GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

At this point in the Mayor’s remaking of our school system, claims of dramatic academic gains seem built on sand.

Analyses prepared for Assemblyman James Brennan by legislative aide Shawn Campbell demonstrate that the Bloomberg administration grossly overstates the impact that the reforms have had on New York City’s student achievement. State test scores are tainted by the exams’ designed-in flaws.  Progress Reports’ school grades are malleable, rising or falling according to administration convenience. Graduation rates are untethered from college and career readiness.  They are the end result of suspect strategies called “credit accumulation” and “knowledge management,” not subject mastery and understanding.

But the Mayor has a renewed opportunity to value learning over his well-known data obsession. (more…)

Did you see Michael McCurdy’s post this week in the Community section on what a kindergarten report card — at least for a G&T student — looks like? Apparently, there are nearly 100 criteria — I count 98 — each which gets rated on a scale from one to four.

That is stunning, or at least it is to me. 98 criteria!! Do you know how many marks a high school students gets on his/her report card? One per class, something like six to nine, total. That’s less than one tenth the feedback that kindergarten students get!

But I do not think that high school students — or their families — get even that much feedback. I mean, what do grades really mean? Mr. McCurdy’s post drew me back to an old thought of mine. What does a B or B+ mean, on a report card? (more…)

• Black and Hispanic students are still more likely to be in schools with low progress report grades. (Times)
• Peace and Diversity Academy, the only F-rated high school, has been moved several times. (Daily News)
• Principals are considering what programs to cut when looming budget cuts are finally ordered. (NY1)
• Community Education Council presidents are no longer meeting with Chancellor Klein monthly. (Post)
• The Board of Regents approved the development of a credit-bearing “virtual high school.” (Post)
• Thomas Carroll calls the state’s teacher training proposal “a heck of a start.” (Post)
• Penn. lawmakers are weighing putting more restrictions on charter schools. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
• A new documentary likens public schools to prisons. (Times)
• Boston is poised to close a dozen struggling schools this year. (Boston Globe)
• Chicago is figuring out how to go on after the suicide of its school board president. (Chicago Sun-Times)

• A second year teacher in the Bronx stresses out over how to grade papers.
• Diane Ravitch compares charter and district school NAEP scores and finds charters lacking.
• A Pittsburgh high school is raising money by letting students pay to stop class.
• A new website from the co-founder of Wikipedia gathers 11,000 free educational videos.
• Norm Scott says that whistle-blowers like Lehman’s tend to be the more experienced teachers.
• A loophole in the National Student Lunch Program may leave the program open to fraud.
• One AFT member praises the Obama administration’s responsiveness on Race to the Top.
• The head of Vanderbilt’s Center for Education Policy is leaving for George W. Bush’s new thinktank.
• Want to find a job as a teacher in the U.S. right now? Best to study math.
• High school applications are due in two weeks. InsideSchools has advice on how to rank your choices.
• And if New York’s gray weather has you down, check out the view from a classroom in Fresno, Ca.

Parents at district schools on the Lower East Side that may be forced to share space with an expanding charter school are telling the DOE to look elsewhere.

Girls Prep Charter School has requested building space from the DOE in order to expand its middle school program, which launched this year with one class of fifth-graders. The charter school currently shares a building with P.S. 188 and P.S. 94, a school serving disabled students, and cannot expand further in the space it occupies there.

DOE officials have three ideas for how to accommodate the new middle school, which they plan to present at tomorrow evening’s District 1 Community Education Council meeting.

In one scenario, P.S. 94 would move out of the district, allowing Girls Prep to expand in its current location. To compensate for the loss of P.S. 94, a new program for disabled students would open, sharing space with PS. 184, the Shuang Wen school.

Another suggestion would have the Girls Prep middle school open in a building currently shared by three secondary schools: the School for Global Leaders, the Marta Valle Secondary School and the Lower East Side Preparatory High School. The School for Global Leaders would then move into P.S. 20. This plan would also allow P.S. 94 to expand in the building it shares with P.S. 188 and the Girls Prep elementary school.

The third proposal would have the Girls Prep middle school share a building with P.S. 20.  (The full memo from the Office of Portfolio Planning outlining the three scenarios is below the jump.) (more…)

Former Gates Foundation education director Tom Vander Ark is behind one charter school’s application to open in New York City next year.

For years, Vander Ark shaped the educational giving for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, overseeing grants the organization gave to cities that agreed to build small high schools. Now a partner at an education public affairs firm in California, Vander Ark has supported such causes as lifting New York State’s charter cap and bringing more and better technology into classrooms.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education confirmed that Vander Ark is behind the application for Bedford Preparatory Charter School, a small high school school that, if approved, would open in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn next school year. (more…)

You may not think ravioli is worth discussing, but the Panel for Educational Policy debated it in some detail last Thursday at its November meeting, held at PS 128 in Queens. Apparently there’s a need for higher-quality ravioli. In fact, the PEP voted to increase spending on ravioli by 40 percent, earmarking over a million bucks to make sure city kids are no longer burdened with the inferior ravioli that’s been dragging our system down all these years.

I was sitting with James Eterno, UFT chapter leader of Jamaica High School.  He told me that now, in mid-November, his school has ten classes without teachers. There is no money to hire them. Yet, somehow, the school was able to open a line for a new English assistant principal, who would not only cost more, but also teach fewer classes than a teacher. Eterno calculated that the additional money spent on ravioli could buy over 20 teachers for a year. How badly do our kids need that ravioli upgrade?

If you were at the meeting, you heard chapter and verse about the virtues of ravioli. It’s canned, and can sit on shelves for a long, long time. Teachers can’t do that. Also, if one of the fine DOE vendors fails to make a delivery, the lunchroom staff can slop ravioli on Styrofoam trays at a moment’s notice. The ravioli contain not only starch, but also protein. (more…)

Did you see that the state wants to evaluate teacher training programs by their graduates’ students’ test scores? Of course, the usual sources think that this is a great idea.

Did you see Michael McCurdy’s post this week in the Community section on what a kindergarten report card — at least for a G&T student — looks like? Apparently, there are nearly 100 criteria — I counted 98— each which gets rated on a scale from one to four.

Of course, high school students’ report cards are far simpler. Just one grade for each subject, something like six to nine marks total. It’s amazing that in nine years schools gets so much simpler and less complex that reporting can be simplified by a factor of ten or more.

Of course, this proposal would rate teachers’ programs even more simply than that, at least high school teachers’. Some teachers would be rated on a single test, and others rated on no test whatsoever (i.e. art, gym, electives). So, a truly a great way to judge teacher preparation programs, no? Remarkable how as we get older, our tasks get so simplified that others need look at less and less data to evaluate how well we are doing, isn’t it?

• More high schools got A’s on their progress reports. (GothamSchools, Times, Post, Daily News, NY1)
• At the sole school to get an F, down from a B last year, students say motivation is an issue. (Post)
• The DOE is looking for a contractor to protect the schools from bedbugs. (Post)
• Mayor Bloomberg asked the DOE to cut 1.5 percent from its budget, less than other agencies. (Post)
• NYS wants to evaluate teacher training programs by their products’ student test scores. (GothamSchools)
• The Daily News endorses the state’s plan, saying it would improve teacher quality control.
• Four Bronx teachers who won math and science teaching awards had parties in their honor. (Daily News)
• The state’s budget crisis could delay payments to school districts. (Bloomberg News)
• Children will play a big role in getting the 2010 census completed. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Wall Street Journal is stunned the Ford Foundation is giving to teachers unions, not charter schools.
• Los Angeles teachers are among the groups bidding to take over the city’s troubled schools. (L.A. Times)
• Food that the FDA deems dangerous often stays in the lineup for school lunches. (USA Today)
• A federal judge ruled Chicago students should get to transfer from an unsafe school. (Chicago Tribune)