Emery School District Top Spender In County, Not Much To Show For It

Emery School District: Lowest On 'Bang-For-Buck' Scale

The following story validates an earlier report from the Center for American Progress, a Washington based progressive think tank regarding school districts and a quality they call "productivity".  That report released in January 2011 and reported on by the Tattler on February 8th shows Emery Unified School District among the lowest in the region in a critical performance criterion, productivity, which measures academic achievement relative to school spending.  The story below is a simple combining money spent against number of pupils as it relates to test scores and is not scientific per se.  It is noteworthy that it supports the more scientific Center for American Progress report however.  The February 8th Tattler story is called School District Fails 'Productivity' Test

Re-Printed from the Contra Costa Times:

Study shows some East Bay districts get bigger bang for their bucks than others

By Theresa Harrington
Contra Costa Times

Posted: 06/05/2011 08:06:01 AM PDT

Updated: 06/07/2011 04:49:24 PM PDT

Click photo to enlarge

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In the East Bay, school spending and academic achievement vary widely, with some districts appearing to get more bang for their bucks than others.

The reasons for the disparities are complex, district officials say. Yet most agree that spending more doesn't necessarily guarantee higher Academic Performance Index, or API, scores, while spending less doesn't always mean students will fare poorly.

Contra Costa County's top-spending district -- Orinda elementary -- also had the top API score. Alameda County's top spender was Emery, which ranked near the bottom in test scores. But Alameda County's top-scoring district -- Piedmont unified -- was also a relatively big spender.

Orinda spent $9,473 per student and achieved an API score of 954 on a 1,000-point scale; 800 is the statewide goal for proficiency. Emery spent $13,680 per student and scored 709, while Piedmont doled out $11,579 per student and scored 925.

"It's actually very hard to isolate the factors that cause the API score to be as high as it is," said Lisa Bissell, Orinda's director of instruction and curriculum. "Per pupil spending may be one factor, but I think it's more about how we use what we have, rather than the amount of money we get. We have a high priority on professional development."

Both Orinda and Piedmont get about one-third of their funding from parcel taxes, foundations and parent donations. This money gives them the luxury of spending on small class sizes, art teachers and other programs and staff, which some less affluent districts can't afford.

"Piedmont's 'extra' expenses are for the 'extra' services such as elementary librarians, counselors and middle and high school seven-period days to include a variety of elective choices," Piedmont Superintendent Constance Hubbard said in an e-mail. "What is termed 'extra' now was not considered 'extra' 30 years ago."

Emery Superintendent John Sugiyama said the tiny Emeryville district, which serves about 726 students, has a higher percentage of children from economically disadvantaged homes than any other Alameda County district, including Oakland.

"So, they come to us with challenges that we're committed to address," Sugiyama said. "Some of the added expense goes to trying to level the playing field a little bit."

The same is true in Contra Costa County's lowest-scoring West Contra Costa district, which spent $8,899 per student and achieved an API score of 696. The district has a large percentage of special education and low-income students, said Sheri Gamba, associate superintendent for business services.

"Families in cities with greater median incomes, like San Ramon, may be able to spend much more in providing their children with the background knowledge and information that helps them to be more successful in school," Gamba said in an e-mail.

A Times analysis of the California Watch data showed four districts beat the odds by spending less than three-quarters of districts in the state, while scoring in the top quarter. These were: Brentwood elementary and Walnut Creek elementary in Contra Costa County and Castro Valley unified and Fremont unified in Alameda County.

Two districts appeared to be sorely "upside down" in terms of expenditures and test scores, with spending in the top 25 percent statewide and achievement in the bottom 25 percent. These were Emery and Oakland.

Oakland spends more than some others in part because it pays $6 million on a state loan from when it was in receivership, said spokesman Troy Flint. It also spends more on security than most districts and has more schools per capita, including early childhood education centers, charter schools and small campuses, which cost more to operate, he said.

The district has developed a draft strategic plan aimed at turning schools into community centers that provide medical, dental and mental health services, he said. Kaiser is providing an $8 million grant and the district wants to collaborate with other community partners to holistically care for the city's children with shared funding, he said.

Many other East Bay districts received test scores that appeared to be in roughly line with their spending. For example, the Mt. Diablo district in Contra Costa County spent $8,199 per student and received a score of 784. Both were in the median range statewide.

Mt. Diablo Superintendent Steven Lawrence said some California districts receive hundreds to thousands more per student than others. But statewide, districts receive $1,000 to $2,000 below the national average, he said.

"California's leaders and citizens need to decide whether or not a world class education is necessary for our children to economically compete nationally and internationally," Lawrence said in an e-mail. "If so, funding our schools at least at the national average should be a minimum goal."

Spending Vs. scores
A sample of 2009-10 per-student spending compared with 2010 Academic Performance Index (API) growth scores in some East Bay districts. Browse the California Watch database at http://projects.CaliforniaWatch.org/school-district-spending.
ALAMEDA COUNTY
District Per-student spending API score*
Alameda City $8,630 833
Berkeley $12,092 785
Castro Valley $7,429 854
Emery $13,680 709
Fremont $7,449 858
Hayward $8,962 707
Livermore Valley $7,993 822
New Haven $8,182 777
Oakland $10,958 719
Piedmont $11,579 925
Pleasanton $7,599 906
San Lorenzo $8,096 739
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY
District Per-student spending API score
Acalanes $9,327 899
Brentwood $6,918 840
Antioch $7,578 732
Liberty $7,519 747
Martinez $7,555 819
Mt. Diablo $8,199 784
Oakley $6,909 779
Orinda $9,473 954
Pittsburg $7,995 718
San Ramon Valley $7,824 916
Walnut Creek $7,345 907
West Contra Costa $8,899 696
State's Median $8,213 783
*Target is 800
Source: California Watch

Will New Emeryville Families Choose The New Public School?

Public vs Private

Two Tiered Education In Emeryville?

Opinion

Left unsaid during last month's contentious deliberations over the resident generated appeal of the Esquela Bilingua Internacional school is how the newly approved private school will impact our public schools.  Concerns over excessive traffic, noise and improper land use were bandied about at the May 19th special council meeting with neighbors registering legitimate fears of Triangle neighborhood quality of life reductions but the most impactful eventuality is the likely hood that this new private school, right across the street from the soon to be built publicly financed new school, will draw much needed Emeryville middle class students away from the public school.  

Is a two tiered education system looming in our future?

This possible encumbrance on efforts to improve the schools comes at an inopportune time; just as a head of steam has been built.  Emeryville residents have stepped up to the plate and they have shown a willingness to go the extra mile to build a public school district here we can be proud of as evidenced by last November's Measure J $400 million bond and the twin school parcel taxes recently passed.  Citizens have indicated they want to protect their new investment and they have joined to push the city council to bring family friendly housing to attract new Emeryville families for the school.

Insofar as the city actually delivers on all the new talk of building family friendly housing, the specter of a new force that would draw these new families away from the public school is disconcerting to say the least.

Supporters of the new 400 student private school have stressed that it will serve as an asset to our public school by offering high quality after school programs in Spanish instruction would have a point if all Emery students could benefit.  But as it is being proposed now, the programs open to the public school students would require substantial tuition.  To enroll as a full time student, tuition will cost a minimum of $15,500.

A vexing scenario is the eventuality that the two schools, public and private, will exist side by side but with radically different cultures; a troubling two tiered education system.  Since newly arriving middle class families will have the means to pay the $15,500 tuition, it's easy to see how the private school will be construed by parents as the superior school, drawing the more affluent children.   Adjacent to the private school would sit the inferior public school with it's poor children.  This threatens our critically important charge to build up a diverse student population, representative of the whole of Emeryville.

Last November's Measure J school bond literature noted the new school will attract families to Emeryville, some 700 new students in all; the minimum number needed to make the new public school economically viable.  If nothing else, the lack of available land in Emeryville for new housing causes one to seriously question this number and the public school will be left to fight for the few middle class students that do locate here.

We're worried this new private school just made our job to bring substantial numbers of new Emeryville kids to the public school a lot tougher.

New Private School Ok'ed, Dissenters Attacked

Drink this and you'll want to quash dissent

Woe Be To The Dissenters

Is The Water OK In Emeryville?

Opinion

Is there something in the water here?

We have to ask:  What is it about Emeryville that makes the power elite so keen to automatically attack dissenters?  Take last month's resident appeal of the Esquela Bilingue Internacional school:  Three resident citizens were attacked after they took issue with the neighborhood damaging aspects of the private school to be located on San Pablo Avenue.

These courageous neighbors spent $200 of their own money to try to force this private school operator to work with the neighbors and limit some of the worst impacts the school will bring to the Triangle neighborhood.  This audaciousness was enough to make School Board Member Pat Hooper and Planning Commission member Frank Flores launch into a personal attack against the appellants: they discredited the appeal and called these Triangle neighbors "NIMBYists".  The spokeswoman for the Oakland based school it should be noted, piled on and derisively called the three Triangle neighbors "appellant landlords"; a clear attempt to discredit and try to re-cast the three residents as some kind of exotic money grubbing interlopers.

NIMBYism

The three neighbors, by their appeal, forced the traffic for student drop off and pick up, some 400 students in all, away from the residential 45th street and over to 47th Street.  The project before the appeal would have resulted in a massive amount of cut-through driving on 45th Street from San Pablo to Adeline Street. Now the cars will turn onto 47th Street, and turn around in the school parking lot and re-emerge onto 47th and back to San Pablo, leaving the residential neighborhood unimpeded.

Further, the appellants got the school to agree to 'Transit Demand Management' practices, including carpooling and van pooling, thereby lowering the total vehicle loads to our streets.

Also, the three neighbor appellants forced concessions on the school to make the new pedestrian path jogging around the back of the school to be gated to keep out nefarious types late at night, owing to the lack of visibility for the police.

These concessions would only have been made as a result of the appeal since the Planning Commission was not interested in lowering the impact on the Triangle neighborhood.  Together, the concessions make the Esquela Bilingue Internacional school a less impactful presence on the Triangle neighborhood and a better project for the whole town.

These three neighbors who bravely faced the anti-dissenter gauntlet at City Hall should be thanked for their work improving the livability of our town.  Instead, these three Emeryville residents had their integrity challenged by our government in the accusations leveled by Ms Hooper and Mr Flores.

We use the word courageous to describe the three neighbors because of Emeryville's infamous lack of tolerance for dissenters at City Hall.  The three neighbors likely knew they would be attacked by the government officials and undaunted they brought their appeal anyway.  We continue to be exasperated by this culture at City Hall and we thank these three neighbors for working to improve the livability for our town.

Audacity

The drama of the San Pablo Avenue private school appeal had audacity all right.  But it came not from the appeal generated by three Emeryville neighbors, it came instead from the thuggish reactions of government officials Pat Hooper and Frank Flores.

The Government Accountability Project

The Emeryville Government Accountability Project
Citizen Access

As part of the on-going effort to strengthen democratic institutions and citizen involvement in Emeryville, the Tattler will publish the telephone numbers of elected officials as they become known.  For decades here politicians made their phone numbers public and would take calls from constituents.  Sadly, this tradition has been waning, and citizen access has eroded.  Meanwhile, developers routinely meet with politicians and city staff in closed door sessions. We are dismayed to see this weakening of citizen access to the levers of power even while corporate access has never been stronger.  Accordingly, we now add the unpublished telephone number of school board member Pat Hooper to the list of published numbers of Emeryville's elected officials.
Future would be politicians should take warning:  If you win office and try to keep your telephone number confidential, the Tattler will publish it if we can find it.
Here then is the newest contact-

Pat Hooper, School Board Member:
(510) 384-7882
path@phooperassoc.com


Here is the list so far:
City Council
Nora Davis -  (510) 652-2199
Ruth Atkin - Unlisted
Ken Bukowski -  (510) 305-0000
Kurt Brinkman - Unlisted
Jennifer West - (510) 420-5795

School Board
Josh Simon -  (510) 601-1480
Cheryl Webb - (510) 654-6012*
Melodi Dice - Unlisted
Miguel Dwin - Unlisted
*unlisted but obtained by the Tattler

'Emeryville Properties 2' Says They Owe Nothing for Illegal Cutting of Street Trees

Will Corporations In Emeryville Be Held Accountable?

Business Appeals Fine For Illegally Cutting Emeryville's Trees

Rick Gerow of Emeryville Properties 2, a Lafayette California based real estate corporation, has thrown down the gauntlet; he should not have to pay a penny for having illegally cut three large city owned street trees in front of his building at 1259 Park Avenue and he has filed an appeal to the city to that effect.

In a May 20th letter to the city, Mr Gerow stated he was "not aware" of the 2003 Emeryville Tree Ordinance and that it was the city's responsibility to notify him that permission must be granted for anyone to cut down the street trees.

Rick Gerow: Says ignorance

of the law means you get off
scot free.

After Emeryville Properties 2, a subsidiary of Gerow Properties Inc was notified of the violation of the tree ordinance, Mr Gerow submitted that the three trees in question should have been cut down anyway and that the fine should therefore be zero.  The May 20th letter states that one of the trees he cut down was dead already and that a second had a major limb that had fallen and the third was causing the sidewalk to lift "about two inches" and these conditions mean the trees value is zero.  

Further, Mr Gerow says he is not responsible for any associated fees including the arborist report.  The city's arborist disagrees and has placed the three trees value at $4600.  With the penalty fine and other associated fees, the city is owed $14,100.

Mr Gerow indicated he has already replaced two of the cut trees with saplings and is willing to replant the third one.  The city's arborist has indicated that the replanting job Mr Gerow did is substandard and that the trees will subsequently not grow to their proper size.  The city maintains that a proper job must be done replacing the three trees and part of the fine imposed is meant to recover these replanting costs.

If the appeal is denied, it will mark the among first time the tree ordinance has been successfully implimented and imposed a fine on an illegal tree cutter.

The city council voted to strengthen the ordinance in May 2010 after citizens complained the ordinance was too lax and let illegal tree cutters off the hook without imposing any fine.  The complaining citizens posited that a penalty fine, as was enacted in 2010, would add sufficient deterrence to would be future illegal tree cutters.  Apparently, not enough for Mr Gerow.

Please read the precursor story to this in the March 10th edition of the Tattler.

Emeryville Properties 2 Inc will make their appeal at the June 21 council meeting.

Emeryville Hospitality: End of the Era of Woodfin

Woodfin Hotel Checks Out of Emeryville

In 2005 Emeryville voters passed Measure C, the 'Hotel Living Wage Ordinance'.  Every hotel in town obeyed the new law except San Diego based Woodfin Suites Hotel.   Instead, they engaged in a fierce multi-year battle to not pay their workers as the new law mandated.  It turned out to be a losing effort and finally last year Woodfin was court ordered to pay the workers. So now, after years of fighting Emeryville resident's will, the infamous Woodfin Hotel finally checks out of Emeryville (reprinted from the Oakland Tribune):

Hyatt expands in East Bay By George Avalos Oakland Tribune Posted: 06/07/2011 03:50:52 PM PDT Click photo to enlarge The former Woodfin Suites Hotel, now owned by Hyatt, is photographed in Emeryville, Calif., on... 1 2 » Hyatt Hotels has bought the Woodfin Suites complex in Emeryville and has re-branded the prominent hotel under the Hyatt Summerfield Suites flag, company officials said Tuesday. The purchase of the East Bay hotel was part of a $76.5 million deal by Hyatt to snap up three Woodfin Suites hotels in Emeryville, Orange County and the San Diego area. The 234-room Emeryville hotel was bought for an estimated $31.4 million. That's based on a price-per-room of $134,000 for the three hotels combined. Hyatt didn't officially disclose a separate price for the East Bay hotel, which is 11 years old. "It's a great buy for Hyatt," said Alan Reay, president of Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group, which tracks the California hotel market. "Hyatt is stepping into some quality assets with all three of these hotels." Besides the price, the location of the Emeryville hotel is seen as ideal. The lodging is a short distance from the east end of the Bay Bridge. "You have a major corporate presence in Emeryville, and it has great proximity to San Francisco," said Mark Fraioli, a vice president with the hotels division of Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial realty firm. When hotel rooms fill up in San Francisco, guests are forced to seek lodging in nearby cities. "San Francisco creates compression in the hotel market," Fraioli said. "If you have events or conventions in San Francisco, rooms become less available".  The deals also were a way for Hyatt to expand its footprint, the hotel giant said. "These properties are great additions to the Hyatt Summerfield Suites portfolio in markets where the brand is not currently represented," said Steve Haggerty, global head of real estate development for Hyatt Hotels. At present, Hyatt has 11 hotels of all brands in the Bay Area, including three Summerfield Suites properties, according to the company online site. Four of the Hyatts are in the East Bay and three are in San Francisco, including the iconic Hyatt Regency. It appears that Hyatt obtained a favorable purchase price, said analysts, who cited value trends for the hotel in Emeryville, which sold for more than $31 million on May 20. "You can buy hotels at below replacement costs, you can get into strategic markets like the Bay Area," said Andrea Grigg, a senior vice president with Jones Lang LaSalle. In 2005, the hotel was valued at $41.1 million based on its financing at that time, according to Reay. In late 2007 or early 2008, at the peak of the commercial real estate bubble, hotels in Emeryville would have been worth $60 million. At present, the cost to build the hotel from scratch would be $50 million, Reay estimated. "Hyatt Summerfield Suites is almost a quasi-residential concept," Fraioli said. "Most hotels aren't built that way. Typically, you would have to start from the ground up. This was a rare opportunity for Hyatt to buy an existing asset that suits their brand." The company's Summerfield brand falls into a Hyatt unit called Hyatt select service. The select group has outperformed the company's full-service unit. During the fourth quarter that ended in December, Hyatt select-service generated a 9.5 percent increase in room revenue, while full service was up 3.9 percent. The addition of the three inns leaves Hyatt with 38 Summerfield Suites hotels. Customers can expect significant improvements at the new Summerfield Suites in Emeryville and Southern California. Hyatt intends to undertake a major renovation of all three properties. The hotel company intends to spend $15 million on the three as a group. Hyatt didn't specify how much of that cash it would deploy in Emeryville. The seller of the hotels, San Diego-based Hardage Group, used the sales of the properties to pay off $110 million in debt. "The Emeryville hotel will do really well at the price that Hyatt paid," Reay said. Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.

Scathing Emeryville Housing Report Released

Long Anticipated Goldman Report Released:

Report: Council bungled unprecedented boom, leaving Emeryville and its schools in disarray, downward spiral

Emeryville's leaders have squandered unprecedented opportunities over the last quarter century in their rush to reconstruct a crumbling industrial core into a retail Mecca. Rather than an urban oasis, leaders have delivered a gleaming, yet demographically unstable post-industrial city, according to a new report from UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.

The May 5th report titled Building a Community: Affordable Family-Friendly Housing in Emeryville  found that giving housing developers a free hand has resulted in a preponderance of one-bedroom apartments and trendy open-plan lofts, but a dearth of housing suitable for growing families.
The report faults the council for refusing to use its authority to compel developers to produce housing that meets the needs of the real world. Instead, the council's laissez-faire coda has allowed development firms to deliver a plethora of cheaper-to-construct lofts and jam more, smaller units, into a building of the same footprint, maximizing profits.
With only a handful of family appropriate housing units, Emeryville has become increasingly a transient city, a place young people depart once singles begin pairing off and starting families.

New Emeryville housing: One 
bedroom units with parking 
on the ground level.

City Council Neglectful

The Goldman report blasts Emeryville, noting that families with children constitutes only 7 percent of the total population, a number that is "exceedingly low" compared to 33 percent nationally.  What few families do make a home in Emeryville, have a tendency to leave as their children get to be of school age because, "the housing developments do not meet the needs of growing families," according to the report.

Further, the report sees few encouraging signs for improvement in the near term. The city council continues to abdicate its responsibility to attain a more balanced mix of units from developers for at least the next three years. "While the city is expecting to increase its housing stock by 64% over the next 30 years, this will most likely not ameliorate the issue because, of the 1,281 new dwelling units the city has issued building permits to be built by 2014, the vast majority are more single bedroom luxury condos and apartments."

Open plan (no bedrooms) lofts 
turns their backs to the street; 
not conducive for families. 

Schools Pay The Price

The report also links poor student achievement within the Emery Unified School District in part on the lack of family housing.

The report's author, Master of Public Policy candidate Homayra Yusufi, is unequivocal; "Without adequate housing that accommodates the needs of families and encourages a strong sense of community, it will be difficult for the [school] district to increase enrollment and improve academic outcomes".

Ms. Yusufi notes that research demonstrates a "strong link" between housing and education. "The negative impacts of the lack of adequate housing can be seen in Emery Unified School District in that the district has considerably high attrition rates, which are constantly substituted by incoming inter-district transfers.  Due to the small size of the district, this greatly affects the district's overall academic performance".

One bedroom condos above,
empty retail below.

The lack of adequate family housing contributes to a high level of school "mobility"--- families that frequently move, enroll their children in different schools.  The report notes that high levels of mobility reduces academic performance by degrading the cohesive school environment and "greatly hinders the ability of teachers to teach effectively within the classroom".  Teachers are constantly being forced to assist new students and must backtrack and reteach information to the new students who are lagging behind, the report noted.

No Family Housing, No Accident

Emeryville's Redevelopment Agency, with its state mandated requirement that no less than 20 percent of all new housing be affordable, hasn't been any help in delivering family friendly housing.  The report notes that, left to their own devices, developers will not build family friendly housing since there is more profit in building single bedroom condos or lofts.  Since the Emeryville city council hasn't pushed developers to build family housing, the affordable housing that has been produced has been almost uniformly one bedroom units.  The report goes on to say Emeryville's affordable housing  "has mainly attracted senior citizens and disabled persons without children".

Even as the population has surged over the past two decades, Emeryville has actually lost families.  The housing breakdown in terms of newly constructed units since 2008 is illustrative of the city's lack of will to build family housing.  The report shows just 4 percent of the newly built housing are single family units, a number the report calls an "extremely low percentage, even for the Bay Area."

More one bedroom units but with
a twist; below is parking and a
shopping mall.

Emeryville's Housing Committee, hand selected by the city council, has placed concern over this issue on the back burner.  The issue was not seen fit to be included in the committee's list of seven goals for housing city-wide included in the "Housing Element" the committee contributed to the city's general plan.

In a bright spot, the report noted that residents nevertheless appear willing to support their schools as evidenced by the recent approval of Measure J, aimed at rebuilding Emeryville's school facilities. The report suggests that this may spill over to residents asking or even demanding that the city build new family friendly housing to support the school investment.

Emeryville Gets Another Private School

Reprinted from the San Francisco Business Times:

Emeryville residents voice opposition

Escuela Bilingue buys Emeryville building despite opposition

San Francisco Business Times - by Blanca Torres

Date: Friday, June 3, 2011, 3:12pm PDT

• Blanca Torres
• Reporter
• Email: btorres@bizjournals.com

It’s official, Escuela Bilingue Internacional is moving to 4550 San Pablo Ave. in Emeryville.

The school, which teaches students in English and Spanish, agreed to pay $3.5 million for a 28,000-square-foot space on a 1-acre parcel that now houses Social Vocational Services and Living Hope Christian Center.

The seller in the deal was Sterling Bank & Trust.

Developers had planned to reuse the site for an apartment building before the current recession took hold, said Aileen Dolby, a broker with Colliers International who represented Sterling Bank.

“Multiple user and investors were interested in property because of its location and the price which was below replacement cost,” Dolby said.

Emeryville’s planning commission approved the school’s move into the space in March, but that decision was appealed by nearby residents who said the school would cause traffic, noise and parking problems, according to the Emeryville Tattler, a local blog. The neighborhood near the building is called the Triangle.

Pues, lo siento, Triangle residents, your pleas were dismissed. A few weeks ago, the city council approved a motion to deny the appeal of the planning commission’s approval and grant the school a permit to proceed.

“One of the Emeryville City Council members commended our parent community for their level of commitment and involvement in the school. Thank you to everyone who has helped us create a permanent home for EBI and its generations of future students!” wrote Jon Fulk, head of Escuela Bilingue in a memo to parents.

The school’s purchase will be a partnership between the school and a philanthropic fund administered by Oliver & Co., a construction firm.

Escuela Bilingue, based in Oakland, plans to set up a second campus in the two-story building. The campus will accommodate up to 400 students in grades kindergarten to eighth.

The school will begin moving in the fall and in subsequent phases as the leases of the existing tenants expire. The full move is expected to be complete within six years.

Beware: Teaching To The Test & Other Scams

Emeryville Schools: New Facility Will Be No Panacea

The following reprint from the New York Times starkly lays out the Faustian bargain school districts make when they descend into a culture of teaching to the tests.  Inveriably, test scores become the compelling barometer of success; a proven false narrative.  Also inevitable from this paradigm comes the culture of cover-up that follows any dip in test scores as administrators and politicians scramble to erect containment firewalls .  Sadly, this is the nature of our Emeryville schools (please see Tattler story on September 19th 2010 titled Emeryville Schools Hide Declining Test Results).  The entrenchment of this kind of metrics also helped deliver the ginned up claim from the School Board that building a new school will cause academic achievement to rise.  The building trades and the Wall Street bond traders supported the building of a $400 million new Emeryville school (Tattler, October 23rd 2010 Corporate/Labor Interests Pour Money Into Measure J Coffers), but educators tell us the real way to raise academic achievement is though hiring more teachers, paying them more and fighting root causes of poverty as the article below says. 

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Waiting for a School Miracle

By DIANE RAVITCH

Published: May 31, 2011

TEN years ago, Congress adopted the No Child Left Behind legislation, mandating that all students must be proficient in reading or mathematics by 2014 or their school would be punished.

Teachers and principals have been fired and schools that were once fixtures in their community have been closed and replaced. In time, many of the new schools will close, too, unless they avoid enrolling low-performing students, like those who don’t read English or are homeless or have profound disabilities.

Educators know that 100 percent proficiency is impossible, given the enormous variation among students and the impact of family income on academic performance. Nevertheless, some politicians believe that the right combination of incentives and punishments will produce dramatic improvement. Anyone who objects to this utopian mandate, they maintain, is just making an excuse for low expectations and bad teachers.

To prove that poverty doesn’t matter, political leaders point to schools that have achieved stunning results in only a few years despite the poverty around them. But the accounts of miracle schools demand closer scrutiny. Usually, they are the result of statistical legerdemain.

In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama hailed the Bruce Randolph School in Denver, where the first senior class had a graduation rate of 97 percent. At a celebration in February for Teach for America’s 20th anniversary, Education Secretary Arne Duncan sang the praises of an all-male, largely black charter school in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, Urban Prep Academy, which replaced a high school deemed a failure. And in March, Mr. Obama and Mr. Duncan joined Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, to laud the transformation of Miami Central Senior High School.

But the only miracle at these schools was a triumph of public relations.

Mr. Obama’s praise for Randolph, which he said had been “one of the worst schools in Colorado,” seems misplaced. Noel Hammatt, a former teacher and instructor at Louisiana State University, looked at data from the Web site of the Colorado Department of Education.

True, Randolph (originally a middle school, to which a high school was added) had a high graduation rate, but its ACT scores were far below the state average, indicating that students are not well prepared for college. In its middle school, only 21 percent were proficient or advanced in math, placing Randolph in the fifth percentile in the state (meaning that 95 percent of schools performed better). Only 10 percent met the state science standards. In writing and reading, the school was in the first percentile.

Gary Rubinstein, an education blogger and Teach for America alumnus who has been critical of the program, checked Mr. Duncan’s claims about Urban Prep. Of 166 students who entered as ninth graders, only 107 graduated. Astonishingly, the state Web site showed that only 17 percent passed state tests, compared to 64 percent in the low-performing Chicago public school district.

Miami Central had been “reconstituted,” meaning that the principal and half the staff members were fired. The president said that “performance has skyrocketed by more than 60 percent in math,” and that graduation rates rose to 63 percent, from 36 percent. But in math, it ranks 430th out of 469 high schools in Florida. Only 56 percent of its students meet state math standards, and only 16 percent met state reading standards. The graduation rate rose, but the school still ranks 431st, well below the state median graduation rate of 87 percent. The improvements at Miami Central are too small and too new to conclude that firing principals and teachers works.

To be sure, the hyping of test-score improvements that prove to be fleeting predated the Obama administration.

In 2005, New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, held a news conference at Public School 33 in the Bronx to celebrate an astonishing 49-point jump in the proportion of fourth grade students there who met state standards in reading. In 2004, only 34 percent reached proficiency, but in 2005, 83 percent did.

It seemed too good to be true — and it was. A year later, the proportion of fourth-graders at P.S. 33 who passed the state reading test dropped by 41 points. By 2010, the passing rate was 37 percent, nearly the same as before 2005.

What is to be learned from these examples of inflated success? The news media and the public should respond with skepticism to any claims of miraculous transformation. The achievement gap between children from different income levels exists before children enter school.

Families are children’s most important educators. Our society must invest in parental education, prenatal care and preschool. Of course, schools must improve; every one should have a stable, experienced staff, adequate resources and a balanced curriculum including the arts, foreign languages, history and science.

If every child arrived in school well-nourished, healthy and ready to learn, from a family with a stable home and a steady income, many of our educational problems would be solved. And that would be a miracle.

Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, is the author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.”