State Policy Impact on HCS Budget

(updated below 2015-03-31, and again 2015-04-03)
A link with clips to a document on the Hamilton Central website, at Factors Affecting the Hamilton Central School 2015-16 Budget (PDF)

New York Schools face an exceptionally difficult task when preparing budgets this year. The Governor has linked funding to an aggressive legislative agenda, and has pushed back the dates for sharing state budget runs with districts. This document provides a brief summary of how these proposals could impact HCS.

The Gap Elimination Adjustment(GEA) is an adjustment to state aid to schools first implemented in 2009-10 to help close large state budget deficits. ... The amount taken from this year’s budget was $474,572. We cannot predict the GEA amount for next year’s budget....With a 5 billion dollar state budget surplus there is no longer a budget gap, and there is no justification for continuing the GEA.

The final tax cap calculation for HCS that had to be submitted to the state by March 1 was -0.49%. In order to be tax cap compliant this year, we would have to reduce the 2014-15 levy amount by $32,232. Of course our expenses continue to rise, so even keeping the budget the same as the current school year would result in cuts to our current offerings....

The Governor and the Board of Regents advocate changing APPR so that 50% of a teacher’s performance score will come from student performance on standardized tests. [Part of the remaining score must be based on] observations... by an independent observer... This is an unfunded mandate, and would put more strain on our budget....

Contact Information:

• Governor Andrew M. Cuomo http://www.governor.ny.gov/contact
• Assemblyman Bill Magee contact via online form: ​ http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/William-Magee/contact
• Senator Dave Valesky​: valesky@nysenate.gov​
• Members of the Board of Regents: http://www.regents.nysed.gov/members/
• HCS Board of Education: boe@hamiltoncentral.org

Update:Deal Is Reached on New York State Budget; Ethics Measures Are Included - NYTimes.com

The governor had dangled a $1.1 billion increase in education aid in exchange for the Legislature agreeing to pass a series of reforms, including tying teacher evaluations more closely to students’ state test scores, making it more difficult for teachers to receive tenure and allowing the state to take over low-performing schools.

Teachers’ unions energetically opposed the governor’s proposals. ...

In the end, the budget will include an even larger increase in education aid – about $1.6 billion, according to Assembly Democrats. Cuomo administration officials said the budget would establish parameters for teacher evaluations that would result in a more rigorous evaluation system; the changes would be left to the State Education Department to work out.

The budget agreement would lengthen the time before teachers are eligible for tenure to four years, from the current three; Mr. Cuomo had proposed a five-year wait.

Update 2:Estimated State Aid for 2015-2016 is shown at 2014-15 AND 2015-16 AIDS PAYABLE ... HAMILTON which they summarize as

$ CHG 15-16 MINUS 14-15                                      140,890
% CHG TOTAL AID                                                 3.26
 
$ CHG W/O BLDG, REORG BLDG AID                               260,655
% CHG W/O BLDG, REORG BLDG AID                                  7.43

Most items are increased a bit, but the biggest single change is the $-291,889 reduction ("GAP RESTORATION") in the GEA. There's some discussion at Only 1 school district in Central New York will get state aid cut in NY state budget | syracuse.com

NY Merger Study in the News

In April, the Syracuse Post-Standard had an article with an HCS picture at the top, reporting that Report says change in New York law might encourage school mergers:

Syracuse, NY - The movement to merge New York's 700 school districts has virtually stopped since 1996 hamstrung by a process of multiple votes and tax disparities,...
A report by the New York State Association of School Business Officials shows that since 2010, some 30 school districts have studied merging but failed to complete the process for a variety of reasons. ...
The report says the obstacles to school mergers are: fear of change, fear of the loss of local identity, the perception that the merging communities are incompatible, higher costs and property taxes, more time needed to transport students and job security for school employees....
Most recently in Central New York voters in the Hamilton Central School District overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to merge with the Morrisville-Eaton Central School District in a December advisory vote.

The NPR summary of the NYSASBO report was slightly simpler: Study finds New Yorkers don't want school mergers, but of course citing the same "obstacles". The report itself is at 1398091412_NYSASBO School Merger Study April 2014 (1).pdf.

Nowhere, so far as I can see, is it mentioned that the proposed merger plan for the merger which Hamilton voted down was not actually going to save money; the economy of scale offered by getting all the kids into one place (reduced staff) was almost precisely balanced by the diseconomy of scale imposed by getting all the kids into one place (increased transportation). That could change, of course; plans which actually close buildings are more likely to save money anyway, and I've mentioned before that it would be possible, with a little more reduction in the school populations, to close and sell the elementary school building that's inside Morrisville, take those students to the MECS building north of town, and bring the 12th, 11th, ... ? grade MECS students to HCS -- which would let some of them sign up for Colgate classes, too. I'm pretty sure that would save money. (It might be possible even now, but the SES merger-study group didn't think so.)

I'm not sure how live an issue this really is; I suspect that most New York parents are thinking instead about the Common Core Standards. But I'm sure it will come back; the state can balance a budget with high enough taxes, but those taxes have been fueling a vote-with-their-feet anti-tax movement: to Florida, to Texas, or just to neighboring states with lower taxes. So the state will need to save money -- state promises of long-run aid should not be relied upon. It would be wonderful to think that they'll only push for mergers that actually save money, but I have no confidence that this will be the case.

Budget approval -- report from Astrid Helfant

Astrid Helfant (BoE candidate) with quick report on yesterday's meeting:

Here's a quick summary of tonight's Public Budget Hearing. Ellen [Larson], please read over it and see if some items need editing or if I left out some things that you consider important. ... The end result is that the Board approved the budget this evening.

- The BoE is looking to hire an interim Superintendent starting July 1st. Erin asked the salary for someone with a doctorate which is $135,000 according to Diana. Barbara proposed the possibility of hiring a permanent superintendent in the middle of the school year starting the spring semester. Matt responded that this would be fine in terms of the budget; such a mid-year hire could be accommodated. My question (which I did not ask) is whether the quality of candidates is better during for a normal July 1st starting time compared to a February 1st starting time. 

- The tax levy of 2.21% and the intent not to override the levy was submitted by March 1st. Although this is not binding, it was clear that the Board had no intent of overriding the levy. From my conversation with Terry Monte during the meeting it was clear that the Board may anticipate a worse budget year coming up as Terry gathered from a Superintendent coffee she attended. It would thus make more sense to avoid an override of the tax levy this year, as we may very well need an override next year. Diana did remind us that in a letter she received a year or so ago from David Valesky, Valesky stated that he anticipated a full restoration of the GEA within the next two years. Since this letter was sent a year ago, that may mean that we should have our GEA restored for the 2015-2016 school year. Of course no guarantees here. 

- I mentioned again to Diana, Matt and the Board that Carolyn is very interested in being involved in the foreign exchange initiative. I asked Diana who the Colgate Alumnus is that is part of the Southern-Westchester BOCES. She was very good about sending Debbie Kirley to retrieve his name for me: Jeff Donnelly. Diana and he had email communication. The full intention is that he is considering up to 5 boys most likely from China paying $14,000-$20,000 HCS tuition and who all may be living in a house provided by Colgate supervised by a house parent. This monetary amount of $70,000-$100,000 has not been included in the budget as there are no guarantees here. With the HCS Sevis rating good to go, we are however all set for students from abroad to come. HCS just needs to facilitate their visas.

- I brought to Diana, Matt and the Board's attention Stephanie's question regarding a second full-time art position. I threw in there the option of the 0.5 or 1.0 second library position. Diana first clarified that with Bill Magee's $50,000 Bullet Aid, HCS is able to maintain Jenn Brigg's 0.5 library position. Which means the total librarian staff is 1.5 FTE. The response was that since we cannot count for sure on the foreign exchange funds, we are unable to include such increased staff position(s) in the current budget. Maybe next year?

- Much talk was about the JV, Varsity and Modified Sports. David Ellis had a conversation with Jen and was particularly concerned with how the HCS administration presented their Sports budget to the public. The perception was that JV sports' funding was contingent upon a grant requested from Dick's Sporting Goods. The money received from Dick's would need to be matched by the Sports Boosters. This is however not the case. Based on the enrollment surveys for all sports, only those sports with enough enrollments to create a team are currently budgeted for. Any additional teams to be created based on unanticipated sign-ups will have to come from this grant. Dennis Roy said that no matter what happens with the numbers, money can be shuffled and the teams will play. It's a matter of getting the numbers. Gary Weeks and Morgan among others asked questions in addition to David Hollis about the sports budget.

- The "Enrichment" position is indeed cut. However, this position cut does not mean HCS students will no longer receive enrichment. Also, Johanna B. (Ag teacher) will hopefully continue to offer the Enrichment Bunch Program, though this is contingent upon funding from the Emerald Foundation as well as help from a second teacher.

- None of the other administrators (besides Diana, Matt and Dennis) were there. I was going to ask the attending Principals what their opinion was about a reduced (interim) Superintendent position (0.75 FTE). Do they think this would be feasible? Could they themselves make up for the reduction in administrative staff? Could they take on the extra responsibility? Again, I didn't get to ask this question, but would very much have liked to.

and Ellen Larson doesn't see anything to change in there, so here 'tis.

Update:Radio Free Hamilton has a report at HCS Board Approves Budget With 1.16% Increase

The HCS School Board tonight approved a preliminary 2014-2015 budget of $12,260,960, which is an increase of just 1.16 percent over the current spending plan.

And Dr. Bowers' blog has information on athletics at Will There be Girl's Soccer in the Fall of the 2014--15 School Year? - Dr. Bowers - SuperintendentHamilton CSD

Opt-Out Info Links: Information from a Parent

An HCS parent who prefers anonymity wanted to share some research on the opt-out "movement":

Here are some of the links I think are worth considering:

Letter and position paper by three NYC teachers (the position paper is quite thorough):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/04/teachers-refuse-to-administer-standardized-tests/

Letter from District 2 NYC principals to parents:
http://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/07/top-scoring-nyc-district-will-protest-ela-tests-this-friday/

Letter to NYS Commissioner King and the NYC Schools Chancellor by a parent/CUNY prof:
http://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/04/nyc-parent-cancel-the-tests/

History of the Common Core:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/

Letter by Award-Winning Principal Carol Burris:
http://www.liparentsforeducation.com/common-core-2/principal-i-was-nave-about-common-core-by-carol-burris/

On Market-Based Education reform, specifically regarding Pearson:
http://www.alternet.org/education/corporations-profit-standardized-tests?page=0%2C0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/pearson-pays-77-million-in-common-core-settlement/2013/12/13/77515bba-6423-11e3-aa81-e1dab1360323_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/24/a-brief-history-of-pearsons-problems-with-testing

Building the Machine (Common Core Documentary)--39 minutes long:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjxBClx01jc

update:

This link has feedback from teachers and principals who have seen this year's test, as well as some parent feedback:

http://testingtalk.org/responses/?region=NY

To these I (TM) will just add a link from Science Daily this week: Education: States' standardized tests have a negative impact on parents' civic engagement -- ScienceDaily

New research from a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found that parents of public school students in states with more extensive and stringent student assessment systems express lower trust in government, less confidence in government efficacy, and more negative views of their children's schools, thereby threatening civic engagement and the potential for future education reform.

 I'm a data guy myself--I would love to approve of more data collection, but once you start making decisions based on that data, well, as I quoted a while back:

Campbell’s law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making,” ... “the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

Pretty Good News from April 8 "Community Leaders/Fiscal" Meeting

(Updated below with comments from others who attended)
Every now and then, things have to go somewhat less wrong: otherwise everybody would understand that the Universe really is plotting against us all, and we'd be permanently braced for it. So this evening our oft/rescheduled meeting revealed that

• The GEA improvement in the just-released final budget run is $68K; (still not good, but less bad)
• Our State Assembly representative, Bill Magee, produced $50K in "bullet aid"; it may indeed be true that Our view:'Bullet' aid clear indication that system is wrong - News - Uticaod - Utica, NY, but in this case at least it is certainly plugging a hole left by, as the article puts it, "the state’s long-broken school funding formula". Again, less bad.
• I've written before on the possibility (and desirability, not just on financial grounds) of appealing to international students. Now it looks like the Southern Westchester BOCES is setting up an exchange student program to which we need only say "yes", for an initial version with probably five students, paying HCS $14-20K each in addition to the money that pays for their stay and supervision here; that's obviously complex, and takes most of the money that their parents pay. Astonishingly, this could happen next year and could add another $70K--$100K to the budget. (The tuition may be less than the average cost of educating an HCS student, but is far more than the marginal cost; it's mostly "profit".) In this case HCS benefits from the Colgate connection and the fact that Homeland Security has already investigated us, costs being paid by a previous student's family.
• Classrooms for special education, a huge expense for HCS, are being reshuffled in complex ways; Molly (BoE President) wanted to comment on the cleverness of the juggling act, without which "we'd be in a very different place."
• And for the moment, the resource officer is off the budget.

What with all the savings, it appears that we keep our full-time art teacher (1.5 art teachers total). Only the "supplemental innovation/enrichment" person is cut. Diana argues against looking for a part-time superintendent...hmm...dunno. Molly says, in response to the observation that we have a few more administrators than comparably sized schools, that she checked on specifics and was told that "for historical reasons" we list a couple of positions, such as the technology directory, as an administrative post where the "low-administration" schools would list the people doing this as teachers. This is plausible, and overall the news is much less bad than it seemed this morning.

Update on Opt-Out Our opt-out percentage may have been high, with almost a quarter of the affected students sitting out the test, but the protest has been heard and it wasn't just us: about 30K students in the state opted out, a vote of no confidence on the current nysed administration has gone through, the new administration is sounding different, the test is invalid and there's no way it will be used. I will probably update with other notes (we talked about telepresence and such) and maybe with more links Real Soon Now, but that's all for the moment.

Update: notes from other attendees:
Susan Marafino adds

I mentioned that [Carolyn Hsu] would be a good person to be involved with the potential exchange student program with Southern Westchester BOCES. The coordinator happens to be a Colgate alumni - Diana couldn't recall his name.  HCS would apparently be the first school to be part of this BOCES exchange student program, and  one appeal for choosing our district, besides the Colgate connection, is that we already have the SEVIS rating.

I missed the first minute of the meeting, but after the meeting Bud Ballinger confirmed that the strings position was being restored to current levels including 2nd and 3rd grade.

Lastly, Diana mentioned, following a question from Astrid about JV sports, that the girls soccer program was being cut because "there aren't sufficient numbers".  This is on the heels of girls volleyball being moved to the fall.  To my understanding, there has been no discussion of this in any BOE meeting to date, so it was surprising to hear it presented as fait accompli.  Considering that the last item on tonight's agenda was "asking for collaboration and transparency as a two-way street", this certainly merits further discussion at the next board meeting, as well as with student athletes and their parents, and Sports Boosters.

Heather Cigeroglu then added

Just a few other notes to point out...

• Susan had mentioned the shift of girls volleyball to the fall. In response, Diana mentioned that Jen Dean should be asked about this because it was Jen and Denny Roy that made the switch based upon a student survey that was given.

• There will be potentially 4 positions opening up at HCS if the budget is passed: 

       2 Guidance Positions (long-term maternity leave) 

       1 Art Position (not sure if full or part is being advertised)

       1 Special Education Position

* I was hoping that the .5 art teacher would somehow be able to extend their position by teaching courses that the technology and innovation coordinator may have taught so not to completely loss that portion of the curriculum and also to be a support to PBL since this is how art teachers have always approached their material. I don’t think I was clear on my intention, I think many people thought I was just advocating to bump the part-time to a full-time position which was not the main intent. Following my comment, Audrey Miller made a great point that although it would be great to have two full-time art teachers there is still only one librarian for the school. An excellent point really.

• Currently the Board is looking into Interim candidates and once he/she is decided on they will then focus their energies on a full superintendent search. 

• The PBL (Project Based Learning) model http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning is just beginning to become incorporated as part of the curriculum at HCS. Diana explained that she prefers to refer to it as process-based learning, placing more emphasis on the process than the product. I have to agree with her on that. 

  Audrey Miller seemed very positive about the experiences her 1st graders are    

  having with the PBL approach. 

• Also, for at-risk students or students who prefer a “hands-on” approach to learning BOCES will be offering a model similar to Tech Valley to 9th and 10th graders. http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/morning_call/2014/03/tech-valley-high-school-model-to-be-replicated.html  If i’m not mistaken, High school programs at BOCES are currently only offered to students in 11th and 12th grade. They hope this program will help catch students before they lose complete interest in school and fall behind.

Astrid Helfant said

Let me add to this Diana's rebuttal in response to my letter to the Board regarding a 0.75 FTE (interim) superintendent position. Her comments included that it would not be of benefit to HCS to reduce the superintendent position. She of course emphasized that she had nothing to gain from advocating this on behalf of HCS considering she's leaving her job this summer. Diana stated that those schools that have reduced superintendent and / or shared principal jobs are of lesser educational standing compared to schools that have no part-time upper level administrator positions. Also, according to Diana, HCS would not be able to hire as good a candidate if it were seeking to fill a less than full-time slot.

Furthermore, and Molly chimed in here, they both critiqued the earlier comparison Ferdinand and I vocalized during a board meeting regarding HCS having 6.0 FTE administrator positions compared to other similar sized schools with only 4.0 administrator positions. Such a comparison, they stated, is invalid as Hamilton includes its Technology Director as part of administrator staff, whereas other schools may include this position under teaching staff. So in essence, according to this argument, we'd be comparing apples to oranges.

Thanks also to Stephanie for backing me up on this reduced superintendent position by underscoring at the end of this discussion that my original letter to the Board suggested this may make sense for the interim job, which does not necessarily mean this is the way to go for the long term.

 and finally, Stephanie McClintick did some research on the athletic issue:

I wrote to Brian Rose who had no idea that there was a possibility of canceling soccer at HCS in the fall. He met with the Jen Dean, the AD this morning, and said that there would be girls soccer.

And a note from me (Tom Myers) -- I had been supporting the part-time interim superintendent idea, and wasn't immediately convinced by Diana's rebuttal: in particular, Diana commented that we could pay less and get a "manager" but not an "educational leader" and I wasn't sure that was bad. Thinking about what Astrid said and back to Diana's remarks leads me to think I was wrong. If we're hoping to get new things to happen, such as the international student project or electrical cogeneration or telepresence in any of its forms or whatever, then we do need more. The Bottom Line for me is that we're probably doing okay for next year... Yaaaaaay!! But there are several troubles on the horizon. So it goes.

Opt-Out Update; (BoE Candidate) Larson Letter

At the end of last month, I described HamiltonCentralOptions: The Opt-Out Option; Parental Protests Against Over-Testing. As Radio Free Hamilton said after the tests, Large Number of HCS Students Opt Out of Test

Almost one quarter of the HCS students in grades 3-8 who were supposed to take Tuesday's state mandated English Language Arts standardized test did not....
Opting out of the exams has become a sizeable movement in New York State, often linked to dissatisfaction with how the state has introduced the Common Core curriculum.

A comment on the RFH post deserves some attention, in part because the author, Dr. Ellen Larson, is one of the candidates in our BoE race; this copy restores the formatting lost in the RFH comment box:

 It appears to me from what I can find through google this may very well represent one of the highest ratios of opting out reported.

To be clear- I am not saying that I support these tests or this testing chapter and verse.
I have not found or seen evidence that these tests have been validated.

I do see value in the common core standards.
I do NOT see value in the common core modular curriculum.
I do see some role for validated standardized tests.
I value our school and our teachers and our administration at HCS for having the foresight to see what we can do with the common core standards by avoiding the modular curriculum.
I also believe that every school's approach to this is a work in progress and everyone - administrators, teachers, kids and parents have a lot to learn through the process and as it evolves.
I do believe in "civil disobedience"- but I did not see that opting out of the test was going to be an effective message - my concern being that kids opting out of testing was really punishing the teacher and the school district not the governor or his educational commissioner.


So I have to ask the questions:
Of the 1/4 of families that opted out of state testing in the Hamilton school district:
How many of those families have ever attended a school board meeting?
How many of those families have attended a school board meeting regularly?
How many of those families have any idea what an APPR is?
How many of those families have any idea what the consequences of opting out of testing may be for the  school or the teacher?
How many of those families have any idea what the common core standards are?
How many of those families have any idea what the difference is between the common core curriculum and the common core standards?
How many of those families have any idea what the Hamilton School District has or has not done to achieve the common core standards?
How many of those families understand what a modular curriculum Is?
How many of those families know what Hamilton's curriculum is ?
How many of those families have ever written a letter, sent an email, or called their Governor, congressman, assemblyman, or State Education Commissioner about this or any other issue?
How many of these families have attended a school budget meeting or discussion?
How many of those children understand why they didn't take the test?

My hope for the outcome of this is that if this many families within the Hamilton School District feel this strongly about their children's education that they will start to participate in these things and start putting voices and signatures and votes out where they make a difference. 

"Helfant for BoE" flyer

I don't yet feel that I know enough about some of the candidates for vacant BoE spots; here's a flyer for Astrid Helfant (PTO President), along with an open letter she recently sent to the current Board, and I'll be happy to post information about any others.

And the open letter she sent to the Board was

Hello -

Thank you for the work that all of you do to keep our school running smoothly. I have a few questions regarding the HCS Budget. I would very much appreciate all of your input. I plan on attending the two budget meetings held this week at HCS and would be happy to receive answers then.

Based on the information I've gathered from all the HCS meetings I've attended the last couple of months, I understand that the following are being (re)considered so as to balance the HCS budget:

- reducing the string program by eliminating 2nd and 3rd grade strings
- reducing the art positions at the elementary and high school to roughly 1.67 FTE
- continuing the cut of Junior Varsity Sports
- changing the pre-K program from two mornings to one morning and one afternoon

Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of these statements.

I was wondering if we could avoid all of these cuts / reductions by hiring an interim HCS Superintendent at 0.75 FTE instead and by eliminating the safety officer as well.

Could such changes enable HCS to reinstate the full string program, not reduce but instead increase the art program to 2 FTE, keep the pre-K to two morning sessions at least for the fall semester and reinstate Junior Varsity Sports?

If these items (or at least some of them) are still on the cutting board, would the BoE consider inquiring whether going beyond the 2% tax levy is a feasible option in our town.

Thank you for considering my suggestions. I look forward to the upcoming budget meetings and hope that these items could be addressed. Though I will confess, Molly, that I'm not sure the extent at which board members will be present during these two meetings.

Thank you again for your time,

Astrid

The Opt-Out Option; Parental Protests Against Over-Testing

Bottom line: NYS wants to use "high-stakes testing" to see how well schools (and teachers) are teaching the material that can be readily tested. This is great, except that it forces schools (and teachers) to concentrate on that material to the exclusion of whatever has to be left off those tests, and sometimes the leftover material is crucial. "Teaching to the test" is inevitable -- and bad. A lot of parents choose to protest by having their children opt out of the evaluative tests.

---

Our outgoing Superintendent posts Guidance for the Upcoming State Exams - Dr. Bowers - SuperintendentHamilton CSD

Recently, we have had a number of students ask questions about the school's reaction if a parent or child "refuses" to take the 3rd - 8th grade State Assessments. Attached please find a copy of the letter that was sent home to parents to clarify the district's viewpoint.

The crucial paragraphs:

   As per prior memorandum from the New York State Education Department (NYSED), please be aware that low assessment participation rates could adversely impact a school district's funding or increased state oversight of local school functions.

   Therefore it will be our practice to provide each student with a copy of each examination that students in that grade level are required to complete. Parents that wish for the child to be released from State testing must communicate their "intent of refusal" to HCS, before the exam is given. Upon receipt of the refusal, the district will arrange an alternative activity and the student will read quietly in an alternate location, rather than complete the examination. Their exam will be coded as "not tested." Although the student will not be penalized for the refusal, the school district may experience the effects described above.

It's pretty much what I remember her saying at the BoE meeting I put here but she did say a bit about the opt-out movement being even stronger downstate. Here's a video summary from NYS Allies for Public Education: They disagree with one point in Dr. Bowers' letter: they note that the threat of impact on school funding has not been carried through yet, and they don't believe it will be. A variety of web sites have more information, such as Opt Out CNY

dedicated to informing the Central New York public about the negative negative impact that high-stakes standardized tests are having on children and public education... How to REFUSE NYS Grade 3-8 TESTS

There are forums like the Onondaga Forum to focus on opting children out of state tests, other Common Core issues | syracuse.com As that "other Common Core issues" suggests, it's a national issue; United Opt Out National has a New York section, but there's nothing that special about us.

The Defiant Parents: Opting Out of Testing : The New Yorker

Last spring’s state tests were an entirely different experience, for children and for teachers. Teachers invigilating the exams were shocked by ambiguous test questions, based, as they saw it, on false premises and wrongheaded educational principles. (One B.N.S. teacher, Katherine Sorel, eloquently details her objections on WNYC’s SchoolBook blog.) Others were dismayed to see that children were demoralized by the relentlessness of the testing process, which took seventy minutes a day for six days, with more time allowed for children with learning disabilities.

Basically I see this as a protest against a trend: US education has been increasingly test-directed, which is great from a data-guy's point of view except for the minor fact that the most important parts of education aren't readily testable, so they tend to be squeezed out by teachers and schools who are evaluated on how well their kids do on the standardized parts. If this goes on, we could end up with an education system which generates excellent PISA scores but whose graduates are unable to think for themselves; really good at solving simple word problems but unable to create, unable to innovate, not even particularly good at working together. That's scary. If you're interested in the issue, I'd suggest that you check some of my posts mentioning Yong Zhao who spoke at HCS a while ago, or just watch the (long) videos at NYC Public School Parents: Video: Yong Zhao on how high-stakes testing is damaging our schools

Check out Yong Zhao's terrific (and funny!) presentation on October 12, along with the question and answer session, co-sponsored by Class Size Matters, GEM, Time out From Testing, and Parents Across America.

Prof. Zhao is the nation's most eloquent critic of high-stakes testing and discusses how the current education reform agenda is taking our nation's schools in entirely wrong direction.

Schools, Teens, Sleep, Research, Politics

One of the more important/interesting educator's blogs is Larry Cuban's; usually it's about research, or about his career as teacher and superintendent. Recently, though, he blogged on the way that research takes a subordinate (but still essential?) role in the school-district political process, using the story of "17-year-old Jilly Dos Santos" as the center. BTW, I hope everybody knows that we could (with pretty high confidence) improve high school learning outcomes by starting the day later. If not, read the links. And we don't do that because...well, mostly because it's not convenient. Cuban's point is about research within politics....he doesn't go all that far, but it's something to think of. Often.

Politics, Research, and School Reform: Letting Teens Sleep in

Santos created a Facebook page and Twitter account telling hundreds of fellow  students that the school board was going to start school at 7:20 AM. She contacted a non-profit group about sleep that gave her the scientific studies about how teenagers needed more, not less, sleep. She emailed all teachers in the district and started an online petition. She brought other students together and they made posters. She tweeted everyone that “If you are going to be attending the board meeting tomorrow we recommend you dress up.”

You guessed it. The school board turned down the earlier start time. A few months later, the coalition that Santos had pulled together worked successfully to get the school board to start high school at 9 AM. The superintendent said after the board voted 6-1 in favor of the later time: “Jilly kicked it over the edge for us.”

Who said that schools are apolitical institutions?...

Without the political muscle of the coalition Santos and others mobilized, ho-hum responses from the school board would have occurred.

Well, maybe nobody said schools are apolitical institutions.

(And if so, nobody was wrong. At least about that.)

Common Core

I wrote a year ago about the Common Core: One More Year; that's the Common Core described as

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an education initiative in the United States that details what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and seeks to establish consistent education standards across the states as well as ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter two- or four-year college programs or enter the workforce.

My concern has basically been that well-intentioned centralization tends to have consistent results -- as Larry Cuban (teacher/superintendent/blogger) puts it in giving what I think of as a Common Core context, On Centralization

Teachers have felt pressured to drop student-centered activities such as small group work, discussions, learning centers, and writing portfolios because such activities take away precious classroom time from standards-based curriculum and test preparation.

That was in October; I didn't even realize that in October, our own Superintendent Bowers was testifying that with Common Core prep, We are heading into the storm. Interesting. The terminology she's using is from Tuckman's stages of group development:

The Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results. This model has become the basis for subsequent models.

Some of the fuss is simply the awkwardness of a big new set of mandates that will take time and lots of money to work out in detail; I doubt their value, I think the money (including the continuing expense of "performing") will be mostly wasted, but I wouldn't put too much stress on articles like Bizarrely complex Common Core math for America's children | The Daily Caller

Still, I do think Diana's phrasing showed prescience, and not just about the fact that we really don't know what we're doing (specifically we don't understand the world that we're educating our kids to live in): the storm has arrived, in more than Tuckman's terms. Common Core Curriculum Now Has Critics on the Left - NYTimes.com

Carol Burris, an acclaimed high school principal on Long Island, calls the Common Core a “disaster.”

“We see kids,” she said, “they don’t want to go to school anymore.”

Leaders of both parties in the New York Legislature want to rethink how the state uses the Common Core.

The statewide teachers’ union withdrew its support for the standards last month until “major course corrections” took place.

Centralized decision making might be great if the center had access to the necessary information. Perhaps someday it will, but I don't think we're there yet -- if we were, we'd probably be trying to develop something entrepreneur-oriented, something far from the Common Core as it now stands. For now, I'd just say that Hayek was right.

Gap Elimination Adjustment Links

\ I've talked before about the HamiltonCentralOptions: Gap Elimination Adjustment and I'll go on talking about it. This is just a set of links, really. Watertown Daily Times | Senators pushing bill to end GAP Elimination Adjustment

Legislative sponsors of Bill 5452, calling for the end of the Gap Elimination Adjustment, are pushing to have the state take a serious look at ending the tax as soon as possible. State Sen. Patricia A. Ritchie, R-Heuvelton, said if there is a surplus in the state budget then there is no longer a need to continue the implementation of the penalty tax on public schools.

“This bill was originally proposed last year. This year there is a whole new dynamic,” Mrs. Ritchie said. “This bill amends the education law, requiring the state to pay down the gap elimination adjustment.”

Mrs. Ritchie and her legislative colleagues are hoping to take the bill before legislators to have the GEA’s conclusion be included in the final 2014 budget.

Bill 5424 is reported at S5452-2013 - NY Senate Open Legislation - Requires the state to pay down the gap elimination adjustment in three years - New York State Senate

Feb 4, 2014: REPORTED AND COMMITTED TO FINANCE
Jan 8, 2014: REFERRED TO EDUCATION
Jan 8, 2014: returned to senate
Jan 8, 2014: died in assembly

Note that Valesky is a co-sponsor.

There's a lot about it at the "Statewide School Finance Consortium": SSFC Responds to Gov’s State of the State | SSFC

The system for distributing state aid to schools is broken and needs to be fixed, says Dr. Rick Timbs: “We need relief and reform. First and foremost: Do away with the GEA!’’

And of course it's not just upstate; Long Island complains, and is trying to reduce the 2014 GEA impact before April 1: Legislators: Gap Elimination Adjustment short-changing Long Island’s school districts - News 12 Long Island

Local lawmakers say they will fight to increase that amount before the state budget is passed by April 1.

So, how to "fight"? Mostly send letters, I guess.

• Watertown Daily Times | General Brown launches letter writing campaign to end Gap Elimination Adjustment
• Freeport Public Schools

  All residents are encouraged to join in the district’s efforts to eliminate the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA) by participating in a letter writing campaign.

• Averill Park Central School District

  Below are a number of advocacy resources, contact information for our representatives as well as others in position of power within the state. You will also find sample letters as well as talking points to create your own letter.

• ADVOCACY / Home

  The Coxsackie-Athens Central School District’s Board of Education and administration are instituting a letter-writing campaign NOW to eliminate the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA) from our school budget for the 2014-15 school year. It is NOW that we need to make our voices and numbers heard in Albany.

• Legislative Action Committee

  Click here to print a letter that may be signed and mailed to legislators. You may also copy the text from the letter and paste it into an e-mail. Legislator mailing addresses and e-mail addresses are provided below.

The list goes on. A lot of people in a lot of communities are doing what they can to say that the GEA is not a good way for the state to save money. The deadline, assuming that a budget passes on time, is April 1st.

Gap Elimination Adjustment

In yesterday's post I noted parts of Wanda Berry's note on NextDoor; I should also have mentioned a very important point she brings up in that note:

Whether or not the merger goes through, it is time for us to believe in democracy enough to mobilize a citizens’ effort to get the state legislature to get rid of the Gap Elimination Adjustment, which is the real threat, along with our declining school age population.

Indeed, while the proposed merger is all about promised state aid; one irony is that it is also all about previous promises of state aid being broken. More concretely:

• as often discussed, we wouldn't be discussing a merger that doesn't actually save money, if there weren't state incentives offering an average 5.3%-of-budget aid for fourteen years, plus permanent (?) reclassification of Hamilton as part of a "high needs district". But also,
• we wouldn't be discussing a merger at all if it weren't for a fiscal squeeze resulting from the "Gap Elimination Adjustment", a formula by which the state has refrained from paying millions that had been promised.

So what, and why, is this terrible "Gap Elimination Adjustment"? Basically, it's a formula by which the state says "we have a fiscal gap this year, with more outgo than income, and sure, we promised you a certain amount of aid, but here's your school district's share of the pain." And we respond with "OUCH". Here's a Vimeo video explanation:
Gap Elimination Adjustment: An Explanation from Cap Region BOCES on Vimeo.

Wanda and many others are hoping that if we all get together and say "No!" then the state legislators will say "Okay" and the schools won't be short of money any more. I sympathize very strongly, but I think we need to consider the context. What are we actually asking the state legislators to do? They want to please their voters; they already want to restore school funding. If they restore school funding, they must either reduce funding for something else, or else they can raise taxes. (Of course they can probably borrow money now, but that means that at some future time they'll be either reducing funding for something else, or raising taxes. Borrowing money now to fix it later is part of how we got in this mess.) This, of course, brings us to the Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force (PDF,page 7)

The conclusion of the Task Force is unambiguous. The existing trajectory of state spending, taxation, and administrative practices cannot be sustained. The basic problem is not cyclical. It is structural. The time to act is now.

From their point of view, the elimination of the Gap Elimination Adjustment would be a big step -- in the wrong direction. If they remove the GEA, then the painful decisions to be made get worse -- do we cut our already-underfunded pension plans, do we cut our massive health care payments, do we just let the infrastructure rust? Or -- the most obvious answer -- do we raise taxes? Hmmm... raising taxes sounds very good, doesn't it? Or does it?

Exactly how high are our taxes, comparatively speaking? That's complicated, because it involves income taxes and sales taxes and property taxes; for Alaska it also involves some weird taxes which don't actually get collected from the individual, they're based on oil movement, but apart from that we can sort of say that NY has the highest tax burden outside Washington DC in the state tax-burden chart. That's a statement that needs lots of qualifiers about what you're including and excluding; some are noted at the bottom of the chart. Some charts will put NY as low as #5 in state tax burden, but we can definitely say that a lot of New York residents and New York businesses notice, now and then, that they could be paying a lot less by moving to another state. And what happens then? Sometimes nothing. Some of us pay, and stay to pay again. For others... Income Migration: What Does It Really Mean For States? - Forbes

New Yorkers are subject to some of the highest state tax rates in the country, so it is not surprising that commentators have suggested residents will leave the state in droves. And it appears to be true. As reported by the Tax Foundation, between 2000 and 2010, New York lost $45.6 billion in income to other states. That’s far more than any other state. The next closest is California, which lost $29.4 billion over the same period.
This is a significant amount of income migration. But where did it all go? The answer, not surprisingly, is that much of the income went down south. Florida reportedly had a net gain of $67.3 billion. ...

Or as the NYT put it two years back, At 102%, His Tax Rate Takes the Cake - Common Sense - NYTimes.com

Mr. Ross said he asked his accountant what he could do. “He said, ‘Fire everyone here and move to Florida,’ ” according to Mr. Ross. He employs 10 people in his New York office.

Of course some of the migration goes to neighboring states, which do have lower state taxes; Florida has no income tax at all. But as our taxes rise, it becomes increasingly attractive for high-income Manhattan residents to start thinking: how much of this could I do on the Web, or by teleconference? As the New York Times put it a year ago Midlevel Finance Jobs Leave Wall Street as Firms Cut Costs

New York’s biggest investment houses are shifting jobs out of the area and expanding in cheaper locales in the United States, threatening the vast middle tier of positions that form the backbone of employment on Wall Street.
The shift comes even as banks consider deeper staff cuts here, which could undermine the state and city tax base long term.
“Places like New York or London will remain financial centers, but most of the players are taking a much harder look and asking whether they can move large numbers of jobs...”

When you ask the legislator to raise taxes again, you're not just being generous with your own money. You're asking that legislator to bet the state's fiscal stability on your hope that these people, people whose lives revolve around the way they care about money, will decide that they don't really care about money all that much: they'll stay, and pay again.

They might, or they might not. State aid cuts may go away, but they might expand. They might expand a lot. Ask for state aid, hope for state aid, but don't count on it.

(My inclination is to agitate for mandate relief more than increases in aid. NYS education costs twice as much per pupil per year as the national average. We should work on that.)

On Learning to Think

I wonder if it's possible for an educational system to encourage actual thought (systematically). I'm thinking about partisanship, here; the way that so many members of a group interpret whatever they see in terms of, well, Who Represents?

most people can't even remember the idiotic things said by people they identify with. Liberals can instantly call to mind this infamous exchange between a Fox News host and Bill Nye, the science guy, about global warming and volcanoes. But how many of them remember the CNN host who asked whether the Russian meteorite had been caused by global warming? Conservatives, meanwhile, all know about the global warming meteorite, but have a much less encyclopedic command of stupid utterances by conservative types.
It isn't, I think, that they don't encounter these stupidities; in fact, whenever one of these stories goes viral, the folks who share a party ID with the speaker generally spend a couple of days getting mad at the other side for blowing this up all out of proportion to its actual relevance.
Rather, it's that we take the stupidity from the other side as representative, and the stupidities from our own side as sui generis.

Maybe education as such has nothing to do with it, or is even counter-productive in that it tends to reward the ability to echo.


Or then again, maybe not.

Education Election

A Time Magazine "ViewPoint" says that The Election Has Compromised Education Reform

The 2012 presidential election sidestepped the issue of school reform. Neither candidate spent much time laying out, let alone talking up, an education policy agenda. But around the country, there were ballot referendums and state and local races with big implications for schools. Teachers’ unions had a good night, but so did charter schools....

We don't know the right answer... we muddle on.
Until we can't, of course.