Tag: nyc

Posted on in Education

Mayor de Blasio’s Ban on K-2nd Grade Suspensions

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio plans to ban suspensions for students in kindergarten to second grade, according to the New York Daily News. 

The New York Daily News also outlines that, of the 801 K-2nd grade students who were suspended during the 2015-2016 school year, 487 students were suspended for either being physically aggressive towards another student or teacher/staff members. It is clear that at least some of these students, especially the ones who bring violence into the classroom, were suspended for good reason (this is not to say that suspension is the right direction to improve the education of both the violent student and the students surrounding him). But, it is crucial that suspensions are not simply banned for these young children; remedies that try to fix the reason why they would be suspended to begin with must also be put in place.

For example, six-year old Jimmy cannot hit his teacher, not be removed from the classroom, and all who is negatively impacted by his actions just hope and pray it does not happen again. If he is to stay in school, there needs to be some kind of action put in place to ensure that both he and his classmates get every second of education they can possibly recieve.

Fortunately, Mayor de Blasio’s administration released “Maintaining the Momentum: A Plan for Safety and Fairness In Schools,” a report that includes findings, reccomendations and next-step efforts to make the NYC public school system a safer place. The most impressive effort in this report is the inclusion of mental health-related support in the 2017 school year budget. The budget, which will include the expansion of support for teacher training in mental health and dealing with students who have social-emotional issues, as well as the addition of about 100 mental health consultants, will still be limited in how much it can achieve.

Because the ban is effective in just a few days (9/8/16) and most of the $45 million funding won’t be seen until next school year, teachers, parents and union leaders are wondering if this is being implemented too soon– the training just is not there. One teacher, interviewed by ChalkBeat, made the following comment:

“When you just ban all suspensions, my next question would be: If I have a child who’s acting out and I’m not getting cooperation from home at all — they don’t come to meetings, they don’t take the child to screenings — what’s my next step then?” Ranieri asked. “None of us have received that support yet.”

Mayor de Blasio’s suspension policy may be too premature: some teachers are seemingly unprepared for such a policy, thus making the policy unfair to students and teachers who have to brook, and are impacted by, some serverly disruptive students. One would think Mayor de Blasio is aware of this issue students and teachers face as a result of a premature no suspension ban. One could only assume that his main reason for acting now, if not his only reason, is that suspensions tend to make the suspended student disengaged from the learning enironment. In other words, suspensions harm the student being suspended by making him less willing to learn. And, since we know suspensions have more of an insidious effect, we should not do it.

Boy, if it were that easy. 

If some schools are unprepared for such a plan, despite the plan’s goals and assume rationale, the plan should not be implemented until schools feel ready and supported. This is a lose-lose dilemma: continue to suspend students and risk those students continuing being unsuccessful. Require misbehaved students to stay in school without appurtanent, and risk other students not learing as a result. There is, however, data that suggests that it is worth delaying the suspension plan (or at least slowly implementing it across schools, starting with the most equipped to the least equipped) unil schools feel confident enough to implement such a plan. Accodring to the New York State Department of Education, 4% of all students are suspended and less than 2% of all elementary level students are suspended. In other words , more students would be distracted by another student’s misbehaving, should the misbehaved student remain in the school without adequate support. Taking this into consideration, Mayor de Blasio should countermand or, at the very least, modify his K-2 suspension ban.

Posted on in Opinions on Politics

UFT, Shame on You

Who is penalized when $250,000,000, which is supposed to be aiding in NYC public school Students’ education, is lost? Who is penalized when that $250,000,000 can increase to as much as $450,000,000 in lost money to help schools who need it most? Th children, of course. No person or group of people is ever so at a disadvantage than the students.

The sad thing is is that they did not have anything to do with the negotiations on teacher evaluations that fell through. While I could understand why not them, but not even a random selection of their parents. Instead,all that money was left in the hands of opposing politicians, and you know what that mean. A complete fail.

Last week, Mike Bloomberg and the UFT did not reach a deal on a new way of evaluating teachers. Bloomeberg says that the UFT added last minute provisions that essentially ignored the whole point of the change in evaluations. The union wanted to have the agreement for the evaluations expire in two years, 2015. Mayor Bloomberg points out that it takes two years for a teacher to be removed from the system, which, if the union’s method were to be put in place, it would be useless.

Surprisingly, I agree with the mayor on this one. The new evaluation system needs to be tested over a number of years, not just a couple. That third year would give us some more fruitful understanding of the effectiveness of the agreement because it goes beyond the two year boundary that protects a teacher. A two year agreement would only show teachers who were warned this year and let go in 2015 but no other. But in order to illustrate a new evaluation system, we’d need at least two years (2015 and 2016) worth of complete feedback compare the two years and its effect on the system as a whole. With the union’s plan, we’d only have one. Teachers who would be given a warning in 2014 have until 2016 to get their act together, but they would be working under a new system. Under the unions provision, there would be two agreements in two years and thats not fair, stable, effective, and in favor of the students.

The union says that they dod not think that this provision was something to hoot and holler about. But, I think they know what they are doing. At the end of the day, the union’s role is to protect the teachers from losing their jobs. They are by law and a sense of obligation, on the side of the teacher, not of the student.

To read more on this issue:

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/175547/teacher-rating-system-deal-a-bust–city-school-budget-to-lose–250m