Share This Story
Alarmed by this trend, a group called the Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) published a report in January that called for a “Marshall Plan” to address the persistent problems of middle schools in New York. Two months later, in response to the CEJ report – as well a new reorganization plan for the city’s public schools, unveiled by Mayor Bloomberg the day after the report’s release, that would place unprecedented responsibility on principals to raise achievement – City Council Speaker Christine Quinn convened a Middle School Task Force to explore solutions to those problems. Over the next several months, the two dozen members of the task force visited middle schools throughout the city and held a public forum in each borough to solicit input from parents, teachers, administrators and various school experts.
On August 13 the task force released a report containing nearly 40 recommendations on topics ranging from curriculum to school safety. At a press conference that day, Mayor Bloomberg, alongside Quinn, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, and several task force members, announced that the city Department of Education would make $5 million available to 50 high-need middle schools in order to implement the task force’s recommendations. Beginning this fall, the city will waive fees for professional development for teachers and will begin expanding Regents-level courses at those high-need schools. The focus will be on the high-need schools at first, but the goal is to gradually implement the recommendations citywide. These steps will be overseen by a newly appointed Director of Middle School Initiatives – Lori Bennett, former instructional superintendent for Region 8 in the Bronx – who will continue to receive input on the city’s middle schools from a working group that will include task force members.
The week of the press conference, City Limits sat down with Dr. Pedro Noguera, the chairman of the task force and a professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education.
CITY LIMITS: What did you think of the press conference?
PEDRO NOGUERA: The press conference focused on the positives – on the fact that the report is out, that there’s a high degree of agreement between the speaker, the chancellor and the mayor about the content and the recommendations, and a willingness to try to implement them. I think there was a lot of good faith demonstrated at the press conference, and that was made possible by the negotiations leading up to it. So I think that’s a good thing.
What I think didn’t get enough attention is the fact that there’s a real problem out there. The reason why the task force was created is because the middle schools are not in very good shape, in many cases. And that became really clear through the course of the hearings that we held across the city. Our hope is that this task force will give the attention and focus – and keep it over a sustained time – on the need to improve these middle schools.
CITY LIMITS: Tell me more about how the public hearings went. What was the main thing that the task force took away from them?
PEDRO NOGUERA: The amount of concern out there. Particularly around issues related to school discipline and safety, in many cases, and just the general quality of education being provided to students. The ways in which we are not clear about what a middle school should focus on with respect to the developmental needs of students, and how schools should go about doing that. All of that came out in the hearings in various ways. And I think it helped to send a clear message that something needed to be done.
On the other side, we also heard from the principals of some schools that are being run really well. Those schools exist in the city also, and it’s obviously important to recognize that we have models out there that we can learn from.
CITY LIMITS: The task force also conducted site visits to six schools. What was it about the quality schools that stuck out?
PEDRO NOGUERA: I’m in schools a lot anyway, because of the work I do, but we wanted to make sure that task force members knew the range of schools that are out there. We wanted to look at model schools with a record of academic success, but the problem with a lot of those model schools is that they screen kids, and they only take the highest-achieving kids. It’s easy to be a good school if you only accept the high achieving kids.
We also wanted to look at schools that don’t screen kids, but are successful. And then we wanted to look at schools that were struggling. Why is it that certain schools haven’t improved? What are the missing ingredients there?
CITY LIMITS: In the task force report, a participant in one of the public hearings is quoted as saying, “Without discipline, everything else is an afterthought.” Was that the consensus of the task force – that it’s difficult to address learning and other student needs without first addressing the physical environment of the schools?
PEDRO NOGUERA: I think safety was certainly a central concern, but there was also a recognition that safety is a byproduct of strong relationships between adults and kids, of a well-run school, of students who are academically engaged. That is, that you can’t just address safety by hiring more guards and more police officers. Which, unfortunately, is something I think the city has done, in a few cases. They haven’t really looked at the deeper underlying issues at the schools with persistent safety problems, and instead focused on security measures.
What we were calling for in the report is that you have to address safety, but you’ve got to do it in a way that really gets at the roots of the problem: students who are not connected to learning; students who are in schools that are too large and too impersonal, where no adults really know who they are; schools that are really lacking in essential resources. And if you don’t address these issues, safety will always be a problem. We wanted to make sure that school quality and safety were very much linked, and not addressed in isolation from each other.
CITY LIMITS: The report brought up the presence of NYPD officers in schools – especially that their role may not be clear enough – and recommended that the administration consider returning jurisdiction over safety matters to the DOE. The day after the press conference, the New York Post reported that “sources in City Hall” said that was “highly unlikely.” Was the task force disappointed that the mayor didn’t entertain that?
PEDRO NOGUERA: There was a range of opinions, so there was no real consensus on this issue, but several members felt that it is highly problematic to have police officers who don’t report to the principal in the building. Because many of us, myself included, think you have to address discipline as an educational issue, and not as a criminal issue. Clearly, there are some cases where the nature of the offense warrants the involvement of the police. But what happens when you bring police into the schools is that a number of issues that previously were handled as school matters now become criminal matters. If kids get in a shoving match, if there’s an argument between a student and a teacher, if there’s a dispute over a cell phone – instead of those matters being resolved as a low-level disciplinary matter, they become a police matter. And there have been several cases where educators have tried to restrain the police from intervening, because it involved a special ed student or other circumstances where a different response was warranted. But because the police are not trained in how to interact with young people, once you introduce the police into a situation you lose a large degree of control.
It’s very important that we not minimize the potential threat. There are weapons in schools – even elementary and middle schools. So I don’t want to be naïve and pretend that this is not a real problem. The question is: How do you address it? Why is it that some schools – like Banana Kelly in the South Bronx, which is in as rough a neighborhood as any – have no metal detectors? It all goes back to school quality. And if you don’t address school quality, you’ll end up with lots of police officers and metal detectors, but you still haven’t solved the problem.
I should add that, given how much authority the principal going to have under this new reorganization plan, to have them not have control over the safety I think is a real problem, personally.
CITY LIMITS: You mentioned the range of opinions on the NYPD issue. Were there other points that prompted particular discussion or disagreement on the task force? Were there any issues on which the task force really had to work to come to a consensus?
PEDRO NOGUERA: I think the big one was this reorganization plan. What we really don’t know is if this plan is going to work. This plan is a radical decentralization. It puts an inordinate amount of responsibility on principals, and principals are going to be expected to figure out what they need to do to improve their school – how to spread their resources. In some ways it makes a lot of sense, except that, in many cases, you have inexperienced principals, inexperienced teachers –and high-needs students. And at those schools – we identified 50 chronically underperforming schools where that combination exists – they’re clearly going to need some more help.
The fact that the mayor and chancellor agreed to some measures, like this professional development academy and a few others, to focus attention on those schools is, I think, an admission on their part that merely leaving these schools on their own to fix themselves may not be sufficient. But there was a lot of debate and discussion among the task force about the plan itself – about how much confidence we have in this plan. And about what should be done to make sure that the schools aren’t left to flounder.
CITY LIMITS: Earlier you referred to the negotiations that went on between the task force and the administration. How did that process shape the eventual report?
PEDRO NOGUERA: Well… that’s where it all gets political. The task force did our work, wrote a report, made our recommendations. But then the question became: Which of these recommendations will the administration accept and act upon? And that’s where the negotiations became important. The speaker wanted to make sure that this was not a report that just sat on a shelf somewhere, but that it actually led to some concrete changes, and so the negotiations were designed to get the commitment and the buy-in from the mayor and chancellor that they would act on some of these. And I think she deserves a lot of credit for really sticking to it and making sure that she got these agreements.
CITY LIMITS: Were there any recommendations that were a real sticking point in those negotiations?
PEDRO NOGUERA: A number of things. I wasn’t directly involved, but I know the whole idea of how we provide professional development in schools is a sticking point. Under this plan, again, it’s a very decentralized focus, so principals get to choose how to spend their professional development dollars. And that puts a lot of responsibility on the principals to know what they need. And we were saying, maybe there needs to be a resource out there that they can tap into so that they don’t have to choose between professional development for teachers or music classes for kids. And I think the willingness to put those resources in there for that particular recommendation will make a difference.
CITY LIMITS: Did the discussion over professional development touch on union issues? Was the teachers union involved or concerned about it?
PEDRO NOGUERA: They were very interested in that particular recommendation, and very supportive of it. They recognized that there’s a real need to provide support to teachers, particularly given the large number of relatively new teachers in the system.
CITY LIMITS: The report highlighted the difficulty that middle schools have in recruiting and retaining the best teachers. Why is that so difficult?
PEDRO NOGUERA: Middle schools are notoriously difficult to teach in. Kids are more challenging, they tend to be more rambunctious at that age, so classroom management is often a big issue. It’s also true that most schools of education do not have credential programs that focus on middle schools. They either focus on elementary education or high school education. So what you often end up with is teachers who are not well-prepared for that age group, for children in early adolescence, either from a content standpoint, as far as academics, or from a developmental standpoint. And I think both needs need to be addressed through professional development, because universities are not doing their part.
CITY LIMITS: Much of the press coverage following the release of the report drew attention to the fact that the mayor did not commit to the task force’s recommendation that class size in middle schools be reduced. Did you expect that response?
PEDRO NOGUERA: The class size coalition has been very effective in drawing attention to this issue for a while now – and I agree with them. I think lowering class size would make a huge difference in the system. The other side of it is, you can only lower class size if you have more classrooms to put kids in. You really run into the issue of physical space: Where are the schools? Because if you lower the class size, you need more classrooms, you need more schools. And this city is in a crunch for space right now. I think class size is vital, and I think lowering class size is probably one of the most significant things the city could do to improve learning conditions for students, but I also recognize that it’s going to take time to make that one happen.
CITY LIMITS: Both in New York and in the rest of the country, there’s been a movement away from traditional middle schools and toward K-8 or 6-12 schools. The report mentions that, but only in passing. Why didn’t the task force address that?
PEDRO NOGUERA: Our own examination of that issue led us to believe that there was no one configuration that was the best. There were some 6-12 schools that were working well, K-8’s that were working well, as well as 6-8’s that were working well. There’s no one model or configuration that seems to be the answer. It always comes back to the basic ingredients of good teaching, good leadership, counseling and social support for kids that you need to create an effective middle school.
CITY LIMITS: You mentioned the screening that goes on at some of the middle schools in the city. The middle school choice program [which allows parents to select schools outside of their zoned neighborhood schools] has expanded in New York in recent years. What impact has that had on the kids in the neighborhood schools, whose parents may not have the time or the ability to help guide them through the choice process?
PEDRO NOGUERA: I think that’s a huge problem throughout the city, and not just for middle schools. It’s certainly a problem with the high schools as well. You basically have a limited number of very good choices, and then a much greater number of mediocre choices, and then a number of schools that no one would choose actively. And that’s a problem, because disproportionately, the high-need kids – special ed kids, kids who don’t speak English, kids in poverty – are concentrated in the lowest-performing schools. And that’s a huge equity issue that the city has to address. And I know they’ve been trying to, by trying to increase the supply of good schools, but right now I would say it’s a real problem throughout the city.
CITY LIMITS: Do you feel that middle-school choice has in fact exacerbated some of the problems that the report addressed – teacher retention, the lack of advanced courses at some schools – in neighborhood schools?
PEDRO NOGUERA: It has. But I don’t want to make it an argument against choice, because you have choice for good reasons. If you don’t provide some degree of choice, you’re not going to be able to keep your middle-class parents, who are going to choose private school if they don’t get the kind of schools they want. The real question is: How do you maintain a choice system that’s fair and equitable, and doesn’t just reinforce the inequities? I do think the new funding
formula that the mayor and chancellor have introduced, if it works, could do some of that, because then you would at least be providing additional resources to schools that serve higher-need kids. That’s a step in the right direction, but I also think you also have to find ways to make these less desirable schools attractive to the middle-class parents who have more options. Because if you don’t do that, you end up concentrating the neediest kids in the worst schools, and when that happens it makes it very difficult to educate kids.
CITY LIMITS: One last question. The report emphasizes that the problems facing middle schools are not unique to New York, and are similar just about everywhere in the country. That said, is there anything about New York that complicates these universal problems?
PEDRO NOGUERA: I think what makes New York unique and different is the size – it’s just so much bigger than any other place. [The public schools have 1.1 million students at 1,400 schools. The 220,000 students in the middle grades represent more students than comprise the entire public school systems of Philadelphia or Houston.] So there’s the size and the scale of the problem. We also have a high degree of poverty. The New York City public schools disproportionately serve the poorest children, and poverty creates other needs – health needs, emotional, social, psychological needs. We’ve not been very good as a city at addressing the needs of the whole child. And I think that makes the challenges that face New York in some ways greater than other cities, just because of the sheer number of kids we’re dealing with.
