Ten Essential Policy Changes For A Truly Progressive Education System in New York City

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1 Ten Essential Policy Changes For A Truly Progressive Education System in New York City The Tale of Two Cities in our schools must come to an end. New York City will not thrive if only some of our schools meet the needs of students. [Mayor Bill de Blasio] will work tirelessly to implement policies and programs that will create great schools in every neighborhood, and prepare all children for success in college and career. De Blasio Education Plan, 2013 During the campaign to replace Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio set an ambitious, progressive agenda for New York City s public school system. The Mayor committed to the notion that every child attending New York City s public schools should graduate ready to succeed in college or a career. We share this laudable goal with Mayor de Blasio and we strongly support de Blasio s progressive commitment to providing equitable educational opportunities for all kids. This policy brief sets forth ten policy changes essential to that agenda. Although we may not agree with every aspect of his education platform, we know that Mayor de Blasio has a commitment to doing right by every student in the city s classrooms and an opportunity to adopt the policies that would support the students who have been traditionally poorly served in New York City. Charles Barone Director of Policy Mac LeBuhn Policy Analyst

2 Executive Summary Addressing income inequality, a central plank in Mayor de Blasio s agenda, requires addressing education inequity. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that policies focusing on equity in education may be a particularly useful way for countries to increase earnings mobility between generations and reduce income inequality over time. In the spirit of reducing income inequality and improving educational opportunities, Democrats for Education Reform prepared a ten-point approach for Mayor de Blasio that concentrates on four issue areas. Developing High-Quality Prekindergarten Despite being one of the most powerful tools policymakers can use to create a more equitable educational system, New York City s early childhood education system does not cover all students and is of highly uneven quality. Mayor de Blasio should: 1. Set a per-child amount of funding that makes quality paramount and prioritize serving the students with the greatest need. 2. Monitor the implementation of the challenging policy changes needed to develop a high-quality prekindergarten system on par with tried-andtrue approaches like New Jersey s Abbott program. Improving the Open Enrollment System For High Schools For too many low-income and minority students, New York City s open enrollment high school system is essentially closed off. To end the Tale of Two Cities still happening in the enrollment process for the city s high schools, Mayor de Blasio should: 3. Improve the open enrollment system for New York City high schools by removing economically discriminatory neighborhood preferences. 4. Increase funding for middle school counselors to help families navigate the confusing open enrollment system. 5. Require high-performing schools to reach out to poor, minority, and immigrant families. Ensuring the Equitable Distribution of Effective Teachers Poverty is an issue in New York City s schools and yet the city exacerbates it by disproportionately assigning low-achieving teachers to low-income students. To make sure that all students have access to New York s best teachers, Mayor de Blasio should: 6. Offer merit funding to highly effective teachers willing to teach in struggling schools. 7. Provide principals and district leaders autonomy in their efforts to improve working conditions in low-performing schools. 8. Establish equitable student-based budgeting to ensure that per-pupil spending is driven by kids needs and not teacher seniority, which often has a regressive effect on school funding. Promoting Collaboration Between Charter and Traditional Public Schools If one ignores the rhetoric, charters and traditional public schools have a lot to learn from one another. To sustain years of collaboration already existing between the two sectors, Mayor de Blasio should: 9. Ensure that traditional public schools and public charter schools continue to share best practices with one another by honoring the 2010 collaboration compact signed by both parties. 10. Explore new ways that collaborative relationships can be established between schools existing in a co-located building. 2

3 HIGH-QUALITY PREKINDERGARTEN Universal prekindergarten already exists in New York State but is seriously underfunded. To ensure that pre-k is both universal and meaningful for every student enrolled, Mayor de Blasio should insist on funding and quality standards on par with students, Mayor de Blasio should prioritize access to the new program to the families with the greatest need. In 1998, New York State passed the Universal Prekindergarten program to provide early childhood education for all four-year-olds. Fifteen years later, the program is under-funded and over-extended: the percentage of eligible students it serves stagnated while its per-pupil funding level dropped below the national average for such programs. Funding has even fallen below the state s historical stan- 2002, the state would spend $6,715 per student far more than the $3,707 it actually spends today. Even at that level, funds provide high-quality pre-k to all New York City students. New Jersey s Abbott Preschool Program often viewed as the gold standard among large preschool programs spends approximately $12,000 per enrolled student. At this funding establish universal prekindergarten. If funding for expansion and quality is insuf- Mayor de Blasio should focus resources on offering high-quality prekindergarten to the students with the greatest need. The substantial spending level that Abbott-level programs require produces dividends in program effects. An analysis conducted by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) found that average quality is now good to excellent in the Abbott Preschool Program. NIEER confers this designation to just a few programs nationwide. In a recent implementation report, Mayor de Blasio acknowledged the need for quality improvements in the city s preschool programs and laid out a comprehensive course for how to fund these improvements. Although it may be easier to stretch the city s available funds in a rush to make prekindergarten universal, we urge Mayor de Blasio to maintain a careful focus on ensuring that every seat open to our youngest students is of the highest quality We applaud Mayor de Blasio for taking these initial steps on the path towards an Abbott-level New York City preschool program. An insistence on quality is very important. Contrary to popular belief, any prekindergarten is not good pre-kindergarten. A review of recent research on early childhood education compiled by NIEER found that the effect of prekin- by a range of factors. These factors include well-educated teachers, monitoring and evaluation from state agencies, professional development for prekindergarten staff, support from educational specialists, clearly articulated goals for learning, intentional teaching and meaningful seat time in the program. We were glad to see that the recent implementation report acknowledged that the city s preschool programs require changes in many of these areas. Mayor de Blasio should prioritize the attentive time-consuming series of program changes needed to develop Abbott-level prekindergarten. As Sara Mead, a principal at Bellwether Education Partners and a prekindergarten expert recently noted, the challenges of getting funding for pre-k [in New York City] pale in comparison Though it may be easier to allow whatever funds become available to be stretched in order to make prekindergarten universal in the city, we urge Mayor de Blasio to maintain a careful and persistent focus on ensuring that every seat open to our youngest students is of the highest quality. 3

4 Public School Choice More than 95 percent of the student population at Stuyvesant High School is white or Asian and less than 5 percent is either black, Hispanic or Latino The school choice system in New York City is one of the most complicated in the well-connected. Mayor de Blasio should make open enrollment a reality for every student attending public school in New York, not just those fortunate enough to have the resources necessary to navigate the system. to construct a fair and workable school choice system for high school students. Right now, it is falling short on both counts. To build out the school choice system, architects had to take into account the following: over a quarter of a million students in high school, 450 different high schools and over 300 square miles on which students and schools are distributed. Likewise, students must consider hundreds of schools with varying application timelines and decision criteria, many of which place restrictions based on residency, test scores, middle school grades and attendance. To evaluate their options, the eighth graders using the city s open enrollment system must consult a guide that runs over 500 pages long to rank the twelve schools they most wish to attend. These complexities act as virtual barricades surrounding the high schools most parents, particularly those with less education and lower family income, would like their child to attend. A system that requires lots of time and resources to successfully use means that only those with lots of time and resources have a shot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one in ten New York City eighth graders are shut out of any of the twelve choices they select. For each of these students and their families, New York City s open enrollment system remains closed off. The new administration can take three steps to improve the high school open enrollment process for the eighth graders tasked with using it. Mayor de Blasio should bar the use of residential requirements that keep low-income students out 4

5 are quick to claim to low-income families that open enrollment provides schools, today s complicated system shows otherwise of the high-performing schools located in wealthy neighborhoods. Eligibility tests that screen out students who may have never received the opportunity of a high-quality education should be eliminated, something the Mayor already pledged to do. Surely, a part of The Tale of Two Cities is written in the residential requirements that keep low-income students out of high-achieving schools if they cannot afford to live within the school boundaries or testing requirements that bar students who have never been given the opportunity to achieve to their utmost potential. Mayor de Blasio must remove these requirements. Second, Mayor de Blasio should increase funding for middle school counselors to ensure that families struggling to access the open enrollment system are supported throughout the process. Middle school counselors are well-positioned to help families with an eighth grader who are having trouble understanding how the enrollment system works. Unfortunately, those families with limited resources the families the program was intended with their child s often-overburdened counselor. The result of this counselor shortage is that some low-income families make uninformed decisions on behalf of their students and these children miss out on high schools that could have Increasing the number of counselors available would give disadvantaged families a resource to consult and narrow the present difference in access between wealthy, well-connected families and disadvantaged families. Finally, Mayor de Blasio should improve the open enrollment system by promoting programs in high-performing schools that would step up outreach to students in traditionally underserved communities. The city could complement those schools efforts by boosting outreach from high-achieving public schools like the Brooklyn Latin School and Queens High School for the Sciences to the low-income and minority students that rarely attend such schools. Successful efforts by high-performing schools to reach out to communities that are poorly represented in their schools should be replicated in other similar schools. low-income families that open enrollment provides equal ed system shows otherwise. Too many disadvantaged students are still denied access to the sorts of schools they policy changes eliminating the use of residential and other discriminatory requirements, increasing the number of counselors available to families struggling to navigate the open enrollment process and promoting active outreach to disadvantaged communities would dramatically improve today s open enrollment system. 5

6 Equitable Distribution of Effective Teachers The effectiveness of the classroom teacher is the single largest variable in schools affecting student achievement, yet New York City lacks a plan to ensure that its best teachers are placed with its highest-need students. Mayor de Blasio should ensure that all students have access to a highly effective teacher. Over the past decade, researchers have grown increasingly capable at measuring the effect of a teacher on student growth. The impact of a teacher on a student s achievement in class outweighs the impact of any other element within a school, such as leadership, funding, or class size. Several studies demonstrate that low-income students have less access to the most effective teachers those that elicit the greatest growth in student achievement than their wealthier peers. A full 55 percent of English teachers at low-poverty middle schools were highly effective. In high-poverty middle schools, just 7 percent of teachers were similarly effective In an analysis of three peer-reviewed studies, the Institute of Education Sciences found that disadvantaged students received less effective teaching on average, though it found that the degree to which this was the case varied from district to district. In one district examined, a full 55 percent of the English teachers at the lowest-poverty middle schools were highly effective; just 7 percent of teachers at the highest-poverty schools were similarly effective. Studies from CALDER and the Department of Education also support the notion that low-income and minority students are more likely to be assigned an ineffective teacher. within New York City is limited, there are good reasons to believe that a similar dynamic plays out in the city s schools. One report found that New York City schools with high rates of low-income or minority students were disproportionately likely to have a high number of teachers ranked unsatisfactory on the evaluation system, a proxy used for teacher effectiveness under the old teacher evaluation system. When low-income students are disproportionately paired with low-impact teachers, the education system exacerbates the income inequality that already plagues New York City. Recognizing that the new, more sophisticated teacher evaluation systems have the potential to more accurately identify the most highly effective teachers within the system, Mayor de Blasio should do everything possible to pair those valuable teachers with the highest need students. Three policy changes would serve as tools to change today s inequitable distribution of effective teachers. First, Mayor de Blasio should expand a promising nationwide pilot program that offers additional funding for high-performing teachers that move to struggling schools. Known as the Talent Transfer Initiative, an evaluation of the program found that the transfers resulted in an improvement of approximately.25 standard deviations among students in the high-performing teacher s classes. The study also found the transfer program promoted these improvements in student achievement at a lower cost than class-size reduction, a policy Mayor de Blasio currently supports. Another promising program, Opportunity Culture, allows effective teachers to provide instruction in multiple schools so that they can maximize their impact and should also be considered. For every year that a student spends in a class taught by an ineffective teacher, he or she will lose out on 2.5 to 3.5 months of learning per year 6

7 Mayor de Blasio should also provide principals and district leaders autonomy in their efforts to improve working conditions in low-performing schools. Teachers seek rewarding working conditions described in one study as the positive aspects of the school s culture, the principal s leadership, and relationships among colleagues and tend to stay longer in schools with those conditions. In order to achieve those ideal working conditions, principals must have the ability to select their own teachers and manage their own budgets. Finally, Mayor de Blasio should establish student-based budgeting to ensure that schools are equitably funded. Without equitable per-student budgeting, teacher seniority can, in effect, drive more per-pupil funding to schools that have more senior teachers, and less to schools that don t. What schools typically have fewer senior teachers? Schools with higher rates of low-income and minority students making it all When low-income students are disproportionately paired with low-impact teachers, the education system exacerbates the income inequality that already plagues New York City the harder for principals of these schools to provide the resources and support needed to attract high-performing teachers. A per-pupil budgeting system would ensure that principals trying to improve work environments do not start against them. To the extent that Mayor de Blasio can improve work environments, increase autonomous decision-making, and ensure equitable per-pupil spending in challenging schools, it is more likely that highly effective teachers will be inclined to remain in the classrooms in which they are most needed. Principals will have more of the tools needed to sustain and extend the equitable distribution of effective teachers. With the upcoming collective bargaining negotiations, these are things that de Blasio could win at the bargaining table and would represent a truly progressive win, as it they would likely come with teacher pay increases. 7

8 District-Charter Collaboration High-performing schools in New York City s charter and traditional public school districts can offer a great deal of guidance and support to other schools working to improve instruction or strengthen special education services. We need a less combative approach between different school models and a more cooperative one. Mayor de Blasio should extend current district-charter collaboration efforts so that traditional public schools can learn from high-performing charters and vice versa. A 2013 CREDO analysis found that New York City char- of additional learning in math and over a month in reading when compared to their peers in traditional public schools. At the school level, the results can be even more remarkable. Among the KIPP schools within New York City, over 40 percent of KIPP alumni graduate college: quadruple the rate of other students from low-income families nationally. A truly progressive education agenda for New York City would not ignore this important reality. These high-performing charters can share professional development and instructional techniques with district schools. Likewise, educators in district schools can offer enjoyed by the New York City Department of Education. They can assist charter schools supporting students with special needs. Already, traditional and charter schools participate in this sort of collaboration through a compact signed in Under this agreement, effective educators from both sectors 8

9 meet together to share innovative instructional approaches and pedagogical techniques. The exchanges between the country s largest public school system and one of its largest charter school systems offer an exciting opportunity for educators to experiment and build upon the valuable experience of the other. Mayor de Blasio should ensure that traditional public schools and charter schools continue to learn from one another and share best practices by supporting the 2010 collaboration compact. Charters and traditional public schools frequently occupy the same block and they often occupy the same building, through a program known as co-location. Under co-location, charter schools may share space with a traditional public school that does not utilize all of its space. This practice offers a tremendous opportunity for productive collaboration among educators. Mayor de Blasio should explore ways to promote collaborative relationships between schools that exist in co-located buildings. References Preparing Every Student For Success In College And Career. Page 14. Accessed online here < Chung, Ji Eun. How can education help tackle rising income inequality? Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 25 April Accessed online here < Frede, Ellen. The APPLES Blossom. June Accessed online here < Mead, Sara. The Model For New York City s Pre-K Exists, And It s In New Jersey. Slate. 21 January Accessed online here < life/education/2014/01/bill_de_blasio_s_push_for_universal_pre_k_the_model_exists_and_it_s_in_new.html> About Us. New York City Department of Education. Accessed online here < Robbins, Liz. Lost in the School Choice Maze. New York Times. 6 May Accessed online here < Hemphill and Nauer. The New Marketplace. The New School Center for New York City Affairs. June Accessed online here < milano/nycaffairs/documents/thenewmarketplace_report.pdf> Teachers Matter: Understanding Teachers Impact on Student Achievement. RAND. September Accessed online here < rand/pubs/corporate_pubs/2012/rand_cp693z pdf> Sass, Tim, Jane Hannaway, Zeyu Xu, David N. Figlio, Li Feng. Value Added of Tecahers in High-Poverty Schools and Lower-Povery Schools. CALDER. November Angelo, Lauren. Access to Effective Teaching for Disadvantaged Students. U.S. Department of Education. November SFNY-Unsatisfactory-Report.pdf> Glazerman, Steven. Transfer Incentives for High-Performing Teachers: Final Results from a Multisite Randomized Experiment. U.S. Department of Education. November Johnson, Susan Moore. How Context Matters in High Need Schools. Teachers College Record Accessed online here < CREDO. Charter School Performance in New York City. Center for Research on Education Outcomes. 20 February Accessed online here stanford.edu/documents/nyc_report_2013_final_ _000.pdf KIPP: NYC Results. KIPP: NYC. 13 January Accessed online here < Compact_Interim_Report_6_2013.pdf> Photo credits: page 1, Flickr user Kenny; page 4, Wikimedia; page 5, Flickr user Lindstrom; Flickr user ilmicrofono.oggiono; page 8, Democrats for Education Reform 9