GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The Brooklyn high school profiled in the Daily News today doesn’t get its students into competitive colleges by “maniacal dedication” alone. The Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice also has a robust college counseling program that outstrips what’s offered by most city high schools.

The school’s college placement office has two staff members who edit essays, help students find internships to build their resumes, and organize trips to colleges near and far. Most schools of SLJ’s size, with about 100 students in each grade, are lucky to have a single person dedicated solely to helping students navigate the college admissions process.

Susan Knight, SLJ’s director of college placement, told me about the school’s college program after a panel discussion this spring about how to boost achievement at city high schools. During our conversation, a college counselor from another Brooklyn high school approached Knight to ask her how he could replicate SLJ’s success on his own. It would be a challenge, Knight said: She hired additional an additional staff member only after persuading foundations to cover the salary. (more…)

A little more than two years ago I found myself trying to decide between New York City Teaching Fellows and a paralegal position at a law firm specializing in anti-trust law. They both seemed like good, albeit far different, opportunities. My ever-protective mom, a former teacher who got her start in East L.A., advised against Teaching Fellows. I myself weighed the benefits of excitement and “making a difference” against the likelihood that I would be embarking on the most difficult experience of my life. Ultimately, picturing myself numbed by boredom one month into work at my air-conditioned Manhattan office, I opted for Teaching Fellows.

Surely it would be an incredible challenge. Despite volunteer experience in high school and college as a mentor and tutor for “at-risk” youth, nothing had really prepared me to teach some of New York City’s poorest children. Still, I looked forward to the chance to gain “valuable life experience” as I saw it.  In two years, I would look back at my time as a teacher with pride at what I had accomplished and the good I had done for the kids. Then, I would move on to whatever career I’d finally chosen.

Flash forward to October 2007. Things were not going well. At least three fights had already broken out in my classroom. Day to day I struggled to get through my lessons and couldn’t find the secret to commanding basic respect from my students. I doubted if I would get through the month, much less the year.  One day at lunch I wondered if I could bring myself to return to the classroom that afternoon.

Somehow, I did go back that afternoon. (more…)

• New UFT President Michael Mulgrew visited two schools on his first day. (Staten Island Advance)
• Brooklyn’s Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice focuses on getting kids into college. (Daily News)
• This year’s swine flu strategy won’t call for as many school closings. (Washington Post)
• The Gotham Gazette analyzes Mayor Bloomberg and Comptroller William Thompson’s schools fights.
• A legal settlement by New York City has put school Medicaid claims on hold for now. (Newsday)
• Parents and teachers are optimistic about the new state test dates. (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)
• Thomas Carroll questions whether summer break should still exist. (Post)
• The dropout rate dropped 17 percent last year in Los Angeles. (L.A. Times)
• City math and reading scores are up but the improvement’s meaning is unclear. (Times)
• City yeshivas are getting federal stimulus funds for construction. (Post)

• Researchers of all persuasions critique the city’s test score claims, and the state tests themselves.
• Andy Rotherham says the test score issue is one that really hasn’t been resolved yet.
• Schools in Manhattan’s District 3 have made a pact to go green together, with the city’s help.
• Rick Hess says Obama would do well to move slowly on Race to the Top, or else it will go NCLB’s way.
• Norm Scott and the Chicago Sun-Times both ask where the money is for gentler school reform initiatives.
• A city teacher posted about her friend’s DonorsChoose project, and then it was funded.
• Peter Goodman says the credit recovery guidelines will be David Steiner’s first big test.
• Do other countries spend their education dollars more wisely, say on preschool?
• Pissed Off Teacher specs out how her students would have fared if she had dumped the low scorers first.
• Now federal authorities are investigating whether Chicago schools played fair in admissions.
• Virtual reality is a new strategy for preparing new teachers for the classroom.
• Teachers want class size reduction. But they’re wrong, says Jamie O’Leary.
• Mr. Accountable Talk has some hard-line suggestions for how to clear the ATR pool.
• Who will tie poor kids’ shoelaces?

City schools are scoring higher on state math and reading tests, but they remain near the bottom of all districts statewide on science and social studies tests, a situation that schools officials attribute to budget cuts.

Although social studies and science scores rose last year, they remain very low compared to scores in the rest of the state. Only five of the city’s 32 school districts performed scored at better than the 10th percentile in science, meaning that 90 percent of districts statewide scored better than 27 city districts. In contrast, 18 districts scored at the 10th percentile or higher in math.

Even in high-performing districts, fourth and eighth graders perform poorly on science and social studies tests compared to other students in the state. For example, Manhattan’s District 2 outperformed 86 percent of districts in the state in math. In reading, District 2 students beat out students in 78 percent of districts. But in science, the district scored in just the 27th percentile, meaning that 73 percent of districts had higher average science scores. 

The discrepancy, highlighted in the test score comparison tool launched by the New York Times today, gives ammunition to critics who say the city schools have focused so much on math and reading that they have given short shrift to other subjects.

The early years of Mayor Bloomberg’s Children First reforms did focus most heavily on math and reading, a department spokesman said today. Now, the city is trying to boost science and social studies performance by introducing some of the same strategies that worked for math and reading, such as offering a standardized curriculum in each subject, said the spokesman, Will Havemann. (more…)

As the lure of federal stimulus money puts new pressure on states to use test scores in tenure decisions, a New York commission that was supposed to study that very issue is making its absence felt.

Last spring, in return for passing legislation that put a two-year hold on allowing principals to use students’ test scores in teacher evaluations, state, city, and teachers union officials agreed to establish a commission to study the matter. Though the state Senate passed a bill to create the commission, no Assembly member ever introduced the bill, allowing it to die just as the 2008 session came to a close. In the wake of the bill’s demise, state and union officials have pointed to each other when asked whom to blame for the Assembly’s inaction.

With the law distancing student data from tenure evaluations set to expire on July 1, 2010, some believe the legislature will let the law sunset without creating the commission.

Timothy Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association, said he has been lobbying lawmakers to study how to integrate student test scores into tenure decisions.

“The teachers unions are very close with the Assembly, and they did not want this [the commission] to happen,” Kremer said, adding that he did not believe the legislature would create the commission before the law expires. “We just have not been able to get any traction on this,” he said. (more…)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein’s emphasis on standardized test scores appears to be working: an analysis of state test scores before and after mayoral control reveals “a broad and steady march upward,” the Times’ Elissa Gootman and Robert Gebeloff report.

The rates of New York City students passing standardized English and math tests have risen at a faster pace than statewide passing rates overall, and Queens and Staten Island have gone from among the lowest-scoring counties in the state to among the best, according to the Times’ report.

The story mentions in passing that the results of the 2007 federal National Association of Educational Progress showed no significant progress among New York City’s eighth-grade students during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure. Some experts claim that NAEP scores may be a better measure of overall student performance because it’s more difficult to engage in direct test preparation and thus less vulnerable to score inflation.

But Klein dismissed those concerns, telling the Times that the state tests are a valid measure of learning: (more…)

In an e-mail to teachers union members sent Friday afternoon, new UFT president Michael Mulgrew outlined his priorities for the coming year. At the top of his list is dealing with a budget situation that he says is not likely to improve:

Huge deficits are again on the horizon, and since education consumes a large chunk of the state and city budgets, it will inevitably be a target of the budget cutters again this year. Our job will be to make the case clearly and compellingly to parents and the wider public that more cuts will be devastating for kids. 

Another of Mulgrew’s concerns — how teachers use data about their students to improve instruction — could shape up to be pivotal this year. The Obama administration plans to distribute $4.3 billion in federal education funds based in some way on the way states use student test scores to evaluate teachers. Mulgrew writes:

The volume of paperwork remains unmanageable, and now teachers are being asked to use the enormous data being generated about their students to drive their instruction without being given the time, training or access to computers they need to do that task effectively.

Mulgrew also addresses the upcoming contract negotiations, saying that a survey is soon to go out to union members to help guide leaders during negotiations with the city. Mulgrew’s full letter to UFT members is below the jump: (more…)

• A little-known law that expired with mayoral control could have posed school construction issues. (Post)
• Weingarten calls standardized tests “the most unreliable measure of student learning.” (Daily News)
• The Obama girls are attending the ultimate summer school, run by the White House. (Times)
• Principals can’t afford to send almost-failing students to summer school this year. (Daily News)
• The soon-to-open Hebrew language charter school found space, not in a public school building. (Post)
• A related Hebrew charter school in Florida is overcrowded and expanding. (Miami Herald)
• D.C.’s school turnaround teams, including one from Brooklyn, face a daunting task. (Washington Post)
• The Obama Administration is still planning to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone. (Washington Post)
• The city demoted the current principal of Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School, Spencer Holder. (Post)
• A state appeals court ruled that an upstate charter school must ID its teachers to the union. (Newsday)
• The Wall Street Journal says the parent-paid aide saga is an example of unions hindering education.
• The Daily News says David Steiner is a promising state ed chief but has been too politic on some issues.
• Albany charter school operator Thomas Carroll has six ideas for Steiner. (Albany Times-Union)
• Jay Mathews profiles a Virginia teacher who opens his advanced math class to all. (Washington Post)