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“Do they have schools that do this all the time?”

“Do what?” I asked my summer school student for clarification.

“Have just one long class instead of a bunch of different ones.”

As I thought about his question, possible answers and complicating factors raced through my head: teachers’ contracts, graduation requirements, the length of the day, space and facilities. I didn’t share these considerations. Instead I just said, “Probably,” and was sure to ask, “Why?”

He explained that he liked having more time in class, he liked that he didn’t feel rushed, and because of the smaller class size he felt he was able to focus more. I had only met the student two days before, but we had already spent over 10 hours together due to our intensive summer school schedule. As it turned out, we liked summer school for the same reason: longer, smaller classes.

But one of his reasons didn’t sit right with me: He said he didn’t feel rushed. I certainly felt rushed. We had just under 40 hours in two weeks to prepare for the Living Environment Regents exam. I had to condense and prioritize a curriculum I loved. I had to figure out exactly what my students knew and didn’t know, and how they liked to learn. My job was definitely a rush job. (more…)

The radical “restart” plans for 14 struggling schools seem likely to get off to a slow start.

In exchange for millions of dollars in federal School Improvement Grants, the city announced this week that it would turn over the reins of 14 schools to nonprofit Education Partnership Organizations. But with the start of the school year just weeks away, those groups say that much of their first year will be spent assessing needs and adding support, not making drastic changes.

“Whenever you’re in a position of partnering, you’re always balancing the need of that sense of urgency with the idea that there is a certain risk or downside to, say, overhauling the master schedule two weeks before school starts,” said Doug Elmer, the director of Diplomas Now, which will manage Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn and Newtown High School in Queens.

The nonprofits put in their bids to take over schools — where they’ll control everything from curriculum to hiring to budgeting — in May. But after a delay while the city and teachers union hammered out a deal over teacher evaluations in the struggling schools, the groups learned only in the last two weeks that the city wanted them to become EPOs. And they found only just this week which schools they would take over. The city had asked the schools and organizations to rank each other, then paired them off.

“It was a little bit of a flurry,” said Sheepshead Bay Principal Reesa Levy of the matching process. But she said she was excited to work with Diplomas Now. ”We’re actually thrilled. I think maybe this will give us that extra push.”

The federal government has promised up to $2 million a year for three years for the restart schools. (more…)

• A tally of four more high schools whose Regents exams scores are being scrutinized for cheating. (Post)
• Jim Dwyer: As principals slash extracurriculars, some nonprofits have escaped state oversight. (Times)
• As it did last year, the Fresh Prep program aims to boost Regents preparation through rapping. (Times)
• The woman who stole from PS 29′s PTA didn’t make her first restitution payment. (Post, Brooklyn Paper)
• A new study shows that bullying might hurt schools’ test scores, not just bullied students’. (L.A. Times)

• A review of Steven Brill’s book says it contains errors and the idea that teachers can fix poverty. (Nation)
• Brill accuses Diane Ravitch of being a paid union shill, a charge even her opponents deny. (Russo)
• Why is New York City telling schools what to teach about sex, but only about sex? (Flypaper)
• A roundup of the Manhattan principals that teachers rated highest and lowest on a city survey. (JD2718)
• A teacher refreshing her classroom over the summer describes deciding to get rid of her desk. (Mrs. Ripp)
• Meet the Education Writers Association’s new public editor, Emily Richmond. (The Educated Reporter)
• Carole Feldman, a longtime Associated Press journalist, is the AP’s new education editor. (Russo)
• As its first class neared graduation, Collin Lawrence’s school entered triage mode. (GS Community)
• A move is afoot to make the Common Core accessible to all students. (Learning the Language)
• Diana Senechal: Schools today have too much boring busy-ness all over their walls. (Core Knowledge)
• A look at the insiders and outsiders that are trying to reshape city teachers unions. (School of Thought)
• Crackerjack California reporters found that many schools still aren’t earthquake-ready. (Voice of S.D.)

Despite our ongoing attempt to streamline the mountain of information that came with the state’s release of the 2010-2011 test scores, there are still plenty of takeaways that haven’t been said on a press release or at a press conference.  After taking a slightly deeper look at the data, here are 10 worthwhile bulletins to consider:

• Some of the neediest students took a step back; others showed progress. Students who are identified as English Language Learners, or ELL, improved slightly in math, but took another step back from statistical gains they made on the english test (ELA) earlier in the decade. While nearly half of the city’s non-ELL students met the state’s ELA standards, just 12 percent ELL students did so. That’s down from 34 percent two years ago, when the standards were easier and 1 percent drop from a year ago. The ELL students improved slightly in math. Special education students improved in both ELA and math.
• The achievement gap remains vast. Schools in poor neighborhoods still struggle the most. In the South Bronx — one of the nation’s poorest congressional districts — and central Brooklyn, average proficiency rates were below 30 percent in ELA and below 40 percent in math. (Citywide rates were 57 percent in math; 44 percent in ELA). In the city’s more affluent neighborhoods, like Bayside, the Upper West Side and lower Manhattan, scores hovered at significantly higher rates. District 26 in Queens topped out in both subjects, with 74 percent proficiency in reading and 88 percent proficiency in math.
• New doesn’t always mean better. More than a dozen schools in their first year of testing spanned both extremes of the performance spectrum. Half of them, including The Active Learning Elementary School, whose entire 20-student third grade class was perfectly proficient, significantly outperformed other schools in their districts. But many others struggled just as much as the closed schools that they were supposed to replace. In four such schools, less than a quarter of students did not meet reading standards. Just 5.8 percent of students at one school, Urban Scholars Community School, were proficient in reading.
• Charter schools outperformed their neighbors, mostly. Citywide, 69 percent of students in charter schools met standards in math, up from 63 percent last year. In ELA, 45 percent were proficient, up from 43 percent last year. Both beat citywide averages. Nearly 75 percent of the charter school classes that took a state exam scored better than their districts, on average. (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.

The administration of the Brooklyn Arts Academy made what was, in my opinion, a strategic blunder when determining teacher placement for the 2009-2010 school year. The veteran and more established teachers were placed in the lower grades, while the senior class was left with just one returning teacher.

In fact, to start the school year, the seniors had no science teacher. A month went by before one was hired. The new English teacher had previous experience, but not at an inner-city school. But the new social studies teacher had several years of previous teaching experience in Queens and was very enthusiastic about joining our staff. By midyear, all three of these new teachers had left the school. Replacements were eventually found, but meanwhile the students in the senior class interpreted the absence of stable teachers as neglect and began a process of seeming self-destruction, some of them even refusing to do work necessary to meet graduation requirements.

This situation may have been avoided had the administrators provided more support and guidance to the new senior teachers at the start of the year. There were a couple of senior students in particular who were responsible for a large share of classroom disruptions. As I understand, the new senior teachers asked for help in disciplining these two students, but were more or less informed that the problem lay in their instruction or management styles.

The history teacher, who was probably in her fifties and had at least 15 years of teaching experience, was observed one day and reportedly given a U-rating on the basis of poor classroom management. This teacher had never received a U-rating in all her previous years of teaching, and was apparently deeply insulted. She allegedly stormed out of the principal’s office after the post-observation debrief and didn’t come back the next day. She took an indefinite leave of absence, and ultimately decided to resign.

The English teacher didn’t leave as hastily, but had decided by mid-year that this school wasn’t for her. She gave advanced notice to the administration that she would leave at the end of the semester.

The students learned science from the career counselor for the first month of the year. (more…)

• Nearly half of kindergartners at Dalton, an elite private school, will be students of color this year. (WSJ)
• Parents applauded the city’s plan to require sex education in all middle and high schools. (Daily News)
• But the Archdiocese of New York, the Catholic Church, criticized the sex ed plan. (Times)
• The church’s opposition could cause trouble for schools housed in church buildings. (GothamSchools)
• The Times praises the sex ed rules, saying teen disease and pregnancy rates make them “long overdue.”
• Bronx schools lagged farthest behind in performance on state tests. (NY1)
• A charter school parent spokeswoman says the scores should end criticism of charter schools. (Post)
• A new report says that even states that raised test standards rarely raise them to NAEP levels. (WSJ)
• Officials in a suburban D.C. county are quietly firing more teachers and principals. (Washington Post)

• An audit by the state comptroller found improvements in Regents scoring policy. (Politics on the Hudson)
• Beverly Hall says she regrets the cheating under her watch in Atlanta but says progress is real. (EdWeek)
• A student recalls Stanley Bosworth, enigmatic St. Ann’s School founder, who died yesterday. (Daily Intel)
• Though the federal i3 competition didn’t favor newness, it’s part of a thriving innovation climate. (GOOD)
• After four years teaching, Ruben Brosbe is leaving to get an education policy degree. (GS Community)
• Weingarten on unions in Wisconsin recall votes: “Getting this close was amazing.” (Dana Goldstein)
• A Teach for America alum is leading a growing minority movement in L.A.’s union. (Quick and the Ed)
• Big ideas and questions collected from 150 education leaders at a “Big Ideas Retreat.” (Eduflack)
• Are the city and the teachers union saying the same thing about their ATR agreement? (NYC ATR)
• Filmmaker Michael Moore says Matt Damon should run for president on his teacher defense. (Politico)
• Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Rick Perry might actually run, as education’s anti-Obama. (Politics K-12)
• In an open letter to the feds, a principal says the NCLB waivers present little choice. (Practical Theory)

New York is among the states holding off on deciding whether to seek relief from the burdens of the No Child Left behind law.

After falling short in its bid to get Congress to rewrite the law, the Obama administration announced the waiver policy on Monday, saying that it would release states from some of NCLB’s regulations if they committed to other reforms. What those reforms must be won’t be announced until September, but education officials in some states have already said they would apply for waivers.

That’s not the case in New York, where state officials say they will wait for further indication from the federal government about what strings would be attached to those waivers.

“What we have heard thus far about the waiver program is encouraging, but we do not yet have its specifics,” a spokesperson for the State Education Department wrote in an email. “Once these are available, we will review the plan carefully to ensure that it is well aligned with the Regents reforms and then make a decision about participation.”  (more…)