GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Private and parochial schools want the same reimbursement from the MTA’s payroll tax public schools get.
• After several requests, the state will allow a Harvard test expert to study whether score inflation is real.
• First Lady Michelle Obama will speak at the commencement ceremony for a D.C.-area turnaround school.
• The group developing common standards wants teachers to weigh in on their draft.
• Jay Mathews says RttT is “like throwing money out of the fifth floor Post newsroom window.”
• Kim Gittleson’s new analysis finds charter schools in city buildings spend less than their district neighbors.
• A teacher has to dig and dig to get access to his new teacher data report.
• Today was the first “Trayless Tuesday,” the DOE’s attempt to make lunchrooms environmentally friendly.
• And a teacher chronicles each day of school, in comic form. (Via Miss Eyre)

When choosing which schools to close, city officials say they pick the worst of the worst. But new graduation data released today shows that the city doesn’t always follow its own criteria.

Earlier this year, Department of Education officials announced their intention to close 19 schools based on the schools’ abysmal graduation rates and low test scores. Many of the schools on the list were high schools where less than half of all students graduated and progress reports were dotted with Cs and Ds. But absent from that list was Washington Irving High School, which has the city’s lowest graduation rate among traditional high schools and the highest drop-out rate.

In January, the Panel for Education Policy voted to begin closing a school 16 blocks north of Irving: Norman Thomas High School. Washington Irving was spared. But a look at the school’s graduation numbers and progress reports shows that in some respects, Irving is performing more poorly than Thomas is. (more…)

More than half of the New York City’s Hispanic students graduated from high school last year, the first time the city has reached that bar since it began tracking graduation rates in the 1980s.

That statistic stood out among several gains reported in graduation rate data trumpeted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein today. The city has nearly halved its drop-out rate over the past five years, and the number of students earning Regents and Advanced Regents diplomas rose, according to data released today by the city and state education departments.

“The results for New York City are historic,” said Bloomberg, speaking to reporters at the city Department of Education’s Tweed Courthouse headquarters this afternoon.

The city’s four-year graduation rates for students who entered high school in 2005 was 59 percent, up three percentage points from students the year before. (more…)

Buried on the Department of Education’s website is a page that lists per pupil spending on a school-wide, district-wide, and system-wide basis. Using this information, as well as expense data from the 2007-2008 audits and the recent Independent Budget Office report, we compared spending by charter schools and traditional public schools that are located in the same building.

We found that charter schools spent $365 less per pupil than their co-located traditional public schools in 2007-2008. You can see our calculations in a workbook here.

Some notes on our methodology:

• We looked only at the amount the co-located traditional public school spent per pupil on their general education students (which includes part-time but not full-time special education students). This is because while charter schools do enroll special needs students, very few offer all-day special education classes. For reference, we included the numbers for overall per-pupil and full-time special education spending in our database. (more…)

Source: New York State Education Department

New York City’s graduation rates have increased for the fifth time in as many years.

The 4-year graduation rate for students who entered high school in 2005 rose to 59 percent, according to data released today by State Education Commissioner David Steiner. That’s 3 percentage points higher than the graduation rate of 56 percent last year for students who started ninth grade in 2004. Another 3.7 percent of students graduated last summer, just after their fourth year of high school. And the city’s 5-year graduation rate rose 3 points as well, to 66 percent.

The overall state graduation rate ticked upward by one percentage point, to 72 percent. Steiner noted that the pace of growth statewide has slowed from last year.

We’ll have more detailed information on New York City’s rates and coverage of the mayor and chancellor’s take on the data later today. In the meantime, the state’s slides and spreadsheets are available here.

State and city officials are preparing right now to unveil graduation rates for students who entered high school in 2005.

The state has already dumped several massive sets of data on its Web site: One document shows overall 4-, 5-, and 6-year rates by local school district, and a second, much larger document shows each the graduation rate for each school in the state. A list of city schools only is at the end of this post.

But we still don’t know the city’s overall graduation rate, which last year was 56 percent. The 2009 figure will be in the presentation that State Education Commission David Steiner is delivering in just a few minutes (as soon as the Board of Regents finishes hearing about the space crunch in the state libraries). Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein are holding a briefing on the city’s graduation rate later this afternoon. 

Here are some other important data points to look out for today:

• How are students with special needs faring? (more…)

The news came out awhile ago that teacher data reports were available. Since I’m at a new school my principal did not have my report (I was the only one to even ask her about it). I checked ARIS constantly, thinking that the city schools’ online data system would be a logical site to post my report, but found nothing. Finally, I googled “teacher data reports nyc” last night and found a Department of Education page about data verification for the reports. Clicking through this page to the Data Toolkit I saw “Get Your Reports” on the side. I was getting somewhere!

The page says that a username and password were to be sent to our DOE e-mail, so I double-checked that and found nothing. Moving on, I clicked through to the site where I could download my report. When I did so an alert showed up notifying me that the site was not under the jurisdiction of the DOE and the DOE was therefore not responsible for its content (the page is run by the Wisconsin Center for Education Reform at the University of Wisconsin). Okay … I tried my DOE username and password, but had no luck, so I went through the password retrieval process, and … I made it. I had finally accessed my data.

The whole ordeal couldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes, but it was far from easy which begs the question — why? (more…)

• The city schools are spending this week focusing on tolerance and respect. (NY1)
• Parents are organizing a “bake-in” to protest the city’s new bake sale rules. (Daily News)
• City Limits offers an overview of the city schools’ dismal budget outlook.
• The proposed state budget would eliminate many summer camp jobs for teenagers. (Times)
• Diane Ravitch summarizes why her education policy views changed over time. (Wall Street Journal)
• A man with a gun was killed by police outside Brooklyn’s PS 194 just after school let out. (Times)
• The Everyday Math program used in NYC is credited with test-score gains in D.C. (Washington Post)