GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Students at Brooklyn’s P.S. 24 embraced the message of the city’s “Respect for All” week.
• Seeing the letters A or F just before taking a test can influence how students perform, a study says.
• A first-year science teacher learns that complaints of “I’m bored” usually signal something deeper.
• A lawyer-blogger questions Arne Duncan’s new focus on fighting racism in public schools.
• Jay Mathews argues that national standards will eventually mean national standardized tests.
• Rick Hess posts the guidelines RttT finalists were given for next week’s presentations in D.C…
• …While the Aspen Institute is helping coach some finalists through dry runs of their pitches.
• James Merriman argues competition from charters leads district schools to connect with parents.
• While Teachable Moment thinks we’re taking the wrong lesson from charter-district school competition.
• And GothamSchools won a National Award for Education Reporting from the EWA today.

Since helping Mayor Michael Bloomberg win his third term last fall, former deputy schools chancellor Chris Cerf has almost completely disappeared from the New York City education landscape.

Perhaps he wanted warmer weather — Cerf is now the head of the new American arm of a Brazilian science curriculum company.

The company, Sangari Brasil, currently sells an elementary and middle school science program to school districts in Brazil and Argentina. It’s part of a larger international group that promotes science education, and recently donated $1 million to help the National Science Teacher Association build a science education center in Northern Virginia.

The position is in some ways a return to Cerf’s roots. Before his stint masterminding the politics of the mayor’s sweeping and frequently controversial education reforms, Cerf headed Edison Schools, Inc. (now called EdisonLearning), one of the United State’s largest for-profit school management companies. (more…)

I should start by saying that I talked about my teacher data reports with some co-workers today and they had been e-mailed their usernames and passwords for their reports. So apparently not everyone had such a difficult time accessing their reports. I guess I’m just special.

Well, maybe not that special. Not according to my data reports at least. In fact I’m wholly average as an educator when it comes to teaching both math and reading. Not exactly the vote of confidence I was looking for.

I can’t say that I was surprised. I got my students’ test scores at the end of last school year, and I knew how they compared to those of my peers at my school and by extension the city. Test scores jumped up across the city last year, and my students? Well most of their scores went up, but some went down. Meaning, pardon the pun, I didn’t make the grade.

So my teacher data report confirmed what I already knew about my test scores. (more…)

The woefully small percentages of black and Hispanic students at the city’s specialized high schools is not a new development, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do something to change it. Here’s my suggestion: The Department of Education should adopt a proportional admissions plan for the exam schools that would offer admission to the highest-scoring students from each of the neighborhoods of the city.

An idea whose time has come

In 1995, then-Chancellor Ramon Cortines lamented the declining percentages of black and Hispanic students at the city’s specialized high schools. At the time, the numbers were actually better than they are now: Bronx Science’s enrollment was 10.7% black and 9.2% Hispanic; Stuyvesant’s was 4.8% black and 4.3% Hispanic.

In 1996, ACORN (well before its recent collapse) published a report, entitled “Secret Apartheid II: Race, Regents and Resources,” that analyzed enrollment numbers at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, the two most selective schools. (more…)

• The city’s high school graduation rate rose to 59 percent. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News, Post, NY1)
• District schools in Harlem are focusing more on marketing to compete with their charter neighbors. (Times)
• One of the unions of school bus drivers has authorized a strike but has no plans to carry one out. (NY1)
• A Cambria Heights student was arrested for painting a “hate-filled” mural on his school’s walls. (Post)
• Brooklyn Generation School, a high school, is using time in innovative ways. (Education Week)
• The Albany Times-Union says the state should justify the cost of Regents exams before continuing them.
• Florida’s Broward County, which recently laid off teachers, is seeking NYC teachers. (Miami Herald)
• The Obama Administration will investigate Los Angeles’s services for immigrant students. (L.A. Times)
• Evidence about the success of school turnarounds is largely anecdotal. (USA Today)
• The content of proposed national standards will be revealed today. (Washington Post)
• An expert says the United States is lagging behind more countries in educational attainment. (Times)