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.

The bill would require the schools to give admissions preference to special education students and those learning English and to demonstrate their efforts to attract those students as a condition of receiving or renewing a charter. It would also allow a single board of trustees to operate charter schools on multiple sites, and allow schools to band together to provide special education services. Often, charter school administrators argue that their schools are too small to adequately provide extra services to needy students.

The legislation would also mandate that charter school trustees disclose potential conflicts of interest and set public practices for advertising and running the schools’ board meetings.

The bill does not allow the state controller to audit charter school finances or ban for-profit companies from running schools, two changes that charter school critics frequently insist is necessary to prevent mismanagement and fraud.

The head of the pro-charter advocacy group Education Reform Now, Joe Williams, said that the new proposal would put New York in a strong position to win in the second round of the federal government’s Race to the Top competition, which favors states with high caps.

“At the same time, the legislation addresses concerns around transparency, accountability and the need to service students with disabilities and English language learners,” Williams said. “We believe that it does so without going so far as to undermine New York’s outstanding charter law.”

The city teachers union countered that the bill’s measures to improve oversight are too weak. “The proposal falls far short of real reform, particularly since it lets profiteers continue to make money off our kids,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said.

And officials from the state teachers union, gathered in Washington, D.C. for an annual convention this weekend, accused Senate Democratic leadership of overriding their members’ concerns about charter schools.

“I think this is full of baloney,” said Andrew Pallotta, executive vice president of the New York State United Teachers. Pallotta decried Senate leadership for developing the bill without consulting the union.

When union officials heard about the bill’s introduction this afternoon, they asked the several thousand delegates gathered at the conference to immediately contact their state senators. “Just about everyone I spoke to said their local senator had never heard of the thing,” Pallotta said. Union officials are threatening to withhold endorsements from any legislator who supports the bill.

Charter school supporters and skeptics will now be paying close attention to the reaction the Senate bill receives in the Assembly, particularly from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Charter school advocates fiercely opposed the last charter school cap lift bill that was promoted by Senate and Assembly Democratic leadership and supported by the unions before the first Race to the Top deadline in January. That bill tied a cap lift to changes to the way charter schools are opened and managed that the bill’s supporters said would increase state oversight of the schools but that charter advocates argued would kill the schools. In the end, the disagreement stymied the passage of any form of cap lift.

In January, the proposed legislation to lift the charter cap emerged less than a week before the deadline for the state’s Race to the Top grant application, prompting a panicked scramble to debate and vote on the law. Today’s bid to raise the cap comes a month before the grant competition’s June 1 second-round application cutoff date.

Here’s the full text of the bill:

The funds, known as School Improvement Grants, or SIG, will be doled out to New York state school districts in upcoming months. Districts have to submit an application to the state explaining which of the four models — turnaround, restart, closure, and transformation — for school improvement they plan to use. Of the schools the state has classified as “persistently lowest achieving,” 34 are in New York City.

Some of the guidance about which model to chose may come from Mass Insight, a non-profit in Boston that is partnering with six states to help design their turnaround strategies.

U.S. DOE’s press release follows:

NEW YORK TO RECEIVE MORE THAN $308 MILLION TO TURN AROUND ITS PERSISTENTLY LOWEST ACHIEVING SCHOOLS

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced that New York will receive more than $308 million to turn around its persistently lowest achieving schools through the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. These funds are part of the $3.5 billion that will be made available to states this spring from money set aside in the 2009 budget and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“When a school continues to perform in the bottom five percent of the state and isn’t showing signs of growth or has graduation rates below 60 percent, something dramatic needs to be done,” said Duncan. “Turning around our worst performing schools is difficult for everyone but it is critical that we show the courage to do the right thing by kids.”

The $308,772,808 made available to New York is being distributed by formula to the state and will then be competed out by the state to school districts. In order for a school district to apply for these funds, it must have a state-identified “persistently lowest achieving” or a Tier III school — a school that has failed to meet annual yearly progress for two years and is not identified as a persistently lowest achieving school.

However, Tier III schools can only receive funds once all of the state’s persistently lowest achieving schools have received funds. New York’s application, which includes its list of persistently lowest achieving schools, as defined by the state, can be found here: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/summary/index.html.

School districts will apply to the state for the funds this spring. When school districts apply, they must indicate that they will implement one of the following four models in their persistently lowest achieving schools:

• TURNAROUND MODEL: Replace the principal, screen existing school staff, and rehire no more than half the teachers; adopt a new governance structure; and improve the school through curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies.
• RESTART MODEL: Convert a school or close it and re-open it as a charter school or under an education management organization.
• SCHOOL CLOSURE: Close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district.
• TRANSFORMATION MODEL: Replace the principal and improve the school through comprehensive curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies.

Once schools receive SIG funds, they will be able to begin to spend them immediately to turn around schools this fall. States may apply to the Education Department for a waiver to allow them to spend funds over a three-year period. An additional $545,633,000 has been provided for SIG in 2010 and will be awarded to states to fund additional schools in the 2011-12 school year. The department has also made a request for an additional $900 million for the program in the 2011 budget.

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. Why would program officials say they were measuring classroom techniques if in fact they were working new ways to observe us? Was this observation or surveillance? And didn’t the cameras smack a little of Big Brother?

One of the participants contacted a higher-up at the program, who said the young woman was entirely wrong. In fact, this person said, the camera was simply a tool. The program simply aimed to evaluate a series of rubrics for effective teaching. Actually the program was planning to give a test at the end of the study to determine which high scores, if any, aligned with which rubrics. If any rubrics stood out, they would therefore be valid and could be used to measure effective teaching elsewhere.

One participant said this might be worthy of support, but nonetheless, it was not what the literature and representatives had said the program would be. Perhaps this was not “Measures of Effective Teaching,” but rather “Measures of Measures of Effective Teaching.”

We’re still awaiting a written response from the Gates Foundation. But if what our teacher was told is true, that would represent a clear bait-and-switch. Personally, I doubt the validity of magic formulas. The studies that support them this year will inevitably be supplanted by studies supporting something else next year. Such infallible studies tend to be discarded and replaced on a rapid and predictable basis. Gates thought small schools were the magic bullet, and he was wrong. I doubt his search for a magic formula for teachers will prove any more fruitful.

Closer to home, a handful of Francis Lewis participants at are considering dropping out of the study, despite the attractive $1,500 stipend attached to it. One teacher told me the literature said only researchers would watch the observation films, yet showed me a participation slip for students saying school administrators would have access. Why tell teachers one thing and students another?

In any case, participating teachers feel misled. Personally, I can’t blame them at all. How can you work with people who say one thing and do something else entirely? How can you have faith in an organization in which the right hand doesn’t seem to know what the left hand is doing?

Bill’s 1,500 bucks could buy me that iMac I’ve been thinking about. 

But I can wait.

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.City officials attributed last year’s increase in the number of minority children meeting eligibility requirements to higher participation and stronger outreach about the process.

Department of Education spokesman Daniel Kanner said weaker outreach isn’t to blame for the drop-off in the number of families choosing to screen their children this year. Instead, he said, last year’s spike was an anomaly.

“There were significant outreach efforts this year, as there are every year, and will be next year,” Kanner said. “Last year’s policy change standardized the process citywide, which created even more attention for gifted and talented programs on top of the outreach efforts that helped cause last year’s increase.”

The drop-off in screenings didn’t dampen a trend toward higher scores. In 2008, the first year the city used a standard screening process, 18 percent of test-takers met the 90th percentile bar. This year, 28 percent of children taking the tests fell into the 90th percentile or higher, up from 22 percent last year. All of those children are eligible to apply for seats in a gifted kindergarten class, and if their parents rank all of the programs in their district, they are guaranteed a placement in one of them.

The number of test-takers meeting an even higher standard jumped by a far larger margin. The number of children who scored at the 97th percentile or higher increased by a full third, making 1,788 children eligible to apply for five ultra-elite citywide programs. Together, those programs offer just 250 seats.

Robin Aronow, an educational consultant who helps parents get their children into selective schools, said she wasn’t surprised to see more students qualify.

“Certainly there is prep that is going on all over the city,” she said. “There are books out there now for kids. There are independent companies that have boot camps. Can I attribute all of the increase to that? Not necessarily, but I’m sure it played a role.”

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.”

Annenberg, Blackrock Scholarships Awarded to Exceptional New Visions Students
Overcoming the Odds, Seven Students Will See Their College Dreams Come True

NEW YORK, April 29, 2010 – The two major college tuition funds administered by New Visions for Public Schools have awarded their 2010 scholarships. One New Visions student was selected as the recipient of the 2010 Leonore Annenberg College Scholarship, and six seniors at New Visions schools have been named recipients of the 2010 BlackRock-Schlosstein Scholarships.

Karina Melendez has been waiting a long time for things to go her way, and finally, they are. In January, she got to move into a good home when the parent coordinator at her high school became her foster mom. Then this month, the 17-year-old was selected as the recipient of the 2010 Leonore Annenberg College Scholarship. No longer will she have to worry about the prospect of tuition she can’t afford. She’ll be covered anywhere she wants to go.

The Annenberg scholarship will provide Karina with the full, four-year cost of attendance at an academically rigorous college, including travel expenses to visit New York if she leaves the area. She was selected from among 65 applicants, all nominated by principals at New Visions schools, based on her academic achievements, integrity, commitment to service, financial need and ability to overcome adversity.

Karina, an aspiring lawyer who is ranked second in her junior class of 100 students at Bronx School of Law and Finance, stands out for her extraordinary resilience and determination. At 10, she was diagnosed with bone cancer, and for three years, her schooling consisted of tutoring at home or in the hospital. She beat cancer and performed so well on state tests that she was able to rejoin classmates her age without repeating a year. But at 14, her family was evicted from her childhood apartment, and she had to live with her aunt, in homeless shelters and then go into foster care. Through it all, she put her energy into learning.

“A part of me always saw school as the one thing in my life I could control,” she said in a recent interview. “Everything else in my life could fall apart, but no one could take that away from me.”

Six seniors at New Visions schools have been named recipients of the BlackRock-Schlosstein Scholarships, which provide up to $20,000 over four years, with a maximum of $5,000 per year, toward the cost of full-time undergraduate study. The scholarship amount is determined by tuition costs and financial need. The winners are:
Dieynabou “Dee” Barry, Bronx Center for Science and Math. Human rights abuses in Dee’s home country of Guinea have inspired her to become “a bettering force in this world,” as she wrote in an application essay for the scholarship. On track to be her class’s valedictorian, Dee has been admitted to Dartmouth College, where she wants to major in international studies. Her goal is to become a member of the United Nations and address human rights issues.

Joanna Mei Juan Luo, High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology. Joanna, who plans to attend New York University, wants to become a nurse and is passionate about public health issues. She will be the first in her family to graduate from high school. “My father was never given a chance to go to high school, let alone college,” Joanna wrote in her scholarship application essay. “From the stories he tells us, I call up a vivid mental picture of him as a barefooted child walking on the dirt road, with two buckets dangling from each end of a stick placed on his shoulder, as he makes his third trip to the village’s only water well. I have always known that if I ever wanted to honor my father with the chance to say, ‘My children all went to college,’ I would first need to set the example.”

Oi Yee Liu, High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology. Oi Yee is extremely passionate about math. After she moved to the United States from Hong Kong four years ago, “My new life in this country was overwhelming and constantly tortured me because everything required English.” Except math. She became known at school as “math girl.” Classmates began to ask her for help in math, and a teacher nominated her for the Math Honor Society, enabling her to make friends and improve her communication skills in English. Oi Yee will attend Lehigh University, where she plans to major in finance.

Sharmin Shompa “Sini” Mollick, Marble Hill High School for International Studies. Sharmin grew up in Bangladesh in a conservative Muslim family that did not encourage her to go to school and disapproved of her desire to study biology. After coming to the United States, she had to keep secret her study of science and goal of becoming a genetic researcher. “Because science contradicted with my parents’ beliefs, I studied for science classes when no one was around, usually in the bathroom,” she wrote in her scholarship application essay. “I wanted to prove to my parents that studying science would not corrupt my mind but would allow me to have a positive impact on the world.” Sharmin is secretary of the school math club, a member of the National Honor Society, and a tutor in algebra and calculus. She will attend Cornell University.

Stephanie George, Collegiate Institute for Math and Science. Stephanie loves history, and she has been on a quest to learn about her family’s past in Jamaica to help define her identity as an Afro-Caribbean American. She enjoys learning about the similarities in folklore and beliefs around the world. “I get goose bumps when I think of how all our lives are linked together through history,” she wrote in her scholarship application essay. At CIMS, she is president of the student government, vice president of the National Honor Society, an editor on the student newspaper, and a representative on the school leadership team, a decision-making body that meets with the principal, staff and parents. She will attend Vassar College.

Shi Giang “Luis” Ng Tong, East-West School of International Studies. Luis was raised in Colombia, where he was the only Chinese person at his school. From the time he was a young boy, he wanted to contribute to solving humanity’s problems, such as finding a cure for cancer; however, he stopped school in seventh grade. Luis resumed his education when he arrived in the United States but was ashamed of his language barrier and the fact that he was older than his peers. But his determination remained, and since his sophomore year, he has been the top student in his grade and taking college courses through the College Now program at Queens College. He is now fluent in English, Chinese and Spanish and studying Korean. His science teacher Gloria Nicodemi says he’s the first student she’s ever taught who scored a 100 on the earth science Regents, then got another perfect score the next year on the chemistry exam. “I strive to become an engineer who solves the people’s challenges of today and tomorrow, to struggle side by side with humanity’s problems,” he wrote in his scholarship application essay. “I do not want to be just anyone, I want to be someone that leaves a mark in the world before my existence extinguishes.”

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.

Although these data give some insight into the number of students that choose to leave their charter school to go elsewhere each year, it’s not clear that it takes into account the full number of students who leave a charter. This is because the question on the BEDS survey asks charters to record the number of students who transferred out of the school between October and the end of the school year. Students who choose not to return are not counted in this number. Although this gap is somewhat made up by the stability number that charters must report, the stability number only records the statistics for one grade, so it’s hard to generalize school-wide.

In a future post, I will be looking at enrollment statistics to see if they can further illuminate the turnover rate at charters. As always, I welcome your feedback!

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.”

In January, state officials asked the legislature to lift the cap on charter schools, but lawmakers froze, in large part because of opposition from the state teachers union. Union leaders have refused to endorse a charter cap lift without significant changes to how the schools are opened and run that charter supporters say would destroy the schools.

Education Reform Now is a coalition of three pro-charter advocacy groups: Democrats for Education Reform, New York State Charter School Association, and the New York City Charter School Center.

The script of the ad follows.

Parent: “When I heard that we did not get the $700 million in school aid from President Obama, I was really angry.”

Parent: “I was speechless.”

Parent: “I couldn’t believe it.”

Parent: “$700 million dollars.”

Parent: “Schools definitely need the money now, especially since their budgets keep getting slashed.”

Parent: “Albany can still make this right.”

Parent: “We can get the $700 million, if Albany just passes the reforms.”

Parent: “Like allowing more charter schools.”

Parent: “Albany’s listening much to much to the teachers union.”

Parent: “Stop listening to the teachers union.”

Parent: “Listen to parents.”

Parent: “Speak for children.”

Parent: “And make decisions that are going to benefit the kids.”

Bloomberg’s poem was composed according to the rules of a writing assignment that’s given to students in grades 3-5, according to the city’s press release about Poem in Your Pocket day. The Envelope Project asks students to write a poem based off of a famous first line, then open an envelope to read the original. Dickinson’s poem is here, and this is Mayor Bloomberg’s, complete with a shout-out to the city’s schools:

Many of the city’s most heated education battles, from how to solve overcrowding to the charter school space wars, boil down to one question: whether the city has adequately planned how many students fit in each school building.

The bill, sponsored by 23 of the Council’s 51 members, would require the Department of Education to break down its space capacity estimates into much more detail than the city currently reports. Instead of offering a single figure for how many students a school building can accommodate, generated by an abstruse formula, the city would have to reveal specific data points about each building, such as whether rooms such as gymnasiums, libraries or science labs have been converted to general classroom space.

The bill would also require the city to use the class size limits the state has set when planning how buildings will be used, instead of the city’s own limits, which are higher. Education officials argue that the larger maximum targets give principals flexibility to schedule classes that are larger or smaller, depending on the class, while still aiming for the state-mandated class size averages.

The city reports its space estimates annually in a guide called the Blue Book. City Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson today argued that the new bill would create a “True Book to replace the Blue Book.”

The bill’s supporters in the Council argue it would result in better assessments of how schools actually use their space and would alert the DOE when schools are so cramped that they turn to hallways and closets for overflow. Councilman Daniel Dromm cited examples of schools he has visited where teachers give one-on-one tutoring to students in converted janitorial closets. The city’s current space surveys do not require principals to report if they use space smaller than a certain square footage, and so advocates argue that many symptoms of overcrowding are overlooked.

City officials argued today that the council doesn’t have a right to change how the city estimates school capacities and that the bill would introduce onerous reporting requirements

“The Department believes the value of the information simply isn’t worth the time and labor required to obtain it,” said Kathleen Grimm, the deputy chancellor who oversees the department’s space planning.

City Councilman Oliver Koppell of the Bronx countered that the bill would only require extra work in its first year. After the historical data has been put together, the reporting requirements for principals in future years would not be much greater than they are now, he said.

“The resistance to this bill is excessive,” Koppell said. “There does have to be some refinement of the Blue Book.”

Doug Israel, research director for the Center for Arts Education, said that the legislation would give the city its first opportunity to track how schools convert rooms intended for things like art and music as overcrowding increases. “This is important because these rooms are disappearing,” he said.

Here is the complete text of the proposed bill, as well as background information on the bill provided by Council analysts. The Council will likely convene several more hearings on the legislation before it comes to a vote.

If Lehman does get scanners, it means there will be no large, comprehensive high schools in the Bronx without them.

Department of Education spokesman Marge Feinberg said the city’s police department has yet to decide whether to install permanent scanners next year, but students and teachers at the school said they’ve been told to expect scanners in September.

Metal detectors in airports and government buildings are standard fare, but in the city’s public schools, they’re still a source of controversy. While some parents don’t feel comfortable sending their children off to school every day without the scanners, others believe the devices cause minority students to be treated like criminals.

Every morning, about 4,500 students walk through the doors of Lehman’s campus — a school building so large, it looks like a beige space station has landed on East Tremont Avenue. Roughly 4,000 students attend Lehman High School itself, while 500 go to the other school in the building, Renaissance High School for Musical Theater and Technology — a combination that has put the total enrollment well over the building’s capacity of 3,500.

Several teachers who currently work at Lehman, but who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said fighting among students and gang activity have increased in the last two years, to the point where there are two or three fights a day.

“A lot of the faculty members don’t feel safe anymore,” said a Lehman teacher. There’s “lots of violence, lots of vulgarity, lots of out-and-out insubordination. A culture of disrespect came into the school.”

According to the DOE, serious incidents at Lehman have decreased by 36 percent since last year, but the exact number of incidents will not be available until the state releases its data on school violence this summer.

In early March, a Lehman teacher reported that she thought she saw a student carrying a gun. Though no gun was found, police brought in mobile scanners the next day and discovered students carrying a handful of knives. A week later, two Lehman students were stabbed in Westchester Square, a block away from the school. Last week, a Lehman student accidentally cut himself when the 2-inch knife he was carrying in his pants leg slipped as he was bending over.

“I know there’s weapons,” said Nikki Nedialkov, a sophomore at Lehman. “There’s a lot of gangs in the school.”

Susan Perez, who works in the safety department of the United Federation of Teacher’s Bronx office, said both principals at the two schools that share the building had asked the department for scanners. Neither principal responded to requests for comment.

Perez said one of the factors contributing to school violence is the size of the student population.

“When I walk the hallways it’s very crowded,” she said. “I know it can short fuse a child being bumped into all the time.”

Lehman’s size has not significantly changed in the last several years, but the composition of its student body has.

In the last two years, Lehman has been flooded with high-needs students in numbers the school had never seen before. According to the city’s annual quality review reports, in 2007, 8.7 percent of Lehman students were classified as ELL and 13 percent as special education. In 2008, 38 percent of students were ELLs and 38 percent were special education.

It also has a new principal, Janet Saraceno, who arrived at Lehman in 2008 after its long-time principal, Robert Leder, was removed over corruption charges. Saraceno is currently under investigation for manipulating students’ grades to boost the school’s graduation rate.

Now-retired UFT Bronx Representative Lynne Winderbaum said Leder, Lehman’s former principal for 29 years, was partly responsible for keeping the school insulated from the violence that plagued other large schools by tightly controlling who enrolled.

“I think he managed to keep the demographics of that school from looking like the demographics of many other Bronx high schools,” Winderbaum said. When violence occurred in the past and the subject of bringing in scanners came up, Lehman didn’t have enough incidents to justify making the scanners permanent, she said.

“It’s unfortunate to see the school end up like this,” a Lehman teacher said. “It was a good school that I would have sent my own kids to and that’s not the case anymore.”

Large Bronx high schools

Evander Childs Campus – Scanning (6 schools)
Adlai Stevenson Campus – Scanning (5 schools)
John F. Kennedy High School Campus – Scanning (5 schools)
Theodore Roosevelt High School Campus – Scanning (5 schools)
William Toward Taft High School Campus – Scanning (6 schools)
Morris Campus – Scanning (5 schools)
Harry Truman High School Campus – Scanning (2 schools)
Christopher Columbus Campus – Scanning (5 schools)
Dewitt Clinton Campus  – Scanning (1 school)
Alfred E Smith Campus – Scanning (1 school)
James Monroe Campus – Scanning (5 schools)
Walton Campus – Scanning (5 schools)
Grace Dodge Career and Technical Education – Scanning (1,362 students)
Samuel Gompers Career and Technical Education HS – Scanning (1,014 students)
Bronx High School of Science – No scanning (2,923 students)
Jane Addams HS – No scanning (1,231 students)
South Bronx Educational Campus – No scanning (3 schools)

That’s not surprising, knowing what’s available in vending machines in New York City schools:

• Brown-Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts: 200 calories, calories from Fat 60, 12 grams of sugar, ingredients include polydextrose, dextrose, high-fructose corn syrup, and corn syrup solids.
• Cheerios Cereal Bar Strawberry: 150 calories, calories from fat 30, 10 grams of sugar, ingredients include fructose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, gelatin, Red 40, maltodextrin, natural and artificial flavor.
• Doritos Cool Ranch Reduced Fat: 130 calories, calories from fat 45, ingredients include corn syrup solids, monosodium glutamate, dextrose, artificial color including Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 5, and natural and artificial flavors.
• Doritos Spicy Nachos: 140 calories, calories from Fat 50, ingredients include monosodium glutamate, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, dextrose, artificial coloring including Yellow 6 Lake, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1, natural and artificial flavor.
• Linden’s Butter Crunchers Cookies: 150 calories, calories from Fat 51, 10.75 grams of sugar, ingredients include corn syrup and maltodextrin.

As we have argued, it’s not the occasional sweet at a school bake sale that is causing childhood obesity, it’s the food our children are consuming every day. When today’s parents went to middle school and high school, there were bake sales, but there were no vending machines making Doritos, Linden’s cookies, and Pop-Tarts available to our children every day. And despite the city Department of Education’s attempts to improve the “nutritional value” of these processed foods so that no single serving contains more than 200 calories or 10 percent saturated fat, make no mistake that it is still junk food filled with empty calories that our children don’t need.

So why, in the midst of a health crisis that many are calling an epidemic, hasn’t Mayor Bloomberg, who eliminated trans fats from city restaurants and has turned his sights to excessive salt consumption, removed the junk food from our schools? One possible explanation is the $28 million the city’s schools are projected to make over the next five years from the vending machines. The sad truth is that the Department of Education and the food companies providing the junk food are making a lot of money by making our children fat. But the report from Mission: Readiness has an answer for this as well: “Research shows that reducing high-calorie, low-nutrition foods and beverages … does not hurt a school’s bottom line. The sales of school lunches increase when junk food and sugary beverages are limited.”

That’s promising news, but whether the Department of Education would make up the loss revenue with increased sales of school lunches is irrelevant. Schools should not be making money at the expense of our children’s health. And yet the junk food continues to be sold out of greed, apathy, or some combination of both. If the distressing statistics regarding the state of our children’s health aren’t enough to persuade Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein to remove the junk food from our schools, maybe this quote from the Mission: Readiness report will: “The United States military stands ready to protect the American people, but if our nation does not help ensure that future generations grow up to be healthy and fit, that will become increasingly difficult. The health of our children and our national security are at risk. America must act decisively.” Let’s hope that now our elected officials will do just that.

One of the largest issues in the charter school debates has been accusations that charters “counsel out” students who have learning disabilities or who do not adhere to the schools’ strict codes of conduct. While we haven’t found comprehensive statistics that track individual students enrolled in charter schools from year to year, the BEDS reports include a “student stability” number that is relevant to this issue.

Student stability counts the number of students who are currently enrolled in the highest grade that the charter serves who were also enrolled in the school last year. For instance, if a charter school serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade, the student stability number would look at the number of current eighth-graders who were also seventh-graders last year.

We found that, on average, charter schools retain 84% of their students, compared to 93 percent for traditional public schools citywide. (The stability rate for traditional public schools varies from district to district, with a 91 percent stability rate in District 5, for instance.) This percentage has remained constant for the past three years but the percentage at individual schools varies widely. Some schools, such as the Beginning with Children Charter School and the Harbor Sciences and Arts Charter School, experience almost no attrition. Others, such as Harlem Day Charter School and the John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy, consistently lose more than one third of their class. And for many charter schools whose highest grade was ninth, the attrition was noticeably high, probably because many of their eighth-graders chose to go to other, perhaps more well-known, high schools.

To better visualize the data, we have created a map that shows all of the charter schools that had applicable data. The size of the dot corresponds to the percentage of students that left the school, and if you hold your mouse over the dot you will be able to see relevant information such as grade studied, number who stayed in the school, and number who left. You can zoom in on certain districts, choose to look at the stability ratio for specific grades, or click to see the stability number of specific schools by using the menu to the right. Unfortunately, this data is only for the 2008-2009 school year — to see the numbers for 2007-2008, you will have to look at the spreadsheet. (Note: If you’re looking at this blog in Safari, you need to enable third-party cookies in order to see the graph.)

It is important to note that these stability numbers only look at one grade in a particular charter school. Furthermore, the BEDS data, while vetted by the State Education Department, is not without its flaws. These include the timing of the report (charter schools must report their numbers in mid-October) as well as the lack of substantial follow-up by the groups that collect the data.

Nevertheless, we believe that this information provides important insight into charter school stability. As always, we welcome your feedback for ways we can improve and build on this report.

UPDATE: Many readers have pointed out that comparing charters’ stability numbers to stability numbers citywide may be slightly misleading. Others have mentioned that I neglected to take into account the number of students that charters retained in grade, as well as the fact that including stability numbers from schools whose grades went from 8th to 9th might slightly distort the numbers. I’ve updated the spreadsheet to include these concerns, but the numbers remain relatively the same. For those of you interested in district comparisons in the three main areas where charters are most numerous, the numbers are:

South Bronx (Districts 7, 8, 9): Charter Stability: 88 percent, District School Stability: 91 percent
Harlem (Districts 3, 4, 5): Charter Stability: 85 percent, District School Stability: 93 percent
Central Brooklyn (Districts 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 32): Charter Stability: 87 percent, District School Stability: 92 percent

• Only four principals failed the city’s principal rating system, even after it was overhauled. (Daily News)
• A fifth of city teachers missed more than the permitted 10 days of school last year. (Wall Street Journal)
• The city’s two-year-old Attendance Court is meant to help truant teens return to school. (Times)
• Special education adds complexity and stakes to the debate over charter schools. (Columbia Spectator)
• Potential challengers to State Sen. Bill Perkins are busily touting their charter school support. (Post)
• A movie about getting into Harlem Success charter schools, is playing at the Tribeca Film Festival. (Post)
• Public school students who are Tribeca Film Fellows are screening their own short movies. (NBC NY)
• A teacher at the Bronx’s PS 117 allegedly negotiated an illicit gun sale from his classroom. (Daily News)
• Investors in D.C.’s schools say they want to be able to leave if Michelle Rhee does. (Washington Post)
• A task force recommended that Los Angeles’s school board tie test scores to teacher tenure. (L.A. Times)
• In response to criticism, Chicago will now let families appeal magnet school rejections. (Chicago Tribune)
• Budget cuts could cause class sizes in Chicago to rise by as much as 25 percent. (Chicago Tribune)

The New York State United Teachers released its report today cataloging cases of documented and alleged financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest and counseling out of needy students. The report, which NYSUT based on a review of records from 60 of the state’s approximately 140 charter schools, estimates that the state’s charter schools have an 8 to 10 percent student turnover rate each year. It also argues that state charter law doesn’t prevent financial abuses such as those at East New York Preparatory Charter School, which the city is closing at the end of this school year.

The union’s arguments will sound familiar to those who followed New York State United Teachers representative’s testimony at State Senator Bill Perkins’ hearings on charter school oversight last week. At the hearing, charter school authorizers responded that many of the cases of mismanagement the union cites were uncovered through their current oversight practices.

The full report is below the jump: