YEAR 2000 ELECTION RESULTS:

Who Won What?

At first glance, the school election of 2000 was notable because it seemed to center around educational issues and not just personalities. According to the Journal News, the election was a “referendum on the district’s efforts to address an educational gap between white and black students.” Newcomer Claudette Clarke ran on a “Pro Education/ No Politics” platform, explaining that the achievement gap was “dividing the community.” Incumbent Pierre Davis agreed, saying “people got pretty tired of hearing the same thing.” Their comments mirror the draft responses of both the administration and the school board to the Task Force on Equality and Excellence. In a nutshell: “We concede there’s a problem, but we’re handling it.”

Mary Wallace, on the other hand, ran on the platform that more needs to be done to close the gap and “create a level playing field.” She argued that making the black/white achievement gap public wasn’t dividing the community as much as revealing a division that already runs long and deep. Among the issues she raised were greater representation of children of color in advanced classes, a more thorough review of Nyack’s elementary reading program, and considerably more energy and funding devoted to outreach in hiring and to teacher training.

So, the election seemed to be about issues. But the campaign argued otherwise. Election posters read, “Mary Wallace is supported by PIE. Vote for Clarke” and “Vote for Valley Cottage Residents Clarke and Davis.” The two public debates were marked by intense, often hostile questions and responses. Was the often vindictive, intense electioneering because of the racial issue, or was it more personal than that? Was it the message or the messenger that bothered people?

Again, the results appear clear at first. They certainly were overwhelming. Clarke received 2030 votes, Davis 2013, and Wallace 851 votes. While Valley Cottage delivered the most votes to Clarke/Davis (1000 to around 200 for Wallace), the pattern ran true at all polling places.

But if this was a vote to stop “dividing the community” over the achievement gap, the budget shouldn’t have passed. It did (by a margin of 1848 to 729), and in the process implemented a number of programs aimed specifically at narrowing the gap. Those include full-day kindergarten, Reach For the Stars to motivate students to take advanced classes, bias awareness in grades K-5, restructuring of special education, and a student data system to track the gap.

The irony of this election may be the most notable thing about it. Two African-American candidates were elected on the platform that the district shouldn’t pay too much attention to how African-American children are doing. Voters overwhelmingly supported a budget full of programs designed to improve a situation those same voters seemed to indicate wasn’t important.

How will all this play out in the future? Clearly, the issue won’t go away. The New York State Regents decided in early May to start grading schools based partly on how well its children of color due on state tests. As a May 9, 2000 New York Times article put it:

“The new grades focus on what has become known as the achievement gap by making suburban parents stakeholders in solving it. Low achievement by minority students will no longer be a remote issue; it will affect the public perception of their schools and local property values.”

We applaud Mary Wallace for her six years of extraordinary service to the district, for being willing to raise and examine difficult issues. We will take Ms. Clarke and Mr. Davis at their word that citizens bringing issues to the school board will receive prompt and satisfying results.

We note that without these more than 800 voters who supported Wallace AND the budget, it might not have passed. There is no guarantee that these voters will continue to support our schools unless there are clear signs that the gap is a top priority.

Finally, we applaud the majority of the Nyack/Valley Cottage voters for electing two African-American candidates. May this majority now work as hard for and extend the same support to the district’s children and employees of color.

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TIPS FOR PARENTS: Full-Day Kinderwhat?

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MORE NEW BUDGET TIPS: How Your Child Could Be in Advanced Classes

TEACHERS AND PARENTS:

A NATURAL ALLIANCE

The two longest-running players in any school system are typically teachers and parents.

Teachers often work in the Nyack district twenty-five years and more. Parents tend to have at least a dozen years of involvement, longer if there is more than one child. National and local statistics show that administrators come and go much more quickly than either parents and teachers.

So, it makes sense that the two groups with the longest investments in the district would be allies. But teacher/parent alliances aren’t as easy as they sound.

Parents are often intimidated by teachers’ expertise -- or respectful to the point of being silent. They may be fearful of repercussions for their children if they enter into an honest dialogue with a teacher. And the simple fact that their child’s teachers change every year makes it hard to establish and maintain a relationship.

For their part, teachers may be interested in involving parents but also need to do their job without distraction. Teachers have told us they feel “watched” sometimes when parents come in to volunteer. Often, it is hard to communicate to the parent the restrictions teachers are under and the pressure they feel from above or outside.

One of the results of this gulf is that teachers often believe that parents are the people with power in the district, while parents are convinced it’s the teachers who call the shots.

Given these difficulties, PIE has tried to build a teacher/parent alliance in many different ways. Its initiatives have ranged from mini-grants supporting teachers (paying for field trips, etc.) to extensive volunteering to the donation of books and other materials. PIE has run Saturday reading programs with the approval and help of teachers. And we’ve tried to maintain and strengthen the dialogue where and when we could.

The year-and-a-half long on the district’s black/white achievement gap has played an important role in this still-fragile alliance. Whether it’s on hiring committees, on the district task force, in classrooms, or simply in the parking lot outside of school, teachers and parents are getting together and trying to make sense of this issue. This year’s excellent, district-sponsored “Undoing Racism” workshops are a case in point. They have offered a safe arena, beyond the rhetoric and the posturing, where parents and teachers have discovered what they have in common and where they can help each other.

What does an honest, open, and on-going teacher/parent alliance look like? That’s hard to say. If, indeed, “we make the road by walking,” there’s no predicting where this dialogue will take us. But we can imagine issues of curriculum, discipline, and community involvement all benefiting, and we look forward to the day.

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Such improvement can only happen through the combined efforts of staff, parents and community members. Which is the kind of co-operation that will be needed to close the 18 percentage point gap that still exists between black children and their white counterparts.

The Journal-News May 22nd editorial called for Nyack to “move ahead in harmony,” and there has been a lot of similar talk since the school board elections. But the divisions in the Nyack/Valley Cottage community won’t be erased by promoting harmony for its own sake. They are divisions of academic opportunity and achievement. One of the hopeful things about these recent test results is that they point the way to a solution based on educational equity.

Again, congratulations.

Oscar Cohen, for NAACP

Daniel Wolff, for PIE

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TEACHING TO THE TEST:

Gains and Losses

The debate over all this testing is on-going. In Nyack/Valley Cottage, fourth graders spent enormous amounts of time preparing for the state tests, some classes taking and re-taking sample tests as many as eight times. No matter how valid the test is that leaves less time for other kinds of education.

At the same time, tests function to keep schools, teachers, and parents focused on goals. They offer something like an objective criteria to measure exactly the kind of achievement gap Nyack has been wrestling with over the last year.

We thought it might be helpful to re-print some quotes in the “new standards” debate. We hope you’ll join the dialogue and send us your reactions to the wave of testing your children are now taking part in.

-- Richard Rothstein, NY Times column, 5/24/00

-- Edward Rust, Jr., chairman Business Roundtable Education Task Force

-- John Clarke, University of Vermont

“This is the country that has the most vicious tracking system in the world because we start to do it so young. The results are far more irrevocable than we will admit to ourselves.... It creates an utter disaster in terms of expectations ... All the tests will do is measure kids’ performance.”

-- Marc Tucker, president National Center on Education and the Economy

-- NYC school chancellor Harold Levy,

on the city’s improved scores after 2 years

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July 2000