GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

High school Regents exams have long come under criticism for being easy to game: Teachers grade their own students’ work, and checks against cheating are flawed. That could change next year with a new rule voted in by the Board of Regents.

Rather than rely on a group of teachers and state officials to examine tests for grade tampering, the city will begin scanning students’ multiple choice answer sheets next year. State officials said scanning tests will let them perform a high-tech cheating check called “erasure analysis.”

That means officials will be able to look for instances of teachers changing students’ answers by counting the number of times each student erased a wrong answer and bubbled in a correct one.

Next year, only six tests that students frequently take in order to get diplomas will be scanned, but in 2012 all Regents exams will be.

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The distance that 67 students re-routed from P.S. 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, (marked A) to a mix of five other schools will trek.

Kindergartners-to-be jilted by neighborhood elementary schools too crowded to hold them will receive a new school assignment in the mail this weekend, the Department of Education announced today.

Some of the new assignments will send families to less-coveted schools just down the block. Others will send the 5- and 6-year-olds on treks as arduous as a nearly 3-mile hike from Sunset Park to Red Hook, in the case of four unlucky Brooklyn families.

Letters with alternate matches are going out to 980 families, more than double the number that received them last year. But the matches are a better option than what seemed possible in March, when 1,885 families were told they would be on a waiting list. Schools have since found spots for many of those families.

None of the decisions are final, and all families will remain on their wait lists even while they receive their new assignment. The city expects some spots will open up as children are admitted to gifted and talented programs and private schools, schools spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld said.

The vast bulk of redirected children live in Queens, where 432 families zoned for 16 schools will be re-routed to a group of 18 less-crowded alternatives. (Brooklyn comes next with 220 redirected families, then Manhattan with 179, 101 in the Bronx, and 48 in Staten Island.) (more…)

There’s a young teacher I’ve taken under my wing of late. I’ve been trying to help her get her classes under control and she’s made considerable progress in a very short time. But though I’ve got 20+ years of experience on her, the other day she managed to teach me a thing or two. Several of her students had unexpectedly shared their novel cheating strategies with her. Perhaps her youth made her appear more sympathetic than she really was.

She surprised the kids, though, by establishing new and unexpected ground rules for her next test. One of the boys who’d confided in her almost cried when he heard them:

1. No water bottles. It’s fairly easy for a kid to manipulate a water bottle so that the test answers are just a twist away. What teacher would deprive a kid of a swig of water?  Probably one that wants the kid to study rather than cheat.
2. No electronic dictionaries. This one was not news to me. Kids can place as much text as they like on these little things. One year I noticed two identical essays on the English Regents exams, right down to the misspellings. A supervisor called them both in and asked them to reproduce the essays. One wrote nothing, and was disqualified. The other produced the first few sentences from the essay and was allowed to pass. I protested, telling the supervisor I could recite “Annabel Lee“ from memory, but that didn’t make me Edgar Allen Poe. I was overruled. (more…)

Karina Melendez, 17, junior at Bronx High School for Law and Finance

This is the second in a series of profiles of college-bound student recipients of scholarships administered by New Visions for Public Schools.

Last month, the principal of the Bronx School of Law and Finance, Evan Schwartz, called junior Karina Melendez to his office, but he didn’t tell her why.

Schwartz had a happy surprise, something that Melendez had long stopped expecting. She had survived bone cancer, homelessness, and foster care all before the age of eighteen, and so had trained herself to anticipate the worst.

“There was this fear and angst in her face” as she walked into Schwartz’s office, recalled Eva Lopez, a lawyer and Melendez’s mentor, who had been invited to the school for the reveal.

But when Melendez saw Schwartz, Lopez, her foster mother, and others who had gathered to celebrate her, with flowers waiting on the table, she was confused.  “Well, I know they didn’t get me that as a sorry gift,” she later remembered thinking. “What’s going on?”

As the news sunk in that she had won a full ride to the college of her choice, Melendez also realized that after years of misfortune, things were turning her way. “This changes everything,” she told the gathered crowd.

Listen to Melendez discuss how she overcame cancer and homelessness to land at the top of her class.

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One of the axioms I was told early in my teaching career was, “Don’t smile till Christmas.” And I suppose to a certain extent this cliche is a useful tool of survival for novice teachers. But based on recent experience, I don’t need advice on how to withstand problems with the kids; I need help with the adults.

The general rule I have tried to follow since early on is, “Pick your battles.” This is definitely helpful in the classroom (Should I bother arguing over pen vs. pencil? Is it worth addressing a kid who is overly fidgety on the rug?), but it is even more valuable for navigating school politics. Since my first year teaching I have found myself confronting issues large and small that made me uncomfortable. Deciding whether to voice my opinions was always a difficult choice.

This year, as I’ve adjusted to the dynamics of my third year of teaching and a new school culture I’ve stayed out of the fray more or less. I don’t bother anyone and nobody’s really bothered me. I may have my issues with test prep strategies or superfluous phone calls in the middle of lessons, but nothing has been worth fighting over. Yesterday, however, I was faced with a classic “small problem, big implications” issue.

It arose from my school’s “science fair” scheduled for today. (more…)

• A judge backed a city health teacher sent to the rubber room over vocabulary. (Times, Daily News)
• A tentative state-union charter school deal fell apart over co-location and for-profit schools. (Daily News)
• Charter advocate Peter Murphy says for-profit schools don’t exist, only for-profit partners. (Daily News)
• In launching his State Senate bid, Basil Smikle said his mother is a teacher and UFT member. (Post)
• City students had mixed national reading test scores. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News, NY1, WNYC)
• The city’s scores put it below the national average but better than other urban districts. (Times)
• The scores show city students are on the right track but still need help, the Daily News says.
• The 5,000 middle school students losing yellow-bus service could get student Metrocards. (Post, NY1)
• Budget cuts have put Chicago’s ballroom dance program in danger. (Times)
• The Washington Post says D.C.’s rising NAEP scores show Michelle Rhee’s reforms are working.

• The state teachers union is threatening not to endorse any pro-charter cap lift gubernatorial candidates.
• Mayor Bloomberg said city students’ scores on the NAEP reading exam were “encouraging.”
• Following Steven Brill’s article, Kim Gittleson offers data and nuance to the charter/district debate.
• Megan McArdle of the Atlantic thinks Brill is on his way to writing a “killer book” about teacher unions.
• Facing a pay cut after years of hard work, a technology teacher says she’s tired of being a sucker.
• On “Teacher Appreciation Day” while TV ads slammed the union, students rallied around their teacher.
• Gateway HS’s leaders and parents are divided over whether to add a 6th grade, as the city plans to do.
• Chaz says the city is already reneging on its parts of its rubber room agreement with the union.
• After pushing a class of grade-focused students to think bigger, a teacher is rewarded.
• D.C. schools were the only ones to make significant gains in both 4th and 8th grade reading since 07.
• San Francisco schools are ending summer school because of budget cuts, but aren’t sad to see it go.
• A Philly middle school is targeting younger students who show signs of becoming dropouts.
• An analysis shows that the ESEA reauthorization would let a lot of mediocre schools skate by.
• New rules in Georgia would ban seclusion and certain restraints if the board votes them in.
• And critics of the four school turnaround plans are finding some support in Congress.

Results on a prominent national reading exam are out today and they tell a story that’s become familiar: younger students’ scores are up, but there have been no gains for middle school students.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as NAEP, or the nation’s report card, is given every two years to students across the country. In New York City, 2,300 fourth and 2,100 eighth grade students took the NAEP reading exam last year.

While their peers in New York State have not seen real changes to their reading scores in over a decade, some New York City students saw gains. City fourth graders’ scores have increased an average of four points in the last two years and many more of them are meeting the standards that signal proficiency or basic understanding. In 2002, 48 percent of fourth graders scored basic or above on the exam and in 2009 62 percent were in the range. (more…)