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The Bloomberg administration has long touted the small high schools it created as outperforming large schools closed to make way for them. But a new report finds, for the second time, that the schools also post higher graduation rates than other city schools that stayed open.

Being randomly selected to attend small high schools opened under the Bloomberg administration made students significantly more likely to graduate, even as the schools got older, according to the report, conducted by researchers at the nonprofit firm MDRC.

The researchers updated a 2010 study that examined “small schools of choice” that opened between 2002 and 2008 and did not select students based on their academic performance. Of the 123 schools that fit that bill, 105 had so many applicants that the schools selected among them randomly, through a lottery.

The lottery process enabled the researchers to compare what happened to two groups of students that started out statistically identical: those who were admitted to the small schools and those who lost the lotteries and wound up in older, larger schools. That type of comparison is considered the “gold standard” in education research.

The original study found that the small high schools had positive effects on their students — but it looked only at the schools’ very first enrollees. The new report looks at those students in the fifth year after they enrolled and also at the second set of students who enrolled at the schools.

It finds that the higher graduation rate — 67.9 percent, compared to 59.3 percent for students who were not admitted — continued for the second group of students who enrolled and cut across all groups of students, regardless of their race, gender, family income, or academic skills upon enrollment. Students at the small schools were also more likely to meet the state’s college readiness standards in English, though not in math.

“Small schools for a variety of reasons, I always felt, were going to succeed in certain ways,” said Richard Kahan, the head of Urban Assembly, a nonprofit that started a handful of schools included in the study. “But I would not have predicted the impact.” (more…)

Geraldine Maione, principal of William E. Grady CTE High School, speaks to a teacher getting ready for summer school.

“Everything about this school has improved. Everything.”

Geraldine Maione, principal of William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School in Brighton Beach, does not hesitate when asked about the trajectory of her school.

Maione just finished her first year at Grady, where she was greeted with a staff weary of leadership changes, a curriculum that has see-sawed between emphasizing traditional academics and the school’s signature “shops,” and a D grade on its 2009-10 progress report.

She was also given $1.4 million of additional “transformation” money through the federal government’s program to improve low-achieving schools.

At the end of her first year, staff members say they’ve felt the impact of Maione’s leadership and the additional funds—though it is unclear if the school is yet making the academic gains it needs to avoid facing closure in the future.

The transformation money helped pay for an array of cosmetic changes to the building and school trips to colleges throughout New York state, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC.

The entrance area was repainted from black and white to maroon and yellow, the school colors. The front doors are now framed by planters, filled with flowers, that double as benches. Murals featuring civil rights leaders and faces of current students fill once-blank hallway walls. (more…)

The 14 high schools the city is trying to close this year posted lower-than-average graduation rates — but they are not all the city’s worst.

Now, teachers union officials are drawing attention to three other high schools approved for closure that posted graduation rate increases two times or more than the city’s overall 2 percent gain. In the Bronx, Christopher Columbus High School’s 4-year graduation rate rose by 5.7 percentage points, to 41.6 percent. Norman Thomas High School, in Manhattan, saw its 4-year rate go from 37 percent to 47.8 percent. Brooklyn’s Paul Robeson High School saw a similar leap, to 50 percent from 40.4 percent last year.

“We knew that we had increased our graduation rate last year by 10 percent and have been saying that since November but no one pays any attention,” said Stefanie Siegel, a Robeson teacher who has been active in protests against the school’s planned closure.

“When our spirits were high after we won the court case last year, we made great gains in a short period of time,” she said.

That court case was the lawsuit the teachers union won to stop the city from closing 19 low-performing schools. Performance boosts at three of the high schools kept them off the chopping block this year. Two of the schools got higher progress report grades, 85 percent of which depend on graduation rates and students’ progress toward graduation. The city said it was confident in a leadership change at the third school.

The schools with oversized gains this year still lag well behind the citywide average 4-year graduation rate of 61 percent. And many of the other schools slated for closure continued to post dismal graduation figures. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg points to a chart showing graduation rate increases among ethnic groups.

Those were the messages Mayor Bloomberg broadcast at the city’s press conference about new graduation rate data, which put the city’s official 4-year graduation rate over 60 percent for the first time.

Indeed, the data released today show that two trends continued last year: The city’s graduation rate again rose faster than that of other urban districts in New York State, and black and Hispanic students posted larger gains than white and Asian students, though they still lag far behind.

But today’s data also draw attention to the fact that many city students are making it to graduation despite weak academic skills. According to a new measure the state adopted this year, just 21 percent of students who entered city high schools in 2006 were ready for college four years later. A higher proportion of graduates — 35 percent — met the state’s standards, city officials noted.

Bloomberg said the focus on college readiness gives short shrift to real performance improvements. “If you don’t give people credit for what they’ve done, they can’t go on,” he said.

At the press conference, which took place at the Van Arsdale campus in Brooklyn, Bloomberg was accompanied by Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, department deputies, principals, students, and principals union president Ernest Logan — but not UFT President Michael Mulgrew. The mayor took aim at the state’s argument that city students are not ready for college, saying that measures of college-readiness are ”just arbitrary points.” (more…)

An audit by the state comptroller found that the city might have underreported its dropout rate by reclassifying dropouts as “discharges,” or students who have moved out of the district. But new procedures actually make it extremely burdensome for schools to classify students as discharged, school officials say.

Until this year, high schools could classify a student as discharged to another state or city as long as the student provided proof of address that was confirmed by two people. That meant the student was removed from his original school’s roster without hurting its graduation rate.

But now the city requires city schools to prove that a school elsewhere requested transcripts of students they say are discharges, not dropouts. School administrators say this requirement presents a mountain of new paperwork for overworked personnel and, sometimes, real difficulty, as transfer students often encounter complications enrolling in new schools.

Students might take a long time to find a school in their new home. They might have a hard time navigating an interstate paperwork shuffle. Their new school might not require a transcript. Or they might be kept out of out-of-state schools altogether because of their disciplinary records or language needs, according to Rhonda Hugel, assistant principal at Lower East Side Preparatory High School, which serves a large Chinese immigrant population. “Who knows if these states have the resources for the kids,” she said.

The stakes are high. If schools don’t get sufficient documentation from a student’s new school within 20 days, he could be counted as a dropout, and the school’s graduation rate could fall. (more…)

Department of Education officials frequently claim that students who attend schools that are phasing out benefit from being there. As school officials told City Council members last week, students get more attention and a stronger push toward grad as the schools get smaller.

Today, two posts in the GothamSchools Community section challenge the city’s story. In the first (reposted from the blog EdVox), Melissa Kissoon describes what happened to her school after it started phasing out. She writes:

My first two years of high school at Lane were great. There were clubs and extra credit activities to help students get ahead or to help struggling students pass. …

Now all the great teachers we once loved have either switched to the other schools in the building or have just gone to another school completely. Now there is no money for the last year of students within my school. For example, there is no longer a library!

A second Community piece, by Christine Rowland, looks at graduation and dropout rates at the four schools where she has worked — two of which closed in 2006 and two of which are up for closure this year. At last week’s City Council hearing, the department presented data that showed that both graduation rates and dropout rates climbed at schools in the process of phasing out.

Rowland dug into the DOE’s data archives and found that that pattern hasn’t always been true. (more…)

CFE found that eighth-grade attendance was more closely associated with graduation rates than any other variable.

City high schools that serve similar students graduate their students at wildly different rates, according to a report to be released today.

Among schools with the neediest students, one school graduated 90 percent of students in four years. Another graduated just 34 percent, the report found.

The report confirms that the city’s highest-performing schools overwhelmingly enroll students who already had high test scores and attendance rates. But it also shows that even among schools serving the highest-need students, some do a much better job graduating students than others.

The report was prepared by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the group that successfully fought for an extra $5.4 billion in 2004 for the city’s neediest schools.

The study looked at ninth graders who entered high school in 2004.  It separated high schools into peer groups based on the demographics and eighth-grade academic performances of that class.  (Read the full report here.) (more…)

Source: New York State Education Department

New York City’s graduation rates have increased for the fifth time in as many years.

The 4-year graduation rate for students who entered high school in 2005 rose to 59 percent, according to data released today by State Education Commissioner David Steiner. That’s 3 percentage points higher than the graduation rate of 56 percent last year for students who started ninth grade in 2004. Another 3.7 percent of students graduated last summer, just after their fourth year of high school. And the city’s 5-year graduation rate rose 3 points as well, to 66 percent.

The overall state graduation rate ticked upward by one percentage point, to 72 percent. Steiner noted that the pace of growth statewide has slowed from last year.

We’ll have more detailed information on New York City’s rates and coverage of the mayor and chancellor’s take on the data later today. In the meantime, the state’s slides and spreadsheets are available here.

Comptroller William Thompson is releasing his second education audit in two days right now, this time focusing on testing conditions and oversight in the city schools. Also for the second time in two days, the comptroller has barred a Department of Education spokesman from his announcement.

Today’s audit exposes “major flaws in testing by the New York City Department of Education,” Thompson’s office said in a press announcement this morning. But the audit says, “Our observations conducted at the sample schools on the day of testing did not reveal any instances of cheating.”

Today’s report is already drawing some of the same criticism from the city as yesterday’s audit, about how city schools qualify students for graduation. That audit found sloppy record-keeping at many city schools but no clear evidence of grade-tampering. City officials charged that Thompson conducted the graduation audit for political, rather than professional, reasons. As the city comptroller, Thompson’s job is to audit official city statistics. But he is also the main challenger to Mayor Bloomberg’s reelection bid.

DOE press chief David Cantor leveled the first complaints about today’s audit just minutes after the press conference began — a press conference that he was not attending after being kicked out by a member of Thompson’s staff. (more…)

The accelerating 2009 mayoral campaign is distracting from real information inside an audit of city graduation rates released by the city comptroller’s office today. In fact, the audit is neither as damning as Bill Thompson Jr., the comptroller and mayoral hopeful, is claiming — nor as unequivocally rosy as the Bloomberg administration says.

Thompson said the audit suggests that principals and teachers responded to pressure to raise graduation rates by falsifying student records. “The New York City Department of Education has become the Enron of American education, showing the gains and hiding the losses,” he said at a press conference today.

But the audit found no evidence of tampering. Thompson’s declaration about fudging numbers came in remarks to reporters, not the official audit. “Is it just about sloppy bookkeeping or sloppy record-keeping? I don’t think so,” he said. He added, “This is a case where you can read between the lines.”

The audit also concludes that only 2 out of 206 randomly selected graduates, or 1%, did not deserve their diplomas. That’s quite different than the 10% figure being widely reported. Auditors initially challenged 19 graduates, or 10%, but threw out the concerns about 17 of them after school officials provided documents showing they earned their diplomas. And 11 of the 19 had overall grade averages of 80% or better, according to the audit. (more…)