GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Schools got nearly straight A’s on this year’s progress reports. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News, NY1)
• The principal of Brooklyn’s PS 8 said nothing changed at the school to change it from an F to an A. (Post)
• Mayoral candidates and city principals say the high grades are an election-year “game.” (Post)
• In a report, Manhattan BP Scott Stringer says the city hasn’t built enough new schools. (Daily News)
• A Bronx teaching assistant says she was fired after reporting abuse, and she’s suing. (Daily News)
• The Daily News backs the ruling against the principal who was fired after stirring up controversy.
• A New Utrecht HS student is suing because she says the school didn’t protect her from abuse. (Post)
• Conservative groups in the U.S. are complaining about an international sex education guide. (Times)
• Some parents are choosing unschooling, a form of homeschooling with little structure. (Baltimore Sun)

• A rubber room teacher shares 15 lessons learned, starting with “most people don’t like A/C.”
• Obama will give a speech for schoolkids only next week, urging them to take responsibility.
• Suggested lesson plans (PDF) accompany the speech. Some are crying federalism foul.
• Joel Klein, meanwhile, will spend next Tuesday in Los Angeles with the Gates Foundation.
• Do new principals hurt schools? Leonie digs inside in the Leadership Academy study.
• You’ve heard of peer effects, where sharp students improve their friends? Meet teacher effects.
• Meeting a Buffalo teacher who has an online partnership with a Scottish counterpart.
• Warlick suggests making textbooks smaller to appeal to the modern-day schoolkid.
• California colleges top the Washington Monthly’s what-do-colleges-do-for-America rankings.
• Eli Broad told WSJ he’d give ED in 08 got a 2 out of 10.
• There may be a dark side to engaging students in schoolwork. (Via always engaging Pondiscio.)
• By 2012, charter schools in New Orleans could outnumber traditional ones 3 to 1.
• Brian Lehrer’s show offers a roundup of public advocate candidate interviews.
• And Kevin Carey points to a school tax credit that he says is a scandalous voucher shell game.

Sample progress report

Principals around the city are celebrating their top grades on the city’s annual school report cards today, and many say the system helped them plan and execute the progress that drove the slew of high scores.

They can do that because the report card grades rise with test score gains — and they also provide an intricate breakdown of exactly what elements brought the overall grade up or down.

Rowena Penn-Jackson, principal of P.S. 230 in the Bronx, realized that the school needed to place greater emphasis on teaching reading comprehension of non-fiction and poetry. Several principals at high-achieving schools said the reports showed them the school needed to devote more resources to English language learners.

Survey data nudged Democracy Prep Charter School’s Seth Andrew and Amber Charter School’s Vasthi Acosta to modify their methods of communicating effectively with parents. Hellenic Classical Charter School principal Christina Tettonis instituted more professional development sessions to train teachers to use test scores to personalize instruction for individual students. (more…)

Number of schools receiving A-F letter grades this year

Defending this year’s school progress reports at a news conference this morning, Chancellor Joel Klein said the high marks given to an overwhelming majority of city schools did not mean the grading system had lost its value.

The reports, which the Department of Education began issuing two years ago, use a complex formula to assign each school a letter grade, allowing parents to compare schools and principals to see what areas need improvement. This year, the city gave 84 percent of elementary and middle schools A’s, while only 13 percent received a B and 2 percent received a C. A total of five schools were given D’s, and two were given F’s. (Philissa has some snapshots of the data here).

Last year, 38 percent of schools were given an A. In 2007, when the reports were first issued, 23 percent received that rating.

Responding to reporters’ questions about whether giving 97 percent of schools A and B’s had rendered the progress reports meaningless, Klein said that the grading system still served a purpose. He explained that the reports only measure whether a school has met the city’s goals for it, not whether it is above average. (more…)

Just two schools got F’s on their progress reports this year, bearing out reports that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein would tout high scores when he released this year’s grades today.

Eighty-four percent of elementary and middle schools earned A’s, up from 38 percent last year, promising to stir up questions about how useful the progress reports are for parents and principals.

A few other highlights: Of the lowest-performing schools, most opened under Klein’s watch. Nearly 5 percent of schools earned so much extra credit for helping their neediest students that their scores exceeded 100 percent. And the schools that the city tried to close last year before being thwarted by a lawsuit all earned A grades.

Klein is offering his interpretation to reporters right now at a press conference, and we’ll bring updates from there later in the day. For now, take a look at the complete list of progress report grades and add your observations to mine:

• Ten of the 12 schools with the lowest raw scores opened since Klein became chancellor in 2002. The two schools that received F’s are Washington Heights Academy, which opened in 2004, and Harlem Link Charter School, which opened in 2005. This was the first year the schools had enough test results to give them progress reports. (more…)

Last year, the school day at packed-to-the-gills Francis Lewis High School in Queens lasted 12 periods to accommodate all 4,500 students. This year, the number of periods is rising to 13, writes Arthur Goldstein, the UFT chapter leader at Francis Lewis, in GothamSchools’s community section.

A 13-period day can only exacerbate the scheduling problems that already plague the school, Goldstein writes:

When you have 12 periods, when you have three sessions, you can never get the staff together, you can never get the department together, and every meeting becomes 3 meetings. Kids eat lunch at 9 in the morning. They come in for free breakfast and have five minutes to eat it and show up to my class. Kids come running into the trailer with styrofoam trays full of what appears to be styrofoam food. …

So how do you fix a school that has 12 periods? Well, this year, we’re gonna make it 13 periods.

Lots of people complain to me about the 12-period day at Francis Lewis High School, and they began well before I became chapter leader.

Perhaps I look sympathetic. I try not to, but it discourages no one. Almost every teacher in my building wants an early schedule. That means you come in around 7 a.m. and leave around 2 p.m. There are fights. Grown men and women gripe about fairness.

“How come he’s on early and I’m not?”

Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they aren’t. But few want the dreaded late shift, which ends after 5 p.m. Personally, I did it for several years in a row and was fine with it. I got to stay up as late as I wanted, and got all sorts of things done in the morning. Also, my Queens College job didn’t start ’til 5:30, giving me a near-adequate window to bolt from the trailer, drive away, park, and run like hell to my class.

After a while, though, they stopped giving it to me and switched me to early. Early is OK if you don’t mind getting up at 5:30 a.m. Me, I don’t care for it. I’ve had kids who didn’t care for it either. (more…)

• Only two elementary and middle schools earned an F on their progress reports this year. (Post)
• Most of the schools that failed the last two years have been closed or gotten new principals. (Daily News)
• City teachers will be part of a study to evaluate how to measure teachers. (GothamSchools, Times, Post)
• Principals are suing after the city took their parking permits away. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Post)
• The city will give free swine flu shots to all students who want them. (Wall Street Journal, Times)
• The lawsuit against the city filed by the fired Arabic school principal has been dismissed. (Times)
• A third of Chicago teachers reported being pressured to change student grades. (Chicago Sun-Times)
• Milwaukee’s mayor stepped up his push for mayoral control yesterday. (Business Journal of Milwaukee)
• Bill Cosby is stepping in to help Detroit’s ailing schools keep students enrolled. (Detroit Free Press)
• Even the teachers union backs Los Angeles’s plan to let outside operators run its schools. (L.A. Times)

• After visiting her book in Barnes and Noble, Mrs. Mimi remembered perhaps the cutest student story ever.
• Mr. Accountable Talk found out who’s in his classes, and he says he can predict their performance now.
• Anticipating a resurgence of swine flu, the city announced plans to protect schools and students.
• For the first time, Jewish advocacy groups are scrutinizing history textbooks and state standards.
• John Merrow interviews former Ed Sec Margaret Spellings, who says there’s no need to ditch NCLB.
• Bay Ridge, Brooklyn awaits a new 379-seat public early childhood center.
• Does Chris Dodd want the chairmanship of the Senate’s education committee? Politico speculates.
• The New Teacher Project will tackle teacher’s contracts in Cincinnati.
• California’s attorney general thinks the Race to the Top Fund has a “command and control” philosophy.
• A new charter school in the Bronx is ladies-only.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wants teachers to sign up to be guinea pigs in a national study on teacher evaluations–and the UFT is backing him up.

In an email sent tonight, Klein and UFT president Michael Mulgrew asked city teachers to volunteer for a new Gates Foundation study that will test methods of evaluating teachers.

The study comes at a time when policymakers are calling for changes in the way teachers are evaluated. The Obama administration is pushing states to judge teachers based on student test scores. But the city teachers’ union last year lobbied the state to ban that practice, at least in teacher tenure decisions.

This study, however, has the union’s wholehearted support because it will begin with measures rooted in classroom practices. Mulgrew told GothamSchools he thought the project was a “fantastic endeavor” that could convince teachers to accept new forms of evaluations.

“It takes the politics out of what’s being measured,” UFT president Michael Mulgrew said. “Teachers are very frustrated with the political debate. They are always saying, ‘why don’t you just come into the classroom?’ That’s what this is doing.” (more…)