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First some good news: The Department of Education just released data on how students performed on Advanced Placement exams last year. Participation is up slightly from last year, and it’s up more among black and Hispanic students, contrary to a national trend. The total number of New York City students who passed is also slightly up.

Here’s the bad part: A cursory glance makes me think that while participation is up, and the number of students passing is up, the proportion of students passing is down. For instance, among black students, 3,825 took tests last year compared to 3,390 in 2007. But the passing rate dropped to 27% from 28%. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If more students are taking the tests, it may be unfair to compare this year’s batch of test-takers to last year’s. But it’s not necessarily good, either.

Too bad only a very talented data analyst with no evening plans and no deadline would have time to write the full story. (Though the national numbers have been out for several hours, via the College Board, only the DOE can release New York City numbers. And the DOE only released the New York City numbers at 6:15. The press officer who did so compiled them into not an analyze-able Excel spreadsheet, but rather an upbeat list of talking points and a single Power Point slide.)

You can read more about national performance on AP’s here. I’ll try to have a better analysis by the morning.

UPDATE: I did call Andy Jacob at the press office to complain about the format of the release. He has not returned my call.

Most supporters of mayoral control list similar reasons for why they prefer the governance structure: it consolidates accountability in a single person; it reduces corruption that can proliferate in a decentralized system. But there’s also a less prominent argument: that mayoral control could facilitate a new breed of full-service schools that tackle both poverty and low academic achievement.

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten made this argument last year when she said mayors could create “community schools” by linking city agencies in innovative ways. But I hadn’t heard it again until today, when I spoke with Katherine Eckstein, a public policy expert who works at the Children’s Aid Society, one of the city’s oldest social services agencies.

“When kids are hungry or depressed, or have no place to go, or have chronic medical problems, they have no way to take advantage of opportunities put before them,” she told me. Eckstein, the public policy director for the organization’s National Technical Assistance Center for Community Schools, said many services exist that can help students deal with such issues, but they are not always effectively delivered.

“I see this as the promise of mayoral control — harnessing the power of city agencies,” she said, adding that the Children’s Aid Society plans to promote this idea as the debate over mayoral control’s future picks up. (more…)

Yesterday I wrote about two politicians who showed up at the Queens mayoral control panel I moderated Tuesday. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is running for mayor, declared with a swagger his desire to keep most of mayoral control preserved for himself, when he becomes mayor. (He is taking on Mayor Bloomberg and Comptroller Bill Thompson in the 2009 race.)

City Councilman Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, waited patiently in a question line and then declared his support for making school governance more democratic. De Blasio is running for public advocate.

Here’s video displaying each official’s testimony. First de Blasio, with the shushing of Weiner’s posse at about minute 3:30:

Then Weiner, who was surprised to be asked whether he had a question for the panel, rather than the reverse: (more…)

If the graduation requirements in effect for this year’s ninth-graders had applied to students who entered high school five years ago, the city’s graduation rate would be just 37 percent.

The new, more stringent requirements could cause the city’s graduation rate, which has only recently topped 50 percent, to plummet, advocates say in a new report (pdf) about what they call a “looming crisis” for the city schools. The report, prepared by the Coalition for Educational Justice, a parent group, details how poor and minority students could suffer most under the new rules.

Beginning with this year’s freshman class, all high school students will have to earn what’s called a Regents diploma by scoring 65 or higher on five different state exams. Until now, the state has allowed students who scored between 55 and 64 on any of the tests to graduate with a less rigorous diploma. The less rigorous diploma, called a local diploma, has been the most common type earned by city students.

At a press conference on the steps of the Department of Education this morning, CEJ and dozens of other advocates called for an emergency working group of state and city education officials to focus on how to help schools where few students are on track to graduate with Regents diplomas. (more…)

In Los Angeles, the teachers union is echoing calls we’ve heard here about what to throw out given budget cuts. First, the tests! The particular focus in L.A. right now is periodic assessments, the standardized tests given three or four times a year, which, unlike state tests, have no stakes attached.

While some dismiss periodic assessments as yet another degradation of the teaching profession, others argue the assessments actually help teachers do their jobs better. This latter group now includes former New York City chancellor Ray Cortines, the new head of the Los Angeles schools. His system just released a report showing exactly how much the assessments help.

Here’s one of the charts they use to argue that the more periodic assessments a student takes, the better her test scores will be:

The Los Angeles Times reached a similar conclusion after its reporters studied the data. We’d love to analyze periodic assessments in New York City. Data please, Department of Education?

A page from a manual helping charter school leaders resist unionization.

Labor-management relations may be off to a rocky start so far at KIPP AMP, the Brooklyn charter school where teachers shocked the charter school community last month by petitioning to join the powerful United Federation of Teachers.

The trouble is that KIPP management has so far declined to recognize the teachers’ petition, something the leaders have 30 days to do — or else defer to a more contentious process, the state labor board. Allowing the labor board to decide whether to recognize the petitions opens the door for KIPP to make a legal case against unionization. The 30-day period ends next Thursday.

It is not clear why KIPP is not recognizing the petitions, or whether the charter school network will do so by Thursday. Union officials said they recently sent the charter school network a reminder letter, restating the 30-day deadline, but KIPP has still not recognized. Dave Levin, the KIPP co-founder and superintendent of New York City KIPP schools who will have to make the final decision, has not returned my requests for comment.

Briscoe Smith, the senior vice president and counsel at a Manhattan-based foundation that helps charter schools fight unions (and is loathed by the UFT), said he has not consulted with KIPP. But he said it is possible for managers to challenge workers’ efforts to unionize. (more…)

• Manhattan’s Brandeis High School is closing. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News)
• Parents in Queens ask why one school on a block is crowded while one is almost empty. (Daily News)
• Several school bus companies are under investigation for fraud. (Times)
• ESPN will help a new Manhattan high school teach about sports professions. (Post)
• Girls at some schools aren’t happy that the DOE agreed to move their soccer season. (Daily News)
• The Daily News says no to the UFT’s mayoral control proposals.
• Federal stimulus money might not stop teacher layoffs everywhere. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Times editorializes in favor of attaching strings to the stimulus money.
• A Chicago lawmaker has launched a quixotic quest to stop school closures. (Chicago Tribune)

• The Innovative Educator has advice for how to go paperless.
• She also highlights a paper on using cell phones in school. (Did anyone watch Gossip Girl last night?)
• A teacher recalls the ugly reality of tracking inside New York City schools.
• President Obama told D.C. charter schoolchildren he admires Spider-Man and Batman.
• Dana Goldstein says the D.C. union’s contract ideas, released today, promise a long fight ahead.
• Sara Mead endorses the American Federation of Teachers’ guidelines for high-quality pre-K.
• Democrats for Education Reform recommends ways to spend the stimulus package.
• Diane Ravitch doesn’t think the union is the problem.

Here’s where you can watch video of the mayoral control panel I moderated at the Queens Civic Congress last night, uploaded by David Bellel. Here’s video of the question-and-answer session.

And here are the full recommendations the teachers union is set to endorse, describing how the union would like the mayor’s power over the schools curtailed.

Brandeis High School will phase out beginning this year.

Few were surprised today when Department of Education officials descended on the Upper West Side’s Louis Brandeis High School to inform staff that the long-struggling school has been slated to close.

For years, the school has been among the lowest-performing in the city, with a four-year graduation rate of just 33 percent. This year Brandeis received a D on its DOE progress report, used to evaluate how much students are improving.

By the time teachers and staff gathered today in the school’s basement auditorium for a 3 p.m. meeting, most appeared to know why they were there. One teacher told me that rumors had spread through the building all afternoon. “There’s been talking ever since we had gotten our progress report,” said another teacher, Tara Bernard, a speech pathologist who has worked at the school for four years.

“We’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop for years,” said another teacher as he left the building.

But some students said they thought the school was improving. A ninth-grader told me he heard the school had problems, but he hadn’t experienced them. And an older student said the school had fewer fights than in the past. Bernard, the speech pathologist, said the school had been relatively stable in her four years working there. (more…)