From the Columbia Daily Spectator
Parents to Boycott Education Surveys
Current Funding at Local Schools Unequal
By: Joy Resmovits
Posted: 5/2/07
Groups of local public school parents are planning to boycott one of the ways the Department of Education solicits their feedback, part of their work to tell Mayor Michael Bloomberg that their voices haven't been heard in his plans to reorganize school funding.As part of the mayor's plan to reorganize how public schools in New York City are funded and held accountable for their students' performances, schools will start to receive letter grades from A to F in a number of areas, including student attendance, performance, and progress. A small percentage of each letter grade will depend on a survey that parents will fill out about their child's education. Many parents say the survey won't sufficiently express their opinions and won't address the issues they feel are most important.In a message titled "The parent voice, censored from the parent survey," posted on the mass e-mail list for parents in school district three, which covers the Upper West Side and some of Morningside Heights, Leonie Haimson, mother and founder of Class Size Matters, a group that advocates for smaller classroom sizes in New York City, called for a boycott of the surveys. Haimson wrote that she was upset that important issues such as classroom size, the level of emphasis on teaching to the test, the relationship between parents and principals, and evaluating school leadership teams were not included in survey questions.According to a DOE press release, the survey asks whether schools are setting high expectations, ensuring safety in school, and creating effective learning environments.Schools that receive A-grades will be eligible for extra bonus funding while F-graded schools will be subject to potential leadership change."For any successful organization, finding out what customers and users think works-or needs work-is key to improvement," Bloomberg said in a press release. Parents will execute the boycott by crossing out the questions and writing instead, "We want real parent input-as well as smaller classes, less testing, and new priorities at Tweed [Courthouse, the seat of the DOE] to deal with the real problems in our schools."Haimson wrote in a message to the e-mail list that Bloomberg responded to the boycott by saying that parents are trying to "subvert the system and sit around and complain and not make it any better."Parents may disagree with the scope and methods of Bloomberg's plan, but there is little disagreement that the current system has led to gross funding inequities between similar schools.The Fair Student Funding report by the DOE, which set forth the new weighted per pupil funding scheme, stated that money is currently subjectively allocated from 90 disparate funding streams. The DOE released data that it calls "neither comprehensive nor perfect," along with the FSF report that demonstrated the iniquities among city schools. This data included information about P.S. 36 Margaret Douglas, a school in District 5 on Morningside Drive near 123rd Street, which has an enrollment of 473 students and a poverty rate of 86 percent. P.S. 36 receives $584 less per student from the tax levy instructional fund than P.S. 149, a school in District 3 on 117th Street near Lenox Avenue with similar enrollment. P.S. 36 received $4,229 compared to P.S. 129's $4,813, even though P.S. 36's poverty rate is 10.1 percent higher. P.S. 125, an elementary school on 123rd Street, receives even less instructional funding, with only $4,112 per pupil.It was in response to inequities like this that Bloomberg proposed Fair Student Funding, a plan that pays a base rate per student with added money for special situations such as poverty, English language learners, and special education students. It is impossible to project exactly how individual schools' funding would be affected by the reorganization."Nobody really knows until they actually put that money out there how it's going to affect anybody or if it's going to be shared properly," District 5 Community Education Council president Harriet Barnes said.
© Copyright 2007 Columbia Daily Spectator
No comments:
Post a Comment