9 For examples of strategy instruction, see Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding (Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2000). See also AUSSIE: Partners in Professional Development, “Literacy Resources,” www.aussiepd.com/resources/literacy.
10 Lori Jamison Rog, Guided Reading Basics: Organizing, Managing, and Implementing a Balanced Literacy Program in K-3 (Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2003); Sewell Chan, “By the Script,” New York Times, July 31, 2005; Meredith I. Honig, New Directions in Education Policy Implementation: Confronting Complexity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 38-44.
11 P. David Pearson and Janice A. Dole, “Explicit Comprehension Instruction: A Review of Research and a New Conceptualization of Instruction,” Elementary School Journal 88, no. 2 (November 1987): 162.
12 Richard F. Elmore and Deanna Burney, “Investing in Teacher Learning: Staff Development and Instructional Improvement,” in Teaching as the Learning Profession: Handbook of Policy and Practice, ed. Linda Darling-Hammond and Gary Sykes (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), 265.
13 The papers produced by this federally funded project can be found at www.lrdc.pitt.edu/hplc/hplc.html. The cost of the project was provided by Grover Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, in an e-mail to the author, May 15, 2007.
14 The figures vary for the amount of the district’s budget dedicated to professional development, with some studies saying 3 percent, while Alvarado told Hedrick Smith on the PBS program Making Schools Work that the amount was “over 12 percent.” See www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/dwr/ny/alvarado.html.
15 New York City Department of Education, Annual School Reports, 1987-1988.
16 Lauren Resnick, Anthony J. Alvarado, and Richard F. Elmore, “Developing and Implementing High-Performance Learning Communities,” Solicitation Proposal RC-96-1370, U.S. Department of Education, 1995, 1-2.
17 Elmore and Burney, “Continuous Improvement in Community District #2, New York City,” High Performance Learning Communities Project, University of Pittsburgh, 1998, 1, www.lrdc.pitt.edu/hplc/Publications/ContinuousImprove.pdf.
18 Lauren Resnick and Michael Harwell, “High Performance Learning Communities District 2 Achievement,” HPLC Project, 1998, 19, www.lrdc.pitt.edu/hplc/Publications/Achieve%20I%20Final.pdf.
19 Michael Harwell et al., “Professional Development and the Achievement Gap in Community School District #2,” HPLC Project, 2000, 21-22, www.lrdc.pitt.edu/hplc/Publications/Achievement%20III.pdf.
20 Elmore and Burney, “School Variation and Systemic Instructional Improvement in Community School District #2, New York City,” HPLC Project, 1997, 5-6, www.lrdc.pitt.edu/hplc/Publications/School%20Variation.pdf.
21 Ibid., 4, 12-13.
22 Ibid., 25-28.
23 High Performance Learning Communities Project, “Final Report,” Contract #RC-96-137002, Office of Education Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, 2001, 27-28, www.lrdc.pitt.edu/hplc/Publications/HPLC_FinalReport_Sept2001.pdf.
24 Louisa C. Spencer, “Progressivism’s Hidden Failure,” Education Week, February 28, 2001.
25 Lois Weiner, “Standardization’s Stifling Impact,” Education Week, February 28, 2001.
26 Anthony J. Alvarado and Elaine Fink, letter to the editor, “Critiques of District 2 Are Seen as Baseless,” Education Week, March 28, 2001; Shelley Harwayne, letter to the editor, “District 2: ‘Results Speak for Themselves,’” Education Week, April 4, 2001.
27 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, “Exploring Krypto,” http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?id=L803.
28 Matthew Clavel, “How Not to Teach Math,” City Journal, March 7, 2003; Barry Garelick, “Discovery Learning in Math: Exercises Versus Problems,” Nonpartisan Education Review/Essays 5, no. 2 (2009), www.npe.ednews.org/Review/Essays/v5n2.htm.
29 Ronald Drenger, “Math Profs Rail Against Dist. 2 Methods,” Tribeca Trib, July/August 2001; the name of the group—NYC HOLD—is an acronym for “Honest Open Logical Decisions” on Mathematics Education Reform; see www.nychold.com.
30 Lois Weiner, “Construction of District 2’s Exemplary Status: When Research and Public Policy Elide,” paper, Annual Conference, American Educational Research Association, April 2002, www.nychold.com/weiner-aera-02.html; Weiner, “Research or ‘Cheerleading’? Scholarship on Community School District 2, New York City,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 11, no. 27 (August 7, 2003).
31 Lauren B. Resnick, “Reforms, Research and Variability: A Reply to Lois Weiner,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 11, no. 28 (August 7, 2003); see Weiner’s response to Resnick: Weiner, “Reply to Resnick’s ‘Reforms, Research and Variability,’” Education Policy Analysis Archives 11, no. 28c (February 2, 2004).
32 Public Broadcasting Service, Making Schools Work, with Hedrick Smith, www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/.
33 Teske et al., “Public School Choice: A Status Report.”
34 The source of the census data for 1990 and 2000 is an Internet tool called Social Explorer, created by demographer Andrew Beveridge at Queens College of the City University of New York. Social Explorer permits the user to identify specific census tracts and compare them along different demographic dimensions. Beveridge and Jordan Segall of Queens College analyzed District 2 and citywide census data for 1990 and 2000. Some of the data may also be found at NYC Department of City Planning, “New York City Public Schools: Demographic and Enrollment Trends, 1990-2002, Manhattan,” 47, www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/pub/schlmanhattan.pdf.
35 Ibid.
36 According to New York State Education Department data, from 1988 to 1998 the proportion of white students increased from 26 percent to 31.2 percent (in the rest of the city, white enrollment declined from 21 percent to 16 percent). The proportion of Hispanic students declined from 24.5 percent to 21.1 percent (in the city system, it increased from 34 percent to 37 percent). Asian students remained constant at one-third (triple the proportion in the city schools). The proportion of African American students declined from 15.4 percent to 13.9 percent (in the city system, it dropped from 39 percent to 36 percent).
37 The source of the achievement data was the New York State Department of Education. Similar gaps existed on the city tests from 1995 to 1998.
38 District 26 in Queens in New York City was demographically and economically similar to District 2. These two affluent districts outperformed the rest of the city, though District 26 generally outperformed District 2 and had smaller achievement gaps. In District 26, 60 percent of African American and Hispanic students met state standards in reading in fourth grade in 1999, compared to 78.5 percent of Asian students and 80.4 percent of white students; in fourth-grade mathematics, 69 percent of African American students and 76 percent of Hispanic students met standards, compared to 89 percent of whites and 91 percent of Asians. In eighth-grade reading, 81 percent of Asian students and 76 percent of white students met the standards, compared to 53 percent of African American students and 55 percent of Hispanic students; in eighth-grade mathematics, 79.5 percent of Asian students and 61.3 percent of white students met the standards, compared to 33 percent of African American and Hispanic students. Source: New York State Education Department, “Performance of Students Scoring in ELA and Math Grade 4 and 8 by Ethnicity,” 1999.
CHAPTER FOUR
1 California Department of Education, Educational Demographics Unit—CBEDS; data available at Ed-Data: Education Data Partnership, www.ed-data.k12.ca.us.
2 Ann Bradley, “San Diego Teachers Strike in Dispute Over Pay,” Education Week, February 7, 1996.
3 Maureen Magee, “Similar Dramas Play Out at S.D., L.A. Schools,” San Diego Union-Tribune, June 5, 2000.
4 Salary schedule provided by Camille Zombro, chapter leader of the San Diego Education Association, in an e-mail to author, July 9, 2009.
5 Jane Hannaway and Maggie Stanislawski, “Flip-Flops in School Reform: An Evolutionary Theory of Decentralization,” in Urb
an School Reform: Lessons from San Diego, ed. Frederick M. Hess (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2005), 54.
6 Ibid., 57.
7 Bess Keller, “Peer-Coaching Plan Approved in San Diego,” Education Week, May 19, 1999.
8 Maureen Magee, “Former Principals Win Case Against District,” San Diego Union-Tribune, November 6, 2004.
9 San Diego City Schools, “Blueprint for Student Success in a Standards-Based System: Supporting Student Achievement in an Integrated Learning Environment,” March 14, 2000, 1, www.sandi.net/initiatives/ciia/000314blueprint.pdf.
10 Richard F. Elmore and Deanna Burney, “Investing in Teacher Learning: Staff Development and Instructional Improvement,” in Teaching as the Learning Profession: Handbook of Policy and Practice, ed. Linda Darling-Hammond and Gary Sykes (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), 285; see also 274-279.
11 Jeff Archer, “Wary Foundations Tie Grants to Leadership Stability,” Education Week, February 12, 2003.
12 Maureen Magee, “Sweeping School Reform Is Approved: 3-2 Decision Made Despite Thousands of Protesters,” San Diego Union-Tribune, March 15, 2000.
13 Micah Sachs, “The Hardest Job in America?” San Diego Jewish Journal, September 2003.
14 Lea Hubbard, Hugh Mehan, and Mary Kay Stein, Reform As Learning: School Reform, Organizational Culture, and Community Politics in San Diego (New York: Routledge, 2006), 173.
15 Hannaway and Stanislawski, “Flip-Flops in School Reform,”55-56.
16 Amy M. Hightower, San Diego’s Big Boom: District Bureaucracy Supports Culture of Learning (Seattle: Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, University of Washington, 2002), 8, 11.
17 Hannaway and Stanislawski, “Flip-Flops in School Reform,” 64-65; see also Darling-Hammond and Sykes, Teaching as the Learning Profession.
18 Elmore and Burney, “Investing in Teacher Learning,” 269.
19 Ibid., 270-271.
20 Matt Potter, “It Was the Biggest Mystery,” San Diego Reader, October 24, 2002.
21 Joe Williams, “The Labor-Management Showdown,” in Urban School Reform, 46.
22 Maureen Magee, “Bersin: Alvarado’s Role to Be Curtailed,” San Diego Union-Tribune, December 6, 2002; Chris Moran, “Chief S.D. School Reformer to Leave: Superintendent Calls Departure ‘Mutual,’” San Diego Union-Tribune, February 5, 2003.
23 American Institutes for Research, Evaluation of the Blueprint for Student Success in a Standards-based System (Palo Alto, CA: AIR, 2002), II-10; AIR, Evaluation of the Blueprint for Student Success in a Standards-Based System: Year 2 Interim Report (Palo Alto, CA: AIR, 2003); Chris Moran, “Report Card on Reform Just So-So,” San Diego Union-Tribune, May 13, 2003; Hugh Mehan, Lea Hubbard, and Mary Kay Stein, “When Reforms Travel: The Sequel,” Journal of Educational Change 6, no. 4 (2005): 329-362.
24 AIR 2003 study, II-27, II-28, II-29.
25 Hightower, San Diego’s Big Boom, 19.
26 Larry Cuban and Michael Usdan, “Fast and Top-Down: Systemic Reform and Student Achievement in San Diego City Schools,” in Powerful Reforms with Shallow Roots: Improving America’s Urban Schools, ed. Larry Cuban and Michael Usdan (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003), 78, 82, 88-89.
27 Daphna Bassok and Margaret E. Raymond, “Performance Trends and the Blueprint for Student Success,” in Urban School Reform, 308-309, 314-315.
28 Ibid., 310-317.
29 Julian Betts, “San Diego City Schools: Evidence Suggests Bersin Reforms Working,” San Diego Union-Tribune, October 14, 2005.
30 Maureen Magee and Helen Gao, “A Change in Plans,” San Diego Union-Tribune, June 12, 2005. There is no single consistent measure for the Blueprint era because the state changed its tests during this time. However, Magee and Gao note that on the state’s “academic performance index,” San Diego’s gains from 2002 to 2004 were smaller than those recorded by school districts in Santa Ana, Fresno, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Garden Grove, San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento. San Diego had higher scores than most of these districts, but the other districts made greater gains.
31 Sheila Byrd, “San Diego City Schools: Creating a Standards-Based Curriculum for English Language Arts,” unpublished manuscript, San Diego Review, 2004, http://old.sandi.net/events/sdreview/eng_math_sci_cirricula.pdf.
32 Byrd, e-mail to author, June 14, 2006.
33 San Diego Education Association, “Vote of Confidence Survey Results,” June 20, 2001. A copy of the survey was provided to the author by Camille Zombro of the SDEA.
34 Author’s conversation with Marty Batcheler, LCSW, Kaiser Permanente, January 31, 2007.
35 Carl A. Cohn, “Empowering Those at the Bottom Beats Punishing Them from the Top,” Education Week, April 25, 2007.
36 Anthony S. Bryk and Barbara Schneider, Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), 123.
CHAPTER FIVE
1 Michael Bloomberg, “Our Children Deserve Better,” campaign document, June 11, 2001 (downloaded June 29, 2003, from a Web site [mikefor mayor.org] that has since been closed).
2 Diane Ravitch, “A History of Public School Governance in New York City,” in When Mayors Take Charge: School Governance in the City, ed. Joseph P. Viteritti (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2009), 171-186.
3 Javier C. Hernandez, “In Debate Over Schools, Panel Is No Threat to the Mayor’s Grip,” New York Times, April 23, 2009.
4 Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973 (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 92-99.
5 Abby Goodnough, “Schools Chief Is Soaking Up Advice in San Diego,” New York Times, August 14, 2002.
6 Mike France, “Can Business Save New York Schools?” BusinessWeek, June 9, 2003; Elissa Gootman and David M. Herszenhorn, “Consultants Draw Fire in Bus Woes,” New York Times, February 3, 2007.
7 James Traub, “New York’s New Approach,” New York Times, August 3, 2003; Deidre McFadyen, “Educators in Region 4: Don’t Stop Us from Teaching Our Kids,” New York Teacher, January 18, 2005.
8 As leader of General Electric, Welch was known for his tough, uncompromising attitude toward employees. See Thomas F. O’Boyle, At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and the Pursuit of Profit (New York: Knopf, 1998), 72-76; Mary Hoffman, “Jack Welch Is My Daddy,” ICE-UFT, March 8, 2005, http://ice-uft.org/daddy.htm; Geoff Colvin, “The CEO Educator,” Fortune, October 1, 2009 (online version).
9 David M. Herszenhorn, “Not So Long Out of School, Yet Running the System,” New York Times, March 25, 2004.
10 Deidre McFadyen, “Trouble in the Workshop,” New York Teacher, February 17, 2005; Catherine Gewertz, “Grading the Mayor,” Education Week, October 26, 2005; Sol Stern, “A Negative Assessment: An Education Revolution That Never Was,” Education Next 5, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 12-16.
11 National Right to Read Foundation, “Selection of a Systematic Phonics Program for NYC Students,” February 4, 2003, www.nrrf.org/phonics_nyc-2-4-03.htm; Sol Stern, “Bloomberg and Klein Rush In,” City Journal, Spring 2003; Stern, “Tragedy Looms for Gotham’s School Reform,” City Journal, Autumn 2003; Open letter from “Education Faculty from Colleges and Universities across the New York City Area” to Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, and Diana Lam, re: “ The New System-Wide Instructional Approach to Literacy and the Restructuring of Districts into Regions,” February 10, 2003.
12 Carrie Melago and Erin Einhorn, “Bus Fiasco Hell on Wheels from Day 1,” New York Daily News, February 2, 2007; Gootman and Herszenhorn, “Consultants Draw Fire in Bus Woes.”
13 Erin Einhorn, “Education Job Titles Stump Parents,” New York Daily News, December 26, 2007.
14 National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation’s Report Card: Trial Urban District Assessment, Science 2005 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2006); Jennifer Medina, “City Schools Fail to Comply with State Rule on Arts Classes,” New York Times, March 7, 2008; Richard Kessler, Center for Arts Education, “Testimony to the Joint Meeting of the Commit
tees (Senate Committee on Cultural Affairs, Tourism, Parks, and Recreation; Assembly Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Sports Development) re: The Impact of Potential Budget Cuts to the Arts Industry, Tourism, and Living Museums,” February 3, 2009, www.cae-nyc.org/potential_budget_cuts.
15 Diane Ravitch and Randi Weingarten, “Public Schools, Minus the Public,” New York Times, March 18, 2004.
16 Jennifer Medina, “Albany Panel Signals It Won’t Give the Mayor Carte Blanche on Schools,” New York Times, May 6, 2009.
17 David M. Herszenhorn, “Bloomberg Wins on School Tests After Firing Foes,” New York Times, March 16, 2004; New York Sun, “Bloomberg’s Finest Hour,” March 17, 2004.
18 Clara Hemphill et al., The New Marketplace: How Small-School Reforms and School Choice Have Reshaped New York City’s High Schools (New York: Center for New York City Affairs, The New School, 2009), 15.
The Death and Life of the Great American School System Page 32