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Fourth grade teacher Gloria Mance with students at P.S. 33 in Chelsea, where test scores doubled this year. (Erin E. Lubick)

NEW YORK, NY November 02, 2005 —Michael Bloomberg has made reforming the public schools a major theme of his mayoralty. In 2002, he captured the Holy Grail that eluded previous New York Mayors when he dismantled the old Board of Education and took control of the schools. Since then, he’s made sweeping changes that he says are finally yielding results.

BLOOMBERG: Students are making record improvements in their test scores. Scores have gone up by more than 12 points in English and by more than 15 points in math. And the number of schools on the state’s probation list has been cut to an all-time low and graduation rates which were stagnant for decades are now starting to rise.

REPORTER: For a closer look at these numbers, WNYC’s Beth Fertig visited one Chelsea elementary school where test scores have doubled.

In the Bloomberg reform class of 2005, PS 33 has been a model student. Almost 62 percent of its pupils were reading at or above grade level this year, compared to just thirty percent in 2004. The school’s combined math scores also rose – by 20 percentage points.

But teachers say the real proof of change at this small elementary school is in its tone.

FARIHA: Right here if you can see there’s the baby gerbil.

REPORTER: Nine year-old Fariha Angum shows off the living laboratories of her fourth grade classroom. There’s the gerbil cage where students learn about genetics through breeding. And there’s a long fish tank with baby trout. Fariha says she and her classmates are watching this one very closely.

FARIHA Because when they hatch they create this natural foam called ammonia and it helps them hatch. BOY: That’s just the foam, we’re not just working on the foam we’re working on power point presentation of the fish.

REPORTER: These science projects are among various collaborations the school has started with outside groups including Trout in the Classroom, the Audobon Society, and local art galleries in Chelsea. Fourth grade teacher Gloria Mance has been here for seven years. She says it wasn’t always such a vibrant place.

MANCE: There was not a sense of order, there was not an articulated vision. The support from the leader was not there. The supplies, the resources were not present. You name it!

REPORTER: Classes were also bigger. Mance used to have 25 to 30 students in her classroom. Now she has just twenty.

MANCE: You have more time to spend with the students, you can definitely focus in on their individual needs. And that is because of Mrs. Lindy.

REPORTER: Mance is referring to Linore Lindy, the school’s dynamo of a principal. Lindy came here two years ago and quickly gave PS 33 a new name: Chelsea Prep. Teachers say she understands the needs of the school’s low income population, which is drawn largely from the housing projects across Ninth Avenue. And they give her enormous credit for creating a sense of calm and order in a place where the hallways are now filled with artwork and inviting furniture.

But Lindy says it wasn’t all her.

LINDY: The schools right now have more support than they ever had.

REPORTER: Lindy is referring to the new management structure established by Mayor Bloomberg. Back in the old days, when she was an assistant principal in Bedford Stuyvesant, Lindy says she had to go through layers of bureaucracy to get any help. But she says that’s all changed.

LINDY: Right now I’m an email away from the chancellor. I was never that close to a chancellor before. They were removed. There were many, many layers between myself and a chancellor.

REPORTER: She says a team of supervisors visit her school on a regular basis to provide curriculum support and supplies.

LINDY: Everyone is accessible now. They either have blackberries, they have cell phone numbers that are public.

REPORTER: Lindy also got extra money to hire more teachers and reduce class size. And when the mayor enacted a new policy to stop promoting third and fifth graders if they failed their exams, students were encouraged to attend after school and weekend tutoring programs. Grissel Romero says this nurturing atmosphere helped her struggling son make it to 5th grade.

ROMERO: He’s doing 100% better. He’s getting all the tutoring that he needs. If he has a problem the door’s always open he can come and speak to whoever he wants. I mean it’s a major – I’m getting teary-eyed because it’s a major, major improvement.

REPORTER: The improvements at Chelsea Prep are clearly real. And there are obviously many factors: a strong principal, good teachers, and support from the school system. But was that enough to produce a 30 point rise in test scores?

TOBIAS: These are large gains. And I believe some of the gains are real.

REPORTER: Robert Tobias is director of the Center for Research and Teaching at NYU’s Steinhart School of Education. He used to run the testing division for the old Board of Education. Tobias notes that in 2004, when Chelsea prep had lower test scores, it also had more students. It was still in the process of phasing out its middle school. But those students were gone by 2005 - eliminating dozens of low-performing seventh graders who WERE tested the previous year.

TOBIAS: I don’t believe that the improvement in test scores, the very large improvement in test scores, is solely attributable to those programs and the policies of the administration as implemented last year. I think there are other factors that figure into that large gain.

REPORTER: Tobias also notes that test scores went up throughout the state this year, meaning New York City’s experience wasn’t unique. New York City was unique in developing a new curriculum after Bloomberg took office. But it’s not clear what role that curriculum played in the double-digit gains experienced at schools like Chelsea Prep.

TEACHER: What did you do there? KID: I went back and read it. TEACHER: To see if it what? KID: Makes sense. TEACHER: That was so smart, I noticed that was – smart readers, it’s okay to make mistakes.

REPORTER: This approach is called balanced literacy. It relies on a workshop model where teachers deliver a 10 minute mini-lesson, and then let their students work individually and in groups. Chelsea Prep had been using a similar approach for years. First grade teacher Danielle Capek likes it because she’s able to spend more one-on-one time with her students.

CAPEK: Just to watch them and see what they’re doing you learn so much by just being able to do that.

REPORTER: But some education experts criticized this approach for not providing enough direct instruction. And in some schools, teachers complained about being treated like robots forced to follow a script. This teacher – whose voice was disguised because of concerns about job security – works in a school where teachers claim supervisors are especially heavy-handed.

TEACHER: You teach for five or ten minutes and no more. You provide that direct instruction, you have the kids sit on the rug and you write on an easel you’re not allowed to write on the blackboard cause that’s too threatening. On the surface that doesn’t sound too terrible. But there are many children for whom that type of learning atmosphere is not necessarily in their best interest, who might succeed learning a different way. And we are not permitted even the slightest deviance from that prescribed program.

REPORTER: It’s this lack of respect that seems to have rankled teachers and principals in schools where things haven’t gone as smoothly. Phyllis Casolaro Williams was a principal at Intermediate School 143 in Washington Heights before taking retirement this fall.

WILLIAMS: I think the hardest to manage was the lack of respect for anything that we had done previously. If we were in the system we were suspect because we were part of the problem. Not part of the solution.

REPORTER: Chancellor Joel Klein often attributes grips like these to defenders of the status quo. But relationships between those who work in the schools and their managers are critical to the hard work ahead: improving stagnating middle schools, and increasing graduation rates. And when the key ingredients are there, teachers and principals say things can improve.

At Chelsea Prep, Fourth graders in Gloria Mance’s class are working on doing research for their upcoming reports. Briana Hines and Mahagony Hansberg are writing about different types of birds.

GIRLS: We’re studying the characteristics, the diet the natural habitat, the reproduction.

REPORTER: The principal and her teachers believe their school is better now because students are engaged and everyone’s got the support they need. Principal Lindy pauses when asked if this could have happened under the old school system.

LINDY: I would have to say no. because otherwise it would have happened. It would have happened in a school like this that all these supports would be here. And yet the school was struggling.

REPORTER: But she and her teachers also caution that higher test scores only tell part of the story. Fourth grade teacher Gloria Mance:

MANCE: Having policies and tests do not change the school. You have to have the whole team. Give us another 2 years and we’ll be one of the top schools.

REPORTER: If they are, Mayor Bloomberg and his Chancellor would certainly love to share some of the credit. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.