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Last week I read a thought-provoking column by Diane Ravitch in the New York Post, in which she discusses the lowering of the bar on New York State math and ELA tests. She points out that to reach level 2, which is sufficient for promotion in New York City, a student needs a significantly lower percentage of points than he or she would have needed three years ago. Ravitch comments. “Ending social promotion, as the city rightly wants to do, is thus meaningless, because students can reach Level 2 by just guessing.”

Likewise, Meredith Kolodner writes in the Daily News, “The number of correct answers needed to score a Level 2 to get promoted has sunk so low that a student can guess on the multiple choice section and leave the rest of the test blank.”

This is disturbing. Surely it isn’t possible to get a 2—and thus a promotion to the next grade—by just guessing! Or is it?

To find out, I conducted a little experiment. (more…)

Two weeks ago, Forbes magazine released their second annual ratings of U.S. colleges and universities.  The Forbes ratings are competing with the market leader, U.S. News & World Report, whose rankings are taken way too seriously by the American public and the institutions that are ranked.  Moreover, as I’ve argued recently, these ranking and rating schemes are wholly inadequate for their purported purpose:  helping students and their families discern whether a particular institution is likely to be a good fit between a student’s needs and interests and a school’s capacity to meet those needs and interests.  In fact, the situation is much worse for choosing colleges and universities than for choosing elementary or secondary schools.  There is even more variability in the experiences of students within a given college or university than within a typical elementary or secondary school, due to the fact that college students have more specialized programs of study.

Forbes has gone to great lengths to distinguish its rating scheme from the one used by U.S. News.  The Forbes rankings are based on listings of alumni in Who’s Who in America;  salaries of alumni;  student evaluations from RateMyProfessors.com;  four-year graduation rates;  numbers of students receiving nationally competitive awards;  and the number of faculty receiving awards for scholarship and creative pursuits.  This differs dramatically from the U.S. News criteria, which emphasize peer assessments, retention rates, faculty and financial resources, selectivity, graduation rate performance, and alumni giving rates.  There’s nothing scientific about the choice of indicators making up the respective rankings;  it’s a matter of judgment, and any reader is free to proclaim that these aren’t the indicators that she or he would choose, or that some indicators should get more or less weight than others.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the Forbes rankings is the reliance on RateMyProfessors.com ratings for 25% of the total score.  Founded in 1999, RateMyProfessors.com (RMP) is a division of MTV Viacom.  I can see a case for incorporating students’ reports of their satisfaction with their courses, as long as one doesn’t mistake such reports for direct evidence of what students learned in those courses.  But using RMP is highly problematic for this purpose, because students choose to rate professors on the website, and the students in a particular college who choose to do so may not be representative of all of the students who attend that college.  If the students who post ratings are not representative of the population of students in a given college, the average of those ratings doesn’t tell us much that is useful about the typical experience of students. (more…)

News from New York City:

• The city’s labor chief says the city has budgeted 8 percent raises for teachers over two years. (Post)
• Bill Gates personally funded Learn NY, the group that lobbied for mayoral control’s renewal. (Post)
• Mayor Bloomberg filled his school board spots with longtime allies. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News)
• Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s passion for pizza hasn’t abated. (Post)
• The Post says Mayor Bloomberg shouldn’t be touting a community college boost he can’t pay for.
• City Councilman Eric Gioia is pushing textbook rentals for CUNY students. (Daily News)

And beyond:

• Urban school districts are turning to public relations campaigns to boost enrollment. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Obama administration is using its clout to get states to change their education laws. (Times)
• Jay Mathews on the “age-old problem” of schools denying help for disabled students. (Washington Post)
• Schools are rethinking Holocaust education as the number of survivors dwindles. (Washington Post)
• Chicago is continuing the school “turnaround” program that Arne Duncan launched. (Chicago Tribune)
• Plans to build an all-inclusive school data system in D.C. have been derailed. (Washington Post)
• A libertarian think tank member says national standards would “homogenize” education. (Daily News)

• Outer borough students are hit hard by the rising cost of rides on city’s express bus service
• A guide to community colleges written by two Bronx college profs lands Jay Matthew’s approval.
• States will be able to use a small amount of stimulus money to administer programs.
• Norm Scott thinks we’ll see a half a generation of mayoral control before it’s voted down.
• N. Virginia students have rising test scores but more of their schools aren’t meeting academic targets.
• A UCLA prof. says talk of “miracles” in city schools is dumbing down eduction (via Frustrated Teacher)
• England formerly stable drop-out rate is now on the rise.
• Eduwonk’s guest blogger ends her run on a personal note.
• And rookie reporter Damon Weaver asks President Obama about his education policies.

The citywide board that became a hotly-debated issue in the fight over mayoral control is back with a mixture of old and new faces.

Mayor Bloomberg announced his eight appointees to the Panel for Educational Policy on WOR Radio’s The John Gambling Show this morning. Of the people he named to the board, four will return to their previous positions, while the other four will join the panel for the first time.

Bloomberg said that the new panel will complete the process of restoring mayoral control. “It is the last step in re-establishing the school governance that has led to all of these improvements over the past seven years,” he told Gambling.

The newly-formed panel will not be an exact replica of the previous one, but the changes are more modest than some had hoped. Going into this summer’s school governance fight, critics who charged that the PEP was little more than a rubber stamp for the mayor’s policies had hoped to give members fixed terms and to prevent the mayor from appointing the majority of its members. Though neither of those changes happened, the new panel will have some increased oversight of things like contracts and school utilization.

The mayor’s appointees have close ties to his administration. One new PEP member, Gitte Peng, spent five years as a senior education policy adviser to Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott. Peng helped craft the original school governance legislation that consolidated the mayor’s control of the schools.

Walcott briefly served as president of the Board of Education this summer before mayoral control was reauthorized. Bloomberg said today that Peng’s appointment would permit Walcott’s presence “live on” at the board. (more…)

New York City cannot spend state school aid until it holds mandatory hearings on how the money will be used, the state said on Wednesday, correcting an earlier statement that the city could already use the funds.

The state funding, known as Contracts for Excellence, is only doled out to districts that prove they will spend the money in certain kinds of programs pre-approved by state school officials, such as training for teachers and principals, and reducing class size. This summer, the city’s Department of Education skipped the mandated date for hearings, and is now saying that the hearings will be held when the new school year begins in September.

“Contracts cannot be approved without proper public hearings being held,” Jonathan Burman, a spokesman for the state education department wrote in an email on Thursday. “Contracts need to be reviewed and approved before any contract funds are released by the State Education Dept.”

Previously, the state had said that the city could use funds continuing last year’s contract, and only money for “new purposes” would require the commissioner’s approval. The state’s grim financial picture has meant that the city will not receive an increase over the amount it was given last year.

A spokeswomen for the city DOE, Ann Forte, said that even though the state has yet to approve the contract, the city Office of Management and Budget has fronted the money to its schools. (more…)

The city’s first Hebrew-language school will open this fall, but the charter school’s ethnic makeup and curriculum are causing some to worry that it will cross the church-state divide.

In an article in this week’s Forward, Gal Beckerman profiles the controversial Hebrew Language Academy, which is cohabiting with a Yeshiva in Mill Basin, Brooklyn after a long search for building space. Principal Maureen Campbell, a former city public school teacher and administrator, tells Beckerman that she’s not fretting about treading on the line between church and state.

As for whether she felt worried about the line between religion and state that critics said the school was toeing: “It’s actually not a thin line,” she said. “It is a line that is very clear. The church and state separation in New York is very clear. You can teach a culture and a language without encouraging the observance of a religion.”

The piece delves into the school’s racial composition, which is drawing criticism from those who worry it will inspire discrimination by becoming an enclave of white Jewish children in a racially diverse neighborhood. (more…)

• The Sharpton-Gingrich-Duncan national tour will kick off in Philly. (AP, Phila. Inquirer)
• Klein told parents to expect more involvement this school year. (Good Day New York)
• A higher-ed textbook publisher is offering students the option to rent e-books. (Times)
• Mayor Bloomberg’s community college push targets immigrants and low-wage workers. (Times)
• The eventual college would have 5,000 students and would target specific jobs. (Post, NY1)
• Bloomberg said he’d dip into his own fortune to help finance the project. (GothamSchools)
• The Times editorial board endorses close supervision, not jail, for young delinquents.
• The WSJ says India’s new Right to Education Act offers watered-down school choice.

• Sherman Dorn makes reading the latest research on value-added more fun.
• Maybe at schools with many good teachers, teacher performance rises even after 3 years.
• New York gets attention that should really go to (my hometown in) Maryland, says Petrilli.
• In Hillsborough Florida, the teachers union is working with voucher advocates. Really.
• Peter Murphy wishes that Merryl Tisch would go along with Obama’s education agenda.
• Should teaching artists be state-certified? Regents and foundation leaders are wondering.
• Sen. Duane’s study forecasts “a looming crisis” in overcrowding in Hells Kitchen schools.
• Mark Weprin, who battles testing, is getting tagged for ties to lobbyists in a City Council race.

Announcing plans to beef up funding for the city’s community colleges, Bloomberg billed himself as the first mayor to heed President Obama’s call for greater investment in higher education.

Part of that investment may come from the mayor himself. At a press conference today at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Bloomberg said that he expected most of the funding for a new community college he wants to open to come from private donations, adding that he would contribute some of his own money to the project.

His campaign plan includes flooding the city’s eight community colleges with an additional $50 million over the next four years as well as increasing the availability of existing programs, such as day care for students’ children and financial aid.

In July of this year, Obama announced a $12 billion plan to produce 5 million more community college graduates by 2020. The mayor’s plan states that it will graduate 120,000 New Yorkers by that year.

“New York City can and should lead the way in following the president’s challenge and we will,” the mayor said. (more…)