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UFT hails city’s new middle school initiative

by Ron Isaac

Sep 6, 2007 1:06 PM

UFT President Randi Weingarten joined City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Aug. 13 as he endorsed several of the recommendations put forward by the Council to improve academic performance and provide more resources to the city’s middle schools.

“This initiative is an important step in focusing attention and resources on our middle schools, which pose significant educational challenges not only here in New York City but across the nation,” said Weingarten at the press conference at IS 44 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

The Department of Education agreed to adopt several of the 39 recommendations of the Council’s Middle School Task Force, which was created in March. They include:

• giving $5 million to 50 low-performing middle schools to hire guidance counselors, enhance support services, improve teacher training, award teacher scholarships or offer extended-day programs for students;
• offering Regents-level courses in all middle schools by 2010, with the phase-in first focused on 50 low-performing schools;
• preparing a “catalog” of available in-house professional development classes for middle school teachers and principals and waiving the fees for teachers at the 50 high-needs schools; and
• naming Lori Bennett, a former local instructional superintendent for Region 8, as director of middle school initiatives.
• “What we have accomplished today is not everything that needs to be done to help the middle schools, but it is a very positive start and cause for celebration,” said Council Speaker Quinn.

The normal difficulties associated with the maturing process of adolescents, together with some disturbing though lately improving test results in Grades 6 through 8, have put middle schools in the spotlight. Last year, 41.8 percent of the city’s 220,000 8th-graders met state standards in English, and 45.6 percent met standards in math. Social studies and science scores were worse.

According to national research, many middle school teachers have been trained to teach in either elementary school or high school and haven’t received specialized training in issues related to this unique period of childhood development.

The 84-page report of the task force, which included representatives of the UFT, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators and education advocacy groups, covered governance and organization, teaching and learning, leadership, parental involvement, student support and counseling, and school safety and discipline.

The city has not yet acted on the following task force recommendations:

• have each school allocate 90 minutes of professional development and common planning time within the work week;
• create a clear career ladder for teachers and administrators;
• offer incentives to spur experienced teachers in shortage areas to transfer to high-needs schools; and
• create a middle school training academy for teachers.

The Task Force had also recommended that middle school classes be capped at 25. They currently average about 28 in the city and 20 to 22 statewide.

Weingarten made it clear that this recommendation was worth fighting for. Bloomberg responded that it would be necessary to build new schools before class size in middle schools could be appreciably lowered. But Weingarten expressed hope that the $5 million in new resources to high-need schools “will still be used to lower class size.”

Dr. Pedro Noguera, a professor in the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University and the task force’s chair, said the panel had “done its best to incorporate the ideas and concerns that have been raised in our consultations with teachers, students, parents, and administrators from throughout the system.”

“There is plenty of work that must be done to bring these recommendations to full fruition,” said UFT Vice President Rich Farkas, one of the two UFT representatives on the task force. “We are very pleased with what we have already done, but have a long way to go. We will use all our energies and resources to get there.”

Jackie Bennett, a UFT special representative in Staten Island and a task force member, praised the report for addressing schoolyard bullying and “persistent incivility” in middle schools. “The report has some serious language that comes to grips with this problem,” she said.

Weingarten hailed the collaborative process that produced the report as a model. “The Task Force demonstrated what the UFT has always known: that collaboration and shared-decision making is the enlightened and effective route to moving ahead,” she said.

Although the city did not immediately adopt all the recommendations, the presence of Weingarten, Quinn, Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson and Ocynthia Williams of the parent group Coalition for Educational Justice demonstrated the breadth of support for the city’s commitment so far.