GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Sometimes, school space-sharing plans stir up controversy. Sometimes, they don’t. (Brooklyn Bureau)
• A special education teacher recounts the saga of waiting for an observation that never came. (Miss Rim)
• Joel Klein is still not sure how the market will respond to Amplify, but he’s optimistic. (Fast Company)
• A new video profiles two schools that are teaching Asian languages to their students. (Asia Society)
• Houston is considering using student surveys for up to 30 percent of teachers’ ratings. (Joanne Jacobs)
• A city teacher who once backed the Common Core says she has changed her mind. (Living in Dialogue)
• In a new video, the State Education Department tries to win over Common Core skeptics. (GS in Brief)
• The city is opening 29 new dual-language programs this fall: what they are and where. (Insideschools)

A slew of glitches in the city’s electronic grading for Regents exams have delayed scores for several subjects, just days before high schools are set to begin holding graduation ceremonies.

The problems represent at best a significant inconvenience and cost and at worst a threat to students’ scores and graduation status, according to educators with knowledge of the grading process.

This is the first June that all Regents exams taken at city high schools are being graded through “distributed scoring,” an arrangement devised to prevent teachers from scoring tests taken by students at their schools. Until last year, teachers graded their own students’ exams, but under pressure to show that test scores are not inflated, the state barred that practice. The city’s scoring system extends the state’s rules.

After a pilot last year, the Department of Education opted to have four of the most-taken tests — Living Environment, Global Studies, U.S. History, and English — scored electronically. McGraw-Hill, the vendor administering the process, collects the exams at schools, transports them to a scanning site in Connecticut, and then distributes answers one by one to teachers stationed at computers in city grading centers.

The company is getting $3.5 million this year from the city to administer the distributed scoring program, part of a $9.6 million, three-year contract to manage the logistical acrobatics that the new arrangement requires. (more…)

State test scores won’t count more toward the evaluations of elementary and middle school teachers next year, according to an amended proposal that a Board of Regents committee passed unanimously on Monday.

The proposed model, which was formally approved on Tuesday, included a methodology to calculate student growth that was nearly identical to the “value-added” model that State Education Commissioner John King brought to the board in April. Both models add new data points to the formula used to approximate how much each teacher has contributed to students’ growth.

But under state law, any model termed “value-added” would have required, controversially, that its weight increase from 20 to 25 percent on some teacher evaluations. King’s alternative this month was for the state to adopt an “enhanced growth model” that adds virtually all of the same data points but doesn’t have the value-added moniker. Spurning the name allows the state to avoid increasing the weight of test scores until all districts have at least one year of implementation under their belts, something the state teachers union has asked for.

“I would have thought that adding all these factors would qualify as ‘value-added,’ but this distinction was always opaque,” said Jonah Rockoff, a Columbia University economist who advised the state on its methodology “If the commissioner wants to keep the weight at 20 percent for another year then staying within the ‘student growth’ framework seems like the simplest way to do it.” (more…)

A day before the teachers union is set to endorse a mayoral candidate, New York City’s principals union has backed former Board of Education president Bill Thompson while acknowledging that they don’t agree on all policy issues.

“I don’t know if we’ll always agree on what’s best,” said Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators. ”But that’s the difference here — having someone talk to you and be collaborative and listen to you.”

He added about Thompson, “He respects school leaders … and we’re not getting that” under Bloomberg.

Logan signaled that the union’s executive board was not at all unanimous in its decision. Thompson had twice as many votes as the next closest candidate, Logan said, but he won just 40 percent of the board’s vote. (more…)

Bill Thompson stumped at an education event earlier this year. Thompson, seen as a strong contender for the UFT’s endorsement this week, has also cozied up to charter school advocates during the primary season.

Even as Bill Thompson has continued to criticize the Bloomberg administration’s education policies, he has courted the mayor’s education allies.

Thompson has privately dined with charter school backers and assuaged their fears about what his mayoralty would mean for them. He’s taken thousands of dollars in campaign donations from a Success Academy board member and won the fundraising support of Merryl Tisch, a top state education official who helped expand the charter school sector.

Most recently, he has distanced himself from some Democratic rivals by refusing to oppose a key education policy that the Bloomberg administration has used to help non-union charter schools thrive.

Thompson has managed to stay in favor with these groups even while getting support from Randi Weingarten, an old friend, and emerging as a favorite to get the United Federation of Teachers endorsement, which is scheduled to come on Wednesday (The principals union, a close UFT ally, is endorsing him on Tuesday). His ability to cultivate support from advocates who are often at odds with one another on education is a testament to his political savvy and his experience as a schools policymaker in New York City, political observers say. (more…)

• The city’s graduation rate dropped slightly. (GothamSchools, Times, NY1, Post, Daily News, WSJ, SB)
  
• Bloomberg used the occasion to take on the UFT. (GothamSchools, Post, WSJ, Politicker, Capital NY)
• Policy makers were split on how to interpret the rate, which reflects higher standards. (GothamSchools)
• Statewide, the average graduation rate was steady, but achievement gaps persist. (Albany Times Union)
• At Bronx Compass High School, teachers work to integrate the arts into science and math. (Daily News)
• The principal of the Bronx’s I.S. 232 is being investigated for allegedly threatening teachers. (Daily News)
• Michael Benjamin: Democratic candidates’ criticism of Eva Moskowitz shows that they lack vision. (Post)
• A handful of parents and staff members started a hunger strike for safe schools in Philadelphia. (Inquirer)
• An advocacy group offers a critical report about teacher training as programs are ranked. (HuffPo, WSJ)

• The Educational Justice Political Action Committee, a parent group, endorsed Bill de Blasio. (GS in Brief)
• A Portland, Ore., high school principal is returning to New York as an achievement coach. (Oregonian)
• The city has redesigned more than 50 playgrounds to encourage imaginative and creative play. (WSJ)
• The “faulty logic of the ‘math wars’” is that skills are required for creative math thinking. (The Stone)
• An argument to improve educational attainment by redirecting subsidies from the well-off. (Opinionator)
• In the remake of “Boy Meets World,” Corey is a seventh-grade New York City history teacher. (Gawker)
• Students at The Equity Project Charter School are bigger than they were four years ago. (Times)
• Carol Burris says her close read of New York City’s teacher evaluation plan raises concerns. (DR’s Blog)
• View every city high school’s graduation rate, charted over time, in one place. (WNYC/SchoolBook)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky announce the city’s graduation rates.

For Mayor Bloomberg, putting a positive spin on the city’s latest high school graduation numbers required him to get creative with his number-crunching.

The city’s four-year graduation rate fell by half a point, to 60.4 percent, making Bloomberg’s final press conference about the data the first to contend with a sharp decline.

During a press conference at City Hall this afternoon, Bloomberg said the fact that the city’s graduation rate did not fall more because of the state’s tougher graduation requirements was reason for celebration. Last year was the first time that students had to pass five Regents exams with a grade or 65 or higher, as opposed to 55.

“Everybody predicted that our graduation rates would fall precipitously and that did not happen,” Bloomberg said. ”This is showing improvement, not decline.”

In a PowerPoint presentation, Bloomberg highlighted how far the city’s graduation rate would have climbed had the standards in place last year also been in place earlier in his term. City officials pointed out that if the state had not raised its graduation standards, the city’s rate would have climbed by 1.4 points instead of falling.

And Bloomberg said he could have raised graduation rates even more had his policy proposals never been stymied by the United Federation of Teachers, spurring a fresh round of mutual criticism. (more…)

Chart

Like the other large school districts in the state, New York City saw its graduation rate decline last year. But it bucked the trend when it came to graduates’ preparedness for college, posting an increase where the other districts did not. (more…)

State Education Commissioner John King presented new data about the state’s high school graduation rate to the Board of Regents today in Albany.

ALBANY — After listening to State Education Commissioner John King present the state’s latest graduation rate data today, members of the Board of Regents were divided on how to respond.

Some grumbled about the rates, pointing in particular to declines that the state’s five largest cities experienced. But others said they had expected far worse.

Though statewide graduation rates stayed steady at 74 percent, rates in the “Big Five” fell by 2.8 points on average, a dip that was largely weighted by a seven-point decline in Buffalo. In New York City, the four-year graduation rate dropped by half a point, to 60.4 percent.

Elsewhere in the state, districts considered “low-need” because many students come from relatively affluent families graduated students on time 94 percent of the time.

“Our affluent children do as well as anybody,” said Regent Kathleen Cashin, of Brooklyn. “Where we don’t do well is with the poor. This concerns me because of the fact that every single large city district has gone down.” (more…)