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Letters 95 May 21, 1995 Hon. George Pataki Dear Governor Pataki: The Educational Priorities Panel is a coalition of 26 civic groups that work together to improve public education in New York City by monitoring the impact of administrative and budget decisions on student instruction and services. We are writing this letter to outline our opposition to the "Learnfare" proposal contained in the Executive Budget and to ask that you not proceed with imposing this large-scale, unfunded mandate on the state's education system. In reviewing our files for documentation of programs that have resulted in improved student attendance in New York City, the Panel has found that improvement has resulted from two types of efforts: A well-designed, adequately funded, and adequately staffed student attendance program. These programs not only identify children at risk but also continue to work with both families and the schools' personnel to help motivate better attendance and better student achievement. In New York City, the first state-funded Attendance Improvement Dropout Prevention (AIDP) programs produced negligible results, largely because many of them were limited to having a staff person identify truants to make initial phone calls or visits with their families. When AIDP was redesigned under Chancellor Fernandez so that they involved more activities and more coordination with school planning committees, more programs succeeded in improving attendance by 3 to 7 percentage points. In talking to principals in 11 schools about how these programs were working and why, the principals either cited the availability of a full-time employee (counselor or paraprofessional), professional counseling services from a hospital-based program or activities sponsored by a community-based organizations that actively engaged at-risk students (like field trips or a music program). The principals spoke to us about the amount of effort involved in even minor attendance improvement and how often they found truants to be seriously depressed children, often coping with fragile parents living in extreme poverty. Less than one-fifth of the public schools in New York City have an on-site, fully funded AIDP program. School Improvement The State Education Department's 1995 New York State of Learning Report shows that while the average student attendance rate for all New York City public schools is 85.6 percent, those schools classified as low-performing by placement on the State Education Department's list of "Schools under Registration Review" have an average attendance rate of 80.2 percent (Appendix, Table B5). Some schools that have been reorganized show significant attendance improvement rates that have ranged from 3 to 10 percent. As an EPP study which will be released this summer will show, schools that have succeed in being removed from the SURR list are those where the principal and staff focused on improving the quality of academic instruction and in providing an environment that stressed the arts, such as music, drawing, drama, and literature. These schools found that by making learning more exciting, students wanted to come to school. What these improved schools offered were what most schools outside of New York City take for granted, such as art and music. Many of these schools also benefited from increased funding so that they could offer, for the first time, counseling programs and activities programs for at-risk students. Given the experience in New York City with school attendance improvement efforts, it comes as a shock to us that the state government is on the verge of embarking on an attendance program affecting all public schools at all grade levels without even a one-year to two-year demonstration project to evaluate its impact on student attendance. We are very concerned that in the six school districts where Wisconsin had demonstration Learnfare programs, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment & Training Institute's 1990 study found that student attendance did not improve among those whose parents received AFDC reductions in benefits. The most troubling finding of this study was that in the most urban school district, Milwaukee, teenagers who were in the Learnfare group increased their truancy, and of those teenagers whose families were sanctioned, 47 percent dropped out of school completely. This study also found that many of the students whose poor attendance resulted in their families living at two-thirds to one-half of the benefit levels needed for food and shelter were already identified through Children's Court or protective services. Thus, the living standards of the most troubled families fell below the level of other AFDC recipients without any positive improvement in school attendance or graduation rates. Worse still, organizations of AFDC recipients, such as Welfare Warriors of Milwaukee, reported that Learnfare undermined parental authority because so many single mothers found themselves vulnerable to "blackmail" by their teenage children who would threaten to skip school and thus reduce the family's income unless they got their way. It may, indeed, be the lack of success with Learnfare that explains the absence of any demonstration project in the Executive Budget. The serious concern of the Educational Priorities Panel is that Learnfare may increase the high school dropout rate in New York City, given Milwaukee's sorry experience. Even should our worst fears not materialize, what is known is that New York City public schools, with the highest student-to-guidance counselor ratios in the state, with city education budget cuts of over $1.7 billion over the last six years, and with a per-pupil funding level that is $1,000 below the average for the rest of the state, will be required to identify staff to administer more record keeping without any concrete promise of funding for this clerical work or for program design to improve student attendance. Given the large number of families receiving AFDC with children in the schools in New York City, Learnfare will be a huge undertaking for this public school system. In 1993, 421,600 school children were receiving some form of public assistance, or 44.5 percent of all public school students. In some schools serving high-poverty neighborhoods New York City, at least two-thirds of the student body are recipients of AFDC benefits. The record keeping burdens on limited staff will be enormous. In the past, poor record keeping in schools with highly mobile student populations, including delays in removing students who have transferred to other schools, have caused problems. Now, these inefficiencies will impact on the economic well being of families. Besides the enormity of the mandate and the lack of funding, what is particularly troubling about Learnfare is that it will transform school staff into personnel involved in sanctioning AFDC beneficiaries. This is an extraordinary change in their functions and powers with hardly any public discussion or concrete experience in New York State with the consequences of this change. For these reasons, the Panel is opposed to the imposition of this onerous mandate on the public school system of this city. We urge you to proceed cautiously, if you proceed at all with Learnfare, so that it does not eliminate the positive attendance improvement brought about by AIDP and SURR programs by implementing a few selected pilot programs at the elementary school level around the state. When the AIDP program was first initiated and functioned poorly, the only slight improvement in student attendance was at the elementary school levels. Initiating Learnfare at the higher-grade levels may be counterproductive and harmful. Given what is known about Learnfare's performance in urban areas so far, it could result in lower attendance and higher dropout rates in New York City. Sincerely, CC |
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