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Teacher Says 'Education Mayor' Is "Barking Up Wrong Tree"
Canarsie High School was designated as an Impact School by the Department of Education because it was statistically determined that we have too many behavioral problems. Recently the state designated us as S.U.R.R. (School Under Regents Review) because of academic deficiencies. The main focus was the English Department, which on the January 2007 English Regent had a 52.2 percent pass rate. A 52.2 percent pass rate is seemingly unacceptable by anyone's standards. Upon review of the numbers, however, a different picture starts to develop. If the truants were removed from the statistics, anyone who was absent 10 days or more for the term, average of 18.5 days, the pass rate becomes 77 percent. When you exclude ESL and Special Education students from the mix the pass rate becomes 86 percent. Eighty six percent pass rate, while not our desired goal, is a more respectable number. This shows that General Education Students, who come to class, are learning, teachers are teaching, and this is an 86 percent pass rate on the English Regent, in a multi-cultural setting where the vast majority of our students are immigrants or children of immigrants. Some might ask why truants, ESL and Special Ed students should be excluded from the statistics. Truants, on the surface, are easy to understand, you can't teach someone who is not there but their problems are much deeper. In a society of broken homes, fatherless families, instant gratification, and students who do not have education as a desirable picture in their minds, we cannot have a one-size fits all educational system. Alternative settings, vocational schools and even corporate partnerships must come into play. ESL programs, for students that English is not their primary language, must be revamped. I once substituted an ESL class of 30 students, who spoke eight different languages, with a paraprofessional. Teaching that class was an experience. Special Education students are typically treated as second-class citizens. Main-streaming students, which is including special-ed students in regular classes, does not work, to my knowledge, at Canarsie High School, there has never been an inclusion student who received a Regent, State or Local diploma. The high school system needs to be restructured but so far the only thing offered is to take large schools, such as South Shore, and place three or four smaller schools in the same building. The educational value of this restructuring escapes me, so at best, it should be labeled a work in progress. Mayor Bloomberg wants to be known as the "Education Mayor" and I wish him well but he is barking up the wrong tree. His top down, bottom line, management style might be successful in the corporate world, and it proved successful in labor negotiations, as he masterfully seduced our union leadership into submission, but it does not translate into the educational field. He and his chancellor, neither of who are educators, hired an outside consultant firm from Texas to dictate to New York City Teachers on how we were to teach. At one point every class, in every subject, at Canarsie High School had to be taught in group lessons. Teachers become facilitators as students taught each other. His micro-management Chancellors' Office went as far as to count the number of staples on the bulletin board and we all know about the school bus fiasco. To his credit the Mayor backed off each of these decisions. Now his mantra is to offer principals a $25,000 bonus to improve schools. This might cause some creative accounting measures that improve the numbers but will do nothing for education. I could almost hear the mayor's retort, "another whining teacher." I'm a combat veteran who served in Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne, a multiple year honoree in Who's Who Among American Teachers, and has even received accolades from your own Chancellors' Office. The reason I am writing this is to look out for our students' interest, someone has to. Canarsie High School will probably be removed as an Impact School and, if it is not already pre-determined, we will survive the Regent Review because, from the principal to the student aides, we have a hard working and dedicated staff whose main concern is our students. Mayor Bloomberg, if you could create a school system where Special Education students can learn with dignity, our ESL students can be immersed in English so they can compete with our General Education students and our truants can have alternatives so they can become productive members of society, we, as teachers, will give you the 14 percent of the students that we missed the first time around. Let teachers teach and together we can create an environment where you can become the 'Education Mayor," we can be respected as the professionals we are, our students can flourish and perhaps we will mail their excellent test results to your new address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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