Families For Excellent Schools Want More Students Held Back Or In Summer School

From the Daily News:

Pro-charter school group Families for Excellent Schools ripped Mayor de Blasio on Thursday after city Education Department officials revealed a steep decline in the number of kids held back a grade or forced to go to summer school.

“Socially promoting tens of thousands of students, and depriving them of critical learning, promises to deepen New York City’s failing schools crisis,” said Families for Excellent Schools CEO Jeremiah Kittredge.

Education Department officials Wednesday said city principals referred 19,422 students to summer school classes in 2015, down from 32,205 in 2013.

The officials also revealed that the percentage of students held back a grade fell from 2.5% in 2013 to 1.2% in 2014.

State test scores are often used to decide which students get left back a grade or have to attend summer school.

We know the Common Core tests were rigged for failure, with NYSED setting the scores such that failure rates would sky-rocket from the pre-Common Core tests.

And lo and behold, many more students failed the Common Core tests than the pre-Common Core tests.

Nonetheless, if you look at the chart linked above, you'll see there's progress, albeit incremental, in the test scores from 2013 to 2014.

Should the rates of students being held back improve along with the scores or should they stay the same because, you know, ed reformers think kids need to learn a little grit?

As for summer school, FES may not know that Governor Cuomo pushed through and continues to tout a rule that says the Common Core tests will not be used against students for a couple of years (although they are being used on teachers.)

Indeed, the NYCDOE pointed this out in their pushback:

Schools officials said de Blasio's policies are in accordance with a change in state law that requires educators consider multiple criteria in decisions to promote students or hold them back.

In fact, Cuomo called the test scores "meaningless" for students back in April as the opt-out movement against the state's tests was gaining steam:

Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday said parents who have chosen to have their children “opt out” of taking this month’s state exams don’t understand that the scores are “meaningless” in terms of students' grades.

“That’s their option,” Cuomo, referring to parents who have participated in the unprecedented boycott of state exams, told reporters after an Association for a Better New York breakfast in Manhattan. “What I don’t think has been adequately communicated is, we passed a law that stops the use of the grades on the test for the student. So the grades are meaningless to the student.”

Cuomo was referring to provisions in the 2014-15 state budget that prohibited Common Core-aligned tests from being included on students’ permanent records or used in grade promotion decisions. He said that action was necessary because of the flawed rollout of the Common Core standards in New York, which he has blamed on the State Board of Regents and Education Department.

“My position was, the department of education had not done a good job in introducing the Common Core, and they had rushed it, so we said, for a period of five years, the test scores won’t count,” Cuomo continued. “So they can opt out if they want to, but on the other hand, if the child takes the test as practice, then the score doesn't count anyway.”

Would have been nice if the DN could have gotten into the story the part about Cuomo insisting that Common Core test scores were "meaningless" and would not be used in any punitive way against them.

Instead the DN story just makes it into a they said/they said thing, with FES vs. the DOE.

Nonetheless, that's another reason for fewer students going to summer school than in the past.

The media's got a bias here, to make de Blasio's NYCDOE look less "rigorous" than the Bloomberg NYVDOE, so they're happy to give Families For Excellent Schools the press to bash the NYCDOE and de Blasio, then half-ass the pushback.

NYCDOE Purposely Underfunds And Under-Schedules Summer School Session To Promote Online Credit Recovery

From the NY Post:

Sloppy math by city education officials has left this year’s summer-school calendar four days shorter than needed — making each high-school course six hours short of a full credit, leaders say.

The abbreviated summer-school calendar has just 26 days for high-school students — down from the normal 30 — because of a later-than-usual starting date of July 8.

Even with scheduling overhauls, students could earn only credits in two courses over the summer rather than the typical three — despite the fact that many students need three to graduate in August, according to principals.

“It’s just completely being mishandled,” said one Bronx administrator. “Obviously somebody at Tweed [the old courthouse building behind City Hall in lower Manhattan, where the Department of Education is housed] — whoever did the calendar — made an error and nobody caught it,” the administrator added. “Now it’s their job to fix this.”

School leaders said extending the summer-school day beyond its normal 8 a.m.-to- 1 p.m. schedule is not an option because it would be prohibitively expensive.

Schools would have to serve lunch to all students and teachers — something they don’t currently do — as well as pay teachers for dozens of hours of added overtime.

Yet summer-school funding has dropped from $81 million in fiscal year 2007 to just $44 million this year, according to DOE documents.

“We don’t have money,” said a Queens high-school principal. “Summer school is so underfunded, it’s pathetic.”

DOE officials insisted the scheduling was purposeful. They pointed to online or credit-recovery courses as options for students who need the maximum number of credits.

I'm going to take DOE officials at their word - they purposely underfunded and under-scheduled summer school sessions in order to promote online credit recovery programs that make money for their cronies in the for-profit education world.

In addition, this sets up a wonderful model for coming years when they want to extend the school year.

One of the pushbacks on the extended school year is what wil lthey do about students who need to make up credits in summer school.

Now the DOE can say "Summer school?  What's that?  There's all-year round school and anybody who needs to make up credits can take the Rupert Murdoch/Joel Klein credit recovery program.

It's either that or, as Yoav wrote in the Post, somebody at Tweed screwed up.

NYCDOE Introduces "Virtual" Instructors Into Summer School

As in virtually non-existent:

Students are getting ripped off at public summer schools that cut corners to save money — including one program that ended Friday after just 10 days of classes, The Post has learned.

And a second high school stuck English students in front of computers and essentially assigned a baby sitter — who didn’t have a teaching license — rather than a certified instructor to keep an eye on them.

...

At Women’s Academy of Excellence in The Bronx, students said the English class has no instructor and no one to answer their questions when they need help with an educational computer program that is teaching them.

Instead, the school assigned a $30,000-a-year “community associate” — a noneducator who is paid to be a liaison between the school and the surrounding area — to monitor the classroom.

“Honestly, I don’t learn much from [the computer]. It tells me stuff, but it doesn’t show me what I’m learning,” said 17-year-old junior Monica Morgan.

“I was so confused . . . I’d get more out of a textbook.”

Despite confirmation from a dozen students and staffers about the lack of a certified teacher, Principal Arnette Crocker denied the charge through the DOE.

She did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

A DOE spokeswoman said the certified instructor was a “virtual” teacher whom the students could ask questions of by e-mail — but the kids said that was news to them.

“I never got offered that,” said soon-to-be sophomore Emani Brown, 15.

DOE officials insisted that the “virtual” teacher was allowable under state regulations.

Those regulations require that online courses be taught or supervised by a certified teacher in the same school district.

Ah yes - students being taught by "an educational computer program."

The future of education is here.

No need for a licensed, certified teacher.

Just a low-paid "community associate," an "educational computer program," some computers and the students.

And of course the use of an "educational computer program" and a "virtual teacher" is "allowable" under state law.

Hell, not only is it "allowable," it soon will be the norm in many urban districts.

This is just one of the reasons the powers that be want to break the unions - so that they can fire the "bad" teachers and replace them with computer programs and "virtual" teachers who are virtually non-existent.

Poof goes to the money - right to Pearson, Wireless Generation and all the other education vulture companies.

Poof goes the future - for the kids stuck in this system.