Exposing Bloomberg's Education Lies in Today's State of the City Address at Morris HS

UPDATE: Union busting is Theme of Bloomberg State of the City

I know it's a busy day and this is my 3rd post (make sure to check out the others) and it's only 1PM, just in time for Bloomberg's lying State of the City address. I was going to go to the protest at 12:30 but looked at directions and saw the word "Bruckner Expressway --- the use of the word "express" is a knee-slapper --- and I thought there is no way on a day it rained. So I am just going to head up to Williamsburg later for the CEC 14 meeting where D. 14 long-time Superintendent James Quail whom I've known for 40 years will be making his last appearance before retiring on Jan. 31. I will attempt to worm some ugliness towards Tweed out of him if I can.

Breaking: Just saw my childhood pal Marty Needelman in NY1 on another Bloomberg scuzzy operation in Williamsburg/Bushwick to create discriminatory housing --- they went to court and won against him -- another slap at the leagacy. David and Pat Dobosz from GEM who are neighborhood residents have been involved in this story.

Leonie initial take:

Bloomberg’s State of City Address |
He wants to re-introduce teacher merit pay (What? didn't we try that already?)
& bring Rocketship charter to NYC http://goo.gl/4cXq7 
see also http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/12/bloomberg-unveils-ambitious-proposals-for-schools/
50 more charters over the next 2 yrs.
streaming live (if you can stand it) at
http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/12/bloomberg-unveils-ambitious-proposals-for-schools/

Gotham reports:

Mayor’s address comes against evaluations impasse backdrop

In education-packed speech, Bloomberg vows to bypass UFT


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Public School Parents from Across NYC to Protest “Mayor 13%” Today Outside State of the City Address

Site of address – Morris HS – likely to be touted by mayor as success;

but “new” Morris actually made gains by neglecting the highest-needs special ed students

After a decade of school closures and other failed school reform policies, only 13% of Black and Latino students are graduating prepared for college under Bloomberg

Poll after poll has shown a strong majority of New Yorkers reject Bloomberg’s education platform and want a new direction

Parents and education advocates from across New York City will protest today outside the mayor’s State of the City Address, decrying the man they call “Mayor 13%” for his failed education policies—which only prepare 13 percent of Black and Latino public school students for college.

Protesters will also draw attention to the dubious selection of Morris High School in the Bronx as the site of the address, and, apparently, a symbol to the administration of its success.  Indeed, Morris’s graduation rates have improved since it was closed and re-opened under the Bloomberg Administration—but at the expense of high-needs (self-contained) special education students who were forced to attend other schools.  The old Morris HS had a 14 percent rate of self-contained special education students; the new Morris HS campus schools have an average of just two percent. [FACT SHEET ON MORRIS HS AND BLOOMBERG POLICIES ATTACHED.]

Advocates and parents will also point to the Bronx neighborhood surrounding Morris as a microcosm of Bloomberg’s failed education policies across the City, where high-needs students who typically score lower on standardized exams are “warehoused” in a few schools to inflate scores in others.  In the neighborhood around Morris, for example, only three percent of students are in high-needs special education classes at the “A” schools, while the closing schools average nine percent high-needs special education.

The federal government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress Trial Urban District Assessment (NAEP TUDA) test results in December showed that City scores have plateaued since 2009 and the large racial achievement gap persists between students of color and their white peers has not budged.  More than one-third of all City schools are now considered failing by the State.  Earlier this fall, we learned that adjusted state scores showed a deepening crisis in our middle and elementary schools, and that higher graduation rates were masking the fact that just one-in-four high school seniors were actually prepared for college.  In response, poll after poll has shown a strong majority of New Yorkers reject Bloomberg’s education platform and want a new direction.  

WHEN:           Thursday, January 12^th – 12:30 PM

WHERE:         Outside Morris High School – 1100 Boston Road, the Bronx

WHO:             Parents and advocates from across the City.

This also available as fact sheet on the CSM website here: http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Morris-HS-fact-sheet-final-final.pdf


For immediate release:
January 11, 2012

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, leonie@classsizematters.org; 917-435-9329
Mili Bonilla, Coalition for Education Justice, mili_bonilla@brown.edu; 347-901-1049

Don’t Believe the Hype!

The Real Deal on Morris High School  

& Bloomberg’s Failed Education Policies

Claim: Bloomberg likes to contrast the graduation rate at the old Morris HS to graduation rates at the high schools currently housed in the building, as evidence of the success of his education policies.

Reality: The types of students enrolled at the old and new Morris campus are very different.  Of the students enrolled in the four schools currently housed in the Morris building, only 1.7% are in self-contained special education classes– revealing their higher level of need, compared to 14% of students enrolled in the old Morris HS in 2001-02.[1]  Also, dividing up the building has caused its own problems; for example, according to a teacher at one of these schools, there is no longer any librarian and the library is completely unutilized: “Lots of books with no one tending to them or using them.” 

Claim: In response to criticism that students at phase-out schools suffer a loss of resources and services, Deputy Chancellor Suransky has said that graduation rates actually improved at Morris HS in its final year: “… it was a school that used to take 700 kids into the ninth grade every year and graduate 70 four years later. And as it was phased out, in the second year of the phase out it graduated 120 kids …In the third year it graduated over 200 and in its last year it graduated 300.”[2]

Reality: According to state figures, only 121 students in the last class at Morris HS graduated and only 3% of them attended college.[3]  Meanwhile, the student discharge rate soared to 55%, compared to 33% of the prior class, a pattern repeated in many of the phase-out schools.[4]  Of the 21 schools closed by this administration between 2003 and 2009, 37% of the students in their final classes graduated on average, 20% dropped out, 33% were discharged, and 10% were still enrolled when the schools closed their doors. [5]

Claim:   Bloomberg’s educational policies are helping more students leave school college- and career-ready.

Reality: The schools now housed in the Morris building have college readiness rates ranging from 0% (High School for Violin and Dance) and 2.9% (Bronx International High School), to 4.8% (School for Excellence) and 5.7% (Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies.)[6]

After a decade of school closures and other free-market policies, only 21% of NYC high school students overall and only 13% of Black and Latino HS students are college ready after four years. [7] 79% of NYC students entering community colleges need remediation, and the percent of high school graduates who require triple remediation in math, reading and writing has increased 47% since 2005.[8]  

Claim: The Mayor’s educational policies are equitable and fair.

Reality:  Most of the schools closed in recent years and those proposed for closure this year enroll higher than average concentrations of English language learners, students who entered the schools overage, and/ or students with disabilities.[9]  In fact, Mayor Bloomberg’s school closing policy is a shell game that displaces high-needs students from one school to another, without addressing their educational needs.

Claim: The new schools started during the Bloomberg administration are uniformly more successful.

Reality: More than half of the middle and high schools that DOE proposes closing this year were started during his administration. Many of the new schools have small percentages of the highest-needs students. However, when the new schools serve comparable populations of students in self-contained special education, their students tend to succeed at the same rate as the high schools that preceded Bloomberg.[10]

Claim: Under Bloomberg, student learning has increased and the achievement gap has narrowed.

Reality: As measured by scores on national exams, NYC is second to last in student progress compared to ten other cities since 2003, when Bloomberg’s policies were first put in place. And the achievement gap has not narrowed significantly between any racial or ethnic group.[11]

For nearly a decade, Bloomberg has had complete authority over our educational system.  Yet of last year’s eighth graders, who entered Kindergarten when he first took office in 2002, only 35% read and write at grade level. [12]

Truly, these are Bloomberg’s kids and Bloomberg’s responsibility.

NYC can’t afford any more of Bloomberg’s failed education policies.

Prepared by the Coalition for Educational Justice and Class Size Matters, January 2012.

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[1] NYC DOE School Progress Reports 2010-2011 & NYS School Report Cards 2001-2002.

[2] GothamSchools, “Chief DOE deputy to parents and teachers: Check our work,” March 15, 2011.

[3] NYSED, Office of Research and Information Systems, “NYS High School Graduates & Their NYS Public College Participation and Persistence, 2004-5.” June 24, 2010.

[4] Jennifer L. Jennings & Leonie Haimson, “High School Discharges Revisited: Trends in NYC’s Discharge Rates,”

April 2009.

[5] Urban Youth Collaborative, “No Closer to College: NYC High School Students Call for Real School Transformation, Not School Closings,” April 2011.  The denominator for discharge rates is the total reported cohort plus the number of discharges. Discharges are taken out of the official DOE reported cohorts on which graduation, still enrolled and dropout rates are based. Each of these outcomes was based on revised cohort figures which included discharges.

[6] NYC DOE School Progress Reports, 2010-2011.

[7] NY Times, “College-Readiness Low Among State Graduates, Data Show,” June 14, 2011. NYC Black and Latino percentage calculated from NYC DOE. Graduation Results. School Level Regents-Based Math/ELA Aspirational Performance Measure 2010.

[8] NY Times, “In College, Working Hard to Learn High School Material,” October 23, 2011.

[9] Parthenon Group, “NYC DOE “Beat the Odds” Update,”  March 6, 2008;  GothamSchools, “Internal report stokes questions about city’s closure strategy,” January 26, 2011;  NYC Independent Budget Office, “Schools Proposed for Closing Compared With Other City Schools,” January 2011; NY Times, “State Approves School Closings, but Puts City on Notice,” July 22, 2011; Jackie Bennett, “Closing Schools: DOE Spins Itself an Alternate Universe of Facts,” Edwize, December 14, 2011.

[10] Jackie Bennett, “Closing Schools, DOE Spins Itself an Alternate Universe of Facts,” Edwize, December 14, 2011; Jackie Bennett, “Meet the New Schools, Same as the Old Schools,” November 21, 2011.

[11] Class Size Matters, “NYC second to last among cities in student progress on the NAEPs since 2003,” January 9, 2011.

[12] NYC DOE, NYC 2011 Mathematics & English Language Arts Citywide Test Results Grades 3-8, Aug. 2011.

Mayor Bloomberg to give State of City speech at  iconic Morris High School in Bronx

Education advocates say Bronx has troubled schools

Comments

By Corinne Lestch / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, January 12 2012, 6:00 AM

Mayor Bloomberg will give his State of the City address Thursday in the grand auditorium of the Morris Educational Campus, surrounded by regal stained glass windows, red velvet drapes and organ pipes.

“Having the mayor of the city I love come in and speak about the state of our city is a dream,” said native New Yorker Charles Osewalt, principal of Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies. “I’m very humbled by it.”
A few lucky students and other invited guests will be in the auditorium when Bloomberg gives his speech in the iconic school.
Morris High School was the first public school to open in the Bronx. Though the 110-year-old school counts such notable alumni as former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, actress Kay Medford and comedian Milton Berle, it became a dangerous hub in the South Bronx during recent decades.
As part of a massive school restructuring in 2002, the city Department of Education converted Morris High School into five small, specialized schools: the School for Excellence, Morris Academy for Collaborative Study, High School for Violin and Dance, Bronx Leadership Academy 2 and Bronx International High School.
All schools have received A’s or B’s on their latest city report cards.
But education activists like Mona Davids said recent scandals like Bronxdale principal John Chase Jr. being allowed to keep his post after allegedly making lewd comments to female staffers, and the exodus of teachers at Bronx High School of Science, do not reflect well on Bloomberg - or his school reform legacy.
“We think it’s interesting that he’s coming to the Bronx considering that Bronx County, for the past 10 years, has scored the lowest on state tests,” said Davids, of the NYC Parents Union. “What is he going to do here in the borough to keep the Bronx off of the failing schools list?”
The last time Bloomberg gave his State of the City address in the Bronx was in 2005 at Hostos Community College, according to a City Hall spokesman.
The address will start at 1 p.m., and can be viewed live on nyc.gov and NYC-TV Channel 74.
clestch@nydailynews.com
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/mayor-bloomberg-give-state-city-speech-iconic-morris-high-school-bronx-article-1.1004741?print