GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The city’s Department of Education thinks the new charter cap bill is “a step in the right direction.”
• With 183 pieces of data, the system for grading schools is very complicated, writes Robert Gebeloff.
• Freakonomics interviews “pizza freak” Joel Klein and profiles School of One.
• A new England-inspired private school will open downtown this fall, with a $31,500 price tag.
• After her daughter was assaulted at Pathways College Preparatory School, a Queens mother is suing.
• Nearly a third more children qualified for the citywide gifted programs this year compared to last.
• More soon-to-be kindergartners in Queens met the bar for the citywide gifted programs.
• The state teachers union is mobilizing to sway senators before a vote to lift the cap on charter schools.
• Helen Zelon looks at what will happen to school choice if students can’t afford to travel.
• Arthur Goldstein: some teachers at Francis Lewis feel misled about the Gates study and may leave.
• A teacher who told his students he’d never let them go catches up with a former student.
• Teacher and students at Jamaica High School reflect on the school’s closure, which is now on hold.
• Teachers at Bronx Science waited for two years for an arbitrator’s ruling; the city rejected it in two days.
• Teachable Moment says, on the whole, the entire country’s school system doesn’t need revamping.
• The Promise Neighborhood grants are small, but they’re for planning, not implementing.
• Richard Whitmire’s book “Why Boys Fail” makes a convert out of Jay Mathews.
• And D.C.’s new teacher contract is on hold until the city shows it can afford to pay for it.

The legislative battle over whether and how to raise the state’s cap on charter schools could begin again as early as next week.

The State Senate’s Rules Committee, which is chaired by Senator Malcolm Smith, introduced a bill today that would lift the charter school cap to 460, more than doubling the number currently allowed under state law.  It also would require schools to make more of their financial practices public and increase the number of special education and English language learners they serve.

Charter school advocates are hailing the bill as a compromise between supporters of the speedy growth of charter schools and critics who argue that a cap lift should come only with changes to how the schools are run. But perhaps the most vocal skeptics of charter management practices, the teachers unions, are crying foul. Union officials are complaining that the bill was developed without union leaders’ input and that its regulatory provisions are too weak. (more…)

Bill Gates is amazed at what he sees happening at KIPP charter schools. Bill has no idea those same things happen at Francis Lewis High School, and countless other public schools, each and every day. Because Bill believes in the very same “reforms” that have caused Francis Lewis, my school, to balloon to 250 percent capacity, he surreptitiously funded the Learn NY campaign to preserve mayoral control (in practice, mayoral dictatorship). So I don’t trust him, and I don’t think he knows much about education, despite the millions he throws around imposing his pet projects on us. Still, I withheld judgment when he sent his new program to my school. I did not participate, but I said nothing to those who chose otherwise.

The Measures of Effective Teaching program, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, is now at my school and many others across the city. Teachers were told this study would show what worked and did not work in the classroom. They hoped it would give them ideas on how to reach their students more effectively. How long should you pause after posing a question? Did certain seat arrangements promote more interaction? Is group work always more effective than lecturing?

A young woman from the program came to our school and told our teachers that the study was actually examining newer ways to observe teachers. Traditionally, said she, there’ve been only a few ways to accomplish this. The most popular is the traditional observation, in which a supervisor sits in the classroom and writes up the results. She also cited peer observation, and the notion of test scores being used to determine whether or not lessons are effective.

However, she said, this new study had an entirely new element — the panoramic camera. This camera, specially designed, could observe not only the teacher, but also the students. Are they engaged? Do they understand? Are they texting their girlfriends during the final exam? Should we grant tenure to the teacher in question? Perhaps the camera could tell all, if only they could get it to work properly (there have been issues, and they’re apparently working on a newer version).

Three participants told me that learning about the panoramic camera caused them to question the sincerity of the program’s sponsors. (more…)

Thousands fewer parents had their preschoolers screened for the city’s gifted kindergartens this year, but the classes could still see enrollment rise.

That’s because the sheer number of children who scored at the 90th percentile or higher on the city’s two standardized tests for gifted programs — the OLSAT and the BRSA — increased by 10 percent, even as 16 percent fewer children took the test.

The families who stayed home this year live largely in low-income areas like Harlem (District 5) and the South Bronx (District 7), which saw a 30 percent and 52 percent drop in test takers, respectively. The only two districts to see an increase in students sitting for the exam were District 2, which includes most of Manhattan below 59th Street and the Upper East Side, and Brooklyn’s District 13.

Last year, far more families chose to have their children screened for gifted programs, and as a result more children qualified. One reason for the jump was that for the first time all districts planned to offer gifted classes in kindergarten. But this year, the number of test takers dropped back down to its level in 2008, when many districts did not offer gifted classes until first grade. (more…)

• It’s not clear whether the idea of tenure for teachers will weather the teacher quality push. (NPR)
• With school closures on hold, some of the city’s new schools are still without homes. (Daily News)
• A building that houses four schools in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy lacks a shared library. (Daily News)
• Students at PS 47 in the Bronx are finally playing on the playground they helped design. (NY1)
• Students from Astor Collegiate Academy took a school trip to European cities. (Bronx Times-Reporter)
• Bankers visited city schools this week to teach students about money management. (Daily News)
• The head of Explore charter schools explains why the proposed state budget hurts charters most. (Post)
• The Post says Merryl Tisch should prove she supports charter schools, rather than limiting them.
• A Rhode Island teachers union is suing over Central Falls’ move to fire all its high school teachers. (AP)
• Arizona is pushing schools to remove teachers who speak English with an accent. (Wall Street Journal)
• Denver is banning teachers from taking work trips to Arizona because of its immigration law. (AP)
• D.C. is on the verge of announcing a budget to fund its new teachers contract. (Washington Post)

• After a rough start at public elementary schools, a novelist found her place at Hunter College HS.
• City Limits looks at Bloomberg’s cash rewards program and its unclear future.
• A Bronx charter school student’s mother claims the school hasn’t provided needed special ed services.
• Analyzing charter schools’ transfer rates, Kim Gittleson finds they go down as schools grow up.
• James Merriman suggests questions he thinks should have been asked at the Perkins charter hearings.
• Charter advocate Peter Murphy responds to the state teachers union’s report on charter schools.
• InsideSchools reports that six percent of the city’s 9th graders applied to different high schools.
• The NYTimes’ Robert Gebeloff answers more questions about the state tests and students’ results.
• Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow attended a benefit for a program that brings yoga into NYC public schools.
• Improving the school calendar could cut down on teacher absenteeism, Forrest Hinton writes.
• A teacher questions the wisdom of the city’s new strategy for educating kids with special needs.
• A New Jersey principal is asking his middle schoolers’ parents to ban social networking sites at home.
• Rated unsatisfactory three times, a teacher believes he’s kept in the school as an example.
• If Chancellor Joel Klein were to leave his job, very little would change, writes a UFT member.
• And Ugandan schoolchildren answer how they would spend $50, the cost of a year’s tuition there.

Sharmin Mollick pores over an Advanced Placement Physics assignment at Marble Hill High School for International Studies.

I spent the day today with a couple of students with amazing stories — Karina Melendez and Sharmin Mollick. Mollick came to New York as a ninth-grader who spoke no English and hid her love of biology and genetics from her disapproving family. Melendez fought bone cancer at age 10, later lived in shelters and foster homes and is now second-ranked in her junior class.

The two are among seven city high school students selected for college scholarships by the school support organization New Visions for Public Schools. Quick bios of the students are below the jump. But stay tuned over the next few days as we post text and audio profiles of Melendez, Mollick and Luis Ng Tong.

“All of this happened for a reason,” Melendez told me today. “I have a story; I might as well tell it.” (more…)

This is the second post in a series that looks at data from charter schools’ Basic Education Data System reports. This data was provided to us by the New York State Education Department via a Freedom of Information Law request. A full spreadsheet with the data we used is available here.

On Tuesday, the state teachers union released a report that said that charters in New York State had a student turnover rate of 8 to 10 percent each year. While statistics on overall turnover rates are hard to come by, data that city charter schools file with the state shows that one measure of transfer rate for city charter schools — that is, the number of students that transfer out of a charter school during the school year — is 6 percent. To be clear, this necessarily leaves out of the number of students who finished the school year but did not decide to return the following year.

Overall, the rate of transfers decreased slightly from 7 percent in 2007-2008 to 6 percent in 2008-2009. Generally, the longer a school has been in existence, the lower its transfer rate. For instance, the NYC Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industries had the highest transfer rate — 26 percent  — in 2008-2009, but it had only been open for one year. Achievement First Endeavor and Ross Global Institute had the highest rates in 2007-2008, 23 percent and 24 percent respectively. By 2008-2009, these numbers decreased to 15 percent at each school — numbers that are still higher than average. Some schools, such as Achievement First Crown Heights, Achievement First East New York, Community Partnership Charter School, KIPP Academy, and the South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures and the Arts, reported no transfers during both the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 school years.

To look at the transfer rates at individual charter schools, you can scroll down the list below. (more…)

A new TV spot by the pro-charter coalition Education Reform Now debuted today, three days before the state has to officially declare whether it will submit a bid for Race to the Top round two.

The ad, which features unnamed people (some charter parents, some not) criticizing the state legislature for not lifting the state’s charter cap, promotes the idea that the cap was a major reason for New York’s loss in round one. The state placed 15 out of 16 finalists. State education officials have already said that they intend to reapply and that while lifting the cap would help their chances, other measures such as tying test scores to tenure would also give the state a needed boost.

Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew told the Daily News today that the attack ad was full of “blatant lies.” (more…)