GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A mother says her son, who has ADD, did better after switching to Harlem Success Academy. (Post)
• Schools with crowding problems figure out creative ways to squeeze more kids into their space. (NY1)
• The city said it could take a year to implement the new school governance law. (GothamSchools)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan says he wants No Child Left Behind reauthorized by early 2010. (AP, USA Today)
• Principals in a kindergarten literacy pilot program have asked to expand it earlier than planned. (Post)
• A replacement is coming for the ousted, reportedly odd principal at the Bronx’s PS 24. (Riverdale Press)
• The big challenge in expanding online schools is getting students to socialize. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Wall Street Journal: Hoxby’s report should end debate on whether charter schools “cream” students.
• A Hebrew language charter school has been approved for New Jersey. (Newark Star-Ledger)
• Charter school booster Thomas Carroll says the schools’ critics can’t handle the truth. (Daily News)

• Arne Duncan will embrace the testing and accountability philosophy of the No Child Left Behind law.
• Michelle Rhee tells Jay Mathews that she did not overrule an investigation into possible cheating on tests.
• Liz Willen wonders what academic rigor really means in kindergarten.
• Ben Wilson doesn’t like the benefits for non-profit companies included in Congress’ new student loan law.
• Dallas students wonder why 20,000 bottles of donated hand sanitizer aren’t in their school bathrooms.
• A journalist is imitating about a hundred movies and re-enrolling in high school for a semester.
• EdWize digs into the data of the Hoxby report.
• Ed in the Apple wonders if a teacher’s race influences student achievement.
• And Accountable Talk speculates on what salary raise might come out of New York’s union negotiations.

Changes in the way public schools are run that were ordered by a law this summer could take until the end of the school year to implement, school officials said today.

At a meeting of the City Council Education Committee this afternoon, council members, along with teachers union president Michael Mulgrew, accused the Department of Education of dragging its heels in putting key provisions of the new school governance law into place.

At issue is how soon the DOE will make three key changes: returning superintendents to work exclusively in their districts, including parents of special education and English-language learner students on Community Education Councils and beginning work to open a new parent training center.

Testifying before the Council, Micah Lasher, the education department’s executive director of public affairs, said that he expected all of the new changes to be implemented fully by the end of this school year.

But Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson complained that time frame is too long. “The law doesn’t give you a year,” he said. “We need this implemented now.” (more…)

Did you hear about the big report that came out this week? You know, the one that “shows” that NYC charter schools are better than traditional non-charter public schools? It has gotten a ton of attention, probably because it uses “‘the gold standard’ method[ology].” The report is not subtle about this. It is right there in the very first sentence of the executive summary, “The distinctive feature of this study is that charter schools’ effects on achievement are estimated by the best available, “gold standard” method: lotteries.” It even uses the term “gold standard” four more times throughout the report.

Everyone wants to follow The Gold Standard — or at least be able to say that they do. Of course! I mean, who wouldn’t? But I do not think that we actually have a gold standard in education research. In fact, I am quite sure that we do not, and appropriating biomedical research’s gold standard does not make it appropriate for us.

However, if we are going to borrow their standard, can we not at least get it right? (more…)

The charter school study released this week that suggests charter school students are catching up with their suburban peers leaves many questions unanswered. As GothamSchools and the New York Times reported, the study found that a student who attended a charter school for all of grades K-8 would close approximately 86 percent of the “Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap” in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English.

But here’s what I want to know.

1. How many students in the study actually completed grades K-8 in charter schools? Nowhere in the study does it say. Yet these students supposedly close 86 percent of the Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap in math and 66 percent in ELA. It would help to know how many there are. (more…)

• Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson laid out his education plans in a speech. (GothamSchools, Times)
• Bloomberg attacked Thompson’s education record as head of the Board of Education. (AP)
• A new study shows that small high schools don’t always enroll the neediest students. (GothamSchools)
• The study casts doubt on Bloomberg’s graduation rate boasts about the new schools. (Daily News)
• Those claims and others about education are front and center in Bloomberg’s campaign. (NY1)
• The UFT thinks the DOE might not be following the new state ed law. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• A dean at an all-boys Bronx high school was arrested for allegedly molesting a student. (Post)
• A science teacher at a Manhattan high school for girls get her students to explore the outdoors. (Post)
• Parents whose children’s day care programs fell to budget cuts are struggling to cope. (Daily News)
• Students at PS/MS 394 in Crown Heights helped design their school’s new playground. (Daily News)
• A new report finds that city high school graduates are ill-prepared for college. (Daily News)
• The Daily News says Caroline Hoxby’s study should end complaints about charter schools. 
• Schools using the Core Knowledge literacy program are doing well, Chancellor Klein said. (NY1)
• The suspicious test results reported in D.C. were all found in just six schools. (Washington Post)