GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Chancellor-designate Cathie Black visited Medgar Evers College Preparatory School today.

More than a month after being named the next schools chancellor, Cathie Black has yet to see the system at its most troubled.

Black has been to 13 schools, making stops in each of the five boroughs and in schools at each grade level. The majority of schools she’s visited have earned either an A or a B on their annual progress report, meaning they are in no danger of being closed for poor performance. She has been to five “C” schools, none of which are on the city’s “to-be-closed” list.

Asked today if she thought she was getting a “realistic” view of the city’s schools, Black said she had.

“I’ve been to the South Bronx, and that’s about as realistic as you can get, and I felt the same thing,” she told Daily News reporter Rachel Monahan. “The principal has been there for four years. And I asked if [the school] looked like that four years ago, and she said no it did not look like that. So that comes from leadership.” (more…)

Remember how, in 2001, when he was first running for mayor, Michael Bloomberg vowed to require all public school students to wear uniforms, to bring in private companies to take over long-failing schools, and to re-evaluate tenured teachers every two years?

These are among the fun facts included in a self-evaluation Bloomberg released today, running through all the promises he made in his 2001 and 2005 campaigns, and reporting that he’s followed through with most of them (97% in 2005, the report says).

The list of education promises Bloomberg terms stick-a-fork-in-it “Done” (as opposed to those he “reconsidered”) includes many that did obviously happen, but it also includes claims that could inspire challenge. Four promises that caught my eye:

• Improve access to selective schools for students in under-served communities. (2005 campaign promise) The mayor’s report notes that the city now offers summer workshops for parents to encourage them to consider having their children take the entrance exam for selective high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. The city has also offered summer test-prep institutes for low-income students. Still, The New York Times reported last year that proportionately fewer racial minorities were taking the admissions exam, and a lower percentage were passing. There was little change when the paper reexamined the figures this year. Gifted and talented programs for primary school students, meanwhile, have also gotten less racially diverse under Bloomberg’s watch, The Times reported.
• Give teachers more control over how they teach. (2001 promise) The report explains that this “done” stems from the new availability of “a series of tools for teachers that highlight students needs and provides teachers the information to focus on helping students master their subjects.” I assume that refers to projects like ARIS, the data warehouse, and the periodic assessments known as Acuity, meant to give teachers an ongoing portrait of what students do and don’t know throughout the school year. While some teachers embrace these tools, others say the tools limit the way they teach, forcing them to focus too much time on test preparation. (more…)

Among those who have commented on Elizabeth’s post about journalist Jay Mathews’ seven KIPP myths are one of the charter school chain’s most vocal critics; a graduate of a KIPP school in Philadelphia; and Mathews himself. It’s a vibrant discussion and one you should check out.

One topic of debate is whether KIPP schools “cream” students — that is, whether the students who enter their lotteries are better prepared academically or socially, thus priming the schools to outperform their local competitors. In the comments section of Elizabeth’s post, Seth Andrew, the head of Harlem’s Democracy Prep Charter School, argues that other public schools are far more guilty than charters of creaming. He writes:

Traditional Public Schools “cream” far more than charter schools throughout New York. I attended NYC Public schools from grade k-12, and I always took a test before being enrolled. The NYC middle school process evaluates students by their test scores, grades, attendance, and even has parent interviews for a number of traditional public schools. Whether it’s great traditional public schools like FDA, Bronx Science, or Anderson, that require specific entry requirements or G&T tests, or traditional schools that select based on other factors, traditional public schools are far more guilty of “creaming” (both in terms of agressiveness and quantity of students effected) than charters could ever be. We have a legal mandate to enroll by a random lottery.