News

NEW YORK, NY December 09, 2003 — Eighth graders throughout the city are preparing to take the New York State English exams in January. Testing is a critical piece of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires schools to reach yearly performance targets. The city's public schools are under tremendous pressure because they're also dealing with new reforms by Mayor Bloomberg. In our ongoing series Reading, Writing and Reform, WNYC's Beth Fertig looks at one low-performing middle school in South Ozone Park.

Middle School 226 is on a list nobody wants to join. All because its 8th grade reading scores fell just HALF a percentage point short of their target.

NIEVES: I kept adding the numbers over and over again hoping I had made a mistake.

Sonia Nieves is the principal of M.S. 226. Only a quarter of her 8th graders were meeting the state standards for literacy last spring - putting her school on a list called Schools in Need of Improvement. But if you looked carefully, it was English Language Learners and Special Education students who didn't meet their targets.

NIEVES: I don't see the school as a failing school. I don't think a school should be judged totally on small areas. Because the majority of the children really are doing well. But because of the subgroup category we get penalized.

Under the federal law, schools in need of improvement are required to offer their students the option to transfer to other schools or take tutoring classes. More than 100 students chose to leave MS 226 this fall. This means the school will eventually get less federal Title 1 money, which is based on enrollment. But the school has gotten one thing: extra pressure.

TEACHER: OK let's just review. What are some of the strategies we use when we do note taking on the E.L.A.? What are some strategies we're going to use.

Teacher Christina Lopez is preparing her 8th graders for the critical English Language Arts exam in January.

TEACHER: Karita what do you do? What do you do the first time you hear the story? KID: You listen. TEACHER: Good.

Test preparation accounts for about half of every English class these days. And the students know it's important. Aaron Andre Blackwood and Stephanie Andrenisa Smith want to do well.

AARON: I feel nervous. If I fail it then I might not get into a good high school.

STEPHANIE: A lot of kids are failing because like, sometimes they don't study and when they go home they just turn on the TV. I used to do that but I'm going to stop doing that.

Their teacher also has a personal stake. Lopez has been teaching here for the past 4 years. If the school doesn't improve by the spring, it could be shut down by the state.

LOPEZ: I think about it a lot because I care about my kids and I want them to achieve. I personally don't feel that one test should determine all of the 8th graders are completely over-tested, but I still have to go under the THEY. They impose these tests, we have to get them ready.

Lopez has 29 students in her class. Mayor Bloomberg was originally hoping to limit 8th grade English classes to 28 students when he announced his education reforms last January. But MS 226 is still overcrowded - with almost 24 hundred students.

So the school is relying on Bloomberg's new curriculum and reorganization to boost achievement scores.

JONES: You are 807? LOPEZ: Um-hum.

Dianne Jones is the literacy coach for MS 226.

JONES: Just looking at the data only I have identified the children that we really need to zero in on. LOPEZ: Um hum.

Jones keeps a list of all of the students in every class. As she goes over the roster with Christina Lopez, she explains how she's color coded the students based on their latest test scores.

JONES: What we're trying to do right now is to identify students who could literally move our scores along.

Those who need extra help may be pulled aside for additional instruction, she says, or encouraged to attend Saturday classes. The federal law demands that all students show improvement. This means Blacks and Latinos and English language learners must meet specific targets. It's this aspect of the federal law that Jones supports.

JONES: That is morally right. For too long yes, a lot of things were ignored and teachers were not doing their task. But at same time I do believe and believe it strongly it's not enough just to look at figures.

That's because every school has its own needs. At MS 226 and throughout the city, smaller classes are still the holy grail. But when you do the math, No Child Left Behind doesn't provide enough money for hiring more teachers and reducing class size. Washington gave the city an extra 100 million dollars this year. But with 300 schools in need of improvement, it's being spent mostly on transportation for transferring students, administrative costs, and on weekly tutoring services.

CAHILL: It's a challenge.

Michele Cahill is a top advisor to the Chancellor.

CAHILL: It's a real challenge. And we're trying to work with the state and the federal government.

Cahill acknowledges it's difficult for the city to make local reforms while trying to comply with federal mandates. But unlike other cities, the Bloomberg administration has been careful not to complain about the new law. U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige - who formerly ran the Houston public schools - says cities and states should be able to manage their resources. While visiting a HIGH performing school in Chinatown this fall, Paige said he was confident the Chancellor could juggle the demands of local and federal reforms.

PAIGE: He has difficult problems dealing with space. We don't expect this to be accomplished tomorrow. It is a journey we hope to achieve by 2014. We want momentum, we want good faith, we want working toward that goal.

New York City says it's showing good faith by running the biggest tutoring program in the country. More than 48 thousand students applied for tutoring services this fall.

And though the program was slow to get off the ground, more than 300 students are going to Saturday morning classes at Middle School 226. The kids are divided into groups of 10. Thirteen year old Eric Joseph says he likes the program because he's not so good in his regular math class.

JOSEPH: We get like more individual help than class because there's more students in class, so teachers don't get around to help us.

The tutoring classes offer a sign of hope to parents who chose not to transfer their students. Frank Thompson, who's picking up his 7th grade daughter, says keeping her at MS 226 was a difficult choice.

THOMPSON: The school had a low score. But we thought that the teachers - and we talked to the principal and they re-assured us they're doing everything in their power to bring up the scores and with the weekend program and after school programs we just thought that the scores and everything else would come up.

Administrators are confident they eventually will. Robert Anastasio was recently hired to be a co-principal just for the 8th grade. He says the school is finally adapting to its new leadership and curriculum. He believes his teachers deserve a real chance - not just a deadline.

ANASTASIO: I think they take it personal that we're on a corrective action list and it's a blight on our school and it's a blight on us as professionals and we really want to get off this corrective action list and since we came so close the year before that we know it's doable.

But Middle Schools overall haven't been doing so well. And the city is vowing to split many of them into smaller schools, including MS 226. Officials say those changes can still happen even as they struggle to meet the federal standards. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.