GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

A change to the city’s high school admissions timeline could alleviate eighth-graders’ anxiety.

In the past, eighth-graders did not all find out at the same time where they had been admitted to high school. Some students — those who won admission to the city’s elite specialized high schools or to LaGuardia High School, a performing arts school — found out in mid-February where they got in. Students who didn’t apply to those schools or weren’t admitted didn’t learn what high school had accepted them until late March.

Starting next year, all high school applicants will find out at the same time in February where they are headed to high school, according to an Insideschools report about tweaks to the admissions process.

The change will likely come as a relief to students, many of whom found the two-part schedule stressful. In March, eighth-grader Audrey Bachman wrote in the Community section about “the empty feeling of not knowing” where she would go to high school after many of her classmates already knew their options:

But when I think about all of this, all this drama and emotion … all for one thing that is determined by some test?  What 13-year-old should have to deal with this? The fact that the high school process in New York City is set up in a way that makes some kids feel like losers and some kids feel like winners in the end is not a very good life lesson.

Buried in a New York Times article about the suspension of George Washington High School’s famed baseball coach is a reminder of the steep challenge students face when trying to switch high schools.

Fernelys Sanchez was admitted to Lehman High School in the Bronx but wanted to play baseball for George Washington’s winning team, the Times reports. So he moved into his father’s apartment in Washington Heights. Then he tried — for more than a year before he succeeded — to win a transfer.

But a policy shift over the last several years means that the city’s system of school choice largely closes off once students are in high school.

“For whatever reason, it has become increasingly difficult, almost impossible, to get a transfer to another regular high school,” Pamela Wheaton of Insideschools told me two years ago. City officials say it’s not educationally sound for students to change high schools unless they absolutely have to.

The city gives three reasons students can transfer from one high school to another: a long commute, a safety risk, or a health issue. Sanchez’s family said he tried all of them: (more…)

A delay in special education reforms is the first sign that plans laid out before Chancellor Cathie Black’s arrival might not be carried out as intended.

The Department of Education was supposed to expand changes to special education from 260 schools system-wide this fall. But that plan has been pushed back to 2012, Black told principals in an email earlier this week. The move was first reported by Insideschools, which reported that special education advocates said the city would not have been able to scale up the changes successfully on its original timeline.

The slowdown is notable because it marks Black’s first departure from the script set out for her by her predecessor, Joel Klein. Since being appointed chancellor, Black has largely indicated that she will stay Klein’s course. In her previous “Principals Weekly” emails, she expressed commitments to many of Klein’s priorities, last week inviting more schools to join the Innovation Zone he launched last year.

The special education expansion plan was ambitious from the start. An internal review completed in July 2009 called for substantial reforms. But by February, when the city began explaining its plans to special education advocates, few details had been fleshed out. Changes to state special education requirements and unanswered questions about funding are contributing to the delay, Insideschools reported.

Black’s complete email to principals is below. (more…)

The website InsideSchools, which for years has provided independent information about schools for parents and teachers, has found a new home at The New School.

Founded in 2002 by Pamela Wheaton and Clara Hemphill, the site and its staff will be based out of the Center for New York City Affairs at the university, where Hemphill currently works. And as part of the move, the co-founders are retooling the site — updating its look and writing reviews that cater to parents who don’t have perfect English.

“The idea is that we want to make the site more accessible to people who don’t read very well and who might not speak English, so we’re going to try to have videos and pictures and try to have less text,” said Hemphill, the site’s senior editor, in a phone interview today.

“Of the schools the chancellor has opened, most of them are really geared for at-risk kids, so we wanted to make it easier for kids who have kind of limited reading levels to navigate,” she said. (more…)

A screenshot from the Insideschools homepage.

Mayoral control is not the only city education institution that lapsed yesterday. The Web site Insideschools.org, which for years has provided independent information about schools for parents and teachers, has dramatically scaled down its operations beginning today.

The site launched in 2002 with funding that was always set to run out now. Unfortunately, in a year when advertisers, philanthropists, and foundations alike are keeping their pocketbooks close, Insideschools hasn’t been able to raise the capital to keep going. The site’s downsizing comes at a time when both critics and supporters of the Bloomberg administration say parents need more good information about their schools. 

I worked at Insideschools for three years, from 2005 until I helped launch GothamSchools last year. Yesterday was the last day of work for many of my former colleagues and this morning, Helen Zelon, the site’s lead blogger, posted for the last time. Insideschools’ few remaining staff members and volunteers will continue to collect basic information about each school and monitor admissions news, a sometimes-herculean task in itself. But they won’t be able to visit and review schools or provide many of the services that their readers, tens of thousands of city parents, desperately seek.

Here at GothamSchools we eschew editorializing. But when it comes to getting school news to New Yorkers, we don’t mind saying more is better.

A frequent criticism of charter schools is that they succeed by “creaming” children. A new analysis by Insideschools finds that many city charter schools do have significantly fewer needy students than other public schools.

Vanessa Witenko, a former colleague of mine, analyzed data from city charter schools (although she had trouble obtaining some data) and found that most do not enroll homeless students, offer special programs for students still learning how to speak English, or provide special education services that are legally required for some children with special needs.

Here are a few key excerpts.

On why charter schools enroll just 111 of the city’s 51,000 homeless students:

“The application period is February and March and the lottery is held in April,” said [Jeff] Litt [of the Carl C. Icahn charter schools]. “A mother who comes [to the shelter] in June is too late, so their kids go to the neighborhood school.” Homeless families may have priorities other than seeking alternatives to their neighborhood schools, he said. “They have daily survival needs. I don’t know if they have the time to research who we are, what we are, how to get in.”

On some charter schools’ use of Collaborative Team Teaching classes, intended for some children with special needs, to educate children who are learning English: (more…)

A public school principal in Fort Greene is asking for a public, face-to-face meeting with concerned community members after Internet and newspaper reports described dissatisfaction with his leadership.

One report, in the Brooklyn Paper, said unhappiness with the principal, Sean Keaton, of the Clinton Hill School, P.S. 20, is behind a surge of interest in the nearby Community Roots charter school. Another report, at Insideschools.org, includes a parent describing Keaton as “authoritarian,” “hostile,” and “abusive.” The frustration comes as a flood of middle class families are moving to the Brooklyn neighborhood – and often searching for options outside P.S. 20, their zoned school. The Brooklyn Paper reported that only 27% of kindergarten-aged students zoned for P.S. 20 attend it.

Parents posting in the comments sections of the Times blog and at Insideschools said they feel Keaton shuts them out of the school. One said that he has a “closed door policy to the parents.” (more…)

Eighth graders at many middle schools this afternoon enacted one of the more emotional rituals of New York City public school life: Comparing their high school placement letters.

Back in December, each eighth grader submitted an application ranking up to 12 high schools, joined by a handful of high school freshmen hoping to change schools for tenth grade. Then the Department of Education’s computer system matched applicants to schools based on their qualifications and preferences. (Check out Insideschools for a more detailed description of the matching process.) Today, students found out what result the computer spat out for them.

The DOE announced today that 86 percent of the 86,169 applicants matched with one of their top five high school picks, and that 91 percent matched with a school somewhere on their list. About 6,000 students found out their high school options last month by scoring high enough on the specialized high school exam to win admission to one of those schools, or by winning admission to LaGuardia, the city’s elite performing arts school.

The DOE delivers match letters to middle schools, and the schools pass them on to their students. (more…)

The five-borough tour by members of the State Assembly’s education committee to listen to public comments about mayoral control ends today with a marathon hearing in Brooklyn.

The hearing begins at City Tech at 10 a.m. and, like its predecessors, is likely to stretch long into the evening. Education committee chair Cathy Nolan says today’s hearing will focus on the Department of Education’s business contracts, as well as on academic achievement under mayoral control, reports Helen Zelon for Insideschools. One person who will testify on behalf of the DOE for the first time is Eric Nadelstern, the official who was recently promoted to “chief schools officer” for the system, Zelon reports.

Some mayoral control fans got an early start this morning. An e-mail sent by an intern at Learn NY, the group lobbying to preserve mayoral control, suggested that attendees arrive an hour early, at 9 a.m., “for visibility.” East Brooklyn Congregations, a coalition of churches, is also holding a pre-hearing rally to support mayoral control; David Brawley, a co-chair, said in a press release that the coalition is bringing 350 parent and community leaders to represent the roughly 350 new schools created under Mayor Bloomberg’s school leadership. Last month, Elizabeth met an EBC leader, Reverend David Haberer, and took this video of him explaining why he supports mayoral control:

Then, late in the afternoon, after they get off from work, parents who support changing the school governance structure will pour into the hearing, according to April Humphrey, who organizes the Campaign for Better Schools, which is calling for more community involvement in school governance. About 150 Campaign for Better Schools supporters arrived at last week’s Bronx hearing around 5:30 p.m., Humphrey told me.

When results of the Department of Education’s screening for gifted and talented programs came out last year, parents of qualifying children had two major complaints: that the ultra-elite programs were all located in Manhattan, and that some districts didn’t have gifted kindergarten classes.

Today, the department revealed the locations of three new programs reserved for the highest-scoring children throughout the city; All three are in Brooklyn and Queens. And back in October, before screening for the programs even started, the DOE announced that all district gifted programs would now begin in kindergarten.

I became familiar with parents’ complaints last year because I was then blogging at Insideschools.org, the site that many parents use to research schools. My posts about gifted and talented admissions got hundreds of comments, such as this one:

The three programs announced today could double the number of seats in citywide gifted programs, depending on whether families choose to enroll in them. But that would still mean that fewer than half of the children qualifying for the programs last year could be accommodated. (more…)