York City Schools Research Articles

Parenting in the Age of High-Stakes Testing: Gifted and Talented Admissions and the Meaning of Parenthood

Background/Context This work contributes to the growing body of scholarly and popular literature on middle-class parental anxiety and competition to ensure their children's academic success. Specifically, this study provides a better understanding of the measures parents will take to obtain high status gifted and talented (G&T) placements that advantage their own children at the expense of others, which is somewhat contradictory given the growing uneasiness they feel about putting their children through the testing process—and paying for test prep—that the system ultimately rewards. By analyzing the different ways in which White parents and parents of color conceive of good parenting in the era of high-stakes testing, I demonstrate the processes in our current educational system that help to produce inequities related to race, class, and G&T identification. Purpose/Objective This paper examines White parents’ beliefs about parenting as it relates to their school choice preferences in the segregated and stratified New York City school system. It also compares the parenting styles and school choices of lower income general education (Gen Ed) parents of color. It explores how parents’ social constructions of where their children belong in school are tied to their beliefs about parenting and doing what is best for their children in a highly competitive society and city. Research Design A qualitative case study was utilized to examine how a diverse group of 52 New York City parents make sense of and interact with an elementary school that offers both a segregated G&T and a Gen Ed program. The semistructured parent interview data was triangulated with school observations, a professional school-choice consultant interview, and an observation of a public school choice workshop for incoming kindergarten parents led by the consultant. Findings/Results The data show that White parents believe that paying for test prep, going through the “hassle of getting your child tested for G&T,” and receiving a high test score are symbolic of being a good parent in the system. In comparison, parents of color had different conceptions of good parenting that did not include prepping for the G&T test or getting into the G&T program, where their children would be in the minority. White parents had social networks of like-minded parents pressuring them to get into the G&T program. Black and Latino parents did not have the same G&T pressure from friends or family, nor did they view a G&T placement as giving their children extra advantages in terms of test scores or future schooling opportunities. Conclusions/Recommendations The findings suggest that the pressure for children to succeed on a single test feeds into parental anxiety and competition regarding getting their children into the high-status G&T program. Instead of trying to avoid an overly anxious parenting culture, the White advantaged parents in this setting get swept up in the test-prepping fad because everyone else is doing it and because of the competitive nature of obtaining a G&T seat. If policy officials want to attack the root of the G&T segregation problem, the city should consider phasing out district G&T programs altogether and instituting school-wide G&T magnets instead.

War and Children

War and Children

SimUfish: An Interactive Application to Teach K-12 Students About Zebrafish Behavior.

As the zebrafish is rapidly becoming a species of choice in preclinical research, several efforts are being placed toward creating educational programs for K-12 students based on this promising model organism. However, as any other model organisms, the use of zebrafish in classroom settings requires additional experimental resources and poses ethical challenges related to animal use. To mitigate these factors, we have developed an application (app), simUfish, which implements a mathematical model of zebrafish behavior for generating multiple fish trajectories and animating their body undulations. simUfish is developed using a multiplatform game engine and is expected to promote the knowledge of zebrafish behavior to both K-12 students and the general public. Specifically, it demonstrates basic principles of fish individual and social behaviors, including environment interaction; fear response toward a predator; shoaling; and attraction toward a stimulus, which can be a food source or simply a finger placed on the touch screen. The effectiveness of the app as an accessible experimental tool for learning was tested in an outreach activity on middle school students from the New York City school system. The results from this activity show an immediate, tangible improvement of students' satisfaction and willingness to learn about key concepts on zebrafish behavior, accompanied by high level of interest in life sciences.

Development of the GREEN (Garden Resources, Education, and Environment Nexus) Tool: An Evidence-Based Model for School Garden Integration

BackgroundResearchers have established the benefits of school gardens on students’ academic achievement, dietary outcomes, physical activity, and psychosocial skills, yet limited research has been conducted about how school gardens become institutionalized and sustained. ObjectiveOur aim was to develop a tool that captures how gardens are effectively established, integrated, and sustained in schools. DesignWe conducted a sequential, exploratory, mixed-methods study. Participants were identified with the help of Grow To Learn, the organization coordinating the New York City school garden initiative, and recruited via e-mail. Participants/settingA stratified, purposeful sample of 21 New York City elementary and middle schools participated in this study throughout the 2013/2014 school year. The sample was stratified in their garden budgets and purposeful in that each of the schools’ gardens were determined to be well integrated and sustained. Main outcome measuresThe processes and strategies used by school gardeners to establish well-integrated school gardens were assessed via data collected from surveys, interviews, observations, and concept mapping. Statistical analyses performedDescriptive statistics as well as multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to examine the survey and concept mapping data. Qualitative data analysis consisted of thematic coding, pattern matching, explanation building and cross-case synthesis. ResultsNineteen components within four domains of school garden integration were found through the mixed-methods concept mapping analysis. When the analyses of other data were combined, relationships between domains and components emerged. These data resulted in the development of the GREEN (Garden Resources, Education, and Environment Nexus) Tool. ConclusionsWhen schools with integrated and sustained gardens were studied, patterns emerged about how gardeners achieve institutionalization through different combinations of critical components. These patterns are best described by the GREEN Tool, the first framework to identify how to operationalize school gardening components and describe an evidence-based strategy of successful school garden integration.

Implementation of a School Nurse-led Intervention for Children With Severe Obesity in New York City Schools

PurposeThe Healthy Options and Physical Activity Program (HOP) is a school nurse-led intervention for children with severe obesity. HOP was developed by experts at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and implemented in New York City schools beginning in 2012. The purpose of this study was to evaluate HOP implementation with the goal of informing HOP refinement and potential future HOP dissemination. Design and MethodsThis study entailed a retrospective analysis of secondary data. Analytic methods included descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon rank sum and Chi square tests, and multivariate logistic regression. ResultsDuring the 2012–2013 school year, 20,518 children were eligible for HOP. Of these, 1054 (5.1%) were enrolled in the program. On average, enrolled children attended one HOP session during the school year. Parent participation was low (3.2% of HOP sessions). Low nurse workload, low school poverty, higher grade level, higher BMI percentile, and chronic illness diagnosis were associated with student enrollment in HOP. ConclusionsAs currently delivered, HOP is not likely to be efficacious. Lessons learned from this evaluation are applicable to future nurse-led obesity interventions. Practice ImplicationsPrior to implementing a school nurse-led obesity intervention, nursing workload and available support must be carefully considered. Interventions should be designed to facilitate (and possibly require) parent involvement. Nurses who deliver obesity interventions may require additional training in obesity treatment. With attention to these lessons learned, evidence-based school nurse-led obesity interventions can be developed.

Trends in Reporting of Physician-Diagnosed Food Allergy in New York City Schools

Trends in Reporting of Physician-Diagnosed Food Allergy in New York City Schools

Students’ and Parents’ Perceptions of Disciplinary Policy: Does Symbolic Representation Matter?

This article examines the effects of symbolic representation and strict disciplinary policy on how students and their parents perceive school discipline. We use data from the 2011-2012 New York City School Survey, combined with data on disciplinary actions from the Office of Civil Rights. Our results suggest that strict disciplinary actions send negative messages to students and their parents about school discipline. We find that as more strict disciplinary actions are administered within a school, students are less likely to perceive discipline as fair or legitimate. The negative effects of disciplinary actions, however, tend to be smaller in schools for which there is a closer racial match between students and teachers and, consequently, a greater likelihood of symbolic representation. We also find that passive representation influences parents’ attitudes toward school discipline in their children’s schools.

School Characteristics and Teacher Policy Influence: Evidence From New York City

Proponents of the charter school movement often claim that the decentralized, autonomous nature of charter schools from district and state authority allows teachers greater influence over school policy both instructionally and administratively. Using a data set of 1,427 New York City schools, we empirically examine the extent to which organizational characteristics predict the amount of policy influence charter schools and traditional public schools grant to teachers. Results indicate not only do charter schools grant their teachers less policy influence but also other organizational features are stronger predictors of teacher policy influence including several nonlinear relationships. Directions for future research are discussed.

“Context-Specific” Teacher Preparation for New York City

In this article, we examine a residency program that was developed to prepare teachers specifically for New York City schools—the Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching Urban Teacher Residency program. This focused preparation on the particular urban context of New York City provides us with a unique opportunity to examine the nature of preparation—how such targeted preparation is conceptualized and organized, what it offers, and what might be missing and need to be strengthened. We also describe the development of a yearlong course aimed at preparing teachers for New York, which emerged from this study.

Asthma management in New York City schools: A classroom teacher perspective

Objective: Classroom teachers play an important role in facilitating asthma management in school but little is known about their perspectives around asthma management. We examined the perspectives of classroom teachers around barriers to school asthma management. Methods: We conducted key informant interviews with 21 inner-city classroom teachers from 3rd to 5th grades in 10 Bronx, New York elementary schools. Sampling continued until thematic saturation was reached. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and independently coded for common themes. We used thematic and content review to analyze interview data. Results: Seven themes representing teachers’ perspectives on in-school asthma management emerged: (1) the problematic process of identifying students with asthma; (2) poor familiarity with the city health department's asthma initiative and poor general knowledge of school policies on asthma management; (3) lack of competency in managing an acute asthma attack in the classroom and poor recognition of symptoms of an asthma attack; (4) lack of confidence in dealing with a hypothetical asthma attack in the classroom; (5) lack of quick access to asthma medication in school; (6) limited communication between school staff; and (7) enthusiasm about learning more about asthma management. Conclusions: Our results revealed several barriers contributing to suboptimal in-school asthma management: ineffective ways of identifying students with asthma, lack of teacher knowledge of guidelines on asthma management, lack of comfort in managing students’ asthma, inadequate access to asthma medication in school, and limited communication between school staff. These issues should be considered in the design of interventions to improve in-school asthma management.

Public Education in the Dynamic City: Lessons from New York City

The plight of urban schools and their failure to adequately and efficiently educate their students has occupied the national discussion about public schools in America over the last quarter century. While there is little doubt that failing schools exist in rural and suburban locations, the image of city school systems as under-financed, inefficient, inequitable and burdened by students with overwhelming needs is particularly well entrenched in the modern American psyche. As the largest school district in the country, New York City attracts particular attention to its problems. To some extent, this image reflects realities. New York City school children, like many urban students around the country, are more likely to be poor, non-white and immigrants, with limited English skills, and greater instability in their schooling, and the new waves of immigrants from around the world bring students with a formidable array of backgrounds, language skills, and special needs. The resulting changes in the student body pose particular challenges for schools. At the same time, despite a decade of school finance litigation and reform, New York continues to have trouble affording the class sizes, highly qualified teachers and other resources that suburban neighbors enjoy. Finally, there is evidence of continuing segregation and disparities in performance between students of different races and ethnicities.

From “Good Will” to “Anachronism”

This article explores the challenges that have made the pursuit of school integration difficult in the contemporary era. Using court records and newspaper archives, we explore how a New York City school desegregation order came to be seen as “unnecessary,” “unfair,” and “anachronistic,” claims that seem to deny the salience of race in one of the most segregated school systems in the nation. In 1974, Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island became the first New York City school to desegregate under federal district court order. Three decades later, Mark Twain was a highly desirable magnet school under a court-mandated desegregation plan that left students across the city competing fiercely for admissions. In 2007, an immigrant parent from India successfully sued New York City, claiming his daughter was passed over in favor of white students who scored lower on the city's selective school screening test but were admitted in the name of maintaining the 1974 court-mandated racial balance. We argue that Mark Twain's story vividly illustrates not only the importance of demographic change in school desegregation policy but also the evolution of racial discourse and the conceptions of the public good in the post–civil rights era.

Qualities, Activities and Modes of Operation of Well-Integrated New York City School Gardens

Objective: New York City School Gardens are highly varied in their characteristics, activities, and how they operate within a school. This study aimed to describe the qualities of well-integrated school gardens. That is, those who have a physically maintained garden that students visit regularly and has become a sustained part of the school culture. Design, Setting and Participants: School gardeners from 21 schools in New York City participated in a survey, observation(s), a semi-structured interview, and a concept mapping exercise during the 2013-2014 school year. Photographs were taken of gardens and additional documents were collected for analysis (when available). OutcomeMeasures andAnalysis:Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the survey and qualitative techniques, including pattern matching, explanation building, and cross-case synthesis were used to analyze the qualitative data. Finally, multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis was used to assess and synthesize data collected from the concept mapping exercises. Results: A rich description, supplemented with images, of each school gardening program was constructed that describe each schools unique coupling of School Garden Integration Framework (SGIF) components to meet their special needs and sustain the garden (e.g. a school with a greenhouse-enclosed rooftop hydrofarm classroom operationalized the SGIF very differently than a school with outdoor raised beds). Taken together these data illustrate the variation in how the SGIF can be used to overcome barriers and effectively integrate a school garden. Conclusions and Implications: Lessons learned from each school may be helpful for other urban school gardeners and can be used to develop guiding principles and policies for schools with similar gardening needs or requirements. Funding: None.

Strategies Used by New York City School Gardeners to Operationalization the School Garden Integration Framework’s Components

Strategies Used by New York City School Gardeners to Operationalization the School Garden Integration Framework’s Components

Lessons of hope: how to fix our schools

New York Times Bestseller (Education)The Economist Best Books of the Year SelectionIn this revealing and provocative memoir, the former chancellor of the New York City schools offers the behind-the-scenes story of the city's dramatic campaign to improve public education and an inspiring blueprint for national reform.In 2002 New York City's newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg, made a historic announcement: his administration had won control of the city's school system in a first step toward reversing its precipitous decline. In a controversial move, he appointed Joel Klein, an accomplished lawyer from outside the education establishment, to lead this ambitious campaign.Lessons of Hope is Klein's inside account of his eight-year mission of improvement: demanding accountability, eliminating political favoritism, and battling a powerful teachers union that seemed determined to protect a status quo that didn't work for kids. Klein's initiatives resulted in more school choice, higher graduation rates, and improved test scores. The New York City model is now seen as a national standard for meaningful school reform. But the journey was not easy. Klein faced resistance and conflict at every turn.Lessons of Hope lays bare the problems plaguing public education and shows how they can be solved. At its core lies Klein's personal story: his humble upbringing in Brooklyn and Queens, and the key role that outstanding public school teachers played in nurturing his success. Engaging and illuminating, Lessons of Hope is essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of American public education.

For Better or worse: Organizational turnaround in New York City schools

The performance of public organizations has become a more salient issue as the popularity of accountability policies has grown. Though organizations are often defined as underperforming, little is known about the effectiveness of various strategies commonly recommended for agency turnaround. This study provides a large-N test of three common categories of turnaround mechanisms – retrenchment, repositioning, and reorganization – in nearly 300 failing New York City schools between 2008 and 2011. Models show that none of the three turnaround strategies appear to be significantly associated with improvements in core organizational performance from an administrative perspective, although repositioning appears to improve client satisfaction.

Routine HIV testing capacity, practices, and perceptions among school-based health center providers in New York State after enactment of the 2010 amended HIV testing law.

The 2010 New York State (NYS) HIV Testing Law requires that primary care providers routinely offer HIV testing to patients aged 13-64 years, regardless of risk, and link individuals with HIV to medical care. School-based health centers (SBHCs) are in a position to offer HIV screening to a significant proportion of youth. One year after the law went into effect, we conducted a study to assess whether NYS SBHCs implemented these provisions. Medical providers from 83 NYS SBHCs, serving students age 13 and older, participated in a Web-based survey regarding school-based health center capacity for and implementation of routine HIV testing, linkage to care, attitudes, and barriers. On-site HIV testing was reported to be available at 71% of SBHCs. Linkages to age-appropriate HIV care were reported to be available at 85% of SBHCs. The routine offer of HIV testing for eligible students was reported to be implemented at 55% of SBHCs. Forty-one percent reported that HIV testing was offered to at least half of eligible students during the 2010-2011 school year. New York City and high school providers were more likely to report the routine offer of HIV testing, on-site testing, linkages to care, perceive students as willing to test, indicate fewer barriers, and report having offered testing to a majority of eligible students in the previous year. Many SBHCs have adopted key provisions of the amended NYS HIV Testing Law. Additional assistance may be needed to achieve full implementation; however, especially among SBHCs serving younger populations and those located outside New York City.

Mitchie Takeuchi and Miyako Taguchi: Second-generation survivors of the atomic bomb

Mitchie Takeuchi’s mother and grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 70 years ago. Miyako Taguchi’s parents survived the bombing of Nagasaki three days later. Takeuchi and Taguchi both are part of the second generation (and in Takeuchi’s case also the third generation) of hibakusha—the Japanese term for people who were exposed directly to one of the two bombings or their radioactive fallout or who were exposed while still in their mothers’ wombs. Although many hibakusha have been reluctant or unwilling to discuss the bombings with their children, some have not only talked about their experiences with family members but also become active in groups such as Hibakusha Stories—which brings survivors into New York City schools to discuss their experiences with students. In this pair of interviews, Takeuchi and Taguchi talk about what it’s like to be the child of a survivor and why they feel a responsibility to share their family stories and to speak out about nuclear weapons.

Asthma identification and medication administration forms in New York City schools

Asthma identification and medication administration forms in New York City schools

Navigating into, through, and beyond the middle grades: The role of middle grades attendance in staying on track for high school graduation

In this longitudinal study, we investigated the use of attendance during middle school as a behavioral indicator of engagement to predict whether students are on track toward high school graduation. We used administrative data from four cohorts of students in New York City schools (N=303,845) to (a) explore patterns of change in attendance between Grades 4 and 8 and (b) determine the extent to which changes in attendance between Grades 4 and 8 predict which students are on track in Grade 9 for going on to graduate from high school. Results of latent growth modeling indicated that students demonstrate the most substantial declines in attendance during Grade 8 and that attendance changes are most variable in this year, with some students demonstrating much more dramatic declines than others. In addition, these changes in attendance were robust predictors of whether students were on track for high school graduation. To identify students who are at risk for not graduating for the purposes of providing appropriate interventions, educators should pay attention to their commonly collected data on attendance rates as a behavioral indicator of engagement.