Testimony of Michelle Bodden before the NYC Council Education Committee on Meeting the State’s ‘Contract for Excellence’ Requirements: July 24, 2007

Jul 24, 2007 12:34 PM

Good morning. I am Michelle Bodden, Vice President for Elementary Schools of the United Federation of Teachers. Thank you for inviting us to testify before you today.

I am disturbed by the history of mistrust and bad faith that underlies New York City’s plan to comply with the state’s Contracts for Excellence.

Let’s start with class size. Here in the city, class size reduction has been on the educational front burner for at least five years. There have been petitions, lawsuits, testimonies, task forces and just an astounding amount of battling—right up through last week--over something that should not be that controversial.

Let me say--once again--that in terms of student achievement, class size reduction is one of the three basic strategies that work. Research has shown, and teachers will tell you, that lowering class size does more to help students—especially students who come into the system with some type of educational deficit or learning issue—than anything else you can do. Class size reduction, when combined with high-quality early childhood programs and skilled teaching, changes children’s educational lives.

That is why the UFT and its partners, including Chairman Jackson and many other legislators in this chamber, fought so long and hard to ensure that the CFE money went to class size reduction. And that is why the State Legislature and Governor agreed this reform must be part of state education policy.

According to the state, it is no longer a question of whether class size gets reduced — it is how. That is where the DOE’s plan still falls short — they still believe principals should decide “whether,” not simply how. Good teachers tell us that class size reduction, school safety and administrative support are the three essentials of their working lives. When the Department of Education, at the 11th hour—really, it’s more like the 13th hour now—tries to claim that it is lowering class size by “empowering” principals, or that holding schools accountable for test score improvement will somehow hold them accountable for class size reduction, or that class sizes will be reduced by mainstreaming special education students into CTT classes, we are no longer willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The state’s Contract for Excellence is not an ambiguous document. It requires that New York City use the new CFE money for programs that can be shown to improve student achievement. It must reduce class sizes in grades preK-3, 4-8 and 9-12 every year over five years in every school district. It must show how the reductions will be achieved. Priority must be given to students with the greatest educational needs, including LEP and ELL students, students in poverty and students with disabilities. And the class size plan must be aligned with the capital plan.

Yet DOE proceeded as if class-size reduction was one of a menu of options, not a mandate. They failed to set any class-size targets or develop any sort of implementation strategy. This is why the advocacy of parents and teachers is so important. The UFT and our partners in New Yorkers for Smaller Classes have fought DOE at the state level, then at the city level and held a series of meetings in which we have criticized and fought for changes to just about every aspect of their class size plan.

And to DOE’s credit, and thanks to our work, they moved off their original position. They now plan to have class size targets in every school and they have made it clear to principals that they will enforce the five Contracts requirements in school budgets. We also believe that amongst some DOE leaders there is a new understanding of the importance of class size reduction.

But their plan is now attempting to reconcile principal empowerment with class size mandates in ways that seem unworkable--and border on the surreal. The DOE’s new Contract for Excellence intends to “coach” 72 principals on how they might, if they feel it is appropriate, reduce class sizes. As UFT President Randi Weingarten said, “It’s akin to saying, ‘pretty please with sugar on top’ with no procedures in place to back it up.”

There isn’t a plan to go to scale. The number of target schools rises to 275 at the end of five years. This is a system of 1,450 schools, schools which have on average 10-60 percent larger classes than the whole rest of the state.

Their plan directs just $66 million of $258 million in additional foundation aid to class size reduction in Year One. In addition, they have included another $40 million in new Collaborative Team Teaching dollars as part of class size reduction. We welcome the new investment in CTT, but that does not constitute class size reduction. That is a mainstreaming initiative in which special education students may easily wind up in larger classes with fewer adults.

There are not even reliable benchmarks to tell us where class size is now. For example, DOE’s revised plan claims the average class size in high schools is 26.7, when by their own report to the Council last fall there isn’t a single high school core academic class at less than 27.1 and most average 28 or more. The only possible explanation is that they averaged special education classes into the count, and given that special ed classes are capped at 12 or fewer, it means that general education classes are still very oversized.

Let me talk briefly about some other components of the state’s Contracts mandate: full-day pre-K, more time on task, and middle and high school restructuring.

The DOE has dedicated less than $1 million to enhancing pre-kindergarten programs. We know that full-day pre-Ks often require more physical capacity than schools have available right now. But it should not be news to the DOE that full-day pre-K is an essential piece in improving student achievement. Giving children an earlier start on learning has wide support among educators, parents, economists, business people and child development experts, and it is extraordinarily cost-effective. Research tells us that a dollar invested in good preschool programs yields between $7 and $17 in saved educational and social costs over the lives of the children. The CFE also expressly mandated this as a key educational remedy, but it is not addressed in any serious way in the DOE plan.

DOE claims that the new periodic assessments or interim tests—five additional classroom tests a year for every student—fall under the Contracts guideline of “increased time on task.” This flies in the face of what educators know about time on task, which refers to strategies to expand individualized instruction, tutor and help students who are in danger of falling behind. Not give more tests. The DOE seems to have adopted the Council’s Middle Schools Task Force, chaired by Speaker Quinn, as its own. We welcome their embrace. But here the devil in the details — and we will only know the answer when the speaker issues the report, and if the recommendations are adopted.

We have already heard from one State Regent, who said of the DOE’s plan, frankly ”this just is not going to fly.” We expect other Regents and state legislators will also reject or criticize the DOE’s plan. This will be an embarrassment for the DOE, but more importantly, it will delay the implementation of critical, research-based school improvements in favor of greater corporatization of the school system.

The UFT and our partners in New Yorkers for Smaller Classes have spent many hours analyzing class size and ways to reduce it in our large and complex school system. I will not go into detail about our proposals. My purpose is to show that while they have chosen to ignore it, the DOE has gotten extensive and thoughtful input from parent and teacher groups about how to accomplish reduced class size. We showed them how they could target the neediest schools and students first, then build towards a system-wide reduction over five years. We proposed ways they could reduce effective class size where space was not available. We urged them to review the capital plan because it currently does not have enough additional seats.

We acknowledged that there was not sufficient time this year to work through all the elements of the state’s new Contracts for Excellence. We understand that some elements of the plan will have to be in the form of promises or stated intent rather than fully fleshed-out strategies. But we still should have gotten a sincere effort to address the state mandates.

Even as we acknowledge that the DOE has moved toward making class size reduction a spending priority, we are not satisfied that will actually happen. That is why accountability for the Contracts for Excellence is so important, and why hearings like these that Chairman Jackson is holding are so important. Our clear sense is that many advocates, parents, educators and legislators are not going to find this plan acceptable, and we hope and expect to see further, substantive changes going forward.