GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Test scores now have regal status. They drive many of our policy decisions, yet we pay too little attention to their content and merit. We know they leave much to be desired, but we need to understand why.

Often the reading passages and questions are poorly written and geared toward limited thinking. For example, the New York State sample sixth-grade ELA test (the actual test from 2005) on the NYSED Web site includes a short anonymous “poem”:

The Giant Pipe

To me, this giant pipe
Is the secret brain center of the world,
The biggest spaceship, the deepest cave,
The longest tunnel, a haunted house,
A submarine, the home of a queen.
Like a lizard that changes colors,
I can live in different worlds.
Like treasures in a pirate chest,
My secrets are hidden
Inside this giant pipe.

A picture below the poem shows a pipe on a playground. (more…)

The city teachers union declared this afternoon that its contract talks with the city are deadlocked and asked a state employment panel to intervene.

The move takes the negotiations one step closer to fact-finding and arbitration, a complex process that observers say could mean nearly a year before a new contract is reached.

“Despite weeks of meetings and discussions, we have not been able to make real progress in our efforts to reach a new contract with the Department of Education,” United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said in a statement.

“The UFT has no choice but to reach out to a neutral third party to help resolve the differences that are preventing us from a new agreement that is fair to our members and to the parents and children who rely on the New York City public schools,” he said.

A spokesman for the city, Jason Post, would not comment on the UFT’s move.

The declaration of impasse comes at a sensitive time for the relationship between the teachers union and the city. The city is currently pushing for legislative changes that would change how teachers are evaluated and make it easier for them to be fired. (more…)

Their school isn’t at risk of closure, but students from Brooklyn’s P.S. 261 still spent the morning protesting.

To commemorate Martin Luther King Day, for which schools will be closed on Monday, P.S. 261 students marched from their Boerum Hill school to Brooklyn Borough Hall, carrying placards calling for peace and singing protest songs such as “We Shall Not Be Moved.”

Now in its third year, the annual event is the culmination of several weeks of intensive study about the civil rights leader Martin Luther King. (more…)

• The state AFL-CIO is lobbying for teachers unions against the governor’s proposed school law. (Post)
• The Post says lawmakers are trying to sabotage the state’s Race to the Top application.
• The Daily News: The charter school compromise being floated would give the Regents too much control.
• The city’s new emergency notification system will now include school information. (NY1)
• A mom says her son’s school bus driver didn’t respond when the boy had a seizure. (Daily News)
• Chancellor Klein will let schools stash away rainy-day funds after all. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• An upstate school district cancelled classes after a student was killed. (AP)
• Los Angeles schools somehow forgot to budget for $200 million in salaries. (L.A. Times)
• In Chicago, volunteers tackle illiteracy where the schools continue to fall short. (Times)

• Governor Paterson says he’ll release the $750 million he’s been withholding from school districts tomorrow.
• The state teachers union says it will wait and see to decide whether to drop its lawsuit on the issue.
• Students at Brooklyn’s P.S. 269 are brainstorming ways to aid relatives and friends in Haiti.
• Paterson wants to meet with legislative leaders tomorrow in Manhattan to talk about a charter cap deal.
• Melissa Mark-Vivitero says she didn’t know de Blasio would endorse a cap lift when she signed his letter.
• Leonie Haimson tells the DOE “I told you so” over the issue of rising enrollment in city schools.
• Richard Kessler gets pensive over the possible closure of Beach Channel, his alma mater…
• …While protests over the proposed school closures continue in Brooklyn.
• Deborah Meier argues we cheapen the meaning of “achievement” by using test scores to describe it.
• A former superintendent in Rochester argues, “mayoral control doesn’t work and is wrong.”
• The Smithsonian is collecting artifacts from segregation-era black schools in the South.
• The Times wants a reporter to cover the “kids of the people who run the world,” i.e., private schools.
• And in the age of over-parenting, here’s “50 dangerous things (you should let your children do).”

Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew does not want to spend a whole night at a meeting in Brooklyn.

Mulgrew is asking the city to clear a long list of scheduled discussions at the upcoming citywide school board meeting at Brooklyn Tech in order to focus on his priority: protests against school closures.

Right now the agenda includes, on top of the proposed closures, a long list that ranges from approval of 37 contracts to new rules about how schools involve parents and teachers in setting plans and budgets. Some of those changes are themselves contentious and could prompt lengthy discussion.

But the debate over the 20 school closings alone is likely to drag on long into the night. Opponents of shuttering the schools are planning to turn out in force to each take their allotted two minutes to denounce the plans. Already public hearings on the proposed closures have drawn more than 100 speakers per school in some cases.

Danny Kanner, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said the department received Mulgrew’s letter and is reviewing its suggestions.

Last month, the DOE responded to protests that the meeting’s original Staten Island location was too remote for many parents and teachers at schools slated for closure by relocating it to Brooklyn.

Mulgrew’s full letter to Klein is below the jump: (more…)

Like we did last year, Ken Hirsh and I used the 2008-2009 financial audits to calculate charter school expenses per pupil for the 77 charter schools operating during the year. This provides a sense of how much charter schools are spending, using funds from philanthropy and other sources, above the $12,432 per pupil provided by the city Department of Education. We’ve found this number is often elusive or non-existent, so we’ve tried to rectify that situation here.

Our main findings were that while total charter school expenses increased over the past year by 8 percent per pupil, the average amount spent by each charter school above the base level provided by the DOE was 13 percent less than in 2007-08. This could be partly be due to the decline in per pupil philanthropy, a trend we detailed in an earlier post, but we can’t be sure. The workbook with all our calculations is available here.

The total expenses for the 77 schools were $342,825,475 compared to $236,230,149 in 2007-2008 — a 45% increase, largely reflecting the significant increase in the number of charter school students. The per-pupil expenses for 2008-2009 were $14,456 — $1,095, or 8 percent more, than in 2007-2008. For the 2008-09 school year, the “base funding” per pupil, i.e. the fixed amount per pupil received from the DOE regardless of demographics, was $12,432. So spending on the average student was $2,024 above the base amount. This is $314 less than the $2,338 spent above the base in 2007-2008. Thus, while the base funding amount increased by 13 percent, from $11,023 to $12,432, the amount charter schools spent above these numbers was actually 13 percent less in 2008-09. (more…)

• The school investigations office received 4 percent more complaints last year. (Daily News)
• A review of city school lunches shows they have too much salt. (NY1)
• Chancellor Klein told principals they’ll no longer be able to save money for the future. (Daily News)
• A teacher says she’s without support after her life was threatened at Dewitt Clinton HS. (Riverdale Press)
• A Tribeca parent council failed to reach a decision on a contentious school rezoning plan. (Tribeca Trib)
• Albany’s Race to the Top bill could limit who gets to approve charter schools. (GothamSchools)
• Citing states’ rights, Texas won’t submit a Race to the Top application. (Times, Houston Chronicle)
• Senate President Malcolm Smith is backing an Albany charter school facing closure. (Albany Times Union)
• New Jersey Gov. Christie’s ed chief pick is a conservative whose confirmation fight could be tough. (Times)
• Texas is gearing up for a long battle over what gets taught in social studies classes. (AP)