GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

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)

• 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…)