GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Test prep for admission to the city’s gifted kindergarten classes is a booming industry. (Times)
• Forty charter school operators will compete for the state’s 18 remaining charters. (Post)
• There are currently 40,000 names, including duplicates, on city charter school waitlists. (Post)
• Governor Paterson is continuing to pressure lawmakers to cut state school aid. (Bloomberg)
• A student who graduated from high school in June is suing the city because he is illiterate. (Post)
• An audit found the state isn’t ensuring schools report accurate Regents scores. (GothamSchools, Post)
• Charter school critics and advocates won’t say they agree on the role of class size. (Columbia Spectator)
• A brand-new Brooklyn teacher offers his view on how well Teach for America prepared him. (NPR)
• A teacher at Humanities Tech raised thousands of dollars for students to take SAT classes. (Daily News)
• A bus carrying students from Brooklyn’s PS 5 caught on fire Friday; no one was hurt. (AP)
• The Daily News says the state should lay off of Excellence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
• In a letter, New York Civil Liberties Union officials boost the City Council’s Student Safety Act. (Times)
• The White House is planning a new media campaign to get students to study math and science. (Times)
• A new report finds that the quality and quantity of gifted education varies by school district. (AP)
• Jay Mathews reports on one teacher’s poor results on D.C.’s new teacher evaluation. (Washington Post)
• Rhode Island is the latest to unveil a Race to the Top-inspired school reform plan. (Providence Journal)
• Few schools are closing because of H1N1 flu outbreaks. (USA Today)
• D.C. charter schools want the same police protection given to district schools. (Washington Post)

• Students at U.C. – Berkeley and Santa Cruz are occupying school buildings to protest steep tuition hikes.
• A Chicago school boosted scores by giving all special ed students a test for the most severely disabled.
• NYSUT says that state higher ed budget cuts may prevent some students from graduating in four years.
• A junior at Stuyvesant has been charged with setting one of nine small fires at the school last week.
• Paterson’s doomsday budget scenario includes cutting early childhood and pre-k programs.
• Actor Gabriel Byrne read from “Dubliners” at a benefit for Brooklyn’s P.S. 8.
• A report by Congress accuses Kevin Johnson, Michelle Rhee’s fiancée, of all kinds of wrongdoing.
• Two federal ed officials are blogging  to ask what is needed to make innovation work.
• So far they’ve gotten replies from Joel Klein, Diane Ravitch, Tom Vander Ark, and others.
• And Jay Matthews thinks we should trade teacher evaluations for more time for teacher prep.

The New York State Education Department is failing to ensure that Regents tests are properly scored, according to an audit published today by the state comptroller’s office.

The exams are given to high school students, who have to pass five in different subject areas in order to receive a Regents diploma. Teachers normally administer and score the tests under the supervision of each school’s principal, and the school district is responsible for reporting scores to the state.

The audit focused on the review process the state uses to ensure the scoring is accurate and consistent. In these reviews, a group of teachers and NYSED officials re-score a random selection of exams and compare them to how the tests were originally scored to judge the accuracy. The review team then makes recommendations to the state and to schools about how to improve the scoring process.

In the most recent review, completed in 2005, the scores awarded by schools were routinely higher than the scores given by the reviewers, and reviewers reported that school scorers frequently assigned full credit to student answers that were “vague, incomplete, inaccurate or insufficiently detailed.”

But auditors found little to suggest that the state followed up to improve the process, the report says.

“For example, we found no evidence actions were taken to implement the Review team’s recommendations to improve scoring training and enhance quality control during the scoring process. We also found no evidence actions were taken to bring about improvements at particular schools,” the auditors write. (more…)

Slightly more than a dozen schools saw their budgets take a hit as a result of Chancellor Joel Klein’s hiring ultimatum.

In early September, Klein sent an email to principals warning that if they didn’t fill their vacancies by October 30, the money would be taken out of their budgets and returned to Department of Education coffers.

The threat was meant to pressure principals to hire teachers who are still paid by the city but have lost their permanent jobs because of school closings or budget cuts. Some principals had expressed reluctance to hire these teachers and were hoping to wait out the city’s hiring freeze.

In all, only 14 schools had to return the hiring funds to the DOE, said a spokeswoman for the department, Ann Forte. (more…)

In a post on this page earlier this week, “Comparing Small Apples to Large Apples,” Teachers College Professor Aaron Pallas raised several important issues with respect to New York City’s high school progress reports. A frank dialogue about the strengths and weaknesses of our accountability system is important as it helps us make improvements while deepening the public’s understanding of how the system works. There are several areas in Dr. Pallas’s argument that I’d like to address to clarify our approach and avoid potential misconceptions.

The high school progress report accounts for multiple data measures: four and six-year graduation rates; attendance; five Regents exams; and credit accumulation at the end of ninth, tenth and eleventh grade.

Pallas questions the usefulness of credit measures. Credit data is derived from the grades teachers assign to students. As a former high school principal, I know firsthand that the progress students make in earning credits is a key predictor of graduation. Academic success in ninth grade in particular better predicts graduation than either demographics or prior academic achievement. (more…)

Back in April, I wrote a post about my efforts to get audited financial statements from the three authorizers that oversee charter schools in New York City: the NYC DOE, the State University of New York (SUNY) and the State Education Department (SED).  I noted that the DOE posted the statements on their website, while I had to use the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) to get the reports from SUNY and SED.

Things are looking better for the latest set of financials.  SUNY has created an excellent web page with the statements for all of the schools they have authorized.  (In general, SUNY’s charter school reporting is very good. I encourage people to check it out.)

I have been told that the DOE will update their website by mid-December. I had to FOIL SED once again to get the financials for their schools and they are looking into why the statements are not posted on their website.

SUNY writes on their website:

“Public funds must be spent appropriately and with ample transparency. Timely audits are an important part of this transparency.”

In my experience, most people from across the political spectrum agree with these statements. I hope we can unite to push for more timely, more comprehensible, and more comprehensive information.

• Some of the schools that got bonuses also had low progress report grades. (Daily News, Times, Post)
• The DOE says it still plans to offer bonuses next year, even with more budget cuts coming. (NY1)
• The Gates Foundation is giving cities $335 million to boost teacher evaluation. (Times, GothamSchools)
• A recently honored teacher from the HS for Economics and Finance is legally blind. (Downtown Express)
• Lisa Gibbs, the principal accused of slashing her husband, has taken leave from her school. (Daily News)
• One plan for rezoning Lower Manhattan schools would divide families by income. (Downtown Express)
• The Queens fourth-grader who was forced to drop dance for test prep is dancing again. (Daily News)
• The Times looks at what Bay Area teachers are doing to boost students’ scores on California’s state tests.

• Don’t look for news on state cuts to schools tomorrow, the legislature has left Albany.
• Sen. Sampson told the DN that Dems won’t accept any cuts to school aid.
• The principal of Brooklyn’s School for Global Studies was arrested for slashing her husband.
• Rezoning plans for lower Manhattan schools could separate well-off residents from middle-class ones.
• Some parents’ anger with charter schools reached epic proportions at a CEC meeting, Norm writes.
• Richard Kessler says the Lower East Side space fight shows how small cuts kill arts education.
• Bill Thompson is still calling for money going to a Brooklyn jail to be spent on the city’s schools.
• A New York apartment building is an example of how noise pollution can impact learning.
• Peter Murphy says the charter association never opposed the CFE lawsuit, as the UFT claims.
• One bullet divides two Bronx high school students.
• A month after D.C. teacher layoffs, some say they’re seeing new hires in schools.
• CA raised college tuition by 32 percent, sparking protests from students.
• School districts have a host of qualms about the U.S. DOE’s rules for i3 grants.
• And Republicans are questioning the education sector jobs that the stimulus money saved/created.