New York note

 

The second Campaign for Fiscal Equity March on Albany, in October 2016, via Schott Foundation—that's Jackson in the T-shirt in front, characteristically making sure somebody else gets time at stage center. Via Schott Foundation.

Something I didn't know about my state senator, Robert Jackson, who I've been cheerfully voting for two or three seasons and who finally won in 2018—actually a few things, thanks to Wikipedia, none of which played much of a role in his campaigns, that although he is Black, his father was a Chinese immigrant called Eddie Chu, and that he's a Muslim, and during his time on the City Council from 2002 to 2013, which is when I first heard of him, he was the only Muslim there. 

But before that, back in 1993, when I was living in Brooklyn, he was president of a local Manhattan community school board frustrated by the unfairness of the way New York City schools in the state budgeting process, and joined together with the board's lawyer, Michael Rebell, to found an organization known as the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which sues the state on the grounds that it was violating its own constitution, which guarantees that

The legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this state may be educated.

They won the principle in the Court of Appeals in 1995, with a ruling that the constitution does indeed require the state to provide every child with a "sound basic education",  during which Rebell became moderately famous and Jackson did not. And another in 2001 (by which time we were living in Manhattan, with two kids in the school system) that the school funding system was itself unconstitutional, affirmed on then-governor Pataki's appeal in 2003, but even after a 150-mile march to Albany (which I certainly remember hearing about, but I don't remember hearing Jackson's name in connection with the march, which he in fact led), but still the state did nothing. in 2005 Judge Leland DeGrasse tried to make it clearer: the state owed the city $5.6 billion in annual operating aid and an additional $9.2 billion over five years in capital spending for building, renovating, and leasing facilities; the state did nothing. In 2006 the legislature finally did pass the capital spending, but failed to pass the annual operating aid even when the Court of Appeals reduced the demand to a  suggestion, for $2 billion a year, and the effort to comply through a succession of Democratic governors, Spitzer, Patterson, and Cuomo, faltered after the 2008 financial crisis and seemed to have permanently died.

Until now, you see, when the state senate has finally achieved a veto-proof Democratic majority, and Cuomo can no longer play the houses against each other, and with the help of federal funding under the Biden American Rescue the plan is finally fully funded, with Senator Jackson's vote, of course, and he's finally accepting some congratulations:

We did it!

Today is a historic day; the NYS legislator has finally agreed to phase in the FULL Foundation Aid owed to NY's schools!

After three decades, I can finally say that we walk the walk and won for our children! pic.twitter.com/VhHCMvxbl6

— Robert Jackson (@SenatorRJackson) April 6, 2021

I just think this is so cool, as an example of what's happening right now. That arc was getting so long!

Me and Andrew

Can't get over these guys.

I've been thinking I ought to write something about Governor Cuomo's Education Tax Credit proposal, something he seems to have become mildly obsessed with:

He is putting his political energy into a proposal to enact a $150 million education tax credit program to benefit mostly private and religious schools – despite his veto lectures to lawmakers against such matters coming up after the budget.

“We know that it is justice,” Cuomo told a Jewish audience in Brooklyn on Sunday. He advised attendees to vote against lawmakers who do not support his tax credit plan.

The plan also has grown in size – from the $100 million effort he pushed in March but that did not get by the Democratic-led Assembly during budget negotiations. Critics call the program a back-door school voucher initiative that, in the end, will do more to help lower tax bills of wealthy donors to private school scholarships than it will to bolster the finances of the schools. (Buffalo News 5/18/15)

In the course of a crazy Twitter battle last night, I argued myself into the idea that it might be a little worse than that. Storify over the fold:

Mikey Mike, poor little rich mayor

Mayor Bloomberg is getting a little snitty about this and that as his endless reign draws to a close. Man needs a hobby, and, frankly, I don't think tooling around Bermuda in a golf cart or whatever he does there is strenuous enough.

Asked about the NAACP's complaint against the city's Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, he dismissed it with a "Life isn't always fair," and, as the Daily News reported,

“It’s done strictly on merit and it’s one of the bright lights in our school system,” he said. “If you started to get rid of those schools, I think you’d really be destroying something that’s great.”

Bloomberg balked at a suggestion that some families have an advantage because they can afford special tutoring for the test.

“I don’t know how you would take away the right to get tutoring or how the public could pay tutoring,” he said. “We have tutoring for all our kids. It’s called the public school system. We do it five hours a day, roughly five days a week.”

Ah, right, except when it's his tests, eh? That's another kettle of potato chips:

Because tougher state exams meant fewer city students were found proficient in math and English, Mayor Bloomberg has pledged $10 million to state test tutoring.... The money will be distributed to 532 schools where over two-thirds of students failed the tests last year, with schools getting between $6,000 and $65,000.

And on the question of Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson's plan to put some limits on prosecuting people for trespassing in public housing or certain private buildings, according to WNYC,

“If you want to bring crime back to New York, this is probably a good way to do it,” the mayor said Thursday at a press conference in Staten Island.

Well, not so fast. As David Cole writes in the current New York Review,  New York has indeed had a very remarkable drop in crime, going back to when David Dinkins was mayor in 1990,  but nobody knows quite why:

Was it New York’s increase in the numbers of police, started by Mayor David Dinkins, and supported by President Bill Clinton’s initiative to make federal funds available to put more police on the streets? Was it the introduction of Compstat, an accountability system that allowed much closer tracking of crime, particular offenders, and police performance on a precinct-by-precinct basis? Was it the focused targeting of “hot spots” and drug markets, or the emphasis on enforcing gun laws?

Quanell Carwell, Mott Haven Houses, accused of trespassing in her own common corridor.  New York Times, 9/26/2012.

Was it, as the police claim, the city’s aggressive use of “stop-and-frisk” policies, involving hundreds of thousands of searches of young black and Hispanic men? Or was it the “broken windows” policy, in which police broadly enforce minor quality-of-life infractions such as vandalism, public drinking, or prostitution in the hope that by restoring a sense of “order,” more serious crime will also drop?

Apparently the correct answer is "none of the above". They've either been tried elsewhere to little effect,  or not actually tried at all (the Broken Windows policy seems to have existed only in mayors' and commissioners' imaginations), or in some other way fail to explain the very real phenomenon.

As a matter of fact there was something that Cole mentioned that struck me much more than it struck him:

What’s more, New York achieved these outcomes without significant changes in demographic, economic, or social factors often thought to determine crime rates. Between 1990 and 2005, for example, rates of drug use in New York were constant, but drug-related homicides dropped by 95 percent. New York’s black and Hispanic youth population increased over the period, which many criminologists would predict would lead to increased crime, yet crime fell dramatically. And most significantly, New York City reduced crime while also reducing incarceration rates. Between 1990 and 2008, the nation’s incarceration rate grew by 65 percent, but New York City’s incarceration rate fell by 28 percent. By 2008, there were ten thousand fewer New York City residents in prison than in 1990.

It's those last sentences that made me sit up and take notice: to Cole, this is another happy effect of the same mysterious cause, but why shouldn't it be a cause in its own right?

For one thing, who is it that isn't getting jailed? It's not ten thousand people who decided not to murder anybody, because there weren't anywhere near that many murderers in the first place. Given the statement on drug use, it's an easy bet that they are mainly the perpetrators of those "quality of life" crimes that the Broken Windows policy would have addressed if it had ever been implemented: dope smokers, panhandlers, prostitutes, and those youths aimlessly hanging around the projects ("Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering?").

That is, mostly male, mostly young, mostly residents of high-poverty districts, and if you need somebody to fill out the "race" blank here, then you're not advanced enough to be reading this (but far from all of them would be African American). They weren't going to jail because they weren't getting busted, and if there's any policy reason for that, it would be the community policing style implemented by Dinkins and commissioner Ray Kelly in his first incarnation (rehired by Bloomberg years later, he has become kind of snitty and arrest-happy himself), and never quite given up in all the waves of policing fashion since then.

Rookie cops, South Bronx. Photo by Antonio Bolfo at Criminal Wisdom.

And then guess what? Then ten thousand boys were available when their girlfriends had their babies, to be called on and nagged into helping out. Ten thousand boys thought about programs for getting your GED because they had nothing better to do. Ten thousand boys looked for jobs, and some of them got one. Ten thousand men did what the mayors and Bill Cosby and above all their mothers are always scolding them to do, because they weren't in jail.

And then guess what else? As a lovely online paper by Randall Shelden explains, ten thousand men had civil rights that ex-convicts may be deprived of: the right to vote, the right to claim parenthood, the right to live in public housing. They were citizens.

There've been plenty of studies showing that raising the incarceration rate doesn't lower the crime rate, most notably in Texas. I don't know that anyone has ever directly asked about the consequences of lowering the incarceration rate (Dr. Google doesn't seem to think so, but of course that could be my fault), perhaps because it's not something governments usually do on purpose. I guess there will be some data coming out of California's prisoner release if the state actually carries it out. In the meantime somebody could try looking at places that emerged from more authoritarian to less authoritarian forms of government in the late 20th century: Spain and Portugal and Greece; South Korea and Taiwan; all those countries in South America; Indonesia and the Philippines.

If I'm right,  DA Johnson's move in the Bronx, in the spirit of Mayor Dinkins and Young Commissioner Kelly, should reduce crime rates further still (more needed in the Bronx than anywhere else). Bloomberg and Old Commissioner Kelly aren't really fighting crime any more, they're just fighting criminals.

And it teaches them respect for authority, too

New York City schoolkids are not allowed to carry cell phones to school, by order of the Department of Education—on the grounds that they're a distraction in the classroom, and can be used to cheat or organize other kinds of evil behavior. If a student is caught on school grounds with a mobile phone it will be confiscated, returned only when a parent comes in and asks for it.

From Times of India.

It's not only the kids that don't accept this, it's the parents, for whom it is a safety issue. Now that the phones exist, we all want our children to have one with them at all times so they can call us if they need us and so we can call them if they don't. So they all do have them, naturally. In a well-run middle or high school, like the ones my kids went to, the principal just smiles and says, "If I don't see the phone, I can't confiscate it, can I?" And so everybody including the principal is living in happy defiance of Mayor Bloomberg and his very serious rules.

But this doesn't work for everybody, as the New York Post reported today:

The city’s ban on cellphones in schools is taking an amazing $4.2 million a year out of kids’ pockets, a Post analysis has found.

The students — who attend the nearly 90 high schools and middle schools with permanent metal detectors — pay $1 a day to store their phones either in stores or in trucks that park around the buildings.

The cottage industry has become so profitable, it rakes in $22,800 a day from some of the city’s poorest youngsters, whose families would rather shell out the money than risk their children’s safety.

If there's a metal detector, you see, the principal can't help; the kid gets caught right at the door. And why do some schools have metal detectors? That's because of a fear of weapons, in particular guns, which was certainly justified at one time not too long ago, and may still be. And which schools have them? You guessed it, the ones in the poorest neighborhoods—that's where a schoolchild might have a gun—and where just for that reason the kids need their phones the most.

So why can't the mayor and the chancellor just drop the rule, and let the kids drop the phones in the basket with their keys and coins before they go through the detector and then retrieve them afterwards? Now, thanks to the Post, we have an idea: it's part of the mayor's program for helping out business by bleeding the public's money.

Frankly I had no idea he was concerned with such small businesses. I mean, I'm used to him doing it with Snapple, or Princeton Review, but these little trucks? I guess it's just a case of no child's wallet left behind...

The Pure Loyalty truck outside Washington Irving High School. From Huffington Post's Alona Elkayam, according to whom this guy clears some $2500 a day.

Old school

Lest you think the picture of education in New York City is unrelievedly grim, the Times runs a story today about (mostly elementary) schools where the PTA raises a million dollars or so a year in pledge campaigns that are largely supplanting bake sales and auctions as money makers. [jump]

The principal mistake

Duck tacos at Poe's Kitchen at the Rattlesnake, Boston. Photo by Boston.Grubstreet.Com.

Michael Winerip brings another of those horror stories back from the NYC Department of Education, but then starts wandering in an unsafe direction:

On the state math test, P.S. 30 did better in 2011, with 41 percent of students scoring proficient — a 3 or 4 — versus 29 percent for P.S. 179.

But on the state English test, P.S. 179 did better, with 36 percent of its students scoring proficient compared with 32 percent for P.S. 30.

And yet, when the department calculated the most recent progress report grades, P.S. 30 received an A. And P.S. 179 received an F.

Is P.S. 30 among the best schools in the city and P.S. 179 among the worst? Very hard to know.

No, you know, it's really not very hard to know at all. Or if you prefer, it's hard to know because it's a profoundly stupid and trivial question. Not so much hard to know as not worth knowing, because when distinctions are being made on this fine a metric then the difference between best and worst is not important.

I want you to understand this, Michael Winerip, because it's really making me crazy. If Schuyler sells slightly more cocktails on Thursday than Wednesday but fewer shrimp entrees, while Eugenie's cocktail sales decline a little between the two days but she does somewhat better on the shrimp front, do you ask if one of these persons is among the best waitresses in New York and the other the worst? Do you fire Schuyler and close down her section, replacing all the tables with tropical fish tanks? Or starting a "sharing" experiment with an avant-garde taco boutique?

The fact is that both these young women are very talented and commendable workers and the information gleaned in this little statistical observation is of no appreciable value in judging them. P.S. 179 and P.S. 30, in the same way, are both pretty dismal institutions, in spite of the Herculean efforts of many talented and compassionate people, not least the students and parents, and for reasons that are largely very well known that nobody appears to have any intention of doing anything about. One of these things would be support from institutions that seem instead determined to figure out ever more Byzantine ways of judging and condemning them.

Last week, 24 schools were closed based in fair measure on report card grades.

Whether a principal is removed or receives a $25,000 bonus depends on the report card grade.

And yet, what appears to be a substantial difference in two schools’ achievement scores can come down to just a few correct answers per child.

Yes, you do need evaluation metrics in the New York school system, but the failure you need to focus on isn't on the teachers, or even the principals, but the effectiveness of the support given by the DOE, or withheld as the case may be in favor of schemes to make it look as if the DOE is carrying out its responsibility...

Teacher accountability taco designed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Photo from The Taste Spot.

Education, higher and lower

Welcome to your New York City Education Department, where they are developing what you might call political correctness for clowns:

In an effort to eliminate potential "unpleasant emotions" among students, the New York Department of Education has placed a ban on mentions of "birthdays," "dinosaurs," "Halloween," and "dancing," in city-issued tests, the New York Post reports. (h/t Huffington Post)

Relief of School Scene, late 2nd c. CE. Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Trier.

This isn't your idea of eliminating test bias in favor of well-off white students, alas. This is just idiocy;

the mandate is meant to curb fear that references to those topics might stir controversy among students. Dinosaurs, officials said, could bring up evolution, Halloween could suggest paganism, and birthdays might create animosity among students who are Jehovah's witnesses, since they don't celebrate them.

CBS New York reports the word "poverty" is also not allowed, as "words that suggest wealth" might cause some students to feel excluded.... The department is also banning mentions of "divorce" and "disease," in case students have loved ones who are separated or suffering from an illness. "Slavery" is also flagged and "terrorism" is considered too scary.

And in tertiary education news, remember the ransom extracted from college students by the House Republicans last summer in return for allowing the national debt ceiling to be raised? Eliminating subsidized loans for graduate and professional students, and eliminating incentive programs for graduates to pay their loans back on time?

Remember that they decided to change the calculation of eligibility for Pell grants so you only qualify for maximum aid with a family income of $23,000 or less, instead of $32,000? And so on up the line, disqualifying hundreds of thousands of students altogether? A-and a cap of 12 semesters per student? Remember the fixed rate on Stafford loans, 3.4% since 2007, is scheduled to go back up to 6.8% on July 1 if Congress doesn't do something.

Hey, remember Occupy?

All these disastrous changes are effective in July (h/t jonnym at Kos). Obama has always had great ideas for federal student loan programs, but they mostly depend on a congress that doesn't respond; meanwhile, though, Bloomberg informs us today that

With $67 billion of student loans in default, the Education Department is turning to an army of private debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on borrowers. Working on commissions that totaled about $1 billion last year, these government contractors face growing complaints that they are violating federal laws by insisting on stiff payments, even when borrowers’ incomes make them eligible for leniency.

This information needs to spread around. I can't believe Obama and most House members of both parties want to go into the election without doing something about this, but I guess the Tea Party caucus, now apparently the Santorum caucus, represents voters who don't think people ought to go to college.

Remember this?

Back when I was obsessed with John Boehner, and his inability to do his job, I meant to say but never did that what Obama really needs to do is find some procedural way of not needing him—like naming a Republican prime minister who could call on support for some modest legislation from Democrats and those Republicans susceptible to the idea of being sane—I bet Eric Cantor would gladly take the job, he's greedy and dishonest enough, but I'm imagining somebody kind of like Boehner but capable of keeping his word, one of those old Rotary Club–type Republicans, lovers of earmarks and little constituent favors and whiskey, who still believe in voters, conservative or whatever. You mean there aren't any?

Grapple from the Apple

In a sane world, it would be the New York City United Federation of Teachers local that would be clamoring for the city to release the test score–based teacher ratings to the public, while the Department of Education would be begging to keep them a secret, because it only takes a glance at the numbers to see how stupid and unserious these numbers are, using the scores of tests that have been totally discredited in the first place, leaping all over the map for any individual teacher from year to year, and with incredible error margin spreads of 35 percentage points for the math scores and 53 (!) for English.

“No principal would ever make a decision on this score alone, and we would never invite anyone — parents, reporters, principals, teachers — to draw a conclusion based on this score alone,”

said Shael Polakow-Suransky of the DOE, trying to be reassuring, but why would they make any use of it at all? The numbers are basically arbitrary, and should not play any role in principals' decisions whatever. The fact that they have used them shows, really, what bad faith the mayor and his chancellors have been bringing to the table in this long debate.

Photo from Village Voice.

Also in a sane world, if the city's police force wants to investigate potential terrorists, instead of infiltrating Muslim student organizations all over New Jersey they could try infiltrating the FBI, because pretty much every terrorist plot they have uncovered over the past x many years has had an FBI informant right in the middle of it—doing practically all of the work, too. There's a pattern there.

It's the principal of the thing (update)

The Puzzle of Boys. From Chronicle of Higher Education.

The study I wrote about last January purporting to show that small high schools are better than large ones now exists in online published form (I don't know since when, but it is dated January 2012)—

"Sustained Positive Effects on Graduation Rates Produced by New York City's Small Public High Schools of Choice", by Howard S. Bloom and Rebecca Unterman (a different coauthor from the one named in the Times story)—and there are some new things to say about it.

The first thing is that it doesn't purport to show that small high schools [jump]

It's the principal of the thing

The New York education world is buzzing with the news of a study ostensibly showing that small high schools are better than big ones, carried out by Gordon Berlin and Howard Bloom of a nonprofit firm called MDRC, funded by the Gates Foundation, and "proving" the correctness of the path followed by the Bloomberg administration over the past ten years, of shutting down those awful old failure mills and then filling the buildings with these little boutique schools, the School of Armenian Studies, the Renaissance School for Future Hipsters, the Cupcake Academy, where all the math and science classes are keyed to understanding the life cycle of the cupcake,  and so on.

And does it, actually? There's no telling in any proper sense, [jump]