A CALL TO ACTION

FOLLOW-UP TO THE NEW YORK EDUCATION SUMMIT

Challenge, urgency, and our strategic advantage

Representatives from all sectors of education, community organizations, the professions, government, and business assembled recently in a Summit on New York Education. Their mission – to confront two critical problems:

· Close the great divide in achievement along lines of income, race and ethnicity, language, and disability.

· Keep up with growing demands for still more knowledge and skill in the face of increasing competition in a changing global economy.

All agreed we must see the challenges clearly, determine the vital few actions needed, and act together.

The achievement gap – from kindergarten through college and beyond – is now well known. Too many children begin life disadvantaged, attend poor schools, learn little, drop out of school or college, and wind up at the margins in low skill, low paying jobs. We have made progress in closing the gap, but not enough. Both research and our progress so far show that people can and must achieve at much higher levels.

Global competition, while in the news, is not well understood. Many see it simply as a problem of global out-sourcing to countries that will do the job cheaply. But that is only part of the story. Other nations compete not only with lower costs but also higher quality. The United States educates too few people through high school, college and postsecondary technical programs to achieve the skills they will need to stay competitive in a global market: skills in mathematics, health care, the social and natural sciences, technology, the arts, and many other fields. At current rates, experts estimate that by 2020 there won’t be enough qualified Americans to fill 14 million of the most skilled, highest paying jobs.[1]

New York faces a special challenge, and it affects everyone: a potential decline in our standard of living. As immigration and diversity increase, the share of the State’s workforce made up of Whites is declining rapidly,[2] while the share made up of other groups is increasing and will reach 44% by 2020. The gap between the educational level of Whites vs. other groups is substantial. For example, only 58% of working age Hispanics have a high school degree vs. 91% of working age Whites. And only 25% of Blacks have a college degree vs. 45% of whites. We must increase graduation from high school and college of all disadvantaged groups – or face a declining statewide level of education, income, and inevitably the state’s tax base. Already New York faces critical shortages in the major professions, including those that provide vital health and safety services.

If present trends continue, too few people will have the knowledge and skills our state needs. This is unacceptable. If we act together, we can correct this problem now.

We bring huge advantages to this challenge, and we will use them. America is still the global leader in research and innovation and has a high percentage of college graduates compared to most other nations. Recent academic gains in New York offer promise of more to come. And the University of the State of New York (USNY), in its capacity to add to the economic and civic vitality of our state, is one of our greatest advantages. We have many distinguished educational and cultural institutions which together form the University. Schools and BOCES, colleges and universities, libraries, museums, archives, public broadcasting, vocational rehabilitation, and the professions in New York, and in no other state, are all under the care of one board – the Board of Regents.

What shall we do? See the challenges clearly, mobilize the capacity of the University, and together vigorously pursue the vital few actions needed.

The Education Summit: Conclusions and commitments

At the Summit, 650 leaders of education, business and community groups agreed to the following aims:

Every child will get a good start. This requires, for example, prenatal care, child health care, family literacy through libraries and other institutions, pre-school programs and full-day kindergarten for all. And these programs have to work together.

Every child will read by the second grade. We know enough now to do this. It requires systems to spread that knowledge to all teachers of young children and parents, and continued research to extend what we know. It means screening programs and reading strategies based on scientific knowledge. It requires leadership from colleges, universities and schools that prepare teachers, and joint effort between schools and libraries.

Everyone will complete middle level education ready for high school. This requires a combination of leadership, instruction, support, and connections with families to enable all children to grow both academically and as caring people. In concrete terms, it means eliminating the problems of low academic achievement by the end of 8^th grade.

Everyone will graduate from high school ready for work, higher education, and citizenship. This requires consistent expectations from higher education, schools, employers, parents, teachers and others, and clear communication with students. It requires help from cultural, professional, and community groups to foster literacy; a focus on students in danger of dropping out and on schools with low graduation rates; action to boost attendance; individual attention for young people with weak skills; and connecting student interests with a rigorous curriculum that includes career and technical education. In the long run, this also means that we must redesign high school.

People who begin higher education will complete their programs. Graduates will be well prepared for careers and possibly the professions, and ready for participation in public life and a fulfilling life in general. This means that colleges and cultural, professional, and community groups will support strategies already proven in higher education opportunity programs: academic support, guidance, and tutoring. It requires financial commitment to stronger institutions and tuition assistance to keep college affordable. It means investing in our capacity in mathematics, science, the arts, and the other disciplines.

People of all ages who seek more knowledge and skill will have the fullest opportunity to continue their education. New York must encourage people to take full advantage of our educational and cultural institutions (not only schools and colleges but also libraries, museums, archives and public broadcasting) and ensure they can accommodate all who want to use them. We must strengthen existing connections among these institutions and schools and colleges.

Summit participants said they strongly supported these aims because they reflect their core beliefs and because the aims cover the entire educational system. Yet most saw them as the starting point. Some wondered if the aims are challenging enough. Others said they were realistic only if we greatly boost resources. The challenge, as participants saw it, is to agree on the specific actions we will take to achieve them and then to follow through.

The Vision to Move Ahead

Summit participants studied data before and during the November 2^nd meeting. The consensus: performance falls far short of the aims.

The Summit revealed a broad agreement to focus on early childhood, high school, and higher education to achieve our aims:

· Expanding pre-kindergarten programs is the most promising strategy because early childhood education programs prevent problems later in a student’s academic career.

· The traditional high school model is rigid, obsolete and needs large-scale redesign.

· In higher education, the focus should be on affordability – which affects both access and retention – and the alignment of high school graduation standards with college entrance expectations.

All these require an intensive, long-term commitment to greater and more equitable funding, professional development, and smarter applications of technology. We must think systemically, from pre-kindergarten through college and graduate school. And, as leaders, we must challenge ourselves continually by asking: Is our work innovative enough? Are our efforts sufficient to generate large-scale systems change?

What We Must Do

Joint venture and collaboration are essential to meeting the two challenges posed at the statewide Summit. And while productive collaborations are underway in all parts of USNY, much more needs to be done. We must learn how to work more effectively as a system.

The eight regional Summits held this past spring revealed the way. We will do more to build regional capacity and invent regional mechanisms to collaborate. We will communicate more frequently with our current partners and add more partners. All institutions will open themselves up and build productive relationships with others. Libraries, museums, community organizations, higher education institutions, parents, and businesses – all have assets they are willing to bring to the table.

We must raise awareness of USNY and its potential as New York’s competitive advantage and as a mechanism to enable joint venture. At the same time, we will examine our relationships with each other. It will be easy to get distracted from pursuing joint venture since our current educational system does not expect or reward collaborations, but instead encourages us to focus only on our own organization and its immediate needs. Avoiding risks and fearing change is often easier than maintaining confidence and optimism about what is possible. We reject that defeatist path. Summit participants left with a strong belief that vast, systematic innovation is required and with a sense of urgency about getting to it.

ACTION: Communicate about the challenge, the stakes, and the plan!

The Basic Message

This is the Basic Message that we will use over and over throughout the State to inform the public about what New York must do to meet the challenges. You will find some of the same wording here that you find elsewhere in this Call to Action. This section can be lifted and incorporated in speeches, releases, and so forth:

Economic growth is essential to New York and improving education is essential to economic growth.

To improve education, we must confront two stark and urgent problems. First, we face a great divide in achievement along lines of income, race and ethnicity, language, and disability. Second, New York and the nation are not keeping up with growing demands for still more knowledge and skill in the face of increasing competition in a changing global economy. We must meet these two great challenges together.

What is our situation now?

The vast majority of new, well-paying jobs require either an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. Yet New York’s high school graduation rate is only 67%. Our college graduation rate is only 70% by the sixth year among those who attempt a bachelor’s degree.

People from low-income families graduate at even lower rates, between 35 and 50%, from both high school and college. Why is this your problem? As immigration and diversity increase, we must increase graduation from high school and college for everyone, especially disadvantaged groups – to avoid a declining statewide level of education and income, and inevitably a declining tax base. In addition, New York already faces critical shortages in licensed professions, including those that provide vital health and safety services.

Some people think there are not enough good-paying jobs to go around. That’s wrong. The United States educates too few people through high school, college and postsecondary technical programs to achieve the skills they will need – skills in mathematics, health care, the social and natural sciences, technology, the arts, and many other fields. At current rates, experts estimate that by 2020 there won’t be enough qualified Americans to fill 14 million of the most skilled, highest-paying jobs.

Some nations, including China and India, are moving urgently to raise the knowledge and skill of their people. Because their populations are so large, they can get it wrong much of the time and still have more educated workers than we do. We can’t afford to get it wrong. Still other nations are moving ahead of us in the percentage of students who graduate from college each year. That means more skilled jobs will go there.

What will we do to solve these problems?

New York’s educational and cultural institutions have improved significantly in recent years. More students are graduating from high school and college, and the achievement gap is closing slowly. However, other nations that can afford to improve education are moving along the same path, or leaping ahead. So we have to do more. We must pick up the pace, and close the gaps.

We have an advantage in this competition: The University of the State of New York. It is a massive, and connected system of education that is visible in every community. It is the pipeline of opportunity. Schools and BOCES, colleges and universities, libraries, museums, archives, public broadcasting, vocational rehabilitation, and the professions in New York, and in no other state, are all under the care of one board – the Board of Regents.

Joint venture will get us there. Finding institutional self-interest in joint venture is critically important. Joint venture becomes a rational strategy when we discover that the interests of our own institution match those of another in pursuit of a particular goal.

When we concentrate on a few key actions, hard effort will produce better results. We need to think together in unconventional ways. We should focus on transition points from level to level in the K-16 education system, the connections between that system and cultural institutions and the professions, and how to create a culture that sends and receives messages of expectation up and down the line.

Where should we focus? Three opportunities stand out:

Early Childhood Education

§ Make pre-K universal.

§ Change the school age from 6 to 5.

§ Fund full-day kindergarten in all schools.

§ Base early childhood education on high standards with proven, research-drive curriculum and instruction. Incorporate the resources of cultural institutions. Maximize the integration of students with disabilities with their peers.

§ Make sure teachers can teach New York’s diverse students.

High School

§ Set targets. Measure results.

§ Make school boards accountable for student performance.

§ Check teacher qualifications and make changes where needed.

§ Strengthen teaching, especially in math and the sciences.

§ Ensure safety.

Higher Education

§ Increase college attendance and graduation rates, especially among underrepresented groups. Increase the number of graduates in critical academic majors and professions.

§ Make college more affordable and increase the number of people who go to college.

§ Increase investment in faculty, infrastructure, and research.

We in New York can mobilize the resources to achieve our goals. We will succeed if we have the will to act together. And we have the will.

Communications Plan

Communication with the public is essential. Many people don’t understand the facts about the achievement gap and the nature of global competition. Many who are aware of the problem don’t understand it’s their problem. Others don’t believe we can solve the problem, or don’t know how. Only by communicating intensively, constantly, and consistently can we galvanize public support.

What the Regents and State Education Department Will Do

The Commissioner, Regents and State Education Department officials will incorporate the basic message into their speeches and other communication, including news conferences and news releases, forums, hearings, regular Regents meetings, preparation of Regents policy papers, the SED website, and other events and papers.

· Focus on the basic message and the key data.

· Speak at events of USNY partners. Secure media coverage.

· Incorporate the basic message in all regular news conferences (School Report Card, grade 3-8 test results, State Aid, etc.). Include print reporters and broadcast media statewide through phone hook-up and satellite feed.

· Conduct regional meetings to follow through and carry on the work of the Summit. Secure media coverage.

· Create new Regents/SED events, e.g., regional high school reform forums. Secure media coverage.

· Throughout the year, issue news releases to highlight Regents/SED initiatives to achieve the aims.

· Celebrate the achievements of all USNY partners through news releases, bestowing honors at Regents meetings, appearances at joint events.

· Schedule editorial board meetings. Include other USNY officials. Integrate the basic message into talking points.

· Prepare and place newspaper Op-ed pieces. Ask USNY partners to prepare them also.

· Produce the PBS-based New York Learns series focusing on aspects of the basic message.

· Recognize the achievement of all the partners of the University of the State of New York.

What USNY Partners Can Do

· Focus their events on the basic message.

· Incorporate the basic message into their speeches and other communication, including news conferences and news releases, forums, hearings, regular meetings, preparation of policy papers, their websites, and other events and papers.

· Join regional efforts to follow-up the Summit.

· Throughout the year, issue news releases to highlight initiatives that help meet the aims of the Summit, with a particular focus on joint ventures with other USNY partners.

· Schedule editorial board meetings to communicate the basic message.

· Prepare and place newspaper Op-ed pieces focusing on how USNY partners are achieving the aims of the Summit.

ACTION: Create or find structures statewide and regionally to accomplish the aims.

At the Summit, people demanded continued momentum. This urgency comes from all the sectors of USNY – school and higher education leaders, cultural education leaders, the professions, and advocates for those with disabilities, as well from as business and community leaders.

Working together well requires a working Structure at the state level, the regional level, and the local level. In some places, those structures already exist and should be directed to this purpose. Where they don’t or where they should be expanded, organizations and agencies should form better structures for cooperation. The state cannot impose structures at the regional or local level; however, it can encourage and help and, where needed, act as a catalyst. Many of the decisions must be made based on the assessment of regional needs, and the actions must be carried out regionally or locally.

What does this mean in practice?

· Regional and local leaders should form working structures, set goals and targets, and carry out the actions needed to meet them. They will be led by the District (BOCES) Superintendents, school superintendents, college presidents, library and museum leaders, heads of professional, social service and community associations, and businesspeople.

· The Board of Regents and the State Education Department will also talk with selected regional and local leaders and assist them where possible. This may involve convening a small group of leaders as the nucleus of a regional or local group.

Who will do what?

· The District (BOCES) Superintendents will lead in their regions, assembling the other leaders in local Summits and follow-up meetings.

· The lead in the Big Four Cities should come from the leaders who are already involved or want to assume this role. This will vary from city to city. Where necessary, key leaders should build the structure from scratch and convene the local meetings.

· New York City, because of its size, requires involvement on a citywide level. The Regents and the State Education Department will work with city leaders and with leaders of each borough to hold local borough-wide meetings.

Specific regional and local follow-up should include these steps:

· Call regional and local Summits to build on existing local initiatives and the actions advocated at the statewide Summit. Focus on the three major action areas. Develop an agenda that will produce wide involvement and concrete decisions.

· Define key actions and set targets to reach in carrying them out.

· Decide on continuing steps to monitor improvements and modify strategies as needed.

ACTION: Modify policy and practice to improve results in early education, high school, and higher education.

The Board of Regents identified these three parts of the system – early education, high school, and higher education – as priorities. Summit participants came to the same conclusion. All have offered sound ideas for key actions to achieve our goals.

Urgent Action on Early Childhood Education

Leaders overwhelmingly supported steps to expand and improve early childhood education. Children who have sound pre-kindergarten and kindergarten experiences read earlier and keep reading better in later grades. Students who fall behind in the early grades have difficulty catching up.

We must act urgently to ensure that all students get a good start in school and are proficient in reading by grade 2. The following strategies are the most promising:

1. Make pre-kindergarten universal throughout the State.

Work to secure multi-year funding to ensure these opportunities can be put in place. The Regents request for an additional $99 million for the Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) program is a good start and needs to be supplemented with increased state aid in future years to ensure availability in all districts.

2. Change the compulsory school attendance age from six to five.

There is much evidence showing that formal schooling and attendance at age five is part of a good start for children. Existing law will need to be changed to put this into effect. The new law should give consideration to families that wish to delay their children’s entry into school until age six by providing an exception process to be established by the Commissioner.

3. Ensure adequate funding to all school districts so they provide full-day kindergarten to all students.

Research shows children who attend full-day kindergarten read better than those who attend half-day kindergarten. However, schools worry about the cost of implementing a full-day program for all, including hiring additional teachers and building additional classrooms. State funding can address these concerns.

4. Make sure that early education programs starting with pre-kindergarten are standards-based and research-driven, employ the best curriculum and instructional methods, maximize the integration of students with disabilities with their peers, and incorporate the resources of cultural institutions.

This strategy will require dissemination of reading practices and access to on-line training and materials for a broader audience of teachers. It will also require the creating and marketing of a coherent program of very early childhood, after school, and summer programs targeted to the neighborhoods of low-performing schools.

5. Make sure school districts are able to hire and retain qualified teachers who can teach a diverse group of students with a range of needs.

This means preparing early childhood education teachers to high standards, supporting their work, and encouraging professional development.

Urgent Action on High Schools

Many at the statewide Summit agreed we need to redesign the high school model in order to meet the needs of – and effectively challenge – today’s diverse group of students. At the National Governors Association High School Summit earlier this year, Bill Gates said simply that the American high school is obsolete. To grasp that something is wrong we need only look at our results in New York, where 67 percent graduate in four years.

Leaders at the Summit demanded urgent improvement in high school performance. What do we do now? First, New York already has enacted as policy many elements recommended in the national discussion about high school. Those elements include higher standards, assessments, accountability, course requirements for graduation, a governance system with a pre-K through 16 reach, teacher standards and improvements in teacher education, and proposals for adequate state aid designed to close the gaps in opportunity.

What can we add to this mix to build urgency?

1. Set targets and measure results.

All high schools in the state should set targets for graduation and attendance, and describe what they will do to meet them. The Regents would accept these targets for the 131 schools with graduation rates below 70% or require other targets. Annually, school boards would report results to the Regents. The Regents would consider further actions for school boards that do not made reasonable progress.

2. Make local school boards accountable for high school performance.

School boards in the 131 high schools would report on results. The Regents would meet with the presidents and vice presidents of those boards to hear what they will do to gain further improvements. In the case of New York City, the meeting would be with the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education. Local responses may lead the Regents to define new policy.

3. Check teacher qualifications and order changes where necessary.

The school boards responsible for the 131 schools would report the proportion of teachers who are certified in the subjects they are teaching, with particular attention to the subjects required for high school graduation. Regents could require necessary improvements.

4. Strengthen teaching, especially in math and the sciences.

Faculties and administrators in high performing schools often conduct continuous professional development focused on proven curricula and lesson plans, with opportunities for colleagues to further develop subject matter knowledge. If the Commissioner determines that this is necessary in any of the 131 schools, the State Education Department will provide modest financial support and will require schools to provide this professional support.

5. Ensure safety.

The Commissioner will review safety plans for the 131 schools and the data about incidents, including suspensions. Where necessary, the Commissioner will require immediate corrective action and evidence of follow throug