GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Bill Gates: It’s better to take longer to create new teacher evals than create bad ones. (Get Schooled)
• Years into data-driven instruction, a study will examine whether it works. (Inside School Research)
• A group making a set of Common Core tests wants help defining “college-ready.” (Curriculum Matters)
• The head of a national private school consortium explains the sector’s position on data. (Class Struggle)
• Stephen Lazar: Before extending the school day, let’s use the time we already have better. (SchoolBook)
• A mother whose son fell short on a Regents exam says she’s just glad he didn’t cheat. (Insideschools)
• Two teachers at a Bronx charter school say they were fired after getting pregnant. (El Diario/Voices of NY)
• In Virginia, a reporter covering the city schools was also a paid consultant for them. Oops. (Romenesko)
• A Congressional hearing delved into discipline in schools and alternatives to tough forms. (HuffPo)
• Just because states have gotten NCLB waivers doesn’t mean won’t have to crunch data. (Politics K-12)
• Teaching for the first time in two weeks, a teacher says summer brings new ideas. (Shoulders of Giants)

For years, the city touted its improved test scores, saying that higher and higher percentages of its students were proficient on the standardized exams.

A new report by the Independent Budget Office, which tracked the change in year-to-year test scores of individual students for the same period, disputes the gains the city claimed.

That’s because more than 60 percent of students from a single cohort who were tested from third to sixth grade between 2006 to 2009 on the English language arts exam didn’t improve their proficiency levels, the IBO analysis found. Thirty percent ended up at a higher level and eight percent ended up at a lower level.

“At a time when the city was saying things were getting better in the school system, it looks different when you look at performances of the individual student,” said Ray Domanico, director of education research at the IBO.

Domanico acknowledged that there were some limitations to looking at proficiency levels alone. He said comparing state test scores from one year to the next is less than ideal, because a proficiency level in third grade doesn’t necessarily mean a student learned nothing if they earn the same level in subsequent grades.

But given the data, Domanico said proficiency levels — rather than raw scores — was the only possible metric to measure individual student progress, in an era when education officials are increasingly evaluating schools and teachers based on students growth on test scores. He added that proficiency level is the most relevant metric to the public, because the city uses that data to make decisions about student promotion and admission, and shares it with parents. (more…)

A chart from a 2010 analysis that compared charter schools' performance by authorizer.

When a researcher with a penchant for crunching charter school data sat down to compare New York State’s charter authorizers in 2010, her impetus wasn’t merely academic.

For Jonas Chartock, then the director of one of three authorizers, who requested an analysis, the data was a matter of survival.

“At the time there was a real push by some politicians to eliminate SUNY as an authorizer,” said Chartock, who headed SUNY’s Charter School Institute until early 2011.

Chartock asked Macke Raymond, a Stanford researcher who had just wrapped up a broad study of New York City’s charter sector, to examine her school performance data based on which office had authorized it. Her comparison showed up as an attachment to one of several hundred Department of Education emails released last week in response to a teachers union’s Freedom of Information Law request.

Raymond found that students at SUNY-authorized charter schools improved at a quicker pace than students at schools authorized by the State Education Department and the city Department of Education. At schools authorized by SED, she found, students actually lost ground over time. (more…)

• With the school year nearing, the city has decided it must reinstate staffers at turnaround schools. (WSJ)
• But it hadn’t told administrators at the schools, who said they are operating in limbo. (GothamSchools)
• A quiet overhaul of how Regents exams are graded has major implications for schools. (GothamSchools)
• Regents chief Merryl Tisch still wants the city and UFT to cut a deal on teacher evaluations. (Daily News)
• A Harvard-bound Stuyvesant High School graduate says the school has a culture of cheating. (Post)
• The Daily News says the Department of Education didn’t do enough to punish Stuy’s cheating students.
• Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a controversial charter school fan, is still sending emails that offend. (Daily News)
• Los Angeles is fighting a court mandate to give district space to charter schools. (L.A. Times)