By Abigail Riva
To improve our city schools, we should do the following:
1) Eliminate mayoral control. Our mayor is controlled by the very wealthy, who wish to make profits by destroying public schools, replacing teachers with online learning and opening charter schools which are publicly funded and privately operated. Charter schools have no transparency and are frequently involved in financial scandals.
2) Abolish the Leadership Academy for aspiring principals. This fast-tracked school leader academy, created by former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, has produced many abusive, incompetent teachers, some of whom have ended up on the news.
3) Remove inept, corrupt, inexperienced principals. There are hundreds of school leaders, many of whom are very young and do not have enough experience, not only as administrators but as educators as well. They have been brought on to destablilize their schools and push the mayor’s harmful agenda. New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña has, for the most part, left them in place.
4) Stop the war on veteran teachers. When Klein took control of city schools in 2002, one of the first things he did was give the principals control of the school’s budget. Principals are being encouraged to push veteran teachers out to cut costs. Seasoned teachers offer much expertise and are mentors to new staff.
5) Reduce class size. Many of our classrooms have high class sizes, proving the mayor does not truly want to improve schools. It’s virtually impossible to improve academic performance with 32 students of varying abilities in a class.
6) Stop spending money on online learning and worthless consultants. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent on consultants, taking money away from the classroom. More and more time is being spent on online learning, such as I-Ready—replacing authentic, traditional instruction.
7) Bring back traditional reading, writing and math curricula. For over a decade, our classrooms have been dominated by poor curricula, most notably the Reading and Writing Project founded by Lucy Calkins, a friend and colleague to Chancellor Fariña. Many fuzzy math programs have been used in that same time—for example TERC Investigations and Everyday Math—leaving students behind.
8) Eliminate Common Core standards and testing. The standards were written by people with no K-12 experience, the standards being highly developmentally inappropriate, and tests and test prep dominate students’ days in school.
9) Remove student scores from teacher and principal evaluations. Such high-stakes testing forces educators to “teach to the test.”
10) Stop listening to people like Bill and Melinda Gates and hedge fund managers on education. The Gates Foundation has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into initiatives without consulting educators and takes no responsibility when those initiatives fail. Hedge fund managers and other wealthy donors are pumping millions of dollars into political campaigns in order to further their privatization agenda.
11) Elected officials need to start listening to rank-and-file teachers. Union leaders do not make decisions based on what’s best for students and in fact in the last decade or so, have not even worked for what’s best for their members.
12) Listen to parents. Parents want to be heard and are tired of their concerns being ignored. It’s time to place students’ needs first.
Abigail Riva
Hollis
