From the March on Washington:

• Organizers of the Save Our Schools rally turned down a planned White House meeting. (Politics K-12)
• A report from day one of the Save Our Schools rally features Kozol, Kuhn, and Klonsky. (James Boutin)
• Chris Lehman, a principal, says uninspiring schools proved to him the rally is needed. (Practical Theory)
• Critics say the rally is asking for funding without accountability, but organizers disagree. (Politics K-12)
• Ben Smith: Union officials are helping organize the march, but that’s not being advertised. (Politico)
• Rotherham: For all the concern about privatization, corporate influence on schools is modest. (Eduwonk)

Mulgrew was responding to comments made by Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott during Bloomberg’s weekly radio address this morning. They said they expect the number of tenure denials to rise next year.

Mulgrew questioned how they could predict more denials when evaluations for teachers up for tenure next year have not yet happened. He said that Bloomberg’s comments signal that the city has set up a quota system for teacher evaluations rather than using them as a tool to help educators improve.

“If it’s more about setting up a set of numbers for political reasons … then what they’re doing is wrong,” Mulgrew said. “If they’re already predetermining they’re setting this up with quotas, that’s absurd.”

The number of teachers who receive poor ratings could change when an evaluation system mandated under state law goes into effect. That is supposed to happen in September, but first the union and the city must agree on the system’s terms.

Mulgrew said they are nowhere near an agreement, even after reaching a deal for 33 low-performing schools two weeks ago. In fact, he said, he still has not had any discussions with city officials about a systemwide evaluation system.

And he said Bloomberg’s and Walcott’s comments today make him less amenable to entering negotiations.

“I’m not going to work with them if they’re doing it as a gotcha system,” he said.

Asked to comment on Bloomberg’s characterization of tenure as a relic of a very different era, when persecution for political reasons was prevalent, Mulgrew said he thought the mayor was unaware of the realities of working in city schools.

“I find a lot of the mayor’s comments to show a complete lack of understanding about what teachers and schools are about,” he said.

Bloomberg was discussing the latest tenure data, which was released Wednesday and showed an all-time high number of teachers whose probation were extended rather than receiving tenure. He said he’d continue to comply with the laws that required him to award tenure, but wouldn’t like it.

“The state law has tenure, whether you like it or not. We have to work with that,” Bloomberg said. ”It may have been necessary in the McCarthy era or maybe even today at the university level. But in public education you’re not writing papers about things that are very controversial, which was the idea of tenure: to protect your ability to do that.”

Bloomberg launched the last school year with a pledge to overhaul the way tenure is granted, and he previously has criticized tenure as being too “automatic.” But he has never called for an outright end to tenure; indeed, in a 2009 speech at the Center for American Progress, he declared, “let me be clear: We are not proposing an end to tenure.”

Under the tougher guidelines unveiled this year, more than 2,000 — or 39% — of teachers up for tenure this year had their probation extended tenure. That represents a sharp increase from last year, when less than 10 percent of teachers had their probation extended.

The number of teachers denied tenure decreased slightly, but, making a special guest appearance on the show, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott reiterated that he expected to see more denials next year.

“You’ll see the number probably go up again next year as far as those denied,” he said.

A screenshot from Kelly Vaughan's Digital Teacher Corps submission. (Click to view.)

A member of GothamSchools’ founding team, Kelly Vaughan returned to the classroom in 2009 — but she never abandoned the digital frontier.

Now, to augment her full schedule as a middle school science teacher at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, Vaughan has applied to join a new program being offered by the nonprofit New Visions for Public Schools. The Digital Teacher Corps connects educators who are interested in digital learning with mentors who can help them design and implement technology-based “hacks” to solve problems in their classrooms.

Applicants to the Digital Teachers Corps are uploading short videos to YouPD, a months-old New Visions project that aims to serve as a YouTube for teachers. Throughout the year, New Visions will use YouPD to share developments within the Digital Teachers Corps, said Hsing Wei, New Visions’ senior innovation officer.

“Our philosophy is to be transparent and try to share out as much to the community as possible,” Wei said.

Vaughan’s application proposes the “Global Weather Protection Agency,” a game to teach students about abstract weather concepts. Applications from other teachers suggest using graphic novels to teach English as a Second Language students andpreparing videos to differentiate test preparation review.

New Visions will select six teachers to receive training and mentorship throughout the year, along with a $3,000 stipend. Applications are due Monday.

The suit aimed at forcing New York City to dedicate a certain pot of state funds toward making class sizes smaller. The union charged that the city misused the funds, sending them to offset budget cuts rather than using them as they were intended — as a means of reducing class sizes. The NAACP also signed onto the suit.

But in a decision handed down today, an appeals court unanimously dismissed the union’s suit, saying that the union must take its complaints to the State Education Department before going to court. (Read the full decision below.)

The union president, Michael Mulgrew, vowed to continue protesting rising class sizes. “Lowering class size is a key issue for the parents and teachers of New York City and we intend to pursue it vigorously,” Mulgrew said in a statement this afternoon.

The appeals court did not address the heart of the disagreement: whether the city actually did, as the union charges, improperly fail to lower class sizes — and use Contracts for Excellence funds instead to stave off budget cuts. At issue is the state Contracts for Excellence funding stream, and in particular, a specific clause forcing New York City to write a plan to reduce class sizes.

What’s not disputed is that class sizes have creeped up for the last two years even as funds aimed at bringing them down have flooded into schools. Class sizes for the coming school year aren’t yet available, but all signs point to likely increases, which principals are preparing for. It’s not clear, however, that the Department of Education deliberately sought to prevent schools from lowering class sizes by sending funds elsewhere.

The Contracts for Excellence funds go straight to school principals, who can decide how to allocate them. The Department of Education argues that it’s possible for schools to invest the funds in exactly the kind of policies that should reduce class sizes — like hiring new teachers — and still fail to reduce average class sizes. Here’s an example offered by an official in 2009:

Take Bronx elementary school PS 57, which reported that it spent $190,000 to open new classes. Let’s be generous and say that the money could pay for three additional teachers. That could go a long way toward reducing class sizes in three grade levels. But would it necessarily lower the entire school’s average class size?

No. That would depend on how many students enrolled at the school, especially in grades and subjects that didn’t get new teachers. It would also depend on the rest of the school’s budget outlook, which, as school officials pointed out when they first released basic class-size data, has not been so good lately. And it would require the school to hire only inexpensive, and therefore inexperienced, teachers. In fact, PS 57 did see its average class size drop by more than one student. But another school, PS 54 in the Bronx, received $185,000 but saw class sizes shoot up on average by about 3 students per class.

Supporting the union’s argument, on the other hand, is a report by Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News suggesting that the city revised its class-size reduction plan in response to the tough budget climate. The report cites a letter from then-state education commissioner David Steiner signing off on the changes.

The letter, obtained by GothamSchools, signs off on the changes, with two caveats that are a bit too bureaucratic for me to summarize right now. Read the letter here.

In a statement, Chancellor Dennis Walcott said that the Department of Education has “remained committed to minimizing the growth of class size in all of our schools.” He cited as evidence the fact that the state approved the city’s Contracts for Excellence plans while the law was in effect. (It went off the books this past school year.)

The dismissal is the second legal defeat for the union and the NAACP in the last week. On Friday, a judge rejected the groups‘ suit asking courts to stop the city from closing struggling schools and giving charter schools district space.

The full decision:
Appellate Court Dismissal UFT Class Size Suit

The July 26 Principals’ Weekly newsletter said that the state had “postponed the release” of the grade 3-8 scores, though the New York State Education Department said today that results were right around the corner.

“The release this year is imminent and will be announced shortly,” NYSED spokesman Tom Dunn said.

The Principals’ Weekly item told principals that after the scores are released, they will need to send “July promotion update letters” to students who had been held back, and to students who failed the tests but had been promoted to the next grade on the expectation that they would pass.

Now, it looks like those July updates may not come until August.

Clemente Lopes, principal of Horace Greeley Middle School in Long Island City, said that he was anxious to see his school’s scores—for planning, but also out of curiosity.

“I’d like to see how my students perform. I’m like a parent—I want to know how my kids did,” he said.

Lopes said he isn’t worried about promotion decisions, which will only impact a handful of his students. But he is waiting on those scores to determine what kinds of classes he’ll need to offer.

“Getting the numbers helps us plan for the services we need for the students, especially academic intervention services, whether we need one, two or three classes,” he said.

Now, like many other city teachers, he’s going to need to use that creativity to find another position.

Horan was recently excessed after teaching for four and a half years at PS 68 in Ridgewood, Queens. Even though the school’s population has been shrinking for years, Horan thought his job was safe because it wasn’t included in the list of projected layoffs that the city circulated in February.

When layoffs were averted, he joined the cheers — only to be told one month later that budget reductions made his position too expensive for the school to maintain. The city has not yet released details about how many teachers shared Horan’s fate this year, but after three straight years of cuts, the number is sure to be significant. Principals eliminated nearly 2,000 positions last year.

“I just find it very frustrating,” Horan said. “Now that I’m excessed, it’s just very unexpected. Until June, everything’s great. I would have planned differently.”

Horan came to PS 68 as a first-year teacher in the spring of 2007, teaching 30 to 50 students at a time in an empty classroom that served as the school’s gym. The school hadn’t offered physical education in at least three years, he said, and he bought the program’s only supplies himself using Teacher’s Choice funds. (Those funds were also eliminated this year.)

For the next couple of years, he didn’t have a classroom — “We have a city park next door, thank God,” he said — and on cold days he would rotate into regular classrooms.

“When you have to figure something out with 30 kids, you do it,” he said. “It was, OK, we’re going to kick a ball today. We’re going to learn how to run the bases, how to play tag. Anything really, to keep the kids active.”

Horan says that he’s heard that a classroom at PS 68 will be still be called the gym room next year. But since he heard that most teachers didn’t set aside time to take their students there before he launched formal physical education instruction, he doesn’t know that they will next year, either.

“The scores in our school weren’t the greatest, and we just got a new math program. The teachers want to teach the kids,” he said. “They have to watch out for their jobs as well.”

State law requires students in elementary school to receive 120 minutes of physical education a week, with daily activity in the lower grades and at least three weekly sessions in grades 4-6. Classroom teachers may lead the instruction, though the city encourages schools to hire certified physical education teachers, according to a Department of Education spokeswoman, Marge Feinberg.

Horan is still hoping to find a position at another school, but he suspects he’ll never have it as good again — teaching in a school close to home, with few discipline problems and a supportive principal.

“I had a great job. But I understand there are more important things than gym sometimes,” he said.

Rupert Murdoch takes a strong interest in his newspapers' education coverage. (Photo by WorldEconomicForum on Flickr)

How involved is Rupert Murdoch at the newspapers he owns? When the subject is education, Murdoch’s views directly influence the coverage in the New York Post and, at the least, the sorts of meetings taken at the Wall Street Journal.

Azi Paybarah at the Observer reports today that at the New York Post, education stories are ordered up according to Murdoch’s visits:

One former reporter said his own editor requested a week’s worth of stories about the New York City public schools because “Rupert was going to be in town.” It was coveted real estate in the paper, and the reporter reluctantly obliged.

We have previously chronicled the Post’s open campaigning on behalf of the Bloomberg administration’s education policies and its effort to renew mayoral control. The coverage prompted Education Secretary Arne Duncan to praise the newspaper for its “leadership” in covering mayoral control.

There are some exceptions — New York City education beat reporter Yoav Gonen is even-handed and columnist Michael Goodwin takes no prisoners. But on and off the editorial page, the newspaper often matches Murdoch’s education views: aggressively dismissive of the teachers union and ridiculing of critics of the mayor.

At the Wall Street Journal, the line between news and opinion and newspaper boss seems to be thicker. But it has some holes. Last week, the New York Times reported on a meeting arranged between Joel Klein, then still the schools chancellor, and reporters:

When Mr. Klein visited The Journal last year to discuss education issues with news and opinion writers, Mr. Murdoch interrupted to lavish praise on the chancellor, much to the surprise of the writers. “Just listen to everything that Joel is saying,” Mr. Murdoch insisted, according to one person who attended the meeting.

A person who attended the meeting confirmed the account. The same story reported that Murdoch relished his access to Journal reporters, with whom he sometimes discussed education issues.

Not everyone at News Corp followed lockstep with Murdoch. When Department of Education officials met with the editorial boards of papers across the city to persuade them of their success at raising achievement, editors at the New York Post’s editorial page were skeptical, a former Bloomberg administration official said.

“We worked hard to get them on board with our numbers,” said the source. “I’m telling you, it was easier with the Times.”

Percentage of Teachers Who Had Tenure Denied or Extended

In a stark departure from tradition, more than 40 percent of city teachers up for tenure this year did not get it.

Just over 5,200 teachers were up for tenure this year. Of them, 58 percent received tenure and 3 percent were denied it, effectively barring them from working in city schools. The remaining portion — 39 percent — had their probationary periods extended for another year.

The number of extensions inched up in 2010 to 8 percent, but skyrocketed this year after the Department of Education revamped the tenure evaluation process in an effort to make the protection tougher to receive.

Yet the rate of tenure denials actually fell slightly from last year, from about 3.3 percent in 2010 to 2.7 percent in 2011, or 151 teachers, despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s insistence that the figures were the first step toward “ending tenure as we know it.”

The numbers, which Bloomberg touted at a press conference today, confirm anecdotal reports pointing to a sharp rise in the number of probation extensions under the new system. Before last year, that option was rarely used and the vast majority of teachers received tenure almost as a formality.

But last fall, Bloomberg vowed to make tenure a reward not for time served but for pushing students forward. In December, the city unveiled a new evaluation rubric for teachers up for tenure and said that teachers falling in the bottom two categories of four should not receive tenure.

“Tenure ought to be reserved for only the best teachers, and unfortunately, as we all know, for far too long it has been awarded primarily on the basis on longevity, not performance,” Bloomberg said today.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said today that he expects the number of tenure denials to rise next year.

Teachers whose probationary periods were extended will get individualized support, Walcott promised. He did not offer specifics about what form that support would take but said the point of the extra year is improvement.

Of the 426 teachers who had their probation extended in 2010, 58 percent had their probation extended a second time this year, DOE spokesman Matthew Mittenthal said. Thirty-one percent of those teachers earned tenure this year.

“Getting an extension is not a bad thing, it’s not a punishment,” Walcott said. “It’s another year to take your game to the next level.”

But Walcott said he would be scrutinizing teachers whose probations are repeatedly extended, as city schools policy allows. And Bloomberg indicated that multiple extensions could help weed some teachers out of the system.

“Keep in mind, if a teacher gets turned down year after year, common sense says that they’ll say, maybe this is not an occupation for me. Everyone has self-esteem, they want to do something they can do well, so a lot of it would take care of itself,” Bloomberg said.

But with the results of the new evaluation system not actually altering the makeup of who is in the city’s classrooms, some say the high extension rate reflects not on teacher quality but on confusion and data troubles within the DOE.

In many cases, principals and teachers say, the extensions were not prompted by concerns about teachers’ skills. Some principals reported being told they could not exercise discretion in the case of mismatch between DOE data reports’ assessment of teachers and their own assessments.

UFT Secretary Michael Mendel said today that the union continues to supports tougher tenure evaluation standards but objects to the use of “broken tools,” such as the city’s Teacher Data Reports, and to principals being told that they cannot recommend tenure when they feel it is deserved.

“You can’t tell me [principals] went from, I’m not sure about 7 or 8 percent of teachers to, I’m not sure about 40,” Mendel said. “It’s not the case. It’s people being told by principals, we wanted to grant you tenure and we can’t.”

And some teachers said they were told they weren’t eligible for tenure for reasons other than their own performance. At Aspirations High School in East New York, for example, administrators’ failure to complete classroom observations and the school’s F grade were cited as reasons for across-the-board extensions, teachers said earlier this month.

In a letter to Walcott earlier this month, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the union was “outraged” if problems with data or supervision contributed to some teachers’ probation extensions.

The city did not immediately offer breakdowns of tenure denials and extensions by school. But Walcott indicated that such data would show “a correlation” between between low-performing schools and tenure denials and extensions.

Educators 4 Excellence, the organization of young teachers that has called for changes to layoff and evaluation rules, said in a statement that the group supports the mayor’s efforts to make tenure “a significant professional milestone.” But the group also wants clarity about how tougher evaluations are conducted.

“What we learned from this year’s effort is that teachers need more transparency about how decisions are made and the process must be standardized across all schools,” E4E’s statement said.

One of my personal goals for the 2009-2010 school year was to help usher in better administrator-staff relations. I was committed to pushing the administration to do more to support teachers, and believed I could be a diplomatic intermediary. In my position as 10th-grade team leader, I had the ear of the administration. As a fourth-year veteran teacher, I had the stature to speak for the teachers. In our weekly “cabinet” meeting (a meeting of the four grade-level team leaders, the principal, and the two assistant principals) I listened more than I spoke, but when I did voice my opinion I did so with conviction yet couched in non-threatening language.

I remember that at one cabinet meeting, I butted heads with the principal over the issue of teacher complaining. I don’t remember the specific argument, but I stayed after the meeting to let him know that I didn’t mean anything personal by my comments and was just trying to be honest. He said he understood. I then talked about the need for teachers to have a constructive way to vent their frustrations. And he said, perhaps jokingly, that the solution to this was called beer. I told him that teachers already used this method of catharsis, but suggested that that the administration and staff have a happy hour together. I said that it might help ease tensions and make everyone feel more comfortable with each other.

So he took me up on the idea. He told me that if I organized it, he would buy everyone a drink.

I did so, and we all went out to a local bar one Friday afternoon in early November. Not everyone made it, but most people did. The teachers showed up first, and took over a corner of the bar. The three administrators showed up a little while later, and the principal did indeed buy everyone drinks. The assistant principals even bought seconds for those who wanted it. During that time, we actually didn’t talk about school that much but rather got to know one another better on a personal level. I traded wedding stories with the principal and another teacher, and chatted with one of the APs about international travel.

Two of the teachers provided comic relief by having a battle to impersonate each one of us.  The Spanish teacher did a great impersonation of me, pounding her fist into her other hand and saying, “You guys, this is going to be on the regents! You have to study this!” Everyone had a good laugh at my expense.

Inspired by observing these teachers’ comedic skill, the principal floated the idea of having a staff talent show during our annual Christmas party. For a while, we batted around suggestions about what to do for this occasion.

The admin didn’t stay too long, but seemed genuinely happy as they the excused themselves to go. I recall that the principal even gave a short toast before he left, and thanked the teachers for our hard work and spoke of a promise for more events like this one in the future as we celebrated shared success.

After the administrators had left, I clinked my glass with the teacher who led the ninth-grade team. She had also helped to promote a more positive tone among staff that year, and we congratulated one another on having seemingly achieved it. After the tumult of the last few years, this moment represented a high point for us.

Mayor Bloomberg is announcing details about how many teachers received — or didn’t receive — tenure this year during a midday press conference today at Tweed Courthouse, the Department of Education’s headquarters. In the past, the city has released tenure details by email. The fanfare comes on top of reports from teachers and principals that tenure was awarded far less readily last year after Bloomberg vowed to make the protection tougher to receive.

For many years, receiving tenure has been an almost automatic step that happens at the end of a teacher’s third year in the system. But as part of a sweeping bid to toughen teacher evaluations, the city unveiled a new tenure evaluation rubric last year. The rubric separates teachers into four categories and the city told principals to recommend tenure only for those falling into the top two.

At the end of the year, principals said the new evaluations had made it difficult for them to recommend tenure for some teachers they felt deserved it, particularly if a teacher’s value-added Teacher Data Report, based on student test scores, said he was below average. Many teachers appear to have had their probationary periods extended for an additional year.

Last year, 11 percent of teachers either were denied tenure or had their probations extended, up from 6.6 percent in 2009. Principals say that figure could rise this year.

“There is more pressure on administrators to have an abundance of evidence, to prove without a shadow of doubt” that a teacher is up to par, Principal Joseph Lisa of PS 61 in Queens told GothamSchools earlier this month.

In recent years, data about tenure recommendations has accompanied details about how many unsatisfactory ratings were handed out during the previous school year. The city has also encouraged principals to rate teachers unsatisfactory more often.

Administrators from the Center School and P.S. 9, which share a public school building at 100 W. 84 Street, agreed last week that the Center School would give one of its 11 classrooms to P.S. 9 in September. Department of Education officials said the building council made the decision in response to an enrollment increase at P.S. 9. Administrators from P.S. 9 were not available to comment.

But some Center School community members say the DOE is sacrificing their school rather than add new school seats in District 3, where popular schools such as P.S. 9 have seen enrollments swell. They also view it as a continuation of a heated controversy between the school and the DOE over the school’s relocation.

In 2008, the DOE told the Center School to leave the building it shared with P.S. 199 for more than 26 years to accommodate P.S.199’s growing class sizes. Parents and staff fought a pitched battle against the move. The actress Cynthia Nixon, a Center School parent, even accused the DOE during a public hearing of promoting racial segregation and classism. Roughly one-third of students at the Center School are African-American or Hispanic.

Ultimately, the fight was unsuccessful, and since moving into the PS 9 building in 2009, crowding has been an ongoing problem for the selective middle school and its 224 students. Even with 11 classrooms, the Center School sometimes held electives, called “minis,” and literature seminars outdoors or in the school’s hallways and stairwells, according to Elaine Schwartz, the principal.

When one teacher, Rebecca Montville, asked some of her 14 literature students to act out scenes from “Flowers for Algernon” during class last year, she and the audience huddled in the back of a walk-in closet usually shared by the guidance counselor and speech therapist. The actors maneuvered around an office desk that furnished the front-half of the make-shift classroom.

“They make it work, but it’s not optimal,” Montville said of her students, who are in fifth through eighth grades. “It will be to the hallways or to the closet. It takes away from class time because one of the first things you have to do when you get in the room is figure out how we’re all going to fit.”

Class sizes at the Center School range from a dozen students to nearly 50 for a theater class, Schwartz said, and the smaller classes are usually the ones sent out into the hallways when there are space constraints, which happens for the majority of class periods. She said the loss of one classroom could further strain the students and teachers.

“We have classes in the stairwell, classes in the back hallway, sometimes on the auditorium stage — anywhere we can find space,” she said.

In May, the DOE pushed the school to cede two classrooms to P.S. 9, which last year had 600 students.

“We objected strongly to that,” Schwartz said. “I didn’t want bigger classes in younger grades, or more classes in the halls.”

The agreement last week gives one classroom to P.S. 9 and is assured until 2015, Schwartz said.

P.S. 9 administrators report that a 65 percent one-year rise in the number of zoned families registering for kindergarten means that the school will offer another kindergarten class this fall, but it is losing its two gifted kindergarten classes.

When asked if she would like to move the school again to a building with more classrooms, Schwartz responded, “No. Not unless you’re building us our own building.”

Critics have long said that the city has inadequately planned for growing populations across the city, and Schwartz said no one in the DOE has formally raised the possibility of creating a school building solely for the Center School.

“I look at this as a major problem for the whole of District 3,” she said. “There’s just not enough spaces for children to put their books down.”

Despite budget cuts, New York is valiantly scrounging together the money to pay for additional testing — now in the arts. I won’t bother asking whether these tests or anyone can actually assess the effects of art education on young people. I won’t even argue against tests themselves: Assessment is a precious way for a teacher to gauge what her students have learned and what she needs to teach differently.

But when we make these tests “high-stakes” for teachers — i.e., tell them that their careers depend on test scores — we give more power to a piece of paper than to the power of the human social and academic intellect. When school becomes a matter of overcoming a hurdle, a student’s learning needs become impediments to be resented, quashed, and expelled. Teachers, who among us has entered the field of education in order to expose the success of gifted students and sweep under the rug students with emotional, physical, and language needs?  Whoever you are, congratulations to you — you’re going to have a very successful career in the era of high-stakes testing.

In response to the mushrooming consequences attached to test results, the Grassroots Education Movement is in the early stages of putting together a new campaign, tentatively titled the “Change the Stakes” Campaign. (Join by signing on to GEM’s mailing list.) We’re not arguing against testing — we as educators know that assessment fits into a conscientious teacher’s curriculum. We are against high-stakes testing. We are against using unproven tests to determine the fate of students and teachers, telling students they have failed and, implicitly, that they shouldn’t try again. The tests we use are rarely developed by teachers, and definitely not by the teachers who actually know our students. As professional pedagogues, we can’t stand by that policy when there are better approaches out there.

If you think there is no model for alternatives to testing, come visit my school around the end of the term. You’ll see parents and students engaged in what we call Student-Led Conferences — highly-formalized presentations in which students share what they have learned in each of their courses and how it enabled them to produce their most quality work. Some schools have become so proficient in their versions of Student-Led Conferences that they are considered performance-based assessment schools, and in recognition the state even exempts students at some city high schools from most Regents exams. The designation, and the exemption, means these schools are trusted to assess their students on academic performance directly related to what they learned— rather than their ability to fill in the right bubble. Shouldn’t we be moving all schools toward quality student performance rather than high scores on tests not developed by educators?