Six on Schools: Minimum student teaching time increased in NY; ‘Educational genocide’: NYC schools are leaving black and His
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“It’s going to take some time to ramp up,” said Albert Inserra, dean of the College of Education and Information Technology at LIU Post in Brookville.
One approach to teacher training getting increased attention across the country is a residency-type program that blends academic studies toward bachelor's and master's degrees with a full year of paid teaching experience. Under this system, teachers in training, like medical interns, take on increased responsibility on the job as their development progresses.
Jay Lewis, an associate dean at Hofstra University’s School of Education, said the institution is working toward pilot programs with such innovations. Lewis is in charge of external relations and field placement — that is, coordination with school districts that accept student teachers.
“My gut tells me that within the next 10 years, what teacher training looks like in terms of field experience is going to be turned on its ear,” Lewis said."
"In a searing indictment of Georgia education policy, Atlanta housing policy, and the neoliberal corporate interests that manipulate both, Shani Robinson, an Atlanta Public Schools (APS) educator, and Anna Simonton, an investigative journalist, have crafted a wide-reaching, detailed text about Atlanta’s racialized history of neighborhood economic disinvestment, gentrification, and Georgia's misguided efforts to cling to educational policies supporting charter schools and high-stakes testing. A history, narrative, personal reflection, and policy statement all at once, None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators provides a new, in-depth perspective on the APS cheating scandal of 2008-2013 through the eyes and experiences of Robinson, an APS teacher charged with collusion in altering her students' answers on second grade exams. In this 246-page text, Robinson, a novice teacher and Teach for America alumna at the time of the incident, explains the circumstances surrounding how she and 34 other APS educators were convicted, then sentenced to up to 20 years in prison through the misapplication of a RICO statute created in the 1970s for the purposes of prosecuting mob bosses like John Gotti.
Many will pick up this book because they simply want to know: did APS educators cheat, and did they learn a lesson by going to jail? However, the answers to those questions are far from simple. As comedian and political pundit Jon Stewart noted in a (2015) monologue on The Daily Show, any decisions made by APS educators, in addition to being clear examples of a response to the nationwide epidemic of unreasonable state and federal expectations generated by No Child Left Behind, were nowhere near as egregious or conspiratorial as the blatant fraud and theft displayed by bankers during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. Yet, only one banker was charged with... well, anything, or spent any time in jail. Conversely, multiple APS educators were charged with a RICO statute and sentenced to serve up to 20 years in jail. Similar to Stewart’s ridicule, None of the Above details Georgia’s histrionic, disproportional response to the APS teachers’ alleged cheating, a response that would almost be funny if it weren’t so unjust.
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Robert Samuelson: Can we fix the schools? (Maybe not.) |
Repeatedly, the study’s authors express frustration that they can’t explain what happens in high school to undo previous gains in achievement. They dismiss “senioritis,” the reputed tendency of students to slacken in their studies, as a major cause. They speculate, though they admit that they don’t know, that teaching in high school is harder than at lower levels.
“The high school is a broken institution,” Peterson said in an interview. “We need to create more learning opportunities for kids in high school.”
Broadly speaking, the study vindicates the results of earlier research conducted by sociologist James Coleman (usually called the “Coleman report”) in 1966. As part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, Coleman examined what factors promoted educational success. He found parental education, income and race to be strongly connected to student achievement, while per-pupil expenditures and class size were much less so."
Ironic that despite the fact that Asian parents have sued against the DOE’s expansion of the Discovery program, Asian students made the most gains by the change.
See WSJ article below – and stats here:
De Blasio’s Expanded Diversity Initiative at City’s Elite Schools Yields Few Gains
Data likely to fuel argument against the specialized high-school admissions test
By Leslie Brody
April 10, 2019 2:23 p.m. ET
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s effort to better integrate New York City’s elite specialized high schools next fall by admitting more students who miss the test-score cutoff for entry made only small gains in adding black and Hispanic students, data released Wednesday showed.
The mayor has vastly expanded the so-called Discovery program, a free program to help disadvantaged eighth-graders earn seats by giving them summer enrichment courses before ninth grade.
The city Department of Education said the program offered spots at the eight schools to 109 black students, up from 79 in Discovery last year, and to 169 Latino students, up from 95 last year.
Asian students benefited the most from Discovery’s growth: 498 Asian students got in, up from 332 last year.
“We’re using every tool at our disposal to increase diversity at the specialized high schools, but despite the incremental progress we’re making through the Discovery program, the status quo remains the same,” Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a release. “We need to eliminate the test now.”
Asian students make up 54% of the 922 students admitted to Discovery this spring, up from 43% last year.
Meanwhile, 135 white students got in, down from 205 last year.
For the past year, the mayor has called on state Legislators to abolish the test, which he says is an unfair barrier to black and Hispanic students. The 1971 state law governing admissions allowed for a Discovery program to help disadvantaged students to get in, and the mayor said he had the authority to expand that route, while pushing for lawmakers to abolish the test altogether.
The mayor and many integration advocates say the test is flawed and these top schools should better reflect the city overall. Defenders of the test say it is the most objective way to determine merit, and the city should do more to broaden the pipeline of talent by improving schools from the earliest grades.
For the first time this year, students had to come from certain high-poverty schools to participate in Discovery. The mayor said that would enable more black and Hispanic students to gain entry. It did boost the numbers from Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Some parents and Asian civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in December to block the changes in Discovery, saying the changes discriminated against Asian-Americans in two ways: by cutting the number of seats available to students who aced the test, and by suddenly excluding from Discovery some schools with high Asian enrollment. In the past, low-income students from any school could join Discovery.
In the continuing litigation, the city’s lawyers have argued in court papers that the Department of Education “did not act for the purpose of hindering any racial group.”
Including the Discovery invitations, 14% of total offers to specialized high schools are going to black and Latino students this year, the city said. The department must still verify that some Discovery students qualify as disadvantaged. Its officials said that based on the projected pool of eligible students and historic enrollment patterns, it expects to fill about 500 Discovery seats, roughly double the number last year.
By 2020, the department plans to expand the Discovery program to 20% of seats at each specialized high school.
Currently, 62% of students at the exam schools are Asian. About 10% of specialized high-school students are black or Latino, despite making up nearly 67% of the city’s enrollment, by city data.
About 27,500 eighth-graders took the specialized high-school admissions test for the coming fall’s class. Those who scored high enough to be admitted the regular way include 190 students who are black, 316 who are Latino, 1,368 who are white and 2,450 who are Asian.
Write to Leslie Brody at leslie...@wsj.com
