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| Overview Explosion of Excellence ON THIS PAGE For the last eight years, much of New York's education focus has been on helping its lowest-achieving students and improving its poorest-performing schools. This close scrutiny to those furthest from the Regents' standards has obscured an exciting development: an explosion of education excellence that is sweeping across New York State.
Public education is seeing real, steady improvement from all corners of the state. School districts are strengthening their educational muscle. And the public is applauding this progress where it counts, overwhelmingly passing school budgets year after year. But measurable improvement in public education is just one piece of a bigger revolution that has quietly taken hold. Public school excellence - not merely competence - is today more commonplace in rural and small-city school districts and even in New York's biggest cities. To be sure, many schools are still falling short of expectations. Excellence is, by no means, everywhere. But, a six-month study by New York State United Teachers into the effects of the standards movement shows the state's investment in public education and its focus on raising standards are, at last, producing one of its intended consequences. More children from a more geographically diverse area, as well as an increasing number of school districts, are demonstrating excellence every day. NYSUT found the "excellence gap" between affluent suburban districts and other school districts is rapidly narrowing as New York's number of high-achieving students and school districts begins to rise and broadly expand. This burst of excellence results from a confluence of factors. Dedicated and highly skilled teachers and school-related professionals continue to make a difference in the lives of children. Classroom teachers have worked heroically to raise achievement in the face of ever-increasing demands. New York's teachers are unquestionably the best-educated, best-prepared and best-trained teachers in the nation. In addition, nearly a decade of higher standards, new tests, smaller classes, greater accountability and the investment of billions of dollars in education funding are beginning to produce results. Despite far more rigorous courses and testing regimen than is found in most other states, New York's public education system is enjoying a groundswell of excellence. This is a story that has not previously been told. It is a new development that should force a re-examination of some widely held assumptions about student achievement and school performance in New York State. Excellence Spreads to More Public Schools Excellence in public education is not at all new.
New York has long been home to first-class public schools. Some well-known names include the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Realtors, business leaders and proud parents have for years recognized the value inherent in New York's many top-notch school districts, where a strong academic foundation and a broad range of advanced course offerings help pave the way to high SAT scores and entrée to the most elite colleges. The sterling reputations of the very best school districts - which for years have primarily been found in the suburbs surrounding New York City and cities upstate - have served as magnets for homebuyers seeking brighter futures for their children. Suburbia is just one home to public school excellence. There is now ample data to show that excellence is also commonly found, for example, in less well-known places like Lyons, Honeoye Falls, Newcomb, Port Jervis, Highland, Cooperstown and Hammondsport. All seven of these upstate school districts had more than 90 percent of their senior class graduate with prestigious Regents' diplomas in June 2002. Other examples of excellence stand out. What do Lewiston-Porter in Niagara County, P.S. 134 in Manhattan and the Webb Central School District in rural Herkimer County have in common? More than 90 percent of the fourth-graders in all three school districts met or exceeded the state standards on both the state English Language Arts and math tests. Meanwhile, Ithaca, Rome and Troy are more than the names of great ancient civilizations. All three small-city school districts sent more than 90 percent of their graduates to college in 2002, part of a deepening trend toward more opportunity in higher education for New York's children. These and hundreds of other public school districts in New York have cleared a high bar for educational excellence in either of the last two years. Without question, excellence is subjective. The way we view excellence is truly colored by our background, personal experiences and preferences. Some say Animal House is a great movie. Others say Ronald Reagan was an excellent president. Yes? No? Definitions of excellence are open to debate. Since perhaps the days of the red, one-room schoolhouse, a grade of 90 percent or better has earned a student an "A." The "A" has, for generations upon generations, represented excellence and its meaning has reached far into America's culture and psyche. For this report, NYSUT looked at objective ways to recognize school districts that today, on one scale, earn an "A" for excellence. A NYSUT analysis of two years of state test data and other State Education Department statistics found documented examples of excellence in 387 New York State school districts, including dozens of rural and small-city school districts. This is on top of the clear, upward trend in achievement for hundreds of other school districts. These 387 school districts - and the teachers and school-related professionals who work in them - deserve recognition for their contributions to this rise in excellence. They are due public acclaim for helping their students achieve a remarkable level of success. The trend toward excellence is so impressive that when measured against public education systems in other states, there is little question as to where New York ranks. New York's public education system - even with its over-publicized warts, its lower-performing schools, its struggling students and the long road ahead to achieve excellence for all - is among the best anywhere. Test scores are just one measure of excellence. Much more evidence supports the contention that New York is experiencing an education renaissance. For example:
Refocusing the Debate: What's Right with Public Education For too long, our national education debate - and New York's - has focused on what's wrong with public schools and what medicine is required to fix it. In an Atlantic Monthly article, "The Near-Myth of Our Failing Schools," author Peter Schrag notes it has almost always been so. [1] From the fears triggered by the launching of Sputnik in the late 1950s; to the early 1980s and publication of A Nation at Risk; to 1989 when the nation's governors wrote Goals 2000; to the standards movement of the 1990s and today, our nation has been wringing its hands over the perception - no matter how inaccurate - that public education is ailing and doomed to fail.
The true picture of our nation's education performance is far brighter and much more complex. Despite the myths and somber pronouncements, most public schools in America - and especially in New York - are doing a very good job of educating children. In "apples-to-apples" comparisons to the public education systems in other nations, New York State and the United States fare well. Indeed, the vast majority of New York's public schools are succeeding. But, the horror stories from ideologues with particular political agendas often overshadow what's really happening. Rarely do New Yorkers read about the steady improvement and broad excellence found in classrooms everywhere. Education Week ranked New York's standards as the highest in the nation in 2002, and gave the state "A" grades for standards and accountability in January 2004. In its report Making Standards Matter, the American Federation of Teachers gave New York top marks for the depth and clarity of its standards. Despite higher-than-average numbers of students who live in poverty, need special education services or are immigrants from other countries, New York not only demands more of its students, it gets more. New Yorkers intuitively understand this. In poll after poll, the public gives very high marks to its local schools, even if - succumbing to the rhetoric of alarm that Schrag writes about - they vaguely believe public schools "in the rest of the nation" are not as good as their own. [2] In addition to understanding what this qualified good news means, we must also remember that public education, as an institution, is the cornerstone of our democracy. It is the common thread that holds the people of our diverse nation together. Public education deserves more support. "A strong public education system is an essential pillar of a plurastic democracy. Only when every person has an equal opportunity to reach their potential will the goals of a democracy be realized," said Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director for the New York State League of Women Voters and chairwoman of P.S. 21, a coalition of groups working to strengthen public education in this state. She added that, "New York State parents, their students and their teachers have worked hard together to achieve the results that are now being seen, and we must continue this progress." This report, while taking note of the undeniable pattern of improvement in nearly every school district, showcases the rising tide of excellence that is becoming more prevalent and more visible in New York's public schools. For example, more than twice as many school districts had 90 percent of their students meet state standards in fourth-grade math in 2003 than five years before. The number of school districts in which 90 percent or more of the graduates entered college rose from 106 in 1998 to 189 in 2002, a rise of 78 percent. There still remains much work to do. All school districts have room for improvement; none have 100 percent of their students exceeding the Regents' standards on every measure. And, of course, superior test scores in one or two subjects, in one or two grades, are just one reflection of the overall quality of a school district. Many school districts offer top programs and turn out high-achieving graduates, but have test scores that do not reflect true measures of their excellence. Others have high levels of poverty, a mobile student population, large numbers of students who speak English as a second language, or considerable special education populations - all potential barriers to achievement which, with the proper investment of resources, can in time be overcome. Many school districts, particularly those in the Big 5, are chronically under-funded and unable to provide all the support their students need. While the gap in achievement between white and minority students is narrowing, more needs to be done to accelerate that improvement. Still, New York City, Syracuse, Yonkers, Rochester and other places have shown tremendous improvement in test scores against great odds. Large urban school districts that have dramatically raised test scores and improved overall student performance have achieved a different measure of excellence. Excellence: Hidden in Plain Sight Why hasn't this pattern of broadening excellence been noted before? Most probably, because no one has been looking for it. For the most part, progress toward raising academic standards and designing fair and appropriate tests has shared center stage with political jousting and a landmark court case over whether New York State funds public schools adequately and distributes nearly $15 billion in state aid equitably. In School Report Cards and in test data released by the State Education Department, the closest attention has been paid to public schools and students that are not meeting expectations. This laser-like focus on raising the performance of children and schools at the bottom rungs is important, necessary and welcome. Yet, perspective is essential, and it is the one element that is most often lost. All the energy spent on fixing what's wrong with public education should not blind us to so much that is right with public education. It may run counter to conventional wisdom, and it may undermine someone's agenda of reform, but there is a new, bold story to be told: Excellence in public education is broad, deep and quickly proliferating across New York State. Excellence in public education is all around us. We should be recognizing it, acknowledging it and celebrating it. NYSUT's findings reveal a whole that is bigger - and better - than the sum of its parts. Each of the categories that follows sheds light on excellence in New York's public education system in a new and different way. When all are fit together, a solid body of evidence emerges that excellence in public education is exploding across New York State. NEXT: "The Evidence" |
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| "Explosion of Excellence." The education revolution no one is talking about. | |
Newly analyzed data reveals that excellence in New York's public education system is significantly deeper and more geographically and demographically widespread than anyone imagined.
Throughout their long history, New York's public schools have produced more than their fair share of very successful students. Graduates of New York public schools and colleges are pioneers in science, medicine and technology; leaders on the world stage, captains of industry, superstar athletes and creative geniuses who enrich the arts.
Schrag writes, "The debate is driven by our favorite myths: that there once was a golden age, an era when schools maintained rigorous academic standards, when all children learned, when few dropped out and most graduated on time; that sometime in the past generation or so (most commonly pegged to the 1960s) the system began to fall apart under a siege of social promotion, grade inflation, and progressive mush that is leaving America helpless against superior foreign education; and that the large amounts of new money that have gone to the schools in the past generation have largely been wasted."