Teacher Eric Levine contrasts Regents school with consortium school

Good afternoon.

My name is Eric Levine.

I teach ninth grade social studies and lead the UFT chapter at Harvest Collegiate High School, a consortium school near Union Square.

I became a teacher partly because I hated school.

My parents put a great deal of value on education and moved me and my siblings just north of the city to Rockland County due to the reputation of the schools there.

The high school I attended still hovers around the top 50 high schools in the state, and it was a miserable experience for me.

At no point in those four years did I feel like my individuality was honored, that my interests were encouraged, or that I was learning what I would need for after graduation.

As a teen, I became very interested in politics and current events.

I wanted to get involved in the world around me, but my high school never offered an outlet for me to explore that.

Instead, much of my time in high school was spent preparing for the New York State Regents.

I often wondered if there wasn't a better way to educate students.

So imagine my excitement when just weeks into my training as a teacher, I found that there were more than a dozen schools working together to do something better than the regions.

Once I learned of the New York State Performance Standards Consortium, I never wanted to be or teach anywhere else.

In the past 11 years, I've visited many of those schools and in every single instance have thought to myself, I wish I went to high school here.

I taught in a traditional region school for a few years, waiting for the opportunity to work at a consortium school.

My time was filled with prepackaged curriculum, rushed lessons in units, and a lack of rigorous work and deep thinking for my students.

I did what I could, but at the end of the day, they needed to pass these tests.

My school bragged about its high graduation and college acceptance rates, but never reflected on or commented on its low college retention rates.

That model simply did not prepare students for the rigors and demands of what comes after high school.

Consortium schools like mine

Better prepare students for what they will encounter after they leave.

I have the freedom to design classes that are responsive to their interests and lives, that are deep and rigorous, and that are rooted in skills that will set them up for success after they graduate.

There is no mad dash to cover 300 years of human history in nine months.

Classes become living, breathing things that force students to think deeply about the world around them and make connections to their own lives.

These classes prioritize critical thinking, reflection, and effective communication, as do the project-based assessments they lead to.

They prepare students to be the global citizens that we hope they will be for the rest of their lives.

Working in a consortium school allows me and my colleagues to provide the kind of educational experience to hundreds of students that I wish I had been able to have had myself.

All right, fellow chapter leader, thank you.

You can begin whenever.

I don't know if you have any.

Oh, they're all done.

Okay.

I'd like to thank this panel for your testimony today.

Really appreciate it and appreciate your stories.