GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

When we posted the report about the tragic field trip taken by students at Columbia Secondary School, we noted that it had arrived in record time, less than a month after sixth-grader Nicole Suriel drowned at Long Beach. Today, we received a report that reflects a more typical timeline for the Special Commissioner of Investigation.

Today’s report is about a trip that several Beacon High School students took to Cuba — in 2007. A three-year investigation revealed that Beacon students had traveled to Cuba in previous years, that Principal Ruth Lacey had opposed the 2007 spring break trip, and that a Beacon teacher organized a trip anyway, with the help of a pacifist nonprofit. All of this should make headlines, except that newspapers reported most details within days of the group’s return — when the teacher, Nathan Turner, and five students were stopped while trying to reenter the country.

SCI chief Richard Condon is recommending that Turner, a Communist who posted pictures of Fidel Castro in his classroom, not be allowed to work in city schools. That would have been a useful recommendation two years ago, before Turner resigned from Beacon.

Why the delay? It’s unlikely that Condon’s office was preparing reports about charges of systemic misconduct, such as grade-changing and test-tampering, but one can only hope. (more…)

In a recent article in the journal Education Next, Mike Antonucci reviewed the finances of the two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). He found teachers unions in states like Oregon, Colorado, and Montana spent several hundreds of dollars per teacher for political campaign spending on candidates and ballot initiatives. New York, according to Antonucci, spent only $5 per teacher.

But this is only part of the picture. Another source of political spending can be found in financial documents that the city teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), filed with the federal government. According to this “LM-2″ filing, the UFT spent around $31 per teacher, or a little over $2.4 million overall, out of a $202 million budget, on political activities during the 2008-2009 school year.*  The UFT membership, however, consists of more than just teachers. If you included total UFT membership — 164,462 — spending on political activities would be around $16 per member. (To be clear, Antonucci only considered active teachers in his calculations.)

In addition to this spending, which includes things like lobbying, buses to events, and phone banks, the UFT has a political action committee (PAC). The PAC is a stand-alone group whose specific purpose is to dole out money to politicians, groups, and ballot measures that the union supports. The UFT’s PAC, known as the Committee on Political Education (“COPE”), is funded by voluntary member contributions as well as other sources.

COPE spent $187,411 in 2008-2009 on donations to politicians. The fund’s balance — the amount that could theoretically be given away — has also dramatically increased, to $1.35 million in July 2009, from an average of $124,000 during 2000-2005.  Furthermore, contributions to the COPE — the amount that members have voluntarily given to the union’s political activities — have reached their highest level in 10 years. In contrast, the amount the UFT spent on political activities independent of COPE has remained relatively constant at around $2.5 million annually. (more…)

• The city’s charter school chief, Michael Duffy, is leaving to join the for-profit Victory Schools. (WSJ)
• Charter school advocates upped their lobbying, spending $600,000 in Albany this year. (WSJ)
• A state report shows test standards are low. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News, NY1, Post)
• The city dropped a proposal to let it evade some contracting requirements. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• City students work in biomedical research labs through a science mentoring program. (NY1)
• A Brooklyn movie theater that’s been unused since 1969 will soon house a charter school. (NY1)
• State officials are putting more energy into linking K-12 and higher education standards. (USA Today)
• Massachusetts wants to limit the growth of online schools. (Boston Globe)
• The Washington Post says all new evidence points to success for KIPP schools’ extended days.

• Chancellor Joel Klein is making a lot more money than Governor David Paterson. (Politics K-12)
• The DOE’s charter school office chief Michael Duffy is leaving to join Victory Schools. (WSJ)
• The city wants the Panel for Educational Policy to give up some of its limited power. (City Room, GS)
• How did the Columbus Secondary School principal get tenure if principal tenure doesn’t exist? (Chaz)
• Rotherham thinks the Times’ NCLB-forced-out-a-good-principal story is simplistic. (Eduwonk)
• Valerie Grey is the State Education Department’s new COO. (NYSED)
• Doug Lemov describes great teachers as great problem-solvers. (Flypaper, Education Next)
• Head Start programs could be in for a rude awakening, funding-wise. (Early Ed Watch)
• NBC’s Education Nation convention is public-service meets marketing. (Sacramento Bee)
• A Berkeley playwright is making a school board the setting for a culture war. (Times)
• Charter schools may be hurting middle-class kids’ scores because they don’t focus on tests. (Flypaper)

Protests from Comptroller John Liu have prompted the city to scrap a proposal that would have let it enter into certain contracts without individual approval from the citywide school board.

Since the state legislature voted last summer to extend Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s control over the city schools, the Panel for Educational Policy has been required to approve all contracts worth more than $1 million as well as those that were given without competitive bidding.

Last week, the city quietly announced that it would ask the panel to approve a resolution giving the city “blanket approval” to enter into contracts negotiated by other city agencies. But Liu objected, calling the resolution an “end run” around the panel’s oversight authority over the Department of Education. Liu also pointed out that while the resolution was listed on the agenda for tonight’s panel meeting, text of the resolution was not posted to the Department of Education’s website.

This morning, the city removed the resolution from tonight’s agenda. If the resolution had remained on the agenda, it likely would have passed; the panel is controlled by a majority of mayoral appointees, and has never defeated an item proposed by the city.

A slide in the state's presentation shows that eighth graders who score a level 3 on the math test have a low chance of getting a math Regents score that will lead to success in college.

In recent years, teachers, principals, parents, and much of the city’s press have met the annual unveiling of climbing test scores with increased skepticism, if not outright incredulity.

Today the State Education Department officially caught up to them and said yes, the results were too good to be true.

At a meeting of the Board of Regents this morning, Commissioner David Steiner presented (webcast) an analysis of state tests performed by Harvard University testing expert Daniel Koretz and New York University assistant professor Jennifer Jennings. The analysis shows that even though a greater percentage of students are passing the state’s exams than several years ago, many of these students are not prepared for high school or college.

Much of the criticism has focused on the state’s tests for elementary and middle school students and Steiner emphasized today that high school scores are exaggerated as well. Many students who pass the math Regents exam, even by a margin of 15 points, flounder in college, Steiner said. (more…)

• A beloved Burlington, Vt., principal is an early casualty of Race to the Top’s requirements. (Times)
• A DOE employee allegedly used a racial epithet when advising on how to shut parents out. (Daily News)
• The city’s Conflicts of Interest Board okayed Cami Anderson’s bid to open charter schools. (Post)
• Few students are assigned to schools the city legally can’t close. (GothamSchools, Daily News, NY1)
• A Manhattan lawmaker who voted to allow more charter schools says he doesn’t support them. (Post)
• A subnarrative of the Nicole Suriel tragedy is the private fundraising that fuels her school. (Times)
• The city says it might reopen an investigation into Columbia Secondary School’s principal. (NY1)
• The Post calls for quick handling of new complaints against the school’s principal.
• The soon-to-be-released testing report is a harsh reality check for city schools, the Daily News warns.
• The Daily News says teachers who have flirtatious relationships with students should be fired.
• Mayor Bloomberg will take part in a televised education summit on NBC in September. (AP)
• Fans and foes of socioeconomic integration in schools are set to face off in Raleigh. (News & Observer)
• New Jersey won’t see charter schools open in affluent areas this fall after all. (Wall Street Journal)

• Bloomberg: If you send your kid to a once-closing school, you need “an education.” (Daily News)
• More concerns e-mailed in about the principal at Columbia Secondary School. (City Room)
• Teachers, mark Staples’ teacher-discount-day on your calendars. (NYSUT)
• Edward Cullen did pass the twelfth grade, and beyond, thank you very much. (Answer Sheet)
• New Orleans is trying to rebuild its education system — and its school buildings. (Good)
• One-time Race to the Top enemy Obey now favors spending more on it. (EdWeek)
• A Wisconsin court finds that teacher e-mails are private. (Milwaukee J-S)
• What it looks like inside the Gates Foundation’s Seattle headquarters. (The Guardian)
• College students say they didn’t learn to write papers in high school. (Class Struggle)

The state education department will spend nearly $48 million over the next three years completing a database that will track students’ test scores, courses and teachers from the beginning of their schooling to the end.

The database system has been hailed by state education officials as a key tool in their reform efforts. It’s intended to help the state use student test scores and grades to judge not only schools and teachers but also the programs that trained the teachers, for example. Education officials also say the system will be instrumental in helping identify students at risk of dropping out of school early on.

The state already tracks some information about students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The data system launched in the 2006-07 school year with an expected cost of $39.4 million over six years. The system got off to a rocky start, plagued by delays in reporting data.

In a memo to the Board of Regents in advance of their Monday meeting, State Education Department Deputy Commissioner John King argued that the current system, while improved, doesn’t meet the needs of schools or help advance Regents’ policy goals. He continued:

Furthermore, the system was not user-friendly; school officials complained frequently about the infamous electronic “spinning cube” that caused long delays in reporting and verifying data. Data collection was therefore slow, and the Department missed federal deadlines in reporting school accountability and other results. (more…)

Enrollment numbers at high schools that the city had targeted for closure are on the rise, but still far below past years’ levels.

After a judge’s ruling postponed closures at 19 schools — 14 of them high schools — many of the schools began reporting that they were severely under-enrolled. Metropolitan Corporate Academy had eight incoming ninth graders and Jamaica High School in Queens had 23 — a number so low the school’s principal doubted he’d be able to have a freshman class. Now that the city has completed its second round of high school placements, more students are set to enter these schools next year.

But the numbers are still extremely low. While there are now 23 students enrolled at Metropolitan Corporate Academy, the school traditionally saw an incoming freshman class of between 70 and 100 students. Many of these schools still have enrollments too low for them to support a ninth grade program. If the city does not assign them more students, they could be forced to phase out their ninth grades, skirting the court’s ruling that the schools should remain intact.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said the city expects the enrollment numbers to climb. (more…)