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The city Department of Education today heralded performance gains among students who are considered English language learners in a new report about how those students have fared under Chancellor Joel Klein’s leadership.

The tone of the report and its accompanying press release is very different from the tone of Friday’s mayoral control hearing in the Bronx, where numerous speakers complained that the department has paid too little attention to ELL students.

The report declares that Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have built a “stronger system-wide infrastructure” to support English language learners, and says that the efforts are “starting to bear fruit.” More than 29% of fourth-graders met English standards in 2008, compared to 4% in 2003; 64% met math standards in 2008, up from 36% in 2003. The report cautions that middle school test scores and graduation rates are not as rosy, but points out that former English language learners — students who once received help in learning English but have since tested proficient at English — are out-performing even non-ELL students.

The report paints a very different picture from the one presented at the Bronx hearing Friday. (more…)

A graph from Assemblyman James Brennan's report shows that test score increases began before 2002, when mayoral control was enacted and Mayor Bloomberg took office.

A Brooklyn lawmaker is throwing doubt on two key arguments in both Mayor Bloomberg’s re-election campaign and his effort to keep the mayor in charge of the public school system: The idea that Bloomberg’s leadership is responsible for city students’ rising scores on standardized tests — and the extent to which achievement actually improved under Bloomberg.

In a paper released earlier this year, Assemblyman James Brennan points out that city students’ test scores were rising steadily for four years before Bloomberg took office, and, in some cases, at a faster pace than they have under Bloomberg.

He also argues that a list of changes in the schools that are unrelated to the Blooomberg administration or mayoral control (a near quadrupling of early childhood programs, for instance, and a dramatic increase in state funding that dates back to 1998) are the real reason for the gains the system has made.

“I generally don’t view their success to be credible,” Brennan, who could play a significant role in the mayoral control discussions this spring, said in a recent interview. “I do not believe that some of the recent improvements in the school system are directly related to policies of Klein.”

Brennan’s stance directly challenges the mayor and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who declare in speeches, billboards, television advertisements, and interviews that their changes to the school system are responsible for a battery of improvements, including higher test scores. A Department of Education spokesman, Andrew Jacob, defended this point of view in a short memo disputing Brennan’s conclusions.

The memo argues that the city’s test scores are rising more steadily than scores across New York State, and accuses Brennan of ignoring several Bloomberg administration policies, including the opening of hundreds of new schools and transfers of funds to schools from the bureaucracy. It also points out an indisputable rise in the graduation rate, which soared by 10 percentage points under Bloomberg, compared to a change of just one-tenth of a percentage point in the entire decade before he took control of the schools.

Below the fold, I’ll walk through each part of the dispute. (more…)

The number of schools considered to be failing state standards dropped to an all-time low this year, both among city schools and schools across New York state, according to a new list released by the state education department today.

The state has been using student test scores to make the list of schools placed “under registration review” since 1989. Every year, the state makes avoiding the list slightly harder, by raising the bar for how many students need to pass exams. Schools placed on the list risk being shut down; of the more than 300 schools placed on the list since 1989, 228 have been removed. Today’s list, which includes 43 schools statewide, takes into account test scores from last school year, which skyrocketed across the state in reading and math for students between grades 3 and 8.

Thirteen New York City schools improved their test scores enough to climb off the list of schools categorized as being “under registration review,” while four city schools joined the list. Another three city schools would have joined the list, but are being shut down by the city.

As Elissa Gootman reports at CityRoom, the Times metro blog, two of the four city schools joining the list — West Bronx Academy and New Explorers High School — are among the recent new small schools created by Mayor Bloomberg as part of his effort to improve the school system. The other schools are Boys and Girls High School and PS 230 in the Bronx. Three schools, Samuel Tilden High School, a large high school in Brooklyn, Business School For Entrepreneurial Studies in the Bronx, and South Shore High School in Brooklyn, would have been put on the state failing list but are being shut down by the city. (more…)

One highlight of the mayoral control panel put together by the parent commission Friday night was testimony by Robert Tobias, the former city testing czar and now New York University professor. Tobias has often been quoted expressing concerns that the Bloomberg administration inflates its record of educational improvement.

But the analysis Tobias presented Friday, explaining exactly what progress he thinks happened (“real” improvements in math) and what he thinks did not (any narrowing of a longstanding gap between the state and city students’ scores on reading tests), was the most succinct summary I’ve ever heard him deliver — not to mention a striking counterpoint to the sanguine evaluations of Chancellor Joel Klein, Mayor Bloomberg, and even Caroline Kennedy.

Here’s what Tobias said:

Tobias also tempered the fact of the improvements in math scores with a warning about score inflation, the phenomenon by which test-prepping, in his words, can “undermine” the meaningfulness of the test as an indicator of what students know, versus how well they have been prepped. (Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Daniel Koretz has written the most on score inflation that I know of. For more on the topic, see this story I wrote for the Sun and these posts by Eduwonkette.)

Tobias’s remarks on score inflation are below the jump. Thanks to David Bellel for sending me the video. (more…)

In the battle over whether to make class sizes smaller, the city appears to be scoring a win against the state. That’s the picture painted in a report school officials sent to the City Council Friday. The report shows that, two years after the state poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the city with the aim of lowering class sizes, public school classes are on average larger than the target values in most grades. (View all recent class size data reported by the city here.)

The figures are a relative win for the Department of Education, which has repeatedly dismissed the goal of reducing class sizes as a pipe dream that will not improve education. (more…)

Graph by Eduwonkette.

Sociologist Jennifer Jennings (who blogs as Eduwonkette) graphed a change in demographics at the city’s eight specialized high schools, providing dramatic visual evidence of a trend described in detail by the New York Times last week.

The Times article focused on persistently low numbers of black and Hispanic students in both the group of students taking the demanding high school entrance exam and scoring high enough to earn a place at one of the specialized high schools.

But Eduwonkette’s graph shows that black and Hispanic students have long been underrepresented in the elite high schools. Instead, it suggests that the real news in recent years is soaring enrollment at specialized high schools by Asian students and declining enrollment by white students.