GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Ever since a Daily News column highlighted declining numbers of black and Hispanic students at an elite Manhattan high school, students there have been trying to figure out how to bolster diversity. Tonight, they are holding a forum to confront the topic head on — but their school won’t be participating.

Beacon High School has accepted fewer minority and low-income students every year since it adopted a selective admissions procedures in 2005, even as the total number of students has been rising, according to the May 15 column by Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News.

The column reignited an ongoing conversation at Beacon about the school’s changing demographics, a Beacon senior, Cory Meara-Bainbridge, told me. After it appeared, a group of about 15 students banded together to plan a forum to begin a tough conversation about how the school’s unique admissions procedures might influence who applies and gets into the elite Upper West Side high school. Beacon requires not only high grades, strong test scores, and a portfolio of work, but also an in-person interview for admission. Current students sit on the interview committees.

So far, students say, the school’s administration has declined to participate in the discussion. (more…)

Just months after adjusting to the news that a schools official with no special education experience would be reviewing the city’s special education offerings, advocates for children with disabilities are now reeling from another shakeup: The news that the official, Garth Harries, is leaving the city.

The announcement today came after a months-long “listening tour” intended to teach Harries about the issues facing teachers and families of children with special needs. On the tour, Harries heard from anxious parents who explained from their point of view the nuances of an extremely complicated system.

“The special education community has invested a lot of time in bringing Garth up to speed,” said Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York (where I used to work). “I hope all that time will not be lost.” (more…)

The Republicans appear to have seized control of the State Senate today, in a dramatic Albany afternoon that could end up solidifying the mayor’s control of the public schools.

With Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith vowing to maintain mayoral control for the most part, the fiercest opponents of the law had pinned their hopes on a group of rogue Democratic senators. The idea was that these senators could force Smith, whose grasp of power in the Senate was quite thin, to revise his position. The opponents had already gathered at least three lawmakers to sponsor legislation they proposed.

But a Senate controlled by Republicans would offer a much less friendly reception. Mayor Bloomberg has generously supported many GOP campaigns, and Republican Senators are likely to take that to heart. When the mayoral control law was first written in 2002, the Republican Senate followed essentially in lockstep with Bloomberg’s wishes, letting him essentially negotiate on their behalf, Steve Sanders, an architect of the law and then the chairman of the Assembly’s education committee, told me this morning.

(UPDATE: City Hall News says the change could hurt mayoral control’s chances, by making it impossible for the legislature to come to an agreement by the June 30 sunset deadline.) (more…)

Chancellor Joel Klein. (GothamSchools via our Creative Commons Flickr)

A string of departures by top school officials is fueling speculation that Chancellor Joel Klein could be the next to go. But in an interview today, Klein laughed off the possibility. He said the departures — four since January — are actually evidence that his prescription for changing urban schools is catching on.

The latest official to leave is Garth Harries, the management guru who is in the middle of restructuring the city’s special education offerings. Harries announced today that he has accepted a job at the New Haven school system starting in July.

A teachers union vice president, Carmen Alvarez, said the exodus signals that even bigger changes could be brewing at the top. ”Read the tea leaves,” she said in an interview today. “People don’t leave like that unless there’s another change in the air.”

Some have speculated that Klein’s departure could be part of a deal that preserves the mayor’s control of the city schools: The head of the unpopular-amongst-elected-officials schools chancellor in exchange for continued power for the mayor. (more…)

Former NYC Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy took to the pages of today’s New York Times to tout a five-point plan for fixing American schools.  skoolboy couldn’t say why the Times saw this as a good use of scarce editorial space—the graphic alone took up a number of column-inches—but there it is.  Here’s his laundry list:

Raise the age of compulsory education to 19, mandating a year of post-secondary education-perhaps to be paid for by the federal government.  One of the issues here is whether an expanded school career should be mandated, or simply encouraged with powerful incentives, such as federal aid for postsecondary schooling.  Levy seems confused on this point:  He quotes President Obama, in his February address to a joint session of Congress, as saying, “I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training,” and in the next breath describes this as “compulsory post-secondary education.”  The presidency is a bully pulpit, and many educators were heartened by this strong statement about the importance of schooling.  But no one is talking about federal or even state mandates for postsecondary attendance.  Let’s try to get kids to complete high school with a diploma that signifies some intellectual accomplishment first.   

Use high-pressure sales tactics to curb truancy.  Levy envisions “making repeated home visits and early morning phone calls, securing written commitments and eliciting oral commitments in front of witnesses” as strategies to “compel parents to ensure that their children go to school every day.”  The policy remedy that Levy proposes assumes that the main reason that kids don’t go to school is because their parents don’t “compel” them to.  This seems like a misdiagnosis of the cause of the problem.  It’s more plausible that students don’t attend because they don’t find what’s happening at school meaningful or valuable.  An engaging curriculum might well be a much better policy solution than high-pressure sales tactics.  If the ultimate goal is to promote student learning, getting a student to the door of the school is only a first step. (more…)

Garth Harries

The city official who is in the middle of reviewing the city’s special education programs will leave New York at the end of the month to take a top job at a Connecticut school system.

Garth Harries, a former McKinsey consultant who has worked with Chancellor Joel Klein since 2003, is scheduled to be appointed assistant superintendent by the New Haven Board of Education at a meeting tonight. The mayor of New Haven, John DeStefano, has said he wants to improve the city’s public schools in similar ways to Mayor Bloomberg in New York City. Harries’ job is to flesh out the specific of how to transform the schools — and implement them, according to the New Haven Register.

Harries’s new position appears to be similar to the one he held in New York before he took over a review of special education, down to its title, “assistant superintendent for portfolio and performance management.” Until January, he headed the DOE’s Office of Portfolio Development, where he led efforts to create new schools.

Harries called the news “bittersweet” in an e-mail message he sent to special education advocates this morning. He said that New Haven began recruiting him just six weeks ago and said his decision was based in part on the proximity of the job to his wife’s farm in Connecticut.

Harries has been preparing for some time to take on added responsibilities in school leadership. (more…)

To assist in reviewing the results for the latest math tests, I have gathered some data and compiled it into a single workbook that you can download here.  In addition to including some hard-to-find data, the workbook includes filters that allow you compare results based on whatever criteria you find interesting.  The results are sorted by grade and mean scale score.

Some notes:

1. I started with the workbooks provided on the DOE website on this page.

2. I added data from insideschools.org to note schools that are “gifted and talented”, “selective”, and “unzoned”.  Insideschools defines these terms as follows: (more…)

FROM NEW YORK CITY:

• Charter school operator Eva Moskowitz wants to open three new schools next year. (Post)
• The Daily News analyzed several years’ state math tests and found that they have gotten easier.
• Comptroller Thompson refused the DOE’s deal with an expensive supplies vendor. (Daily News)
• Most schools where kids are being paid for their grades saw higher-than-average test score gains. (Post)
• Sheldon Silver says he’d consider fixed terms for school board members. (Downtown Express)
• A professor who influenced Joel Klein’s reforms says the chancellor is doing a good job. (Daily News)
• Mayor Bloomberg made sure there was a possibility of a gifted program in every district. (Post)
• At one of the new selective schools the mayor opened, everyone studies Latin. (Post)
• Many city schools, public and private, require students to volunteer before they graduate. (Daily News)
• A nonprofit squash program helps keep some city kids on the path to college. (Times)

AND BEYOND:

• The Syracuse Post-Standard says the state comptroller should be able to audit charter schools.
• Jay Mathews’ new list ranks schools where many kids take, but don’t pass, AP tests. (Washington Post)
• Bob Herbert writes about a KIPP school in North Carolina, where every senior is going to college. (Times)
• From mayoral-control-bound Nashville, a report on mayoral control’s mixed effects. (The Tennessean)
• Houston is looking for a superintendent like Joel Klein. (Houston Chronicle)
• Former NYC chancellor Harold Levy has five ideas to make colleges and universities better. (Times)
• An Ohio school district cancelled graduation after most students were involved in a cheating ring. (AP)
• A $100 personal computer lets students work independently in class. (Christian Science Monitor)

• Canada says the children of Harlem have “much better options today” because of mayoral control.
• Paterson strikes a deal, trading limited pension benefits for buyouts and fewer layoffs.
• The Queens Tribune calls ARIS’s Parent Link a victory for Learn NY.
• Sharpton’s alliance with Bloomberg and Klein has kept him useful to the Obama admin.
• Billy Easton says Obama and Duncan have got it wrong: we shouldn’t start reform by closing schools.
• Insideschools asks you to grade the mayor on mayoral control.
• ThinkQuest NYC wants the city’s teachers to fundraise and offers to pay the winners in iPods.
• The Hechinger Institute puts out a new guide for journalists reporting on academic rigor.
• Here’s a good collection of the mixed reactions the standards movement has elicited from bloggers.
• Ed Notes offers an explanation of Randi’s actions as the result born of the ’68 UFT strike.
• When the going gets tough, flee the country and give your kids a good, if unconventional, education.
• And Eduwonk makes an appearance (albeit a fuzzy one) on Bloggingheads.

The 4.9 percent figure that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has given for each school’s budget cut seriously underestimates the severity of the cuts, especially at schools where teachers want to stay, a principal told me yesterday.

When he first got his new budget from the Department of Education, the Brooklyn principal, who asked to remain anonymous, saw a cut of almost 5 percent, as Klein had warned. That amount was significant, but he could handle it. Things looked much worse when he saw that his expenses were also rising, by nearly the same amount that was being cut. In total, he said, his effective budget is set to drop by 8.5 percent, a size that means he will probably have to let go at least one teacher.

The second surprise came when he realized what was driving the rising costs: The arguably good news that staff members at his school, from teachers to school secretaries to administrators, are sticking around. That means they have more years of experience than they have in the past — and therefore must be paid more, thanks to the salary structure in schools gives teachers and other employees, including the principal himself, more money every year they stay in the system.

Klein explained the phenomenon at a recent City Council hearing on the Department of Education’s proposed budget. (more…)