The preparation of public school students for college

Good afternoon, Chairman Jackson, Chairman Rodriguez and members of these two distinguished committees. On behalf of New York City’s public school educators and the students we have dedicated our careers to helping, I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak before you today on this important topic.

The headlines are shocking: Only one out of every four students who graduate New York City schools are ready for college, according to the State Education Department. Four in five who enter CUNY’s community college system need remediation classes, according to a report by the university. And the city’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, which had been relatively flat, revealed this year that students have lost ground against other large cities.

The sad fact is that the administration that has never stopped congratulating itself for ending “social promotion” has created a new program – “social graduation.”

The DOE has systematically dismantled teaching in favor of test prep, and left our high schoolers woefully unprepared for college-level work. This is the legacy of the Bloomberg administration, and the mayor’s “Decade of Disaster” running schools. And the smokescreens that the mayor proposed last week in his State of the City address aren’t even close to being solutions.

When you hear us talking about the need to get back to true teaching and learning, this is exactly what we’re talking about. Unfortunately, this administration doesn’t see it. That’s probably because the city represents management and political interests while our union represents the students and educators.

I’m here to tell you today that we will not see any real or meaningful improvement until classroom teachers are given a strong curriculum and are allowed to focus on real instruction – writing, research, analytical skills, problem solving skills and more.

To be truly college ready, students must acquire the skills and fundamental knowledge to properly tackle college-level work, including problem-solving and critical thinking. A student should be able to research a topic, synthesize the material, weigh facts, draw their own conclusions and document how they did the work.

What we need is nothing short of a cultural shift within the Department of Education, and a new emphasis on strengthening our students’ educational foundation. That begins with reinstituting an Office of Teaching and Learning, which the DOE shut down. As a result, schools do not have a core curriculum to use, and teachers only get a fraction of the training they used to receive. I want to note that we are moving forward with what’s called the “Common Core Standards,” but it’s important to know that’s not a curriculum.

Beyond the desperate need for a curriculum, our schools also need the resources and support to bring back the so-called “extras” that schools use to enhance student learning. I’m talking about the science labs, academic intervention services, tutoring, electives, art, music and so much more that have been forced out to make room for test prep or lost to budget cuts. These are programs that not only engage students academically, but also teach technical and employability skills. Smaller class sizes, guidance counselors and social services are also critical to college readiness, especially for at-risk kids.

The city needs to renew its investment in these important educational components, and bring back the programs and services that children so desperately need. Our schools have seen their budgets cut by more than 11% since 2009 – that’s had a devastating effect on our classrooms, and that’s why the UFT has been out front lobbying for additional city, state and federal school aid.

The UFT also continues to strongly push for the expansion of community schools models, which strengthen school communities by bringing outside agencies and services right into the building to service students and their families. The idea is to make schools into community hubs, and the idea has seen widespread success in places like Cincinnati, where there are people in schools every day to help students stay on track towards productive careers.

Investing in college partnerships is also a big part of the equation. I am a strong supporter of College Now, a collaborative program run by CUNY that served over 20,000 students in 390 high schools last year. The program is free for students, who enroll in basic skills courses and college credit classes either before school, after school or on weekends. Over 50% of the participating students who graduated high school in 2010 and attended college went to CUNY. What’s more, research has shown that College Now participants accumulate more credits in their first year at CUNY and have better retention rates. It’s a program worth expanding to all city high schools.

Likewise, we are also strong supporters of the Carpe Diem program and the Teacher Leadership Quality Program, both run by CUNY’s Office of Collaborative Precollege Programs. Carpe Diem helps students at some of our career and technical education (CTE) high schools discover and pursue career pathways in booming business sectors. The Teacher Leadership Quality Program helps educators improve their skills and provide students with real-world environments right in their classrooms. Both of these are programs that should be expanded.

I want to emphasize the importance of public/private partnerships that bring outside resources into our school buildings and expose students to new technologies and careers. Coming from a career and technical high school in Brooklyn, I can tell you that developing those types of partnerships and career pathways can have a profound impact on a school. They engage students in ways traditional classroom work don’t, helping to keep them in school and pointing them towards productive lives. I’m talking about partnerships like that of Food and Finance High School, which works with the Food Network, and some of our CTE graphic arts programs working with media and technology companies. Teachers have been developing these partnerships for years; it is time the DOE gets on board and helps us take them to the next level.

What we need to get away from are policies like “credit recovery,” at least the way it’s practiced by the DOE. The general rule, of course, is that if a student has not mastered the material at hand, taking the class a second time is probably the single best solution. Short of that, if students who need supplemental learning were given real, meaningful work, one could make the argument that they are truly expanding their knowledge base and building skills.  By meaningful, I mean working on solid research and writing assignments or conducting experiments in a science lab. The DOE’s idea of credit recovery is spending a few hours listening to a lecture. Moving forward, schools need strong, structured methods of going about remediation.

Credit recovery is part of the larger issue of credit accumulation, which has become a scandalous, high-stakes issue inside the DOE’s punitive culture. Once the DOE decided to plug credit accumulation (pass rates) into progress reports and count that information as nearly a third of a high school’s grade, those numbers changed from being a measure of tracking students to something “gotcha” in nature. The DOE has now added college readiness to the progress reports starting this year, making that a high-stakes game as well.

Test scores themselves are also a high-stakes issue. We all know scores can’t begin to reflect a student’s depth of knowledge on a particular subject, but if used correctly, test scores can be useful tools in the larger college-readiness toolbox. For example, the state says that a Regents score of 75 in English and 80 in math indicate minimum level of college readiness. That can be helpful to a teacher trying to individualize instruction. The problem is that those scores, like the passing rates for high school students, are currently used in a punitive way against the schools. It’s not hard to see how teaching to the test and pumping up credit numbers became the priority over true learning.

Lastly, it’s important to note that fewer and fewer schools these days have dedicated college counselors tracking coursework and shepherding students through the college selection and application process. Even students whose families understand the college application process need help, support and advice on how to make the right choices and succeed during the application process. Instead, counselors in most schools find themselves trying to squeeze in college counseling around their other responsibilities such as crisis intervention. Combined with the lack of communication and training from the DOE and huge student/counselor ratios that severely limit the time counselors can spend with individual students, it’s easy to understand why more dedicated college counselors are needed.

Higher graduation rates mean little when students aren’t ready for college work. One student told the New York Times a few months ago that “Passing the Regents don’t mean nothing. The main focus on high school is to get you to graduate; it makes the school look good. They get you in and get you out.” That’s the legacy of the DOE’s punitive culture. It is abundantly clear that the mayor’s strategy of pushing music, art and other programs out of schools to make room for more test prep is not working.

It’s time to get back to the fundamentals of teaching and learning. It’s time the mayor stop bashing teachers, start taking responsibility for not properly supporting schools and help us give children the quality education they deserve.

Every student deserves a high quality education, and the teachers and other staff in our schools have dedicated their careers to making that happen. Our number one priority is making sure that each and every student has the opportunity to succeed.

High quality teachers conducting high quality learning through a robust curriculum is the formula for successfully acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills for college. Give us a curriculum, give us resources and support, and let us teach. We stand ready to do the hard work of making every classroom the best it can be.