GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Confronted with heightened standards on the state exams, only half of all summer school students graduated to the next grade this year, city officials said today.

New York State education officials made the annual math and English exams more difficult to pass this year after realizing that, over the course of the last three years, the tests had become too easy. As a result, the number of students who failed the exams and had to attend summer school rose from 10,000 in 2009 to about 22,800 this year.

But even after weeks of summer school, the bar remained too high for many students to pass. Roughly 11,500 failed the exams again on the second try and are being held back. The other 11,300 passed the tests and have advanced to the next grade.

Last year, when students sat for the then less-difficult exams, about 80 percent were promoted onto the next grade at the end of summer school. (more…)

The federal government is giving the city $36 million to expand a performance pay program that gives large bonuses to high-performing teachers in struggling schools.

The money is a percentage of the $442 million Teacher Incentive Fund doled out today to more than 60 groups, including states, school districts, charter school operators and non-profits. Federal officials are handing out the grants the same week as a major study of merit pay in Nashville found that offering teachers up to $15,000 bonuses had little effect on student academic achievement.

The award aims to let the city hire “master” and “turnaround” teachers for 75 low-performing schools. The two groups of teachers have full or nearly-full course loads and devote extra time to training or mentoring other teachers at their schools.

Turnaround teachers, who will work an estimated 30 hours more per year, get bonuses of 15 percent of their salaries. Master teachers work an extra 100 hours and receive 30 percent bonuses. Both categories of teacher are also required to maintain a “highly effective” rating under the state’s new teacher evaluation system, based partly on their students’ test scores. (more…)

• Facebook’s CEO is giving $100 million and more mayoral control to Newark’s schools. (Times, WSJ)
• Lisa Luft, Kennedy HS’s new principal, has phased out two schools before. (Riverdale Press)
• Joel Klein said the UFT’s Michael Mulgrew is harder to work with than Randi Weingarten. (Daily News)
• Brooklyn elected officials are fighting a plan to put a charter school in Floyd Bennet Field. (YourNabe)
• More than 50 students at Brooklyn’s IS 234 were told they had to change schools. (Post, Daily News)
• Hundreds of retired school administrators draw six-figure pensions. (Daily News)
• Errol Louis says charter advocates should rethink their strategy after last week’s primaries. (Daily News)
• Education Secretary Arne Duncan predicts continued school reform in post-Fenty D.C. (Washington Post)
• Some conservative Texans say the state’s new textbooks have a pro-Islam bent. (Times)
• The Times calls on Congress to pass a bill that would require healthier school lunches.

• The city says former rubber room teachers who don’t like their new duties may file grievances. (WNYC)
• OFEA’s new head wants “to communicate things better and earlier and to listen better.” (InsideSchools)
• Retired city educators make up about a third of the state’s highest-paid pensioners. (Albany T-U)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan still hopes that Congress will reauthorize ESEA early next year. (Politics K-12)
• Hess: The “goopy groupthink” around “Waiting for Superman” may have little impact. (Rick Hess)
• Paging Mayor Bloomberg: eighth grade parents need time off to shop for high schools. (InsideSchools)
• Unlike on “Glee,” the “real-life Mr. Schuester” held most of his choir classes in trailers. (Salon)
• And a big purple furry thing is ambling the streets, encouraging kids to walk to school. (Streetfilms)

City officials are planning to hire “talent coaches” for principals of a handful of struggling schools that received federal grants to improve student performance.

Department of Education officials said they want to hire three or four coaches to observe the city’s 11 “transformation” schools as they begin to pilot a new teacher evaluation system this year.

The job title “talent coach” is something of a misnomer. The coaches will hold principals and administrators’ hands as they try to judge which teachers are effective, but they will not be responsible for actually judging the teachers or helping them get better.”They’ll be silent observers,” said DOE spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld. “They’ll be providing feedback to the evaluators as opposed to feedback to the teachers.”

The new position is meant in part to lighten principals’ workload at a time when federal grant requirements are forcing them to overhaul how their schools operate. (more…)

As the city school system faces another round of budget cuts, a new report details which schools suffered the most under last year’s cuts — and which saw their budgets grow.

The analysis, prepared by the Independent Budget Office, compares the September budget allocations each school received this year to the same time last school year. It found that while the majority of schools — 864 out of 1,464 — saw their budgets drop, nearly 600 schools received greater per-pupil allocations this year.

Schools’ budgets change not only when their enrollment fluctuates, but also when their demographics shift. A school with a sudden influx of students who need special education services will see a budget increase. Schools receive less money per student as more of their students meet state academic standards. In some cases, schools that saw their overall budgets grow actually lost money per student.

How much money each school receives is determined in large part by a formula known as Fair Student Funding, which the city has used since the 2007- 2008 school year. The formula calculates the amount of money a school receives per student, but gives more money for each student with higher needs. Because of state cuts to education aid, however, the formula has never been fully phased in and some schools still receive more or less money than the formula calls for. And last year, to implement a 4 percent budget cut systemwide, the city changed its method of allocating funds so that no school would receive more than a 4.2 percent total cut.

The result is that the amount of money individual schools gained or lost this year varies considerably. Most schools saw less than a 3 percent cut or under a 3 percent gain. But just over 100 schools received more than 3 percent more money per student this year, and 150 schools lost more than 3 percent.

Read the IBO’s analysis and search individual schools’ budget allocations here.

We were ten minutes late for everything yesterday. During a lesson on prefixes there was mass confusion and during a goals setting lesson there were glazed eyes. Our math lesson ran long so there was no time for social studies. But balancing out all those frustrations was a simple moment of magic.

During our first real attempt at independent reading I sat down on the rug with my five non-speakers. I told them we were going to make a book together, and I watched their faces light up. Each student told me one thing they liked, I translated it to English and recorded it on an index card. Then each student got to illustrate their sentence. For a brief part of the day they weren’t confused. They were excited and engaged.

It was a simple lesson, taken from a colleague, but it was the best part of my day. It was the kind of “ah ha” moment that embodies the thrill of teaching. I’m hoping in my fourth year of teaching I can make these moments a daily occurrence.

• Mayor Bloomberg announced a 2.7 percent budget cut for city schools. (Bloomberg, WSJ)
• Some former rubber room occupants say they aren’t happy with their new duties. (Post, Daily News, WNYC)
• Many schools saw budget increases last year; most saw their budgets go down. (Post)
• The state allowed the city to raise class sizes while still funding class size reduction. (Daily News)
• Two city groups got federal grants to help children in their neighborhoods. (NY1, GothamSchools, Times)
• The only area of expansion in the city’s private school scene is among for-profit schools. (Times)
• A top D.C. schools official resigned suddenly last week. (Washington Post)
• A new study says teacher merit pay didn’t cause higher test scores. (Washington Post)
• Al Sharpton is launching a new education-focused television show next month. (AP)

• A “hubris alert” is issued against Davis Guggenheim’s claim that “we’ve cracked the code.” (Flypaper)
• Should Merryl Tisch’s brother-in-law’s company be allowed to help open a charter school? (City Limits)
• Bloomberg issued a hiring freeze today; the DOE is least spared, but still has to cut spending 2.7%. (NY1)
• Study: teacher merit pay didn’t work in Tennessee. (WashPost, LM, Hechinger, Educated Reporter)
• Every single employee at the state’s home-schooling support office has retired. (CityRoom)
• A student said it took him more time to commute to school than he spent in school. (Pissed Off)
• The full list of Promise Neighborhood grant winners goes from sea to shining sea. (Early Ed, GS)
• The “leadership trap” at no-excuses charter schools: too much reinventing the wheel. (Goldstein)
• Only 23% of teachers come from the top third of college graduates, a McKinsey report says. (Flypaper)
• One Manhattan private school is a for-profit, unlike the Dalton/Chapin contingent. (New York Times)

The Abyssinian Development Corporation's promise neighborhood would sit right on the border of the Harlem Children's Zone (marked in blue).

Two New York City groups won federal grants today that will give them one year to figure out how to recreate the Harlem Children’s Zone in other corners of the city.

One winner, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, plans to duplicate the Zone’s work practically next-door to the iconic organization in central Harlem. Another, the Lutheran Family Health Centers would focus on Sunset Park, Brooklyn — a neighborhood that has witnessed an influx of students who are recent immigrants and speak little English.

The groups won about $500,000 each and a year to decide exactly what their “promise neighborhoods” (as the grant is called) would look like. This doesn’t mean they have the government’s assurance of more funding to get their plans off the ground. President Obama has asked Congress for $200 million for implementation.

Promise Neighborhood grants are part of the Obama administration’s goal to replicate Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, an anti-poverty experiment that follows children from birth to adulthood. Zeroing in on a few neighborhood blocks in Harlem, the Children’s Zone offers parenting classes, after school activities, and has started its own network of charter schools. The program has received high praise — and some questions about the strength of its results so far and its scalability. (more…)