GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Steven Brill’s latest article chronicling the politics of the Race to the Top competition has caused a torrent of commentary. One contentious aspect of the piece is Brill’s comparison of two schools that share the same building: Harlem Success Academy and P.S. 149. After Valerie Strauss picked up the statistics posted on the New York Public School Parents Blog, there has been much speculation about what types of kids are attending each school. Just how different are the populations anyway?

To figure out the answer, I looked at NY State Accountability Report Cards, the Special Education Service Delivery Report for P.S. 149, as well as special education invoices provided to the UFT by the New York State Education Department. I chose these data sets because they seemed to be the most reliable and the most comparable. By “comparable” I mean that both Harlem Success and P.S. 149 have to submit to the state as part of their Accountability Report Cards data on students who receive free or reduced price lunch (an indicator of economic need), whereas, for instance, only P.S. 149 lists something known as the poverty rate (which is slightly different.)

According to this data, Harlem Success Academy does appear to serve fewer needy students, both in terms of economic status, limited English proficiency, and special education needs.  On the other hand, Harlem Success dramatically outperforms P.S. 149 on 3rd grade test results. (more…)

Special ed advocates objected to the limited choices in this drop-down menu on the proposed IEP form.

A new push by the state to standardize the way school districts plan which services special needs students should receive is rattling parents across New York.

At the heart of the process is a document called the Individualized Education Plan, which a team of experts crafts to describe the student’s educational needs and how the school should address them.

For years, every school district has used its own IEP form. Now, state officials have created standardized forms to be used by all districts.

The officials say this is an important move because it will create consistency across the state, but special education advocates are worried that the new form could put children’s needs in jeopardy. Everyone agrees that IEP forms are crucial documents because they are the strongest form of insurance a parent can have that his child will get specific services. Advocates worry that the forms the state is pushing would weaken that insurance. (more…)

I just spent the afternoon at a public hearing about the state’s proposed changes to special needs students’ individualized education plans. I’ll have more to say about the controversial proposal soon, but one thing that surprised me was that the hearing overlapped with parent-teacher conferences for self-contained District 75 programs in New York City. With 23,000 students with special needs enrolled in District 75, I wonder how many parents would have liked to attend the hearing but prioritized meeting with their child’s teacher instead?