Say Yes is a landmark collaboration that brings the Syracuse City School District, Syracuse University, Say Yes to Education, Inc., the Syracuse Teachers’ Association, the Syracuse Association of Administrators and Supervisors, the City of Syracuse, Onondaga County, the American Institutes for Research, and a diverse group of Syracuse area corporate, non-profit, and philanthropic organizations together to organize people, time, money and resources to support city students.

Syracuse is the first community in the United States committed to ensuring that all public school students can afford and succeed in college. Other cities have Say Yes chapters, including Philadelphia, Hartford, Conn., Cambridge, Mass. and New York City, but Syracuse is the first city to implement the Say Yes program district wide. Students who attend 10th, 11th and 12th grade and graduate from a Syracuse City School District high school are eligible for free college tuition at more than 100 Say Yes compact colleges in New York state.

The Project’s “non-negotiables” and Theory of Change:

We at 20/20 are especially pleased with Say YES’ commitment to outcome transparency and will be monitoring their progress with great anticipation.

What began as a prayer movement last year has evolved into a full-blown student leadership initiative this year. At once a prayer (“I Am” is the name God calls himself, hence the prayer) and a call to lead, “I Am My School” recognizes that school performance and outcomes reflect what students, faculty, parents, and other stakeholders bring to them every day.

Solidarity: How You Can Help

1. Organize a prayer walk in your neighborhood. Step-by-step instructions and interactive maps here.

2. Represent the movement; wear the t-shirt.

The sound of bubbles bursting: Student gains on state test vanished into thin air

BY Diane Ravitch

Every year for the past four years, the New York State Education Department has announced dramatic test score gains. And every year, it turns out they were misrepresenting reality. This year, New Yorkers got an accurate accounting of student performance, and it was sobering.

Since 2006, scores have gone through the roof. Teachers and principals quietly told reporters that the tests were getting easier to pass, but no one listened. A few critics and testing experts warned that outsized annual gains were not credible, but no one listened.

At the same time that the state was announcing phenomenal annual gains, national tests administered by the federal government – exams considered the gold standard – told a different story. On those tests, the state’s scores in reading were flat from 2000 to 2009. Math scores were up in fourth grade, but not in eighth grade, where they were flat from 2005 to 2009.

New York Commissioner of Education David Steiner made a bold move. He decided to end the inflation – and administer some shock therapy. The sharp contrast between mostly flat scores on national tests and dramatic annual claims by the state made it necessary for him to act, and he did.

Now we know the painful truth. Last year, 86.4% of the state’s students in grades three to eight were deemed proficient in mathematics; today it is 61%. Last year, 77.4% of students in the same grades were deemed proficient in reading; today it is 53.2%.

When the scores were released, there was a sound of bursting bubbles across the state. What once were miracles turned into mirages.

Since 2005, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein have trumpeted historic gains. But after the state’s adjustment, the pass rate on the state reading test among city students fell from an impressive 68.8% to an unimpressive 42.4%, and from an astonishing 81.8% to a disappointing 54% in mathematics. Overnight, the city’s historic gains disappeared.

Now, look at the achievement gap between the performance of white students and that of minorities. Last year, black students were 22 points behind white students in passing the state English exam. This year – after the state corrected its scoring – the gap increased to 30.4 points.

In math, the gap grew even more. Black students were 17 points behind whites last year. Now they’ve fallen 30 points behind.

Charter school advocates saw their bubble burst as well. The pass rates in the state’s charter schools, overall, dropped even faster than those in regular public schools. In third grade math, it plunged from 96.1% to 61.6%, and in eighth grade, from 84.5% to 50.4%. On the 2010 reading tests, the scores of charter students in New York City were nearly identical to those of district schools: 43% compared to 42%.

In math, 63% of the city’s charter students passed, compared to 54% in public schools, which was an advantage but nothing like the miraculous results previously claimed by charter promoters.

Among other bubbles that popped were the city’s school report cards, which based 85% of their grades on the state’s test scores, mostly on gains on the test now proven to be vastly overstated. Some schools were given an A for “progress” on dumbed-down tests, and others were closed because they didn’t make the grade. But the measure was a deeply flawed instrument.

The hundreds of millions of dollars that the city has spent on test preparation turned out to be a bad investment. Students were learning test-taking skills, not truly learning reading or mathematics.

As a result of the fiasco, we now know that the bonuses of more than $30 million handed out last year to teachers in schools that made “gains” on the state tests were a waste of precious money.

Why does test score inflation matter? Aside from the fact that the state misled the public, the inflated scores caused tens of thousands of students to be denied needed remediation. The inflated scores also help to explain why 75% of the city’s high school graduates require remediation when they enroll in community colleges at the City University.

Now we know that achievement in the city and state did not grow by historic proportions, as officials claimed.

The way to avoid similar messes in the future is to use test scores for information and diagnosis, not for rewards and punishments.

Two questions remain: Will Bloomberg and Klein accept this new reality or will they continue to deny the plain facts and refuse to be held accountable? And will the state education department find and fire the bureaucrats and private contractors responsible for this scandal? Unfortunately, the prospects for genuine accountability by the city and state are not promising.

- Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University.

Original Article

A Crisis of Zeroes: Engaging NYC Public Schools

by Jeremy Del Rio

Where are the Christians?

The New York City Department of Education will spend $12,200,000,000 ($12.2 billion) to educate 1,100,000 students (1.1 million) in its public schools beginning this month – an average of $11,220 per student. For those of us who scrimp by on modest means, our minds struggle to grasp the effect of all those zeroes. Let’s put them in perspective.

12.2 billion: Larger than the economies of dozens of nations. More revenue than the net worth of all but the nine wealthiest Americans.

1.1 million: Larger than eight U.S. states and all but nine U.S. cities, including Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Las Vegas.

That’s a lot of kids, and a lot of money, especially considering that they reflect only New York’s public schools while the City also boasts private schools, charter schools, parochial schools, home schools, and too many dropped-out-of-schools to count with certainty. They are taught by a system where, as of June 2002, 18% of teachers had failed licensing exams.

Even more telling:

60.7% of the City’s elementary students do not meet state and city reading standards.

64.7% do not grasp math standards.

26.5% of students in Grades 4-12 exhibit symptoms of at least one diagnosable psychiatric disorder requiring intervention.

5.1% of high school students abuse alcohol so severely as to impair daily functioning.

Fiscal mismanagement. Failing educators. Underachievement. Mental illness. And enough children to make one school system the tenth largest city in the nation. All this crisis, plastered on the front pages of metro area newspapers at least weekly during every school year, has made reforming our public schools one of the great public mandates of our day.

Politicians, educators, teachers unions, bureaucrats, academics, corporate big shots like New York City’s current mayor and schools chancellor all seem to have opinions on how to improve our schools, but where are the evangelicals in the public discourse? As a collective voice, how many summits have we held or debates have we entered? How many coordinated city-wide efforts have we undertaken to address the problems?

Zero. The real crisis.

Individually, some are engaged. They function as principals and administrators, teachers and paraprofessionals, student missionaries and advocates, coaches and volunteers. But for every Christian employed in a public school, for every local church that has adopted a neighborhood school, for every outspoken parent or pastor, scores do nothing. For instance, how many leaders have reached out to local principals or superintendents as a resource to serve? How many retirees or youth workers or Sunday school teachers volunteer as hall monitors or teachers’ aids or tutors? How many parents are active in PTAs or coach PSAL teams or regularly attend parent-teacher conferences? How many student organizations, whether Bible clubs or not, have Christian business people supported? How many prayer groups intentionally intercede for community schools?

Sadly, not enough. In some communities, zero.

Last year, New York City’s officials finally set aside partisanship long enough to initiate the most widespread, systemic education reform in decades. As a collective group, administrators, politicians, and the teachers union all agreed to tackle entrenched problems with innovative strategies. Only time will tell how effective the reforms are.

In the interim, evangelicals, as a group, should follow their lead and bypass whatever excuses have kept so many of us disengaged for so long. It’s time for our community to seriously consider its role in one of our great public issues. It’s time for us to propose comprehensive strategies that go beyond the pat answers we are more commonly known for. Cliché solutions are no more helpful to our schools then they would be in the board room of a $12.2 billion Fortune 500 company or in Detroit’s City Council chambers.

Finally, it’s time we recognize that mandating a return to institutionalized prayer in schools is bankrupt. Legalistic prayer, devoid of faith, is no prayer at all. Besides, purposeful prayer by men, women, and students of conviction is already in public schools. It’s time for us to turn zeroes into heroes by becoming answers to those prayers.

[L]ast week, the federal government released scores for the nation and the states, and New York did not fare well. In fact, almost all of New York’s reported gains for the past seven years disappeared into thin air.

The federal test – the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP – is the gold standard of testing. Congress requires all states to take NAEP tests to audit state claims. The federal audit was an embarrassment for New York.

The reading scores released last week show that 36% of New York’s fourth-graders – not 77% – are proficient. And unlike the state scores, which have gone up every year without fail, the state scores on NAEP for fourth-graders have been flat since 2002. The federal test continues to show huge achievement gaps: 45% of white students are proficient, as are 52% of Asians. This contrasts with 18% of black students and 22% of Hispanic students.

In eighth grade, the picture is no better. On the NAEP test, 33% of our students are proficient in reading, not the 69% claimed by the state. The federal test shows zero improvement at this grade since 1998. And the racial achievement gap is shocking: 44% of whites are proficient, as are 49% of Asians, but only 13% of blacks and 16% of Hispanics.

In math, the state does slightly better, but not much. The federal tests show 40% of our fourth-grade students are proficient, while the state says it is 87%. Over time, the federal scores have improved for this grade, but not for eighth grade. There, only 34% are proficient, not the 80% claimed by the state. And, unlike the state, which has boasted of big improvements in the eighth grade, the federal tests reveal that there have been no gains in eighth grade since 2003.

If students in New York made no gains on the national tests, why did state tests report spectacular progress every year? The people of the state deserve an honest answer.

Fortunately, there is new leadership in Albany. Merryl Tisch, the new chancellor of the Board of Regents, and David Steiner, the new state commissioner of education, have pledged to review the entire testing program. Surely they will determine how standards dropped so low that the public was regularly misinformed about student progress.

Now is the time for honesty, integrity and transparency.

Article.

Education officials and charter school backers on Monday lashed out at teachers unions and the Legislature after New York failed to get $700 million in federal Race to the Top money.

Tennessee and Delaware scored a combined $600 million of the competitive $4.3 billion pot of education money to help turn around failing schools and implement other reforms.

New York finished 15th out of the 16 finalists.

“Race to the Top sets a high bar for states to adopt sweeping education reforms, and at least this time, New York State couldn’t clear that bar,” Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said.

New York lost 30% of its potential points because of its failure to pass charter school reform, link teacher evaluation to student performance and develop a statewide data system.

The state also lost points for not having full support from local school districts and unions and not having a strong plan in place to turn around failing schools.

Article.

Newsweek probes the failures of education reform over the last decade.

“Aw c’mon Ms. Baker, nobody thinks we’re smart! If they did, they wouldn’t give us this broken down school and these ratty old books. You don’t even have enough paper and pencils for us!”

As Teach For America’s Vice President of Faith Community Outreach, Ms. Fulgham has spent the last 15 years fighting to overcome educational inequity. Why?

The academic achievement gap, in a well-resourced country like ours, is a tragic moral injustice that should move people of faith to action. As Christians, let’s take stock of how we’re working to eliminate this problem. Are we encouraging our most talented college graduates and young professionals to teach in schools like Solomon’s? Are we mobilizing our church communities to volunteer, tutor, and provide much-needed supplies to under-resourced schools? Are we mobilizing on behalf of students like Solomon to demand that lawmakers create policies that will improve the quality of their education?

The Bible is pretty clear about our responsibility. God says that all children were created in his image, so we should believe every child has unlimited potential. God says that children are incredibly precious to him. And God tells us to eliminate injustice. It’s time for Christians to take a stand on behalf of the ‘least of these’ in our nation’s low-income public schools. Solomon and his classmates are waiting for us.

Full article.

“We cannot continue to accept that barely half of the country’s black and Hispanic students are graduating from high school, or that white children can read at levels far exceeding those of minority children,” Chancellor Klein said. “These facts translate to diminished life opportunities for millions of students who are being denied their proper access to the American Dream.”

The event, held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, was part of the Department of Education’s “Closing the Achievement Gap” series. The series of forums is designed to engage educators, parents, and other members of the New York City community in a dialogue about how to improve achievement.

Klein and Sharpton also co-authored a Wall Street Journal editorial calling on President Obama to nurture “a bipartisan coalition that challenges the entrenched education establishment…. [and] demonstrate an unflagging commitment to ‘what works’ to dramatically boost academic achievement — rather than clinging to reforms that we ‘wish would work.’”

Sign us at 20/20 up for that bipartisan coalition!

A similar call during the election last year resulted in Klein and Sharpton convening the Education Equality Project.  On eve of President-elect Obama’s historic inauguration, the EEP will host an Martin Luther King Day education rally in at Cardozo High School in Washington, DC, this Monday, January 19.

Reverend Sharpton and Chancellor Klein will lead the rally and will be joined by other civil rights, government, and education leaders including Mayors Booker (Newark) and Johnson (Sacramento), Martin Luther King III, Governor Romer, US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, Dr. Michael Lomax (President, United Negro College Fund), Geoffrey Canada (President and Chief Executive Officer for Harlem Children’s Zone), and Senator McCain.