Top officials in the city and state are still gathering information on how to address cellphones in schools as they consider a possible ban.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday kicked off a statewide listening tour that will include discussions with administrators, educators, and others over the coming months to inform a policy proposal for the state’s schools on smartphone use expected to be unveiled later this year.

At a citywide meeting for principals on Monday, New York City schools Chancellor David Banks told school leaders that the Education Department was still doing its research — signaling an apparent pause after Banks had told reporters that a big announcement on a citywide school cellphone policy was imminent.

Principals were asked at the start of the meeting to complete a survey on cellphones, asking them if they already collect phones and whether they planned to implement a cellphone policy for the upcoming school year, school leaders told Chalkbeat.

A Pew Research poll from June found that 72% of high school teachers nationwide said cellphone-related distractions were a major problem in their classroom. And a survey conducted by Chalkbeat echoed these findings, with teachers saying they feel ignored and have to dedicate more and more time to policing phone use.

Many educators and families are concerned about harmful mental health effects. “The Anxious Generation,” a new book by Jonathan Haidt, a New York University Stern School of Business social psychologist and New York City public school parent, builds a strong case for phone-free schools. Haidt also urges parents to withhold smartphones from students before high school and to prohibit the use of social media before age 16.

On the flip side, some educators and parents have said that schools should teach kids to use their phones responsibly instead of banning the devices. Parents are often prime offenders in calling or texting their children during the school day, teachers and parents told Chalkbeat. One parent told Chalkbeat that there were many times when her daughter, a recent high school graduate, had to “pounce” on a call to deal with college or scholarship applications.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio lifted the school system’s cellphone ban in 2015, concerned about inequities for students who were paying local businesses to store their phones before they entered school. The Education Department then allowed schools to come up with their own policies. As a result, there’s a patchwork of policies at schools across the five boroughs.

Some schools may have policies on paper barring phones, but in practice, teachers are left figuring out how to enforce those rules. Others collect and store phones during school hours. And many have their students carry around Yondr pouches, cloth cases for phones that are locked from morning to dismissal.

A third of New York City high schools use Yondr pouches to collect phones, twice as many as last year, officials from the 10-year-old pouch company told Chalkbeat. The pouches cost about $25 to $30 per student, with pricing varying depending on school size, a company spokesperson said. Yondr said it’s expecting “significant growth” in pouch use in New York City and beyond.

Chanan Kessler, a special education teacher at Bronx Health Sciences High School, which shares a campus with several other schools, said his school was the only one in the building this past school year that implemented Yondr pouches, and by the end of the year, many students had figured out workarounds. He and his co-teacher did an experiment in one classroom to gauge compliance: They asked students to take out their phones to do an assignment and offered computers to anyone who didn’t have a phone on them.

About 70% had their phones accessible, Kessler said.

Students would hand their phones to students in the other schools and then collect them later, use “dummy” phones for the pouch, or just break into the pouches. Some kids, he said, figured out ways to turn their phones on and listen to music even when their phones were in pouches. And what about students with smart watches, he wondered. Seniors were less compliant than freshmen, he said.

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Moreover, teachers did not enforce the policy of confiscating phones. In fact, Kessler said teachers were instructed not to touch students’ phones. As the city and state both work on crafting cellphone policies, Kessler is worried that enforcement will still fall on teachers — and that it won’t be easy.

“How do you enforce it, when students are really feeling that the phone is an extension of their being?” he asked. “When there’s mass resistance, teachers give up.”

But even if only half the students complied with the pouches, he said, it was still better than no policy.

“It sent the message that you’re not allowed to have your phone,” Kessler said.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education

Editor’s note: Chalkbeat stories are free to republish through a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Mayor Adams’ and Chancellor Banks’ effort to overhaul the NYC curriculum in reading, math, and early childhood education is being rolled out in an aggressive, top-down manner. The current NYCDOE leadership has pushed prepackaged, scripted curricula across all grades and is rolling this effort out in phases across multiple districts each year. In this series, we share concerns about the lack of cultural responsiveness (also highlighted in a recent report from NYU) in these curricula, the lack of credible research to support their effectiveness, and the ways we can organize and push back on these top-down mandates.

Concerns from rank and file members about PreK-12 curricular overhaul:

Overall, MORE members are concerned about the lack of teacher autonomy, the amount of money going to corporations and venture capitalists, the one-size-fits all approach to our diverse students, the culture of compliance and “fidelity” rather than critical consciousness and culturally responsive pedagogy. We reject the corporate takeover of our school curriculum, and we demand the protection of our students’ data. We demand autonomy about how and what our students learn. Teachers are being asked to implement curriculum which is not aligned to NY State standards or the NYS framework for Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education. 

A scripted curriculum, and the rigid adherence to it, is not responsive to our students and their context. The corporations that write and produce these curricula are beholden to their shareholders and are motivated by profit margins. They are not motivated by ensuring that all students have what they need to succeed academically, or by a desire for all children to read. 

If Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks were serious about addressing dyslexia in NYC schools, they would not be advocating a one-size-fits all basal reading program. They would not be removing literacy coaches in the middle of a curriculum overhaul. 

Response from the UFT has ranged from some District Reps completely denying that there is a curricular mandate in place to other District Reps acknowledging the mandate and insisting that any vagueness in our contract result in management (the district, superintendent, and principal) making the final decisions about how curriculum is implemented. We reject this capitulation to the demands and whims of management. 

UFT was granted a $7M, 2-year contract to help implement these curricula at the March 20, 2024 PEP (Panel for Education Policy) meeting. Rather than resisting this far-reaching curriculum mandate, UFT is rolling out the red carpet for and profiting from the implementation of these scripted corporate curricula. 

MORE sees this curricular overhaul as a haphazard attempt to slap together a response to the impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The reality is that there is no curriculum that will work for everyone, and our students deserve a variety of resources and the support required to meet their diverse needs. The best practice in education continues to be a culturally, academically responsive and sustaining approach. We need to move students towards grade level materials and skills while differentiating. A one-size-fits-all scripted curriculum does not support differentiation, meet the needs of students, or capture their interest and motivation.

Teachers and other school staff know how to support our students’ learning. We have fought for a contract that protects our right to teach our students using our professional expertise. We will not let the school bureaucracy eliminate our autonomy at work and deprive our students of a quality education.

HMH Into Reading 

Phase 1: Districts 5, 11, 12. 14. 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32

Phase 2: Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 24, 27, 28, 31, 75, 79

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, owned by Veritas Capital

Veritas Capital is the venture capitalist firm that owns HMH and is profiting off of the Into Reading roll out.  Despite having spent so much money and time on developing full classroom libraries over the past few decades, schools now have to purchase new consumables (the MyBook readers) each year, while classroom libraries sit and gather dust. Students no longer read books; they read articles, short texts, and short plays from their hefty MyBook. Schools have already invested so much money in buying and warehousing materials for HMH that even if data shows it is not effective, districts and schools will be reluctant to turn the ship around (despite Adams’ and Banks’ apparent willingness for the DOE to scrap the Mosaic curriculum after $200M and years of investment). 

The amount of money that has been spent on this transition to HMH Into Reading has been in the tens of millions, although transparency in the actual cost is completely lacking (despite multiple requests to the PEP for this information). The NYC Mayoral Control hearings were dominated by educators and families lamenting this new reading curriculum that does not involve reading books. 

Mayor Eric Adams has shared his struggle in learning to read as a child suffering from dyslexia. He decried the one-size-fits-all reading curriculum that he was subjected to, which failed to address his needs. His current curriculum overhaul gives districts a choice of 3 reading programs, each of which is... *checks notes* one-size-fits-all and fails to meet our students’ needs. Ironically enough, the most popular curriculum of the 3, and the one that most superintendents have chosen for their districts, HMH, remains completely centered around Fountas and Pinnell (F&P) reading evaluations. We are replacing one F&P program with another, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, while supposedly denouncing F&P as ineffective. 

Students are not being taught to write the essays that they are expected to generate every 3 weeks during the module assessments. Untenured teachers will be reluctant to assert their rights under article 24 without a unified assertion of teacher autonomy across chapters, schools, and districts. When the results of assessments are low, administrators blame teachers while in the same breath denying them any opportunity to scaffold and address gaps that have widened over the course of years in an education and economic system wrought with inequity. This includes the oversight that all students are required to type essays, but no students have received computer literacy classes or typing classes. This work falls into the shoulders of classroom teachers who are already being reprimanded for not adhering to unrealistic pacing guides.

In a blow to principal and teacher autonomy, schools are being dictated a pacing calendar by their district. This pacing calendar does not take into account the ridiculously long (16-page) end-of-module assessments that all students in grades K-5 take once every 3 weeks. It takes students about a week’s worth of reading lessons to complete them (25% of our reading instructional time is going towards these computerized assessments!). These assessments are not editable by teachers, and they are assessing the entirety of the module (based on 90 minute reading blocks), while schools are only able to fit 50 minutes of reading a day. Teachers are required to use large amounts of class time to assess students on material that has not been taught to them. 

The DOE continues to unfairly penalize the children who remain on the wrong side of a digital divide that has persisted for decades despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that the PEP has thrown at tech for schools. Without a comprehensive plan and curriculum, there is no guarantee that every child will learn how to use the very tools they are being held responsible for demonstrating mastery of from such a young and inappropriate age. We will continue to reward the children whose families already have money and internet access and computers at home and who have time and energy to show their children how to express their ideas through typing. 

Some of the components of the HMH curriculum include AI. Students’ voices and responses are recorded and cannot be removed after the fact. There is a huge privacy violation inherent in voice collection especially as DOE does not list this app nor post the privacy protections. Have parents given permission for their children to be recorded in this way? And how will this data be protected? 

We are greatly concerned about our students never reading entire books of their own choosing. If HMH is adopted across K-12 in some districts, it will mean students will not have independently read a single book in its entirety for their entire education in the NYCDOE. Is this the quality of reading instruction that independent schools provide to their students? Would Chancellor Banks or Mayor Adams be satisfied with a school system that never asked their children to read a single entire book?

The texts and excerpts that students are reading are not culturally responsive. As shown in the recent NYU report, this curriculum is actually culturally destructive. A text in third grade presents a violation of bodily autonomy and consent as a form of celebration. In the questions in the teachers’ guides, there is no criticality or examination of the deficit mindset or stereotypes that some of these texts reinforce. As the report states, we see patterns of superficial diversity and representation, along with demeaning language. The module themes direct the lens of the conversation– how can the “Heroic Feats” module’s text on St. Augustine fairly and accurately present the perspective of the colonized Seminole and Timucua population? Presenting settler colonialism as a heroic feat is a regression in our work with students. They deserve better, especially in 2024. 

Glossing over the impact of settler colonialism and genocide in a nonfiction text in HMH Into Reading, grade 4

Eliminating any pretense of consent, from HMH Into Reading, grade 3

Rolling these changes out in phases should allow for evaluation, feedback from educators, and cost-benefit analysis. No data is being collected from classrooms, despite claims to the contrary by NYCDOE. This data should inform the next steps in curriculum rollout, but we see no desire in the NYCDOE for information to flow in any direction besides top-down. 

In Spring 2023, the UFT assured teachers at a delegate assembly (DA) that the DOE would not be able to rush the new curriculum by Fall 2023, that there wasn’t enough time to train all of the teachers, and that a new time frame would be rolled out. By the following DA, the UFT had capitulated and gave the DOE the green light to rush through the new curriculum in the fall. Because of the rush, most teachers did not have all of the materials or training they needed for HMH. There has been intense pressure all year from the chancellor to superintendents, from superintendents to principals, and from principals to teachers to “implement the new curriculum with fidelity,” despite the reality that teachers had not been given adequate training on how to do that while meeting the needs of their students. 

Connection to Mayoral Control of Schools

The top-down implementation of the corporate curriculum project termed NYC Reads is only made possible by the monopoly of control that the NYC mayor has over schools. 

NYCDOE’s Mayoral Control system has been in effect since 2002. For those unfamiliar, here is the Democracy in NYC Schools website, and here are session 1 and session 3 of the ECC series on mayoral control of schools, as well as a panel discussion on Mayoral Control. IntegrateNYC  (power to the youth!) has launched Schools By Us For Us, critiquing mayoral control of schools as well.

The legacy of Mayoral Control speaks for itself– under two decades of mayoral control, schools have become ever more racially and economically segregated, and conditions are getting worse. One-size fits all corporate scripted curriculum means less differentiation and less responsiveness to our students and their cultures. Violence against parent leaders and educators are increasing, with many of the perpetrators closely connected to and advising current NYCDOE leadership. 

Mayoral Control is being referred to by Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks as “Mayoral Accountability.” There is absolutely no accountability for the mayor or his appointees under Mayoral Control. The mayor’s record low approval ratings don’t seem to be any form of accountability. Parents, educators, and students line up to speak month after month at the PEP, and mayoral appointees (the majority of voting PEP members) do not show any accountability to their concerns and do not address or explain their extremely unpopular decisions that fly in the face of the testimony being given to them. 

The players involved in the NYCDOE continue a legacy of privatization initiated under Mayor Bloomberg at the start of Mayoral Control. We are seeing a lot of self-dealing and a lack of accountability as deputy chancellor positions are created from thin air for corrupt employees, while the entire Department of Teaching and Learning is dismantled and their work privatized through lucrative third party contracts. Dan Weisberg is the CEO of The New Teacher Project, and the former right-hand-man to Michelle Rhee, corporate ed reformer in DC schools and notorious privatizer. Weisberg’s TNTP held large contracts with NYC Teaching Fellows until 2017. Weisberg continues to push back on the 2022 class size law (that is ALREADY the law!). 

What Does the UFT Contract Say?

Our UFT contract includes Article 24,which directly addresses mandated curriculum: 

Where differences related to school-based decisions in one of the following areas cannot be resolved, a conciliation process will be available to facilitate the resolution of these differences:

• Curriculum mandates

• Textbook selection

• Program offerings and scheduling

• Student testing procedures and appraisal methodology

• Pedagogical and instructional strategy, technique and methodology.

While the red carpet is being rolled out by UFT officers, and UFT teacher coaches have been brought in to facilitate the implementation of HS canned curricula (and the UFT teacher center is profiting from the , we are seeing individual schools and communities stepping up and pushing back. Petitions are being circulated at chapter meetings, addressed to the chancellor and to UFT officers. Educators must stand together with parents and students to demand better for our students! 

Ways to Engage/ Take Action

Educators at schools in Districts 20, 22 and 15 (and across the city) are already organizing against these curricular mandates. We are calling on UFT to stand up for teacher autonomy instead of profiting from and supporting the DOE in implementing this disaster.

We are collecting data on this form about educators’ experiences with corporate curriculum. Please share your thoughts! 

Talk about your concerns about corporate canned curriculum at your chapter meetings. Share information with your colleagues about Article 24 of our contract. 

Reach out to more@morecaucusnyc.org to find out about joining our Curriculum Autonomy working group.

We will be participating in a study group to read NYC Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg: Community Control of Schools and its Legacy and we invite other folks to read along and dispel the myths that have been spread by Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks about what they term “Mayoral Accountability” but is actually an undemocratic, accountability-free stranglehold on school policy, enabling corruption and privatization for the largest and most segregated school system in the country.

One of the country’s most prominent union leaders is raising fresh concerns about New York City’s sweeping literacy curriculum mandate, the signature education initiative of schools Chancellor David Banks.

During a panel discussion at a Manhattan elementary school this month, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten sharply criticized the reading curriculums elementary schools are required to use.

And in a recent interview expanding on her views, she said that she is “hearing a lot of frustration from teachers” about how the new materials are being rolled out.

“It became much more about the performative aspects of saying the curriculum is being implemented as opposed to the real support that teachers need and students need in mastering new skills and new tools,” Weingarten told Chalkbeat.

Weingarten said she supports the city’s move to mandate curriculums that line up with longstanding research on how children learn to read — often referred to as the “science of reading” — but the expectations have been “really rigid, and it doesn’t give teachers enough time to learn.” The city should also expand the number of schools that are exempt from the mandates, she said.

That message is not new, as New York City educators have previously raised concerns about the Education Department’s training efforts, and some school communities have called for waivers from the new curriculums. But the messenger is.

Weingarten’s comments represent one of the highest-profile critiques to date of Banks’ top education initiative. It’s also a significant break from the local teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, which was a key backer of the curriculum overhaul and has remained publicly supportive of the rollout.

The UFT, which is a local affiliate of the AFT, did not respond to a question about whether local union leaders agree with Weingarten’s assessment. She is the former president of the UFT and said she maintains a “very close” relationship with Michael Mulgrew, the union’s current leader.

Weingarten’s critique comes at an inflection point, as elementary schools across the five boroughs must implement one of three approved reading curriculums by this fall. City officials contend the curriculum overhaul will help flush out instructional practices that have been discredited by experts and boost reading proficiency rates.

And the stakes of figuring out how to train teachers to use new curriculums at scale are only getting higher. On Monday, city officials announced plans to adopt standardized curriculums across middle and high school math classrooms.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein did not directly respond to Weingarten’s comments. But she said in a statement that “NYC Reads would not work without our labor partners because they understand the power of providing high-quality instructional materials to teachers.” The UFT is also involved in training teachers to adopt the new curriculums.

Teachers are eligible for up to 26 days of coaching throughout the school year to help adapt to the new materials, officials said, in addition to other opportunities offered by local district offices. Based on surveys of teachers, the feedback on the city’s training efforts has been “overwhelmingly positive,” Brownstein wrote.

During the Manhattan panel discussion at The Neighborhood School earlier this month, which was co-sponsored by Chalkbeat, Weingarten took direct aim at the city’s curriculum choices. “The three curriculum in my judgment that the chancellor picked … they’re terrible,” she said.

Others have taken aim at the curriculum choices as well, zeroing in on Into Reading from the company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the program most local superintendents are mandating. Some educators, students, and advocates contend it is dry and too reliant on excerpts rather than full books, a claim the company disputes.

Weingarten later said in an interview she regrets saying the curriculums are terrible. But she stands by her view that teachers need more support and flexibility in implementing them.

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“Anytime someone introduces something that looks like a script — or every five minutes is regulated — it takes the teaching out of teaching,” she said.

At The Neighborhood School, parent leaders have raised concerns that the curriculum mandate will make it harder for teachers to use materials they’ve designed themselves and which makes their instruction distinctive. Known for project-based learning and inclusive approaches to LGBTQ students and staff, the campus incorporates lessons about gender identity, pronoun use, and social-emotional issues.

During Weingarten’s roundtable discussion there, she suggested schools that have strong instructional approaches should be given exemptions to the mandate. So far, just one school — a gifted and talented program in Brooklyn — has been granted a waiver, which came only after an advocacy campaign from parents and students.

The Education Department indicated the school’s high academic performance made it eligible for a waiver, but officials have not outlined precise criteria for granting them, insisting principals must submit a request and final decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

“My hunch is there are a lot more schools that should have gotten the waiver,” Weingarten told Chalkbeat.

Susan Neuman, a literacy expert at New York University, said she was surprised by Weingarten’s comments and worried they might sour educators on the new materials before they’ve taken hold.

“Teachers might begin questioning the curriculum before they’ve had a chance to enact it appropriately,” Neuman said. “One of the things that’s frustrating to me is there has to be a sense of patience.” (Neuman is a board member of the Al Shanker Institute, which is affiliated with the AFT.)

Neuman said Weingarten is likely trying to navigate the tension between requiring schools to adopt new approaches to reading instruction while maintaining room for teachers to adapt the materials to meet their students’ needs and respecting their expertise.

“This is a huge school system and they can now say there is some consistency … that is something to be recognized and celebrated to a great extent,” said Neuman. “We no longer have a curriculum based on hope and prayer.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Editor’s note: Chalkbeat stories are free to republish through a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat on March 25, 2024. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

In a major shakeup, the city’s Education Department is disbanding its division of teaching and learning, which oversees schools Chancellor David Banks’ centerpiece literacy initiative.

The deputy chancellor who leads that department is leaving at the end of the school year, according to a letter Banks sent to Education Department staff on Monday.

The announcement of Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning Carolyne Quintana’s departure took some staff by surprise. Quintana has been supervising Banks’ top education priority to reshape how the city’s elementary schools teach children to read, mandating that all elementary schools across the five boroughs are using one of three curriculums by next school year. The department has also been working to overhaul high school algebra programs.

“We are moving forward with dissolving the Division of Teaching & Learning and integrating its work into the Division of School Leadership under the leadership of Deputy Chancellor Dr. Danika Rux,” Banks wrote in a Monday letter to Education Department staff.

Banks signaled that the move was designed to put resources closer to schools — a pledge he made with Mayor Eric Adams when he first took the helm of the nation’s largest school district more than two years ago. He suggested some of the staff could be placed under the purview of local superintendents, who directly supervise principals.

The shakeup follows other efforts to give superintendents more power, with Banks previously assigning other Education Department staff who work in central offices to local superintendents’ offices.

“The superintendents are clearly in charge, and the content experts are subordinate,” one staffer who works in a superintendent’s office wrote in a text message, adding that they were “shocked” to learn of Quintana’s departure.

Shakeup could be logical for next phase of literacy push

Some observers are optimistic that the restructuring could help create clearer lines of authority and streamline the implementation of the curriculum changes. Before the latest shakeup, decisions about which curriculums to mandate and how to set up teacher training came from Quintana’s division. But the local superintendents who work with principals to implement those curriculums answer to Rux, the deputy chancellor responsible for school leadership.

There are challenges “having decision making split between the curricular choices and the implementation of those across two different deputy chancellors,” said Evan Stone, the CEO and co-founder of Educators for Excellence, a teacher advocacy group. The organization supported the Education Department’s push for a curriculum mandate, and Stone said Quintana is an “incredible leader.”

Another source involved with implementing the NYC Reads initiative said shifting responsibility for the program closer to the superintendents was logical now that districts have all chosen which curriculum to use and are focused on the daily work of helping schools adjust.

“This makes complete sense in terms of managing the NYC Reads initiative in particular,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Now we’re more into the implementation … and that falls on the superintendents.”

But other observers said that they are concerned that the reorganization will wind up shuffling many of the system’s literacy experts into superintendent offices where those leaders may not be able to deploy them as effectively. Education Department officials have not said how many staffers will remain in central offices or sent to local superintendents.

“Many of these district superintendents are just getting on board [with the new reading curriculums] and literacy is not necessarily their field of expertise,” said Susan Neuman, a professor at New York University who serves on the city’s literacy advisory council. She added the literacy council wasn’t in the loop on the shakeup which “came out of nowhere for us.”

Another department employee who works in a superintendent’s office said change could deliver needed manpower to help schools implement new curriculums.

“We don’t have the people to do that effectively on top of everything else,” the staffer said. Still, they added it was unclear who would be sent to their office and whether they would have relevant expertise.

The reorganization also comes at a delicate moment for Banks’ signature literacy initiative. The second half of the city’s districts will begin implementing the mandated curriculums in September, which requires a massive effort to train thousands of teachers. The initial rollout, which began this school year, has been bumpy so far with some teachers reporting that they have not received sufficient training on the new curriculum materials.

The overhaul of the high school algebra curriculum, which has drawn mixed reactions from educators, is also poised to expand next year.

Layoffs not expected

In his letter to Education Department staff, Banks indicated that the restructuring would not result in layoffs.

“I know change is hard,” Banks wrote. “I want to assure you that this restructuring is not a negative reflection of your work. In fact, we want to make sure that your hard work is as close to our students as possible.”

The teaching and learning division is staffed by about 2,000 people. The division includes hundreds of staff who oversee support for special education and multilingual learners; those people will not move to superintendent offices and will instead report to Rux.

Keep learning.

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Quintana did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the circumstances of her departure or whether she has another job lined up. The New York Post previously reported that Quintana was frustrated that she was paid less than a male deputy chancellor, though an Education Department spokesperson said that did not play a role in her departure.

“I want to thank the dedicated team of the Division of Teaching & Learning for their tireless work to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of students daily,” Quintana wrote in a statement. “It was an honor to lead you, and I will always be your ally in fighting for educational equity. I look forward to supporting this transition.”

Banks indicated the department’s Chief of School Support Miatheresa Pate will oversee the restructuring effort and will be the “interim executive chief” of teaching and learning during the transition period. The superintendent of Bronx District 10, Maribel Hulla, will move into the chief of school support role.

The chancellor indicated that Quintana will spend the remainder of the school year helping with the transition and advising him on “other key projects.”

Do you have inside details about the shakeup? Send us a tip to ny.tips@chalkbeat.org

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed to this story.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at aimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Editor’s note: Chalkbeat stories are free to republish through a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

A story, maybe apocryphal, Al Shanker was asked his reaction to sharply declining test scores after the forty day 1968 strike, he replied, “thank goodness”

Excessive student absence, now called Chronic Absenteeism, (usually defined as absent 10% of a school year, in New York State eighteen days) has been getting more and more attention. Perhaps the hierarchy is hip to kids, learning is tied to coming to school every day and coming to school is tied to the quality of instruction, kids sometimes vote with their feet.

The major education press is covering the issue, National Public Radio (3/10/24) “Chronic Absenteeism in US Classrooms is Presenting Unique Challenges to Teacher Tracking Student Data Falls Short,” Education Week (1/24), The Sticking Power of Chronic Absenteeism, and the Hechinger Report, Tracking Student Data Falls Short in Combating Absenteeism at School.

New York City, sort of under the radar is attacking this sticky issue. Each district has an Attendance Compliance Coordinator, each school an Attendance Plan, an Attendance Team, the Department has software (Insight) accessible at the end of the school day listing the attendance of every student, identifies students approaching chronic absenteeism and who are chronically absent, schools are expected to contact students not appearing as soon as possible after start time, staff members, ideally calling the same families. The Coordinators meet with other family service providers (i.e., ACS, etc.) to attempt to coordinate contacts to families.

Is the process successful? How do you define “success”?

This is not a one-time fix, the process must be embedded in school districts and schools. Ideally school cultures should blend collaboration and accountability.

The many city agencies too frequently fail to coordinate, if a family is moved to another shelter do you move the student to a school closest to the new shelter or remain in their school and provide busing?  It many take weeks to arrange for busing, schools are not in the shelter system loop and mark the student absent.

Some schools vigorously implement their plan, others half-heartedly, the competence of school leaders vary. 

Principals are over-burdened. This year half of the elementary schools are implementing the Phonics reading program, akin to learning to swim by being pushed off the end of the diving board, materials in many schools were slow to arrive, professional development difficult to fit into schedules, attendance just isn’t a priority in all schools.

I’ve been told over and over again, “poverty is not an excuse,” yes; however poverty is a reality.

Ten years ago the Center for NYC Affairs at the New School published, “A Better Picture of Poverty: What Chronic Absenteeism and Risk Load Reveal About NYC’s Lowest Income Elementary Schools.” Read here

The report reflects a Bloomberg funded three-year initiative to improve chronic absenteeism, with modest success, sadly the de Blasio administration moved on and created another initiative, named Thrive, which did not.

The report looks closely at NYC’s schools and documents the risk factors that plague struggling schools …Researchers found that from kindergarten through third grade 10% or more of students were chronically absent …scores on standardized tests were far below city averages. And many of the students lived in deep poverty with high rates of homelessness, child abuse reports and male unemployment.

The researchers identify 18 risk load factors, closely associated with chronic absenteeism and clearly declared the risk load factors and chronic absenteeism were intertwined, you must implement in-school practices as well as policies to alleviate deep poverty.

The author’s conclusion: “The best strategy to improve attendance is to improve school quality and enhance direct student supports.”

Generational poverty is commonplace, while in each generation a cohort of kids breaks free from the chains of poverty too many fail.  School is the ladder out of poverty, the CUNY colleges lead the nation in social mobility, students who enter college in poverty and upon graduation move into the middle class.

Chronic absenteeism begins in pre-k and becomes more difficult to address in each grade,

Hopefully the current concentration continues, interagency coordination improves, and superintendents continue to emphasize the importance of attendance efforts. Every kid pulled out of the morass of the streets, every kid engaged in the classroom is a success story, we just need more success stories. 

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

For nearly all of her decade long teaching career, Abby Loomis used one of the most popular reading programs in New York City, a curriculum that aimed to foster a love of literature by giving students plenty of time to independently read books of their choosing.

She found the program, developed by Teachers College professor Lucy Calkins, engaging — particularly for students who were easily absorbed by books. Still, she noticed many other children struggled to read independently, and Loomis cobbled together other resources to help them.

So, the fourth grade teacher felt open minded when the city announced in May a sweeping overhaul of elementary literacy instruction, forcing schools to abandon programs like Calkins’ in favor of those that city officials say line up with an established body of research about how children learn to read, often called the “science of reading.”

But a couple months into the city’s curriculum overhaul, Loomis and several other teachers said they haven’t yet received the training they need to make it work.

“The general sentiment at my school is we’re being asked to start something without really knowing what it should look like,” said Loomis, who asked that her Brooklyn school not be named. “I feel like I’m improvising — and not based on the science of reading.”

In nearly half of the city’s local districts this fall, elementary school teachers were required to adopt one of three curriculums alongside separate phonics lessons that explicitly teach students the relationships between sounds and letters. The remaining elementary schools will be required to use the materials next school year.

Literacy experts have largely praised the new mandate. By moving from a hodgepodge of different curriculums that varied school by school, it’s easier to train teachers at a larger scale. The city has added a pacing calendar that tells educators how quickly they should move through the materials, meaning children may face less disruption if they switch schools.

But observers also warned that getting teachers up to speed quickly with new materials would prove challenging — and that success would hinge on whether teachers felt adequately supported. The city did not give schools much lead time, announcing the overhaul less than two months before the summer break. Teachers were expected to roll out new materials when they returned in September.

Top Education Department officials have said there was little time to waste. About half the city’s students are proficient in reading on state tests — figures that fall to about 40% among Black and Latino children.

“In the best of all worlds, we would have studied this for the next three or four years,” schools Chancellor David Banks said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “We are building the plane as we are flying it because kids’ lives are actually hanging in the balance.”

Training efforts are underway

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said the city offered training for all teachers who are using new reading curriculums.

Teachers received between two and three days of training, though teachers said the introductory sessions offered by curriculum companies were mostly broad overviews including how to access digital materials rather than deep dives on instruction.

[ Educators: How are you preparing for NYC's reading curriculum mandate? Take our quick survey. ]

After disbanding its in-house literacy coaching program, Education Department officials contracted with several outside companies to provide individualized coaching to educators. All teachers in the first phase should have participated in at least one coaching session so far, Brownstein said, and will receive at least eight sessions overall. The city’s teachers union also hosted two-week seminars over the summer and has over 200 coaches helping teachers with the new materials, a union spokesperson said.

“Educators are receiving ongoing supports, including 1-on-1 coaching, throughout the school year to ensure that they are comfortable with the material and able to teach it with fidelity,” Brownstein said.

Most teachers are using a program called Into Reading from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the curriculum required by 13 of the 15 district superintendents who are part of the mandate’s first phase.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt made its sprawling set of digital materials free for city educators during the pandemic, and boasts a Spanish language version, likely contributing to its popularity. About 53% of schools in the first phase were already using Into Reading before this fall, Brownstein said.

But even as many educators weren’t starting from scratch, several teachers including Loomis — whose school began incorporating Into Reading during the pandemic — said they’ve still struggled with the densely packed lessons.

Teachers crave more hands-on help

One Brooklyn elementary school teacher said the rollout has been frustrating, noting that some teacher guides arrived late. And while she has concerns about the Into Reading curriculum, including criticism about its cultural responsiveness and emphasis on short text excerpts rather than whole books, she said the coaching has been a bright spot.

During twice-a-month meetings that last two periods, the school’s teachers are encouraged to bring their lesson plans for the next week so they can trouble-shoot with their coach, who was provided by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “I am learning a lot,” said the teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I wish it was longer.”

Other teachers said their interaction with coaches has been limited, and crave more guidance on how to transition away from Calkins’ approach. Some schools that previously used Calkins’ materials paid for regular coaching that was popular with many teachers.

Into Reading involves longer periods of teacher-led instruction, and typically asks students to read more difficult texts at their grade level. Instead of encouraging children to read books of their choosing, they spend more time collectively reading excerpts from a textbook.

Some educators said they’re looking for help making the lessons more captivating, finding that students may not be able to sit still for 30 minutes or more of teacher-led instruction compared with the tighter 10- to 15-minute lessons in Calkins’ curriculum. Others said the program’s texts are more difficult and are looking for strategies to make them accessible, especially for English learners or students with disabilities. The curriculum is packed with resources, from vocabulary and spelling materials to writing activities, with little time to get to them all, teachers said.

Meanwhile, multiple educators said they’ve been directed to reconfigure their classroom libraries so that they’re no longer organized by reading level, a hallmark of Calkins’ approach. But it’s a time-consuming task that has frustrated some teachers who contend they received little explanation about what the goal of the reorganization is.

One veteran teacher misses elements of Calkins’ curriculum, which involved modeling a skill and then sending students off to practice on their own. She feels like the scripted lessons from Into Reading lack creativity.

“I feel like I’m not really sure how much they’re loving reading,” said the teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

She’s also struggled with moments when the Into Reading curriculum assumes students have skills that haven’t been explicitly introduced yet, such as a recent writing exercise that involved apostrophes. The teacher quickly pivoted to a mini grammar lesson on the fly.

“I didn’t do it very well because I was trying to cover so many different skills in the little time I had,” she said.

A coach observed one of her lessons, but there wasn’t time for feedback. The teacher said she’s turned to Facebook groups when she has questions. Though she’s been in the classroom since the 1980s, pivoting to a new curriculum has left her feeling like a novice, spending Friday evenings poring over lesson plans for the next week.

Supporters say curriculum overhauls take time

Teachers have struggled with other elements of the reading overhaul, including a push to more consistently deploy phonics lessons.

Marnie Geltman, a third grade teacher at P.S. 150 in Queens, said she typically teaches older children where phonics lessons aren’t the norm. Geltman said that neither she nor her co-teacher have received much training on how to deliver the highly regimented lessons.

Education department officials said the city continuously provides phonics training, though Geltman said they’ve filled up quickly and she hasn’t participated yet.

“I just think it’s been too fast,” she said. “We should have been trained first.”

Others involved in the city’s literacy efforts said it is unsurprising that teachers feel overwhelmed in the initial phases of the transition.

Lynette Guastaferro, the CEO of Teaching Matters, an organization that has contracted with the city to help train teachers in three local districts, said the first year of a curriculum change is typically a big learning curve.

She stressed that changing curriculum strategies is a long-term project.

“We’re two months in,” she said. “This is about the next five years of change.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Editor’s note: Chalkbeat stories are free to republish through a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Educators: Take Reading Mandate Survey

Four years ago I traipsed to Ft Hamilton High School for a Regional Meeting addressing Graduation Measures in New York State. A few hundred of us were directed to sit at tables, I sat with a superintendent, a principal and a few parents. We watched a few videos, listened to a comments by Board of Regents members, similar meetings were going on around the state. We were asked to select a recorder and discuss a number of questions. The question not on the list, the question we all had: was the state going to eliminate Regents Examinations, was not addressed, each group reported out, a collegial few hours.

A few months later COVID hits and everything is on hold. A year ago the process resumed, the State Department of Education posted asking for applicants for a Blue Ribbon Commission, selected sixty-five members and the commission met monthly with a retreat in July.

The meetings were not live-streamed or webcast, in my view violating the open meetings law.

With considerable fanfare the final report was released and discussed by the Board of Regents Read here.

The Report does not make specific recommendations, it identifies broad areas and State Ed and the Commission will “fill in the blanks,” in other words the specifics of an actual plan in the forthcoming months

The Report is divided into,

• Consideration of multiple pathways leading to one diploma

• Review of Assessment Flexibility

• Understanding of meaningful life-ready credentials

• Culturally responsive curriculum, instruction and assessment
  

I must admit I expected a document with specific recommendations, for example, a number of years ago the State adopted Culturally Responsive Curriculum Frameworks Read here.

Do the 700 school districts in NYS have to adopt and implement the 64-page Framework document and the accompanying Scorecard?

The State has said: the State sets standards, the districts create curriculum to implement the standards, is the State changing the policy?

If the State is keeping the “valid and reliable” Regents Exams (Commission’s words), or some of them and at the same time creating other evaluative instruments how do we know if they are also “valid and reliable”?

The members of the Board asked many questions, especially Regent Hale (Rochester), who asked perceptive questions about the unexplained proposed expansion of CTE programs.

The calendar: a further in depth discussion throughout the winter and spring and the rollout in next fall?  Maybe, probably ….

A section of the Report discusses a Portrait of a Graduate, unfortunately ignores a Portrait of a Student who fails to graduate.

• A long history of excessive absence Read discussion here.

• Low (level 1) standardized test scores in elementary school and failing subjects in middle and high school

• Many poverty risk load factors

• Entered school in junior and/or senior high school with limited English language skills.

I have my doubts whether the yet to decided changes will address the obstacles to graduation noted above. Yes, periodic exploration is an excellent practice, better than the piecemeal changes over the last few decades; for example, if we don’t get kids to school every day the system is failing the students, blaming parents is not an answer. Improving attendance is a partnership: parents, schools and social service agencies. Why do schools with the same demographics vary so significantly in attendance?

If the system fails to teach a student to read and numerate by the third grade the chances are overwhelming that the student will fall further and further behind. What we call remediation has never addressed the issue adequately.

There are highly effective programs for new immigrants, watch the U-Tube here, you will find it revelatory.

The Report suggests we teach students to think creatively is a worthy goal, although can be elusive.

Should credit accumulation require seat time, or show proficiency on performance tasks? 

How do we measure school, teacher and student performance?  Is accountability punishment by another name?  

All complex topics with a wide range of opinions.

In the real world of school, preparing students for life after school means graduating and I fear we are not specifically addressing issues we know are obstacles to graduation.

….any powers that are not specifically given to the federal government, nor withheld from the states, are reserved to those respective states, or to the people at large.[10^th Amendment]

Education is not mentioned in the Constitution, and therefore is a power “reserved” for the states and segregated schools were commonplace under laws passed across the nation.

In 1896 the Supreme Court sustained a Louisiana law requiring segregated facilities on public transportation,

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it… The argument also assumes that social prejudice may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured except by an enforced commingling of the two races… If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.

In the lone dissent Justice John Marshall Harlen wrote,

I am of the opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberties of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several States of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery as an institution tolerated by law would, it is true, have disappeared from our country, but there would remain a power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the blessings of freedom; to regulate civil rights common to all citizens, upon the basis of race; and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens,

For the next sixty years “separate but equal” was the constitutional standard.

In 1955, in a unanimous decision, the Court rejected the separate but equal standard writing,

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

A decade later President Johnson proposed a major reform of federal education policy in the aftermath of his landslide victory in the 1964 United States presidential election, and his proposal quickly led to the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The act provides federal funding to primary and secondary education, with funds authorized for professional development, instructional materials, resources to support educational programs, and parental involvement promotion. The act emphasizes equal access to education, aiming to shorten the achievement gaps between students by providing federal funding to support schools with children from impoverished families.

Among his first acts President Bush passed the bipartisan reauthorization of ESSA, retitled “No Child Left Behind, arguing the law “confronts the soft bigotry of low expectations.”  The law required testing of all children in grades 3-8, the public disagregation of test results and the requirement of states to intervene in persistently low achieving schools (Read here)

The annual testing requirements of the law became controversial with increasing conflicts, civil right organizations supporting the testing requirements, arguing the testing results highlighted inadequate funding in high poverty districts and the opponents opposing “highstakestesting,” as unnecessary, both stressful and creating a test “test prep heavy” curriculum.

In 2015, under the Obama administration, ESSA was once again reauthorized, renamed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and generally applauded for granting to states far more authority. (Read detailed summary here). The law did initially encourage alternative avenues.

• Establishes a pilot program in up to seven states (or consortia of states) that allows for the complete revamping of their assessment system, meaning that it’s possible that summative state tests as we know them will be eliminated, replaced by competency-based assessments, performance-based assessments, interim assessments, or something else entirely

Unfortunately ESSA did not provide funding for what were called Innovative Pilots and few states applied. NYS did not apply, without funding the pilot was not possible. 

Randi Weingarten, leader of the AFT, argued for sampling rather than testing all students as per NAEP and alternate year testing, Wade Henderson, the CEO of the Leadership Coalition on Civil and Human Rights, representing over 200 Civil Right organizations opposed and prevailed.

The emphasis on testing, “test and punish” attitudes infected most states, and the criticism mounted

Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) introduced the “More Teaching, Less Testing bill,

 “We need a revolution in our public schools that unlocks the brilliance of all our kids and cultivates a generation equipped to take on 21st century challenges,” said Congressman Jamaal Bowman Ed.D. (NY-16). “This means valuing diverse intelligence and fostering school cultures grounded in joyful, rigorous learning across a wide range of subjects and skills. We must end the over use, abuse, and misuse of standardized testing in our schools, and trade a broken metric for a system that empowers educators and communities to excite, inspire, and challenge their students. Our already underfunded schools should not be forced to spend valuable time and resources teaching to the test. Kids deserve experiential learning opportunities, and the time and space to play, discover, and create. These pursuits cannot be bubbled in on a multiple choice scan sheet.”

See details of the bill here .

In a bid to get more states to develop “innovative” assessments, the U.S. Education Department has lifted the cap on its innovative assessment pilot so any state may apply.

The announcement came at the department’s State Assessment Conference Sept. 26-27 in Arlington, Va. (See breakout session topics here)  Until now, the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) has been open to a maximum of seven states (or consortia of states), but only a handful have participated, and none have applied since 2020. To jump-start interest, USED officials lifted the cap on the number of states that may apply.

As you probably remember, the IADA allows states to use competency-based and other models in the assessments they use for federal accountability in exchange for two types of flexibility in their testing programs:

• States can run their new and previous assessment systems at the same time without requiring students to take both tests, and

• They can try out new models with a subset of districts before deciding whether to scale them statewide by the end of the program.

Scott Marion, the leader of the Center for Assessment asks the crucial question,

Most people agree that the factory model of education doesn’t work. If we don’t want students learning the same knowledge and skills at the same time, as if they’re on one big conveyor belt, why would we require all the adults in K-12 education to use essentially the same accountability (or assessment) system?

We are moving towards significant changes in the assessment and accountability process and continue to ask:  how can the process help teachers to improve their practice? We must be part of the process, including teacher unions at the table.

The Board of Regents “suggests” watching a presentation of another approach to assessment, watch here.

I’m hopeful

Public school teaching remains a female-dominated profession. Nearly 80 percent of classroom teachers in our public schools are women. Yet when it comes to the top job — superintendent — just three in 10 are women.

Nearly half of the country’s 500 largest school districts had a change in leadership during the pandemic, but men still filled more than 70 percent of those vacancies, research by Women Leading Ed, a national network working to grow and strengthen the pipeline of women in education leadership, found. And men often replaced women in the districts where women had been leading — seven out of 10 times.

These are alarming and discouraging numbers. But they don’t have to be the end of the story.

We can strengthen gender equity in education leadership by actively supporting women who aspire to be leaders, opening professional doors for them and changing systems and policies that thwart their ascension to positions of power.

During my own leadership journey to become a superintendent, I have seen first-hand the attrition of talented women in our profession. I have also seen how sponsors, mentors and the inclusion of aspiring female leaders in key decision-making roles can be powerful tools for addressing these unacceptable imbalances, along with thoughtful approaches to gender equity in hiring and promotion.

As a teacher, I worked with about as many male principals as female — which is standard for the roughly 50/50 split nationally. However, central offices were always male dominated.

That continues to be the case in too many of our public school districts.

The lack of representation in leadership meant that when I did get a central office leadership position, I felt a constant need to prove I was worthy of being there. I believed I had to demonstrate daily that I wasn’t only just as good as but even better than my male colleagues.

Imposter syndrome, discussed across many professions, is something I felt and had to grapple with as I rose from building principal to head of curriculum, chief academic officer and beyond. I persisted thanks to sponsorships, through which my professional superiors actively opened doors for me, created trusting leadership environments and encouraged me to see myself in the female leaders who were in positions above me.

I was fortunate to have dedicated and dynamic sponsors and mentors. These leaders, women and men, not only took me under their wings, but gave me the chance to spread my own, even when my title at the time may not have matched the specific requirements of a given leadership opportunity.

Long before I became the superintendent of the school system that I attended as a child and in which I began my teaching career, I had mentors. My predecessor, Sharon Contreras, didn’t just name me her deputy, she gave me broad exposure to new challenges and management assignments.

She and other colleagues encouraged me to “just get in there and lead.” It was vital advice.

Women in leadership must often take their own seat at the table. That can mean inserting yourself into meetings and discussions even when your name isn’t on the invitation.

I believed I had to demonstrate daily that I wasn’t only just as good as but even better than my male colleagues.

It can also mean actively seeking opportunities well outside your official job description. When I served as head of academics for the district I now lead in North Carolina, I would ask another sponsor of mine if I could join meetings on facilities, operations and finance.

She always said yes and pulled me into an increasingly broader set of meetings and management decisions.

Sponsorship works, and as a woman in education leadership I am committed to paying it forward. This is a commitment I know countless of my female colleagues share.

However, there are also systemic levers that we can and must pull in order to bring about real gender equity in education leadership and in leadership as a whole.

Focusing on the composition and function of hiring teams is a good place to start — reexamining who is on hiring committees, what authority each team member holds and who determines the initial hiring pool are all opportunities for placing greater emphasis on gender equity.

Once women are on the job, ensuring that workplace policies and programs support and facilitate their growth and tenure in leadership is similarly paramount.

The reality is that women are more likely to be primary caregivers not only for children but for other family members too. As a mother of two with a job with 24/7 responsibilities, I know that so-called mom-guilt is real and corrosive if not acknowledged and addressed.

So, despite my real and important professional obligations, I make time for my family and demand that our policies encourage my colleagues in leadership and our school staff to do so as well.

Without that understanding, and without ensuring that people have space to meet the demands of their personal lives and make their loved ones the priorities they should be, we will continue to push too many talented, aspiring women leaders out before they can ascend to higher positions.

Well-administered family leave policies, flexible schedules and common decency and understanding can go a long way. The job needs to get done, but we can and must have humane workplace practices as we collectively do the work.

Paying it forward, pulling on the levers of policy change available to us and making gender equity in leadership an intentional priority all helped me and have been drivers of growth for countless women in leadership that I know.

It takes no great leap of imagination to see how powerful these changes could be for gender equity in leadership. The solutions are right there for us.

We simply need to just get in there and lead.

Whitney Oakley is superintendent of Guilford County Schools in North Carolina.

Class size has been an enduring concern of parents and teachers alike and a deep flaw of New York City schools for nearly a century. As far back as 1930, during the administration of Mayor Jimmy Walker, the New York Times concluded that excessive class sizes were the “chief problem” of the public schools:

“There is hardly any disagreement that smaller classes are desirable and that individualized instruction is better than mass teaching, but the task of substantially reducing the average size of class [is] the most drastic and serious confronting the board [of education] and the city.”

Some progress has been made over the last century, but not enough. In 2003, in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case, New York’s highest court concluded that excessive class sizes had deprived New York City students of their right under the state constitution to a sound basic education. And though both Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio pledged to reduce class size during their campaigns, neither one fulfilled that promise, and as of this fall, more than 230,000 students were still crammed into classes of 30 or more.

As written during the 2021 mayoral campaign by Gothamist’s Elizabeth Kim, “For some New York City education policy experts, the mission of reducing class sizes can be likened to a holy grail.“

But in June 2022, the State Legislature finally had enough. Especially as the long-delayed funding from the CFE lawsuit was due to be finally awarded to city schools — $1.3 billion phased in over three years — Senators John Liu, the chair of his chamber’s New York City education committee, and Robert Jackson, the original plaintiff in the CFE lawsuit, spearheaded the passage of a new law that required what city officials had long failed to accomplish: to lower class sizes. 

The bill, signed into law by Governor Hochul in September, requires that all class sizes in public schools be gradually capped over the next five years to no more than 20 students per class in grades K-3, 23 students per class in grades 4-8, and 25 students per class in high school, with an additional 20% of classes meeting those limits every year.

Because of overall enrollment declines, there is little doubt that the New York City Department of Education will meet the first year benchmark of 20% at or below these levels. This past fall, 38% of classes citywide were at or below the mandated caps, compared to 42% last year. Class sizes increased at most schools this year because of budget cuts to schools, causing the loss of teachers and important programs. In fact, New York City public schools have lost 4,000 K-12 teachers over the last five years.

It is far less likely that the Department of Education (DOE) will meet the 40% mandate in 2025 if current trends continue, and nearly impossible that these caps will be met in years three to five without significant changes to school funding, enrollment policies, and the capital plan for school construction — none of which the DOE intends to do. In fact, DOE policies are moving in the wrong direction.

The DOE recently posted a draft class size "plan" in preparation for borough and Community Education Council hearings that will occur this month (June).

But here are some of the important steps that DOE has failed to take:

None of the additional $500 million in CFE funding (called Contract for Excellence funding in the law) will be targeted specifically towards hiring additional teachers to lower class sizes. According to a City Council analysis, another 817 full-time teaching positions are due to be lost if the mayor’s proposed budget is adopted, although the DOE is projecting a minimal enrollment decline of less than 1% and an actual increase in high school enrollment next year.

Even though the DOE has assured the public that initial school budgets for the upcoming 2023-2024 school year will remain the same as initial budgets for this year, big cuts in funding that can be used to keep teachers on staff are being replaced with increased funding for specified purposes, such as professional development. Moreover, less funding is likely to come over the course of the year in contrast to past years. In fact, the initial budgets schools are receiving for next year are about $800 million less than they were as of March of this year. As a result, we have already heard of schools that will be forced to excess teachers -- again.

Despite the fact that more than 300,000 students were crammed into overcrowded schools this year, the School Construction Authority is instead proposing to cut the number of new seats by 38%, compared to the plan adopted in June 2021. In fact, in over 800 pages of the proposed capital plan introduced in February, the new class size law is never mentioned once, while only 46,000 new seats are funded.

Yet expanding the capital plan cannot be put off -- especially when it takes at least five years to site and build a new school. Instead of actually building the necessary additional school space, the Schools Chancellor is threatening to add more trailers at the last moment, which no one wants.

The need for new space would be significantly diminished if the DOE had a plan to cap enrollment at overcrowded schools. This change in admissions policies would  more equitably distribute students across schools. In many instances, severely overutilized schools are near extremely underutilized schools, as can be seen on our interactive school overcrowding map. Yet DOE officials have repeatedly refused to even consider doing so.

Instead of taking any positive steps to ensure compliance with the new law, the DOE draft “plan” repeatedly refers to the existence of a working group that the Chancellor appointed to help advise him on these measures. Yet the members of this working group, of which I am one, were not appointed until late April, and the group’s recommendations are not due until late October, too late to make the changes in the capital plan that are needed now.

All the actual proposals described in the draft class size “plan” are only vaguely expressed without any apparent substance behind them. Though the DOE claims they will “Ensure that schools with classrooms that currently meet the class size mandate have appropriate funding to continue to maintain these class sizes in SY23-24,” they do not explain how this will be accomplished; nor with what funding. There is nothing mentioned in the school allocation memos recently posted that even mention this goal.

The DOE adds that in the future, “efforts to achieve compliance…could include…considering creative interventions to support schools in meeting mandates, working in partnership with school communities.” Again, this contingent language does not describe what these “creative interventions” might be. In no respect does this flimsy rhetoric indicate any sort of real plan.

Instead, the DOE should commit to targeting funds for school staffing, so that the teaching force increases or at the very least is maintained at current levels. The DOE and School Construction Authority should also expand the number of new seats in the capital plan to ensure sufficient space to meet the smaller class size caps in years three through five.

Finally, the DOE should project what percentage of classes will achieve the mandated caps next fall and in the following years, outlining in which specific schools class sizes will be lowered, using which  strategies and policies.

Otherwise, one must assume that DOE officials are merely biding their time, hoping no one notices, until it is too late to comply.

The City Council has an important role to play in this. The Council should refuse to approve the DOE budget, which threatens to cut school budgets once again, unless it receives promises that total school-level funding over the course of the year will remain the same as this year. And the Council should demand that the capital plan be expanded and accelerated, or else it risks being nearly as complicit as the mayor in failing to take the necessary steps to create the space needed to lower class sizes to the levels required by the law — so desperately needed by New York City students.

***
Leonie Haimson is the Executive Director of Class Size Matters. On Twitter @leoniehaimson

Editor’s note:

All work on GothamGazette.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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By Georgia Lignou, Teacher of Social Studies and UFT Chapter Leader at Bryant High School    

Posted with permission from the author. Originally posted at:  https://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2023/03/think-outside-rubric.html  

When training to become teachers, we learn that planning starts with the “why” and this will direct the “what” and the “how” of the lesson. However, most often when we plan, we find ourselves thinking about the Danielson rubric more than we think of the students’ needs, the topic we teach or the strategies that can be most effective. When a rubric becomes the center of teaching and every discussion on instruction turns into a discussion of the rubric, we know we have a problem.

The Danielson rubric of evaluation entered our profession about ten years ago. For the first few years the administrators who were tasked to enforce it were trying to figure out how. Many administrators coming from an older tradition in education saw it as another bureaucratic tool that interfered with the culture and vision of their schools, while principals who were the new products of the Bloomberg tradition were more eager to codify the expectations, and some saw themselves as pioneers in creating the new Danielson rubric-based classroom.

Ten years later, many of the old Danielson skeptics have retired to be replaced by Danielson believers and Danielson crusaders who elevated the rubric to a dogma. Teachers are receiving write ups which are so removed from the reality of the classroom that have more in common with medieval scholastic discussions about how many angels fit on a needle. In addition, a new generation of teachers has been trained under this system and that is the only thing our students have experienced in the classroom since kindergarten. So, what are the results?

It has created a big discrepancy on how teachers are evaluated and often the difference between a Developing and an Effective or a Highly Effective rating is literally a change of address as teachers find out when they transfer, sometimes to schools within the same neighborhood and under the same superintendency. The DOE instead of using Advance to identify these abuses, is turning a blind eye to how diverse, subjective, bias, and punitive at times, the interpretation of the rubric is, when this rubric was introduced on the promise to quantify and mainstream standards of performance.

The evaluators do not teach, so they do not model what they expect, and there is no independent committee a teacher can go for justice and the APPR complaint process is, to put it mildly, a joke. The leadership of our UFT is relying of the fact that many principals prioritize differently; they still use common sense, and they are flexible with the rubric. So, for the UFT, the problem is limited to a few unreasonable administrators. However, when we brought to the attention of the DOE the fact that in Bryant HS, where I work, we have a history of low ratings, to the point that last year about half the teachers were found Developing on the MOTP measure only to be saved by the MOSL, we were clearly told that our principal was using the rubric “with fidelity” implying by omission that other principals are not. But for how long? In fact, with every passing year the number of schools where teachers are feeling the pressure is increasing.

The Effective ratings are turning into Developing even on lessons and strategies that were acceptable the previous year. Still the current application of the Danielson is inequitable and unfair but if its interpretation becomes ever more uniform. Bryant will be the example and not the outlier. It is indicative that the principal who we had up until last year, the same principal who thought that when teaching remotely in the middle of the pandemic was a good time to penalize her teachers for classroom management, engagement, and discussion, was promoted to a higher position in the DOE. 

Perhaps most important is the effect Danielson has on teaching itself. The workshop model of a lesson has become the only acceptable format. Group work, student to student verbal interaction and high-level discussion has become the only signs of student engagement. High level open-ended questions have become the only acceptable teacher input. The mini lessons are so mini that if the students blink, they miss them. Anything more, and the lesson is deemed teacher centered and therefore ineffective.

Students every day, and in every subject area, go through the same motions: a Do Now, a mini lesson, a reading using a graphic organizer for analysis and inquiry, group work, assessment, some more group work, protocol-based discussion and sentence starters, a share out and an exit slip. The material must be differentiated, and the teacher is to circulate with a tennis-chart (in case you are wondering, the tennis-chart replaced the traffic lights that used to litter our classroom floors for a few years) to assess what the students understood and where they need the extra help ideally to provide it on the spot. So, these are the buttons a teacher is expected to press with proper timing and even then, that Holy Grail of an effective lesson is hard to come by. In summary, we are tolerating a system where teachers are not treated as professionals, but they are micromanaged as mere facilitators of a well-orchestrated prescribed process, and yet they are the ones who must take responsibility for its failure. 

Independently, the above practices are valuable, but in combination they have become a nightmare of planning and execution. The learning environment this creates lacks spontaneity and leaves little room for the magic a charismatic teacher can bring to the classroom, putting the students through an unnatural even ritualistic daily routine instead. In fact, lessons must be “student led” and the main input of the teacher is to keep the timing of the activities. Many times, we just supervise our students as they copy things from documents to rubrics seemingly engaged when many are not even clear what it is they are examining.

We have not paid attention to the fact that their basic knowledge is not at the level that meaningful discussion is even possible. We are so eager to move the students to the group work part of the lesson that we pay little attention to the lack of context necessary to connect the snippets of history, literature, science, or math that might be the focus of the material that day. Teachers are faced with an unprecedented workload that barely leaves any personal time free, and they are penalized for things that are not under their control. That includes what the students say or whether students get distracted by their phones when we all know that disengaging them from their electronics has become impossible. On top of it we have piled other challenges by turning most of our classes to ICT and blended-ENL, thinking that differentiation will bridge the academic gaps. No wonder schools are faced with low morale, high turnover and the profession itself with a severe shortage of teachers. Finally, the whole system is fixated on numbers, but we rarely stop to think, how can we really measure knowledge. 

Is this education? Teachers say it is not. Student boredom and the gross lack of knowledge say it is not. Common sense says it is not. Then what is it, especially in a day and age that is so transitional and the calling to us all is to envision the education of the future?  As an educator, I am trying to figure it out every day, but what I do know is that a rubric does not hold the answer. Figuring out what works can start by acknowledging that which ten years later we know does not work. It must be a collective effort involving educators not outside gurus and technology companies. For that, perhaps we should go back to the original questions that drive our instruction.

“Why” we teach? The system calls it college readiness, but maybe we can agree that it is to help young people with whom we have been entrusted to become adults, able and flexible to deal with the demands and adversities of life and empathetic enough to connect with others. It is to create well rounded critical thinkers and civically engaged citizens, well versed, and trained in humanism, art, science, and mathematics to become world citizens. It is to help them develop the cognitive flexibility to apply the general to the specific and recognize the specific in the general. A well-rounded world understanding is a big task, but how can we get there if our students can be in 11th grade not knowing where the seven continents are and need convincing that the body of water between the US and Europe is not the Mississippi River? 

“What” we teach? That of course is guided by each subject area, and it cannot be addressed in this article which I am trying my best to keep short. 

“How” we teach? Engagement and relevance are a must, but how does or can that look like is a big discussion that relates to different styles of learning and the individual character of the students. The Danielson rubric has been interpreted so that engagement means verbal, student to student interaction, and true to be told, no serious educator will argue that discussion is not important, but focusing only on that is an impossible task for the teachers, and discriminatory to those students who learn differently. It is worth mentioning that in my 27 years of teaching, my best students were not talkers. They were listeners, readers, writers, and thinkers. But yes, students should be encouraged to talk, however, it is illogical to expect students in an algebra class to be engaged in the level of discussion students will be in an AP Government class or penalize the teacher for the lack of it in an ENL beginner’s class.

What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of technology? What is the foundation for critical analysis? In addressing the “how” in teaching, the questions are many, but as we look for the answers, we cannot forget that teaching is not just a craft. It is mainly and foremost an art and how we teach bears more resemblance to the flowers in a spring field than to the buttons of a computer keyboard. 

And the last and probably most contentious question is how we measure learning. Again, no serious educator will argue that there is an exam which can accurately do that. However, as the legislation to get rid of the Regents exams is already being discussed, we must think carefully what effect that will have on our evaluations and our profession.

The last two years when graduates did not need to take the Regents, graduation skyrocketed. Why? What do we prefer to be judged by, the results of our students, even if the exam is not perfect, or our compliance to a rubric? Right now, the answer still depends on what school we work at, but if  Danielson stays in place, we do need to think preemptively and see it for what it does. The Danielson rubric is boxing us in, and it is suffocating our profession. It is one of those things that future generations will look back at and say, “what were they thinking?” So, what are we thinking? 

Danielson on the Danielson Framework

Editor’s note: Georgia Lignou is Chapter Leader at Bryant High School.

We should start a conversation on teachers getting their freedom to teach back. In 2005, the UFT agreed to contractual changes that forced many veteran teachers to be trapped in their schools or become Absent Teacher Reserves if schools closed. In 2013, we put another nail in the teacher professionalism coffin when we let charter school champion John King impose Danielson on us.

After ten years of Danielson and with UFT contract talks heating up, maybe now is the time to convince the State Legislature to empower teachers in their classrooms.

Neurobiology tells us the process of learning literally changes the composition of the brain. But it’s harder to learn under duress. When you’re feeling triggered or emotionally dysregulated, the brain floods with adrenaline, your fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and it can be hard to carry on without an intervention. If that happens repeatedly but the interventions are ineffective or escalating, it becomes difficult to build healthy, trusting bonds with not only your teachers, but the school experience in general.  

As educators, we should understand that in order for learning to occur, for the synapses to connect and new neurons to grow, we need to create conditions in which students are physically and emotionally safe and able to focus on the intellectual tasks at hand. It should follow that the students displaying the most egregious behaviors are communicating to us that they have the greatest need for intervention. 

Unfortunately, the response to that communication through unwanted behavior often fails to acknowledge the neurological factors at play in each high-stakes scenario. We seek to punish, not understand. Too many of us want retribution, not healing. And through suspensions and expulsions, we discard, not support, the most troubled children in our care. 

This is not a post about the harm caused, and I want to acknowledge that. I do not wish to dismiss or downplay the impact of actions caused by children in the classroom setting. There is no doubt that those experiencing anger, fear, and hurt deserve healing and peace and the right to learn in a safe environment. But their right to a safe environment does not supersede anyone else’s. In order to build school communities where all students’ needs are met, we must pay more attention to those whose needs are urgently unmet. 

So what do we do? Many teachers, when faced with the data about the failures of zero tolerance, proof of the school-to-prison pipeline,  statistics about the disproportionate suspension and expulsion rates of Black and Latine children, particularly Black boys, are still reluctant to abandon suspension as a disciplinary tactic. They throw the question back, decrying the absence of alternatives. 

The fact is that there are alternatives, and unlike schools suspensions, they work. The catch is that they are not formulaic, and they are not easy. There is no magic response that will undo years of trauma and cause children to function in a space that is not built inclusively of them. There is no brilliant punishment that will teach kids their lesson and make them want to obey us if everything in their being is telling them they want to quit. What we need to think about is not children as general beings, but as individuals with individual needs that cannot be analyzed and solved by people on the internet who don’t know them, their histories, their strengths, their dreams, or their circumstances. But I firmly believe that even if the answers aren’t in front of our faces, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  

The point I’m making is that when children make mistakes, we want them to learn from them, fix them, and walk away feeling better. This is obviously a simplistic interpretation of restorative justice, but it’s exactly how I would explain it to one of my students. It hits at the heart of the philosophy that no human being is disposable, that growth and change is always possible, and that we are going to succeed or fail as a community and we must operate as such. 

Suspensions and expulsions fly in the face of that ‘community as care’ mindset. Instead of calling for harsher and more frequent punishments, we should be sharing ideas about reasonable and appropriate consequences that mitigate harm and promote healing. Instead of doling out sentences, we should be investigating root causes and putting supports in place. I’d love to be a part of a teaching community that sees those types of responses as righteous, reasonable, and possible.

Andrea Castellano serves as an elementary teacher, instructional coach and PBL collaborative coach in New York City’s public school system. After 20 years in the classroom, she remains continuously enriched and inspired by her students, colleagues, and the teaching profession in general. You can connect with Andrea on Twitter @teachbk and Instagram @teach_bk. 

Chancellor Banks to teachers in 300 schools:  “I know you’ve worked hard for years, dedicated, caring; however, you’re responsible for children not learning to read, balanced literacy doesn’t work, we’re switching to phonics, we’ll provide professional development as soon as we figure it out.”  The Chancellor has decided to rekindle the Reading Wars.

For the past three years, during COVID, I’ve spent a lot of time with my six year old grandson, watched his parents teaching him letters, numbers, colors, shapes and the beginnings of reading between his playing race car driver, firefighter and with his trains.  He started to sound out the J-E-T-S on my t-shirt and jumped up and down shouting, JETS, JETS, JETS. Do children learn to read by sounding out letters or recognizing words? Or both? At least he was learning to root for the right team.

In 1955 a book was on the Best Seller list for thirty-seven weeks, the book: Why Johnny Can’t Read. (Read here)

 [The book] advocated the teaching of phonics, a method that teaches children the common letter-sound correspondences of English words and a handful of rules they can use which, together with the sounds, allows them to read the word.

Why Johnny Can’t Read was one of the first shots fired in what later became known as the “Reading Wars,” a series of public debates over how children best learn to read.

The Balanced Literacy folk [See Lucy Calkins, Reading and Writing Workshop Model here] is favored by most schools in New York City, in New York State curriculum decisions are left to schools/school districts.  Carmen Farina, the New York Chancellor from 2013 to 2019 was a strong supporter of Calkins Balanced Literacy.

As the Balanced Literacy and the Phonics folks tussled Congress funded the National Reading Panel and in 2000 issued a detailed report (Read here) and the term Science of Reading was born, the report supported phonics instruction. Since the report was released about thirty states, either through statute or regulation adopted a phonics model.

WHAT IS THE ‘SCIENCE OF READING’?

In a science of reading framework, teachers start by teaching beginning readers the foundations of language in a structured progression—like how individual letters represent sounds, and how those sounds combine to make words. At the same time, teachers are helping students build their vocabulary and their knowledge about the world through read-alouds and conversations. Eventually, teachers help students weave these skills together like strands in a rope, allowing them to read more and more complex texts.

Most teachers in the United States weren’t trained in this framework. Instead, the majority say that they practice balanced literacy, a less structured approach that relies heavily on teacher choice and professional judgment. While the majority of students in balanced literacy classrooms receive some phonics instruction, it may not be taught in the explicit, systematic way that researchers have found to be most effective for developing foundational reading skills.

New York State traditionally leaves curriculum at the discretion of the school districts, although under the stewardship of John King the state adopted the Common Core Learning Standards, and the required grades 3-8 exams results moved from 2/3 proficient to 2/3 below proficient and the battle was on!

See my blog from 2013 here.

The testing opt out movement emerged, King moved on become the US Commissioner of Education and under Commissioner Elia the state began the move away from Common Core Learning Standards [Read here] to Next Generation Standards [Read here].  

The teaching of reading never arose as an interest at the state level.

In spite of the National Teaching Panel report phonics instruction lags.

John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics at Columbia University is a proponent of phonics based instruction (See an Atlantic article here and a NY Times article here.

McWhorter avers,

Scientific investigators of how children learn to read have proved repeatedly that phonics works better for more children.

Crucially, the method works well with poor as well as affluent children.

However, there is a persistent disconnect between the world of reading science and the world of people teaching children to read. Only 15 percent of programs training elementary-school teachers include actual instruction on how to teach children to read. There remain people who favor the whole word method, or a combination of whole word and phonics, or even no particular “method” at all.

Mayor Adams jumped on the phonics instruction train in May, 2022.

New York City will require all elementary schools to adopt a phonics-based reading program in the coming school year — a potentially seismic shift in how tens of thousands of public school students are taught to read.

“We’re going to start using a proven, phonics-based literacy curriculum that’s proven to help children read … This is our opportunity to really move the needle on something that has been impactful for our children for a long time.”

The “science of reading” stands in contrast to the “balanced literacy” theory that many teachers are exposed to in schools of education. That theory holds that students can learn to read through exposure to a wide range of books that appeal to them, without too much emphasis on technically complex texts or sounding out words.

Education Week, the weekly publication devotes an issue to the move to phonics and the multitude of questions,

A national movement seeks to change how reading is taught. Will it work?

More than half the states have passed laws or policies mandating a “science of reading” approach to early literacy.

In a sense, these mandates mark the end of one story—that of the activists and educators who have pushed forcefully for an evidence-backed approach to reading. But they’re only the beginning of another story—the monumental challenge of shifting teaching practices on the ground, classroom by classroom.

Are states providing enough coaching for teachers to feel comfortable with an approach still unfamiliar to many of them? Have they provided curriculum and teaching models in time? Are they selecting trainings and materials backed by science? Where is teaching truly changing and where are old habits still holding on?

Education Week has a series of stories about the Science of Reading movement here.

“When the Science of Reading Goes Too Far”   (7/29/22) 

“5 Insights in Getting the Science of Reading into Classrooms” (8/22/22)

While systematic, explicit instruction in these foundational word-reading skills is a key component of an evidence-based approach to reading instruction, the “science of reading” involves more than just phonics.

Experts say that students also need to have rich conversations to develop oral language, vocabulary, and critical thinking—even before they can read text. 

Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist, finds the science of reading team too didactic. In the Reading Mind (2017) Willingham explains the complexity of the learning to read process and how it is different from child to child.

Read Willingham’s comments on the science of reading here and a review of the Reading Mind here.

Eric Nadelstern, a deputy NYC chancellor during the Klein years and the founding principal of the first International High School, a school for new immigrants wrote in a letter to the editor in Hechinger Reports, [See full letter here]

While teaching reading is complex, learning to read doesn’t have to be. In schools where the primary learning methodology provides children the opportunity to work in small groups on interdisciplinary activities and projects designed to strengthen literacy skills, further knowledge, and deepen inquiry skills, all youngsters can progress to their full potential. In such classrooms, teachers guide and support rather than transmit and lecture. They understand that literacy skills and content study are inextricably linked, and that in the final analysis, learning is talking and teaching is listening.

Diane Ravitch questions the term “science of reading,”

Having studied the history of teaching reading and written about it, I believe that teachers must be prepared to meet the needs of students with an array of methods. Some children need phonics for beginning literacy. Some children start school already reading. I do not believe there is a “science of reading” anymore than there is a “science of teaching history” or a “science of teaching math.” Good teachers have a toolbox that includes but is not limited to phonics. Do what works with the goal of encouraging children to love learning.

Nancy Dunetz, an experienced teacher and staff developer agrees with Ravitch,

I am so tired of this. It is all politics-driven or capitalism-driven. I’m with Diane Ravitch. There is only ONE approach that makes sense, and that is an eclectic approach. Every child is different and learns differently. Good teachers know this.

The Reading Wars are a long way from resolution. Reading is a complex neurological function, we don’t know why one child acquires the skill faster than others, nature or nurture, we do know the skill of the teacher matters and we also know ineffective teaching strategies are difficult to extinguish in a teacher. Telling a teacher what you have been doing for years is wrong and we going to teach you a new approach are commonly seen as punishment. My “go to” reading expert tells me the skill of the teacher is the key element in the process,

Only the Lone Ranger can depend on silver bullets.