Contract for Excellence spells anything but progress

Volume 1, Number 48 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | Aug. 17 - 23, 2007

Talking Point

By Leonie Haimson

Governor Spitzer and the New York State Legislature approved an unprecedented increase in education aid this year: The New York City Department of Education will see $700 million in new state funds (along with $430 million in new city monies). In the process, the state also formulated a “Contract for Excellence,” requiring that districts receiving new state aid spend a portion of the new funds on behalf of their neediest students, in specific ways that increase student achievement.

As part of its Contract for Excellence, New York City was obligated to submit a five-year plan to reduce class size in all grades. This is appropriate, since the state’s highest court—in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case—found that classes in New York City schools were too large to provide students with their constitutional right to an adequate education. Since that decision was written, little or no progress has been made, and our class sizes remain the largest in the state by far.

The DOE’s Contracts for Excellence proposal, submitted on July 16, is severely deficient in several areas, however, especially when it comes to class size. Despite the fact that the city is required to submit a plan showing continuous reductions in class size in all grades, and a capital plan for school construction aligned with this plan, there is nothing in the city’s submission that projects smaller classes beyond next year’s horizon. There are no goals, no benchmarks, no timetables, not enough resources and insufficient space to achieve significantly smaller classes in all grades.

Moreover, even as a one-year plan, the city’s proposal falls far short. It projects a mere .3-.8 of a student reduction in class size, which is so small it will be difficult to measure, given the unreliability of the Department of Education’s class size data. There is no specificity about how any of the additional teachers will be deployed, aside from those who will teach CTT classes, which will not lead to smaller classes. There is no mention of how many new general education classes will be created and in what schools.

Half of all schools will receive no extra funding through the “fair student funding” allocations for the next two years—those funds the city claims under the contracts that will be used to reduce class size. This includes 47 percent of the schools that are currently on the state’s failing list.

Many other low-performing schools do not have any room to reduce class size—and will not in the future, given the city’s current inadequate capital plan. According to DOE’s own data, half of our failing schools with very large class sizes are severely overcrowded, at 100 percent capacity or more. And yet the city has no intention of addressing this situation, as the capital plan creates room only for smaller classes in grades K–3, rather than in all grades, as the law requires.

The Mayor was given enhanced accountability for running our schools, and the DOE under his direction must be required to start the process now of making the substantial and continuous reductions in class size that are mandated by state law, and planning for the future so that schools citywide can achieve smaller classes someday soon. Instead, the administration is attempting to shift this critical responsibility onto the shoulders of principals, without providing them with either the resources or the capacity to make smaller classes a reality.

We urge the state department of education to require the city to amend its proposal and submit an plan that will actually deliver the smaller classes to our children that are required by law—and that the state’s highest court concluded would be necessary to receive their constitutional right to an adequate education.

Leonie Haimson is executive director of the nonprofit group Class Size Matters and a District 2 parent from Greenwich Village. Part of this op-ed was excerpted from a letter sent to the commissioner of the New York State Department of Education that was signed by more than 200 New York City parents, teachers, parent and community leaders, and education advocates.