Activists, Use this ProPublica site: A New Way to ‘Check In’ on Education Inequality

The ProPublica Nerd Blog A New Way to ‘Check In’ on Education Inequality

by Al Shaw ProPublica, Jan. 24, 2013, 2:19 p.m.

Starting today if you connect [1] your Foursquare account to "The Opportunity Gap," we'll send you stats about schools whenever you check into one. If you've checked into a school we've associated with a Foursquare "venue," we'll show you some details and give you a link to that school's profile.

You can also tap the ProPublica section of your checkin (see screenshot to right) to bring up that school's profile and compare it to nearby schools right from your smartphone.

The ProPublica News apps desk is:

* Scott Klein * Krista Kjellman Schmidt * Jeff Larson * Al Shaw * Lena Groeger

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A year ago when we launched the first version of our "Opportunity Gap [2]" news application ["A New Way to ‘Check In’ on Education Inequality"], we tightly integrated Facebook [3] in order to make it easy for readers to compare schools and share their school comparisons. Today's relaunch adds Foursquare, along with adding a slew of new data [4] to the app as well as algorithmically generate narratives by Narrative Science. [5]

To accomplish the Foursquare integration, we're taking advantage of their new Real-Time API [6] which lets us send push notifications in response to checkins. In order to associate schools with Foursquare venues, we used Foursquare's search API with its "match" intent -- a specially-designed endpoint [7] for "venue harmonization" between apps. We ran our database of over 50,000 schools through Foursquare's API to store the venue IDs. If you check into a school that we haven't matched to a venue in our database, we'll use your location and the school name to show you a number of guesses as to what school you're at (we don't store your checkins or location data in our database at all). Once you pick one, we'll use your checkin data to link the school venue, so the next user that checks into that school will immediately see school stats.

Many news applications are location-based, and we're excited to start experimenting with bringing our apps to users where they are.

Principal in Sex Harass of Women; Walcott Stood By Him

Two standards of justice exist in the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE). For staff there are few rights. For principals and other supervisors there is tremendous leniency and forgiveness.
A Regents test cheating scandal or a sex harass case, the accused stays on the job. Demoted maybe, but usually not fired.
Now a clarification, I say for such cases, staff or supervisors, that the claims, the charges must be recognized as allegations, and there should be stronger cases than rumor. There should be due process, and trials outside of the news media. Accused should be innocent until proven guilty.
However, we must also say that there should be a consistent standard. Staff are guilty until they can prove their innocence. We do not find consistent application of standards with the higher-ups in the education field, particularly in the NYC DOE.
Last month, the South Bronx blogger raised this point and he brought renewed attention to the case of "Dr." (from a diploma mill) Mychael Willon, someone with the equivalent of a guilty plea to the charge of lewd acts in a Wichita bookstore. South Bronx reminds us that the DOE eventually let him go from his "LIS" [local instructional superintendent] position supervising principals in the Bronx. "Dr." Willon did get to move to a plum executive position at a private Texas education firm. Now, South Bronx raised this case in the context of publicizing the case of the accused principal John Chase, Jr. It is alleged that he made vulgar comments to female staff about a copy machine's ability to do things for his private areas. Click here for the quotes too vulgar for this blog, from the police report.
Lost amidst other "education news" over the past week was the news that the DOE demoted principal Chase. NY1.com reported on May 15 that the DOE has moved Chase over to the position of assistant principal at a location yet to be determined.

Take an inventory, there was a police report. The allegations against accused the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) president did not reach the level of a police report. However, his case garnered two days of front page coverage from the New York Post.
More of an inventory of the DOE kid gloves treatment of the accused principal, compared with accused teachers removed from the classroom:

DOE officials say there was no formal disciplinary hearing.

and:

After the report came out in November, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott let Chase keep his job. The accused principal received a letter of reprimand and was forced to undergo sensitivity training.

Oh, and the Gothamist site reported, May 16, the additional news that

Could this [decision to move Chase over to an AP position some place] have anything to do with the fact the DOE is now investigating NEW claims by a 15-year-old girl that Chase made comments that made her uncomfortable?

Actually, very creepy comments. See the details at Chaz's post, comments that spurred to child to contact the police. For comparable sub-administrator educators, the outcomes are routinely, four-digit fines or suspensions of pay, and feeding of stories to the Post that would make rabid wolves blush.
Remember, when Walcott or another big, or the media speaks, accused teachers are guilty when charged. Chaz gave us Walcott's latest standy-by-your-man. Principles of fair treatment apply to principals:

On the new allegation, he said, “Just because an accusation is made doesn’t mean a person is guilty.”

The allegations against Chase involved non-consensuality, harassment by a superior over subordinates, features of a hostile work environment, and plenty of salaciousness. Where was the public media execution of Chase as there has been for countless accused New York City teachers?
Additionally, disturbing, disgusting was Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott's statement that amounts to an instance of "Stand by Your Man," albeit in January. "'We're going to make sure he goes for the appropriate training, but at the same time we have an investment to make as far as leadership is concerned,' Walcott said in January," NY1.com reported last week. Interesting. Walcott is overlooking the alleged abuse and trauma of women workers, with the justification of standing by "an investment" of leadership.
Let's be clear, there should not be public media trials. We have just noted how the DOE has double standards when it comes to allegations and justice. Yet, the media practices the same double standards. We are not calling for public trial; but we are calling out the outrageous, classist inconsistency in the media treatment of the accused.

Parent Involvement, Obesity Diets: Insensitivity Behind Blaming Impoverished Parents

A recent blogpost made re-think the criticisms I have had of "uninvolved parents".

Modeducation, blogger Michael Dunn, a San Francisco Bay, California area educator, has written on how the notion of parent involvement make a few class-based assumptions.

I insert below Modeducation's post which misleadingly takes its post title from New York Times' Thomas Friedman's ideas: "Stop Blaming Teachers When It’s the Parents’ Fault!", but in the post Modeducation is actually making a good argument against parent-blaming. After this, I draw the parallels with the issues surrounding food choices and the obesity epidemic. Parents are blamed while there is silence about toxic food pushers win battles to push their junk in school lunchrooms. Undergirding both issues is the toxic factor of poverty. Sadly, poverty permeates many of the issues impacting on education, yet discussion of the poverty factor --or any way to ameliorate poverty or class disparity-- remains off the table.

[In November 23, 2011's] New York Times, Thomas Friedman had an op-ed ["How About Better Parents" {sic}] that seems to bash the Ed Deformers and tell them to get off of teachers’ backs. However, rather than placing the blame for the achievement gap and other problems with public education where it belongs—on the defunding of schools and growing poverty among children—he places the blame on parents, as if they merely need to behave better and become more effective parents.

“Here’s what some new studies are also showing,” he tells us. “We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children’s education can also make a huge difference in a student’s achievement.”

There are several problems with this proposal. First, it conflates correlation with causation. Parents who are more involved in their children’s education tend to be more affluent. There is plenty of data correlating affluence with higher academic achievement. So is it affluence or parental involvement or both?

Secondly, can parents simply be taught, encouraged or forced to be more involved in their children’s education or is this a product of their class backgrounds? And what does parental involvement even mean?

Plenty of studies indeed show that parents who read often to young children and who use larger and more complex vocabularies with their kids end up with kids who have significantly larger vocabularies and pre-literacy skills by the time they are ready for kindergarten, creating an achievement gap before children have even started school. Affluent parents are also more likely to have the time and education to do this with their children. A parent who works two or three jobs or who is barely literate is not going to read to their children or use complex language with them.

Affluent parents are also more likely to be able to make it to after school and evening meetings, open houses and community events. They are more likely to understand how the system works and have the self-confidence (or self-entitlement) necessary to navigate the system, advocate for their children and challenge perceived injustices or inadequacies in their children’s schools and classrooms.

Schools are essentially middle class institutions that have mores, norms and expectations similar to those in middle class families. Middle class children, therefore, come to school with the “cultural capital” necessary to succeed, whereas lower income kids often must learn this culture from scratch.

In short, Friedman is correct that parental involvement is important and parents who do, or who learn to, participate in their children’s education are more likely to see their kids succeed academically. However, his op-ed piece implies that there is something wrong with parents who are not involved with their kids’ education, when in reality it is often not their faults. Furthermore, whether you are blaming teachers or parents, you are still missing the point: the most significant influence on academic achievement is a child’s socioeconomic background. So long as we continue to ignore poverty, as long as we accept a society in which a few have all the wealth and a large minority is desperately poor, neither better teaching, no better parenting, is going to close the achievement gap or ensure that all children succeed academically.

* * *
Now, let us look at parallels with the issue of class, diet and the twins of obesity and diabetes.
A school professional, cash-strapped and a single parent reacted to the news of the government authorities that took custody of a 200-pound Cleveland Heights, Ohio son from his parents, on the charge of medical neglect. She put the issue as this: she supports her son on her own, she pays rent, car insurance, gas fuel for her car, apartment utilities. Only so much is left for food, and with that limited budget, there are few options. So, she is left with just so much to spend. She said she doesn't want a guilt trip for just a couple of times satisfying his son's taste-buds.
Plus, the columnists and bureaucrats who scold the parents surely are not familiar with the staple stores in blue collar neighborhoods: convenience stores, whether the corner store in cities or the gas stations-cum-food-marts. These places specialize in canned or ready-to-eat foods. Blue collar parents cannot find arugula or organic strawberries or other pesticide-free treats. Trader Joe's stores, the middle class alternative to Whole Foods or Fairway Supermarket, do not appear in blue collar minority neighborhoods.

Plus, who are pundits or bureaucrats to scold parents when school lunches cater to sweet tastes with carbohydrate and additive-heavy pizza or burgers. And has anyone noticed that the oranges offered in school cafeterias are the cheapest looking products, more frequently the low barrel "juicing oranges" rather than the navel oranges?
Plus, why are we ignoring the power of the junk food players that push french fries and the like are prevailing over the Barack Obama administration? See Dina ElBoghdady's November 15, 2011 article "Obama administration loses effort to make school lunches healthier" in the Washington Post. (The Department of Agriculture's improved guidelines got nixed by industry-influenced Congresspeople.)
Plus, who are those people to lecture parents when mayoral control mayors such as New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg supplant physical education classes with programs overloaded with block-programming doubling up of English and math, along with the competition for gymnasium access when Bloomberg or [Corey] Booker-type mayors make public schools compete with multiple charter schools into their buildings with "co-locations?"
[Another Washington Post article quoted experts that suggest that confiscating or sequestering a child away from parents can contribute to unhealthy stress on the child and its mental development:

“Children at that age are very susceptible to high levels of stress, that’s a biological fact... the neural networks that are developing most rapidly at that time tend to be most susceptible to the biology of stress,” Dr. Robert Anda told me.
Anda is a co-investigator of an ongoing study funded by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. It tracks how childhood trauma can impact the brain and have far-reaching effects. Anda is not suggesting that Zofia [Leszczynski] suffered trauma, but he makes clear that removing any child from a parent at that age has to be considered carefully.

Shoplifting... does anyone see the poverty factor here?]
It is a cruel irony that the government took the son from the parents with the charge of medical neglect. Poverty fuels the condition of poor food options; but parents and children are victims; and by the way, know-it-alls blame the parents.

Shame of the city V: overcrowding the result of unresponsive Tweed; seeing how the other half studies

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg likes to tout his educational performance, and he likes to contrast it with the William Thompson era at the Board of Education.
We are seeing the results of an autocratic mayor, with an autocratic policy, a man that acts alone, through his puppet schools chancellor Joel Klein (head of the NYC Department of Education, at the old Tweed Courthouse).
There are no authentic sessions of parental or parent advocate expression at public meetings of school policy panels. Instead, we have a rubber stamp, mayorally-selected board of yes-men and women that OK everything that King Michael has decreed.

(I was about to cite a Daily News article. Though it has a date of a year ago [October 2, 2008], the analysis remains the same. It is shameful that the city has not addressed the issue. It is shameful that the media, from the liberal "American Prospect" to the "New York Times" has uncritically frothed on about "the work that Joel Klein is doing" and that they have ignored this persistent, and now worsening crisis.) Meredith Kolodner reported community activists making an argument as to the cause of the problem: central or district office decisions that do not consider a common sense solution: build neighborhood schools.

In response to the crisis, a coalition of parents, elected officials and the teachers union will launch a campaign Friday called A Better Capital Plan.

Hey, it's been a year. What ever happened to this campaign? What ever happened to media coverage about parent outrage? Why aren't parents coalescing and challenging the leadership that has worsened this crisis? Why did the city council not challenge Bloomberg's education policy? Why did it roll over and play dead with every demand of King Michael? Hopefully, the changes in the city council and the new public advocate and comptroller will pay attention to the misguided funding policies.

The groups will rally before a City Council hearing to urge leaders to build schools based on neighborhood need instead of the current district-wide evaluation.
They say keeping up with demand is as important in troubled economic times as it is when the city is prospering.
"We don't want to make the same mistake we made in the 1970s, when we stopped investing in the city's infrastructure," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. "You do not want to lose the tax base because of a lack of school construction."

* * *
Again, the arts suffer: read this reader response to the article:

A recent survey of NYC principals revealed that 25% reported losing art, music, dance or drama spaces to general education classrooms. Extrapolated to the whole system, that’s close to 400 schools that have lost their art room! In New York, the cultural capital of the world – renowned for its Broadway theaters and world class museums -- public schools are failing to provide the infrastructure, and even instructional time, to provide students with a world class education in and through the arts.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/10/02/2008-10-02_new_york_city_schools_suffer_massive_ove.html#ixzz0Sz02aISy

LOOKING THROUGH THE GLASS ONION: SEEING HOW THE OTHER HALF STUDIES: DIVERSITY OF COURSE OFFERINGS IN AFFLUENT FRESH MEADOWS
Note the class disparity in policy. Neighborhood schools are forced to close or break up in minority neighborhoods. Parents get upset. The city ignores them. Yet, in middle class neighborhoods, the city modifies its activities (to break up or not to break up) with a mind to not upsetting local sentiments. Again, it bears repeating, note how high schools in the middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods of eastern Queens have been spared the break-up mania, no doubt so as not to disturb the parents that don't want to disturb Johnny's chances to take AP classes and French and get accepted into Columbia or Cornell.
Contrast the diversity of offering at schools such as Fresh Meadows' (Queens) Frances Lewis High School with the patterns discussed in this morning's earlier post (Shame of the Cities IV) about block scheduling in small schools in poor neighborhoods.
Note the following from Jennifer Medina, "The New York Times," September 28, 2009:

Not far from Francis Lewis, two schools with lesser reputations, Jamaica and John Bowne High Schools, are below capacity. But education officials, wary of alienating middle-class parents, have been reluctant to shift students to even out the load.

And Frances Lewis High School is big; and somehow there is no rage to shut it down and replace it with limited course offering "academies."

“We’re big because we’re good and people want to send their kids here,” said Francis Lewis’s principal, Musa Ali Shama. “But how much longer can we keep getting bigger and stay great? There comes a point where too much is too much.”
This year, as it has for much of the past decade, enrollment grew by 200 students, to roughly 4,600, expanding the school day to 14 periods, more than any other school in the city. The school has successfully kept most classes below 34 students, which is better than many schools in the city.

Note: the large size of the schools offers diversity of course offerings, something not found in the small schools peppering the poorer districts of the city. The students Medina quoted enjoy the range of courses:

Jasmine and her friends extol the benefits of Lewis, as students call the school — their electives have included forensics, psychology, bioethics and aerobics. The school’s graduation rate, 81 percent, far exceeds the citywide rate of 56 percent.

Affluent neighborhood: neighborhood school; poor neighborhood: restricted choices
Note the contrast: Students have to apply to high schools. For many students in poor neighborhoods (particularly in much of the Bronx and Brooklyn) they do not have the chance to go to their neighborhood schools. As I've noted elsewhere, this is forcing students to become commuters on the subway, certainly not a green policy, as heavy transit usage requires greater use of natural fossil fuels.
Yet, in affluent eastern Queens and (affluent parts of) southeastern Brooklyn, generally, if you are in the geographic zone, you get to go to your zone school. This is generally implicit in the following:

Unlike high schools in Manhattan,
[comment: somehow, the Times writers are unaware of the convolutions in school access many Brooklyn and Queens students endure.]
which are open to anyone in the city, Francis Lewis and other high schools in Queens have geographic enrollment zones.

TRACKING THE OVERCROWDING WITH HIGH-TECH INTERACTIVE MAPPING
This interactive website on New York City public school overcrowding has been up since 2008. Where has been the public outrage that forced a reversal of the mayor's preference for charter schools that run rough-shod over neighborhood schools?
Click here, to http://www.overcrowdednycschools.org.

Children need neighborhood schools. They do not need siphoning of resources over to charter schools that will then produce skewed results and that the mimicking media (the Daily News excepted) will tout as miraculous. Enough with making new sports stadia, steer public policy over development and construction of neighborhood schools. Stop forcing tweens and teens into becoming commuters.