GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

A postcard Democracy Prep sent out inviting other schools and parents to their Harlem Armory inauguration party.

I’m planning to spend next Tuesday at this event in Harlem, where a bunch of charter schools — more than 30 last I heard — will be gathering to celebrate inauguration day. School leaders at Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem planned the event after being disappointed in their first plan, to take the whole school to Washington, D.C. The day will include student performances, art projects, and some political work too.

As the postcard Democracy Prep sent out to advertise the day makes clear, the party will also be a chance for charter school supporters to make a political statement in favor of school choice.

Now that the ELA test has been postponed, I’m guessing other schools are making inauguration plans, too. Leave yours in the comments section.

First-year 7th grade teacher C in the City has just one wish for the holidays:

I caught myself praying as I was writing a self-checklist for my students to wrap up this persuasive unit. As a final check for their editorial, I’m going to ask students to go back to their rough drafts and count how many paragraphs they have and write the # in a space: ____ Then, in a moment of desperation and panic, I added next to the blank “<—-If this number isn’t 5, see me.”

And then, I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I realized what I had written was so absurd. I was thinking to myself, God, I hope it’s 5. Please don’t write 3 or 2 or 4. 5 paragraphs please. 5 is the magic number. That’s the only gift I could really appreciate from my kids. Something to affirm that I know what I’m doing slightly. I marvel that by the end of this week or Monday, all students will have written their first persuasive essay, and that I can say I moved 91 students to write a 5 paragraph essay.

After some back and forth between bloggers and the DOE press office, NYC has released scale scores and standard deviations broken down by race for the past seven years of English Language Arts and Math tests. In Eduwonkette’s analysis, they show that the racial achievement gap in the city has increased during the Bloomberg administration, and in 8th grade ELA, the one area where the gap has decreased, it’s because white and Asian scores have declined.

This note on the spreadsheet, coupled with concerns that the tests may have gotten easier, makes you realize just how tricky it is to get a clear picture of how the kids are doing:

As of 2006 the New York State Education Department expanded the ELA and mathematics testing programs to Grades 3-8. Previously, state tests were administered in Grades 4 and 8 and citywide tests were administered in Grades 3,5, 6, and 7. State tests at Grades 3-8 include both multiple-choice and extended response questions. Citywide tests were composed of multiple-choice questions only. As a result of the changes in the testing program, scale score results from 1999 to 2005 cannot be compared with scale scores from 2006 to 2008 because the state changed the scale scores and its corresponding ranges with the introduction of state tests in ELA and math in grades 3-8.

Personally, I’m hoping for some visuals to help bring the numbers to life… (hint, hint).