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Yesterday I was told which of my students passed the New York State English Language Arts and Math exams, and which students will be attending summer school to get a second try. Unfortunately (or fortunately perhaps) we didn’t get exact scores that would allow me to see exactly how well my students did and therefore how well I did as a teacher. Rather I got two copies of my class roster with each student labeled either “Met Promotion Criteria” or “Did Not Meet Promotion Criteria.” Somewhat unsatisfying, no?

The Good News
While 10 of my students scored 1′s in the fall ELA simulation, all but four of them met the criteria, even in a year when the criteria were supposedly tougher. In math, all but two met the promotional criteria. Considering my students were acknowledged to be the lowest-performing class in the school, I’m pretty proud of the class as a whole.

The Bad News
Of course the other side of this story is that four of my students didn’t pass the test. That’s certainly more than any other class and while I know my students and their limitations, that won’t matter when I’m judged against my peers. Worse still, the results included one big surprise, a student who is currently reading at a late second-/early third-grade level — meaning he should/could have passed the test. He passed every simulation we took. But he never really showed any true interest or effort, and I blame myself for never finding a way to spark that in him.

The Slightly Reassuring News
While I’m not happy that any of my students failed, I wasn’t surprised by the results (except for one student I mentioned above). In a strange way the results were slightly reassuring, a sign that the test isn’t completely invalid. (more…)

Education is on a roller coaster recently, with unexpected twists and turns seemingly improvised on the spot by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. First, 4,400 teachers were going to receive pink slips. Then, the mayor unilaterally declared teachers would receive no raises for two years, and that layoffs would thereby be averted.

His declaration spat in the face of the Taylor Law, which “requires public employers to negotiate and enter into agreements with public employee organizations regarding their employees’ terms and conditions of employment.” Though the mayor has no legal right to unilaterally declare a conclusion to ongoing negotiations, the New York Times declared it was a “sensible choice.” Gabe Pressman called it a “wise decision.”

Then, wise decision or not, Mayor Bloomberg surprised us by reconsidering yet again. Apparently, he may give teachers pink slips anyway. Even if he doesn’t, the draconian budget cuts he’s imposed will mean fewer elective classes for kids, larger class sizes, and widespread “excessing” of teachers, dumping them into the Absent Teacher Reserve and forcing them to scramble for a rapidly decreasing job pool. Teachers have every reason to be nervous.

Having lost my job this way four times, I know exactly how they feel. (more…)

• Low scores could boost summer school enrollment. (GothamSchools, Times, Post, DN, NY1, WSJ)
• A new city task force will work on reducing truancy. (GothamSchools, Daily News, NY1)
• Thousands of students plan to walk out of school today to protest potential Metrocard cuts. (Times, Post)
• Legislators and MTA officials still say it’s likely that the student Metrocard cuts won’t go through. (WSJ)
• Even with new schools, overcrowding persists for popular Downtown Manhattan schools. (The Villager)
• With pay and job security increasingly tied to test scores, cheating seems to be on the rise. (Times)
• More Chicago students will take summer school classes online to save the city money. (Chicago Tribune)
• Michigan’s teacher retirement incentive isn’t saving the state as much as hoped. (Detroit Free Press)
• Nationally, the high school graduation rate fell again last year. (Christian Science Monitor)

• With pay and job security increasingly tied to test scores, incidents of cheating are multiplying.
• Retention rights in the teachers union contract give retired teachers first dibs on summer school jobs.
• Helen Zelon looks at the charter & district space wars and questions the new law doesn’t answer.
• Reshma Saujani, who is running against Carolyn Maloney, proposes “Teachers to the Top.”
• Chancellor Klein met with a tough crowd in Queens, where schools are overcrowded.
• Peter Murphy: if the state raises the cost of school construction, the money will come out of classrooms.
• The Alvin Ailey Theater is featuring films produced by NYC students tonight.
• Dan Brown says his school, SEED, is doing great things, but that doesn’t mean all charters are.
• Bill Turque looks at why the D.C. schools and the union took so long to reach a contract deal.
• Community colleges are rethinking how they teach remedial math, a huge obstacle to graduation.
• Chancellor’s Conference Day is all about professional development and wasting time, writes a teacher.
• NYC public school grads now have a website that the city wants to use to stay in touch with them.
• NYC produces the most high school dropouts nationally, but LA has a higher drop out rate.
• And Democrats are thinking of redirecting unspent stimulus money to avoiding teacher layoffs.

The number of elementary and middle school students running out the school doors this month only to come back for summer school in July is set to more than double this year.

The city has identified 21,000 students in grades three through eight who, based on their low state test scores, will be required to attend summer school this year. That’s a major increase over the 10,000 students sent to summer school last year because of their test scores.

The explanation for that jump lies with a change in how the city and state are calculating which students passed the annual math and English exams. As a result of a delayed state testing schedule, the city is setting what it calls “promotional cut scores” meaning they will only be used to decide who is required to go to summer school. This year those cutoff scores are higher than in years past, causing more students to fall into the low-scoring range that compels them to attend summer school.

Schools still have some time to appeal the city’s decisions, meaning that the final number of summer school students could change.

The vast majority of summer school students are in high school, so the increase in elementary and middle school students is not likely to have a large impact on the school system as a whole. In 2009, out of over 100,000 summer school students, 90,000 were in high school.

Mayor Bloomberg chose a rare day off for city students to launch a new effort to study ways to stop truancy.

A new city task force led by the mayor’s chief policy and strategy advisor, John Feinblatt, will investigate how to improve the city’s anti-truancy policies. A key goal is to track student academic and attendance data to determine which students are at risk of chronic absenteeism and notify their parents. The task force has been assigned to figure out the best way to make that goal reality.

One in ten city students is absent from school on an average day, and research shows that nearly three-quarters of students who are chronically absent in sixth grade eventually drop out of high school, city officials said.

The city is billing the mayor’s announcement as the “first-ever task force” to address chronic absenteeism and truancy, but the city has a checkered history of attention to the problem. Currently, the city runs a small “Attendance Court” program in three schools, offering around 45 chronic truants counseling and occasional tough talk from a judge. (more…)

Public school principals were told this morning how many of their students passed the state’s annual math and English exams and from what we’re hearing, the numbers aren’t pretty.

One principal wrote in to say that the percentage of his students who scored so low they didn’t meet promotion criteria has quadrupled since last year. On the English exam, his percentage of low-scoring students is more than ten times higher. Almost all of his special education students and most of his students who are recent immigrants didn’t pass the exams.

“It’s not like the kids have gotten dumber or the teachers worse, it’s just the tests are being looked at differently,” the principal said.

A Department of Education official confirmed that because the city and state set higher score cutoffs this year, fewer students will meet the standards for promotion to the next grade. As a result, the city expects that more students will be required to attend summer school  this year.

“We are committed to raising the bar for our students, so we’re using preliminary results on this year’s tests to set higher promotional cut scores than last year,” said DOE spokesman Matt Mittenthal. “We will guarantee a seat to every student who requires summer school.”

“We’re going to have a huge summer school program now,” the principal said. “No question about that.”

Schools haven’t received their students’ raw scores — they only know whether a student met the promotion criteria or didn’t. See below for the DOE’s cutoff scores.

• Many schools with poor students got less stimulus money, but still had bigger budgets. (WNYC)
• A few politicians are pushing for charter schools to be required to pay union wages. (Post)
• A school custodian leads a program at PS 14 to give bikes to needy children. (Bronx Times-Reporter)
• With a local TV station’s help, Lehman HS students produced anti-bullying ads. (Bronx Times-Reporter)
• A new private school’s principal left last week and never came back, and parents are angry. (Times)
• Too few families signed up for gifted classes on Roosevelt Island to keep the program there open. (WSJ)
• The Daily News lauds a 6-year-old East Harlem Catholic school for sending all its graduates to college.
• And happy Brooklyn-Queens/Chancellor’s Conference Day! (GothamSchools)

• Gov. Paterson introduced Rochester’s mayoral control bill, which could have trouble in the Senate.
• Klein may have declared an end to social promotion, but in practice it’s alive and well, writes a teacher.
• The economy could bounce back, but the education of children going through the recession may not.
• Whether you live in South Dakota or Alaska determines at what age you’ll learn to tell time.
• A policy brief on Teach for America finds the teachers improve with time, but most don’t stay long enough.
• TFA isn’t the answer, but it still has a role to play, argues an education blogger.
• The city’s practice of overbooking gifted programs has led to a frantic search for seats at P.S. 163.
• Kim Gittleson adds retention data to a UFT report on charter attrition and finds it changes the story.
• Leonie Haimson analyzes the number of charter school opeds in recent months from the city’s papers.
• CO Sen. Michael Bennet backs a bill to create training programs for principals of turnaround schools.
• Bennet had been working on a teacher quality bill but may have shelved it to avoid union ire.
• Sherman Dorn explains his skepticism of performance pay and the studies done on merit pay systems.
• Mike Petrilli says Fordham is working to see that control of national standards isn’t given to unions.
• And Deven Black asks: can you name five famous teachers?

City students will stay home for an odd midweek break tomorrow and teachers will head to training sessions during the weekday formerly known as Brooklyn-Queens Day.

From 1829 to 2006, schools in Brooklyn and Queens were closed on the first Thursday of June so that students could honor their Sunday school teachers with parades and parties. Over time, the original purpose was mostly lost, but schools in the two boroughs continued to shut their doors one day each June. That all changed with the 2005 teachers contract, which extended the day off to students across the city but turned it into a professional development day for teachers.

Now it’s called “Chancellor’s Conference Day for staff development related to the Regents High Learning Standards and Assessments,” according to the Department of Education’s calendar, and teachers are required to report for duty. (“Students IN ALL FIVE BOROUGHS will NOT be in attendance,” the calendar warns.)

That doesn’t mean the day will be all work and no play for city teachers. (more…)