GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

New York State's eighth grade students are scoring at about the national average on a reading exam, but their scores haven't significantly changed in over a decade.

Results are out this morning for the nation’s reading test, and the numbers show New York State students’ scores have plateaued in the last eight years.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as NAEP, or the nation’s report card, shows that not only have state scores not changed since the test was last administered in 2008, the state hasn’t seen significant growth since the late 1990s.

This year, the average score of a New York State fourth grade student was 224 points and in 2002, that number was 222 points. The picture is similar for eighth grade students: this year their average score was 264, just as it was eight years ago. (more…)

One unintended consequence of my fledgling career in teaching is the adoption of some phrases that used to drive me crazy as a kid. The thing is, once you’ve grown up and tried your hand at communicating with children on a regular basis, these sayings start to make a bit more sense.

Although almost every measure I have shows my kids are making progress, the day-to-day instruction can still be maddening. With a few exceptions asking my kids to recall and use vocabulary and explain concepts from prior lessons is almost always fruitless. Sometimes even asking them to draw on vocabulary from that same lesson yields nothing but frustration. Often conversations are just a mess of vocabulary with no signs of understanding.

Even since realizing how much vocabulary support my students need as English Language Learners, sometimes the frustration is too much for me to handle. Against my deeper understanding, I berate the kids for not listening carefully enough. “You aren’t paying attention. You need to listen. It’s like what I say goes in one ear and out the other. You can’t just mix and match vocabulary!” As if the kids are intentionally misusing words to drive me crazy. (more…)

• State Sen. Malcolm Smith said politics didn’t cause a charter school he founded to move. (Daily News)
• District 16′s parent council, which has two members and no president, can’t get anything done. (NY1)
• A school closure lawsuit is delaying high school decisions. (Daily News, Times, Post, Insideschools)
• Extra-long kindergarten waitlists have parents anxious. (GothamSchools, Times, Post, Daily News)
• The expanded School of One program is offering personalized math instruction to 240 students. (WNYC)
• The city school board approved $400 million in contracts to bus companies accused of corruption. (Post)
• All the mayor’s commissioners went bowling last night, and Joel Klein rolled a 126. (Post Page Six)
• More than 150 high school students competed at a high-level science fair yesterday. (Daily News)
• Staten Island parents got a rare audience with Chancellor Klein at a local PEP meeting. (S.I. Advance)
• New York City is one of few places whose school closures this year aren’t budget-related. (AP)
• When closed schools sit empty, communities suffer. (AP)
• The decision to close an Albany charter school will have wide-reaching effects. (Albany Times Union)
• The chairman of a chain of small schools offers a defense of charter schools. (L.A. Times)
• Chicago is launching an initiative to rid its schools of Pop Tarts and other junk foods. (Chicago Tribune)
• D.C. has hired a New York City restauranteur to revamp its school lunch program. (Washington Post)

• The State Assembly, “puzzled” by Senate’s cuts, is planning school cuts closer to $800 million.
• Three Assembly Dems are asking the teachers union to put off raises to avoid layoffs.
• In a series on District 16, NY1 reports that the Community Education Council has only two members.
• The UFT’s consolation prize for budget cuts: a state resolution honoring the union’s 50th anniversary.
• SUNY voted to close the New Covenant Charter School today, but did so with six abstentions.
• U.S. schools will have to report more and different kinds of civil rights data this year.
• In a five-part series, a UFT member is outlining his problems with the 2005 union contract.
• The UFT’s school closure lawsuit has delayed high school admissions notifications.
• A teacher cringes when her students say there’s no one at school they trust on an official survey.
• The admissions letters are sitting at borough enrollment offices, but can’t be handed out yet.
• Nat Hentoff notes all the examples of what he calls “Bloomberg-style segregation” in recent news.
• Teaching students how to argue could lead to a more civil society, writes Jay Mathews.
• Chicago’s only all-male charter school is sending all of its high school seniors to college next year.
• And the “cadillac” tax on health benefits is likely to affect public school teachers.

It’s becoming a New York City spring ritual: thousands of parents sign up their children for kindergarten only to find that the school they’re zoned for is all out of room. This year, the early enrollment period ended with about 2,000 soon-to-be kindergartners on waiting lists, city officials said today.

Those students and their families represent less than five percent of all the city’s entering kindergartners, but they’re not easy to ignore. Last year, parents of wait listed kindergartners staged a protest in front of City Hall, drawing press coverage and a new name for their predicament: the kindergarten crisis. This year, despite the introduction of new schools in some neighborhoods and rezonings, 104 public elementary schools have wait lists, and many of them are more than fifty names deep.

DOE spokesman David Cantor said this year, the department was tracking the problem earlier than in the past in hopes of easing parents’ anxiety. (more…)

The bake-in rally that we organized last Thursday outside City Hall to protest the new chancellor’s regulation banning the sale of home-cooked foods at schools while allowing highly processed foods to be sold instead wasn’t simply a contest between Mommy’s oatmeal raisin cookies and a bag of cool-ranch Doritos. It was about restoring the democratic process and curbing the corporate takeover of our schools.

Officials at the Department of Education consistently fail to engage parents on policy involving their children, and in this instance they have experienced a serious backlash. Parents don’t want the city mandating what to buy and feed their children if they want to raise money for their underfunded schools. Many administrators and teachers aren’t happy about the regulation, but the regulation (included at the end of this post) states that “failure to follow this regulation … may result in adverse impact on the principal’s compliance performance rating.” They’re scared to speak out. Parents, administrators and teachers are being held hostage by a policy they don’t want, and the Department of Education still believes it’s doing the right thing.

We believe we have shown broad opposition to the regulation, with our robust event, coverage by national media, and an online petition with more than 1,500 signatures. But why should it be the responsibility of mothers, juggling careers and families, to demonstrate broad opposition? When opposition is so clear and strong, should it not be the responsibility of DOE officials to hold a public forum where they can hear from parents and students directly? (more…)

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Source: NYS Division of the Budget; NYC DOE

The budget plan that the Senate passed yesterday essentially preserves the $1.1 billion in cuts to school aid statewide that Governor David Paterson proposed in January. That would mean a cut of over $400 million to the New York City schools for the next fiscal year, according to the state’s Division of the Budget. And that figure doesn’t even include cuts from the city that are likely to soar above $300 million.

Under the plan, state funding to the city schools would drop to $7.95 billion, below the level of the 2007-2008 school year, when the historic funding increases triggered by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit began. (See the chart above.)

The cuts are even more challenging considering that costs beyond the city’s control like teacher pensions and salaries have skyrocketed in the last several years. (more…)

• The budget that state lawmakers are set to pass cuts $1.4 billion from education. (Times)
• The city school board green-lighted $420 million in contracts to allegedly corrupt bus companies. (Post)
• A Queens mom is suing after her 4-year-old was allowed to walk home alone from PS 147. (Daily News)
• Special education students are big losers in the charter school space wars, parents say. (Daily News)
• The Green Dot charter school chain is closing one of its Los Angeles schools. (L.A. Times)
• As Chicago schools chief, Arne Duncan kept a list of politicians’ school choice favors. (Sun-Times)
• The Wall Street Journal worries that the Obama administration’s education plan is weak on penalties.

• Some Democratic House members are pushing back on Duncan’s plan to expand Race to the Top.
• Mrs. Mimi argues that it’s not the fault of teachers that their evaluations need fixing.
• NYC Educator says 50 years is too long for a single party to control the UFT.
• Jay Mathews thinks the recent boom in the number of high school kids might explain all the NCAA upsets.
• Nearly 60 percent of respondents to an InsideSchools poll rated the DOE’s school surveys as important.
• The TNR debate between Ravitch, Smith and Carey continues.
• Pedro Espada proposed, somewhat ironically, to toll East River bridges to pay for student Metrocards.
• Have Obama’s grand plans to expand early childhood ed been lost in the shuffle? Liz Willen wonders.
• Willen also dissects the pros and cons of moving high school start times later in the day.
• Draft common core standards have elicited more than 2,000 comments, but they’re not being published.
• And The Open Planning Project, home of GothamSchools, has a new executive director.