But first things first – hats off to the 4th graders at Ward who scored #1 in the state in Math, followed by 7th ranked Zervas, and 8th ranked Lincoln-Eliot. Then Pierce 4th graders who were 9th in English. And Brown 8th graders who were 12th in Math.

Critics argue that MCAS drives teachers and school systems to “teach to the test”, while defenders say that standardized tests matter as they are meaningful ways to verify student achievement in core subject areas. Personally I am not strongly opposed to MCAS but I think it takes strong, independent-minded principals and teachers to keep them in their place, as a measure of how we do and not a target to try to hit.

What do these results mean, and how strongly should we react when we see raw rankings, or trends from year to year?

The Globe site with the 2009 rankings also had a link to 2008. Two year’s data is not as good as 4, or 8, but I thought I’d track our English and Math rankings for 8th and 10th grades, the last two testing grades. Here is what I found:

NSHS, 2008-2009 10th grade English, 46th to 75th;
NNHS, 2008-2009 10th grade English, 78th to 105th;
NSHS, 2008-2009 10th grade Math, 38th to 59th (tied);
NNHS, 2008-2009 10th grade Math, 46th to 59th (tied).

Bigelow, 2008-2009, 8th grade English, 101st to 128th;
Brown, 2008-2009, 8th grade English, 34th to 52nd;
Day, 2008-2009, 8th grade English, 101st to 91st;
Oak Hill, 2008-2009, 8th grade English, 70th to 178th.

Bigelow, 2008-2009, 8th grade Math, 34th to 33rd;
Brown, 2008-2009, 8th grade Math, 15th to 12th;
Day, 2008-2009, 8th grade Math, 48th to 56th;
Oak Hill, 2008-2009, 8th grade Math, 46th to 38th.

Here are my two-year summaries: Our high school English and Math rankings dropped significantly from 2008 to 2009, as did our middle school English. Our middle school Math rankings stayed flat. I wonder how much difference in student achievement and/or knowledge is reflected by a drop in rankings from 70th to 178th? Is this a trend to be alarmed by, or a one-year blip that evens out when looking at 5 or 10 year data? Are we looking at trends that should be cause for great self-analysis and remediation, or do they not matter because we should not make too much of MCAS anyway?

I hope our community can start to look at MCAS as simply another information source, and get past the love-hate duality that has characterized our relationship with MCAS since they were introduced.

The issue of class size is entirely one tied to money.

Here is the roller coaster: class size is going up, because teacher numbers are going down, because compensation is going up, while the rate of revenue increase is going down. Last year the school department cut 80 positions, and 80 more would have been cut for this coming year had NPS not budgeted for a freeze in COLA. The NTA has still not ratified this contract, so who knows what our final budget numbers will be.

Some options to deal with the roller coaster include: bringing more money into the system (property tax increases, hotel and restaurant tax increases, new growth, PILOTs, raising fees, taxing telecommunication company assets, etc.), finding cost savings and efficiencies, and shifting money from the municipal budget.

Small revenue growth has been realized in a few of these areas and will impact the next budget. But I believe the reality is that no significant new revenue will come soon that will address the diverging curves of revenue growth and NPS compensation growth. Simply, this means that teacher numbers, or teacher compensation growth, get cut. We must choose. I’ll say it again - we must choose.

Does NPS spend too much on SPED? Do we have too many highly paid administrators? How does METCO impact our budget? These and other questions certainly require our consideration. But, sound evaluation takes time, and in the meantime we will be looking at large staffing cuts, and growing class sizes, for next year.

Immediately, we can mitigate the harm of growing class sizes by keeping the lowest student: teacher ratios in grades K, 1, and 2. These are the grades in which class size measurably impacts educational outcomes. In higher grade levels, we may viscerally react against higher class sizes, but the impacts on student performance are much less significant. The variation in student performance and educational outcomes are much more impacted by teacher quality than by class size.

In the longer term, we can negotiate (let’s assume the outcome and not fuss over how difficult the process may be) a lower rate of compensation growth for our teachers (which, when COLA, step increases, longevity increases, and educational increases are factored in, has averaged around 7% annually). The trick is to slow growth rate while keeping Newton a very attractive option to top quality teachers. I propose doing this by increasing the non-monetary features of their work, such as providing career path options including “master teacher” roles, making higher quality professional development available, being given the opportunity and encouragement to innovate, organizing more focused collaboration time with colleagues, and operating under the support and guidance from strong supervisors including principals.

And finally, we’ll have to factor in the revenue and efficiency impacts noted above, as we gradually bring them online.

Class size is about money and how we allocate it. Period.

(A respondent to the post suggested that class size is more complicated, and must consider population increases and space constraints in a given school). My followup:

Sue is absolutely correct – this issue is complicated with subtleties and her points are well taken. But for our school system as a whole, this remains a money problem and we must address this above all else. Adding teachers to a school with a population bubble is a specific, local solution and may indeed be limited by the space constraints of one school. The big picture however, is that our student:teacher ratio is climbing because we are cutting teaching and support professionals completely out of the system, and this is driven solely by budget constraints. We let 80 FTE (full time employees) go from Newton Public Schools last year. We did this not because we couldn’t cram another modular in here and there across the system to fit them in, we did it because we didn’t have the money to pay them.

Included in this body count were many of our school social workers, the “pressure relief valves” that each principal and classroom teacher needs to allow them to be most effective at their administrative and academic work. We didn’t let them go because we did not have enough office space to house them. Instead we decided that we had to remove their salaries from the school budget. This decision increases the stress levels in all classrooms and administration offices. Just ask those who remain.

Flexible staffing via teams, redistricting new students, increasing technology in the classroom, creating teacher support with students from area colleges, and gradually introducing new sources of funding into the system, are all blow-softeners that will ease some impacts of growing our student:teacher ratio. These and other ideas should be evaluated regardless of the budget allocation and teacher contract features we see in 2010.

Expect more staff cuts next year. Why? It is all about the money. The fundamental problem our school system faces is an unsustainable budget structure (CAG 101). Figuring out how to take care of our teachers while addressing our unsustainable budget issue is our most important work right now. This is where our attention must be focused to best fulfill our mission of giving our students the best education possible.

Reading the executive summary and other descriptive portions, there is not a single reference to the pending collective bargaining agreement. The elephant in the room. Yet there are specific strategies of staff cuts and reallocations across the board. How can a budget be established and voted on when a contract settlement is at best months away?

This appears to me to be a “steady as she goes” budget, apparently with a continuation of historic compensation policy and with no apparent acknowledgment of the radical rethinking going on in municipalities across the state and country, that include wage freezes, changing the insurance split, and joining the GIC (still waiting for numbers on this one) for starters. This budget is formed in a vacuum relative to community and national conversations.

What is the collective bargaining agreement presumed to generate these numbers? It cannot remain a secret. Can’t the NTA, reading through this budget and having access to recent budget personnel numbers, determine what contract settlement the NPS has assumed?

NPS would deserve accolades if they said “Here is the settlement agreement assumed for this budget. These are the outcomes that will result from this agreement. A different settlement will result in different outcomes.”

I would like to see a handful of contract choices, along with the associated budget outcomes that would follow. Offering real outcomes allows the community to weigh in honestly with their choices about what is most important to them. It allows the community to see what different compensation agreements will mean about their schools and the experience their children will have in school relative to class size, course selection, math coaches, social workers, etc. It allows honest, meaningful conversations about community values to take place. This is a very good thing.

As an example, a salary freeze will “yield” roughly $3.5 million dollars this year. A change in the insurance split from 80/20 to 70/30 will yield roughly $5 million dollars this year. Shifts within a range of $8.5 million dollars one way or another will completely change the nature of the budget for FY10. Admittedly these types of decisions will impact costs and burdens to teachers, but shouldn’t we all be able to discuss them, rather than having them discussed as a closed process within the SC and NPS? This year more than any in recent history, the process should be open because so many “constants” in our world are in flux.

(I wrote this on the Newton TAB blog on March 3, 2009. On March 5th, Jeffrey Young announced that the proposed budget assumed no cost-of-living adjustments for FY 2009-2010 (these are benignly identified as “negotiated increases” in the current contract).

I have been concerned for some time about the quality of our Everyday and Impact Math programs being used in our elementary and middle schools. Personal exposure via my children, anecdotal commentary by fellow parents, discussions with Newton’s teachers, and a study of national literature and reviews strongly suggest that these two math programs are compromising the math education of Newton’s children. 

For one direct and alarming example, I met with a Newton South High School math teacher recently, and asked how well prepared the ninth graders are for high school math. The teacher laughed, and told me that the teachers tend to compress the year’s curriculum somewhat so they can create 2-3 weeks at the beginning of the 9th grade specifically for remedial math time. This person noted that the incoming students are weak on the fundamentals.

This is distressing to me on a couple of levels. First, as a top school system, this seeming gap in math capability among matriculating students is inexcusable; its repair should be a strong focus of our curriculum coordinators.

Second, this reflects a math program weakness in NPS that leaves this teacher less impressed with and less proud of working in this particular system. It feels great to be working within a well-oiled machine, and this feeling can be a compelling bonus above monetary compensation. Instead, we demonstrate to our teachers that the curriculum quality and progression is not tight and they must rely on their individual resourcefulness to compensate.  Is NPS blind to this reality?  One is left to wonder who is providing leadership in support of our teachers.

Well written, content-probing teacher surveys should help expose deficiencies like this to NPS. Let’s make this happen. This will benefit our kid’s education, and can help us clarify the non-monetary rewards we must offer our excellent teachers to keep them here.

]]> http://stevesiegel.org/2009/07/04/everyday-and-impact-math/feed/ http://stevesiegel.org/2009/06/12/historic-newton-and-our-school-buildings/ http://stevesiegel.org/2009/06/12/historic-newton-and-our-school-buildings/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:31:51 +0000 Steve http://stevesiegel.org/?p=329 I subscribe to the NewtonParents listserve, which serves as a discussion board for a wide range of school-related issues.  In recent days, the topic of renovation verses demolition/reconstruction of some of our elementary schools has come up.  Questions have been raised about whether Angier, Zervas, Cabot, and Ward schools have historic value, are tasteless eyesores, are physically suitable for renovations, or can be affordably replaced.  The topic drifted into properties that the city calls “historic” and a role that the Historic Commission has played.   I posted my own thoughts, which are largely captured below:

Regarding tasteless old school buildings, this is, as they say, a matter of taste.  What 50 or 80 year old building could not benefit with a makeover, or at least a nice cleaning up?  Each of these “eyesores” could become the core of an attractive, highly functional, renovation/addition project that would positively reflect the architectural period they were created in.

Every city has buildings that were ready for the wrecking ball, only to be preserved and ultimately honored by later generations.  Faneuil Hall and the Paul Revere House in Boston are two area examples, along with many old warehouse buildings across Fort Point Channel which are now top-rent office spaces.  Newton has the old Sweater Factory on Glen Avenue that the Green Company restored into offices; meanwhile many of our sold-off school buildings live on as attractive housing.  Would you rather a new Avalon Bay alongside of Weeks field, or the handsome brick residence that was derived from the old school?

Renovating old school buildings offers lessons to our children and community about the environmentalism of preservation, offers our taxpayers the potential of significant cost savings, and offers our residents a variety of streetscapes that reflect the broader history of our city rather than just a short moment.

Next, some facts about buildings.  Public assertions were made when a new NNHS was being considered, that we should not throw money at a renovation of the old building since it was nothing more than a “tired” edifice.  Yet consider that buildings are assemblies of structure, enclosure, and operating systems.  The NNHS building structure is as intact and functional today as when built.  The enclosure, or building envelop, needs updating via more, better quality natural daylighting, better glass, and a more energy-efficient skin.  And the operating systems, in particular the HVAC system, need redesign and replacement.  What is important to emphasize is that this building foundation, columns, floor plates, and much of its enclosure are undeteriorated and represent millions and millions of dollars of value as a completely appropriate starting point for a high quality renovation.

I am not trying refight an old battle, but simply want to highlight the gross misrepresentation that many proponents of a new building advanced and ultimately sold to our community.  This did a huge disservice to honest discussion regarding the merits and financial value of renovations.  We should not buy this argument again with our elementary schools.  The building structures and envelops of Angier, Zervas, Cabot, and Ward Schools, at least in part, are suitable for reuse and should be fully and open-mindedly analyzed for possible renovation.   There are so many sound arguments for doing so.

We must look hard at renovations/additions to our school buildings in lieu of total replacement.  Many of our old school buildings have significant useful life left in them.  Let’s take advantage of this, for economic value, environmental responsibility, and out of respect for the history within our built environment.

We should create multiple alternate scenarios that consider variations of compensation levels of teachers, the biggest cost driver; variation of the number of teachers; contributions of technology; energy savings alternates; the contribution of overrides of different levels; and possibilities of corporate funding, possibly through naming rights.

The imperative to”make difficult decisions about the desirable and the essential” will only be clear to our citizen/taxpayers when the outcomes of these scenario projections are presented.  Otherwise the thinking process is too abstract.

We should not forget the impact that our long range facilities planning will have on our educational choices.  Although the budget for capital projects come from the municipal and not the school side, capital costs will affect the funding available to support our direct educational mission.  We must spend wisely on buildings to insure there is enough to fund what will take place inside of them.

As a practice, user fees should be assessed in pursuit of specific policy goals, and not as a revenue source.  Their contribution as a revenue source is small relative to their impact on behaviors, and is miniscule relative to the cost drivers in our school system.  Therefore they should be assessed judiciously.  Currently assessed and proposed fees should be eliminated where they will result in lower access to instruction, such as the 4^th grade music program, and maintained where they may proactively influence behavior, such as assessing parking fees at a level that will discourage students from driving to school.  School bus fees should be high enough to so a student will take the bus (”We paid for that bus pass, so don’t t ask your mom or me to drive you to school!”), but not so high that parents will choose to avoid the fee by driving their children in.

Our teachers argue that early release days are critical to their ability to provide quality teaching to our students, as they afford our teachers time to collaborate with their peers, meet with parents, and obtain professional development.

However, the periodic early release days reduce classroom instruction time, wreak havoc with parent schedules, and arguably compromise learning for the entire day, especially at the middle school level.  Is early release time bad for our students?

President Obama is the most visible of our leaders calling for an increase in classroom time for our students.  He argues that American children must have more quality time in the classroom to be able to learn 21^st century skills, in order to compete with other nations on the worldwide stage.

Absent budget considerations I would scrap early release time.  The school day would be left intact, and teachers would extend their workday to fit what they do now during early release.

But we do have budget considerations.  Is there a meaningful compromise here?  I would try to find balance by reducing but not eliminating the number of existing early release days, especially at the middle school level, and lengthen the teacher’s work day.

I support within-class academic ability grouping in grade schools for reading and math only.  Measurably positive results in ability grouping are shown in these subject areas, in multiple studies.  Both higher and lower achieving students show improvement.

In secondary schools, ability grouping by class has been the most common practice.  This proves to lead to significant improvement at higher ability levels, especially because these groups tend to advance at a rapid pace and are given more materials to study.  Low ability groups also show improvement but only if they are lead with high quality instructors.  This is an important issue:   I don’t know if studies have been done in NPS, but national studies indicate that lower ability groups are commonly lead by lower quality instructors and this results in lower achievement for these students than if they sit in unsorted classrooms.

Concerns about reduced esteem that students in lower ability groups may experience have not been borne out in studies.

In summary, I support within-class academic ability grouping in grade schools for reading and math only and between-class ability academic grouping in secondary schools if high quality instructors are available for all segregated classes.

1. The factor that dwarfs all others in impacting the achievement level of our students is teacher quality. Which means that in order to return to the top level school system we once were, we must hire, develop, and retain top-quality teachers.
2. Although class size has only been shown to be a meaningful factor in educational outcomes for the first few grade levels, Newton is not yet ready to grow class sizes across the board.
3. The rate of teacher compensation growth in NPS is too high, and this is why the CAG has called the economics of our school system “unsustainable.”
4. New revenue from overrides, new growth (development), closing tax loopholes for telecommunications companies, etc. is only a stopgap – cutting the growth rate of compensation is the only way we will get there, until our national health system costs are contained.

We are therefore left with this series of objectives – maintain the number of teachers we presently have, slow the growth rate of teacher compensation, and identify and implement all of the non-monetary features of a teacher’s work experience that will allow us to hire, develop, and retain top quality teachers as a means of taking pressure off of our budget.

A 2007 McKinsey and Company study found, in an analysis of school systems across the country and the world, that solid starting salaries are a key to hiring top teachers as an indirect means of acknowledging the import of the teaching profession and competing with other occupations available to new graduates. But they found that once teachers are in place, the rate of compensation increase is of secondary importance to factors such as:

• Functioning in a stimulating work environment;
• Receiving the support and guidance from strong supervisors including principals;
• Having opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues;
• Being given the opportunity and encouragement to innovate;
• Having access to high quality professional development;
• Career path options including “master teacher” roles.

It is incumbent upon us to perform broad, probing surveys of Newton teachers on a regular basis to try to tease out the non-monetary factors of working life that matter to them, that will help them grow, that will make them better teachers, and that will keep them happy working in NPS. It is incumbent upon us to be creative and clever, about how to provide for our teachers the features listed above at least cost.

The most responsible and considerate thing we can do is clearly admit these objectives to ourselves and communicate them to our teachers and the NTA. This is a pro-community and pro-teacher thing to do; it is the only decent, responsible, thing to do. If we are not clear about what our objectives are, we will certainly never achieve them.