GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Next year, the teacher data reports that sparked a battle between the city and the teachers’ union could find a much warmer reception.

The new firm hired to produce the Teacher Data Initiative is reaching out to the teachers’ unions that bitterly opposed the program, and the firm’s researchers say they are committed to producing tools to help teachers learn, not to rank them.

The Value-Added Research Center at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, the firm hired last month to produce the reports, held a summer workshop on their research methods for officials from school districts around the country. Two researchers from the United Federation of Teachers also attended.

Chris Thorn, associate director of the center, said that this school year’s round of teacher assessment reports will likely look much the same as last year’s.

But the long-term goal for the three-year, $840,000 program, he said, is to refine the way data is collected so it tells the most accurate stories about what’s going on in the classroom.

“You can’t connect students to teachers without data so clean you can eat off of it,” Thorn said. (more…)

• Loopholes in a new state program allow high school dropouts to get money. (Buffalo News)
• Sen. Gillibrand and Speaker Quinn want a child nutrition act renewed, and revised. (WNYC)
• As many as 5,000 placards could be returned to principals. (Post)
• Merry Tisch challenged Obama to a debate over NY’s right to Race to the Top. (GothamSchools)
• The “bag lady” who gave to Hebrew Univ. wasn’t a bag lady at all. (Daily News)
• DC37, which represents school aides, will endorse Thompson, not Bloomberg. (Times)
• Diane Ravitch boosts David Steiner in the Post, saying he will toughen the state tests.
• Note the title of her forthcoming book: “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.”
• A self-help critic writes in the Daily News that American colleges are declining.
• Colleges are struggling to ensure that they get enough students to pay the bills. (WashPost)

• Paterson called Bill Thompson an “outstanding” president of the Board of Education.
• The WashPost reports on the state superintendent’s response to cheating at a D.C. school.
• Liz Willen wonders if Soros’ back-to-school checks would be more fool-proof as gift certificates.
• Eduflack wants to know why the loyal oppositions to Duncan is so quiet.
• “We can truly become a model for the nation as a whole,” says Baltimore’s schools chief.
• California’s budget woes put a hold on new textbook orders, encourage the digital variety.
• The National Center for Science Education reports that evolution is making a comeback.
• Dallas teachers say the district wasted state money on a cushy retreat.
• A teacher offers tips on how to stock your classroom for close to free.
• Another says she’s about to start school, but has no idea what she’ll be teaching.
• In its “Careers” section, the WSJ documents the expansion of charter schools.
• Aaron Pallas writes that NYC’s retention policies have no evidence backing them up.
• And Arne Duncan went to Alaska, but he didn’t see a moose.

Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the Board of Regents (file photo)

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch is challenging President Obama and his secretary of education to a verbal duel over New York’s access to a special pot of federal stimulus dollars for schools.

“I am willing to debate the president and Arne Duncan in public space at any time of their choosing on the impact of this law in New York State,” Tisch said in a telephone interview this evening.

Obama administration officials have said that states that ban the use of test scores to evaluate teachers will not be eligible for the dollars, called the Race to the Top fund. A New York law prohibits something very similar, using student test scores to decide whether teachers deserve tenure.

A nonprofit group, The New Teacher Project, today said the law should exclude New York from receiving Race to the Top funds. (Founded by Michelle Rhee, the D.C. schools chancellor, The New Teacher Project brings non-traditionally trained teachers into school districts and advocates for teaching policies that often clash with teachers unions’ positions.)

Duncan himself has suggested that New York’s law does not make the cut. “Believe it or not, several states including New York, Wisconsin, and California, have laws, they have laws that create a firewall between students and teacher data,” Duncan said at a June conference where he previewed the guidelines around the fund.

The administration’s aim is to spur states to change laws and policies it disapproves of. Duncan has vowed to dole out the dollars in two batches, one this fall and the next in 2010, in order to give state legislatures time to change their laws.

But New York officials, including Governor Paterson and Tisch, have refused to accept that the state might be disqualified. Teachers union officials, including American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who lobbied state lawmakers to pass the law last year, are also lobbying hard for New York not to be disqualified. (more…)

Democratic primary day is sneaking up on the city, but candidates in district and city-wide races have offered little in the way of public pronouncements on the city’s schools.

To remedy this, GothamSchools is blanketing candidates’ inboxes with an education survey, asking candidates for their opinions on matters from how schools in their districts should be improved, to whether Chancellor Joel Klein should keep his job.

But there are dozens of races and even more candidates, so we’re asking our readers for assistance. If you know that a candidate in your district or borough is dodging important questions about the schools or has an interesting background in education, send us an email. (more…)

The confusion over what GothamSchools is, most of it outrageously inflating our place in the world, never ceases to flatter me. We regularly receive questions from parents about how to get their children into a school, and we have received several requests to be put in touch with government officials.

Here is a recent example, name and organization redacted to protect the innocent:

Hi Ms. Green,

The [redacted], is holding a Symposium on the arts on Friday, September 25, 2009 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and wants to invite the Dr. David Steiner.   Please let me know his mailing address.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

[redacted]

I do know Steiner, the newly appointed state education commissioner who won’t start officially until October. I have interviewed him several times, and even once sat next to him at a delicious seafood dinner in Manhattan. However, I don’t have his mailing address on hand. If you do, let me know, and I’ll send it along to the reader.

Mike Bloomberg’s comments at Monday’s press conference announcing plans to extend a test-based promotion policy to grades four and six were eerily reminiscent of Arne Duncan’s and Joel Klein’s reactions to two reports on social promotion released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research in 2004.  The Chicago Consortium, an independent research group studying Chicago schools, examined the effects of promotional gates at the third-, sixth- and eighth-grade levels.  (I reviewed one of the draft reports at the request of the Consortium.)  The findings were unequivocal:  Test-based retention did not alter the achievement trajectories of third-graders, and sixth-graders who were retained had lower achievement growth than similar low-achieving students who were promoted.  Implementing the eighth-grade promotional gate reduced overall dropout rates slightly, but clearly lowered the likelihood of high school graduation for very low achievers and students who were already overage for grade at the time they reached the gate.  

David Herszenhorn, writing in the New York Times at the time, described a Chicago press conference releasing the reports.  He quoted Arne Duncan, then the chief executive of the Chicago public schools, as saying, “Common sense tells you that ending social promotion has contributed to higher test scores and lower dropout rates over the last eight years … I am absolutely convinced in my heart, it’s the right thing to do.”  Herszenhorn delicately noted that Duncan made claims about the promotional policies that were not supported by the two reports.  “While the report drew no such conclusion,” he wrote, “[Duncan] credited the tough promotion rules for improvements in the system as a whole, including better overall test scores, higher graduation and attendance rates and a lower overall dropout rate.”

In the same article, Herszenhorn suggested that NYC Chancellor Joel Klein had “seemed to push aside the findings.”   He cited a statement by Klein that, “The Chicago study strongly supports our view that effective early grade interventions are key to ending social promotion and preparing students for the hard work they will encounter in later grades.”  Klein’s statement was patently false:  the Chicago studies didn’t examine early grade interventions.  Rather, authors Jenny Nagaoka and Melissa Roderick pointed out that a great many students in Chicago were struggling well before the third-grade promotional gate, suggesting the desirability of early intervention with struggling students. (more…)

• The number of right answers needed to score a Level 2 on state tests is dropping. (Daily News)
• A Bronx City Councilwoman was funneling public dollars to Catholic schools. (Post)
• Governor Paterson is confident NY will get Race to the Top dollars. (GothamSchools)
• The city will get C4E dollars without first holding required public hearings. (GothamSchools, Post)
• Signing mayoral control law, Paterson praised the city for steady gains since 02. (Post)
• The family of the swine flu victim who was also an A.P. will sue the city. (Times, Post, GS)
• George Soros paid for a charity program, inspired by a gift from Quakers in his youth. (Daily News)
• The average amount of money students borrow to pay for college is growing. (Times)
• Gov. Paterson said he hasn’t yet decided who should be New York City mayor. (Post)
• The Post’s Seifman filed a story on Bloomberg’s Twittering in 140 character chunks.
• A Queens middle school will receive a dose of South Korean culture this year. (Daily News)

• The UFT comes out in favor of Dick Ravitch’s lieutenant governor appointment.
• Paterson really did sign renewed mayoral control into law, for real!
• How to describe teacher retention that makes life better but doesn’t keep bad teachers in?
• Calif. AG Jerry Brown must decide if the state deserves Race to the Top funds. Cuomo, you’re up.
• The California union may be urging NEA, its parent union, to challenge Obama more directly.
• Richard Rothstein urges Obama to replace No Child Left Behind.
• And Education Equality Project has its own accountability paper out.
• Imagining a central, but not center, role for teachers in the classroom of the future.
• Looks like NYC nixed Tony Danza’s reality TV-in-a-school idea. Now he’s begging in Philly.

Governor David Paterson, speaking today at Harlem's P.S. 208

Governor Paterson insisted today that New York deserves a piece of the special Race to the Top stimulus fund for schools, declaring that an Obama official assured him the state will be eligible for the funds.

But there was immediate confusion over the governor’s explanation for why New York is eligible.

Paterson said that New York’s tenure law, which bans school districts from using student test scores when doling out teacher tenure, applies only to New York City. Therefore, he said, it does not violate Race to the Top’s requirement that states not link student data to teachers.

“That’s a specific law to New York City,” Paterson said, adding that the provision is “a local law that’s implemented through the state.”

A Bloomberg administration source disputed that interpretation, saying that the tenure provision applies statewide. (more…)