GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The co-director of an F-rated charter school said the city’s grades are flawed. (City Room)
• Though test scores fell sharply, only five percent of schools got D’s or F’s today. (Daily News)
• Take the progress reports “with a very large grain of salt” advises Clara Hemphill. (InsideSchools)
• Phys Ed teachers took Klein’s comments on teacher pay as an insult. (WaPo)
• Ruben Brosbe: students’ behavior is embarrassing, but their math skills are worse. (GS)
• The Manhattan School for Children is starting a composting program. (GS)
• National teachers unions have spent $8.2 million on Democratic candidates so far. (EdWeek)
• Andrew Rotherham gives Zuckerburg advice on how to have an impact on schools. (Time)
• Jay Mathews says kind-hearted teachers have become easy targets for cheaters. (WaPo)
• The U.S. DOE could have done a more thorough job of tracking stimulus funds. (Politics K-12)
• A teacher says the city has a double standard for disciplining teachers and principals. (Chaz)

The Department of Education official charged with creating schools’ progress reports said today that parents should look beyond the capitalized, bold-faced grades on the reports and analyze the schools’ data.

“We want parents to get more involved at looking at all the information behind the overall grade,” said Deputy Chancellor for Accountability Shael Suransky. He also said that this year’s reports for elementary and middle schools are the “most accurate” the city has ever produced.

As parents and principals figure out what to make of the new ratings, here are some highlights culled from the data:

• Because the DOE gave schools extra credit if they were especially successful with special education students and students who aren’t fluent in English, two schools scored over 100 points. Chancellor Klein visited one of the schools — P.S. 172 Beacon School in Sunset Park — as part of his back-to-school tour. The other school, P.S. 32 Belmont in the Bronx, received more extra credit points (15 in total) than any other school in the city. Last year, nearly 50 schools got more than 100 points.

(more…)

Joseph Almeida, a sixth grade math teacher at KIPP Infinity, taught a lesson to adults at Rockefeller Center.

Among the mix of pages, chancellors, and mayors at NBC’s “Education Nation” outdoor museum at Rockefeller Center this week were a cadre of teachers from around the country who taught live “lessons” to the general public.

The exercise was remarkable for its lack of actual students. The lessons occurred inside one of several mini-tents on the plaza, starting at irregular hours, and the only officially invited guests were teachers, not children.

But the one teacher whose lesson I saw — Joseph Almeida, who teaches sixth grade math at KIPP Academy in the Bronx — did not let that deter him. He tailored his lesson, about place value, to the collection of adult tourists and passersby who gathered around him.

The principal training nonprofit New Leaders for New Schools gathered Almeida and the other roughly 50 teachers who taught public lessons through what New Leaders founder Jon Schnur described as a rigorous process. After recruiting nominations of teachers from around the country, New Leaders reviewed information ranging from the teachers’ students’ performance results to videotapes of their teaching. (more…)

Embarrassing is the word that best summarizes my day yesterday. In the afternoon my students had math while I had my prep period. I spent my prep in the classroom listening to the math teacher constantly redirect my students. For 45 minutes straight they were rude and disrespectful. She was unable to even complete her lesson and instead assigned the day’s work as homework.

I’m frustrated that my students’ focus and behavior seems to fall apart when they’re not with me. But most of all I was embarrassed by their behavior and embarrassed on their behalf. I didn’t mind letting them know. Although I don’t know how well third-graders truly understand the concept of feeling embarrassed …

Later, I finally finished grading my students’ math baselines, and the results were equally embarrassing. But this time I didn’t feel embarrassed for my students. Rather I was embarrassed for myself and for our educational system. (more…)

The percentage of elementary and middle schools to get A’s on their city-issued report cards fell this year from 84 to 25 percent — a drop precipitated by more students failing the exams and the city grading schools on a curve.

Of the city’s 1,140 elementary and middle schools, 35 percent (396 schools) received B’s, 35 (398 schools) got C’s, 4 percent (49 schools) got D’s and 1 percent (8 schools) got F’s. More schools scored low enough to get failing grades, but their final marks were buoyed by city officials’ decision to limit the amount by which a school’s grade could fall this year.

About 70 percent of schools saw their grades drop this year. Roughly 400 had their grades fall by one letter and about 340 dropped by two letter grades. Only 22 schools went up at least one letter grade.

Last year, students’ inflated scores on the state exams led 84 percent of schools to get A’s, 13 percent to get B’s, and two percent got C’s. Only two schools got F’s.

This year, as a result of the city’s limit on how far scores could fall, schools that got A’s in 2009 could not receive a grade lower than a C. A “B” school last year couldn’t be worse than a “D” this year. (more…)

Budget cuts are reducing bus service and meal choices, but they’re not cutting down on the waste in our schools.

Schools such as PS 333 (The Manhattan School for Children) want to change that by starting composting programs to teach their students that food waste does not have to end up in a landfill. Instead, the schools are teaching, food waste can be used to create rich black soil that will nourish plants students can eat in the future. Students learn the invaluable lesson of decay, regrowth, and the cycles of life.

The voluntary composting program the Manhattan School for Children is initiating could one day be mandatory, not just for our schools but our entire city. That’s because composting is an environmentally superior alternative to landfilling organics that eliminates methane production and substantially reduces greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, ton for ton, composting reduces greenhouse gas emissions from organics management over any other management option. Citywide composting is already in place in cities like Seattle and Berkeley, Calif.

The Manhattan School for Children, a K-8 school with both a Wellness Committee and a Green Team, has made sustainability issues a top priority. (more…)

• The city’s newest education policy announcements have put it back on the national radar. (NY1)
• The principal of International Business and Finance HS was demoted after tackling a student. (Post)
• A Riverdale high school still hasn’t worked out its start-of-school scheduling issues. (Riverdale Press)
• PS 95 in Queens appears to be keeping one kindergartner out of classes. (Daily News)
• A principal under investigation for corporal punishment is retiring mid-year. (Riverdale Press)
• Mayor Bloomberg personally suspended the teacher who wrote about her sex-worker past. (Daily News)
• Unlike many schools, Manhattan’s Millennium HS wants to share its building. (Downtown Expresss)
• Because of the state’s test score changes, it’s hard to know how city students are doing. (WNYC)
• Gail Collins: “Waiting for ‘Superman’” has issues, but it’s at least put attention on schools. (Times)
• President Obama’s call for a longer school year will be hard for districts to afford. (AP)

• More than 80% of ed school professors favor making it easier to terminate teachers. (Fordham)
• Bloomberg refused to say if he’d sign a contract that included teacher seniority rights. (Daily Politics)
• Two charter school backers are among the NYC stars on a “40 under 40″ list. (City Hall News)
• What if ed schools only accepted pupils once they’d already tried out teaching? (Goldstein)
• The first initiative of the George W. Bush Initiative: improve principal leadership. (Ed Week)
• One small New York school district’s RTTT share? $55,000 a year for four years. (Flypaper)
• A step forward, and a step back, in the race to extend Race to the Top. (Politics K12)
• USDOE is handing $50m to 12 “no-excuses” charter management groups. (Politics K12)
• The professors critical of edu-think tanks are starting their own… “policy center.” (Ed Week)
• “‘Superman’” critics made a rap: “Will the Real Reformers Please Stand Up.” (Ed Notes)
• Teacher Ruben Brosbe wonders, How do you teach students to love learning? (GS Community)
• Teachers and students at for-profit colleges protested possible regulations. (Wash Post)

New York City is releasing its annual report cards for every public elementary and middle school tomorrow, and though this event is usually the focus of the week’s news cycle, city officials are trying to keep the release quiet.

Last year, when 97 percent of elementary and middle schools received an A or B on their progress reports, Department of Education officials held a press conference with Chancellor Joel Klein to announce the results. The same was done in 2008. This year, just as the city has changed its formula for assigning the grades and tougher state tests mean more schools will receive a D or F grade than last year or the year before, the DOE is downplaying the release.

There will be no press conference tomorrow. The chancellor, who in years past has taken questions from reporters in public, will spend the day in Washington D.C, according to a DOE spokesman. Instead, reporters have to request a phone interview with DOE Deputy Chancellor for Accountability Shael Suransky and Klein may be made available for some reporters’ calls late tomorrow afternoon.

“The reasoning is that apart from the data itself, the grades schools receive, and which ones receive the grades, there’s no news here,” said DOE spokesman Matt Mittenthal. (more…)

Tomorrow, when the city releases its progress reports for elementary and middle schools, parents will begin the annual rite of deciphering their schools’ report cards. But this year the tradition will be complicated by a new formula and, for many schools, lower grades.

The city is trying to accomplish several goals at once: It is hoping to improve the methods it uses to measure student progress and reduce the wild fluctuation and inflation of grades that has marked past years’ progress reports. At the same time, city officials hope to convince parents, teachers and principals that the grades are meaningful, especially in light of this year’s sharp drop in test scores across the city.

Last year, the city gave 84 percent of elementary and middle schools A’s, while 13 percent received a B, and 2 percent received a C. Just five schools were given D’s, and two were given F’s. Those grades were much higher than the year before, when 38 percent of schools were given an A. In 2007, when the reports were first issued, 23 percent received that rating.

For this year’s progress reports, the city is making several big changes to how the grades are calculated. First, it is modifying how the city calculates students’ progress. In the past, a significant percentage of a school’s grade  — 85 percent for elementary and middle schools — was based on student performance on state math and reading scores. So when test scores went up throughout the city in 2009 (reflecting a statewide trend), the grades soared on progress reports.

This year the city is doing something different. It is comparing the progress of each student to other students who began the school year performing at the same level. (more…)