart. At station WMHT in Schenectady, which provided production services, thanks go to Station Manager Donn Rogosin, and staff members Stephen Honeybill, who served as producer, and Dave Povero who served as director. At the Mohonasen-Rotterdam School District, which served as the host site, thanks go to Superintendent Audrey Farnsworth, Draper Middle School Principal Daniel P. Lucca and countless staff members who cheerfully met some extraordinary demands for the opening day of school. Also, thanks to members of the panel who served on the front line with me: Mimsie Robinson, a biology teacher at the Unity School in New York City, and 1997 New York State Teacher of the Year; Heather Barabba, a third grade teacher in Skaneateles, near Syracuse; Linda Ulrich-Hagner, a home economics teacher at Kenmore High School, outside Buffalo; and Rochelle Cassella of Syracuse, who did an outstanding job as moderator.
Also, thanks go to the 40 teachers and administrators who were in the live audience. In addition to the Mohonasen District, they came from rural Voorheesville, and the City of Schenectady. And finally, special thanks to Chris Carpenter and Alan Ray in the Department's Communications Office who pulled all of this together and made it work.
The 1997-98 budget proposal will be our first budget to be linked to our new strategic plan. The simpler format highlights sources and uses of funds, the goals of the major expenditures, and the reason for the proposed increases. The budget request does not yet include our State school aid proposal.
Our 1997-98 budget proposal calls for no new State funded positions but seeks important increases in curriculum and assessment, support for low performing schools, summer institutes in the arts, preschool special education, higher education and other aid to local communities. Our State operations budget would increase by 2.3 percent.
Arts teachers visited me recently to ask why the school report card includes no data on the arts. At one level, the answer is simple: there are no statewide data on the quality of arts performance in New York schools. But let's look deeper. Shouldn't we measure this aspect of school performance? And how should we do that? Measurement helps drive performance.
A visit to the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education revealed one source of the high performance in some schools. The Institute has a powerful approach to defining standards and building capacity which not only enhances students' performance in the arts but also could improve results in other parts of the curriculum.
The Institute offers three week summer institutes for teachers which feature performed works in dance, theater, and the visual arts, and then supports this assertion of high standards with "repertory packets" of readings, classroom activities, and questions to guide first rate teaching. The concept is a model for what we must do next with the resource guides to support the newly adopted Regents standards. The resource guides could resemble these packets of useful materials for teachers, and the current investments in professional development at BOCES, Teacher Centers and elsewhere might focus on examples of effective teaching strategies connected to the resources.
The public and the higher education community should have better information on the performance of New York colleges and universities. The purpose should be to inform the public about choices and also to support quality improvement in the institutions.
It is not a simple matter to pick the right measures. And no one would benefit from a simplistic report that overlooked the vastly different missions of the various institutions. Therefore, this month I have invited leaders of all sectors of higher education, as well as from business and the public to advise us on how best to measure and report performance. We collect a great deal of information but almost none of it is published in a readily usable form.
Last year we linked the Regents proposal for aid to higher education to a call for higher performance. We also included this concept in our strategic plan. We are following through on what we started last year.
In June, the Office of the Professions began a major investigation of persons in the Chinese community in New York City who were practicing illegally as physicians or acupuncturists and, in some cases, dispensing illegal pharmaceuticals. This was a coordinated effort involving the State Education Department, the Attorney General, the New York City Policy Department, and the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.
The investigation was a response to a series of articles published in the New York Daily News which heightened awareness in the community of the dangers of seeking treatment from these persons. During the investigation, we received more than 100 complaints and began 97 investigations. So far, there have been 13 arrests for illegal practice, involving several professions. On August 8, the Attorney General reported to the public on this matter and praised the work of our Office of the Professions.
In the midst of the last legislative session, we promised to complete a significant review of the BOCES structure by January 1. A strong and experienced task force convened this week under the leadership of David Monk to do the work. They are concentrating on three topics: governance and organization, cost and quality, and the role of the BOCES and the district superintendents in supporting school reform.
Labor Commissioner John Sweeney and I have agreed to several joint presentations this year. We have found that we have common ground in the urgent need to build knowledge and skill.
Business has a big stake in New York educational quality and many business leaders are committed to a much stronger partnership. Educators must meet these offers wholeheartedly. I have accepted several invitations to meet with business groups this fall and I will stress the need for business to help schools and higher education by demanding high quality. Businesses often support education out of a commitment to good corporate citizenship and that is much appreciated, but the help I will ask for is for them to be good businesses -- that is, to treat education as a supplier that needs to understand customer requirements. Young people need to know that jobs go only to those who are competent and willing to work. And school people need to express their obligation to prepare all students for work.
