GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• NYU says it’s being generous to offer the city schools 5,500 square feet for pre-K classes (Times, 
• A poll out yesterday had mixed results about Mayor Bloomberg’s school control. (GothamSchools, Post)
• A Bronx school has raised eyebrows for joining a Manhattan-based network. (Riverdale Press)
• The Times says “reasonable critics” of mayoral control make good points, but the structure should stay.
• The UFT and others are upset that teachers’ discretionary funds appear to have been cut. (NY1)
• An ed reform advocate opines against the Regents’ bid to have more control over charter schools. (Post)
• A Coney Island charter school that couldn’t find space will open inside a housing project. (Daily News)
• Ground was broken for the DOE’s first green roof, at PS 6 on the Upper East Side. (Daily News)
• Day care workers are getting raises owed to them, but the city will cut day care slots to pay. (Daily News)
• The Post says a bill favored by the Campaign for Better Schools would effectively kill mayoral control.
• Fixing schools won’t end poverty, and poverty needs to be ended, Errol Louis says. (Daily News)
• Critics of D.C.’s voucher program were absent as others praised it before Congress. (Washington Post)

• Sad news for my industry: Veteran schools reporter Sara Neufeld is leaving the Baltimore Sun.
• P.S. 9 students’ un-scored gifted and talented tests have been traced to San Antonio, Texas.
• The union newspaper highlights labor-management collaboration at a Harlem charter school.
• Resurrecting a story from Eric Nadelstern’s past: He came up with teacher peer review!
• Dissidents are asking the UFT to fight for chapter leaders sent to the rubber room.
• A New York delegation will go to Chicago to learn about their research consortium on schools.
• Teaching Fellows members are not getting job interviews, and they’re not happy.
• There might be teacher layoffs in Rochester, but the union is fighting back.
• Detroit’s public school system is probably on the brink of a giant overhaul.
• The DFER-backed Peter Groff will cede his Colorado state senate seat to a principal.
• Even as vouchers are under the microscope in D.C., demand for them is up in Ohio.
• The Chicago charter school that voted to unionize is winning an award.
• The “fade-out” phenomenon: How well-preschooled poor children lose skills they learn.
• Antonucci wonders if union work is what teachers do once they’ve figured out their job.
• Financial disclosure forms for USDOE staffers, courtesy ProPublica. (Via Russo.)
• Richard Kessler adores a new staffer at the National Endowment for the Arts.
• The most troubled children seem to have an adverse effect on their classmates’ learning.

Much ado is made every year about how students do on state tests. But are individual students’ test scores useful for them and their teachers?

Ruben, a Bronx teacher who blogs at Is our Children Learning?, says they might not be, because the scores come months after the tests are given and don’t give specific information about students’ skills. In a post about finding out his students’ reading scores yesterday (some improved; others showed a decline), he writes:

What’s most frustrating is how little the numbers tell me. We’re talking about a test that was taken in January. So the data doesn’t really even speak to the students I’m currently teaching. The data doesn’t really speak to anything at all, because it isn’t dissected in any way to show strengths in needs in specific areas such as vocabulary, drawing conclusions or writing. All I have are numbers, numbers that in many ways contradict what I know to be true about the reading and writing abilities of my students.

Of course all this is inconsequential, because even if the test was flawed, or too easy (the whole city went up 20%? Really?), those flaws apply to 4th grade students (and their teachers) universally. … Ultimately, I know my students should have done better, because pretty much everyone else did better. So, now it’s time to figure out what went wrong, so I can get it right next year.

Ruben’s objections to how the state delivers test scores represent two of the reasons Department of Education has offered to justify the introduction of more frequent, rapidly scored interim assessments in city classrooms.

I’ve posted about Ruben’s insights before, here, here, and here.

A bare majority of New Yorkers say the mayor’s school leadership is strong, but that doesn’t mean they want him to keep control of the city schools, according to poll results released today.

New Yorkers approve of Bloomberg’s handling of the public schools more than they approve of how he is handling the economic crisis, public transportation, and taxes, according to a new Marist Poll. Only his handling of crime (78 percent) and swine flu (74 percent) got higher marks in the poll. Still, the proportion of people surveyed who think the mayor’s school handling is a success was low, at 51 percent, up from just 40 percent in Marist’s February poll.

Fewer people want Bloomberg to retain control of the schools than approve of how he is leading them: 60 percent of those polled said they thought state lawmakers should take Bloomberg’s school control away when they pass a new law about the system’s governance structure, which must happen by the end of next month.

Those respondents instead said that responsibility for running the schools should be given instead to “an appointed citywide Panel on Education Policy.” The city’s school board is currently known as the Panel for Educational Policy, and how much power it should have has been a central question in the school governance debate. (The Department of Education is already questioning the poll’s findings because of its wording.)

Among parents, the proportion who would strip the mayor of his schools control was even higher, at 67 percent. (more…)

A vocal supporter of mayoral control says that though he’s an economist, it’s tough for him to base his belief in the school governance structure on numbers.

Marcus Winters, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research who has touted Mayor Bloomberg’s school reforms in newspaper op/eds and academic papers, says mayoral control is the best way to govern schools because it provides more accountability for education reforms — but he can’t prove that using test scores.

“It makes me a little queasy to talk about researching positive effects of mayoral control,” Winters said today in a meeting with reporters about the governance structure. He said it’s “inappropriate” to draw a correlation between student performance and mayoral control because mayoral control is a broad governance structure, not a specific reform. “It’s really difficult to study because there’s a period before mayoral control and a period after, but other things have changed in the world besides mayoral control in that time,” he said. (more…)

• Stuyvesant High School introduced metal detectors this week, as an anti-cheating measure. (Post)
• The Post editorializes against Merryl Tisch’s bid to give the Board of Regents more power over charters.
• NYU is saying the DOE could possibly use some of its space to hold prekindergarten classes. (NY1)
• PS 121 in Brooklyn analyzed student data to post top-improving reading test scores. (Daily News)
• And PS 230 in Queens did the same thing to get its own double-digit test score boost. (Daily News)
• Wayne Barrett says Bloomberg’s reelection campaign should include attacks on the UFT. (Village Voice)
• A bill that would weaken mayoral control has five politicians supporting it. (Daily News)
• In districts where state politicians are pondering mayoral control, students are doing better. (Post)
• A Queens school put a 5-year-old boy on the wrong bus, which dropped him off blocks from home. (Post)
• A Bronx principal is being considered for a yearlong fellowship at the White House. (Daily News)
• The New York Observer says simply, “Mayoral control is working.”
• An initiative announced yesterday is set to bring more technology to city high schools. (NY1)
• The state comptroller should get to audit charter schools, says Buffalo’s schools CFO. (Buffalo News)
• Formerly a key opponent, black lawmakers are supporting school vouchers more. (USA Today)

• A report from Garth Harries’ latest meeting with special education parents.
• A teacher on her school’s union chapter: dysfunctional, but very well-intentioned.
• Another teacher on a colleague at her school who “definitely should not be teaching.”
• Tom Vander Ark, formerly of Gates, maps out the “new American education agenda.”
• Cory Booker takes to the HuffPost, and Klonsky surprisingly likes what he reads.
• Diane Ravitch says the Harlem Children’s Zone offers lessons, but not the ones David Brooks saw.
• Christine Quinn is jumping into the search for pre-K options in the Village.
• The Department of Education is admitting some problems getting G&T results to parents.
• A super-useful summary of Obama’s proposed 2010 education budget, from New America.
• Are school districts neglecting to read the USDOE’s advice on stimulus spending?
• The former union activist who manuevered performance pay in Denver will go to Washington.
• Charlie Barone found he had little common ground with academics at a panel on teacher quality.
• Los Angeles teachers won’t be able to strike in protest of layoffs following a judge’s decision.
• Sawchuck marvels at AFT ad campaigns. New in D.C., maybe, but not in New York City.
• The USDOE’s inspector general will audit New York’s stimulus spending.
• Peter Murphy of the state charter school association isn’t happy with Merryl Tisch.

Back in November, Elizabeth crashed the Gates Foundation’s annual meeting and reported that the foundation was planning to turn its attention to pushing for national standards. 

Today, testifying before the the U.S. Congress Committee on Education and Labor during a hearing on high school reform, Vicki Phillips, who heads the foundation’s education division (and wants “college ready” to be the word of the day), hinted at what those standards might look like. She said a strong set of national standards would bear little resemblance to the ever-expanding lists of skills and content that most states require students to master:

The hard part of this standards process will be making the radical leap from the vast numbers of standards states have today to a focused core that can accelerate performance. Dedicating ourselves to the fewer standards of what students really need for college and career readiness will require courage. Everyone can posture about whose standards are higher — what takes courage is making the tough choices about the fewer things that demand students and teachers attention. 

Chancellor Joel Klein responds to a question from moderator Doug Muzzio. (Left to right: Ana Maria Archilla, Doug Muzzio, Joel Klein and Monica Major) (GothamSchools / Kyla Calvert)

With the state legislature’s deadline for making a final decision on mayoral control less than two months away, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein himself made an appearance at one of the panels debating the issue across the city.

Sandwiched between assorted people who have called for curtailing the mayor’s power over the schools, Klein, who supports preserving the law intact, fielded criticism calmly.

When other panelists raised arguments about whether test scores and graduation rates were increasing at the dramatic rate touted by the Department of Education, the chancellor shot back with more data.

“In 2002 CUNY enrolled 16,000 students, in 2008 CUNY had 24,000 students enrolled,” Klein said. “I don’t care what you say about the graduation numbers — those are 8,000 real kids whose lives have changed because of the opportunities that are a product of mayoral control.”

Klein reiterated previous statements that he is open to having an independent agency review Department of Education data, like graduation rates and test scores. But he kept the door closed to other concessions. When the teachers union chief operating officer, Michael Mulgrew, asked Klein if he would be willing to consider removing MS 399 in the Bronx from the list of schools slated to close, Klein balked. (Mulgrew had replaced union president Randi Weingarten at the last minute; he is considered her likely successor as president when she transitions to running the national American Federation of Teachers union full-time.) (more…)

A bill introduced in Albany last week could limit The State University of New York’s (SUNY) power to certify charter schools, empowering the Board of Regents to veto the university’s recommendations for which schools should be allowed to open. New Board of Regents head Merryl Tisch is leading the charge for the change, and United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told GothamSchools today she supports the bill.

“SUNY as an entity is not sensitive to issues in the communities here,” Tisch told the Daily News. (A call to  Tisch’s office has not yet been returned).

Currently, the state’s Board of Regents, which is one of three boards that can authorize city charter schools, reviews SUNY’s authorizations but cannot prevent the SUNY-approved schools from opening. The Board has disagreed with SUNY’s charters two thirds of the time since 2007. While the Regents can’t block those schools from opening, they do have the power to revoke the charters of SUNY schools that drop below their standards.

The bill was introduced by Assembly Education Chair Catherine Nolan last week and is described as a way to standardize and streamline the chartering process. Critics of the bill argue that SUNY’s charter schools outperform other charters and that consolidating the power to authorize charters would mean fewer charter schools in the city. It’s unclear how much of a chance the bill has to pass, though charter advocates say they plan to work vigilantly to prevent it from becoming law.

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten defended Nolan’s and the Regents’ stance, even though SUNY is the UFT’s charter authorizer.

“If you really want to have top to bottom and bottom to top accountability you should have one statewide entity authorizing charters, not two,” she said. “We are always looking for ways to save money and be more efficient and having one statewide authorizer is probably best.” (more…)