Thanks for the opportunity to address the committee and attendees and to revise and extend my remarks. There are some hyperlinks in this document. If you’re reading this electronically, just click to follow the links.
I’d like to complement the RISE task force, the Schools Administration – ably led by Betty Sternberg, and the Board of Education for the efforts they put into their work. I think it was a prodigious effort – but sadly misguided.
The Veil of Secrecy
My principal concern is the veil of secrecy that was drawn over the entire proceedings. Although much was spoken and written about the desire for community input, the operation was run as a fiefdom. I was drawn into voicing my discontent by what the School Administration provided as a solicitation for comments on their website. They allowed for all of 500 characters – not words – CHARACTERS! (It sometimes takes me more than that just to sneeze …. Aaaah …. Aaahh ..). And to compound that – they refused to share what little commentary they did get. And they demonstrated seeming contempt for our citizens (and Task Force members) by presenting their “conclusions” without any input from the Task Force Members (other than the insiders).
Gentlemen and gentle ladies – we live in an internet world. We’re used to things like weblogs (‘blogs” to the cognoscenti) where comments can be shared and serious and silly thinking can be vetted by the community. If the RISE Task Force had set this up (about ten minutes work on Google’s Blogspot – and FREE!), it wouldn’t have been blindsided by the criticisms we all heard last night, and it might have produced a usable work product.
Even the format for tonight’s meeting seems designed to limit what they’re obliged to hear from the community. Yes, allotting each speaker two or three minutes helps you get through the night. But it sure doesn’t allow for the expressions I provide herein.
The Moving Targets
One of last night’s commenters made the observation that it seemed like RISE was tasked to do too many things – RISE began as an exercise to examine our schools facilities in light of declining enrollment AND a potential racial imbalance at some schools. But it turned into the primary study vehicle to produce a plan to remediate an URGENT racial imbalance at New Lebanon – and only incidentally to look at facilities utilization.
The original charge to RISE – the racial imbalance part – was occasioned by a letter dated April of ’06 from then Commissioner Betty Sternberg to then Superintendent Larry Leverett which spoke of the forbearance of the Department of Education in dealing with Hamilton Avenue’s racial imbalance (plans have been afoot for seven years) and the POTENTIAL imbalance at New Lebanon and Old Greenwich – with the specific statement by Betty that no immediate actions by Greenwich were required. Hence, the “racial” charge to the RISE Task force was not at first urgent.
But Betty’s replacement as State Commissioner of Education – Interim Commissioner George Colemen sent a new letter to Betty in April of this year, demanding that Greenwich produce a plan to remediate the newly emergent racial imbalance at the New Lebanon School (it didn’t exist the year before) within ninety days of Betty Sternberg’s receipt of this letter. Betty and Colleen Giambo asked for additional time from State – in light of the work of the RISE Task Force – and the need for the Greenwich Board of Ed to vote on the plan that would be recommended by RISE.
And thus RISE was transformed and retasked to solve the suddenly emergent and curiously urgent demand by the state to “fix” New Lebanon. And any examination of facilities usage in light of declining enrollment would have to be done with an eye towards incipient “racial imbalances”.
Yes indeed, the goalposts moved.
Now, much was said last night about the silliness and arbitrariness of the Connecticut Statute and how the recent Robert’s decision by our Supreme Court might affect the enforceability of the statute, but the law is the law and we must respect it and expect our town officials to obey it – until a higher power may intervene. But, there is considerable suspicion in the community that Betty “put-up” her protégé at State to write the “90 days – or else” letter to give Betty the means to gently guide RISE to conclude that Greenwich really needs “magnet schools for all” and that the Board would have no choice but to rubber-stamp the RISE recommendations. And, the secrecy that has surrounded RISE only feeds these suspicions. And the 90-day deadline set by the state is certainly unusual (I mean, Hamilton Ave has been going on for SEVEN YEARS).
So, what should the Task Force do – and what should the Board do? The answer is to keep it simple – deal with New Lebanon as one problem and recharge a commission to separately explore our entire school system – to try to explore and suggest improvements to both the work product (our children’s education) and the work process (efficiency). Indeed, Betty Sternberg announced plans (hopes?) to undertake a comprehensive study of how we provide secondary education -- All the more reason to defer comprehensive solutions until the comprehensive problems are understood and, instead, to solve the immediate problem (New Lebanon) by itself.
How can we fix New Lebanon?
Well, all the State really requires is a plan (not a result), and the simplest plan need only involve the school(s) at issue. Much in the same manner that Hamilton Avenue has been a solution-in-progress for seven years – all’s we have to do is to recast New Lebanon as an open enrollment facility (across the entire district) and provide enticements to parents to move their children to the school – that MIGHT work. It really doesn’t matter if it actually works or not.
How not to fix it? Don’t appoint a committee to search for a solution. This isn’t how the private sector works. When we have a problem that’s confined to a single facility we usually try to hand the problem off to the line supervisor for that facility and give him a budget and an incentive to fix the problem. We ought not permit the policy arm of our School System to invent programs and procedures that can and should be developed by the guys and gals with “hands on” the problems. Why entrust part time bureaucrats and full time educrats to formulate plans to attract parents and students when our own experience shows that the school system has been hemorrhaging families to private schools for fifty years?
Suppose we gave this charge to the New Lebanon principal: Remake your school into a “magnet” – we’ll give you a $50,000 marketing budget and pick up the transportation costs – and we’ll give you a $10,000 bonus for each percentage point you manage to reduce whatever racial category (de jour) the State is antsy about. Would it work? Well, it would be more likely to work – and to take less time and a lot less money to prove itself -- than anything the RISE task force might recommend (the Hamilton Avenue “solution” has been in play for SEVEN YEARS). And it would satisfy the State (it really is a credible plan). And, it would allow us all to move on to address the issues we thought the RISE task force was commissioned to study. And, I’ll bet it would cost a lot less ($100,000 or so – all in) than we have paid or will pay to outside “consultants” to formulate a “consensus” plan and nurse it through the bureaucracy.
You’d like another suggestion? OK – how about inviting interested parties to take over the New Lebanon building as a charter school, serving the local attendance area AND attracting inter-district enrollment. Let the winner write the plan to satisfy the state. All’s we’d have to do is to produce the plan that says we’re going to try to find someone to produce the plan. Done and done – and we’d save the taxpayers (us) money. The point is that innovation is what Charter Schools are all about – and what the sclerotic Schools Administration is not. Let’s invite folks in to make proposals. It would cost us nothing and it would certainly satisfy the State regulations (a plan to invite proposals to plan a plan – is still a plan – and it’s all the State could reasonably expect the town to do in the timeframe).
You’d like yet like yet another suggestion? How’s this? Let’s ask the State for a delay – until we can audit the New Lebanon School student population to weed out students who aren’t Greenwich residents. There is great concern in the community that there are more than a few students at the school who have listed their residences as being in Byram – but who actually live in Port Chester. (There is similar suspicion about Old Greenwich and its proximity to Stamford). I’d be surprised if there were none – this is a recurring problem. And, these students might have skewed the head counts, putting the school into “racial imbalance”. Now, it wouldn’t be fair to look only at minority students, so a detailed audit (actually attempting to visit students “at home” and inspecting their listed addresses) would take some time. Thus, we should expect the State would be reasonable and accede to our request for more time before we’re obliged to produce a plan for remediation – Greenwich might actually be in compliance with the statute.
I think the Board really must insist on an audit in any event. I’d be less concerned about angering the State than the local citizenry (lynching doesn’t provide for due process). If the board can’t certify that the headcounts aren’t skewed by out-of-district pupils – but goes ahead with trying to move children away from their neighborhood schools – I’d look out for hot tar and pitchforks.
Declining Enrollment and School Utilization
Now, let me speak about our declining student enrollment and what the Task force looked at and what they didn’t look at.
I accused Bob Grady and Betty Sternberg of “cooking the books” on school utilization. Those were pretty strong words for two very nice and very intelligent people. But my words were accurate – let me explain.
Bob kindly invited me to attend the RTM educational subcommittee meeting on Monday. And he and Betty told me that there really wasn’t any excess capacity in our schools (even though our student population had grown smaller) – and that this was all explained in detail on the Schools’ website. And so I looked. And this is what I found:
What does this chart show? In 1970, the student capacity of the Greenwich Public School system was in excess of 11,100 students. And today, nearly fifty years later – after renovating and expanding many of the facilities – the claim is that we’re at capacity with less than 9000 students enrolled. How can this be? The simple answer – it can’t.
Here’s what the “insiders” on the RISE task force did: They arbitrarily declared certain (six, I think) classrooms in each of the elementary schools as reserved for special purposes (such as resource rooms, reading rooms, art rooms, pre-school rooms, music rooms, etc) – and thus unavailable for general use. Thus they reduced the actual student capacity of the elementary schools – many by more than 25% -- in their published analyses.
Now, there are several problems with this:
One, it’s dishonest and disingenuous – if part of the mission of the RISE task force was to look at facilities utilization in light of declining enrollment, it’s outrageous to assume that we must do things in the future the way we’re doing them now. What’s the point of the exercise if the operant assumption is that we can’t change the way we use space in these buildings? And, it’s unclear whether these “assumptions” were ever disclosed to the non-insiders on the Task Force.
Two, it’s not at all clear that dedicating space to specific, non-traditional instruction has improved learning. I sure would like to see some analysis of the costs and benefits and efficacies of these dedicated space programs – and I’d be willing to wager that it’s never been done. If you can’t demonstrate an educational benefit from a program you ought to look at what might work better for a similar or lesser cost. It’s one thing to dedicate unused classroom space to specific functions – if you can find no other use for the space. But it’s quite another thing to presume that now dedicated space cannot be considered for ordinary classroom use.
Three, there’s been no thought as to time-shifting. For example – all of the benefits (to the children) of a pre-school program would be realized if these programs were time-shifted to before or after the regular school day (thus freeing up their dedicated classrooms). What would be lost? Well, the parents of pre-schoolers wouldn’t be able to use the pre-school program as day-care. What would be gained? A significant number of additional classrooms for regular elementary students. Would this be a good thing? Depends on whether you’re benefiting from the program or paying for it – if it isn’t mandated by the State, it ought to be up the taxpayers to decide. I, for one, would much rather see the schools provide expanded athletics programs (inter-school, intramural) than day-care.
Four, there’s been no thought to recapturing the students whose parents now send them to private schools (I think the population estimate is currently 2,900 students). There are reasons parents doubly tax themselves. And, these reasons are invariably that these parents find our public schools sufficiently deficient enough in some ways to cause them to tax themselves twice to provide a good education to their children. If we knew what we were doing wrong and took steps to improve our schools – we’d be projecting increased instead of decreased enrollment. The school population isn’t declining because of a dearth of children – the decline in population is a result of a decline in the quality of our schools.
The Threat to Close Schools
A number of speakers last night were primarily concerned that the RISE Task Force might recommend closing an elementary school. And, their concerns were genuine – but only because RISE has continually floated the notion that such a closing was possible. And, as much as Bob Grady and Betty Sternberg tried to reassure everyone that these options were listed by the Task Force for the sole purpose of attempting to demonstrate that RISE had considered “all” options, this was a straw man argument. It was a lame attempt to work up the community to fight a threatened school closure – only to have the RISE Task Force apparently save their bacon by rejecting school closing, and thus garner support for the insiders’ preferred “solutions” – magnet schools for all.
And, the sad thing is that they obscured what might have been a meaningful look at how Greenwich educates our children.
We should close some schools – but not by redistricting. Instead, we should restack the grades. The primary schools are our neighborhood schools. They define us and offer the closest and most effective partnerships between our schools, our parents, and their children. If we’re faced with declining enrollment (and we are), we should look to moving the six and seventh grades back to our primary schools and the eighth grade to either the primary schools or to the fifth house (that we built at great expense) at the high school. And, we should close ALL of the middle schools, Eastern, Central, and Western.
Closing the Middle Schools would yield significant savings and would greatly improve student performance. Instructional costs would stay about the same, but administrative, physical plant, and busing costs would be sharply reduced.
And closing the middle schools would do much more than improve space utilization and save money. Middle school configurations serve NO educational purpose and contribute greatly to our children’s academic and behavioral problems. Middle Schools present an unneeded additional transition for children and introduce incipient problems for well meaning – but unfamiliar – staff, who have no history with these children. Middle Schools are a failed experiment (much like the open classroom design of Glenville that now demands remediation). Indeed, there is a growing national trend towards eliminating middle and junior high schools in favor of K-8 and 6-12 configurations.
Middle Schools impede academic performance, contribute to budding disciplinary problems, sever the relationships between teachers and students (and parents!), and are costly to operate. The only voices that will rise to their defense will be from the people who work in them or the folks whose empires encompass them. Parents will be much happier with a K-7 or 8 configurations – and their children will be much better served. And the Greenwich taxpayers will cheer!
The Greenwich Middle Schools, as organized, are relatively young institutions in our town. The buildings were originally commissioned as junior high schools and were needed because the high school then (the current town hall) had insufficient capacity for our then burgeoning school-age population. When the (then) new High School opened – it accommodated grade 10-12 and the junior highs, 7-9. It wasn’t until later on that the 6th grades were moved from primary schools to what became the Middle Schools, and 9th was moved to the High School. So, the 6-7-8 configurations aren’t cast in stone, and we ought to try to move the lower grades back to the primary schools, as we have excess capacity at all grades.
And closing the Middle Schools and repurposing their facilities would help meet some current needs that would otherwise require a significant new building program.
Class Size, Diversity, and Private Schools
One commenter was concerned about the apparent disparity between class sizes in Greenwich and some area private schools. She thought that having nine or ten children in a class (as is often the case in independent schools) conferred a significant educational advantage to a student in the smaller class over a similar student in a Greenwich public school class of over twenty. Betty Sternberg offered that the available research confirmed such an advantage (albeit small) – but only in the lower grades. Betty is exactly right – but for the wrong reasons, as I will explain below.
Another commenter (an RTM education committeeman), opined that what Greenwich needs is MORE diversity – that the recent fight at the High School was likely racially motivated and that children need to learn to play well with other children not like themselves, and it is imperative that Greenwich remediate any racial imbalances in the primary schools and to ensure that all races are mixed in all schools. And then, he started singing “Kumbiah” (just kidding).
Several other commenters observed that forced integration (by busing) was a failed experiment and that experience has shown that parents and children prefer neighborhood schools – regardless of their racial composition.
There’s a little truth in all of the above – let me explain:
Diversity is actually anathema to good and efficient education. Homogeneity works far better for both students and teachers – and makes class size largely irrelevant. There’s a reason we provide classroom instruction within divisions by grade. Divvying up students into cohorts of similar individuals is just a more efficient model than the old “one room schoolhouse”. (As an aside, my ninety year old mother really did get her primary education in a one room school house in Harris, NY. And yes, her descriptions do evoke images of Spanky and Alfalfa). Dividing student populations into grades makes it possible for a teacher to lecture to the entire classroom at once instead of dividing classroom time to educate students who perform at vastly different levels.
We seem to have lost sight of these fundamentals – trying to provide the best education at the lowest costs. We’ve decided to lump everyone at the same grade level into common classes, without regard to their individual abilities. And we make our teachers teach to the lowest common denominator – trying to go slowly enough so as to inculcate some basic knowledge into the less able – and yet going fast enough to keep the more able students from banging their heads against their desks. Of course, this is absurd. It simply doesn’t work well at all and leads to remedies that worsen the overall situation.
We end up with TAG (Talented and Gifted) and Special Ed programs to sop up the outliers. And these programs come perforce with their own administrative staffs and costs and in the end, satisfy no one. And, there’s continual pressure to reduce class size (and increase classroom utilization and staffing costs) because teachers can obviously do a better job catering to a diverse class if the class size is smaller.
The TAG programs are really an abomination. Higher achieving students are removed from class for “enrichment” (presumably, just before they’re bored to tears). This is wildly inefficient. Look at education as an industrial process (a batched operation) and figure out if this makes any sense. Consider a commercial bakery as a model. Would it make sense to have each production line operating at the same fixed speed with an oven operating at the same temperature for products ranging from soufflés to bagels? With the TAG model we’d have to pluck the soufflés off the conveyer before they were burnt (out) and then reintroduce them down line for finishing and packaging. Does that make sense? Or should the line speed and oven temperature be tailored to the needs of each group of bakery products? Which model would be more likely to stay in business?
The Special Ed programs are different (as an aside, I’m the parent of a since-graduated Special Ed student at the Greenwich High School and I’m reasonably intimate with the programs). Yes, Special Ed is costly – but it need not be so much if we applied its reasoning to the general school population and modeled the general school programs in the same vein.
Special Ed presumes (and demands) that each student be individually assessed and an IEP (Individual Education Program) formulated for each student – with the participation of his parents (each year). Gee, this sure sounds like something the schools should be doing for all of their students. And if it were, it wouldn’t be an extraordinary expense (or necessarily require additional staffing). And, if they had an IEP for every student, our schools could group students with similar abilities and thus satisfy the needs of all of our students at much lower cost. Students would be better educated, there would be far fewer outliers both above and below the curve, and we could increase class size because teachers could more easily pace lessons to the level of their classes. And all students would learn more than they would otherwise with the current models. And, Special Education costs would be drastically reduced because there would be educational tiers in regular classes that would be suited to the needs of more Special Ed students.
Oddly enough, this is the methodology that schools used to use, way back when I was educated (in the fifties, btw). It used to be called “Tracking” and fell out of favor because minority students seemed to be disproportionally assigned to the slower tiers, and those not assigned to the upper tiers suffered from low self esteem. It’s time to recognize that what has replaced it (TAG and Special Ed) yield far poorer results at much higher costs. Tiering (can’t call it “Tracking”), combined with annual assessments for each student (IEP’s) would pass muster (Equal opportunity – not equal results). And self-esteem can’t be taught – it must be earned. And, IEP’s for all would yield additional benefits. It would give us a yardstick to measure teacher performance.
If we knew a priori what a student should learn in an academic year (given his annual assessment) and measured what he DID learn that year (Connecticut Mastery Testing), then we’d have a meaningful measure of the teacher’s work product – when summed across all his students. And then perhaps we could work out a compensation plan based on the number of students taught by that teacher and their achievements. We could pay him for his productivity. And teachers could be permitted to voluntarily teach larger classes – based on their ability to handle them. Higher performing teachers would be better paid. All students would benefit. And we’d lower costs and improve student performance. Teachers would have an economic incentive to help each student achieve up to (and beyond) his abilities. And teachers would have an economic incentive to teach to larger classes. Why should the Board of education limit class size to what the “average” teacher might be able to handle? What good does that do?
Another thing about smaller class size in private schools – this is actually a weakness of the independent schools, not a strength. Let me explain. The independent schools don’t have large student populations and are highly selective. They cannot accommodate a significant disparity in student performance (or behavior). Their teachers aren’t trained to handle it, and students who can’t fit in are “asked” to leave. (Trust me, I KNOW THIS). Our public schools are much better at handling a broader range of student abilities and behaviors than the independent schools.
And, while it’s true that it’s important for all of our children to learn to get along with others who not be of the same race (or sex, or religion, or age, or IQ level, or athletic ability, or whatever), divvying them up in such a manner as to yield equal proportions in each school of the particular categories of people enshrined in the State regulations is a poor way to do it (and it’s certainly not going to lessen the likelihood of fights at the high school. Letting the coaches put gloves on the kids and letting them whale away at each other – as was done in earlier years at our Greenwich High School – actually would diminish fighting).
A far more effective way to both educate kids and to help then socialize would be to keep kids in their neighborhood schools, but promote inter-school activities, both competitive and purely social. We ought to have both intramural and interschool basketball, field hockey, track, etc programs and academic contests as well. There should be interschool science fairs, chess contests, bridge tournaments, and dances. Years ago, there were such things. But, years ago – we had not yet developed a sclerotic School Administration.
Athletics have been sorely neglected by our School Administration. You want to know one very good reason for parents to send their children to private schools? The kids get a chance to play competitive sports! There is almost no chance that an average child will play ANY sport for the Greenwich High School – there are way too many kids and not enough slots on the teams (varsity and jv – that’s IT). We need active intramural programs between the Houses at the High School and between the primary schools. We need more athletic programs and we need more gym space to house them. Greenwich High School really needs a field house – far more than it needs a new arts center. You’re worried about fights at the high school? Give the kids (especially the boys) athletic outlets for their aggression. Give them more things to do and they’ll do less dope! (And, if you want them to do less dope – DON’T send them to boarding school).
Closing Thoughts
In closing, let me emphasize that I’ve used this time to express my ideas – ideas that I’m willing to share. Some of these ideas may resonate with some or all of you. Others, some or all of you may find silly. But, because I’ve taken the time to write them down and because the School Administration is willing to share my ideas with you and your ideas with me in this forum, we’ll all learn from each other and the School Administration and our Board of Education and our Selectmen and our RTM members will learn from these exchanges and we’ll end up helping our schools and our children (and may be our pocketbooks).
Thank you,
Marshall Caro
Glenville
