Comments on: Your Next Stop–The Empowerment Zone

By: Runcinate

Runcinate — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 15:09:52 +0000

Empowerment for whom? CEO Nadelstern is the same individual who declared at a staff development training several years back, ‘look at how standards improve, when we get rid of standards,’ and ‘all of us sacrificed careers in corporate America to really help kids.’ That he now advocates a system of small schools under a new assessment standard and holds a corporate moniker appropriate to the business world should give us pause. Our skepticism is reasonable. Fortunately for him he led a school for seventeen years that exempted themselves from enrolling special needs students, allowed teachers free rein to create whatever maverick curriculum they wanted, and maintained graduation rates among the city’s highest only to look away once their students reached college. (International students fair no better than any other NYC high school student in college success). He also benefited from modest parent input since as immigrants the parents of his students spoke little English . His title surfaced around the time of a job offer by the Las Vegas Central School District to run their schools. Having never been a superintendant, the offer is curious. After he declined, Nadelstern appeared clothed in his new and present identity.

By: jd2718

jd2718 — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 03:07:48 +0000

Being well-meaning and being a teacher-unionist are different things. Sometimes people confuse them, and get involved in ‘school reform’ projects from a well-meaning rather than a teacher-union point of view.

But that’s not enough to explain why so many people seem confused by the Empowerment game.

Jonathan

By: R. Skibins

R. Skibins — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 01:10:30 +0000

I have been told that if scores go down, not only does the principal get the sack, but the teachers as well. If this is true, then the chancellor can make sure that the higher-functioning students are siphoned-off, and special education is further cut, leaving the lowest functioning in the school.

By: institutional memory

institutional memory — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 23:41:42 +0000

Thanks, Jonathan.

How come everyone doesn’t realize what scoundrels these guys are? It’s so painfully obvious.

By: jd2718

jd2718 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 23:37:43 +0000

Here! here!

Institutional Memory is dead on. I’ve been nervous about the lack of details from the beginning. Sounded like they were selling something at a carnival….

And again, I even hate their language. i.m. is 100% on that, too. I’ll take it further. I make kids spit out gum or remove hats before listening to anything they said. Until they are appropriate, we don’t talk. Now, let’s think about how inappropriate the title CEO is. You know what we should recommend.

Jonathan

By: institutional memory

institutional memory — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:48:59 +0000

EMPOWERMENT? YEAH, RIGHT.
The name “Empowerment Schools” alone should set off alarms. It’s reminiscent of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” or “Mission Accomplished. A more truthful title would be “The McGraw-Hill Test Prep Zone.”

It’s all a regrettable scam, another cynical attempt by Tweed to impose their arrogant and ignorant will on a once-proud school system.

Any principal who voluntarily signed on to this Titanic of a plan has been bamboozled.

It’s become increasingly difficult to write about the DOE without sounding like an alarmist, but this is truly alarming.

By: redhog

redhog — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 02:50:03 +0000

The Department of Education is expanding its so-called Empowerment Zone to include roughly one-fourth of the city’s public schools. This means that the principals of these schools, rather than the regional or central bureaucracies, will have new authority over key educational policies. In exchange for this they accept greater accountability for outcomes.
This initiative covers not only professional development and program support, but also the option of either implementing the DOE’s core curriculum, which critics contend it has in effect abandoned long ago in favor of test preparation, or proposing alternatives. The same choice theoretically applies to systems of assessment.
Participating principals have been given new discretion over funding sources, prioritization, and spending. Restrictions on their existing budgets are relaxed as well. They must consult, but don’t require the consent of teachers and parents. Union contracts stay in force.
Eric Nadelstern, the former principal of a charter school, is the Chief Executive of the Empowerment Zones schools.
How will these schools, formerly known as “autonomous,” be evaluated? Basically they will live or die based on test data and measures that the Department of Education continues to select from non-bid contractors. There is typically no independent oversight from researchers or experts from outside the tightly controlled system.
This lack of transparency is a stubborn problem under Chancellor Klein. It has been identified as such by thinkers on all sides of the ideological spectrum.
Careers will sink or swim based on doubtful tests and dubious statistics gathering. Certainly tests can be a logical way to judge whether things work. But it is more urgent that students learn than that they be tested, especially since learning is for the sake of children and the view of most educators is that testing, as it has been morbidly imposed under Chancellor Klein, is for the sake of his public relations team.
Test preparation has already usurped instruction as the activity of record in the classroom.
Tests are a valid tool when they are the right test given the right way for the right reason, not when they fail to measure what is relevant or measure what is not.
Principals who seek some professional liberty and relief from some of the massive micromanagement that has enslaved them in recent years, have no choice but to sign the Empowerment School Performance Agreement. This spells out “leadership changes” that result from two consecutive ratings of “undeveloped,” a highly inexact category, on their school’s annual “progress report.”
A principal stands to lose his job if the flow chart doesn’t look pretty. Imagine the pressure on them and, realistically, the trickle-down stress on children. Perhaps that is the cost that must be paid to achieve a significant educational purpose. But is it?
Interestingly, the answer may have come more than once from Mr. Nadelstern himself.
Just a few years before he parlayed an earlier passion into a career move made possible by adopting a contradictory conviction, he wrote to the New York Times on February 7, 2000: “ Replacing the joy of learning with test anxiety simply hastens the premature end of childhood. That is too high a price to pay in the service of questionable assessment practices and misguided educational policies.”
Back to the future, Mr. Nadelstern?