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f e a t u r e

ED REFORM

ROLLBACK IN NEW YORK CITY

MAYOR DE BLASIO'S EFFORTS REMAIN A WORK IN PROGRESS

IN HIS C A M P A IG N FOR M A YO R o f New York City, Bill de Blasio positioned him self as the candidate m ost determ ined to break with the legacy o f the outgoing Michael Bloomberg adm inistration. V oters responded enthusiastically, handing de Blasio a nearly 50-point m argin o f victory in the November 2013 election. De Blasio, a Democrat, interpreted the win as a broad mandate for change, calling in his inaugural address for “a new progressive direction” that would "put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love.”

Public education, a top priority o f the Bloomberg adm inis­ tration, was one o f several areas where de Blasio prom ised big changes. De Blasio has pledged to m aintain Bloomberg’s focus on closing the achievem ent gap, b u t his education agenda has revised the means: tu rn aro u n d s instead o f closures, heavy

em phasis on addressing the “ro o t causes” of K -12 u n d erp er­ formance through pre-kindergarten education and social ser­ vices, less antagonistic relations with the U nited Federation of Teachers (UFT), and m ore-relaxed school-discipline policies.

But the results have been something less than revolutionary. De Blasio’s first three years in office attest to the significant constraints progressives across the country will face in trying to roll back education reform, even when faced with no signifi­ cant political opposition at the local level. These constraints stem from state governm ent’s role in education policymaking, limits on available resources, an d tensions w ithin progressiv- ism itself. All o f them will likely continue to frustrate de Blasio and other progressive m ayors in their attem pts to develop an alternative to the education-reform agenda.

by STEPHEN EIDE

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Bloom berg’s Record o f Achievem ent (Figure i)

(la) During Mayor Bloomberg's second and third terms in office, the high school graduation rate in New York City rose steadily.

(1b) Leaving aside the years when the state recalibrated its evaluation framework, student achievement in the city also improved each year under the Bloomberg administration.

Percentage proficient in NYC public

schools, grades 3-8

■ Math English language arts

NOTES: Data are presented by calendar year in which the school year ends. In figure 1a, starting in 2 0 0 8 , data include students attaining a high school degree by August. New York State revised its proficiency standards in 2010 and instituted exams aligned to the Common Core in 2013, changes indicated in figure 1b with a vertical black line.

SOURCE: New York City Department of Education

Accountability Gaps Mayor Bloomberg, a Republican-

turned-independent, left an impressive record of achievement on school reform that contributed substantially to New York City’s shedding its reputation as the “ungovernable city.” The graduation rate rose by more than 20 percentage points and, leaving aside the years when the state recalibrated its evaluation framework, student-achievement rates in the city improved annually (see Figure 1). From 2003-13, 4th- and 8th-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores rose in both reading and m ath at rates far outpac­ ing those of the rest of the state and, in some cases, the nation as a whole (see Figure 2). On state tests, New York under Bloomberg gradually reduced the student proficiency gap between the city and the rest of the state in both English language arts (ELA) and math.

The city clearly has room for im ­ provement, given its pockets of deep underperform ance: the m ost recent round of state-test results found that 15 percent or fewer of the city’s students are proficient in ELA in 145 schools and in math in 271 schools. And New York’s NAEP scores place it only in the middle of the pack among large urban school systems. But aside from a slight drop-off in NAEP 4th-grade reading and m ath scores, the overall upward trends put in m otion under Bloomberg have continued through de Blasio’s first term. A February 2016 analysis by the Independent Budget Office found that New York’s district and charter schools outperform the rest of the state when ethnic and econom ic variables and disability rates are accounted for. And in the spring 2016 round of state test­ ing, the city’s 3rd through 8th graders caught up to the rest of the state in ELA, notching a 38 percent proficiency rate com pared to 37.9 percent statewide. (In math, the respective numbers were close, at 36.4 percent and 39.1 percent.)

W hen de Blasio took office, m any critics doubted that his background as

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f e a t u r e D E B L A S IO EIDE

an activist and m inor local official had prepared him for the awesome administrative challenges of Gotham ’s mayoralty. De Blasio tried to address his lack of executive experience by rely­ ing less than Bloomberg did on outsiders to staff his ad m in ­ istration. De Blasio’s schools chancellor is C arm en Farina, a 50-year veteran of New York education policy. Though Farina worked as a deputy chancellor in the Bloomberg adm inistra­ tion, her m anagem ent philosophy differs sharply from that o f Bloom berg’s chancellor, Joel Klein, in significant ways. She is far less data-driven, as a favorable profile in the New York Times pointed out, and she takes great pride in taking

a collaborative approach to running the city’s D epartm ent of Education (DOE).

Relations with the UFT have become far m ore collegial under de Blasio than they were under Bloomberg. According to the Wall Street Journal, UFT president Michael Mulgrew visited de Blasio more than any other registered lobbyist during his first two years in office. Six m onths after becoming mayor, de Blasio settled a new contract with the UFT, stretching from the last three years of the Bloomberg administration past the 2017 mayoral election. The de Blasio administration neither attained nor sought signifi­ cant concessions from the UFT on fiscal matters or workforce

Closing the Gap between the City and the State (Figure 2) Under Bloomberg, 4th- and 8th-grade National Assessment o f Educational Progress scores rose in both reading and math at rates fa r outpacing those o f the rest o f the state. The upward trend has continued fo r 8th graders so fa r under de Blasio, but 4th-grade scores have fallen.

Grade 4 math Grade 4 reading

— NYC — Rest of NY S ta te N a tio n al

Grade 8 math

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SOURCE: New York City Department of Education

ed uc a ti o n n e xt .o rg W I N T E R 2 0 1 7 / E D U C A T I O N N E X T 29

Six months after becoming mayor, de Blasio settled a new contract with the United Federation of Teachers, but

satisfying union demands limits the resources available for other priorities, such as universal full-day pre-K.

rules. In c lu d in g retroactive raises, teacher pay will increase by $9 billion over nine years. For the city, the net impact will be billions more: under New York’s “pattern bargaining” approach to contract negotiations, the gener­ ous deal with the UFT, the city’s largest bargaining unit by far, set the framework for the dozens of other municipal unions.

De Blasio’s reluctance to bargain h arder with the UFT was partly political, b u t also likely rooted in his ideologi­ cal sympathies with organized labor (although the UFT did n o t endorse de Blasio in the Democratic primary). Whatever the motives, collegiality comes at a cost. Satisfying union dem ands will limit the resources available for progressive priorities in education and other areas. For example, de Blasio argued that universal full-day pre-K, his marquee education initiative, would be more secure if locally funded. De Blasio could easily have paid for the $340 m i l l i o n pre-K expansion in the program ’s first year, and m ost of the ongoing cost in subsequent years, by requiring teachers and other city workers and retirees to contribute 10 percent to their health insurance premiums (amounting to nearly $550 million, according to the Independent Budget Office). Instead, he tried to raise city income taxes—a move blocked by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Thanks to the health of the local economy, the de Blasio adm inistration has been able to paper over this tension between labor harmony and the expansion of government services, but that does not make it any less real.

Farina and de Blasio’s collegial approach to managing the DOE, and their lack of interest in data-oriented policymaking, have caused them to weaken account­ ability frameworks that Bloomberg put in place. In 2007, the Bloomberg adm in­ istration rolled out a system of “School Progress R eports”—re p o rt cards for

schools that assigned A -F letter grades. But as part of the may­ or’s plan to “lower the stakes on testing,” the de Blasio adm in­ istration replaced the report cards with a “School Quality Report” system, which is based on similar metrics but does not give schools a letter grade. In a recent analysis, m y colleague Marcus W inters compared the final batch o f School Progress Reports with the 2014 de Blasio School Quality Reports to see if F-quality schools notched as much progress without the letter grades as with them. He found that “im provem ent dissipated

immediately after summary letter grades were dropped.” This conclusion comports with research about the motivating effects of school report cards that Winters and others had published long before de Blasio and Farina made their decision to eliminate the Progress Reports.

The perception th at de Blasio has m ade the DOE less accountable m ay have contributed to his failure to gain a m ul­ tiyear extension of mayoral control o f the schools. In general, mayoral control enjoys broad support in New York City: even the m ayor’s m ost strenuous critics d o n ’t advocate a return o f the pre-Bloomberg Board of Education, whose mem bers were not directly elected but appointed by other local officials.

But mayoral control m ust be reautho­ rized by the state legislature, and twice de Blasio has been forced to settle for one-year extensions o f this authority rather than the perm anent and seven- year extensions he sought in 2015 and 2016, respectively. M any observers view de Blasio’s losses on m ayoral control as motivated by political payback by state senate Republicans, whose dominance in the legislature’s upper chamber de Blasio tried unsuccessfully to end during the 2014 election cycle. Scott Reif, spokes­ m an for Senate M ajority Leader John

De Blasio and his schools chancellor Carmen Farina (right) have weakened accountability frameworks as part o f apian to “lower the stakes on testing.”

Under Bloomberg, schools were assigned A -F letter grades, a system that helped motivate improvement.

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De Blasio on Discipline (Figure 3) After increasing throughout much o f Bloomberg’s term, suspensions declined during his last years in office. The de Blasio administration has placed further restrictions on their use.

N u m b e r o f s u s p e n s io n s in N Y C p u b lic s c h o o ls

D a ta a r e p r e s e n te d b y c a le n d a r y e a r in w h ic h t h e s c h o o l y e a r e n d s .

S O U R C E : N ew Y ork C ity D e p a r tm e n t o f E d u c a tio n

Flanagan, disputes this analysis: “The decision to provide a one-year extension of mayoral control was based solely on the merits and nothing else,” Reif said. “At the end of the day, our only motivation is what’s in the best interest of the 1.1 million students who attend New York City schools and their parents.”

School D iscipline Reform De Blasio has also weakened school discipline rules and pro­

cedures. With the vocal encouragement of the Obama admin­ istration, de Blasio, like other urban progressives across the nation, has recently put forth a raff of changes aimed at ending the so-called cradle-to-prison pipeline. Suspensions had already been on the decline during the last three years of the Bloomberg administration (see Figure 3), but de Blasio’s DOE has placed further restrictions on their use. For example, in April 2015, the de Blasio administration changed the DOE’s discipline code to require principals to get approval from central administration before suspending a student for defiant or disobedient behavior. This move runs counter to the notion of principal autonomy, a long-sought goal of many education reformers. But from another perspective, a progressive school-discipline policy is the logical extension of education reformers’ achievement-gap philosophy. While below-proficient students are believed to benefit the most from a lower suspension rate, those who have

the most to lose are the above-proficient, low-income strivers. Opposition to de Blasio’s innovations on school discipline

has centered around the empirical question of whether schools are getting safer under the “restorative justice” regime. The administration has heralded a 29 percent drop in school crime over four years, but the organization Families for Excellent Schools has put forth other studies based on state data that have shown rising levels of violent incidents in city schools (See Figure 4). An August 2016 announcement that the num ­ ber of “Persistently Dangerous” schools, a state designation, had dropped by 85 percent to only four citywide was met with skepticism by the head of the school-safety agents union, who pointed out that not a single high school had made the list. In May 2016, the New York Post reported that school-safety agents and police officers had confiscated 26 percent more weapons from students during this past school year than over the same span in 2014-15. (Phasing out metal detectors, first installed during the late 1980s crack epidemic, is a priority of the de Blasio administration’s school-discipline task force.)

The school discipline discussion has paralleled the wider debate in urban America over “broken windows” or “qual­ ity of life” policing, which entails aggressive enforcement of low-level crimes if they threaten to disrupt the social order— vandalism, turnstile jumping, public drinking, and the like. In schools, the analog to such policies is a “zero tolerance”

e d u c a tio n n e x t.o rg W I N T E R 2 0 1 7 / E D U C A T I O N N E X T 3 1

discipline code, in which school officials crack down on even “low level” offenses such as defiance, m inor physical co n ­ tact, and inappropriate language, because o f the potential consequences o f such behavior on other students and their learning. According to one recent UFT survey of its members, “m ore than 80 percent of the respondents said students in their schools lost learning tim e as a result of other disruptive students.” T hough school discipline reform is an imperative for the m ost ideological progressives, the debate over the issue has revealed some riffs w ithin the de Blasio coalition.

Turnaround Strategies Closing down large, chronically low-performing schools and

replacing them with a greater num ber of smaller, new schools was central to Bloomberg’s expansion of school choice and his overall approach to the achievement gap. Dismissing studies that found that it had benefited students, de Blasio characterized Bloomberg’s closure policy as “an excuse not to address ways

Are Schools Really Getting Safer? ( F ig u r e 4)

to help struggling schools improve and meet our expectations that all students graduate ready for college or a career.” Instead, he has invested in two overlapping turnaround programs: the Community Schools Initiative and the School Renewal Program. The latter supplements struggling schools’ per-pupil outlays, funds additional teacher training and summer school, and will add another hour to the school day. In some extreme cases, Farina has counseled out ineffective teachers, and three schools, plagued with rapidly declining enrollment, have been closed. The Community Schools Initiative proposes to boost student achieve­ m ent by providing struggling schools with wraparound social services via city-sponsored partnerships with neighborhood orga­ nizations. (There are 94 Renewal schools and 130 Community schools. All Renewal schools are Com munity schools but not all Community schools are Renewal schools.)

The de Blasio tu rn aro u n d program s have suffered from a certain lack o f urgency, and their scope is both too broad and too narrow. As the education news website Chalkbeat has docum ented, it took 10 m onths for the initial announcem ent

o f the programs, m any schools received only cu r­ sory assistance during the 2014-15 school year, and progress m etrics were n o t released to the public until December 2015. Initial estimates of the three-year cost have swelled from $ 150 million to $400 million. This is a significant sum, b ut the Harlem Children’s Zone, a m uch-adm ired model for C om m unity Schools, runs its two Prom ise A cadem y schools and the related n etw ork of com m unity services on an annual budget o f $100 million (see “How Family Background Influences Student Achievem ent,” features, Spring 2016). Rather than a scaled-up version o f the Harlem C hildren’s Zone, de Blasio’s tu rn aro u n d efforts resemble dozens o f m uch m ore m odest versions o f the model. At the same time, as the reform - advocacy group StudentsFirstNY has pointed out, m any city schools that are very low -perform ing based on the adm inistration’s own m etrics are not even included in the tu rn aro u n d program s.

Thus, de Blasio’s tu rn a ro u n d efforts are ham pered by m ore than just unforced errors of execution. C oncentrating resources is likely to be m ore effective, but spreading resources m ore widely will enjoy m ore political support. Either way, a focus on “root causes” is expensive, and urban America’s resources will be quite limited for the foreseeable future. A 2015 report by the National League of Cities found that the revenues of cities across the country had yet to fully recover since the end of the recession. Revenue growth has been outpaced by rising expenditures associated with cities’ trillion-dollar-plus retirem ent benefit

The de Blasio administration has heralded a decline in the n u m ­ ber o f school safety incidents over fo u r years, but state data show a spike in the number o f violent incidents in the city’s schools.

— ■ ” N Y S t a t e d a t a o n t o t a l v io le n t in c id e n ts in N Y C s c h o o ls

N Y C D O E d a t a on t o t a l in c id e n t s in N Y C s c h o o ls

N O T E : D a t a a r e p r e s e n t e d b y c a l e n d a r y e a r in w h ic h t h e s c h o o l y e a r

e n d s . N Y C D O E d a t a o n t o t a l in c id e n t s in c lu d e m a jo r f e l o n y c r im e

i n c id e n t s , o t h e r c r i m i n a l - c a t e g o r y i n c id e n t s , a n d o t h e r i n c id e n t s .

S O U R C E : Families for Excellent Schools

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Charter schools expanded by more than 600 percent during Bloomberg's tenure, facilitated by co-location, the practice of giving charters unused space in district school buildings.

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Bill de Blasio made a campaign pledge to start charging rent to charter schools, but in October 2013, weeks before the mayoral elec­ tion that fall, thousands of children and adults marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in protest.

liabilities. (Unlike federal officials, mayors are subject to local balanced-budget requirements.) It is not remotely practical to authentically replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone model for every struggling school. To the extent that the progressive alternative to education reform relies on increased spending, it will always be a work in progress.

Cuomo, Pre-K, and Charters Though the 2017 election cycle has yet to kick into high

gear, de Blasio has already made clear that he believes he deserves a second term largely on the strength of having estab­ lished “universal, high-quality, full-day” pre-K in New York. When de Blasio took office, about 20,000 children had access to government-funded full-day pre-K. In the 2015-16 school year, that num ber has grown to 69,000. Like Community Schools, pre-K focuses education policy away from elementary and secondary school classrooms toward root causes. W ith an achievement gap in numeracy and literacy already evident by

the time children begin kindergarten, progressives nationwide believe that a massive investment in preschool will compensate for disadvantages related to students’ poverty status and family background. In making pre-K universal, de Blasio has here, too, opted for a broad distribution of resources over a more concentrated one. In an interview with Politico New York, Richard Buery, the administration’s lead on pre-K, justified the need for universality by arguing for the importance of “diversity” and claiming that “from a political perspective, universal programs are easier to maintain over the term, [and] there’s a broad constituency for early childhood education.”

Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, questions this argument. He points to research he and others have done showing that children from low-income families are the ones who derive the most benefit from public pre-K. “Given scarce resources,” he tells me, “government should fund kids in the families where the effects are discernible-to-large, and that means focusing on poor kids.” Fuller has put out a series of reports about the de

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f e a t u r e D E B L A S IO EIDE

Though de Blasio may lack effectiveness as an executive, the challenges he has faced in rolling back education reform are also partly attributable to the role of the state, budgetary

limitations, and an inability to say no to union demands.

Blasio program , finding, am ong other things, that new pre-K seats have been disproportionately concentrated in affluent neighborhoods. He estimates th at 12,000 children in poor neighborhoods still lack any access to a public pre-K program.

The state has played an im portant, if questionable, role in bringing universal full-day pre-K to New York City. De Blasio’s initial proposal was to expand pre-K by im posing a 0.5 percent su r­ charge on incom es above $500,000. A bout forty thousand tax filers would have seen th eir an n u a l bills go up by an average o f $12,000. But New York’s taxing power, like all other cit­ ies’, is regulated by state government. G overnor C uom o rejected de Blasio’s tax proposal, instead locating funds in the state budget to fund the pre-K expansion. Thus, while the cost of uni­ versal pre-K in New York City is $863 million, local revenues cover only $ 112 million, according to a recent analy­ sis by the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission. As m entioned earlier, the m ost optim al funding scenario would have seen de Blasio cut spending elsewhere in order to fund pre-K. The second-best choice would have been for the city to raise taxes citywide to pay for the service expansion. C uom o’s approach allowed New York City to get som ething for nothing, and m ay have diverted attention from the relative benefits o f “universal” versus targeted pre-K.

O n charter schools, Cuom o has played a m uch m ore con­ structive role. D uring Bloomberg’s three terms, charter schools expanded by m ore than 600 percent, a rate six times that of the nation as a whole during the same time span. Because real estate is at such a prem ium in renaissance New York, the Bloomberg- era charter expansion was facilitated by co-location, the practice o f giving charters unused space in district school buildings. O n the campaign trail, de Blasio criticized this policy, saying, “There’s no way in hell Eva Moskowitz should get free rent,” referring to M oskowitz’s Success Academy charter network (see “W hat Explains Success at Success Academy?” features, Summer 2015). De Blasio does not question charter schools’ right to exist and has a n um ber of personal connections to independent charter operators. But because o f their ambitious plans for growth and their connections to Wall Street, charter

networks seemed to be on a collision course with the de Blasio adm inistration shortly after the 2013 election.

Surprisingly, though, thanks to the intervention o f state gov­ ernment, access to facilities funding for New York City charter schools is now more secure than ever. During the FY’ 15 budget cycle, Cuomo and the state legislature passed a law requiring

the city to either accommodate new or expanding charters in district buildings or provide them with rental assistance. Lobbying played an im p o rtan t role here, no doubt. P ro -ch arter groups have in some years outspent the UFT and New York State U nited Teachers, longtime dom inant forces on the state scene. A nd increased political support has been an effect as well as a cause o f charter school expansion. According to the New York City Charter School Center, charter school enrollm ent now tops 100,000 students, with another 43,000 on waitlists. In Harlem, char­ ters now enroll m ore than a third of all

youngsters in public schools. But since the city’s progressive ruling class remains tepid at best on charters, it took the inter­ vention of Cuomo and the legislature to translate this political support into policy.

What Lies Ahead? It’s early yet—Bloomberg had 12 years in office, and de

Blasio has thus far been in charge for only two full school years. However, though de Blasio m ay lack effectiveness as an executive, the challenges he has faced in rolling back education reform should not be attributed only to the gap between his progressive ideals and his adm inistrative competence. The role o f the state, budgetary limitations, and an inability to say no to union dem ands will lim it progressive m ayors’ power over education policy in the future, both in New Y ork and in other cities. A viable progressive alternative to Bloomberg’s education-reform agenda has yet to emerge.

Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His work focuses on public administration, public finance, political theory, and urban policy.

Thanks to state government intervention under Governor Cuomo, access to facilities funding for New York City charter schools is now more secure than ever.

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