GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Jay Greene points out that the UFT misspelled “stakeholders” — “steakholders”? — on those cue cards.
• Pallas says Klein shouldn’t say that charter students are on par with suburban high-performers.
• Here’s a good way to take the mayor up on his challenge and volunteer in the public schools.
• Self-esteem can help children learn, but too much self-esteem could create a “generation of narcissists.”
• The Times’ “Room for Debate” blog has academics discussing whether teaching can be a “fallback career.”
• A study finds that charter school teachers are 230% more likely to leave the teaching profession.
• Questioning whether national curriculum standards stymie — or aid — teacher creativity.
• David Simon, who made “The Wire,” talked about “juking the stats” on Bill Moyers’ show.
• A 10-year-old Pennsylvania student successfully ordered a batch of secret state tests — “to play school.”
• To cut costs, U.S. Dept of Ed employees will have to share computers more often, among other stuff.
• Survey: 44% of senators and 36% of members of Congress have paid for private school. Via Pondiscio.
• How to give that aging Bugaboo stroller a “nip/tuck”: First, go to Tribeca.

Joel Klein sure gets his name in the papers a lot.  Last week, Klein placed an op-ed piece in the Daily News that was an abridged version of a longer essay appearing in U.S. News and World Report.  “Stop making excuses,” the Chancellor commanded.  Teachers, principals, superintendents, and citizens who claim that poverty is an insurmountable impediment to student achievement need to get out of the way and let the real reformers take over.  “The truth is,” Klein wrote, “that America will never fix poverty until it fixes its urban schools.”

Wow.  Setting aside the obvious—i.e., the fact that fixing urban schools will probably have little impact on the 15% of rural children under the age of 18 living in poverty—this is a bold assertion that “great schools,” especially networks of charter schools, can succeed in closing the achievement gap and reducing social and economic inequality where nothing else has.  It’s not spending and school resources that matter;  it’s high-performing charter schools.

To support this contention, Chancellor Klein cites the recent study of charter and pilot schools in Boston.  This study finds that students who won lotteries to enter charter schools in Boston outperformed their peers in traditional public schools, as did students in charter schools who were matched with similar students in traditional public schools.  Promising evidence for charter schools, but weak support for the notion that attending charter schools can close the achievement gap between economically disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers, and weaker still for charter schools as the centerpiece of a public policy initiative to fix poverty. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg today issued a new requirement for public school principals: Add instruction about community service to their schools’ packed programs of reading, writing, and math.

The directive came during an upbeat event today where Bloomberg unveiled a new citywide volunteerism initiative. The event was broadcast on MTV.com, the Web site of the cable network that is trying to remake its image for the civic-minded Obama generation, and included a brief speech by Caroline Kennedy. Under Bloomberg’s plan, every public school principal must integrate service into his or her school’s curriculum.

“We’re going to be asking every city principal to create a service plan — no exceptions,” Bloomberg said at the event, held at the Armory Track and Field Foundation in Washington Heights. “Because from now on, civic service and volunteering will be a core part of what goes on in every single school.”

Bloomberg’s NYC Service initiative is well-timed: Tomorrow, President Obama is set to sign the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which will increase membership in AmeriCorps, a national service program, from 75,000 to 250,000 over five years and encourage volunteerism in other ways. (more…)

A Spanish-language Keep it Going NYC subway ad. GothamSchools

Spanish has been making more and more appearances at the highest levels of city government as Mayor Bloomberg hits the campaign trail, so I wasn’t surprised last night when I boarded a subway car and saw one of the by-now-familiar Keep it Going NYC ads boasting about the city’s escuelas.

When translated, the ad, which is pictured above, reads, “Because we think that the opinion of each person counts, the New York City Department of Education asked all parents, students, and teachers what they think about their schools — 800,000 of them responded.” (Our resident Spanish expert offers one correction: The first words after Ciudad de Nueva York should be les preguntó, she notes, lest native speakers think the ad copy is in the first-person.)

The ad is part of an ongoing campaign by the Fund for Public Schools, the nonprofit fundraising organization associated with the Department of Education, to promote developments in the city schools since Bloomberg became mayor. The organization purchased subway ads for the first time last fall, and the colorful ads are also at bus stops and on taxi marquees. Below the jump is a (bad) picture I took of the ad atop the taxi that brought Elizabeth and me home from the airport on Friday night. (more…)

Robert Tobias

The former testing czar at the old Board of Education, Robert Tobias, sometimes offers criticism of the accountability programs being produced these days at Tweed Courthouse. He’s also been hatching an accountability system of his own — this one to study the effectiveness of teachers produced by New York University’s school of education, where he now works.

Preliminary results suggest that teachers trained at NYU are getting above-average results in English, but they give students no extra boost on math tests, Tobias said last week at the educational research conference Philissa and I attended in San Diego. He also found that NYU-trained elementary-school teachers produced significantly greater results for students than middle-school teachers, and that the teachers get better as they become more experienced. The effect tapers off at between five and nine years into the job, he said.

Tobias’s results could provide one clue about what’s being found in an ongoing research project about teacher training programs in New York City. So far, that project has found that different programs produced different student results but has not named the programs that had the largest effects.

The results could also be important as alternative teacher training programs like Teach For America increasingly bring into question the need for traditional programs based entirely at universities. “As a dean I want to say I want to steal these three and have them do it at my school,” said Rick Ginsberg, who runs the education school at the University of Kansas, referring to the professors working with Tobias. “We’re fighting this battle all the time.” (more…)

News from New York City:

• Two state politicians have proposed giving more school control to borough presidents. (Post)
• Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum is meeting with lawmakers to push her vision of mayoral control. (Post)
• More than 100 elementary schools can’t accommodate all of their zoned students. (Daily News)
• The DOE is raising class size to 25 in a number of overenrolled elementary schools. (Post)
• The UFT is planning to lobby against the fare hike planned by the MTA. (Post)
• City Councilman Eric Gioia is proposing a ban on new fast food restaurants near schools. (Times)
• A whistleblower says many schools lack basic fire safety mechanisms. (Daily News)
• Charter school advocates are pushing to get some of the state’s stimulus money. (Daily News)
• Beth Fertig reports on the differences between schools in Amsterdam and New York City. (WNYC)
• Because of violence in Mexico, the DOE cancelled a trip there for some Brooklyn students. (Post)
• The city is cutting funding for program that uses retirees as tutors. (Daily News)
• The Economist‘s education writer visits TFA founder Wendy Kopp and several NYC schools.
• The Post revisits last year’s political fight over whether test scores should be used in tenure decisions.
• Newest in the Post‘s series on mayoral control: The introduction of A-to-F progress reports. 
• The principal of PS 272 in Brooklyn explains how the school went from an F to an A. (Post)
• The Post revisits the mayor’s prediction that chaos would follow changes to mayoral control.

Opinions:

• The Post grits its teeth and lauds Randi Weingarten’s MTA moves.
• In a letter to the editor, Joel Klein says the NAEP test isn’t a good measure of the city’s schools. (Times)
• Chancellor Klein makes the case against the status quo in a Daily News column.
• The Post wonders why the UFT is so “ill-disposed” when “they’ve never had it better than since 2002.”
• Lenore Skenazy, the mom who let her kid take the subway alone, reports on a lack of outdoor play. (Post)
• A Post columnist says some upstate teachers are being represented by a union against their will.
• Jay Greene: The UFT represents how teachers unions try to kill all school reform. (Wall Street Journal)

And beyond:

• As the number of autistic students grows, so do arguments over the cost of educating them. (Times)
• Representatives from 41 states attended a conference on national standards this week. (EdWeek)
• The idea of national standards isn’t new. (Time)
• Philadelphia’s school head wants to supervise the chief school investigator. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
• Jay Mathews describes an effort to give young teachers a voice in school reform. (Washington Post)
• Even good schools are focusing on “bubble kids,” Jay Mathews reports. (Washington Post)
• A new study shows that self-esteem boosts student achievement. (Times)
• Time Magazine brands Arne Duncan an “apostle of reform.”

NYC Chancellor Joel Klein’s response in Wednesday’s New York Times to Diane Ravitch’s op-ed last week provides a lot to chew on.  Today, I’m focusing on his comments about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is also known as the Nation’s Report Card.  NAEP began collecting data in 1969, and remains the only federal assessment designed to report on trends in the academic performance of U.S. children and youth.  All 50 states and the District of Columbia participate in NAEP, as does New York City and an increasing number of other urban school districts.  NAEP has an annual operating budget of more than $130 million per year, which represents a significant share of federal investments in education research.  Though not an expert on testing and assessment, Diane Ravitch has a long-standing interest in NAEP—she was appointed to the bipartisan National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which oversees NAEP, during President Bill Clinton’s second term, and remained on the board until 2004.

One of the ways that NAEP differs from many other standardized tests is that NAEP is designed to yield a much wider picture of the subject-matter knowledge the test is intended to measure.  Many standardized tests are designed to provide an accurate picture of a particular child’s performance.  It’s efficient to do so by having all test-takers respond to the same set of test items.  If a group of fourth-graders all answer the same 45 items in a 90-minute math exam, we can learn a lot about performance on those particular items, which are chosen to be representative of the content domain they are supposed to represent (such as fourth-grade math).  But such a test would tell us little about student performance on other items that might have a different format, or address different fourth-grade math skills.  NAEP addresses this problem by having many more test items, but no child answers all of the items, because that would take hours and hours of testing time.  Instead, each child responds to a sample of the items, and the performance on these items is combined across children to yield a picture of the performance of children in general.  Testing experts such as Dan Koretz at Harvard believe that assessments such as NAEP are less vulnerable to score inflation than state assessments because it’s more challenging to engage in inappropriate test preparation when there are so many potential test items a student might respond to.  But the tradeoff is that NAEP is not designed to provide a reliable and accurate measure of performance for a particular child.   

Let’s look at what the Chancellor had to say about NAEP: (more…)

• The DOE wants 100,000 kids, or four times the current number, to be in charter schools by 2012. (Post)
• Applications are up at CUNY, and so are applications for financial aid. (NY1, Daily News, Post)
• Carl Icahn Charter School in the Bronx accepted only 3 percent of its applicants. (Daily News)
• Students at International High School in Queens deal with their pasts through performance art. (Times)
• Some psychologists say public charter school lotteries could hurt children emotionally. (Daily News)
• The DOE is banning sugary drinks from being sold inside schools, starting in the fall. (Post)
• Private donations are enabling students to compete in a robotics competition this week. (Daily News)
• Some Bronx students are spending their spring break visiting concentration camps. (Times)
• The parent council “straw vote” is open all week. (WNYC)
• Students and teachers at a Queens school are suing the DOE over their decayed building. (Daily News)
• A Brooklyn teacher said there’s more creativity at his school than ever, thanks to mayoral control. (Post)
• Teacher salaries increased substantially during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure. (Post)
• The DOE is bending the rules so a Queens child can attend the school named after his uncle. (NY1)
• A Post columnist looks at a Buffalo charter school that is suffering under this year’s budget cuts.

And beyond:

• Declining local budgets are chipping away at stimulus dollars. (Washington Post)
• Diane Ravitch says New York City shows that mayoral control isn’t a panacea for failing schools. (Times)
• The Obama education policy direction seems to be toward tougher schools. (Times)
• Ten years after the violence at Columbine High School, schools have more security. (USA Today)
• A former mayor of Baltimore will mediate between D.C. teachers and the district. (Washington Post)

Bonus! Index cardgate, week 2:

• Handing out cue cards isn’t the only way the UFT tries to influence city politicians. (Post)
• Mayor Bloomberg said again that he found the cue cards distasteful. (Daily News)
• Longtime rivals Randi Weingarten and Eva Moskowitz are sparring over the incident. (Daily News)
• The Post says the cue card debacle shows that unions have bought the City Council.
• The Observer says the worst thing is that City Council members took the bait.

Philissa and I will take a spring break along with the public schools starting tomorrow. Ours will involve a week of learning about the latest education research in San Diego, thanks to generous support from the Hechinger Institute.

Meanwhile, please stay tuned to our community section. If anything earth-shattering happens, we’ll post in the newsroom. Otherwise, we’ll be back April 20th, smarter and with a tan. And maybe then we can convince the doubters that we really do not have “an agenda,” besides good journalism.

• Steve Koss analyzes turnout for parent council elections and declares the results pathetic.
• Trying to trace stimulus money, Michelle McNeil finds all levels of gov’t fail “the transparency test.”
• Peter Murphy takes on Jonathan Gyurko’s analysis of charter school funding.
• Childhood poverty creates stress, which impairs memory, a study finds. (Via Joanne Jacobs.)
• Debating what makes a good school: Academic rigor versus hands-on experience?
• A 21st century writing expert says writing is “newly technologized, socialized and networked.”
• There’s concern that stimulus funds might not get sent equally to charter schools.
• An update to that North Carolina Teach For America study: Add more teachers and TFA still does better.
• Some fan mail, and some concerns that GothamSchools has an agenda. Comments?
• And: Arne Duncan introduced Neko Case, indie rocker, at the 9:30 club in D.C. last night. Video:

The latest in the cue-card extravaganza: Here’s a letter that the former City Council member-turned-charter school operator Eva Moskowitz just sent to teachers union president Randi Weingarten, her rival.

The letter is a response to Weingarten’s appearance on Fox 5′s Good Day New York this morning. Weingarten told Fox 5 that City Council members commonly ask the teachers union for advice on issues. She said that Moskowitz herself asked for information when she chaired the council’s education committee.

“I find that people shouldn’t be hypocrites,” Weingarten said. “Eva used to ask us all the time when she was education chair for questions to prep the City Council about, you know, what’s really going on in schools.”

Moskowitz writes back today in a letter to Weingarten saying that the characterization is false — and demanding a retraction:

I never asked the UFT or any party to propose questions for me.  I held over a hundred days of hearings as Chairperson of the Education Committee.  I demand that you identify a single instance in which I asked the UFT for questions or used questions prepared for me by the UFT.  You will be unable to find such an example because it does not exist.  In light of that, please retract your inaccurate and defamatory statement.

A rivalry between Weingarten and Moskowitz burst open in 2005 when Weingarten campaigned heavily against Moskowitz’s bid for borough president of Manhattan. Moskowitz had targeted labor unions in hearings when she chaired the education committee.

This week, Moskowitz testified at the same hearing that drew the controversy that a “union-political complex” is holding the city back.

Here’s the full letter: (more…)