Mayor-elect Eric Adams’ campaign website vows to “reimagine our education system.” With more than 50 years between us of teaching in, creating and leading public schools — both district-run and charter — we humbly propose these five areas for the mayor to consider that we think can be game-changers for all of New York City kids.
First, combating pandemic-fueled learning loss must be front and center, even while we continue to grapple with all the ongoing challenges of COVID-19. To do so effectively means that — perhaps counter-intuitively — schools cannot just focus on remediation, wasting time going backward when what our students need is for us to push forward.
The last thing we want to do at this critical time is dumb down a curriculum, even temporarily, while kids “catch up.” The disruptive effects of the pandemic for many students, including loss of regular in-person learning, has been devastating, while others kept right on learning.
His lesson plan. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)
The prescription for both — and everyone in between — is to teach grade-level content with a just-in-time approach to address gaps as they are identified based on academic data we need to continue to collect. This is most critical for children of color and kids from low-income communities who are most likely to be treated with remediation that ultimately derails growth. Under this new administration, there should be a watchful eye that schools don’t fall into the trap of remediating their way out of this crisis because the research says that won’t work.
While Adams has already signaled that he will make changes to the city’s gifted-and-talented program, we know that one of the most important drivers of student success is the opportunities they get — and all students deserve the same opportunities at rigorous academic instruction. That means we need to look very seriously at schools that aren’t offering students access to Advanced Placement classes. Let’s stop deciding that “some” kids can’t handle it. Plenty of schools and students show that they can and do when they have access.
Success in AP courses in high school — and this could mean just taking the AP class, not even receiving a passing score — is correlated with a higher chance of obtaining a college degree, and that’s no surprise because it exposes students to college-level concepts, material and teaching methods. To really ensure college readiness, you need to start by working towards the right bar for college content.
At Uncommon Schools, where we teach 21,000 students in 57 charter schools, more than 95% of our students take at least one AP course and our students — the majority of whom are the first in their families to go to college — pass AP exams at more than double the passing rate nationally. Any city high school that serves predominantly students from low-income communities that is not offering most of its students AP classes should be asked why, especially because having AP classes simply starts with the will to do it.
Second, if we follow the science, we know that for most New York City students, having a teacher of color literally changes the trajectory of their educational life, increasing the chances that they graduate from high school and go on to college. We can’t continue to leave this huge lever on the table. In a school system where more than 85% of students identify as students of color, they deserve to see themselves reflected in the adults around them. We know our teachers are some of our most powerful role models, and the diversity of our teachers should reflect the amazing diversity of our city.
Adams should set a specific goal for the percentage of New York City teachers that will be people of color by the end of his first term. In our charter network, back in 2012, only about 30% of our teachers were people of color. Today, it’s more than double that amount. We bolstered our numbers in a number of ways, including creating our Summer Teaching Fellowship program, a pipeline of college students that we recruit from not only across the country but especially from our nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Further, to clear a path for more teachers of color, Adams must use his bully pulpit to bring some rationalization to the state’s broken teacher certification system. It’s bad enough that the pandemic brought about teacher shortages, as we know the work of teachers has never been harder. It’s crazy to look at our archaic teacher certification pathways, which by and large discourage young people from becoming teachers.
For instance, while we all agree that we need a high bar for teachers — we have to find a way for qualified STEM majors who want to teach in middle and high schools, and who are experts in their subject matter — to start their teaching careers without insisting that they simultaneously earn a master’s degree. That system cannot stand if we want our students to have great teachers at the head of the class.
Third, Adams and his chancellor should work hard to free school principals from the dozens of tasks they do every day that don’t contribute to student learning. Principals got to where they are because they were once extraordinary teachers who rose through the ranks. Rather than using their skills as teachers, they tend to be saddled with bureaucratic and administrative work that keeps them out of the classrooms. According to one study, principals spend less than 13% of their time in instruction-related activities. This is equivalent to benching your best player at every game.
At our schools, we’ve seen the power of a dual-leadership model, where our principal focuses all day long on supporting teachers so that they can become better, while our director of operations blocks and tackles to ensure students, staff and families have what they need to be successful — supplies, technology, information, etc. — within a safe, supportive, building environment.
Let’s be clear: The director of operations is not a vice principal. If this position reports to the principal, then you’ve added a management duty to the principal that simply does not add to student growth. Give the director of operations full dual leadership status that does not report to the principal, and you will see more effective principals and teachers. In this time when so many students have so many needs, it is especially critical to make sure principals can be in the classrooms working with and coaching teachers to success.
Fourth, we need to follow all of our students after they leave our schools. It is simply not enough to wish them luck when they graduate from high school, or just hope for the best when they enroll in college or a post-secondary program. They were with us for as many as 13 years; we owe it to them, their families and ourselves to make sure that we know how and if we contributed to them having meaningful opportunities in their lives.
Years back, when we first started following our graduates into college, we learned that while we thought they were academically prepared, too many of them were not making it to the finish line of a college degree. We’ve been studying what gets in a college student’s way ever since to ensure we can continue to follow kids after high school to help them access the dreams and passions they had for themselves. Based on what we learned, we changed our own K-12 program to better be the schools kids need us to be.
If we can’t track students post-high school, how will we really know whether what we did was worthy of the time students and families gave us?
Finally, we have a real opportunity here to strengthen charter-district partnerships. We’ve been getting there. Once again, when there’s a good idea, no one cares about the governance structure of a school. The vaccine clinics that were open to all schools were an important way to put our students first, not our structure, as opposed to the battles we had to fight around access to COVID-19 testing for all students. It’s hard to believe a court had to intervene to affirm that charter public students deserved COVID testing just like district public students.
Even through the pandemic, our top educators have continued to meet with, brainstorm with and share ideas with educators from the New York City Department of Education. We started this relationship nearly a decade ago and we’re glad that teachers and leaders on the ground agree that if there’s an instructional program or technique that can help students, let’s talk. There has never been a more pressing time for us all to band together to serve all students in a building, regardless of the schools’ governance structure.
We are optimistic about Mayor-elect Adams’ education agenda and look forward to the opportunity to unite as a city behind public education and make a difference for all of New York City’s students.
Jackson is president and Peiser is CEO of Uncommon Schools.