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The Department of Education will start 2012 without a longtime official who has supervised number-crunching about test scores.

Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger, a two-decade veteran of the city schools who is currently a senior advisor to Chancellor Dennis Walcott, was picked last week to be Baltimore’s first schools “achievement and accountability officer.” Starting Jan. 3, she will head data efforts for Superintendent Andres Alonso, himself a product of New York City’s central schools administration. (She is already listed as chief accountability officer on Baltimore Public Schools’ website.)

The city will select a replacement within a month to take over Bell-Ellwanger’s responsibilities, which include managing research and analysis about the city schools and working with the state to align the two education departments’ policy agendas.

“She has built a strong and effective team, and I’m confident the DOE will remain in good hands,” Walcott said in a statement. “I thank Jennifer for her contributions and look forward to seeing all the great work that comes out of Baltimore.”

Bell-Ellwanger’s departure comes just weeks after the state’s seven-year data chief, David Abrams, resigned abruptly. His resignation followed the leak of a memo about much longer state tests. The two departures leave the city and state with key vacancies at a time when efforts to revamp assessment programs are ramping up. (more…)

The State Education Department official who has supervised the state’s testing program since 2004 — through skyrocketing scores, a brutal crash, and the dawn of an overhaul — has resigned.

David Abrams, the State Education Department’s assistant commissioner for standards, assessment, and reporting since 2004, announced his resignation today. His resignation is effective immediately, shocking some people who had expected to participate in meetings with him this week.

Abrams’s departure comes at a time of robust efforts to overhaul both state tests and how their scores are used — and of robust criticism of those efforts. Most recently, principals across the state have launched a rebellion against the state’s plan to use student test scores in teacher evaluations. This week, a plan to lengthen reading tests to four hours was released prematurely, then rescinded the next day amid backlash.

The department has yet to find a replacement for Abrams, according to SED spokesman Dennis Tompkins. He said other department officials would fill in for Abrams for now, as would members of a privately funded group that has been advising SED on implementing Race to the Top commitments, which include redesigning student assessments and teacher evaluations.

“Obviously [Abrams] will be missed, but we do have a really strong team that can fill in,” Tompkins said. He declined to comment on the reasons for Abrams’s departure.

Abrams supervised the state’s testing program during a period of controversy and change. (more…)

One provision has gone unnoticed in the widely discussed school governance bill that sailed through the Assembly last week.

Though much has been made of language dictating independent oversight and new power for the district superintendents, scant attention has been paid to a sentence that may end up kicking a member of the citywide school board out of office.

The bill states:

No appointed member of the city board shall also be a member, officer, or employee of any public corporation, authority, or commission where the mayor of the city of New York has a majority of the appointments.

Currently, members of the school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, cannot be “employed in any capacity by the city of New York,” but Mayor Bloomberg has evaded the law by naming people he appointed to city agencies.

This includes Alan Aviles, president and CEO of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, who serves at the pleasure of the mayor. (more…)

Garth Harries

The city official who is in the middle of reviewing the city’s special education programs will leave New York at the end of the month to take a top job at a Connecticut school system.

Garth Harries, a former McKinsey consultant who has worked with Chancellor Joel Klein since 2003, is scheduled to be appointed assistant superintendent by the New Haven Board of Education at a meeting tonight. The mayor of New Haven, John DeStefano, has said he wants to improve the city’s public schools in similar ways to Mayor Bloomberg in New York City. Harries’ job is to flesh out the specific of how to transform the schools — and implement them, according to the New Haven Register.

Harries’s new position appears to be similar to the one he held in New York before he took over a review of special education, down to its title, “assistant superintendent for portfolio and performance management.” Until January, he headed the DOE’s Office of Portfolio Development, where he led efforts to create new schools.

Harries called the news “bittersweet” in an e-mail message he sent to special education advocates this morning. He said that New Haven began recruiting him just six weeks ago and said his decision was based in part on the proximity of the job to his wife’s farm in Connecticut.

Harries has been preparing for some time to take on added responsibilities in school leadership. (more…)