Posts tagged "spin cycle"
spin cycle
March 7, 2013
City to begin rotating assistant principals, against their protest
Dozens of assistant principals were told on Wednesday that they would be removed from the schools where they have worked since the beginning of the year and placed in other schools.
The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, which represents assistant principals, says the surprising news is sure to wreak havoc on schools just as they begin state testing, which assistant principals often coordinate.
The rotation is part of the Department of Education’s strategy to reduce the number of educators who do not have permanent positions but who remain on the department’s payroll. Teachers whose positions have been eliminated by budget cuts or school closures and do not land another position in the school system enter the Absent Teacher Reserve, which department officials have criticized as financially burdensome and a refuge for “teachers who either don’t care to, or can’t, find a job.”
The equivalent of the ATR pool for administrators is the “excess pool.” Currently, there are 192 assistant principals and a small number of principals in the pool. (more…)
spin cycle
June 11, 2012
Bloomberg praises 2011 grad data growth, but hedges on future
Bloomberg with Walcott and Nilda Gomez-Katz, one of four high school principals at the old Bushwick High School building.
Mayor Bloomberg did his best to put a rosy spin on the newly-released graduation rates that showed New York City’s progress last year has flattened for the first time in seven years.
Stunted graduation numbers weren’t a setback as much as they were an impressive achievement in the face of higher standards, he said at a press conference this afternoon. And better rates of improvement in other cities weren’t an indication of New York City’s failures, but a credit to what those school districts were doing right.
“They’re doing a great job and they should be congratulated,” Bloomberg said, even though in past years he’s used such comparisons to tout his own city’s growth. “That doesn’t mean we aren’t doing a great job.”
But even Bloomberg grew sober when asked about future graduation rates. Beginning this year, all students who began high school in 2007 or after will not have the option to earn a less-demanding local diploma, which for years helped prop up the city’s overall graduation numbers.
“That’ll make it tougher,” the mayor said. The man to his left, Chancellor Dennis Walcott, quickly agreed. (more…)
spin cycle
August 8, 2011
Bloomberg boasts about outsized gains, but critics are cautious
Mayor Bloomberg struck a boastful tone as he and Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced modest gains in city students’ test scores today.
Bloomberg focused on the improvement in city students’ scores relative to the test score gains across the state. He said the improvements were especially notable given changes to the state tests to make them tougher.
“The only way to measure how students are doing year in and year out is to compare them to how students are doing in the rest of the state,” Bloomberg said. “The good news is, no matter where the state sets the bar for proficiency, New York City students continue to achieve at higher levels each time.”
City students’ average test scores went up by 1.5 percentage points in reading and 3.3 points in math, more than scores statewide. But the city’s reading and math scores still lag about 10 points behind schools in the rest of the state, city officials acknowledged.
Nonetheless, Bloomberg said the small jumps in city students’ math and English scores amounted to an “enormous difference.”
To underscore the upward trajectory, Bloomberg even presented a graph of how students would have performed according to the standards that were in place before last year. The graph projected that under the old scoring system, which the state discarded last year as inflated, 86.7 percent of students would be considered proficient in math and 72.7 percent of students would be considered proficient in reading.
Howard Everson, a professor at the Center for Advanced Study in Education at CUNY and chair of the Technical Advisory Group, a committee that guides the state’s testing program, said that the gains under the new standards were small, they can be viewed as statistically significant because of the sheer number of students tested. He also said he trusted the state’s ability to track score trends even as the tests’ length, composition, and proficiency standards change.
But critics of the Bloomberg administration’s school policies cautioned against reading too much into the new scores. (more…)
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