GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The head of the charter school office at the Department of Education, Michael Duffy, recently announced his decision to leave the government to work for Victory Schools, Inc. Victory Schools is a for-profit Educational Management Organization (EMO) that runs seven of the nine for-profit charter schools that are currently open in New York City. Duffy’s move attracted attention to the company’s business plans, which were complicated by the new charter school law passed in May that barred for-profit charter operators from opening more schools in the state. (The company might become a nonprofit to keep growing.) But Victory Schools’ performance has been left out of the discussion.

I decided to compare Victory Schools’ performance against that of its for-profit and not-for-profit charter school competitors in the city by looking at both the amount that the schools spent per pupil on management fees and their 2008-2009 progress report raw scores, which I then ranked independent of the DOE’s letter grades. (These grades were sharply questioned during the 2008-2009 school year.) I found that the five Victory Schools that had progress report scores in 2008-2009 placed in the bottom 35 percent of all charter schools and in the bottom 20 percent of schools citywide. Two schools — the NYC Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industries and the Bronx Global Learning Institute for Girls — were too new to get a progress report score. Both, however, received evaluations of “underdeveloped” from the city.

These middling performance numbers come despite the fact that the seven schools paid around $2,163 per pupil to Victory Schools for the company’s services. (more…)

This just in, via the U.S. Education Department’s Twitter feed: New York is one of the 19 finalists in the second round of the Race to the Top competition.

New York was one of 16 finalists in the first round of competition, but then came in 15th in the final scoring. Only two states, Delaware and Tennessee, won grants in the first round of the contest.

For this round, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said that there are likely to be 10 to 15 winners of the competitive grant money. New York could be in a better position to win the $700 million grant this round after legislative wrangling last spring resulted in a new teacher evaluation system and a lift on the number of charter schools allowed to open statewide.

The other finalists are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

In a few minutes, Duncan will formally announce the finalists during a speech at the National Press Club. We’ll have more on the announcement later in the afternoon.

Over half the states have now agreed to implement the Common Core standards as their own. I think it is now time to think about how quickly we can expect these standards to be met.

We are told that Common Core is a high quality, rigorous set of standards for K-12 education, far more challenging and explicit than what most states have been using as their own standards. I am going to accept that that is true.

If states could immediately begin to implement Common Core in the classroom (i.e. if we had the curriculum, unit plans, materials and lesson plans ready for September), there would still be problems. There is no way that today’s students are ready for those more rigorous standards. Today’s 12th graders obviously are not up to the high bar that Common Core sets for 11th grade work, because last year they were only operating at the level set by their states’ lower standards. So, next year’s graduates will not be up to the level of Common Core.

Similarly, next year’s 11th graders are not ready for Common Core’s highly rigorous 11th grade work, because their 10th grade work was only at the level of their states’ less rigorous old standards. And if they can’t do 11th grade Common Core level work this year, then they will not be able to do Common Core 12th grade work the following year. So, the high school graduating cohort of 2012 will not be up to Common Core’s standards. (more…)

• A debate over the name of a new South Bronx school has stoked underlying community tension. (Times)
• Buffalo school and union officials say the new evaluations will better support teachers. (Buffalo News)
• Civil rights groups, including the NAACP, are criticizing President Obama’s education reform goals. (AP)
• The D.C. teachers union plans to sue the city on behalf of 241 fired teachers. (Washington Examiner)
• William McGurn: The rise of school choice in D.C. helped Rhee pressure the teachers union. (WSJ)
• Ed. Sec. Arne Duncan encouraged Detroit voters to support mayoral control. (Detroit Free Press)

• Randi’s favorite body part? Her legs, “because I have to walk a tight rope most of the time.” (Politico)
• One budget-cut casualty is full-day kindergarten programming. (Hechinger Report)
• Math and ELA scores are out on Wednesday, but parents can’t see them for a month. (InsideSchools)
• A teacher says DonorsChoose is hurting teachers by supporting a pro-charter movie. (Accountable Talk)
• Teach your students problem-solving skills and this will never happen to them. (Education on the Plate)
• And a comic shows the theory v. reality of media and education. (Toothpaste For Dinner)
• Basil Smikle, the reform-friendly state Senate candidate, travels by motorcycle. (New York Mag)
• The NAACP and other civil rights groups are attacking Arne Duncan’s agenda. (Answer Sheet)
• Aaron Pallas is worried about Michelle Rhee’s firings’ reliance on value-added. (Hechinger Report)
• Arne Duncan’s speech tomorrow will be themed “the quiet revolution.” (ed.gov)

New York could enter Race to the Top’s bell lap tomorrow — and then one step closer to winning $700 million toward overhauling to the state’s education system.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will announce second-round finalists tomorrow during a speech in Washington, where he is set to discuss what he is characterizing as the “quiet revolution” of education reform.

New York State surprised many observers by being named a finalist in the first round of awards even though, at the time, the state legislature had not yet lifted the cap on charter schools or passed legislation overhauling the way teachers are evaluated. In the final first-round scoring, New York placed 15th out of 16 finalists.

But in part because of those legislative changes, some observers are predicting that the state’s chances of winning, or at least being named a finalist, are better this round.

New York’s chances could also be boosted through pure statistics. Only Delaware and Tennessee won in the contest’s first round, leaving most of the pot —  $3.4 billion — left to award. Duncan has said that there are likely to be 10 to 15 second-round winners, out of a total of 36 states applying.

You can read New York’s full, second-round Race to the Top application here, and more about what it proposes can be found here and here.

Let the transforming begin. The city has sent out letters encouraging teachers to apply for new positions that offer large annual bonuses in return for putting in more hours at struggling schools.

As part of a performance pay deal struck between the city teachers union and the Department of Education, these “master” and “turnaround” teacher positions will only be offered to exemplary teachers who want to serve as role models for their colleagues. The idea is for the teachers to help with curriculum-writing and to perform model lessons for their colleagues. But experience isn’t the main qualifier; applicants only have to have completed one year of teaching.

In exchange for the extra work — which is expected to take 30 hours each year — turnaround teachers get bonuses of 15 percent of their salaries. Master teachers work an extra 100 hours and get bonuses of 30 percent.

In order to stay in the three-year program, teachers have to maintain a “highly effective” rating each year. It’s a bit of a gamble for them: if the experiment fails and the city decides to close the struggling schools, these teachers will have no right to return to their current schools. (more…)

News from New York City:

• Merryl Tisch said the “inflation rate” on state tests has been around 20 percent. (Post)
• A lot of money and jobs have hinged on the flawed test scores. (Daily News)
• The Times says promised state testing reforms are exactly what parents and students need.
• City principals are already working on incorporating new national standards. (GothamSchools, WNYC)
• In an era of test prep, Head Start pre-Ks say fewer of their students get into gifted programs. (Times)
• About 40 percent of students at a new East Harlem charter school need special education. (Daily News)
• The identity of the state’s university system is at a crossroads. (Times)
• Many students assigned to summer school are not attending. (GothamSchools, Post)
• The S.I. teen allegedly killed by his mother was supposed to get counseling at school but didn’t. (Times)
• Five students at Millennium High School said a school drinking fountain made them sick. (Daily News)
• PS 72′s new rooftop soccer field was paid for by Manchester City, the British soccer team. (WSJ)
• Nathan Quinones, chancellor from 1984 to 1987, has died. (AP)
• The Post says the fact that only 20 city schools are on the SURR list shows mayoral control is working.
• Unlike Dallas, New York City does not have a central textbook depository. (Times)

And beyond:

• Students are trying to turn the roof of the country’s oldest school into a garden. (Boston Globe)
• Maryland is ending the longstanding practice of letting teachers preview state tests. (Washington Post)
• New York University is going to provide intensive support for seven schools in Newark. (Times)
• D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee fired hundreds of teachers deemed low-performing. (Times, AP)
• The Daily News and Post say Joel Klein should follow Rhee’s lead and fire more teachers.
• Portland, Ore., is looking to New York City as a model for reducing its dropout rate. (Oregonian)
• Some aren’t happy that low-performing Jersey City, N.J., has a highly paid superintendent. (WSJ)

• Michelle Rhee fired 241 of 4,000 D.C. teachers (6%) today citing poor performance. (WashPost)
• 737 of D.C. teachers were rated “minimally effective” by the new IMPACT eval. (Teacher Beat)
• Geoffrey Canada responds to critical analyses of the Harlem Children’s Zone. (Ed Week)
• “Big money has a way of making itself heard over hard data.” (Walt Gardner)
• A brief video history of P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights. (Brooklyn Heights Blog)
• Submit questions to Arne Duncan for a July 29 radio town hall with teachers. (ed.gov)
• USDOE has a tool showing where Promise Neighborhood grants came from. (data.ed.gov)
• Duncan is also cracking down on for-profit universities, and their stocks follow. (Hechinger)
• The Education Voters of New York group released its first report. (Imagine: NY Schools)
• Mayor Bloomberg sympathizes with child abuse victims: he once cried as a baby. (Daily News)

UPDATE: I changed the headline in response to Smith’s comment below.

Source: NYC DOE

The number of students enrolled in summer school has increased more than 16 percent compared to the same time last summer.

That’s according to a snapshot of summer school enrollment and attendance from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week that city officials released today.

The jump isn’t a surprise. This year, the city and state raised the bar that determines who passes the state exams and who falls into the low-scoring range that requires them to attend summer school.

But the number of students compelled to attend summer classes could fall next week, when the state releases the official results of its third- through eighth-grade math and reading exams. Because the state delayed its testing schedule this year, the city set its own cutoffs that were used only to decide who would be sent to summer school.

It’s possible that some students marked as failing under the city’s provisional scoring could end up officially scoring high enough to be promoted to the next grade without the extra class time. If that happens, the students will be given the option to drop out of their summer classes. (more…)