Good Schools Are Still Possible, But

...Twenty years later only 23 percent were white and 60 percent were poor enough to qualify for federal food subsidies...

...At the end of expensive (but shoddy, by average professional standards) evaluation processes, children were neatly labeled, and specific written school goals set: "Given ten two-digit addition examples, the student will use concrete materials to solve eight correctly...

...Teachers were the workers, Macchiarola boasted, and students the products...

...Fundamental school-based reform has been the major casualty of the post-1960s reforms...

...Meanwhile, finding the funds to buy paper, repair our single rented typewriter, fix a computer, or tune the piano requires most of my time and imagination...

...Since we now used exactly the same reading tests every year from grades 2-8, teaching to the test was fairly easy...

...Formal schooling, after all, occupies at least a dozen of our most impressionable years, and we are involved again as parents when our children go to school...

...From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, little happened except more window-dressing...

...Prestigious commissions—like Carnegie and Holmes—speak, at last, of the need to improve the status of teaching, of giving the people who must implement programs the power to design them...

...We began a second school (CPE II) in 1979 and a third (River East) in 1982...

...Such things could be seen from time to time, but most of us taught in moderately orderly schools, with generally benign, even at times overly docile, though uninterested, children...

...media and public alarm grew...

...Every apparently good protest gave birth to a new mandate, a new piece of legislation, a new contractual clause, a new pedagogical or curriculum prescription...

...literacy collapsed...

...They resent the time spent "managing," scrounging, making do, not the time spent "teaching...

...They were given an abbreviated catalogue, two weeks to complete their orders and no time for schoolwide consultation...

...This new plan spelled out a statewide curriculum, complete with grade-bygrade testing mechanisms, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, for every accredited school—public, independent or parochial—in the state...

...The result: classrooms have gained some well-deserved extras but we have all lost the critical basics: paper, pencils, duplicating fluid, stamps, etc...

...Any more than an eye exam— which loses value if examinees are "too well" prepared...

...The result was that children entering kindergarten now had a better chance of scoring "gifted" (30 percent) and very little chance of being labeled "handicapped...

...During Macchiarola's tenure as chancellor it was precisely this elbow room that had steadily been invaded...

...Why not a citywide elementary science test...

...In reality, the new systems were mainly more of the same: more tests, more officially sponsored coaching, plus undisguised warnings that test scores better go up...

...He called upon teachers to make their own local revolution...

...In 1964 over half the students were white...

...A social and political climate hardly friendly to poor minority families left these vulnerable young people with little hope...

...What to do next...

...years that have enormous influence on public habits, values, and competencies...

...The Central Board for years had encouraged individualized instruction, matching curriculum to the child, and pedagogical innovation...

...There was no fight left in anyone...

...They ignored some, followed others, were cynical about most...

...He never downplayed professionalism, didn't knock teachers, avoided looking for villains...

...Few of the city's thirty-two district superintendents have lasted more than a few years...

...But Macchiarola managed the news well FALL • 1987 545 CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES enough to keep this data out of the public eye until after he departed in the spring of 1983...

...In fact, things got worse in the high schools...

...A stunning blow—though, as critics noted, no one in the mammoth Central Board offices was laid off...

...To make this possible requires support, time—and patience...

...Patience above all...

...Class sizes went up, support for the remaining teachers was cut, and school principals were hopelessly mired in new administrative tasks...

...We were never the carriers of our own stories...

...Children rarely met books intended to be read from front to back...

...Many good teachers kept doing what they knew was right, and brave principals plugged ahead at educating kids (they would coach for the tests at the last moment, hoping that their scores would not fall hopelessly behind their neighboring "competitors...

...It was pretty straightforward, and only seemed "crooked" to those who remembered that good assessment devices should not be taught to or coached for...

...Nearly half a lifetime...

...Strangling schools with red tape and systemwide mandates—big ones or little ones—is what is truly inefficient...

...The "experts" rushed in...

...Radiators leak, toilets back up, doors have no locks, windows are broken, fluorescent lights don't work because they need ballasts (which I am not allowed to go out and buy), desks are gouged with graffiti, and because we have too few chairs we have to carry them from classroom to classroom...

...But while teachers (including me) might not always like informed criticism, we would acknowledge more of it, and it could thus lead to real discourse...

...Serious, rooted change cannot happen unless the knowledge of those who do the job is tapped...

...Then, for a brief moment in the spring of 1984, there was a flowering of hope and possibility...

...During those ten years we lived in a protected world, doing our work—steadily and sturdily...

...546 • DISSENT CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES So while New York City's Board voiced opposition to the state mandates, it had, in fact, already begun to practice what the state was preaching...

...And so the proposed solutions led teachers to be treated like interchangeable parts...

...or "given teacher supervision, praise and positive reinforcement, the student will attend to difficult assignments for five minutes, three times out of four, as recorded by teacher...

...Although Alvarado captured interest everywhere, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Wagner would get the job...

...As the curriculum began to imitate the tests, the test-coaching programs became school norms...

...Previously principals received a lump sum (approximately S10-15 per student for the school year) to spend on all non-textbook needs...

...Alvarado argued, cajoled, manipulated...

...it is teaching that they want to get back to...

...Formerly head of the high school division (the only part of the system incontrovertibly still under Central control), he had the additional advantage of being Hispanic, thus averting any accusations that Alvarado's fall might have had racial implications...

...Nor, in face of layoffs, was factory-style militancy useful...

...These were the slogans of the day...

...Although not all the changes were educationally first-rate, they provided opportunities for teachers and children and a welcome feeling of optimism...

...Or that schools be required to make their beliefs and practices public...

...Reforms came, but we didn't make them...

...there was a kind of peace between the union and the world, and the state would now tell us what to do...

...The only kind of mandates that could help would be of quite a different order...

...He took an opposite tack...

...The custodial engineer is the boss of the building, and can prohibit teachers from coming in early or staying late, or dropping by on off days...

...At least we couldn't be blamed if it went wrong...

...Parents withdrew to their workplaces and teachers once again closed their doors hoping only to be left alone...

...Even though this rhetoric was not backed by structural support, at least it gave schools and teachers some elbow room...

...Wagner is, of course, white...

...note: As we went to FALL • 1987 547 CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES press Quinones had just announced that he was taking early retirement...

...Macchiarola had provided a more friendly press...

...The conversations that teachers, and parents as well, held among themselves remained private, as though even they thought them unworthy of exposure, of "serious" people's concern...

...But the community control fight had both undercut the union's educational position and split apart the city's pro-education coalition...

...Consternation...

...By the mid 1980s a majority of black and Hispanic youngsters were dropping out without diplomas...

...New York City's students were no longer a cross-section of its voting population...

...By hook or crook, most of us complied...

...Many of these "others" appreciated the union's new statesmanship, but they also wanted quick and measurable "results" — something to show for their support of public education...

...Within ten years District 4 established twenty small alternative schools led by innovative teacherdirectors...

...Many schools did virtually nothing but test practice from January through April...

...These are also the latest federal and state targets...

...But the state commissioner, Gordon Amsbach, vetoed Wagner on the technical grounds that he had insufficient teaching experience...

...Until those who make decisions, including "the public," can see the specific local connections between policy and practice, we will not make the breakthroughs that our rhetoric demands...

...The payroll secretary has more power over teachers than I do—she can dock their salaries and generally harass them if they are late, or forget to punch out, or are sick without a doctor's note...

...Parents were organized and vocal...

...And yet there was a lively sense that the old system was done for: change of some sort was on the agenda...

...Unlike the high schools, which the Regents curriculum had long controlled, the elementary schools had had room for considerable diversity...

...The city laid off more than 15,000 teachers in response to its financial crisis...

...Cognitive got translated into "measurable," which led back to test scores...

...Mayor Koch's choice was Robert Wagner, a respected insider's politician...

...Although it's true that money alone won't buy change, the idea that a system can both ruthlessly cut back on its teaching staff and make educational breakthroughs is absurd...

...This powerful critical idea was, however, translated, as usual, into a simple-minded mandate...

...Finding the results of the first assessment unpalatable (30 percent were found "handicapped" and 2 percent "gifted") Macchiarola allegedly asked for new scoring norms...

...A demoralized staff teaching larger classes on smaller paychecks gave the city its rising test scores...

...This had not won it friends either...

...It did so both to "look good" and because the pressure on kids to get better scores increased...

...these made for drama and slogans but little understanding...

...But as a New York Times editorial noted in response to black and Hispanic outrage, doing so would expose the previous search as a charade...

...Paragraphs replaced chapters...

...A few decentralized districts used newly won local control to unleash talent, to support teachers and principals with ideas, to encourage parent/teacher collaboration...

...The kind of detailed specificity that teachers could offer seemed a mere nuisance to the policy makers...

...Thousands of social workers, psychologists, and educational evaluators (former teachers) were hired, not to remediate, not to assist teachers, parents or kids, but simply to screen—to test, assess and prescribe...

...Nor did he enjoy the public/media "stature" of either Macchiarola or Alvarado...

...If it couldn't be marketed on a grand scale, it was hardly worth exploring...

...Even a high school diploma began to seem an unlikely dream...

...But when we speak of educating for democratic citizenship, rather than job training, patience is at the heart...

...New reports, time lines, and task forces are in place...

...All in one twenty-four hour day...

...The board then selected Nathan Quinones as chancellor...

...And by 1983 the N.Y...

...There are pages of new rules and regulations to study: the Regents plan alone would take a few months to make sense of...

...Teachers' salaries were frozen during this period of steady inflation...

...Gradually the union's leadership began to address issues with an eye to that broader public...

...The more "exposure" the better—so that schooling becomes visible in many ways, not just through numbers and statistics...

...But the teachers I know do not object to being called "teachers...

...My friends used to marvel that I had the "courage" to teach in a Harlem public school...

...Inflated scores kept the number of holdovers to manageable proportions, but otherwise the only effect of these "gates" was to increase the number of students entering high school as adults—beyond the school-leaving age...

...Reform must address both...

...Our products should roll off our assembly line classrooms in uniformly proper condition—with plenty of inspections along the way...

...This kind of attention might produce lots of criticism, not just applause...

...In this disheartening atmosphere I found a haven in a maverick school district, where a charismatic young superintendent, Anthony Alvarado, supported by the East Harlem political establishment, was unleashing a miniwave of real reform...

...We are ordered to stick to "cognitive" (academic) goals, but our students still come to us with the exponential weight of unsolved economic and social family crises...

...Any halfway decent camp sets aside more time for collective planning for a two-month summer recreation program than teachers are provided to plan a ten-month educational program...

...Our concern for improved literacy (sparked by the exposure of low test scores) created a mammoth drive to improve test scores...

...Such reforms bypassed the kind of school-by-school changes, both small and structurally radical, that teachers and parents might have been able to suggest—changes that, however slow, could have made a powerful difference...

...By the early 1970s both teachers and parents, the new actors of the 1960s, had retreated to their more familiar postures...

...By regulation there was now a plan uniform for all, more "rigorous" and more detailed than former state guidelines and general graduation requirements...

...Five teachers and I founded Central Park East (CPE) in the fall of 1974 as a progressive school at a time when everyone claimed such an "open" style was dead...

...Quinones was a safe choice...

...Under attack from all its usual allies for not minding its own business—traditional breadandbutter demands—the UFT had accepted the more modest posture of factory-style adversarialism...

...And only those changes that could be translated into system-wide, replicable programs seemed worth discussing...

...We never trusted our own voices...

...Decentralization, pedagogical innovations, parent control, teacher empowerment, accountability, public access, increased state and federal monies...

...As these twenty were gradually established, they sparked change also in the now less-populated neighborhood schools...

...Could we mandate that schools provide teachers with time to talk and plan together...

...The struggle is not only over weighty academic rights, but also these seemingly small and petty ones...

...Hardly an insignificant topic for public discussion...

...Some interesting high school innovations had also sprung up, offering alternate approaches to providing adolescents—particularly those most "at risk" — with academic skills...

...It had to worry, also, about its public image...

...And they are right...

...And, as the social problems of families increased, so did the school's burdens—even though the accepted view of the school's role remained strictly "cognitive...

...There was talk of starting a new search...

...Over 10 percent of the city's pupils were soon labeled "handicapped" —nearly 120,000 children...

...Yet no one in the city's high schools praised us for sending them better readers...

...They were invented by people far removed from schools—by "experts...

...There just isn't a faster route...

...By 1986 most New York elementary school students were scoring above average...

...Inventively humiliating procedures began the moment one applied for a job, as one wandered down the Central Board corridors of 110 Livingston Street hoping not to get scolded as one tried to untangle endless Catch-22s...

...Within eight months, however, his promising career was tangled in an investigation of possible corruption and misuse of funds...

...In a highly personal profession, the sudden disappearance of so many people, and the attendant reassignment of thousands of others, caused pain and then a kind of numbing...

...There was the state of the school toilets as well as the required daily lesson plans, the time-clock and the endless interruptions...

...The proliferation of "gifted" kindergarten classes was one result of this screening program...

...They want to be "exposed...

...It's even harder this year...

...Can mandates be designed that support school-based initiative, inquiry, and decision making...

...In fact, in the "old days" such test-specific coaching had been rigorously prohibited...

...This year, the Central Board directed that teachers receive $200 each to order their own supplies...

...Besides, everyone liked being called "gifted...

...Responding to it would take a lifetime...

...q * A report on the kind of structural change being proposed here appears in an interview in the Spring 1987 issue of the American Educator, "Shared Decision Making at the School Site," based on an AFT-backed plan in Hammond, Indiana...

...And somehow teachers were never considered experts...

...Not a bad strategy, since we have few resources available to do anything about handicapped kindergarteners (a child has to be two years behind in reading to qualify for special education monies...

...The United Federation of Teachers (UFT—the American Federation of Teachers local) tried to assume this role...

...At the same time, new regulations for special educational services for the handicapped were creating an ever larger and more expensive bureaucracy, requiring lots of testing and record keeping to stay in legal compliance...

...They imagined schools disorderly and chaotic, filled with violence, knives flashing...

...We had grown accustomed to federal and state accountability schemes attached to various funded programs, but Macchiarola promised a new citywide accountability system...

...All must now score above-grade (however ludicrous such an idea might be statistically)—regardless of race, color, or social class (although class was rarely mentioned...

...It promised equity and quality if students and teachers did their jobs as they were told...

...Macchiarola's other innovation was the institution of two "gates" at fourth and seventh grades through which students scoring in the bottom 25th percentile could not pass...

...But it won't until teachers get more actively involved in the reform movement...

...The mayor and the Board of Education had been forced to select a most unlikely successor to the retiring Macchiarola...

...Neither bottom-up nor bold top-down initiatives were Quinones's style...

...A subtle campaign to recentralize the city's schools is probably the most dangerous, although it's not clear who is initiating this one...

...The agenda stemming from the chancellor's office has slowed...

...He didn't mandate one universal top-down system for improvement...

...predictable multiple-choice questions replaced conversation about books...

...District reading coordinators focused on finding the "best" reading system and training teachers to "operate" it, rather than on understanding how children learn to read and the value of being literate...

...The union now depended on its members' electoral muscle, and on alliances with other powerful groups...

...He was a maverick who enjoyed mavericks, and he gave many of them a chance to explore—without pressure for quick results or an eye on the media...

...Two minority candidates were also included in the final list of nominees: Tom Minter, a well-credentialed black educator then working at the Central Board, and Anthony Alvarado, superintendent of East Harlem's District 4. The three ran a lively public campaign...

...Thus another vast bureaucracy started testing five- and six-year olds...

...For a starter maybe we could mandate that employers give parents time off to visit school.* School people don't insist on working in a vacuum, "doing their own thing...

...In 1986, under Alvarado's successor, Carlos M. Medina, we opened a secondary school, thus providing East Harlem with a progressive educational institution for youngsters all the way through high school...

...Its 1960s militancy had depended on the capacity to strike...

...And then, in the mid-1970s, the schools experienced a major trauma—equal in impact to the late 1960s battles for community control...

...New York's racial minorities had already lost their 1960s enthusiasm and militancy, and were suffering the first stages of official "benign neglect...

...With no new ideas, larger class sizes and the same old teachers, the city's scores experienced a remarkable and steady rise...

...Our working conditions were often intolerable, but in ways that seemed either hard to explain or trivial to outsiders...

...By a mere stroke of a pen, it solved the most complex educational issues...

...Mandates only seem efficient because they can at least make claim to "quick cures," in time for the next election...

...No one could now publicly acknowledge that "some children" might be less "teachable" than others...

...We are ordered to give every child an hour's homework nightly—exact numbers of minutes per child per grade are centrally dictated—and expected to also read, assess, and comment on each...

...Meanwhile the building in which we work is falling apart...

...His responses were evasive...

...Most of the charges were minor and some merely exposed standard system practices, but the very number of them seemed suspicious...

...School libraries were gradually closed and the librarians eliminated in favor of remedial teachers and remedial reading "labs" filled with expensive prepackaged kits and reading programs rather than real books...

...Alvarado resigned...

...But they did so amid a system that was becoming increasingly test-driven, prepackaged, and bureaucratized...

...Schools reflected this in many ways—mostly trivial, cumulatively devastating...

...One pioneering county in Florida is planning to rename teachers "executives...

...Reducing dropouts, truancy, and absenteeism were his stated major goals—a little each year...

...There was no one to lead an effective fight to save our schools...

...Meanwhile, a straightforward professionally administered hearing and vision exam for every entering student remains a utopian goal in our medically sophisticated city...

...And with every "reform" we encountered new nightmares...

...The only educational legacy of his brief tenure was the creation of all-day kindergartens...

...The state and city have set up teams to "help" schools write plans for how they will improve— higher test scores and lower absentee figures...

...The staff and I are directed instantly to implement new programs to resolve current social crises, to use the latest research on teaching, to tighten supervision, increase consultation, and to report back in detail on all the above...

...Now an innovative UFT-sponsored plan to create workplace democracy has created instead schoolwide chaos...

...He attracted talent, he made schooling seem an adventure...

...It was tension rather than actual violence that wore down most school people...

...From the 1950s to mid-1960s the UFT had pioneered a whole array of proposed structural reforms...

...Perseverance, reflection, flexibility, intelligence . . . but also patience...

...Since most of those directly hurt by a strike were constituents of little political importance, and state penalties on strikers severe, the UFT had abandoned its old style of militancy...

...Disbelief...

...They too were largely silent...

...The real issues that concerned us were rarely noticed by the press, the politicians, the parent organizations, the school boards, or even by our own teachers' union...

...544 • DISSENT CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES We were back to business-as-usual, but one legacy of the 1960s remained...

...Violent children and low reading scores were the symbols everyone agreed to talk about...

...In fact, he kept things quiet for us, and thrived on minimal confrontations with the outside world...

...Still, there was no protest...

...This made it more flexible about traditional union issues, but it was now in a bind about exposing those deteriorating working conditions that it had no effective way of dealing with...

...The good press Macchiarola's reforms received made their spread inevitable...

...Taken from the Division's Manual) A vast statewide law (called Chapter 53) mandating assessment of all new students for possible handicapping or gifted conditions was instituted in 1980...

...He was also rare in his calm expectation that he would be with us for a long time...

...Improved test scores, alas, are best achieved by ignoring real reading activity...

...A social studies test...

...teachers believed their recently won powers to be threatened...

...Alvarado was appointed chancellor of the public schools...

...Federal funds earmarked for libraries were now spent on "software"— filmstrips and computer programs...

...We spend more time and energy making sure that no one who doesn't deserve it gets a free or reduced price school lunch than we do on making the lunchroom a decent place...

...At their worst, the city's schools were never bad in quite the way the public imagined...

...Absence of respect for the people who made up the roster of school life—parents, kids, teachers, principals—was what was really driving us crazy...

...Let me be specific...

...the city was divided by race and class...

...The union did voice objections, but it had limited clout...

...Macchiarola handled politicians, corporations, foundations, and news reporters marvelously well...

...As I stare at the piles of memos and forms that confront me as a school principal, the job appears somewhere between a joke and an impossibility...

...State Board of Regents got on the accountability bandwagon, instituting one of the most detailed and far-reaching top-down educational packages in the nation...

...But they often miss 548 • DISSENT comnacirs AND CONSTITUENCIES the significance of the details that stand in our way...

...He promised big changes— always system-wide...

...In turn, the union's inability to avert such massive layoffs, had an impact on teacher self-confidence, as it did on organized parent groups, who saw years of work destroyed overnight...

...All of this was occurring at a time when the employment prospects for New York's "at risk" students—always grim—had reached new lows...

...Overworked teachers and principals, who never had much authorized autonomy anyway, were too overwhelmed with new city and state regulations to find the heart and energy to fight them off...

...And these "others" were often corporations, business coalitions, and powerful public figures...

...The impact of this layoff has been virtually undiscussed...

...Every time a fault was found, a system-wide solution was ofFALL • 1987 • 543 CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES fered...

...Instead, ersatz issues were endlessly addressed, and they exhausted us...

...Alvarado, who rose from teacher to principal to district superintendent before he was 30, was now positioned to make history in American education...

...Lower class size in the early grades is probably Quinones's most important initiative...

...There were exceptions...

...A sense of excitement stirred parent groups and the teachers' union...

...Nor was anyone told that the $200 was not in addition to, but largely in place of, routinely available funds...

...Money to run our school is always tight—an adventure in ingenuity and making do...

...A rule that made sense in one setting had to cover all settings...

...Once again, a centrally imposed solution defeats an essentially sound idea...

...Reading scores went up...

...The headline battles ignored the participants' experiences and their perceived complaints...

...FALL • 1987 . 549 550 • DISSENT...

...During this same period, the city got a new chancellor, Frank Macchiarola...

...Sounds good...

...It was now dependent on what "others" thought, not just on what teachers found credible...

...Schools will not become educationally successful by deadlines and mandates...

...In a system that refers to the midday meal as a "feeding program" (in England, it is called "dinner"), it is clear that the people doing the "feeding" and those being "fed" are not valued too highly...