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If you’re confused today’s DOE press release announcing that the department has awarded a contract for principal training to the NYC Leadership Academy, you’re not alone. The Leadership Academy has been training principals since it opened in 2003, so today’s announcement sounds like a blast from the past — except that for the last five years, the academy has been funded using private dollars, and now it will be paid for with public money.

Joel Klein announced the academy’s creation at a December 2002 press conference where he was joined by former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who would lead the development of the academy based on his company’s management training program. To train a generation of leaders, principals would be selected from a competitive pool of applicants, thrown into an intense summer program in which they managed mock schools, then given real principals to shadow for a year before receiving assignments of their own. The program’s first three years would be funded through donations, many of them from corporations and major foundations, and the expectation was clear that the DOE would pick up the tab at the end of that time. In fact, Chancellor Klein said he hoped he would be able to use money awarded as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit to pay for the program; those funds finally began to make their way to the city this year.

But three years later, the program appeared to be in jeopardy. Not all principals who graduated from the academy found jobs as school leaders, and some of those who did garnered criticism as they ruffled feathers when introducing change, brought a business-like management style to schools, and sometimes proved incompetent. Vigorous — and expensive — efforts to recruit principals from outside the city yielded few transplants. City officials questioned whether the program’s success rate warranted its high cost. Ultimately, the scope of the program was scaled back, and rather than accept full responsibility for the program, the DOE started picking up the salaries and benefits for the principals-in-training, which make up the bulk of the academy’s budget.

It’s now been three more years, and the DOE has announced that the Leadership Academy bid competitively to win a contract to train principals. Obviously the Leadership Academy, constructed by Joel Klein to serve the DOE only, was the department’s preferred vendor. And it’s certainly appropriate for the DOE to foot the bill for training its own principals. But given that the academy was just three years ago considered inappropriate for the DOE’s budget, I would love to know what evidence the DOE is using to justify the expenditure now. Surely there must be information the DOE can make public about the success rates of Leadership Academy graduates? (In my experience, new principals coming from the academy are as mixed a bag as administrators who got their positions through other avenues.)

And I’d also like to know what three other vendors were foolish enough to prepare bids for this contract!

• A small high school in Brooklyn graduates its first class — and loses its founding principal. (Times)
• Wherever a Bronx principal goes, test scores jump; teachers say cheating’s involved. (Sun)
• An array of special programs in Long Island school districts may be stemming the tide of dropouts. (Times)
• Sikh students have been recent targets for bullying. (Daily News)

Looks like the City Council made good on its promise not to approve a budget that includes cuts to schools — late last night, the council and the mayor tentatively agreed on a budget that includes $129 million the council is allocating to schools to make up for the DOE’s planned cuts.

Centrally, the DOE will accept a small budget cut, as will most other city agencies. Unfortunately for other New Yorkers, restoring school budgets forced the council to cut some of the other services it funds, including senior centers and workforce and youth development programs. And Mayor Bloomberg also warns that if the city’s economic picture continues to deteriorate, city agencies — presumably, including schools — could see their budgets reduced downward during the year. When that happened this spring, schools were forced to cut programs and services midyear, which can be more disruptive than planning ahead for lean times.

• The mayor and the City Council decide on a budget — and schools are spared cuts! (Times, Daily News, Sun, Post)
• Chancellor Klein wants to break up big middle schools into smaller schools. (Daily News)
• The DOE has reversed its plan to close an alternative school on the Walton campus. (Daily News)
• Teachers give the chancellor a failing grade. (Times, Daily News, Post)
• Study: Preschool helps kids get basic skills faster (USA Today)

My first year teaching in the South Bronx, I helped chaperone my 8th graders’ “prom.” I was a little surprised to hear them calling it that - for me, the prom conjures up memories of glamorous dresses and rented tuxes, fancy dinners with friends, posh locations - and high school. But my girls bought expensive gowns, the boys showed up in sparkling new suits, and we rented a space at Jimmy’s Bronx Cafe, a somewhat pricey club and restaurant in the area. It was one of the strangest evenings of my life: fun, at times, as kids showed off their spiffy clothes and posed for photographs; stressful, as they flaunted their sexuality on the dancefloor and I tried to figure out when to draw the line; and permeated by a sad knowledge that for many of the students, this was the only prom they would attend.

Much of the pomp and circumstance that used to be reserved for high school graduation ceremonies and related events like the prom now surrounds graduation from middle school, reflecting the reality that many children never graduate from high school. But educators and parents in some communities are trying to balance the desire to honor a rite of passage with the need to send a message of high expectations: that students will go on to complete high school, and that’s when they should throw the really big party. They have toned down 8th grade ceremonies accordingly.

The next middle school where I worked took that scaled-back approach to 8th grade graduation. Our students wore caps and gowns, a small yearbook was produced, the class took a senior trip to a nearby amusement park, and we held a low-key senior formal. We changed the language around these events, calling graduation a “Moving Up” ceremony and the “prom” merely a “dance” or a “formal.” We tried to keep the focus on getting into and graduating from an excellent high school - and then continuing on to college.

Teachers, how does your school handle middle school graduation? Parents, what do you think is appropriate? Students, how do you want to celebrate this milestone? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

• The City Council is on the verge of a deal to restore funding to the schools. (Daily News)
• The Kids Protest Project has been picketing daily since June 3 to oppose the budget cuts. (Daily News)
• Joel Klein thinks he gets an A for effort and hopes to stick around after the mayor’s term ends. (Post)
• Paul Vallas, the current New Orleans schools chief who may be on the shortlist to replace Chancellor Klein, says New York should extend its school year. (Sun)
• Kids from Bushwick learn boat-building at the Harbor School. (Times)
• Vocational schools can get low-income kids to college, too. (Times)
• A Brooklyn principal is retiring early after an investigation found that he failed to inform police when girls complained that a teacher was touching them inappropriately. (Post)
• Education schools aren’t producing math-competent teachers. (USA Today)

It’s been a big year for the DOE. In September, it won the Broad Prize, given each year to an urban school district that has improved its poor and minority students’ test scores. This spring, students continued on their upward trajectory, at least according to the state math and reading scores that were released yesterday. But the biggest coup may have happened this past weekend, when the DOE, in partnership with the agency Droga5, snagged a prestigious international advertising award given each year to the “most innovative and ground-breaking idea” in advertising.

The DOE took home the Cannes Lion Titanium Award for the “Million” Motivation Campaign, which aims to increase students’ engagement with school through the use of cell phones. Through a partnership with Verizon and Samsung, the DOE gave cell phones to 2,500 students in seven middle schools. The number of minutes available to each student depended on their performance in school; a child who successfully completed all of his work, therefore, would have more minutes to use than a lackluster student. When the program launched last fall, the DOE planned to use the phones to deliver motivational text and voice messages, sometimes from celebrities such as Jay-Z; it’s not clear whether that portion of the campaign has been rolled out yet.

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As the number of incentive programs has risen in New York City, so have the city’s state test scores. But does that mean the two trends are related?

If you believe the Post’s headlines, then the answer is yes. Yesterday, the paper ran one article about test scores rising in virtually all schools where students are now paid for their performance and another about test scores inching up at the 158 schools where teachers are to receive bonuses if their students do well. Today, the Post reported that 23 of the 51 middle schools targeted for extra resources due to persistent low performance post higher-than-average gains.

But you have to look no further than the Post’s own coverage to see that it’s impossible to determine whether any of the incentives programs have paid off. In two of the programs — teacher bonuses and the middle school initiative — more than half of participating schools saw below average improvement. The Post declares that the third, the controversial new program that pays some students in selected schools for particular successes, “dramatically improved test scores” because scores rose in almost all of the 35 schools included in the program. But here, as with all of the incentive programs, we know only about correlation, not causation. And as part of Opportunity NYC, the student-payment program included only some students at the eligible schools — a fact that suggests that some other force may also have been at play in those schools’ test score jumps.

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• Some school districts are embracing retention as a way to help kids. (Times)
• A new study says the achievement gap has narrowed during the era of No Child Left Behind. (USA Today)
• More on charter schools’ comparatively high test scores. (Post, Daily News)
• Malcolm Smith, the Democrat from Queens who is likely to be the next State Senate majority leader, loves charter schools. (Sun)
• About half of the low-performing middle schools that received extra funds this year posted above-average test score gains. (Post)
• Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music graduates its second cohort of musicians. (City Limits)