GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Graduating from one school to another for sixth grade is typical, but the arrangement is not ideal for student achievement.

That’s according to a new study the compared the varied pathways that city students took to eighth grade from 1995 to 2002. The report, “The Path Not Taken: How Does School Organization Affect Eighth-Grade Achievement?”, was just released in the Summer 2011 issue of the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

Led by Amy Ellen Schwartz and Leanna Stiefel at New York University, the researchers looked at “grade span paths,” or the grade configurations of the schools that students attended on their way to eighth grade. With more than 900 elementary and middle schools, New York City boasted 28 different grade span paths during the period studied, the report notes, making it an ideal laboratory to study effects of school organization on student achievement.

Looking at eighth-grade state and city test scores and controlling for a host of other factors, the researchers found that students who moved from K-4 schools to 5-8 schools and students who remained enrolled in a single K-8 school outperformed students who moved to middle school in sixth grade. But they couldn’t conclude why those arrangements were more successful.

“Our results suggest that changing school less frequently, changing schools at an earlier grade, a smaller size of the within-school cohort, and the stability of students’ peer cohorts are the most likely explanations for these positive performance differences,” the researchers write. (more…)

At Manhattan’s PS 140, students in Tony Paulino’s middle school Spanish classes are exploring the geography, economics, and culture of South America, all without leaving their classroom.

They’re using the Internet to follow the One Road South team of adventurers on a 14-month bicycle trip around the continent. Through a program called Reach The World, kids at 60 of the city’s elementary and middle schools are getting a taste of global citizenship by following the One Road South bikers, a family traveling in Europe, a bike trek in Africa, and a Harlem teacher working with scientists in Antarctica through online videos, journals, and field notes.

Sometimes, students even get to meet the travelers they are following online. Three of the four One Road South bicyclists recently visited Paulino’s classes to present a slide show about the places they plan to visit.

The students jumped in with questions, asking if the travelers were afraid of wild animals, running out of food, or going for 14 months without having a girlfriend.

But Reach the World isn’t just for fun. (more…)

Yesterday, Elizabeth posted a letter from Comptroller William Thompson urging city officials to use millions of dollars earmarked for reopening a Brooklyn jail instead to build new schools.

But the comptroller isn’t the first to use the Brooklyn House of Detention as a pawn in an argument about schools.

Way back in January (Yes, it’s been a long year!), City Council member David Yassky, who represents the jail’s neighborhood, supported a plan that would renovate the building to include a new middle school, in addition to shops and jail cells. But after a sharp outcry from parents and other community members, the city killed the proposal quickly.

Should middle school students have to earn credits in specific courses in order to graduate and enter high school? That’s what middle school teacher Adam Berlin proposes in a column in EdWeek:

A graduation credit system that included grades 7-12 would help establish the academic accountability currently lacking in middle schools. In such a system, middle school students, needing to earn credits toward graduation, would repeat failed classes as they do in high school. Ideally, they also would come to understand at the age of 11 or 12—not as 14-year-olds—that it is important to study and do your work.

He says that social promotion is problematic for allowing students to coast into high school without necessary skills. But retaining students is also problematic, he writes, because students who are held back have to repeat courses they’ve passed in addition to those they’ve failed.

Berlin proposes that students make up failed courses in the summer. Summer school would focus on key concepts and skills from the failed course, rather than trying to review all course content, and would also emphasize skills needed for the following year’s course. And summer work would culminate in alternative assessments that would allow students to demonstrate key content and skills, rather than comprehensive final exams.

Should we make middle school promotion work more like high school? What do you think?