The advances in virtual learning have been so rapid that many of its strongest believers think that it could be the answer to the problems that have been plaguing education for decades. Katherine Mangu-Ward writes that more than $1 billion in investment went into the sector last year, and among the education superstars that have put their skills towards evangelizing it is former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former NYC public schools head Joel Klein.

Yet like any nascent industry, virtual learning faces risks as it grows — and those risks include over-regulation and the attempt by teachers unions to assert the same type of control they have held over the traditional education system.

Mangu-Ward hopes that technology can remake the education landscape the same way it has remade the world other industries it touched. As examples she cites the way that vendors like Amazon and Apple have revolutionized shopping and personal communication over the last ten years.

However, the landscape is is also littered with failures like Kazoo, Pets.com and FullTiltPoker – the latter being the most significant example because it was killed not because of faulty business plan or an unfriendly marketplace, but because of over-regulation and government pressure. Is virtual learning headed for a similar future?

At the state level, a mishmash of laws and regulations means that battles to make room for online schooling will have to be fought over and over. Long-standing rules requiring that students sit in desks looking at a teacher for a certain number of hours a day—so-called seat time and line of sight requirements—could kill online learning in the cradle. Requirements for specific teacher-student ratios are tough to translate in a world where a single school day might have a student chatting with a friendly avatar online, getting tech support from an in-person teacher’s aide, and emailing with a subject-specific tutor, all while having her tests graded by a team of data-center workers in India.

While online education has its supporters, teachers union such as the National Education Association spent $24 million just last year battling various school choice initiatives, including measures aimed at growing online and virtual learning.

As Mangu-Ward points out, their stand on online charters isn’t exactly ambiguous – they’re very much against it. If given the power, they would choke what could prove to be the biggest revolution in education in history before it had a chance to grow.

Truly amazing new products have transformative power. And competing with free isn’t impossible. But online education entrepreneurs looking to break into the K–12 market will have to do much more to come up with a product that’s a little better than what’s already out there. They have to come up with something truly new and mind-blowing, because to survive they’re going to have to short-circuit, bypass, or rewire the entire education bureaucracy. Good luck with that.

The post Could Too Much Regulation Kill Virtual Learning? appeared first on Education News.

The shift from traditional textbooks to e-books and tablets continues to pick up speed in American schools, Yahoo News reports. Districts are becoming increasingly enamored with the new medium which they say not only allow quick updates and more interactive learning, but also brings down the costs of academic materials per-student.

The former New York City school chief Joel Klein is one such technology evangelist, saying that digital tools revolutionize the way students learn. Introducing tablets instead of textbooks allows teachers to personalize learning to the individual needs of their students, as opposed to sticking to a one-size-fits-all solution offered by traditional texts.

Klein is not a disinterested party in this debate. Since leaving his post in NYC, he’s joined the educational efforts of the company NewsCorp, which recently announced a launch of its own tablet Amplify that will come complete with a suite of software published by the company’s education arm.

News Corp. introduced their Amplify tablet during a breakfast Wednesday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. Priced at $299, the 10-inch unit runs on a school’s wireless Internet system and comes with software for teachers to watch each student’s activities, offer instant polls and provide anonymous quizzes to gauge student understanding.
Orders placed by June 30 will be ready for the start of the school year in the fall, officials at Rupert Murdoch’s company said, adding yet another platform for schools to consider.

Merely a decade ago, a tablet for every student might have seemed like an unrealizable dream – but that was before the dramatic price drops that brought such technology within the means of many school districts. Google, which sells a stripped down notebook running its Chrome operating system priced at only $199 per unit, has already formed partnerships with several localities that put the Chromebook in the hands of more than 20 million students.

The more advanced the courses, the more likely is technology to play a part in them. According to a Pew Research Trust study, 40% of AP classes and National Writing Project classrooms use tablets, smartphones or laptop computers regularly in during instruction.

In coming years, growth seems to be the norm. Christine Quinn, the speaker of the New York City Council, has suggested replacing textbooks — they cost the city $100 million a year — with tablets. Schools in Los Angeles last month allocated $50 million to start buying tablets for every student; the project is expected to cost $500 million by the time it is completed. Schools in McAllen, Texas, distributed 6,800 Apple tablets last year at a cost of $20.5 million.

The post Shift from Traditional Texts to E-Textbooks Continues appeared first on Education News.

Joel Klein, former New York City Schools Chancellor, spoke about the importance of technology in education as he addressed the attendees at the Higher Education Tech conference hosted at the International Consumer Electronics Show. He said that bringing technology into the classroom was the only way to shake up the moribund system that hasn’t evolved much in over a century — even as the world completely changed around it.

Klein said that any enterprise run along the same lines would have gone out of business years ago, unable to support an excessive amount of financial outlay while being completely unable to compete in the marketplace. While America’s education funding is on par with other countries, it consistently rates squarely in the middle in international rankings year after year in terms of quality and outcomes.

Things have changed since Klein left his post as the head of the one of the largest school districts in the country. At the time, technology in schools mainly comprised of computer labs hosting out-of-date desktop computers where students took turns to do their work. Since then a growing number of districts have implemented plans to equip all of their students and faculty with portable digital tablets, or found a way to use technology already owned by the students themselves in the classroom to improve learning.

“Everything else has already made the leap,” Klein said, referring to industries such as commerce that have been quicker to adopt new technologies. “Education has to do the same.”

Some schools, such as the Rocketship charter schools in California, already are pioneering “one-to-one” technology, which puts computers in the hands of every student. But one of the biggest barriers to widespread adoption of mobile technology in the classroom has been its high cost. In 2010, the average cost of a tablet PC was $543.

Since leaving his NYC post, Klein has taken over as the head of the education technology startup Amplify, which designs and sells classroom management software for teachers which can be run on a tablet. The company – which forms a part of News Corp’s education division – announced at last year’s UBS Global Media and Communication Conference that it plans to enter the hardware market as well by releasing an open-source tablet specifically optimized to run the company’s software suite.

According to estimates unveiled during the presentation, Klein views the education market as lucrative, with over $700 billion up for grabs. Seventeen billion of that is available in the K-12 market in which Amplify expects to compete most aggressively.

The post At CES, Joel Klein Sees Technology as Future of Education appeared first on Education News.

Joel Klein, former Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education and current executive vice president at News Corp, has announced ambitious expansion plans for “Amplify,” the company’s education division. Klein, who also heads Amplify, sees the division becoming aggressive in the sector by releasing products meant to appeal to the current crop of students and their insatiable hunger for everything tech-related.

Over the course of a presentation made during the UBS Global Media and Communication Conference, Klein outlined plans to release an open-source tablet that will run the company’s optimized educational software. The included applications will not only be Common Core Standards-compliant, but will also include an extensive analytics component that will aid teachers, schools and districts in feeding increasingly popular and extremely data hungry academic assessment systems.

Klein’s point is that U.S. K-12 education is a “broken model,” with shockingly low graduation rates, “we spend a lot on education and do not see the results.” To change all this, Klein said, “the private sector’ has to be involved and that “technology will forever change how we teach students.” Klein said, “kids use media and technology of all kinds but they’re told they have to turn them all off when they get to school.”

According to estimates unveiled during the presentation, Klein views the education market as lucrative, with over $700 billion up for grabs. Seventeen billion of that is available in the K-12 market in which Amplify expects to compete most aggressively.

To take a chunk of that market, the division is prepared to invest heavily in development. So far, the costs of the product design is pushing $180 million – a large number considering that the unit is reporting about $100 million in yearly revenues. Amplify has already contracted to provide its software and hardware services to over 200 school districts around the country.

Amplify is focused on changing American education with a program focused on Amplify Insight, teaching software tied to a prototype Amplify tablet device designed to collect and mine “big data,” in other words, use data analysis to drive teaching. He also pointed to Amplify Learning, customizable “gamefied” educational content—the digital textbook in a new form—tied to national core curriculum standards and designed to appeal to young people’s love of digital technology and multimedia.

Klein hopes that products sold by Amplify will not just transform the way kids are taught, but will completely overthrow the current 9-3 school day paradigm. When academic materials are available around the clock online, and instructors are easily reachable via forums, social media and email, learning doesn’t need to stop when kids leave the class or even the school building.

The post News Corp’s Ed Division to Enter Tech Market with Amplify appeared first on Education News.

Former New York City Schools Chancellor and noted education reformer Joel Klein and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten found an unexpected area of agreement. When discussing the future of education at the Aspen Ideas Festival earlier this year, Weingarten noted that she supported giving aspiring teachers a rigorous exam testing their knowledge and reasoning skills prior to licensing them for the classroom. When Klein, along with Delaware Governor Jack Markell, delivered remarks at this week’s Washington Ideals Forum, he pointed out that the teaching profession could stand to be professionalized – by which he meant that each teacher should be subject to a national test akin to the bar exam.

Neither Weingarten nor Klein are the first to propose this kind of licensing exam for teachers. It first gained traction with Albert Shanker, who headed up the AFT in the 1980s, and whose legend endures among those on all sides of education.

When The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissman asked Klein to clarify his statement, Klein said that he was in favor of the exam as well as other changes to the teaching profession because America’s academic success heavily depended on allowing only the best of the best to lead classrooms.

I can see the appeal of the proposal for both sides of the education reform debate. For the unions, as Weingarten said, a bar exam would be a great public relations tool for proving that the teachers they represent are qualified to be in the classroom. It would also inevitably limit the supply of teachers, which might make it easier to bargain for higher wages or prevent competition from charter schools. For reformers like Klein, it might be a step towards attracting a class of talented professionals to teaching who are less likely to want to collectively bargain, and who might be more amenable to ideas like performance-based bonuses.

The exam that Weingarten had in mind – which she described as a “rigorous exam that tests critical thinking and instruction chops” – strongly resembles the massive multi-day bar exam that aspiring lawyers must now pass before they are allowed to practice law. The bar exam is used to make sure that all legal professionals operate at certain minimum professional standards; such a goal seems eminently reasonable when it comes to classroom instructors as well.

Still, those who invest time and effort in obtaining a law license and pass the bar exam do so with the expectation of a certain financial reward, in theory if not – at least at this moment in time – in practice.

Whether or not you’re a fan of professional credentialing — and there are many out there who aren’t — there’s one very obvious problem I can foresee: There’s no way this idea would work unless teacher salaries were raised first, and possibly dramatically. As Klein said, our best and brightest already don’t go into teaching. Throwing up hurdles in front of them without a big payoff in return isn’t going to encourage them.

The post Klein and Weingarten Agree: Teachers Should Take ‘Bar’ Exams appeared first on Education News.

It was perhaps fitting that the Mayor of New York most associated with education reform stayed in office just long enough to see an entire grade of students move through the entirety of the school system from first grade to 12th.

When Michael Bloomberg first took office in January of 2002, the students scheduled to graduate high school in June of 2013 were just taking their first, tentative steps in their academic journey. Now, City Limits Magazine profiles some members of the Class of 2013 — who are sometimes dubbed “Bloomberg’s Babies” — who ended up being the first to feel the impact of the reforms introduced by the “education mayor” in his effort to change the landscape of urban education.

Of the first batch of changes introduced shortly after Bloomberg put Chancellor Joel Klein in charge of the New York City Department of Education, it was probably the standardized testing that made the greatest impact on the Class of 2013. The standardized exams, mandatory for students in grades 3 through 8, were put into place in the first few years after Klein took office.

Today, these teens are also the first crop to have encountered DOE’s policy prohibiting social promotion – that long-critiqued but widely practiced policy of passing of students up the grades, whether or not sufficient academic progress had been made. They are the first to go to schools that have been graded for performance – and shuttered for “failure” or inadequate gains. They are the first generation to be rewarded financially, in some districts, for taking advanced-level work, like AP classes in high schools – and the first to see those incentives removed, when the experts who’d pushed for the practice discovered it didn’t work.

Shane Thompson, a Crown Heights, Brooklyn teenager who at 17 is in his last year at the High School of Public Service: Heroes of Tomorrow, felt the impact of one Bloomberg reform drive in a very personal way. Thompson spent his whole academic career in and around Crown Heights schools as he followed his dream of becoming an airplane designer. When the time came for choosing a high school, he applied – using the city’s rather confusing and occasionally impenetrable matching process – to Transit Tech High School, which was located a good 90-minute commute away in East New York.

When the atmosphere at the school proved a poor fit, Thompson attempted to transfer out. New York City students have the option to transfer in their sophomore year, but transfer opportunities during 9th grade are limited, in part because Bloomberg’s overhaul included shutting down “zoned” high schools all over the city. The initiative included Wingate High School in Crown Heights, which might have accepted Thompson “over the counter.” He was stuck in Transit Tech for the whole of 9th year, and, as a result, he was behind the curve when he finally obtained a transfer to HSPS one year later.

But he recovered — even while struggling to make up the work, Thompson found that HSPS was the school for him.

“I love it here,” he said in September. “Everyone’s in a nice mood. The teachers here are friendly and down to earth; they’re really here to help us when we have a problem.” Shane appreciated one teacher’s patience with a missed deadline – and the school’s practice of requiring “mastery” projects to demonstrate knowledge of specific subject areas, like the presentation he gave last year in Spanish. “I was really nervous, but I got up and it just flowed,” he said. “I got a perfect score, 100 percent,” still basking in the moment.

It’s hard to figure out what might have been if Thompson never had a chance to transfer at all or if he had been allowed to transfer earlier. However, he does credit the atmosphere of HSPS – including the personalized attention made possible by the smaller student body – for putting him where he is now: studying for the SATs and filling out college applications. The next set of hurdles he will have to overcome will be in part financial as he’s not sure he’ll be able to afford to attend Penn State or Syracuse like he hopes, and in part it will be readiness. Although under Bloomberg’s watch the high school graduation rates have risen, too large a percentage of graduating seniors will still require remediation in order to perform well in college.

The post City Limits Looks at the Lives of the ‘Bloomberg Babies’ appeared first on Education News.

As the academic achievement of American students falls further and further behind their international peers, people whose priority it should be to work on improving the nation’s schools are instead focusing on making sure that any private sector solutions are weeded out of the public school system, writes former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein in The Atlantic. Any idea with private sector backing, be it good or bad, is sure to draw protest characterizing it as mere profiteering and privatization. In doing so, says Klein, they fail to account for the fact that without any outside forces, the system, which is designed to protect itself, will never get better.

Private sector involvement underpins many public sector success stories in America, from fields as diverse as health care to computing to infrastructure. There’s a strong history of cooperation between private and public interest in the country, which is one of the reasons why it leads on many standard of living markers among industrialized nations:

In energy, privately funded breakthroughs in gas exploration technologies hold the promise of liberating America from dependence on foreign oil. In computing, Google’s privately funded search utility has democratized access to information in ways that improve countless lives.

Embracing the contributions of private entities doesn’t mean going without governmental power of regulation and oversight. Klein takes this part of the government’s job seriously, as he proved by heading up several anti-trust cases when he was a part of the U.S. Department of Justice in mid-1990s.

But maintaining strong oversight on the system doesn’t have to mean choking it off entirely. Thus, anyone who tries to argue that a profit motive makes any approach automatically suspicious or bad ignores the potential of the profit motive to drive innovation.

It’s to miss the basic economic lesson of the past two centuries—when innovations spawned by the entrepreneurial talent and capital of the private sector have been harnessed for public purposes to become the greatest force for human betterment in the history of the world. “Doing well by doing good” is a cliché for a reason.

Even before private firms’ contributions to education came to the fore as a result of the school choice movement, they played an integral part in the success of the country’s schools. Textbooks, buildings, supplies and even school transportation and maintenance were more often than not provided by private companies under contract to the local school districts. Allowing non-government entities to perform jobs in which they have expertise is hardly the kind of privatization advocates are worried about. On the contrary, doing this often leads to better results and substantial savings compared to attempts at keeping such things in-house.

The reason why those kinds of firms rarely get questioned is because they are not interested in altering the status quo.

But the deeper reason is that the current generation of private sector innovators want to challenge traditional ways of doing things in schools. They see a system that’s failing to equip America’s children with the skills to compete in a global age, and they believe passionately that innovative products and approaches could help the country do better. This determination to shake things up is seen as a threat by many who hold power over schools today, and who act as if the status quo is working just fine.

The post Klein: Public Sector Shouldn’t Fear Privatization in Ed appeared first on Education News.

Aware of the possibility that Mayor Bloomberg will be replaced by a more union sympathetic mayor when he leaves office in 2014, leaders of the national education reform movement have formed a political group to offset union influence in the 2013 New York mayoral election. Most of the current frontrunners for the position are known to be better disposed towards the unions and Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers.

StudentsFirstNY is led by Joel Klein, the former schools chancellor in New York, Michelle Rhee, who held the same position in Washington, and Micah Lasher, the director of state legislative affairs for Bloomberg.

Members of the group worry that without a significant marshaling of forces, their achievements could be dismantled. Their aim is to raise $10 million annually for five years, hoping to make an imprint throughout the next mayor’s first term.

The group aims to pressure candidates into revealing their education positions publicly during the mayoral campaign. This is seen as crucial because many loose ends in education reform will still remain to be tied up during the next mayor’s tenure. For example, the city’s contract with the unions remains to be negotiated with the unions pushing hard for schoolwide bonuses instead of the individual merit bonuses favored by reformists. Mayoral control is also due to come up for state renewal by Albany in 2015.

“This organization is really going to represent a redoubling of efforts, new energy and serious resources, invested in making our schools great in a climate that may not be as favorable post-Jan. 1, 2014,” Mr. Lasher said. He has been the mayor’s point person in Albany, and was involved in negotiating the recent deal creating a new teacher evaluation system.

Rhee and Klein have a turbulent relationship with the unions and Klein in particular is unlikely to give ground on an issue he knows is vital to the future of America. He recently headed a task force with Condoleeza Rice which found that if American schools continued to underperform it would put the nation’s economic prosperity and security at risk.

The post Education Reform Fight Continues in New York appeared first on Education News.

The Washington Post argues that education has to become a central issue in the presidential election.

New research shows that only one-quarter of America’s 52 million K-12 students perform on par with the average performance of the world’s five best school systems — which are now in Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, Taiwan and South Korea.

In addition to this troubling finding, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has found that currently the US produces less than 50% of the advanced math students as 16 other countries. This is extremely disturbing for the future growth of science and engineering within the US as it indicates a future need to import scientific talent to make up for the failing performance of home grown math and science students.

The United States spends more on schools than most wealthy nations as a share of GDP yet ranks in the middle to the bottom of the pack on international comparisons. McKinsey estimates that the cost of this achievement gap vs. other nations is up to $2 trillion a year — the equivalent of a permanent national recession.

Despite the critical importance of this shortfall, only 1% of time in Republican debates have candidates even touched upon educational matters. This seems as bizarre as it is obvious that the future economic welfare of a society hinges upon the education and skill growth of its current children.

Joel Klein, chief executive of News Corp’s education division and former New York City Chancellor of Schools, argues that:

The accountability regime set up by No Child Left Behind likewise left the design of standards to the states. The result has been what many consider a “race to the bottom,” as states eased requirements to create the illusion of progress.

NCLB has also recently been neutered by the Obama administration’s widespread granting of state waivers to head off the inevitability of the state’s failure to reach the standards set out in the bill. Klein also argues for a professionalization of the teaching profession.

There is almost universal consensus that effective teaching is the most powerful way to improve student performance. But we’re not serious as a nation about making teaching an attractive career. Finland, Singapore and South Korea recruit 100 percent of their teachers from the top third of high school and college students. Their teachers train in prestigious institutions that accept only one of every seven or eight applicants. By contrast, only 23 percent of new U.S. teachers come from the top third (14 percent for high-poverty schools). Our teachers are trained mostly in open-enrollment institutions seen as second-rate; poor pay and working conditions compel the best to leave the classroom within a few years. A trade union mentality makes it hard to reward excellence and promote accountability.

The US is among the top global spenders ($ spent as a share of GDP) on schools, yet ranks in the bottom half of international comparisons. If these issues aren’t addressed soon by politicians currently unwilling to provide what could be a politically unpopular mandate for reform, then the danger is that instead of a child, an entire nation may be left behind.

The post WaPo: Presidential Candidates Need To Spotlight Education appeared first on Education News.

"With our future as a nation at stake, we need to be bold for our schools to be successful with all children." -- Eric Nadelstern

A Bronx native and graduate of DeWitt Clinton High School, Eric Nadelstern worked in New York City public schools for 39 years, rising to the position of Chief Schools Officer, Division of School Support in 2009, and to the position of Deputy Chancellor for the Division of School Support and Instruction for the New York City Department of Education in 2010, from which he retired last year.  He is currently Professor of Practice in Education Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, from where he received a Master of Arts degree in 1973. I had the opportunity to chat with Professor Nadelstern about the issues that face the New York City public school system.

What are the problems we face in the New York City public school system?

We are spending $23 billion of the public’s hard earned money in New York City every year to support the country’s largest school district, and yet 35% of the students are not graduating from high school.  The good news is just a few years ago it was half the students, and things had been frozen at that rate for the prior 50 years.  Still, 35% are not graduating and the 35% who aren’t are largely male, African American and Latino.  This is significant evidence that despite everything we are doing, we haven’t been able to close the achievement gap in the city.

What I think differentiates New York from some other countries in the world that I have visited or am familiar with is that we recognize there is an achievement gap.  This contrasts with Israel which runs 5 separate and unequal school systems.  Their primary concern, as in many other places, is to produce the few outstanding mathematicians and scientists who can compete with other countries, compared to thinking about educating the entire population to their highest potential.

In America, it is not that we aren’t producing enough college graduates.  It’s that the students who are most likely to graduate are disproportionately white, Asian, and female in large urban areas versus male, African American, and Latino.  You can still walk into a kindergarten class in New York City on the first day of school, and simply on the basis of race and how kids are dressed, predict with frightening accuracy which kids are likely to graduate 13 years later.  To my mind, that is an intolerable situation and an indication of seated societal issues that we have not begun to address.

Why is the public school system to blame for this?

I’ll give you one example of how we exacerbate the problem, however unintentionally.  For years in New York City we had a seniority transfer plan.  The most senior and consequently most expensive teachers could transfer into middle class schools in areas where they were needed least.  That created a situation in our poorest neighborhoods of the revolving door of the newest teachers.  This went on decade after decade, seemingly with the approval of those in management positions.

"The astonishing thing is why there isn’t a greater sense of outrage from people who work in the system." -- Eric Nadelstern

What should be the goal of the public education system?

I am a product of public education.  My parents were holocaust refugees who came to this country a few years before I was born.  I was the first member of my family to graduate from high school, let alone go to college.  I understand how critical a public education is.  To my mind, that is the American ideal.

So what things would you change and how would you make them better? 

Initially, we were going in the right direction.  We had a mayor who wasn’t beholden to the politicians or other interest groups.  He didn’t seem to have personal ambitions beyond doing the best job he could.  He was prepared to take courageous steps to address the issues.  As time goes on, people invariably become seduced by the system.  Joel Klein used to say I was groomed by the system to run the system but instead I chose to dismantle it, and that is what recommended me to him in the first place.  My need was to change things in order to make them better.

In New York, you would have to tell people living in $4 million dollar coops on the Upper East Side that their kids would have as much chance of going to PS199 as a kid in destitute circumstances in the Bronx; and that the school system was going to make sure that the kid in destitute circumstances had the same chance.  Could you do that for very long?  I don’t know, but that is what you need to do.  When we were in a position to do it, we didn’t have the courage to do it.

I am of a mind that if schools fail to perform their function, it is more efficient and more effective to close them and give others an opportunity to do better.  We closed dozens of large underperforming schools, primarily high schools, and replaced them with over 500 new small schools.  Those new small schools, according to research, are graduating students from high school at a rate of 8 percentage points more than the average school.  That was moving in the right direction.

What can schools do about factors affecting kids outside of school?

Schools have little control once the kids leave them.  Historically, we used that as an excuse for failure.  The better schools create opportunities for parents to feel welcome in the school and even begin to address the needs of the students’ families.  For example, they’ll offer immigration counseling or computer classes in the evening.  Some schools partner with community organizations that are able to deal with the needs of the whole family.   However, the truth is schools have limited capacity to have an impact on students’ families.

"I understand how critical a public education is. To my mind, that is the American ideal." -- Eric Nadelstern

Tell me more about schools that were going in the wrong direction and what went wrong.

I’ll give you some examples.  We closed Stevenson High school.  The school had 1800 student absences by Christmas, and no person in the building understood his responsibility.  The attitude was it is the parent’s job to make sure the kid comes to school.  In South Bronx High School, 20% of the kids made it to junior year.  I met with the Principal and his cabinet, and their attitude was shocking.  They did not understand why I was so disturbed by that statistic because it had always been that way.  If I wanted to see it any different, I would have to give them a better building;  I would have to give them better supplies and materials;  I would have to send them better teachers;  I would have to pay them more; and I would have to send them better kids.  If I sent them better kids, I would see how great they were.

At Morris High School there were 1700 kids enrolled.  1100 of them were freshmen.  Year after year, the DOE sent them hundreds of 9^th graders, and most of those kids never made it out of 9^th grade.  When I visited the school, one kid had written F… You in red letters across the back door of the building, and no one understood his responsibility to wipe that off as quickly as possible.

The astonishing thing is why there isn’t a greater sense of outrage from people who work in the system.  The reality is we are becoming inured to failure.  The people in the system are not necessarily the ones to blame for this.  It is the structure we have given them.  The rules and conditions under which they operate lead them to believe that nothing makes sense and nothing will ever change.

What would be the priority actions that you would take to improve the New York City public school system?

With our future as a nation at stake, we need to be bold for our schools to be successful with all children. What I would recommend is:

1. Unzone all schools and give every child an equal opportunity by lottery to attend any school.
2. Continue to close low performing large schools and replace them with campus communities of smaller, more successful ones.
3. Decentralize authority to the school level and hold principals and teachers accountable for student performance.
4. Encourage like-minded schools to network for purposes of mutual support and accountability.
5. Significantly reduce central and field operations, and place the money saved directly into school budgets.
6. Recruit and reward outstanding principals and teachers.
7. Partner with not-for-profit organizations in the community to better serve students and their families.
8. Support choice and competition represented by charter schools.
9. Invite the private sector to compete in the world of K-12 education.

Eric Nadelstern and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of NYC Department of Education and Eric Nadelstern

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?”. She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post The Global Search for Education: A Look at New York Public Schools appeared first on Education News.