GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A new Fordham Foundation report is making important people lean toward national standards.
• Linda Darling-Hammond, the lightning-rod Obama campaign adviser, will not join his administration.
• Though many teachers use technology, most don’t use technology to change the way they teach.
• The D.C. teachers union is promoting its counter-Rhee contract, despite a lack of details.
• Rhode Island is following NYC’s move to eliminate “bumping” rights for senior teachers.
• San Francisco teachers think principals are too tough on them; principals think they aren’t tough enough.
• An often-cited statistic on how getting better teachers can erase the achievement gap is scrutinized.
• In Chicago, Arne Duncan tackled early childhood by letting a thousand flowers bloom.

I asked teachers union head Randi Weingarten today whether she shares Mayor Bloomberg’s optimism that the city will be able to use its federal stimulus funds to avert thousands of threatened teacher layoffs. “I’m glad the mayor is optimistic,” Weingarten said. But she said the stimulus money is “a big, big step forward but not enough” to insulate schools and children from budget cuts this year. The video above shows Weingarten’s complete response.

Weingarten also told me she’s hopeful that the city will use some of its stimulus money to build up social services at some schools with particularly needy families. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan didn’t say today whether he’d like to see stimulus money used that way. But as the head of Chicago’s school system, Duncan promoted that city’s “community schools” model, where schools act as neighborhood centers that offer medical, mental health, and family support services. Weingarten pushed the model in her first speech as president of the national teachers union; that speech took place last July in Chicago.

Class sizes on average jumped at nearly every grade level this year compared to last year.

By now we all get it, I think, that class sizes really are up since last year. I entered today with high hopes of being able to attack one of the big questions this raises: How could that have happened, considering the state poured $150 million into the school system this year for the sole purpose of making class sizes go down? Unfortunately, it turns out there’s one big obstacle to answering this question.

The DOE did release figures on both how much each school pledged to spend on class-size reduction and how big their classes ultimately were. But it did not release any means at all of comparing this year’s class sizes to last year’s. Even referring to data released last year does not help, because the two years’ information is organized in ways that are not at all comparable.

Take the Bronx School of Science Inquiry and Investigation, a middle school that pledged to spend $473,000 this year on lowering class sizes. I can find a good figure for this year, the average class size for all the school’s general education students, which is 26.3. But I can’t find anything close to comparable for last year. The only way to get a comparable figure would be to do arithmetic involving grade-by-grade class size averages and enrollment figures. (more…)

In another development that does not bode well for the Bloomberg administration’s ability to get what it wants out of Albany on school issues, a state senator is signaling her opposition to the mayor’s plan to convert floundering Catholic schools into charter schools. The senator, Suzi Oppenheimer, who is the new chair of the senate’s education committee, volunteered her opinion in a video interview published today by the Journal News, a Westchester paper. The key remark:

By the way, I think in the last couple weeks we’ve seen that the mayor of New York City has been talking about taking the closed parochial schools and turning them into charter schools. I think what needs to be done is they need to remain regular public schools. Because we’ve set aside millions, billions, in order to create, build schools, but we’re finding it difficult to build them fast enough.

And here are school that could be utilized for the public system, save us money for not having to build those schools. That’s the direction that I would like to move the mayor’s idea about what to do with closed schools.

Liz Benjamin, who noticed the interview first, notes that Bloomberg gave money to Oppenheimer’s opponent in the senate race, a Republican, and that Oppenheimer enjoys the support of the state teachers union, which sometimes opposes charter schools.

In the interview, Oppenheimer said she doesn’t oppose charter schools — in fact, she likes their ability to innovate — but she does object to the way they are funded, which she said can deprive traditional public schools of per-capita dollars if their students leave to go to a charter school.

When the Bloomberg administration announced it would assign every public school a letter grade, based largely on test scores, critics worried the grades would lead to a “drill and kill” approach to teaching. Forced to raise test scores, they said, schools might avoid teaching creativity and problem-solving in favor of focusing on basic skills. New research suggests that the critics worries may have come true — but the researchers don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Jonah Rockoff, a professor at Columbia business school who has been studying the Bloomberg administration’s accountability system, presented the finding today at a lunch at New York University. It’s part of a paper whose central conclusion — that grading schools with D’s and F’s led schools to improve their test scores — was publicized last year. But the paper has many other interesting aspects, and Rockoff’s research is continuing. Today, I’ll stick to the “back to the basics” idea; future posts will tackle other areas of interest.

Rockoff’s paper draws three conclusions about schools tacked with D’s and F’s that lead to the “back to the basics” conclusion. In the months after getting the failing grades, these schools 1) spent less time on work that involved essays and projects; 2) saw an increase in emphasis on using test score data to make decisions about curriculum; and 3) were less likely to have teachers report that their administrators’ focused on teaching quality. (more…)

Flanked by people who often find themselves arguing — Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Joel Klein, and teachers union leader Randi Weingarten — U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today offered praise for them all.

At a press conference this afternoon in Brooklyn, Duncan said all three New Yorkers have helped make the city an example for how school districts across the country could “remake public education” with their share of $100 billion in federal stimulus funds.

Some of the stimulus money is meant to plug deep holes in states’ education budgets. But Duncan said he wants states to use other funds allocated in the stimulus package to adopt accountability-oriented reforms along the lines of some recent New York City initiatives, such as the creation of a comprehensive data system, called ARIS, and the introduction of a program that gives some teachers bonuses based on their students’ test scores. The city Department of Education said in a press release today that it might try to use some of its stimulus money to expand those initiatives.

Those programs could be funded through Duncan’s discretionary “Race to the Top Fund,” through which the education secretary will give grants to states that want to try new approaches to helping students do better. “I fully expect New York City and New York State to put together a great proposal” for the funds, Duncan said. “In many ways, you are already setting the standard — including the pay-for-performance program here pioneered by the leadership right here in this city.”

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan with students, parents, and teachers from Brooklyn's Explore Charter School

Duncan departed from his prepared remarks to compliment Bloomberg’s “extraordinary courage” in taking control of the city’s schools and to say that he has learned a lot from Klein, whom he called “a good, good friend of mine.” Duncan also called Weingarten “a remarkable leader” and said he and President Barack Obama will work closely with her. “She is going to be a strong, strong voice for reform,” Duncan said. Video of the lovefest is above.

Even if they don’t see a cent of the Race to the Top Fund, New York City’s public schools and colleges are slated to receive about $1.9 billion through the federal stimulus act signed into law this week, Duncan said today. That money would prevent teacher layoffs, fill in some budget gaps, add new funds for poor students and children with special needs, and support preschool, technology, and job training programs.

The city DOE’s full press release is after the jump.

(more…)

To whet your appetite while I process some video and pictures from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s stimulus bill announcement this afternoon, here’s a link to the newest episode of “Education News Parents Can Use,” the U.S. Department of Education’s monthly television broadcast. Last night’s show was Duncan’s first, and the broadcast’s title, “Charter Schools: School Reform That Works,” offers a hint at his administration’s policy priorities.

Given Duncan’s obvious support for charter schools — as Elizabeth noted earlier, the first school Duncan visited as education secretary was a D.C. charter — I wasn’t suprised to learn that he was holding his first New York City event at one. But there was another, more obvious reason that Explore Charter School in Flatbush played host today, I was reminded when I asked a member of Duncan’s entourage about the choice of location: With its freedom to set its own schedule, Explore is one of the only schools in the city that’s actually in session this week.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is meeting with Mayor Bloomberg probably as I type to discuss how the federal stimulus package will help the New York City schools. After that, they will take their conclusions public, in an appearance at Explore Charter School in Brooklyn, where the men will be flanked by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and teachers union president Randi Weingarten. Philissa will be there and will report back later today.

This will be one of Duncan’s very first school visits as President Obama’s education secretary. Duncan, the former head of the Chicago public schools, beat out a list of names to join Obama’s cabinet that included Klein. He enjoys support from sparring factions of the Democratic Party, including both teachers unions and supporters of reforms like charter schools and merit-based pay for teachers and principals. Yet so far he is giving extra public attention to the latter group, visiting now two charter schools in his first few weeks in the job and advocating behind the scenes for innovations like merit pay to be included in the stimulus package.

Today’s visit to New York City, an epicenter of these kinds of reforms, may be one more signal that Duncan will cooperate with those who sometimes spar with teachers unions. The visit is Duncan’s second visit to a charter school this month. On February 4, he joined the president and the first lady, Michelle, on a visit to a D.C. charter school. He also visited a traditional public school in Arlington, Virginia, last week.

• An on-campus suicide shocked the Upper East Side’s private Dalton School yesterday. (Daily News)
• Errol Louis writes that schools still treat kids like criminals, even if the handcuffs are Velcro. (Daily News)
• Chicago journalism students compare Chicago and New York school closings. (Medill Reports)
• Readers, including one from NYC, comment on Nicholas Kristof’s reform proposals. (Times)
• R.I. officials say schools should hire teachers who are better, not more senior. (Providence Journal)
• Schools don’t worry about head lice like they once did. (AP)

• The New York Post editorial board doesn’t want KIPP teachers to unionize. (Via Leo Casey.)
• A fight between Jay Greene bloggers and the UFT over who’s to blame for the rubber rooms.
• Jonathan thinks the Department of Education’s web site needs help.
• Help building data systems is definitely in the stimulus. Wonder if DOE will apply.
• Study: Taking more than four years to graduate high school is much better than getting a GED.
• DFER, the New York-based lobbying group, is getting its staffing wishes at the federal ed dept.
• Said group points out that a Rochester mom was jailed for sending her child to the wrong school.
• A 17-year-old Dalton student killed himself today, while at school, which was in session.