GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A rural teacher tells the rules to “Spot the TFA.” (Not Much Just Chillin via Quick and the Ed)
• New model standards for teaching outline key knowledge and “performances.” (CCSSO)
• Kim Gittleson summarizes how city charter schools did on the state tests. (Community)
• Leonie Haimson isn’t impressed with New York City’s NAEP performance. (NYPSPB)
• Ed Next survey: Support for charter schools among blacks rose to 49% in 2009. (WSJ)
• A Ghanaian immigrant living in Harlem describes her school. (Learning Matters)
• GAO: For-profit colleges encouraged students to lie to get more financial aid. (WashPost)
• A San Francisco student says gang violence motivates him to go to college. (Ms. Chew)
• A summary of all the bad attention Waldorf schools are getting. (Joanne Jacobs)
• The next Justin teenage music idol? From PS 22. (PS 22 Chorus)

McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw III, appearing on CNBC. The full interview can be seen here.

What goes on at McGraw-Hill, the mysterious Midtown company that makes New York’s state tests? One answer: The company is not-so-quietly producing a slew of ratings lambasted for being inflated, corrupt, and totally bankrupt.

I don’t mean more state test scores. I mean credit ratings churned out by Standard and Poor’s, the ratings agency that makes up nearly half of the company’s business, according to CNBC.

Yes, that’s the same ratings agency that has been criticized for inflating the value of companies from Enron to Bear Stearns.

One of the biggest criticisms of S&P and agencies like it is that their customers have an inherent interest in being rated highly. (more…)

The city must start over its controversial plan to let a Lower East Side charter school expand in city space but may proceed with another, the state education department ruled yesterday.

State Education Commissioner David Steiner threw out the city’s plan to allow Girls Prep Charter School to expand its middle school grades in the building it shares with two district schools, ruling that the city did not properly report the plan’s impact on disabled students who attend school in the building.

But in a separate ruling, Steiner argued that the city did provide enough information about its plan to let Brooklyn’s PAVE Academy Charter School expand in the building it currently shares with P.S. 15.

Both plans have prompted bitter space battles this year between the charter schools and teachers and parents at the district schools who share the buildings. Both charters want to expand the number of grades they serve; opponents of the expansion argue that the plans would squeeze the students at the district schools in the building. (more…)

As discussed here and here, the state released the results of the 2009-2010 Grade 3-8 Math and English language arts test results last week. The focus has been on the new, higher bar for passing the tests and the resulting large drop in the percentage of students judged as proficient. Charter schools, like traditional public schools across the city, saw their much-touted proficiency gains plummet. Barbara Martinez at the Wall Street Journal did a good job of summarizing charter schools’ results in New York City. In order to give a more complete picture, I analyzed the 2009-2010 results for charters to see which schools performed best and how the schools performed compared to their traditional public school counterparts. I also posted data on individual schools below and in this spreadsheet.

PROFICIENCY

I defined proficiency in the customary way: as the proportion of students at a charter school that scored a Level 3 or higher on the ELA or math tests. In order to look at overall school performance, I averaged the proficiency rate across grade levels broken down by subject, and then took the average of both the ELA and math tests to come up with a single “proficiency” number. The schools that had the highest average proficiency rates were Harlem Success Academy, Icahn Charter School 2, the Bronx Charter School for Excellence, and the Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School. (The other two Icahn Schools also scored in the top 10 of all charter schools.) To be clear, different schools serve different grades and comparing performance across grades can be misleading.

I’ve posted a chart below that lists the average proficiency rates as well as the ELA and math proficiency rates, for every charter school that posted test results during the 2009-2010 school year. Scroll over the name of the school to find out what grades the school services, which grades were tested, and other salient information relating to the school’s performance.

(more…)

• A Brooklyn teacher threw herself down stairs to avoid a performance review, investigators say. (Post)
• The city tossed a mound of books from the windows of a Catholic school it’s leasing. (Daily News)
• City schools and colleges accounted for half of all construction starts in the last two years. (Crain’s NY)
• A nonprofit gives special assistance to visually impaired students who are heading to college. (NY1)
• The Harbor School is finally holding school fulltime on Governor’s Island. (WNYC)
• West Harlem residents still can’t decide what should be done with the old PS 156 building. (Times)
• The Post points out that the union’s charter schools saw larger-than-average test score drops.
• Chicago has dropped a plan to save money by eliminating non-varsity sports. (Sun-Times)
• An independent review of test irregularities in Atlanta found no evidence of systemic cheating. (Times)
• In letters to the editor, readers including a city teacher weigh in on kindergarten teacher quality. (Times)

• Edujobs could rise again tonight in the Senate. Background here. (Politics K12)
• Arne Duncan never intended to hold private schools accountable, and won’t. (Flypaper)
• Is it time to reevaluate the “little or no exposure” to screens early ed policy? (Early Ed Watch)
• Britain’s war on child poverty produced results we don’t have here. (Answer Sheet)
• On Thursday, we’ll know which i3 grants the Obama admin. is funding. (Politics K12)
• Aaron Pallas’ blasting of D.C.’s teacher evaluation system is uninformed. (Rick Hess)
• A Hebrew charter school will rise in New Jersey, the state’s first. (Fundermentalist)
• Thousands of students transferred out of their district schools in Philly. (Inquirer)

New York City’s economy is still suffering, but the teachers union’s political coffers have grown, as have union members’ donations.

An analysis of the United Federation of Teachers’ political activities, done by Kim Gittleson, shows that contributions from union members to the union’s political action committee are at their highest level in 10 years. The amount of money in the fund, called COPE, has increased from an average of $124,000 in the earlier part of the decade to $1.35 million in July of 2009. It’s unclear where the sudden infusion came from and what the union plans to do with it.

Between 2008 and 2009, COPE donated $187,411 to political campaigns. Gittleson breaks down the expenditures to reveal that most of the money went to politicians in Brooklyn, with Manhattan and Queens politicians as the second two largest recipients.

Though it’s located in New York City where its active members teach, the union donated about as much to campaigns in Florida — where many of its retired members live — as it did to those in the Bronx. The Palm Beach County Democratic Party turns up three times on a list of recipients, and the Democratic Club of Greater Boynton Florida makes an appearance. (more…)

Older M.S. 223 students working with the Summer Bridge program made this bulletin board to welcome the new sixth-graders. (Photo courtesy M.S. 223)

School districts around the country are increasingly trying to bring special education students into mainstream classrooms. The challenges this presents — and the possible benefits — were on display last week inside a summer school classroom in the Bronx.

Each summer, the South Bronx’s M.S. 223 brings in as many of its rising sixth-graders as it can find for a “summer bridges” program to smooth their transition into middle school.

This is the first year that the summer program has brought special education students and students learning English together into the mainstream classes.

The city school system as a whole is moving in this direction — this school year, about 200 schools will begin to bring special education students at all levels into regular classes. The following year, all schools will be required to do so. M.S. 223 is not a part of the pilot, but is trying to get a head start.

During the week-long summer session, each day concluded with “team and family time,” where students give thanks or shout-outs as praise to other students, and apologize or call each other out for misbehavior.

In a class taught by Ashley Downs, one girl called out another for relying too heavily during class time on the older M.S. 223 student working as the class’ counselor. “It’s like she wasn’t doing the work herself,” the girl complained. (more…)

I’ve become increasingly alarmed at the growing divide between the news and editorial functions of major metropolitan daily newspapers (e.g., in New York City, the New York Times,  New York Daily News,  and the New York Post;  in Washington, DC, the Washington Post).  The functions are largely independent, and that is as it should be;  the ideological proclivities of the publisher and editorial board should not be shaping what counts as or is reported as news. 

To be sure, the editorial page of a newspaper should express a point of view, and a typical reader will likely agree with some viewpoints, and disagree with others.  But it’s a very dangerous thing when the editorials of a newspaper are not informed by the daily reporting of its journalists.  Ignoring the news, reported with a minimum of spin by “beat” reporters, leads to simple-minded and ignorant editorializing on complex matters of public policy.  It’s also insulting to the profession of journalism, and to the many reporters whose goal is simply to understand the news and get the story right.  (I talk to some of the reporters to whom I’m referring.)

A case in point is yesterday’s Daily News editorial, “Truth in testing.”  The editorial is an effort to shore up claims about the success of school reform in New York City under Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein.  Last week’s revelations that the state testing system was dramatically overstating student growth and the closing of the achievement gap rocked the New York City Department of Education on its heels.  The Daily News editorial board, which has long supported these reforms, came out firing, citing four “facts”:  (1) The State Education Department defrauded parents and students;  (2) Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner David Steiner owned up to the deception;  (3) The drop triggered bogus charges that the schools have made no progress;  and (4) Only radical action will give New York’s kids a shot at the quality education they need. (more…)

• New state test scores widened the gap between the city’s highest and lowest performing schools. (WSJ)
• Principals worry what this year’s low pass rates on state tests will mean for their schools. (Times)
• Statewide, charter schools’ scores fell farthest, but city charters still outperformed district schools. (WSJ)
• Schools in Queens out-performed those in other boroughs on the state tests. (Daily News)
• Critics call for an investigation into inflated scores, but state ed officials want to move on. (Daily News)
• Diane Ravitch writes that the chances city and state officials will be held accountable are ”not promising.”
• Former city accountability chief James Liebman argues the test results still show real gains.
• The Daily News: charges that the test scores show city schools have made no progress are “bogus.”
• The Post says city students have made big gains since before the mayor took over the schools.

And in other news:

• A homeless Bedford Academy student won a full college scholarship. (Daily News)
• Massachusetts data links academic performance to how often students switch schools. (Boston Globe)
• KIPP charter schools in D.C. aim to double their enrollment using a $5 mill. donation. (Washington Post)
• Madison, Wisc. schools are nationally known for including students with autism into most classes. (Times)
• Sally Ride, the first woman in space, has launched a science training program for teachers. (USA Today)
• The textbook publishing market is changing as more states allow open-source  online texts. (Times)